Catacombs (2 page)

A few of the rescued cats peered curiously around the humans emerging from the
Ranzo
, but the rest, I suspected, were hiding under bunks and in ventilation ducts and the other places Barque Cats normally patrolled. They weren’t in a trusting mood, hardly surprising under the circumstances.

My mother—Thomas’s Duchess, aka Chessie—stood beside
me. “It’s so open,” she said when her paws touched the ground. We looked out over a landscape more featureless than an empty cargo hold.

Toward the south, though, the endless expanse of golden brown sand and white-hot sky was interrupted by a strip of silver-green river, lined as far as we could see with a fertile strip of trees, grass, and some mud-brick structures, most of which were in ruins. A single yellow sun burned overhead, the heat soaking through our dense fluffy coats. We all had long beautiful fur, being descended from a feline race once known for some arcane reason as “Maine coon.”

“How would you know where you were out there, away from the river?” Mother asked, nervously surveying the surrounding fields and sand.

“That’s why we don’t go away from the river!” Pshaw-Ra told her. “The river is life. And it is long. But the city is large enough for most of us, and that is where my people await your arrival and where your new lives and families will begin.”

“I kind of like the wide-open spaces myself.” That was my milk brother, Bat, racing toward us from the
Ranzo
. Bat and his brothers were born to be wild. Their mother was Git, a barn cat who befriended my mother. The two queens had birthed their litters hours apart, Bat and his brothers only slightly older than my siblings and me. When Git was killed, Mother nursed Bat and his brothers Doc, Wyatt, and Virgil, alongside her own. Jubal’s father then took all of us into space to serve aboard different ships. All except Mother and me, who were sold back to Mother’s original ship.

Bat plowed sand until his paws came to a stop, whereupon he stood stiff-legged and lashy-tailed beside me. “I’ve got your back, milk bro,” he told me. “In case the locals don’t all share old Sandy Britches’s enthusiasm for us.”

“It’s too big,” said Hadley, the
Ranzo
’s ship’s cat who was still in the arms of Sosi, Captain Loloma’s daughter and the ship’s
self-appointed Cat Person. The
Ranzo
’s passenger hatch was still open, and while a few more cats and crew poured out, Hadley suddenly wriggled from Sosi’s grasp and bolted back inside the ship, leaping over the cats coming the other way. “I’ll just be in here when we’re ready to leave,” he told us.

Pshaw-Ra spat, “Foolish feline, do you think I have led you all this way to the promised place for you to leave? You are all here to stay. This is the planet of the cats and you are a cat. Accustom yourself to your new life.”

“It’s very warm,” Mother said, and she was right. The humans, who had no thick fur coats, were leaking water from their pelts. Sosi’s face was wet and Beulah’s was as red as her hair. None of them spoke cat, however, so they were merely uncomfortable, not alarmed by Pshaw-Ra’s words.

Jubal of course understood him as well as I did.

The
Ranzo
can go whenever it wants to though, right?
he asked me openly enough that Pshaw-Ra could hear.

Pshaw-Ra turned with twitching tail to regard my boy impatiently. He had heard the thought through me but was becoming adept at sorting out whose thoughts were whose. And no wonder. The kefer-ka, the shiny beetles that had caused our psychic link, were his creatures. I didn’t fully understand what they were—other than delicious—or what all that eating them could do, but Pshaw-Ra claimed they were responsible for the link between Jubal and me.

“Ask the boy where he thinks the ship that allowed diseased cats to escape the clutches of the tyrannical Galactic Government can go,” Pshaw-Ra said. “Our other human minions have been sent for. They will assist the
Ranzo
’s crew in acquainting themselves with their new homes and duties.”

“See here, Pshaw-Ra,” I said. “It’s good of you and yours to hide us here until the Galactic Government humans come to their senses. But you can’t make the cats stay here if they don’t like it. And you are not going to force the
Ranzo
’s crew to—”

“Calm yourself, catling,” Pshaw-Ra said. His tail had stopped twitching and he sat calmly grooming his paws. They needed it, surely. All that sand blowing around out there made us all instantly very dusty. The coats of the horde of cats milling around outside the ship had all begun to look almost as tawny as his, with a coating of the surrounding environment. “I was merely pointing out that they will need refuge from their authorities until further notice, and the resident humans will be happy to offer them accommodation. Human food is less plentiful than ours, however, so the duties I spoke of will involve acquiring that as well as helping their hosts tend to our needs.”

“What are they to be then?” I demanded. “Bringers of food we can hunt for ourselves and litter box changers?”

Pshaw-Ra snickered behind his whiskers, then planted his front paws wide and stared out into the vast tawniness that so closely matched his coat.

“Behold the desert!” he said. “The largest self-changing litter box in the galaxy!”

T
he arrival on Mau turned out to be a nonevent. For a half hour or so everyone followed Pshaw-Ra’s gaze as he stared expectantly across the desert, waiting for the welcome wagon. Then the cats from the
Ranzo
returned to the shaded interior of the ship, followed by the humans, Captain Loloma, Beulah, Sosi, and Felicia Daily.

Pshaw-Ra’s tail began twitching, then thumping the sand. Then, abruptly, he darted back into the pyramid ship. Chester hopped down from Jubal’s shoulder and started to follow, but a shrill whistle from the
Ranzo
made both of them look up.

Captain Loloma beckoned. “Jubal, we got ourselves a situation over here. Sosi says to have you bring your cat.” He sounded as if he thought that was a bad idea.

Jubal half expected Chester to decline in favor of his original course, but his tuxedo-furred friend had decided that while something had clearly gone wrong with Pshaw-Ra’s plans, the tawny short-hair wasn’t about to discuss it with them for the time being.

Without a further word to Chester, Pshaw-Ra took off across the burning sands in the general direction of the river.

By the time Jubal and Chester boarded the
Ranzo
, the place was a cacophony of yowls, howls, hissings, spittings, and snarls. Sosi was screaming, “Hadley! Stop! Other kitty, let Hadley alone!”

Mild-mannered Hadley, in full-furred battle dress, straddled his food dish as three other Barque Cats, including Chester’s sire Space Jockey, challenged him for the right to eat from it.

“Mine!” Hadley snarled. “My food. My bed. My ship. My crew. My girl. Mine!”

The others lashed their tails and closed in.

Space Jockey leapt into the air and Sosi screamed, “No, kitty, no! Hadley!” Hadley seemed to levitate to the top of Sosi’s head, where he clung while she screamed, now in pain.

Hadley’s remaining food was the only cat food on the
Ranzo
. The river wasn’t far; maybe it contained fish. Jubal saw himself with a line and a pole catching endless fish to keep the cats fed. That could work out. He liked to fish, though he’d never had much time to do it.

Fish would probably be about all they could get for the cats, though. He didn’t think a mouse could survive here.

“Does Hadley have any extra food?” Jubal asked Sosi.

She shook her head.

“There’s not much,” Captain Loloma said, correcting his daughter and giving her a stern look. “We were going to restock at the next station and then we were diverted to Galipolis for the catty call.”

If Pshaw-Ra had it wrong and they weren’t welcome on Mau, the Barque Cats could be in for a bad time. Gentle as they were with their human crews, they were used to situations in which one cat inhabited one ship. Right now there were probably more than 150 of them stuffed into every available cat-sized spot aboard the
Ranzo
. Somehow, Jubal just couldn’t see this working out long-term. But now that they’d lost the attrackers, maybe Captain Loloma could find some not-so-law-abiding place to take them until the plague scare blew over. Meanwhile, some of these cats at least were going to need other accommodations.

He looked up into the ventilation duct and saw two cat shadows arched and bristling at each other. “Hey, you two, cut it out,” he
told them. “This is only temporary, you know.” But the cats either didn’t hear him or didn’t care.

A larger, older cat dabbed a clawed paw at Chester, who sat calmly except for the switching of his tail. Jubal understood him to say,
Come off it, old man. You can’t fight your way out of everything. I’m younger, stronger, and I take after
you
so go scare someone else, or better yet …
Chester gave Jubal a significant look. Jubal, still in his shipsuit, grabbed the larger cat, Chester’s sire, Space Jockey, known as Jock. It wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done. Jock clawed and bit and squirmed.
I’m starving!
Jock snarled.
At least in the lab we got fed
.

“We’ll take care of it,” Chester said. “My boy will bring food, right, Jubal?”

“There’s an extra bag back on the pyramid ship,” Jubal said alone. “We can go get that. But let’s split up the rest of Hadley’s chow to calm everyone down first. We can put the ginger momcat and her kittens in a separate cabin so they’ll be safe.”

By the time Jubal and Chester set out for the pyramid ship to retrieve the food, the battle cries and yowls had been replaced by the happier sound of kibble being crunched as whiskered faces dove into dishes of it.

While Jubal dragged the large bag of cat food toward the outer hatch, Chester sprang up to the cat ramp and darted inside, his paws retreating into the cabin in the nose cone. He reemerged with a bag of fishy treats clenched in his teeth.

The sun was setting, painting the sky in gaudy pinks and oranges. The light faded, then darkened to navy blue as Jubal and Chester returned to the
Ranzo
. Jubal had been hoping Pshaw-Ra might reappear but wasn’t terribly surprised when he didn’t.

He hauled the bag of food to the bridge, where the officers were all in conference.

“Unless help comes, we should all remain inside for the night,” Captain Loloma was saying. “The cooling system is overtaxed as it is.”

“Even so, we won’t be able to maintain a comfortable—or even habitable—temperature much longer.” The engineer, Denny Gregg, spoke in a clipped, no-nonsense voice. “We were running low on fuel when we got to Galipolis. Since we didn’t refuel there, we’re dangerously low now. By my calculations, we haven’t enough power to break atmo. I assumed we could refuel here but have seen no signs of a proper station.”

Beulah, with sweat rolling down her heat-reddened face, said, “If we don’t maintain the climate control, we’ll die from the heat, and the cats will go first.” She wiped her face miserably.

“How does anybody live here, Dad?” Sosi asked.

“I’m not sure, honey. I hope we’ll have a chance to find out soon.”

Jubal felt frustrated and guilty. He had trusted Pshaw-Ra, and the wily old cat, maybe intending to save them, stranded them in this predicament. Didn’t he realize it would be too hot for the Barque Cats? Or that the
Ranzo
would need refueling sooner or later? He was the pilot of his own ship, after all. He ought to be aware of these things.

Chester sat down, dropping the fishy treats at his front paws long enough to yawn.
He’s not what you’d call a thoughtful cat. I doubt it occurred to him to think anything about anyone but himself. He’s probably telling all his mates about his adventures and has completely forgotten about us
.

Realizing at last that his summons for a welcoming party was going unheeded, Pshaw-Ra set off for the city to see what catastrophe could have possibly led his race to neglect to greet his return with the appropriate display of joy and gratitude. Had he reflected a bit more on what had actually occurred and a little less on his reception as he imagined it, he would have realized that no one had actually answered his transmission.

Which surely meant that something dire had happened.

Presiding over the lesser structures, the ziggurat temple/palace loomed as serrated and sharp-fanged as he fondly remembered. And yes, there were the guards, looking like stone cats sitting on the steps at each level. He padded down the dune and leapt the city wall that in olden days, before the force fields were perfected, protected the streets from the worst of the sandstorms.

As he strolled through the streets, passing and being passed by cats coming and going to their duties, it occurred to him that he’d been in space longer than he realized. When he left he had known almost everyone, their list of mates, whose offspring were whose, and who had secrets they’d rather not have made public. He’d also known which cats he could thoroughly trounce in a fight, and that had been most of them.

Now he noticed some younger, stronger-looking toms and queens he thought might give him a spot of bother. But there were also a few likely looking clueless specimens who could prove useful later.

He was sure the failure to answer his summons was the fault of some newcomer to the Office of Communications. Queen Tefnut would hear of this!

But when he entered the temple, as all citizens of Mau could do at any time, he recognized the cats resting in the sleeping platforms along the temple walls and also, to his shock, the cat sprawled across the head of the sacred statue of the Mighty Mau.

He hadn’t counted on a total regime change!

“So,” the queen on the head of Mau—none other than one of his own offspring, the troublesome Nefure—trilled down at him. “I heard a rumor that you had returned, Pshaw-Ra. If you’re looking for my mother the former queen, she doesn’t live here anymore. The queen is dead. Long live—me!”

Diplomacy was not Pshaw-Ra’s greatest skill, but he knew enough not to say what he was thinking, which was something to the effect of “easy come, easy go.” He was disappointed that Tefnut was gone, however. She had been unusually reasonable and cooperative
for a highborn female, and he was rather fond of her. However, he was a very old cat, older than almost anyone realized, and had been the consort of previous queens. They did not tend to last very long. Tefnut was a good ruler, more throne than kitten oriented. And she’d had the intelligence to understand the brilliance of most of his schemes. He hoped this chit of a kit would as well.