Cats Triumphant (11 page)

Late one evening shift in the third month of the mission, Ardway heard a tap on the cubicle door. On the little viewscreen, Parky had just jumped out from behind the couch and assaulted Blivit, who’d just been having a drink, and was minding her own business as she walked back to her favorite sprawl spot. The two of them rolled together, rabbit-kicking at one another’s bellies. The tap sounded again.

“Just a minute,” Ardway called. He didn’t want to miss the best part. Here it came: Parky and Blivit rolled into the couch. The contact surprised them. They jumped apart, and sat at opposite ends of the open area washing themselves to cover their discomfiture. Ardway laughed and shook his head. He unlocked the door.

“Benny?” It was Mel Johnson, the junior geophysicist, a large, dark-skinned, friendly man with big hands. “Hey, buddy, we don’t see a lot of you any more.”

“I’m there when you need me,” Ardway said, defensively. He popped the cartridge out of the video reader and prepared to load another one.

“Yeah, but you’re not
there
, man. You haven’t been yourself since about four weeks ago.” Johnson looked at the recorder and met Ardway’s eyes with sympathy. “You miss ‘em that much, huh? No,” he held up a hand as Ardway took a deep breath. “Don’t tell me your stories again, man. Tell them to your diary. I’m tired of ‘em, too.

“I think even the computer is tired of them,” Ardway said, with rueful humor. “I do miss them. I can’t even
tell
you how much. I’d give everything for a cat. I can’t last two years like this. I’m going to go crazy!”

“Well, what is it you really miss?” Johnson asked, propping himself in the door frame so Ardway couldn’t shut him out. “You’ve got one of those virtual pets on your screen, right? Feed me, clean me, scold me...?”

Ardway dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “It’s not the same. Feeling Parky rub against my leg in the morning when I’m getting his breakfast. That’s after Blivit has woken me up by jumping on my... my bladder to make sure I’m awake. The way they cuddle into my arm or my lap when I’m reading, even the way they run across me when they’re fighting!”

“Yes, yes,” Johnson said hastily, throwing his hands up, and Ardway remembered Johnson had been very patient about listening for weeks even when it was clear he’d had it up to his neck with Ardway’s favorite topic. “Let me think about it.”

“You think you can convince the brass to bring me a cat? Way out here?” Ardway was full of hope. Maybe Johnson, a disinterested party, could succeed where he had failed.

* * *

Not even for the finest astrogator in the service, which Ardway was proving to be. No living animals would be put into danger, or be able to put the crew of the deep-space mission into danger. Besides, as the message from NASA said tartly, nothing in the space program existed that could catch up with the
Calliope
in less time than it would take to return to Earth on their normal schedule. Ardway read a copy of the reply Johnson received. There had been half a dozen attachments, but Ardway didn’t read those. All he was interested in was the denial. He fell into a real depression, refusing to come out of his quarters or the privacy cubicle, sometimes not even for meals.

A couple of weeks later, Johnson’s voice came again outside the privacy cubicle, tried to persuade him to open up the enamel box. Ardway sat with his arms folded, refusing to budge. Eventually, he heard fumbling on the bulkhead and swearing. Callan’s sweating red face appeared as the door slid open.

“I’m taking the locks off all these doors,” Callan said, and turned to Johnson. “He’s all yours.”

“C’mon, buddy,” Johnson said, bravely ignoring the stink of unwashed and unshaved crewman as he took Ardway’s arm and pulling him toward the geophysics lab. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

In the white-enameled room, all the exhibits the crew had gathered on their stops were in clear, vacuum-sealed cases to prevent direct human exposure. Against one wall was the lightweight waldo-suit Johnson wore to gather specimens.

“You know what this does, right?” Johnson said, pointing to the suit. “It’s a remote-control unit for the one outside. The suit that corresponds to the motions made by this one was in a compartment behind a panel on the skin of the ship.”

“I know all that,” Ardway said, waving it away.

“But do you know how it gets its feedback? On the inside, it’s got a fine mesh suit of two kinds of sensors fused together, receivers and responders. Together, they’re only about a micron thick, like a second skin. The cloth is thinner than nylon stockings. If the suit picks up a rock, I can feel the shape of it in my hand as if I’d picked it up myself. If the suit takes a knock from a meteor, I get knocked ass over teakettle. Of course, the responses are toned down so that I can take it without getting hurt. I can feel that the rock is cold, but not the burning cold of deep space. I get pushed around by the responders, but not enough to do more than bruise me a little.”

“So?” Ardway said.

“So I made you a suit, man,” Johnson said, opening a compartment and taking out a wad of tan cloth about the size of his fist. “Instead of getting real output from out there, I’ve used your home movies to program the computer for sufficient characteristic behavior. I’m plotting the right size, shape and motion in three points in space which the suit will respond to.”

“So what?”

“So when you wear the suit,” Johnson said, smiling broadly, “you’ll have your own virtual cat around you. No one will be able to see it, or hear it, including you, but you’ll be able to feel it.”

Ardway let hope gleam in his eyes. “That’d save my life, Mel.”

“And our sanity,” Johnson said.

* * *

The sensor suit worked exactly as Johnson had said it would. When hooked up to the central computer, Ardway could feel subtle motions against his arms and legs. Nothing like a cat, yet, but it was promising. The program Johnson adapted needed to be debugged first, and Ardway jumped in to help. He pored over the code for days on end, motivated for the first time since he had left home. He gave Johnson his best videos and pictures, along with precise measurements of the two animals that he had made when he thought they would be coming along on the mission. Johnson devoted his spare shifts for a week helping him to fine-tune the responders so they would push against Ardway’s skin in the right sequence and at the right amount of pressure. The testing had to be done during the gravity periods each day so the plotting for ship placement would be accurate. Not unlike the benchmarking program, Ardway thought.

“Okay,” Johnson said, kneeling at Ardway’s side to adjust the flat control box in the middle of his back. Ardway wore nothing but the suit and a pair of boxer shorts over it. The suit itself was of pale tan filaments, not all that much darker than his skin, and was so fine he felt the cold of the floor through the feet, and the breeze from the ventilation fan. “You know, you can shower in this. And should. The sensors work best when they’re kept clean. Okay, try it. The cat ought to be right about there.” Johnson stood up and pointed to a spot approximately three feet up over a white dot painted on the floor.

Ardway put out a hand in space, and was surprised as it ran into an obstruction. He couldn’t see it, but his body told him it was there. His hand insisted there was something solid in the way. He ran a hand over the form. It was shaped approximately like a cat. The soft ears bent under the pressure of his glove, but the hard round skull resisted the downward motion. Encouraged, Ardway stroked his hand down its back. The spine arched upward to meet his caress. The edges were very rough, but Johnson tweaked the programming until the sawtooth spine under his palm melted into a surface like silken fur. Ardway felt the body shift. A rough tongue, at first limp as corduroy but stiffened with a little help into wet sandpaper, occasionally licked the back of his hand.

“It’s wonderful, Mel,” Ardway said, feeling a lump rise in his throat. “I don’t know how to thank you.” Then it disappeared. Ardway felt around with both hands.

“Where did it go?” he asked.

“On the floor, man,” Johnson said, consulting the monitor. “Wait.” In a moment, the firm body reasserted itself, rubbing against Ardway’s calf. It was such a real sensation, he could almost picture himself home again.

“It’s wonderful,” Ardway said again, shaking his head in wonder. “You’re a true friend, Mel.”

Johnson stood away from his screen and stretched his long back. “I’m starved. Let’s stop for a while and get something to eat.” For the first time in weeks, Ardway felt as if he had an appetite. He followed eagerly.

The two of them headed for the mess room. Ardway walked along, feeling the occasional sensation of the pressure against his leg as the programming caused the ‘cat’ to bump into him impatiently.

“It’s following me,” Ardway said, with delight.

“It’s yours.”

If the rest of the crew was surprised to see Ardway in his underwear, they didn’t say anything as he and Johnson sat down to a meal. He tucked into his dinner as though he hadn’t eaten since he’d left Earth. Then, suddenly, he felt sharp pain in his knee.

“Ow! The damned suit attacked me!”

“It’s in the programming, man,” Johnson said. “It just scratched you. What’s it want?”

“It’s hungry,” Ardway said, after a moment’s thought. “That’s what Parky always does. What do I do?”

“What you would do at home. Pretend to throw him something. Or try to teach him not to beg at the table. Maybe it’ll learn. Maybe it won’t. It’s a cat. It’ll act like one.”

With an incredulous glance at his friend, Ardway reached into his plate-bowl, a clear globe with a gasket to admit his hand or fork but to keep the rest of his food from floating away in zero-gee, picked up an imaginary morsel between thumb and forefinger, and tossed it onto the floor. Instantly, the invisible presence left his side. Ardway could imagine the cat chomping and chewing at his offering, or maybe symbolically burying it in the floor the way Blivit always did. He hoped the bit had been something the cat considered good. In a moment, he felt a light touch on his kneecap, a little paw, beseeching and thanking in one soundless motion. He reached down toward the invisible presence, felt his palm stopped by a hard, round object, the cat’s head. It shifted, maneuvering his hand downward a couple of inches to a softer surface that must be its throat. Automatically, his fingers curved and began scratching lightly against the presence the glove told him was there. Incredibly, a gentle vibration came through his fingertips. The cat was
purring
. His heart melted. He looked up at Johnson. “Thank you, Mel. I owe you.”

Johnson held up his hands. “Hey, it’s a challenge. I’m enjoying it. Really. Just do us a favor and keep your clothes on over the suit.”

From that moment on Ardway was a new man. He wore his mesh of sensors under his uniform all of the time. Most of the time the invisible cat, whom he’d named Boojum, stayed in his cabin. Ardway leaped back into his work, becoming the most willing of the crew, working long shifts, never complaining, cheerful all day long, because he knew that at break times and meal times and rest periods, he could go back to his quarters and play with his very own cat. He rejoiced in the marvel as if he had never had a pet before. He could pick it up and put it on his shoulder, feeling a several-kilos weight there. He could sit and read, feeling a sprawled figure across his lap and a whiskery chin on his wrist. Boojum would even come to him when he called. He could play fight-games using an old sock as a glove. The mesh calculated a compensation for the padding, lessening the force of the cat’s nips or scratches. The best part was sitting in the mess, or in the break room, or floating at his station feeling a small, rumbling body cuddle up against his. He pictured Boojum as a solid, mackerel-striped tabby with black mascara markings around the eyes. A bit of a bruiser, but loving and devoted. Ardway loved him back without reservation.

The crew referred to the program as Ardway’s ‘imaginary playmate,’ but they didn’t knock something that had solved the morale problem so neatly. Ardway still enjoyed receiving his updates from his cat sitter on Earth, but he could see the cats were well and content, now that he was not reading extra angst into their responses. All that had come from him, and he was cured. Polson moved into a spare bunk room, so Ardway wouldn’t be embarrassed to talk to his cat in the middle of the night. The cat proved to be a good listener. The sensor receptors responded to the vibration of his voice, creating a response in the cat’s programming. Ardway talked, and the cat sat with him and purred. Ardway was happy.

When he had a chance, Mel Johnson made him a hood to go with the suit, for Ardway to wear in the privacy of his cabin, so he could be awakened by cheek rubbings and roundhouse paws to the ear, and so he could enjoy again for the first time in five months the sensation of a cat asleep curled up in the hollow of his neck and shoulder.

Johnson had gotten interested in the Boojum project in spite of himself. To the captain, he’d argued that such a refinement of the retrieval-suit technology could be a useful side product of the space program, one with applications in industry as well as the military, which kept Thurston from complaining about misused resources. Johnson had incorporated plenty of Ardway’s personal stories about his cats as well as the videos into the programming. One shift while Ardway drowsed over his control board, thinking in three dimensions, he fell asleep. Suddenly, he woke with a start. There was something slimy in his hand. No! He jumped up out of the seat, batting at his palm, and looked down. There was nothing there. What could it be? Gingerly, he felt for it, and read the shape with his sensor-covered fingers. With a smile, he remembered. Johnson had worked into the cat’s repertoire the actions from the time Blivit had decided to help feed her poor stupid human. She had brought him one of the goldfish from his apartment tank. Ardway reached down, knowing that Boojum was there, waiting for approval.

“Thanks, kitty,” he said, petting the hard little head that was under his hand, whether he could see it or not. He threw the imaginary morsel toward the disposer bin, and hoped the cat wouldn’t try to go after it and retrieve it for him.