Catacombs

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Oh? I thought our crew had taken care of the pirate problem in this sector,” Mother said. “So where do you think raw, untrained kittens are going to find ships that want to take them on?”

  “Haven’t you heard about the rat problem?”

  “Have you forgotten it takes training to learn to handle a rat? Have you been teaching your offspring to hunt, Jockey?”

  “Well, not yet, of course …”

  “Then I think it’s time we start.”

  “Don’t look at me. I’m needed back on my old bucket of bolts. And there’s only room for one top tom there. I cannot wait to see the faces of my crew when they see me back again. The treats and pets are never going to stop.” He sat down and preened his whiskers. The kittens did the same thing. “They will be lining up all the most gorgeous queens in the galaxy to partake of my services.”

  “You can start wooing them right away,” Mother told him sharply. “Because quite a few of them are on the ship.”

  “I’ve already started,” he told her.

  “It’s time for me to start too, then, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, and sauntered off down the corridor, stopping at each cabin to consult with the cats inside. Within a couple of hours she had a trail of six kittens behind her as she toured the ship, showing them all of our passages. There would be no place for me to hide now.

  When she finished with one group, and whatever grooming, sleeping, or eating she had to do, she began with more kittens. Sometimes their mothers came too, but more often the ladies enjoyed a little well-needed rest.

  Jubal and I lay on our bunk while he stroked me, and my children too, since they wouldn’t leave us alone. What was it with them and my tail anyway?

  Chessie’s started a kitten school, hasn’t she? he asked me. Your mom’s quite a kitty.

  Better her than me, I said.

  But I got antsy after a very short time because as infested with vermin as the ship had been before, once the kitten school started, there wasn’t enough work left to keep any one cat occupied.

  Even my sire decided to get into the act, making all of the kittens call him “sensei” and instructing them in the arts of feline battle. Some of the male kittens came away looking like they’d done something naughty, and I suspected he was telling them his seduction techniques after class.

  Renpet was still too weak to be much of a mother to our two, so I ended up kitten-sitting them when they weren’t with one or the other of their grandparents.

  “Papa, what is all of that stuff in the room with the big piece of space in it?” Junior asked me one day.

  It took me a whisker twitch to realize he meant the bridge—the view port held the largest piece of space he’d ever seen.

  “That’s where they run the ship,” I told him.

  “Why is it only humans doing it?”

  “Well, I guess because the ship is their toy.”

  “Pa-Ra has a ship. Mother used to have one.” Pa-Ra was what the kittens called Pshaw-Ra, who was their grandfather. He had never spent much time with them, but both Renpet and Balthazar had told them stories about him.

  “Yes, but only Pa-Ra’s ship works. And it’s specially made for him. Humans wouldn’t be able to work it at all.”

  We hopped up onto the platform with all of the consoles. There were two other cat families there already, sleeping or just resting beside their humans’ feet. Shahori and Sheleg and their siblings were among them.

  Indu was at her console, so we hopped up there so I could show the kids the controls. I wished Jubal were there so he could give them a guided tour, but he was off changing other cats’ litter boxes again, probably. However, Indu reached over, gave me a nice pat and said, “Hi, Chester. Showing your kittens how things work, are you?”

  Yow! Understanding cat must be catching. The crew was so used to Jubal doing it, they seemed to be getting the hang of it. “You know all about the gravity control,” she said, pointing to the button I’d accidentally pushed when I was a baby. “I can’t see demonstrating it with so many kittens and a sick mother on board, however. The kittens will just have to wait until they get their new assignments before they swim in free fall.”

  Shahori and Sheleg joined us, Shahori putting his paws lightly on Indu’s thigh. “What’s ‘assignment’ mean, Chester?”

  “All that stuff my mother is teaching you to do? That’s what you will do on your own when you get your new home—your new home is your assignment. You’ll have your own Cat Person with nothing to do but take care of all of the human stuff for you so you can devote yourself to hunting and making the ship safe.”

  “Are we all going to ships?”

  “Your mother already has a ship that will want her back,” I told him. “So do most of the other adults. The crew is looking for other places for most of you kittens.”

  “Even us, Papa?” my daughter asked. “We can’t stay with you?”

  I didn’t know how to put it. I was sure that it would be okay with Jubal if my kittens stayed with us forever, but his parents would probably sell them as they had with the rest of us.

  “They’re looking for better homes for you. Ones where you can be top cats instead of just one of a clowder. We are all a very special kind of cat, and they have to spread our specialness around.”

  “This,” Indu said, “is the scanner array, where we can see other ships even when they are too far away to see through the view port. Over there where Charlotte is sitting is the com unit. You’ve all seen what it can do in your cabins, where it shows pictures of what’s going on in other cabins and holds, on other ships, even dirtside.”

  “What’s ‘dirtside’?” Junior asked me.

  “It’s like Mau—a planet or maybe a moon,” I explained. “Not a ship or space station.”

  When there’s no big catastrophe happening on a space vessel, it can get pretty boring, so the rest of the crew enjoyed explaining to the kittens, not knowing they understood more than the humans could imagine, about the controls, the charts, the gauges.

  By the end of our tour of the cabin, I was puffed up with pride at how bright my babies were. They understood everything and asked questions I wished I could ask the crew but would have to save for Jubal to interpret later.

  One of the most repeated questions was what made the ship go, so our next stop was the engine room, Shahori and Sheleg trotting along beside us. The crew were perfectly willing to show us anything we pointed our noses at, but the kids were overawed by the large machines and their strong metallic scents. We retired for a bite to eat and a nap soon after.

  The kittens were still sleeping when I awoke to the feeling of being stared at. The door of the cabin was open and filled with wide-eyed fluffy faces, every one of them focused on me.

  “Mama says we can go to the bridge too if you’ll take us, Chester.” The speaker was one of Flekica’s new litter. Their older half brothers probably had bragged that I’d shown them how to fly the ship. My guess was that Flekica and the other mothers wanted a little more rest and didn’t mind me sacrificing my nap for them to get theirs.

  It was only a game for us, though, or so I thought. Then Pshaw-Ra returned to dock inside the Molly Daise again and upped the ante.

  CHAPTER 21

  After the precipitous departure of the Barque Cats and the Ranzo during their escape from the lab in Galipolis, landing in Galport was out of the question, but the Molly Daise and the Ranzo needed some other central place to rendezvous with the ships whose cats they’d rescued. Ponty had argued for selling the kittens first, or offloading them somewhere, but Captain Vesey and Dr. Vlast argued that the vermin problem was so severe, lives might be lost if the cats weren’t reinstated on their ships as soon as possible. Ponty hoped the ships saw it the same way and would be prepared to pay the hefty finder’s fee for each cat as he had suggested—and of which he would get a cut, though he wasn’t officially crew on either ship.

  But he was nervous that the ships would try to claim the kittens too.
Jubal helped him document the parentage of each litter on the Mau side—the more titles and provenance he could dig up for every little kitten, the better. He was sorry they’d let the queen’s kitten go to Mavis, but there was no separating them. One of the crew had tried to take Spike away from the pirate and was clawed by both Mavis and the cat. He might as well have tried to take one of Mavis’s tattoos.

  There was a certain irony to the place finally chosen for the exchanges. The captain of the Makarska, Flekica’s old ship, suggested it.

  “You know that Klinger guy, the nephew of the ex-secretary?” Captain Arijana asked. She was elated to learn that the Makarska’s beloved cat was returning to them, and eager to set up the rendezvous that would place the fluffy feline back in the loving arms of her crewmates. The Ranzo and the Molly Daise contacted the Makarska first because there were, they decided, extenuating circumstances regarding the kittens. Since Flekica had been pregnant with her litter when incarcerated, the crews decided that in her case, Sheleg, Shahori, Rizhic, and Masic still belonged to the Makarska, though the rescuers would ask a finder’s fee for the kittens as well as Flekica. They also decided to offer at a discount to the crews of those ships the half-Mau kittens of the little mothers who had lost their litters.

  “Yes, we know all about that,” Captain Loloma said in the com conference among the ships.

  “Well, when all of it came out about the lies Klinger and his uncle told, which took not only Remy Trudeau’s horses, but our cats and many of the animals throughout the galaxy, Klinger seems to have developed a streak of remorse and generosity. He gave Trudeau half his land in reparation—no court proceedings, mind you—and relocated to one of the outer worlds. It is said that his uncle the disgraced councilor assisted him financially. Without animals to fill his new lands, Remy Trudeau has created a small private spaceport, not under the same kind of direct government scrutiny as most of them.”

  Captain Loloma and Captain Vesey agreed this would be a fitting place to dock and rendezvous with the ships of the displaced cats.

  “I’m not sure we’ll be able to afford the fees for a private port before we sell the kittens,” Yawman the purser told the captain.

  “We’ll offer him a kitten,” Ponty suggested. “He still has some farm, right? So he’ll have a lot of vermin. He should be thrilled to have one of our royal kittens.”

  “They’re not all royal,” the captain pointed out.

  Ponty just gave him a long look.

  “Or maybe they are. I didn’t quite understand the ins and outs of the social structure among the cats of that planet.”

  Ponty nodded wisely. The captain was catching on.

  They landed beside the Ranzo at the small port called Trudeau’s Landing. The Makarska landed a short time afterward, and Flekica was reunited with her crew, who exclaimed over the kittens and admired them with lots of pets and baby talk. Shahori, Sheleg, and their siblings were sorry to leave Chester’s kittens, and there was a lot of face licking to be done before they finally allowed themselves to be carried away in the arms of the crew members.

  Flekica’s family was loaded and Mr. Yawman completed the financial arrangements with the Makarska’s purser. The day was a fine one, with a warm but not oppressive temperature, sunshine, high clouds, and the sweet scent of freshly planted crops wafting over from the farm portion of Trudeau’s property.

  Over the next few weeks most of the original Barque Cats were reunited with their ships. Romina was so glad to see her Cat Person Gordon she forgot all about her litter of half-Mau kittens, and Ninina had a similar reaction when her ship came for her. Neither ship quibbled about the finder’s fee, although one crewman was overheard referring to it as “ransom.” But they did not want the kittens.

  “It’s too bad about the first litter,” Gordon said, inspecting the half-Mau kittens not unkindly, because he was a smart man and really liked cats. “But we can’t buy these little guys from you. They’d make good pets but people don’t pay that kind of money for pets.”

  “But the vermin problem …” Ponty reminded him.

  “Our Romina and the others will sort them out soon enough once they’re back home,” he said. “And I see you’ve plenty of intact toms to be returned yet, including some fine studs. We’ll soon have proper Barque kittens to help their parents, and things will get back to normal. None too soon for me, I can tell you.”

  “Pets,” Mr. Yawman said when Romina’s ship departed. “We’re going to be bankrupt on this trip, even with the finder’s fees, if people think our kittens are only good for pets.”

  Ponty looked glum.

  CHESTER ON THE MOLLY DAISE AND AT TRUDEAU’S LANDING

  Pshaw-Ra had returned to the Molly Daise shortly before she docked at Trudeau’s Landing. He’d of course had extremely critical business to attend to while away from the ships. He spent a long time inside his little ship with Balthazar and Renpet when he first arrived, and when they came out, Balthazar’s expression was carefully impassive, that is to say, almost as sneaky as Pshaw-Ra’s.

  Balthazar explained to the crew members that the vizier, as he always called Pshaw-Ra, had been scouring the galaxy, mouse-holing to the better traveled spaceways, always searching and remaining alert for good situations for cats in need of homes. After inspecting the mechanisms of the human society currently ruling the galaxy, he had discovered one major hitch in his plans and a brilliant idea for kitten placement.

  “There are institutions for training the handlers of cats who travel space,” Pshaw-Ra told me. “The ships should send many of the kittens there to find humans they can bend to their will. Tell your boy to tell them.”

  I yawned. “That is such old news. Tell your old man to tell them himself if you want, but they already know about the school. Mother’s Kibble trained at the Galipolis school before Kibble was hired to serve her.”

  “Oh. Then they should have no difficulty carrying out my instructions,” he said.

  “Are we not going to wait and see what cats have connections with certain humans, like Jubal and I have?” I asked. “I thought that was part of your plan?”

  “It was, but it may not be possible to do that quickly enough. Had we not developed such highly bred kittens, establishing links for each would have been essential. Fortunately, these kittens are so superior that even without that connection all is not yet lost.”

  “Lost how?” I demanded. “Why? Don’t tell me it’s because the humans aren’t good enough—I know you don’t like them, but—”

  “That has nothing to do with it. It’s just that opportunities for forging the bonds have become scarcer. The humans have not become as highly prepared as I anticipated, have not had the opportunity to ingest sufficient kefer-ka to heighten their link with similarly nurtured kittens.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because with so many of the meat animals destroyed by the human government, the kefer-ka did not continue working their way into the human food chain and instead were ingested by the vermin.”

  “So none of the kittens will find their own human like Jubal and me?”

  Pshaw-Ra changed the subject. “So, we must begin training the young now.”

  “Mrrr—I have news for you. We’ve been training them during the entire journey while you’ve been off thinking up new ways to make this even more difficult than it already is.”

  “Whatever do you mean by that, catling? I have dedicated myself to the welfare of these young ones. I have traveled far and spent a great deal of the fuel you procured. I do not suppose you hid some someplace for future use, did you?”

  “If I did, I don’t think I’d tell you right now,” I said, miffed. My son and daughter both expected that they would have a relationship with a human like Jubal with me, or their mother’s with Chione. Now the old cat was saying this was not likely to happen.

  “Very well, I have no time to quarrel with you now. As I said, the education of the young must commence at once.”

  I might as wel
l have saved my mental energy. I left him trying to demonstrate paw exercises to a kindle of kittens who were crying because they weren’t allowed outside with their mothers. I could feel Jubal’s heart going out to all of the newly abandoned children of mothers and fathers returning to their ships.

  “It’s just how it is with cats, Jubal,” his father tried telling him. “They don’t have the same kinds of feelings as us humans. They expect the kittens to go their own way while the parents go theirs.”

  “Like you going into space and leaving me behind?” Jubal asked resentfully as he tried to stroke the dozen or so half-grown cats who crowded around him, feeling his sympathy.

  “Cats grow up faster than people. Just ask Chester here.”

  For a change Jubal’s sire was speaking the truth.

  But although the crying increased every time a new lot of ships arrived and the adult cat population decreased, at a certain point everything grew quiet again, almost eerily so.

  I was pleased until I noticed Junior and Buttercup doing paw exercises in their basket at night, the ones Pshaw-Ra had been showing the other kittens. With his slender tawny feet, it looked kind of pointless. On my kittens with their oversize feet—like mine, shaped like lopsided hearts, thanks to extra toes—the exercises looked as ominous as anything a kitten does can look. They flexed their larger toes so they bent back into their paws and then they made the tips of the large toes and the tops of the small ones bend inward to meet.

  Every time I caught one of the kittens making these moves, it sat on the paws that had been busy flexing and extending as I approached, and looked up at me with big innocent eyes.

  I was not fooled for a moment.

  Later, even before most of the adult cats had returned to their original ships, little things with no legs began moving around the ship. Mr. Yawman’s reading glasses were the first prey to go missing, then the captain’s favorite pen, and Janina’s Cat Person badge mysteriously detached itself from her dress shipsuit.