by David Weber
In a way, she was actually glad her mother had found herself too tied down by current projects to go for those nature hikes she’d promised to try to make time for. Stephanie had been grateful when her mother made the offer, but now her mother’s presence would have posed a serious obstacle for any attempt to pursue her private research in secret.
It was perhaps unfortunate, however, that her father—in an effort to make up for her “disappointment” over her mother’s schedule—had decided to distract her with the surprise gift of a brand-new hang glider for her twelfth birthday. She’d been touched by the thoughtfulness of the present, and even more by the way he’d rearranged his work schedule to free up time to resume the hang-gliding lessons their departure from Meyerdahl had interrupted. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy the lessons, either. In fact, Stephanie loved the exhilaration of flight, and no one could have been a better teacher than Richard Harrington. He’d made it into the continental hang-gliding finals on Meyerdahl three times, and she knew no one in the galaxy could have taught her more.
The problem is that every minute I spend on flight lessons is another minute I can’t spend doing what I really want to do . . . assuming I can figure out how to do it in the first place. And if I don’t spend time on the lessons Mom and Dad are for sure going to figure out I’ve got something else on my mind!
Worse, Dad insisted on flying in to Twin Forks for her lessons. That made sense, since unlike her mom he had to be “on-call” twenty-five hours a day and Twin Forks was the central hub for all the local freeholds. He could reach any of them quickly from town, and teaching the lessons there let him enlist the two or three other parents with gliding experience as assistant teachers. It let him offer the lessons to all the settlement’s other kids, as well, which was one of the drawbacks in Stephanie’s opinion, but exactly the sort of generosity she would have expected of him. But it also meant her lessons were not only eating up an enormous amount of her free time but taking her over eighty kilometers away from the place where she was more eager than ever to begin the explorations she’d promised her parents she wouldn’t undertake.
She hadn’t found a way around her problems yet, but she was determined that she would find one . . . and without breaking her promise, however much that added to her difficulties. But at least it hadn’t been hard to give the species a name. It looked like an enormously smaller version of a “hexapuma,” and like the hexapuma, there was something very (or perhaps inevitably) feline about it. Of course, Stephanie knew “feline” actually referred only to a very specific branch of Old Terran evolution. But it had become customary over the centuries to apply Old Terran names to alien species—like the Sphinxian “chipmunks” or “near-pine.” Most claimed the practice originated from a sort of racial homesickness and a desire for familiarity in alien environments. Personally, Stephanie thought it was more likely to stem from laziness, since it let people avoid thinking up new labels for everything they encountered. Despite all that, however, she’d discovered that “treecat” was the only possible choice when she started considering names. She hoped the taxonomists would let it stand when she finally had to go public with their discovery. Usually the discoverer of the species did get to assign its common name, after all, though she suspected rather glumly that her age would work against her in that regard. Grown-ups could be so zorky sometimes.
And if she hadn’t figured out how to go about investigating the treecats without breaking her promise—which was out of the question, however eager she might be to proceed—at least she knew the direction in which to start looking. She had no idea how she knew, but she was absolutely convinced that she would know exactly where to go when the time came.
She closed her eyes, took one arm from behind her head, and pointed, then opened her eyes to see where her index finger was aimed. The direction had changed slightly since the last time she’d checked, and yet she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was pointing directly at the treecat who’d raided her mother’s greenhouse.
And that, she reflected, was the oddest—and most exciting—part of the whole thing.
7
Marjorie Harrington finished writing up her latest microbe-resistant strain of squash, closed the file, and sat back with a sigh. Some of Sphinx’s farmers had argued that it would be much simpler (and quicker) just to come up with something to swat the microbe in question. That always seemed to occur to the people who faced such problems, and sometimes, Marjorie admitted, it was not only the simplest but also the most cost-effective and ecologically sound answer. But in this case she and the planetary administration had resisted firmly, and her final solution—which, she admitted, had taken longer than a more aggressive approach might have—had been to select the least intrusive of three possible genetic modifications to the plant rather than going after the microbe.
She knew even some of her colleagues back on Meyerdahl would have backed the “fast and aggressive” approach, but Marjorie had always regarded that as a last resort. Besides, her distaste for such methods lent a certain elegance to her work. There was something almost poetic about it, like the way she’d grafted the genetic resistance of native Sphinxian plants into terrestrial celery to defeat the blight which had threatened to destroy the plant. This one hadn’t been quite as subtle as that one, but it still left her with a sense of profound satisfaction, very like the satisfaction she felt standing back from her easel to survey a finished landscape painting.
She smiled at the thought, looking remarkably like her daughter for a moment. Then her smile faded as she turned her mind from squash to other matters. Her workload had grown much heavier over the past weeks as Sphinx’s southern hemisphere moved steadily towards planting time, and the press of priority assignments had kept her from finding the time for long hikes with Stephanie. She knew that, but she also knew she hadn’t even been able to free up the time to help her daughter explore possible answers to the celery pilferage which had finally reached the Harrington freehold.
At least she’d responded enthusiastically to Richard’s resumption of her hang-gliding lessons. In fact, she’d started spending hours in the air, checking in periodically over her uni-link—and despite the vocal worry of some of the Twin Forks parents whose kids were also learning to glide, Marjorie wasn’t especially worried by the risks involved in her daughter’s hobby. A certain number of bumps, scrapes, contusions, bruises, or even broken bones were among the inevitable rites of childhood, and while Marjorie Harrington didn’t want her child running stupid risks, neither did she want Stephanie to grow up into an adult who was afraid to take risks.
Which, judging by Stephanie’s personality at “twelve-but-I’ll-be-thirteen-in-only-eight-months” wasn’t very likely to happen, she reflected wryly.
Yet if Marjorie had no qualms over Stephanie’s new interest, she was still unhappily certain Stephanie had embraced it mainly as a diversion from other disappointments, and she rubbed her nose pensively. She had no doubt Stephanie understood how important her own work was, but the situation was still grossly unfair to her, and although Stephanie seldom sulked or whined, Marjorie had expected to hear quite a bit of carefully reasoned commentary on the subject of fairness. And the fact that Stephanie hadn’t complained at all only sharpened Marjorie’s sense of guilt. It was as if Stephanie—
The hand rubbing Dr. Harrington’s nose suddenly stopped moving as a fresh thought struck her, and she frowned, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her before. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know her daughter, after all, and this sort of sweet acceptance was very unlike Stephanie. No, she didn’t sulk or whine, but neither did she give up without a fight on something to which she’d truly set her mind. And, Marjorie thought, while Stephanie had enjoyed hang gliding back on Meyerdahl, it had never been the passion it seemed to have become here. It was possible she’d simply discovered she’d underestimated its enjoyment quotient on Meyerdahl, but Marjorie’s abruptly roused instincts said something else entirely.
She ran
her mind back over her more recent conversations with her daughter, and her suspicion grew. Not only had Stephanie not complained about the unfairness of her grounding, but it was over two weeks since she’d even referred to the mysterious celery thefts, and Marjorie scolded herself harder for falling into the error of complacency. All the signs were there, and she should have realized that the only thing which could produce such a tractable Stephanie was a Stephanie who was Up To Something and didn’t want her parents to notice.
But what could she be up to? And why didn’t she want them to notice? The only thing she’d been forbidden was the freedom to go wilderness hiking on her own, and however devious she might sometimes be, Stephanie would never break a promise. Yet if she was using her sudden interest in hang gliding as a cover for something else, whatever she was up to must be something she calculated would arouse parental resistance. Which, unlike her promise to avoid woodland hikes, wouldn’t stop her for a moment until they got around to catching her at it. Her daughter, Marjorie thought with affection-laced exasperation, was entirely too prone to figure that anything which hadn’t been specifically forbidden was legal . . . whether or not the opportunity to forbid it had ever been offered.
On the other hand, Stephanie wasn’t the sort to prevaricate in the face of specific questions. If Marjorie sat her down and asked her, she’d open up about whatever she was up to. She might not want to, but she’d do it, and Marjorie made a firm mental note to set aside enough time to explore the no doubt boundless possibilities.
Thoroughly.
8
Stephanie whooped in sheer exuberance as she rode the powerful updraft. Wind whipped through her birthday glider’s struts, drummed on its fabric covering, and whistled around her helmet, and she leaned to one side, banking as she sliced still higher. The counter-grav unit on her back could have taken her higher yet—and done it more quickly—but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as much fun as this was!
She watched the treetops below and felt a tiny stir of guilt buried in her delight. She was safely above those trees—not even the towering crown oaks came anywhere near her present altitude—but she also knew what her father would have said had he known where she was. The fact that he didn’t know, and thus wouldn’t say it, wasn’t quite enough for her to convince herself her actions weren’t just a bit across the line. But she could always say—truthfully—that she hadn’t broken her word. She wasn’t walking around the woods by herself, and no hexapuma or peak bear could possibly threaten her at an altitude of two or three hundred meters.
For all that, innate honesty forced her to admit that she knew her parents would instantly have countermanded her plans if they’d known of them. For that matter, she’d taken shameless advantage of a failure in communication on their part, and she knew it.
Her father had been forced to cancel today’s hang-gliding lesson because of an emergency house call, and he’d commed Mr. Sapristos, the Twin Forks mayor, who usually subbed for him in the gliding classes. Mr. Sapristos had agreed to take over for the day, but Dad hadn’t specifically told him Stephanie would be there. The autopilot in Mom’s air car could have delivered her under the direction of the planetary air-traffic computers, and he’d apparently assumed that was what would happen. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on one’s viewpoint—his haste had been so great that he hadn’t asked Mom to arrange transportation. (Stephanie was guiltily certain he’d expected her to tell her mother. But, she reminded herself, he hadn’t actually told her to, had he?)
All of which meant Dad thought she was with Mr. Sapristos, but that Mr. Sapristos and Mom both thought she was with Dad. And that just happened to have given Stephanie a chance to pick her own flight plan without having to explain it to anyone else.
It wasn’t the first time the same situation had arisen . . . or that she’d capitalized upon it. But it wasn’t the sort of opportunity an enterprising young woman could expect to come along often, either, and she’d jumped at it. She’d had to, for the long Sphinxian days were creeping past, over two T-months had gotten away from her, and none of her previous unauthorized flights had given her big enough time windows. Avoiding parental discovery had always required her to turn back short of the point at which she knew her treecats lurked, and if she didn’t find out more about them soon, someone else was bound to.
Of course, she couldn’t expect to learn much about them just flying around overhead, but that wasn’t really what she was after. If she could only pinpoint a location for them, she was sure she could get Dad to come out here with her—maybe with some of his friends from the Forestry Service—to find the physical evidence to support her discovery. And, she thought, her ability to tell them where to look would also be evidence of her strange link with the celery thief. Somehow she figured she’d need a lot of evidence of that before she got anyone else to believe it existed.
She closed her eyes, consulting her inner compass once more, and smiled. It was holding steady, which meant she was headed in the right direction, and she opened her eyes once more.
She banked again, very slightly, adjusting her course to precisely the right heading, and her face glowed with excitement. She was on track at last. She knew she was, just as she knew that this time she had enough flight time to reach her goal before anyone missed her, and she was quite correct.
Unfortunately, she’d also made one small mistake.
* * *
Climbs Quickly paused, one true-hand stopped in mid-reach for the branch above, and his ears flattened. He’d become accustomed to his ability to sense the direction to the two-leg youngling, even if he still hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else. He’d even become used to the way the youngling sometimes seemed to move with extraordinary speed—no doubt in one of the two-legs’ flying things—but this was different. The youngling was moving quickly, though far more slowly than it sometimes had. But it was also headed directly towards Climbs Quickly. In fact, it was already far closer than it had ever come since he’d been relieved of his spying duties—and he felt a sudden chill.
There was no question. He recognized exactly what the youngling was doing, for he’d done much the same thing often enough in the past. True, he usually pursued his prey by scent, but now he understood how a ground runner must have felt when it realized he was on its trail, for the two-leg was using the link between them in exactly the same way. It was tracking him, and if it found him, it would also find Bright Water Clan’s central nesting place. For good or ill, its ability to seek out Climbs Quickly would result in the discovery of his entire clan!
He stood for one more moment, heart racing, ears flat with mingled excitement and fear, then decided. He abandoned his original task and bounded off along the outstretched net-wood limb, racing to meet the approaching two-leg well away from the rest of his clan.
* * *
Stephanie’s attention was locked on the trees below her now. Her flight had lasted over two hours, but she was drawing close at last. She could feel the distance melting away—indeed, it almost seemed the treecat was coming to meet her—and excitement narrowed the focus of her attention even further. The crown oak had thinned as she’d left the foothills behind and begun climbing into the Copperwalls proper. Now the woods were a mix of various evergreens, dominated by shorter species of near-pine and the dark, blue-green pyramids of Sphinxian red spruce, and the crazyquilt geometry of picketwood.
Of course they were, she thought, and her eyes brightened. The rough-barked picketwood would be the perfect habitat for someone like her little celery thief! Each picketwood system radiated from a single central trunk which sent out long, straight, horizontal branches at a height of between three and ten meters. Above that, branches might take on any shape; below it, they always grew in groups of four, radiating at near-perfect right angles from one another for a distance of ten to fifteen meters. At that point, each sent a vertical runner down to the earth below to establish its own root system and, in time, become its own nodal trunk. A single picket
wood “tree” could extend itself for literally hundreds of kilometers in any direction, and it wasn’t uncommon for one “tree” to run into another and fuse with it. When the lateral branches of two systems crossed, they merged into a node which put down its own runner.
Stephanie’s mother was fascinated by the picketwoods. Plants which spread by sending out runners weren’t all that rare, but those which spread only via runner were. It was also more than a little uncommon for the runner to spread out through the air and go down to the earth, rather than the reverse. But what truly fascinated Dr. Harrington was the tree’s anti-disease defense mechanism. The unending network of branches and trunks should have made a picketwood system lethally vulnerable to diseases and parasites. But the plant had demonstrated a sort of natural quarantine process. Somehow—and Dr. Harrington had yet to discover how—a picketwood system was able to sever its links to afflicted portions of itself. Attacked by disease or parasites, the system secreted powerful cellulose-dissolving enzymes that ate away at connecting cross-branches and literally disconnected them at intervening nodal trunks, and Dr. Harrington was determined to locate the mechanism which made that possible.
But her mother’s interest in picketwood meant very little to Stephanie at the moment beside her realization of the same tree’s importance to treecats. Picketwood was deciduous and stopped well short of the tree line, abandoning the higher altitudes to near-pine and red spruce. But it crossed mountains readily through valleys or at lower elevations, and it could be found in almost every climate zone. All of which meant it would provide treecats with the equivalent of aerial highways that could literally run clear across a continent! They could travel for hundreds—thousands!—of kilometers without ever having to touch the ground where larger predators like hexapumas could get at them!