A Beautiful Friendship-ARC Read online

  She made a face, and MacDallan chuckled. Stephanie hadn’t really paid that much attention to Gryphon, yet, but what she’d seen about its seasons—exceptionally violent, thanks to its extreme axial tilt—suggested Irina was right about that!

  “Anyway,” Irina resumed, “Sphinx is where most of the desirable undistributed land is located. So everybody’s figured all along that eventually the public lands here would mostly be sold, probably at pretty good prices when the time finally comes. What the government did to raise cash during the emergency was to allow people to put down a relatively tiny payment—only about four or five cents on the dollar, actually—for chunks of land so that they’d be guaranteed the first chance to buy that land whenever it finally goes on the market. There’s a little more to it than that, including a provision that the government agrees to discount the price for option-holders—by up to forty percent of the current market value, in some cases—at the time it goes up for sale. So, especially since the option prices were based on the land’s current value, not what it’s going to be worth when there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of people ready to bid against each other for it, the people holding those options stand to make a lot of money on their initial investment.”

  “But at the rate people are settling on Sphinx, most of the people who bought the options will be dead by the time the government gets around to selling all that land!” Stephanie protested.

  “Of course they will. But in the meantime, the options can be sold and traded just like any other property or investment, and they have been. Not only that, but their value can be expected to do nothing but increase over the long term. So what Scott is getting at is that if the government decides the entire planet belongs to the treecats, there are going to be people—quite a lot of them, in fact—who will suddenly find that the options they’ve invested in are worthless. And since options like that tend to end up in the hands of professional speculators, the people that could happen to are likely to already have a lot of money . . . and a lot of political influence. If the government wants to give Sphinx back to the treecats, they aren’t going to like it very much, and it’s possible some of them will decide to use that money and influence of theirs to keep it from happening.”

  Stephanie’s eyes widened in horrified understanding, and Lionheart reared up on the back of her chair, hissing, ears flattened as he sensed her distress.

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to really believe the Crown’s likely to declare the entire planet off limits to everybody else, no matter how intelligent it decides treecats are, Stephanie!” MacDallan said quickly. “And it’d probably take something that radical to start any organized effort to turn them into more Amphors anytime soon.”

  “But if people start thinking they are that smart, then some of those option holders you’re talking about are liable to think that!” Stephanie protested. “You know they are!”

  “Maybe,” MacDallan agreed, “but they’re going to try to limit the damage first—restrict how much of the planet might be set aside for the treecats—not go directly to an all-out ‘exterminate the little monsters’ campaign. And that would probably be a more workable approach for them in the first place. Just like there aren’t all that many two-legged people on Sphinx yet, there aren’t all that many treecats here, either, unless I’m sadly mistaken. If I’ve understood what Hobbard’s been telling me correctly, she’s thinking they’re only just beginning to make the transition from a basically hunter-gatherer society to one that grows its own food, and that means their population can’t be anywhere near as dense as a human population might be. So I doubt they’re going to need the entire planet no matter what happens. I imagine the government’s going to see it that way, anyway. And let’s be fair, here, the people who traveled all the way out here to build new homes for themselves, new lives for their families, do have a legitimate interest in what happens to the land here on Sphinx. So I doubt most of the speculators Irina’s talking about are likely to find themselves really desperate when the time comes.

  “That doesn’t mean there won’t be any opposition to setting a good-sized chunk of the planet aside for the treecats, though. That’s what I think we need to be concerned about. What we want to happen—what I think we need to be working for—is to see to it that when those public lands we’ve been talking about are finally sold, the treecats are guaranteed enough of the planet for them and their children and their children’s children.”

  “But how do we do that?” Stephanie asked, gathering Lionheart into her arms as she—and the treecat—calmed down again.

  “I’m not sure about that,” MacDallan admitted. “Not yet. It’s going to be tricky, especially since the original colonization charter gave most of the authority to the local planetary governments when it comes time to deal with this particular question. And if the planetary administrations exercise that authority, then two-thirds of the revenue generated from the sale of the lands go to the planetary governments, not to the system government. That’s going to make a lot of planetary administrators feel mighty greedy, and I’m not sure where that provision stands under the new Constitution. I’m inclined to doubt that anyone really wants to push real hard to find out at the moment, either.

  “But the point I was trying to make is that there probably are people who are going to feel economically threatened if somebody suddenly starts making noises about handing the entire planet over to its ‘indigenous intelligent species.’ At this point, no one’s really worried about those ‘cute, fluffy’ little treecats of yours. Or, at least, I don’t think they are. And we need to keep it that way as long as we can, because no matter what we do, sooner or later, the people who stand to lose all that money are going to wake up to the fact that they do. I think we need to keep them from realizing that long enough for us to get as many protections—and as much good publicity—as possible for the treecats in place before anybody does start organizing a political campaign to turn them into Sphinx’s Amphors.”

  Stephanie looked at him for several more seconds, then nodded slowly and looked at her parents.

  “That’s what you and Mom have been thinking about, isn’t it, Dad?”

  “More or less,” Richard admitted, glancing at Marjorie. “It sounds to me like Scott’s been giving it a lot of thought, too, though, and I’m inclined to agree with him. On the other hand,” he looked back at MacDallan, eyes narrowing slightly, “I’m also inclined to wonder about something you said earlier, Scott. Something about knowing the treecats are even smarter than anyone else thinks. Would it happen that however it is you come to know that has you particularly worried?”

  “In a way,” MacDallan admitted.

  Then he paused, visibly steeling himself, and Fisher raised his head. He put his triangular chin on his person’s shoulder, leaning his whiskered muzzle against MacDallan’s cheek, and crooned encouragingly. MacDallan’s expression eased slightly, and he pressed his cheek back against the treecat and looked back at Richard.

  “The thing is, I’m afraid that if the people who might worry about treecats staking a claim to all of Sphinx realized how smart they really are, they might be panicked into taking some kind of . . . preemptive action after all. Or worse.” His expression tightened again, although not as much as it had before. “It’s bad enough to think about having xeno-anthropologists poking and prodding at them in their native environment, but if anyone ever confirms that they’re genuine telepaths—extremely capable telepaths—then every black-ops genetic lab in the galaxy is going to want treecat specimens so they can figure out how it works. And that doesn’t even consider how the ‘fear factor’ could play into the hands of anyone who wants to sweep them out of his way here on Sphinx. Your family’s from Meyerdahl; mine’s from Halakon. We know how much prejudice there is against human genies, how many times stupid people have started rumors about genies’ ‘sinister powers.’ You think that kind of crap wouldn’t be used against ‘evil telepathic treecats’ if it worked to get them
out of someone’s way?”

  “And you’re saying it would work?” Richard asked slowly. “That they really are—what was it you called them? ‘Extremely capable telepaths’?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “And you know this because—?”

  “I know it because I’ve got ‘the sight,’ ” MacDallan sighed. He managed a particularly crooked smile. “Runs in my family—Highland Scots, you know.” He shrugged. “My grandmother, God rest her soul, could be five thousand kilometers away when one of her kids or grandkids broke an arm, and it would turn out she’d already been in the air headed for the hospital before he did it. That kind of thing.”

  “So you were speaking from personal experience about people talking about ‘genies’ sinister powers,’ ” Marjorie Harrington said gently, her eyes soft with sympathy.

  “Oh, yes.” MacDallan smiled at her, and this time the expression was a little more natural looking. “And, to be honest, I’d just as soon not hear them talking about it again where my family or I are concerned. Which is one reason I’ve kept my mouth very firmly shut about what really happened when the Stray turned up.”

  “But you trust us enough to tell us about it?” Marjorie asked in that same gentle voice.

  “Well,” MacDallan reached up and stroked Fisher. “As far as I can see, you come pretty highly recommended.”

  “So do you, Dr. MacDallan,” Stephanie said with a smile of her own, and pointed at Lionheart, who had leaned forward to mimic Fisher, pressing against the side of her neck and purring.

  “Go ahead and tell them, Scott,” Irina said quietly, still holding the hand that wasn’t stroking Fisher.

  “All right.”

  He let his gaze circle his hosts’ faces and settled himself visibly in the chair.

  “After the Stray and Fisher led me to Erhardt’s air car, I called the Twin Forks tower to get a search and rescue crew out to recover the bodies. Since I was already on site, Wylie Bishop—he had the tower watch that day—asked me to go ahead and conduct the field autopsies. It wasn’t very pleasant.

  “I’d completed my preliminary exams before the accident investigation guys had finished with the air car, though, and Fisher wanted me to head off into the woods for some reason. I wasn’t real crazy about that, since it was already after dark and that was hexapuma country, but he was insistent. So I went with him. And when I did, he and the Stray led me right to a tiny campfire completely surrounded by treecats.”

  He was watching Stephanie as he spoke, and he saw her eyes when he mentioned the campfire. Clearly the fact that the treecats were fire-users as well as tool-users was no surprise to her, although he knew she’d never mentioned anything of the sort to Sanura Hobbard or the other scientists. He nodded to her slightly, putting down another plus mark on his mental ledger under the heading of “Harrington, Stephanie, Good Things about.”

  “I didn’t know what they had in mind at first,” he continued, “but it didn’t take them long to show me. One of them, a female from her coloring and markings, I think, was obviously in charge, and she obviously wanted something from me. I didn’t know what, but then she looked into my eyes and—”

  20

  “Hi, Scott,” Richard Harrington said cheerfully. “Didn’t expect to hear from you again quite so soon.”

  Dr. MacDallan grinned from the com screen. He and Irina had ended up spending two nights, not one, as the Harringtons’ guests. The weather had been partly to blame, but the real reason had been that they’d simply discovered how much they liked the Harrington family. Besides, Fisher and Lionheart had clearly taken a real shine to each other, and Stephanie had wanted to take Fisher home to meet Lionheart’s clan. From Fisher’s response when he got back to the freehold with Stephanie and Lionheart, the visit had been a great success.

  Of course, that might have been because he’d gotten to go hang gliding for the first time in his life, too.

  On the other hand, MacDallan hadn’t realized Stephanie was traveling back and forth between the freehold and the treecats’ central range by herself. When he did figure that out, he was horrified. The fact that she was making the trip by air mollified his concerns a little, but still . . .

  Which, after all, was the reason he’d screened this morning.

  “Well, I hadn’t really expected to be screening you this soon, either,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking about something. I hope I’m not going to be . . . intruding on anything, but the truth is I’m a little worried about the way Stephanie’s getting back and forth to the treecats.”

  “I could be happier myself,” Richard said, his expression sobering. “I think it’s probably the best compromise when it comes to keeping their location secret, though. And, trust me, the counter-grav unit I put into this glider would keep her up at three hundred meters for the better part of sixteen hours without a bit of airfoil lift! If she runs into any kind of trouble, she knows she’s supposed to go straight up, com us, and then stay there until one of us comes and collects her.” He shrugged. “I can’t say I’m delighted with the arrangement, but we can’t keep her wrapped up in cotton forever, and this whole situation with Lionheart’s making that even truer than it would have been otherwise.”

  “I agree,” MacDallan said. “For that matter, Halakon’s only been settled for about three hundred years. We’re probably still closer to a ‘frontier mentality’ where I come from than you folks on Meyerdahl were. And from what I’ve seen of Stephanie, that’s one capable kid you’ve got there. But I’m still worried. The best equipment in the world malfunctions occasionally, and I’ve always been a big believer in the belt-and-suspenders approach.”

  “Meaning what?” Richard asked in a slightly puzzled tone.

  “Well, what I’m thinking is that if she goes down in the bush again, it might be a good idea for her to have something just a bit better than a vibro blade if a hexapuma or a peak bear comes calling.”

  * * *

  “I don’t know, Richard.”

  Marjorie Harrington and her husband stood facing each other across the kitchen’s central island. She was chopping carrots and shredding lettuce for a salad while Richard carefully seasoned the steaks waiting to go onto the broiler. Stephanie was keeping careful watch on the baking potatoes . . . and trying (unsuccessfully) to conceal her intense interest in their conversation.

  Now Marjorie glanced in her daughter’s direction and found herself wishing this particular conversation wasn’t being listened to by that particular set of ears. More than one other conversation had fallen into that category in the past, though, and they’d survived those. She imagined they’d survive this one, and given how deeply it concerned Stephanie, she deserved to hear it.

  “To be honest, I don’t much like the idea myself,” Richard said, then shrugged. “Still, he’s got a point. More than one, really. And I think you and I might’ve considered it ourselves if we hadn’t grown up on Meyerdahl.”

  “I know Meyerdahl wasn’t still some rough, wild-frontier colony planet,” Marjorie said just a bit tartly. “The planetary constitution did guarantee the right of self-defense, though, you know!”

  “Of course it did. It just wasn’t something that came up all that often—at least where anything besides our fellow humans was concerned.”

  Marjorie nodded. That nod looked unwilling, but her expression was thoughtful.

  “Would it really be practical, though?” she asked. “Stephanie’s never going to be all that big, you know. Tall, I mean,” she added, turning to smile at her daughter before Stephanie could take umbrage.

  “Scott seems to’ve factored that into his calculations,” Richards said. “I think that’s one reason he wants her to learn to handle a rifle, too. In fact, he’s suggested—and I think it would be a good idea—that you and I learn, too. Neither of us has spent any time traipsing around the bush yet, but that’s certain to change eventually. And when it does, it’s always possible we could run into a hexapuma, you know.”

&n
bsp; Marjorie made a small face, but she also nodded.

  “What he’s really thinking about, though, is that if she’s gliding back and forth, what she’d probably really need is something she can carry fairly easily. Something powerful enough to at least . . . discourage the biggest predators while she sits in a tree or something and coms for help. He says what he had in mind would be something like, oh, a ten or eleven-millimeter handgun.”

  “Ten or eleven-millimeter!” Marjorie looked at him. “A gun that size would be as long as she is, Richard!”

  “Not quite,” he disagreed with a smile. “Close, I’ll grant you, but she could probably keep the muzzle from dragging if she carried it in a shoulder holster instead of on her belt.”

  “Very funny.” Marjorie’s tone was deflating, but the corners of her own mouth twitched in an unwilling half-smile.

  “Look,” Richard said, “this isn’t my area of expertise, so I’m sort of having to take Scott’s word for it. He says one of the friends he mentioned to us—Frank Lethbridge—is a Forestry Service and law enforcement-certified firearms instructor. He says Lethbridge has already volunteered to teach her, and as Scott points out, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to be making friends—gathering allies, if you like—in the Forestry Service. Lethbridge’s willing to train you and me, too, and he’s talking about rifles all around, as well as handguns if we want to learn those, as well. As far as a handgun for Steph is concerned, Scott says Lethbridge would probably be the best person to ask for recommendations. He says Lethbridge is a pretty good gunsmith, too. Apparently he’s the one who customized Scott’s own pistol for him.”

  “I don’t know,” Marjorie repeated. “I mean, it all sounds perfectly logical, but . . . she’s my little girl!” She looked at Stephanie again. “Sorry, honey, but there it is. You are my little girl. I know you’re growing up fast, but there’s still a part of me that worries about you. And something like this—”