Seventeen
Despite the first mate's desperation to have no hatch between him and the new object of his lust, Becker obstinately waited until human beings, armed and dangerous and clad in very little, poured from and around the Temple, each of them accompanied by a bevy of felines.
(We are friends,) Acorna broadcasted. (We came to warn you and to help you, if necessary.)
Having entered into their minds, she now met their eyes as they peered in at her.
Haruna and her companion apparently understood for, much to RK's disappointment, they dismounted. Then the people began talking excitedly among themselves, in a dialect new to Acorna.
"What are they saying, Miw-Sher?" Acorna asked. Miw-Sher didn't notice at first that she had been addressed, as the boy was pointing out features of the Temple to her.
"Oh," she said when she turned back to Acorna, "they're simply telling each other that you are the one and you have come as prophesied."
"It's so nice that everyone but me knows about that," Acorna said a bit crossly. She was tired of many things, including her reputation, which had so unexpectedly preceded her nearly everywhere on this planet.
"At least you can rest here, Princess," Becker said. "These pussycats are fine as feline fur. You look like you need healing more than they do."
He raised the hatch and climbed out. Acorna and the others followed him. The sight of the boy caused one of the women to cry out and rush forward to embrace him. He was glad to see her, but disentangled himself rather quickly to show her the kittens. The Hissim Temple cats began mingling with the locals, and RK sidled up to Haruna. He was trying to get close enough to growl sweet nothings into her tufted ears, Acorna supposed.
For a few moments the locals chattered busily about everything, and Miw-Sher and the boy chattered with them. Then, as if recalling their manners, the woman, who was surely a relative of the boy's if not his mother, gestured for Becker and Acorna to ascend the steps carved between the cat Temple's outstretched front paws and up onto the tongue and into the mouth.
More stairs led them through the torso of the Temple, the interior of which was lined with beautiful murals, accented by wall sconces holding torches - currently unlit-to provide illumination when necessary. During daylight hours, as Acorna could see, the building had more than sufficient natural light because of all of the open areas leading to the exterior platforms where the Temple cats perched. If the cats wished to ascend the Temple 's outer walls, they could simply leap from one platform to the next, and descend in the same manner. There were also a number of interior platforms, should the cats wish to seek shelter inside the building.
It was a bit unnerving to watch the cats leap from platform to platform right through the Temple. As Acorna and her friends walked through the building's halls, Temple cats of every color and size appeared occasionally, often seeming to shoot out of the walls and fly through the air of the passageways above their heads. But after a while even Acorna and Becker grew used to the sudden rush of air as a fully extended furry body sailed from one side of the Temple to the other, as if crossing a jungle ravine.
Although Acorna had enjoyed some rest in the flitter on the way, the climbing tired her further and her feet felt heavy and clumsy as she set them on one step and then another.
And then her feet were no longer touching the steps and she felt pressure on the backs of her thighs, knees, and upper arms as six people adroitly inserted themselves between her body and the effects of gravity on it, lifting her up onto their shoulders and bearing her among them.
"Hey," Becker said, "how does a person get prophesied about around here? I'm kinda tired, too, you know."
Much to her surprise, the high priestess was not wearing robes as the priests in the other two cities did. In fact, she was wearing nothing except a coat of her own home-grown fur, pointed ears, and long elegant whiskers.
Miw-Sher gasped and Acorna caught her thought. (She can keep her cat form during the day!)
The creature on the throne beckoned languidly and growl/purred to Acorna, "So you are the one who He said was coming."
Becker, who had not been in on the change in conversation and wasn't sure if the high priestess was friend or foe, stepped in front of Acorna. "Who said she was coming and what did he say about her? Did he tell you she would heal all the sick cats? Because she did. Did he tell you she outsmarted the Mulzar of Hissim, otherwise known of the King of Everything? She did that, too."
The cat priestess stretched out her paw-hand and ran a single claw along Becker's jaw, drawing a thin line of blood. RK suddenly reached up a paw and smacked at the hand. "Mine!" he said clearly in his own tongue.
The priestess snatched her hand back. "Excuse me, little brother. I didn't realize he had a guardian. He seems to think he is one himself."
Becker stooped down and scratched RK's ears, whispering, "It's okay, big fella. It's not her fault. I seem to have this animal magnetism for cat ladies. You remember how Nadhari was about me when we first met."
Acorna said, "He's right. I don't know what has been said about me before I arrived and I would like to find out. But first, since your cats are all well, I must tell you that there is a 'gift' shipment of food and medicines coming from Hissim. You mustn't accept it. It's contaminated with an organism that will kill your guardians -and maybe you, too. I made a vaccine that could give you some protection, but there's not enough of it for all of these cats. The ones in Hissim all died except these few that came with us."
The boy set the basket containing Grimla and kittens at the high priestess's feet and Pash, Haji, and Sher-Paw stepped forward as if they were characters in some feline creche pageant.
The spotted light from the holes in the walls dappled everyone so that they resembled the large cats. The heat made the air shimmer in a way that caused Acorna to feel as if the whole thing was one of Hafiz's holograms.
The cat lady returned her attention to Acorna. "There is something you must see. Perhaps then you will understand."
Flowing from the throne, the high priestess stepped to one side of the platform and beckoned. "You may use this if you wish," she said, gesturing to a column with steps carved in a spiral around it, descending into darkness. She murmured something else Acorna didn't catch and then dove headfirst into the hole.
Miw-Sher translated. "She said she'd take the shortcut."
"I believe I'll use the stairs," Acorna said.
"You're still lookin' puny, Princess," Becker told her. "You think you can go down that thing without getting dizzy and falling off?"
"There's a handhold," Miw-Sher said, pointing out a groove carved into the column. It ran at about waist height and parallel to the stairs. "And I'll go first. You can hold on to my shoulder, Ambassador, if you feel faint."
"Thank you, Miw-Sher," Acorna said. "I believe I'll manage going down."
And she did.
As she descended lower and lower, gripping the handhold with the tips of her fingers and occasionally touching Miw-Sher's shoulder for balance, she became aware that it was not entirely dark below. Thousands of gold coins with slots in the middle glittered up at her until suddenly, as the light from above grew too dim to see their feet, the space below was lit by one torch after another.
She had the sense that a few of the priests holding the torches had hastily covered their private parts, after transforming from their feline state. Of the felines large and small that lay in every imaginable attitude up and down the length of the room, she could not have said if they had declined to transform or were unable to.
Their eyes no longer glittered but blinked lazily in the light, or slitted, or in some cases showed the milky inner membrane that protected the eyes. There was no catty smell at all. In fact, it smelled fresher down here than it had in the open, with the jungle vegetation hemming the Temple so closely.