Treecat Wars (2 page)

Stephanie shook her head, but Karl said slowly, “If it isn’t the high-profile stuff, then it must be the rest, right? The time we put in as provisional rangers?”

Chief Shelton nodded emphatically. “That’s it. Your demonstrated willingness to do the non-glamorous and routine patrols that are part of a ranger’s daily job is what convinced the worst of the doubters. Stephanie, in particular, has a bit of a reputation for impulsive behavior.”

He paused, but Stephanie didn’t protest. She supposed some might see her as impulsive, but she preferred to think of what she did as taking necessary initiative. Chief Shelton gave her a sideways smile and continued.

“However, our computer logs don’t lie, and they show how faithfully you’ve done your shifts—even when those shifts have consisted of nothing more romantic and exciting than covering headquarters so someone with more experience or a wider range of skills could go out into the field. Remember that when you—if you—get to Manticore.

“I’m forwarding all the necessary information to your uni-links so you’ll be able to show it to your parents. I’m afraid I’m going to need to ask for a decision fairly quickly. Time was wasted while we went through our rosters looking to see who we could spare. Then more time was wasted while we convinced various people at various levels that our provisional rangers would fit the bill. Can you give me an answer within a week? We can stretch to ten days, but a week would be better. The class starts in two weeks.”

“A week?” Karl seemed momentarily astonished, then nodded and got to his feet as if he was prepared to start the trip back to Thunder River that very moment. “I can do it.”

“Me, too, Stephanie said, “but my folks will want a few days to make sure they’ve considered everything. Neither of them are impulsive.”

“Unlike you,” Karl said, grinning at her.

All too aware of Chief Ranger Shelton, Stephanie refrained from sticking her tongue out at Karl, but the rumble of Lionheart’s purr against her chest as she picked him up and got to her feet let her know that more than one of her friends was laughing at the joke. Immediately, the treecat flowed into approved “carry” position—his remaining front foot (his true-hand) on her shoulder, his rearmost set of feet (or true-feet) on a specially built brace she wore with all her clothing. This was a compromise her dad had recently agreed to, although Richard Harrington still preferred Stephanie let the treecat do most of his own walking.

“Good luck,” the Chief Ranger said, waving them toward the door. “I look forward to hearing from you both.”

Karl stopped in mid stride. “I suppose the information’s in our uni-links, but I forgot to ask. How long is this course, exactly?”

“Three T-months,” came the prompt reply. “As I said, there’s a lot that needs to be covered.”

Stephanie’s feet kept moving, but inside her something froze as the shapeless dread that had been haunting her for the last few minutes suddenly came into focus.

Three months! Anders! I want to go to Manticore, but can I bear to leave him for three whole months?

Despite her sudden emotional turmoil, Stephanie managed to talk naturally to Karl during the trip back to Twin Forks from Yawata Crossing. Thankfully, they had a lot to talk about. If Karl thought Stephanie was acting at all oddly, he probably put it down to her thinking about ways to convince her parents to let her go off-planet for three months.

“I’ll com you later,” he said, as she got out of his air car, “and let you know how it goes with my folks.”

“Me, too,” she replied. “Remember—don’t let your folks call mine until I get a chance to talk with them first. I need to figure out how best to let them know.”

“I promise,” Karl agreed. Then he shifted the car up to where he could pour on speed as soon as he was out of the city limits. The Zivoniks lived near Thunder River, a good many hours travel away even at top speeds, but Stephanie didn’t doubt Karl would have the car on autopilot and be on the com to his mother as soon as he was in clear airspace.

Her own mind swirled as she walked to her dad’s office. Of course, the fact that Richard Harrington had an office in Twin Forks didn’t mean he’d be in it. Stephanie’s father was a veterinarian, a job that, on Sphinx, embraced not only the care of the animals belonging to the colonists, but often of creatures native to Sphinx, as well. Add to that the numerous genetically altered creatures that were being tried out as the colonists looked for the best way to work with their environment and still have some of the meat and dairy products they were accustomed to, and one could argue that Richard Harrington was one of the most irreplaceable professionals on Sphinx. Certainly Richard’s interest in exotic creatures, combined with the fact that his wife was a plant biologist and geneticist, had assured the Harringtons of a warm welcome when they had immigrated to Sphinx back when Stephanie had been ten.

Six years later, Stephanie could hardly understand the girl she’d been then—a girl who’d been so overwhelmed by her changed environment and the loss of all her previous dreams and goals that she’d spent a lot of time sulking. Now Stephanie loved Sphinx with all her heart. She’d be happy to go visit Meyerdahl, but she knew she’d always come home to Sphinx.

Stephanie wasn’t surprised when she got to her dad’s office and found both him and the Vet Van missing, given how scattered Sphinx’s human settlers were. Besides, his recently hired assistant, Saleem Smythe, would be in shortly to cover the evening shift. Under the circumstances, she wasn’t unhappy to have the office to herself until Dr. Smythe’s arrival, though. There was celery in the fridge, and she gave Lionheart a big stalk as a thank you for his support during the meeting. Uncharacteristically, she didn’t feel very hungry, but she got herself a fruit and nut bar which she nibbled more from duty than desire. Next, she commed her parents to let them know where she was. She didn’t mention the meeting with Chief Ranger Shelton. She hadn’t been lying to Karl when she said she needed to figure out the best way to present the proposed trip to Manticore to them, but there was something else she needed to figure out first.

Anders.

Anders Whitaker had come to Sphinx last year, not long before Stephanie’s fifteenth birthday, as part of an anthropological expedition from Urako University, headed by his father and formed for the express purpose of studying the treecats. From the first time Stephanie had seen Anders, she’d been overwhelmed. It wasn’t just that he was good-looking, although with his wheat-blonde hair and dark blue eyes he was undeniably handsome. Anders was also smart, smart enough that he didn’t feel a need to hide his enthusiasms—and one of his enthusiasms turned out to be treecats.

At nearly seventeen, Anders was quite a bit younger than the next older member of the Whitaker expedition, which meant he was happy to spend time with Stephanie. She’d found ways for the two of them to spend time together, although often enough Karl (who frequently boarded with the Harringtons, since Thunder River was so far from where he and Stephanie did their ranger work) made a third. In fact, for the first time since Stephanie met him—back when Stephanie had started learning how to use firearms—Karl had definitely become less than welcome company.

Things might have gotten uncomfortable, but then the Whitaker expedition’s air van had gone missing. In the intensity of search, rescue, and forest fire, somehow any uneasiness had vanished. Then after…

Stephanie felt her lips twist in an unwilling smile as she remembered the first time she’d kissed Anders. It hadn’t been much of a kiss, but it had been her first time kissing a boy. Later, Anders had reciprocated a lot more enthusiastically than her careful lips against his cheek.

Although nothing had been formally declared, they’d become more or less a couple. It helped that part of Stephanie’s and Karl’s job as provisional rangers had been to act as advisors to the Whitaker expedition. Then, too, although he could assist, Anders wasn’t a professional anthropologist. That meant he was free to ride along when Stephanie and Karl did their patrols. Before long, he was learning to hang-glide and becoming as much a part of Stephanie’s circle of friends as any of those who lived in Twin Forks.

Things had appeared to be moving along very satisfactorily, but then, shortly after the fire, Dr. Whitaker had been sent back to their home world, Urako in the Kenichi System. His behavior on Sphinx had been…erratic, and the potential consequences could have ended his expedition to the Star Kingdom in academic disgrace. Stephanie knew Dr. Hobbard and Chief Ranger Shelton had both argued in favor of allowing the university’s expedition to remain on Sphinx, with a Sphinx Forestry Service ranger or two permanently assigned to it to keep it out of trouble. Unfortunately, the Manticoran government had been unwilling to go along. Neither Governor Donaldson nor Interior Minister Vásquez had been satisfied with Dr. Whitaker’s simple promise to behave himself. They wanted the same sort of guarantee from the university itself, and that meant sending him home to face a review of his actions by the chancellor of the university and the chairman of his department.

Dr. Whitaker hadn’t been at all happy about that, but he’d clearly realized that he had no choice. However, getting there was easier to say than to do because the Star Kingdom of Manticore was so small and so far from the core systems…like Kenichi. There was very little interstellar traffic into or out of the Star Kingdom, especially now that the assisted immigration following the Plague Years had almost entirely wound down. There was little cargo to attract freighters, passenger ships had become less frequent, and even mail couriers arrived only at intervals which were erratic, to say the least. Worse, Kenichi was 400 light-years from Manticore, so even one of the fast courier boats would take literally months to make a one-way trip between them. By the best passenger ship connection Dr. Whitaker could arrange, the trip home would have taken at least six months, which meant it could easily be well over a T-year before he returned—
if
he’d returned—so he’d intended to take Anders with him.

The thought of having Anders snatched away for
at least
an entire T-year had been devastating to Stephanie, and she’d spent more than a night or two railing to Lionheart about stupid, small-minded, chip-pushing bureaucrats. There’d been more than a few tears involved, as well, despite Lionheart’s comforting presence.

But then Dr. Whitaker’s plans had changed.

Anders’ mother was a cabinet minister in the Kenichi System government, and Kenichi turned out to have close trade ties—and treaty agreements—with the Beowulf System. Beowulf was one of the few core systems which maintained a full time consulate on Manticore, and Dr. Whitaker had appealed to the consul for assistance. As it turned out, a Beowulfan courier had been in orbit, there to collect the consul’s regular quarterly report to his home government, and Kenichi lay almost directly on the route between Manticore and Beowulf. The courier boat was scarcely a luxury liner, but it did have the capacity to carry a
few
passengers, and the consul had offered the available space to Dr. Whitaker.

Unfortunately (from Dr. Whitaker’s perspective; Stephanie had seen things a bit differently), there’d been room for only one additional passenger: him. There would be no place for Anders, if he took advantage of the courier boat, and he’d had only two days to make up his mind about accepting the consul’s offer, given the courier’s scheduled departure date.

In the end, he’d decided speed was of the essence, for several reasons, including the fear that some other anthropology team would be credentialed to study the treecats instead of his if the delay stretched out too long. So instead of taking Anders back to Urako, he’d left him in the Star Kingdom under the supervision of Dr. Emberly, the expedition’s xeno-biologist and botanist, and her mother, Dacey.

At first, Stephanie had been ecstatic over Dr. Whitaker’s decision, but her joy had been short-lived. Until Urako University responded with the required assurances, Governor Donaldson had barred the Whitaker Expedition’s team from further exploration. None of its members came from heavy-gravity worlds like Sphinx, and Sphinx, with a total population of less than two million, didn’t offer a great many attractions to people who were prohibited from doing the one thing they’d come to the Star Kingdom to accomplish. Dr. Emberly had certainly felt that way, at any rate, and she’d decided to withdraw the expedition’s personnel from Sphinx to Manticore, the Star Kingdom’s capital planet, whose lower gravity was far more comfortable and whose larger population provided a lot more in the way of “civilization.”

The decision had not met with unanimous approval. Unfortunately, the two people who’d most strongly objected—Anders and Stephanie—hadn’t gotten a vote. And, in her more reasonable moments, Stephanie actually understood Doctor Emberly’s thinking. Sphinx truly could be an uncomfortable planet for people who hadn’t been genetically engineered for heavy-gravity environments, like the Harringtons, or grown up on its surface, like the Zivoniks, and Dacey Emberly, Calida’s mother, wasn’t a young woman. Not only that, but Dr. Whitaker had been adamant that Anders keep up his studies, and it was hard to deny that the planet Manticore’s educational opportunities were better than Sphinx’s.

But none of that changed the fact that Manticore and Sphinx were almost ten light-minutes apart even at their closest approach and, at the moment, they were over twenty-five light-minutes from one another. That meant any real-time conversation between someone on Sphinx and someone on Manticore was impossible, since it took nearly a half hour for any lightspeed transmission to make the trip between them. Somehow, asking a question and then waiting an hour for an answer put a damper on lively discussions.

Twenty-five light-minutes was a lot better than 400 light-years, but the communication delay had still limited Stephanie and Anders to letters and recorded vids. True, they could be sent back and forth a lot more quickly than they could have been transmitted between Kenichi and the Star Kingdom, but it just wasn’t the
same
as face-to-face conversation…and Stephanie had discovered that even the warmest letter was a poor substitute for kisses and cuddling. There were things she just couldn’t say, or explain, even in a personal vid. Not when she couldn’t see his expression or hear his voice when she said them. It was a lot better than having him go all the way home with his father, but in some ways it was actually worse.