Fire Season-eARC (3 page)

Despite their name, treecats were not all that feline. For one, no Terran cat had ever possessed six limbs or a fully prehensile tail. Their build was longer and—beneath their fluffy coats—leaner. They were also larger, averaging sixty to seventy centimeters through the body, with their tails doubling their length. And, of course, no Terran cat had three-fingered hands with fully opposable thumbs.

However, quite like Terran cats, male treecats, like Lionheart, were tabby-gray above, cream below. Their gray tails were ornamented with a varying number of darker bands. There were other similarities as well: slitted pupils to the eyes (these almost always green), retractable claws (although these were far sharper than those possessed by any Terran cat), pointed ears, and long whiskers. Moreover, when tense, treecats bristled out their fur much as a Terran cat did. As Karl piloted them closer to the fire, Stephanie could feel from the tickling along her neck that Lionheart was distinctly puffed.

Stephanie wondered what treecat clans did when faced with a forest fire. They didn’t have fire retardant chemicals. They were tool users, but the tools she had seen were limited to ropes, nets, stone knives, and small stone axes. These last were fine for hacking off the branches treecats used to build sleeping platforms, but could not fell a burning tree so the flames consuming it would not spread through the canopy.

She supposed the only thing treecats could do was run in the hope they could get their kittens and old ones out fast enough they didn’t need to watch—and what she suspected was worse,
feel
them burning to death—as the flames licked out greedy tongues, devouring all with a mindless hunger.

Shuddering at the thought, Stephanie pulled up a template and overlaid it on the map of their location. Immediately, she felt relieved. The map the Forestry Service had put together indicating the locations of known treecat clans did not show a clan in this area. The map was far from complete, but this close to human inhabited lands, she felt pretty confident that it would be accurate.

Stephanie knew she shouldn’t have favorites among the creatures that lived on Sphinx. As Frank Lethbridge and Ainsley Jedrusinski kept reminding her, every creature—even hexapumas—had their part to play in the complex planetary ecology. Stephanie couldn’t help it. She didn’t like hexapumas. She liked treecats a lot—more, in fact, than she did most humans.

To distract herself, Stephanie thought about a particular litter of hexapumas, the kits of a mother she and Lionheart had killed just under three T-years ago. When she had become a probationary ranger she had learned, to her surprise, that SFS rangers had rescued and hand-raised the kits. Like the cubs of many Terran “higher” predators, hexapuma kits required parental care for their first several years.

As a probationary ranger, Stephanie had been required to take her turn cleaning the pens and bringing the little monsters food. Lately, she and Karl had been included in discussion as to the best areas in which to release them. Care had been taken to make certain the hexapuma kits did not bond with their human caretakers, but a certain greater familiarity could not be avoided—even if merely that these hexapumas would be accustomed to human odor and might even associate it with food.

A surge of anger filled Stephanie as she recalled how she’d struggled not to point everyone’s attention at Lionheart’s horrible scars, his missing right true-hand. Quick heal and considerable medical attention had made certain her own scars did not show, but they were there nonetheless. She wanted to scream, “Hexapumas are dangerous monsters!” but knowing hers would be the minority opinion—suspecting she was probably even wrong—she’d kept her opinions to herself.

When Lionheart suddenly stiffened, Stephanie thought that—as so often—he was reacting to her internal turmoil. However, instead of reaching and patting her gently on one cheek as he usually did to soothe her, he now began to bounce in place, pointing both ahead and down. Stephanie could almost feel his frustration that he couldn’t make his point more clearly.

“What is it, Lionheart? What’s wrong?”

*
 
*
 
*

Climbs Quickly hadn’t exactly relaxed when Shadowed Sunlight and Death Fang’s Bane had demonstrated that they understood his warning about the fire. From past experience, he knew that two-legs took fire at least as seriously as did the People. Moreover, being what they were, the two-legs would likely deal with the fire in some fashion, rather than merely running from it. He had witnessed such actions in the past and seen Shadowed Sunlight and Death Fang’s Bane being trained to fight fire. While he was still uncertain why some fires were put out promptly while others were permitted to burn in a contained area, he had come to trust that any danger this fire offered would not be ignored.

Now, settled comfortably across the back of Death Fang’s Bane’s seat, Climbs Quickly decided that it couldn’t hurt to spread the warning a bit further. He was no memory singer to send his mind voice out between clans, but he knew his mind voice—especially since he had bonded with Death Fang’s Bane—was stronger than that of most males. Moreover, his sister Sings Truly was considered one of the most remarkable memory singers of this generation. Even at this distance, he might be able to reach her. She could spread the word to other memory singers and so alert the clans. At the very least, he might reach some scout or hunter who would relay the warning.

Climbs Quickly sent out a call, then opened his mind to “listen” for a reply. One came almost immediately, but it was not his sister’s voice he heard. This was an unfamiliar voice, male and much closer.

<
Help!
>
it cried. <
My brother and I are trapped by the fire. Help!
>

There was a desperation to the cry, as if the one who gave it had been calling for some time and had lost hope that any would hear. The mind-speech included information not included in the simple message. The two treecats were high in a green-needle, within a grove of such trees.

This was not good for several reasons. Unlike the net-wood groves in which clans tended to make their central nesting places, green-needle trees did not have interconnected branches. Instead, branches tended to taper off, ending in needles that would not bear an infant bark-chewer, much less a full-grown Person. To make matters worse, green-needle trees burned fast and hot. These brothers must have been hard-pressed to take refuge here.

The fire had not yet reached their refuge.

<
Can you get down? To another tree?
>
Climbs Quickly asked.

<
No,
> the speaker—he called himself Left-Striped—replied. <
The ground is very hot. We tried. My brother—he insisted he could run fast enough—badly burned the pads of his hand-feet and true-feet. We made our way up into a green-needle and hoped the winds would carry the fire elsewhere, but…
>

Climbs Quickly knew then what this call really was. It was not so much a call for help—for what help could come in such a situation? It was Left-Striped’s last attempt to make certain that the clan to which these brothers belonged would learn of their deaths and so not be left to empty mourning.

So the situation must have been in the days before the coming of the two-legs, the tragedy accepted as something to be sung of in sorrow, but now…

Climbs Quickly’s “conversation” with the stranded treecat had taken only breaths. Now he rose onto his true-feet and began pointing. He tried to show that he was indicating a specific portion of the fire-affected area by angling his gestures precisely along the lines where he could “feel” the other treecat’s mind-glow.

Death Fang’s Bane made mouth noises at him. One of these was the one she used as his name; the rest was only noise. Yet Climbs Quickly sensed concern in her mind glow, a desire to comfort, to reassure.

She made more mouth noises. Climbs Quickly felt fairly certain that she understood he was not merely repeating his warning about the fire, but a frustration that matched his own indicated that his new message was not reaching her.

“Bleek!” he said desperately, wishing the sound carried different meanings the way mouth noises seemed to do. “Bleek!”

*
 
*
 
*

“Easy, Lionheart. Easy,” Stephanie said soothingly.

The treecat flowed down from her seat back onto her lap. Then he stood and turned, his flexible spine meaning that his feet could remain oriented forward even as he turned to face her. He placed his remaining true-hand on her face and looked deeply into her brown eyes with his green.

“Bleek,” he said with a sort of pathetic intensity. Then, gently but firmly, he grasped two locks of her short, curly brown hair and began tugging them.

Stephanie heeded the prompt—not to do so would have been to have her hair pulled, since the treecat was very strong. She found she was looking down.

“Karl,” she said, her voice coming just a little choked from the tight angle of her throat, “I think he’s telling us that whatever has his attention is lower.”

“Well,” Karl replied. “That’s a given, since we’re flying above the tree canopy.”

Despite the sardonic tone of his reply, Karl began guiding the air car lower down. Stephanie felt precisely when Climbs Quickly let go of her hair.

“Okay, Karl! I think we’re at the right elevation. Can we level off here?”

“Pretty well,” Karl replied. “There’s a lot of mature near-pine here and they tend to leave space between as they develop. If it was picketwood, no way. What direction does he want me to go?”

The treecat had adopted his “pointer dog” stance again.

“Still the same,” she said. “I’ll let you know if he changes direction.”

“So we’re still heading into the fire,” Karl said. “Check the Forestry Service reports.”

Stephanie pulled the maps up on her uni-link screen.

“The heart of the fire is further west,” she said, “definitely on what my grid shows as Franchitti lands. However, the winds are pushing a tongue out this way—right toward these near-pines.”

“Bad. Very bad.” Karl said, “Near-pines burn super hot and fast.”

Stephanie nodded. At firefighting orientation, she had learned that the high profile of the oldest trees was meant to attract lightning. Basically, when a stand reached the point in its life-cycle where new growth was impossible, the oldest trees became lightning rods—inviting fire that would open up the area, fertilize it with ash, and accelerate the germination of seeds by burning away the resinous covering.

Now all that theory was becoming real. She and Karl had helped with a few firefighting operations this season, but always as support: bringing in supplies, coordinating communications, answering questions from concerned residents. This was the first time they’d flown directly into a fire—and all the warnings they’d been given about how dangerous and unpredictable fire could be were becoming very real.

“Lionheart’s changing his point now,” Stephanie reported a few minutes later. “He’s indicating more south.”

She took a compass reading along the line of the treecat’s hand and gave it to Karl. He then refined their course. This was repeated several times.

“I think,” Stephanie said, “we can guess where Lionheart wants us to go. I’m marking your nav map. See where the fire’s sent out a tongue? The place isn’t really ‘on fire’ yet, but it’s close.”

“Why do you think he wants us to go there?” Karl asked, adjusting the course and accelerating the air car’s pace.

Stephanie pressed her lips together. “I think someone—some treecat—must be right where that tongue of the fire is. I think we’re its only chance not to get burned to death.”

Chapter Two

<
We are coming,
>
Climbs Quickly sent to Left-Striped as soon as he was certain that Death Fang’s Bane and Shadowed Sunlight were indeed heading in the right direction. <
Can your brother move?
>

The reply was muddled. Through it Climbs Quickly felt an awareness of smoke and heat. All People knew that smoke was as dangerous as fire. Despite this, the only place the brothers had been able to take refuge from flames that were eating along the ground was in a tree—and smoke rose. Climbs Quickly sensed that the brothers had already climbed as high as the flexible length of the green-needle would bear them.

<
Coming?
> came Left-Striped’s faint reply. <
How? Flames lick up the trunk beneath us. This green-needle is tallest of its kin, but only a hand or so of body-lengths are between us and the fire.
>

This did not come at once, but in little spurts, the usual almost-instant communication of mind-speech broken as Left-Striped struggled to concentrate on more than holding fast to the tree and gathering in his next breath. There, too, a flood of worry for the brother contaminated his thoughts. Climbs Quickly caught a fragment of sensation containing weight against Left-Striped’s shoulders and upper body. He knew then that his new friend had positioned himself beneath his brother, making of his own body a platform to hold the other as the grip of his burned limbs weakened.

The brother then could not move. Indeed, he was barely conscious, and when he lost consciousness, likely he would plummet into the hungry flames beneath.

Climbs Quickly looked up over his shoulder at Death Fang’s Bane.

“Bleek!” he said to draw her attention from the little device she held in one hand. “Bleek!”

When Death Fang’s Bane was looking, Climbs Quickly made as if he was running. It was awkward to do so without actually moving, but Death Fang’s Bane was swift to comprehend. She made urgent mouth noises to Shadowed Sunlight. Immediately, Climbs Quickly felt the vibrations as the air car picked up speed. Shadowed Sunlight was flying much less carefully now, permitting the feathery tips of the green-needle and even small branches to brush against the outside of the air car.

Death Fang’s Bane was making urgent noises, then she was pointing, pointing…

Climbs Quickly looked with his eyes—rather than following the guidance of Left Striped’s mind-glow—and saw a horror. The two treecats clung high in the branches of the tallest green-needle in this grove, their weight enough to bend the tip of the tree to one side. Flames licked up the trunk, consuming smaller limbs at once, spilling out along the larger limbs for a more leisurely meal.