SCat s-3 Read online

  SCat

  ( SCats - 3 )

  Mercedes Lackey

  Мерседес Лэки

  SCat

  The four SKitty stories appeared in Cat Fantastic Anthologies edited by Andre Norton. I’m very, very fond of SKitty; it might seem odd for a bird person to be fond of cats, but I am, so there it is. I was actually a cat-person before I was a bird-mother, and I do have two cats, both Siamese-mix, both rather old and very slow. Just, if the other local cats poach too often at my bird feeders, they can expect to get a surprise from the garden-hose.

  “NoooOOOWOWOWOW!”

  The metal walls of Dick’s tiny cabin vibrated with the howl. Dick White ignored it, as he injected the last of the four contraception-beads into SKitty’s left hind leg. The black-coated shipscat did not move, but she did continue her vocal and mental protest. :Mean,: she complained, as Dick held the scanner over the right spot to make certain that he had gotten the bead placed where it was supposed to go. :Mean, mean Dick.:

  Indignation showing in every line of her, she sat up on his fold-down desk and licked the injection site. It hadn’t hurt; he knew it hadn’t hurt, for he’d tried it on himself with a neutral bead before he injected her.

  Nice, nice Dick, you should be saying, he chided her. One more unauthorized litter and BioTech would be coming to take you away for their breeding program. You’re too fertile for your own good.

  SKitty’s token whine turned into a real yowl of protest, and her mate, now dubbed “SCat,” joined her in the wail from his seat on Dick’s bunk. :Not leave Dick!: SKitty shrilled in his head. :Not leave ship!:

  Then no more kittens—at least not for a while! he responded. No more kittens means SKitty and SCat stay with Dick.

  SKitty leapt to join her mate on the bunk, where both of them began washing each other to demonstrate their distress over the idea of leaving Dick. SKitty’s real name was “Lady Sundancer of Greenfields,” and she was the proud product of BioTech’s masterful genesplicing. Shipscats, those sturdy, valiant hunters of vermin of every species, betrayed their differences from Terran felines in a number of ways. BioTech had given them the “hands” of a raccoon, the speed of a mongoose, the ability to adjust to rapid changes in gravity or no gravity at all, and greatly enhanced mental capacity. What they did not know was that “Lady Sundancer”—aka “Dick White’s Kitty,” or “SKitty” for short—had another, invisible enhancement. She was telepathic—at least with Dick.

  Thanks to SKitty and to her last litter, the CatsEye Company trading ship Brightwing was one of the most prosperous in this end of the Galaxy. That was due entirely to SKitty’s hunting ability; she had taken swift vengeance when a persistent pest native to the newly-opened world of Lacu’un had bitten the consort of the ruler, killing with a single blow a creature the natives had never been able to exterminate. That, and her own charming personality, had made her kittens-to-be most desirable acquisitions, so precious that not even the leaders of Lacu’un “owned” them; they were held in trust for the world. Thanks to the existence of that litter and the need to get them appropriately pedigreed BioTech mates, SKitty’s own mate—called “Prrreet” by SKitty and unsurprisingly dubbed “SCat” by the crew, for his ability to vanish—had made his own way to SKitty, stowing aboard with the crates containing more BioTech kittens for Lacu’un.

  Where he came from, only he knew, although he was definitely a shipscat. His tattoo didn’t match anything in the BioTech register. Too dignified to be called a “kitty,” this handsome male was “Dick White’s Cat.”

  And thanks to SCat’s timely arrival and intervention, an attempt to kill the entire crew of the Brightwing and the Terran Consul to Lacu’un in order to take over the trading concession had been unsuccessful. SCat had disabled critical equipment holding them all imprisoned, so that they were able to get to a com station to call for help from the Patrol, while SKitty had distracted the guards.

  SCat had never demonstrated telepathic powers with Dick, for which Dick was grateful, but he certainly possessed something of the sort with SKitty, and he was odd in other ways. Dick would have been willing to take an oath that SCat’s forepaws were even more handlike than SKitty’s, and that his tail showed some signs of being prehensile. There were other secrets locked in that wide black-furred skull, and Dick only wished he had access to them.

  Dick was worried, for the Brightwing was in space again and heading towards one of the major stations with the results of their year-long trading endeavor with the beings of Lacu’un in their hold. Shipscats simply did not come out of nowhere; BioTech kept very tight control over them, denying them to ships or captains with a record of even the slightest abuse or neglect, and keeping track of where every one of them was, from birth to death. They were expensive—traders running on the edge could not afford them, and had to rid themselves of vermin with periodic vacuum-purges. SKitty claimed that her mate had “heard about her” and had come specifically to find her—but she would not say from where. SCat had to come from somewhere, and wherever that was, someone from there was probably looking for him. They would very likely take a dim view of their four-legged Romeo heading off on his own in search of his Juliet.

  Any attempt to question the tom through SKitty was useless. SCat would simply stare at him with those luminous yellow eyes, then yawn, and SKitty would soon grow bored with the proceedings. After all, to her, the important thing was that SCat was here, not where he had come from.

  Behind Dick, in the open door of the cabin, someone coughed. He turned to find Captain Singh regarding Dick and cats with a jaundiced eye. Dick saluted hastily.

  “Sir—contraceptive devices in place and verified sir!” he affirmed, holding up the injector to prove it.

  The Captain, a darkly handsome gentleman as pop­ular with the females of his own species as SCat undoubtably was with felines, merely nodded. “We have a problem, White,” he pointed out. “The Brightwing’s manifest shows one shipscat, not two. And we still don’t know where number two came from. I know what will happen if we try to take SKitty’s mate away from her, but I also know what will happen if anyone finds out we have a second cat, origin unknown. BioTech will take a dim view of this.”

  Dick had been thinking at least part of this through. “We can hide him, sir,” he offered. “At least until I can find out where he came from.”

  “Oh?” Captain Singh’s eyebrows rose. “Just how do you propose to hide him, and where?”

  Dick grinned. “In plain sight, sir. Look at them—unless you have them side-by-side, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one you had in front of you. They’re both black with yellow eyes, and it’s only when you can see the size difference and the longer tail on SCat that you can tell them apart.”

  “So we simply make sure they’re never in the same compartment while strangers are aboard?” the Captain hazarded. “That actually has some merit; the Spirits of Space know that people are always claiming shipscats can teleport. No one will even notice the difference if we don’t say anything, and they’ll just think she’s getting around by way of the access tubes. How do you intend to find out where this one came from without making people wonder why you’re asking about a stray cat?”

  Dick was rather pleased with himself, for he had actually thought of this solution first. “SKitty is fertile—unlike nine-tenths of the shipscats. That is why we had kittens to offer the Lacu’un in the first place, and was why we have the profit we do, even after buying the contracts of the other young cats for groundside duty as the kittens’ mates.”

  The Captain made a faint grimace. “You’re stating the obvious.”

  “Humor me, sir. Did you know that BioTech routinely offers their breeding cats free choice in mates? That otherwise
, they don’t breed well?” As the Captain shook his head, Dick pulled out his trump card. “I am—ostensibly—going to do the same for SKitty. As long as we ‘find’ her a BioTech mate that she approves of, BioTech will be happy. And we need more kittens for the Lacu’un; we have no reason to buy them when we have a potential breeder of our own.”

  “But we got mates for her kittens,” the Captain protested. “Won’t BioTech think there’s something odd going on?”

  Dick shook his head. “You’re thinking of house-cats. Shipscats aren’t fertile until they’re four or five. At that rate, the kittens won’t be old enough to breed for four years, and the Lacu’un are going to want more cats before then. So I’ll be searching the BioTech breeding records for a tom of the right age and appearance. Solid black is recessive—there can’t be that many black toms of the right age.”

  “And once you’ve found your group of candidates—?” Singh asked, both eyebrows arching. “You look for the one that’s missing?” He did not ask how Dick was supposed to have found out that SKitty “preferred” a black tom; shipscats were more than intelligent enough to choose a color from a set of holos.

  Dick shrugged. “The information may be in the records. Once I know where SCat’s from, we can open negotiations to add him to our manifest with BioTech’s backing. They won’t pass up a chance to make SKitty half of a breeding pair, and I don’t think there’s a captain willing to go on BioTech’s record as opposing a shipscat’s choice of mate.”

  “I won’t ask how you intend to make that particular project work,” Singh said hastily. “Just remember, no more kittens in freefall.”

  Dick held up the now-empty injector as a silent promise.

  “I’ll brief the crew to refer to both cats as ‘SKitty’—most of the time they do anyway,” the Captain said. “Carry on, White. You seem to have the situation well in hand.”

  Dick was nowhere near that certain, but he put on a confident expression for the Captain. He saluted Singh’s retreating back, then sat down on the bunk beside the pair of purring cats. As usual, they were wound around each other in a knot of happiness.

  I wish my love-life was going that well. He’d hit it off with the Terran Consul well enough, but she had elected to remain in her ground-bound position, and his life was with the ship. Once again, romance took a second place to careers. Which in his case, meant no romance. There wasn’t a single female in this crew that had shown anything other than strictly platonic interest in him.

  If he wanted a career in space, he had to be very careful about what he did and said. As most junior offi­cer on the Brightwing, he was the one usually chosen for whatever unpleasant duty no one else wanted to handle. And although he could actually retire, thanks to the prosperity that the Lacu’un contract had brought the whole crew, he didn’t want to. That would mean leaving space, leaving the ship—and leaving SKitty and SCat.

  He could also transfer within the company, but why change from a crew full of people he liked and respected, with a good Captain like Singh, to one about which he knew nothing? That would be stupid. And he couldn’t leave SKitty, no matter what. She was his best friend, even if she did get him into trouble sometimes.

  He also didn’t have the experience to be anything other than the most junior officer in any ship, so transferring wouldn’t have any benefits.

  Unless, of course, he parlayed his profit-share into a small fortune and bought his own ship. Then he could be Captain, and he might even be able to buy SKitty’s contract—but he lacked the experience that made the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy in the shaky world of the Free Traders. He was wise enough to know this.

  As for the breeding project—he had some ideas. The Brightwing would be visiting Lacu’un for a minimum of three weeks on every round of their trading-route. Surely something could be worked out. Things didn’t get chancy until after the kittens were mobile and before SKitty potty-trained them to use crew facilities. Before they were able to leave the nest-box, SKitty took care of the unpleasant details. If they could arrange things so that the period of mobility-to-weaning took place while they were on Lacu’un. . . .

  Well, he’d make that Jump when the coordinates came up. Right now, he had to keep outsiders from discovering that there was feline contraband on board, and find out where that contraband came from.

  :Dick smart,: SKitty purred proudly. :Dick fix every­thing.:

  Well, he thought wryly, at least I have her confidence, if no-one else’s!

  It had been a long time since the Brightwing had been docked at a major port, and predictably, everyone wanted shore leave. Everyone except Dick, that is. He had no intentions of leaving the console in Cargo where he was doing his “mate-hunting” unless and until he found his match. The fact that there was nothing but a skeleton crew aboard, once the inspectors left, only made it easier for Dick to run his searches through the BioTech database available through the station. This database was part of the public records kept on every station, and updated weekly by BioTech. Dick had a notion that he’d get his “hit” within a few hours of initiating his search.

  He was pleasantly surprised to discover that there were portraits available for every entry. It might even be possible to identify SCat just from the portraits, once he had all of the black males of the appropriate age sorted out. That would give him even more rationale for the claim that SKitty had “chosen” her mate herself.

  With an interested feline perching on each arm of the chair, he logged into the station’s databases, iden­tified himself and gave the station his billing information, then began his run.

  There was nothing to do at that point but sit back and wait.

  “I hope you realize all of the difficulties I’m going through for you,” he told the tom, who was grooming his face thoughtfully. “I’m doing without shore-leave to help you here. I wouldn’t do this for a fellow human!”

  SCat paused in his grooming long enough to rasp Dick’s hand with his damp-sandpaper tongue.

  The computer beeped just at that moment to let him know it was done. He was running all this through the Cargo dumb-set; he could have used the Brightwing’s Expert-System AI, but he didn’t want the AI to get curious, and he didn’t want someone wondering why he was using a Mega-Brain to access feline family-trees. What he did want was the appearance that this was a brainstorm of his own, an attempt to boost his standing with his Captain by providing further negotiable items for the Lacu’un contract. There was something odd about all of this, something that he couldn’t put his finger on, but something that just felt wrong and made him want to be extra-cautious. Why, he didn’t know. He only knew that he didn’t want to set off any tell-tales by acting as if this mate-search was a priority item.

  The computer asked if he wanted to use the holo-table, a tiny square platform built into the upper right hand corner of the desk. He cleared off a stack of hard-copy manifests, and told it “yes.” Then the first of his feline biographies came in.

  He’d made a guess that SCat was between five and ten years old; shipscats lived to be fifty or more, but their useful lifespan was about twenty or thirty years. All too often their job was hazardous; alien vermin had poisonous fangs or stings, sharp claws and teeth. Cats suffered disabling injuries more often than their human crewmates, and would be retired with honors to the homes of retired spacers, or to the big “assisted living” stations holding the very aged and those with disabling injuries of their own. Shipscats were always welcome, anywhere in space.

  And I can think of worse fates than spending my old age watching the stars with SKitty on my lap. He gazed down fondly at his furred friend, and rubbed her ears.

  SKitty purred and butted her head into his hand. She paid very little attention to the holos as they passed slowly in review. SCat was right up on the desk, how­ever, not only staring intently at the holos, but splitting his attention between the holos and the screen.

  You don’t suppose he can read . . . ?

  Sudden
ly, SCat let out a yowl, and swatted the holoplate. Dick froze the image and the screen-bio­graphy that accompanied it.

  He looked first at the holo—and it certainly looked more like SCat than any of the others had. But SCat’s attention was on the screen, not the holo, and he stared fixedly at the modest insignia in the bottom right corner.

  Patrol?

  He looked down at SCat, dumbfounded. “You were with the Patrol?” He whispered it; you did not invoke the Patrol’s name aloud unless you wanted a visit from them.

  Yellow eyes met his for a moment, then the paw tapped the screen. He read further.

  Type MF-025, designation Lightfoot of Sun Meadow. Patrol ID FX-003. Standard Military genotype, standard Military training. Well, that explained how he had known how to shut down the “pirate” equipment. Now Dick wondered how much else the cat had done, outside of his sight. And a military genotype? He hadn’t even known there was such a thing.

  Assigned to Patrol ship DIA-9502, out of Oklahoma Station, designated handler Major Logan Greene.