Catacombs

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Oh, very well.”

  And she turned away from us, her tail high over her sleek-furred rump, and permitted her bearer to return her to her pallet.

  “That’s some female,” Bat said. “Who is she?”

  “That is my queen, Nefure,” Pshaw-Ra said.

  “Your mate?” I asked.

  “My daughter,” he replied, giving his shoulder a self-satisfied lick.

  “So by queen you mean she’s the boss of you?” Bat asked.

  “Just climb onto the nice pallet, kittycat, and don’t ask impertinent questions,” Pshaw-Ra told him. “Chester, you too. Quickly. It is too hot for you here. Refreshments await us in the city.”

  The people carrying the pallets looked hot and uncomfortable, but smiled and waved to the crew to join them.

  Captain Loloma walked up to the most important looking man and inclined his head in greeting. “We’re very glad to see you. We seem to be stranded. One of your—well, one of your cats led us here but we are about out of fuel and hope you can help us. We don’t actually have enough for the life-support systems to function for long, but if we can work out a deal, we will refuel and be on our way as soon as possible.” Jubal noted that the captain said nothing about them being on the lam.

  The man smiled broadly, and a woman stepped forward and inclined her head as the captain had. “We welcome you and the wondrous creatures you bring in such quantity. Never had we dared hope for so many. We have arranged accommodations for each of them and each of you, where your every need will be provided. You must not stay aboard your ship. It would be unbearable during the day, whereas our dwellings are well equipped for Mau’s climate. Please, be our guests.”

  The captain looked around as if for transport. “Uh, you walked?”

  “Yes, it is warm but it is only a short distance. The sacred ones of course must ride, but it is tradition that we walk.”

  “We should help you load the cats,” he suggested, though to Jubal he sounded extremely unsure how that was going to happen.

  “It is not necessary. They arrange themselves,” she replied. And indeed, with a little prodding from Pshaw-Ra and Chester, the Barque Cats each found a pallet. To Jubal’s surprise, there was no squabbling, hissing, spitting, or fluffed fur, mostly because the native cats were almost uncatly in their gracious welcomes, offering grooming and nose kisses, and showing their guests to the dishes of water and food set into the pallets for their use. Women, sweating themselves, wielded feathered fans to keep the cats cool.

  The young mother cat, Flekica, and her seven-week-old kittens rode on a pallet with several other females who seemed to admire the kittens. The humans carrying that pallet spoke soothingly to the mother cat.

  The captain signaled to the rest of the crew to fall in behind him, then assigned them each a position and told them to make friends. “We need their help,” he said. “You’ve got your marching orders. Go!”

  Sosi and Hadley stayed with him and the first man he had addressed, who accompanied a pallet of six cats, two spotted like leopards, two tawny like Pshaw-Ra, and two black. Space Jockey rode with the queen, Jubal noted, and Chessie, Bat, and Sol rode with Pshaw-Ra and a group of four or five native cats. A boy about Jubal’s own age waited beside the pallet.

  Jubal decided he wanted to meet the boy and went to greet him. Chester jumped onto the pallet, accepted a grooming from his mother, had a drink, and lay down to rest.

  “I am Edfu, keeper of Bahiti,” said the boy who accompanied the pallet, gesturing to a large and rather wild looking spotted cat, who used the boy’s gesturing hand to rub against his ears in an affectionate way. Edfu’s Standard was heavily accented but understandable. “Welcome. We have long waited for the Grand Vizier’s return, but little did we imagine he would bring with him such bounty—so many beautiful new cats!”

  “We didn’t have much choice,” Jubal told him. “There was sort of a—misunderstanding with the government.”

  “Your government does not like cats? Or are these cats perhaps exiled members of a larger royal family?” Edfu’s voice dropped when he asked the last question.

  “No, no, nothing like that. Our cats don’t have a royal family—neither do the people, actually—but these are very special cats just the same.”

  “So have we heard! It is said that the Grand Vizier told the queen that each cat among them has extra toes and that they hunt among the stars!” Said by whom? Jubal wondered, but then he realized that the kind of bond he had with Chester was commonplace here, where cats and humans routinely shared communication. If the cats wanted to, of course.

  “Well, a lot of them have extra toes. My kitten Chester does. This is him, here.” He reached over and scratched Chester’s ears and was given a brief prrt for his trouble. “But not all of them. They are all good hunters, though, and all of them come from ships where they were sort of security and morale officers, I guess you could say. It’s what their ancestors have been doing for a long time. Chester’s supposed to look like the very first Barque Cat of all, his own many times great-granddad Tuxedo Thomas.”

  “Ahhh! So these cats help you to hunt?”

  “No, they do the hunting,” he said. “Don’t yours?”

  Edfu looked a bit puzzled. “It’s much too dangerous.”

  Jubal thought that was pretty odd but it would be rude to say so, and besides, he was tired and hot, and to his surprise, Edfu seemed to be too. Beulah offered her sunscreen to the woman she walked beside and rubbed some on Sosi. The woman was fanning the pallet full of cats just as another woman was fanning Bahiti, Chester, Pshaw-Ra, and the others on that pallet.

  “Is it always this hot?” he asked Edfu.

  “Yes,” Edfu said.

  “How do you stand it?”

  “Our houses and the temple are cool. Our work is done under the city.”

  “Do kids work too?”

  “There are not many. I tend to Bahiti and that is my work. That is my mother, Eshe, wielding the fan.”

  “Is fan wielding a part-time job or what she does for a living, besides being your mom, I mean?”

  Edfu gave him quizzical look. “Part-time? Living? Oh! Oh no. My mother is an engineer who designs and maintains the underground structures.” When he saw Jubal still watching the fan going up and down, he said, “What she does—what we all do at this time is strictly ceremonial. We seldom stray far from the city.”

  “How about your dad? What’s he do?”

  “He is a medical assistant,” Edfu said. “That’s him at the front of the pallet, on the right side.” He pointed to one of the bearers. His father was dripping sweat and panting. They were climbing a tall dune now and it was slippery.

  “If this is the welcoming ceremony, it’s a good thing you don’t get visitors more often,” Jubal said, starting to pant a little himself. “I thought you might send flitters for us.”

  Edfu looked a little confused, but before Jubal could explain, the other boy pointed. “Behold, Bubastis!”

  Spread out below them was a city shaped differently than any Jubal had seen before. In its center was a tall stepped pyramid—ziggurat, he thought they were called—and around it was a road with houses lining the far side. But then there were more circles of houses attached to the central circle, like the petals of a flower, and in the center of each of these was another pyramid structure—Jubal thought they might be pyramid ships similar to Pshaw-Ra’s.

  Bahiti mrowled up at Edfu. In turn the boy told Jubal, “We go first to the temple so that each of your passengers may meet a host family. This is a great honor for us.”

  As they proceded through the city, they were met along the roads by people banging on things like drums or cymbals, rattling can openers, and sending wind chimes swinging. With each house they passed, the occupants fell in behind them and followed them to the temple.

  CHAPTER 5

  CHESTER IN THE TEMPLE OF MAU

  We entered the temple, a comparatively cool shadowy place dominated by the
fangy openmouthed face of a huge golden cat statue. The queen and two of her feline attendants were already installed between the statue’s ears, presiding over the welcome. Well, presiding after a fashion. The two attendants sat beside her with paws crossed and faces impassive. The queen, evidently fatigued from her earlier exertions, lay splayed on her tummy, paws curved down onto the forehead of the golden cat, head cradled against one leg.

  “Come with me, catling,” Pshaw-Ra said. “Your assistance is required to get our guests housed. It will perhaps expedite matters if you inform them that more food and water awaits each of them in the new quarters, as well as two-legged servants who will devote themselves to the happiness of each cat.”

  “I’ll tell them, but some of them aren’t going to want to be split up,” I said. “And I hope you’re not thinking of trying to keep Jubal and I apart.”

  “Perish the thought!” Pshaw-Ra said with mock horror. “In fact, I am housing you in my old home, where I used to live with my senior servant before my journey.”

  “Where will you stay?” I asked him.

  “Oh, I will be nearby. But for now, we will place the others. Of course, the humans think they are making the choices, but I have some very specific ideas regarding who I want to stay with whom.”

  That surprised me. Pshaw-Ra usually didn’t concern himself with the comfort or welfare of others.

  “The girlchild, her father, and her old tom will be lodged with Heket and her family. Heket is a physician and is out a great deal, taking her assistant with her, so they will have privacy.”

  “Heket is a vet?”

  “Heket is a feline physician. We have several such. The humans may assist with tasks requiring thumbs, but who better than a cat would know how to tend the needs of a fellow feline?”

  Jubal caught that. Wow, a cat cat doctor! That’s great.

  Pshaw-Ra ignored him. After all, he was the cat pilot of a space vessel. “Your mother will stay with Bahiti and his family. He is also a physician. Your boy seems to have made friends with his boy and their lodging is next to yours, so you may easily visit your mother. From what you have said, she is the sort of cat who may be able to learn something from observing Bahiti’s skill.

  “There are, I believe, two pregnant females among the ranks,” Pshaw-Ra continued. “They will be staying with Bes, the top cat physician, so he may be within paw’s reach when they are ready to deliver.”

  Wait a minute, Jubal said, having heard all of these arrangements through me. I’ve heard that strange toms will kill kittens.

  I passed this along to Pshaw-Ra, who said, “Ah, but Bes is, as male physicians always are, a eunuch. It is not a profession that runs in families.”

  Jubal was not entirely reassured, probably because he didn’t trust Pshaw-Ra. Neither did I. I found his sudden interest in the pregnancy of the two females especially suspicious; I hadn’t even known about the coming kits. But perhaps the native cats who rode on the pallets with them had passed the information to him.

  “The young ginger mother and her kittens will stay with the woman Mesi and her lamentably catless family, who dwell in the circle nearest the temple entrance. It will be such a blessing for them to have kittens in their midst.”

  He went on and on, sometimes putting Barque Cats with native cats, sometimes in catless homes with humans he said would feel honored to finally have a sacred feline, even one of an inferior species, gracing their home.

  Jubal and I took our fellow refugees to meet each host. The human hosts promptly carried our cats off to their homes. I expected a certain amount of protest from the cats whose abodes were being invaded, but Pshaw-Ra told me he had picked each home specifically because of the hospitable nature of the resident feline deity. Again I was surprised he had been able to see beyond the end of his own whiskers long enough to figure out who had hospitable natures and who didn’t.

  My sire Space Jockey was invited to stay with the queen. Better him than me.

  The communications officer, Beulah; the second mate, Felicia Daily; and the medic, Guillame Pinot, were assigned quarters at the edge of town with three different catless families so as not to burden any one family unduly, Pshaw-Ra explained.

  “Divide and conquer?” Jubal muttered under his breath when I transmitted the last instructions to him.

  Pshaw-Ra, who had been prancing, tail curled high over his back, to and fro, from cat to human and back to another cat again to indicate his choices to us, finally relaxed and sat down to wash his feet.

  Most of the Barque Cats and a lot of the native cats and people still milled around the temple. “What about the rest of them?”

  Pshaw-Ra kept washing. “What of them? I have made the special assignments. Everyone else can pick up a guest and go home. I suggest we do the same.”

  ———

  By the time they left the temple, the outside was as dim as the inside had been. Pshaw-Ra did not leave with them, Jubal was somewhat relieved to find, but the round man the captain had first approached led them to the house where they’d been assigned. He stood outside the door opening, which was covered with a beaded curtain, and gestured that they should go inside. “Thanks,” Jubal said.

  “It is nothing. Make yourselves comfortable. This house is for you,” he said, looking at Chester. Soft lights bloomed from unseen sources as he entered. The little house was wonderfully cool and its furnishings pretty simple—a bed, a chair and table, a little round bed on a sisal-covered pedestal, and four blue pottery bowls, two on the table holding what seemed to be dried fish and fruit, and two on the floor, one that held dried fish, the other water. There were also a few storage baskets and bowls lining the wall.

  A small enclosure held a fairly conventional toilet and sink and a box of sand.

  There was a real door as well, and Jubal closed it. The beaded curtain appeared to act as a kind of screen door.

  Toys! Chester cried delightedly, and began scrabbling through a basket until he dumped it onto the floor. Balls and wiggly things spilled out. Around the top of the room was a long shelf. Chester hopped onto the cat bed and from there leaped to the shelf and peered down, chin resting on paws, at Jubal. He rubbed his face against the ceiling, both marking it and pushing at the boundary. I smell air, he said.

  With a nudge of his nose, he opened a hole in the ceiling and slipped through it. He stood with his front paws on the roof, his back paws still on the ledge. His tail flicked back and forth as he looked. There’s one of those ship things on the side. Looks like all of these houses have a personal pyramid ship, like a smaller version of Pshaw-Ra’s, in the yard. And there’s the temple over there.

  He drew himself back inside and began washing his white paws, which were now a dusty tan. His chest, only a little whiter, was next.

  Jubal yawned. The excitement had worn off. You go ahead and take a bath. You’ve had a few dozen naps today but I’m getting tired. We had an early morning. I’m turning in.

  Chester looked down. You’re right. I’m not tired. I’m going to check out the places Pshaw-Ra sent our friends and make sure everyone is comfy. And he disappeared through the ceiling flap.

  Jubal turned on his side, away from the door.

  A few minutes later he was awakened by a yowl and a cat’s scream. He sat up. Chester?

  CHAPTER 6

  Janina Mauer, former Cat Person to Thomas’s Duchess aboard the Molly Daise, had felt like cheering when the ships carrying the fugitive Barque Cats, including her Chessie, blinked out of sight and out of reach of the pursuing Galactic Government attracker vessels. She’d felt like cheering again when the council ruled that the epidemic had in fact been caused by premature panic among the overly cautious and that all of the animals that survived their quarantine in good health would be allowed to return home.

  Then the loneliness set in. Chessie would not return home—maybe not ever. Would the Ranzo, the ship of her rescuers, stop running long enough to discover that it was safe to bring back the cats? Would they fe
ar prosecution for the illegal nature of their rescue mission and just stay hidden? That would be terrible. Without Chessie she felt incomplete. To her surprise, the new closeness she shared with the young veterinarian, Dr. Jared Vlast, was no substitute. In fact, it was difficult to enjoy at all when she always felt there was something missing—the part of her that Chessie had filled for most of her life.

  Jared was kind and caring about the animals, but he didn’t quite understand what the loss of a cat meant to a Cat Person. And it wasn’t only Chessie—she missed the Molly Daise, her home for so many years, and the crew who had been her family. Hers and Chessie’s. She had lived with them since the age of ten when she first came aboard to care for her special kitten.

  It didn’t help Jared or her either that they were right when they exposed—or caused the authorities to expose—the recent epidemic as a hoax. Quite the opposite, in fact. While the council admitted to each other and even to their accusers that mistakes had been made and wrong had been done, they did not quite come clean publicly. To do so, Jared told her, would have cost the government far too much money in reparations to farmers whose livelihoods had been destroyed, not to mention everyone else whose valuable and loved animals had not survived the council’s little “oops” moment.

  Jared was allowed to return to Sherwood Station, but at first there was little work for him there, since many of the animals he would normally have screened or treated had been destroyed.

  Janina, shipless and catless, found work at the same station with a maintenance crew. Since she was needed only part-time, she was sometimes free to accompany Jared when he flew down to the planet’s surface. This had been the case when he was called to leave the space station for George Varley’s ranch. The trouble had actually started there, through no fault of the rancher or his animals.

  Nevertheless, they had suffered for the greed and foolishness of others.

  Mr. Varley’s extensive herds were no more. The relief vets who replaced Jared when he was sent to Galipolis had disposed of all but a few of the beautiful horses, condemning them for the glitter in their secretions, which was nothing more than a by-product of the shiny beetles they’d ingested.