by David Weber
She was grateful for their presence, and she knew those scores of guardians could—and would—protect her from any other predators. Yet she had little thought to spare them, for every scrap of her attention was fixed with desperate strength on her treecat, as if somehow she could keep him alive by sheer force of will. The pain of her arm and knee and ribs and her residual, quivering terror still filled her, but those things scarcely mattered. They were there, and they were real, but nothing—literally nothing—was as important as the treecat she cuddled with fierce protectiveness in the crook of her good arm.
Her memory of what had happened after the other treecats poured down from the trees was vague. She recalled switching off the vibro knife, but she hadn’t gotten it back into its sheath. She must have dropped it somewhere, but it didn’t matter. All that had mattered was getting to her treecat.
She’d known he was alive. There was no way she could not know, but she’d also known he was desperately hurt, and her stomach had knotted as she fell to her good knee beside him. Her own pain had made her whimper whenever she moved, yet she’d hardly noticed that as she touched her protector—her friend, however he’d become that—with fearful fingers.
Blood matted his right side, and she’d felt fresh nausea as she saw how badly his right forelimb was mangled. The blood flow was terrifying—without the spurt of a severed artery, but far too thick and heavy. She had no idea how his internal anatomy was arranged, but her frightened touch had felt what had to be the jagged give of broken bones, and his mid-limbs’ pelvis was clearly broken, as well. She’d cringed at the thought of the damage all those broken bones could have done inside him, but there was nothing she could do about them. That shattered forelimb needed immediate attention, however, and she plucked the drawstring from the left cuff of her flying jacket. Tying it into a slip noose with only her teeth and one working hand was impossibly difficult, yet she managed it somehow, and slipped it up the broken, bloodsoaked limb. She settled it just above the ripped and torn flesh and drew it tight, bending close to use her teeth again. Then she worked a pocket stylus under the improvised tourniquet and tightened it carefully. She’d never done anything like this herself, but she knew the theory, and she’d once seen her father do the same thing for an Irish setter who’d lost most of a leg to a robotic cultivator.
It worked, and she sagged in relief as the blood flow slowed, then stopped. She knew that cutting off all blood from the damaged tissues would only damage them worse in the long run, but at least he wouldn’t bleed to death now. Unless, she thought, fighting a suddenly resurgent panic, there was internal bleeding.
She didn’t really want to move him, but she couldn’t leave him lying on the cold, wet ground. He had to be in shock after such traumatic injuries. That meant he needed warmth, and she lowered herself to the ground to sit beside him and lift him as carefully as she could with only one hand. She flinched when he twisted with a high-pitched sound, like the mewl of a broken kitten, but she didn’t put him back down. Instead, she tucked him inside her unsealed flying jacket and tugged the loose flaps closed around him as well as her single working arm could manage. Then she leaned back against the tree he’d been flung against, whimpering with her own pain, holding him against her and trying to fight his shock and blood loss with the warmth of her own body.
She didn’t think about her missing uni-link, or her parents, or her own pain. She didn’t think of anything. She only sat there, cuddling her defender’s broken body against her own, and thought of nothing at all.
That was all she had the strength to do.
* * *
The elders of Bright Water Clan sat in a circle about the young two-leg. All of them, even Song Spinner, who had come after the others for the sole purpose of berating Sings Truly for her incredible folly in risking herself in such a fashion. But no one was berating anyone now. Instead, the other elders watched in confusion and uncertainty as Sings Truly and Short Tail crept closer to the two-leg. The chief scout and the clan’s second-ranking memory singer crouched on either side of the two-leg, quivering noses scarcely a handspan’s distance from it. They sniffed it carefully, and then reached out to touch the link between it and Climbs Quickly.
Sings Truly’s ears went flat in shock that, even for her—even now—was honed by disbelief. Despite the alienness of the two-leg, Climbs Quickly’s link to it was at least as strong as that of any mated pair she’d ever encountered. More than that, the link clearly had yet to reach its maximum strength. It couldn’t possibly happen—not with a creature as obviously and completely mind-blind as the two-leg. Yet it had happened, and Sings Truly’s mind whirled as she tried to imagine the ramifications of that simple fact.
The rest of her clan’s adult fighting strength sat or crouched or hung behind and above and all about her and the two-leg. As she, they’d watched the youngling, tasting its pain like their own as it dragged its gravely injured body to Climbs Quickly. As Sings Truly, they had tasted its fear for him, its tenderness and frantic concern. Its . . . love. And, as Sings Truly, they had watched the youngling—surely no more than a kitten itself—tighten the string which had stopped Climbs Quickly’s bleeding before he died. And then they’d watched the two-leg gather him against itself, hugging him, giving of its own body heat to him, and the music of the clan’s soft, approving croon had risen about the two-leg.
The clan had reached out, able to touch the two-leg—albeit indirectly—through its link to Climbs Quickly, and their massed touch had calmed the youngling’s fear and pain and eased it tenderly into a gentle mind haze. The People of Bright Water took its hurt upon themselves and soothed it into something very like sleep, and it was safe for them to do so, for nothing that walked the world’s forests could threaten or harm Climbs Quickly or his two-leg through their watchful ring of claws and fangs.
Sings Truly saw all that, understood all that, and deep inside, wanted—as she had never wanted anything before—to hate the two-leg. Climbs Quickly might live. His mind-glow was weak, yet it was there, and even now she felt his awareness creeping slowly, doggedly back towards the surface. But he was terribly hurt, and those hurts were the two-leg’s fault. It was the two-leg which had drawn him here. It was the two-leg for which he’d fought his impossible battle, risked—and all too probably lost—his life. And even if he lived, he would have only one true-hand, and that, too, was the two-leg’s fault.
Yet badly as Sings Truly wished to hate the two-leg, she knew Climbs Quickly had chosen to come. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the strength of his link to this alien creature had left him no choice but to come. Yet if that was true, it was equally true that the two-leg had been given no choice, either. They were one, as tightly bound as any mated pair, and Sings Truly knew it . . . just as she knew her brother, as she herself, would have fought to the death to protect his mate.
And so would this two-leg. Youngling or no, despite broken bones and legs which would scarcely bear it, this barely weaned kitten had attacked a death fang single-handed. Climbs Quickly had done the same, but he had been an adult—and uninjured. The two-leg had been neither, but it had risen above its wounds, above its broken bones and terror, to fight the same terrible foe for Climbs Quickly. No youngling of the People, and all too few of the People’s adults, could have done that. And without the two-leg, Climbs Quickly would already be dead, so—
The question came from Short Tail, and though it was directed to Sings Truly, the chief scout had thought it loudly enough to be certain all of the elders heard him.
as if Short Tail had shouted it aloud—which, indeed, he had in a way—and his own mind-voice was hot when he replied.
The other elders stared at her in consternation, and she turned from her contemplation of the young two-leg and her brother to face them.
He and Digger gawked at her in horror, but Song Spinner stared at her in shock too profound for any other emotion. Short Tail, on the other hand, crouched beside her radiating fierce agreement, and they were joined—albeit with less certainty—by Fleet Wind, the elder charged with the instruction of young scouts and hunters, and by Stone Biter, who led the clan’s flint shapers.
Broken Tooth reared back in astonishment, and Song Spinner twitched in even greater shock. As the clan’s second-ranking singer, Sings Truly had every right to make that demand. Yet by making it, she had in effect challenged Song Spinner’s own position. She’d appealed to the entire clan, seeking the judgment of the majority of its adults, when all knew Song Spinner opposed her. If the clan chose to support Sings Truly, she would become Bright Water’s senior singer, while if the clan chose to reject her, she would be stripped of all authority.
But the challenge had been issued, and the clan adults drew closer.
Sings Truly looked directly at Song Spinner, and Bright Water’s senior singer could only flick her ears in curt agreement, for it was obvious to all—singer and non-singer alike—that it was true.
Not a whisper rose among her listeners. Every eye was fixed upon her, and even Broken Tooth’s tail had stopped its lashing, for it had never occurred to him to consider what the two-legs could do for the People. He’d been too aware of all the threats the intruders posed to them, and Sings Truly felt her hope rise higher as she tasted the shifting emotions of his mind-glow.
The mental silence lingered, hovering in the wet, rapidly darkening woods. And then, in the way of the People, it was broken by mind-voices in ones and twos, choosing their course.
12
Richard Harrington’s face was white as the air car’s powerful lights picked the wreckage trail from the darkness.
The icon of Stephanie’s emergency beacon glowed in the dead center of his air car’s HUD, indicating that it lay almost directly below him, but he didn’t really need it. Bits and pieces of the mangled hang glider were strewn through the tops of three different trees, and the continued silence from his daughter’s end of the com link was suddenly even more terrifying.
He didn’t know what Stephanie had been doing out here, but she’d clearly been trying to reach the clearing ahead when she went down, and he sent the air car scudding forward. Marjorie sat tense and silent beside him, twisting the control that swept the starboard spotlight in a wide half-circle on her side of the car. Richard was just reaching for the control to the port light when Marjorie gasped.
“Richard! Look!”
His head snapped around at his wife’s command, and his jaw dropped.
Stephanie sat huddled against the base of a huge tree, clasping something against her with one arm. Her clothing was torn and bloody, but her head rose as he looked at her. She stared ba
ck into the lights, and even from his seat in the air car, he saw the bottomless relief on her bruised and bloody face. Yet even as he recognized that, and even as his heart leapt to a joy so sharp it was anguish, stunned surprise held him frozen.
His daughter was not alone.
A grisly ruin of white bone and mangled tissue lay to one side. Richard had done enough anatomical studies of Sphinxian animal life to recognize the half-stripped skeleton of a hexapuma. But neither he nor any other naturalist had ever seen or imagined anything like the dozens and dozens and dozens of tiny “hexapumas” who surrounded his daughter protectively.
He blinked, astonished by his own choice of adverb, yet it was the only one which fitted. They were protecting Stephanie, watching over her. And he knew—as if he’d seen it with his own eyes—that they, whatever they were, had killed the hexapuma to save her.
But that was all he knew, and he touched Marjorie’s arm gently.
“Stay here,” he said quietly. “This is more my area than yours.”
“But—”
“Please, Marge,” he said, still in that quiet voice. “I don’t think there’s any danger—now—but I could be wrong. Just stay here while I find out, all right?”
Marjorie Harrington’s jaw clenched, but she fought down her unreasoning surge of anger, for he was right. He was the xeno-veterinarian. If the problem had been plant life, he would have deferred to her expertise; in this case she must defer to his, however her heart raged at her to rush to her daughter’s side.
“All right,” she said grudgingly. “But you be careful!”
“I will,” he promised, and popped the hatch.