“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, Iopened 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 theSunStar’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 andho-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 washere. Right now.
