Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [54]
“I wouldn’t want to do that. So I’m gonna break your neck instead.”
“Why? What did you want from one little cat? He looks like a ship’s cat to me, meows like a ship’s cat, has a chip that says he’s a ship’s cat, and he has a job on your ship, making him a ship’s cat. And that’s what you bought, so what’s the difference?”
“Several thousand credits is the difference. You’re going to have to scoop a lot of cat poop to make it up to me.”
“I got something better,” he said. “I got the DNA and the codes for Thomas’s Duchess and her last litter. The thing is, this little guy is a foster kitten of the Duchess’s, suckled along with her own babies when his mama tragically died. The Duchess adopted him and his brothers all by herself. So you see, he isn’t a phony after all. He was good enough for her, and he ought to do for you until I can clone you a cat with the right code.”
“Is that what you were planning to do with that stuff you were buying back at Hood Station?”
He nodded.
“Sounds to me like you’ve given this considerable thought already, Carlton. Maybe I misjudged you. Maybe you’ve been wracking your brains all this time thinking, ‘How can I ever repay Mavis for all she’s done for me? I know! I’ll make her a purebred kittycat just like she’s always wanted. And then I’ll make a lot more for her to sell and pay back my debt.’ That’s what you had in mind, wasn’t it, Ponty?”
He allowed himself to draw a breath, smiled and shook his head—not in denial but in apparent admiration. “Mavis, I always knew you and I had a special understanding—like you could read my mind.”
“Cut the crap, Ponty. You gonna make the cats for me?” “Just give me a little space to set up my lab and we’ll have kittens.”
This was good. Very good. It was what he had planned to do anyway, just in a different place. Later, when she was in a better mood and he’d produced several cats for her to sell, he’d produce the Chester clone he’d promised Jubal. The kid would just have to wait a bit longer. It was for his own good.
CHESTER: THE FIRST DREAM OF THE DERELICT
I fell asleep and for a time dreamed the regular sort of dream. Of the barn and fields, of chasing tasty beetles through the hidden spaces of the ship. It was a good enough dream, as regular ones went, but I longed for the dreams the boy and I had shared, after I was taken from him. Then all I had to do was nap and he was with me. The dreams I had dreamed since were lonely and boring by comparison, and although I liked sleeping, hardly made it worthwhile.
But sometime in the course of this dream, I realized I was no longer alone. Another presence, not the boy, was with me, watching, listening, feeling what I was feeling. And then suddenly it all turned around and in the way of dreams I was feeling what he was feeling.
Merging with him, I knew that I was the last survivor. I huddled alone in the tiny space, as I had so often huddled before, sleeping, dreaming of stepped pyramids whose broad sunny slopes were fine to climb and drowse upon, of walls covered with picture writing in which my own shape was a symbol, of open sun-drenched structures devoted to my pleasure. Of cozy passages flled with funny looking cats and strangely dressed humans involved in a wide variety of tasks. Of a ferocious-looking gigantic cat with a beautiful queen on his head.
And then, suddenly, I was in exile—banished to drift in space in this small craft, with food stores dwindling, as my will to survive dwindled while I feared rescue might never come. Of being alone and abandoned.
Of my ears being licked …
I opened an eye and filled my nostrils. Plenty of food and company after all, not like the dream. That was a relief! I stretched and yawned and stretched again.
“Get up, lazy kit. Time to patrol,” Mother said.
I was already up and grooming, pleased to see my tail was growing in length and furriness every day. I could wave it as gracefully as Mother did now.
The watch was somewhat eventful. Mother and I found a pinprick gas leak and we both pointed it out to Kibble with