Fire Season-eARC (8 page)

When they were introduced, Dr. Whittaker shook Stephanie’s hand. He gained a point in her estimation by neither patting nor poking Climbs Quickly, but instead offering the treecat a little bow by way of greeting.

“This,” Dr. Whittaker said, “is my chief assistant, Dr. Langston Nez.”

Dr. Nez proved to be shorter than average, built along planes instead of curves. His most noticeable features were untidy brown hair that stood up in spikes, as if he ran his hands through it frequently, and bushy eyebrows from under which green eyes—darker than Lionheart’s but no less alert—watched like animals from a forest.

Dr. Whittaker went on. “This is our linguistics specialist, Kesia Guyen.”

No “doctor” in front of this one’s name, Stephanie noticed. A graduate student, then, but certainly one who was done with classes and now working on her dissertation.

Kesia Guyen had lovely rich chocolate-brown skin and wore her hair in swirling curls that framed a face that seemed to find seriousness difficult. She had a rounded figure with breasts that could do double-duty as platforms, and full hips. Her clothing showed a penchant for bright colors, sashes, and jewelry, but Stephanie didn’t think that this was a Trudy-like effort to show off, more as if Kesia found life colorful and didn’t mind showing it.

“Delighted!” Kesia said when Stephanie said she was happy to meet her, “Enchanted! So very, very happy to meet you both.”

She might have said more, but Dr. Whittaker continued.

“This is Dr. Calida Emberly.” He indicated a woman quite a bit older than the others, older even than himself, for she was easily in her mid-fifties. “She is our xenobiologist. Her first concentration was in zoology, but she also holds degrees in xenobotany.”

Dr. Emberly extended a long-boned hand. “I’ve read several of your mother’s papers. I hope to get to chat with Dr. Harrington while we’re here.”

Stephanie liked Dr. Emberly instantly. “I’m sure she’d be happy to meet you. She’s always glad to hear other people’s thoughts.”

Dr. Emberly possessed a hawklike profile that made her seem very stern, but when she smiled, the hawk took wing. She wasn’t nearly as tall as Dr. Whittaker, but her slender, lithe build made her seem taller. Her hair was either silvered or platinum blond—Stephanie couldn’t be sure which—but she wore it long, in a thick braid intertwined with a contrasting violet silk cord. Stephanie admired this touch of vanity on a woman who otherwise might be dismissed as plain. It gave her character.

I wonder if Dr. Whittaker waited to introduce her because, in a lot of ways, she probably outranks him,
Stephanie thought.
He seems like that sort.

“Finally,” Dr. Whittaker said, “we have Virgil Iwamoto. He’s our lithics specialist. He’s also an expert on the latest in field methods.”

Iwamoto was the youngest of the group, probably in his mid-twenties. His face showed a distinct Asian influence that expressed itself in brown, almond-shaped eyes and small, neat features framed by silky black hair. He wore a short, tidy beard and seemed anxious.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said in a soft, pleasant voice.

“Let me see,” Dr. Whittaker said with a curious smile. “There’s one other person I’d like you to meet.”

He looked around, finding the one he sought at one end of the refreshments table, where he had apparently just filled a cup with coffee.

“Finally, I’d like you and Karl to meet an unofficial but important member of our team,” Dr. Whittaker said, the words rolling out as if he was making a speech. “Over there, hiding behind Dr. Emberly, is my son, Anders Whittaker.”

Anders turned and almost sheepishly toasted Stephanie and Karl with his coffee mug.

“Hi,” he said. “I’ve read a lot about you both. Glad to meet you.”

Stephanie knew she said something in reply. She could feel the words buzzing in her throat, but somehow she wanted to say something more than “Glad to meet you, too.”

Anders Whittaker was, simply put, the most compelling young man Stephanie had ever met. It wasn’t just his dark blue eyes, large enough to lose yourself in, or the thick wheat-colored hair that he wore gathered in a neat ponytail at the base of his neck. It was the shape of his mouth, the way it quirked in a sideways smile that invited you to join in on some unspoken joke. It was the rose-and-ivory glow of his unexpectedly fair skin—his father was several shades darker. Anders was already tall, taking after his father in that, but where Dr. Whittaker seemed to be made of curves, Anders was lean and supple.

Stephanie was saved from gaping stupidly by Chief Ranger Shelton saying, “If we could all grab drinks, then take seats, I’d like to get this gathering underway. Sadly, I have a meeting regarding yesterday’s fire that’s going to pull me away, but I’d like to get things started.”

While all the predictable things were said—Dr. Whittaker holding forth on how very happy he was to be there and how proud he was to have been selected for this important, groundbreaking study, Dr. Hobbard and Chief Ranger Shelton responding in kind—Stephanie fought to keep her attention on what was being said. She wanted to move to where she could get a better look at Anders, see if he was maybe smiling one of those quirky smiles as the adults said all the things they already knew, but wanted to get on the record.

After Chief Ranger Shelton left, the mood immediately became less formal. Chairs were pushed back. Several people rose to refill their drinks.

Karl was one of these. “More cocoa, Steph?”

“Uh, sure.” She blushed. That had really sounded polished, hadn’t it?

“Bleek!” Lionheart said. The SFS staff had provided him with a stool so that he could sit next to Stephanie and still comfortably see over the table. When Stephanie had gotten her cocoa, she’d brought him some cubes of cheese, but she had no doubt what he was asking for now.

“Not really a good idea,” she said.

“Is he asking for celery?” said Dr. Emberly, the woman who had been introduced as the xenobiologist.

Stephanie smiled ruefully. “He is. He’s known it was here since we walked into the room—heck, he probably knew as soon as we got into the building. From what we can tell, treecats have a wonderfully sharp sense of smell.”

“Is it all right if I give him some?” asked Virgil Iwamoto.

Stephanie considered. “Well, Lionheart had some celery just last night, so he shouldn’t have too much. Treecats are more carnivores than omnivores and…”

She wished she hadn’t started in on this, but having done so, she pushed on, inelegant though the subject might be. She hoped Anders didn’t think she was being crass or crude.

“…Well, it makes them constipated if they eat too much of it. Lionheart had some real problems when he first came to live with us, but Dad figured out the problem. Now I give Lionheart doses of what’s basically cod-liver oil a couple times a week. Since he likes fish, it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Interesting,” said Dr. Emberly. “Extra fiber usually gives terrestrial animals gas. Eating it helps eliminate blockage. I wonder what the difference is in the metabolisms?”

She looked as if she would very much like to be given a treecat to dissect, but since Stephanie had heard her father say similar things, she recognized scientific fervor when she heard it.

Watching Lionheart make his messy way through the helping of celery sticks Iwamoto slid over to him broke the ice amazingly. Questions rained down from all sides. Karl—whose uncle by marriage, Scott MacDallan, had also been adopted by a treecat—helped answer them.

“What else does Lionheart eat?”

“Just about what the wild treecats do. We try to make certain he gets a healthy, balanced diet, but he does eat with the rest of us, so he’s developed rather esoteric tastes.”

Karl added, “Fisher and Lionheart do have different preferences. Fisher really loves fish. Lionheart seems to prefer poultry or red meat.”

“Will the treecats eat celery to the exclusion of everything else?” This was from Dr. Nez, the cultural anthropologist.

“You mean, do they get addicted?” Stephanie asked back, hearing her voice sharpening.

She’d been asked this before, and knew that there were some humans who thought that the “pet” treecats stayed with humans more for access to this delicacy than out of affection—like a drug addict hanging around a pusher.

She went on before Dr. Nez could clarify his question. “No. They don’t get addicted—at least the treecats I’ve known don’t seem to be. They just like it a whole lot. It’s like my mom and chocolate. She can go without it, but offer her a slice of apple pie or a slice of chocolate torte and she’ll take the chocolate every time.”

Ranger Lethbridge chuckled. “I’ll second that. I’d say there are some members of the SFS who are more addicted to coffee than any treecat is to celery, but that doesn’t mean I’d leave a bunch of celery unsupervised when Fisher and Scott come to call—not if I expect to find it left untouched.”

There were more questions about diet, which segued pretty naturally into matters of food gathering and hunting. Stephanie and Karl could handle most of these questions without violating their sense of what was right. For the questions they didn’t choose to answer—Stephanie never gave away quite how often she and Lionheart went to visit Lionheart’s extended family—one of the SFS rangers could offer at least a partial answer.

After the fiasco with Tennessee Bolgeo, there had been two treecats in need of care and rehabilitation before they could be returned to their clan. Stephanie and Karl had helped with that, but it hadn’t been too long before the treecats had returned to Lionheart’s clan. There had been another case when a human had done considerable harm to treecats. In that case, an entire clan had come close to being wiped out. The SFS had helped however they could, relocating the ’cats and even giving them food and tools.

After they relocated the treecats, the SFS didn’t quite snoop, but they did take some long-range films. However, since the treecats lived in the shelter of the picketwood, satellite downlook was out for all but chance spottings. The microbugs that had been attached to ears or skin were meticulously groomed out of existence. Attempts to plant observation mini-cameras in known treecat colonies had ended with a series of mysterious accidents to expensive equipment.

Or not so mysterious,
Stephanie thought,
once you realize that Lionheart and a couple of the others figured out what those cameras were and passed the information along.

Eventually, the voice Stephanie had been longing to hear again without consciously realizing it spoke. His voice was clear, but there was a sense of hesitancy as well.

“Lionheart was really badly hurt,” Anders said. “He lost one true-hand entirely. Even with his fur grown back, you can see the other scars. Could he go back to being a wild ’cat if he wanted?”

Stephanie always hated this question because it implied that—like one of those birds who had a badly broken wing and so couldn’t be set free again—that Lionheart was a captive because of injuries he had taken protecting her.

She felt Karl stiffen slightly where he sat next to her, his foot moving to press against hers in a reminder to keep her temper. This time, though, maybe because Anders had asked so gently, the question didn’t sting as it usually did.

“I think Lionheart could,” Stephanie said. “He’d have to be careful. He doesn’t climb quite as fast or run as well as I’ve seen other treecats do, but he has adapted. The middle set of limbs are basically—as far as we can tell, anyhow—used for expanding options. Treecats can run like centaurs, but still have their hands free. Or they can manipulate things with two sets of hands while standing on their back legs. Or they can run all-out on all six limbs. Basically, Lionheart’s lost a few options, but he’s not as crippled as a human would be even if that human had lost only a couple of fingers.”

Karl, apparently not trusting this unexpected calm and wanting to give Stephanie a chance to collect herself, added, “Also, treecats are social. We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to observe their community interactions, but we have plenty of evidence that they help each other.”

He went on to tell about how Left-Striped had held Right-Striped in the burning near-pine. “Left-Striped did that,” Karl continued, “even though any chance of rescue was pretty slim. I’d say Lionheart would have plenty of support from his clan if he chose to go back.”

To a one, the anthropologists were eager for more details about this most recent treecat contact. This rescue, as well as the evidence of mirror twins among the treecats, was new material.

“It’s lucky you two came along,” Dr. Whittaker said, “or was it entirely luck?”

“Lionheart probably smelled the smoke,” Stephanie said. “He likes to hang out the air car window if we’re not going too fast.”

She went on to tell that part of the story, leaving out only that she had been piloting and that was why they’d been going so slowly. No one asked. Probably they figured she and Karl were doing some sort of sample survey. Not all SFS work was as glamorous as fighting fires.

“Was it Lionheart who led you to the others? Do you think he used that empathy or telepathy or whatever it is that they have?”

Again, the questioner was Anders, eager and wide-eyed. A few passing comments during the more general discussion had shown he really was pretty well-informed about treecats. Again, because it was him, Stephanie found herself answering maybe a little more freely than she might have otherwise.

“Lionheart did seem to sense them first,” she said. “It’s pretty clear treecats have means of communicating with each other that we don’t understand. The empathy seems clear. However, it’s possible that they have some manner of verbal communication we haven’t figured out, as well.”

She offered a winning smile to Kesia Guyen, the team’s linguist. “Maybe you’ll be able to figure out things we’ve missed.”

Ms. Guyen looked both pleased and concerned. “Well, that’s not going to be easy unless I have an opportunity to observe a colony or clan—at least some larger group—in action, and I believe that sort of thing is frowned upon these days.”

Ranger Lethbridge cut in. “We have hours of recordings of the clan we helped out after the Ubel affair. Hours upon hours of material that has never been out of our archives. Lots of it is of sick treecats sleeping. Once the danger of infection was gone, knowing they’re social creatures, we kept as many of them together as we could.”