by David Weber
He paused, as if waiting for someone to jump up and leave immediately, but no one stirred.
“The Chancellor also made it clear that any member of the University faculty will be liable for some pretty severe penalties, tenure or no tenure, if there’s another incident anything like the last one,” he continued, and grimaced. “I expect most of those penalties would probably come down on me, but from what he had to say, I’m confident there’d be enough of them to go around for anyone else responsible for it.”
This time it was the others who smiled—Kesia actually chuckled—and Dr. Whitaker shook his head.
“I’ve delivered Chancellor Warwick’s messages to Dr. Hobbard, and I spoke personally to Minister Vásquez before leaving Manticore for Sphinx. I have a meeting scheduled with Governor Donaldson this evening, as well. And then, of course, I’m going to have to sit down and discuss all of this with Chief Ranger Shelton.” He shook his head again. “I’m not really looking forward to that conversation. Do you think you could get Ms. Harrington and Lionheart to come along and protect me, Anders?”
“I’m afraid not,” Anders said. His father looked at him, and he shrugged. “Stephanie’s on Manticore for the next three months. She’s attending a forestry training program there for the SFS.”
He’d thought his voice had come out perfectly naturally. From the flicker in Dr. Whitaker’s eyes, he’d been wrong.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” his father said after a moment, looking directly at him.
“It was a surprise for all of us,” Calida said. “Frankly, I’m not sure it’s a wonderful idea to take Lionheart into such a radically different environment, but none of the people involved in the decision asked my opinion. And even if they had, I don’t know if Stephanie had any alternative but to take him with her.”
“I don’t think she did,” Calida’s mother put in. “At least, neither she nor Lionheart thought she did! And it’s not as if we’ve been left without any ambassador to treecats. There’s always young Jessica, you know.”
“Jessica?” Dr. Whitaker repeated a bit blankly.
“Jessica Pheriss, Dad,” Anders said. “Stephanie’s best friend. She got hurt fighting the fire and wound up paired with a treecat of her own, remember?”
“Tall girl—red hair?” Dr. Whitaker said after a moment.
“More auburn than red, but that’s her.”
For some reason, Anders was a little nettled by the vagueness of his father’s memory.
Well, of course I am, he thought as he recognized the reason. Jessica was a big part of saving our butts, and Dad was so far gone I don’t think he even noticed she was there!
“I do remember her,” Dr. Whitaker said. “She was with Ms. Harrington and young Zivonik and the others in the forest fire, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, she was,” Anders confirmed, pleased to discover that his father had noticed his rescuers.
“Well, if she’s half as knowledgeable about treecats as Ms. Harrington was—and if she’s willing to work with us—I’m sure she could be a very valuable asset,” Dr. Whitaker went on. “And, in addition, Minister Vásquez made it abundantly clear that she wants at least one SFS ranger assigned as a full-time member of our team. I’d really like to object, but, unfortunately, I’m not in much of a position to do that. And there is a good side to it.” Dr. Whitaker rubbed his hands together cheerfully. “If he’s assigned as a full-time team member, we should be able to get a decent priority from the Rangers when we need to go into the bush!”
Now that, Anders thought, sounded like the Dr. Whitaker he knew. He was a little surprised by how much the thought amused him.
“What about these other xeno-anthropologists, Bradford?” Langston Nez asked. “How are they going to fit into the picture?”
“That’s difficult to say at the moment.” Dr. Whitaker scowled. “What Dr. Hobbard was able to show me about their credentials looked…reasonably good.” He flipped one hand back and forth in a waving away gesture. “I wouldn’t say any of them are absolutely top-drawer, but they all seem competent enough. And unlike that cretin Bolgeo, they’re all from reputable institutions. Really from them, I mean. They were pre-vetted by the Adair Institute before they were ever proposed, and Dr. Hobbard and Minister Vásquez have double and triple-checked the documentation this time! Unfortunately, I’m still not very clear on exactly what it is they hope to accomplish.”
“I did a little research on the data net after we got your message, Doctor,” Calida Emberly said. “The Adair Institute has an excellent reputation. It was established in the first decade or so of the colony here and it’s been dedicated to researching the biospheres of all three habitable planets ever since. According to its site, its primary emphasis up to this point has been on Manticore, rather than Sphinx or Gryphon, which makes a sort of sense. There are a lot more people on Manticore, and their footprint’s already a lot bigger there. I think we can safely say that the Institute’s priorities shifted just a bit when the possibility that Sphinx has a native sentient species hit the boards, though.”
“Yes, well whether or not the treecats are truly sentiment—demonstrably and provably, I mean—remains to be seen,” Dr. Whitaker said. “I hope these people are going to keep an open mind about that instead of slanting their findings to suit their sponsors! But from what you’re saying, at least they’re unlikely to want to rush in and contaminate our contacts with the treecats or start anthropomorphizing them with all sorts of untrained preconceptions. Unlike some other people.”
Anders started to protest the obvious shot at the Forestry Service’s handling of the human-treecat situation—and probably Stephanie, too—but stepped on the temptation. Whatever else might have changed, Dr. Whitaker was still a xeno-anthropologist. He would have been far happier if the Star Kingdom’s authorities had declared the entire planet a nature preserve and decreed that no one—no one at all…except, of course, for him and his team—could have any contact whatsoever with the treecats until he’d completed his study of them. Which probably wouldn’t take longer than, oh, twenty or thirty T-years.
If he rushed himself, that was.
“Well, we’ll just have to see how all of that works out,” Dr. Whitaker continued. “Dr. Hobbard tells me that we probably have a T-month or so before they begin arriving, and I’d really like to have our new relationship with the SFS worked out before we have to start integrating them into our team’s schedule. So, bearing that in mind, Calida, what I’d like to do tonight is—”
Chapter Six
Anders found himself checking his mail several times a day, especially first thing in the morning while he ate his breakfast. He didn’t go out of his way to bring that to the attention of any of the Whitaker expedition’s other members, although he was certain they’d noticed anyway.
Stephanie’s first few messages included copious quantities of video about the trip itself and the campus. The accompanying commentary was obviously genuinely enthusiastic…and equally obviously an effort to pretend she didn’t miss Anders as much as she did. He found that rather sweet and touching, and he supposed he really had to admit that his messaged replies were intended to disguise exactly the same loneliness.
The vids got somewhat shorter as she started settling in, dealing with things like registration, dorm rooms, finding her way around campus, and all the other preliminaries for her course of study. Still, he was a little surprised when he received a message less than a week after her departure that was not only very short but text-only.
“I bet you thought I forgot your birthday,” it read. “I didn’t! Happy Seventeenth, Anders Whitaker! The attached file will show you where I hid your present. Hugs and kisses, Stephanie.”
Anders blinked. Stephanie hadn’t forgotten his birthdate…but he had. He supposed it was the fact that he was living on another planet, under a different calendar, which had mixed him up. At home on Urako, his birthday usually came sometime in summer; here on Sphinx it was autumn. He checked to make sure t
he date was right and noticed a flurry of messages in his queue from friends and family off-planet. They’d probably sent them—quite possibly with Doctor Whitaker on his return from Urako—to be delivered specifically on this date.
He read a bunch of them, saving Stephanie’s attachment for last. It was very short, even shorter than the message to which it had been attached:
It starts your name.
It’s cherry bright.
It gives a zing,
So you can stay up at night.
Anders stared at the four lines in confusion.
His name started with the letter “A,” but the rest seemed like complete nonsense. How could this tell him where Stephanie had left his present?
“Anders?” Dad’s voice came through the door. “Are you coming with us to the site today?”
“You bet!”
The entire team was upbeat and eager now that they’d been allowed back into the field. Anders was just as happy about that as any of the others, and he was ready to go except for his boots and jacket. He shoved his feet into the one and his arms into the other. Dad was never patient about being delayed but, to Anders’ surprise, Dr. Whitaker hadn’t even put on his jacket or picked up his pack. Instead, with a sheepish smile, he extended a large package to Anders.
“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 as
ked, “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.
* * *
