Pet Noir Read online

“Here you go,” he said, pouring some shrimp out onto a fiber plate he set on his desk. “Try not to get crumbs everywhere, okay?”

  “Mmph,” I said through a mouthful of crunchy crustacean.

  The chief checked his messages while I worked my way through my snack. He made a couple of calls. I didn’t pay much attention, but when I finished the last shrimp on the plate he looked at me.

  “I’ve called Devin in to come meet you.”

  “Oh, good. Can I have some water, please?”

  “Sure, um … I think all I have to put it in is a coffee cup.”

  “That’s fine. Just fill it full. I won’t slop.”

  He got up to round up the water, and while he was busy I opened the shrimp bag he’d left on the desk and took out a couple more, then folded it shut again.

  Thumbs are a handy thing, that’s for sure. I don’t know how ordinary cats get along without them.

  “Now remember, Leon,” the chief said as he came back with a cup full of water. He hesitated, looking suspiciously at me. I was grooming my face at the time. He put the water on the floor, and after giving him a glance that expressed my disappointment, I jumped down for a drink.

  “You can’t talk to Devin out in public, or your cover will be blown.”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t ever talk when there’s anyone besides me or Devin around, okay? Even here in HQ.”

  “Got it. What’s HQ mean?”

  “I keep forgetting. You’re young. You probably haven’t had time to watch any war movies.”

  I raised my head, water dripping from my whiskers. “Are you kidding? I love that old stuff! Hope and Crosby were the best—”

  “Why don’t you look through the file on the enhancer smuggling case while we’re waiting for Devin?”

  He slid a datafilm into his com station and turned it to face the side table next to his desk. I hopped up there and watched while I washed my face. The case briefing wasn’t that enlightening. The chief had already given me most of the details. I started dozing off a bit.

  Next thing I know the chief is nudging me. “Leon. Wake up.”

  “Hm?”

  “Glad to know you’re so enthusiastic about the case.”

  “Hey, I’ve got a full belly and it’s been a stressful day. What did you expect?”

  “Devin just flashed. He’s on his way over.”

  “Oh good.” I yawned, then got up and stretched. “Got any more of those shrimp?”

  The chief glanced up from his screen and cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you were full.”

  “I’m a growing kitten. I could tuck in a couple more.”

  He shook his head, but dumped the rest of the shrimp on the grease-stained plate. I was just finishing the last of them when the door slid open and a guy, presumably Devin, sauntered in.

  My first impression was not favorable. The guy wore a warehouse one-all, stained and floppy, the tabs hanging open at his neck and his wrists. He slouched, and his dark eyes were half-hidden by lazy lids beneath the chiseled brows. Dark brown hair in a ruffed-up mess, and a good heavy stubble of beard over the square jaw. He looked like a slob.

  The chief stood up, sticking out a hand. “Devin, thanks for coming. I want you to meet your new partner.”

  Devin shook hands. “Okay, but I can only wait a few minutes. Got a shift at seventeen.”

  “No waiting. He’s here. Devin, meet Leon.”

  The chief indicated me. I strolled across the desk toward them, sat down with my tail curled around my paws, put on my best cute kitten look, and said, “Mew.”

  Devin shot the chief a sour look. “Ha, ha. You’re early, it’s two weeks ‘til April.”

  “It isn’t a joke,” said the chief, frowning at me. “Come on, Leon, say hello.”

  I wanted to keep the game going, but since the chief was my food source, I humored him. I tilted my head and looked Devin up and down before speaking.

  “Hiya, bub. Got any French fries?”

  “Holy crap!”

  The lazy eyes opened wide and he took a step back. Pleased with this reaction, I belched, then licked my paw, stretching my thumb to get at a greasy spot.

  “What the hell is that?” Devin said.

  “Leon is a modified feline,” the chief told him. “Specially engineered. He’s, ah—here to help us with the enhancer smuggling case.”

  “A cat??”

  “He’ll be working undercover with you. Posing as your pet.”

  “Oh, no way. I’m not a pet person.”

  “You are now,” said the chief, a steely edge creeping into his voice. “It’s cover, Devin. We need a reason for him to be in the warehouse. You’ll bring him in, put down a dish of kibble for him—”

  “I like the liver flavor,” I put in.

  “—and he’ll be free to roam around and listen in on the shippers’ conversations.”

  Devin shook his head, frowning at me. “It’ll never work. They’re too cagey.”

  “Too cagey for you. That’s why I brought Leon in.”

  The glare Devin shot the chief indicated offense taken. I saw an opportunity to chalk up a couple of bonus points with the chief.

  “I’m new to all this,” I said to Devin. “I’ll be counting on you to show me the ropes. I asked specifically to be partnered with the savviest human on the security team.”

  Devin looked surprised. He glanced at the chief, and so did I, giving the chief a wink that Devin couldn’t see. The chief cleared his throat.

  “Ahem, that’s right. With your experience and Leon’s specialization, I expect you to be a highly effective team.”

  Devin seemed mollified. The chief handed him the carryall he’d brought along on the trip from Astara.

  “Here’s everything you need to take care of him. Both of you remember, Leon shouldn’t talk when anyone else is around. As far as the public’s concerned, he’s just a cat.”

  “Yeah.” Devin gave me a sidelong look. “OK, let’s go or we’ll be late.”

  “One more thing,” I said. “We need some kind of signal so you can tell me when one of the suspect shippers come in.”

  “Oh. Uh, I’ll whistle,” said Devin.

  “OK.”

  Devin headed for the door. I jumped down from the table and followed him. The chief called after us.

  “Good luck!”

  I was excited, I admit. This was the first time I’d ever been out on my own in a large human habitat—well, except for the one time I got out of the lab at Astara, but since that only lasted about forty-five seconds it didn’t count. I felt proud, grown-up and responsible. Interstellar Investigator Leon, on the job. I got into investigating right away, starting with the trash canisters out back of a sandwich kiosk.

  “Leon!” Devin shouted. “Come on, we’ve got to get to work.”

  “So—ah, mew.”

  He grimaced and shook his head, striding off toward the rotunda’s center. I had to run to keep up, and was a little winded by the time we got into an elevator. Local transport, similar to the one the chief had brought me down in, except we didn’t have to go through customs to get there.

  Gravity seeped away as the elevator moved upward. It wasn’t zero gee, but it got pretty close toward the center of Gamma’s axis. I began to float up from the floor.

  This time there was no box to keep me contained, and before I knew it I was drifting in midair. Not a fun sensation, and I let my feelings about it be known.

  “Shh,” Devon said as he caught me with one hand and clamped me against his chest. I hooked my claws into his one-all, making sure I wouldn’t drift free again, and looked around.

  There were a few other people in the elevator, mostly in work clothes like Devin’s. One woman with freckles and short red hair made moony faces at me. I looked away and noticed the colored stripe on the elevator wall was fading from blue to green. Must be a location indicator, I thought, proud of myself for figuring it out. Investigator Leon makes another brilliant deduction.
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  The freckled woman came over, her static boots making crackly sounds with each step. “What a cute kitten! Can I pet her?”

  “Him,” Devin said hastily. “It’s a he. Sure, I guess.”

  I couldn’t very well get away, not without drifting around in zero gee, so I submitted to having my head stroked while she cooed at me. She had big, heavy fingers and was kind of clumsy, not like Jill who knew just where to scratch. Devin fidgeted, apparently no more comfortable about it than me.

  The stripe was vivid green when the elevator stopped and Devin got off, boots making shklep, shklep sounds with every step as if the soles were coated with chewing gum. He turned right and entered a long, round corridor, bare and utilitarian, nowhere near as nice as the rotunda or even the lab halls at Astara. The only decoration was the green stripes on what were now, to our orientation, the ceiling and floor.

  Every so often we passed through a ring of large hatchways, Devin stepping over the handrails that preceded and followed them, which I saw a couple of people using to change their orientation from wall to ceiling or floor as they went in and out of the big doors. Not many people walked on the walls—it tended to disrupt traffic. Most stuck to the floor or the ceiling, walking along the green stripes.

  Gamma Station is really huge. I hadn’t understood how huge before, but I began to get an inkling as Devin carried me past ring after ring of the hatches, all marked as warehouses. No wonder security couldn’t screen every shipment that came through. It would take an army.

  We passed a lot of people in the hall, quite a few of them non-humans, especially a big, burnt-orange species with four arms and no cues for gender that I could see—maybe they only had one. They grunted in response to Devin’s greetings. Looked like efficient heavy-lifters. Here in the low-gee warehouse section weight wasn’t a factor, but muscle was still required to move mass around.

  At last Devin stopped at a doorway marked “Warehouse 217” and thumbed the access pad. The big, heavy door slid open and we stepped into a cavernous, wedge-shaped room. Shipping containers were stacked on the floor, walls, and ceiling, held in place by containment nets. I knew from the briefing that this was a short-term storage warehouse, designated for holdover shipments awaiting flights to their final destinations.

  Devin walked over to the a half-circle desk that housed a huge control console and traded lazy hellos with the dark-skinned guy who got up from the chair. Devin called him Steve. They chatted a little and Steve reached out to scratch my head.

  “New pet?”

  “Yeah, just got him. Didn’t want to leave him alone in my apartment.”

  “Looks kind of young,” Steve said.

  “I thought he could work on the mice.”

  Mice? No one said anything about mice. I perked up my ears. Mice were one of the things I’d seen only on holo.

  “Amazing, huh?” said Steve, laughing. “We can travel to the edges of the galaxy, but we still can’t keep mice out of our transports.”

  “Yeah. Amazing.”

  “Well, have a good shift, Dev. See you later.”

  Devin settled into the chair at the console and detached my claws from his clothes. He put me down gently on the floor, which I was glad to observe was covered with a thin layer of dull gray carpet. Stuff helps the static generators, I guess. For me, it’s for claws to grab onto. Can’t run on it, but at least I can stay on the floor.

  Or the walls. Or the ceiling. I wandered around the warehouse, getting used to the brain-twisting changes of perspective when I shifted my “ground” surface. Looked for mice behind the crates, but didn’t find any. Finally got bored with it and looked around for Devin.

  I couldn’t see him. There were stacks of crates everywhere, blocking my view. I had no idea where Devin’s console was, even which surface it was on. I was lost.

  I yowled.

  “Leon! Over here!”

  Devin’s voice echoed off the crates. I tried following it but couldn’t figure out which direction to go. I yowled some more until I heard him cussing, then stopped to listen to his approach. A thump off to my left told me he’d landed on my wall.

  “OK, Leon, where are you?”

  “Yeow!” I said, proud that I’dremembered about not talking.

  Some thumping around followed, after which Devin appeared, head down from my perspective, peering at me from the top of a stack of crates. He hand-climbed along until he reached me, then scooped me up and pushed me against his chest. I grabbed on.

  “Ow! Take it easy.”

  “Mew,” I said, by way of apology.

  Devin reversed his position and shoved off, shooting us across the open center of the warehouse. I could see the control console off on the wall to our right. Devin caught himself against a stack of crates and shifted, pushing off toward the console. He grabbed it and swung his feet around to make that wall our floor again.

  “See this light?” he said to me, pointing to a greenish spot that glared on the center of the console. “That’s how you can find your way back here. You should be able to see this from any part of the warehouse, and follow it back.”

  He detached me from his one-all and put me down again. I commenced a frustrating discussion, via cat-talk, of the various items necessary to my comfort. He figured it out pretty quick, and stuck a water bulb to the floor under the console for me to drink from. Food was going to be trickier, but fortunately I was still full of shrimp. There remained only one issue, one I made sure he knew was of pressing importance.

  “Oh,” he said. “Uh—lemme think a minute.”

  Low-gee toilets are designed for species that are more or less human-sized. The solution Devin came up with was a bit precarious, but it worked. He stuck two strips of packing tape across the seat for me to hold onto. I must say, that vacuum is not very comfortable, but at least it does the job.

  “We gotta figure out something else,” Devin said as he removed the tape after I’d finished. “You’d better go before we come down here, next time.”

  I shrugged and sat down to groom myself, but in low gee it’s problematic. The fur stays fluffed out and makes it hard to do a good job.

  I gave up and went underneath Devin’s console for a nap, curling up and hooking my claws into the carpet to keep from drifting. Devin returned to work at his cover job, scheduling and monitoring shipment arrivals and departures. Seemed like a boring job. I was glad it wasn’t mine.

  I woke up with his foot nudging me. He was whistling.

  “Hey, you in charge here?” said a nasal voice.

  “Yeah,” Devin said. “What do you need?”

  “My cargo in bay 49 was supposed to go out to the Pits last week.”

  “Lemme see … Nu-Delta transport 36-A. Had an unscheduled maintenance stop at Gorando. Should be here in a day or two.”

  Devin’s foot nudged me again. I stuck a claw into his toe to get him to stop. He made a little gulping noise, then covered it by coughing.

  I stood up and stretched, then walked up next to Devin’s chair to get a look at who he was talking to. Listening to, rather; the guy set off complaining about the maintenance delay and the extra storage fees it would cost him. I peered up at him. A skinny, fish-faced guy with a wet, loose mouth and watery eyes. Brown hair cut fairly short, floating out about an inch all around. He blinked a lot.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Devin told him. “It’s out of my control. Talk to Nu-Delta, it’s their ship.”

  “What about my next shipment? I’ve got twenty crates to unload for the next New Philly run, and my bay’s full of this other crap!”

  “I think I can squeeze it in. Let’s go have a look.”

  They stepped out from the console, both looking toward the ceiling. I realized they were about to cross the warehouse, and snagged a claw into the cuff of Devin’s one-all just before he pushed off. He sailed across the open space with me dangling from his ankle. A bit of a hair-raising ride, though my hair was already about as raised as it could be.

 
They landed on a stack of crates and began talking about moving it, putting the new shipment underneath and restacking the current batch on top. I was about to climb down onto the crates when I realized they were smooth-surfaced, nothing for me to grab onto. The only thing I might be able to hook my claws into was the containment net, but its strands looked pretty dense and were widely spaced. I would have had to do a tightrope act to move around on them. I chickened out and secured my hold on Devin’s ankle instead, being careful not to distract him with a poke.

  The crates were all labeled with a logo, a funky star design with the company name, Stratoma, woven into it. I memorized it, thinking I might have to find my way back over there on foot.

  By this time Devin had talked the guy into a better mood. They agreed on moving the shipment, and pushed off to float back across to the control console. I hopped off Devin’s ankle and slunk back under the console to await further developments. After a little more chat, the guy headed off for the airlock at the far corner of the warehouse.

  Devin sat in his chair and leaned down to talk to me in a low voice. “I’m gonna help this guy and his crew move their stuff, but I’m programming my com to page me halfway through. You keep an eye on them after I go, OK?”

  I nodded, then glanced up at the ceiling where Stratoma’s bay was. If I was going to get over there in time, I’d better start walking.

  “You can hitch a ride on my ankle again,” Devin said as if he’d read my mind. “Let’s go, while they’re busy in the airlock.”

  I hopped onto Devin’s leg and he pushed off, catching himself on Stratoma’s crates. He bounced back and forth between two stacks, making his way to the ground surface, and turned around so I could get off. He uncoupled the containment net over Stratoma’s stuff, fastened it to itself to keep the crates from drifting out of it, then headed back to the top of the stack.

  I decided to get out of the way. I moved into a narrow aisle between neighboring bays. The bays weren’t structural, just areas marked off by green-striped borders on the carpet, each with a number.

  Looking up toward Devin I got the feeling of being in the bottom of a deep canyon, or on the street in a city of skyscrapers, gazing up toward a tiny scrap of blue. In this case, the blue was green—reflected light from the control console. Deep shadows slanted down where the cargo stacks blocked it.