Fire Season

by David Weber

  “You say she’s working, though,” Mom said.

  Jessica nodded. “In child care. The advantage is she doesn’t need to pay to leave the little ones anywhere. The job lets her keep them with her. That’s useful, since Nathan is still nursing.”

  Mom looked thoughtful, and by the time Jessica had to leave—“I usually try to be home to help wash up the kids and stuff some of them to bed”—a plan was clearly in the works.

  After seeing Jessica off, Stephanie went into the kitchen to help clean up.

  “Thanks for letting Jessica come at such short notice, Mom.”

  Marjorie hugged her. “I’m proud of you for taking initiative.”

  Stephanie grinned. “I guess not all the kids here are total losses. Jessica is interesting. I bet she’d be almost up to my study levels if her family hadn’t had to move so much.”

  Quickly, hoping she wasn’t betraying a confidence, Stephanie shared what Jessica had told her about her father and the Pheriss family’s many moves.

  “Mom,” she concluded, “even if things don’t work out when you interview Ms. Pheriss, I was wondering. Jessica was really glad today to buy some ice potatoes you would have tossed on the compost. Could we, I mean, when you cull the greenhouse, could I take some of the stuff over to the Pheriss house?”

  Marjorie Harrington nodded, but her expression was serious.

  “Charity is a difficult matter, Steph. Sometimes it backfires—like my trying to be nice to that horrible Trudy.”

  Stephanie nodded. “I understand. We might hurt the Pheriss’ feelings. Still, sometimes good comes out of even that sort of thing. I mean, if Trudy hadn’t come to the party and been such a know-it-all, I might not have found out that Jessica had a mind of her own. Even if she’d been friendly at the party, I would have thought it was just because she was a guest, but when she spoke out that way…”

  “Good point. We won’t know unless we try, but let’s be cautious about how we go about it. It will be easy enough if Ms. Pherris works out as an assistant. I can just tell her to help herself—that there’s too much for three humans and one treecat.”

  “Bleek!” protested Lionheart, although his comment could have been because Stephanie was pulling a casserole dish away before he’d completely scoured the cheese and meat sauce off the ceramic.

  “Well, then,” Stephanie said. “I’ll just have to hope Ms. Pheriss is qualified.”

  Snuggled under the covers that night, listening to the night noises through the open window, Stephanie watched Lionheart scamper out. She hoped he wasn’t too lonely for other treecats. Now that she was making human friends, it seemed even more important that her best friend not be deprived of similar companionship.

  “You okay, Lionheart?” she called after him.

  “Bleek,” he assured her, his warmth and affection flowing back to her stronger than any sound. “Bleek. Bleek. Bleek.”

  She had to hope those sounds meant, “Yes. Absolutely and unquestionably, yes.” not, “I’m miserably lonely, but I’ll stick by you.”

  Chapter Eight

  When getting ready for the expedition to the abandoned treecat site, Anders made certain to pack his reader as well as several changes of socks. He had gone on some of his dad’s field trips before and usually he was allowed to help, but none of those trips had ever been as important as this one. For all he knew, his assisting might be considered a contamination of data or something.

  But maybe not, he thought. Dacey Emberly is coming along, but then she’s on the books as an official scientific illustrator. Poor Peony Rose…I know she was counting on helping Virgil on this project, but her morning sickness is pretty bad.

  He grinned, remembering the look of astonishment and delight that had lit Virgil Iwamoto’s bearded features when he’d announced to the team over dinner just a few nights ago that his wife’s recent bouts of illness were not some form of flu, as everyone had expected, but were because she was pregnant.

  “Peony Rose didn’t renew her implant after we were married,” Virgil had explained shyly, “because we planned on starting a family. The med-tech told her that it would probably take months before her cycles re-established, especially with the stress of travel, but it seems her body had other ideas.”

  Congratulations had gone around, but later Anders had heard his father grumbling that Peony Rose really could have chosen a better time, since he’d planned to make her a crew chief. Now, if they got permission to excavate a site, he’d probably need to hire someone local. Virgil couldn’t be expected to handle the lithics analysis—so crucial at this early stage when stone tools would be one of the most important means of judging the complexity of treecat culture—and also coordinate the laborers Dr. Whittaker hoped to hire.

  Dad’s thinking weeks ahead, of course, Anders thought, but that’s like him. This project means more to him than anything.

  John Qin, Kesia Guyen’s husband, hadn’t been coming on these jaunts. His interest in treecats was mostly because she was interested. His passion was interstellar trade. He’d been taking meeting after meeting since their arrival, trying both to get an idea of what the colonists of Sphinx needed and what the Star Kingdom would allow to be imported.

  So it was a group of seven who got into the air van early that morning: Dr. Whittaker, Dr. Nez, Dr. Emberly, Dacey Emberly, Kesia Guyen, and Virgil Iwamoto. Since the ostensible reason for the trip was to visit a variety of picketwood groves north of Twin Forks, they had loaded up with ladders, slings, and other gear related to arboreal investigation.

  Counter-grav units were great for getting up and down, but none of the crew was particularly skilled in doing work while floating in mid-air. Besides, such activities did put a drain on the power sources. While those could be charged from the air-van, the broadcast power didn’t reach if one went out of range.

  In addition to this gear, they’d packed a lot more field gear—including a selection of envelopes and boxes into which smaller samples could be put. This told Anders that, even if Dr. Whittaker said that most of their work would be in the nature of a photographic survey, he wasn’t about to risk losing some choice artifact.

  So what happens if the site isn’t really abandoned? Anders thought. What if what the treecats have done is more like moving to winter quarters after summering somewhere else? When Mom and Dad close our cabin in the mountains for the winter, we leave all sorts of stuff behind. If someone took that, we’d figure they were stealing. Why shouldn’t the treecats feel the same?

  Anders wanted to ask his dad about this ethical fine point, but he knew that Dr. Whittaker would simply brush it off by denying that he intended to take anything, so why did it matter? Dad knew perfectly well that once they were in the field, Anders wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his crew. Not embarrassing either of his parents—especially his mother, who, as a politician, lived in the public eye—was something Anders had been trained in since he started to walk and talk.

  I’ll ask Dr. Nez, Anders thought. He likes questions like that. I guess that’s why he’s a cultural anthropologist, rather than an ethno-archeologist like Dad.

  Dr. Whittaker chose to fly them himself. He departed in the direction of the first stand of picketwood they were scheduled to investigate, then, when they were far from any of the settlements, he dipped down below the tree line, punched up the map program, and entered the coordinates for the abandoned treecat settlement which Ranger Jedrusinski had shown them.

  This looped them around back south, all the way to the south side of the Makara River, hundreds of kilometers from their assigned locations.

  Even with the need to navigate around the trees, they made good time. As in many first-growth forests, the under story was relatively clear. Fire activity cleared away the snags, dead grasses, leaves, shrubs, and other low-level detritus, scarring the trunks of the more massive trees, but often stimulating growth. More flammable trees—like the near-pines from which Stephanie and Karl had rescued Right-Striped and Left-Striped—
actually needed fire activity to clear away weaker trees and break the hulls on their seeds.

  Still, Anders thought, looking up at the sky when the air-van passed through a small clearing, I’m glad to see it’s a nice day, not a trace of storm clouds in the sky.

  Dr. Whittaker took them up a little higher when they arrived near the site so they could make certain no one else was around, but he was careful to stay below the elevation of some nearby crown oaks. These provided them with sufficient cover to survey the picketwood grove and its surroundings, since picketwood averaged between thirty-five and forty-five meters in height, while crown oak regularly reached eighty meters.

  “There’s a nice landing spot over there,” Dr. Whittaker said. “Level and still relatively green, but far enough from the picketwood that our landing won’t hurt valuable artifacts.”

  Dr. Calida Emberly had pulled out a pair of binoculars and was surveying the area. “I don’t see any signs of use,” she began. “Maybe we should take a closer look before landing.”

  Dr. Whittaker shrugged. “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. You know, the Forestry Service’s fanatical interest in fire watch and control has gotten me thinking. How do treecats deal with forest fire? They certainly haven’t survived by waiting for Stephanie Harrington to come rescue them from burning trees.”

  He laughed at his joke, politely echoed by Guyen and Iwamoto.

  “Seriously,” Dad continued. “I think one of the ways we can judge whether or not treecats are intelligent would be to look for evidence of fire control features near their dwelling areas: cleared areas like this one could be just such evidence.”

  On that triumphant note, he brought the air van down. The surface underfoot was thick with a springy vegetation. Dr. Emberly bent to clip a sample.

  “It reminds me of wild portulaca,” she said. “I wonder if this also has a mat structure?”

  Despite her silver-gray hair, her excitement made her seem girlish. Anders remembered how many new discoveries awaited science on Sphinx. Marjorie Harrington had mentioned that probably fewer than fifty percent of the plants had been typed: “And most of those we have identified fall into broad categories,” she’d said. “It will be decades, maybe centuries before we recognize sub-species and the environmental cues they evolved in response to.”

  “Is that really important?” Anders had asked, not to challenge, but because he’d never really thought about plants.

  “Absolutely!” Dr. Marjorie had responded. “We can learn about the life-cycle of the planet that way, anticipate, perhaps, seasonal variations and prepare for them. It’s all too usual for new arrivals to a planet to assume that what they see when they first arrive is ‘normal,’ but it’s just as likely that landfall might have been made during a time of drought or flooding. Plants can tell us far more.”

  She’d had a lot more to say, but most of it had gone right over Anders’ head. What he had come away from that talk with was a realization that—despite mobile humanity’s tendency to give preference to creatures that move—the vegetative world was a whole lot more than backdrop.

  Dr. Emberly was tugging at the edge of one of her “portulacas.”

  “Look, Anders. They do form a mat, a pretty thick one. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that these ‘plants’ are actually one plant. In a heavily forested environment like this one, there would be a real survival advantage to being able to stretch.”

  “Like picketwood,” Anders said, “only this does it sideways more than up and down.”

  “Interesting comparison,” Dr. Emberly said, taking a note. “I must check if Dr. Harrington has written anything about that.”

  Bradford Whittaker’s voice bellowed across the open area. “Dr. Emberly! I’ve located some bones. I’d like your opinion regarding their source.”

  Dr. Emberly, who, after all, was a xenozoologist as well as a xenobotanist, hurried to go look.

  Dr. Nez called to Anders. “I’m going to walk around the immediate area. Want to join me?”

  Anders hurried over, happy to be needed. “What are we looking for?”

  Langston Nez made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “I want to see if we can work out just how much of this grove the treecats were actively using. Your father’s thought about fire-control features is an interesting one. If the treecats are intelligent—as most of us think they are—then they should have done something.”

  “What can they do?” Anders asked. “They don’t have machines to pump water or anything. They certainly can’t fly in trained crews or dump hundreds of gallons of water mixed with fire suppressant chemicals.”

  “I can tell you’ve been listening to the SFS rangers,” Dr. Nez said with a chuckle.

  “Well, fire control is their favorite topic these days,” Anders said. “I heard that Chief Ranger Shelton was preparing an educational broadcast about the costs of fighting even a smallish fire like the Franchitti fire. He’s hoping that those who can’t be convinced to value the wild lands for themselves will think of fire control as a way to prevent a tax increase.”

  “It’s a good approach,” Dr. Nez said. “As an anthropologist, I have to agree that more people are motivated by self-interest than by altruism.”

  Thinking of his dad, Anders silently agreed.

  They spent the next couple of hours working on their range estimate. As they did so, they listened to the chatter on their private uni-link channel. The bones Dr. Whittaker had found proved to be fish bones, lots of them. Anders knew that his dad—despite his claims to the contrary—would be taking samples. Well, hopefully the treecats didn’t think fish bones were sacred or something.

  Virgil Iwamoto had found a couple of areas where lithics scatter indicated the treecats had been in the habit of making their stone tools. These “workshops” had him almost unreasonably excited.

  “It proves the treecats didn’t just whack off a chunk of stone as needed for a job. These areas indicate that they probably had specialists, perhaps older ’cats, past their best hunting days, who continued to contribute to the community in this fashion.”

  “And if they have one type of specialist,” Dr. Nez added, “they might have others. Weavers, perhaps? We know they make nets. I wonder if we can find evidence of a weaving ‘shop.’”

  “I saw some lace willow near where we left the van,” Dr. Emberly supplied. “We should check to see if there’s evidence of a workshop near there. Of course, they could have chosen to move their materials elsewhere.”

  “Still,” Dr. Nez replied, “it’s a logical place to check. Thanks for the information. Anders and I will go take a look.”

  He reset his uni-link to “listen” mode and frowned. “Lace willow. Why does that bother me? Well, let’s go and take a look.”

  Anders had been reading about local plants in the SFS guide Stephanie had given him out of self-defense, after he’d gone hiking with Stephanie, Karl, Jessica, and Toby, and had learned that even Jessica—who was relatively new to the planet—knew more than he did about common plant types.

  “Lace willow lives mostly near waterways or marshy areas,” Anders recited. “It is relatively low-growing and bushy—at least for Sphinx, where really huge seems to be the size of most plants. It’s interesting because its leaves are pierced as an insect trapping mechanism.”

  Dr. Nez started trotting.

  “Waterways and marshy areas,” he repeated. “Open green spaces on a planet that has been experiencing drought. Fish bones…”

  He started running. Anders, catching his urgency even before he figured out the reason why, pounded alongside him. They were closer than the rest of the team to where the air van had been parked, which was doubtless why Dr. Nez didn’t immediately call for assistance. The other reason, Anders intuitively knew, was Dr. Whittaker himself. Dr. Whittaker was in the midst of grand discoveries and would not want to be interrupted for anything other than a full-blown emergency.

  They reached the bouncy area covered with what Dr. Ember
ly had informally dubbed “mat-portulaca.” Was it Anders’ imagination, or did his feet sink just a little as he ran?

  Arriving at the van, they saw disaster in progress. The air van had sunk into the ground. Already the lower portions of the doors were covered. Anders could see the ooze moving up even as he watched.

  “He parked on a bog,” Dr. Nez said, his tone as fierce as any profanity. “On a bog!”

  He activated his uni-link. “We’ve got a problem here. The van is sinking, seems we accidentally parked on wetlands. Dr. Whittaker, I think you’d better call for help.”

  There was a longer pause than absolutely necessary, then Dr. Whittaker’s voice came back. “Sinking? How deep is it?”

  Anders could imagine the course of his father’s thoughts. Did they need to call for help? Maybe they could get the van out themselves. If they called for help, then the Forestry Service and Dr. Hobbard would know they’d been bending the rules.

  “The bottoms of the doors are covered,” Dr. Nez shot back. “That means all the heavier parts are already under. I know we brought rope, but it’s a lot to expect seven people to pull out a vehicle.”

  “Get inside and see if the engine will still run,” Dr. Whittaker snapped. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Dr. Nez rolled his eyes. “It’s worth my job if I make the call, Anders, but if you do…”

  He trailed off, not asking, and began picking his way over the ground nearer to the van.

  Anders watched Dr. Nez’s progress while he activated his uni-link, trying to think of a solution that wouldn’t be directly disobedient to his father, yet would get them help. He agreed with Dr. Nez. There was no way seven people—one of them an old lady—were going to pull the van out of the bog.

  Stephanie! he thought. I’ll call Stephanie, tell her what’s going on, and she’ll call the SFS. Even if they get here too late to save the van, we’re going to need a ride out.

  Keeping an eye on Dr. Nez, who was using a branch as a makeshift crowbar in an attempt to force the van’s door, Anders requested the uni-link connect him with Stephanie Harrington.