Treecat Wars (12 page)

“From your mother and me. We picked it out before the expedition ever left Urako. I’ve been hiding it for months!”

Anders ripped off the wrapping paper. Inside was a new uni-link, one of the fancy high processor models he’d coveted. Surrounding it were about six packages of socks in different colors—the need to have plenty of socks having become a running joke between Anders and his mom.

“Dad, this is super-hexy! Thanks so much. It’s the exact model I wanted.”

Dr. Whitaker looked very pleased. “And you can be certain that
this
model is calibrated to access the com net here on Sphinx.”

Anders grinned. Screwed up communications equipment had been the cause of a lot of last year’s trouble. He strapped on his new uni-link while his dad got into his jacket. Daytimes were still pretty nice, especially if the site was sunny, but the rest of the time a jacket was an absolute necessity.

Father and son hurried down the steps together. It rapidly became apparent that the rest of the crew also knew it was Anders’ birthday. Once they were all in the air van and speeding toward the site, gifts came out. Langston Nez presented him with a text on how sentience and intelligence had been judged practically from the dawn of human history.

“Did you know that things like skin color were once considered indicators of human intelligence?” he said. “This book will help you understand why getting humans to admit anyone—even other humans—to the exclusive ‘person’ not ‘animal’ club can be so difficult.”

Anders was a little overwhelmed. From what he could see, this was a pretty serious book, but then one of the reasons he’d always liked Dr. Nez was that he never treated Anders like a kid.

“Thanks!”

The rest of the gifts were less serious. Kesia Guyen and her husband had found Anders a selection of popular music from back on Urako—“So you won’t be too behind when you get back home.” Dr. Emberly, true to her botanist background—and perhaps as a sly reference to all the foraging they’d done together—had given him an assortment of dried fruit from all the planets in the Manticore system. Dacey Emberly had painted Anders a portrait of several male treecats lolling on pads of leaves and branches, their gray and cream coloration blending in amazingly well with the long streaks of sunlight coming through the limbs overhead.

“I put in several of our friends and acquaintances,” she said, pointing. “There’s Lionheart. Valiant is over to the side. He looks like he’s asleep, but you can see he has a root in his hand-feet and he’s drowsed off while inspecting it. Right-Striped and Left-Striped are the two who’re wrestling. Fisher is licking his true-hands clean. Next to him, you can see the bones and scales from his most recent catch.”

Anders laughed. “Thanks so much. This is great.”

“It’s an original painting,” Dacey said, “not a print. It’s from the series I’m doing to illustrate the expedition reports.”

“That makes it a real treasure, Anders,” Dad cut in. “We’ll wrap it very carefully when we pack up this winter.”

Pack up
, Anders thought.
This winter, when it will be
my
turn to leave. And not just to another planet in the same star system, this time. At least Dad sounds like he’s given up on the idea of shipping me home early
.

All the gifts got Anders thinking about Stephanie’s little rhyme. He played it over in his head, then used his new uni-link to check his guess. “Cherry” was one of those words that had mutated a lot since humans started cultivating the particular sub variety of
genus prunus
back on Old Earth. When humans had taken off for the stars, they’d shown a strong tendency to name new things after what they’d left behind, whether they looked a lot like the original or not. Certainly the Sphinxian crown oak, with its arrowhead-shaped leaves and enormous size, bore only the faintest resemblance to the oaks of Old Earth. The same was even more true of the Sphinxian red spruce, which was not much like a spruce at all, given that it had blue-green leaves rather than needles. However, some colonist had seen a similarity between the timber produced by that particular tree and that of the terrestrial spruce. As was so often the case, the name had stuck.

So what remained “cherry” when everything else changed? Anders happily viewed a variety of fruits and fruit woods that used “cherry” in their names and spent much of the morning considering that question. In the end, he decided that—although even on Old Earth cherries had come in pink and yellow, as well in various shades of red, including a hue so dark it was almost black—to most people “cherry bright” would mean bright red.

Okay
. He made a note to himself.
The letter A and bright red
.

For a moment, a potential answer tingled in the back of his mind, but it drifted off. Rather than chase after it, he decided to let it percolate on its own while he considered the next line. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of an answer for that one, either.

At mid-afternoon, the crew stopped for a break. Anders had been helping Dr. Nez sift through river gravels to see if the treecats might be able to forage for sufficient flint there rather than traveling—or trading—to get it closer to the source. He was glad to take a rest from the neck and back-stiffening work and play waiter to the rest of the group.

Kesia Guyen, who had managed to keep her plump—she referred to it as “full” figure—despite hours of hard labor, plopped down and leaned back against one of the picketwood trees that were always part of a treecat settlement.

“Anders, my boy, I know it’s your birthday, but I’m too pooped to pop up again. Can you grab me something to drink from the cooler?”

“Sure, but would you like? There’s a bunch of stuff here.”

“Anything as long as it has caffeine.” She chuckled one of her deep, throaty laughs. “This girl needs some caff if she’s gonna stay on Dr. Whitaker’s staff.”

Anders grabbed a bulb of a cream-coffee drink he knew Kesia liked and tossed it over to her. He was reaching for a bulb of spike thorn tea with associated honey when an idea hit him.

Gives a zing. Caffeine. Caff. It’s not the letter “A” only; it’s
a
letter. A cherry letter. A red letter. Caff-A! The Red Letter Café in Twin Forks! That’s
got
to be what Stephanie meant
.

He knew the Red Letter Café well. The owner, Eric Flint, had been one of the first business owners to announce that—despite Lionheart’s terrible table manners—his business was a treecat-friendly zone. In thanks, the Harringtons had frequented the café, although thanks alone probably wouldn’t have kept them coming back if the Red Letter Café hadn’t also served ample portions and made excellent milkshakes.

After Jessica had been adopted by Valiant, the café had become the preferred hangout for the hang-gliding club after practice. So when, on the way home, Dr. Whitaker asked, “So, son, where do you want to go for your birthday dinner?” there was really only one answer.

“The Red Letter Café. All this shifting stone has given me a real taste for a milkshake.”

* * *

Stephanie swung her feet out of bed as soon as her alarm beeped, but it was harder than usual for some reason this morning. Even having stayed up last night getting to know a few of the other students couldn’t explain why she felt so dragged down.

Only after she’d gotten out of the shower and was strapping on her uni-link did she glance at the date and remember.

“Anders’ birthday!” she said aloud.

Lionheart stopped scratching at his shedding further. “Bleek?”

“It’s Anders’ birthday,” Stephanie repeated. “I wonder if he’s got my message yet?” She calculated the differences in time quickly. “I bet he has…I wonder if he’s figured it out yet?”

“Bleek!”

“Yeah. I think he will, too. He’s pretty smart.”

Her uni-link beeped and for a moment she had the crazy hope it might be a message from Anders. Instead, it was a text from Karl: “Heading down to eat. Meet you. Remember. Early target shooting before forensics.”

Stephanie sighed and shoved her feet into her shoes. She thought about eating in her room—she’d laid in a stash—and seeing if she could record a quick message to Anders, a follow-up to the timed one. Then she shook her head and continued talking to Lionheart as she gathered up her stuff.

“No. I can’t risk seeming standoffish, especially not so early in the session. Last night was fun. I especially liked that Carmen Telford. But there were a lot of people who were looking at me like I was a trained neo-monk or something. And if the word somehow got out that I was brooding over a boy….”

She hugged Lionheart, sneezed at the cloud of shed fur that came up, and ran for the door.

* * *

Anders certainly hadn’t been wrong about his solution to Stephanie’s puzzle. What he hadn’t expected was that it would have more than one part. After they’d had dinner, he’d gone up to Eric Flint and said, “I believe you have something Stephanie left for me.”

Mr. Flint had grinned and immediately produced a slim envelope from one of the cubbies at the reception desk. When Anders got home and opened it, the contents read: “High, high, up in the sky, where purple moths go drifting by!”

He got this one immediately. Not long ago, when he and Stephanie had been hang-gliding on the Harrington freehold, they’d found themselves flying in the midst of a host of delicate little six-winged creatures that they’d dubbed “purple moths.” They’d hovered on the counter-grav units built into the gliders, taking images and—when a few unfortunates chose to commit suicide against the glider wings—taking samples, as well.

They’d nursed hopes that they’d discovered another new species, but it turned out that their moths were already known under the name “lavender hexaflies.” Nonetheless, the SFS was happy to have the samples and images, since it was suspected that various species of hexaflies played an essential role in the late-season pollination of some of the faster-growing Sphinxian plant species.

That had been a wonderful, magical day, and Anders was certain he could locate the place again. However, he also knew he was one of the less skillful flyers in Stephanie’s gang, and air currents this time of year could be unpredictable. It would be a good idea to bring someone else along. He’d also better get the Harringtons’ permission. Their freehold was huge—over six hundred square kilometers—and they would probably not even notice people poking around, but Anders’ mother had always stressed that remembering one’s manners applied even when no one was likely to notice.

Richard Harrington asked where Anders wanted to go and, after checking the coordinates, gave the okay.

“You’re not going alone, are you?”

“I know the safety rules, Coach,” Anders replied promptly. “I figured on asking the gang: Toby, Chet, Christine, and Jessica. Club games and races are nice but, well, there’s something great about flying just for the fun of it.”

“I agree. Have a good time, then.”

Anders debated which of his friends to call first. He realized that despite the amount of time he’d spent with them, this would be the first time he was the one setting something up. Usually Stephanie handled that, following some shared unwritten assumption that they were “her” friends. Finally, Anders decided a blanket invitation had the best chance of succeeding.

He was delighted—and a little suspicious, when all four were available. Could Stephanie have set this up in advance? Maybe Mr. Flint had been asked to let them all know when Anders picked up the note, indicating that he’d solved the first puzzle. Or maybe Richard Harrington was in on it and had signaled when Anders called to get permission. Anders wouldn’t have been surprised. If Stephanie hadn’t wanted to be a ranger, she would have made a great fleet commander.

* * *

“So that’s Ms. Stephanie Harrington and the famous Lionheart,” Gwendolyn Adair murmured, gazing at the imagery on her display. Harrington and the SFS had maintained a very low profile on her arrival and none of the newsies seemed to have realized she was coming, but Gwen had positioned her own camera team ahead of time.

“Yep,” Oswald Morrow agreed, looking over her shoulder. “Doesn’t look all that impressive, does she? She’s just a kid!”

“Who went up against a hexapuma with just a vibro blade and a treecat,” Gwen reminded him a bit frostily. “And you might want to remember what happened to our good friend Bolgeo when
he
crossed swords with her.” She shook her head, never looking away from the imagery. “Don’t sell this particular kid short, Ozzie.”

“Umph.” Morrow shrugged, but he didn’t argue with her. Not out loud, anyway. Instead, he tapped the display with a fingertip. “That’s Zivonik?”

“No, Ozzie; its Crown Prince Edward.” She glared over her shoulder at him. “Of course it’s Zivonik!”

Morrow glared back at her, but only from the corner of one eye, and she snorted.

“Sorry.” There might have been just a
little
insincerity in her tone. “Yes, that’s Zivonik. Bigger than I expected, really…though he could just
look
bigger because he’s standing next to her.”

“How did they do coming through the terminal?”

“Better than I’d hoped they would, actually.” Gwen shook her head. “I’d sort of hoped all the people running around everywhere would spook the ’cat, but he seems to’ve taken it in stride.”

“Too bad,” Morrow murmured. “That probably means he’ll behave himself in crowds on campus, too.”

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy.” Gwen shrugged, gazing at the imagery for another handful of seconds, then shut it off and tipped back in her chair. “Like I say, our young friend Stephanie’s not someone to take lightly, and I’m beginning to think her six-legged friend isn’t, either.”

“Are you thinking about changing the plan?” Morrow sounded both surprised and perhaps a bit anxious, but then, despite his confident exterior and reputation for brokering big deals, he was much more of a creature of habit than Gwen. He liked to make a plan then stick with it, and her tendency to improvise made him nervous on occasion.

“No,” she reassured him. “I
am
thinking about how best to apply it, though. And the more I look at the imagery, the less confident I am of our being able to convince people treecats aren’t really sentient.”