Norton, Andre - Anthology (25 page)

 
          
 
When we arrived back in known space, the
Veritage was not in a very good way. The cargo hold was not internally
accessible and would take major refitting before it could be. Our partnership's
credit wasn't in much better shape, either, which was one reason why we'd made
this venture in the first place. We were getting older and we needed a larger
credit balance to provide ourselves with the income from a secure brokerage.
We'd hoped the profit from this chancy run would do that. By the time we'd made
our way back to our own galaxy, we weren't even sure we could both repair the
Veritage and secure the supplies we needed to replace those blown out by the
breach. As we docked at Precific Station, we even considered contacting
moneylenders, which would mean years of safe milkruns to pay off that small
debt before we could even begin to secure enough for our own shipping
brokerage. Interest rates in space ventures were exorbitant. We had hoped to
have our own agency before too much longer, not be dependent upon continuing
independent work: we'd reached middle age; we were too old to be starting all
over again.

 
          
 
We sat about the galley table, Cor dipping one
finger in her caff while Pak's eyes reflected the dull sheen of the deck
plating in the ceiling. I knew Pak was thinking about personal options, leaving
the partnership altogether. His augmented sight could be sold to belt miners,
and he might be left with enough then to secure his own retirement. He'd said
before that Cor and I could do just as well without him. Of course, we didn't
agree. I left them to their cold caff and even colder additions and subtractions
when the port authority buzzed on the com.

 
          
 
"Veritage here," I said, 'Tort
Authorization PZ2148.01. Registration Beta 6627DC24. Owners C. Shord, P. Shord,
and L. Longbird." I rubbed my temples. My sight was shimmering again.
"I think you guys have the date a little wrong," I told them,
"it should be 147.29, not 148.01." My forehead felt heavy and there
were little dancing tingles along the nerve paths under my left eye.

 
          
 
"I appreciate your confusion," a
man's voice answered, ''checking .. . no, date's right: 148.01. Been out there
a little too long?" He sounded amused. His holo image reached up with one
finger and rubbed the side of his temple.

 
          
 
When it was all sorted out, we'd lost time in
hyper-space. It was the first time something like this had ever happened.
Somehow the sudden propulsion through hyperspace, the puncture through
realspace to hyper-space then back to realspace again, had caused a loop and
the Veritage had momentarily become a small singularity protected by an
envelope of anti-mass it generated at the same time. In effect, the puncture
bent space on several levels, a geometric progression of reality/nonreal-ity
that propelled us through space as it simultaneously backed us through time,
going forward in physical reality and backward in temporal reality. The
distance we covered in space became massive, throwing us way out of this galaxy
and the scientists are still trying to work out the theoretical data. They are
working on building a drive to couple with the anti-mass generator to duplicate
the effect, even though they don't understand this phe-nomenon any more than
they understand hyperspace itself. With such a drive, space travel would be
even cheaper, faster, and distant galaxies would be substantially less distant.
My partners and I put up the information for sale, and at a price that would
buy us our brokerage agency, too, with one stipulation. They had to call the
phenomenon the Tink Effect. I insisted.

 
          
 
I still make occasional trips on Veritage III.
Space has been my life, and I "could never settle on the ground
completely. There're always business trips, always negotiations for new and
unusual cargos and handlers. Now, though, when I go through hyperspace,
especially the long jumps, the ones that go on and on, through time, through
space, and out the other side in a never-land between realities, I often feel a
gentle, soft nudge, a pressure at my side and a softness underneath my open
hand. Sometimes I even hear the slight rumble of a purr.

    
        
Mercedes Lackey was born in
Chicago
, and worked as a lab assistant, security
guard, and computer programmer before turning to fiction writing. Her first
book, Arrows of the Queen, the first in the Valdemar series, was published in
1985. She won the Lambda award for Magic's Price and Science Fiction Book Club
Book of the Year for the The Elvenbone, coauthored with Andre Norton. Along
with her husband, Larry Dixon, she is a Federally licensed bird rehabilitator,
specializing in wild birds. She shares her home with a menagerie of parrots,
cats, and a Schutzhund trained German Shepherd.

            
"NoooOOOWOWOWOW!"

            
The metal walls of
Dick's tiny cabin vibrated with the howl. Dick White Ignored it, as he injected
the last of the four contraception-beads into SKitty's left hind leg. The
black-coated shipscat did not move, but she did continue her vocal and mental protest.

            
Mean,: she
complained, as Dick held the scanner over the right spot to make certain that
he had gotten the bead placed where it was supposed to go. .Mean, mean Dick.: Indignation
showing in every line of her, she sat up on his fold-down desk and licked the
injection site. It hadn't hurt; he knew it hadn't hurt, for he'd tried it on
himself with a neutral bead before he injected her.

 
          
 
Nice, nice Dick, you should be saying, he
chided her. One more unauthorized litter and BioTech would be coming to take
you away for their breeding program. You're too fertile for your own good.

 
          
 
SKitty's token whine turned into a real yowl
of protest, and her mate, now dubbed "SCat," joined her in the wail
from his seat on Dick's bunk. .Not leave Dick!: SKitty shrilled in his head.
:Not leave ship!:

 
          
 
Then no more kittens — at least not for a
while! he responded. No more kittens means SKitty and SCat stay with Dick.

 
          
 
SKitty leaped to join her mate on the bunk,
where both of them began washing each other to demonstrate their distress over
the idea of leaving Dick. SKitty's real name was "Lady Sundancer of
Greenfields," and she was the proud product of BioTech's masterful
genesplicing. Shipscats, those sturdy, valiant hunters of vermin of every
species, betrayed their differences from Terran felines in a number of ways.
BioTech had given them the "hands" of a raccoon, the speed of a
mongoose, the ability to adjust to rapid changes in gravity or no gravity at
all, and greatly enhanced mental capacity. What they did not know was that
"Lady Sundancer"—aka "Dick White's Kitty," or "SKitty"
for short—had another, invisible enhancement. She was telepathic—at least with
Dick.

 
          
 
Thanks to SKitty and to her last litter, the
CatsEye Company trading ship Brightwing was one of the most prosperous in this
end of the galaxy. That was due entirely to SKitty's hunting ability; she had
taken swift vengeance when a persistent pest native to the newly-opened world
of Lacu'un had bitten the consort of the ruler, killing with a single blow a
creature the natives had never been able to exterminate. That, and her own
charming personality, had made her kittens-to-be most desirable acquisitions,
so precious that not even the leaders of Lacu'un "owned" them; they
were held in trust for the world. Thanks to the existence of that litter and
the need to get them appropriateiy pedigreed BioTech mates, SKitty's own
mate—unsurprisingly dubbed "SCat" by the crew, for his ability to
vanish—had made his own way to SKitty, stowing aboard with the crates
containing four BioTech kittens.

 
          
 
Where he came from, only he knew, although he
was definitely a shipscat. Too dignified to be called a ''kitty," this
handsome male was "Dick White's Cat."

 
          
 
And thanks to SCat's timely arrival and
intervention, an attempt to kill the entire crew of the Brightwing and the
Terran Consul to Lacu'un in order to take over the trading concession had been
unsuccessful. SCat had disabled critical equipment holding them all imprisoned,
so that they were able to get to a com station to call for help from the
Patrol, while SKitty had distracted the guards.

 
          
 
SCat had never demonstrated telepathic powers
with Dick, for which Dick was grateful, but he certainly possessed something of
the sort with SKitty, and he was odd in other ways. Dick would have been
willing to take an oath that SCat's forepaws were even more handlike than
SKitty's, and that his tail showed some signs of being prehensile. There were
other secrets locked in that wide black-furred skull, and Dick only wished he
had access to them.

 
          
 
Dick was worried, for the Brightwing was in
space again and heading toward one of the major stations with the results of
their year-long trading endeavor with the beings of Lacu'un in their hold.
Shipscats simply did not come out of nowhere; BioTech kept very tight control
over them, denying them to ships or captains with a record of even the
slightest abuse or neglect, and keeping track of where every one of them was,
from birth to death. They were expensive—traders running on the edge could not
afford them, and had to rid themselves of vermin with periodic vacuum-purges.
SKitty claimed that her mate had "heard about her" and had come
specifically to find her—but she would not say from where. SCat had to come
from somewhere, and wherever that was, someone from there was probably looking
for him. They would very likely take a dim view of their four-legged Romeo
heading off on his own in search of his Juliet.

 
          
 
Any attempt to question the torn through
SKitty was useless. SCat would simply stare, at him with those luminous yellow
eyes, then yawn, and SKitty would soon grow bored with the proceedings. After
all, to her, the important thing was that SCat was here, not where he had come
from.

 
          
 
Behind Dick, in the open door of the cabin,
someone coughed. He turned to find Captain Singh regarding Dick and cats with a
jaundiced eye. Dick saluted hastily.

 
          
 
"Sir—contraceptive devices in place and
verified, sir!" he affirmed, holding up the injector to prove it.

           
 
The Captain, a darkly handsome gentleman as
popular with the females of his own species as SCat undoubtably was with
felines, merely nodded. "We have a problem, White," he pointed out.
"The Brightwing's manifest shows one shipscat, not two. And we still don't
know where number two came from. I know what will happen if we try to take
SKitty's mate away from her, but I also know what will happen if anyone finds
out we have a second cat, origin unknown. BioTech will take a dim view of
this."

 
          
 
Dick had been thinking at least part of this
through. "We can hide him, sir," he offered. "At least until I
can find out where he came from."

 
          
 
"Oh?" Captain Singh's eyebrows rose.
"Just how do you propose to hide him, and where?"

 
          
 
Dick grinned. "In plain sight, sir. Look
at them—unless you have them side-by-side, you wouldn't be able to tell which
one you had in front of you. They're both black with yellow eyesraird-it's only
when you can see the size difference and the longer tail on SCat that you can
tell them apart."

 
          
 
"So we simply make sure they're never in
the same compartment while strangers are aboard?" the Captain hazarded.
"That actually has some merit; the Spirits of Space know that people are
always claiming shipscats can teleport. No one will even notice the difference
if we don't say anything, and they'll just think she's getting around by way of
the access tubes. How do you intend to find out where this one came from
without making people wonder why you're asking about a stray cat?"

 
          
 
Dick was rather pleased with himself, for he
had actually thought of this solution first. "SKitty is fertile—unlike
nine-tenths of the shipscats. That is why we had kittens to offer the Lacu'un
in the first place, and was why we have the profit we do, even after buying the
contracts of four young cats for groundside duty as the kittens' mates."

 
          
 
The Captain made a faint grimace. "You're
stating the obvious/*

 
          
 
"Humor me, sir. Did you know that BioTech
routinely offers their breeding cats free choice in mates? That otherwise, they
don't breed well?" As the Captain shook his head, Dick pulled out his
trump card. "I am—ostensibly—going to do the same for SKitty. As long as
we 'find' her a BioTech mate that she approves of, BioTech will be happy. And
we need more kittens for the La-cu'un; we have no reason to buy them when we have
a potential breeder of our own."

 
          
 
"But we got mates for her kittens,"
the Captain protested. "Won't BioTech think there's something odd going
on?"

 
          
 
Dick shook his head. "You're thinking of
house-cats. Shipscats aren't fertile until they're four or five. At that rate,
the kittens won't be old enough to breed for four years, and the Lacu'un are
going to want more cats before then. So I'll be searching the BioTech breeding
records for a torn of the right age and appearance. Solid black is recessive—there
can't be that many black toms of the right age."

 
          
 
"And once you've found your group of
candidates—?" Singh asked, both eyebrows arching. "You look for the
one that's missing?" He did not ask how Dick was supposed to have found
out that SKitty "preferred" a black torn; shipscats were more than
intelligent enough to choose a color from a set of holos.

 
          
 
Dick shrugged. "The information may be in
the records. Once I know where SCat's from, we can open negotiations to add him
to our manifest with BioTech's backing. They won't pass up a chance to make
SKitty half of a breeding pair, and I don't think there's a captain willing to
go on BioTech's record as opposing a shipscat's choice of mate."

 
          
 
"I won't ask how you intend to make that
particular project work," Singh said hastily. "Just remember, no more
kittens in free-fall."

 
          
 
Dick held up the now-empty injector as a
silent promise.

 
          
 
"I'll brief the crew to refer to both
cats as 'SKitty'— most of the time they do anyway," the Captain said.
"Carry on, White. You seem to have the situation well in hand."

 
          
 
Dick was nowhere near that certain, but he put
on a confident expression for the Captain. He saluted Singh's retreating back,
then sat down on the bunk beside the pair of purring cats. As usual, they were
wound around each other in a knot of happiness.

 
          
 
I wish my love-life was going that well. He'd
hit it off with the Terran consul well enough, but she had elected to remain in
her ground-bound position, and his life was with the ship. Once again, romance
took a second place to careers. Which in his case, meant no romance. There
wasn't a single female in this crew that had shown anything other than strictly
platonic interest in him.

 
          
 
If he wanted a career in space, he had to be
very careful about what he did and said. As most junior officer on the
Brightwing, he was the one usually chosen for whatever unpleasant duty no one
else wanted to handle. And although he could actually retire, thanks to the
prosperity 'want to. That would mean leaving space, leaving the ship—and leaving SKitty and
SCat.

 
          
 
He could also transfer within the company, but
why change from a crew full of people he liked and respected, with a good
Captain like Singh, to one about which he knew nothing? That would be stupid.
And he couldn't leave SKitty, no matter what. She was his best friend, even if
she did get him into trouble sometimes.