Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [92]
She knew when the door opened that she would never see them again, and then it swung wide and in an instant she was on the other side, in That Place. It smelled bad, worse than inside the cage room. It felt bad. The light was too bright, the walls swallowed her protests. The man deposited her cage on a metal table and turned away. She thought he was leaving her there alone. Then something came at her through the wires of her cage and stabbed her sharply, like a very long claw. When she whirled to slap it away, she saw the man withdrawing a syringe, the kind Jared used to give her vaccines and antibiotics.
“That should calm you down, old girl,” he said, not unkindly.
She shuddered, and her legs collapsed under her.
She didn’t close her eyes, however, didn’t sleep, just lost the ability to control her own movements.
Vaguely she was aware of the whispering of the shiny bugs from the edges of the room. She caught a whiff of the old cat who had preceded her. When the man opened the cage door and pulled her out, she couldn’t so much as bite him. Her head was too heavy for her to raise it. When he lifted her, it drooped and she could see her tail dangling like a length of old rope. She had soiled it, though she had not felt her bowels and bladder releasing.
The man left her lying there helpless while he ducked out the door and called, “She’s quiet, Doc.”
The white-haired woman, wearing a suit and a mask, but not a helmet, entered. “You can leave, Weeks. I’ll take it from here,” she said.
Chessie didn’t see the man go. She was staring up at the woman, though her vision kept blurring. One moment the woman was just standing there. The next she was holding some horrible metal thing with teeth. The woman grabbed her front paws with her free hand and flipped her onto her back. The toothed thing sprang to life, buzzing like a swarm of angry insects, as the woman lowered it toward her belly.
It touched her, cold, hard, and pinched and pulled, followed by a sensation of openness, bareness. Fluffs of fur drifted up from the toothy buzzer.
“Maybe I’ll shave you all over, cat. No one will recognize you without all that fuzz.”
Chessie could not even cry.
CHESTER TO THE RESCUE
“I control the kefer-ka, instructing them in their destiny, guiding them to their tasks,” Pshaw-Ra bragged as he settled his vessel onto the roof of the laboratory building. Even though it could look like an ordinary ship, the pyramid craft was actually so small that it slipped easily through the tangled traffic over Galipolis. The biggest part of it was the shuttle bay, which seemed to be much larger than its actual capacity, just big enough to dock one ordinary shuttle and its own little cat-sized one. I wasn’t sure how he managed it, but Pshaw-Ra had expanded on the natural feline ability to appear larger than usual when necessary, extending it to his vessel. Was he as brilliant as he thought or merely crazy? Brilliant would be best, under the circumstances.
My boy and his companions were gone long enough for me to enjoy a refreshing nap. When they returned, bearing one cage among them, they appeared both concerned and oddly smug.
Jubal was shaking and his mind roiled with fear and frustration. He had the most to lose, namely me. To amend that, he had the most to lose other than me, and of course Pshaw-Ra.
This is not a good idea, Chester, he said, scooping me up and cuddling me to his chest. I felt his heart beating hard. It seemed to be raining warm drops, even though we were still inside the ship. I turned in his arms, put my paws on his collarbones and licked the salty drops from his chin and cheeks. Dr. Vlast isn’t there anymore. I asked for Dr. Mbele but he wasn’t there either. It’s some lady vet instead. She acted like she was too busy to loan us the cage, but her assistant wouldn’t do it. He said he wasn’t authorized to accept animals from anyone other than the designated GHA agents. They had a really silly argument about it, and in the end she had to come down and bring us the cage