by David Weber
Climbs Quickly’s ear shifted as the two-leg made noises at him.
For the first time, thanks to the link between them, he had proof the noises were actually meant to convey meaning, although just what their meaning might be was more than he could have said. While the two-leg’s emotions themselves were almost painfully sharp and clear at this short range, the echoes, the hints of meaning, which infused the emotions of any mind-glow were far too strange and unfamiliar for him to sort out any sort of specific meaning. Yet it was obvious the youngling was trying to communicate with him, and he felt a stab of pity for it and its fellows. Was that the only way they knew to communicate with one another? But however crude and imperfect the means might be compared to the manner in which the People spoke, at least he could now prove they did communicate. That should go a long way towards convincing the clan leaders the two-legs truly were People in their own fashion. And at least the noises the hurt youngling was making coupled with the taste of its mind-glow were proof it was still thinking. He felt strange surge of pride in the two-leg, comparing its reaction to how some of the People’s youngling’s might have reacted in its place, and bleeked at it again, more gently.
* * *
“I know, I know, I know!”
Stephanie sighed and reached back to the counter-grav’s controls. She adjusted them carefully, then bit her lower lip as a ragged pulsation marred its smooth vibration.
She gave the rheostat one last, gentle twitch, feeling the pressure of the harness straps ease as her apparent weight was reduced to three or four kilos. But that was as far as it was going. She would have preferred an even lower level—had the unit been undamaged, she could have reduced her apparent weight all the way to zero or even a negative number, in which case she would actually have had to pull herself down against its lift. But the rheostat was all the way over now. It wouldn’t go any further . . . and the ragged pulsation served notice that the unit was likely to pack up any minute, even at its current setting.
Still, she told herself, doggedly trying to find a bright side, maybe it was just as well. Any lighter weight would have been dangerous in such a high wind, and getting her lightweight self smashed against a tree trunk or branch by a sudden gust would hardly do her broken arm any good.
“Well,” she said, looking back at the treecat. “Here goes.”
* * *
The two-leg looked at him, made another mouth noise, and then—to Climbs Quickly’s horror—it unlatched its harness with its good hand and let itself fall.
He reared up in protest, ears flattened, yet his horror vanished almost as quickly as it had come, for the youngling didn’t actually fall at all. Instead, its good hand flashed back out, catching hold of a dangling strip of its broken flying thing, and he blinked. That frayed strap looked too frail to support even his weight, yet it held the two-leg with ease, and the youngling slid slowly down it from the grip of that single hand.
* * *
The counter-grav’s harsh, warning buzz of imminent failure clawed at Stephanie’s ears.
She muttered a word she wasn’t supposed to know and slithered more quickly down the broken rigging stay. It was tempting to simply let herself fall, but any object fell at over thirteen meters per second in Sphinx’s gravity. She had no desire to hit the ground at that speed with an arm which was so badly broken, no matter how little she “weighed” at the moment of contact. Besides, although the stay’s torn anchorage would never have supported her normal weight, it was doing just fine with her current weight. All it had to do was hold for another minute or two and—
She was only two meters up when the counter-grav unit decided to fail. She cried out, clutching at the stay as her suddenly restored weight snatched at her, but it disintegrated in her grip. She plummeted to the ground, automatically tucking and rolling as her gym teacher had taught her, and she would have been fine if her arm hadn’t been broken.
But it was broken, and her scream was high and shrill as her rolling weight smashed down on it and the darkness claimed her.
10
Climbs Quickly leapt down through the green-needle branches with frantic haste. His sensitive hearing had detected the sound of the counter-grav unit, and though he’d had no idea what it was, he knew its abrupt cessation must have had something to do with the youngling’s fall. No doubt it had been another two-leg tool which, like the youngling’s flying thing, had broken. In an odd sort of way, it was almost reassuring to know two-leg tools could break. But that was cold comfort at the moment, and his whiskers quivered with anxiety as he hit the ground and scuttled quickly over to the youngling.
It lay on its side, and he winced as he realized its fall had ended with its broken arm trapped under it. He tasted the shadow of pain even through the murkiness of its unconscious mind-glow, and he dreaded what the youngling would experience when it regained its senses. Worse, he sensed a new pain source in its right knee. But aside from the arm, the knee, and another bump swelling on its forehead, the young two-leg appeared to have taken no fresh damage, and Climbs Quickly settled back on his haunches in relief.
He might not understand what had happened to forge the link between him and his two-leg, but that was no longer really important. What mattered was that the link existed and that for whatever reason the two of them had somehow been made one. There was an echo to it much like that in the mind-glows of mated couples, but this was different, without the overtones of physical desire and bereft of the mutual communication of ideas. It was a thing of pure emotion which only one of them could truly perceive, not the two-way flow and exchange which two of the People would have shared. And yet he felt frustratingly certain that he had touched the very edge of the youngling’s actual thoughts a time or two. It could not shape and send them as one of the People did, yet he had almost captured those echoes of meaning and made them his, and he wondered if perhaps another of the People and another two-leg might someday reach further than that. For that matter, perhaps he and his two-leg would manage that someday, for if this was in fact a permanent link, they would have turnings and turnings in which to explore it.
That prompted another thought, and he groomed his whiskers with a meditative hand while he wondered just how long two-legs lived. The People were much longer lived than large creatures like the death fangs and snow hunters. Did that mean they lived longer than two-legs? The possibility woke an unexpected pain, almost like a presentiment of grief for the loss of the youngling’s—his youngling’s—glorious mind-glow. Yet it was a youngling, he reminded himself, while he was a full adult. Even if its natural span was shorter than his, the difference in their ages might give them an equal number of remaining turnings. That thought was oddly comforting, and he shook himself and looked around.
The battering rain had already eased as the squall line passed through, and much of the wind’s strength had died away, as well. He was glad his two-leg had gotten down before the wind could knock it out of the tree, yet every instinct insisted that the ground was not a safe place to be. That was certainly true for the People, but perhaps the youngling had one of the weapons with which its elders sometimes slew the death fangs which threatened them. Climbs Quickly knew those weapons came in different shapes and sizes, but he’d never seen the small ones some two-legs carried, and so he had no way to tell if the youngling had one.
Yet even if it did, its injured condition would leave it in poor shape to defend itself, and it certainly couldn’t follow him up into the trees if danger threatened. Which meant it was time to scout around. If there was danger here, best he should know about it now. Once the young two-leg reawakened, it might have ideas about how to proceed; possibly it even had some way to let the other two-legs know where it was and summon them to its aid. Until then he would simply have to do the best he could on his own.
He turned away from the two-leg and began to circle it, moving out in an ever-widening spiral while nose and ears probed alertly. There was normally little undergrowth to obscure one’s line of sight under the thi
ck canopy of the mature forest, but there was far more of it here in the old forest fire’s scar, where sunlight could reach the ground. Low-growing scrub and young trees—future giants like the one from which the two-leg had fallen—were beginning to reclaim the clearing, and even this early in the season, they were putting out thick coverings of new leaves. He could see little enough through that riotous explosion of green, but at least the rain had not been hard enough or fallen long enough to wipe away scents. Indeed, the moist air actually made them sharper and richer, and his muzzle wrinkled as he tested them.
But then, suddenly, he froze, whiskers stiff and fluffy tail flattened out to twice its normal width. He made himself take another long, careful scent, yet it was no more than a formality. No clan scout could ever mistake the smell of a death fang lair, and this one was close.
He turned slowly, working to fix the location clearly in his mind, and his heart fell. The scent came from the clearing, where the undergrowth would offer the lair’s owner maximum concealment when it returned and scented the two-leg. And it would return, he thought sinkingly, for he smelled something more now. The death fang was a female, and it had recently littered. That meant it must be out hunting food for its young . . . and that it would be back sooner rather than later.
Climbs Quickly stood a moment longer, then raced back to the two-leg. He touched its face with his muzzle, willing it to awaken with all his might, but there was no response. It would wake when it woke, he realized. Nothing he did would speed that moment, and that left but one thing he could do.
He sat upright on his four rearmost limbs, curling his tail neatly about his true-feet and hand-feet, and composed his thought carefully. Then he sent it soaring out through the dripping forest. He shaped and drove it with all the urgency in him, crying out to his sister, and somehow his link to the two-leg lent his call additional strength.
Climbs Quickly replied as calmly as he could, and felt a surge of astonishment from his sister. No one from Bright Water Clan would soon forget the terrible day Sun Shadow Clan had lost control of the fire and seen its entire central nesting place—and all too many of its kittens—consumed in dreadful flame and smoke.
Sings Truly knew her brother well, and the oddness in his reply was obvious to her. But so was the unusual strength and clarity of his mind-voice. He’d always had a strong voice for a male, but today he reached almost to the strength of a memory singer, and she wondered how he’d done it. Some scouts and hunters gained far stronger voices when they mated, as if their mates’ minds somehow harmonized with theirs at need, but that couldn’t explain Climbs Quickly’s new power. Yet those thoughts were but a fleeting background for the chill horror she felt at the thought of any injured youngling trapped so near a death fang.
She started to reply once more, then stopped, tail kinking and ears cocking in sudden consternation and suspicion. No, surely not. Not even Climbs Quickly would dare that. Not after the way the clan elders had berated him! Yet try as she might, she could think of no way any Brightwater youngling would have strayed so far, and no other clan’s range bordered on the fire scar. And Climbs Quickly had named no names, had he? But—
She shook herself. There was, of course, one way to satisfy her curiosity. All she had to do was ask . . . but if she did, then she would know her brother was violating the edicts of his clan heads. If she didn’t ask, she could only suspect—not know—and so she kept that particular question to herself and asked another.
she said with equal simplicity—and the unquestionable authority of a memory singer.
* * *
Stephanie Harrington awoke once more. A weak, pain-filled sound leaked from her—less words than the mew of an injured kitten—and her eyelids fluttered. She started to sit up, and her mew became a breathless, involuntary scream as her weight shifted on her broken arm. The sudden agony was literally blinding, and she screwed her eyes shut once more, sobbing with hurt as she made herself sit up anyway. Nausea knotted her stomach as the anguish in her arm and shoulder and broken rib vibrated through her, and she sat very still, as if the pain were some sort of hunting predator from whom she could hide until it passed her by.
But the pain didn’t pass her by. It only eased a bit, and she blinked on tears, scrubbing her face with her good hand and sniffling as she smeared mud and the blood from her mashed nose across her cheeks. She didn’t need to move to know she’d smashed her knee, as well as her bad arm, and she felt herself shuddering, quivering like a leaf as hopelessness and pain crushed down on her. The immediacy of the need to get out of the tree had helped carry her to this point, but she was on the ground now. That gave her time to think—and feel.
Fresh, hot tears brimmed, dripping down her face, and she whined as she made herself gather her left wrist in her right hand and lifted it into her lap. Just moving it twisted her with torment—she wasn’t sure whether she’d broken it in yet a third place or not—but she couldn’t leave it hanging down beside her like it belonged to someone else. She thought about using her belt to fasten it to her side, but she couldn’t find the energy—or the courage—to move that shattered bone again. It was too much for her. Now that the immediate crisis was over, she knew how much she hurt. She knew how totally lost she was, how desperately she wanted—needed—her parents to come take her home. How stupid she’d been to get herself into this mess . . . and how very little she could do to get herself out of it.
She huddled there at the foot of the tree, crying hopelessly for her mother and father. The world had proved bigger and more dangerous than she’d ever quite believed, and she wanted them to come find her. No scold they could give her, however ferocious, could match the one she gave herself, and she whimpered as the sobs she couldn’t stop shook her broken arm and sent fresh, vicious stabs of pain through her.
But then she felt a light pressure on her right thigh and blinked furiously to clear her eyes. She looked down, and the treecat looked back. He stood beside her, one hand resting on her leg, his ears flattened with concern, and she heard—and felt—his soft, comforting croon. She gazed down at him for a moment, her mouth quivering in exhaustion, despair, pain, and physical shock. And then she held out her good arm to him, and he didn’t even hesitate. He flowed up her leg to stand on his rearmost limbs in her lap and place his hands—those strong, wiry, long-fingered hands with those carefully sheathed claws—on either side of her neck. He pressed his whiskered muzzle to her cheek, the power of his croon quivering through him as if he were a dynamo, and she locked her right arm around him. She held him close, almost crushing him, and buried her face in the dampness of his soft, outer fur, sobbing as if her heart would break. And even as she wept, she felt him somehow taking the worst hurt, the worst despair and helplessness, from her.
* * *
Climbs Quickly accepted the two-leg’s tight embrace.
People’s eyes didn’t shed water as the two-leg’s did, but only the mind-blind could possibly have mistaken the grief and fear and pain in the youngling’s mind-glow, and he felt a vast surge of protective tenderne
ss for it. For her, he realized now, though he wasn’t quite certain how he knew. Perhaps it was just that he was becoming more accustomed to the taste of her mind-glow. One could almost always tell whether one of the People was male or female from no more than that, after all. Of course, this youngling was totally unlike the People, but still—
He pressed more firmly against her, stroking her cheek with his muzzle and patting her good shoulder with his left true-hand while he settled more deeply into fusion with her. It wasn’t as it would have been with another of his own kind, for she was unable to anchor the fusion properly from her end. But it was enough to let him draw off the worst of her despair. He felt the burden of her fear and pain ease and sensed her surprised awareness that he was somehow responsible, and a deep buzzing purr replaced his croon. He nudged her cheek more firmly, then pulled back just far enough to touch his nose to hers. He stared deep into her eyes, and her good hand caressed his ears. She said something—another of those mouth-sounds which so far meant nothing—but he felt her gratitude and knew the meaningless sounds thanked him for being there.
She leaned back against the tree, easing her broken arm carefully, and he settled down in her lap, wishing with what he hoped was concealed desperation that there was some way to get her away from this place. He knew she remained confused and frightened, and he had no desire to undo all the soothing he’d achieved, yet the scent of the death fang seemed to clog his nostrils. If not for her injured knee, he would have done his best to get her on her feet despite her broken arm. But the tough covering she wore over her legs had torn when she hit the ground, and the knee under it was swollen and purpling around a deep, obviously painful gash. He didn’t know if it was actually broken, but he needed no link to know she could move neither fast nor far, and he turned his mind once more towards his sister.