First Warning: Acorna's Children

Chapter 18

Khiindi was getting worried about himself. He didn't feel at all well. It was probably all that talk of illness. He had never actually been ill before, but then, he'd never been slung into a pool-well, almost into the pool-by his tail before either. Much as he liked novelty, all new experiences were not necessarily good just because they were new. The truth was, being frozen in this one shape all the time made him less inclined to accept change in other ways, too. Not that anyone sane would like being flung by their tail, but he found it all too easy to degenerate into a purry, lap-sitting, nip-sniffing, kibble-vacuuming, common pussycat, and that alarmed him. Still, his personal philosophy aside, he couldn't see any upside to being ill.

He found a cargo bay and hopped up onto the topmost container for a contemplative scratch and wash. He needed to scratch far more than usual. His left ear really itched, and something bit him near the base of his tail. Fleas? They had fleas on this tub? He hadn't seen a flea since way back before he became Khiindi, while traveling to the more rustic agro colonies. Back then, for the most part, he'd had no fur to infest and did have opposable thumbs capable of wielding antidotes to the nasty bugs.

But now it seemed that as soon as he got one spot quieted, another two itches flared up on other parts of his body. He scratched and bit himself in first one place, then another, until the blood seeped through his fur, but that didn't help anything. What would help was a horn touch, but those among his kind who felt he was so self-centered that he would consider personal comfort above explorations possibly beneficial to the good of all mistook his inherently noble nature.

Besides, there might be something tasty back here that Linyaari and humans would overlook because it chiefly concerned cats.

Not that he had his usual healthy appetite, of course, as poor as he was feeling. But he would need to keep up his strength, no matter the sacrifice involved or his personal feelings on the matter.

He tried stalking stealthily through the labyrinth of containers but had to keep stopping to scratch. And suddenly, with his foot in midair after a swipe at the patch behind his left ear, he heard his scratch being echoed. An echo of a scratch? That was a new one, surely.

"Someone's out there."

"Of course someone's out there. Someone has to fly the bloody ship, don't they? Unless you've grown opposable thumbs recently."

"I don't mean one of those. I mean someone on four feet. Our sort of feet unless I miss my guess."

"Are you sure it isn't the quarry?"

"Oh, yes, of course I'm sure it isn't the quarry. I can see through these big opaque containers, can't I? How should I know!"

"Just asking," the other voice said, making itself small.

"Mmyow?" Khiindi inquired. And since the rest of the dialogue was, as best he could tell, conducted by thought transference, he used that mode to ask, "Who's there?"

"Vermin Eradication Specialists," replied the loudest and most mature of the voices. "This is our patch, you know. You're intruding. Move along now."

"Where are you?" Khiindi asked, looking around. Were his eyes growing dim? There was very little ambient light in the storage hold-only a faint glow tube around the perimeter of the bulkhead. But as he rounded the edge of a container the light was sufficient to glitter off three sets of coin-bright eyes. Between him and the eyes were crude bars. These belonged, it seemed, to the ordinary sort of cats. It did not surprise Khiindi that he understood their language, as he had been, in his time, widely traveled, and although his ability to change forms had vanished, his knowledge of languages and customs had not. Also, quite possibly these cats were not as ordinary as they seemed. Khiindi had sired many offspring throughout time and in many galaxies. Some resembled one form and some another, but the most common shape was felinoid. These could therefore be distant descendants of his own, but they wouldn't realize that, and he did not feel it prudent to treat them as anything but common house cats. Or ship cats, in this case. He had, after all, been rather generous with his-uh-affections-and being related to him did not necessarily recommend them as creatures worth cultivating though they would, of course, be superior to creatures who were not of his line. "Oh, yes, of course, you're incarcerated for the journey," he said, with an approving glance at the bars partially concealing their faces. "You would be. Mustn't have animals running loose on shipboard, or they make an awful mess like that beast aboard Becker's Condor . . ."

"What is he talking about, mammy? It doesn't make any sense," said the smallest voice.

"Naturally not, child. He's an unstabilized male. Can't you smell him? You have to watch out for his sort. Nothing on their so-called minds but rape and murder."

The kitten's voice reflected the natural bloodthirstiness of the young. "Really, mammy? Why does he do that? What's unstabilized mean?"

"It means he has not had his hormone balance surgically adjusted, as we all have had." Khiindi saw her tail lashing in the dark like some kind of a whisk broom sweeping back and forth as she paced the front of the cage. "His kind can think of nothing but sex and lives only to kill little kittens like yourself to force their mothers to go into heat again so he can have his way with them and make more kittens, which he would not scruple to kill any more than he would you."

"I assure you, madame, that although I am, as you say, unaltered, I have no designs on you or your adorable offspring," Khiindi said in his smarmiest tone. You had to be gentle with beasts such as these- they were only cats, without his superior knowledge or experience. It wasn't their fault they were mere beasts, but to Khiindi that fact made them far less stable and their reactions more volatile than the female supposed his own to be. "I am Khiindi, and I have worn many guises before donning this cat form for the duration of this life. You are in very grave danger, though not from me. A plague has overtaken the humans-your humans."

"These people are nothing to us," a male voice said, "and we are only cargo to them. They have not brought us food for weeeeks."

By this he knew he meant weeks in terms of feline feeding schedule, which meant they had probably missed two feeding sessions at most. Inflation of the times between food was an ingrained feline cultural characteristic, a survival mechanism to ensure that if a steady supply of food was not received according to schedule, those responsible would be shamed into correcting their dereliction of duty at once. Khiindi had heard Uncle Hafiz Harakamian and Captain Becker discussing this topic once, with the comment that cats would make excellent bill collectors, if only the language barrier could be overcome.

"Perhaps, but they were the ones flying the spacecraft and if they cease to do so, none of us will be in very good shape," Khiindi told him. "I will help you as best I can."

"Very good of you, I'm sure," the male said jovially, but the female spat and hissed.

The kitten said, "I'm called Kali. If you aren't going to kill me, would you like to play? I'd very much like to have a go at your tail."

"That's only because yours isn't long enough to play with yet," Khiindi told her kindly. "And some other time, I'd be delighted to accommodate you, little one. But we are all in danger now. And the truth is, I don't feel very well. I could do with a little therapeutic grooming, actually." He heard himself mewing quite plaintively. He pressed himself against the bars and the kitten stuck her muzzle through and went to work on his right ear.

"Get away from him, Kali, he's probably infested with those itchy things," the belligerent queen said.

"Yes, madame, I am," Khiindi admitted reluctantly. "But surely you all are similarly beleaguered?"

"We are not, and it is my belief that it is my enforcement of good hygienic practices on the family that has kept us safe from them. Oh, they tried nibbling at us, but they were quickly discouraged and disappeared."

"He's crawling with them, "Kali informed her mother with ghoulish satisfaction. "I expect if we don't pick them off him and kill them, they'll eat him all up. Maybe not his tail, but everything else."

"I don't think they eat anything up," Khiindi said, moving away from the bars to preserve his dignity, then ruining it by having to scratch compulsively at his left ear while biting the base of his tail on the other side. He found it hard to work up the necessary vigor, however. His limbs felt heavy, his breath came with difficulty. Even his nose felt sweaty. Also, the figures of the other cats behind their bars were less distinct than they had been. His third eyelid, the nictitating membrane that covered his eye from the inner corner to the middle, had spread across his vision as it did when there was too much light or he was otherwise indisposed. "But they make you very sick-they are making me very sick-and I hear many have died already."

"Poor hygiene," the female said smugly. "You're speaking of the two-legged sort, are you not? You know they never wash, don't you? I've never seen one grooming himself. I don't suppose that bothers an unstable male like you though."

"You have no idea to whom you are speaking, my dear-uh-puss. Although I am indeed endowed with rather splendid reproductive equipment, I am, far from being unstable, as you put it, the most stable I have been in far more years than you have seen in all of your lives put together. And I can tell you for a fact, stability is highly overrated."

"So is your opinion of yourself," she said, with a flick of her tail.

Hmm, perhaps the lady was protesting too much? That would be it of course. The mere sight of his own magnificent physique was enough to send any female of the appropriate species into heat. He kept forgetting the effect he had on the fair sex, having weightier matters to occupy his intellect. Poor puss. She'll just have to wait. He scratched again. Why didn't the vermin leave him and go to the others, where they could, if the reputation of these cats was truthful, be eradicated?

"You lot don't seem to be bothered by these space fleas. What did you use?"

"Stabilization," the female said. "It protects us from a variety of ills, including this one. Unfortunately for you, the crew member in charge of stabilization and other procedures pertaining to the health of the four-legged crew members was among the first to die. She neglected to stabilize herself, it seems. So you, too, will be dying soon."

"Nooooo!" he yowled.

"Khiindi!" a voice called from far away, "Where are you, Khiindi? Here, kitty, kitty."

He tried to arise from where he'd been sitting and run back the way he'd come, but found he could no longer move. It was as if someone were lying on his face and upper torso now-he couldn't seem to get his breath. He yowled again but could barely hear himself.

"Help me!" he told the others.

"Why should we?" the female said. "There's not enough food left for us, much less an unwelcome stranger."

"Food . . ." he told her, though it was difficult to focus his thoughts enough to make a clever answer. "My people will bring food. Enough for all of us. Fishes …"

The caterwauling of starved, neglected, and mistreated cats filled the cargo hold, spilling into the corridors beyond.

The last thing Khiindi heard was his own pitiful mew.