by David Weber
He didn’t much like thinking about that possibility, but it had occupied his mind more and more of late. It had been frustrating, to say the very least, to find himself stuck on Manticore until Dacey managed to convince Calida to return to Sphinx. Letters and vids just weren’t the same thing as face-to-face conversations, although he did have to admit that he would always treasure the memory of the rib-popping hug Stephanie had bestowed when they finally did return. And whatever happened, they’d have at least another three or four months together, he reminded himself. And on the same planet, this time!
He smiled at the thought, and the smile broadened as he anticipated having her to himself for a change. Dacey would disappear into her sketch pad as soon as they reached the waterfall Stephanie had described, and that would give him a chance to sit and talk with Stephanie in the sort of privacy they seldom enjoyed.
Usually, when Stephanie guided him or other members of the expedition in the bush, Karl came along, as well. Anders liked Karl quite a lot, but the older boy was an intimidating presence. Like Stephanie, he often moved around without the need for a counter-grav unit. However, in Karl’s case, the ability owed nothing to genetic modification and a great deal to sheer stubbornness. Karl had the determination of a nativeborn Sphinxian to be able to move about on his home planet without being constantly dependent on a counter-grav unit. Anders had been on Sphinx long enough to know that not every Sphinxian made that difficult choice, which added to his respect for Karl.
The fact was that Anders wasn’t at all sure how Karl felt about him—Anders—and his increasingly important role in Stephanie’s life. From various things he’d overheard—and from various things Stephanie herself had let drop—Anders had learned that after the Harringtons moved to Sphinx, Stephanie had resisted making friends among people her own age. She’d managed with her own company and—later on—that of Lionheart, supplemented by corresponding with people she met on the net through classes or clubs. If her parents hadn’t pretty much forced her to join the hang-gliding club, Stephanie probably wouldn’t have met anyone her own age at all. Then a couple of rangers had talked the Harringtons into having Stephanie take lessons in how to use a variety of firearms. Karl had been brought in to act as tutor, since the rangers couldn’t always be available. It had turned out they shared interests in a lot more than target shooting, and Karl had become Stephanie’s first real friend on Sphinx.
Anders knew Steph liked Karl but thought of him as a buddy rather than anything else. What he couldn’t figure out was how Karl felt about Stephanie. There had been a few times early on when Anders thought he was being given “keep off” signals, but then Karl had seemed to accept that Stephanie would make her own mind up in matters romantic, the way she did about everything else.
Even so, when a couple of times Karl had come upon them when they couldn’t have been doing anything other than kissing, Anders had thought he saw jealousy—or maybe just protectiveness—flash in Karl’s dark eyes.
Thinking about Karl reminded Anders of the other complication in his developing relationship with Stephanie. That was her link with Lionheart. The ’cat was far more than a pet. Anders thought that anyone who bothered to spend time with the ’cats would come to the conclusion that they were intelligent—although that intelligence had taken a somewhat different shape than it did in humans. Even someone who, like Dr. Whitaker, preferred to make assessments of a race based on its material culture had decided the ’cats were intelligent. Really, the only question that remained—at least as Anders saw it—was where on the sentience scale the treecats would end up being placed.
However, Stephanie had confided in Anders something that far fewer people had had the opportunity to learn. She was certain the ’cats were at least telempathic. She was less certain—but still pretty positive—that they were telepathic, as well. Anders had to agree that something was going on with the treecats that didn’t lend itself to visual confirmation. He’d seen how Lionheart seemed aware of the flow of Stephanie’s emotions. He’d also become pretty certain that Lionheart could read people other than Stephanie—although he wasn’t sure if the ’cat got the same amount of detail from anyone else. Stephanie claimed that Lionheart was a really good judge of character. He liked Anders, didn’t he? But he’d taken a strong dislike to another off-worlder, Tennessee Bolgeo, right off.
As to whether the ’cats were telepathic . . . Anders thought Stephanie was probably right. He’d had opportunities to observe Lionheart and Valiant acting in concert when the action in question implied a whole lot more information was being exchanged than could be held in some sort of emotional burst. One of the best examples was when Valiant—who shared Jessica’s interest in gardening—had reached for a specific tool, one Jessica had borrowed a few moments before. Lionheart had loped over, retrieved the tool from Jessica, and handed it to Valiant. There’d been no exchange of sounds. Valiant hadn’t even turned around, so there couldn’t have been any of the body language signals Kesia had thought might substitute for more complex vocalizations.
All of this made Anders less than comfortable when he was alone with Stephanie and things were getting . . . romantic. Were the two of them really alone? How much did the treecat share in Stephanie’s reactions? How much did he feel of Anders’ own reactions? Anders was determined to keep his and Stephanie’s mutual explorations within Stephanie’s comfort range, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t had thoughts, some of them pretty detailed and pretty graphic.
It was bad enough to think that Lionheart might sense some of what he was thinking, but what if the treecat shared those feelings with Stephanie? What would she think of Anders? Would she be enticed or horrified? Could the treecat somehow contaminate or influence their feelings for each other?
Such conjectures were enough to make Anders stop short every time he got a bit carried away, even when he was pretty sure Stephanie wouldn’t mind trying a little bit more. Now, just thinking about what Lionheart might or might not know was enough to make Anders hot under the collar.
He shook his head, smiling at himself, and concentrated on paying attention to his surroundings.
* * *
“It’s gorgeous, Stephanie!” Dacey Emberly exclaimed as they came to the foot of the waterfall.
It plunged over a precipice ninety meters above them, plummeting down in a single long spill, flanked by two secondary falls that descended in a series of roaring cataracts. The seething pool at the base of the cliff was at least fifty meters across, its surface perpetually dimpled by fine drops condensing back out of the falls’ spray. The river was twenty meters across where it flowed away from them, brawling through a forest of rapids and sliding down deep, glassy smooth chutes between mossgrown boulders. The backdrop of trees and undergrowth—most of it the distinctive deep blue-green of summer red spruce but touched here and there with paintbrush kisses of autumn—framed it in a rich, luxuriant tangle of color.
It was just a bit difficult to hear Dacey over the steady, unremitting thunder of the falls, but her expression was all Stephanie had hoped for.
“Jessica was the one who spotted it, really,” she told the older woman. “She and I were mapping the freehold’s plant diversity from the air for Mom. You wouldn’t think something that tall would be hard to see, but those crown oaks”—she pointed back over her shoulder—“do a really good job of hiding it from the air unless you hit the angle just right.”
“It’s spectacular,” Dacey said, head swiveling as she absorbed the falls’ entire impact. “And speaking of crown oaks, I think that might be my best vantage point. If that’s all right with you, of course, Probationary Ranger Harrington!”
She smiled broadly, and Stephanie chuckled.
“I think it’s probably perfectly safe,” she replied. “Look—Lionheart’s already checking it out!” She pointed, and Dacey followed her finger to see the cream-and-gray blur of the treecat swarming up the tallest of the crown oaks. “We’ll just make sure nothing’s hanging around up there
to eat any of us, and then Anders and I will find a good lookout post about halfway up. You can climb as high as you like to get the exact angle you want.”
* * *
Climbs Quickly flowed up the towering golden-leaf, exploring his surroundings with eyes, ears, nose, and mind. He had realized early on that they must be bringing Eye of Memory out here to see the waterfall Windswept had discovered, and he was happy that they had, because he loved to watch Eye of Memory at her craft.
It would never have occurred to one of the People to make a permanent image of something one of them had seen, since they could always pass the actuality of it from mind to mind. Because of that, it had taken him longer than perhaps it ought to have to associate even the moving images on the bright, flat memory thing Death Fang’s Bane spent so much time sitting in front of with things he had actually seen. Then he had realized that of course the poor, mind-blind two-legs could not possibly exchange the memory of things seen with one another. He had been pleased by the clever way they compensated for their inability, yet the images that Eye of Memory made were even more pleasing. They were not as accurate, perhaps, and they did not move, but gazing at them was like savoring the tiny differences between two of the People’s remembered images of the same thing. It was as if Eye of Memory was able to share her own perceptions of the things whose images she captured despite the fact that she was mind-blind, and watching those images come to life under her clever, skilled fingers was almost as pleasing as the taste of her happy, focused mind-glow as she worked.
He and Death Fang’s Bane had accompanied Eye of Memory on several expeditions, and so he had already guessed where she would be most likely to perch while capturing this image. When Death Fang’s Bane turned and looked at the tallest of the golden-leafs, he had known he had guessed correctly, and it felt good to climb swiftly up the enormous tree. Well, of course it did! Had not his clan named him Climbs Quickly because climbing was one of the things he most enjoyed in all the world?
He reached a wide fork in one of the branches and paused, looking back down the way he had come. This would do well for Eye of Memory, he decided. The branch was broad enough to give her a comfortable place to sit or stand and shaded from too much direct sunlight, and the entire waterfall was clearly visible. He had detected no sign of any danger, and so he scurried out to the end of the branch, sat up high on his true-feet, and waved his true-hand at Death Fang’s Bane.
He could not make her hear his mind-voice, but he knew she would be watching him through the far-seeing thing she carried at her belt, and he felt her understanding as he beckoned to her and the other two-legs. She waved back, and he settled down on his bright, breezy perch, waiting.
* * *
“How long do you think she’ll paint this time?” Anders asked, grinning at Stephanie as they sat on their own branch, twenty meters below Dacey’s, and leaned back against the crown oak’s enormous trunk, sharing the thermos of lemonade Marjorie Harrington had sent along.
“Until she runs out of light, probably,” Stephanie replied with an answering grin. She’d become very fond of Dacey Emberly, but having a mother who was also a painter had taught her a thing or two about the breed.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Anders agreed.
He looked around, thoroughly enjoying the sunlight and the cool breeze singing through the crown oak’s leaves. He might not have felt quite so happy about perching so many meters above the ground if he hadn’t had his own counter-grav, but he’d gotten accustomed to climbing trees here on Sphinx. Stephanie and Lionheart seemed to spend at least a third of their time in the treetops, after all!
The thought of the treecat drew his attention to where Lionheart clung to a branch just above Dacey, gazing intently over her shoulder as she worked. He knew Lionheart seemed to love watching Dacey paint, and he wondered how focused he was at the moment on Dacey’s emotions instead of Stephanie’s. Could he be distracted from his person’s emotions, or was the link between them—whatever it was and however it worked—always in the forefront of his attention? It was a question which had occupied Anders more than once, but in a lot of ways, he was grateful, since no one objected when he and Stephanie went off on a hike together, even without Karl. Apparently they assumed that Lionheart made an adequate chaperone.
And I guess he does, Anders thought ruefully. Even if Stephanie flat-out invited me to . . . well . . . to do more than we’ve been doing, I don’t think I’d try. I saw the records of what Lionheart and his family did to the hexapuma. I don’t really want him to decide I was offering his human some sort of threat.
Today, however, Stephanie seemed to have something on her mind other than their usual explorations of the local wildlife and each other. He hadn’t been able to put his finger on what that something else might be, but several times he’d thought her usual smile seemed a little more forced. Now she looked at him for several moments, smile fading. Then she reached to hold his hand, and Anders didn’t need to be a telepath—not even a telempath—to know she was looking for comfort, not inviting a snuggle.
His eyebrows furrowed as he searched for a way to ask what was wrong without implying that she was acting particularly weird, but he didn’t have to.
“Anders,” she asked, “how did you feel when you realized you had a chance to go to Sphinx?”
Anders was surprised. They’d talked about this before when comparing notes on their various trips to other planets and it hadn’t seemed to worry her any then. Why should it be worrying her now? Unless . . .
Guessing this was a lead to some other topic, he answered honestly.
“Pretty happy, really. I’d already gotten interested in treecats, you know. Here was my chance to see them—not in recordings, not some captive being brought around as a display—but where they lived. I was really excited.”
“You weren’t nervous about going to a strange place?”
“Not really. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going alone. Yeah, Dad can be really obsessive, but if I got in trouble he’d be around. Anyway, despite my mom’s impression that a colony world was going to be pretty backward, I knew Sphinx was cutting edge in a lot of ways.”
“Manticore is even more cutting edge,” Stephanie said. “I haven’t been there since we stopped over on the way to Sphinx. I was only ten and fresh from Meyerdahl, so it didn’t seem too much to me then. Now I know lots of people on Manticore think people from Sphinx are complete rubes.”
“Some of them probably do,” Anders replied. “I don’t remember anyone actually saying anything like that to me, but most of the people I talked to knew I was a visitor. They probably wouldn’t have talked down about their neighbors to a stranger.” He smiled slightly. “I don’t think most of them think that way, though.”
“No?” Stephanie looked away for a moment. “I sort of felt that way when we first got here, you know. Until Lionheart and I met, anyway. So I guess it wouldn’t be too surprising if somebody on Manticore felt that way. Or if . . . if they might, I don’t know, look down on somebody from Sphinx if they were to run into them wandering around Landing or something.”
The meaning behind her somewhat jumbled words registered on Anders suddenly.
“You’ve got a chance to go to Manticore? That’s really cool, Steph. I enjoyed my visit a lot—except for the fact that you were on a different planet, that is. I think you’ll really enjoy it! What is it? Some sort of educational field trip? A competition, maybe?”
“You might say so,” Stephanie agreed. She took a deep breath, and then, the words spilling out of her in a torrent, she told Anders about her and Karl’s meeting with Chief Ranger Shelton.
Anders listened first in delight, then—as he realized just how long Stephanie would be gone—with increasing dismay. He fought to hide his reaction. He was sure Stephanie didn’t guess how he felt, but he was pretty sure that if Lionheart was paying attention to them instead of Dacey, he wasn’t fooled at all.
Stephanie ended her account on a sort of c
hoking note, like she was swallowing back a little sob. She’d told the last part to some point on the tree limb near her right foot. Now Anders reached and tilted back her head so he could see her face. To his amazement—Stephanie was a queen of self-control—her brown eyes were swimming with unshed tears.
He thought she might pull away, but instead she flung her arms around him and squeezed him with a bone crushing intensity that demonstrated that, for once, she’d forgotten her own strength. Anders tried not to show he was gasping for breath, but hugged her back as hard as he could.
“Oh, Anders! Anders! What am I going to do? I thought that maybe Mom or Dad would be against it, but as far as I can tell, if I want to go they’re going to let me. But you only just got back from there! And . . . and we don’t know yet how long you’re even going to be here in the Star Kingdom at all! How can I tell them I don’t want to go because I don’t want to leave you?!”
She relaxed her hug so she could look at him. To give himself a moment to catch his breath, Anders kissed her lightly. Then, trying hard not to show how mixed up he himself felt, he settled her back next to him with his arm around her.
“I don’t want you to go, either, Steph. But I’m guessing that you don’t know what you really want.”
Stephanie gulped something between a sob and a laugh. “I do know, actually. Absolutely. I want to go and take that class and I want to stay right here on Sphinx with you. Since that’s impossible, I’m going to have to make a choice.”
Anders cuddled her against him. He’d grown a bit in the last six T-months, but Stephanie hadn’t much. Against his side, she felt deceptively fragile and delicate, like a baby bird.
Stephanie is fragile and delicate, he thought. Maybe not in her body, but inside, where it counts. I’ve got to help her make the right decision or something might break—and along with it, whatever it is we have between us.
“We’ve never really talked about being from two different planets—what that means to ‘us,’” he began.