Catacombs (23 page)

“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 well 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.

I found these things in the ventilation ducts and hull linings and shoved them out where they could be found by the crew. None of them were large or bulky, nothing that couldn’t have been whapped from a surface with a swipe of a paw and rolled or batted into the places where I found them. They could have been picked up and carried in the mouths of cats too. Yes, it could have happened that way.

Then came the day when my sire was to be returned to his ship. Nefure’s remaining kittens, the ones who weren’t pirates, cried and cried as our feisty father was put into the carrier because they knew by now, from the experiences of the other kittens, what that meant. He would not be coming back to his offspring.

But an hour later I heard Janina calling and calling him, and found him deep inside one of the ventilation ducts, curled up in his own fluffy tail, napping.

Jubal had been so busy with the other cats and kittens, I hadn’t seen much of him, but when he saw me sitting outside of the duct he sat down beside me.
Have you seen Jock? Janina put him in a carrier but she says she must not have latched the door real well because when she came back it was wide open
.

He’s asleep in the duct. I think if his people want him back, their Cat Person had better board and call him
.

The crew doesn’t really want the other crews to know how many kittens we have aboard
.

You could try to hide them, then. But Nefure’s kits don’t want Jock to go. I think they sprang him
.

Those little guys?

Humans! Even the best of them could be so taken in by an ingenuous little face. I yawned and gave him a pitying look, but he was getting to his feet.

Moments later hatches closed and soon a voice began calling my sire, who came ambling out of the duct, purring and looking around expectantly. “Jock!” his Cat Person, a young male, cried joyfully and knelt down rubbing his fingers together. My sire moseyed over to him, sniffed his fingers, and jumped into his arms.

As he carried my sire away, a door sprang open and the kittens burst out and scrambled down the hall, but Janina and Jubal scooped them up.

They cried and cried until Jubal crumpled a piece of paper and rolled it on the floor for them to chase.

Kittens! So difficult and yet so easy.

Aside from his cat duties, Jubal helped with routine dirtside maintenance on both ships. This included cleaning and checking the outer hulls, not that onerous a task since the weather was fine.

That’s how he found the worm segments. However immortal the great snake might be, these were thoroughly dead—crushed and broken. He noticed the smell right away. Chester, who had been lying in the grass beside him, taking a break from the kittens, lifted his lip to show fang, slit his eyes and growled.

You think it smells like the snake too, huh?

There’s no mistake. Is it really dead? Shall I kill it again?

No, but I’m going to show the captains. I don’t like to think of these things growing inside that pirate ship
.

Chester had no response to that, but sauntered, black feathery tail held high, back to the ship to watch the kittens. He’d been very attentive to the kittens lately but hadn’t shared why exactly with Jubal, and Jubal hadn’t asked. After all, he was a father now. Jubal sometimes feared he and Chester were growing apart, and he hoped the kittens would get their own homes with their own people
and maybe Renpet would too, so he and Chester could return to being a team.

Captain Vesey looked at the worm and said, “Well, good thing that one’s dead now, at least. Would you ask Chester and Chessie to make sure none got aboard somehow and are living in the ducts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s something else, Jubal.”

“Sir?”

“You and your father are still part of Captain Loloma’s crew by contract. Your mother has signed on with me and asked if I could get Captain Loloma to release you and sign you on with the
Molly Daise
instead. You’re a good worker and your ability to communicate with Chester and through him with the other cats is very handy. I’d be glad to have you, though your father will be returning to the
Ranzo
. How do you feel about it?”

“How about Chester, sir?”

Captain Vesey actually looked embarrassed. “You know, most of us think of Chester as a short crewman now—we know he talks to you, and that he’s concerned for the welfare of the ship, but he has no contract as such and you are his chosen partner. You and I both know, I think, that you have no legal right to him—”

Jubal opened his mouth to protest, and the captain made a “hold on” motion with the vertical palm of his hand before continuing.

“But we’re not sure anybody does. His stud fees will be worthwhile, especially if the ships continue to feel that our kittens aren’t as good as purebred Barques.”

“I don’t care about the stud fees, sir. Its kinda—embarrassing really.”

“Well, you will, son. Your parents and the crew have discussed this and decided that the fair thing is for Chester to be considered your partner and an emancipated cat. Those who want him to make kittens with their queens can negotiate for the privilege, but
since he was originally our kitten, how about half his fee reverts to
Molly Daise
’s crew?”

“That’s okay with me, sir. And Chester doesn’t care about that stuff as long as we’re together and there’s kibble in his bowl.”

“Fair enough. Just one thing, son?”

“Sir?”

“I want you to handle the money. Your mother has been a big help and your father is a good horse-trader, but you seem to have gotten most of the integrity in the family. Do I have your word?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, are you staying with us or the
Ranzo?
”

“The ships are on different courses after we leave here, are they, sir?”

“It makes sense not to have all the kitten salesmen in the same area, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir. If we go with the
Ranzo
, can Chester’s family come with him so he can approve the homes for his kittens?”

“I have no problem with that if we get our share of the sale.”

“Then with all due respect, sir, and appreciation for the crew’s consideration of us, the
Molly Daise
seems like a more—I dunno, official kind of ship than the
Ranzo
. Like you do what you’re told more, and Captain Loloma and his crew risked their lives and their ship to help us, and—”

It was the wrong thing to say. Captain Vesey’s face closed up. “I understand.” Because what Jubal was trying to say, evidently not diplomatically enough, was that, however respectful the
Molly Daise
crew was to Chester now, when the government had ordered the impounding of cats, the ship left Chester drifting in space and gave Chessie up to the authorities. Captain Vesey trusted Jubal, but Jubal wasn’t entirely sure he returned the favor. Besides, being with Mom wasn’t nearly as interesting as being around Pop.

The
Ranzo
was no longer considered too dangerous for Jubal now that the pirates had been taken into custody by the local police,
who almost shot Spike for resisting arrest. He wished there was a nice way to explain how he felt to Captain Vesey, but the captain had marched away.

He consulted Chester, of course, but already knew how the cat would respond.

Nice of them to admit I don’t belong to them
, Chester said, though not entirely graciously. He remembered very well that when he was a kitten there had been talk of destroying him for misbehavior. The
Molly Daise
had just now gotten around to acknowledging that he was not their property, whereas the
Ranzo
crew had from the first seemed to look to him and Jubal for leadership in cat matters.

To their surprise, though, Buttercup didn’t want to change ships. She had discovered Jubal’s mother.

D
uring the layover at Trudeau’s Landing while the silly Barque Cats purringly returned to enslavement to their masters, Pshaw-Ra made himself and his instruction generously available to the next generation. In addition to their paw exercises, he taught them a thing or two about a cat’s natural ability to increase or decrease gravity, thereby gaining advantage in fight, flight, and tromping heavily on others with pressure far greater than accounted for by a grown cat’s weight.

While such skills came naturally to almost any cat, a Mauan mage of Pshaw-Ra’s level could extend these powers until they seemed superfeline.

The time came when the ships were ready to depart with only Chessie aboard the
Molly Daise
, and Chester, Renpet, and the hapless Hadley on the
Ranzo
as adult cat crew. Pshaw-Ra hoped he had also taught the kittens to hone their powers of observation to a degree that would allow them to employ their strengthened paws to advantage. Meanwhile, he returned to his own cozy ship, once more docked in the
Ranzo
’s shuttle bay, where he stayed sequestered with Balthazar and Renpet when he wasn’t—as Jubal’s sire put it—subverting the kittens. Balthazar said the vizier had decided for a time to conserve his fuel by allowing the
Ranzo
to ferry him around the galaxy.

Meanwhile, the vizier’s advice and leadership were available to
all who wished to call upon it to help run the ship, the galaxy, and the universe more efficiently, and of course in the event of any emergency he would be handy to help out. Meanwhile he required a supply of the excellent cat treats the
Ranzo
had taken aboard at Trudeau’s Landing and needed to catch up on his rest.

The older cats had taught the kittens the basics of vermin extermination, but the skills Pshaw-Ra taught would help this new breed become the best that they could be. Unfortunately, kittens were not the only rapidly evolving creatures in space.

“It’s so peaceful here now,” Beulah said, leaning back in her chair and stretching. “Mavis and her lot gone from the brig, the
Molly Daise
en route to Sherwood again so she can drop off Dr. Vlast and try to sell some of the kittens to the farmers. Your father says they’ll pay top dollar regardless of breeding to have help with the rat problem.”

Jubal didn’t like the idea of the kittens going to farms, even if they needed them. Farmers were not always kind to cats, as he recalled, and while they might be okay with this generation, he thought subsequent generations would probably be treated like four-legged trash.

Besides, the kittens would have to develop some new tactics if they were going to beat the smart rats on Sherwood. Chester told him he and Doc controlled the worst of the rodent problem on shipboard by explaining to the kefer-ka-enhanced rats—who were highly intelligent to begin with—that if they chewed the insulation from the wiring on the ships, the ships would crash, life support would end, and rats would go down with the dying ship. The cats reading their thoughts probably spooked the rats worse than the idea of being spaced.