Cats in Space and Other Places

by Bill Fawcett

  The brewos greedily took their second squirt and then, at times wistfully sucking their tubes for remnant drops, began to shoot the breeze. In his distant circling, Spar's keen ears heard most of it.

  "A dirty Sleepday, Keeper."

  "No, a good one, brewo—for a drunken sucker to get his blood sucked by a lust-tickling vamp."

  "I was dossed safe at Pete's, you fat ghoul."

  "Pete's safe? That's news!"

  "Dirty Atoms to you! But vamps did get Girlie and Sweetheart. Right in the starboard main drag, if you can believe it. By Cobalt Ninety, Windrush is getting lonely! Third Hold, anyhow. You can swim a whole passageway by day without meeting a soul."

  "How do you know that about the girls?" the second brewo demanded. "Maybe they've gone to another hold to change their luck."

  "Their luck's run out. Suzy saw them snatched."

  "Not Suzy," Keeper corrected, now playing umpire. "But Mable did. A proper fate for drunken sluts."

  "You've got no heart, Keeper."

  "True enough. That's why the vamps pass me by. But speaking serious, boys, the werethings and witches are running too free in Three. I was awake all Sleepday guarding. I'm sending a complaint to the Bridge."

  "You're kidding."

  "You wouldn't."

  Keeper solemnly nodded his head and crossed his left chest. The brewos were impressed.

  Spar spiraled back toward the green corner, sweeping farther from the wall. On his way he overtook the black blob of Kim, who was circling the periphery himself, industriously leaping from shroud to shroud and occasionally making dashes along them.

  A fair-skinned, plump shape twice circled by blue—bra and culottes—swam in through the green hatch.

  "Morning, Spar," a soft voice greeted. "How's it going?"

  "Fair and foul," Spar replied. The golden cloud of blonde hair floating loose touched his face. "I'm quitting moonmist, Suzy."

  "Don't be too hard on yourself, Spar. Work a day, loaf a day, play a day, sleep a day—that way it's best."

  "I know. Workday, Loafday, Playday, Sleepday. Ten days make a terranth, twelve terranths make a sunth, twelve sunths make a starth, and so on, to the end of time. With corrections, some tell me. I wish I knew what all those names mean."

  "You're too serious. You should— Oh, a kitten! How darling!"

  "Kitten-shmitten!" the big-headed black blur hissed as it leaped past them. "Izz cat, Izz Kim.

  "Kim's our new catcher," Spar explained, "He's serious too."

  "Quit wasting time on old Toothless Eyeless, Suzy." Keeper called, "and come all the way in,"

  As Suzy complied with a sigh, taking the easy route of the ratlines, her soft taper fingers brushed Spar's crumpled cheek. "Dear Spar . . ." she murmured. As her feet passed his face, there was a jingle of her charm-anklet—all goldwashed hearts, Spar knew.

  "Hear about Girlie and Sweetheart?" a brewo greeted ghoulishly. "How'd you like your carotid or outside iliac sliced, your—?"

  "Shut up, sucker!" Suzy wearily cut him off. "Gimme a drink, Keeper."

  "Your tab's long, Suzy. How you going to pay?"

  "Don't play games, Keeper, please. Not in the morning, anyhow. You know all the answers, especially to that one. For now, a pouch of moonbrew, dark. And a little quiet."

  "Pouches are for ladies, Suzy. I'll serve you aloft. You got to meet your marks, but—"

  There was a shrill snarl which swiftly mounted to a scream of rage. Just inside the aft hatch, a pale figure in vermilion culottes and bra—no, wider than that, jacket or short coat—was struggling madly, somersaulting and kicking.

  Entering carelessly, like too swiftly, the slim girl had got parts of herself and her clothes stuck to the hatch's inside margin and the emergency hatch.

  Breaking loose by frantic main force while Spar dove toward her and the brewos shouted advice, she streaked toward the torus, jerking at the ratlines, black hair streaming behind her.

  Coming up with a bong of hip against titanium, she grabbed together her vermilion—yes, clutch coat—with one hand and thrust the other across the rocking bar.

  Drifting in close behind, Spar heard her say, "Double pouch of moonmist. Keeper. Make it fast."

  "The best of mornings to you, Rixende," Keeper greeted. "I would gladly serve you goldwater, except, well—" The fat arms spread. "—Crown doesn't like his girls coming to the Bat Rack by themselves. Last time he gave me strict orders to—"

  "What the smoke! It's on Crown's account I came here, to find something he lost. Meanwhile, moonmist. Double!" She pounded on the bar until reaction started her aloft, and she pulled back into place with Spar's unthanked help.

  "Softly, softly, lady," Keeper gentled, the tiny brown blurs of his eyes vanishing with his grinning. "What if Crown comes in while you're squeezing?"

  "He won't!" Rixende denied vehemently, though glancing past Spar quickly—black blur, blue of pale face, black blur again. "He's got a new girl. I don't mean Phanette or Doucette, but a girl you've never seen. Name of Almodie. He'll be busy with the skinny bitch all morning. And now uncage that double moonmist, you dirty devil!"

  "Softly, Rixie. All in good time. What is it Crown lost?"

  "A little black bag. About so big." She extended her slender hand, fingers merged. "He lost it here last Play- day night, or had it lifted."

  "Hear that, Spar?" Keeper said.

  "No little black bags," Spar said very quickly. "But you did leave your big orange one here last night, Rixende. I'll get it." He swung inside the torus.

  "Oh, damn both bags. Gimme that double!" the black-haired girl demanded frantically. "Earth Mother!"

  Even the brewos gasped. Touching hands to the sides of his head, Keeper begged: "No big obscenities, please. They sound worse from a dainty girl, gentle Rixende."

  "Earth Mother, I said! Now cut the fancy, Keeper, and give, before I scratch your face off and rummage your cages!"

  "Very well, very well. At once, at once. But how will you pay? Crown told me he'd get my license revoked if I ever put you on his tab again. Have you scrip? Or . . . coins?'

  "Use your eyes! Or you think this coat's got inside pockets." She spread it wide, flashing her upper body, then clutched it tight again. "Earth Mother! Earth Mother! Earth Mother!" The brewos babbled scandalized. Suzy snorted mildly in boredom.

  With one fat hand-blob, Keeper touched Rixende's wrist where a yellow blur circled it closely "You've got gold," he said in hushed tones, his eyes vanishing again, this time in greed.

  "You know damn well they're welded on. My anklets too."

  "But these?" His hand went to a golden blur close beside her head.

  "Welded too. Crown had my ears pierced."

  "But . . ."

  "Oh, you atom-dirty devil! I get you, all right. Well, then, all right!" The last words ended in a scream more of anger than pain as she grabbed a gold blur and jerked. Blood swiftly blobbed out. She thrust forward her fisted hand. "Now give! Gold for a double moonmist."

  Keeper breathed hard but said nothing as he scrabbled in the moonmist cage, as if knowing he had gone too far. The brewos were silent too. Suzy sounded completely unimpressed as she said, "And my dark." Spar found a fresh dry sponge and expertly caught up the floating scarlet blobs with it before pressing it to Rixende's torn ear.

  Keeper studied the heavy gold pendant, which he held close to his face. Rixende milked the double pouch pressed to her lips and her eyes vanished as she sucked blissfully. Spar guided Rixende's free hand to the sponge, and she automatically took over the task of holding it to her ear. Suzy gave a hopeless sigh, then reached her whole plump body across the bar, dipped her hand into a cool cage, and helped herself to a double of dark.

  A long, wiry, very dark brown figure in skintight dark violent jumpers mottled with silver arrowed in from the dark red hatch at a speed half again as great as Spar ever dared and without brushing a single shroud by accident or intent. Midway the newcomer did a half somersault as he passed Spar; his long,
narrow bare feet hit the titanium next to Rixende. He accordioned up so expertly that the torus hardly swayed.

  One very dark brown arm snaked around her. The other plucked the pouch from her mouth, and there was a snap as he spun the cap shut.

  A lazy musical voice inquired, "What'd we tell you would happen, baby, if you ever again took a drink on your own?

  The Bat Rack held very still. Keeper was backed against the opposite side of the hole, one hand behind him. Spar had his arm in his lost-and-found nook behind the moonbrew and moonmist cages and kept it there. He felt fearsweat beading on him. Suzy kept her dark close to her face.

  A brewo burst into violent coughing, choked it to a wheezing end, and gasped subserviently. "Excuse me, coroner. Salutations."

  Keeper chimed dully, "Morning . . . Crown."

  Crown gently pulled the clutch coat off Rixende's far shoulder and began to stroke her. "Why, you're all goose-flesh, honey, and rigid as a corpse. What frightened you? Smooth down, skin. Ease up, muscles. Relax, Rix, and we'll give you a squirt."

  His hand found the sponge, stopped, investigated, found the wet part, then went toward the middle of his face. He sniffed.

  "Well, boys, at least we know none of you are vamps," he observed softly. "Else we'd found you sucking at her ear."

  Rixende said very rapidly in a monotone, "I didn't come for a drink, I swear to you. I came to get that little bag you lost. Then I was tempted. I didn't know I would be. I tried to resist, but Keeper led me on. I—"

  "Shut up," Crown said quietly. "We were just wondering how you paid him. Now we know. How were you planning to buy your third double? Cut off a hand or a foot? Keeper . . . show me your other hand. We said show it. That's right. Now unfist."

  Crown plucked the pendant from Keeper's opened handblob. His yellow-brown eye-blurs on Keeper all the while, he wagged the precious bauble back and forth, then tossed it slowly aloft,

  As the golden blur moved toward the open blue hatch at unchanging pace, Keeper opened and shut his mouth twice, then babbled, "I didn't tempt her. Crown, honest. I didn't. I didn't know she was going to hurt her ear. I tried to stop her, but—"

  "We're not interested," Crown said. "Put the double on our tab." His face never leaving Keeper's, he extended his arm aloft and pinched the pendant just before it straightlined out of reach.

  "Why's this home of jollity so dead?" Snaking a long leg across the bar as easily as an arm, Crown pinched Spar's ear between his big and smaller toes, pulled him close and turned him round. "How're you coming along with the saline, baby? Gums hardening? Only one way to test it." Gripping Spar's jaw and lip with his other toes, he thrust the big one into Spar's mouth. "Come on, bite me, baby."

  Spar bit. It was the only way not to vomit. Crown chuckled. Spar bit hard. Energy flooded his shaking frame. His face grew hot and his forehead throbbed under its drenching of fearsweat. He was sure he was hurting Crown, but the Coroner of Hold Three only kept up his low, delighted chuckle and when Spar gasped, withdrew his foot.

  "My, my, you're getting strong, baby. We almost felt that. Have a drink on us.

  Spar ducked his stupidly wide-open mouth away from the thin jet of moonmist. The jet struck him in his eye and stung so that he had to knot his fists and clamp his aching gums together to keep from crying out.

  "Why's the place so dead, I ask again? No applause for baby and now baby's gone temperance on us. Can't you give us just one tiny laugh?" Crown faced each in turn. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongues?"

  "Cat? We have a cat, a new cat, came just last night, working as catcher," Keeper suddenly babbled. "It can talk a little. Not as well as Hellhound, but it talks. It's very funny. It caught a rat."

  "What'd you do with the rat's body. Keeper?"

  "Fed it to the chewer. That is, Spar did. Or the cat."

  "You mean to tell us that you disposed of a corpse without notifying us? Oh, don't go pale on us, Keeper. That's nothing. Why, we could accuse you of harboring a witch cat. You say he came last night, and that was a wicked night for witches. Now don't go green on us too. We were only putting you on. We were only looking for a small laugh.

  "Spar! Call your cat! Make him say something funny."

  Before Spar could call, or even decide whether he'd call Kim or not, the black blur appeared on a shroud near Crown, green eye-blurs fixed on the yellow-brown ones.

  "So you're the joker, eh? Well . . . joke."

  Kim increased in size. Spar realized it was his fur standing on end.

  "Go ahead. Joke . . . like they tell us you can. Keeper, you wouldn't be kidding us about this cat being able to talk?

  "Spar! Make your cat joke!

  "Don't bother. We believe he's got his own tongue too. That the matter, Blackie?" He reached out his hand. Kim lashed at it and sprang away. Crown only gave another of his low chuckles.

  Rixende began to shake uncontrollably. Crown examined her solicitously yet leisurely, using his outstretched hand to turn her head toward him, so that any blood that might have been coming from it from the cat's slash would have gone into the sponge.

  "Spar swore the cat could talk," Keeper babbled. "I'll—"

  "Quiet," Crown said. He put the pouch to Rixende's lips, squeezed until her shaking subsided and it was empty, then flicked the crumpled pliofilm toward Spar.

  "And now about that little black bag, Keeper," Crown said flatly.

  "Spar!"

  The latter dipped into his lost-and-found nook, saying quickly, "No little black bags, coroner, but we did find this one the lady Rixende forgot last Playday night," and he turned back holding out something big, round, gleamingly orange, and closed with drawstrings.

  Crown took and swung it slowly in a circle. For Spar, who couldn't see the strings, it was like magic. "Bit too big, and a mite the wrong shade. We're certain we lost the little black bag here, or had it lifted. You making that Bat Rack a tent for dips, Keeper?"

  "Spar—?"

  "We're asking you, Keeper."

  Shoving Spar aside, Keeper groped frantically in the nook, pulling aside the cages of moonmist and moonbrew pouches. He produced many small objects. Spar could distinguish the largest—an electric hand-fan and a bright red footglove. They hung around Keeper in a jumble.

  Keeper was panting and had scrabbled his hands for a full minute in the nook without bringing out anything more, when Crown said, his voice lazy again, "That's enough. The little black bag was of no importance to us in any case."

  Keeper emerged with a face doubly blurred, surrounded by a haze of sweat. He pointed an arm at the orange bag.

  "It might be inside that one!"

  Crown opened the bag, began to search through it, changed his mind, and gave the whole bag a flick. Its remarkably numerous contents came out and moved slowly aloft at equal speeds, like an army on the march in irregular order. Crown scanned them as they went past.

  "No, not here." He pushed the bag toward Keeper. "Return Rix's stuff to it and have it ready for us the next time we dive in—"

  Putting his arm around Rixende, so that it was his hand that held the sponge to her ear, he turned and kicked off powerfully for the aft hatch. After he had been out of sight for several seconds, there was a general sigh; the three brewos put out new scripwads to pay for another squirt. Suzy asked for a second double dark, which Spar handed her quickly, while Keeper shook off his daze and ordered Spar, "Gather up all the floating trash, especially Rixie's, and get that back in her purse. On the jump, lubber!" Then he used the electric hand- fan to cool and dry himself.

  It was a mean task Keeper had set Spar, but Kim came to help, darting after objects too small for Spar to see. Once he had them, in his hands, Spar could readily finger or sniff which was which.

  When his impotent rage at Crown had faded, Spar's thoughts went back to Sleepday night. Had his vision of vamps and werewolves been dream only?—now that he knew the werethings had been abroad in force. If only he had better eyes to distinguish illusion from reality! Kim's "S
see! Ssee shsharply!" hissed in his memory. What would it be like to see sharply? Everything brighter? Or closer?

  After a weary time the scattered objects were gathered and he went back to sweeping and Kim to his mouse hunt. As Workday morning progressed, the Bat Rack gradually grew less bright, though so gradually it was hard to tell.

  A few more customers came in, but all for quick drinks, which Keeper served them glumly; Suzy judged none of them worth cottoning up to.

  As time slowly passed, Keeper grew steadily more fretfully angry, as Spar had known he would after groveling before Crown. He tried to throw out the three brewos, but they produced more crumpled scrip, which closest scrutiny couldn't prove counterfeit. In revenge he short-squinted them and there were arguments. He called Spar off his sweeping to ask him nervously, "That cat of yours—he scratched Crown, didn't he? We'll have to get rid of him; Crown said he might be a witch cat, remember?" Spar made no answer. Keeper set him renewing the glue of the emergency hatches, claiming that Rixende's tearing free from the aft one had shown it must be drying out. He gobbled appetizers and drank moonmist with tomato juice. He sprayed the Bat Rack with some abominable synthetic scent. He started counting the boxed scrip and coins but gave up the job with a slam of self-locking drawer almost before he'd begun. His grimace fixed on Suzy.

  "Spar!" he called. "Take over! And over-squirt the brewos on your peril!"

  Then he locked the cash box, and giving Suzy a meaningful jerk of his head toward the scarlet starboard hatch, he pulled himself toward it. With an unhappy shrug toward Spar, she wearily followed.

  As soon as the pair were gone, Spar gave the brewos an eight-second squirt, waving back their scrip, and placed two small serving cages—of fritos and yeast balls—before them. They grunted their thanks and fell to. The light changed from healthy bright to corpse white. There was a faint, distant roar, followed some seconds later by a brief crescendo of creakings. The new light made Spar uneasy. He served two more suck-and-dives and sold a pouch of moonmist at double purser's prices. He started to eat an appetizer, but just then Kim swam in to proudly show him a mouse. He conquered his nausea, but began to dread the onset of real withdrawal symptoms.