Little Kitten

The morning of Genly Ai’s 207th day on the Gobrin ice sheet, he woke to an animal in the tent. 

“Meow! Meow!”

Genly fought with his sleeping bag. The cold bit at the exposed skin of his hands and face, a shock even after all this time, and he frantically wiped away the ice that gathered on his eyelashes in the night. He did not immediately see the source of the sound. He also did not see Estraven.

Estraven often rose earlier than Genly. It was not unusual for Genly to wake and find Estraven dressed in their underlayers scratching numbers in their journal while breakfast defrosted, or even to find himself alone in the tent and Estraven walking back and forth through the snow, triple-checking landmarks. But Estraven would usually wrap up their sleeping bag before doing so.

The sleeping bag lay in disarray. Somewhere from within the mess came the cry of a small, upset animal.

“Meow! Mew! Mew!”

“Okay, okay!” The cry had the character of an alarm bell: inescapable, piercing, and demanding action. Genly crawled on his hands and knees and gingerly lifted one after another layer of Estraven’s bedding and clothes.

The wail raised to a wordless pained scream, as if calling Genly directly: “Ai!”

Genly raised up the neckline of Estraven’s woolen underlayer and unearthed a black-furred animal with large, wet eyes and a pink tongue. He gasped and dropped the fabric. The thing took two or three shaking steps and poked its head out into the air.

“Aiiiiii!”

A kitten.

-

The kitten looked half-frozen. He wondered if cats were native to Gethen. He certainly hadn’t seen one in the time he had been here. But Gethen must have cats, or native animals indistinguishable from cats, or else how could this one have gotten into the tent?

Genly remembered from his studies that wild cats could grow quite big; larger than a human. His stomach turned with renewed fear for Estraven. Imagine that they rose early and wandered into the snow to mark a path for the day, unaware a pack of wildcats prowled nearby…

He quickly put on his outerwear, stepped from the tent, and shouted.

“Estraven!”

Back in the tent, buffeted by the ice sheet winds: “Meow!”

“Estraven!” Genly saw no footsteps. The sled and their supplies were packed exactly the way they had left them, covered in an unbroken dusting of fresh snow.

The kitten continued to scream as if it was being killed. Genly remembered something else. Kittens often were kept in incubators, weren’t they?

He returned to the tent. The kitten looked up at him with watery eyes and sneezed. Then it sneezed three more times, tearing up so much that it could no longer keep its eyes open. There was a crust of icy snot under its nose.

“Oh, for the love of…”

After some trial and error and with great care to the claws that Genly knew a cat was born with, he managed to bundle it in a ball of Estraven’s woolen undershirt and zipped the ball into his own jacket.

Why had Estraven left their clothes behind like this? Genly hurried back out, almost frantic to find his friend now. He doubled back some ways across the ice they had crossed yesterday, shouting at intervals. Only the wind howled back. It began to snow in wet, freezing drops.

Before he could lose sight of the tent, he doubled back, shivering already. Damn his human eyes in this white-on-white land, damn his frailty in the cold…! He reached out with mindspeech, knowing that Estraven could not respond in the same way, but hoping regardless.

No sign.

Genly passed the tent and went a few hundred feet out in front, towards the looming mountain in the distance. The freshly-fallen snow crumbled under his feet and he sank to his waist. He paused for a minute there, heart pounding, half-convinced that even the slightest move would cause him (and his small passenger) to fall into a hidden ravine. Then, hot with cowardice, he turned back.

“Estraven!” He shouted, hopeless. “Estraven! Harth!”

The only reply came from his jacket. A muffled, high-pitched, “Ai!”

-

Half-frozen, Genly rescued some rations from the sled and zipped himself back into the tent. His snow-crusted gloves had trouble grasping the zipper so it took him long minutes as the snow fell harder.

He turned on the heater. If he was alone on the ice, then there was no longer any point in conserving the fuel. An alien on Winter, he had no chance. He could not push the sled with their precious food supply by himself, and he did not have eyes to see through the tricks the snow played to hide treacherous falls.

Please, Harth, he said in mindspeech.

A wiggle underneath his jacket. Oh. The kitten.

He held his hands over the slowly-warming heater until they began to tingle, then tackled the zipper of his jacket and pulled the kitten out. With its claws trapped in the fabric of Estraven’s undershirt, Genly felt brave enough to hold it to his face. It blinked slowly as if it was just waking up. Genly was reminded of watching Estraven wake: that long, unhappy, reluctant process. The fabric smelled of Estraven; not pleasant, exactly, but somehow not unpleasant. It smelled of their sweat and effort.

Fear and grief threatened to overwhelm him. Had Genly ever felt this alone? Not even on the tiny one-way shuttle that dropped him onto Geth, the only human who would step foot on the planet in his lifetime.

At least he was no longer so damn cold. He set the kitten-bundle down and it began a slow process of escaping.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, to the helpless squirming thing. He had realized that it would likely die with him.

He unwrapped the meat; some wild game that Estraven had brought down with the ease of a lord in a hunting party, and then butchered and dried in the arctic sun. He took a slice and held it toward the kitten, which prompted an explosion of movement until it finally threw off the wool and moved, free, toward its prize with astonishing speed. Genly didn’t even have time to pull his hand back before it had grasped the jerky with its two front paws and teeth, devouring. A tiny tail lashed behind it.

“Hungry, hm?”

Genly fed it two more pieces from his hand. It was a cute thing with intelligent eyes. He had to research Gethenian wildlife, if he had the chance. Not likely in this lifetime.

The wind howled.

-

Genly began to go through Estraven’s things, thinking he might find a clue as to their whereabouts. Their clothing, their sleeping bag, their notebook. He piled them against the wall of the tent, as if he was neatening up before Estraven returned.

It felt like a betrayal to read the journal. However, if Estraven had mentioned their plan, or where they might be…

Genly picked up the worn leather and opened it.

Hiss.

He jumped to the space heater, searching it up and down for the source of a leak or imminent explosion. Finding nothing, he returned to the notebook.

The kitten had sat itself on top of it, and when Genly reached for it, the kitten bared its teeth and made that sound. Hiss.

“I’m sure that is very threatening when adult cats do it,” Genly said. He tried to pick up the notebook, but the kitten clawed him, drawing blood. Not so helpless! It took quite a long time for Genly to pick it up once more in the woolen shirt and move it away. And after all that work, Estraven’s last journal entry, from the night before, was a straightforward account of the miles they had traversed.

He unwrapped the defeated kitten apologetically.

“I’m sorry.”

The kitten turned its face away and licked its paw.

-

Genly dined on jerky and begged forgiveness from the kitten with an especially fatty piece. It let Genly touch its soft fur with his fingertips.

“We can’t fight, hm? It’s only us.”

It was a blizzard outside, but with the heater running the inside of the tent was comfortable. Genly had undressed to his underlayers. He checked the ventilation every so often, moving the heater so it did not melt through or burn the tent. How many hours left before he froze to death? Before they both did?

He only wished…

“Ah, well. I’ve said goodbye many times before.” But he’d at least known it was goodbye. “Where do you think they went?”

“Ai,” the kitten said. Its intelligent eyes bored into Genly’s and its jaw widened, its tiny voice rising. “Ai. Ai. Mmeeow!”

Genly smiled despite himself and touched its fur again. The kitten hissed, took a swipe at him, and turned away.

“Maybe I’ll learn to understand you, too,” he mused. Though he hadn’t had the chance in years to learn Estraven, had he? He had gotten close.

The heat tired him. He opened his own sleeping bag and crawled inside.

“Mew…”

The kitten crawled in, very close, and curled up on Genly’s breast. He held his breath, heeding the claws. Slowly he became aware of another new sound coming from the kitten, this one like the rumbling engine of a motorcar.

Genly wondered at the tiny sound that he could feel. He fell asleep wondering.

-

The afternoon of Genly Ai’s 207th day on the Gobrin ice sheet, he woke with a weight on his chest.

He opened his eyes. Estraven’s glossy black hair fell over his shoulder. Their body heat, much warmer than a human, sank into Genly’s bones. He was sweating, which he found strange.

Oh, yes. They were on the ice sheet. It was strange to be over-warm. Why…?

Genly gasped and scrambled up, reaching an arm out of the sleeping bag to turn off the heater. How many hours had he stupidly kept it running? How much fuel had he wasted?

Estraven groaned and turned their face into the sleeping bag. Genly’s sleeping bag.

Looking down, Genly realized that Estraven was naked. He had never had this view of Estraven’s bare back, the unmarred brown stretch of it. He looked away, guilty of…something.

“Estraven.” His voice was scratchy, almost nothing.

Estraven twitched and frowned. Genly peered around the tent, looking for the kitten. It was not there.

Two points connected in Genly’s mind, impossible though the connection was. Perhaps he had lost his mind. These things happened when humans were left alone; it happened in space, it could happen in any desolate place.

Estraven slowly won the battle against sleep. They raised their head from Genly’s sleeping bag.

“Did you read my journal?”