by David Weber
" . . ."
It was no good. The storm's rising interference was too strong. Scott clipped the com unit to his belt, drew a deep breath and smiled at his anxious friend, who peered up at him through brilliant green eyes, then dragged himself slowly up the tree trunk. He fought dizziness and waves of sickness. "Don't let me fall, Jesus, don't let me fall and hit my head again." He made it up, leaning heavily against the tree trunk, then opened his eyes and peered upward.
The nearest branches were just within reach. Scott fumbled the vibro-knife off his belt clip and switched it on. The blade would cut through virtually anything known. It made short work of a section of branch as thick as Scott's wrist. The branch crashed down and Scott switched off the knife, hunkered his way cautiously back down again, then crawled along the length of the makeshift staff, lopping off side limbs and twigs.
The treecat shadowed him, peering curiously at the humming blade, but thankfully the treecat didn't offer to poke so much as a twitching whisker at it. "What must you think of this?" Scott asked, aware that the treecat wouldn't understand him, yet driven to communicate, somehow, with the creature who was so patently trying to keep him alive. He was also desperately trying to keep his own mind focused, battling not only the agony in his head, but a terrifying tendency to fog out and lose control of his wandering thoughts. With a force-two thunderstorm bearing down on them, Scott couldn't afford a foggy brain with thoughts as scattered as dandelion down on a gale-force wind. So he talked to the treecat as he crawled along the downed tree limb, lopping off branches and shaping his walking stick. "You know, little buddy, I can't just keep calling you `creature,' can I? You've got a name, I'll wager, but what does it sound like in your language?" So far the only sounds he'd heard the treecat make were a curious, warbling sort of bleek, that buzzing purr, and a soft, reassuring croon.
As he worked with maddening slowness, Scott considered the problem.
"Any suggestions?" he asked his companion, who was busy solicitously dragging sharp-edged branches and twigs out of his way as he inched forward on hands and knees, to spare him cuts and splinters. "No? Well, you fished me out of that river, right enough. Maybe that's what I'll call you, little buddy. Fisher."
The treecat's reaction astonished him. It sat up on its hindmost set of legs, whistling sharply in visible excitement. Then it startled him by touching the disassembled fishing rod attached to his taped ankle, pointing to the river, and saying, "Bleek?"
Scott paused, momentarily oblivious to the onrushing storm, the agony behind his eyes. "Fisher?" he repeated. He touched the fiberglass sections of rod, pointed to the river, and made casting motions, said, "Fisher." Then he pointed to the treecat and said it again. "Fisher."
"Bleek!"
He found himself with an ecstatic treecat twining around his arm, head pressed strongly against his cheek, while the lithe, furred body purred like a well-tuned Terran housecat. Scott laughed shakily and petted the treecat with one unsteady hand. "I think that means you approve of the name? Is that what you're trying to tell me, Fisher?"
The treecat gave out a satisfied-sounding, warbling chirp, then pointed urgently to the sky. "Bleek!"
"Right." He'd let his thoughts scatter off the task at hand after all, distracted by the astonishing rapport the treecat was somehow building with him. A grim smile came and went as it occurred to Scott that what he was sensing might well be the same thing his grandmother had scared him witless with when Scott had been just a kid, when Granny MacChait had routinely anticipated things he said or needed, or when she'd known, from half a planet away without anyone calling her, that he'd been injured in an air car accident on his way to a nature preserve, simply showing up at his hospital room, or quietly giving out advice to neighbors who pointed to their heads and whispered behind her back about "that crazy old Scotswoman . . ."
The idea that he might have inherited the same curse—he'd never been able to think of it any other way, growing up—disturbed him deeply, even as he realized that he was "sensing" a great deal more from Fisher than anyone had reported picking up from the treecats who'd adopted them, even Stephanie Harrington—and that his ability to pick up so much emotional information from this treecat might prove to be of extreme value one day.
"Great, not only am I crawling around with a busted head and a bum ankle while a force-two thunderstorm howls down on me, now I find out I'm as psychic as Granny MacChait and I'm tuned in on a treecat's psychic aura." The notion—and his current predicament—were so absurd, he couldn't help it, he started to laugh. I'm gonna die out here, if I don't shag my butt downriver, and I'm sitting here laughing like a maniac!
Maybe it was just reaction hysteria?
"Bleek?" Fisher asked quizzically, peering worriedly up at him.
"Never mind, Fisher," Scott wheezed, wiping his wet face with shaking hands and wincing as thunder boomed above the forest canopy, which tossed in the rising wind with a sound like thousands of snakes hissing in rage. "Gotta get moving." Scott finished lopping off all the protruding limbs, then shut off the vibro-knife once more and slipped it back into its sheath. He dragged the thick pole across the rough ground, crawling backwards until he reached the tree trunk once again. Scott wanted to lean against it and shut his eyes and not move again until rescue came, but thunder echoed and boomed above the picket wood trees, closer every minute. The ominous darkness flared with lightning above the forest canopy. "Got to get moving, don't we, Fisher?"
Scott bit back a groan and struggled once again to his feet. He peered toward the river to get his bearings, strapped on haversack and rifle, then gripped the heavy wooden shaft he'd fashioned in both hands and shuffled forward a step, leaning his weight against it. He didn't fall, but his knees shook and his ankle screamed and the pain in his head blossomed like a bright fire flower at the heart of an incendiary bomb. He stood still for a moment, swaying and fighting down nausea which surged up his throat. Sweat stood out in beads along every millimeter of his skin. If he'd been smart enough to bring his medi-kit out here, instead of leaving it in the air car, he could've given himself something for the nausea, at least, which would've made hiking out of here a little easier, even if he didn't dare give himself a painkiller because of the head injury.
A low crooning reached him and Scott opened his eyes to find the treecat clinging to the picket wood trunk at eye level, staring at him with a worry that Scott could nearly taste. "Bleek?"
He swallowed down sour acid. "That way," he managed, pointing toward the bend in the river and his distant air car.
"Bleek!" The treecat pointed in the same direction, then swarmed up the trunk to one of the straight, horizontal limbs that made the picket wood so unique.
Fisher could have outdistanced him in the blink of an eyelash, but he didn't. The treecat remained close above his head, crooning audibly as Scott lurched with agonizing slowness down the riverbank toward his air car. The wind picked up overhead and the snarl of thunder grew steadily closer. Lightning strobed through the lashing branches overhead, streaking from cloud to cloud. Before long, it would be snaking from cloud to ground—or the nearest convenient tree. Scott did not want to be under whatever tree served as a conduit for a river of raw electricity. Fear for the treecat's life sharpened his anxiety as he thought about lightning strikes in the picket woods overhead.
"Gotta make it to the air car." He chanted it half under his breath and struggled forward, leaning his whole shaky weight on the staff. With every step, his ankle throbbed and stabbed in protest, but that pain was nothing compared with the blinding agony in his head. The forest blurred around him, growing as faded and indistinct as his waning strength. Reality shrank, condensed to a fearful knot of pain inside his head and the need to shuffle forward another step and another after that, to crawl, awkward and shaky, over downed tree trunks, sharp outcroppings of rock, and jagged boulders tossed into his path by the roaring floodwaters of some past season. He gasped in the thick, storm-heavy air, trying to drag enough oxygen into h
is lungs to keep up his grueling, limping pace across the broken, rough terrain which skirted the riverbank.
When the rain struck, it did so with a shock. He halted a skid across suddenly slick leaves and mud, then stood huddled against the downpour, gasping and shaking and trying to regain sufficient strength to keep going. Rain pelted down, lashing at his back and head with ferocity only slightly eased by the trees between himself and the open sky. He was trying to get his bearings, having momentarily lost sight of the river through interposing underbrush, when he was half-blinded and deafened by a brilliant flash of lightning and a roar of thunder that beat against his whole body. Another blinding flash showed him a furry, bedraggled form on a branch just overhead. "Why don't you go home?" Scott shouted above the roar of rain and bruising thunder. "You're going to get struck by lightning if you stay up there!"
Between crashes of thunder, he heard a sharp sound from overhead, then gasped. The treecat jumped from the branch right onto his shoulder. Fisher's warmth was shocking against his drenched skin. The touch of tiny hands against his face, claws sheathed, left him awed. "Bleek!" There was sharp distress in that sound. Scott could feel the urgency of worry coming from the treecat, sensed somehow that Fisher would stay with him no matter what happened, just as Stephanie Harrington's treecat had charged a hexapuma rather than abandon her. He was face-to-face with a selfless honor that left him ashamed of three-quarters of his own species' history.
A warm, furred body pressed against the side of his head and the treecat leaned his face against Scott's cheek, oblivious to the blinding rain. Fisher was crooning into Scott's ear, touching his face, wrapping his tail gently around Scott's neck, all but shaking in his effort to let Scott know he wasn't alone in this terrifying disaster in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Scott risked letting go of his crutch to lift one hand, touching the sentient creature riding his shoulder; he could feel as well as hear its contented purr as he stroked wet fur with unsteady fingers.
"Where did you come from?" Scott whispered. "Your people must live near here. I don't know why you're helping me, Fisher, but you can't know how glad I am that you are." Then, pondering the intense emotions he could feel pouring through him from the treecat, he reconsidered. "Then again, maybe you can."
"Bleek . . ." The sound was low, comforting. The treecat pointed through the downpour, in a direction that looked about right for the spot he'd parked his air car, what felt like a lifetime ago. "Bleek!" The treecat pointed emphatically; Scott could all but taste its rising urgency. So he started hobbling in that direction, still trying to get his bearings. If he'd thought he could find a cave closer, he would cheerfully have crawled into it; but the only place he was certain offered shelter was his air car, somewhere up ahead in that general direction. At least, he thought it was in that direction. When lightning strobed overhead, he finally caught a glimpse of the river, but he couldn't tell how far he'd come. The confusion of wind-lashed rain made it impossible to judge his position relative to where he'd fallen so disastrously, never mind to where he'd left the air car.
"Bleek!" The treecat pointed firmly ahead.
"Hope you know where we're going, Fisher." He kept slogging forward at a slow shuffle, uncertain of his footing in the mud and the thick layers of detritus on the forest floor. Fallen branches and deadwood and rain-slick rocks tripped him every few moments. Only his grip on the walking stick kept him from falling. The treecat stayed with him, warm on his shoulder and along his upper arm, a comforting presence that kept despair at bay. Whenever he paused, panting and hopelessly lost, the treecat pointed firmly through the lightning-slashed gloom and driving rain, clearly aware of where he wanted to go, even if Scott no longer was certain where they actually were going. He had no idea how long he'd been moving, hunched over against the stinging downpour, when he heard the first rattle of hail strike the trees like gunfire.
Then pain stung his back where a hailstone struck and Scott yelped, nearly losing his balance. He caught himself at the last moment, clinging to his staff, then stood shaking for a moment while hail smashed down through the canopy, striking the mud all around him. Scott was so wobbly, he wasn't even sure his knees would hold him for another step, and hail was falling all around him, smashing through the picket wood in a rain of destruction that showered broken twigs and branches to the forest floor.
"Bleek!" The treecat moved across his shoulders, arched his whole body protectively over Scott's head. One three-fingered hand appeared in his peripheral vision, pointing urgently ahead. Lightning flared wildly—
And Scott saw a break in the trees, saw the gleam of bright yellow paint on his air car. "The car! Fisher, oh, God, you wonderful, marvelous treecat!"
He slithered forward through the mud, gasping with effort, cringing every time hailstones cracked off branches overhead and splashed down past him. Almost there . . . another few meters, that was all . . . He came out from under cover of the trees and slipped in the sea of mud beyond. Scott yelled, aware that he couldn't stop the slide, knew he would fall, jarringly. He hit with his left shoulder, heard an animal squeal of pain . . . then discovered himself lying prone in the mud, with his head resting on a pile of wet, shivering fur. A faint sound of pain escaped the treecat. Scott whimpered, too, all but blinded by his own pain, but that sound of distress brought him to hands and knees, crouching over the treecat. Hailstones pelted down, striking his back, but he ignored the sharp, bruising sting and squinted down at the treecat.
A flare of lightning showed him the treecat under his shoulder, one of its middle limbs curled up tautly against Fisher's body. When he probed gently for damage, the treecat screamed. Oh, God, that middle limb's gotta be broken. You could've jumped clear . . . why didn't you?
Because if he had, Scott would've smashed his head against the muddy, boulder-strewn ground and the treecat had known it, had sensed how much damage that would cause. Scott didn't need words to understand what the treecat had done. He fought a sting of salt in his eyes, blinked against it. He lifted the treecat in one arm, cradled it close, stricken by the mewling sound that escaped. Scott peered through the rain, spotted his air car less than two meters away. He crawled, one-armed, across the muddy ground, splashing through puddles and wincing at the jab of broken, splintered wood under his palm and his knees where the earlier flood had torn away the trees to form this clearing. It seemed like an eternity, but couldn't have been more than a few minutes, at most, when Scott finally fumbled his hand up the side of the air car, popped the latch, and crawled, shaking in every limb, into the dry shelter beyond.
He wanted to collapse right there on the floor.
Instead, he dragged the hatch shut, crawled forward, and switched on the power. Taking off in a storm like the one raging outside would have been out of the question under any other circumstances, but Scott needed medical help badly—and now, so did Fisher. And a storm like this one was liable to tear out whole trees and send them crashing downstream with flash flood waters cascading down the mountain canyon, potentially straight into his parked air car. He flipped switches, brought up the lights and powered up the air car's systems. Exhausted, sick with his own pain, Scott dragged himself and his injured companion up onto the mid-car seat cushions, then rummaged through the medical kit he carried everywhere he went—and had stupidly left behind. "Won't make that mistake ever again," he muttered aloud as he pulled out bandages and splints.
Scott bit his lips, knowing this would hurt the treecat, but that leg had to be splinted. He gently touched the treecat's injured limb. Fisher whimpered like a hurt child, but let him draw the leg out straight. It didn't feel broken, thank God, when he explored with cautious fingertips. He could feel inflammation and swelling, though, and stiffness, which suggested a bad sprain. He was no xeno-veterinarian, but he was a medical doctor and soft-tissue injuries were soft-tissue injuries, whether they occurred in a human, a bird, a horse, or a sentient treecat.
"I'm sorry, little buddy, didn't mean to hurt you like that. God, what a
mess I've got us in. Hang on, Fisher, I'm going to get us out of this, okay?" Scott retrieved a moderate painkiller from his kit and injected his little friend, selecting one of the medications he'd read Richard Harrington had tested safely on his daughter's injured treecat. The treecat bleeked softly, a sound of mingled distress and thanks as the drug began to take effect. Scott tried to smile. "Yeah. That should feel a little better. Wish I could give myself some of that."
But Scott had to fly them out of here and painkillers did not mix well with head injuries or with flying through force-two thunderstorms. He wrapped the sprained middle limb in a cushioning plasti-foam bandage, then shifted Fisher and carefully strapped him into a protective webbing in the co-pilot's seat, which allowed him to remain suspended in a sort of stabilized sling that would reduce the jouncing they were going to get once this car was airborne. Scott then gave himself a badly needed anti-nausea medication and strapped himself into the pilot's chair. He tried to use the air car's com, but could raise nothing but static.
Worry gnawed at him, but he couldn't do anything about it right now and Gifford Bede had a fix on his transponder. He'd have to fly nap-of-the-earth to stay out of the worst of the savage winds, which meant the river was his best bet. Scott said a silent prayer, then powered up the engines and lifted off. His hands sweated on the controls and his head pounded to a savage rhythm of physical pain and gnawing fear, but he got the air car out over the open river and headed downstream. The cross-winds were a nightmare, even this low to the ground, and rain beat at the windows in a solid, leaden curtain; but his instruments showed him the terrain just below and ahead, and the anti-gravs kicked in automatically every few seconds, surging against sudden down-drafts that tried to swat them into the riverbed.
How long Scott hunched over the controls, fighting the wind and slewing them back and forth above the twisting, savage river as it snaked its way down out of the mountains, dipping and diving to avoid picket wood trees that grew out across the river's snaking bed to set down nodal trunks on islands mid-stream, he wasn't certain. Hail cracked and rattled off the canopy like machine-gun fire and lightning blinded him every few seconds, hissing and cracking so close, at times thunder vibrated through the car's airframe. But there finally came a moment when Scott realized the worst of the storm lay behind them. He'd gained on its leading edge and was now flying level over the valley floor.
