A Beautiful Friendship-ARC

by David Weber

  “I guess it does,” MacDallan acknowledged, and looked at Stephanie. “I have to admit the possibility of comparing notes with you had crossed my mind—crossed it quite a few times, as a matter of fact—before you actually screened, Stephanie. I was a little . . . nervous about the possibility, though. And I don’t suppose it’s going to come as any great surprise to anyone that one reason I was nervous was the fact that I feel really protective where Fisher is concerned.”

  “I think you can safely assume we’d understand that, yes,” Marjorie said dryly, and MacDallan chuckled. It was a curiously strained chuckle, Stephanie thought, and felt Lionheart raising his head from his perch on the back of her own chair to gaze at the visiting doctor.

  “I’ve really wanted to sit down and talk with you—all of you, but especially with you, Stephanie—ever since Fisher came into my life, though,” MacDallan continued. “Obviously, we’ve all been awfully busy. And then there was that BioNeering business.”

  His mouth tightened, and he reached out to take Irina’s hand in his as shadows flickered behind his blue eyes.

  “That was pretty bad, really,” he said quietly. “And if I thought people had been pestering me about trying to ‘figure out’ the treecats before it happened—!” He shook his head. “Trust me, it got a lot worse.”

  He sat gazing silently into the fire for a few moments, then shook himself and looked back at Stephanie.

  “I’m pretty sure they’ve been after you at least as much as they’ve been after me,” he told her. “From what I’ve heard, your mom and dad have been pretty firm about laying down limits, and I think that was a really good idea. Most—well, a lot—of these people don’t actually seem to mean any harm, but they’re enough to drive Fisher crazy. I think their emotions are like some kind of feeding frenzy as far as he’s concerned, and I don’t think he’s far wrong about that, either.”

  He paused, and Stephanie shrugged.

  “Lionheart and I have met a few like that,” she admitted. “Dr. Hobbard—you know her, right?” MacDallan nodded, and Stephanie went on, “She’s not so bad. In fact, we kind of like her. But even she keeps—”

  She stopped suddenly, and MacDallan’s eyes narrowed.

  “Even she keeps asking you questions you don’t really want to answer,” he said softly. “That’s what you started to say, wasn’t it, Stephanie?”

  Stephanie only looked at him. She was surprised she’d started to say even that to a pair of complete strangers. She’d contacted MacDallan in the first place specifically because she wanted to discuss the situation with him, yet she’d planned on going more slowly. On getting a better feel for his personality, judging where he stood on the question of protecting treecats, before she jumped straight into it, anyway. But there was something about MacDallan—something more than the fact that he, too, had been adopted by a treecat. Something that made her want to trust him.

  She looked at her parents, eyes silently questioning, and after a moment, her father gave a very small nod.

  “Actually, she keeps on asking questions none of us want to answer,” she said then, turning back to MacDallan. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  MacDallan leaned back in his own chair, still holding Irina’s hand. His eyes swept the Harringtons’ faces while the storm battered at the house, and then he inhaled deeply.

  “That’s what I thought,” he repeated. “I know how excited I’ve been learning things about Fisher, and I was pretty sure you had to be at least equally excited, Stephanie. But you weren’t going on and on about it to anyone who’d listen, the way a lot of kids would have, and that suggested to me that you were keeping your mouth shut on purpose. You’re worried about how humans and treecats are going to get along in the long run, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted quietly, her eyes dark. “I think there was a reason they were hiding from us for so long, and I’m not sure they were wrong to worry about us. I know a lot of the other kids in Twin Forks are all going crazy trying to figure out how to catch themselves a treecat for a ‘pet.’ ” Her eyes hardened and her lips thinned. “I wouldn’t trust most of them with an Old Terran hamster, and treecats aren’t pets! I can’t seem to get any of those idiots to figure that out, either! They’re all too busy being jealous, too busy thinking I’m just trying to keep Lionheart all for myself. They don’t have a clue what he did for me—not really—and they all think he’s so cute, so cuddly—!”

  She chopped off what she was saying and gave herself a shake.

  “Sorry about that. It just really, really makes me mad sometimes. And it scares me, too. Because if the kids can feel that way, why can’t the grown-ups? And Dad and I have spent a lot of time talking about what happened on Barstool to the Amphors. I don’t want that happening to the treecats!”

  “You have no idea how delighted I am to hear you say that,” MacDallan said. “That’s exactly the same sort of thing I’ve been afraid of. And I didn’t feel a lot better about the possibility after seeing the way Ubel was willing to let an entire clan die just to cover her own . . . posterior, either. So when you screened, it occurred to me that you had a pretty good point. I think it would be a good idea for any of us who have been adopted by one of these little guys,” he reached up to caress Fisher’s soft fur again, “to get together and see if we can’t all arrange to be singing from the same sheet of music.”

  “You mean concentrate on figuring them out for ourselves?”

  “That’s part of what I mean—a big part, really. But more than that, I think you’re right that the treecats are going to need us to protect them just as much as you needed Lionheart’s clan to help you deal with that hexapuma and I needed Fisher to keep me from drowning. And, to be honest, I’m pretty sure they’re a lot smarter than anybody else suspects, even now, and that they really are telepathic.”

  “I think they’re a lot smarter than anybody else thinks—except maybe Dr. Hobbard—too,” Stephanie agreed. “I’m not sure about her. But most of those other ‘scientists’ keep acting like the treecats are maybe a couple of steps up from a golden retriever.” She grimaced. “I think maybe part of it’s because they’re so small. It’s bad enough when you run into anyone who thinks that way, but I had one xeno-biologist who insisted on explaining—and explaining and explaining—to me that treecats just don’t have enough body mass to sustain genuine intelligence. Their brains can’t be big enough for ‘advanced cognitive functions,’ anybody knows that! So of course there’s no point in finding out whether or not what ‘anybody knows’ is accurate!” She rolled her eyes. “The idiot was standing there holding Lionheart’s flint knife and looking at his cargo net, and he was insisting treecats couldn’t possibly be ‘truly intelligent’ however cleverly they ‘mimicked’ sapient behavior. I thought he was going to pat me on the head and tell me to run along and play with my dolls like a good little girl while the real, qualified, properly skeptical scientists got on with straightening out everything I’d obviously gotten wrong!”

  “I’ve run into some of those myself,” MacDallan told her with a wry grin. “And speaking about big enough brains, people like that make you sort of want to unscrew their heads from the rest of their bodies to see if there’s anything actually inside their skulls, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not big enough!” Stephanie told him with a broader grin of her own.

  “For which the rest of the human race can only be grateful,” her father observed. “I’m afraid a temper kind of like the one popular legend assigns to people with your hair color runs in the Harrington family, Scott.”

  “Actually, you know, there really is a link between red hair and enhanced adrenal function.” MacDallan chuckled. “I think that’s the reason redheads tend to get into trouble so much.”

  “And a very convenient excuse it is, too,” Irina said dryly.

  “But getting back to the subject at hand,” MacDallan said in dignified tones, “I think in some ways the
idiots you’ve just been describing, Stephanie, are almost our secret weapon at the moment. Personally, I think it may be better—initially, at least—for the treecats to be underestimated instead of overestimated.”

  “Are you sure about that, Scott?” Richard asked quietly. MacDallan looked at him, and he shrugged. “I can’t get Barstool out of my mind. If the powers that be here on the Sphinx decide treecats are really only slightly more clever animals, they could be in a lot of trouble. I’d hate to have some fool with more political clout than brain power decide the proper policy is to institute game control laws and bag limits rather than give them protected status!”

  “I agree entirely. I just don’t want us rushing into anything, Richard. The way I see it, we can always admit treecats are smarter than people have been thinking they are if we have to. It’d be a lot harder to convince humanity in general that they aren’t as smart as people think, assuming that turns out to be a good idea, if we rush this.”

  “Dr. MacDallan’s right, Dad,” Stephanie said soberly. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, especially since you and I started talking about Barstool, and I think there are three things we need to be doing, if we can, really.”

  “Which three things?” MacDallan asked, watching her intently.

  “First, I think you’re right. No matter what we do most people—especially those who haven’t actually met a treecat—are going to think of them like those null wits in Twin Forks. They’re going to think ‘Oh, what cute, fluffy little pets!’ I think that’s probably dangerous for individual treecats, given the lengths some people are already going to trying to catch them. But as far as all treecats are concerned, I think you’re right that it would be better for them to be underestimated, instead of overestimated, at least at first.

  “So I think we want people to realize they are intelligent, they are tool-users, but to think of them . . . well, to think of them as kind of permanent, cute kids, if you know what I mean. An intelligent species that needs to be protected, not exploited, but which nobody could think of as a real threat.”

  She paused, watching MacDallan until he nodded slowly, then went on.

  “At the same time, though, I think we do need to make it clear they are an intelligent species. Not only that, they’re the native intelligent species of Sphinx. They were here first—this is their world, not ours—and we need to make sure nobody tries to take it away from them.

  “And finally, as part of that first thing I was talking about, we need to convince people here on Sphinx, at least, that the treecats who adopt people are more than just pets. Treecats like Lionheart and Fisher have to be . . . ambassadors, I guess. I’ve seen what they can do when they’re angry.” She shivered, remembering a huge hexapuma shrieking in agony as it was literally torn apart by a tidal wave of “cute, fluffy” treecats. “Sooner or later, other people are going to figure it out, too. I mean, Dr. Hobbard already has, and I kind of suspect the Forestry Service rangers have been thinking in the same direction. Well, it’s all well and good to convince people they’re ‘permanent kids’ who need to be looked after, but at the same time, we have to convince the people around us that no treecat is just going to suddenly take it into his head to eat somebody’s Pekingese or pet parakeet . . . or rip out somebody’s throat!”

  She came to a halt, staring at MacDallan, and the doctor looked back at her. Then he looked at her parents.

  “Remarkable daughter you have here,” he told them.

  “We think so,” Marjorie replied, smiling at Stephanie, and MacDallan returned his attention to her.

  “I agree with everything you’ve said,” he told her, “but I think we might want to go a little slower on your second point.”

  “But they were here first!” Stephanie protested. “We can’t just let people take their whole planet away from them!”

  “No, we can’t. And if I have anything to say about it, we won’t. But, to be honest, one of the reasons I think it would be a good idea to have them underestimated, at least initially, is that what really happened to the Amphors was that they got in the way. The colonists who’d settled Barstool had already divided up the planet and its mineral rights. For that matter, they’d already committed some of the rights to exploit the planet to off-world investors in return for the capital they’d needed to get their own colony up and running. So when the Amphors turned up all of a sudden, there were groups—factions—who stood to lose an awful lot of land . . . and money. All they had in some cases, if it turned out the Amphors owned the planet and not the humans. You know, back on Old Earth more than one bunch of humans got exterminated or chased into exile by other humans who wanted what they had. I’m afraid what happened to the Amphors suggests it’s even easier to do that if the people you’re taking it away from aren’t even shaped the same way you are.”

  “Exactly! That’s why it’s so important to make sure nobody can do that to the treecats!”

  “I agree. But right now, there aren’t a lot of humans on Sphinx, which means there aren’t going to be that many people suddenly worrying about what happens to the land they’re actually living on. Most of the planet is still public domain, too, which means it belongs to the Star Kingdom as a whole, not to individual people. Except that there are land speculators over in Landing and here in Yawata Crossing, who’ve already acquired options on some of it.”

  “Options?” Stephanie repeated.

  She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but the City of Landing on the planet of Manticore was the Star Kingdom’s capital. Yawata Crossing was the current planetary capital here on Sphinx, though there was talk of moving the Planetary Parliament to the more central city of Tillingham. But anyone living in either of those places right now would have ready access to their system or planetary parliaments. And that, she thought sinkingly, meant politics were going to be involved somehow. She didn’t know a lot about politics—yet—but she’d learned enough in her history classes to know politics could always be counted on to make a bad situation worse.

  “It was an idea the government came up with during the worst of the Plague,” Irina explained. “Before the colonists ever left Old Earth, Roger Winton took everything the expedition had managed to scrape together and hadn’t spent on the cryo ship and supplies and invested it. It wasn’t all that much compared to what they’d already invested, but since it took better than six hundred and forty T-years for the ship to get here, that investment had a lot of time to earn interest. By the time Jason got to Manticore, that ‘minor’ investment had grown into an enormous sum. Most of the colonies hadn’t bothered with anything like that, since the whole object was to leave Old Earth (and everything on it) behind forever. Besides, it would have taken centuries for light-speed ships in normal-space to make the trip back to the Sol System to do anything with money invested there, anyway. But King Roger—only he wasn’t king then, of course—suspected that somebody might make a breakthrough into a practical commercial hyper-space drive that made faster-than-light travel practical for everybody, not just survey ships, while his expedition was on its way. In that case, money back on Old Earth might come in handy, after all.”

  She shrugged.

  “Obviously, he was right about that, and Manticore wound up a whole lot better off than the vast majority of colonies because of that. And it helped a lot when the Plague hit, too—helped pay to bring in doctors and researchers, helped fund the immigration program and the land credits. But even with the Star Kingdom’s investments back on Old Earth, we were really strapped for funds at the height of the Plague. We needed cash to pay for supplies, medicines, all kinds of stuff, from people out here, and it’s five and a half T-months from here to Old Earth one-way, even for a high-speed courier boat in hyper-space. Some of the people we needed things from weren’t real eager to wait around for eleven T-months until money could be requested from the Sol System and then transported out here to pay them, so the government decided to raise cash locally by selling options on public lan
ds.”

  “But what kind of options?” Stephanie asked. “You mean they sold off public lands? That’s not what they told me in school!”

  “Because that’s not exactly what they did,” Irina said. “Some of the land and mineral rights here on Sphinx have already been assigned, even if no one’s tried to develop them yet. They’re not public lands anymore; they were deeded over to first-shareholders from the original colony fleet.

  “Of course, some of those people died without heirs during the Plague Years, and their lands and rights have reverted to the Crown, so those are back in the public lands category. Other first-shareholder grants are like my brother’s land—or my husband’s and mine. Or like the land that’s been distributed under the immigration incentive program, like your parents’ freehold, for that matter. It’s already been settled, claimed, and proved, so that’s not public land anymore, either.

  “But what does still come under the ‘public lands’ heading is the better than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the planet that hasn’t been distributed or sold yet. What the Crown did sell was the option to be first in line to buy public lands when they are sold. The idea was always that, ultimately, except for a modest wilderness reserve, most of the land on all three habitable planets here in the Manticore system would end up in private hands, you know, Stephanie. Given their climates—and gravity wells—Manticore itself is the obvious first prize, which is why something like seventy percent of its land and mineral rights have already been distributed. Sphinx is attractive, too, but mostly to people like your family and Scott’s, who are . . . particularly well-suited to heavy-gravity planets, let’s say. Gryphon’s generally considered the consolation prize, though, since it orbits the system’s other stellar component which puts it a long way from Manticore and Sphinx. And then there’s its climate.”