“And giving them an opportunity to actually meet Lionheart is going to do that?” Morrow looked skeptical. “You’ve read Dr. Radzinsky’s reports, and we’ve both watched the vids of Lionheart scampering around the campus with her. They’re sentient, Gwen, and you know it. In fact, they’re probably even smarter than we were afraid they were! If the Board gets a chance to spend any time in Lionheart and Harrington’s presence, a lot of them—I’m thinking of Turner and Fitzpatrick, especially—are going to see this as some kind of healthy symbiotic relationship between two highly intelligent species. And it’ll be the first time humans have ever managed anything of the sort, too. If they decide that’s what’s going on on Sphinx, they’re almost certain to vote in favor of some act granting the treecats the legal status of full sentients!”
“First, Turner and Fitzpatrick are going to do that anyway. Second, anybody with half a brain who’s actually listened to how Harrington and Lionheart met ought to realize treecats can be dangerous. Third, dangerous aborigines need to be isolated, both to protect them from corruption—not to mention the sorts of reactions that interaction with the threats and challenges of a high-tech society are likely to provoke—and to protect innocent bystanders from injury if something triggers their fight-or-flight mechanism. And fourth, Ozzie, who ever said Harrington and her little friend were actually going to get to the next meeting?”
Morrow had opened his mouth to reply. Now he shut it very slowly, eyes narrowed in speculation at her across the table, and her knife-sharp smile was cold.
Chapter Fourteen
Hard Claw and Firm Biter helped Keen Eyes position the net trap where any Person trying to reach Keen Eyes must trigger it. Then they retired to the agreed-upon distance. Keen Eyes concentrated on Nimble Fingers, focusing on the sense of the other Person he had gained during their brief encounters. Then he shaped his mind-voice into notes of anger and pain. He let himself remember Red Cliff as he had been when they had last met, half-mad with grief over his beloved Beautiful Mind, weak in body because he kept insisting that his share of the food be given to either his mate or their kittens.
Keen Eyes shaped the images into mockery.
Making his memories into a coherent mind-voice image was painful in and of itself. Keen Eyes let that pain intensify the message. He showed the listener where he was, how he sat within Trees Enfolding’s own territory.
At first, Keen Eyes thought his plan to lure Nimble Fingers to him had failed. He let his despair come forth to color his mind-voice. Perhaps this last was what made Nimble Fingers finally hear.
Nimble Fingers spoke to Keen Eyes, mind to mind.
Nimble Fingers said indignantly.
In reply, Keen Eyes sent a detailed image of Red Cliff’s body as he had found it, claw-slashed and bloodied but with no indication that any part of it had been eaten, as surely would have been the case if the killer had been either of the fearsome predators suggested. He focused on showing how those wounds were very like those made by a Person’s claws.
Nimble Fingers’ reply was not so much a statement as a sense of uncertainty, a hint that perhaps Keen Eyes was not providing the full tale.
As he shaped his own reply, Keen Eyes also sensed the first hints of the other’s mind-glow. In it he tasted no indication that Nimble Fingers had yet called for help from others in his clan. Whether this was because Nimble Fingers was young and impulsive or because what Keen Eyes had accused Trees Enfolding of having done made him uncertain, Keen Eyes could not be sure.
Keen Eyes kept projecting his own anger and grief, his certainty that his clan mate had been slain by another Person and that the killer belonged to Nimble Fingers’ own clan. He kept his mind-voice narrowly focused, so that what he said would be heard only by Nimble Fingers. He sought to disorient Nimble Fingers, so the younger ’cat would hurtle forward, leaping from point to point without thinking very hard about what he might meet at the end.
Keen Eyes knew his own mind-glow would reflect his current state of mind. To the approaching Nimble Fingers, Keen Eyes would be a vibrant emotional storm in which his current intense anger and grief would dominate less immediate emotions. Keen Eyes knew his own excitement that his plan seemed to be working would blend into the storm. In such a situation, excitement and tension were only natural. Indeed, he had to fight not to attack when Nimble Fingers at last burst from the cover of the sheltering trees. Instead, Keen Eyes shifted his position so that when Nimble Fingers took his next leap he would land squarely in the trap prepared for him.
Nimble Fingers leapt. The spread net snapped shut into a ball with Nimble Fingers caught on the inside.
Before Nimble Fingers could call for assistance from his clan, Keen Eyes bombarded him with a shout of command.
With the swiftness of thought, Keen Eyes hammered into Nimble Fingers the one part of his discovery of Red Cliff that he had withheld to this moment—how when he had found his murdered friend’s body he had been taunted from afar by Swimmer’s Scourge. Keen Eyes had considered sharing this memory from the start, but he had chosen not to because he had worried that rather than racing forward in indignant defense of his uncle, Nimble Fingers might have chosen to confront Swimmer’s Scourge.
Now the memory, perfect in every detail, hit Nimble Fingers like a blow. He stopped struggling against the tightly knotted mesh and hung limp.
The statement held no doubt as to the accuracy of Keen Eyes’ reporting of the event, only shock and pain that a Person Nimble Fingers thought he knew so well could be capable of such cruelty.
Nimble Fingers could easily have shared all the details of these clan quarrels fully with Keen Eyes. However, he clearly felt he had no reason to trust the other. Nonetheless, although Nimble Fingers could conceal details, he could not conceal the confusion and pain that now dominated his mind-glow.
Keen Eyes carefully tasted that mind-glow, but he saw no indication that Nimble Fingers was about to call for help. Soon, however, Nimble Fingers would get over his initial shock and call for someone—perhaps the senior memory singer. Therefore, Keen Eyes could not delay his next move, no matter how much sympathy he felt for the younger Person’s confusion.
Keen Eyes said, abating some of his anger and replacing it with a thoughtfulness that came easily because it was more natural to him,
The younger
Person’s thoughts muddled into frantic incoherence. Keen Eyes hurried to offer a compromise.
Keen Eyes opened himself to the younger Person, letting him see without reserve that Keen Eyes meant him no harm, that he could be set free this moment—but that Keen Eyes was equally sincere about carrying out his threat.
Nimble Fingers did not offer an answering openness, but remained thoughtfully silent for a long moment. When his reply came, it was lit with sincerity.
Keen Eyes accepted his promise. Mind-voices might be able to withhold some aspect of an event. In such a manner, Swimmer’s Scourge might have disguised his own emotional state as merely a reaction to the strain of current events. However, it was impossible for a Person to be dishonest to another Person when they stood close enough to read one another’s mind-glows. He saw no indication that Nimble Fingers was anything less than vibrantly interested in doing what he could to preserve his clan’s internal peace—and if that would also help the Landless Clan, then that was good, as well.
Keen Eyes spoke to Hard Claw and Firm Biter, sharing with them what had passed. Then he said,
The two hunters agreed. Reassured that their backs were being watched, Keen Eyes led Nimble Fingers toward a meeting that they both hoped would change the fates of their clans.
* * *
Keen Eyes called ahead to the members of his clan that he was bringing Nimble Fingers in with him.
He wondered what Nimble Fingers would see. Even in its prime, Swaying Fronds had been only a moderate-sized clan, for the mountains were not hospitable to the largest sized clans. Yet they had also been prosperous and well-fed. The mountains gave them good stone for their tools. They had strong stands of green-needle and gray-bark from which they harvested the seeds. The females with small kittens tended stands of golden-ear and other such bark-growing plants. Both seeds and bark-growing plants were kept against the thin days of winter, when hunting and fishing became more difficult.
Now they were poor beyond measure. Even thickening coats could not hide that most of them were growing gaunt. Moreover, many members of the clan had perished in the fires, others soon after it, for it took great need and support from the clan for the survivor of a bonded pair to carry on once one of the pair had died.
To make matters worse, many of the survivors were the very old, the very young, and the infirm. Swaying Fronds Clan had started its evacuation with these. Younger, stronger members of the clan had remained behind to salvage what they could of the stored food and tools—a task that had been viewed as especially important because even then the clan’s elders could tell that the fires would destroy much of their territory and they would need every advantage if they were to make it through the winter.
It was a decision which had cost them dearly when the winds swirled suddenly, driving the flames before them like a tempest.
He was desperate to know how Nimble Fingers saw them. Would he see their need, or would he see a group of refugees—too many young, too many injured, too many elderly to be anything but a burden to Trees Enfolding clan? Keen Eyes was certain this was how Swimmer’s Scourge had viewed them. Was it too much to hope his nephew would be any different?
Silently, Nimble Fingers passed among the members of the Landless Clan. Very few spoke to him, but their mind-glows were eloquent of their hope and need. Only the kittens—who had only heard tales of winter—were less eloquent of their desperation, but even they were scarred with grief and loss.
Keen ears paced behind Nimble Fingers, ready to protect him if any of the Landless Clan forgot that he was there as a guest, not an enemy. He tasted Nimble Fingers’ mind-glow carefully, hoping for a clue as to how he would judge them. Surely there were the echoes of sympathy, of shared pain. Surely, Nimble Fingers was seeing them as they saw themselves—wounded but not beyond healing and growing strong again.
Hope was budding in Keen Eyes’ heart when a sudden loud cry reached his mind. It came from Long Voice, a scout who had stationed himself where he could relay messages from Hard Claw and Firm Biter.
* * *
Any Person old enough to be accepted as an adult by the clan had heard the memory songs that recalled those rare and horrible times when People fought each other. Such times were rare, and the memory songs preserved from them were old, faded, yet still dreadful in their intensity. But Keen Eyes soon discovered that even their savage intensity fell short of reality.
Fangs and claws were the least of the weapons brought to bear. For clan to fight clan, the empathy that connected even People of different clans must be washed away in a tide of emotion so strong and fierce that it eliminated the awareness of the others as People, transforming them into Enemies.
So it was among the members of Trees Enfolding who descended upon the temporary nesting place of the Landless Clan. Their mind-glows were one loop of fury, of rage that their kindness had been met with cruelty, of fear for Nimble Fingers, of visions that horrible torments had been visited upon him. The attacking mass of People were beyond reason, for if they had been capable of reason, they could have reached for Nimble Fingers’ mind, discovered that he lived, learn from him what had actually happened.
But reason was gone. All that remained were fangs and claws.
Already ravaged by their own many losses, by starvation, by dread of the coming winter, the Landless Clan rapidly mirrored Trees Enfolding in senseless rage. Elders swept panicked kittens into hiding, mated couples swept forth in terrible battle pairs, their linked mind-glows intensifying their shared fears into a berserker rage.
Caught as he was between these two emotional storms, Keen Eyes struggled to maintain some slim thread of reason. He felt Nimble Fingers striving to do the same. He heard as Nimble Fingers shouted at the top of his mind-voice that he was well, that there had been a mistake…that there was no need to fight.
But Trees Enfolding was deaf to reason. The tide of fear had risen beyond the triggering cause for this attack. As their grouped minds now perceived matters, the Landless Clan must be wiped out, eliminated before they could threaten Trees Enfolding further. Glimpses of the vision within their mind-glows showed Keen Eyes the Landless Clan not as it was, but as a combination of the cold, white power of winter and the cramping constriction of lands suddenly seen as too small to support them.
And in this image, Keen Eyes thought he smelled one mind more mad than all the rest—the stress-corrupted mind of Swimmer’s Scourge.
Struggling to retain his own identity, Keen Eyes stretched his mind-voice to touch that of Nimble Fingers.
Then he bunched his muscles for a great leap, seeking with all his pow
er to separate the voice of Swimmer’s Scourge from the mind-glow storm that swirled in many-colored emotions around him.
He found the mind-glow he sought. Swimmer’s Scourge was wild with glee as he tore into Tiny Choir’s mother, battering her not only with fangs and claws, but with a determination that she understand that neither she nor her kittens deserved to live, anathema as they were in a land strained beyond the ability to support them.
The images were nearly more than Keen Eyes could bear. He leapt forth, stretching his limbs to their utmost, six sets of claws extending to rend and tear. He hit his mark, felt blood flow, drowned in insanity beyond his comprehension.
Yet Keen Eyes struggled to retain a thread of sanity, fought for his clan but also for Trees Enfolding Clan, fought for the hope of the reconciliation that had seemed possible a bare moment before.
His mouth wet with a Person’s blood, matted with fur, Keen Eyes felt Swimmer’s Scourge’s voice fade down the dark trails towards unconsciousness. Yet the reverberations of his insanity could not be so easily quieted. The battle storm raged around where they were entangled.
Keen Eyes did not know who hit him, whether one or many. His pain was a wind howl within a storm of fear and suffering.
The blackness that took him would have been welcome, but for the regret that he had failed.
* * *
“I think Mom’s gotten to depend on us to make this run,” Jessica laughed as she picked Anders up. “I hope you don’t mind.”