Catalyst (5 page)

“I hope not. But we’ll need to tag this lot before we process this,” he said. “We’ll want to be able to identify them again, in case it’s necessary to isolate them.”

But when they rose to return to work, they found the attentive horses had all vanished. Returning to the tracker, Janina and Jared followed the beasts into the hills, down into another valley, and then into a thick birch wood, where they lost them. The tracker’s scanners showed that the horses were still there, but when they tried to follow on foot, no fruity inducements were enough to persuade the horses to show themselves.

Finally Jared shook his head and said, “We’re wasting our time here. We’ll need to have a talk with Varley. He’s going to have to round this lot up for us to tag. Not a word about the specimen, though, all right? He’s not likely to be cooperative if he thinks we may be looking for something that could endanger his herd.”

Janina nodded gravely, her former high spirits thoroughly dampened.

Jared set the tracker down in the wide drive outside of Varley’s extensive ranch home, which was bigger than the bridge and the crew quarters of the
Molly Daise
put together. The house was surrounded by a vast garden with an array of flowers in a rainbow of colors. The gardener, Hamish Hale, stood up as they exited the tracker.

“Hi, Doc Vlast,” he said. Hamish owned a black lab named Rollie who had a hip problem. As they drew nearer, Rollie looked up at them from his place beside Hamish’s feet and wagged his tail. Jared greeted them both, patting Rollie’s head, and asked if Mr. Varley was around.

“In the stables, Doc,” Hamish said, waving his trowel in the direction of the building that was the size of one of the Locksley malls.

Two large red dogs came bounding up to meet them. One of them leaped to put its front paws on Jared’s shoulders, and he held them and danced the dog around as if they were at a ball. The other settled for pats from Janina, when it was clear his doctor was tied up with another patient.

“Roscoe, Roary, down,” a man’s voice commanded. Varley himself strode out to meet them and shook their hands briskly.

“Get the mustangs tagged already, did you, Doc?” he asked in a jovial tone.

“One lot, but the second spooked and hid in the woods. They wouldn’t come out for love nor bribes, so you’ll have to have your hands corral them and call me back.”

“The ones you did check—they look okay to you?” Varley asked. “Healthy, no mutations or anything?”

“Other than their coloring and undocumented origins, no,” Jared said.

“Because I’m thinking I should probably sell them offworld—I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but on the other hand, I don’t want to get fined for owning a herd of them when I can’t say who the giver is.”

Jared nodded. “They look healthy enough to me, and I would say most are young and sturdy as well. But as long as we’re here, I thought we might take the annual specimens from your other stock. Save us all time later.”

Varley screwed his mouth up considering, then shrugged. “It’s up to you. They’re not due for six weeks, though.”

“I know, but I figured you’d like to get it over with.”

He shrugged again. “Your call. You know where to find them.” He signaled toward the stable area. “When you’re done, you and your helper come on up to the house for refreshments, why don’t you?”

“Thanks,” Jared said, waving as he strode toward the corral, Janina trailing behind him. Roary and Roscoe, wagging and bouncing as if they’d never before seen such a wonderful man, followed their master to the house.

It took another two hours to gather the necessary specimens. Only three of the stabled horses exhibited the sparkly saliva, which obviously puzzled Jared as much as finding it had displeased him. But neither he nor Janina said anything about it as they sat sipping iced tea and nibbling fresh baked biscuits from Mrs. Varley’s dessert plates. The biscuits were dusted with cinnamon and melted in Janina’s mouth. She thought she’d never tasted anything so delicious. She was biting into her second when one of the hands, dressed in blue work pants and a matching shirt with the tails hanging out, strode into the room.

“The station’s on the com, sir,” he told Varley. “They said they’ve been trying to raise Dr. Vlast on the tracker com but can’t.”

“Is it an emergency?” Jared asked, setting down his glass and plate as he rose.

“I think it may be, sir. They were wondering if you can explain
why there are horses, dogs, and sheep running through the station.”

Janina felt her stomach clench with anxiety.

Even before entering the tracker, they heard the com unit squawking at them through the closed hatch. Janina’s dread swelled to near-panic as she made out the first words of the message. The security monitor that had last showed Chessie peacefully napping was now black.

“Fire,”
the com unit was saying.
“Fire in the animal clinic!”

T
raffic diverted the tracker from its customary bay near the clinic, and security contacted them as soon as they docked.
“Dr. Vlast, station ops requests that you and your assistant round up the animals who escaped from the clinic and examine them for possible injuries and smoke inhalation while we are securing the area.”

They didn’t need to be convinced. Jared’s patients were his top priority, and Janina was frantic to find Chessie. She triggered the cat’s locator beacon, hoping against all odds that it would lead her to a Chessie calmly setting her whiskers in order with a dampened paw. But there was no answering signal from any part of the ship.

By the time she and Jared had rounded up the horses, dogs, exotic birds, and the boa constrictor wreaking havoc throughout the station, Janina was sick with worry for Chessie.

But when at last the animals were secured, examined, and lodged in whatever space available until their owners could collect them, and Jared and Janina returned to the clinic deck, they were still denied access.

“Toxic fumes,” a guard, barely distinguishable as a female in her hazmat suit, told them. “The fire seems to have started in the hay in the horse stalls, but it ignited a lot of other substances that give off poisonous gases when they burn. Good thing the animals got loose before that happened or they’d have all died from inhalation. As it is, some of the fire crew are in sick bay now.”

Frustrated, they turned away, and Jared went to the station master’s office to fill out paperwork.

Janina roamed the station with Chessie’s locator, calling and listening, but saw no sign of her, though two other cats stopped hunting long enough to regard her curiously from a safe distance.

Finally, after hours of fruitless searching, Jared called her on the com to tell her the area had cooled and the air supply had been cleansed enough that they would be allowed in as long as they wore masks.

Steeling her nerve, Janina followed him into what was left of the clinic. It was hard to believe that this rubble was the same neat, hygienic place where she had left Chessie. She picked her way through the clinic, the pools of melted stuff, the collapsed ceiling, the twisted metal exam tables. She had felt sure that Chessie was alive, since all of the other animals appeared to be accounted for and unharmed, but since she could not find her charge alive, she began to dread finding evidence that she was dead—charred fur, bits of bone, her locator chip … Jared set off in another direction to examine other areas of the clinic. Perhaps he too couldn’t bear to see proof that the kennel where Chessie should have been safe had become a death trap. If Chessie had died, Janina only hoped it was from smoke inhalation, quickly, while the cat still slept, dreaming of her new litter.

“Careful there, miss,” the guard called. “Some of the floors have buckled and pulled from their moorings. You could fall through in some places.”

“Thank you,” she replied without looking at the woman. Her eyes were on the twisted wire door lying halfway across some beams two doors away. She picked through the rubble toward it over upended file cabinets, their bent-open drawers filled with the blackened remains of the hardcopy records, the shattered blind screen of a computer, and charred and melted plastic chairs from the waiting room. Chessie’s kennel had faced a large viewport, to give her sunbeams to bask in, since sunlight was said to be healthful
particularly for ships’ cats much deprived of natural feline pleasures.

She looked back at the guard and asked, her voice muffled by her mask and husky from a throat already scratchy with the remains of the smoke: “Did the first responders who rescued the other animals find a pregnant cat and save her too? She would have been over there.” She pointed to where the husk of the kennel remained standing.

“I think the other animals escaped on their own, miss. No one I know set them free. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen no pregnant cat nor has anyone mentioned such a one.”

It was no more than Janina had expected, but her spirits sank a little more. Still, she slogged through to the room where she had left Chessie.

Even when creatures were cremated, there were ashes, shards of bones. She knew if she saw her cat’s remains, she would recognize them.

As she drew nearer the burned-out kennel, she could clearly see through the blackened wire mesh that the sleeping shelf appeared untouched, although the cat bed was no longer there.

But better yet, the door hung slightly ajar. Chessie got out! Someone had let her out!

Janina allowed herself a deep relieved breath, then coughed over and over, her throat and chest burning.

She stumbled back through the ruins, pressing Chessie’s button again and again. She had to have survived, had to. She could not have run far, fleet of foot as she was, with her belly full of young. Whoever had saved the other animals must have saved her too, but instead of setting her free—perhaps realizing the pregnant cat would not be fast enough to outrun the fire—had taken her far away from the once-safe haven that had become a deadly inferno.

Janina collapsed to the deck in the outer corridor.

Jared, his face ashen, turned his back on the ruins and hurried toward her and then past.

“Jared, what—” she began.

He stopped, took a step back and gave her a look full of sorrow and pity, letting his fingers brush her hair, then strode on without speaking. But not before she saw the tracks of tears through the soot that covered the exposed part of his face. He was as stricken by this tragedy as she, but he had not lost the creature dearest to him in the whole universe. She had—but the loss was not hers alone. She rose and straightened her uniform. It was time to face her crewmates.

Her feet felt so leaden she thought she’d dent the deck as she boarded the
Molly Daise
and marched to the bridge.

The ship’s officers were waiting for her. That was unusual. A Cat Person was normally not important enough for such an august assemblage. She didn’t flatter herself that it was her welfare that concerned them now. Not only were most members of the crew fond of Chessie, but they had plans for the money they’d receive from the sale of her new litter.

The officers’ faces were not accusatory or unkind, however, and somehow that made her feel worse. She had thought she was doing the right thing by Chessie, leaving her at the clinic. How had it gone so horribly wrong?

To put off having to say anything, she hauled the gifts she’d bought for the captain’s family from her pack and silently handed them to him. He took them with a distracted frown, not inspecting them. “Are you all right, Janina?” he asked her.

“I am well enough, sir, but—” Her throat closed with aching and she couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Did you—find her?” asked second mate Indu Soini, her voice holding a strange restrained mix of hopefulness and dread.

“I did not, ma’am. She was not among the rescued beasts from the clinic—”

“Oh no!” said Engineer’s mate Charlotte Holley, who of all of
her section was the one fondest of cats in general and Chessie in particular. “Janina, why did you leave her there? You could have brought her to me. I’d have watched her.”