Moonmay Marsden approached Khorii, a basket hanging from the crook of her arm. “I heard you were still here, and I thought maybe you’d like to see our kittens. I bottle-fed Thomasina myself, and seems like no sooner than she was off the bottle than she was out to do something personal about the cat shortage we’ve had here ever since the plague.”
Khorii couldn’t resist looking. There were four little kittens with gray stripes, and one orange one. She petted them very softly with a fingertip between each set of tiny ears, still kittenishly rounded and not standing up in proper cat-ear points. The orange one grabbed her finger in both front paws and tried to nurse from it.
“Khiindi was orange-ish when he was a baby,” she said. “But I guess Makahomian Temple Cats can change colors as they get older.”
“Not Rushima barn cats,” Moonmay said proudly. “That there is Punkin. Looks to me like he would admire to have a career as a space cat if you were to take him on.” She looked up at the sky, or what was visible of it through the fog. “Anybody would like that. I know I sure would. You must think Rushima is real backward compared to your planet, you being from a highly advanced civilization with notions and gadgets way beyond anything even the Federation thought of.”
“No, not at all,” Khorii said. She was just feeling a bit low. She didn’t want to give Moonmay the impression she felt superior, though something inside her said, You do. You think you’re better than Mikaaye and all the others, too, or why would you be so angry? Hushing that part, she said in a confidential tone, “Actually, where I live there are hardly any gadgets at all. Most of it is lush fields and tall mountains, rivers, and streams. My people have what you would consider tents, but we mostly only use them for shelter, and on fine nights, we often sleep in the open.”
“All purely natural,” Moonmay said. “Imagine that.”
“Well, not exactly natural. It was originally, but when the Khleevi invaded, they completely destroyed and destabilized our world. If it weren’t for my uncle Hafiz, who used some of his vast resources to restore it, we’d all be living on narhii-Vhiliinyar, the planet my people evacuated to when the Khleevi invaded.”
“Isn’t that a good place?” Moonmay asked.
“It was. Partially terraformed, too, by our people way back before I was born. All our plants and animals and things were brought over by our scientists. But then the Khleevi attacked us again, so Uncle Hafiz had to help out there, too.”
“So lots of technology, like I thought.”
“Mostly we use that of other peoples—we trade with them and our techno-artisans learn to use what we acquire. But other than our space vessels and a few other things, those who stay planetside don’t use a lot of what you would call ‘gadgets.’”
“We just plain don’t have all that many anymore,” Moonmay said. “When the commodore and the first shipload of our ancestors arrived here, they had lots of technical things and lots of people had knowledge how to use things and invent more. But most of them wanted to live quiet, with animals and woods and such, kinda like your folks, I reckon. And I guess they just about had enough money to get here, and the Federation wasn’t as big as it is now…” Her voice trailed off. Even on Rushima they knew how badly affected the Federation forces had been by the plague. “Anyway, lots of the surface here isn’t very useful, but our patch was pretty easy to make like Old Earth. That’s what the ancestors wanted. They made do with what they had, reused stuff, rebuilt it, or made new things in old ways.”
“But you still have a place for ships to dock,” Khorii said.
“That’s Federation doing,” Moonmay told her. “And we do trade for a few things, too, and buy or rent others. Weapons, some equipment, like what Scar brings.”
“What do you trade?”
“Produce, animals, some handicrafts. But I wouldn’t ask you to pay for a kitten, not after what you did for Grampa.”
But Khorii shook her head, withdrawing her finger from Punkin, who gave a squeak and pounced into the middle of a sleeping gray sibling. “That’s very sweet of you, Moonmay, but Khiindi wouldn’t like it. He’s been with me since we were both babies, and there’s a litter of half-grown kittens on the Mana already.”
“How about dogs?” Moonmay asked. “Maybe you could use a dog?”
Khorii shook her head again. “Khiindi would be even more upset if I brought a dog aboard.”
“Too bad,” Moonmay said. “We got a litter of the funniest-lookin’ pups you ever did see. Mama was a little short herd dog and the daddy was a sled dog from way out on the cold fringe. His master moved here with twelve of them but old Dooley, we called him Drooly, is the only one left. Pups look like him in the face, but they got their mama’s short legs.”
Khorii forced herself to give the child, probably only a few years younger than she in Standard years, but much younger in other ways, a weary smile. “Hap might enjoy seeing the puppies when he returns,” she said. Mikaaye probably wouldn’t have thought about Hap’s liking dogs if Moonmay had approached him. “He’s very fond of dogs. Thanks again for showing me your kittens, Moonmay. Please have someone alert me when the others return. I’m going to go back to the ship to keep Khiindi company.”
“You do that,” she said. “Oh! Wait! Can you wait just a minute? I’ll be right back! Uh, here, watch the kitties, will you?”
Thrusting the fur-filled basket at Khorii, she ran off with her bare feet flashing beneath the rolled-up cuffs of her blue trousers.
Khorii sat down and leaned against the nearest building, pulling the basket of kittens into her lap. She hadn’t realized she was tired, but she closed her eyes for just a moment. It was then that she heard the thrum of a space shuttle and thought that the others had made short work of the crisis and were returning much more quickly than she thought.
However, the sound seemed to be coming from much higher than the shuttles would have gone for a surface jaunt. Khorii looked up but saw no lights, only a navy blue sky with patches of grayed clouds blocking out the cosmos. Mist steamed up from the ground, too, or maybe it was the local “natural” ghosts going about their nocturnal business. A kitten climbed her arm, and Khorii was distracted by trying to gently extricate the little beast with a minimum of damage to her skin.
Moonmay came running back again, another, smaller basket on her arm this time, filled with grasses.
“A snack? That’s so nice of you, Moonmay!” Khorii said, but the girl shook her head.
“It’s for your kitties. It’s catnip. Although, well, maybe you’ll like it, too. I forgot you folks like that kinda thing. I can go get more,” she offered, but Khorii shook her head.
“I have catnip in the ’ponics garden, but not fresh, natural soil-grown nip like this. The flavor is much richer. I thank you, and I’m sure the cats will be crazy about it. I’ll just take it back up to the ship and give it to them. Tell the others I’ll be right back to help take care of the wounded.”
“Okay, I will when they come back.”
“I thought I heard a shuttle.”
Moonmay shrugged. “Not so’s I noticed. If you’re lonesome, you could come to our house though.”
“No, I think I’d better get back to Khiindi. He isn’t used to being without me.” Especially, she thought, he isn’t used to being without me when Sesseli isn’t around to carry him everywhere.
“I’ll walk you over,” Moonmay offered. “It’s getting a mite foggy tonight, and you don’t know the way as well as I do.” It didn’t take belonging to a psychic race to see that another being was emotionally unsettled and want to comfort her in whatever small way possible.
“I’ll be fine,” Khorii told Moonmay. “But thank you for your concern and your kindness—and for letting me see your kittens. Now we’d both better get some rest before the others return.”
“Just don’t seem right you goin’ off like that all on your own,” Moonmay said.
“I’ll be fine,” Khorii repeated. Moonmay looked unconvinced but ran off again.
The dock was a short walk from the center of the settlement. The mist Khorii had noticed before had indeed become a true fog now. It was odd to see it lying so thick and close along the ground and still be able to look up and see the sky in other places. There was no moon that night, though, and the way was dark. Fortunately, Khorii’s olfactory and auditory senses made up for the diminished visibility under these conditions.
As she drew nearer, however, she smelled the hot scent of a shuttle’s exhaust.
With it, she caught a faint mental call, followed immediately by a strong sense of something gone very wrong indeed.