Authors: Anne Mccaffrey
Sesseli would have thought he was being cute, the typical curious kitty, but she didn’t know about his past. Until the last few
ghaanyi
, he had been master of time and space and had flown many different sorts of spacecraft.
The inside of the cabin, which had been glowing softly with sleep cycle lighting, suddenly blazed with a harsh light that caused Khiindi’s pupils to contract to narrow slits. The change of lighting was automatic when the com unit, ship’s computer, or other salient functions engaged. The people who designed the ship didn’t want the human guardians sleeping on watch either.
Instead of transmitting an image or a voice, the communicant sent a low electronic tone, or rather, a series of them, amounting to a muted electronic symphony. The ship’s computer responded with its own harmonies. The navigation screen also activated, filling with numbers flashing past in rapid succession.
Khiindi hopped onto the panel and stood above the navigation screen, staring down at it. Someone was messing with the
Mana
’s course. That couldn’t possibly be a good thing. Luckily, the faithful ship’s cat was on the job!
Khiindi leaped up to add the force of gravity to his own meager weight and pounced on the appropriate switch. The screen died with a sigh. Victory! But the crew had to know about this. Now where in the stars was that hatch control?
T
he fartin’ thing quit on me, Captain,” complained the communications officer aboard the
Black Mariah,
the name of Marl’s current ride. “You sure them was the right codes, mate?”
The pirate ship was approaching Rushiman atmo, having followed the
Mana
that far. The backwater agro colony would not be the
Mana
’s ultimate destination, though, of that Marl was sure. They’d be heading for that treasure ship Khorii and her little toy tin man had been talking about before lousing up his retirement plans on Dinero Grande. She and Elviiz had found a luxury liner full of rich stiffs in all their finest and an even richer cargo, according to research he’d done since Khorii had brought the
White Star
’s fate to his attention. All he needed to make it his were the coordinates to its hiding place. He had gathered that Khorii and her family had it stashed someplace. Then the only other thing he would need would be Khorii to ensure the safety of him and his mates, and they’d claim it for their own. After that, if the girl got tricky, he could dispose of her, or maybe sell the goody-goody little bitch to his buddy in the Nanobug Market, who could make good use of her talents on a retainer basis. If she didn’t cooperate, he had also heard a rumor that Linyaari horns still worked fairly well without the Linyaari attached.
“’Course I’m sure,” Marl replied. “I got us this far, didn’t I?”
“Yeah you did, and a thrill it is to be here, too,” the man said. Marl despised sarcasm and irony from beings he considered lesser creatures than himself.
“The ship is right there where I said it would be.” He flipped his fingers up for the man to vacate his chair. “You probably entered the codes wrong.”
“No I didn’t. It started up okay, see them little numbers right there? But then it crapped out on me, like it switched itself off.”
Marl tried the codes himself with the same result. “Somebody noticed then and shut us down.”
“So now what, boy genius?” asked the captain, looking up from sharpening the short, curved blade he always wore for sentimental reasons, as he claimed. “We just keep following them?”
The captain’s tone was bland, but Marl was not deceived. The captain was not asking for suggestions from his least popular crew member. Marl knew that the rest of the crew and their families considered him a Jonah, not a genius. Ever since he came aboard, the ship had been falling apart. Though the engine room and features critical to the ship’s function had remained unaffected, the bulkheads, decks, berths, and chairs crumbled as if attacked by termites. Marl knew why. He appreciated that the spooks had learned from their mistakes aboard the shuttle. However, he wasn’t keen to share his insight with Coco, as the captain was known, and his crew. They were a superstitious lot already, and they really didn’t need any encouragement to connect him with the damage and with the see-through stowaways they had glimpsed in corridors or darkened quarters.
As for him, Marl had already begun regretting including these unimaginative louts in his brilliant scheme. “We could,” he answered the captain. “Or we could throw a boarding party.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Because we’re bigger than they are, and there’s no one to stop us?” Marl replied. “Because that way we don’t have to wait for them to make their milk run. Instead of just taking the codes, we can grab Khorii, add the ship to your fleet, and—since Rushima is a puny unprotected ag colony—stock up on fresh meat and eggs and wholesome veggies while we’re at it?”
“Good plan,” the captain said.
Marl swallowed his surprise. He had expected more of an argument, if for no other reason than that the idea was his. “Thanks,” he said.
“So why don’t you take the shuttle and do it.”
“But, Captain, the shuttle is—”
“It’s in a lot better shape than when you arrived. Good as new, the repair crew says. You can also let me know if they’re right. Once you’re dirtside and have the ship and the girl, you call and let us know it’s safe to land and pick up the provisions as well as a crew.”
It was a challenge of course. The captain gave his knife a final swish against the strop, sliced the air with it a time or two, and fixed Marl with a flinty glare that let him know—in case he had any doubt—what the consequences of failure would be.
Marl tried to look doubtful. “All by myself, sir? What if I’m killed or captured?”
“That would certainly save me a lot of trouble,” the captain replied.
“But how about the rapin’ and pillagin’, Cap’n?” the com officer complained. “We haven’t had shore leave in ever so long.”
“Thoughtless of me, Pauli,” the captain said. “I thought you’d appreciate missing out on the plague, but I can see I was neglecting your other needs. You can go with Fidd.”
“With him? But, Cap’n, that’s suicide!”
“So’s mutiny, Pauli. So’s mutiny.”
“What if we’re outnumbered?”
“Take Petit with you, then, but you three are all we can spare.”
Petit was of course so named because he was huge. He would take up half the shuttle all by himself and, besides, he had an obvious fetish for his own body odors, which were as strong as the body to which they belonged. Certainly he never assaulted them with soap, water, or sonics in any sort of cleansing capacity.
Even Pauli stifled a groan, but Marl sighed. “Sorry to get you into this, Pauli, but orders are orders.” The two would come in handy in any possible altercations between themselves and the kids and geezers who would be their only opposition. And, as they maybe shared one functioning brain between them, they’d be easily ditched when no longer needed.
“Aye,” Pauli said.
“That’s ‘aye aye, Cap’n’ to you, mate,” Coco said.
Marl allowed his shoulders to slump and his feet to trudge as he turned toward the docking bay, but when he saw the shuttle he’d almost died in, he did not have to feign reluctance to board it.
M
oonmay Marsden approached Khorii, a basket hanging from the crook of her arm. “I heard you were still here, and I thought maybe you’d like to see our kittens. I bottle-fed Thomasina myself, and seems like no sooner than she was off the bottle than she was out to do something personal about the cat shortage we’ve had here ever since the plague.”
Khorii couldn’t resist looking. There were four little kittens with gray stripes, and one orange one. She petted them very softly with a fingertip between each set of tiny ears, still kittenishly rounded and not standing up in proper cat-ear points. The orange one grabbed her finger in both front paws and tried to nurse from it.
“Khiindi was orange-ish when he was a baby,” she said. “But I guess Makahomian Temple Cats can change colors as they get older.”
“Not Rushima barn cats,” Moonmay said proudly. “That there is Punkin. Looks to me like he would admire to have a career as a space cat if you were to take him on.” She looked up at the sky, or what was visible of it through the fog. “Anybody would like that. I know I sure would. You must think Rushima is real backward compared to your planet, you being from a highly advanced civilization with notions and gadgets way beyond anything even the Federation thought of.”
“No, not at all,” Khorii said. She was just feeling a bit low. She didn’t want to give Moonmay the impression she felt superior, though something inside her said,
You do. You think you’re better than Mikaaye and all the others, too, or why would you be so angry
? Hushing that part, she said in a confidential tone, “Actually, where I live there are hardly any gadgets at all. Most of it is lush fields and tall mountains, rivers, and streams. My people have what you would consider tents, but we mostly only use them for shelter, and on fine nights, we often sleep in the open.”
“All purely natural,” Moonmay said. “Imagine that.”
“Well, not exactly natural. It was originally, but when the Khleevi invaded, they completely destroyed and destabilized our world. If it weren’t for my uncle Hafiz, who used some of his vast resources to restore it, we’d all be living on narhii-Vhiliinyar, the planet my people evacuated to when the Khleevi invaded.”
“Isn’t that a good place?” Moonmay asked.
“It was. Partially terraformed, too, by our people way back before I was born. All our plants and animals and things were brought over by our scientists. But then the Khleevi attacked us again, so Uncle Hafiz had to help out there, too.”
“So lots of technology, like I thought.”
“Mostly we use that of other peoples—we trade with them and our techno-artisans learn to use what we acquire. But other than our space vessels and a few other things, those who stay planetside don’t use a lot of what you would call ‘gadgets.’”
“We just plain don’t have all that many anymore,” Moonmay said. “When the commodore and the first shipload of our ancestors arrived here, they had lots of technical things and lots of people had knowledge how to use things and invent more. But most of them wanted to live quiet, with animals and woods and such, kinda like your folks, I reckon. And I guess they just about had enough money to get here, and the Federation wasn’t as big as it is now…” Her voice trailed off. Even on Rushima they knew how badly affected the Federation forces had been by the plague. “Anyway, lots of the surface here isn’t very useful, but our patch was pretty easy to make like Old Earth. That’s what the ancestors wanted. They made do with what they had, reused stuff, rebuilt it, or made new things in old ways.”
“But you still have a place for ships to dock,” Khorii said.
“That’s Federation doing,” Moonmay told her. “And we do trade for a few things, too, and buy or rent others. Weapons, some equipment, like what Scar brings.”
“What do you trade?”
“Produce, animals, some handicrafts. But I wouldn’t ask you to pay for a kitten, not after what you did for Grampa.”
But Khorii shook her head, withdrawing her finger from Punkin, who gave a squeak and pounced into the middle of a sleeping gray sibling. “That’s very sweet of you, Moonmay, but Khiindi wouldn’t like it. He’s been with me since we were both babies, and there’s a litter of half-grown kittens on the
Mana
already.”
“How about dogs?” Moonmay asked. “Maybe you could use a dog?”
Khorii shook her head again. “Khiindi would be even more upset if I brought a dog aboard.”
“Too bad,” Moonmay said. “We got a litter of the funniest-lookin’ pups you ever did see. Mama was a little short herd dog and the daddy was a sled dog from way out on the cold fringe. His master moved here with twelve of them but old Dooley, we called him Drooly, is the only one left. Pups look like him in the face, but they got their mama’s short legs.”
Khorii forced herself to give the child, probably only a few years younger than she in Standard years, but much younger in other ways, a weary smile. “Hap might enjoy seeing the puppies when he returns,” she said. Mikaaye probably wouldn’t have thought about Hap’s liking dogs if Moonmay had approached
him.
“He’s very fond of dogs. Thanks again for showing me your kittens, Moonmay. Please have someone alert me when the others return. I’m going to go back to the ship to keep Khiindi company.”
“You do that,” she said. “Oh! Wait! Can you wait just a minute? I’ll be right back! Uh, here, watch the kitties, will you?”
Thrusting the fur-filled basket at Khorii, she ran off with her bare feet flashing beneath the rolled-up cuffs of her blue trousers.
Khorii sat down and leaned against the nearest building, pulling the basket of kittens into her lap. She hadn’t realized she was tired, but she closed her eyes for just a moment. It was then that she heard the thrum of a space shuttle and thought that the others had made short work of the crisis and were returning much more quickly than she thought.
However, the sound seemed to be coming from much higher than the shuttles would have gone for a surface jaunt. Khorii looked up but saw no lights, only a navy blue sky with patches of grayed clouds blocking out the cosmos. Mist steamed up from the ground, too, or maybe it was the local “natural” ghosts going about their nocturnal business. A kitten climbed her arm, and Khorii was distracted by trying to gently extricate the little beast with a minimum of damage to her skin.
Moonmay came running back again, another, smaller basket on her arm this time, filled with grasses.
“A snack? That’s so nice of you, Moonmay!” Khorii said, but the girl shook her head.
“It’s for your kitties. It’s catnip. Although, well, maybe you’ll like it, too. I forgot you folks like that kinda thing. I can go get more,” she offered, but Khorii shook her head.
“I have catnip in the ’ponics garden, but not fresh, natural soil-grown nip like this. The flavor is much richer. I thank you, and I’m sure the cats will be crazy about it. I’ll just take it back up to the ship and give it to them. Tell the others I’ll be right back to help take care of the wounded.”