A Beautiful Friendship-ARC Read online

  “You’re probably right,” Lethbridge agreed quietly. “Damned shame, but you’re probably right.”

  “He’ll get over it,” MacDallan replied. “Or he’ll recover, at least. In fact, I think he’s doing exactly that. But even if he is, I’m pretty sure Aleksandr—and especially, Evelina—will make sure matters don’t get out of hand. Besides, I think Karl’s actually a little bit in awe of her.”

  “The girl’s a heck of a shot,” Lethbridge observed. “Smart as a whip, too. Cute, now that I think about it. And she’s almost certainly the most famous fourteen-year-old on Sphinx.” He shrugged. “What’s there to be in awe of?”

  “And Lionheart,” MacDallan said. “Don’t forget Lionheart—Karl certainly isn’t going to!”

  “Oh, I’m not forgetting him.” Lethbridge smiled at the deck railing, where Fisher and Lionheart lay comfortably asleep in the sun. Normally, Lionheart and Stephanie were inseparable. Given the sensitivity of treecat hearing, the ranger was hardly surprised the shooting range was an exception to “normally.”

  “No, I’m not forgetting Lionheart,” he said. “As near as I can tell, though, Lionheart seems to approve of young Master Karl.”

  “You’re right, there,” MacDallan agreed. “Which, to be honest, is one reason I’m not worrying the way I might where raging young hormones are concerned.”

  “Probably reasonable of you.”

  “Well, she’s scheduled to go home tomorrow afternoon,” MacDallan pointed out, listening to the steady crack of far-off pistol fire. “Should I take it you expect her to pass her qualifications shoots in the morning?”

  “Oh,” Lethbridge said, stepping up beside him and gazing off at the distant pistol range, “I think you can assume that.”

  21

  “Stephanie,” Dr. Hobbard said, “this is Dr. Tennessee Bolgeo. He holds the Kerry Gilley Distinguished Chair of Xeno-Anthropology at Liberty University in the Chattanooga System, and he’s come all the way from Chattanooga on a Paulk Grant to study the treecats. The Ministry’s asked me to extend him every courtesy, and to introduce him to you and Lionheart.”

  Stephanie looked at the man standing next to Hobbard. He was of average height, with a round face and somewhat thinning hair. He looked to be four or five T-years older than her father and had a pleasant smile and eyes which seemed to invite the rest of the world to smile with him, yet there was something about him . . .

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Bolgeo,” she said, extending her hand politely.

  “And good afternoon to you, Miss Harrington.” He actually bowed over her hand slightly, beaming at her. “And please, call me ‘Ten.’ ” His smile grew even broader. “I’ve really always thought ‘Tennessee’ was a pretty silly first name, whatever my parents may have thought, and people have been calling me that as long as I can remember.”

  “I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable doing that just yet, Dr. Bolgeo,” she said, still politely. Then she smiled herself. “Maybe later.”

  “Well, I certainly hope you’ll start feeling comfortable,” he told her. “You’ve done something quite remarkable here, you know. Another sentient species? And one so much smaller than we’ve ever encountered before!” He shook his head admiringly. “I checked the literature before I headed out here to Manticore, and as far as I can tell, you’re also the youngest person ever to discover another species of sapients. It’s going to be one for the history books, young lady. You should be very proud of your accomplishment.”

  Lionheart stirred on her shoulder, and she heard a sound from him that she’d never heard before. It was almost too low to hear—in fact, she wasn’t certain she was actually hearing it with her ears, at all—and it didn’t sound very happy to her.

  “Dr. Bolgeo comes with the highest recommendations, Stephanie,” Dr. Hobbard said. “Paulk Grants are hard to come by, and the fact that he was able to secure one this quickly is a testimony to his stature in the field.”

  There was something a bit odd about Dr. Hobbard’s tone, too, Stephanie thought.

  “Spare my blushes!” Dr. Bolgeo laughed. “Dr. Hobbard, you know as well as I do that when it comes to securing grants it’s who you know, as often as it is what you know.” He shrugged modestly. “I won’t deny it’ll be a feather in my cap at the next Chattanooga Anthropology Conference to be the only person there who’s actually met the galaxy’s newest sentient species. And I’ll admit Paulk Grants aren’t exactly a centicred-a-dozen, either. But the bottom line is that all of us are simply following in this young lady’s footsteps.”

  Stephanie smiled as politely as she could, and Dr. Bolgeo beamed at her all over again.

  “What I’d like to ask you to do, Stephanie,” Dr. Hobbard said after a moment, “is to go over firsthand for Dr. Bolgeo what you’ve already told me. He’d like to get . . . call it a general feel for the situation before he considers any fieldwork of his own.”

  “Of course, Dr. Hobbard,” Stephanie said, although if the truth were known, it was last thing she wanted to do. “Where would you like me to start?”

  * * *

  “Well, Steph, what did you think of Dr. Bolgeo?”

  “Honestly, Mom?” Stephanie looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. “I don’t think I like him very much. Neither does Lionheart. For that matter, I’m not even sure Dr. Hobbard likes him.”

  “Really?” Marjorie Harrington looked over her shoulder at her daughter, garlic press paused in midair, and quirked an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Why don’t I like him?” Stephanie asked, and shrugged when her mother nodded.

  “I can’t really say,” she said slowly. “Part of it, I think, is that he acts like somebody who thinks I’m just a kid but he’s trying to treat me like a grown-up. Or the way he thinks a kid would expect a grown-up to be treated, maybe.”

  “I hate to say it, Steph,” Marjorie said, inserting another peeled garlic clove into the press, “but you do tend to have that effect on people sometimes.”

  “Effect? What kind of ‘effect’?”

  “Well,” Marjorie squeezed the press, crushing the garlic into the salad dressing she was making, “your dad and I wouldn’t want you getting a swelled head, but some people—especially some adults—aren’t sure how to react around someone who’s both as bright and as young as you are. They try too hard, and they come off seeming, well, phony.”

  “I guess that could be part of it,” Stephanie said slowly, her gaze thoughtful as she started peeling again. Now that her mother mentioned it, she had seen adults reacting that way around her, especially since she’d met Lionheart. And it had always irritated her, too. But she hadn’t found herself actively disliking all of the others who’d done it.

  “I don’t think that’s all of it, though,” she continued out loud. “And I don’t think that would cause Lionheart to dislike him.”

  “No, but it’s possible that if you dislike him, Lionheart dislikes him,” Marjorie pointed out, measuring olive oil and vinegar into the dressing. “We still don’t really know all that much about how his empathy works. In fact, let’s be honest and admit we’re still trying to guess how his empathy works. I’m pretty sure you’re right that he can read the emotions—generally, at least—of the people he meets. On the other hand, though, I’m positive he can read your emotions. So do you think it’s possible he’s picking up on the fact that this Bolgeo makes you uncomfortable and deciding he doesn’t like Bolgeo because of that?”

  “Maybe. It’s possible, anyway,” Stephanie conceded. But she didn’t really think that was the answer, either. She thought it went deeper than that. And if she was right about Hobbard’s not liking him, that might be additional evidence. After all, Dr. Hobbard didn’t have any ‘empathic sense’ to be leading her judgment astray!

  “Well, if you don’t like him—and if Lionheart doesn’t like him either, for whatever reason—I don’t see any reason you have to have a lot to do with him,” her mother said with a shrug. “You already told him pretty much
everything you’ve told Dr. Hobbard, so unless he turns up something on his own and wants to discuss it with you, I think your father and I can be a little stingy about making your time available to him.”

  “Thanks, Mom!” Stephanie beamed appreciatively, and Marjorie shrugged.

  “Hey, it’s what parents are here for. That and reminding you to put your dirty socks in the hamper.”

  * * *

  Dr. Tennessee Bolgeo sat in his hotel room and pondered.

  The Harrington girl was smarter than he’d allowed for, and he’d already allowed for a pretty smart little cookie, considering what she’d accomplished. It was unfortunate he hadn’t had more time—or at least more information—to study before catching the liner to Manticore. Of course, he admitted philosophically, it might not have helped in the girl’s case. There was only so much one could do about people who persisted in being smarter than one found convenient. And then there was that dratted treecat.

  Still, he’d recognized this was going to be an unusually complicated assignment. The fact that it looked like being even more complicated than he’d anticipated shouldn’t come as all that great a surprise. And if it had been easy, they wouldn’t have needed him, now would they?

  He chuckled at the thought and took a sip from the glass in his hand.

  It was a good thing his patrons were well-heeled, he reflected. Producing the papers he’d needed on such short notice hadn’t been easy, and they hadn’t come cheap. Fortunately, they really were on genuine, security-validated Liberty University computer chips. In fact, that was one of the reasons they’d been so expensive, since the forger had had to steal the blank chips from the university’s offices without alerting the chip inventory system to his depredations. And the certification for his Paulk Grant was first rate, too. Even if anyone should come to suspect they might be forgeries, they ought to pass any test the authorities this far out in the Fringe could apply, and no one was likely to send all the way back to Chattanooga to check them at the source.

  And if worse came to worst, the fact that he had a second set of patrons right in this microbe-sized “Star Kingdom” should come in handy. It was amazing how a man with the right contacts—and the right experience—could find the proper support team in almost any situation.

  None of which got him any closer to solving his problems.

  He took another sip of his drink and leaned further back in his chair.

  In one way, this entire trip represented a speculative effort on the part of his immediate superior, Tamerlane Ustinov, president and CEO of Ustinov’s Exotic Pets, Inc. One wouldn’t have thought, perhaps, that the interstellar trade in pets could show enough return to send someone hustling all the way out to the boondocks this way, but it could. Oh, puppies and kittens and bunnies—or their alien equivalents—could never have paid for a trip like this, but those weren’t the kinds of pets Ustinov’s Exotics normally carried. And even if they had been, Tamerlane wouldn’t have sent his top collector after such mundane prizes. No, the people who patronized Ustinov’s Exotics wanted pets which were . . . out of the ordinary. Most of Ustinov’s customers were incredibly wealthy, people who could truly say price didn’t matter at all as long as they got what they wanted. And what they wanted were the additions to their collections which no one else—especially their equally wealthy rivals—could match. Or if someone else had beaten them to the latest “must have” pet, they had to have one, too, and as quickly as possible. There was no way to guess at this point how much those collectors would pay for something as adorably cute as that treecat of Harrington’s, especially with the persistent reports that it was intelligent, but the price tag would be literally astronomical, that much he was sure of.

  Then there were those fascinating rumors that the creatures might actually be telepathic. Bolgeo had been inclined to dismiss that particular claim as too fantastic, something obviously too good to be true. But the way that little beastie had reacted to him suggested there might really be something to it this time. And if there was, he could almost literally write his own ticket from any of half a dozen black-market genetic labs he could think of. Manpower, on Mesa, for example. They’d pay a fortune for live specimens of a possibly telepathic species! And they were only the tip of a very lucrative iceberg. In fact, he could probably clear enough for “Dr. Bolgeo” to disappear into a very well-off retirement, and all he’d have to do would be to skim a couple of dozen treecats off the top of his delivery to Ustinov’s.

  And, finally, there were those patrons of his right here in the Star Kingdom. They were a bit more problematical, he admitted. He didn’t see a good way to squeeze a lot of money out of them at this point, but he knew he could count on them to smooth his path if it became necessary. They weren’t interested in pets, or in laboratory specimens. They were interested in proving treecats weren’t really sentient at all. If they couldn’t prove that, Bolgeo never doubted that what they’d prefer as a fallback position would be another mysterious Plague . . . this time one that killed off treecats, not humans. He doubted he could provide any such epidemic, although he’d keep his eye out for possibilities. He always liked to make people happy, and once he had his own treecats safely tucked away, anything that reduced the supply his rivals might be able to tap would be all to the good. Scarcity always drove up prices. On the other hand, he thought regretfully, it wasn’t really likely he’d be able to manage anything like that. Fortunately, most of his Manticoran patrons presumably realized that, in which case they’d probably settle for the best information he could give them, instead. If he could at least confirm the treecats’ sentience for them before it became commonly known—and accepted—by everyone else, they might be able to unload their land options before the price started plummeting. They’d still lose money, but not as much.

  But the problem was how one went about acquiring specimens of a species which certainly did appear, based on Lionheart’s example, to be able to detect emotions, even if they weren’t fully telepathic. Presumably that meant they’d be able to recognize the emotions of anyone hunting for them, and they were already irritatingly small, obviously fast, and well suited to disappearing like smoke in their native environment. So how did one sneak up on an empath? And if the little beasties really were telepathic, how did one keep the creatures from calling for help if someone did manage to grab one of them? That was a particularly pressing question, given the potentially messy consequences of such a call for help. Bolgeo wasn’t certain he believed the story about them ripping a hexapuma apart. He’d checked the data on the hexapumas, and they seemed awfully formidable for something the size of a treecat to take down, even in a mass attack. But he wasn’t about to assume it wasn’t true, either. Much better to discover he’d been more cautious than he’d had to be than to do something careless and outstandingly stupid and find out he hadn’t been cautious enough.

  Especially when the consequences might be so . . . permanent.

  He had time to think about it, he decided. Time to collect more information, insert himself into the “scientific community” looking into the treecats locally. For that matter, even though no one at Liberty University had actually ever heard of him, he probably did know more about xeno-anthropology—and he for darned sure knew more about xeno-biology!—than at least half the “genuine scientists” falling over their own feet here on Sphinx. He didn’t anticipate any problem passing himself off as the xeno-anthropologist he claimed to be, and the letter from Idoya Vázquez was completely genuine. No one out here in Manticore had ever seen a real Paulk Grant, so it wasn’t too surprising the Interior Minister had accepted his credentials without question.

  That letter would open all sorts of official and semi-official doors for him—as long as he didn’t overplay the card, at least. He didn’t want to throw his weight around so much he irritated the locals into passive resistance; he’d seen that happen before, and the consequences were seldom good. It was even distinctly possible that someone who felt his toes had been stepped
on by a pushy outsider might go to the trouble—and expense—of sending a query back to the Chattanooga System for a background report on one Dr. Tennessee Bolgeo. Sending messages over that kind of distance wasn’t cheap, but it was amazing how much some people would spend if it offered the possibility of whacking somebody who’d irritated them sufficiently.

  On the other hand, even if someone sent an inquiry off today, it would take literally months to reach Chattanooga. That was one reason he’d chosen Liberty University, although the fact that it was one of the most respected and prestigious institutions in the explored galaxy had also been a factor. And so had the fact that it was so big, had so many satellite campuses scattered about the Solarian League. With a faculty that large, someone like Dr. Hobbard probably wouldn’t be all that surprised they’d never heard of some of its professors, no matter how good a reputation they had in the field. Like the aforementioned Dr. Tennessee Bolgeo. Of course the university knew who was on its faculty, and it would be astounded to learn it had a professor of that name. So it was, perhaps, fortunate all round that he’d have time to complete his operation here and depart, treecats in hand (figuratively speaking, at least; he wasn’t going to actually risk his hand anywhere near something with those teeth and claws), long before any embarrassing responses from Chattanooga could reach the Star Kingdom.

  Assuming he could get around that entire empathy angle somehow.

  He hummed tunelessly, tapping one index finger against the rim of his glass while his agile brain revolved possibilities.

  It all came down to range, he thought. How close could he get before they detected him? And, conversely, how far away could he be and successfully take one of them alive? But how did one go about determining the range of an invisible sense of a previously completely unknown species without already having one for examination and experimentation?

  Indirection, he decided. He needed an indirect way to evaluate the treecats’ range. Now how . . . ?