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ROWLE HADN’T EVEN NOTICED she’d dropped the limp bundle of flesh to the floor. She was paralyzed with shock. What the hells was that noise? And why was it coming from everywhere? All at once. She shook her head. The sound was coming from far away and near as well. How was that possible? She flicked her ears up and then down. Wait, there was a point of sound near her. It was very close, on the floor. She toed the limp body out of the way and revealed the source of the noise. One, of its sources.
She knelt down. The nearest noise was coming from a small junk pile, an arm’s length high and no more. One of those speaking things that cursed Technician had attached to the Vat? Hidden inside the junk pillar. She kicked the pillar over. It distorted and crackled. She then found herself stamping on its remains until it stretched to a thin hiss and then stopped. But the sound did not. Those junk pillars were everywhere. Everywhere. And the sound, now she thought about it, was that awful mewling the folk made when someone died. That ghastly mourning song they all did together. But they should have been fighting. All that had stopped. Her loyal guard were all stock still, some weapons still in hand, some not. And they started singing too.
“Stop!” she yelled. “Fight, you cowards!”
But no one moved. Their songs all began to rise, one and all, across the battlefield. Folk voices nearby, combined with echoes from the far sides of the hab, combined with whatever tinny relayed sound the junk pillars were projecting. The noise was becoming extraordinary.
Then she had to whip her head around. The nearest working junk pillar. There was a sound coming from there she wasn’t sure of, but something deep down in her gut knew it. She walked toward the pillar spellbound. It was the noise of Cat-people. She wanted to be thinking about how, but she couldn’t. The sound had caught her. Mourning of her people, for her people. Did she almost recognize some of the voices? It was difficult to rationalize when it was pulling on her heart as much as her ears. It was certainly bypassing her brain. Yowling, mourning sounds that should be howled to the sky. The sounds of lost loves, of the death of hope, of loneliness, of grief made into sound. She felt the vibrations deep in her chest and didn’t know when she herself had started crying too. The grief of all the Cat-people and the memories of Cat-people since forever. It resonated in her and shook her to the core. She was the last. And she had lost everything. Her chance of continuing when she could not bear a litter. Much later her partner who had been there since the beginning. Now her whole sense of self. Why was she allied with these rodents when she should be hunting them, torturing them, eating them? But that was the cat speaking; where was the person? The Cat-people had been grand, civilized, elegant, luxurious; gifting their superior intellect in return for labors performed. It was they who had conceived the food-farms and factories so no one had to predate on each other again and no one had to starve. They had made this world livable, possible. But now it was all gone. All of it in shreds, stinking, torn, tiny shreds. She was scratching at the door of her mind trying to get out, scratching and scratching till her claws bled.
She fell to her knees and her jaws fell open in a scream. It was the most massive noise she had ever made, but it was lost in the symphony of mourning: folk and human, Cat-people and other. She put her hands over her ears, but still, she couldn’t hear herself: The noise was everywhere. The resonance shook every structure of her body. She screamed on until her lungs were empty, on her knees, mouth open, unsure if any of the noise was her or not. Ever. She let her body drop forward with her face to the ground, in the hope it would dull some of the sound, but it seemed the noise came from everywhere. All that it resulted in was her shaking uncontrollably now her muscles weren’t holding her upright anymore. Then the texture of the sounds changed. Instead of a whole symphony of calls, the soundscape broke into solos: one voice here, a trio there—all moving in flight from one speaker to another; chasing, then fleeing, first high, and then low, swirling, tumbling. It had changed from a mournful chorale to a beautiful fugue: angel voices pursuing each other through the air. Her sobs had changed too. She was still crying uncontrollably, but now the wracking, chest-shaking sobs had gone, but in pure joy, tears poured out of her.
Then, by her ear, a playful cat noise.
“Mrow!”
Someone wanted chasing, did they? Well, a chase they would get and no mistake. And off she shot, following the noise, first here, then there, jumping and pouncing, and prancing like a kitten. Around and around and around, then on, bouncing and hopping along until, ah! Through? In and under and then? Up, onward, and up.
The speakers beckoned, “Catch me, bet you can’t find me. You’re it!”
Her play partners always ten steps ahead, twirling and twisting onward and upward in an endless dance. Up and up, onward and inward and through the door.
The voices of the rejoicing, dancing Cat-people still frolicked and leaped, but now around the room she found herself in. But she knew exactly what room this was. Why was she surprised? Was she, even? The smell of this room was always unmistakable, but now it even smelled a bit of Cat-people. How was that possible? She was the only one here. But it was a scent she couldn’t mistake; it was wired into her. A rising joy of a smell, that spelled the courtship dance and mating. Of long spans yowling at, at something.
Rowle stood at the center of a vortex, cat voices all around her, on the ground, and in the air, but the vortex moved her on, enticing, leading, edging. She knew where this was heading, there was an inevitability, but she let the voices lead her anyway.
She climbed onto the edge of the Vat, knowing exactly where she was, exactly what she was about to do. The cat voices were swirling from under the surface of the liquid.
“Join us, be with us.”
Then silence stretched out over the chamber. A slow tick of a pipe expanding. Rowle raised her arms, enjoying the feeling.
“It has been too long,” she said and slowly swan dived forward. The limpid fluid closed behind her.
