Junkyard Cats Page 6

  He gestured to the screens with his beer. “Don’t reckon you’d let me take pics of the scanners and screens.”

  “Nope.”

  “Don’t reckon you’d let me make a vid of the cats hunting.”

  “Nope.”

  “And I assume you have the means and capabilities to make sure I don’t take vid, or leave before you’re ready, without your permission.”

  “Not bad, Asshole.” I grinned at him. “Matt. How’s our visitor’s bike?” I asked without raising my voice.

  “Pretty li’l thing. Hope I don’t have to hurt it,” he said, over the office speakers.

  Jagger’s eyes flashed at the mention of hurting his bike, but he smiled anyway.

  “I’ll have to be on my best behavior.”

  “Good idea,” Mateo said.

  We sat in silence, watching the cats hunt and Mateo clean up. Time passed. Twice, Jagger spotted something and moved to the weapons. Shot a Puffer. Each time, Mateo collected and fried it. They were working together, silent. Which was a very bad sign for my own long-range problem solving.

  The sun moved toward the west; the hottest part of the day passed into late afternoon. I made coffee. Opened a pack of dried apples to share. Jagger watched, his eyes on my gloved hands.

  The med-bay light flashed three times and went dark. I got up to find Notch sleeping, breathing, his open wounds no longer open and most of his blood washed away. Med-bays weren’t perfect but they were very, very good when the nearest veterinarian was thirty klicks away. I popped open the bay and used the disinfectant sprayer to wash off Notch—thin, red-tinted fluid gurgling down the drain. I dried off the unconscious cat and tapped the panel, saying, “Instructions for rehab.”

  The med-bay’s androgynous computer voice said, “Clear liquids tonight and tomorrow. Minced protein after forty-eight hours. Commence swimming therapy at seventy-two hours. Reevaluation in seven days.”

  “Yeah. If I live that long,” I muttered, laying non-fibrous padding over the thin, glued line of wounds, and wrapping the cat’s torso in sticky wrap.

  “Why wouldn’t you live that long?” Jagger asked, his voice coming from behind me. Too close.

  My breath caught. That earlier longing moved through me like a slow wave, unfurling, covering, drenching all of me.

  “You ever make a cat swim?” I asked. “Not that I have water for cat-paddling. No one does, around here.”

  “Huh.”

  The med-bay was an older model, from before the change of weather patterns and the loss of fresh water. Its instructions didn’t take the low-freshwater world into account.

  “I’ll keep him in the back airlock for forty-eight hours, feed him according to instructions, drug him when he gets too wild. When I can get the bandages off without getting myself mauled, I’ll let him go. He’ll live or not.”

  I glanced back and up to see Jagger watching my hands as I secured the tail of the wrapping. The sticky tape was bright purple. Notch would hate it. How I knew that, I didn’t know. Most cats couldn’t see the colors red and purple, except as shades of gray. All the junkyard cats were different.

  “You’ve worked on cats before,” Jagger said.

  “Tuffs, Notch’s primary mate, is a junkyard Torti,” I said. “Her paw got stuck under a skid, early on in my employment here. Broke her leg. Crushed part of her paw. She was trapped and was fighting it like a rabid cat when I got there. She calmed down when I talked to her, explaining what I was going to do, not that I thought she understood me. But even with the explanation, she wouldn’t let me touch her. I figured I’d have to shoot her, put her out of her misery. I went back to the office and got one of my employer’s weapons—”

  “One of dozens,” Jagger said softly.

  “It’s a scrap and junkyard, Asshole, of course he has guns. Everyone all over the state has guns to protect us from roving bands of raiders. Boss makes a point to keep them out of the wrong hands. And anyway, by the time I stepped back through the airlock, there she was, sitting with her bloody paw to her chest, waiting on me. Along with four of the meanest cats you ever saw, from her first litter here. She had chewed off part of her own foot and come to me for help.”

  I stroked Notch’s head. He’d nearly died today. All the cats had worked together to save the junkyard and help me. It was time for a sacrifice to the cats, so to speak.

  Leaving the med-bay open, in the kitchenette I unsealed a pouch of goat’s milk and poured it into a wide, shallow bowl. In another bowl, I dumped a pouch of very expensive chicken chunks and stirred in a helping of crunchy kibble. I un-gloved, scanned through the front airlocks, and when I was sure no Puffers were in the vicinity, I opened the locks and placed the bowls outside. Fast. The airlocks closed.

  Lifting Notch, I carried him to the small space between the two back airlock doors. I got him settled in with an old army blanket and two bowls, one with water and one with canned broth. A shallow tray with desert dirt, suitable for a litter box, went on the other side of the floor. I added a folding household ladder that should be easy to climb and would let him see out as soon as he felt like making the few steps up. I sealed the lock, leaving the sleeping cat safely between the two back airlock doors.

  “You were telling me about Tuffs,” Jagger said.

  He was back at the med-bay, a fresh beer in his hand. He hadn’t asked, but since he was effectively a prisoner, I didn’t begrudge him the stout.

  “I told her she could come in, but her kits had to wait outside. I explained that I’d put her in a box and she would go to sleep and she’d wake up better. Not healed. But better.”

  “You talked to the cats.” Deadpan. Not laughing.

  I shrugged and ran a hand wand over my hands, cleaning them.

  “She came in, let me lift her into the med-bay, and lay down. When the surgery was over and she woke up, she limped to the kitchen, demanded goat milk, drank it and went to—the owner’s bed.” I had almost said “my bed.”

  Jagger seemed to find my inept lies amusing and breathed out a laugh.

  “The boss slept on the dinette bed for three days until Her Majesty decided she was well enough to leave.”

  “And where did you sleep?”

  My lips lifted in a small smile. I turned from the sink to see Jagger cleaning the med-bay. I was so surprised I stopped dead. He knew his way around, cleaning with disinfectant and refilling the surgical supplies from the marked cabinet to the side. He hit the right sequence for decontamination on the instruction screen and ultraviolet light lit the room. It was scut work, not the sort of thing a National Enforcer did.

  “I live in Naoma,” I said, naming a nearby town.

  Jagger made a noncommittal sound. As he worked, the sun set, and the office darkened. The modified, low-water-use air-scrubber plants closed their leaves and stopped removing pollutants from the air. The lights overhead should have blinked on, bright and gleaming. Instead, they came on slowly, with a dull glow, a brownout that indicated the office AI, nicknamed Gomez, had shunted power to the med-bay and the AG Grabber. I’d overused my energy supply and now I was paying for it. Between the Grabber’s power usage and healing Notch, my energy reserves were nearly tapped out. I could draw on the spaceship’s nearly inexhaustible supply, but . . . No. Not with Jagger here. I had already used the shields, but they were less obvious to humans; I was sure he hadn’t noticed, beyond a weird crawly feeling under his skin. But if I used the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle power from the SunStar’s engines or the office’s weapons array, he’d figure it all out. I didn’t think even my talents could make Jagger forget a WIMP engine, and if I couldn’t alter his memories, Mateo would kill him to protect us. And . . . I didn’t want Jagger dead. Bloody damn. I didn’t want him dead.

  On the screens, I saw pride cats targeting a line of Puffers on Aisle Tango Three. I counted fourteen cats and six Puffers, most of them weaponized. Even with those numbers, that was not good odds for the cats.

  “I have jerky and dried
fruit at the bike,” Jagger said, tucking his fingers into his pockets, looking all relaxed and loose and easy, as if he couldn’t kill me with those hands in less than two seconds if he wanted. “But since the bike is outside and I’m not, may I impose on the hospitality of Little Girl to let me use her facilities and to feed me?”

  That was about as formal as an OMW ever got. When he didn’t change his stance or his expression, I jutted my chin at my PTC, my personal toilette compartment.

  “I’m not that little, but help yourself. As to food” —I tilted my head, thinking about my supplies—“Boss has pouches of tuna, canned shrimp, and goat’s milk. A couple of tablespoons of butter, a few dried herbs, onion powder, a little wheat flour, and roasted garlic.” As an afterthought I added, “Canned corn. Salt. Pepper.”

  Jagger grinned ear to ear. The transformation was startling and intriguing and ho-ly cow.

  “Little Girl, that sounds like the makings of a seafood stew, right here in the middle of the West Virginia desert.”

  I had no idea why I offered my hard-to-replace and terribly expensive foodstuffs to the National Enforcer. A small voice—not the Berger-chip implant, but a recognizable, small voice—whispered into the back of my mind, Because you’re lonely. That stopped me cold.

  The voice was right. Mateo and I had been alone for years. I was no longer human. And Mateo was a warbot, as much a machine as a man. Except for limited and brief times, he wasn’t someone I could see or touch or physically interact with.

  Jagger was human. Jagger was here. Right now.

  Chances were very good that he’d be dead or different—altered—in seventy-two hours tops. First time in forever, I had company. If I’d admit to being Shining Smith, he’d be company who knew the real me and what I had done, or at least some of my history. He’d be company who could talk to me about the Outlaw Militia Warriors and the outside world. Real conversation. Maybe a game of cards. An old movie.

  But if he’d sent Harlan, if he was the traitor, he might also just shoot me and be done with it.

  The loneliness ached. Take it, the small voice said.

  I opened my mouth, still trying to decide.

  “I don’t know who your Shining Smith is. My boss’s name is Smith but the only thing shiny on him is his bald head.”

  “Your boss? Really.”

  I ignored him and turned away, leaving him hulking behind me. He didn’t strangle me or cut my throat, heading for the PTC instead. Score one for Jagger.

  Though it was hard to see in the dim light with the orangey glasses, I opened the food supply cabinet and removed the ingredients, putting it all on the counter. Jagger returned from the PTC too fast to have used the body wand, not that he had clean clothes to change into. I thought about that while he raided my cabinets to find a two-gallon stew pot, which he placed on the hob, and turned on the propane stove. He began to assemble the stew, starting with the dried onion, butter, and canned seafood. All that in the office—in my house. Making himself at home. Doing things I’d done alone for years.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  I decided to clean up. After the fight, I stank. I left the room.

  I stood in the tiny toilette, adjusting the screen to show the views from the office cameras, watching Jagger in case he decided to snoop. He didn’t. But he moved well—economical and sure. As I watched, I used the body wand. Dead skin cells, dried sweat, body hair, and desert filth landed in the bottom of the stall. I blew my body clean with the small blower and palmed a little dry shampoo into my hair, rubbing it into my scalp before vacuuming it.

  I missed water. I missed it a lot.

  And I needed to make a decision about Jagger. Fast.

  After the wanding, I cleaned up my mess, moisturized, put on my orangey lip gloss and Kajal, and dressed in clean clothes, things I could sleep in comfortably if it came to sharing quarters with him. With Jagger. Who was clearly a dangerous mountain of a man. I stared at myself in the mirror, my glasses off, my odd orange eyes staring back at me. In the low light of the brownout, it wasn’t likely that Jagger could see my eyes anyway, so I didn’t have to wear the lenses. Hopefully. I debated putting on Little Mama’s perfume. Makeup.

  This was not a date. It wasn’t.

  But some small part of me might want it to be.

  And the deadly part of me demanded it to be. I squashed that part down.

  Back in the main room I defaulted all the inside screens, including the one in the PTC, to show outside events. I pulled out some of Pop’s clothes, things he’d worn before the war, before the stress and constant battle and seeing people he loved die had stripped all the meat off him, leaving him a shell of his former self. Before the Parkinson’s stole his brain and personality and memories. And before I changed. I rested my hand on the heavy fabric. The pants legs would be too short, but they were soft and clean. Better than the sweat-stained things Jagger was wearing now.

  Jagger had made a roux with the butter and flour and herbs, added in the goat milk, dry milk, a bottle of water, and the seafood from their packets. It wasn’t fresh seafood from the ocean, which I hadn’t had since I escaped Washington State and headed east, but it smelled delicious.

  I placed the clean clothes in the PTC. Jagger set the propane burner to simmer and went to the toilette. Shut the door. I hadn’t said a word. Into my earbud Mateo said, “Got yourself a servant. That’s a little fast even for you.”

  Softly I replied, “I didn’t do that on purpose.”

  “Did he touch you?”

  “No.” I thought through the events of the afternoon. “But the office hasn’t ever been decontaminated. And I didn’t wash my hands at lunch. Or after I set up the med-bay. I never thought about it. I don’t clean my stove or the cabinets.”

  “You’re still passing them through your sweat,” Mateo said. “Interesting.”

  And awful. We had hoped I’d eventually stop secreting the funky nanobots through my pores.

  My ant-stung wrist itched, wanting to be used, as if the nanos knew what was happening and wanted to speed things up.

  Night fell. On low-light cameras I watched the pride cats tear into another Puffer. I couldn’t ID the specific cats, but they were fierce. I watched as Mateo strode in, lifting his long legs over the skids of engine and body parts, and swept up the pieces.

  “Gomez,” I said, talking to the office AI. “Put on some of Pops’ music in the background.” Pops had loved music of all kinds: Heavy Metal bands, nineteen-forties Big Band, Jazz, R-and-B, crooners, Country, even the skirling early-war martial Celtic stuff. He listened to everything. Eclectic taste. Gomez started with a tear-jerker called “Half as Much” by Rosemary Clooney.

  “Makes it easier,” Mateo said, picking up where he left off. “We won’t have to burn the body. I’ll come up with the cover. Meantime don’t admit to being Shining. If he lives, it would make it harder to mind-wipe him. From now on, your name is Heather Anne Jilson.”

  “I don’t look like a Heather Anne,” I grouched.

  “Tough.” The printer began spitting out documents. “Heather Anne Jilson was the name of the girl whose mother was being beaten up by Darson, the one saved by an enforcer. The one who supposedly died in the Battle of Seattle.”

  His brain didn’t work on every level all the time, but Mateo was thorough about security. Sometimes scary thorough. I paged through the thin brown hemp-docs on the printer. Heather now had a full ID, background, and history, all documented. I stuffed the docs into my personal storage area and pulled out my kutte. I hadn’t looked at it in ages and it was way too small to fit now. I’d been spider-monkey small at twelve and had put on a quarter meter and a few kilos since then. I pulled off the old sensors, found the one that was activated when the Crawler crossed over the property boundary, and ripped it off. I put them all into a box. I added some older sensors and a few ancient digital camera parts. Some early EntNu Coms, earth-to-space hardware. The box now looked as if I stored small electronic scrap in
it.

  I placed the box on the cabinet, knowing that the decision on how to proceed had been made for me the moment Jagger started to serve me. It was a damn shame. He was interesting. But he’d live or he’d die. Either way, I couldn’t keep him around and I had to make sure he remembered what I wanted him to.

  I set the table for two. Which was really weird. I had never done that before. I checked the power levels on the office weapons that Jagger didn’t know about yet. Stirred the soup. Realized I was nervous. There were little pinpricks all over me and my wrist was all but buzzing. My system was flooding with battle pheromones and mating chemicals and my breath rate and heart rate were increasing. I fought to push my reaction down, to control my anxiety and my need, to decrease the secretions of chemicals and nanos through my pores.

  I was never around people for long. I made sure that I never had to deal with this part of me. I didn’t have the control I might have if I went into town more often.

  “So. I’m Matt?” Mateo said, making sure I had chosen.

  “Yeah. Matt,” I said flatly. “I didn’t mean to transition Jagger.”

  “You never do.”

  “A transition is better for him than being dead. If I can alter his memories enough to keep us safe,” I amended.

  “If he lives through the process, maybe,” Mateo said, his metallic voice managing to convey both doubt and mockery.

  I rubbed my wrist and said softly, “That was mean.”

  But Mateo was right. Surviving the transition was no sure thing. Yet I had lived through it twice.

  The first time was when I was twelve, near the end of the first year of the war. I was swarmed by deadly genetically-engineered male ants. They bit off parts of me and stung me full of poison. Then the queen got me, depositing her DNA-based bio-nanobots. The bio-nanos entered my bloodstream and attacked me on the genetic level—just as they had been designed to do to the ants. When I somehow survived the initial transition, the bio-nanos continued to modify me.

  In the second incident, I got exposed to a different kind of nano when a bigger, newer model Chinese Mama-Bot crawled out of the bay and attacked what was left of Seattle. I’d been the only OMW small enough to get inside the Mama-Bot in an attempt to disable it. Once inside, I’d been attacked by Puffers, and their mechanical nanos—mech-nanos—got into a cut. The bio-nanos already in my system adapted and modified them too.