Fire Season Read online

  “Bleek!” he said, pointing in the direction in which the smell of smoke was strongest. “Bleek! Bleek!”

  His faith in these two-legs had not been misplaced. Almost immediately, he felt the vehicle change direction. Nor was the impulse entirely that of Death Fang’s Bane. Shadowed Sunlight’s mind-glow was less easy for Climbs Quickly to read, but he could feel in it acceptance that he had some reason for his urgency—even if the reason was as of yet a mystery.

  * * *

  “What’s in that direction?” Stephanie asked, trying to increase the speed while not losing control of the air car. “Let me know if Lionheart seems to think we’re going the wrong way.”

  “He’s still pointing southwest,” Karl said. “Let me call up the area map. We’re within a Forestry Service district, but I’m pretty sure it’s close to private holdings near here.”

  Stephanie knew Karl wasn’t being in the least slow, but she felt an intense sense of impatience—or urgency. Not for the first time, she wondered if her feelings were always entirely her own. For example, she could always locate Lionheart, no matter how far away he was. She knew he could do the same with her. However, she felt certain Lionheart knew what she felt sometimes even better than she herself did. However, how much did the link work the other way? Might the urgency she felt now not be her own impatience, but Lionheart’s?

  “Oh, Steph,” Karl said with a chuckle. “You’re going to love this. The private lands we’re heading toward belong to the Franchitti family.”

  Stephanie made a rude noise. The Franchittis were not among her favorite people on Sphinx. In fact, it wasn’t stretching the point too much to say that they were among her least favorite. Certainly Trudy Franchitti, who was roughly a year older than Stephanie, was on Stephanie’s “Most To Be Avoided” list.

  “Well,” Stephanie said. “Maybe we don’t need to go that far. I wonder what has Lionheart so riled. If it was something on the ground, we should have flown over it already. I mean, we’re not moving all that fast.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Karl said. “Which means it’s something he could smell from a long way off. Take the car up, Steph. Maybe we can see what he can smell.”

  Unspoken between them was that they both had guessed what this threat might be. The season was very late summer—on Sphinx the seasons lasted for approximately fifteen T-months. This summer had started out normally enough, but as it had progressed, conditions had grown increasingly dry. Drought status had been declared. Fire warnings were posted everywhere.

  Very carefully, Stephanie brought the air car up above the canopy. The gigantic crown oaks and near-pines that dominated this area were so widely spaced that it was possible to steer between them. Since steering without the autopilot and radar assistance was something Stephanie had wanted to practice, they had stayed at trunk level. This choice had the added advantage of keeping Stephanie’s more erratic maneuvers away from casual observation.

  “Steph!” Karl was pointing southwest, his gesture unconsciously mimicking that of the treecat who rested in his lap. “Smoke!”

  Looking in the direction indicated, Stephanie saw the faintest wispy grayish-white traces threading through the thick arboreal canopy.

  Karl was already on his uni-link, comming the SFS fire alert number. “This is Karl Zivonik. We’re at…” He rattled off coordinates. “We’ve spotted smoke. It’s pretty faint and might be coming from private land, but we thought we’d better report it.”

  The voice of Ranger Ainsley Jedrusinski came back over the com. “We’ve got it, Karl, and one of the weather-watch birds is just clearing the horizon. Give me a sec.”

  There was a brief delay while she queried the weather satellite for a downlook. Then her voice came back. “Definitely a hot spot over accepted limits, especially given wind direction. We’re going to send in a crew. Good work. Out!”

  Stephanie had set the air car to hover and now she glanced over at Karl. “So, do we go to help?”

  Karl considered. “Well, Ainsley didn’t say we shouldn’t, and it is our fire, sort of. But if we go, pilot.”

  “No problem,” Stephanie said, setting the auto-pilot to hover and sliding so they could change places. “No problem at all.”

  * * *

  Actually, though she wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, Stephanie was glad to give up having to pay attention to the surprisingly demanding role of pilot—at least a pilot without autopilot. Freed up from those responsibilities, she brought up her uni-link and downloaded information on the location of the fire.

  “Winds are rising,” she told Karl. “Unless there’s a miracle, the fire’s going to spread—and fast. I wonder what started this one?”

  Karl shrugged. “We can rule out lightning. The usual summer T-storms are really late. This might be a ground fire that’s finally broken out to the surface, so we’re seeing the smoke. The area is so dry almost anything might start a fire.”

  Stephanie nodded. She also knew what Karl wasn’t saying: on Meyerdahl, eighty to ninety percent of forest fires had a direct or indirect human cause. The percentage wasn’t as high on Sphinx, since the population was so much smaller, but that didn’t matter. When the forests were this dry, even a stray spark could find ample natural tinder.

  Whatever their cause, forest fires were never comfortable events. Intellectually, Stephanie knew wildfire was actually a necessary part of a forest ecology, a means of clearing away deadwood, underbrush, and accumulated duff that contributed to disease. Moreover, many plants actually needed fire in order for their seeds to germinate. Browsing and grazing animals benefitted, too, since new growth was higher in nutrient value. Thus, a bit more indirectly, the predators benefitted as well.

  Despite knowing all of this, Stephanie still found it hard to think of forest fires as good. The skeletons of burned-out trees, the carcasses of animals that failed to outrace the spreading flames, the fallen bodies of birds choked by smoke, even though they were never close to the fire, all seemed evidence of evils to be fought.

  Yet what was true on any planet with forests was even more so on Sphinx. Eighty percent of Sphinx’s land surface was forested. Some of the plants—like the picketwood, on which the treecats were so dependent—might look like forests. However, picketwood groves were actually one vast plant. The parent tree sent down runners from the branches of a nodal trunk. These in turn became their own trunks and sent out more runners. Damage to one area of picketwood could have a definite—although usually short-term—effect on related groves, even if those groves were kilometers away.

  The policy of the Sphinx Forestry Service was to manage rather than simply put out natural fires. This did not make SFS popular with many of the human settlers, who felt that they and their property should be protected no matter what—even if that property was located where it should not be. When the fire was of human origin and SFS started handing out reprimands and fines…Well, then the SFS found itself even less popular.

  Karl had switched the com so they could listen to the Forestry Service chatter as the unit was assembled and sent out. Although the SFS had what many of the planet’s residents considered an overly large staff, they were actually stretched pretty thin. Ranger Jedrusinski’s call had alerted any and all on- or off-duty rangers in the immediate area of the fire. Some would delay long enough to fetch specially equipped firefighting vehicles.

  However, at this time of year, all rangers—and that included Stephanie and Karl, who were only probationary rangers—routinely carried with them a kit that included a Pulaski, a shovel, a bladderbag, a portable fire shelter, and a fire-suit. Many of these tools would have been perfectly familiar to firefighters some thirteen hundred years before. Others, like the modified vibroblade cutting edge of the Pulaski (a combination hoe and fire axe that had been in use for centuries even before humans reached for the stars) or the fire-retardant chemicals that the bladder bag automatically mixed with water, would have surprised and delighted them.

 
When he’d taken over piloting, Karl had closed the back window they’d opened for Lionheart. The treecat had remained in the front seat, perched on Stephanie’s lap. Once they’d set course in the direction of the fire, Lionheart stopped pointing. Some of the tension had left the lines of his long, lean body, but through their shared link Stephanie could feel that the treecat was clearly conflicted about heading into—rather than away from—a fire.

  She stroked Lionheart, even going so far as to roll him over onto his back so she could ruffle the cream-colored fur on his tummy and tickle under his chin. Usually, this relaxed him, but soon enough, Lionheart put his one remaining true-hand and his two hand-feet on her forearm and gently shoved her away.

  Stephanie offered him a perch along the back of her seat. He flowed up, sinuously graceful, and settled where he could rest his true-hand on the top of her head while looking out the window.

  Despite their name, treecats were not all that feline. For one, no Terran cat had ever possessed six limbs or a fully prehensile tail. Their build was longer and—beneath their fluffy coats—leaner. They were also larger, averaging sixty to seventy centimeters through the body, with their tails doubling their length. And, of course, no Terran cat had three-fingered hands with fully opposable thumbs.

  However, quite like Terran cats, male treecats, like Lionheart, were tabby-gray above, cream below. Their gray tails were ornamented with a varying number of darker bands. There were other similarities as well: slitted pupils to the eyes (these almost always green), retractable claws (although these were far sharper than those possessed by any Terran cat), pointed ears, and long whiskers. Moreover, when tense, treecats bristled out their fur much as a Terran cat did. As Karl piloted them closer to the fire, Stephanie could feel from the tickling along her neck that Lionheart was distinctly puffed.

  Stephanie wondered what treecat clans did when faced with a forest fire. They didn’t have fire retardant chemicals. They were tool users, but the tools she had seen were limited to ropes, nets, stone knives, and small stone axes. These last were fine for hacking off the branches treecats used to build sleeping platforms, but could not fell a burning tree so the flames consuming it would not spread through the canopy.

  She supposed the only thing treecats could do was run in the hope they could get their kittens and old ones out fast enough they didn’t need to watch—and what she suspected was worse, feel them burning to death—as the flames licked out greedy tongues, devouring all with a mindless hunger.

  Shuddering at the thought, Stephanie pulled up a template and overlaid it on the map of their location. Immediately, she felt relieved. The map the Forestry Service had put together indicating the locations of known treecat clans did not show a clan in this area. The map was far from complete, but this close to human inhabited lands, she felt pretty confident that it would be accurate.

  Stephanie knew she shouldn’t have favorites among the creatures that lived on Sphinx. As Frank Lethbridge and Ainsley Jedrusinski kept reminding her, every creature—even hexapumas—had their part to play in the complex planetary ecology. Stephanie couldn’t help it. She didn’t like hexapumas. She liked treecats a lot—more, in fact, than she did most humans.

  To distract herself, Stephanie thought about a particular litter of hexapumas, the kits of a mother she and Lionheart had killed just under three T-years ago. When she had become a probationary ranger she had learned, to her surprise, that SFS rangers had rescued and hand-raised the kits. Like the cubs of many Terran “higher” predators, hexapuma kits required parental care for their first several years.

  As a probationary ranger, Stephanie had been required to take her turn cleaning the pens and bringing the little monsters food. Lately, she and Karl had been included in discussion as to the best areas in which to release them. Care had been taken to make certain the hexapuma kits did not bond with their human caretakers, but a certain greater familiarity could not be avoided—even if merely that these hexapumas would be accustomed to human odor and might even associate it with food.

  A surge of anger filled Stephanie as she recalled how she’d struggled not to point everyone’s attention at Lionheart’s horrible scars, his missing right true-hand. Quick heal and considerable medical attention had made certain her own scars did not show, but they were there nonetheless. She wanted to scream, “Hexapumas are dangerous monsters!” but knowing hers would be the minority opinion—suspecting she was probably even wrong—she’d kept her opinions to herself.

  When Lionheart suddenly stiffened, Stephanie thought that—as so often—he was reacting to her internal turmoil. However, instead of reaching and patting her gently on one cheek as he usually did to soothe her, he now began to bounce in place, pointing both ahead and down. Stephanie could almost feel his frustration that he couldn’t make his point more clearly.

  “What is it, Lionheart? What’s wrong?”

  * * *

  Climbs Quickly hadn’t exactly relaxed when Shadowed Sunlight and Death Fang’s Bane had demonstrated that they understood his warning about the fire. From past experience, he knew that two-legs took fire at least as seriously as did the People. Moreover, being what they were, the two-legs would likely deal with the fire in some fashion, rather than merely running from it. He had witnessed such actions in the past and seen Shadowed Sunlight and Death Fang’s Bane being trained to fight fire. While he was still uncertain why some fires were put out promptly while others were permitted to burn in a contained area, he had come to trust that any danger this fire offered would not be ignored.

  Now, settled comfortably across the back of Death Fang’s Bane’s seat, Climbs Quickly decided that it couldn’t hurt to spread the warning a bit further. He was no memory singer to send his mind voice out between clans, but he knew his mind voice—especially since he had bonded with Death Fang’s Bane—was stronger than that of most males. Moreover, his sister Sings Truly was considered one of the most remarkable memory singers of this generation. Even at this distance, he might be able to reach her. She could spread the word to other memory singers and so alert the clans. At the very least, he might reach some scout or hunter who would relay the warning.

  Climbs Quickly sent out a call, then opened his mind to “listen” for a reply. One came almost immediately, but it was not his sister’s voice he heard. This was an unfamiliar voice, male and much closer.

  it cried.

  There was a desperation to the cry, as if the one who gave it had been calling for some time and had lost hope that any would hear. The mind-speech included information not included in the simple message. The two treecats were high in a green-needle, within a grove of such trees.

  This was not good for several reasons. Unlike the net-wood groves in which clans tended to make their central nesting places, green-needle trees did not have interconnected branches. Instead, branches tended to taper off, ending in needles that would not bear an infant bark-chewer, much less a full-grown Person. To make matters worse, green-needle trees burned fast and hot. These brothers must have been hard-pressed to take refuge here.

  The fire had not yet reached their refuge.

  Climbs Quickly asked.

  the speaker—he called himself Left-Striped—replied.

  Climbs Quickly knew then what this call really was. It was not so much a call for help—for what help could come in such a situation? It was Left-Striped’s last attempt to make certain that the clan to which these brothers belonged would learn of their deaths and so not be left to empty mourning.

  So the situation must have been in the days before the coming of the two-legs, the tragedy accepted as something to be sung of in sorrow, but now…

  Climbs Quickly’s “conversat
ion” with the stranded treecat had taken only breaths. Now he rose onto his true-feet and began pointing. He tried to show that he was indicating a specific portion of the fire-affected area by angling his gestures precisely along the lines where he could “feel” the other treecat’s mind-glow.

  Death Fang’s Bane made mouth noises at him. One of these was the one she used as his name; the rest was only noise. Yet Climbs Quickly sensed concern in her mind glow, a desire to comfort, to reassure.

  She made more mouth noises. Climbs Quickly felt fairly certain that she understood he was not merely repeating his warning about the fire, but a frustration that matched his own indicated that his new message was not reaching her.

  “Bleek!” he said desperately, wishing the sound carried different meanings the way mouth noises seemed to do. “Bleek!”

  * * *

  “Easy, Lionheart. Easy,” Stephanie said soothingly.

  The treecat flowed down from her seat back onto her lap. Then he stood and turned, his flexible spine meaning that his feet could remain oriented forward even as he turned to face her. He placed his remaining true-hand on her face and looked deeply into her brown eyes with his green.

  “Bleek,” he said with a sort of pathetic intensity. Then, gently but firmly, he grasped two locks of her short, curly brown hair and began tugging them.

  Stephanie heeded the prompt—not to do so would have been to have her hair pulled, since the treecat was very strong. She found she was looking down.

  “Karl,” she said, her voice coming just a little choked from the tight angle of her throat, “I think he’s telling us that whatever has his attention is lower.”

  “Well,” Karl replied. “That’s a given, since we’re flying above the tree canopy.”

  Despite the sardonic tone of his reply, Karl began guiding the air car lower down. Stephanie felt precisely when Climbs Quickly let go of her hair.