Catalyst (22 page)

Doc followed her into the room and hopped up on the console, pretending to use it for a washstand as he carefully groomed his long luxurious gray-striped coat.

First his chest, then his paws, then his ears and whiskers, his shoulders.

“What’s this all about, Mavis?”

“Making us rich, mostly,” she said, stroking Doc’s head, which messed up his bathing schedule so that he had to wash that part next. “Every ship docking at Galport has to surrender its critters to be tested.”

Doc’s ears flicked forward a fraction.

“You know as well as I do they’re not going to bother following up to see which ones are sick or get sick, they’ll just put ’em all down. There will be a lot of berths open for expensive ship cats then. We’ll be able to name our own price.”

Doc sprang to Ponty’s shoulder, clinging with all claws.
Save me, boss. I’m too young to die
. Ponty thought he was imagining it, of course. Cats could make themselves understood without words,
even ones inside your head. That kind of thing just told him he’d been working too hard. He felt the kitten trembling against his neck, though, so he wasn’t imagining that the little fellow was afraid.

“How about this guy, Mavis? You gonna let them take him?”

She looked sad and shrugged. “He’s not exactly legal to begin with. Not exactly on the manifest or anything. What the GG don’t know won’t hurt ’em.”

“Hide him?”

She gave him a pitying look back over her shoulder as she strode from the cabin. “And they’d better not find him either.”

Doc mewed into his ear again, and although the sound that came out was standard feline issue, the thought that came into Ponty’s mind in a nasal little cat voice was in GSL—Galactic Standard Language:
Save me
. Meanwhile, the kitten clung to his neck with sharp baby cat claws that threatened to open a jugular.

“Pipe down,” he told the cat aloud. “If I’m gonna hide you, you need to keep your mouth shut or they’ll find you. Keep still too.”

I’ll be as quiet as a—you know
, the kitten promised, but Ponty wasn’t sure he could trust him. Cats had been known to lie-especially about when they were last fed. He’d learned that from Chessie’s and Git’s litters. There wasn’t anything wrong with a good fib, of course, but he liked to be the one telling it.

None of the kitten’s usual haunts would work. The crew would know about those places. They could turn the little guy in to the GG goons and Mavis would never know.

He tried the bottom of a tool bag, but the kitten popped its head back up, wrinkled his little pink nose and said,
Smells bad
.

The ship’s intercom blurted that the impound team had arrived to search the ship for beetles and infected animals. Mavis made sure to warn her crew that the team was armed with bioheat detectors and other more lethal weapons.

Time had run out. The only hope for Doc was that nobody would, well, rat him out.

The kitten would make an unlikely spot of bioheat in any clothing or bag where he might be hidden, so Ponty took the cat to his quarters, where he put on his civvies—the jeans and plaid shirt he’d been wearing under his shipsuit when he left home, and the black leather jacket he’d kept in the carrier. The jacket had an interior pocket that was handy for a lot of things. It fit up close under his arm and was, he judged, the right size for the kitten.

He picked the cat up and tucked it in the pocket.

Hey, I wasn’t done with my bath yet!

“Yeah, well, if you don’t want to be done for, you’ll take a nap and be quiet about it until I tell you it’s okay, got it?”

This is a good place
, the kitten said as it curled into the pocket. A deep purr throbbed against Ponty’s side.

“Cut that out, Doc,” he whispered to his own armpit. “They’ll hear you from the bridge if you keep purring like that.”

Sorry. I’m happy
.

“Enjoy it while you can, fuzz face.”

Boss?

“What?”

You don’t have to say words to me. I can understand you. You’re my person, boss. I can read you like a cargo manifest
.

Mavis was always looking at cargo manifests—of other ships, making her shopping lists for her heists. The kitten liked to get between her and her paperwork.

Like this?
Ponty thought experimentally.

You got it
.

Well, I’ll be spaced. Do you do this with Mavis too?

No. She’s nice to me. She likes me. I like to keep it that way. But you’re my boss
.

Ponty was pretty sure now that the kitten was lying. He didn’t actually know much about cats, but he did know that most of them considered themselves their own bosses. The kitten’s story stank worse than an unemptied litter box, but the important thing now
was to keep the cat safe from the goons and therefore himself safe from the wrath of Mavis.

He strolled right past the goons and their equipment, down the gangway and into Galport, then into the streets of Galipolis.

The old man looked around at the sound of Jubal’s voice, then grinned down at him as if they had agreed to meet there. “They treating you okay on the
Ranzo?”
he asked.

No hug, no hi, no “How’s your mom?”

“Up till now, yeah. At least they honored my contract, even if you didn’t honor yours.”

“Couldn’t help it, son. I was, as they say, unavoidably detained.”

“The law?”

“Some old—friends. Find your cat?”

Jubal said, “No. And now Hadley and Chessie and the other ship cats have been impounded. They’re probably going to kill them.”

“I know. Tough luck about that,” his father said, sounding only a little sad. Jubal recognized the credit signs in Pop’s eyes.

“I get it. You’re going to make money off this, aren’t you?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at his father. “You didn’t cause the impound order, did you?”

“Mercy, no! What do you take me for, boy?” he asked. Jubal didn’t answer.

But just then Sosi ran back, clutching her cloth. Seeing Jubal’s dad, she stopped in her tracks and looked from Jubal to his dad and back again.

“Ponty,” she said to his father. Of course. Pop had probably spent more time on the
Ranzo
and ships like her than he ever had at home. “Ponty, they took Hadley away. You can help, can’t you? Or you know somebody who can help? When they arrested my daddy you made them let him go …”

“That was a matter of knowing someone, sweet cakes,” Pop said, kneeling to talk to the girl. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do about the kitties they arrested, but I’ll see to it you have your pick of the litter of the new kitties as soon as they’re born.”

For a smart guy, Pop really didn’t get it about cats, did he? They weren’t interchangeable. Jubal felt like yelling at him, but Sosi for once made herself useful and went him one better. Her lower lip trembled, her eyes watered up and began streaming, then she let out a loud
Bawwww
that would have made one of the cows back home proud. Then she leaped onto his old man. Throwing her arms around his neck while the blue cloth was still in her hands, she nearly strangled him crying, “I want
Had
ley, Ponty. I don’t want them to h-h-h-hurt h-him! Please make them give him back. I don’t want a new kitty. I want
mine.”

Under other circumstances Jubal would have been tickled to see his old man speechless for a change, but this was serious. Ponty patted Sosi and said, “There there, there there, I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I know someone who can let me rescue one cat …”

“But Pop, they took Chessie too, and what about the oth—”

The old man shot him a warning look. Then, to Jubal’s amazement, he pulled the side of his leather jacket out from under the sobbing Sosi and pointed under his left arm. The tips of two gray-striped ears with delicate pink insides tufted with fine soft white hairs poked up from a pocket inside the jacket. The ears tilted back and the sleepy white-mustachioed face of Doc, Chessie’s foster kitten, rose slowly, eyes slitted. Finding nothing interesting to look at, the kitten shut his eyes again and burrowed his face back into the pocket.

How’d you find him?
Jubal mouthed. But his father shook his head over the top of Sosi’s and pulled the jacket back together in front again.

For just a moment Jubal felt more lighthearted than he had in a long time. His pop was actually on their side. And then, from the other side of the jacket, something blurted and Pop dislodged Sosi enough to answer it.

“Ponty, you’d better make yourself scarce and hide my cat better than you hid his box, food, and toys. The goons found them and they are looking for you.”

The old man mumbled something into the com, took off the jacket and gave it to his son, who put it on. Not a good fit. The collar slid over his shoulder on the side where Doc was hidden, and Doc mewed in protest and started to try to climb out.

“Ow,” Jubal said. Sosi, delighted when she spotted the kitten, bounced up and down, and when they told her to hush up and act natural, she bit down on her fist to keep from squealing with excitement.

“If you want me to save your furry tail, you’d better behave yourself and stay still,” Pop said to the jacket’s bulge. “It’s okay, I’ll be right back and I’ll find a better place to hide you.” Then, “Okay, okay, I’ll find you something to eat too.”

He looked up at Jubal’s face, shook his head in mock disgust and said, “Cats!” then strode back into the market, turning back once to say, “Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

He was gone a long time. Jubal stood there in the hot leather jacket as the kitten settled and resettled himself inside the pocket, mewing when his claws caught in the lining, and sometimes in Jubal. Sosi, trying to help, wrapped her blue cloth around Jubal’s shoulders three times, but it still dragged on the ground. It did hide most of the jacket, however.

When Pop returned, he was wearing the long loose robe and head cloth of a Khafistani merchant, from which he produced a large bag.

“What took you so long?” Jubal asked.

“I had to have a pocket put in, didn’t I? For the merchandise? Give us a hug now.”

It was awkward and Jubal got scratched pretty bad during the transfer, but by the time Pop stood away, Doc was in the robe, the jacket was in the bag, and the contents of a smaller bag of dried fish, which had been in the larger bag, was in the kitten.

Jubal looked after them wonderingly. He thought the old man was for once really committed to taking a side regardless of profit. He’d gone to a lot of trouble for Doc, and now he’d be in a lot more trouble if anybody found out.

Not that Jubal would tell. He had other plans.

Beulah had been the one to suggest getting the press on their side. Before becoming a com officer, she’d been a comcaster for one of the big Galactic networks. For the most part, the news these people reported was local and was so stale by the time it made its way through the relays to the outlying worlds that it wasn’t worth bothering about. That was what the GG said anyway.

Also, the popular press, as it was called, was mostly only popular with the people affected by the news it reported. Folks on Sherwood didn’t care any more about what happened on Galipolis than Galipolitans cared what happened on Sherwood, unless somehow or other it affected prices or taxes or some other pan-galactic issue.

The GG kept people informed about that kind of thing. Most of the people on the colony planets and those traveling through space were somehow or other working for the GG. If something they didn’t like was happening, they usually found it more trouble than it was worth to say or do anything about it.

Galipolis didn’t depend on ships’ cats to keep the crew and cargo safe, nor on livestock for a livelihood, but if animals on the other planets were destroyed, it would mean less fresh meat, maybe even less produce, and Beulah said city folks could get almost as attached to their pets as Jubal was to Chester.

What they needed, she said, was a story. The GG doing something unpopular wasn’t news, but maybe a group of people whose beloved animals had been impounded trying to save them—or at least trying to make sure they weren’t unnecessarily sacrificed—was more the kind of thing the press would latch onto. They would report it to Galipolitans at large, and either the movement—and
the pressure on the GG to do the right thing—would gather momentum, or the city people would sneer at the unsophisticated critter lovers. But there’d be attention paid in either case.

Janina and her crewmates had gone to rally crews from other nongovernment-affiliated ships. They were all meeting back at the fountain in two more hours, and Beulah would alert some of her old friends at the networks about their cause.

Meanwhile, Jubal and Sosi trailed an impound team from one of the ships to the quarantine area inside what looked like a large office building. Nobody paid any attention to a couple of kids. Why should they care if the officers in the florries were carrying containers full of beetles and a couple of squalling cats?

“You kids looking for something?” a uniformed security guard asked them.

“Who? Us?” Jubal and Sosi said, each opening their eyes as widely as they could to look innocent and harmless and much too young to cause any problem.