Givens stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“His very own treecat bodyguard?!” she demanded.
“Well, if he’s on the up-and-up, he’s definitely somebody the Alignment would move heaven and earth to shut up, assuming they figure out he’s alive and we’ve got him,” White Haven pointed out. “It would make sense to give him a nanotech-detector to make that as difficult as possible, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, of course it would!” Givens agreed, still snickering as she turned back to the recording. “My, oh my! Remind me to compliment your wife the next time I see her.” She shook her head. “I do like a woman with a devious mind!”
* * *
Clean Killer told Thought Chaser.
Thought Chaser replied, looking across from his place on the back of Crafty Mind’s sitting place. He yawned a silent smile at the younger scout.
Clean Killer mind-laughed in agreement. No one would ever fully understand two-legs; that was a given. But he didn’t need to understand them to know that, just like the People, there were good two-legs and there were evil two-legs, and he knew where his own allegiance lay.
His laughter faded as he considered that, thought about why he was here in this huge two-leg nesting place. A “city” they called it, he thought, forming the mouth-noise carefully in his mind. The strength of so many hands of mind-glows pressed in upon him like some powerful, invisible wind, or perhaps like the heat of the sun in mid-summer. It threatened to crush him, but he had tasted the memory songs of others of the People who had gone among the two-legs. That had prepared him for it, although not so well as he had believed it had before he experienced the reality himself. That first day, he had seriously considered fleeing like a kitten newly escaped from its nesting place, but he had overcome the temptation by remembering why he was here.
His older sister, Silver Claw, had mated into the Black Rock Clan. She had also died with her mate, her kittens, and her entire new clan family when the fire fell from the heavens. Clean Killer had been near the boundary between Black Rock’s range and Mossy Tree Clan’s. Indeed, he had been mind-speaking with her when it happened, and he would never forget that day. Never forget her scream of terror, brief as the time between two breaths, before her beloved mind-voice vanished into cold, eternal silence, cut away from him forever with the sharpness of one of the singing blades the two-leg hunters and scouts used.
And then, even as he turned to speed madly through the net-wood towards Black Rock’s range, the dreadful boil of sun-bright fury had roared up before him and the terrible thunder-rumble and howling wind had raced over him like a mighty storm. The shock had splintered branches all about him, flung him from the net-wood like one more broken twig. Indeed, so far as any of the memory singers knew, no one closer to Black Rock’s central nesting place than he had survived, and it had taken him many hands of days to heal from the bones which had been broken, even with the two-leg healers’ assistance.
It had taken far longer for his mind-glow to heal.
Heart Singer, Mossy Tree’s mind-healer, had told him he could survive the deep, inner wounds of that day. At first, Clean Killer had shut his own mind to him, refusing to believe the older Person. In the end, though, Heart Singer had been right. He had survived it, but he would never be the same again. None of the People would ever be the same. Clean Killer was not the only Person who had directly shared that single mind-scream from all of Black Rock’s People, and by now all of the People—aside from the youngest kittens—had tasted the memory songs of that day. The day Black Rock died, murdered by the evildoers from beyond the sky who had killed so many more of the People’s two-legs on that same dreadful day. The memory-singers had mercifully dimmed the worst of the terror, of the agony, in their songs, but it was important that all of the People taste them, know the darkness at their core.
Know their enemies’ work and never forget their hatred for the ones who had done it.
Clean Killer needed no memory songs. He carried that darkness with him everywhere. Thanks to Heart Singer it had not devoured him, as it had too many other People, yet he had discovered he could not go back to his everyday life as one of Mossy Tree’s scouts. He could no longer roam the net-wood and golden leaf, hunting and warding, guarding the clan from death fangs and snow hunters. Not when he knew that other, far greater threat hid beyond the stars. And so, when the memory singers sent forth the summons, seeking volunteers to venture among the two-legs and to guard them against the threat they could not taste themselves—the other two-legs who the evildoers somehow compelled to slay even their closest friends—Clean Killer, scout of Mossy Tree Clan, was among the first to volunteer. And not just because of his need to protect the two-legs who fought to protect all the people—People and two-legs, alike—of his world. No. He’d volunteered because he hoped that someday, some way, he would come within claw’s reach of at least one of the evildoers responsible for such slaughter, so many deaths, and on the day he did…
He supposed that was why Spins for Joy, Speaks from Silence and Dances on Clouds had considered him as the “protector” for this once-upon-a-time evildoer who claimed now to be a friend. Well, Clean Killer would see about that. He had tasted Pounces on Leaves’ memory of People’s Eyes conversation with the captured evildoer, and he knew the evildoer had never said anything which was not true, but that did not fully reassure Clean Killer. The People had never even considered saying a thing which was not so before they had encountered the two-legs and learned to understand their mouth noises. There had been no point, since any Person always knew whether or not the Person mind-speaking with him was doing such an outlandish thing. But two-legs were mind-blind—all of them except Dances on Clouds and Cloud Dancer’s Joy, her kitten, and—just a tiny bit—Deep Roots and Laugh Dancer, her parents. Not only could they say things which were not so, they could not always tell when someone else said such things to them, poor creatures. People could deceive or trick other People—indeed, some, like Laughs Brightly, were notorious among all the clans for their ability to do that! But they could not do it that easily, not by simply saying false things. They had to find other ways, more creative ways. Was it not reasonable to assume that two-legs had more than one way to deceive their own kind, as well? Clean Killer had observed that some of the most effective deceptions lay not in the saying of untrue things but in saying things which were entirely true…and did not mean what the other Person believed they meant.
He did not expect to enjoy his time “protecting” the evildoer, although the memory song of the two-leg’s mind-glow Sorrow Singer had relayed to him from Pounces on Leaves was much less…distasteful than he had initially expected. Pounces on Leaves had a powerful mind-glow for a male. Admittedly, he had been more focused on tasting the truth of the evildoer’s responses to People’s Eyes questions than on delving deep into the two-leg’s mind-glow itself, but the memory he had shared with Sorrow Singer and, through her, with Clean Killer had carried none of the dark, cold evil Clean Killer had always assumed must mark an evildoer capable of destroying Black Rock Clan and so many two-legs.
Perhaps it does not, he thought now, grimly, as the two-leg flying thing swooped downward towards its destination. But unlike Pounces on Leaves, I will be a hunter stalking that mind-glow, and this evildoer who now says he is prepared to aid our two-legs will not like what happens if I find treachery within him.
* * *
 
; Damien Harahap felt more unsettled than he would have admitted as he followed his escort—the Manties were too polite to call her a guard—down the hall. He supposed it was a good thing they wanted to keep him alive, at least until they decided differently, and he doubted they were lying about the “nanotech assassins.” He had no more idea than they did about how Bardasano’s people might make that work, but it sounded like exactly the sort of thing they would make work. So if this treecat they meant to pair him with could keep that sort of unpleasant encounter from claiming the scalp of one Damien Harahap, that was a good thing.
He was less comfortable with why his new protector, Clean Killer—a name which suggested a few unpleasant possibilities of its own—would be able to detect a programmed assassin in time to do something about it. There’d been rumors about Sphinxian treecats’ supposed esoteric abilities for a long time, although he’d never been interested enough to chase them down himself. One thing he hadn’t heard about them, however, was that they’d learned to communicate with humans. If, as Jubair claimed, they were telepaths, able to detect lies—and assassins—their ability to tell someone about it explained why Jubair had been accompanied by his own treecat partner for every session with Harahap. And there was the corollary: a telepath who knew someone was lying would make the most effective “control” for any asset of dubious reliability in the long and murky history of espionage.
Harahap might not have minded that, since he entertained no current plan to be unreliable, if he’d felt more confident about a treecat’s sense of…self-restraint in the case of any little misunderstandings. Or, for that matter, if he’d believed treecats were the adorable, silken pets they appeared to be. Unfortunately, he believed nothing of the sort. He might not have made a special study of them, but Honor Alexander-Harrington’s companion Nimitz was the most famous treecat in history in no small part because of how conclusively he’d demonstrated that however adorable and silken he might be, he was anything but a “harmless pet” when his human was threatened.
And there was that name…Clean Killer.
* * *
“He’s on his way, Ma’am,” Commander Lassaline said.
Patricia Givens looked over her shoulder as her chief of staff entered the small conference room. The admiral’s expression was an interesting study in contrasts, Lassaline thought. The chief of staff probably understood Givens’s ambivalence where Damien Harahap was concerned better than almost anyone else. Lassaline had been her assistant chief of staff for over three T-years before moving into the top slot just after the Yawata Strike. She’d seen—and shared—Givens’s anguish in the wake of ONI’s total failure to see the sneak attack coming. And, like all of the admiral’s staff, she wanted any window into their enemies’ operations and objectives they could get. But she was also a career intelligence officer, and she knew how devastating a trusted source that provided bad information could truly be. And she also knew that some of the best disinformation programs had dependent upon the individuals providing the information not knowing it was false to begin with.
“Thank you, Terry,” Givens said, then smiled with more than a trace of sourness. “I wonder if he’s looking forward to this with as much joy and celebration as I am.”
“If it’s any consolation, Ma’am, I’m pretty sure he’s looking forward to it with a lot less joy and celebration than you are,” Lassaline replied. “Man’s got a damned good poker face, but I don’t care how good he is at hiding what he feels, he still feels it!”
“I know. I only hope Her Grace is right about why he feels it. Pull up a chair.” Givens twitched her head at one of the other chairs at the conference table. “One way or another, it ought to be interesting.”
“You always were a mistress of understatement, Ma’am,” Lassaline told her with a smile and seated herself in the indicated chair.
Givens tipped back in her own chair, rubbing the ears of the treecat spilled warmly across her lap, while the three of them watched the smart wall display showing the interior of the interrogation room just down the hall from where she sat.
At the moment, its only occupants were Antoine Jubair, Pounces on Leaves, and Clean Killer, and Givens frowned as she thought about why they were here this morning. It wasn’t that she really thought it was a bad idea, but—
Thought Chaser turned his head to look at her and a true-hand smacked the fingers which had paused in their rubbing. She twitched slightly and looked down at him, and he smacked her hand again, narrowing his eyes.
“Sorry!” Her frown turned into a smile and she heard something suspiciously like a suppressed chuckle from her chief of staff’s direction. She glanced at Lassaline whose poker face at that moment could have given lessons to Damien Harahap. Givens glowered at her for a moment, then started stroking Thought Chaser’s ears again, and her smile grew into a grin as he closed his eyes once more and buzzed a contented purr.
He and she had formed nothing like the soul-deep adoption bond between Honor Alexander-Harrington or her husband and their treecats. There were times she wished they had, when she envied those who’d been adopted. Other times, she didn’t. She knew Nimitz had represented a very real hurdle, one that could have derailed Honor’s naval career before it ever began, despite Queen Adrienne’s rules about treecats and their people. And she wouldn’t have liked knowing that if something fatal happened to her, Thought Chaser would almost certainly follow her into death.
But if they didn’t have that bond, he’d still become what was probably the closest, most reliable friend she’d ever had, and she’d learned to trust his judgment implicitly, at least in most ways. There were human conventions, relationships, and societal mechanisms no ’cat truly understood or probably ever would, though. And she did have concerns about how the species’ intrinsic honesty might affect the judgment of someone navigating the murky moral waters of the intelligence community. If telepaths couldn’t lie to one another, then how deep an appreciation of human-style dishonesty and deceit could they truly possess? And if—
The door opened, and Thought Chaser sat up in her lap as she brought her chair upright.
* * *
Harahap followed his keeper into the now-familiar interrogation room, then paused just inside the door as he saw the pair of treecats parked on the table like matching bookends.
They weren’t identical, although they had exactly the same coloring and exactly the same grass-green eyes. His was a brain which had been trained to record and file away as much data, even—or perhaps, especially—trivial data, as possible in a single glance. So even though it would have been difficult for him to consciously catalog all the differences between the two creatures, he was reasonably certain he’d be able to tell them apart if he ever saw them side-by-side again. He might have more trouble putting a specific name to either of them in isolation, however. It was rather like looking at a pair of almost, but not quite, identical twins. Seen together, the differences between them could be picked out; seen separately, the similarities would overwhelm the memory of any identifying differences.
The one on the right’s Jubair’s partner, Pounces on Leaves, he told himself. He found treecats’ names a bit odd, but he supposed a telempathic species’ naming conventions would have to be a little strange. So, that’s Clean Killer on the left. Wonder if those swirls in his fur are from scars underneath it?
It was an interesting question, since Jubair had been at some pains to explain that Clean Killer had survived a treecat mass-casualty event during what the Manties called the Yawata Strike. He’d also explained how badly the ’cat had been injured by it. Since Manticore held the Alignment responsible for the attack, Jubair had suggested not at all delicately, it might be unwise for Harahap to say, do, or even think anything that might lead Clean Killer to associate him with the attack.
Sounder advice was never given, Harahap decided. He reminded himself that reading an alien species’s body language was likely to yield less than reliable results, but Clean Killer—who, now that
he thought about it, looked to be at least twenty percent bigger than Pounces on Leaves—didn’t look very happy.
Hadn’t realized a treecat’s coat could actually bristle, he thought. Alien species or not, I doubt that’s a sign he’s just overjoyed as hell to see me!
* * *
Clean Killer said.
Pounces on Leaves replied
Clean Killer flicked his ears in mingled embarrassment and humor as he tasted the dry amusement in the older Person’s mind-voice. Not that Clean Killer was all that concerned about courtesy at the moment. Still, he was supposed to be protecting this two-leg, not killing it himself.
He pulled his claws back into their sheaths. The bristle of his coat, however, was not a conscious response. He could not make it go away as easily, so instead of trying, he switched his attention to the two-leg.
He was not as tall as some of the other male two-legs Clean Killer had seen since volunteering to help guard the People’s two-legs, but Clean Killer saw with a scout’s eyes, recognized the way the two-leg moved. The one who had escorted him here was armed, and he was not, yet Clean Killer sensed that he was actually far more dangerous than she. He was poised, balanced, in a way she was not, much as a scout on duty was perpetually attuned to all about him while he flowed through the net-wood, every sense alert for any sign of danger to the clan.
But that was only the two-leg’s outer shell. It was not what truly mattered, and Clean Killer’s eyes narrowed as he reached out and delved deep to taste this two-leg’s mind-glow fully and completely.
* * *
“Mister Harahap,” Jubair began, “this is Clean—”