Catalyst

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Don’t be daft. There are no canines here, and if there were, the entire crew would protect us. We’re quite valuable, you know. At least, I am, and you will be if you start performing your duties.”

  I didn’t care. The boy was not to be found during dreams or waking, so what did it matter? I wanted him, and until someone produced him, they could expect whatever they wanted from me but I wasn’t interested in cooperating.

  Mother was quite stubborn, and soon used her feline wiles to convince Kibble to load me into the kitten harness and attach us to each other. I lay down and wouldn’t move, but Mother dragged me along.

  We paused outside the service opening in the bulkhead, while Mother sniffed and scratched, searching for the source of the telltale scrabbling from within.

  “This close to the station, there is always more hunting to do,” she instructed me. “As we get farther from port, there are fewer and then no creatures left for me to hunt. By then it is time to visit with the crew. There are so many of them, and they all want me to spend time with them. Sometimes it is quite draining, but I do my best not to disappoint my public.”

  Kibble opened the service door for us and unhitched my harness, scratching my ears. “Be a good boy, Chester, and follow Chessie’s lead,” she told me, shoving me inside and closing the door behind me. The passage was only one cat wide, with no extra room even for a kitten as small as I was.

  But I confess it smelled intriguingly of rodent and keka bugs. The floor lacked claw holds, and one could feel the ship’s movement far more clearly than from within the corridors. With no one but Mother there to notice if I failed to live up to her standards as a hunter, there was little point in further demonstration of my lack of worth as a ship’s cat. I suppose I thought they would send me back to the boy if I was not what they expected, but I underestimated how much they hoped to profit from acquiring me.

  So that day I hunted and made my mother proud. With each kill, she would pick up our adversary in her mouth and carry it back to the service door and scratch for Kibble to open it. When one passage had been cleaned, we were let into the next.

  I cooperated. I did what they wanted me to do. But I was not happy about it, and I let Mother take credit for the hunt.

  When Kibble tried to pet me and tell me what a fine cat I was—as if I didn’t already know that—I took a swing at her with my lethal right paw and drew blood. She looked as if she were going to cry, not because I had hurt her hand to any great degree, but because she expected me to be as affectionate with her as Mother was. Well, it wasn’t going to happen. The boy was my person, and I had no room for others, especially not those responsible for separating us.

  Mother cuffed me again, but though I yowled as if she’d gutted me, I didn’t care. Mother was as much to blame as anyone. Most of my life she had been ill or idle. Git had taught me more than she had. It seemed as if all she did was cuff me or scold me or wake me up from my naps. She wouldn’t let me nurse anymore. In fact, since the doctor had fixed her, she didn’t smell exactly like she should have. I was thoroughly dissatisfied with everyone and intended to let them know about it.

  I was still yowling while Kibble washed her scratch and scooped me up, wrapping me in a towel except for one leg. She tucked me under her elbow, and try as I might, I couldn’t wriggle free. I was little more than three months old and no match for a seasoned Cat Person. She pulled out something metal, sharp, and shiny.

  “Mother! Help!” I cried. “She is seeking revenge for that little scratch, she is going to chop off my leg! Save me! Save me!”

  “Do be still,” Mother said, opening one eye. “I need my beauty sleep.”

  “No! No! Mother, help me! Oh no, she’s starting with my toes—she’s going to torment me to death, Mother, just as Git said no well-brought-up cat does to its prey. It was only a little scratch! She took liberties with my fur! I was only defending myself. No-no!”

  “Janina, will you shut that brat up?” a gruff male voice demanded.

  I looked up, afraid another attacker would join Kibble in my torture. I felt a brief tug, heard a snip, and when I looked back, the sharp pointed useful bit of my middle claw was gone! Amputated! I can scarcely relate the indescribable horror of that moment. And then she pressed another toe and another claw poked out, entirely against my will. I cried, I howled, but to no avail. She was without mercy. I twisted and squirmed and freed my back paws and tail, but her shipsuit lent her impressionable flesh armor as impervious to my claws as a turtle’s shell would have been.

  My hind legs churned and I tried to back out of her suffocating embrace, but once more there was the tug and snip and another claw fell away from my poor mutilated paw. Then three more times in quick succession, and suddenly my paw and leg were free! Free! She had weakened at last. Now she would feel my wrath and be forced to release me.

  But alas, it was not to be. Her fingers somehow entangled my disfigured paw in the towel and pounced upon the other foreleg.

  I wriggled and cried for mercy, humiliated to be bested by a human who was not even mine. But the worst was to come when she flipped me over just as Mother had earlier smacked rodents into submission, imprisoned one of my free hind paws in the folds of the restraint, and grabbed my right rear leg in a grip so tight I knew she would snap it if I continued trying to pull away from her. Although she was not the boy, I had thought, up until then, that she was adequate as far as humans went. Mother was fond of her, but all I could think was that Kibble had concealed her brutish nature until my attack brought it forth. When I felt her grip loosen this time, I kicked hard and connected with her hand again, but she just laughed, grabbed the paw, and tucked it back into the towel before starting on my other leg. I got in one kick, but all that did was cause her aim to miss, and this time there was horrible pain shooting up my leg, causing me to release the contents of my bladder.

  “Kitten, you are a trial and a tribulation,” Kibble said to me, and gripped me tighter, her elbow continuing to clutch me to her side while my urine soaked into the towel and my fur. She wiped her hands—one on my towel, one on her trouser leg—and clipped my remaining claws while I continued crying unheeded for mercy.

  Then she set me down and went once more to the basin, where she washed her hands. I ran to Mother for comfort, thinking that when she saw what the girl she loved so foolishly had done to me, she would surely relent and groom me lovingly as she had when I was younger. But instead she flattened her ears and hissed at me, and I jumped back.

  Cruel hands caught me around the middle and lifted me to the basin. The wicked young woman took a cloth and rubbed it over my soiled fur, then reached for something else—a gun, not as long as the one Jubal’s mother had wielded, but the same general shape. She pointed it at the wet fur and I twisted to see what she was doing. Her finger moved, something clicked, and the gun went off, not barking but growling and blowing warm wind into my fur. I knew it was some sort of death ray, the kind the boy had read about in his comic books. But it didn’t kill me, and in fact I am ashamed to admit it actually felt rather nice.

  When she at last set me down and allowed me to rest from her evil ministrations, I found I was exhausted from the abuse and fell straight to sleep. But the horrors of waking were nothing compared to the pain of a restless, searching sleep where no boy joined with me no matter how hard I tried to find him. When I awoke, desolately lonely, I vowed that my attack of that day would be nothing compared to the campaign of terror I intended to wreak on the heartless hapless humans who held me captive. They thwarted my will at their own peril.

  I awoke at a different hour than Mother and Kibble, who were attuned to each other’s sleep patterns. First I took my revenge on the girl, turning one of her boots over and crawling inside it to relieve my bowels. It is an acknowledged fact that cats could teach entire invaded civilizations a thing or two about guerrilla warfare. Which does not mean that we usually have anything against apes, simply that we are masters at effectively deploying the weapons that
our bodies provide against the sensitivities of our adversaries.

  Once I had taken care of Kibble’s boots, I refueled at the water dish, then used Mother’s cat flap to exit our quarters. The captain’s boots were next. He was the one who insisted I be snatched from the bosom of my boy and forced aboard his ship. He would pay dearly for that.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jubal didn’t think much about it when his father didn’t return. He’d probably poked around so long he had to go straight back to work when he got back to the ship instead of coming to find his only son. Jubal was busy in the crew quarters, making up cots, returning safety harnesses to their proper positions, cleaning lockers and mopping floors, all part of his own new duties. It was the kind of stuff he hated doing at home, but somehow it was more interesting doing it aboard ship.

  He was, in addition to his other duties, designated assistant Cat Person, meaning he helped the captain’s daughter and cleaned the litter pan, because she didn’t want to. The girl’s name was Sosi, a quick, black-haired, dark-eyed little thing who seemed to be in a big hurry when he met her. She called herself the ship’s Cat Person but she wasn’t a professional one like Janina Mauer. She was just the captain’s kid who had a big fluffy black garden variety cat, and she’d given herself a jumped-up title to make herself sound important.

  The Ranzo’s ship’s cat, Hadley, was what the old man might have called “easygoin’.” He was not an old cat but seemed very lazy. Every time Jubal saw him, the cat was sprawled in a furry puddle, fast asleep. Jubal scrunched the soft dense fur of the cat’s exposed side and received a placid purr in return, and a languid opening of beautiful green eyes. His black fluffiness reminded Jubal of Chester, but unlike Chester, Hadley seemed totally disinterested in most of the people and events around him. His hunting mostly consisted of walking to his food dish and grazing.

  The second mate, Felicia Daily, gave Jubal a fast tour and introduced him as “Ponty’s boy” to as many of the crew as they encountered. He learned that his pop used a different name when he shipped out—he was Carlton Pontius. Most of the people Jubal met seemed friendly, if busy, but a few acted suspicious and he really couldn’t say he blamed them. He wondered what they knew about his old man from previous journeys and supposed they might be worried about what other trouble he’d cause.

  It wasn’t until he heard the station intercom saying, “Mr. Pontius, Mr. Carlton Pontius, please report to your duty station aboard the Reuben Ranzo immediately,” that he realized the old man was still gone. A few minutes later the ship’s intercom advised the crew to prepare for disembarkation, and Dad totally failed to stride down the corridor at the last minute. He wasn’t coming.

  Another kid, hearing the same messages, might run to the captain, ask where the old man was and if he wasn’t aboard, try to leave the ship to go find him. But Jubal simply sighed and strapped himself in the way Felicia had showed him. Although his original plan had been to stay on the station and wait for the Molly Daise to return with Chester, he realized now that the scheme was flawed. Mom had probably sent the Guard after him, thinking he’d been kidnapped. It would be just like her to have had Pop arrested.

  Nope, Jubal decided, he was better off staying put. And if the old man wasn’t around pulling what Mom called his shenanigans and making everybody mad at him—and his son by association—he knew he stood a chance to show his new shipmates what he could do being his own man. He had another plan for finding Chester, one that would be easier without worrying about what his dad would do next.

  The person he most needed to make friends with was the communications officer, he’d decided. He’d find out what she liked to eat, maybe, and filch extra tidbits from the galley, as he might for the cats. Give her something, tell her she looked nice, carry messages, anything to make her like him. Then he’d tell her his story and see if she could help him keep track of the Molly Daise’s location, and somehow or other set up a circumstance where they could rendezvous. He wasn’t like his dad. He wasn’t trying to trick anybody or take anything away from them. He just wanted some help getting Chester back.

  Jared’s last patient surprised him, since she lacked fur, feathers or fins and only had two legs.

  Although she was by herself and dressed in expensive-looking new clothes, he recognized her as the woman who had come with her son to the Locksley clinic to return Chessie and the kitten. She was the wife of the arsonist who had torched his clinic and kidnapped Chessie in the first place, he was pretty sure.

  “More cats, missus?” he asked the woman.

  “No, but that’s why I came,” she said. “I wanted to ask you to get in touch with that cat girl and her crew. I need to buy that kitten back.”

  “I thought that was settled. The ship’s five days out from port now,” he said. “Janina, Chessie, and the kitten are on it.”

  The woman tightened her lips. She looked no less anxious than she had on the previous occasion. “Five days, you say? Not four?”

  Jared found he knew to the hour when the Molly Daise and Janina had left the station. “Five days, seven hours, and thirty minutes actually.”

  She looked puzzled. “No, he’s only been gone four.”

  “The kitten?”

  “Jubal, my son. I think he got his good-for-nothing father to bring him back here so he could go after that cat. I thought he’d got over it but then I got up the next day and he was gone, as was my transport.”

  “He couldn’t have just taken it himself? Because if he did, station security would have detained him. It’s against regulations for an unregistered, underage youngster to enter the station without an adult.”

  “I’m pretty sure Carlton brought him,” she said, her eyes shifting to the side, indicating she was hiding something.

  “Why?”

  “There was—a note,” she said. “And Carlton—Jubal’s father—is an old spacehand. This is where he would come. It took me awhile to catch a ride with one of the neighbors who was coming here. I need them to search the station and find my boy. If he didn’t get on board the ship with the cat, he could still be here.”

  “You should be talking to station security, missus, not to me,” Jared said.

  “I intend to. I came here first because I figured if that girl and the cats were here, I could take the other deal—less money for the mother but keep the kitten for Jubal. I don’t know why, but the kid was really attached to that little cat. He didn’t speak to me till the next morning, but then he seemed to be all right for a couple of weeks, didn’t mention the cat again. He’s a good boy and a big help to me with his old—his dad gone, but he’s stubborn. Gets that from me, I guess. I should have known he had something up his sleeve when he was so quiet and cooperative. He was just biding his time, I guess. Carlton’s more slippery than stubborn, but once that boy sets his mind on something … well, the thing is, Doctor, if I get my boy back and not the cat, he’s not going to stay and I know that now for a fact.”

  “Still, I think you’d be better off finding your son first, ma’am. The kitten is on board the Molly Daise, and he’ll be safe with Janina until you can work something out. But I don’t know about your son. He’s probably here at the station, if what you say is true, waiting for the Molly Daise to return, but if not, ships come and go all the time and he could have boarded one of them.”

  “I’ll do that, but meantime you contact that girl, okay? Tell her I can pay what they wanted for that kitten and to be sure to bring him back with them.”

  “I’ll relay your message,” he promised as she turned on one shiny new boot heel and stomp-clicked her way from the clinic. He wondered why—when she and her son brought Chessie back—the reward money seemed to matter to her so desperately, and now she was willing to return a large portion of it in exchange for the kitten. He didn’t think she was willing to relinquish the funds solely because of her son’s disappearance.

  Then his assistant Bill called from the waiting room that they had an emergency. The passenger line
r Tesoro had brought in their cat, Tess—short for Galactic Treasure—a purebred like Chessie, injured in an accident.

  By the time he finished operating on Tess, Jared had forgotten all about the woman.

  When Chessie jumped as gracefully as ever onto Janina’s chest to alert her that it was time for their next watch, Janina smelled the cat feces right away. She thought she might have forgotten to clean the box so she rose and sleepily pulled on her shipsuit and then her boots, which had fallen over sometime while she slept. The kitten, probably. Chessie was always as neat about Janina’s things as she was about her own fur.

  Her toe was only partway in when she discovered the source of the stink. She pulled her foot out quickly. “Chester? Did you do this, you naughty kitten?”

  But to her surprise he wasn’t there. She looked down at Chessie, who was standing with her tail to the boot and industriously scraping her paws back toward it, trying to bury it. Janina retrieved her boots, slipped on clean socks, and said, “Madame Chessie, I’d like a word with your son,” and set off down the hall, stopping to throw her soiled socks down the laundry chute outside the female crew’s loo. There, she scraped the contents of her boot into the commode, scrubbed it clean, and spritzed the inside with odor neu-tralizer. She took off her sock and washed her foot for good measure, then put the sock back on, dried the inside of her fortuitously waterproof boot, checked the other one carefully, and slipped them on.

  Janina was wondering where to start looking for Chester when the intercom exploded with a long string of oaths followed by a shout of, “Kibble!” that could easily be heard from the forward corridor without the benefit of the intercom.

  As she ran up the corridor, Chessie trotted behind her and the intercom ordered, “CP Janina Mauer report to Captain Vesey’s quarters on the double.”

  She opened the door to the captain’s cabin, and Chester’s furry form flashed out the door past her, heading toward the bridge. Chessie took off after him.