Laughs Brightly broke off, and Sharp Nose's eyes narrowed as he caught the fringes of what his brother had left unsaid.
Laughs Brightly said more briskly.
* * *
Honor wasn't sure what had drawn her attention to the treecats initially.
Their cream and gray coats provided excellent natural camouflage, and like all of their species, this pair was capable of holding still with the absolute, motionless patience of a predator. She'd considered addressing them as a matter of courtesy, after she'd noticed them watching her. There were those—including many people born right here on Sphinx, who should have known better—who continued to doubt the level of treecat intelligence, but Honor wasn't one of them. She'd read Stephanie Harrington's journal, and the diaries of a dozen other Harringtons who'd been adopted over the last three T-centuries. There was no question in her mind that 'cats were at least as smart as, if not smarter than, the majority of humans she'd ever met. At least some of them clearly understood Standard English far better than most people believed, and as far as she was concerned, that was the crowning proof of their intelligence. Stephanie Harrington's journal had made it clear how frustrating she and Lionheart had both found their inability to communicate fully, and Stephanie's hypothesis—that the 'cats had to be functional telepaths among their own kind—only made the fact that they had ultimately made the leap to comprehending a spoken language even more impressive.
But she couldn't be certain these two would have understood her, and they'd kept their distance, which meant they might have considered it rudeness, not courtesy, if she'd intruded upon them. Besides, these were their woods even more than they were hers. The Harrington Freehold was one of the minority of original freeholds which had been maintained completely intact, passed from generation to generation without a break ever since it was first granted to Richard and Marjorie Harrington all those T-years ago, but the ‘cats had been here even before them. If they were gracious enough to share with the Harringtons, then they had every right to be the ones who initiated any contact.
There'd been a few times, especially when she'd been younger, when Honor had rather wistfully considered the possibility that she might be adopted by one of them. No one knew exactly what drew a 'cat to a human—or to a particular human—although more members of Honor's family had been adopted than of any other family on Sphinx. Whatever it was, though, humans didn't choose ‘cats; ‘cats chose them, and their standards were obviously picky.
The truth was that Honor had been surprised that any treecats ever bonded with humans when she'd discovered how long the 'cats lived in the wild. Humans had been slow to realize a treecat could reach well over a hundred and fifty T-years, and none of them had realized at first that bonded treecats virtually never survived their human partners' deaths. The thought of all the 'cats who had chosen humans, even after they knew how short-lived those humans were, how much of their own lives they would sacrifice, still brought tears to her eyes, and she wondered what could possibly have been strong enough to lead them to it.
At least prolong's changing that at last, she thought now. I wonder if the 'cats have realized it, though? Daddy's only first-generation prolong, after all; have enough of us lived long enough for them even to notice the difference? Have they figured out that now the humans are going to be outliving them, instead? And if they have, how will that change their attitude towards adopting?
She didn't have the least idea how to answer those questions, and they didn't much matter in her case, anyway. She'd had more contact with them than the vast majority of humans could ever hope to, and none of them had chosen her. They obviously liked her, and she could pick out at least a dozen of them—especially the ones who had gone hang-gliding with her—from their relatives, yet none of them had ever looked into her eyes the way Lionheart had looked into Stephanie's.
Just as well, she told herself now, standing still and watching the treecats flow away through the trees. Treecats belong here, on Sphinx. It wouldn't be fair to take one of them off world, and I don't know if one of them could even stand being separated from all the rest of his clan for T-years on end. Even if he could, how could I justify asking him to, anyway? Besides, if there's one thing guaranteed to screw up my plans, it would be a treecat!
The Navy's official policy ever since Queen Adrienne had been that humans who were adopted by treecats were allowed to take those treecats with them aboard ship and at their duty stations. But Honor suspected the Navy was probably less than delighted at the prospect of dealing with a bonded pair, whatever the Regulations might say, which was an excellent reason for someone hoping for an appointment to the Academy not to add that to her baggage. It would be harder for the daughter of a yeoman to secure one of the precious appointments, anyway, although being the daughter of a yeoman named Commander Alfred Harrington probably wouldn't hurt. It might not help enough to get a treecat past the selection board, though, whatever official policy might be. Besides, she knew the Navy's practice where adoptions were concerned was to direct the human partner's career track into one which would keep her and her companion right here in the Manticore Binary System, on one of the space stations or on dirtside duty, where they could return readily to Sphinx at need. That might not be what the Regs stipulated, but that didn't change the policy. Nor should it, really. Honor might long for the Navy, but she was Sphinxian to the bone and she was a Harrington. The drive to protect treecats was in her DNA, so how could she possibly object to a policy that kept them safe and close to home, where they belonged?
Still, the discovery of that policy was the reason she'd abandoned any thought of 'cat adoption by the time she was eleven. Even if the opportunity had offered, she would have had to refuse it if she ever hoped to command one of His Majesty's starships and deploy to the distant stars she longed to see. The odds were monumentally against her ever securing that sort of command even without the encumberance of a 'cat, and she knew it, because there weren't that many commands to go around and the families with influence tended to monopolize the best ones. But if she was going to dream of a Navy career, she might as well dream of the one for which she truly hungered.
She waited until the last flicker of moving 'cat had vanished into the gentle stir of breeze-touched leaves, then drew a deep breath. The cool mist of Jessica Falls drifted to her under the trees, caressing her cheek almost like a farewell from the treecats, and she felt it in her lungs like some cleansing elixir. She stood a moment longer, gazing up at the falls' plunge down the ninety-meter cliff, letting the unending, rumbling thunder and the splash and gurgle of the rapids soak into her bones, then turned and headed downstream for the near-beaver dam and the mountain tulips she'd come to collect.
* * *
Sharp Nose remarked as he and Climbs Quickly scampered through the net-wood,
Laughs Brightly replied. He paused, gazing down at the wide rings radiating across the still surface of the lake builders' water where one of the striped swimmers had risen to capture an incautious small flyer.
Sharp Nose agreed, and then felt a quick flicker of embarrassment as he tasted Laughs Brightly's silent chuckle. He hadn't meant to sound like a clan elder tutoring some newly weaned kitten!
Laughs Brightly told him after a moment, his tone an apology for his amusement.
Sharp Nose pointed out, sen
ding a mind picture of the lake builders' formidable teeth. A fully grown lake builder was actually larger and much heavier than a Person, and while they preferred to flee to some safe, underwater hiding place when danger threatened, they could be formidable fighters if they were cornered.
Laughs Brightly told him.
Sharp Nose flicked his tail in agreement, and the two of them flowed onward through the net-wood. Fallen leaves drifted on the surface of the lake below them. There were more of them than there would normally have been at this time of year, another sign of the season's dryness, and some of the branches about them showed signs of death and brittleness.
he pointed out, and tasted Laughs Brightly's unhappy agreement.
* * *
Honor grimaced as she passed a red spruce more than half of whose scaled, blue-green leaves had turned brown and yellow. She'd seen more and more of those, and she'd made a mental note to com the Forestry Service about it. There was plenty of sign of bark beetles and flat case borers, which was only to be expected, she supposed, after such a dry summer. The rock martins and hill swallows which would normally have preyed on them hatched far fewer fledglings in years like this one. Reproduction rates for both species of bird analogue were tied to a whole host of environmental and climatic factors, and they were always lower in particularly dry seasons. Probably because the insect species upon which they usually subsisted were likely to be in shorter supply, she thought. Unfortunately, whatever might have been the case elsewhere on Haley's Land, there seemed to be plenty of moisture along Rock Aspen Creek, and the insect population here was doing just fine. In fact, it had gotten considerably worse since her last visit, and she was seeing plenty of evidence of leaf cutter ants and leaf shearers, too.
It was all part of the natural cycle of the planet, and the SFS was scarcely likely to fog the area with insecticides, but the Rangers did like to keep track of data like this. And the flat case borers, especially, were some of the worst tree-killers in Sphinx's entire ecosystem.
I wonder if that's what those two 'cats were out here checking on? This is a fairly important part of their range in fall and winter. It'd make sense for them to keep an eye on it in a year like this one. I hope they're not going to end up short of food this winter!
She knew that happened sometimes, and it was always hard for anyone who cared about the 'cats. Treecats who turned up at one of the Forestry Service's stations in a distressed state could count on being fed and offered emergency medical care, but the SFS had decided centuries ago not to intervene in the wild except in cases of disaster relief. Hard winters didn't constitute “disaster” by the Forestry Service's definition unless they produced acute starvation, and intellectually, Honor understood why that was. Offering assistance too readily was likely to encourage both 'cat dependency on humans and the sort of overpopulation which led to genuine catastrophe. Not that understanding the policy would prevent her or her parents from providing meals to any ‘cats who turned up at their front door. In fact, they could usually count on at least one treecat visitor every week or so during the winter. It was painfully obvious that word had gotten around long ago that the Harringtons were an easy touch who always had celery stashed away somewhere.
The creek broadened and deepened as she approached the near-beaver dam. The meter-long critters could top sixty kilos in weight, and the stumps of red spruce, near-pine, and mountain hickory gave clear evidence of just how efficient they were as loggers. Like the merely four-limbed Old Earth species for which they had been named, near-beavers tended to cut the timber for their dams and lodges in spring or summer and let it season until they needed it for building purposes in fall and winter. They could take down trees as much as thirty-six centimeters in diameter, although they usually settled for smaller prey, and—also like Old Earth beavers—they constructed “canals” to float bigger trunks and branches to where they needed them. In many ways, they were among Sphinx's most destructive life forms, given what even a small population of them could do to woodland. On the other hand, the water they impounded behind their dams played a critical part in maintaining healthy wetlands and watersheds. And they also helped the spread of picketwood.
For some reason, they never touched picketwood. It wasn't because of any sort of toxicity issue—the SFS had determined that long ago—but picketwood was a clever survivor which had worked out resistance modes for many of the diseases and parasites (including near-beavers) which attacked other Sphinxian flora. Apparently, it just plain didn't taste good as far as near-beavers were concerned, and their habit of eating everything else along the banks of their streams and ponds cleared space for it, which had to make treecats happy.
Pity it doesn't work the same way for the flat case borers, Honor thought now, picking her way through the near-beavers' lumberyard. On the other hand, of course, if they were willing to bring down the picketwood, too, it would probably mean I could get in here with a hang glider, which would've saved me quite a hike!
She spent a couple of minutes trying to convince herself that she really would have preferred to fly, rather than hiking. The effort didn't work out very well, though, and she snorted in amusement at herself.
She reached the upstream end of the near-beaver pond proper and smiled appreciatively as a leopard trout broke the surface, leaping half out of the water to take one of the insects buzzing above the pond's surface. It wasn't the biggest leopard trout she'd ever seen—they could go was much as eighty or ninety centimeters in length—but it was certainly well grown. There was going to be some excellent fishing up this way this fall.
She looked around, getting her bearings, and saw a distant flash of purple through the tree trunks. At least the bugs hadn't eaten the mountain tulip she'd come after! Now all she had to do was hike halfway around the lake, cut the blossoms she'd come for, and then hike back home again.
* * *
Sharp Nose froze suddenly, his head coming up in alarm.
he exclaimed, and tasted Laughs Brightly's surprise echoing his own. His brother's concern wasn't as deep as his, though, and he found Laughs Brightly's calmness reassuring.
Sharp Nose added after a moment, and Laughs Brightly flicked his ears in agreement, accepting the younger treecat's explanation for his surprise.
he agreed.
The two treecats moved cautiously closer. Snow hunters, like death fangs, were far too big and heavy to follow a Person up into the trees, and they were normally less territorial than death fangs. That did not mean that they would not happily eat any Person they could catch, though, and only death fangs were bigger than they were. At the moment, two of them stood shoulder deep in the lake builders' pond, and as the brothers watched, one of them pounced, snatching a striped swimmer from the water and flipping its head to fling it ashore.
Laughs Brightly said, and Sharp Nose tasted the suddenly stronger edge of caution in his brother's mind-glow.
Sharp Nose nodded as he watched the pair of snow hunter cubs scuffling through the brush to where the wildly flopping striped swimmer had landed. They were very young, although already several times a Person's size, and their clumsiness was obvious, but there was nothing wrong with their jaws. The still squirming swimmer came apart into two unequal sized pieces as the cubs squabbled over it, and the one with the small
er piece squalled unhappily as it realized its sibling had done better than it had.
Laughs Brightly continued more glumly, and Sharp Nose could only agree once more. A single snow hunter could eat many times a Person's weight in swimmers in a single day; a pair of them, hunting to feed their young, could easily strip even a pond this size of its swimmers in short order.
And even if they did, their young were unlikely to survive through ice time, for they would not be able to sleep through the long cold.
Sharp Nose sat very still on the net-wood branch, looking down on the snow hunters, and felt a surge of sympathy for them. Snow hunters were but little brighter than death fangs, yet these two parents realized, at least dimly, how unlikely their cubs were to survive. He could taste it in the muddiness of their mind-glows. There were no thoughts to share as there would have been among the People, or to taste without sharing like the two-legs, but even snow hunters had feelings, and the fishing adults below him were angry at the approach of that dimly sensed loss to come.
he said quietly.
his brother replied.
Laughs Brightly acknowledged.
Sharp Nose's ears flattened at that thought. If anyone had ever been inclined to think of snow hunters as remotely like People, their willingness to eat the young of other snow hunters would quickly have changed his mind. And death fangs, of course, were prepared to eat anything they could catch. None of which even considered how quickly a pair of hunting snow hunters with young to feed could strip a clan's range of almost all its prey animals at a time of year when less and less of those prey animals were being born.