Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [124]
There were many things about Ace, and about human behaviour generally, which chick found baffling. But when Ace raised her brown limbs out of the water and soaped and rubbed them, Chick understood exactly what was going on. The girl was washing herself. And as he watched, fascinated by the ritual of sponge and soap and cloth, he’d lift a nonchalant paw and lick it and begin casually rubbing it across his head, washing himself.
Chick took great pride in washing. Ever since he’d been a kitten small enough to sit in Ace’s hand he’d taken responsibility for himself, endlessly grooming his glossy fur.
Chick wished he could wash himself now. He lay on the laboratory bench in a puddle of his own vomit and moaned.
Pam heard the moan and went back over to the cat. She took his small head in her left hand and Chick turned, slowly and painfully, trying to reach her with his mouth.
He strained, opened his jaws, and managed to lick her.
How odd. Pam thought she might more reasonably have expected him to try and bite her. The battery of tests she’d just put the little cat through had been demanding in the extreme. Now he lay on the bench, his fur clotted and streaked with vomit, his once proud whiskers matted and filthy. Pam repressed a feeling of disgust at the way the cat looked.
She could wash the work surface off easily enough. But there wasn’t any point cleaning up just yet. Pam had several more test subjects to deal with.
She held the cat’s tiny head firmly in place with her left hand. In the right she held a syringe. She slid the needle neatly into the flesh under the rounded fur of his haunch. Chick hardly made a sound as the needle went in. Compared to the ordeal he’d been put through in the last hour, the pain of the syringe was nothing.
And also the sensation had reminded him of something. Something comforting.
Chick remembered this sharp thorn‐prick sensation. He’d felt it before when the Doctor or Ace or Benny had taken him to the place of many animals and another woman in a white coat had stood him on a table and stabbed him with a thorn. Always on those occasions Chick had been ill and the thorn had made him better. All the indignities and pains he’d experienced in that place had been for his own good.
So, this must be for his own good too. Chick thought he must have been ill without knowing it. All the horrible pains he’d just endured must have been done to him out of love, not hate.
These thoughts gave the small ginger cat comfort as the sharp thorn penetrated him and sent a steady spreading coldness through his hindquarters. Chick relaxed. If he had the strength he might have purred. He closed his eyes. The woman in the white coat was making him well. He would wake up, happy and healthy.
He would chase the elusive grey mice in the attic again. Prowl moonlit walls again and defend his territory in fierce battles. Spring out of nowhere in ambush onto the stupid Siamese and scare it out of its wits.
Soon. Soon he’d run free again.
He just wished he had the strength to clean himself. Chick hated being dirty.
Pam withdrew the syringe and watched as the cat shuddered and died.
Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have wasted an injection. The ginger cat was quite small and she could easily have ‘benched’ him the way she would a rabbit: swing him by the hind legs and smash his head smartly against the edge of the bench, killing him instantly. But the cat was covered with puke and swinging him around would have proved very messy. So she’d chosen the syringe instead.
Pam used a folded newspaper to jab the little body to the edge of the work surface and roll it over the side into a metal bin. She didn’t bother carrying the bin through to the incinerator. She wasn’t finished yet.
Pam turned back to the four remaining animals in their cages. The two dogs and two cats, one black and one white. They watched her as she approached.
To Pam’s astonishment, one of the cats was purring.
* * *
All her life Shell had wanted flawless white skin, but her body had betrayed her. At puberty