Catalyst

by Anne McCaffrey

  “I found this when I came back from my watch,” the captain told her, pointing to his bunk, where a damp spot on the pillow reeked of cat urine. “It looks to me as if this falls into the scope of your duties. The little devil went for the one part of my bed that isn’t waterproof.”

  “He was missing when Chessie woke me for our watch. I wonder how he got in here?”

  “Probably snuck in when I went on watch myself,” the captain replied. “I must have shut him in.” The normally mild-mannered Vesey was cooling off, calming down. “You checked him for UTIs?”

  “No, sir, but I will as soon as I find him,” Janina promised.

  “You go do that, then, and I’ll have someone else clean this up.”

  She clicked Chessie’s locator. She was on the bridge, two doors down from the captain’s quarters.

  For the second time in as many minutes someone bellowed, “Kibble!” and she ran for the bridge, where chaos reigned.

  Crew members leaped and lunged, those who were trying to cajole the kitten rampaging across the control panels shouted down by those demanding that he stop. Chester hopped from one console to the next, landing squarely on control buttons while Chessie chased him across the same panels trying to corral her offspring.

  Janina calmly planted herself in Chester’s path, preparing to grab him before he could climb up one side of her and down the other. The scratches on the faces and hands of others in the crew testified that their attempts at similar maneuvers had been futile. She was very glad she had trimmed his claws earlier or someone could have been injured far worse.

  Chester pounced again on another bank of keys, and Janina thrust her hands forward to catch him. She knew she was going to miss when suddenly Chester and his mother levitated toward the ceiling while crew members began floating, then swimming in free-fall.

  Chester gave a startled mew. His legs and tail flailed in every direction until his mother caught him with a precision free-fall pounce and grabbed his ruff in her teeth. Someone keyed the buttons the kitten had activated, slowly reintroducing gravity so that cat, kitten, and crew gently sank to the deck.

  Captain Vesey walked onto the bridge, carrying a stack of bedding he shifted under one arm before he bent and picked up a printout from the floor, saying, “That kitten is a menace.” His voice was mild, even amused, as he looked down at Chessie, who was growling through a mouthful of fur. “Keep him on a leash, Janina, until he learns some manners. If he doesn’t learn to use his box properly, we may have to give up on him as a breeder and have him fixed. He’ll not fetch such a good price that way but we can’t allow cats like this to taint Chessie’s line.”

  “Yes, sir,” Janina said, and bent to retrieve Chester from his mother. The kitten laid his ears back and hissed, but Janina kept hold of his ruff while he grrred ferociously and lashed his tiny fuzzy black tail.

  Captain Vesey pulled a pillowcase from his stack of bedding and tossed it so it landed on her shoulder. “Put him in that until he calms down,” he told her. Janina was shamed. She was the Cat Person. No one else, not even the captain, should have to tell her how to manage her charges.

  She expertly swaddled Chester in the folds of the pillowcase and carried him off the bridge. Behind her the crew began returning things to normal, but there was a lot of muttering.

  “Is that really Chessie’s kid? She’s always been such a sweetie.”

  “I told you we should have looked for a better sire than the Jockey,” Charlotte’s voice answered.

  “Dr. Vlast checked him for rabies and distemper, didn’t he?”

  “I think he’s got mad cat disease.”

  “What’s that? Is it serious?”

  “Sounds like they’d have to euthanize the animal for that,” was the last comment Janina heard.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Are you mad, little cat?” Kibble asked as she carried me into the quarters she shared with us. “Did you hear that? They’re talking about destroying you, and these are people who admire and respect your mother and your species.”

  Once inside, I expected her to release me. Instead she opened the door, grabbed a carrier from under her bunk, and popped me inside without removing my shroud.

  I had been planning to let her know I was sorry about her boot. Now I wished I’d done the other one too. If my eyes had been death rays they’d have incinerated her where she stood. As it was, a squinty glare and an indignant hiss had to suffice.

  I thought she and Mother would then go on patrol, but instead Kibble set me upon the little table where she wrote out her reports of Mother’s patrols. “Kitten,” she said sternly, “I know you’re just a baby and you probably do not understand what I am saying to you, but I think you are an intelligent little cat so I will try to explain this nonetheless. You must never again do what you did just now. Captain Vesey is as kind and caring a skipper as any in the universe. Wetting on his pillow was a naughty, wicked thing to do. But your rampage through the bridge was much worse because it was very dangerous. You could have caused us to lose life support, destabilize our navigation system, any number of things that could cost us all our lives.”

  All that for pushing a few buttons? Surely Kibble was exaggerating.

  Mother was washing her flank with quick little licks. I thought she would agree that the girl was overreacting but when I mewed inquiringly at her she raised her head, laid her ears flat against it and spat at me, saying, “Ignorant offspring, what has gotten into you? The older you get, the more you resemble that tom who sired you. You’ve disgraced me in front of my crew. Even Kibble is cross and she is never cross.”

  And now that she had finished her tirade, Kibble’s eyes filled with tears and she sniffled a little, then wiped her face impatiently with the heels of her hands. She took another box from the locker beside the head of her bunk and withdrew some interesting looking articles. With her fingers, she quickly wove a little web like the one the boy had called a cat’s cradle. He, of course, had invited me to destroy it. It had been one of our games. But she attached shiny things to it and a very long snake. She emitted little wet hiccups as she did so.

  “You made her cry!” Mother scolded, and rubbed Kibble’s ankles, then hopped onto the bunk beside her, not even trying to leap onto the web thing.

  “You love her more than you love me, your own son!” I accused.

  “Well, of course I do. Kittens are fine when they’re very small but they are very selfish and do nothing but take all of your milk and time and attention and then go to some other home. I wish you had done that too, instead of spoiling my work and angering my crew. Kibble is good to me and takes care of me and loves me. All you do is cause trouble.”

  “The boy was good to me and took care of me and loved me, and your girl took me away from him and brought me here,” I said. “And if that’s the way you feel, I won’t even let you know when I leave. I’ll just be gone and then you’ll be sorry.”

  Kibble let loose of her work long enough to reach over and stroke my mother’s beautiful soft fur. My mother didn’t love me anymore! But she didn’t understand how much I needed to find my boy. I could have done without my tail more easily because he had been half of what was me. Now he was gone and I was left with nothing but a lot of heavy boots waiting to step on me, faces I had to crane my neck to see, and small dark places made of metal. No trees, no chickens, no cows, no brothers or sisters, no reading under his blankets at night, just a mother who hated me.

  I didn’t mean to do it. I meant to be haughty and disdainful, to show these people how little their opinions and missions counted to me, that they did not, as they thought, own me. But I was suddenly so sad that a mew escaped my mouth like a mouse might slip through my paws.

  Kibble opened the carrier and took me out. I hadn’t the strength to fight her, nor, as she cuddled me and petted me and made soothing sounds, the will.

  “There there,” she murmured. “Look, I’ve made you a pretty new harness, suitable for the enormous cat you are
becoming. This will keep you tethered to Chessie or me and out of trouble.” And she slipped the web she’d woven over my head and across my back, holding me with one hand and fastening it with the other.

  Mother was not fooled by Kibble’s sugarcoated explanation of the new harness. “Now Kibble will walk you like a dog,” she said, her eyes still slitted. “You will hate it but you’ve brought it on yourself.”

  So naturally I decided I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of thinking they’d bested me. I pretended to admire the hateful thing and batted—charmingly, if I do say so myself—at the lengthy bit that attached my harness to Kibble’s hand.

  Kibble petted my back but told Mother, “I fear he will not like this once we begin our patrol.”

  Hah! I’d show both of them. Besides, my other plan hadn’t worked and I needed to think of something else, some other way to escape my captivity and return to my boy. Although I did not understand exactly what the captain meant when he threatened to have me “fixed,” I assumed it involved breaking me in some way first, and that it would not help me return to Sherwood.

  So I trotted meekly beside Kibble and behind Mother. Sometimes I made it a point to grab for the tall fluffy plume of Mother’s magnificent tail, making her trot more quickly ahead so that I ran to catch up and leaped toward the target just before she whisked it out of the way. When was my tail going to be that pretty? I wondered. How fast did tails change? When I turned to see if it was growing properly yet, I couldn’t quite see it. It kept getting away from me when I tried to grab it to examine it more closely. For some reason, Kibble and the crew found this amusing and laughed at my efforts. Finally I sat down to wash it and saw that although it was a little longer and perhaps a bit fluffier than the last time I’d looked, it was only a third as long as Mother’s. Maybe they got longer every time you washed them? I began an extensive licking campaign, but was interrupted when Mother and Kibble insisted on continuing the patrol and Kibble unhitched my tether from Mother and picked me up to carry me to the next station.

  I very cleverly did not struggle or yowl, scratch or bite, but purred into her ear.

  A few days of this and crew members were remarking on what a changed kitten I was. I began hearing words like “adorable,” “cunning,” and “cute.” I was being cunning, all right, but not in the way they thought. Soon they would forget my transgressions and that I had a very definite mind and will of my own. Then, when I made good my escape, they would be unprepared. Only my mother remained suspicious, though she had forgiven me and started grooming me again and allowing me to sleep with her. My kind are stealthy stalkers and patience is part of our equipment. It had just taken me a few false starts to learn that the quickest way to catch the prey may be apparent immobility. The boy read me a book in which some ancient Asian general said the same thing. He no doubt learned it from his cat.

  Jubal made a game out of doing everything quicker and better than he was asked. Some days he won the game, and some days he lost, but the crew was mostly patient with him. It was a lot more interesting keeping busy anyway. He missed the horses and cows, and the cats of course, and he would sometimes pet Hadley and talk to him. But compared to Chester, he was just an ordinary furball, not especially smart or especially dumb, pretty and soft but not much of a conversationalist.

  So it helped that a lot of the crew members took to him and after a while were willing to show him stuff about running the ship.

  As he’d intended, he won over the com officer first. Her name was Beulah Bradley and she was originally from Sherwood. She had been brought up on a horse farm and liked gardening, so when Jubal was off watch, he dug up a patch for her in the hydroponics garden in one corner of a cargo bay. It wasn’t as hard to till as regular earth had been, compacted by rain and snow, baked by the sun, and scoured by wind. He could turn it over with a rake and hoe. When she was off watch, she planted her rows. Weeds weren’t really a problem, though some of the other more aggressive plants in the garden tried to invade their patch and had to be set straight.

  He watered for her a couple of times when she had meetings or was too tired, and once found her some seed packets that had been dropped when a shipment was unloaded.

  And she answered a couple of his innocent questions by showing him the com system, which was more complicated than any he’d encountered before, telling him about its range, which varied depending on the nearest relays and proximity to major stations, moon bases, or dirtside docks.

  She accessed the roster of registration codes for him and looked up from the screen, the instruments reflecting in her intelligent blue eyes, their pale red brows almost disappearing into her spacerpale skin. “Come closer and I’ll show you how to read this. I know what you’re after, Jubal.”

  “You do?” he asked. He hadn’t told anybody here about Chester. He didn’t think they’d care anyway, but maybe Beulah had heard something. Maybe Mom was looking for him, or the Guard.

  “You’re trying to find your father, aren’t you? I called back to Hood Station but no one had seen him since your arrival and he wasn’t on the roster of any of the other ships. He must have returned to Sherwood.”

  “I don’t think so, ma’am. He might run into my mom, and they weren’t exactly on friendly terms when we left.”

  “It was that way, was it? Hard to understand. Your father is such a—pleasant man.”

  Which told him right there that Beulah might be a smart lady but was no great judge of character.

  “I was wondering maybe if my cousin had heard from him. She’s aboard the Molly Daise,” Jubal said, adopting the cat girl temporarily.

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t rightly know her whole name, ma’am. Pop had a lot of brothers and sisters. But if you’d let me know if we’re going to meet up with the Molly Daise at any of the stations anytime soon, I’d be obliged.”

  “No problem. Let me see if I can get her position and course from Traffic Control.”

  She pulled her headset up from where it was coiled around the back of her neck and adjusted the mouth-and earpieces. Her station was within a sound-insulated booth that kept the noise to and from the bridge at a minimum. Her com voice was lower, crisper, and more musical sounding than the way she usually talked. It was a voice that wouldn’t be hard to listen to all day, maybe that was the key.

  She spoke briefly with Control, nodded, then paused. With one side of her mouth and an eyebrow raised, she asked, Oh?” and resumed the normal protocol before pulling the headset down again and adjusting her screen. A starmap appeared. She tapped a key, and the picture zoomed. Jubal had seen it when he visited Beulah before, and it usually indicated the Ranzo’s position with a large red light, but now there was a green light as well and a yellow one.

  “Looks like our courses may intersect again at Galport, in Galipolis. The Molly deviated from course for a few minutes but seems to have adjusted.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Signals from other ships and nearby relay stations, mathematical projections from those signals when a ship is out of range. And the Molly reported her momentary deviation. But don’t worry. She corrected it almost at once.”

  “What caused the deviation, do you think?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  But he had the oddest feeling that it had something to do with Chester.

  Mavis wagged a finger at Ponty. “You been evil again, sweetie. How many times I tell you to leave evil to Mavis? You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

  “If you could have waited a little longer to see me, gorgeous, I’d have paid your loan back to you with big interest.”

  She waved her hand impatiently. “Sure you would, Ponty. I not worried about that. You got plenty good collateral. But why’d you pass off a counterfeit cat for the real thing? Cost me plenty of money!” She snapped her fingers. “Bring it.”

  Ponty didn’t have to think twice about the kitten deals he’d made. He would never have approached Mavis with
any of the little furballs, who were, if not of “counterfeit” lineage, hot. Mavis would know about Chessie’s theft and pay him only a fence’s price, so he’d approached less knowledgeable clients. Less dangerous ones.

  A rough-looking customer of a crewman arrived carrying the kitten on his shoulder next to his ear. Sure enough, it was one of Git’s gray and black tabby jobs. The one with the slash of white under its nose, like a mustache. Doc?

  “I never saw that cat in my life,” he said automatically, opening negotiation, as it were. It was sort of true. The little twerp had grown bigger, the tail longer, the fur fuzzier. He’d been a totally different kitten when they left the barn together in search of a wealthy ship in need of a cat.

  Doc ratted on him—or maybe it was catted on him—by leaping from the crewman’s shoulder to his, nuzzling into his hair and kneading his claws into Ponty’s sensitive skin. “Affectionate little critter, isn’t he?” Ponty asked with what he thought was a cool suavity, reaching up with a couple of fingers to tickle the kitten’s belly. It was purring louder than the ship’s engine, which—uh-oh—seemed to be propelling them away from the station. It was going to take a really good present to get back in Jubal’s good graces. Something mechanical, maybe, that the kid wouldn’t get attached to like he had Chester.

  Mavis said, “Wipe the grin off your face, Ponty. I’d smack it off but I don’t want to scare the kitten. He’s a sweet little fellow, even if he is a phony.”

  The kneading and purring stopped, the claws retracted, and weight lifted from Ponty’s shoulder as Doc launched himself onto Mavis’s scrawny bosom. She boosted the kitten to her own shoulder, took a swing, and knocked Ponty to the deck.

  He thought he might be safer if he just stayed there, but then they’d probably kick him.

  Rubbing his jaw, Ponty sat up and said, “Looks like a real cat to me.”