Catalyst

by Anne McCaffrey

  If the kittens had survived.

  “Janina?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. Chessie would be found if she was in the station. Sherwood was another matter.

  CHAPTER 5

  Chessie had smelled the newcomer, heard her kennel door release, and felt the large hands reach in to lift her from her sleeping platform shortly after the first whiff of smoke reached her sensitive nostrils.

  The hands were fairly gentle, though a bit tighter than she’d have liked around her swollen middle, and she was glad to be released into a carrier. She assumed this was one of the vet’s assistants, moving her long enough to clean her kennel, though she certainly hadn’t soiled it by any means.

  “Come on, old girl, I’m saving your furry tail,” the man told her.

  She had heard this voice not long ago, when the man stopped Kibble in the hall. What was he doing here? And what was that awful smell? Eyes widening with fear, she emitted the growling battle cry intended for prey larger than herself. By then the smoky smell had grown stronger, underlain by the stench of terror as she heard the whinnies, barks, hoofbeats, and paw pads of other animals running past them to escape other parts of the clinic.

  When the man carried her from the room, she saw the back of her prison through one of the airholes in her carrier. Flames blossomed and flowed along the floor. Then the man clicked the hatch shut behind them, blocking her view, running down a side corridor at a brisk trot.

  Chessie caterwauled and scratched and poked her paws through the airholes, trying to snag her captor in a way to let him know this was no way to treat a lady and an expectant mother. What did he think he was doing? Where was her Kibble? Where was Jared? Who did this man think he was anyway?

  He was carrying her and her unborn kits to safety, away from the fire, and that was good, of course. But there was still something very wrong. Why hadn’t the sprinklers been set off to douse the flames? Where were the other rescuers?

  Hoofbeats clattered down the tiled corridor. Dogs barked behind them. The man paused now and again, then hurried down several flights of stairs, reaching the flight deck. Halfway there the com system began blatting the fire alarm. Her rescuer paused, lowering her carrier so that all she saw were running feet, racing from the direction of the flight deck and past them to emergency duty stations. She meowed, hoping a more familiar person would take charge of the carrier and release her, but her cry was lost even to her in the continuous bleat of the alarm. By the time the alarm stopped and the calm voice began instructing crew members from different areas of the space station to proceed to different areas of the clinic block with their extinguishers, the smell of smoke was filling the staircase. The landing crews were running toward them, away from their duty station. This chaos was quite unlike the disciplined order aboard the Molly Daise. Chessie didn’t like any of it one bit. She was unaccustomed to being hauled about by strangers. Still, she supposed the man must be taking her back to the ship and to her Kibble.

  But he didn’t go to her ship’s dock. Instead, she saw him run up to a small utility shuttle, the sort colonists used to haul goods from the space station to their businesses or homes on the ground. It was on one of these that she had captured the interesting bug on their last trip here before her crew had introduced her to that cocky Space Jockey responsible for these wretched kittens. She had just weaned her previous litter then, and had spotted the shiny iridescent insect scuttling away from a USV—a utility service vehicle, as the air-to-ground shuttles with cargo space were called—just before the sterilizer was turned on it. She had pounced with alacrity and devoured it in one bite. Afterward she’d caught several more aboard the Molly Daise, probably taken aboard with provisions, the same way the ship acquired most of her prey.

  The man hoisted her carrier into the USV’s co-pilot’s chair and strapped it down. What was he doing? She hissed and clawed at the airholes, sticking as much of her paw and leg as she could through them to try to claw his clothing or skin. But suddenly the shift in the light, the pressure of the air, told her they were in space again, and moving farther and farther from her ship and her people.

  The man paid no attention to her protests and had been smart enough to position her carrier where she couldn’t reach him. Her struggle quickly exhausted her meager reserves of strength. She needed to rest, to be ready for when the kittens came. The movement in her belly told her they would be arriving all too soon.

  After a bit more grumbling, she fell asleep. It could have been mere moments later when she awoke as the shuttle set down on the planet’s surface, with an aqua sky overhead, in front of a crude building with a three-cornered roof. It was constructed of some sort of rustic organic material. Beside it, at a short distance, was a smaller structure with rectangular ports and hatches and a peaked roof.

  A collection of machinery littered the bare grounds close to the buildings, beyond which stretched wide green and gold fields. Some of these contained bovines. That much Chessie could see. She heard the cluckings of fowl. It all smelled richly organic, which was not unpleasant of itself, but alarming in that it was definitely not her ship.

  The carrier bumped along beside the man, who opened one of the double doors to the larger structure. “I know you’re not a barn cat, old girl, but the best place to hide a cat is where people expect to find cats. Barn cats don’t have chips in their ears, so nobody will expect you to have one either. You’ll be fine out here. Lots of nice hay and milk cows to keep you company. Play your cards right and I can promise you all the fresh milk you can drink. Your kittens too, when they’re big enough.”

  The man talked a lot but he wasn’t making any sense. He acted as if she was going to have her kittens here!

  He set the carrier down in a stall and went away without releasing her. She began yowling for all she was worth.

  “Take me home!” she demanded repeatedly, over and over, until her throat was sore. She stuck her paws through the airholes again and clawed futilely. “Let me out! Let me out!” she cried. Her right front dewclaw caught in the wire and tore, bleeding into the fur of her leg.

  “What are you on about, anyway?” The question came to her along with the scent of another cat, a female and pregnant. “And what are you doing in my barn? I found it first.”

  “I don’t know,” Chessie replied dismally. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home to my ship and my Kibble and crew.”

  “I guess they left this barn sitting catless too long. The rats and other vermin have really taken over. I don’t know what the man expects you to do about it from that box, though. It suits me. I’ll line up my kill and show him how much he’s needed me before he lets you out. Then he’ll know who the working cat is here and take you back where you belong. I need this place. I’m going to have my kits any day now. Believe you me, it hasn’t been that easy catching rats the size of the ones in this barn.”

  Chessie hissed, which showed how upset she was. “He doesn’t want me to catch rats, you stupid creature. He wants to steal my kittens.”

  “He steals kittens?” The other cat sounded puzzled, then she laughed. “That’s a good one! Barn humans don’t steal kittens, at least not before they’re weaned. Sometimes they give them away—or worse. But they don’t have to steal them. There are too many cats who would kill to live in a warm cushy barn like this one. As excited as that boy is about my kittens, he wouldn’t steal them.”

  “What boy? Who are you? Where is this awful place? I want my ship!” Chessie cried. “Please make them take me back.”

  “Do be quiet,” the other cat growled. “I’m sure when the man finds out the position is filled, he’ll get rid of you and your spawn at once. The boy should have told him about me.”

  “You’re wrong,” Chessie told her. “That man talked to Kibble in the corridor. He wanted a kitten. She told him they all have homes to go to and now he’s taken us all. More than likely it’s you he’ll get rid of.”

  “Not me! I’ve caught many mice and r
ats and one frog already. I’ll show you.”

  The other cat turned tail and waddled away. Chessie immediately felt lonely, even before she was out of sight. The other cat was not as unfriendly as she could have been, and Chessie was used to being surrounded by friends and admirers, not to mention her Kibble. She cried out for the other cat to return, and the tortoiseshell padded back toward her. She had a lot of red in her mottles, looked to be the same breed as Chessie and as heavily pregnant, though perhaps a little younger, and she was dragging a huge rat, which she dropped in front of Chessie’s carrier. Then, despite Chessie’s entreaties that she stay, she waddled away again to return with another rat, then the frog, several small mice, and some other things Chessie had never seen before.

  “Good catch,” Chessie said, one expert hunter to another.

  “And these are just the ones I haven’t eaten yet!” the other female said. She was sitting erect, guarding her prey, and at Chessie’s comment, her chest puffed out so that it almost protruded more than her kitten-filled middle. Her nipples looked as swollen as Chessie’s felt. This was a clever and able cat, Chessie thought, and a possible ally when she escaped to return to her ship.

  “I’m formally called Thomas’s Duchess,” she said. “But my shipmates call me Chessie.”

  “The boy hasn’t called me anything yet, except ‘momcat,’” the other replied. “But before him, others said ‘Git!’ when they saw me, so I guess that must be my name.”

  “Git—succinct, efficient, no nonsense about it. It suits you.”

  “Do you think it’s short for anything grander, like yours is? I have no idea what Duchess means but I like the sound of it.”

  “Possibly it’s your name and coloring. Your real name might be Grizabella. That is quite a venerable name among Barque Cats so probably it is among dirtside—land cats—as well. It must be an acronym—the first letter of each word. ‘Grizabella Is Tortoiseshell’ might be your real name.”

  “Oh, that sounds very grand. Why do you suppose they only use first letters?”

  “It’s kind of a code. They’re fond of using letters for codes. The health op used to say to my Kibble, ‘It is time to take Chessie to the V-E-T.’ As if I didn’t know what that meant!”

  “They’re really confusing,” Git said. “Some cats want to be house pets, but me, I’ll be happy for a warm barn to raise my family and plenty of game to hunt. A kind word once in a while is nice but it’s not like I’d want to depend on humans.”

  “My Kibble and crew are very reliable,” Chessie said. “They will come looking for me. I’m sure they won’t take off without me and my kittens. I doubt the ship will even start unless I’m there.”

  “If you’re so important, why did they send you here?”

  “They didn’t. I told you, I was abducted. But my people will find me. There’s a chip in my neck.”

  “A chip? Does it hurt?”

  “No worse than an insect bite when they put it in. It has my ancestral record in it and my duty station and its signal, but it also transmits my whereabouts. Kibble uses it to track me when I’m patrolling places too small for her to fit.”

  “Can’t say I’d care for that,” Git said disdainfully. “You set a lot more store by humans than I do. In my experience they’ll more than likely let you down.”

  “I told you I am worth a great deal to them. That’s got to be why the man stole me. He wants these kittens.”

  “You’ll see. It will be as much as either of us can do to keep him from drowning or shooting us all if he reckons there’s too many.”

  “Not my kittens. My kittens patrol ships all over the universe. They are much sought after as vermin-control agents.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hunters. Killers. We’re very good, you know.”

  “Better than me?” Git growled, and hunkered down to glower menacingly in through the airholes. “Could you or your kittens catch more prey than this in a single night? I don’t think so!”

  “Oh, no,” Chessie said quickly—and truthfully. Git’s proficiency as a huntress surprised her. She’d had no idea that simple land cats, whom she had always heard were inferior to Barque Cats, were so deadly. Perhaps this cat had been stolen from a ship as a kitten by the same man? But no, she had said she’d only just arrived in the barn a short time ago herself and the man didn’t know about her yet. She did look like a Barque Cat, though, with her long, though slightly matted, fur, tufted ears and paws, plumelike tail that puffed to considerable circumference when she was agitated, and large shining golden eyes.

  “I’m hiding when I have my kits and keeping them out of sight until they can fend for themselves. I’d advise you to do the same.”

  “I don’t think he’ll let me,” Chessie said, and it came out as a wail. “I am stuck in this box with no food and no water and I’ve already soiled it. It won’t be fit for my kittens and they’re coming any time now, I feel it!”

  Git nosed an airhole and stuck her tongue out, trying to give Chessie a comforting lick.

  “What’s all the commotion?” the man said, entering with a number of bewildering things in his hands. “Who the frag are you?” he asked Git.

  “She’s mine, Dad,” a younger male voice piped up from behind him. “She’s my new barn cat. She knew I wanted a kitten and she brought me a belly full of them.” He rushed forward, putting himself between his father and the cage so that his legs blocked Chessie’s view. “Lookit there! Lookit what she caught already. She’s a good cat and a pretty cat—good as that one you got. Take that one back. We don’t need her.”

  “Okay, calm down, son. You can keep the barn cat out here. But I brought this fine lady cat here so you can have your pick of her litter for your house pet.”

  “How about the others? What are you going to do? Gruder’s dad killed his cat’s kittens and Cellie’s mom sold some to a lab. You wouldn’t do that, would you, Dad?”

  “Calm down, son. It’s okay. This cat here is a special kind. She’s very valuable and her kittens are too. We can make enough from selling them—no, no, not to a lab, to good homes that will pay a lot of money for the privilege of having them—to fix up the house and hire a hand to help with the stock so you can concentrate on your schooling. You’re just like your mama. You worry too much.”

  “Okay,” the boy said. “You’re not connin’ me, are you, Dad?” His voice implied that whatever connin’ was, it was something his dad did often.

  “Son, trust me. I got this cat so you could pick out your own kitten, like I said. Once we sell all the kittens but yours, we’ll be able to make something out of this place.”

  “And how about the other cat’s kittens? Can I keep them too?”

  “How about picking up that board over there and helping me build up that stall into a little room for the mama cat to have her babies in where nothing will disturb them? I don’t want anything to damage those little gems.”

  “What’s that thing?” the boy asked, pointing to the little machine the man had brought with him to the barn.

  “Something else we need to do to protect our investment, son. I’m going to install it right above the barn door, and that will keep anybody from bothering the mother of your future kitten.”

  Jubal suppressed his excitement about the kitties all through supper. Mom had made egg pie, which he had come to love in recent months. Something had improved the flavor tremendously and the shiny bits in it looked very appetizing. He hated to think about it, because it was kind of gross, but he suspected it was because the chickens had been pecking up those shiny beetles that infested the barnyard. Like the beetles, the eggshells were shiny, sparkling like they’d been coated in sugar sprinkles. He’d actually been saving the shells because they were so pretty.

  But much as he loved everything made with eggs, Jubal was too anxious to get back to the kittens to eat much that night. When he muttered, “’Scuse me,” and started to leave the table, his mom asked him where he thought he was going in
a tone that said no matter what he answered, she probably wasn’t going to like it.

  “To do my chores, Mom,” Jubal said with wide-eyed earnestness. “I want to get them all done before I start my homework.”

  “Right, and I’m Maid bloody Marian. You doing your chores before you even check to see if there’s dessert, that doesn’t fly, my lad. What’s the use of having the biggest liar on Sherwood for a daddy if you can’t fib any better than that?”

  Pop looked up from a forkful of his second helping of the pie. “Leave him be, Dorice. He’s just going to check on the livestock.”

  They hadn’t told mom about the cats yet. They’d have to sooner or later but hoped to stall as long as possible. She probably wouldn’t raise too much fuss over the barn cat because even a cat-disliker had to admit that barn cats served a good and useful purpose. But Pop had said he didn’t want her to know about the fancy new cat yet.

  Jubal was pretty sure it was because there was something fishy about the way Pop had come by Chessie.

  If Mom knew what they were up to, she wasn’t saying anything. Jubal thought she might have a good idea about at least some of what was going on. He’d caught her staring at some cat hairs on his overalls, wrinkling her nose when he hadn’t washed off the smell of cat pee good enough. Dad’s industriousness, if nothing else, was enough to rouse her suspicions. Suddenly he was doing all the men’s jobs in the barn, the ones Jubal couldn’t do that she usually had to do since the old man, for a retired guy, spent a lot of time in space.

  She rolled her eyes and pointed to the door as she bit down on a biscuit. Even if she had guessed the whole thing, Jubal wasn’t too worried.