Claws For Christmas

*First, I haven’t done anything for a while, because I went down again, this time more briefly, with an ear infection, and just couldn’t muster the strength to write. And now I’m late for everything for Christmas, but… Deep breath.

I’’m running a mid winter fundraiser for the blog. You know why.

There’s a Give Send Go for the Winter Fundraiser and well, if you need anything else including a snail mail address, please go here.

But I don’t like to ask for money without giving something back. Yes, I know, the blog. But I mean something else. I’ve been ill, and just writing this took the stuffing out of me. BUT here’s a Christmas story. Now I rattle the tin cup.

THANK you to those who sent Virginia Editions of Heinlein’s works, but I now have two, and that means I have one for each son to inherit. Please, don’t send me more. (I know, but after five years of lusting after them I get two within days of each other. I’m very, very grateful, profoundly overwhelmed and a little afraid of having to build an extra room for these, if you guys keep going like that.)

Whether you donate or not, whether you’ve donated or not, I hope you enjoy the story.

I probably don’t need to say this, but I’m going to anyway. When we lost our little Helena, Dan asked me to write her as a continuing character in something and immortalize her that way. So this short, which is hopefully the first chapter of a short novel, (not tomorrow, you understand. Maybe late next year), is dedicated to the memory of Helena Dioscuri Hoyt the Misoite, who left us at five months of age, much too young, and is still missed every day. Sleep well, my little one. Your fictional counterpart will live and fight for you. And some day I’ll pet you again. — SAH*

Claws For Christmas

Sarah A. Hoyt

The dame came in through the office window. Which wouldn’t be all that surprising, since it was off a fire escape, but it was snowing and I had closed that window.

And locked it.

And yet, as I sat on my desk, idly scanning for trouble in near-Earth, I felt a strong breeze, and turned around to see her there. She was tall, about my height, and was an orange short hair, just as I was. The resemblance ended there. Her face was wide where mine was narrow, she had very large green eyes. And she looked kind and attentive.

Not a simp.

I didn’t move from my perch. First lesson learned in the litter, under mama’s watch was to never give up the high ground. Particularly in the presence of an unknown hostile.

Not that she smelled hostile.

She smelled young, very young, and vaguely nubile.

She cam in confidently, and closed the window behind her, without even turning, but at some point my immobility, watching her, only the tip of my tail twitching, stopped her. She sat down, and looked up at me, those very green eyes wide.

After a while she asked, “I was told you were Shan, and that you could help me with… with a problem.”

I jumped down from the desk, and walked around her. Sniffing. She stayed immobile, as protocol dictated, since she was coming to ask a favor, and she was lower prestige anyway.

As I said, she smelled juvenile, barely past puberty. For a simp that would be six months, for one of us… it varies. She also smelled of blood, perhaps death – it was hard to tell, unless one had rolled in a dead body – and she had a strange, hot, oily scent.

Anyone who smelled that – and for a human to smell it in sufficient concentration to detect it it would have to be much closer – would think “snakes.” In particularly heavily infested places, my human referred to it as “snake house at the zoo smell.”

But it wasn’t snakes. As us cats knew, it wasn’t snakes at all. We’d been on patrol against these creatures since our creation, trying to save our nose-blind humans.

The pretty little dame stayed put, never betraying a hint of discomfort with my examination, except by a consciously patient look in her eyes.

I sat across from her. Just as dignifiedly. Look, yes, the smell was alarming and it worried me, but there was absolutely no point letting her know how alarming, just in case she didn’t know. She was still a juvenile, and I didn’t know how well she’d been trained.  “My name, I told her is Mithra Tamuras de Shangrila.” I let a little pause pass. “They call me Shan.”

She inclined her head and her whiskers twitched, just the slightest bit. I wondered if I was making her impatient. “I am Helena Dioscuri D’Arcadia.” She lowered her eyelids at me, as though daring me to ask for her call name. She might as well teach her grandmother to eat mice.

I loafed comfortably on the floor, showing I wasn’t the slightest bit threatened by her, and looked up.  “You didn’t come here on a social call.”

She lowered her head in acknowledgement, and then she spilled the beans. And what beans they were.

Before I go on, I suppose I should explain, for any human who might come across my chronicles. Should that happen it is because the times are dire, we cats are losing way in our sacred mission, and therefore even the purblind, lostlings that are humans will have to come into the fight and be aware of the enemy. And of what we’ve done all these years to protect them.

I explained it in my very first recorded chronicle, but in case you’re a human reading this, who hasn’t found the first chronicle, let me lay out the facts, at least as we know them.

If you’re imagining the cats I’m referencing are some strange creature with tentacles hidden under our fur, we are not.  We are the cats you know. But we are not …. Precisely what was known as cats throughout history.

In 1942, going to war with the Axis powers, the American administration threw untold amounts of money at strange research projects.

None was stranger than the research done in Espanola NM,  a little town near Los Alamos. There a program was undertaken to … well, not precisely to uplift cats, but to make cats more trainable and capable of communication. The idea being that sending cats behind the lines to collect information would be less obvious than sending dogs.

The program lasted two years, breeding thousands of cats in a compound where every shed had the name of a mythical lost city or civilization. Shangrila, Acadia, Atlantis, Mu. On and on it went. The cats themselves were named for two mythical beings, with the shed name appended.

After two years it was judged a failure, and cats were either adopted out, or simply let go. Many of the rejects from it had already been adopted out and let go over the two years.

Only the project wasn’t exactly a failure. Oh, for the purposes stated, maybe, but not for cats.

You see, what emerged from the Cat Guardian project was… cat guardians.

Somehow, the half fumbling in the dark attempts, the irradiating of pregnancies, and who knows what else, produced cats who had what the humans call psi powers: a full panoply of them.

Those cats – we – could see, hear and smell things that weren’t apparent to humans. Well, that’s a given, same as always, of course. Humans are truly impaired.

But they – we – could also communicate with thoughts, move objects with thoughts, and cast illusions so perfect they could fool humans.

They spread like weeds.  In fact, there’s a very good chance you have a Guardian – as we call ourselves — living with you. The reason for this is that there are far more Guardians alive than what cats were before the project. The few sad remnants of former catdom – simps, we call them – live mostly in feral colonies, hunted, despised. … And all of them have some component of Guardian Cats.

Oh, your cat is spayed or neutered, you say? Yes, humans think so. Read where I said we can cast illusions.  The Guardians reproduce like … cats.

We have to.  You see, when we first became conscious of who and what we were, and what our relationship was to the humans who created us, we realized how threatened they were.

Let’s say there are creatures in the world who are not humans. Aliens would be a good name for them. They come in spaceships, sometimes. They can also cross space-time rifts. There are many varieties of them. And their aim is nothing else than render humans extinct of slaves.

They can fool humans by illusions and mind tricks. Just like we can. But they can’t fool us.

By the time the project was disbanded, a core group of us had organized, to defend humanity and the Earth. This core group grew. Recruited other guardians.

Every single guardian knows the mission, and every single guardian watches. And a few of us are coordinators, recruiters, investigators, ready to help the others identify a threat, a breakthrough, and alien beach head and combat it.  Without us, humans would long since have disappeared under the onslaught of alien races seeking to steal this most desirable planet from them.

With us…. They have a fighting chance. Just about.

That was my job in Goldport Colorado, where I used my human’s art studio, high up in a converted 19^th century five story building, as my office at night. The place guardians with a problem could come to ask for my help.

“I came home this afternoon, at the time my human normally comes from work, and I found him dead.”

My ears perked, and my hair rose.  I heard the growl come out before I projected the words. Some things are instinctive. “Dead?”

“In a pool of blood,” she said.  “And the smell of…” She looked for a word, but she was young.  “The smell of the others all around.”

I hesitated, then asked, “Are you sure?” Though of course I shouldn’t doubt her. I’d smelled the residual smell on her.  “There have been ten years without… well, not in Goldport.”

She twitched her whiskers at me. “Very sure.”

“Were there signs of a breakthrough? I’ve had no reports of a landing here, or anywhere in the state.”

She was silent a long time, then said, “No. I think it might have been… someone he worked with.”

I blinked at her, slowly. “An embed? You think your human worked with an embed?”

Her whiskers twitched, and her tail did a little flop flop, twice. “Look, I didn’t know how to contact, okay? We just moved here from New York City.  I didn’t know who to contact there. No one approached me, no one told me.”

I was on alert. “Honey,” I said, very seriously. “Were your parents simps? Or perhaps your mother.”

For a moment there, I thought she was going to claw me. Simps were the poor saps, the cats from before the experiment. The ones we’d replaced. I think she thought she was going to claw me too. Her tail got faster, and she actually lifted a paw, then put it back down with force. Her eyes flashed anger at me.

“I don’t mean it as an insult,” I said. “Sometimes the colonies throw out a guardian, full fledged and full of power but the problem is no one tells them what to do, or how to contact the network. They might have a vague idea of what they heard somewhere that they’re supposed to protect the humans, but they don’t know how.”

“No.” Her mental voice was still tight with anger. “It’s not like that. My parents were… murdered, and I was hurt. My human found me and brought me home. A year ago. I haven’t—I never knew the network. My parents did. All I knew was from watching them work. So when he came home smelling of the others every day, and he talked of this person at work who—” The tail twitched. “Every time he talked of this person the smell was stronger.  So, I convinced him to get a new job, in Colorado. I manipulated him, really. And he did. But—”

“But?”

“He saw the man again last week. He said he’d met him in a coffee shop. And there was the smell.”

“Helena—” I said, and at her narrowing eyes. “Miss Arcadia, what did your human do?”

She blinked, this time in surprise, and reared a little as though I’d threatened to slap her. “My human… Bill, Bill didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t deserve—”

“No, no,” I hastened to clarify. “You misunderstand me. The Others tend to target people who can give them… mastery over some realm. What did your human do for a living?”

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t fully understand it, but he did something that involved the mathematics of tracking near Earth objects.”

I swore. I swore by the Great Litter and the Lord of All. We don’t have a religion as such, or at least not one all of us obey, but we have a strong belief that there’s a Great Human cranking the wheel, and that in the fullness of time he created the Great Litter of felines and sent them onto the world. Most of the Guardians believe we were created in particular to look after and defend our humans – and occasionally correct them, as they need it – because they can’t defend themselves.

Miss Arcadia looked at me, her moustaches twitching frantically, as though wondering if I’d lost my mind. It occurred to me belatedly that if she lost her parents early she might not know cat swearing.

“You see, Miss,” I explained. “The Others are very interested in anyone that can track their landings. Yes, they can open portals, or some of them can, but those are limited to within the atmosphere. To actually get to Earth, they use ships. Now those ships also open portals, but that’s a complication. The point is they target anyone tracking near Earth objects. Did he keep his job?”

She nodded very slightly, another sign she was raised mostly by humans. She used their body language. “Yes. He worked from home.”

I steeled myself. It was going to get ugly. I checked my armory and readied it for teleporting. Look, we can teleport things, yes. But they have to be arranged in such a way, and in a place we can completely visualize.

Because my human is one of those who believes weapons beget violence – he’s an artist, not a thinker – I keep mine hidden in false compartment beneath the floor. I opened it and scanned the contents, to make sure I hadn’t moved anything and the teleport wouldn’t fail. Then I closed it, and said, “let’s go.”

Turned out her human didn’t live very far away. It was about three blocks, in one of the old office buildings being converted to micro apartments, now that so many people were working from home.  The biggest delay to getting there was having to wait for the lights to change to cross the street.  Oh, and one more than a little drunk college student who insisted on kneeling down on the snow and petting us and hugging us, while calling us “beautiful Christmas cats.” Honestly, if he’d smelled in the slightest ophidian I’d have thought he was enemy action. As it was, we tolerated his mistimed affection, then trotted on.

We accessed the apartment the same way she’d got into my office. Up the fire-escape, mind-unlock and open a window. This window was small, and opened to over a toilet tank.

Before we made it out of the bathroom – neat and very small, barely big enough for a toilet, a tiny sink an a shower stall that fit only one human, tightly squeezed in – we heard someone move around in the apartment beyond the door.

Helena stopped, her head a little back.

“Police investigators?” I asked her. Some of the Others could hear mind talk, but most couldn’t so we were probably safe.

“Maybe…” she said.

But we proceeded cautiously, as she rotated the knob on the door and edged out.

I closed the window behind us and followed.

She had stopped stock still, staring up.

Facing her was a tall, redheaded, bearded man, in the kind of clothes that are considered super-formal business attire in Colorado: a polo and khaki pants. He smiled, “Oh, there you are, sweetie,” he said. “I’ve looked for you all over.”

Was this her human? Had she dreamed of his death? No. It was unlikely. Young and innocent as she was, she was unlikely to confuse a dream with reality. Unless of course, the dream were a premonition.

He bent down as if to pet her. He hadn’t seen me yet. I saw his hand moving to scruff her, and jumped in, as he said, “Got you.”

But he hadn’t got her. She had become a puffed-up ball of fur and claws, and swiped him as she jumped aside.

The thing – I’d caught the nose full of snake smell – tried for her again, but I’d joined the fight. I visualized my weapon compartment even as I jumped. There is a place on the male human that draws instant attention. It doesn’t work the same for ophidians, but I was excited, and jumped for it. He grabbed me and swung me against the wall.

Helena gave a banshee scream and jumped from the floor to the coffee table, from that to the sofa, then the bookshelf, all so fast the eye could barely follow, and then she was at his face, scratching, clawing, and screaming, screaming.

The face is just as vulnerable in Ophidians, but they have teeth humans don’t have. She was clawing too hard for him to get a hold, but I heard the clack clack of sharp teeth, and had to act.

Through and act of will, I reached for the weapons. A knife would be better than a gun for this. Mostly because I could avoid cutting the pretty little miss, but firing, while they lurched all over, and she attacked while staying out of his teeth reach, that was difficult.

The knife came through, and I pushed it at his throat, low, beneath her scrabbling hind legs, then with all the force of my mind through his neck, severing the head. It rolled, and she screamed, and for a moment I thought I’d cut her.

Then I saw her jump free of the head, while the corpse fell, and the neck fountained blood. Green-black, it smoked as it hit the floor, and it didn’t smell like human blood.

I wanted to check on her, to tell her the blood was poisonous, but I was all out of energy. It is a thing little appreciated how much effort telekinesis takes. It leaves you wiped out and sodden on the floor, wanting to do nothing so much as sleep. Or pass out. It might be one or the other.

She woke me up. Or rather I woke up with her, methodically, grooming my face. As soon as I budged she stopped, which was a pity.  “Sir?” she said. “Mr. Shangrilla.”

“Call me Shan,” I said, muzzily. “We’ve fought side by side.”

She didn’t say anything, until I’d gathered myself into sitting, and then she said, “Sir, Shan, what happened to my human? I’m sure I didn’t dream it. That Bill was dead. But this—” She looked at the corpse, twisted in death into something that not only didn’t look human, it didn’t look natural. It looked like two pieces of petrified wood, if anything. “This isn’t Bill.”

“I know,” I said. My mental voice was slower and more hesitant than it should be. “We’ll never know what they did to the corpse. They do this and then replace the person, so they have access to the information and can lie about the data.”

“Oh,” she said. It was a little, sad “oh.”  “You see Si—Shan. I loved my human. And he was my only family. And now I don’t know what to do.”

I realized the poor kid was orphaned for Christmas.  Well, there was only one thing for it.

“Come with me,” I said.  “At least for a little while, and who knows….”

She cast a sad look around the little apartment. “I’m going to miss Bill,” she said. Really, it’s a shame our kind can’t produce tears.

“Hey, you avenged him. It’s as honorable a death as we can have. I’ll contact my superiors to clean the apartment, so information doesn’t fall in the hands of the Others.” I closed my eyes and did so, causing my supervisor, Balor Arash de Cockaigne to swear creatively in cat. I saw Helena had heard it from the way her eyes widened. I was going to have to bring the kid’s education up to date.

She caught my amusement and twitched her tail at me, but it wasn’t an angry twitch, more an irritated one.

“Come,” I said.

We went back. We got to my human’s apartment, which was one building over from his office.  “Oh, you decided not to sleep at the office?” he asked as I came in through the window. He was convinced I opened the window with my enormous and dexterous “monkeypaws” as he called them. Of course, using my mind was far more efficient.

His apartment was a one bedroom, decorated in thrift store style, but it felt cozy and nice on this December night with the snow starting to fly and melting on my fur. He had the little tree mounted on the tenth hand pine coffee table, and boxes of ornaments on the slip covered old sofa.  “Just in time to help me make the tree,” he said.  And then he caught sight of Helena behind me. “Oh, what have we there?” Helena approached, carefully, and nuzzled the hand he extended for her inspection. He petted her, then looked – it must be terrible not to be able to smell well enough to know without looking – and said “Oh, a pretty girl.” Then with a grin at me, “You sly dog.”

I should have been offended, except I’d learned this was praise, somehow.

I nuzzled his hand in turn, strongly projecting that she needed a place to stay. “Well. Well, we’ll check if she has a chip. She doesn’t look starved but no collar.”

Both of us nuzzled him purring. “Okay, okay, Shan, you ape, you can have your lady friend stay.  We’ll see if anyone complains.  Let me give you some food, and then you can help me fix up the tree.”

The food was the best tuna. I’ve trained my human again. Helping fix the tree consisted of sitting on the sofa, watching him do it.

He sang off key Christmas carols as he worked. Not that he meant to sing off key. It’s just what he did.

Afterwards he sat drinking hot chocolate while we sat on his lap. I sensed sadness and loss from little Helena and groomed her ear.

She looked at me, and slow-blinked her big green eyes. “I avenged him. It must be enough. For now. And I’ll continue fighting against the Others. If you’ll teach me how to do it better.”

“I will teach you,” I said. “We’ll continue protecting the humans. It’s what we were put on this Earth for. The poor creatures can’t protect themselves, but the Eternal created us to do it.”

She slow blinked. “I’ll always remember Bill,” she said. “I’ll fight in his name, to keep the rest of his people safe.”

Outside, the snow fell. Christmas lights blinked in the dark of night. Humans everywhere, like mine, celebrated Christmas and sang of peace on Earth.

And we’d have that. At least as long as we Guardians stood between the Others and our beloved humans.

Peace on Earth. Goodwill to men.