Fire Season-eARC (29 page)

And at that moment, upstream from where the two-legs worked so intently hacking away at the shrubs and branches and spreading their “pee,” a gust of wind hurled across the stream a branchlet live with sparks and blew those sparks into flame. It landed in a patch of dry grass at the far side of the meadow as gently as if it had been placed there and, like an exotic flower blooming, burst into flame.

Death Fang’s Bane shouted something, then began running directly toward where the meadow fire now raged.

*
 
*
 
*

While Anders and Dr. Calida went to mark a path to a stable island in the bog, Virgil and Kesia started lowering crucial equipment to the ground so it could be transferred to their new camp. Dacey Emberly prepared Langston Nez to be moved, easing him limb by limb onto a stretcher and tying him into place.

Only Dr. Whittaker continued to place his own priorities first. When Anders gently suggested that perhaps bedding was more important than artifacts, Dr. Whittaker shook his head with pity. He, for one, seemed to have forgotten how close he had come to hitting Anders. Anders wondered if he was going crazy.

“My boy,” Dad said kindly, “aren’t you the one who has been reassuring us that we’re going to be rescued any moment?”

Anders hadn’t, but he really didn’t think this was the time to mention that. He climbed over to where he could check the knots that held Langston’s stretcher—they were very firm, if somewhat elaborate, a heritage of what Dacey called her “macrame phase.” Then, with both Dacey and Virgil’s help, he began easing the stretcher toward the ground.

As Anders strained every muscle, he was aware of his father’s chattering, apparently completely unconcerned about a man who had been his closest assistant.

“Remember what we talked about on the trip here? It has already been conclusively shown that the treecats use tools. That hasn’t been enough to prove to the narrow-minded plutocrats who have such influence here in the Star Kingdom that treecats are intelligent. What will convince them conclusively is proof that the treecats also practice art and possess philosophy and religion.”

As he spoke, Dr. Whittaker waved the broken pieces of a gourd scoop that had been one of his most recent finds. Although purely functional, it was etched around the edges with what were clearly images of the long, splayed picketwood leaves, fanning out realistically from a bough that began at the lower bowl of the scoop.

Anders thought the “art” wasn’t much more than what he’d done as a small child, but he had to agree that it clearly was meant to be representational, not random scratchings.

Langston was a few feet from the ground now. Kesia was raising her arms to steady the stretcher and guide it level.

“What’s wonderful about this piece,” Dr. Whittaker went on, wrapping it in what Anders recognized as his own spare shirt, “is that no one can argue that it was done under human influence. That makes it seminal.”

Langston was down now. Anders rolled his shoulders and began the slow climb down so he could help carry the stretcher.

“Anders!” Dr. Whittaker snapped. “Couldn’t you at a least help a little? Surely you could carry one of these bundles down. No need to go empty-handed.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Anders said without pausing. “If you’d been up and down these ladders as many times as I have, you’d know I need both hands.”

He got to the bottom and trudged over to join Kesia.

She spoke very softly. “Don’t think too hard of your dad. He’s suffering from what psychologists call ‘displacement.’ My grandmother went through something like it when my granddad died in an unexpected wreck. She couldn’t deal with the idea that something so horrible could come out of nowhere. Suddenly the health of her pet fur-button became the most important thing to her. Dr. Whittaker will probably snap out of this, uh, obsessive behavior when we’re back at base. Right now, he’s trying to convince himself that something good will come out of this.”

Anders bent to pick up the top of the stretcher, flexing from the knees as he raised it. His words, when he spoke, were gasped out around the effort.

“Maybe, but I’d like him a whole lot better if he’d just admitted he f…” He hesitated out of respect for Kesia, not that he hadn’t heard her use worse.

“That this is mostly his fault?” Kesia grunted as she picked up the other edge of the stretcher. “That he has behaved unconscionably? Believe me. He’s not going to be allowed to forget it.”

Anders wondered if this was a prediction or a threat—maybe a bit of both. For a moment gladness coursed through him. Then he realized what it would mean. If Dr. Whittaker was disgraced, then he’d lose the project. Anders hated the idea of Dr. Whittaker losing the project. That would mean leaving Sphinx and the treecats—and Stephanie, who was becoming a friend, and Karl and Jessica…

Worse, this would be the second time off-planet scientists—not that Tennessee Bolgeo had really been a scientist, but Anders had heard more than one person refer to him as “Dr. Bolgeo”—would have fallen short of the Star Kingdom’s high expectations. What would that mean for the treecats? At the very least, a delay in having their status as sentient creatures verified.

Anders and Kesia were alone now—except for the unconscious Langston Nez—and as they picked their way slowly along the trail he and Dr. Calida had marked, Anders spoke softly.

“Kesia, I know my dad has been a blackhole, but…You do realize that if this all blows up, the project is doomed. Dr. Calida is a xenobiologist with an interest in anthropology, but she couldn’t take over. You and Virgil are depending on the research you’ll do on this expedition to finish your degree work…And Langston…”

There was a long pause from where Kesia carried the back end of the stretcher, then she said, “You’re not saying we should defend Dr. Whittaker?”

“I’m saying,” Anders said, “that he’s behaved like a self-centered jerk—but like you said, that’s this ‘displacement’ thing. Not for one minute has he forgotten the treecats.”

“No. Just the humans.”

“Still, think about it?”

“I will.”

If hauling all the gear from where the van had sunk to land had been bad, hauling it back was three times worse. Yes, there was less—they’d given their last power pack to Dacey and they were pretty much out of their own food—but they were much more weary.

The odor of smoke hadn’t become stronger, or maybe their noses had just accepted it as part of the background. Maybe, the fire was even being gotten under control. Anders didn’t think he had the energy to climb above the canopy again, at least not until he’d had something to eat and maybe a nap.

He picked up a pair of high-powered binoculars and scanned the tree line, trying to see if he could glimpse his flag. Motion lower down in the tree caught his eye.

He saw them only for a moment, clearly defined against the leafy background: two treecats, gray-and-cream males. It seemed to Anders that their gazes met his own across the distance—although that was impossible. Then they were gone.

For a moment, Anders thought about mentioning what he had seen to the others, then he stopped. What good would that do? His dad might call him a liar or, worse, insist they go back and see if the treecats were still there.

Anders’ legs ached; so did his neck and shoulders and back. In the end, lying back on a blanket and resting, even with the extra gravity pressing down on him, was all he wanted.

Closing his eyes, Anders didn’t so much drift off to sleep as plunge off a cliff into purest exhaustion.

*
 
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*

Relieved and delighted as she was when Chet, Christine, and Toby arrived, Stephanie knew they were fighting a losing battle. Sensations of uncertainly and guilt surged through her. If they hadn’t meddled, would the treecats have managed matters on their own? Had the presence of humans disrupted their usual behavior patterns?

She remembered how many years ago on Meyerdahl she’d brought home what she thought was an abandoned baby squirellette, how her father had taken it from her, concern drawing lines on his face.

“Steph, never move a baby animal. Likely its parents are close by, ready to help. This little one…”

He didn’t say more, but Stephanie could tell from his expression that he was concerned that her actions had doomed the little creature. It would have been doomed, too, except that her father was a vet and had happened to be home. The experience had cured her from “adopting” wild pets forever. When they’d left Meyerdahl, she’d found homes for those pets she did have, knowing it would be cruel to transport them to an alien planet just because she loved them.

Was this the incident of the squirrelette all over again? Had she condemned these treecats through her arrogance?

Stephanie hacked violently through the base of a shrub, not even bothering to turn on the vibroblade edge. Realizing she was wasting energy she could spend more productively, that she was letting her temper—that wild and dancing flame that ate into her as the fire now consumed the shrubs on the other side of the stream—rule her, Stephanie wished for Lionheart’s soothing presence.

Glancing over at him, she remembered that
he
was the one who had guided them here, so clearly he had thought they could do some good. She was turning back to the next section of her patch, when she saw a windblown branch come sailing across the stream and land in the midst of the farther edge of the grass-filled meadow.

“Karl!” she yelled. “Fire line’s been broken. I’m going in.”

Grasping her Pulaski firmly in one fist, Stephanie galloped beneath the picketwood trees, in the direction of the burning segment of the meadow. Her bladder bag had long emptied its original load, but she’d had the siphon in the stream, so she had some water with her. Even so, playful tongues of wind were spreading the fire through the dry meadow grass faster than she could reach it.

“Steph,” Karl called, his voice reaching her through her fire-suit’s radio, “we’re not going to be able to put that out. Do you have your drip-torch?”

“Yes.”

“I think we have enough room to start a counter-fire. It’s risky, we’ve got to try. If that fire takes the meadow, it’s going to reach the trees and then…”

He trailed off, perhaps remembering that his words were audible to anyone on their channel. She knew what he had been about to say. If those flirtatious winds pushed the fire in the direction of the tree line, there would be no saving the treecats. There might be no saving themselves, either.

Within a few steps, Stephanie reached the edge of the meadow. One corner of her mind noticed that a few meters of the tall grass had already been cut down to a few millimeters’ height. That might slow the fire if the wind was not driving it, but not enough to count on—especially since the grass had only been clipped, not raked down to bare earth.

When she dashed out into the taller grass, she cursed her lack of height. The grass came up to her neck in places, making progress difficult, but she could hear the whoosh of the fire as it licked at the dry stalks, and knew the direction in which she must go.

Karl’s voice again. “Steph, we’re deep enough in. If we go much closer, we’re going to just join up with this fire. Ready?”

She glanced over, saw Karl standing about three meters to her right.

“Ready. I’m starting now!”

Essentially, the drip torch was nothing more than a tube holding very flammable liquid with a quick-lighter set at the tip. Stephanie pressed the tab that caused the tube to elongate outwards so that she wouldn’t be starting the fire at her own feet. Carefully, pretending this was nothing more than a training exercise, she drew a neat line with the liquid, then set it alight.

Fuel, heat, oxygen
, she thought, fanning the flames so they’d burn away from her, back toward the already existing fire, not toward the trees. When her backfire was burning well, she traded the drip torch for her Pulaski. Turning it hoe side down, she started raking back the grass on her side of the new blaze so that even if the wind decided to take part, the flames would only find bare earth.

Over to her right, Karl had also started drawing a new fire line. Then, to her left, Stephanie became aware someone else—shorter even than her—was tearing away at the grass.

“To—” she started to say, but this person was smaller even than Toby. In fact, this person wasn’t even human. It was a treecat, a very large treecat. The same treecat, she somehow felt certain, who had confronted Lionheart upon their arrival. To his left another cat was digging away at the grass, exposing the bare, unburnable earth.

Wow!
Stephanie thought.
I wish Dr. Whittaker and Dr. Hobbard were here. They’d love this.

She swallowed a laugh. She supposed the opponents of treecat intelligence could still claim that constructive firefighting wasn’t an indication of constructive thought. They’d say that what treecats were doing was a matter of instinct or imitation or that anyone who thought running towards a fire, rather than in the opposite direction, was an indication of intelligence needed their heads checked.

Time vanished into motion as Stephanie concentrated on building a barrier against the fire. Occasionally, one of the human members of her team would ask a question, but common sense and initiative were the order of the day.

Over across the stream to the east, the fire was spreading.

We’re not going to be able to stay here much longer,
Stephanie thought.
I hope Lionheart convinces the treecats to let us get them out of here.

She glanced over to where Jessica, Toby, Christine, and Chad, assisted by a few treecats, had done a good job clearing their side of the stream. Stephanie knew all too well that all it would take was another stray branch or windblown bundle of leaves and that hard-won fire line would be broken.

Already the drought-dry leaves in some trees were catching fire. One dead near-pine went up in a blaze of isolated glory.

Candling,
Stephanie remembered.
That’s what they called that effect in class. Weirdly pretty…