Janina explained the situation to both cats in reasoning tones, petting them in turn, though Chessie kept getting between her hand and the kitten.
Later that night when Chessie began her rounds, she suddenly hunkered down, her tail’s feathery plumage dusting the floor as she switched it back and forth, winding herself up for a pounce.
Chester watched his mother anxiously, and just as she sprang, ran between her legs. She backed off with a hiss and swatted him so soundly the kitten rolled ears over tail back against the bulkhead. “Stop hindering me and pay attention!” his mother said sharply when he looked up at her and mewed.“This is what I do, and it’s what you were born to do.”
For the next week, Chester behaved himself in the manner expected of a ship’s cat, and made several kills of his own. Talk of selling him to another ship died down. They were still docked at the station while they waited for another ship to bring them one more consignment of cargo before they resumed their previous mission.
Janina was glad of the reprieve, as it gave her a few more opportunities to see Jared and observe the progress in the new clinic. The clinic was being improved upon as it was rebuilt, with more exam rooms, a larger operating theater, much nicer kennels, and a far more efficient fire detection and prevention system. The floor coverings and upholstery were all made of substances that would not produce toxic fumes if they did burn, would not mildew or mold, and were delightful to cats wishing to sharpen their claws. Janina begged an extra piece for new coverings for Chessie’s scratching posts.
Jared hardly had time to see her, though when he did give her his attention, he seemed glad of her presence and her company. She took Chester and Chessie back for one last checkup when five of the broken-colored horses from Varley’s “bonus herd” arrived at the clinic for outprocessing before being shipped off to buyers on another colony world.
Jared immediately became distracted, almost agitated, again. Janina was about to accept—as she always had before—that he had other business to attend to and tell herself that she’d taken up enough of his valuable time. But he looked so tired, as if he weren’t sleeping well, that instead she gathered her courage and asked, “Jared, are you all right? I don’t want to intrude but you seem—well, troubled.”
He sighed and leaned against the exam table, arms crossed over his chest. “You’re not intruding, Janina. In fact, I’ve considered asking if you had any thoughts on this matter already. I may be taking an entirely wrong, even disastrous, path here, and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to decide what to do. I should follow protocol and report my findings to the center for disease control. But it isn’t really a disease, you see, not as far as I can determine. Nevertheless, precedent in times past has been for the center to step in, put down every beast in the affected area, ruin the lives of the owners, and damage the reputation of an area for years to come. So I’ve been trying, discreetly, to learn just what is causing the sparkle in the spittle and some other bodily fluids of the animals from Sherwood, and some from this station, like your Chessie.”
“You think they’d order you to destroy Chessie?” Horrified, Janina hugged the cats close to her. “And the horses and—and—”
“And every beast they might have come in contact with, yes. The thing is, this seems to be a recent phenomenon, and I’ve yet to see that there’s any harm in it, but analysis doesn’t reveal what is causing the sparkle in the secretions or what its effects might be. On the one hand, it doesn’t look as if Chessie, for instance, has suffered any harm from it. However, it might have been responsible for her losing some of her litter …”
“Or more likely, it was the fire and being carried off when she was so far along in her pregnancy,” Janina said, clutching harder. “She’s been doing very well since her operation, and Chester seems perfectly healthy too.” She thought it best not to mention the kitten’s apparent aversion to hunting. He had improved in the last few days, after all. His problem wasn’t physical, as far as she could tell. He seemed more frightened than anything.
But she saw now that Jared was even more worried about the consequences of his actions, whichever course he chose. If he said nothing to report the aberration or to quarantine the affected animals, including Chessie, and the substance did prove at some later date to be symptomatic of a disease process, the entire settled portion of the universe could become infected in an incredibly short time. If he did report it and the center decided to be as proactive as in times past, thousands of innocent animals would be slaughtered, settlers who depended on them would be ruined and stranded on colony worlds with no way to make a living, and others—like the crew of the Molly Daise—would be heartbroken with the loss of a valued crew member and possibly forbidden to do business until they were certified free of contamination.
While she was considering this, Chester suddenly wriggled out of her grasp, leaped to the floor and chased something across it. He leaped right over it swiftly, corrected his trajectory and landed on it with an impressive snick, crunch. Then, like a modest conquering hero, he picked it up in his jaws and took it to Jared, laying his kill at the vet’s feet.
It was a small iridescent insect. Janina had seen the cats catch these creatures before but had never examined one closely.
Jared squatted down, gave Chester a scritch under the chin, grabbed a glove from his equipment counter, picked the creature up, and popped it inside another glove. Chester paraded back and forth, thoroughly pleased with himself, emitting wild raucous cries, which clearly meant, “What a mighty hunter am I!”
Janina laughed. “And the crew were worried he wouldn’t hunt! I think he also fancies himself a detective—”
“Or an entomological epidemiologist,” Jared joked. “You notice that just as I was discussing the sparkling matter in the animals’ saliva, he made a point of catching this.” He peered inside the glove at the crunched creature. “Come to think of it, I don’t actually recall seeing these things until lately. Could be that they’re some new species, possibly accidentally imported from another world, and have made their way into the food chain, with the results that we’ve seen.”
“I don’t see how they can be harmful,” Janina said hopefully. “The cats have been catching them since they’ve been back aboard the ship, and I’d vow I saw Chessie catch one before. Apparently they’re right tasty because neither cat has ever gifted one to me. Chester must really like you.”
Jared cocked an eyebrow at the kitten, who sat looking up at them, waiting for something. Probably more praise. “Either that or he understands Standard and was making a suggestion.”
Janina half expected a reluctant Jared to prevent the Molly Daise from disembarking, but that did not happen. Five days after the ship returned for her and the cats, it departed the space station, two cats and one Cat Person richer.
By the time they were a day out, Chester’s behavior changed again. From a ’fraidy cat and a happy hunter, he morphed once more, this time into a listless, indifferent little lump with a vacant and vaguely resentful stare. He did not want to eat, he would not hunt, and he followed his mother and Janina around only, she suspected, because he did not wish to be left alone.
Janina began to fear she had reassured Jared as to the cats’ health too soon. What if he made a disastrous decision based on her support? She lay awake when she should have been catnapping with her charges, imagining a terrible plague—the first symptom of which was the shiny spit and mucosa—wiping out the animals that ate the shiny bug, infecting each other with whatever vile disease it might carry, and finally contaminating the entire universe. The animals would die. The disease might even spread to people. And again the blame would be hers; Jared, who had only tried to do the right thing, would be destroyed professionally when the origins of the disease became known.
She whimpered and tossed in her berth until she finally did sleep, exhausted by her dreams and then comforted by purring cats, Chessie having crawled on top of her chest, while the kitten—more animated than he h
ad been since they left the station—curled up between her head and shoulder and sang into her ear.
All of which made his lackluster performance when they next patrolled more puzzling than ever.
Ponty found the ship he was looking for. The captain and crew of the Reuben Ranzo were respectable enough that he didn’t mind taking the boy there, but not so respectable that they could afford to be too inquisitive about Ponty’s own schemes. The captain was a divorced man whose ex-wife—a memorable woman Ponty recalled with painful clarity—made him look like a saint. He had a little girl about Jubal’s age. Ponty’s other criteria for a ship was that it not be one to which he had delivered a contraband kitten.
Not that Jubal was going to secure a berth simply to be a playmate for the captain’s daughter. Fortunately, the boy was a hard worker and handy at a number of practical pursuits of the kind that had never interested Ponty. His mother’s influence. He was good at building things and taking them apart, good with machinery, and even seemed comfortable fixing plumbing.
And Jubal liked it that the Ranzo had a ship’s cat; not a fancy Barque Cat, just a jumped-up mangy old alley cat. In spite of what the kid had said about not wanting another cat, he immediately befriended it, though the captain said his daughter, the self-appointed Cat Person, considered Hadley to be her own. Hadley was black and fluffy, like Chester without the tuxedo and spats. He seemed to be a laid-back animal and graciously spread himself around enough to include Jubal, a possible new source of food and pets.
Once the kid was installed and helping load and stow the equipment and cargo, Ponty went about his business. He needed to acquire a few things to furnish the homegrown lab he intended to establish shipboard, an enterprise he was sure would interest Captain Loloma—nonviolent, low risk, and potentially quite profitable. He already had the DNA of Chessie and her litter. Cloning her and her kittens was only illegal if he got caught, and there was little chance of that. To most people, one cat looked a lot like another.
The equipment and supplies he couldn’t filch or acquire by calling in favors, he had to buy at the station commissary, a huge megamall encompassing one entire deck of the station. He was looking for a particular reagent when he felt an ominous poke in his back.
“If it isn’t my old friend Ponty,” a familiar but entirely unwelcome voice growled in his ear. “You weren’t planning on leaving without coming to see Mavis, were you? You know how she gets when she feels snubbed by them she’s shown kindness to.”
Translated, this meant Mavis had noticed he hadn’t repaid the advance she’d given him on one of his earlier projects that had not turned out as well as he’d anticipated. The kitten money would have covered his debt had he not left it with Dorice.
“I know I’m a little late, but I’ve been working on something new. Tell her I’ll be able to repay her ‘kindness’ soon.”
“She’d rather hear it from you, that and another little item, with all the details. At length, while you start working it off aboard the Grania.”
The Grania was Mavis’s ship, the Grania O’Malley, named for the famous Irish woman pirate. Mavis claimed descent from her, which seemed doubtful, considering she appeared to be of Asian descent, despite the long red dreadlocks she habitually wore. Nobody knew how old she was, but he had once heard that her real name was Mai Ling.
Mavis was not a pirate, of course. Piracy was against the law, and in order to survive, ships had to be able to dock at all of the usual stations and at least appear to abide by all of the usual regulations. Mavis was an entrepeneur and a financier, and he’d have said she was a gambler except that she wanted every gamble to be a sure thing and was a very sore loser.
“She thought about sending the law after you,” Mavis’s henchman told him.
“She wouldn’t want to do that. You know how snoopy they get.” If they found out about the cats, it would not just be his neck—they’d more than likely go after Dorice and Jubal as well.
“Yeah, that’s what she said you’d say. So why don’t you just come along with me now and join us on a little voyage.”
He thought about trying to escape and get back to the Ranzo, but that would lead Mavis’s thugs back to Jubal. They could decide to use the kid as leverage. They could find out about the cats and send someone to take the money from Dorice, which was unlikely to go well for anybody. Especially him, the next time he met either his wife or his creditors. No, best leave Jubal where he was and keep him out of it. Maybe he could convince Mavis to release him if he told her about his current project. It would be easier to do his experiments on the Grania than the Ranzo anyway. Captain Loloma was a little too inquisitive, and more law-abiding than made for comfortable working conditions.
The kid would be fine in the meantime. Ponty hoped he’d get over being mad at Dorice and send her a message to let her know he was okay. He had planned to suggest it to Jubal later on, when they were well out of range. In his current situation, however, it didn’t seem like a good idea to draw attention to his wife while under Mavis’s iron thumb. Not that Dorice in the right mood wouldn’t be a match for Mavis and her entire crew, but he didn’t want to be in the middle. You never knew about women. They might decide to join forces, and that would be extremely bad for his health.
CHAPTER 11
CHESTER’S LOG: DR. VLAST’S OFFICE
Imagine the vet making such a fuss about the shiny stuff in our poop! I was surprised the doctor hadn’t deduced that the glittery bits only showed up in our leavings when we ate the keka bugs. They didn’t make us sick. They were delicious, and I for one always felt better after eating one. It was fun to hunt them too. They made a tiny sound when they scuttled, their crunchy shells clicking, that sounded like keka keka keka, the sound we cats make when watching prey. I could say that’s how I knew to call them keka bugs but the truth is that it just came to me, the same way the boy’s thoughts and activities came to me in dreams and sometimes even while I was awake, if the need was great.
Sometimes they didn’t want to be eaten, that was true, and that led to a lot of hacking up, but nothing serious or prolonged. The shiny bits that didn’t digest were certainly nothing to panic over.
I was very anxious to please the girl and the vet that day, because I hoped another visit meant the boy would be there. He had been in my dreams every time I closed my eyes, and I knew he was thinking of me. I thought we’d be together again soon. The girl was kind enough, but her friends talked of selling me—they didn’t think I could understand them, but I could, of course. I may not share dreams with everyone, and require a lot of cat antics to make myself understood to people who are not my boy, but having been connected with him from my birth, I understood his language perfectly well. Naturally, my vocabulary was limited to words he knew, and I had only a sketchy notion of many human concepts, but I considered those to be the humans’ concern and of no interest to me or my species. However, I understood perfectly well what the vet meant when he said all animals might be “destroyed.” That was not good, and I was glad to be able to straighten him out about the connection between our “symptoms” and our prey.
I was somewhat deflated when Mother asked, “Why did you catch a keka bug for the doctor, dear? Humans don’t eat those, you know.” I had to explain my act of selfless heroism to her—after all, keka bugs are delicious and I gave that one away without knowing if I’d ever catch another one.
Although I was disappointed that the boy had not appeared in person at the clinic by the time we left, as I’d hoped, I continued to feel his presence with me, as I had since we were parted.
I danced back to the ship, running circles around Mother, pleased with my accomplishment and certain that there never was a young cat cleverer than I. I was sure I had been chosen to spend my life doing Great Things.
But shortly after we returned to the ship, it departed the space station. We floated in what Mother called “free-fall,” and although I was frightened at first, I soon started to enjoy it. Then someone turned o
n the gravity again, gradually, so that we were lowered to the deck.
The separation happened then, and it wasn’t gradual. It was as if someone had snipped the harness that bound the boy and I together, the way the harness on the ship bound Mother and I together.
Without warning, the boy’s warm bright presence vanished, leaving only a cold hollow void. I could not hear his thoughts or see what he was doing. I curled up for a nap, thinking to find him while I slept, but he was not in my dreams, which were instead of wild canines breaking into the barn, hunting tender kittens, then stalking the space station while they somehow brandished laser rifles while standing on their hind legs. They clamored at the ship’s hatches and my mother cried. My boy had been with me almost since birth and now he wasn’t! It was as if I was suddenly blinded, or had lost my paws.
“Get up, you lazy kitten,” Mother chided me, unaware of my loss. “You’ve missed one patrol. Kibble let you slide since you did that showy bit of killing at the doctor’s office, but it’s time you earned your keep again.”
“Let me sleep,” I whimpered in return. “I’m trying to find the boy.”
“You can’t find him, you silly child, because he’s back at home. I tried to warn you not to get too attached but you never listened to me. The boy and his father were our abductors. They are not our people.”
“The boy is my person,” I cried. “And I want him back.”
“That is foolishness. We are back where we belong, with Kibble and the crew, doing the job we were born and bred to do. And it’s about time you got off your tail and did it. I thought you were over this nonsense.”
“Mother, without the boy, the canines will get us,” I told her, remembering my dream. “Like they got Git and Buttercup.”
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