Catalyst (12 page)

“I’m sorry,” Janina said. “I made up the flyers and I left out anything about the kittens, it’s true.”

The woman said in a hard businesslike tone, “Kittens would be extra, then, even you would have to agree.”

The crew members nodded at one another. “I’m sure we can come up with a bonus on the reward for the return of the little fellow as well. Another 750 credits perhaps?” Captain Vesey said.

“No!” the boy said. “He’s mine. You can’t have him!”

The woman sighed and put one arm around her son’s shoulders, including the one with the kitten, who sniffed at her uncertainly, bobbing his fuzzy tail behind him as he investigated. “Well, there you have it. My son is very attached to his kitty. I’m afraid it’s not worth it to me for 750 credits to disappoint him.”

Mick cleared his throat and said, “These cats belong to the crew, ma’am, and we aren’t wealthy people. We offered the reward as an inducement to returning them, not in place of a purchase price. As I understand it, when Chessie left, she was pregnant with at least five kittens, of whom you still have only one. Furthermore,
you’ve brought her back in such a condition that she can’t bear us any more kittens. We’re pleased to have her back as acting ship’s cat, but we’ll need the kitten for her to train as her successor, and to continue her line. The truth is, as things stand, he’s the more valuable of the two to us. So …” He looked around to the others, who depended on their purser for negotiating the ship’s business. “… I’m afraid that if the kitten isn’t returned with his mother, the reward will have to be considerably diminished—to about a tenth of our original offer.”

“You can’t do that!” the woman said. “I’ll take you to court! I—”

Captain Vesey cleared his throat. “The cat disappeared under mysterious circumstances—arson and considerable damage to station property and to Dr. Vlast’s personal records and effects. I’m sure the court will want the Locksley Guard to investigate fully how our cat—who is very talented and clever but who, as you know, has no wings—left the station, made it down to Sherwood and into your possession. The
Molly Daise’s
parent company has a pretty good fleet of lawyers and investigators.”

“But we need that money!” the woman said. “All of it.”

“Then we’ll be needing both cat and kit, madame,” Captain Vesey said. “Once Ms. Mauer, Chessie, and her kitten have reached the space station, the money discussed in the reward, plus the bonus I mentioned, will be deposited in your bank account. Not before.”

The woman bit her lower lip as she looked down at her son. “Hand Chester to the lady, Jubal.”

“No! Mom, no.” The kitten slid down the boy’s shirt front and under the bib of his overalls. “See? He doesn’t want to go!” The boy turned to the com screen. “He can’t be a ship’s cat like his mom. He can’t! He’s—He’s afraid of heights. He closed his eyes all the way here.”

“Give it up, son,” Bennie advised.

“Janina will take good care of him,” Indu said.

“Let them have him, Jubal,” the woman said in a no-nonsense
voice. “We need that money to keep a roof over our own heads now. It’s time for you to grow up and realize we don’t always get what we want in this life.”

Janina’s heart, so full now that Chessie was back with her, went out to the heartbroken child, but the cool expressions of her crewmates and Jared made her feel that perhaps she was being naive. Although she didn’t see how such a young boy could have had anything to do with the clinic fire, she sensed that the others were suspicious of him and his mother. She knelt in front of him and looked directly into his eyes. “Jubal, I have been with Chessie since she was no bigger than Chester. I have helped her birth many many litters of kittens, and loved every single one and had to part with them, so I know how you feel, I really do.”

“No you don’t!” he said in a tight, stubborn voice, his fingers clutching the bulge snuggled inside his overall bib.

“Maybe not because I’m not you. But I loved them and they loved me, and I know how that feels. Chester will be well-loved and will have great adventures. But do you know what? I don’t think he’ll ever forget you.”

The boy’s chin quivered, much against his will, and he looked down at her and quickly back up again to hide the tears welling in his eyes, threatening to flood down over his freckles.

“Jubal Alan!” his mother said sharply, startling Chester, who poked his little black head out of the top of the overall bib. Jubal’s mom reached down and pinched the scruff of the kitten’s neck between her thumb and fingers and lifted. The kitten’s needle claws clung to the boy’s shirt and it squealed a high-pitched indignant protest. But Jubal, outnumbered and beaten, reached down and unfastened each set of claws.

“Go on, Chester,” he said as his mother deposited the wriggling kitten in Janina’s outstretched hands. “Go be a space cat. You’d probably just get it like the others if you stayed with me anyway.”

F
or the next two weeks, while the
Molly Daise
was en route to Hood Station to collect Chester, Chessie, and the girl, Jubal dreamed of Chester every single night. In his dreams he repeated everything he had done that day, except in the dreams Chester was with him. The first night this happened, when he woke up alone in the morning, he choked up remembering what had really happened, but as he shared his world with Chester every night after that, it made him feel better to think that as soon as he fell asleep, he and Chester would be a team again.

His mother thought he had forgotten all about it, though he couldn’t hide how mad he still was at her for making him give the kitten up. But he did his chores and he didn’t have to be told to go to bed.

But on the twelfth night, the pattern of the dream changed, and instead of Chester helping him with his chores, Jubal was carried with Chester through the space station, awesomely huge and clanking and whizzing with all kinds of mechanical and electronic contraptions, and taken aboard a ship. On the ship’s bridge, they saw the captain and a bunch of other people, among them the ones Jubal had seen on the com screen at the vet clinic.

Janina Mauer lifted the cats from the carrier and the people all petted Chessie and made a fuss over her. Then the cat girl passed Chester from crew member to crew member to be admired, and
everybody oohed and ahhed over how cute he was. When the captain said it was time for the crew to get back to work and prepare for departure, Janina took the cats to their quarters and slipped a harness onto Chessie, who accepted it, purring and rubbing her face against Janina’s hand as the girl snapped its straps secure. She picked Chester up, and her fingers tickled his chin and belly gently as she fastened a similar harness on him. Jubal knew Chester didn’t want to like this, but his mother told him proudly that all of her kitten apprentices from previous litters had been harnessed to her until they learned the tricks of the trade.

When Chester and his mother were securely attached, she took him through the ship, trying to teach him her trade. He thought it was play and refused to take it seriously, though he enjoyed poking through the nooks and crannies, as he had in the barn. Despite his mother’s encouragement, however, he didn’t try to hunt and he didn’t want her to, except for catching an occasional beetle. Every time his mother started waggling her hindquarters, Chester remembered Git and Buttercup and tackled her. Hunting was dangerous. He didn’t want to lose his mother too.

There was another visit to the clinic, but Chester slept through a lot of it, and it was overshadowed by what happened afterward.

They returned to the ship, boarded, and Janina harnessed the cats together again. Suddenly there was a loud noise and the ship began to move. Moments later Chester and his mother floated around the cabin in what Jubal knew must be zero g. Chessie thought it was fun and tried to show Chester how to cling to things with claws and push off again. Chester clung to Chessie, quaking.

And suddenly Jubal was wide-awake. It was still the middle of the night. He tried to go back to sleep, but when he did, he didn’t dream at all and he woke again a few moments later with the bleak knowledge that when Chester’s ship whizzed off into space, the kitten’s dream connection to him had snapped. That was it. He would never see Chester again. He was just too far away.

He lay there crying into his pillow to muffle his sobs, mourning
the loss of his friend all over again. His window was open to the warm night and the scattered stars with Chester’s ship among them. The yard was quiet except for the usual noises, the lowing of a cow, night birds calling, the rustle and sigh of the breeze through the leaves of the taller trees.

Then he heard light footsteps and the creak of the barn door as it opened. He slid out of bed and crept to the window. He wasn’t at all surprised to see his old man’s back as he snuck into the barn.

He’d come back for Chessie, apparently, not knowing that Mom had turned her in. He intended to take Chessie—and probably Chester too—and escape in the shuttle.

As Jubal’s mom often said, the old man was so predictable it was a wonder his past deeds hadn’t caught up with him a long time ago.

Maybe he’d be coming to the house to get Chester, like he’d tried to before, then take off into space for good? Jubal had other ideas.

Still barefoot in his pajamas, he grabbed his pants and shoes, crept down the stairs, opened the door quietly, and streaked toward the shuttle, which was thrumming and ready to go.

He opened the hatch and slid behind the front seats. The blanket his mother had carried Chessie in had been tossed back there, and he threw it over himself. It occurred to Jubal that if the old man did go to his room and found both his son and the kitten gone, he might think to check the shuttle before he took off. The barn door creaked open, and the footsteps crunched on the bare dirt and shushed through the grass, then snicked on the paving stones leading through Mom’s kitchen garden to the back door. Jubal rose from the floor to peer out the port. The old man was standing there, inside the screen door, scribbling away on something he then placed on the doorsill. It looked like an envelope. Then he turned and strode back toward the shuttle, way less careful of the noise he made than he had been before. Jubal barely had time to scrunch down and cover up again before the hatch opened and the old man was in the driver’s seat.

He hoped he was right about where his father was going. Since
Mom had run him off and the cats were gone, there would be nothing for his father to do but go back to work before the people on Chessie’s ship or the vet figured out who he was and maybe had him arrested, or at least try to sue him for the damage to Chessie. Pop would be heading for the station to find a berth on an outbound ship.

This time the old man was going to take him along, like it or not. Everything was his father’s fault, and even if he wouldn’t help get Chester back, his father would at least get Jubal closer to his cat. Jubal knew he sure couldn’t do anything while he was stuck on the ground and Chester was in space. He’d gotten the impression that the
Molly Daise
docked at Hood Station at pretty regular intervals. He reckoned the ship probably docked at other stations fairly often too, and met up with other ships. He just had to get himself to the right place at the right time.

It was a long uncomfortable ride wedged behind the seats. He didn’t dare go to sleep for fear he’d snore and Pop would discover him and take him back home. Mom was going to be mad, he thought, and then she was going to worry and send people looking for him, but he wasn’t going home, no matter what. Let her worry. All she cared about was getting the damned reward money. She didn’t like cats, and whatever she said, she didn’t really want him to have Chester or she’d have let him get a kitten a long time ago. She was brought up on Sherwood, among farmers who thought animals were just for eating, or riding, or catching mice. She thought loving them was dumb and something he’d grow out of. Well, he wouldn’t. Besides, she was wrong. Those people on the ship were all adults, seasoned spacers, and though they talked about how valuable Chessie was and how much they needed her, he could tell they cared about her. And the girl was crazy about her. His mom was just cold, hard-hearted, money grubbing, and
weird
sometimes, that was all.

The ride to the station seemed like hours, but when the shuttle began its docking routine and he checked the watch Pop had brought him for his last birthday (although he hadn’t actually given it to him until six months later, when he returned home from his latest—and better not discussed, according to Mom-venture), Jubal saw that it had only been about forty-five minutes. Shuttles were poky on the ground but had that second mode for extreme outer atmo travel that made them practical and even essential for the colonists on Sherwood.

When the transport settled down, Pop unstrapped himself, opened the hatch and said, “You’d better come out now too, Jubal. If you were planning on waiting for a ship associated with the circus you’re planning to run away to, you may have to wait a long time. Meanwhile you’d best stick with me.”