Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [15]
She looked back at the guard and asked, her voice muffled by her mask and husky from a throat already scratchy with the remains of the smoke: “Did the first responders who rescued the other animals find a pregnant cat and save her too? She would have been over there.” She pointed to where the husk of the kennel remained standing.
“I think the other animals escaped on their own, miss. No one I know set them free. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen no pregnant cat nor has anyone mentioned such a one.”
It was no more than Janina had expected, but her spirits sank a little more. Still, she slogged through to the room where she had left Chessie.
Even when creatures were cremated, there were ashes, shards of bones. She knew if she saw her cat’s remains, she would recognize them.
As she drew nearer the burned-out kennel, she could clearly see through the blackened wire mesh that the sleeping shelf appeared untouched, although the cat bed was no longer there.
But better yet, the door hung slightly ajar. Chessie got out! Someone had let her out!
Janina allowed herself a deep relieved breath, then coughed over and over, her throat and chest burning.
She stumbled back through the ruins, pressing Chessie’s button again and again. She had to have survived, had to. She could not have run far, fleet of foot as she was, with her belly full of young. Whoever had saved the other animals must have saved her too, but instead of setting her free—perhaps realizing the pregnant cat would not be fast enough to outrun the fire—had taken her far away from the once-safe haven that had become a deadly inferno.
Janina collapsed to the deck in the outer corridor.
Jared, his face ashen, turned his back on the ruins and hurried toward her and then past.
“Jared, what—” she began.
He stopped, took a step back and gave her a look full of sorrow and pity, letting his fingers brush her hair, then strode on without speaking. But not before she saw the tracks of tears through the soot that covered the exposed part of his face. He was as stricken by this tragedy as she, but he had not lost the creature dearest to him in the whole universe. She had—but the loss was not hers alone. She rose and straightened her uniform. It was time to face her crewmates.
Her feet felt so leaden she thought she’d dent the deck as she boarded the Molly Daise and marched to the bridge.
The ship’s officers were waiting for her. That was unusual. A Cat Person was normally not important enough for such an august assemblage. She didn’t flatter herself that it was her welfare that concerned them now. Not only were most members of the crew fond of Chessie, but they had plans for the money they’d receive from the sale of her new litter.
The officers’ faces were not accusatory or unkind, however, and somehow that made her feel worse. She had thought she was doing the right thing by Chessie, leaving her at the clinic. How had it gone so horribly wrong?
To put off having to say anything, she hauled the gifts she’d bought for the captain’s family from her pack and silently handed them to him. He took them with a distracted frown, not inspecting them. “Are you all right, Janina?” he asked her.
“I am well enough, sir, but—” Her throat closed with aching and she couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Did you—find her?” asked second mate Indu Soini, her voice holding a strange restrained mix of hopefulness and dread.
“I did not, ma’am. She was not among the rescued beasts from the clinic—”
“Oh no!” said Engineer’s mate Charlotte Holley, who of all of her section was the one fondest of cats in general and Chessie in particular. “Janina, why did you leave her there? You could have brought her to me. I’d have watched her.”
“She had my permission,” Captain Vesey said. “It seemed best at the time. The