34 "Wise pack leader lead from orbit."
Stargazer awoke suddenly in panic. Her spear. She did not know where it was. The herbs had been washed out of her fur while she slept, a cruel prank to play when she relied on those herbs for her very life! And upon the cuts and scrapes which were inevitable in any journey through the brush, as she had been forced to do often in the last few days, were unguents that she did not need the keen sense of smell of a hunter to sense. It soothed the pain, but she would prefer the pain to the knowledge that they would reveal her position, that it would make her trail even easier to follow.
"Easy now, young one," A gentle voice called from nearby. "You’ve had quite a shock. Literally. It was enough to stop your hearts. Fortunately a second shock was able to start them again and save your life. But you were dead for a moment."
"And the idiot who shot you is never going to live it down," a second voice said with wry amusement.
"Do not be too hard on him. He is putting himself under a lot of pressure at the moment. We never should have let him on the planet again, even on a safe mission like the passing out of his spears."
"I do not like that we are only giving them spears. I would give them -"
"You would give them weapons that they could conquer their world with, and that would break the fine balance upon which we must stride," the first voice said firmly. "Welcome aboard the Theseus, young Aurealian. May we ask your name?"
When Stargazer turned to face the voices singing softly and pleasantly, she was surprised. They were decidedly not Aurealians. They were quadrupeds, without the hands or upright torsos that Stargazer expected of her own kind. They were also much too small, the size of a kip only just opening their eyes, but the fur and head and body were much the same.
"I am Stargazer," she informed them. "Who are you? Where am I? That giant said something about helping us, and I thought he was human so I … it was a trick. Am I dead? I always thought the afterlife was superstition."
"That is a question we cannot answer for you. You did die, if you count stopping your hearts beating for a moment death. But at the moment you are very much alive," the tabby informed her. "We are Felus sapiens. Uplifted house cats. Smarter than the rats, more useful than the dogs, but unlike both of them we mostly do our own thing. My sister and I came aboard just in the hopes of meeting you, but when your little sisters were rescued earlier there were so many of them that we … well, we hid."
"Yes. Too many, all of them children. So terrifying," the calico agreed. "But when he accidentally shot you, Captain Sawyer asked us to watch over you while you recovered."
"Accident? He killed me by accident?" Stargazer considered for a moment. "I suppose I would rather have been killed by a human by accident than slaughtered by a Hunter. It did not even hurt. What sort of weapon was used?"
"A shock lance. The humans sometimes call them lightning guns. The one used on you was calibrated for use on your enemy, which is why it was so temporarily fatal to you," the calico explained.
"Fortunately what’s true for earthlings seems to be true for Aurealians as well. One shock may stop a beating heart, but a second one restarts it," the tabby agreed. "I am Sophia."
"I am Lucia," the calico introduced herself as well. "Would you like to walk with us? It is boring sitting in one place for so long."
"Is this truly a space craft?" Stargazer asked. She grabbed an object from the table next to her just to drop it and watch it fall. Both of the cats seemed greatly amused by the antics.
"What a wonderfully feline thing to do," Sophia sang mirthfully.
"I was testing the gravity," she explained. "It’s slightly stronger than I thought it would be, I think."
"Yes, you must always test and retest gravity," Lucia agreed. "You never know when it’s going to change on you."
"The gravity is set to earth standard," Sophia explained. "Earth has a dense core which increases it beyond the world you were born, despite having a smaller surface area. But it is close enough that you should tolerate it without difficulty, or we would have already adjusted the gravitics."
"Or, if you prefer, we can turn them off entirely for a few minutes, to prove that you truly are in space," Lucia suggested.
"Yes," Stargazer agreed without hesitation. "Do that, please. I want to believe you, but I have had so many disappointments in my life and -"
The gravity cut off without warning. Stargazer laughed with delight as she pushed off from the sling she had been lying in and floated about in the air. She kicked and squirmed as she floated, delighting in the experience she had heard described by her false teacher, but never expected to experience. Not since … not since the night her sisters had been killed.
"Turn it back on now, please," she said after the somber memory had taken the joy out of the experience.
"It will return to normal slowly over the next half of a minute," Sophia informed, her gentle voice coming from a speaker around her throat, Stargazer now saw. The cats were making sounds of their own, a soft rumbling sound from inside their chests. "So you believe now that you are no longer on Horthus Prime?"
"Is that what that hell-world is called?" Stargazer asked, her song distasteful. "Yes. I believe that I am in microgravity, at least."
"You do know that it is possible to use gravitics to simulate microgravity upon the surface of a planetary body, do you not?" Lucia inquired. "That is not the case, but -"
"We Aurealians can sense the difference," Stargazer insisted. "It is part of our ear, the fluids inside sense the two gravity fields competing with each other. I … I know the song, but I do not wish to sing it."
"Then do not," Sophia agreed cheerfully. "I must sing, if the rats are right about anything, it is that your people do have a wonderful language. It is a shame that the humans spent so many thousands of years focusing on short-clipped noise-sounds and their body language to convey meaning. Music is a much more beautiful medium for conveying those things."
"Fortunately for us, they did build the technology we need to understand you and make ourselves understood," Lucia explained. "Come, walk with us. You have been asleep for hours and the exercise will be good for you,"
"The things around your neck," Stargazer guessed as she followed the two enhanced house cats through the human spacecraft. The doors opened for them, and as they walked the halls many other four legged things stopped and danced at them, but did not sing.
"And the things inside our skulls. Those most importantly," Sophia countered, making no mention of the Rodentia on their path. "Although you cannot see them, those are the things which are truly telling us what you sing. Without that it is just … pleasing sound."
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"And the humans are so deaf that they could not even hear the half of it!" Lucia sang in amusement.
"The human who shot me, he was singing," Stargazer argued.
"It is no different than us, a speaker to make the noises, and a microphone to pick them up and translate them into something he could understand," Lucia explained. "Without the microphone, he might not even hear that you sang. The human ear is a pathetic thing, all of the non-primates and most of the primates accept this as true."
"Yes, it is their mind and hands which gave us the galaxy," Sophia agreed, "Not their ears, eyes, nose, or teeth. Like your people, sister. They have hands like yours."
"And their minds? Have they clever, kind minds like us as well?" Stargazer asked.
"They have very clever minds," Lucia agreed.
"You should not truly be asking cats about humans," Sophia informed her. "If you want to know humans, you should ask a human. A human, and nobody else, for none of us truly understands humans, including the humans themselves. They are very clever. Too clever. Cats are clever too, but cats can be counted upon to be cats."
"And rats rats, and dogs dogs," Lucia agreed. "Even the monkeys stayed true to their nature after the uplift. Although I suppose that is true for human nature as well. It is still as confusing and multifaceted as it ever was."
"So then, where may I meet a human? One who will not electrocute me, preferably," Stargazer asked.
"We are heading there now. After he shot you, he returned immediately to the ship. He was very embarrassed," Lucia explained. "He had other business to attend to. He should not have been on the surface in the first place. He has been so busy since he became captain, and yet he insists on making more work for himself by going on a mission that even the rats can handle!"
"Do we not like the rats for some reason?" Stargazer asked.
"We do not like that the humans do not let us eat them," Sophia explained. "The humans believe that all sapients have a right to exist without fear of predation, even those whose base species were prey. It is a constant source of discord among our kind and theirs."
"Wait, you eat other intelligent beings, as the Others do?" Stargazer demanded, suddenly stopping where she stood.
"Of course we don’t. That’s the problem. The humans made them just smart enough for them to know how delicious they look to us," Lucia sang with strong hints of frustration.
"And how they smell! Oh, this entire ship stinks of rats, and my instincts are screaming at me to go hunting," Sophia agreed. "And the filthy rodents know it, too. Look how they dance at us as we walk past. Part of that is greeting you, for they have decided that they love your people for some reason. But many of them – look, that one there! He is taunting us, trying to make us give chase because he knows that, even if we catch him, we have to let him go. It is a game to them, but they don’t understand how difficult it is for us to restrain millions of years of evolution."
"It is a dangerous game for them to play," Lucia agreed. "For themselves, and for us. Nobody wins if they trick us into surrendering to our instincts."
"It’s enough to make one wish that the humans had never bothered with uplifting any of us to begin with," Sophia argued.
"Well, I wouldn’t go that far," Lucia disagreed. "We are both too opinionated and independent to share the same litter box, sister, let alone the same human pet."
"Your species used to have humans as pets, and now you wander the stars together?" Stargazer asked in amazement.
"Oh yes. The ancient humans worshiped us, and they have such clever hands for scratching … it was wonderful for our ancestors. Uplifting the humans was the best decision ever made by any of the feline races," Lucia stated.
"Indeed. They owe us so much, but we are magnanimous in our glory and ask so little from them in return for all we have given them," Sophia agreed.
"It is indeed fortunate that we are so magnanimous, for there is no way they could ever repay us should we try to collect," Lucia continued.
"Indeed, sister, indeed."
"Do not listen feline! Felines lie like breath through nose, every breath is lie," Came a new voice, much sterner than the pleasant, purring song of the cats. The cats, upon hearing this new voice, arced their backs and hissed as the owner of the voice came through a doorway. They were gone a second later.
"I am Wizard. I and my pack there when you hurt. Happy you better now," Wizard said, sniffing. "Smell better too. Stink bad on planet. Smell good now."
"It’s supposed to stink. The lotrushi powder weakens the Other’s nose, the further they track me the weaker their sense of scent gets. The otali berry is everywhere, as is their flower. If you rub its nectar on you, it masks your own scent. The pofaln root is …"
"Very clever. Humans use tricks like that too, avoid predators. Even dogs, and dog nose better than any other nose. All know these tricks?" Wizard asked.
"N-no," Stargazer admitted. "It’s not that I keep them secret. But the first few weeks, the kips need help just staying alive. There is so much to teach them, and I can only do so much. I am Eldest, I must survive. It is my duty. I teach the veterans, and the veterans teach the young. But the young take time to learn tricks like this, so it is their veteran’s job to paint them with lotrushi and otali and pofaln and other plants to make them safer."
"Is good. Is smart way teach pack," Wizard praised. "Strong elder teaches strong veteran be strong, strong veteran teach young be strong. Your pack must be strong."
"I don’t know. I don’t know of any other packs to compare ourselves to," Stargazer sang in disappointment. "We are all alone in a wilderness down there. That is why I came out in the light to speak with the human, but he must have thought I was another Other and shot me as he shot the one who does not kill."
"We know your pack strong. Maybe strongest. Biggest, with oldest and best veterans," Wizard informed her. "That why human go there. Stupid pup think pack leader leads from front. Wise pack leader lead from orbit. Maybe he learn to be wise now that he be so foolish."
"I heard that, Wizard," a voice from the next room came. It was short, clipped noises in a deep tone – Nathan was a tenor but to an Aurealian his voice was extremely deep – followed by music from everywhere that translated his words into song Stargazer could understand.
"You meant to hear. Maybe you learn," Wizard answered. "Bring little one you hurt. Make right, pack leader."
"Thank you, Wizard. Sophia. Lucia. I appreciate your help. Please, Stargazer, come with me. I need your help."
~~~~~~~~~~