by David Weber
He began to chuckle, shaking his head, then snorted. Maybe it would be that simple! And if it was, it would actually be amusing to use that little creature’s very dislike for him against it.
* * *
“I don’t like him, Scott,” Stephanie said, frowning at her bedroom com terminal. “And Lionheart doesn’t like him, either. I talked to Mom about it, and she came up with two or three different explanations that could all be pretty harmless, I guess. But I still don’t like him.”
“Your mom may be right, Steph,” Scott MacDallan said from his Thunder River office. “On the other hand, smart as your mom is, she hasn’t been adopted by a treecat. I have, and nothing I’ve ever seen out of Fisher suggests he takes a dislike to humans for no good reason. In fact, he seems to like some people I don’t have much use for a lot more than I do. From what I’ve seen of Lionheart so far, I’d say it’s pretty much the same for him.”
A corner of MacDallan’s mind was a little bemused by the fact that he was very seriously discussing this topic with a fourteen-year-old.
“That’s what I think,” Stephanie agreed now. “Still, I’ve got to admit he hasn’t actually done anything I could object to. I mean, except for smiling too much and making me wonder when he’s going to offer me a lollipop or jellybean, anyway.” She grimaced with so much disgust MacDallan found it difficult not to chuckle. “By grown-up standards, he was just being polite, I guess. And I know I look even younger than I am to a lot of people, but I’m not exactly still in kindergarten, you know. Blechhhh!”
“Unfortunately, we can’t go around shooting people for that,” MacDallan pointed out. “Mind you, it sounds like he ought to come under the ‘Needs Killing’ rule, but I don’t think the Star Kingdom’s adopted that one yet.”
“ ‘Needs killing rule’?” Stephanie repeated, grinning as she heard the laugh he’d tried to keep out of his voice.
“Yeah, that’s the one that says it’s justifiable homicide if you can convince a jury of your neighbors that he was such a pain he needed killing,” MacDallan explained, grinning back at her. “I always thought it was a good way to encourage good manners and common courtesy, personally. But like I say, I don’t think Parliament’s gotten around to passing that one locally.”
“In that case, King Michael better get in gear and get it adopted quick. We need it on the books before he gets out of range again!” Stephanie said tartly.
“Why don’t you drop him an e-mail with the suggestion?”
“People already think I’m weird enough, thank you.”
“Yeah, I guess they do.” It was his turn to grimace, obviously thinking about how “weird” some people had considered him over the years because of his psychic talent or whatever it was.
“But since we can’t shoot him, what do we do about him?” Stephanie asked more seriously.
“I don’t see anything we can do . . . yet. You say all he’s done is basically ask the same questions Dr. Hobbard’s asked. Oh, sure, he’s been irritating, but he hasn’t actually done anything out of line yet. And the truth is, we need to maintain at least some objectivity ourselves. We need to make sure we’re not letting our own eagerness for the ’cats to be even more special than they really are lead us into leaping to conclusions that turn out later not to have been justified.”
“You’re saying that even if Lionheart doesn’t like him, that may not really prove anything about Dr. Bolgeo,” she said slowly. “That Lionheart might be wrong about him. Or that I might be wrong about the reasons Lionheart doesn’t like him.”
“That’s part of what I’m saying,” he agreed, nodding to her from the terminal. “Maybe he just wears a cologne that smells really disgusting to a treecat. Maybe he thinks on a ‘frequency’ that’s like a ringing in the ears, or some kind of irritating background whine, as far as a ’cat is concerned. We don’t really know yet how reliable a treecat’s empathic sense is where human beings are concerned, and we need to find out. In fact, this might be an opportunity to do a little experimenting of our own.”
“What do you mean?” Stephanie asked, eyes narrowing in sudden speculation.
“Well, if this Bolgeo’s really serious about studying the treecats, he’ll probably want to talk to me, too, which should give me a chance to size him up for myself. Then you and I will have something more definite in the way of impressions to compare. And if he comes back into range of Lionheart—or Fisher, for that matter—we watch how the treecats react to him. Let’s try and get something a little more specific than just a feeling that they ‘don’t like him,’ and let’s see if he eventually does something that would justify their dislike. Until we can establish some more definite way to communicate with them, assuming we ever do, we can’t just ask them why they’re reacting this way. From where I sit, that means we need more observational data. And before we could get anyone to take us seriously about someone with credentials like Bolgeo’s, we’re going to have to understand what’s happening ourselves well enough to be able to convince someone else to accept the treecats’ judgment.”
“You mean I have to go ahead and talk to him again,” Stephanie said distastefully.
“ ’Fraid so, kid,” he said sympathetically.
Scott MacDallan, Stephanie had discovered, was one of the few people who, like her parents, could call her “kid” without instantly irritating her. Normally, at least. At the moment, though, as she glowered sourly at his com image and thought about enduring more of Bolgeo’s company, she wasn’t inclined to cut him any slack. Especially since she realized he was right and she didn’t want him to be.
Good thing for you Lionheart’s asleep, she thought, glancing at the treecat sprawled along his perch beside her bed and snoring gently. He’d give you one of those “Stop-being-such-a-crybaby” bleeks of his. And you’d deserve it.
“All right,” she sighed. “All right! I’ll be good. But I’m telling you right now, Scott MacDallan, you owe me for this one. You owe me big. And I’ve got a feeling that one of these days, even if I don’t get to shoot him, I’m at least going to be perfectly justified in kicking him right in the kneecap!”
22
Dr. Bolgeo, Stephanie decided, wasn’t one of those people who got more likable the better you got to know them.
She still couldn’t decide exactly why she disliked him so intensely. It wasn’t just because he gave her that big smile while pretending he didn’t think of her as just one more kid. And it wasn’t—or shouldn’t be, anyway—just because she had the distinct impression he was working on wheedling more information out of her, since it wasn’t as if he was alone in that. Dr. Hobbard kept trying to get more out of her, and she actually liked Dr. Hobbard. It was almost as if the two of them were playing a game with rules they both understood, and Dr. Hobbard was an opponent Stephanie could respect. Of course, Dr. Hobbard played the game openly, without trying to sneak around and trick Stephanie into telling her things. She was quite sure Bolgeo would play any trick he could, but she could have lived with that. In fact, she would normally have taken a certain pleasure out of dropping false information on him while letting him think he was tricking her into revealing the truth, so that wasn’t what she found so irritating. And she didn’t dislike Bolgeo this much just because he wouldn’t leave her alone, either.
No, there was more to it than any of that . . . she just wished she could figure out what that “more” was.
Scott MacDallan and Irina Kisaevna had both met the Chattanoogan now, and they didn’t much care for him, either. Neither did Karl, for that matter. None of them could put a finger on exactly why they disliked him so much any more than Stephanie could, but they knew he wasn’t high on their list of favorite people. And, interestingly, Fisher had reacted to him very much as Lionheart did.
Unfortunately, as MacDallan had pointed out, “We really, really don’t like him” wasn’t enough to get her out of being polite to him, which was why she currently found herself, to her considerable disgust, sitting at a checkerb
oard cloth-draped table in the Red Letter Café, an open-air sidewalk restaurant in what passed for Twin Forks’ business district, waiting for yet another interview with him. She was pretty sure her parents would have found a way to politely decline the luncheon invitation if Bolgeo hadn’t gotten Dr. Hobbard and Chief Ranger Shelton to front for him.
Stephanie didn’t know how the Chattanoogan had found out about her campaign to secure an internship with the Forestry Service, although it probably hadn’t been too hard, given how all the news stories had emphasized the “human interest” angle of her intention to eventually pursue a Forestry Service career. But the opportunity to eat lunch with Shelton and improve her relationship with him couldn’t hurt, and she was actually eager to show the chief ranger more of her relationship with Lionheart. And she liked Dr. Hobbard too much to be impolite by refusing to have lunch with her. She knew her parents felt the same way about both of Bolgeo’s other table guests, and she had to admit that inviting them along had been a shrewd move on his part.
The Harringtons had gotten to the café early in case the restaurant’s proprietor and staff took a little convincing before they allowed an “animal” onto their premises. For that matter, Stephanie wasn’t sure there wasn’t something in the health code which would have prevented a restauranteur from allowing that. But Twin Forks really was a small town, one where everybody knew everybody else—or at least knew all about everyone else—and she and Lionheart had become celebrities. Besides, Eric Flint, the Red Letter’s owner, was one of Stephanie’s friends. Despite something of a reputation as a curmudgeon, he always spoke to her as an equal (which a lot of adults seemed constitutionally unable to do), and he’d pointed her towards some interesting sources for her history and economics classes. Not only that, he was from the planet of New Chicago, and New Chicago had been a dumping ground for radical anarchists, socialists, and—especially—every member of the Levelers’ Association the government could round up after Old Earth’s Final War. The descendents of those deportees had a zealously maintained reputation as scofflaws and rule-breakers, and it seemed pretty clear to Stephanie that Mr. Flint actually hoped some Public Health busybody would come and object to his decision to seat Lionheart.
No objections had been raised, however, and now she listened to the juicy crunching sound as Lionheart ecstatically devoured celery sticks.
“You know if you keep pigging up celery that way, we’re going to have to start feeding you even more laxatives. And this time I think I’ll ask Dad to find one you don’t like,” she said warningly. Lionheart, predictably, paid her no attention, and her father chuckled.
“Don’t worry, Steph. I’m pretty sure I can come up with one that tastes bad enough he won’t be in a hurry to repeat the experience.”
“Good,” Stephanie said, grinning up at her father. “The last time he ate his weight in celery, he kept me up all night!”
“He does like it, doesn’t he?” Marjorie Harrington observed, and her husband snorted.
“That’s sort of like saying that I ‘like’ oxygen, Marge! I only wish I could figure out what it is about celery—celery, of all things!—that seems to generate such addictive behavior in every treecat.”
“As long as it doesn’t turn out to have any kind of long-term ill effects, I don’t suppose it really matters,” Marjorie said slowly. “Still, you’re right. We really do need to figure out why they all seem to crave it so much. Among other things.”
“Yeah, like why they don’t—” Stephanie began, then paused as Lionheart abruptly stopped chewing on the current celery stick.
The treecat straightened, sitting bolt upright in the highchair Mr. Flint had provided. Treecat teeth and celery made for a messy meal, and the end of his current stalk hung down in wet, well-shredded ruins as he held it in his remaining true-hand, but he wasn’t paying it any attention. Instead, he turned his head, ears more than half-flattened, and stared up the sidewalk on the other side of the low wall separating the Red Letter’s tables from the pavement.
“Lionheart?” Stephanie asked, her eyes narrowing as she took in the treecat’s stiffness. He seemed to be listening intently, focused on something human ears couldn’t hear, and he obviously wasn’t delighted with whatever had attracted his attention.
Stephanie looked up at her parents, both of whom were clearly as baffled as she was. Her father shrugged, and all three of them turned to look in the direction Lionheart was staring so fixedly.
Twin Forks was small enough for people to walk to most destinations, and the warm (for Sphinx) sunlight and deep, comfortable shade of the green belts the city planners had incorporated into the town made that the preferred mode of travel. Even a relatively small population could provide a lot of pedestrians under those conditions, especially during the lunch hour, and the sidewalks were crowded. Nothing about the various passersby seemed especially significant, though. Certainly not anything which should have fixed Lionheart’s attention so firmly, and Stephanie frowned in perplexity as the seconds trickled past, turning slowly but steadily into minutes.
Finally, after what felt like half an hour but was probably closer to five minutes, max, just as she was about to start asking Lionheart questions in an effort to figure out what was bothering him, a trio of pedestrians strolled around the corner towards the restaurant. It wasn’t hard for her to recognize Dr. Hobbard, Chief Ranger Shelton, and Dr. Bolgeo.
Lionheart saw them at the same instant she did, and again she heard that low, almost-snarl she’d heard the first time they met Dr. Bolgeo. She glanced at him quickly, then looked up at her parents.
“Do you hear that, Mom?” she asked her mother.
“Hear what, honey?” Marjorie asked, looking down at her with a frown, and Stephanie’s curiosity sharpened. Now why was she able to hear it when clearly neither of her parents could?
“Never mind,” she said quickly, lowering her voice slightly as Dr. Bolgeo and his other lunch guests came closer. “I’ll explain later.”
Her mother cocked an eyebrow, her expression curious, but she also nodded. That was one of the thing Stephanie loved about her mother—she knew there were times when it was better not to ask questions. And she was willing to trust Stephanie’s judgment about things like that, too.
Stephanie smiled across the table at her, then reached out and touched Lionheart gently. He looked at her, ears coming back up almost into their normal position, and made a soft sound all of them could hear.
“Time for us to behave—for both of us to behave,” she warned him, simultaneously concentrating hard on the thought herself. He looked back at her for another moment, and she gazed into his green eyes, hoping he’d understand the message she was trying to get across. Then he blinked and nodded in the gesture he’d learned from his human family.
I don’t think he understands why we have to behave, though, she reflected, and I don’t blame him. I’m starting to think treecats probably do have that “Needs Killing” rule of Scott’s! They’re obviously what Mom likes to call “direct personalities,” anyway. So maybe it’s just as well Dr. Bolgeo arranged for us to meet someplace nice and public where Lionheart’s less likely to try to rip his eyeballs out.
Somehow, she found the possibility of the Chattanoogan’s suffering a certain degree of bruising and laceration at Lionheart’s hands rather attractive. Then she made herself put that thought away and rose and to smile politely at her host as the three adults entered the restaurant.
* * *
Well, that worked rather well, actually, Dr. Tennessee Bolgeo congratulated himself later that same evening, as he sat studying the imagery on his hotel room’s desk terminal.
He hadn’t expected to learn very much from his afternoon’s conversation, but he’d ended up garnering a few extra tidbits after all, not so much from anything the Harringtons had offered as from interpreting comments Hobbard made. The xeno-anthropologist had obviously been putting things together for quite a while, and her contributions to the table conversatio
n had clarified several points Bolgeo was pretty sure the close-mouthed Harringtons would have preferred to keep un-clarified.
That was nice, yet it wasn’t what he’d actually been after, and he carefully considered the numbers displayed in the small windows opened in the imagery in front of him. The numbers in the window in the lower right corner of the terminal were a time display from the camera which had recorded the imagery; the numbers in the window in the lower left corner of the terminal were from his uni-link’s GPS tracker. At the moment, that uni-link was networked to the terminal, and the computer was comparing the locator’s time-stamped record of Bolgeo’s movements to the timestamps on the video. From there, it was an easy matter for the computer to display his exact distance from the Red Letter Café at any instant.
Which was how he knew he’d been precisely one hundred and fourteen meters from the restaurant when Lionheart suddenly stopped chewing his celery and turned to stare in the very direction from which Bolgeo was approaching.
It had turned out to be less expensive than Bolgeo had anticipated. The immediate furor had died down a great deal, but the girl and her treecat remained figures of considerable interest both here on Sphinx and on Manticore, and it hadn’t been hard to convince one of the local news stringers to let him have a copy of the imagery. It had been a straightforward quid-pro-quo, after all. Bolgeo had explained that he really wanted an opportunity to examine video of Lionheart when Lionheart didn’t realize he was being recorded. Solely from the highest of scientific motives, of course. And the cameraman had been more than willing to let him have it in return for the advance tip about the Harrington family’s luncheon engagement with the Sphinx Forestry Service’s uniformed commander and the head of the Crown commission studying the newly discovered treecats. He’d been in place, carefully concealed at an upper-floor office window on the other side of the street, almost an hour before the Harringtons had arrived at the Red Letter, and he’d recorded every moment of their time in the restaurant.
