“Can’t we just take the stairs, then?” Sosi asked. “I want to see Hadley.” And with that she bolted past Beulah and the lift, through the exit to the staircase, and clattered down flight after flight, with Jubal right behind her, shaking us up thoroughly.
It would be faster and easier if you’d just let us out to run down the steps, I told Jubal.
But by then we had bounced to our destination and he was helping Sosi push through the heavy door from the stairs to the fourth-floor corridor.
Sosi raced through ahead of us and pounded her fist on the double doors opposite the stairwell. There was a little box with a flickering red light to the right of the door.
Beulah pushed through the stairway door behind us and pointed to the box. “Stop! Kids, we can’t get in there without proper codes either.”
Leave this to me, Pshaw-Ra said, ignoring her. It would be most useful to have our two-legged assistants lurking nearby to aid us. I will send forth the kefer-ka to smooth our pathway …
I felt my skin crawl again and pounced toward the line of movement departing the cage, but I was too slow. A string of something extremely tiny in a line half the width of one of my whiskers zipped across the pristine surface of the floor and up the wall to the electronic latch.
Before I had a chance to see what marvelous thing they were going to do, Sosi banged on the door with her skinny fists and in her shrill little-girl voice hollered, “Cat delivery!”
The door slid back far enough to allow us to see a harried-looking man in a white suit.
“You again?” he asked, and said to Beulah in a rather angry voice, “I told you to leave them with the guard in the lobby. How did you get past him?”
“We didn’t. We’re not there yet. We docked our shuttle on the roof. We figured it would be faster to just drop them off.”
“Can I see the other kitties?” Sosi asked, trying to push around the man. “I want to see the kitties!” She was doing okay until one of the cats began yowling especially loud. “Hadley!” she cried, and nearly knocked the man over trying to push past him.
“Easy, kiddo,” he said.
“Hadley is in good hands with this gentleman, Sosi,” Beulah said, pulling on the girl and patting her shoulder.
A mother cat would have boxed her ears for endangering the whole litter. But I could hardly blame her. I could hear her friend crying out to her, “Girl! Come and get me! I want to come home! Get me owwwt!” In a few more minutes that would be me, probably.
From behind the man a woman’s strident voice called, “How am I supposed to work with all this racket? That damn cat is waking up already. She scratched me!”
Her footsteps clicked up behind the man and she peered over his shoulder. Her left hand clutched a tissue to her right forearm. In spite of her own disinfectant stench and the scents of all of the other cats, I smelled my mother on her. Had I been out of the cage, I’d have scratched her up one side and down the other myself.
“Steady, catling,” Pshaw-Ra cautioned. Easy enough for him to say. It wasn’t his mother that woman was doing terrible things to—or trying to. Reading me, he replied, “Already the diversion created by our entrance has delayed this creature from harming your mother the queen. How do you like my plan so far?”
“Terrific,” I replied. “I hope you’ve worked out the part where someone diverts the woman from harming us.”
“All will be revealed in due time,” he said sagely. Of course “all” would be revealed in due time. “All” inevitably was, sooner or later. It didn’t take a sage to tell anybody that. I only had to worry about what “all” would consist of, vis-à-vis my own personal tail.
“You again!” the woman was saying, as if my boy and his shipmates were some troublesome spot that would not fade from her upholstery. “Weeks, call security and have these people removed—preferably to a holding facility.”
“Doctor, please,” Beulah said in a reasonable tone. “We docked on the roof and were on our way down when it occurred to us it would be faster—and involve less chance of infection—if we simply brought the cats to the lab ourselves. Besides, they know us and it comforts them to have us near longer.”
“I can’t tell you how moved I am by that,” the woman said with a sneer worthy of Pshaw-Ra himself. She had to shout over the cats in the banks of cages behind her, though. “Too bad your presence hasn’t settled them down. Now leave before we’re forced to sedate every single specimen and have you jailed for obstruction of a GHA investigation. Weeks, pick up that cage and log in these cats.”
He picked up our cage and, as he carried us to the towering structure of cages, the door slid closed with a soft snick behind us, separating us from Jubal, Beulah, and Sosi.
My fur was erect, and quite involuntarily I began yowling in response to the pathetic cries of the assembled cats.
Don’t worry, buddy, Jubal’s presence beyond the door reassured me. We won’t be far.
A lot of good that would do!
“Lookit here, Fluffy. Fresh meat!” an angry old tom called out to a crony.
“Guess they weren’t the ones that got away after all, eh, Socks?” his friend replied.
“Maybe the woman will take them ahead of us. Hey, there, you new cats! You can go ahead of me. Think nothing of it. I don’t mind a bit.”
I smacked Pshaw-Ra into the wire of the cage, furious that he had talked me into this. We were as helpless as everyone else. Pshaw-Ra still outweighed me, but I rode him clawing and spitting over and over from one side of the cage to the other and from back to front.
“Stop it!” he said finally, laying on his side, his paw raised within a whisker width of my nose. “Why’s your tail in such a twist all of a sudden? This is all according to my master plan.”
“Weeks, bring that cage here,” the woman said. When she peered in at us, I saw that her nose was damp, which is not a sign of health in humans. Her eyes were red and her pale face blotchy. She poked at Pshaw-Ra with the end of a pencil. “What kind of cat are you, anyway?” she asked, though she didn’t expect him to answer.
He did, however, sit up as nonchalantly as if I had decided not to rip his throat out, and pretended to play with the end of the pencil.
“Weeks,” she said, “bring out that fuzzball in the other room and clean the place up. All that fur of hers is bringing on my allergies. This fellow is a far more interesting specimen. He has a wild look about him, don’t you think?”
Pshaw-Ra gazed adoringly up at her and purred loud enough to rattle the cage.
“He seems to like you, Doc,” Weeks remarked.
I had thought, momentarily, that perhaps she had taken a liking to Pshaw-Ra as well. They had a lot in common, both being insufferable and all. But her smile was not kindly as she looked down at him. “Oh, I think we can fix that,” she said.
Pshaw-Ra gazed at her as if she were wonderful and held one front paw up, as if he couldn’t wait to leap into her lap.
“We’re out of cages,” Weeks said. “We’ve no place to put the kitten.”
“Stick him in there,” she said, motioning toward a half-empty cage. “It won’t hurt them to double up. They’re all here for the same thing.”
“So you concluded definitely that the Duchess isn’t infected?” Weeks asked hopefully. “Because I’m sure you wouldn’t want to put this little guy in with an infected cat.”
“Weeks, look at this arrangement, will you? If any of these beasts came in here clean, they won’t be by now. You don’t think the GHA can risk returning them to their ships and homes do you?”
“Well—yeah,” Weeks said. “If they’re healthy, why not?”
The female rolled her eyes.
Weeks stooped and looked into our cage, noting Pshaw-Ra’s attempts to ingratiate himself with the doctor. “These guys look friendly enough. You want to hold the one with the big ears, while I park the kitten and go get the Duchess?”
She gave him a withering look. “Of course not. Do I look like I want t
o be scratched again? Give the other cat more sedation and carry her out yourself. Then I can sedate this one while he’s still securely caged.”
Pshaw-Ra squeezed his eyes at her, lovingly. Not that he did love her, but he was trying to confuse her. She did not soften, however, even though a look like that was usually good for an extra feeding on shipboard.
Weeks took me from the cage and stuck me into one that smelled like my mother. Even though I knew she was in no position to help me, it comforted me. After a while Weeks returned with her, sleepy and reeking and matted, lying bonelessly in the impersonal padded arms of his suit. “There you go, old girl. You’ve got company,” he said, shoving her in beside me, which wasn’t all that easy, as her paws, tail, and head were still floppy. My poor beautiful mother! What had they done to her? I began washing her ears and face and bit the mats and snarls from her long silky fur, which was wet in places with blood—but not her blood. As I had already noted, my gentle mother left her mark on the woman who was now carrying Pshaw-Ra into her lair.
Mother was not unscathed, however. She was filthy and a strip of bare pink flesh gleamed in the midst of her creamy belly fur. I bathed her bare patch and cleaned her up. By the time I finished her bath, Mother was stirring, and purring, though she hadn’t opened her eyes.
When she did, she lifted her head, licked my ear, and said, “Son, I had hoped you’d escaped this madness. I can’t think why our people have allowed this to happen to us.”
I didn’t answer. She knew as well as I did that the cat-serving humans were not as dominant as the cat-impounding humans. “Don’t get your ruff in a tuft, Mother,” I told her. “Pshaw-Ra has a plan to release everyone.”
“I don’t see how anyone can do that,” she said, her ears flattened slightly against her head to show her consternation. “Even if we did escape, the scientists would just round us up and bring us back. Even if we made it back to our ships, they’d probably make our people give us up again.”
“All I know is he has a plan and he is also captain of his own ship.”
“You mean he is the captain’s cat.”
“No, I mean he is the captain and the ship has controls a cat can work. Very paw-friendly. Cats run things where he’s from.”
Weeks had been going from cage to cage, filling dishes and emptying the filthy papers that served each of the occupants for toilets. He pulled the paper out of each cage, scraping the contents into little jars and labeling the jars. He spoke to each cat in turn as he worked, and when he got to us he said, “You two seem to be getting on well.”
I gave him my best innocent kitten expression and rubbed my cheek against his hand. No mutinous plotting going on here, Mr. Weeks! We are good kitties!
CHAPTER 23
Jared was showing Mrs. Klinger the “fairy dust” in her bay mare’s saliva when her husband entered the stable, followed by Ponty strutting officiously at his heels, and Janina, carrying a clipboard and wearing a grim expression.“Oh, Philly,” Mrs. Klinger cried. “Dr. Vlast says Leaf is infected! Tell them they can’t put her down. She’s mine!”
“Nobody’s going to be put down,” Klinger said. “Uncle Phil says it’s just been determined that the fairy dust syndrome isn’t dangerous after all. The impounded animals are all going to be released, so you see, there’s no reason whatsoever for you to impound ours.”
“You understand, sir, we have to follow procedure,” Jared said. “The proper entries must be made in the data banks, and the decision to release the animals must come through the proper channels. Otherwise it would look like favoritism, and you wouldn’t want that.”
“Look,” Klinger said, “be reasonable. My animals have remained unimpounded all this time with no harm to themselves or others, and now it seems there’s no threat after all. Can’t you just return to headquarters and get the orders before you upset my wife further?”
Ponty gave him a “there’s nothing we can do” shrug and shake of the head. “If it’s any comfort, sir, you have a lot of company. All over the galaxy this epidemic scare has been a nightmare, the potential ruin of generations of careful breeding, the burning of farmland—”
“And the deprivation of countless ships of the services of the Barque Cats,” Janina added.
“Of course,” Ponty said, as if he’d suddenly thought of a loophole, “I suppose if you personally made the journey to Galipolis to confer with your uncle when he signs the documents ending the necessity for these measures, we could allow your stock to remain here pending further orders.”
“That’s reasonable!” Mrs. Klinger said, looking imploringly at her new husband. “Oh, Philly, do it. Leaf is coming into season. I don’t want her disturbed.”
“Fine,” Klinger said at last. His voice sounded smooth, but Janina noticed that he was perspiring.
Jared’s com buzzed. He checked it and looked up. “We need to return to Galipolis now, Mr. Klinger.”
“If you’ll just step this way, sir,” Ponty said firmly.
“I can follow you in my own craft.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir, since we’re all going to the same place anyway,” Ponty replied. “I’m sure you can catch a ride back with the teams that will be dispersed to release your neighbors’ animals from impound.”
“Very well, then,” he conceded when his wife made little shooing motions at him.
Janina wasn’t sure what had passed between the councilman and his nephew on the com, but she thought it odd that the councilman had single-handedly reversed the decision to impound animals because of the supposed epidemic. Of course, according to Jared, vets and animal owners all over the galaxy had been protesting to the council that the fairy dust syndrome was just an odd side effect of the ingestion of the beetles, but no one had paid attention so far, least of all Councilman Klinger.
Her heart lightened as she strapped herself in, Jared in the seat beside her, while Ponty piloted the GHA craft Jared had commandeered.
The small ship had two compartments—the bridge and a section normally reserved for passengers. The latter had been converted into a cage for carrying suspect animals, so the councilman’s nephew sat behind a grid of heavy black wire in a hastily reinstalled passenger seat. Before take-off, Philly Klinger had grabbed his personal entertainment system and was goggled and ear plugged, his body moving slightly to music only he could hear.
“You really think this will turn things around?” Jared asked Ponty. Poor Jared looked so haggard and frazzled. Janina reached over to him and with one hand began massaging the back of his neck. He let out a grunt of sheer relief as the tension in his neck muscles was released, and let his head droop forward so her fingers could find the tight spots more easily,
“Yeah, I think so,” Ponty replied.
“It’ll be a miracle if it does,” Jared told him. “My reports to the GHA and those of every honest vet I’ve talked to have consistently failed to show any harmful side effects connected with animals ingesting the bugs. The GHA has basically called us incompetent and dangerous for ‘failing to recognize and properly contain this sinister invasive organism.’ What sinister invasive organism, I ask you?
“What I think—and others agree with me—is that the beetles are nothing more than a latent emergence of a native species from one of the terraformed planets, one that’s either lain dormant until now or that mutated and merged with some of the imported species and entered the food chain of free range animals via the grasses and grains they ingest. Very few of the impounded animals I’ve examined have any signs of illness whatsoever. And I’ve examined as many as thoroughly as I can without being invasive myself.
“The ones that are sick are mostly sick from the stress of being snatched from their homes and stuck into cages in close quarters with other unfamiliar animals. Of course, I’ve been dealing with the Barque Cats, who are exceptionally well cared for and a hearty species anyway. But if one of them were ill with something contagious, we could lose them all even without the idiocy of the GHA.”
Ponty had one hand on the controls as the other fished inside a flight bag between his seat and Janina’s. The bag moved with far more agitation than the slight twiddling of the man’s fingers seemed likely to cause. Abruptly he snatched his hand out and yelled, “Ouch, you little savage!”
Janina withdrew her hand from Jared’s neck and leaned down to look inside the bag. A grave furry face with a slanted white mustache and huge golden eyes looked up at her.
She reached down to pick him up, and he humped his back and curled his tail to be petted, but Ponty said, “Better not—Klinger back there might take off the gaming goggles. I need to keep Doc a secret.”
Jared was staring at the three of them—Ponty, the kitten, and Janina—evidently trying to understand what was happening.
“Jared,” Ponty said, “I don’t want to confuse the issue after all your fine arguments and research and such, but there might be this one little teensy side effect I maybe ought to tell you about, just among us friends …”
Janina wanted to throttle the man. He’d been holding something back! She should have known it. She had gone along with Ponty’s plan simply because it was the only one anybody had proposed that showed signs of working. It didn’t mean she trusted him. Knowing that he was Jubal’s father, she realized he had to be the person who kidnapped Chessie and probably set fire to the clinic to cover his tracks.
“How could you?” she demanded, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb their passenger. “Do you mean there is a real threat, and you know about it but you’ve still let Jared stake his reputation to participate in your charade?”
“I didn’t say it was a threat, young lady,” Ponty replied smoothly, with a hint of amusement in his tone. “I said it was a side effect. And it might not be. I have to ask you something. Have any of the Duchess’s previous kittens developed psychic bonds with certain people?”
“Psychic what?” she asked. “You’re saying Chester can read someone’s thoughts? Jubal’s?”
“That’s about right,” he said. “Any of Chessie’s previous kittens done that sort of thing?”
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