"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.
Chapter 19
Across the street from the building where Aari and Acorna stood, a curtain twitched in an upstairs window. Acorna caught the movement in her peripheral vision and immediately felt the shifting of the space in that building. "Wait," she told Aari. "Someone is coming."
The someone was a small, hunched woman, who walked with a slight lurch and regarded them through squinted eyes, her mouth screwed up in concentration.
"What exactly are you?" she asked them.
"We are Linyaari-a race of healers," Acorna explained. "We've come to help you."
"We have a lot in common then," the woman said. "I am Luz Allende, but everyone calls me Abuelita. I am a curandera. Not a euro, not like these modern ones. I use old things because I am an old thing. But this is good. I am alive and the young euros are not, so evidently my medicine works better on this sickness."