And murder was not unknown, even among the People.
What Clear Singer did not know was how the two-legs viewed the deliberate killing of their kind by one of their own number. If Clear Singer accomplished the impossible, if she somehow communicated with a mind-blind creature like the two-leg Scott, if she somehow made him understand that murder had been done in this tree-shattered clearing, what would the two-legs do? A creature that would murder three of its own companions could not be trusted to remain at large amongst its own kind, nor could the People risk letting such a creature walk loose. A mind-sick two-leg who would destroy its companions could never be trusted to refrain from committing murder against the People—and after what True Stalker had seen and heard and had done to him, he had more than ample reason to fear for his very life.
If True Stalker went back with the two-legs, trying to bring the killer's actions to light—without the two-leg Scott understanding what True Stalker returned to—Clear Singer feared the grieving Bright Heart hunter would not survive another hand of days. But if he remained with Walks in Moonlight Clan or even returned to his own distant clan, the murder would never be known by any but the People. And that, Clear Singer could not permit. Not without at least trying. So she sent her call to the clearing, where the two who had summoned her to this place waited.
It was now Clear Singer's turn to wait.
Swift Striker crooned softly, touching his true-hands to Scott's face to gather his friend's full attention. The mind glow he so loved focused all its glorious brightness on him.
"Fisher?"
He had learned, that day he'd first glimpsed the two-leg called Scott MacDallan, that his friend's mouth sound "Fisher" was the name his two-leg had given him, unable to hear Swift Striker's mind voice clearly enough to learn his true name. The name was so surprisingly close to his own name's meaning, he delighted in the sound of it from Scott's lips.
"What is it, Fisher?"
He pointed into the night, away from the downed air car, toward the place Walks in Moonlight Clan had gathered and now waited with their precious, irreplaceable senior memory singer. He knew the two-legs feared the night in open forest like this, with good reason, but Scott had to be made to understand. He pointed again. "Bleek?"
Along with that plaintive sound, Swift Striker put all the intense need he felt for Scott to come with him. At his side, True Stalker—whose grief was a knife-cut in Swift Striker's mind—added his own urgent summons, silently reinforcing Swift Striker's plea and even reaching out to grasp Scott's nearest hand in both True Stalker's own.
Scott twitched his face into the gesture of unhappiness. "You want me to come with you? Out there?"
The stubborn resistance Swift Striker had learned to recognize flared in his friend's mind glow. It was dangerous in the forest at night. Scott did not want to go anywhere near the trees at the edge of this ruined clearing.
"Bleek!" The grieving True Stalker ran to the shattered windows of the broken flying machine, bleeking his distress, came back and grasped Scott's hand again, dragging at it, tugging Scott's large, smooth fingers in the direction of the forest and the waiting Clear Singer. "Bleek! Bleek!"
True Stalker's reaction had startled Scott; water-blue eyes had widened. "What in the world's gotten into the two of you?"
At least, that was the emotional gist of the question. Swift Striker was still learning the two-leg language of mouth noises and although he had mastered many basic words, complex ideas and abstract concepts were laboriously difficult to translate. He knew that Clear Singer, waiting in the darkness, shared his frustration, with even greater reason. If a senior memory singer with the help of an entire Clan could not get across what True Stalker so desperately needed Scott to know, who among the People could?
"Bleek!" Swift Striker tried again, voicing his frustration the only way he could. "Bleek!" He, too, dragged at Scott's hand with one of his true-hands, while pointing urgently toward the waiting memory singer. If they could just get him outside, far enough from the other two-legs for him to realize other treecats were out there, all wanting him to come, Swift Striker knew Scott would risk any number of death fangs to try and understand what they were attempting to tell him. The love he felt for his two-leg friend that this was so was all the sharper for the darkness in True Stalker's mind, where a beloved mind glow would never be welcomed again.
The hunter's grief burned through Swift Striker's awareness, an agony none of the People could possibly have ignored, for True Stalker had sensed, despite the immense distance between them, that his friend Erhardt had known he and his companions were being murdered even as the flying machine fell, crippled, from the sky. And the two-leg responsible for that devastating crash had tried to kill True Stalker, attacking in his worst moment of pain and grief, with murder in her heart. His clan, already thrown into chaos by the two-legs' terrible, incomprehensible accident at their research place—an accident which was devastating his clan's home range—had packed their food stores and flint tools, their baskets, carry nets, and kittens with frantic haste, even while True Stalker fled for his life.
With a mind-sick two-leg attacking the People as well as her own kind, Bright Heart Clan's very survival demanded they immediately abandon their doubly-threatened central nesting place. Not only was their hunting range devastated, with many of the animals they depended on dead, killed by the poisons the dissolving trees emitted to keep any animals from spreading the two-legs' mysterious blight from damaged, dying trees to undamaged, healthy ones, the clan's central nesting place lay far too close to the two-leg habitation to risk leaving their kittens and memory singers where this mind-sick, murderous two-leg could all-too-easily find and strike at them.
And while the People had occasionally been forced to hunt down and kill one of their own hunters or scouts who had become murderously mind-sick, such as Bright Water Clan had been forced to do when a High Crag Clan hunter had attacked their scouts, trying to steal kittens for hideous purposes, Bright Heart Clan could not trust the wisdom of doing the same to a mind-sick two-leg. The newcomers were simply too powerful, too great an unknown to risk the entire future of the People, even if their cause was a good one. There was no guarantee the two-legs could comprehend what had happened here, or comprehend it in time to protect Bright Heart's kittens and females from their mind-sick companion. So the Bright Heart Clan deserted their home to find safety elsewhere and the grieving True Stalker, his entire clan in flight, refugees in their own home range, had set out to find his murdered friend—and any two-legs who might help him prove that murder had been done.
He had found Swift Striker and Scott MacDallan.
Swift Striker, huddled now beside the remains of True Stalker's murdered friend, tightened his true-hand around Scott's finger and thumb, desperate to make his own friend understand. "Bleek?"
Scott regarded him for a long moment, his water-blue eyes dark and troubled. The artificial lights which shed so brilliant a blaze in the cramped space glinted on the fire-colored curls of his head fur. Swift Striker had never seen a two-leg before he'd found Scott, had never seen any creature with fur the color of bright hearth fires. Scott's pale skin, lighter in color than the cream in Swift Striker's own fur, was almost as mottled as Swift Striker's pelt, not with fur, for most of him was smooth and virtually furless, but with pale golden spots and splotches, hundreds of them, as though little droplets of sunlight had splashed across his skin and glowed from inside it.
Of all the two-legs Swift Striker had now seen, he thought Scott MacDallan was by far the most strikingly decorated; that his mind glow was as brilliant and unique as his appearance only made Swift Striker love him the more. And he had tasted his friend's determination to discover what had happened here, knew that if Scott would only come with them, the chances of his learning the truth would be far greater.
"Bleek?" he pleaded again.
"I ought to have my head examined," Scott M
acDallan muttered.
But he was moving toward the shattered hatch and Swift Striker could taste his decision to go at least a little way with them. Exultation sent his mind call soaring out to the waiting Clear Singer.
True Stalker darted out through the window, while Swift Striker chased after Scott and found his favorite place on his friend's shoulder. The process of removing the two-legs who had died inside the flying machine was finished and now two-legs Swift Striker had never seen were moving all through the machine, tinkering with bits and pieces of it and using tools whose purposes Swift Striker could not begin to fathom. One of these two-legs called out something to Scott.
"Doc, are you going to do an—?" Swift Striker could not yet interpret some words, leading to frustrating gaps in two-leg conversations.
"No, I'll—them later." Whatever it was, Swift Striker received an impression of distaste for something unpleasant. "What about you?" Scott called back.
"Almost done. Where are you going? The rescue car's that way, not under the trees."
"I just wanted to check out something under the—" The feeling Swift Striker got from that was "front of the flying machine."
"Have you got a pistol?"
That word Swift Striker knew. Scott took either a pistol or a rifle with him whenever he walked through a forested area away from town or one of the far-flung houses they visited so frequently. Swift Striker had seen him use the pistol once. While not as devastating as the larger, longer weapon called rifle, Scott's pistol had still killed a half-grown snow hunter with only two thunderous barks from its long, thin tubular end. The rifle, he knew from memory songs of those who had witnessed them being used, could kill a death fang at full charge, with only one such thunderous roar.
"Yes, I have my pistol, Garvey. I'm not a greenhorn newcomer to Sphinx, you know!"
The other two-leg laughed, although Swift Striker could taste the grimness behind that sound. All the two-legs who had come to this clearing were distressed by what they had found. Swift Striker knew that distress would increase sharply if they understood the reason they had found their companions dead here. At least, he knew Scott's distress would. The other two-legs, he wasn't quite so certain about. And that was one reason Walks in Moonlight Clan's memory singer waited for them in the trees. Swift Striker had learned a great deal about the two-legs, hoped he understood them sufficiently to judge how some of them would react, when they understood this wreck completely. But he had not learned enough. Never enough.
So he wrapped his tail around his friend's neck and crooned encouragingly as Scott picked his way cautiously through the debris of broken, jagged wood and torn metal at the base of the wreck. True Stalker waited for them at the edge of the forest, rising up on his true-feet to tug at Scott's hand.
"Bleek!"
Scott moved cautiously toward the looming trees, wariness sharp in his mind glow. His hand hovered near the handle of his weapon. When they reached the first thick trunks and spreading branches, he halted and would go no farther. Swift Striker knew he would not leave the safe haven of the artificial lights, not without much greater incentive than they'd already given him.
Swift Striker called to the waiting Walks in Moonlight Clan.
Swift Striker listened intently to the response, hearing the hurried exchange of worried thoughts between clan hunters and the precious senior singer of Walks in Moonlight clan. A moment later, Clear Singer's mind voice, so much more powerful than any hunter's or scout's, answered clearly.
Like spirits of ancestors visiting in the night, the assembled Walks in Moonlight Clan materialized from the darkness, appearing on branches in a wide arc around Swift Striker and his beloved two-leg. Eyes gleaming in the harsh lights from the clearing, they showed themselves in a silent, welcoming mass.
* * *
"Good God!"
Treecats—hundreds of treecats—materialized out of thin air where moments before there had been only empty, shadowed picket wood branches. The fine hairs along Scott MacDallan's arms stood starkly upright. A wave of warmth, of welcome and encouragement, rolled over him with the power of a breaking thunderstorm. On his shoulder, Fisher said, "Bleek . . ."
—and pointed toward the darkness beneath the trees.
The treecats wanted him to go out there?
"But why?" he gasped, trying to understand why several hundred treecats would be concerning themselves over a simple air car crash. Surely they'd seen other crashes? This was hardly the first air car that had smashed into the Sphinxian forests during the past fifty T-years, killing all crew and passengers aboard.
Orrin Garvey's voice drifted to him from the back of the wreck. "Doc? You okay out there? Thought I heard you shout something."
"Yes, I'm fine. I was just startled by something I saw, that's all. I'm going to take a closer look down here."
"Don't take too long. We're just about set to pack up and head home."
"Right."
Scott wasn't sure why he didn't tell Garvey about the massed treecats gazing so intently down at him, but he was receiving the very strong impression that he was the only human welcome out here tonight. And that thought disturbed him far more than he liked to admit, coming as it did on top of his disquieted feelings about the wreck and the grieving treecat who'd brought him all the way out here to it. Humanity understood so very little about the tiny arboreals, any contact with "wild" treecats was unnerving. Coming face-to-face with what looked like upwards of two or three hundred wild treecats, all of them firmly putting themselves squarely in the middle of an ugly business, drew Scott's nerves taut against his bones with fear. That those same three hundred or so wild treecats were also focusing their uncanny attention squarely on him only made the situation scarier.
Scott MacDallan was no diplomat.
At the moment, however, he appeared to be the only human Sphinx's native inhabitants wanted to open diplomatic relations with. The treecats could've showed themselves at any time, to the Zivoniks, to Garvey or Vollney, or the pilot of the rescue car, but they hadn't. They'd waited, hidden in the darkness, until Fisher and the distraught stray had convinced him to follow them out into the trees.
Looks like I'm a diplomat, after all . . .
"Okay," he said quietly, addressing the hundreds of treecats who watched him so closely, "I know there won't be any hexapumas around, not with that many of you here. Although why you want me . . ." There wasn't much point in speculation. He'd find out shortly, for himself. Scott glanced over his shoulder toward the crash-investigation team finishing up their preliminary evaluation of the crash site, then stepped cautiously beneath the dark trees. He could feel the treecats' eyes following his progress as he left behind the safety and warm glow of lights in the clearing. Nervousness as well as fear prickled along his spine, but he trusted Fisher implicitly, for his companion had earned that trust multiple times over the course of their unlikely friendship.
At length, he spotted a faint glow beneath the trees and realized with a shock of surprise that a small fire burned just ahead. Old leaves and fallen deadwood crackled underfoot as Scott moved uncertainly through the darkness toward it. He caught the scent of woodsmoke, unmistakable in the still spring air. Then his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he made out small, furred shapes seated around the tiny campfire. Their positioning and some indefinable sense of emotion he was catching from Fisher told Scott this was a deeply formal gathering, thick with protocol. He swallowed sharply and wondered what to do. I'm no xenologist! What if I blunder into this and mortally offend a highly placed treecat dignitary? The xenologists hadn't even figured out how treecat familial and social organizations operate
d, never mind their political ones.
For a brief, blinding instant, Scott bitterly regretted his complete lack of camera or sound-recording equipment, despite the fact that his instinct to keep to himself what he learned was currently operating full tilt. Then Fisher jumped lightly to the ground and the half-starved treecat appeared from the darkness overhead, and Scott realized the council session—or whatever this might be—was already open for the main order of business. Fisher and the stray moved between ranks of large, clearly male treecats toward the fire, where they greeted a much smaller, slimmer treecat. Scott studied this one sharply, cursing the dim light. Ruddy firelight which flickered across this smaller 'cat suggested a darker, brownish tint to the coat, darker, certainly, than the grey markings in Fisher's coat. Female? Scott wondered. The other 'cats regarded her deferentially and Scott received an overwhelming sense of protectiveness toward her from the assembled treecats.
Maybe the treecats wanted him because Scott, alone of probably all humans on Sphinx, could sense their emotions so clearly? For the first time in his life, Scott's unwanted genetic heritage suddenly loomed as a major plus in his favor, rather than an embarrassing handicap to be hidden from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances at all cost. If the treecats are communicating through telempathic means, maybe I'm not such a bad choice of ambassador, after all? The thought encouraged him a little, even though he cringed at the idea of telling anyone what he was sensing at this council fire right now. Better keep my mouth shut and figure this out on my own, rather than risk telling some off-world xenologist, "Yes, well, I sort of read the treecats' emotions, uh, like a psychic, you know . . ."
No, that was definitely out. Whatever the treecats had to tell him out here, he was on his own when it came to pursuing it.
They were half-a-dozen paces from the low, crackling fire when Fisher turned and bounded back toward him. "Bleek?" He sat up on his rear-most legs, looking for the world like an oversized Terran prairie dog. Fisher caught at Scott's fingers. "Bleek?" He was tugging Scott forward.