Catalyst (23 page)

The guard nodded curtly.

“We’re looking for my dad—stepdad, actually,” Jubal said. “Dr. Mbele?”

“The epidemiologist?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what they call it,” Jubal said, in case it was a trick question.

“You think he’d want you bothering him at work?”

“No, sir, but it’s mighty important. My mama said I was to tell him personal.”

“Couldn’t she com him?”

“No sir, she—”

“She lost her voice,” Sosi said. “She took sick with a sore throat and lost her voice.”

The guard grunted and picked up the com behind his desk.

“Get ready to run,” Jubal told Sosi from behind his hand. But meanwhile he was watching the lift, trying to tell where it was depositing
the impound team and their cargo, looking to see if there was a map of the building on display to help people find the right department.

The guard said, “Dr. Mbele hasn’t returned from his mission. I can tell him you kids were here and have him call home.”

“Can’t we wait?” Jubal asked.

“Not allowed,” the guard said. “They’re bringing diseased animals in here from all over the galaxy. You kids might catch something worse than a sore throat.”

“What’s wrong with the animals?” Sosi asked.

“They don’t know, but whatever it is, it spreads fast and is hard to detect. That’s all I was told about it.”

“That’s too bad,” Jubal said. “What are they going to do?”

“Test ’em.”

“Like ask them questions?” Sosi asked in her brightest little-girl voice.

“No, honey,” the man said. “Take samples, see what’s making them sick.”

“Oh. Does Daddy do that?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Where? Here?”

The man sighed a deep put-upon sigh. “Of course not. Up in the lab.”

“Where’s that?” Jubal asked.

The man looked trapped. He didn’t want to be mean to the kids of one of the scientists, but he probably wasn’t supposed to be chitchatting with them either. “If I show you on my computer, will you go back home and wait like I told you?”

“You can do that?” Sosi asked, clapping her hands.

“I’m not supposed to, but of course I can. You’ll see it if you come in at a better time, career day maybe, when your daddy can bring you to work with him.”

He was going to get fired for this for sure, Jubal thought, feeling sorry for the man, who kindly showed them a layout of the building,
pinpointed Mbele’s laboratory, then showed them the scientists at work in the lab on his security camera. He shut it off when it picked up the yowls of the cats and the protests of the other animals.

“Are the kitties sick?” Sosi asked, overdoing it now.

The guard, having bent over backward to avoid appearing officious or unkind, belatedly seemed to realize that the current circumstances called for just such an attitude. He pushed them back into the corridor and said, “That remains to be seen. You run along now and I’ll tell Dr. Mbele he needs to call home. You’d better be there to talk for your mama.”

As they skittered out of the building, another team arrived. Mbele was among them, Jubal saw. He wished he could signal the man, but he wasn’t sure how far the scientist was prepared to help them anyway, even for Beulah’s sake. Then he did a double take. He recognized someone else too: Dr. Vlast, the vet from Hood Station. How had he gotten here so fast? Of course, he’d come on a GG transport! It would have been granted priority landing and would have escaped the giant traffic jam. The vet could have come all the way from Hood Station during the time the
Ranzo
had been waiting to land.

Dr. Vlast was surrounded by government types. He looked busy and preoccupied and not a bit happy about being there. He didn’t see Jubal and Jubal didn’t try to get his attention as the group moved into the building.

At the fountain, Jubal was deeply disappointed to see that Janina, her crewmates, and Beulah had been joined by only a half dozen other people. None of the media people Beulah knew were there yet. “A fuel transport collided with a cargo vessel over Gal-isouth,” Beulah told them. “That’s the story everyone is after. We’ll have to wait for a slower news day.”

“Hadley may not have that long,” Sosi said.

Janina looked like she was going to start crying. Jubal said, “On the way out of the building, we saw your vet friend Vlast.”

She looked startled, then hopeful, then glum again. “They’ll have forced him to come,” she said. “That’s what they’ve done historically anyway—traded the vets around so the resident vet can return to what clients are left without having them angry with him. I wish I could contact him. He’s bound to be miserable about all this.”

“Why can’t you?” Jubal asked. “We can show you where he is.”

W
hen the children showed her the building, Janina entered and the guard stood to intercept her. “Sorry, miss, only authorized personnel beyond this point.”

“I’m looking for my brother,” she said. “Dr. Jared Vlast of Hood Space Station.”

The lift opened and a herd of hazmat-suited personnel lumbered out of it and toward the outer door. The smell of urine, feces, and fear overlaid with antiseptic spilled down the shaft and through the lift’s open door behind them. A small portion of that smell would be Chessie’s. Janina couldn’t bear it.

“I can take a message,” the guard said.

“Could you tell him now?” she asked, her voice trembling a little. “I haven’t seen him in weeks and my ship is scheduled for departure. Tell him Janina is here, please.”

“You’ll have to wait outside,” the guard said. “Sorry, those are the rules.”

“I—I’ll be there. By the door,” she replied, and retreated to the not entirely fresh air outside, trembling with her own boldness, with anticipation at perhaps seeing Jared again, and with anguish at the thought of her beautiful, gentle Chessie trapped at the source of the stench.

But she stood staring at the reflective tint of the doors, wishing she could see more of the inside. Jubal had drawn their little group
a rough sketch of the building’s layout. The lab was on the fourth floor, he said.

Imagining the lab’s location made her picture what might be happening to the cats within it, and she shook her head to dislodge all of her pitiful fancies of what those poor animals might be enduring.

The doors retracted, and there, looking weary and red around the eyes, was Jared. She wished she had had the time or the spirit to dress up a bit before this, but Jared looked as if he hadn’t slept well in days and was in no mood to notice.

She stepped up to meet him and could not resist the urge to put her arms around him and hug him, since he looked as miserable as she felt. To her surprise, he held her even closer and brought his hand up to the back of her head to keep it against his shoulder.

“I’ve seen Chessie,” he told her. “She’s fine. I’ll not let anyone hurt her if I can help it, Jannie. I promise.”

“But if there’s an epidemic …” she said.

“There is no epidemic—no more than the glitter effect you and I have already observed in the secretions of animals who eat the beetles, as your little Chester so clearly demonstrated to us back at the clinic. This is all about ranching rivalry and politics. Varley told me all about it before I ever received any directives from the GHS.”

He went on to tell her how the import of the wild pintos had upset the balance of power between Varley’s friend and the relative of a GHS official, causing the relative to claim, falsely, that the glittery secretions were the early sign of an epidemic so the horses would be impounded.

“But that’s madness!” she protested. “What about the colonists who will be ruined, the innocent animals who will be destroyed? Surely our government does not condone such corruption and cruelty!”

“Not openly, of course,” he said sadly. He had released her but retained a hard grip on both of her hands. He was clearly angry.
“Sorry to disillusion you, but the welfare of animals and those who raise them is a very low priority with most officials.”

“Dr. Vlast,” the guard said from the doorway. “You’re needed back in the laboratory, sir.”

“Coming,” Jared said over his shoulder. “I’ll try to see you again,” he told her. “I’ll leave a message with the
Molly Daise
when I’ll be free again. I’ll do my best to save Chessie, no matter what.”

But that was very cold comfort to Janina. She loved Chessie very much, but the thought of all of the other innocent creatures being destroyed over political game-playing sickened her.

Jared was back inside the building before she remembered she had wanted to tell him about the derelict ship and its strange feline inhabitant and the seeming abduction of Chester.

Pshaw-Ra launched into his story and I was hooked. I sat with my tail curled around my paws and my eyes half shut, ears tilted forward, as he spoke.

“Long ago, when there was One Sun and One Sky, our feline kind was worshipped by a clever and industrious race of two-leggeds. We all lived in a hot country along a flowing river, the only such place for hundreds of miles. The rest of the country was desert and pretty much useless, but where we lived it was lush and fertile and teeming with prey for us and game for our followers. For our purposes, it was the world, the only world, and we were content.

“Then the two-leggeds got distracted from paying us homage and waged war on one another instead. Persians, Hittites, Greeks, Romans, yada yada yada, they all came and took over our poor country. The last race to descend upon us were the Diggers, who disinterred our ancestors, both feline and human, and carried them from the tombs where they were supposed to find eternal rest
into foreign places where their mummies could be defiled and turned into litter.

“After many years, the descendants of the original two-leggeds recognized that the error of their ways, the adulation of less worthy beings and goals, had led to their downfall. They begged our forgiveness and once more paid us homage. This did not make them any more popular with their less enlightened enemies. At last our two-leggeds and our illustrious selves were banished from the sight of the One Sun in a vessel that took us to a new world. Or so those who inherited our old land believed. The truth was, our race—yours and mine—had long ago dwelt beyond the One Sun. It was our ancient wisdom that made the Two Lands great.

“To the surprise and delight of our followers, the new world was far from being a punishment. It was wondrous, an entire planet we might call our own, with a climate lush and fertile as our riverine lands had been. The game in our new home was, for the most part, imported along with our worthy selves, but there were also a few indigenous life-forms, just small ones, that neither our two-leggeds nor their skyborne overlords noticed. One among these species was able to breed with the dung beetles sacred to our people, the ones we brought with us, and from the mating evolved the even more sacred and revered—and delicious, of course—kefer-ka, commonly called the Bug of Becoming among my people.”

“Becoming what?” I asked. Pshaw-Ra laid his big pointy ears back a bit and showed his fangs. He didn’t like being interrupted and let me know in no uncertain terms that he thought mine a stupid question.

“Becoming One!”

“One what?” I asked. But now I was playing with him. I had a good idea what eating the shiny bugs did, at least for me. It made me one—sort of—with the boy.

He did not answer for some time but started washing his chest and shoulders as if I were not there. Long loving licks from the base of his throat, as high as he could reach, down to his belly, his
rough tongue easily smoothing his sleek fur. Hah! I’d like to have seen him do that with a soft fine coat of slightly curly fur such as mine was becoming.

I moved my front paws a fraction forward in the direction of the fishie treats. He didn’t notice. Another fraction. From beneath his top whiskers he sent me a baleful glare. “Do not start with me, un-sanctified son of a ship’s cat. I am Pshaw-Ra, ancient mariner of the stars, light-bringer to the universe, and I will smack you so hard you’ll spin around and swallow your own tail.”

I was young but I was already as large as he was. He might be old but he was small and slim, whereas my entire race tended toward substantial size. Fighting with Git’s get throughout my land-bound days had made me tough, I believed, and my youth made me quick. Not nearly quick enough, as it turned out. I put my right front paw one claw length forward and found myself knocked two cat lengths back against the bulkhead of Pshaw-Ra’s small cabin. My cheek smarted, my whiskers ached, and I was sure my poor little tufted ear was shredded.

I ran for the exit, for the comfort of Kibble, who would take me back to Mother to wash it all better. But the long twisting cat tunnel was dark and full of crawling things. I clawed at the closed opening, crying to be released from my imprisonment with this strange vicious beast who picked on poor little helpless kittens, but no one answered. My sharp ears heard no movement. My sensitive nose detected no smell but the mustiness of the corridor, the odor of Pshaw-Ra, and an intoxicating aroma that reminded me of both salmon and catnip.

If only my boy were out there instead of Kibble, he would have heeded my cries. I scratched until my claws shredded and my paws ached. I cried myself hoarse but no response came until I felt teeth close on the tip of my beautiful tail.

“Monster!” I cried, whirling as fast as I could in the narrow darkness of the corridor. “Fiend! Wild canine in a cat coat! You tricked me! Let me out of here now so I can return to my ship.”

“Your ship is far away, son. Did you not hear the cries of your provider? Did you not feel my vessel free itself of the bondage beam? What are you complaining about? You were dissatisfied with the female, the ship, and even the company of your own mother. I took that from your thoughts.”

“You did?” I sat back on my haunches and licked my sore paws, my sore face, my poor little ear that had a tiny torn place just above the fluffy tuft adorning its center.

“I can do such things, can read your wishes, intentions, disappointments, and dreads as well as the thoughts you send me,” Pshaw-Ra said proudly, blinking his shining gold-coin eyes shut, so that for a nanosecond the darkness was unrelieved. I could tell he expected me to be impressed, but what I had actually meant—as he would have known if he were as good as he claimed—was that I didn’t realize he could do it
too
. I’d been reading thoughts—and the thoughts under thoughts—my entire life. “What is the use of my ancient and all-encompassing wisdom without a suitable pupil to receive my teachings? You will do.”