Catalyst (13 page)

Jubal poked his head out from under the blanket, feeling foolish and a little like a turtle. “How’d you know I was here?”

“Never try to kid a kidder, sport,” the old man said. “I got eyes in the back of my head.”

“Yeah sure. And thanks for the ride, but I don’t want to stick with you. I want to find Chester.”

“Where is he anyway?”

“Mom turned him and his mother in for the reward,” Jubal told him. “The people on the ship wouldn’t give her all the reward money unless she gave them Chester too, so she did.” He had intended to be as calculating in what he said as the old man always was, but remembering what happened at the clinic got him all stirred up again and he told his dad just how much trouble he had caused, how the vet and the people on the ship had treated them, blaming them, though they didn’t exactly say so, for the loss of the clinic and the cat and kittens to begin with. “If you hadn’t made her run you off by being such a—”

“Careful, kid.”

“By making her mad,” Jubal said, altering his course slightly in
the interests of avoiding getting thumped. “She wouldn’t have been so worried about money and let them take him.”

“So it’s my fault no matter who took your kittycat, is that how you’ve got it figured?”

“That’s about right,” Jubal agreed, narrowing his eyes resentfully at the old man, who clamped his lips together and made a popping sound with them, which always meant he was thinking about something that did not please him even a little bit.

Then he ran his hand through his thinning hair and shook his head. “Damn, I wish she wouldn’t go off half-cocked like that. You neither. You both should have known I was working on a plan. Now I wish I hadn’t left her the money from the sale of the other kittens. She’ll have enough from selling the Duchess and Chester to last for a bit.”

“You left her that money? When?”

“Just awhile ago, when I went up to the house. I didn’t know you were in the shuttle then or I’d have hung onto our assets.”

“Yeah, maybe we could have bought Chester back,” Jubal said.

“You are a single-minded little sonofagun, aren’t you?” Pop asked. “I think we can get your cat back but it’s going to take some doing.”

“How?” Jubal asked. “We can’t just steal him. That girl and the vet know who Mom and I are and where we live.”

“I can grow us another one,” Pop said, shrugging. “I’ve got DNA from all the cats, including the mother. You may not know it, but cats have been cloned longer than any other species except sheep.”

“I don’t want a clone or any other cat,” Jubal said stubbornly. When his father looked angry, he added, “Pop, it wouldn’t be the same. Chester and I—well, don’t laugh, but I think we can read each other’s minds.”

“No kidding?” his father asked mildly. “Well, well, well, that’s special.”

“Yes, it is,” Jubal said. He wasn’t sure what the old man was making of it. He didn’t sound exactly like he didn’t believe him, but he
didn’t sound like he took him seriously either. He sounded like he had a use for the information.“If you’re thinking we’ll get him back so we can do some kind of hokey psychic act like at the Universal Chatauqua show last spring, forget it.”

“Me? Put my own boy in a hokey act? No siree, nothing like that. I admit I couldn’t see what the big deal was until you told me about you and your kitty—”

“Chester,” Jubal said. “His name’s Chester.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. But I think with a slight change of plan and quite a bit more trouble and risk on my part, we can still make the cloning thing work for us. In fact, it opens up a number of other interesting possibilities.”

“Whatever,” Jubal said. This was sounding all too familiar, like some of the old man’s other crazy schemes.

“Meanwhile, though, we’re going to need a grubstake and—ah, I see just the ship!”

“I was going to wait here for Chester’s ship, the
Molly Daise
, to come back,” Jubal said, still not willing to trust his father again, though he was feeling a little better about him. If it hadn’t been for Pop, after all, he wouldn’t have ever had Chester to begin with. “I thought maybe the vet could use some help around the clinic.”

The old man dismissed that plan with a wave of his hand. “He’s not going to hire you if he thinks you had something to do with the fire.”

“I guess not,” Jubal admitted.

“So, what do you say? Are we a team or what?”

“Might as well, I guess.”

“You want to call your mother before we leave the station?”

“Nah. If she got your kitten money, she’ll figure I’m with you, and if I call, she can track us.”

They continued down the ramp of the docking bay, in search of a ship with two open berths.

C
hessie took up her duties again as if she had never left, and at first it looked as though she and Chester were going to make a good team. The kitten trotted along beside his mother, alert, attentive, curious, and very fast. Janina realized how much Chessie’s perpetual pregnancies had slowed her down. In spite of her recent surgery, she was much quicker now that she was free of her litter. Amazing how rapidly cats recovered from even the most drastic surgeries, once they’d been set to rights. Of course, Jared was an excellent surgeon, and that helped.

Chessie caught several rodents and one of the shiny bug things in the first week she was back aboard the ship. Chester clung to her side and didn’t give her enough maneuvering room in the tight passages where she did much of her stalking.

Chessie was patient, licking and comforting him. Some members of the crew observed the cats hunting and were critical of Chester’s behavior. “Sure you got the right kitten, Kibble?” Siegi Shively, a ship’s steward, asked. “This one doesn’t seem to have Chessie’s spunk, or Jockey’s.”

“We paid a good bonus for him,” Zane Beres from maintenance said. “But if he’s not going to hunt, might be we should sell him to a ship that can afford to keep a cat just to breed.”

“Don’t be daft,” Thielk Sulin, the galley chief, told him. “They’re not going to want their queens bred with a tom that won’t
hunt. Better we sell him while he’s still a trainable kit and buy our Chessie a new assistant. Her kittens have all been good workers in the past, but there’s always one in every family.”

Janina was thoroughly chagrined by their words and knew they’d spread the criticism of poor little Chester to other crew members. How awful if they ended up selling the kitten after all the fuss that took him away from the boy who obviously loved him! Chessie might be upset too, although she had relinquished all former kittens with equanimity. Would it be different with this little one, her only remaining baby—and the last she would have? Did she realize that? It was hard to tell about cats, even when the one in question was a close companion for ten years.

Janina explained the situation to both cats in reasoning tones, petting them in turn, though Chessie kept getting between her hand and the kitten.

Later that night when Chessie began her rounds, she suddenly hunkered down, her tail’s feathery plumage dusting the floor as she switched it back and forth, winding herself up for a pounce.

Chester watched his mother anxiously, and just as she sprang, ran between her legs. She backed off with a hiss and swatted him so soundly the kitten rolled ears over tail back against the bulkhead. “Stop hindering me and pay attention!” his mother said sharply when he looked up at her and mewed.“This is what I do, and it’s what you were born to do.”

For the next week, Chester behaved himself in the manner expected of a ship’s cat, and made several kills of his own. Talk of selling him to another ship died down. They were still docked at the station while they waited for another ship to bring them one more consignment of cargo before they resumed their previous mission.

Janina was glad of the reprieve, as it gave her a few more opportunities to see Jared and observe the progress in the new clinic. The clinic was being improved upon as it was rebuilt, with more exam rooms, a larger operating theater, much nicer kennels, and a
far more efficient fire detection and prevention system. The floor coverings and upholstery were all made of substances that would not produce toxic fumes if they did burn, would not mildew or mold, and were delightful to cats wishing to sharpen their claws. Janina begged an extra piece for new coverings for Chessie’s scratching posts.

Jared hardly had time to see her, though when he did give her his attention, he seemed glad of her presence and her company. She took Chester and Chessie back for one last checkup when five of the broken-colored horses from Varley’s “bonus herd” arrived at the clinic for outprocessing before being shipped off to buyers on another colony world.

Jared immediately became distracted, almost agitated, again. Janina was about to accept—as she always had before—that he had other business to attend to and tell herself that she’d taken up enough of his valuable time. But he looked so tired, as if he weren’t sleeping well, that instead she gathered her courage and asked, “Jared, are you all right? I don’t want to intrude but you seem—well, troubled.”

He sighed and leaned against the exam table, arms crossed over his chest. “You’re not intruding, Janina. In fact, I’ve considered asking if you had any thoughts on this matter already. I may be taking an entirely wrong, even disastrous, path here, and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to decide what to do. I should follow protocol and report my findings to the center for disease control. But it isn’t really a disease, you see, not as far as I can determine. Nevertheless, precedent in times past has been for the center to step in, put down every beast in the affected area, ruin the lives of the owners, and damage the reputation of an area for years to come. So I’ve been trying, discreetly, to learn just what is causing the sparkle in the spittle and some other bodily fluids of the animals from Sherwood, and some from this station, like your Chessie.”

“You think they’d order you to
destroy
Chessie?” Horrified, Janina hugged the cats close to her. “And the horses and—and—”

“And every beast they might have come in contact with, yes. The thing is, this seems to be a recent phenomenon, and I’ve yet to see that there’s any harm in it, but analysis doesn’t reveal what is causing the sparkle in the secretions or what its effects might be. On the one hand, it doesn’t look as if Chessie, for instance, has suffered any harm from it. However, it might have been responsible for her losing some of her litter …”

“Or more likely, it was the fire and being carried off when she was so far along in her pregnancy,” Janina said, clutching harder. “She’s been doing very well since her operation, and Chester seems perfectly healthy too.” She thought it best not to mention the kitten’s apparent aversion to hunting. He had improved in the last few days, after all. His problem wasn’t physical, as far as she could tell. He seemed more frightened than anything.

But she saw now that Jared was even more worried about the consequences of his actions, whichever course he chose. If he said nothing to report the aberration or to quarantine the affected animals, including Chessie, and the substance did prove at some later date to be symptomatic of a disease process, the entire settled portion of the universe could become infected in an incredibly short time. If he did report it and the center decided to be as proactive as in times past, thousands of innocent animals would be slaughtered, settlers who depended on them would be ruined and stranded on colony worlds with no way to make a living, and others—like the crew of the
Molly Daise
—would be heartbroken with the loss of a valued crew member and possibly forbidden to do business until they were certified free of contamination.

While she was considering this, Chester suddenly wriggled out of her grasp, leaped to the floor and chased something across it. He leaped right over it swiftly, corrected his trajectory and landed on it with an impressive
snick, crunch
. Then, like a modest conquering hero, he picked it up in his jaws and took it to Jared, laying his kill at the vet’s feet.

It was a small iridescent insect. Janina had seen the cats catch these creatures before but had never examined one closely.

Jared squatted down, gave Chester a scritch under the chin, grabbed a glove from his equipment counter, picked the creature up, and popped it inside another glove. Chester paraded back and forth, thoroughly pleased with himself, emitting wild raucous cries, which clearly meant, “What a mighty hunter am I!”

Janina laughed. “And the crew were worried he wouldn’t hunt! I think he also fancies himself a detective—”

“Or an entomological epidemiologist,” Jared joked. “You notice that just as I was discussing the sparkling matter in the animals’ saliva, he made a point of catching this.” He peered inside the glove at the crunched creature. “Come to think of it, I don’t actually recall seeing these things until lately. Could be that they’re some new species, possibly accidentally imported from another world, and have made their way into the food chain, with the results that we’ve seen.”

“I don’t see how they can be harmful,” Janina said hopefully. “The cats have been catching them since they’ve been back aboard the ship, and I’d vow I saw Chessie catch one before. Apparently they’re right tasty because neither cat has ever gifted one to
me
. Chester must really like you.”

Jared cocked an eyebrow at the kitten, who sat looking up at them, waiting for something. Probably more praise. “Either that or he understands Standard and was making a suggestion.”