Catacombs (7 page)

Miss me?
I asked.

Yeah
, Jubal replied sleepily, raising his arm to let me snuggle.

What’s going on out there? Are the cats sick?

No, just making friends. Where did you put my treat?

What treat?

The cat doctors brought us all treats
.

Sorry, Chester, nobody came
.

You should have got up when you heard them scratch at the door. It could have been me, you know
.

I would have! Of course, I would have
. He stroked me.
But nobody came
.

I was left out at treat time? After all my hard work? The management was going to hear about this!

T
hree nights after the Barque Cats settled in the city, the first catastrophe happened. It was at night, and fortunately just after the feline physicians began making the rounds they had made both of the previous nights.

On the second night Jubal had been amused, as he watched through the beaded curtain, to see the cats scratching at the doors, as Chester had described it. The phrase “wandering mendicants” came to him from one of his old books. Chester pawed at him.
Why am I being left out? It’s not fair!

Keep your tail on. I’ll ask Edfu. Maybe they just forgot where we are. You said he came with Bahiti last night. Let’s go find them
.

He rushed Chester past the house where Bes and his servant had entered to minister to the cats inside.

Two looped streets later they saw Bahiti, Chessie, and Edfu emerging from one of the houses. When the door had closed behind them, Jubal ran forward, waving. “Hey, Edfu, how’s it going?”

“Going?” the other boy asked. “We are going from door to door, as you see, where Bahiti passes out these packets.”

“Yeah, well, about that? Chester saw the packets being taken to the other cats and wondered why he didn’t get one. I told him our house probably just got overlooked.”

Edfu looked a little shifty, like his old man did, Jubal thought,
when he was trying to think of a good excuse for doing a bad thing. “Yes, yes, that must be it.”

“Can I have one for him now?”

“Oh, I am sorry but there are just enough doses—I mean, treats—in this basket for the cats we must see tonight. I’ll tell you what, though. When we are done with rounds, I will ask Bahiti if we can make up another treat for your Chester and bring it to him.” He gave both Jubal and Chester an inquiring look, and Bahiti purred something soothing to Chester.

Chessie gave her son a nose kiss. “Bahiti is not really assigned to your house and has been very busy, but I will remind him about your treat. You have grown into a very fine cat and should not be left out.”

Chester purred and rubbed his head against his mother’s cheek. “Thanks, Mother.”

He jumped up onto Jubal’s shoulder.
Let’s go back to our house now. I want to be there when they bring my treat. I thought those were fish but now I wonder if they might not be ground-up keka bugs. It’s funny. I haven’t seen any keka bugs since we left the ships, have you?

Jubal allowed as how he hadn’t and agreed that it was kind of strange.
Maybe Pshaw-Ra exported all of them
, he suggested.
Didn’t you say they’re part of his plan for universal domination? He might have used them all up
.

He intended to ask Edfu about it when the other boy came by with Chester’s treat, but Edfu didn’t have time to talk then either, just handed him what seemed to be a gob of rolled-up fish and left. Neither Bahiti nor Chessie were with him.

Chester nibbled at the treat, then batted it around with his white stockinged paw.
It’s just fish
.

You like fish
.

Yes, but there should be some powder or something rolled up in it. I thought it might be powdered keka bugs. Whatever the others got, I don’t think it was only fish
.

Judging from the increase in wildly operatic cat song issuing from the neighboring houses, Jubal was inclined to agree. Maybe the other cats had been given some really good nip. In which case Chester’s complaint was justified. He was the best and brightest cat there, Jubal felt sure. If the others got good nip, Chester should have it too, and he intended to ask the captain to see if he could—Well, what could he do, really? Maybe instead of asking the captain, he just needed to corner Edfu.

Mother will know
, Chester said.
I will ask her when …
He yawned hugely, sprawled out on the middle of the bed and fell asleep.

Jubal had a harder time sleeping. He wished he had brought something to read. By the time Edfu had arrived, it was almost dawn again and nobody seemed to be around during the day. Eventually, he curled himself around Chester and slept fitfully.

He woke up a few hours later to a knock on the door. Opening it, he was almost knocked backward by the heat. In the doorway was a small woman holding two pots, one full of fishy smelling bits, the other covered. “Your meal,” she said.

“Thanks,” he told her. “I can cook a little if you’ll tell me where to find supplies.”

But he said much of it to her back. He shrugged, refilled Chester’s dish, and set his own on the table. It was some sort of rice dish with dried fruit of undetermined origin. It was hot but bland. He looked down at Chester, whose head bobbed up and down as he snapped up his food.

Don’t suppose you could spare me some of your fish?

What fish?
Chester asked innocently, looking up from his empty dish.

What did he expect? Chester might be his best friend, but he was a cat and he liked fish a lot.

Chester jumped up on the table and watched while Jubal finished his meal.
Maybe we should go fishing again
, the cat suggested.

It’s really hot out there. How do these people live in this place anyway?

Chester didn’t answer. Having eaten, he was ready for another nap.

Jubal decided that as soon as it cooled off enough, he would ask the captain if he could go back to the ship and get stuff—food, something to read, his pocket unit for music, games, and data, including a number of his favorite books Beulah had let him download from the ship’s computer. Somehow he had thought it would be more interesting when they got here. That they’d have adventures. The fishing trip was the most adventurous thing they’d done so far. But going back to the ship was a good idea. He’d bring their communicators too. How could these people have spaceships for cats but no coms?

He must have fallen asleep again because when he woke up, Chester was gone. He filled Chester’s water dish, then he left the house. The evening air was much cooler, and he turned away from the temple, toward the edge of town where most of the crew was supposed to be.

Tonight several other cats were out, lounging on the roofs or in the bead-decked open doorways of the houses. As he passed they looked at him expectantly, and he realized they were waiting for the treat that had come the previous two nights.

As he turned into the next street, he saw Bahiti scratching on a door, with Chessie and Edfu looking on. He was about to say hello to them when he heard a noise behind him. Every cat he had seen outside quivered with attention and looked back toward the temple. Chester called him.
Jubal, help! She’s losing her kittens!

Who?
he asked, running back toward their house. Edfu and Bahiti outstripped him, the basket bouncing on Edfu’s arm as he ran. The two other cat doctors, Heket and Hathor, streaked past him too, their attendants hot on their heels.

Her name is Romina, she says. She wants her Cat Person, Gordon
.

Help is coming, Chester. All of the cat docs are on their way
.

Bes is here now
, Chester said.
But Romina misses her human. I think we should have the human vet look at her, Jubal
.

Where are you?

Looking through the roof flap. I was just about to drop in for a visit when she started crying. Hurry! The room is getting crowded but nobody seems to be doing much to help
.

Maybe there’s nothing to be done, but I’ll get Pinot just the same
. He took off running, and immediately began streaming sweat again. As he reached the last street between the desert and the city, he started calling. People stood outside their doors, watching.

“Medic!” he yelled. “Pinot?”

Felicia Daily, smoothing her hair back, came from one of the houses farther down the street. Pinot, zipping his shipsuit, appeared behind her in the doorway.

“What?” the medic asked.

“You ever helped birth kittens before?” Jubal asked, waving his arm for them to follow.

“No, but humans—”

“One of the pregnant cats is miscarrying.”

“Poor little thing,” he said.

“I’ll come too,” Felicia said. “Should I get the captain?”

“He’s closer to the temple. Probably heard the hullabaloo and is there already. Come
on,
” Jubal said, though they were right behind him.

The cats who had arrived earlier seemed to have lost interest, but there were a few people outside Bes’s house. All of the feline physicians were inside when Jubal, Daily, and Pinot arrived.

The feline physicians sat around the cat whose dead kittens lay at her feet. There were four, very tiny, looking more like mice than cats. The physicians bathed the mother while she licked the nearest dead kitten, patting it with her paw, as if trying to wake it up.

Jubal glanced up and saw Chester, wide-eyed, staring at him through the roof flap.

When he looked back, one of the cat doctors had pinned the little
mother’s head and shoulders with her paws and was licking her face while Bes picked up one kitten after another and flipped it away from her. His human assistant scooped the little corpses into a bag.

Pinot frowned at the assistant.

“Examination of the remains may help determine why the mother lost them,” Bes’s flunky explained.

Romina mewed up at Pinot, and he stepped forward to caress her and speak to her. Jubal squatted beside him, with Felicia on the other side.

The cat doctors and their humans quietly departed.

“What happened to her?” Jubal asked them. “She was doing so well on the ship.”

“Stress maybe,” Pinot said, feeling her sides and checking her for any residue from the births that might cause her to bleed. The cats had already taken care of the placenta. “She seems okay now, though. Could be something happened to her in the lab in Galipolis that had a delayed effect.”

She looked so pitiful. She needed cleaning and comforting. Chessie slid under Jubal’s knee, lay down beside the bereaved mother and began to wash her. Jubal wanted to stay with them and protect them, but Chester told him,
Mother is going to stay with them tonight. She will alert me if there’s any more trouble and I’ll tell you right away
.

With that reassurance, they left. By then the sky was dark and full of stars, the moons hovering over the dunes.

It was too late to return to the ship now.

He walked with Daily and Pinot to the quarters assigned to the captain and Sosi to report what had happened.

The house they were staying in was very similar to his and Chester’s. People on Sherwood didn’t live in houses that looked alike—there were individual differences outside as well as inside. Here they seemed to be as standard as ships’ cabins. Was it because the houses were considered to belong to the cats? That didn’t make sense when you considered that cats were a very original
kind of creature—they were each different from the other. But maybe because they carried those differences around inside their own fur coats they didn’t need to express them or have their humans express them in furnishings or possessions?

It was a good thing I stayed behind to watch over everyone. I started to drop down into the room, once my boy left with the rest of the humans and all of the native cats, but my mother froze me with a look. “No males,” she told me.

“I was just going to help keep her warm,” I said, wounded by the rejection. When my brothers and sisters and I were born, there was one last kitten who hadn’t made it out, and Mother had bled terribly. I couldn’t see it then, but I could smell it, and the smell I remembered was still in the room below, even though the mess had been cleaned.

“Just run along, son. This is female business,” Mother told me firmly.

I was on the edge of the roof, getting ready to spring to the adjacent roof, when a noise called me back to the flap.

Ninina, the other pregnant cat, gave a low yowl. “Not you too!” Mother said.

“My belly hurts,” Ninina complained. “There it goes again—Yow! I think my kittens are coming too and it’s not time yet. Not nearly time.”

Her sides heaved up and down, up and down.

Better come back and bring help
, I told Jubal, who promised to hurry. But despite the humans’ and the cat doctors’ best efforts, repeating the whole scene that had played out with Romina, it wasn’t like they could push the kittens back inside the mother and let them grow until they were ready.

I thought Pshaw-Ra might show up. After all, he wanted kittens. He’d said so.

Of course, he did get what he wanted, as usual, but that came somewhat later.

Jubal and some of the crew went back to the ship to scavenge later that evening. I stood guard over Mother, Romina, and Ninina until Bes and his assistant returned. The cat doctor gave the two miscarried females something to help them sleep. They needed it because, as usual after the doctors made their rounds, it got very noisy outside. Maybe they missed the music that was played on shipboard sometimes, because my fellow cats, Barque and Mau alike, were singing love songs embellished with a border world warble and wail.

With the Bes household back under his paw, I took off across the rooftops, determined to wait at the edge of the city for Jubal and the crew to return.

Two streets down from the temple I saw more kittens, these the seven-week-old offspring of Flekica, a ginger. Her white kit was being carried by its mother in the usual manner, the scruff of its neck between her teeth, but it was so large its paws dragged the street. She waddled along purposefully, her gait impeded by the big kitten body bumping against her front legs. Three other kittens, two gray and a tortoiseshell, bounced along behind their mother and hapless sibling. They were truly kittens, small and still wearing fuzz rather than fluffy fur. They didn’t even have proper tails yet, not fine and long and fully coated like mine.