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  A vibrating hum startled him. Then something sprang into existence beyond the two-leg's hand, projecting out of the oddly shaped tool he held. Whatever it was, it sliced through the heavy branch as though passing through empty air. In seconds, a limb nearly as thick as Swift Striker's whole body and three times longer was reduced to kindling. Swift Striker's whiskers twitched and trembled in excitement. He wanted to look at the marvelous tool, yet feared that without knowing how to properly use it, he would do himself a grievous injury. His own flint knife felt clumsy and ridiculous by comparison. The People must learn more of the two-legs!

  Once the cut-up branch was blazing brightly, the two-leg did something that caused the tool's hum to stop and replaced the marvelous knife-tool in some kind of holder at his hip. The fire crackled invitingly and the two-leg hunched closer to its blazing heat. He closed his eyes, huddling as close as he could get without igniting his curly red head fur, then lay still for long minutes. Swift Striker fed the fire with more of the big branch, running his true-hands over the perfectly smooth, flat edges, and wondered what other marvels the two-legs possessed. Slowly, the two-leg's dripping hair and skin dried in the warmth of the hot fire. His body coverings remained wet, but they had ceased to drip, now, and the front of his chest-covering was beginning to show dry in patches, as well.

  When, eventually, the wood ran out and the fire began to die back, the two-leg stirred, opening his eyes once more. Fingers capable of such enormous power touched Swift Striker's fur, trembling and weak as a newborn kitten. Water spilled from the bright blue eyes and dripped down gold-speckled cheeks and his breaths shortened as his emotional distress deepened, coming in short, ragged gasps. The agony of fear and loneliness in his two-leg's mind was unbearable.

  Swift Striker huddled close again, wrapping his tail around the two-leg's arm, stroking his head against the two-leg's cheek, focusing all his own energy on quieting the deep currents of fear and despair he could taste so strongly in the two-leg's broken mind. It seemed to help. His breaths deepened and water ceased to flow from his eyes. A few soft mouth noises came, gusting across Swift Striker's fur with his breath, then his two-leg struggled to sit up. Swift Striker crooned and pushed gently against his two-leg's shoulder, lending what little strength he could. His two-leg sat panting for a moment, then touched Swift Striker's fur and stroked gently down his back once again. He arched and purred ecstatically, reveling in the caress, so unlike anything he'd ever experienced.

  His two-leg made low mouth noises, then pointed away under the trees, down river. The gesture was unmistakable. His two-leg wanted to go down the riverbank, for some unknown but imperative reason. The urgency Swift Striker felt from his mind glow was a bright furnace, impossible to ignore. There was something in that direction which his two-leg needed, desperately. And his two-leg was peering through the brush, as well, clearly hunting for something closer at hand. Swift Striker sat up on his rear-most limbs, looking—had he known—something like a Terran ferret with one pair too many feet and a head far more feline than weaselish. Swift Striker peered intently into the deep shadows beneath the trees and spotted what his two-leg must be searching for. A heavy-looking sack of some not-leather substance lay at the foot of a tree. A long, tube-like, not-wood rod, thicker than the pole he'd used for fishing, leaned against the tree trunk beside it.

  Swift Striker had never seen one of the thunder-bark tools, but Song Crooner had sung the oldest of the memory songs, from Blue Mountain Dancing Clan and Fire Runs Fast Clan, which showed clear images of such tools being used to kill a charging death fang when the two-legs had first been sighted in the world. Clearly, this was what his two-leg searched for. Swift Striker bleeked excitedly and pointed toward the alien tools. The two-leg's lips quivered upward again and a wave of pleasure rolled across him, leaving Swift Striker burbling with happiness. His two-leg crawled toward the tools, moving with pained shakiness, and finally gained the tree where he'd left them. He ignored the long tube and dug into the not-leather sack, instead, bringing out another oddly shaped tool whose function Swift Striker could not fathom.

  His two-leg made mouth noises at it, then fell silent. The tool sputtered strangely—then two-leg voices came from inside it! Swift Striker uttered a sharp sound of amazement and crept forward, staring. The tool spoke again, with a voice that was clearly a two-leg, yet Swift Striker knew that no two-leg could possibly fit inside that tiny little box, nor could he taste the mind glow or catch the scent of another two-leg anywhere nearby.

  His own two-leg made the pleasure grimace at him, then made more mouth noises into the tool. But his two-leg's glow of pleasure was short-lived. Swift Striker felt a rising tide of worry from him as the tool spoke again and his two-leg listened in growing agitation. Then he peered toward the sky, clearly trying to see upward through the trees. Swift Striker could taste his frustration and sense of helplessness as he sat huddled at the base of the tree, listening to the bodiless voice from the tool. What could his two-leg want to see in the sky? Swift Striker scented the wind for clues. He could smell nothing out of the ordinary, although the wind was heavy with the scent of approaching rain.

  –Rain?

  "Bleek!"

  Swift Striker swarmed up the tree trunk, racing through the tangle of branches until he clung to the thin twigs at the very canopy of the forest. Wind fingers ruffled through his fur as he peered up toward the distant mountain peaks. Dark storm clouds gathered on the mountain above them, thick with the promise of driving rain and lightning. Such storms were so common in the spring season, Swift Striker hadn't really paid much attention to the signs of the coming deluge. He didn't have far to travel to his clan's central nesting place, after all, and could easily outrun any storm to reach the snug, woven shelter waiting for him.

  But his wounded two-leg could barely sit up, unaided.

  The coming storm would slash down across them with unbridled fury. Nor was there any shelter his two-leg could reach that would protect him from the coming wind and rain and—if he tasted the scent of that wind right—hailstones, as well. Swift Striker had no idea how the two-leg had known the storm was coming, but clearly he had, or at least, the two-leg voice from the tool had known, for the voice had spoken and his own two-leg had tried to see the sky, worry suddenly thick in his mind glow. And he was right to worry, Swift Striker realized bleakly, watching the clouds boil down from the mountain peaks. There was no guessing how far away the nearest two-legs must be, so Swift Striker couldn't even begin to guess how soon others of his kind might be able to rescue him. It couldn't be soon enough, not even if they came in one of the flying tools like the one that had carried away the injured Climbs Quickly and his youngling—

  Flying tools!

  Of course! Swift Striker's two-leg must have used one to come this far from the nearest two-leg nesting places. That meant he must have left it somewhere close by. If his two-leg could reach it before the storm broke, it would provide shelter from the slashing hail storm on its way down the mountainside. From his vantage at the top of the trees, Swift Striker scanned the forest canopy, wondering where the two-leg might have left his machine. He knew what two-leg flying machines looked like, from the Bright Water Clan memory songs and those of clans which lived closer to two-leg habitations. And his two-leg had pointed down river, wanting to go that direction.

  The wind was whipping through the treetops, swinging his perch in dizzy arcs, when Swift Striker finally spotted the clearing at the river's bend. Floods from melting snow had come roaring down the riverbed earlier in the season, smashing into that bend and gouging out whole trees. He had seen it happen before, other spring seasons, both here and along other twists of the river where it raged and tore its way down the mountainside. There was a flat, treeless stretch of ground there, more than large enough to hold a two-leg flying machine. And when the wind whipped the trees in just the right direction, Swift Striker saw a flash of alien, bright color, yellow as the sun, shiny and strange, and quite large enough to be a
curved section of his two-leg's flying tool. Feeling a sense of triumph the circumstances probably didn't warrant, Swift Striker scrambled for safer footing in the lower branches, where the rising wind didn't reach with quite so fierce a strength, and raced for the ground and his injured friend.

  " . . . no way we can get an air car up there in time, Scott," Gifford Bede's voice broke the bad news from Scott's backup com-link unit. "That's a force-two thunderstorm brewing up there. Even if we set out now, that storm would drive us back to town inside thirty minutes. It's going to break over you in about ten. Can you get to your air car?"

  "Yeah, sure," he lied, knowing he couldn't possibly crawl over terrain that rough in only ten minutes. It had taken him more than twice that long just to crawl a few meters out of the river. One glance at the chronometer in his backup com unit told him more than thirty minutes had passed since he'd landed that huge fish, so he'd been out cold for nearly ten minutes with his face suspended in his little friend's net. If he hadn't fallen with his arms and torso draped over a boulder, keeping much of his body mass out of the icy water, hypothermia would've killed him, making it physically impossible for him to crawl to relative safety on the riverbank. And now Scott had only ten minutes in which to drag his battered self several dozen meters down a forested, boulder-strewn riverbank to the safety of his air car before a force-two Sphinxian thunderstorm burst over him.

  The treecat listened to his exchange with Gifford Bede, then uttered a curiously sharp, "Bleek!" and took off straight up the tree trunk at top speed. It vanished into the branches, a cream-and-grey blur streaking toward the treetops. A stab of abandonment crushed through Scott, watching the treecat leave. He leaned against the picket wood's rough-barked trunk and bit his lower lip and wondered what the hell to do next. He needed to fashion a walking stick of some kind, because he needed to make better time than he could simply crawling all the way to the air car from here, and he needed to wrap his throbbing ankle to brace the sprain under his flexible boot, and if he sat here much longer, that storm was going to come howling down across him like a shrieking banshee and God alone knew if he'd survive, exposed to the wind, the rain, and the hail.

  "Keep talking to me, Giff," Scott said in a choked voice. "I'm all by myself out here."

  "Roger. Hang on, Scott. Just get to your air car and you'll make it through fine. What's the rest of you look like?"

  He explained the wrenched ankle and the need for a splint and walking stick.

  "Okay, Scott, we'll talk you through this. You've got a vibro-knife with you, right?"

  "Yes, I do. I . . ." He hesitated, looking across to the dying fire. "I used it to cut up a big limb the treecat hacked out of the picket wood I'm under."

  The backup com unit crackled with silence for a long moment. "Come again, Scott? Did you say treecat?" He could hear the uncertainty in Giff's voice, even through the storm static which interfered with his com unit's signal to the orbital communications system it accessed. At this juncture, it had been only a couple of T-months since little Stephanie Harrington had first been adopted by a treecat and any human contact with the native sentients of Sphinx sent ripples of shock, excitement, and uncertainty through the planet's newest sentients.

  "The treecat," he said slowly. "There's a treecat with me. Or there was. He just ran up the picket wood I'm leaning against and disappeared. He was with me out in the river when I woke up." Scott found it surprisingly difficult to say the words, because the implications, the depth of concern shown by one sentient race for another impacted him so deeply and closed up his throat. "He dragged a net around my head. Pulled my face up out of the water, looped the damned net over a tree limb. Kept me from drowning while I was unconscious. And when I dragged myself out of the river, he used some kind of stone tool to chop deadwood out of this big picket wood I'm under, then he started a fire going, I watched him use a flint to strike the sparks with."

  "Good God!" Gifford Bede's disembodied voice echoed the same naked shock Scott still felt, having witnessed the astonishing things his little arboreal friend had done on his behalf. "You said the treecat's been with you since you woke up?"

  "Yeah."

  "And he wasn't there before you fell and struck your head?"

  "No. At least, not where I could see him, because I've been looking for signs of treecats all day. When I woke up, I was sprawled across a boulder with my face hanging in a net. And he'd cut off part of my sleeve, wrapped compresses around the gashes in my skull. Kept me from bleeding to death, probably."

  A rustle overhead drew Scott's attention. He gripped his backup com tighter and started to reach for his rifle. Then hope and a pleasure so intense it astonished him surged as a familiar cream-and-grey shape hurtled down through the branches. The treecat swarmed down the picket wood trunk and dropped lightly beside him. It rested one hand against his and lifted another to point urgently downriver.

  "Bleek!"

  "Scott?" The com crackled with wild static interference from the descending storm. "What was that sound?"

  "It's the treecat," Scott whispered, awestruck. "He's come back. And he's pointing toward my air car. My God, I think he climbed the tree and saw it!"

  "Well, if he's telling you to shag your butt out of there, you'd better pay attention. That storm is a mean monster and it's on collision course with your transponder. We're picking up high winds and big hailstones and more lightning than you'll ever want to meet up close and personal."

  Given the amount of static shrieking through the com unit's pickup, that didn't come as a surprise. "Roger. I'll do my best, Giff."

  "Okay. First, wrap up that ankle, splint it with anything you've got."

  Scott rummaged through his haversack, pulling out plastiglass-filament tape and several sections of disassembled fishing rod, the spare he always carried. With his head swimming from the pain in his skull, Scott dragged his knee up until he could reach the throbbing ankle, then tried to hold the fishing-rod sections in place and wrap the plastiglass-filament tape around them. He quickly discovered he needed about four more hands than he currently possessed—and the only ones he had were shaking so violently, they were nearly useless. The treecat tipped his head to one side, ears pricked forward, studying the stiff pieces of fiberglass rod that kept toppling over, then bleeked softly.

  With deft, three-fingered hands and strong, opposable thumbs, the treecat snatched up the disassembled sections and held them firmly against Scott's ankle, using all four of his upper limbs to hold them in place. Sudden salt stung Scott's eyelids. "Thanks, little buddy," he mumbled, pulling a length of tape loose and winding it around his ankle with shaking hands.

  "What's the treecat doing?" Giff asked urgently. Scott knew Gifford Bede would be recording every second of their exchange, now that he knew treecats were involved—just in case Scott didn't make it back to give the xenologists a report.

  "He's—"

  Scott closed his mouth before he could say, He's holding the pieces of my spare fishing rod against my ankle so I can tape them down. Scott's sixth sense had just kicked in with as big a warning as he'd ever received from his hindbrain. That profoundly intelligent, life-saving bit of assistance, figured out in a flash of problem-solving intuition, so similar to the treecat's solution to prevent him from drowning, gave Scott a great deal of insight into treecat intelligence. You might use flint tools, little friend, but there's nothing primitive about your level of sapience. Stephanie Harrington was right about that, and maybe there's a lot she's not saying, if half of what I'm picking up from you is accurate. The xenologists haven't got a clue, have they? This is data they haven't got, nothing like it, in fact. And maybe little Stephanie's got the right of it, keeping her mouth shut when those xenologists start poking at her. You're smart and you care—and how many of us humans would take advantage of the fact that your technology consists of stone knives and fire flints? Well, if Scott got himself out of this mess, nobody would find out from him just how clever this treecat was. Better they erre
d on the side of caution, unsure what treecats could or couldn't do, than take advantage of them the way humanity had taken advantage of almost every other sentient aboriginal population they'd ever come across, just because they knew they could.

  But that didn't stop Scott from wanting to learn everything he could about this particular treecat. A few well-informed, close-mouthed humans could do the treecats more political, sociological, and legal good than entire bureaus of well-meaning xenologists. Stephanie Harrington was only eleven. Scott MacDallan was a grown man and a respected professional in the far-flung community he served as physician. He could do a great deal, protecting this treecat and the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of others. If he survived long enough to try. God, how much more could I learn about you, what kinds of things could I accomplish, protecting you and your kind, if I had the chance?

  Scott wanted that chance, wanted it badly.

  By the time he'd wrapped enough tape to stiffen his ankle, the blaze of late afternoon sunlight had vanished into an ominous, lowering darkness. Wind whistled and shrieked through the treetops and the smell of ozone and rain lay thick on the air.

  "Gotta get downriver," he mumbled to himself. "Have to get to the air car."

  "Scott?" Gifford Bede's voice was breaking up in the crackle coming from the comlink.

  "Yeah?" He strained to hear through the interference.

  " . . . tape around your ankle?"

  "Yes, I've got it splinted."

  " . . . stick . . ."

  "You're breaking up," Scott said, feeling tendrils of fear stir again as he glanced involuntarily skyward. "Say again?"

  " . . . walking stick . . ."

  "Roger that, I'll try and cut a walking stick, Giff. Something sturdy enough to lean against and hobble across the broken ground between here and my air car."