Fire Season Read online

  Climbs Quickly cautioned.

  Much of this conversation was augmented with a flow of images. There was no chance that Left-Striped would mistake which specific two-leg Climbs Quickly referred to. The names were accompanied by mental images: sharp in the case of Darkness Foe and Speaks Falsely, both of whom Climbs Quickly had met personally, less sharp in the case of those he had only heard about from another treecat. The People could lie—however, when they did, it was usually by leaving out some important piece of information, as Sings Truly had done when encouraging the Bright Water Clan to come to the rescue of Climbs Quickly and a “youngling.”

  said Left-Striped,

  Considering what he had seen Death Fang’s Bane do, such as her venture in the pilot’s seat of the air car earlier that day, Climbs Quickly could only agree.

  Left-Striped went on.

  A good question, Climbs Quickly thought to himself. But one for which I do not yet have an answer.

  * * *

  Stephanie was worried that her dad would ask all sorts of awkward questions regarding how she and Karl had come up with two more treecats, but whatever Karl had said over his uni-link had apparently left Richard Harrington with the impression that they had been working the fringes of a fire with the SFS and that the treecats had been handed over to them.

  “Have I ever messed up the air car,” Karl said, ruefully surveying the array of scratches and smoke stains while the vet examined his two newest patients where they huddled in the backseat.

  Richard Harrington pulled out a spray applicator and gave each treecat a light sedative. “This will let us move them without stressing them further.”

  “Help yourself to the supplies I keep in the hangar,” he went on. “You won’t be able to get the smell of smoke out of the upholstery, but this should go a long way toward your keeping your use-privileges. I’ve found a buffing compound that does wonders with scratches.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Richard. I was wondering what my folks would say. Do you need help moving the ’cats?”

  “No, I can handle them. Once I get them out, you can take the ’car directly over to the hangar.”

  Of average height, but strong enough to carry his heaviest gear without assistance even under the pull of in Sphinx’s 1.35 g, Dad easily lifted the two stranger treecats. Stephanie bent to give Lionheart a ride.

  Without turning, Dad said, “Let him walk, Steph. It won’t hurt him to work off some of what I’ve seen him devouring at the table. In any case, how many times do I have to tell you that you may be strong, but your skeleton is still pliable. Hauling that treecat around could give you curvature of the spine.”

  “But, Dad, I used to carry him all the time.”

  “That was before Scott gave you your last physical, young lady. Consider the facts. You are a hundred and thirty-five centimeters tall. Lionheart is sixty-five centimeters through the body. His tail adds another sixty-five centimeters, so he’s one hundred and thirty centimeters long—only five centimeters shorter than you are.”

  Stephanie knew that was true. When Lionheart stretched out next to her in bed, he was just about as long as her. Still, she wasn’t going to give up without trying at least a little more. Motioning for Lionheart to come along, she followed her dad toward his in-house clinic.

  “He’s not as heavy as I am, though.”

  “No, he’s not, but when you consider that a poorly balanced backpack or even a large purse can contribute to scoliosis, you surely can see my point. Scott MacDallan may carry Fisher half-perched on one shoulder, but Scott’s a grown man. When you’re an adult, you can make your own choices, but for now, you—and your skeletal structure and soft tissues—are my responsibility, got it?”

  “Got it,” Stephanie sighed.

  I can handle being short, Stephanie thought, as long as one of these days I get around to having a figure. Mom’s built okay. She keeps telling me she was a late developer, but what if I got the Harrington genes for figure and the Quintrell genes for height?

  The thoughts, a constant source of minor worry as her fifteenth birthday drew closer, ran like background music through her mind as Stephanie hurried after her father.

  In the clinic, Stephanie assisted her father as he cleaned up the two treecats and treated their surface injuries. One good thing about having a resident treecat was that Richard Harrington had a good idea of what medications would work and which would not.

  The smoke inhalation was more of a problem, since Dad didn’t like the idea of forcing a breathing mask over the treecats’ heads.

  “They’re tense enough without scaring them with that, but from the wheezing in their chests, they took some damage. I’d hate for them to get pneumonia.”

  Lionheart had been standing by making reassuring croons and bleeks when the stranger treecats—especially the one that had been more severely injured—bristled at being handled. Even though the burn medication was applied with a light spray, the treecat clearly hadn’t liked it and had hissed back at the applicator.

  Maybe he thinks the applicator was threatening at him, Stephanie thought, and wished, not for the first time, that she could ask Lionheart a question more complex than “Want some celery?” (the answer to that was always enthusiastic agreement) or “Want to come with me?” (This also almost always met with agreement, although with varying degrees of enthusiasm.)

  Now, remembering how Karl had reported that Lionheart had brought him his respirator when the air car had filled with smoke, she had a sudden idea.

  “Dad. Lionheart was in the smoke, too, though not for as long. Do you think he could use a dose from the inhaler? Maybe if he used it, he could somehow let the others know it won’t hurt them.”

  Richard Harrington had long gotten past the days when he underestimated Lionheart. He looked thoughtful, then nodded. “You show him what we want.”

  Stephanie did so, miming using the inhaler on herself, then holding the inhaler to Lionheart’s mouth. He sniffed it carefully, then sighed gustily and opened his mouth. This revealed a remarkable array of very sharp teeth, but Stephanie trusted him not to bite her. The procedure completed, she held up the inhaler, then pointed it at the other two treecats.

  “They need this, too,” she said. “Can you explain?”

  Lionheart bleeked and directed his attention at the other ’cats. Whatever he said also involved a great deal of wheezing and deep breathing, but in the end, the two treecats submitted to one deep breath each.

  “Very good!” Dad said after they had finished with the breathing treatments. He leaned forward and took a closer look at the two treecats’ coats, focusing particularly on their tabby-gray sections. “This is interesting. I think we have a pair of mirror twins here.”

  “Mirror twins?” Stephanie asked. The term sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

  “Fraternal twins,” Dad clarified, “but ones that have markings that match each other like reflections in a mirror. In humans, this would mean that one twin would be right-handed while the other was left-handed. Things like that. Look how the stripes and other markings on these two work. Our injured friend’s larger stripes all go right. The other one’s are a perfect ma
tch, but oriented to the left.”

  Now that the two treecats were cleaned up and brushed, Stephanie could see what her father meant. To a nonspecialist, all male treecats looked pretty much alike. Their upper coats were striped in shades of gray, while their stomachs were a contrasting cream. Female treecats (not that most humans got a glimpse of these, since they were less adventurous than the males) were dappled brown and white, rather like a Terran fawn. However, when you spent enough time with treecats, you learned there was a fair amount of variety within individual tabby patterns.

  “Well,” Richard Harrington continued, “that will make naming them for my records easier: Right-Striped and Left-Striped. I wonder how usual mirror twins are among treecats. You said you’ve seen litters of kittens, but do treecats often have identical twins?”

  “I haven’t,” Stephanie said, rolling her eyes, “been able to ask them. Is the one who got worst burnt—Right-Striped—going to be okay?”

  “I think so. In an ideal universe, I’d keep him in bed for a day while the skin healed, but in this case I think the best we can do is take him and his brother out to the gazebo. You still have a hammock rigged for Lionheart there?”

  “A couple. He likes taking advantage of sun or shade, depending on the weather.”

  “Good. We’ll put them out there and invite them to stay by bribing them with fresh food and water. Let’s add some celery for good measure—that always seems to work with Lionheart.”

  From past experience, Stephanie knew that most treecats reacted to celery like a Terran cat did to catnip. This was really weird, since, although technically omnivores, the ’cats seemed to lean to the carnivorous side. It also meant that their teeth weren’t really well equipped for eating the stuff and they tended to make a horrible mess.

  “I’ve commed your mother,” Dad went on as he scooped up first Left-Striped, then Right-Striped, “and she knows we have guests. She’s bringing her car in on the side furthest from the gazebo so she doesn’t startle them. Ask Karl if he wants to stay for dinner.”

  Karl did and was easily convinced to stay overnight as well, since he and Stephanie both had been asked by the SFS if they’d help with fire clean-up, and the Harrington freehold was a great deal closer than his own family home.

  That evening, Karl showed Stephanie some images he’d taken of her going into the fire. By necessity, the pictures were wobbly and choppy, since he’d had to leave his uni-link balanced on the dashboard while he concentrated on keeping the vehicle steady. Even so, it was impressive. Stephanie hadn’t realized just how close the flames had been or how badly burnt she would have been without her fire-suit. A couple of times, even knowing that everything had worked out in the end, she found herself distinctly scared.

  Still, she knew that if circumstances demanded, she’d do it again.

  * * *

  Sphinx! Anders Whittaker felt delight shiver through him as the shuttle touched down, followed some moments later by a not unexpected heaviness as the planet’s higher gravity took effect. He switched on his belt-mounted counter-grav unit, already adjusted to compensate, and felt his weight return to normal.

  It shouldn’t be so easy, Anders thought, to adapt to an alien planet.

  Of course, it really hadn’t been easy. The counter-grav unit could compensate for weight, but lightening a person didn’t do anything to help the lungs deal with the denser atmosphere’s concentrations of gases. For that he’d needed nano-tech treatments. Then there had been all the immunizations, not just against the plague, which had wiped out so many of the original settlers, but against anything else his parents could think of.

  I bet I could swim in raw sewage and come out without the least trace of infection.

  He grinned at the image, thinking how horrified his mother would be. She’d been worried about him accompanying his father to Sphinx on this research expedition. However, she hadn’t been able to deny that it made more sense for Anders to spend the time in his father’s company. She’d just been named to a post as a cabinet minister of the newly elected president of Urako. She’d been busy before, as Counselor Whittaker, senior representative for one of the highest population zones on the planet. As Cabinet Minister Whittaker, she was going to be nearly unreachable for the next six T-months.

  In light of his wife’s appointment, the timing for Dr. Whittaker’s trip to Sphinx hadn’t exactly been the best. However, although Bradford A. Whittaker could be called many things, “professionally uninvolved” would never be one. A rising light in the field of xenoanthropology, he’d long griped that his career had been held back by the lack of a new intelligent alien species to study.

  When the earliest reports of the Sphinxian treecats had come to his attention, Dr. Whittaker had seen the opening for which he had longed. He had all but memorized every word of every press release, every report. He’d begun immediate correspondence with Dr. Sanura Hobbard, Chairwoman of the Anthropology Department, Landing University, on Manticore, the official head of official Crown inquiry into treecat intelligence. He’d fumed that his own responsibilities as a faculty member of Urako University on the planet Urako in the Kenichi System didn’t let him take ship right away—this despite the fact that the Sphinxian Forestry Service wasn’t allowing anyone much access to the treecats.

  Anders had been infected by his father’s fascination. Like Dr. Whittaker, he agreed that treecats just had to be intelligent, maybe not humanly intelligent, but no one was certain where they would fit on the sentience scale. Human exploration had turned up too few other intelligent species—and in at least one case, the species had been wiped out before it could become inconvenient. Long before there had ever been a chance to go to Sphinx, Anders had become an advocate for treecats’ rights.

  Then had come the fiasco with “Doctor” Tennessee Bolgeo, ostensibly of Liberty University in the distant Chattanooga System. Not many people knew what had happened, but enough had leaked out—especially within xenoanthropological circles—to create a scandal. In response, the Star Kingdom had decided that the best damage control would involve two steps.

  First, they changed their policy of permitting relatively free access to the treecats. Second, they decided to bring in an officially sanctioned off-planet xenoanthropological team. Needless to say, Dr. Whittaker had immediately applied for this newly created Crown consultancy.

  It was a long shot. There were many other xenoanthropologists with more seniority—and with a better chance at landing additional grants that would assure detailed investigations. However, Anders was certain that no other applicant had more passion than his dad.

  So had begun several T-months of pure agony.

  Between Dr. Whittaker waiting to hear if he had been selected for the Sphinx project and Counselor Whittaker waiting to hear if soon she would be Cabinet Minister Whittaker, the tension in their household had been thick enough to cut into bricks.

  Very much the son of a politician and the son of an anthropologist, Anders had weathered the situation with skill. From the politician side, he’d learned to say the right things and not commit himself to any course too soon. From the anthropologist side, he’d learned to step back and observe, weighing the data with as little added emotion as possible.

  So it was that Anders was more prepared than either of his parents when—miracle of miracles—both of them had found themselves with fascinating new professional opportunities and the topic of “What do we do with Anders?” had arisen.

  Anders knew his mother would want him to stay on Urako. He loved his mom, but he also knew how much time he’d spend alone—and that much of the time he’d spend with his mother would be within the context of official functions. Compared to the lure of treecats and a chance to live on a barely settled alien world within the fascinating Star Kingdom of Manticore, well, even regular dinners with the president of Urako and all the perqs that came with high public office held no attraction.

  Bradford Whittaker wasn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy parent—there was
too much of the anthropologist in him for that. But he did believe in exposing his son to every possible experience, and he’d already taken Anders with him on trips to anthropological sites both on planet and in a few nearby systems. Given all of this, it wasn’t hard to convince the new cabinet minister that her son would be better off accompanying his father. What had surprised Anders was how enthusiastic Dr. Whittaker had been about taking Anders with him.

  “Anders is interested in treecats,” he’d said. “I’m certain he’ll be a real asset to the team.”

  Anders had glowed like a sun going nova. It wasn’t often his father approved of him within the context of the anthropology that was his first love. Even Mom had been won over.

  “But you’ll write me every week,” she’d fussed as she’d helped Anders to pack. “And I’ll write, too. Send lots of pictures and make certain you don’t fall behind on your studies. University may seem impossibly far off to you, but you’re nearly sixteen and entrance exams will be on you before you realize it.”

  There was a lot more of this. Anders let it flow over him. He knew it was just his mom making sure he knew he was important to her. He’d let her pack him extra socks and underwear without protest. On some atavistic maternal level Mom seemed convinced that a relatively newly settled planet like Sphinx would lack such basic items.

  Unspoken was her concern that Dr. Whittaker would forget such things as clean underwear and regular meals once he was within reach of his new test subjects. He’d always been a bit obsessive. Now, with his entire professional reputation resting on this trip (as he repeatedly stated), Dr. Whittaker had taken to addressing his son as if he was simply an unusually young graduate assistant.

  In many ways, this suited Anders just fine. It beat being “the kid.” Since the field season was going to be a long one, several members of the crew had brought family members. However, Anders was the only one who wasn’t another adult.