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cats, or a control group. As expensive as the real thing, of course, but all misrepresented in a spirit of scientific inquiry. If they didn’t know the difference, would his clients adopt the barn kittens and believe them to be as good as Chessie’s realkittens? It was a far far better thing he planned to do, a redemocra-tization of that most independent feline species. He would be undermining a silly human value system that falsely overinflated some animals while leaving others homeless and forsaken—when they could be going to good homes for a healthy profit to him. He was nothing, he liked to think, if not softhearted.
    His own kid would get a bona fide Barque kitten, of course. His kid deserved nothing but the best.

    Jared returned to the tracker swinging a large woven basket, and he and Janina took off over the ridge to the field Varley had indicated, where six more broken-colored horses watched curiously as the humans unpacked their lunch. Included in the picnic provisions was a healthy supply of apples and carrots.
    A café lunch might have been more private, as it turned out. These horses were no more frightened than the others had been, and were also so nosy as to be intrusive. Janina and Jared sat together on a blanket, close enough to pass food and close enough that she could feel his body’s warmth radiating through the chill of the afternoon breeze.
    “Janina, you’ve been a tremendous help,” he said, handing her a plate with some cheese and apple on it. “Did your Cat Person training include being a vet tech?”
    “Not really,” she said. “Just certain things. Like birthings, treating wounds, emergency cat medicine, recognition of the usual cat maladies.”
    “Not all of the cat handlers I’ve met seem nearly as well-versed in all of those areas as you are,” he said.
    “What they gave us at the academy was a bit sketchy. I was lucky to be assigned such a wonderful cat to work with as soon as I’d finished the Cat Person elective in my schooling. And not all of the cabin boys and girls who care for a ship’s cat have even had the academy training I did. Some ships acquire a cat without having aproperly trained Cat Person in the crew, just a youngster to feed the cat and change the commode. They don’t all know how to monitor the cat’s hunt and search activities properly, to do the most good for the ship. When I meet some of the untrained ones, I try to answer questions and make suggestions. Most of them at least do love their cat.”
    “You’ve done remarkably well with the knowledge you have,” he told her.
    She felt her skin growing warm from more than the sun’s heat. He had the most beautiful eyes, and they were totally focused on her.
    “I study everything I can from the courses in the data banks, and take classes at our ports of call when we dock for more than a couple of days.”
    “Excellent. Have you thought about later?”
    “Later?”
    “When Chessie—retires. She’s not a young cat, and all of these litters are taking a toll on her.”
    Janina studied the grass intently for a moment or two while her eyes stopped swimming. She knew he didn’t mean actually retire. Chessie wouldn’t leave the
Molly Daise
until she died. Then, if the ship hadn’t retained one of her kittens for an understudy, they’d have to buy a kitten and assign a new Cat Person, someone young and small enough to follow the kitten into places where an adult couldn’t go. “I—I’d probably train my replacement,” she said. But the thought of trying to do that after Chessie passed—she didn’t know how she’d face it. She couldn’t bear the thought of being without Chessie. They’d been together since she was eight years old and Chessie fit into the palm of her hand.
    “Will you return to your family on your home world?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t noticed her discomfort.
    “I don’t have a family, not that I know of. My mother was killed in an accident when I was small. My