Catalyst (30 page)

But I knew I could not stay behind. With the cage into which Pshaw-Ra had so blithely settled himself, Jubal and the others had brought the stink of fear—and it smelled like my mother’s.
She
had been imprisoned in this cage.

Stick me in there, Jubal
, I told the boy. I’m sure to everyone else it sounded as if I said “mew,” but Jubal had heard me, and through me, most of my discussion with Pshaw-Ra.

Jubal sniffed and wiped his nose on the arm of his suit.
I knew cats were good at guilt trips but I didn’t know it worked on other cats
, he complained, the tears still falling so hard he petted them into my fur as he deposited me next to Pshaw-Ra. The poor boy could hardly breathe, he was so choked up with worry for my sake and grief at the prospect of losing me—again—but he said bravely,
I’ll be with you as far as the lobby. If you change your mind, let me know and I’ll let you out. Then run like crazy
.

Pshaw-Ra yawned again. It was meant to show his disdain, but watching his tail switch I realized he was actually using it to disguise his own nerves. “Oh, really. Such histrionics. Spare me.”

“Just shut up,” I told him. “Or l really will let you go alone!”

His eyes widened earnestly as he looked at me. “You must trust me, catling. I have a plan. I really do. It is in motion even now.”

“Oh, goody. I can’t wait to see what happens,” I said, lifting my leg and cleaning under my tail. At that inopportune moment Jubal lifted the cage, toppling me into Pshaw-Ra and rolling both of us to the back of the cage. I thought it was fear making my skin crawl, then I saw Pshaw-Ra’s bronze coat ripple like wind blowing across the sand dunes in one of Jubal’s books. We were sharing our fur with guests. The kefer-ka were using us as transport and concealment.

Jubal carried us out of the vessel and onto the roof.

The woman Beulah led us, her back straight and her red curls bouncing as she walked down the steps, Jubal carrying our cages in the middle, the girl Sosi bringing up the rear. All of the humans were afraid. I knew that if they were caught they would be in a lot of trouble with the authorities, probably whether or not our mission succeeded. They didn’t care about that too much—at least, Jubal didn’t—but they were worried about the captive cats.

We emerged from the stairwell into a broad, bland corridor of white walls and, to the right of us, a bank of double metal doors. Beulah pushed a button and a lift came to pick us up.

“Let’s not go to the lobby,” Jubal said. “We should stop at the fourth floor instead. That’s where the cats are.”

“We don’t have the pass codes, Jubal,” Beulah told him. “We won’t be able to get in to see them without the pass codes.”

“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 to 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!

J
ared 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.”