1
“This could have far-reaching consequences,” George Lebedyenko, known on social occasions as the Earl of Adair Hollow, said, tipping back in his office chair as he watched the smart wall. “From what I’ve read of the preliminary coverage, the treecats’ actions are central to the prosecution’s entire case. And so far, everything Karl’s said bears that out.”
“I agree it’s getting the ’cats plenty of coverage,” Gwendolyn Adair said. “I don’t know how much it’s going to move the needle on the question of their intelligence, though.”
“Oh, come on, Gwen!” Adair Hollow snorted. “I know the defense is doing its damnedest to downplay the ’cats’ intelligence to undercut their evidentiary value, but I think that’s going to shoot him in the foot before it’s all over. And you and I have seen the evidence from the Foundation. There’s no question that they’re a sapient, tool-using species! And you’ve seen even more of Stephanie and Lionheart than I have.”
“And I’m not the one arguing with you,” Gwendolyn pointed out just a bit acerbically. “For that matter, I’m pretty sure we both know where the…counternarrative is coming from.”
“Angelique,” Adair Hollow said in a disgusted tone.
“Not openly, and not all by herself, but almost certainly,” Gwendolyn agreed. “You’d think somebody as wealthy as dear Countess Frampton would figure she already has enough money, but she’s way too invested in those Sphinx land futures to go down without a fight. And the fact that she’s not openly campaigning against the treecats worries me.”
“I know.” Adair Hollow ran his fingers through his dark hair. “And let’s face it, she’s better at the political stuff than you and I are. That’s why she’s not ‘openly’ campaigning. Keeping her hands—and skirts—clean for Parliament and the newsies.”
“And disconnecting the nonpartisan, purely scientific debate from anything sordid, like profit,” Gwendolyn pointed out to her cousin.
“There shouldn’t be any debate,” Adair Hollow said stubbornly, returning to his original point. “From what Karl’s said, the ’cats saved both their lives this time!”
“Of course they did. But as Doctor Mulvaney pointed out last night, we have to be ‘careful’ about assigning ‘full sapience’ to them.”
The irony in Gwendolyn’s tone could have turned Jason Bay into a desert, Adair Hollow thought, and with reason. Clifford Mulvaney had an enviable reputation as a xeno-biologist, and Idoya Vásquez, the Star Kingdom’s interior minister, had imported him from Sigma Draconis as a consultant. At first, despite a certain professional caution, he’d looked like one of the treecats’ greater boosters, but he’d backtracked. To be more precise, he’d begun warning against “prematurely assuming” a greater degree of intelligence on the six-limbed arboreals’ part once their lack of any discernible language became apparent. His appearance on Alana Martínez’s “Did You Know?” podcast the night before had underscored that point yet again.
“I couldn’t believe he was comparing them to ‘service animals,’” the earl said disgustedly.
“Fair’s fair, George,” Gwendolyn replied. “He didn’t actually compare them to service animals. He simply said that to date, aside from the very simple tools and artifacts we’ve seen out of them, they haven’t really done anything in relation to humans that service animals haven’t also done for millennia. And in a lot of ways, he has a point. For that matter, some of the arguments we’ve been putting forward in favor of treecats in public places are being construed that way, and you know it.”
“But service animals do things because they’ve been trained to,” Adair Hollow shot back. “They don’t do them spontaneously, without ever having been taught to.”
“I agree.” Gwendolyn nodded. “And it was at best a poorly chosen analogy, since it can be interpreted as suggesting the treecats are no more intelligent than, say, a German Shepherd! But—”
“Hold that thought.” Adair Hollow raised one hand. “We’re back.”
Gwendolyn’s green eyes moved back to the smart wall as the holding pattern disappeared to show them the courtroom once again.
* * *
“Ms. Harrington,” Stephen Ford began, “or would you prefer to be addressed as ‘Probationary Ranger’ Harrington?”
Ford, the defense attorney for Erina “Stormy” Wether, looked precisely like central casting’s version of the “promising young attorney”: well-groomed, not flashy, but somehow completely fake. He spoke to the sixteen-year-old in the tone of voice some adults reserved when they were pretending to treat people they still thought of as “kids” as adults. Stephanie Harrington hoped this was just because she was short for her age. She knew her fine-boned build made her look younger.
She squared her shoulders, but kept her hands neatly folded in her lap, so she wouldn’t give into the temptation to play with her hair. Over the last year, she’d been working on growing it out. Today her mom had helped her pull the curly brown locks back into a neat little ponytail that tickled her neck. It also reminded Stephanie acutely of the treecat who wasn’t there, but instead waited in the chamber reserved for pets.
“Ms. Harrington is fine,” Stephanie said. She was actually very proud of her rank, especially since the position had been created specifically for her, but the way Ford said it, “probationary ranger” sounded more as if she’d done something wrong and was “on probation,” rather than what the term actually meant, which was that in defiance of a policy against interns, and especially junior interns, Stephanie was officially enrolled as the most junior member of the Sphinx Forest Service.
“Ms. Harrington,” Ford continued with a meaningless smile, “you were present in court for the testimony of Ranger Karl Zivonik of the Sphinx Forest Service. Would you confirm whether you agree with the accuracy of his testimony regarding how the two of you came to be in the area where Gill Votano was concealing evidence of valuable mineral resources?”
Stephanie hated how Ford’s wording made Gill sound like the criminal, rather than the victim. Nevertheless, she kept her voice level as she replied. “Yes, I do agree.”
“Very well. Rather than go over those details, I’d like to move to the point where your specific actions have a marked impact on the evidence against my client.”
Ford paused for dramatic effect, drawing his right index finger over his right eyebrow with what, based on how many times Stephanie had seen him do it, was clearly his trademark gesture. Stephanie waited for him to continue with a patience she didn’t feel. She wanted her part in this trial to be over, to go back to sitting on the bench next to Karl. Even better, she’d like to collect Lionheart from where he’d been exiled with Survivor in an area reserved for “pets”—if he’d been classed as a “service animal” he’d have been allowed to accompany her, but of course he hadn’t been granted that status—then leave this stuffy courtroom behind for good.
“After learning of the apparent suicide of Gill Votano,” Ford continued, “you and Karl Zivonik decided to take an air car ride out in the direction you thought Votano had intended to bring you for a tour that very day. You were upset?”
“Some,” Stephanie said honestly. “We didn’t know Gill very well, but we did like him, and he’d seemed very enthusiastic about our planned outing. It didn’t seem to fit that he’d killed himself, but apparently, he had.”
In the months since Gill’s death, Stephanie and Karl had worked hard on how to present why they had been in the right place to get the evidence that proved Gill had been murdered while keeping the role Lionheart and Survivor had played in the investigation out of the picture. It wasn’t easy since, from the start, Lionheart and Survivor had been deeply involved.
The treecats’ sensitivity to emotional landscapes had alerted Stephanie and Karl that there was more to Gill’s invitation than the geology field tour he’d ostensibly offered. The treecats also had been the ones who had noticed—likely because they picked up Gill’s scent—the concealed crevice which contained the evidence as to why someone might want Gill dead. And it had been the treecats who had alerted their humans to the presence of someone else in the area, which had definitely been crucial to the case’s resolution. Finally, the treecats had saved Karl and Stephanie’s lives, without which action, there would be no trial today.
“So, you decided on a memorial outing,” Ford prompted. “Very touching. Ranger Zivonik has already related how you two came to the place where you noticed a slab of rock where it shouldn’t be, and how you decided to move it, thereby finding a concealed crevice. Very impressive.”
Stephanie inclined her head slightly, as if acknowledging praise, though she suspected the opposite was intended. When he’d been on the witness stand, Karl had done a magnificent job explaining how the pair had spent a lot of time outdoors, not only in their work, but in hobby activities like hunting. This meant that even in an unfamiliar environment they were inclined to notice what didn’t fit. Stephen Ford had been reprimanded by the bench for grandstanding when he’d tried to discredit their testimony by stressing the unlikelihood that their skills would have translated from Sphinx’s forests to Gryphon’s rocky wastes. After all, how or why they’d ended up in the right place wasn’t germane to the case at hand.
“I must say, Sphinx certainly is a challenging environment,” Ford continued. “Not only are even you young rangers so keen of eye that you can spot a stone out of place, but you can apparently scent a nearly odorless gas before it knocks you out. Ranger Zivonik has admitted he did not hear or smell the gas. However, Ms. Harrington, you did so with sufficient time to switch your uni-link to record both audio and visual images. Please tell us in your own words what happened.”
Stephanie was ready for this question.
“We’d gone back into the crevice and seen the mineral formations. We made some images, and were walking back when, I’m not really sure…I heard something, or maybe Lionheart started acting edgy.”
“Lionheart?” Ford cut in. “That’s your pet treecat, correct?”
Stephanie fought an urge to roll her eyes. “Yes. Lionheart is a treecat.”
“And so when your treekitty got nervous, you—”
“Treecat,” Stephanie corrected icily. “Cattus arbor habitans if you prefer. That’s the currently agreed upon nomenclature.”
Ford gave a showman’s laugh. “Oh, I don’t prefer it, really. Quite a mouthful for such little beasts. Please go on.”
Although Stephanie wanted to snap at him, she suddenly realized that the defense attorney wasn’t being nearly as stupid as he seemed. Although it was unlikely Stormy would get off on the charge of first-degree murder, she had been careful about covering her tracks. This had given the defense the opportunity to portray her as a pathetic and frail old woman who had perhaps been incapable of judging her own actions. Stormy herself had been playing the role to the full, sitting slumped in one corner rarely reacting to anything said. If she did react, she did so inappropriately, seeming to care more about having her teacup full than that she was on trial for her life.
If any of those testifying against Stormy could be made to seem unreliable—especially Jorge Prakel, whose testimony was key to proving that Stormy’s actions were premeditated—the defense might be able to get the charge reduced, or even dismissed. If that happened, then the case against Stormy Wether would move to the secondary charges, which included the attempted murder of Stephanie and Karl. Since they’d only escaped death by poisonous insect sting because of the intervention of Lionheart and Survivor, anything that could make what had happened on that stony outcrop in Gryphon’s outback seem open to different interpretations would be gravy from the defense’s point of view.
So, I need to respond without making the treecats seem dumb or, worse, letting on how smart they are. Okay…time to do a little offensive myself.
Stephanie narrowed her large brown eyes in her best serious and intent expression, then asked, “Why Karl and I were there doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that I turned on my uni-link to record both audio and visual. The images aren’t the best, but they’re good enough to show that when Karl and I went down after being gassed, the person who picked us up, moved us, then set us up to—”
Stephen Ford held up one hand.
“What the images apparently show is not germane to my question. Thank you, Ms. Harrington, that will be enough.”
He glanced at his notes, apparently decided against the wisdom of keeping Stephanie on the stand any longer than necessary, and asked her to step down. She did so, restraining an urge to hurry to where Karl Zivonik sat, tall, dark, and reassuring. Instead, she held her head high and walked with a measured tread to her seat.
In the lull before Ford called his next witness there was the usual murmur from the press gallery as they speculated on the significance of each stage of the trial. As Stephanie took her seat, she glanced up to see if she could judge what impact her own small contribution might have had. To her surprise and delight, she recognized a familiar face, large-nosed and unmistakable: José “Nosey” Jones, the owner of and sole reporter for the popular Sphinx Oracle.
She nudged Karl and said in a soft voice, “Nosey’s here!”
Karl grinned, his gray eyes sparkling. “Wondered when you’d notice. He’s been up there all day.”
A short while later when a recess was called for lunch, Stephanie looked up into the press gallery and gave Nosey a little finger wave. Nosey beamed and pointed to his uni-link. A moment later, a message came up on both her screen and Karl’s.
“How about lunch? I’d love a chance to catch up,” Nosey suggested. “You’ve been gone nearly eight months. Messages just aren’t the same.”
“That would be great,” Stephanie replied. “I really want to get away from the courthouse.”
“Me, too,” Karl added. “I realize the defense has to show willing, but this morning was absolutely no fun.”
“Then meet me outside the west exit?” Nosey suggested. “I’m staying at the Blue Basil, which is in easy walking distance. I’ll com an order for food in advance. If we take the side entrance into the hotel, then the treecats shouldn’t attract too much attention.”
“Great!” Stephanie texted back.
* * *
After collecting Lionheart and Survivor from the room reserved for service animals, Stephanie and Karl met up with Nosey. Nosey’s long, lanky build testified to his birth off-Sphinx, but here on Manticore, he could do without a counter-grav unit. His pale blue eyes were thoughtful and sensitive, and nicely contrasted with his reddish-brown complexion. He was somewhat older than Karl, in his twenties. Initially, Nosey and especially his articles in his Sphinx Oracle, had more irritated Stephanie than otherwise, but she’d come to appreciate that he cared about Sphinx as much as she did.
“What brings you here?” Karl said, shaking hands with the other man.
“Why do you think I’m here?” Nosey’s lips curved in an impish smile. “I’m here to provide firsthand coverage of the testimony of Sphinx’s own heroic rangers. Trust the two of you to get into trouble, even when on holiday on another planet!”
“I wish we hadn’t,” Stephanie said. “I don’t mean I regret stepping in, but it would have been a lot more fun to explore a new planet without having a murder investigation mixed in.”
“I get you,” Nosey said, giving Stephanie a friendly pat on the shoulder that was in no way condescending. “But you two aren’t the type to let something go just because you’re not on duty. We’re all proud of you back home. That’s one of the reasons I decided to make the trip and provide an on-the-scene report. Another reason is that I am solidly sick of snow and ice. C’mon, we can walk to the hotel from here. It’s great to be out of doors.”
As he led the way toward his hotel, Nosey continued chattering.
“Back home, people can follow coverage of the murder trial in the Manticoran press, sure, but they’re not going to know the background of the people involved. Stephen Ford, the attorney for the defense, is a great example. He wants to go into politics in a big way. Rumor is, that’s why he took this case, even though Ms. Wether isn’t likely to get off. Even if Ford fails completely, he’s already gotten lots of publicity, as well as support for his claim that he’s all for the underdog. Voters love that sort of thing. If Ford gets the charges against Wether reduced, that will work out even better for him.”
“Yeah, we heard a few rumors about Ford’s ambition,” Karl said.
Stephanie nodded agreement, but was too distracted to comment. As Nosey talked, she was picking up some curious vibes. Underlying Nosey’s genuine enthusiasm for his topic was a sense of mingled apprehension and excitement. Stephanie had found, since her adoption by Lionheart, that what her mom called her “people sense” had improved markedly. She suspected most of that was simply the fact that she was almost six T-years older and that she’d become much more comfortable with people in general. There were times when she suspected it might be more than that, though. She’d become certain the treecats were empaths—that they could literally feel another’s emotions—and sometimes she suspected that might be leaking over to her. Yet every time she tried to narrow it down, all she got was a frustrating mental tickle she couldn’t be at all certain wasn’t simply her own imagination. One thing she did know, though, was that she’d learned to use Lionheart as an emotional barometer as she’d become more and more adept at reading his body language. At the moment, as he rode in his accustomed place, his rearmost set of feet resting on a reinforced panel in her tunic, his mid-limb hand-feet on her shoulder, his head was cocked with an almost speculative air as he gazed at Nosey.
Nosey’s hiding something, Stephanie decided, but Lionheart doesn’t seem worried. If anything, he seems amused! I wonder if there’ll be celery for lunch or something.
She glanced over at Karl and could tell he also suspected Nosey planned to surprise them with something based on Survivor’s reaction. Over the last year, they’d had plenty of opportunities to compare how well they could “read” their treecats. Stephanie was definitely better at it, although whether that was because she’d known Lionheart longer and had more practice, or for some other reason, they really didn’t have enough information to figure out.
There’s still so much we don’t know about treecat and human interactions, Stephanie thought. But, as the pool of adoptees grows, we’re getting more and more information. Eventually, we can stop generalizing from too small a sample set.
When they reached the Blue Basil, the three Sphinxians slipped in a side door, then took the stairs to the third floor. Once there, Nosey palm-coded open the door to his hotel room, and sniffed the air with ostentatious satisfaction. “The food beat us here. I remembered you both liked pizza, so I ordered several combinations, as well as salad, and dessert. I ordered sushi for the treecats, but extra for the humans, if the ’cats decide to share.”
This little bit of business had taken them into the hotel suite proper. The food was indeed waiting, spread out temptingly on a long, low table in front of a comfortable-looking sofa. Presiding over the banquet, managing to look both smug and shy at the same time, was none other than Trudy Franchitti. Trudy got to her feet as they came in, a welcoming smile brightening her undeniably lovely face.
Not too many years ago, if Stephanie had been asked to name her least favorite human on Sphinx, Trudy Franchitti would have likely topped the list. Not quite a year older than Stephanie, Trudy had been her rival on the Twin Forks hang gliding team—that is until she’d dropped out at the prompting of her then-beau, Stan Chang. But Trudy had changed a lot in the last year. She still had the curves that had made Stephanie feel like an underdeveloped kid, the big violet-blue eyes, and the shining dark hair, but Trudy no longer went out of her way to hide her intelligence and how deeply she cared about the well-being of Sphinx’s wildlife.
Trudy had always been interested in the wild creatures of Sphinx. In fact, her numerous wild-captured “pets” had been one of the sources of contention between her and Stephanie. However, when the recent severe fire season had put those pets at risk, Trudy had actually stood up to her domineering father, and insisted on getting them treated at Richard Harrington’s vet clinic. Soon after, she’d started volunteering with Wild and Free, an animal rescue and rehabilitation group. By the time Stephanie had left for Gryphon, she’d actually been starting to like Trudy. Still, that didn’t mean she wasn’t shocked to find Trudy sitting here in Nosey’s hotel room, or that the slightly open closet door showed what had to be one of Trudy’s outfits hanging in the closet.
With the air of one making a wordless declaration, Nosey went over to Trudy and gave her a kiss, right on the lips. Then he motioned to the two chairs set to one side of the coffee table.
“We’ll sit on the sofa. You two take the chairs.”
Trudy indicated the space between the chairs. “I spread a couple of towels there so Lionheart and Survivor could be as messy as they need to be. I hope you don’t mind, but when we ordered lunch, I did ask for a few sticks of celery, along with the salads.”
Stephanie managed to swallow all the questions burbling up in her throat and say, “No, I don’t mind. Very kind of you to think of them.”
Karl, normally the less outspoken member of their team, helped himself to a slice of pizza with mushrooms and sausage, then asked the burning question, “So…How long have you two been dating?”
Trudy actually blushed, which surprised Stephanie, since it had been a pretty open secret that Trudy and Stan had long gotten past holding hands.
But then, romance and sex aren’t the same thing, are they? Even if they get mixed up together all the time.
Nosey grinned happily and reached to squeeze Trudy’s hand with the hand that wasn’t holding a slice of pepperoni and pink olive pizza.
“A few months now. I mean, since we decided to date just each other. We started spending time together further back, when I wanted to do a feature story on Wild and Free for my Nose for News column in the Oracle. I’d met Trudy at your sixteenth birthday party, Stephanie, and we’d chatted there, so she offered to be my guide around the facility. We got to talking and—”
“And it was just so easy to talk to him,” Trudy cut in, giving Nosey a melting look. “At first, we mostly talked about animals, and the impact of fires on habitats, and stuff like that, but I was still really messed up over Stan’s death. For a while after Stan died, I tried not to think about what had happened, concentrated on my PT, all that. But there was too much to just keep stomping down, not just the sorrow—we’d dated for a long time, and Stan hadn’t always been such a jerk—but the anger, too. He’d put us at risk, and…Oh! It’s stupid, but I couldn’t help but feel like Stan had gotten off easy. If it hadn’t been for Karl showing up right after the accident, I might have been dead, too. I had a lot of pain, especially during rehab. But thanks to some great doctors, all my scars were inside. Even after my body was mostly healed, and I was supposed to be ‘all better,’ those emotional scars were still there. Not just still there, worse than ever.”
“I understood some of what she was feeling,” Nosey continued, motioning for Trudy to take a bite of her pizza. “I mean, I’d had my own experience healing from bad injuries not that long before. My injuries were also connected with fear and resentment, and…” He gave an eloquent shrug. “We talked a lot about how we felt. One thing led to another, and, well, here we are!”
“That’s terrific,” Stephanie said and meant it. “I’m really glad for both of you. I guess your families must be pretty pleased, too.”
Nosey laughed. “My sister is thrilled. She loves Trudy to bits. My mother can hardly believe I have a serious girlfriend. She’d decided I was married to my job.”
Trudy laughed with him. “His family is great. I was so nervous when I met his sister—she’s the only one of his sibs who lives in the Star Kingdom—but…”
The long, involved anecdote that followed was backdropped by the demolition of several pizzas, large salads, then slices of a rich, multi-layered cream cake. Stephanie out-ate everyone else, but not even Karl teased her. It was only after the talk had turned to the trial, which Trudy had been watching on the vid, since she couldn’t sit with Nosey in the press box, that Stephanie realized Trudy had neatly dodged how the Franchittis felt about their daughter’s new boyfriend.
Didn’t Nosey call out Jordan Franchitti in at least one of his columns? Something about how the Franchittis weren’t helping one of their tenants whose home had been seriously damaged during the fires? Stephanie thought. But they must not mind the relationship. I mean, Trudy’s here, with Nosey, staying in his room.
But thinking about what Trudy hadn’t said, she definitely wondered.
* * *
<I am surprised,> Climbs Quickly said around a glow of amusement. <I would not have expected Needs to Know and Walks in Shadow to mate.>
<Nor would I,> Keen Eyes replied with an answering flicker of laughter.
The two People lay stretched comfortably along the backs of their two-legs’ sitting things, nibbling the pieces of spicy, bright-tasting food their bondmates offered them from time to time.
<Still,> Keen Eyes continued more soberly, <I think this may be very good for both of them.>
<I think it has already been good for both of them,> Climbs Quickly agreed. <His heart is far lighter than the last time I tasted him. And the shadows through which she walks seem lighter, somehow, when she is with him.>
Keen Eyes radiated agreement, and Climbs Quickly thought back to his first meeting with Walks in Shadow and how much the young female two-leg had changed since then. Once again, he wished Death Fang’s Bane were able to taste other two-legs’ mind-glows, because all she had felt where Walks in Shadow was concerned in those early days of their bond had been frustration and anger. Climbs Quickly still had no idea what had shadowed the other two-leg’s life, but he knew the pain of it had shaped Walks in Shadow’s life as the cold, powerful winds of the high peaks twisted and blighted the trees that grew there. And the things that had so angered Death Fang’s Bane had grown out of that pain, out of the defenses Walks in Shadow erected about it.
And they are too mind-blind to recognize even that much about one another, he thought pityingly, for far from the first time.
<And yet is that not a part of their courage?> Keen Eyes asked, following his thought. <The courage to continue, day after day, and to reach out to one another despite their mind-blindness? I do not think one of the People could do that.>
<That is a very good observation,> Climbs Quickly said approvingly. <And I hope Walks in Shadow’s courage will carry her still farther from the shadows. There was a time when I would not have believed she and Death Fang’s Bane could ever become true friends, yet they have. And now, with Needs to Know, I think perhaps she is ready to take yet another step.>