Mercedes Lackey - SCat

“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 leapt 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 appropriately pedigreed BioTech mates, SKitty’s own mate—called “Prrreet” by SKitty and unsurprisingly dubbed “SCat” by the crew, for his ability to vanish—had made his own way to SKitty, stowing aboard with the crates containing more BioTech kittens for Lacu’un.

Where he came from, only he knew, although he was definitely a shipscat. His tattoo didn’t match anything in the BioTech register. 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 towards 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 tom 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 eyes, and 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 the other young cats for groundside duty as the kittens’ mates.”