Mercedes Lackey - A Better Mousetrap

If there was one thing that Dick White had learned in all his time as SuperCargo of the CatsEye Company Free Trader Brightwing, it was that having a cat purring in your ear practically forced you to relax. The extremely comfortable form-molding chair he sat in made it impossible to feel anything but comfortable, and warm black fur muffled both of Dick Whites ears, a steady vibration massaging his neck. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door, Dick said idly, as SCat poured himself like a second fluid, black rug over the blue-grey of his lap. It was SKitty who was curled up around his shoulders, vibrating contentedly in what Dick called her subsonic purr-mode, while her mate took it as his responsibility to make sure there was plenty of shed hair on the legs of his grey shipsuit uniform.

What? asked Terran Ambassador Vena Ferducci, looking up from the list of Lacuun nobles petitioning for one of SKittys latest litter. The petite, dark-haired woman sat in a less comfortable, metal chair behind a stone desk, which stood next to a metal rack stuffed with archaic rolled paper documents. The Lacuun had not yet devised the science of filing paperwork in multiples yet, which made them ultra-civilised in Venas opinion. This, her office in the Palace of the Lacuara and Lacuteveras, was not often used for that very reason. When she dealt with Terran bureaucracy, she needed every electronic helper she could get.

The list she perused was very long, and made rather cumbersome due to the Lacuun custom of presenting all official court-documents in the form of a massively ornamented yellow-parchment scroll, with case and end caps of engraved bronze and illuminated capital-initials. Dick had a notion that somewhere in the universe there probably was a collector of handwritten documents who would pay a small fortune for it, but when every petitioner on the list had been satisfied, it would probably be sent to the under-clerks, scraped clean, and reused.

Its an old Terran folk-saying, Dick elaborated, and gestured to the list by way of explanation. One which certainly seems to be borne out by our present situation.

Yes, well, given the length of this list were doubly fortunate that SKitty and SCat are soahfertile, and that BioTech is willing to send us their shipscat washouts. Vena stretched out her hand towards SCats head, and the huge black tom cooperated by craning his neck towards her. Even before her fingers contacted his fur, SCat was purring loudly, giving Dick an uncannily similar sensation to being strapped in while the ship he served was under full power.

Dick White could well be one of the wealthiest supercargoes in the history of space-tradehis share of the profits from CatsEye Companys lucrative trade with the Lacuun amounted to quite a tidy sum. It wasnt enough to buy and outfit his own shipyetbut if trade progressed as it had begun, there was the promise that one day it would be.

Not that I want my own ship yet! he told himself. Not until I know as much as Captain Singh. There are easier ways to commit suicide than pretending I know enough to command a starship when all I really know is how to run the cargo hold!

Not that Captain Singh would let him take his profit-share and do something so stupid. Dick grinned to himself, imagining the Captains face if he showed up in the office with that kind of harebrained proposal. Captain Singhs expression would be one to beholdfollowing which, Dick would probably find himself stunned unconscious and wake under the solicitous attentions of a concerned head-shrinker!

The Captain had been willing, even more than willing, to let Dick stay on-planet for few Terran-months though, after SKitty and SCat announced the advent of a litter-to-be. One of her last litter was co-opted to serve as shipscat pro tem, while Dick and his two charges waited out the delivery, maturation, and weaning of eight little black furballs who were, if that was possible, even cuter than the last batch. It was a good thing that they all were on-planet, too, because the Octet managed to get themselves into a hundred times more mischief than the previous lot.

The trouble is, they have a lot of energy, absolutely no sense, and no fear at all at this age. Brainless kitten antics rapidly begin to pall when youve fished a wailing fuzz-mote out of the comconsole for the fifteenth time in a single shift.

But every Lacuun in the palace, from the Lacuteveras down to the lowliest scullery-lad, was thrilled to the toesor rather, clawsto play with, rescue, and cuddle the Bratlings. If SKitty and SCat had not taken their duties as parents, palace-guardians, and role-models so seriously, they wouldnt have had to do anything but lie about and wait for the kittens to be carried in to them for feeding.

Fortunately for all concerned, their parents had powerful senses of responsibility towards their offspring. Both cats were born and bredliterallyfor duty. Yes, they were cats, with a cats sense of independence and contrariness, but they took duty very, very seriously. And their duty was Vermin Control.

This was a duty that went back centuries to the very beginnings of the association of man and cat, but until BioTech developed shipscats, never had a feline been better suited to or more cooperative in the execution of that duty. Furthermore, Dick now knew what few others didthat the shipscats so necessary to the safety of traders and their ships were actually a highly profitable byproduct of other research, secret research, designed to give the men and women of the Patrol uniquely clever comrades-in-arms.

These genetically altered cats were not just clever, it was not just that they had forepaws modeled after the forepaws of raccoonsoh no. That was not enough. Patrol cats were telepaths.

SCat had been a patrol catbut although he could understand the thoughts of humans, he couldnt speak to them. This was a flaw, so far as the Patrol was concerned, though not an insurmountable flaw. However, when criminals took over the ship he served on and killed all of those aboard, SCat was the only survivor and the only witnessunable to call for help or relate what he had witnessed, he had sought for help from his own kind and found it in SKitty. When the same criminals learned SCat was still alive and tried to eliminate him and the crew of the Free Trader ship Brightwing, for good measure, it had been Dicks research and deductive reasoning that had learned the truth in time, and with SCats and SKittys help he had foiled the plot.

As for SKitty, she was something of an aberration herselfordinary shipscats were not supposed to be telepathic or fertile; she was both.

As far as Dick could tell, she was telepathic only with himthough, given that she was all cat, with a cats puckish sense of humor, she might well choose not to let him know she could speak to others. Everyone on the ship knew she was fertile, thoughwhen they had first come to the world of the Lacuun, shed already had one litter and was pregnant with another. That first litterborn and raised in the shiphad shown just what kind of a nightmare two loose kittens could be within the close confines of a spaceship. Dick had not been looking forward to telling Captain Singh of the second litter, when SKitty had solved the problem for them.