Catacombs

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Come on!” I told Renpet, a command relayed to the girl, and we sprinted back up the ramp and through the open mouth of the statue. The girl did not come the same way exactly, which made sense, as the hole was large for a cat but not nearly adequate for a human, even a young one.

  We were just clear of the statue’s mouth when I heard a cry and Renpet tried to turn back. “They’ve taken her! I thought you said your boy had detained the guards!”

  “Where is she?”

  “Humans use the servants’ entrance, of course, under the Great Mau’s tail. We must free her! Who else would care for me? Besides, she has my mother’s remains!”

  “Well, you can’t help her if they have you too!” I said. Jubal, we have to go back for the girl. There were guards at the statue’s tail.

  I know. They’re dragging her out now. Tell the princess to hide. And call the kittens. Maybe they can tangle the guards’ feet and I can free her.

  “Jubal and the kittens are going to try to free your friend,” I told Renpet. “Meanwhile, we have to hide.”

  “Cover me!” she said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Surrounded by the feline revelers, I leaped on top of Renpet, giving her a well-deserved thump and a bite as I did so. To my surprise, she emitted a moaning sound as if I were doing her more of a favor than simply hiding her.

  Behind me, back toward the statue, the captain shouted, “Jubal, catch the kittens!”

  I rolled Renpet head over tail so we were facing the statue. Two human guards were holding Renpet’s handmaiden, her head hanging down so her hair concealed her face. They stood by the statue’s mouth, the guards no doubt awaiting orders from the absent queen. Flekica’s kittens, led by my brothers Bat and Sol, chased each other through the maze of cats and tangled the guards’ feet while Jubal, Captain Loloma, and Beulah tried to catch them, dodging and feinting around the guards. Simultaneously Jubal barreled after them and into one of the men holding Renpet’s servant, knocking him off his feet. As the guard began to fall, he dragged the girl with him. Captain Loloma caught him by the arm holding the girl, and Jubal pretended to stagger back, knocking the other guard off balance too. The girl broke free and leaped over the cats as if she too were a particularly agile feline.

  Renpet clawed me as she slid out from under me and bounded after the girl. In two more leaps she was balanced on top of the roughly cone-shaped basket the girl had strapped to her back.

  A few of the guests stopped eating or woke up to stare at the departing renegades. Then six toms and five females of the native race broke from the party and sprinted after them in hot pursuit. I was right behind.

  Chester, wait! Jubal cried.

  Be right back, I said. I had no particular plan, but I wanted to see what would happen. Would those other cats or their humans hurt the fugitive princess and her friend, as she said, or was she exaggerating to make herself sound important? That they chased her really didn’t mean much. She was running, after all, so of course they were chasing. Pretty soon so were many others, and the temple entrance and courtyard swarmed with cats, first the Mauans and then, curious like me, my fellow Barque Cats.

  I hopped atop a wall and spotted the escapees disappearing into one of the houses. No one was paying any attention to me so I jumped down and then up toward the nearest roof, and then the next, and the one after that. Renpet’s scent, the girl’s, and the dead smell of the late queen told me when I’d reached the right house. Their other pursuers had covered those telltale scents with their own as they poured out, one leaping over the other, racing in the wrong direction.

  I streaked inside the house just as a slab of flooring that had been raised to show a gap beneath it was lowered once more. My ears brushed the underside of the trapdoor as I scooted into the gap before it closed. I pulled myself in and jumped to avoid being crushed by the door.

  But my paws touched—nothing. I rotored wildly, trying to find a place to hook claws, but I fell and fell and fell until I landed hard—but on my paws—at the bottom.

  “Renpet?” I called. My eyes adjusted to the dimness, even darker than the night outside. Just in time I saw the sandaled foot raised to kick me and flung myself sideways.

  Chione, no! Renpet cried. The foot withdrew. It is Chester the Fisher, who saved us.

  Chione, the handmaiden, uttered an exclamation, then turned and hurried away. I rose from my crouch, stretched, and pattered after them as if it didn’t matter to me whether I did or not. We were in another tunnel, and at least down here it was cool.

  “Where does this go?” I asked Renpet. “Won’t the others think to look here?”

  “This is one of the secret entrances to the underground city. It is far vaster and more labyrinthine than the upper city. From it we can access the secret passage Mother showed me, and only me. She never trusted Nefure.”

  “Oh. That’s good,” I said. “Passage to where?”

  “To our place of concealment and the royal place of preparation for the afterlife. We must help my mother begin her journey properly.”

  “Oh, okay.” I was still curious but starting to wonder what to tell Jubal about how to find me, and how to make it back to the ship. My curiosity was satisfied now. Renpet had matters well in paw, and Chione had failed to kill me a second time. I didn’t want to wait around for the third.

  Chester? Jubal called. Chester, where are you? Are you okay, buddy?

  I’m fine. I don’t know where I am. Underground somewhere. You?

  Still in the temple. The cat queen and Pshaw-Ra came back from inside the statue, and boy are they mad. They think Renpet blew up the queen’s ship.

  She blew something up, I told him. Or had Chione do it for her. Chione is the name of her girl, you know. I knew he didn’t know, but I was pulling his tail a little because I was the first one to learn something. Looked like I was going to find out all the secret stuff first.

  The other kittens are all okay, Jubal told me. I thought you’d want to know.

  I hadn’t even thought about it, but it was good that they were.

  Something tickled my right forepaw and I looked down to see one of the keka beetles—the kefer-ka, as Pshaw-Ra called them—skittering over it. That beetle was only one in a string of them that went forward and back as far as I could see. They were crawling back the way we’d come. Good. It was about time they showed up. I could use a snack.

  I didn’t even have to chase them. They just kept in line, streaming toward me, practically asking to be eaten.

  While I nibbled, Chione and Renpet continued on ahead, and when I looked up after one more beetle, I couldn’t see them anymore. That was fine. I could still smell, and I ran zigzagging down the tunnel, messing up the beetles’ formation as much as I could, just for fun.

  But the farther I went, the less I smelled Renpet and her handmaiden and the more strongly I smelled the dead queen. Her scent overwhelmed all the others, even mine, or at least I thought it was her scent.

  As I rounded a bend in the tunnel floor, I saw Renpet and Chione ahead, but I also saw that what I had been smelling was not just one dead queen, but tier on tier of stinky bundles wrapped, rosined, and waiting for all eternity, from the look of them. These had been cats. I could tell from their size and general shape and also because the ears had been specially wrapped into pointy cat ear shapes.

  I tried to tread more softly. It wasn’t so much that I thought the dead might waken as that I was a bit awed by their number and state.

  The chamber seemed to go on and on, and kefer-ka poured from among the cat mummies in a steady stream.

  “I presume this is where we are taking your mother?” I said to Renpet.

  “Oh no, this is the common tomb of the ancestors. My mother belongs in the royal tomb.”

  Silly me. I just couldn’t seem to get this royal thing right.

  “There are an awfully lot of kefer-ka here,” I remarked, changing the subject.

  “This is the spawning place of their present form,” R
enpet replied. “They are born within death.”

  “That’s very poetic. Does it mean they eat the mummies?”

  “The kefer-ka contain the essence of the ancestors and are the instruments of their reincarnation,” she replied. That did it. I started hacking and choking until I spit up the last snack, along with a giant hair ball.

  I am not a fussy eater but I draw the line at devouring decomposing cats. At least I do unless I get a lot hungrier.

  “You are common born and alien,” Renpet said, picking up on my disgust. “You cannot be expected to understand these matters. Are the kefer-ka not tasty?”

  Well, yes, they were.

  “Are they not plentiful?”

  Their numbers seemed infinite.

  “And easy to catch?”

  Very easy.

  “You have no cause to revile them or complain of them. They are the gift of the ancestors.”

  “Pshaw-Ra says they’re part of his plan for universal domination.”

  “He says many things, some of which may even be true,” she said.

  I did a little figuring. “Now you sound as if you know him well, and yet you are surely not much older than I am. The keka bugs—kefer-ka—were in the barn where I spent my earliest months, and according to Pshaw-Ra, their presence was his doing. So how could you know him all that well?”

  “There are lots of stories about him,” she replied. “Mother told some and others did as well. Everyone has been a bit in awe of him. I can’t believe he’s been taken in by Nefure!”

  The tunnel widened into a great chamber whose walls rose into darkness high above us. The smells in here were so pungent they hurt my nose and almost overpowered the stench of death, which was fresher than it had been elsewhere. It was a good thing that it was not nearly as hot down here as on the surface. This room, in fact, was downright chilly.

  “The common embalming chamber,” Renpet told me. And then to her girl she said, Now, Chione. We may not get another chance.

  Chione went to the side of the chamber and touched a button. A circle of light suspended itself over one of the tables, and from the shadows other tables rolled in quietly across the stone floor to flank it. Chione drew her arms from the straps that held the basket on her back and gently laid the contents onto the table. There was little left of the late queen. Her face and neck were unbearable to look at and her body seemed to have fallen in on itself, her fur stiff and spiky, all turned the wrong way, toward her head instead of her tail.

  Renpet hopped up onto the table, gave a little cry, crept forward to lick a shredded ear, and hopped back down to the floor again. I don’t think she even knew she was crying. I went to her and washed her face for her, then wrapped myself around her for warmth, and she curled shivering within the cup of my body. It was spooky down there, not so much because of the dead but because of what the living might do if they caught us here.

  Chione was busy above us. A lot of whirring came from the moving tables, and I supposed they were giving her some sort of electronic assistance in the task she had undertaken concerning the queen. From the pyramid ships littering the lawns of this city, and also from what Pshaw-Ra said, this place had been, at one time anyway, very high-tech. It seemed odd that these remnants dedicated to preserving the dead were among the few things I’d seen that indicated the civilization here was anything but extremely rustic. I was really curious about what was happening with the embalming, but I was also quite comfortable where I was. My curiosity had been indulged plenty for one day and had gotten me into lots of trouble already.

  Chester! Jubal interrupted my doze.

  What? I was sleeping, I said.

  Sleep later. Right now I need you to stay alert so I can find you.

  But I got distracted then.

  Chione backed away from the table and keka bugs began pouring off it, down the legs, onto the floor. Renpet sprang into action, catching and eating them as fast as she could. Like a cat possessed, she pounced and gobbled, batted, caught, devoured whole. If these bugs held the essence of her mother, was she trying to eat her legacy? Only a few bugs escaped her, skittering, then forming a single column that marched back the way we’d come, as the ones I’d seen earlier had done. I ran to the entrance of the big room and headed them off. They moved fast but their legs, though many, were short.

  Then I charged them, breaking up their line with pounces and zigzags, sending them scurrying for the shadows. Even knowing where they’d had their last meal, I still found their smell delicious.

  Renpet cried, “Eat them, Chester. Don’t torment them.” Which was a really odd thing to say. It was all the encouragement I needed, however. I gobbled too. Then Chione got into the act, grabbing handfuls of them and dumping them in the basket with the freshly wrapped form of Renpet’s mother.

  Renpet sank to the floor and licked her paws, then the rest of her. Leave them, Chione, she said. Perhaps some of her former subjects will partake of them and recall why they were once loyal to my mother as queen.

  Would eating bugs do that? I had just eaten a gob of them and I didn’t feel loyal to anyone from this place, though Renpet was growing on me.

  Abruptly she cocked her ear. “Listen!” she said.

  I heard then what had been concealed by our own activity: the sound of heavy footsteps and the padding of paws on the packed earth floor.

  I bristled and growled until there was a whiff of a beloved scent among all the dead smells. “Chester!” Jubal cried aloud, and ran toward me. In his wake were eight of the sleek Mauan cats.

  I looked back over my shoulder to warn Renpet. She and Chione had vanished! Nor was there any sign of Renpet’s mother’s remains.

  “I tried to catch them for you but I wasn’t fast enough!” I lied to the Mauan cats, though I could have spared myself the effort.

  The Mauans ran past me, snuffling at the table, the air, the ground, barely slowing down as they snapped their jaws around the occasional beetle. They did not speak to me, but that might have been because Jubal was scooping me up and holding me close to his chest.

  “Are you okay, boy?” he asked me, still aloud.

  Three kilted attendants and Captain Loloma appeared there next. “How’d he get down here, Jubal?” the captain asked.

  I mewed and rubbed my boy’s red and sweating face with mine. I had a fur coat and I was cool enough. But then, he’d been running, I could tell from his breathing.

  “He’s not sure,” Jubal told the captain. “He was chasing them, then they came down here and he got lost.”

  One of the kilted attendants said something, and the captain asked, “He wants to know why Chester growled at us.”

  I mewed pitifully.

  “He was afraid,” Jubal said, petting me reassuringly. “This is all very new. Come on, boy. We’re going home now.”

  I snuggled against him and let him carry me into the narrow corridor, Captain Loloma with us.

  A familiar pair of eyes glowed back at us from the darkened far end of the corridor.

  “So, catling, you make friends quickly,” Pshaw-Ra said.

  CHAPTER 10

  We exited the underground passages by a different door than the one I’d used to enter. It was very near the temple.

  Aboveground, the fur was flying. The streets were full of people rattling rattles and holding out hands full of food. Beulah rushed up to us, cradling Flekica, who was crying in a heartbroken way.

  “They ran away, Captain,” Beulah said.

  “Who ran away?”

  “The kittens. They’re missing at any rate.”

  Pshaw-Ra had done a disappearing act when Beulah appeared and suddenly he was back. “The tracker cats have hitched up their humans and are following the scent,” he told me. “We’ll have them back soon.”

  Two humans emerged from the temple, each harnessed to a pair of the larger tawny Mau, long strands of leather connecting the humans to the cats, who also deigned to wear harnesses. They all looked big and fierce and scary, l
overs no longer.

  “They’re just going to scare the kittens away!” I told Pshaw-Ra. “Call them off. The boy and I can find them much faster.”

  “Viti-amun and Vala-ra are excellent hunters.”

  My boy picked up on what passed between Pshaw-Ra and me. “Let Chester and me go find them, Captain.”

  The captain put his hand on the elbow of one of the harnessed human hunters. “If you could just loan us a flitter so we can see them from the air, I think we can get them back.”

  The man stared at his hand and I think he wanted to claw the captain, but the locals were supposed to be nice to us.

  The queen’s attendant answered in heavily accented but understandable Standard. “We regret that there are no flitters of a size to fit you,” she said. “Such devices were designed only for the sacred ones, and even so, are now devoid of fuel.”

  I left them standing talking and began my own search. “Sol? Bat?” I cried. My brothers and I were still considered kittens, however mistakenly, and I figured if I could find them first, they could help me look for the others—or maybe I’d find them all together.

  I poked around doorways and under awnings. Jubal followed calling, “Kittykittykitty” and “Fishfishfishfishfish” until the word sounded like “fush.” This city was so tidy there were very few hiding places apart from the houses.

  Maybe that was because these people kept everything important belowground? Belowground (except for the part that had all the cat mummies) had felt right, smelled right, more lived in. Like the barn on the farm where I was born had smelled right, full of the scents of life; plants, cats, people, other animals. Up here it felt kind of—well, like on shipboard. Something people had made up, that had nothing to do with anything natural. Which was strange since the houses seemed to be made of stone and mud.

  My brothers came running, trailing my sire, Space Jockey. “We were searching too but couldn’t find them anywhere,” Bat told me.

  “They’re not very big. They can’t have gone far,” Flekica cried, struggling away from Beulah.