Werehunter (anthology) Page 10

  “SKitty’s telepathic with me,” he admitted. “I think SCat’s telepathic with her. She seems to be able to talk with him, anyway.”

  He waited for Erica to react, either with disbelief or with revulsion. Telepaths of any species were not always popular among humankind. . . .

  But Erica just pursed her lips and nodded. “Eyeah. I thought she might be. And telepathy’s one of the traits BioTech doesn’t talk about, but security people have know for a while that the MF type cats are bred for it. Maybe SKitty’s momma did a little wandering over on the miltech side of the cattery, hmm?”

  SKitty made a “silent” meow, and he just shrugged, relieved that Erica wasn’t phobic about it. And equally relieved to learn that telepathy was already a trait that BioTech had established in their shipscat lines. So they won’t be coming to take SKitty away from me when they find out that she’s a ’path. . . .

  But right now, he’d better be worrying about making a successful escape. He pulled his faceplate down and sealed it, fastening the tether-line of the ball to a snaplink on his waistband. He warmed up his suit-radio, and she did the same. “I hope you know what you’re getting us into,” he said, as Erica sealed her own plate shut and led the way to the emergency lock.

  She looked back over her shoulder at him.

  “So do I,” she replied soberly.

  The trip was a nightmare.

  Dick had never done a spacewalk on the exterior of a station before. It wasn’t at all like going out on the hull of a ship. There were hundreds of obstacles to avoid—windows, antenna, instrument-packages, main­tenance robots. Any time an inspection drone came along, they had to hide to avoid being picked up on camera. It was work, hard work, to inch their way along the station in this way, and Dick was sweating freely before a half an hour was up.

  It seemed like longer. Every time he glanced up at the chronometer in his faceplate HUD, he was shocked to see how little time had passed. The suit-fans whined in his ears, as the life-support system alternately fought to warm him up when they hid in the shade, or cool him down when they paused in full sunlight. Stars burned down on them, silent points of light in a depth of darkness that made him dizzy whenever he glanced out at it. The knowledge that he could be lost forever out there if he just made one small mistake chilled his heart.

  Finally, Erica pointed, and he saw the outline of a maintenance lock just ahead. The two of them pulled themselves hand-over-hand toward it, reaching it at the same instant. But it was Erica who opened it, while Dick reeled the cats in on their tether.

  With all four of them inside, Erica sealed the lock from the inside and initiated pressurization. Within moments, they were both able to pop their faceplates and breathe station-air again.

  Something prompted Dick to release the cats from their ball before Erica unsealed the inner hatch. He unsnapped the tether and was actually straightening up, empty ball in both hands, when Erica opened the door to a hallway—

  —and dropped to the floor, as the shrill squeal of a stun-gun pierced the quiet of the lock.

  “Erica!” Without thinking, he ran forward, and found himself facing the business-end of a powerful stunner, held by a nondescript man who held it as if he was quite used to employing it. He was not wearing a station-uniform.

  The man looked startled to see him, and Dick did the only thing he could think of. He threw the support-ball at the man, as hard as he could.

  It hit cleanly, knocking the man to the floor as it impacted with his chest. He clearly was not aware that the support-balls were as massy as they were. The two cats flashed past him, heading for freedom, and Dick tried to follow their example. But the man was quick to recover, and as Dick tried to jump over his prone body, the fellow grabbed his ankle and tripped him up.

  Then it turned into a brawl, with Dick the definite underdog. Even in the suit, the stranger still outweighed him.

  Within a few seconds, Dick was on his back on the floor, and the stranger held him down, easily. The stun-gun was no longer in his hands, but it didn’t look to Dick as if he really needed it.

  In fact, as the man’s heavy fist pounded into Dick’s face, he was quickly convinced that he didn’t need it. Pain lanced through his jaw as the man’s fist smashed into it; his vision filled with stars and red and white flashes of light. More agony burst into his skull as the blows continued. He flailed his arms and legs, but there was nothing he could do—he was trapped in the suit, and he couldn’t even get enough leverage to defend himself. He tasted blood in his mouth—he couldn’t see—

  :BAD MAN!:

  There was a terrible battle-screech from somewhere out in the corridor, and the blows stopped. Then the weight lifted from his body, as the man howled in pain.

  Dick managed to roll to one side, and stagger blindly to his feet with the aid of the corridor bulkhead—he still couldn’t see. He dashed blood out of his eyes with one hand, and shook his head to clear it, staring blindly in the direction of the unholy row.

  “Get it off! Get it off me!” Human screams mixed with feline battle-cries, telling him that whichever of the cats had attacked, they were giving a good accounting of themselves.

  But there were other sounds—the sounds of running feet approaching, and Dick tried frantically to get his vision to clear. A heavy body crashed into him, knocking him into the bulkhead with enough force to drive all the breath from his body, as the zing of an illegal neuro-gun went off somewhere near him.

  SKitty!

  But whoever was firing swore, and the cat-wail faded into the distance.

  “It got away!” said one voice, over the sobbing of another.

  A third swore, as Dick fought for air. “You. Go after it,” the third man said, and there was the sound of running feet. Meanwhile, footsteps neared where Dick lay curled in a fetal bundle on the floor.

  “What about this?” the second voice asked.

  The third voice, cold and unemotional, wrote Dick’s death warrant. “Get rid of it, and the woman, too.”

  And Dick could not even move. He heard someone breathing heavily just above him; sensed the man taking aim—

  Then—

  “Patrol! Freeze! Drop your weapons now!”

  Something clattered to the deck beside him, as more running feet approached; and with a sob of relief, Dick finally drew a full breath. There was a scuffle just beside him, then someone helped him to stand, and he heard the hiss of a hypospray and felt the tell-tale sting against the side of his neck. A moment later, his eyes cleared—just in time for him to catch SKitty as she launched herself from the arms of a uniformed DIA officer into his embrace.

  “So, the bottom line is, you’ll let us take SCat’s contract?” Captain Singh sat back in his chair while Dick rubbed SKitty’s ears. She and SCat both burdened Dick’s lap, as they had since SCat, the Captain, the DIA negotiator, and Erica had all walked into the sickbay where Dick was still recovering. Erica was clearly nursing a stun-headache; the Captain looked a little frazzled. The DIA man, as most of his ilk, looked as unemotional as an android. The DIA had spent many hours with a human-feline telepathic specialist debriefing SCat. Apparently SCat was naturally only a receptive telepath; it took a human who was also a telepath to “talk” to him.

  “There’s no reason why not,” the DIA agent said. “You civilians have helped materially in this case; both you and he are entitled to certain compensation, and if that’s what you all want, then he’s yours with our blessing—the fact that he is only a receptive telepath makes him less than optimal for further Patrol duties.” The agent shrugged. “We can always get other shipscats with full abilities. According to the records, the only reason we kept him was because Major Logan selected him.”

  SKitty bristled, and Dick sent soothing thoughts at her.

  Then the agent smiled, making his face look more human. “Major Logan was a good agent, but he didn’t particularly care for having a cat talking to him. I gather that Lightfoot and he got along all right, but there wasn’t th
e strong bond between them that we would have preferred. It would have been just a matter of time before that squad and ship got a new cat-agent team. Besides, we aren’t completely inhuman. If your SKitty and this boy here are happily mated, who and what in the Patrol can possibly want to separate them?”

  “Judging by the furrows SKitty left in that ’jacker’s face and scalp, it isn’t a good idea to get between her and someone she loves,” Captain Singh said dryly. “He’s lucky she left him one eye.”

  The agent’s gaze dropped briefly to the swath of black fur draped over Dick’s lap. “Believe me,” he said fervently. “That is a consideration we had taken into account. Your little lady there is a warrior for fair, and we have no intention of denying her anything her heart is set on. If she wants Lightfoot, and he wants her, then she’s got him. We’ll see his contract is transferred over to Brightwing within the hour.” His eyes rose to meet Dick’s. “You’re a lucky man to have a friend like her, young man. She put herself between you and certain death. Don’t you ever forget it.”

  SKitty’s purr deepened, and SCat’s joined with hers as Dick’s hands dropped protectively on their backs. “I know that, sir,” he replied, through swollen lips. “I knew it before any of this happened.”

  SKitty turned her head, and he gazed into amused yellow eyes. :Smart Dick,: she purred, then lowered her head to her paws. :Smart man. Mate happy here, mate stay. Everything good. Love you.:

  And that, as far as SKitty was concerned, was the end of it. The rest were simply “minor human matters.”

  He chuckled, and turned his own attention to dealing with those “minor human matters,” while his best friend and her mate drifted into well-earned sleep.

  A Better Mousetrap

  If there was one thing that Dick White had learned in all his time as SuperCargo of the CatsEye Company Free Trader Brightwing, it was that having a cat purring in your ear practically forced you to relax. The extremely comfortable form-molding chair he sat in made it impossible to feel anything but comfortable, and warm black fur muffled both of Dick White’s ears, a steady vibration massaging his neck. “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door,” Dick said idly, as SCat poured himself like a second fluid, black rug over the blue-grey of his lap. It was SKitty who was curled up around his shoulders, vibrating contentedly in what Dick called her “subsonic purr-mode,” while her mate took it as his responsibility to make sure there was plenty of shed hair on the legs of his grey shipsuit uniform.

  “What?” asked Terran Ambassador Vena Ferducci, looking up from the list of Lacu’un nobles petitioning for one of SKitty’s latest litter. The petite, dark-haired woman sat in a less comfortable, metal chair behind a stone desk, which stood next to a metal rack stuffed with archaic rolled paper documents. The Lacu’un had not yet devised the science of filing paperwork in multiples yet, which made them ultra-civilised in Vena’s opinion. This, her office in the Palace of the Lacu’ara and Lacu’teveras, was not often used for that very reason. When she dealt with Terran bureaucracy, she needed every electronic helper she could get.

  The list she perused was very long, and made rather cumbersome due to the Lacu’un custom of presenting all official court-documents in the form of a massively ornamented yellow-parchment scroll, with case and end caps of engraved bronze and illuminated capital-initials. Dick had a notion that somewhere in the universe there probably was a collector of handwritten documents who would pay a small fortune for it, but when every petitioner on the list had been satisfied, it would probably be sent to the under-clerks, scraped clean, and reused.

  “It’s an old Terran folk-saying,” Dick elaborated, and gestured to the list by way of explanation. “One which certainly seems to be borne out by our present situ­ation.”

  “Yes, well, given the length of this list we’re doubly fortunate that SKitty and SCat are so—ah—fertile, and that BioTech is willing to send us their shipscat wash­outs.” Vena stretched out her hand towards SCat’s head, and the huge black tom cooperated by craning his neck towards her. Even before her fingers contacted his fur, SCat was purring loudly, giving Dick an uncannily similar sensation to being strapped in while the ship he served was under full power.

  Dick White could well be one of the wealthiest supercargoes in the history of space-trade—his share of the profits from CatsEye Company’s lucrative trade with the Lacu’un amounted to quite a tidy sum. It wasn’t enough to buy and outfit his own ship—yet—but if trade progressed as it had begun, there was the promise that one day it would be.

  Not that I want my own ship yet! he told himself. Not until I know as much as Captain Singh. There are easier ways to commit suicide than pretending I know enough to command a starship when all I really know is how to run the cargo hold!

  Not that Captain Singh would let him take his profit-share and do something so stupid. Dick grinned to himself, imagining the Captain’s face if he showed up in the office with that kind of harebrained proposal. Captain Singh’s expression would be one to behold—following which, Dick would probably find himself stunned unconscious and wake under the solicitous attentions of a concerned head-shrinker!

  The Captain had been willing, even more than willing, to let Dick stay on-planet for few Terran-months though, after SKitty and SCat announced the advent of a litter-to-be. One of her last litter was co-opted to serve as shipscat pro tem, while Dick and his two charges waited out the delivery, maturation, and weaning of eight little black furballs who were, if that was possible, even cuter than the last batch. It was a good thing that they all were on-planet, too, because the Octet managed to get themselves into a hundred times more mischief than the previous lot.

  The trouble is, they have a lot of energy, absolutely no sense, and no fear at all at this age. Brainless kitten antics rapidly begin to pall when you’ve fished a wailing fuzz-mote out of the comconsole for the fifteenth time in a single shift.

  But every Lacu’un in the palace, from the Lacu’teveras down to the lowliest scullery-lad, was thrilled to the toes—or rather, claws—to play with, rescue, and cuddle the Bratlings. If SKitty and SCat had not taken their duties as parents, palace-guardians, and role-models so seriously, they wouldn’t have had to do anything but lie about and wait for the kittens to be carried in to them for feeding.

  Fortunately for all concerned, their parents had powerful senses of responsibility towards their offspring. Both cats were born and bred—literally—for duty. Yes, they were cats, with a cat’s sense of independence and contrariness, but they took duty very, very seriously. And their duty was Vermin Control.

  This was a duty that went back centuries to the very beginnings of the association of man and cat, but until BioTech developed shipscats, never had a feline been better suited to or more cooperative in the execution of that duty. Furthermore, Dick now knew what few others did—that the shipscats so necessary to the safety of traders and their ships were actually a highly pro­fitable byproduct of other research, secret research, designed to give the men and women of the Patrol uniquely clever comrades-in-arms.

  These genetically altered cats were not just clever, it was not just that they had forepaws modeled after the forepaws of raccoons—oh no. That was not enough. Patrol cats were telepaths.

  SCat had been a patrol cat—but although he could understand the thoughts of humans, he couldn’t speak to them. This was a flaw, so far as the Patrol was concerned, though not an insurmountable flaw. However, when criminals took over the ship he served on and killed all of those aboard, SCat was the only survivor and the only witness—unable to call for help or relate what he had witnessed, he had sought for help from his own kind and found it in SKitty. When the same criminals learned SCat was still alive and tried to eliminate him and the crew of the Free Trader ship Brightwing, for good measure, it had been Dick’s research and deductive reasoning that had learned the truth in time, and with SCat’s and SKitty’s help he had foiled the plot.

  As for SKitty, she was somethin
g of an aberration herself—ordinary shipscats were not supposed to be telepathic or fertile; she was both.

  As far as Dick could tell, she was telepathic only with him—though, given that she was all cat, with a cat’s puckish sense of humor, she might well choose not to let him know she could “speak” to others. Everyone on the ship knew she was fertile, though—when they had first come to the world of the Lacu’un, she’d already had one litter and was pregnant with another. That first litter—born and raised in the ship—had shown just what kind of a nightmare two loose kittens could be within the close confines of a spaceship. Dick had not been looking forward to telling Captain Singh of the second litter, when SKitty had solved the problem for them.

  The Lacu’un, a race of golden-skinned, vaguely reptilian anthropoids, suffered from the depredations of a particularly voracious, fast, and apparently inde­structible pest called kreshta. The only way to keep them from taking over completely was to lock anything edible (and the creature could eat practically anything) in airtight containers of metal, glass, ceramic, or stone, and build only in materials the pest couldn’t eat. The pests did keep the streets so clean that they sparkled and there was no such thing as a trash problem, but those were the only benefits to the plague.