A Beautiful Friendship-ARC (15 page)

But the challenge had been issued, and the clan adults drew closer.

<
What my brother has done, the bond he has formed with this two-leg, was not of his choice
,> Sings Truly said quietly but clearly. <
It could not have been his choice, for none of the People even guessed such a thing was possible. Nor could he—or any of us—have known how to establish such a link with a two-leg even had we desired to do so. But he
did
establish the link, and though the two-leg is mind-blind and clearly fails to understand what has happened, it shares the link. It is as linked to him as he is to it. Is that not true, senior singer?
>

Sings Truly looked directly at Song Spinner, and Bright Water’s senior singer could only flick her ears in curt agreement, for it was obvious to all—singer and non-singer alike—that it
was
true.

<
Very well
,> Sings Truly continued. e did not know—then—that such links were possible. We do know now, however, just as all of us have seen proof of the link’s depth and power. Climbs Quickly fought the death fang for his two-leg, but the two-leg also fought the death fang for
him
, and by the standards of its own kind, this two-leg is but a kitten
.
We dare not judge all two-legs by its actions, yet we dare not reject its example, either. We must learn more about them and their tools and their purpose in being here. They are too dangerous, and there are too many of them, and their numbers increase too quickly for us
not
to learn those things. Climbs Quickly was right in that . . . and the very things which make them so dangerous could also make them powerful
allies.>

Not a whisper rose among her listeners. Every eye was fixed upon her, and even Broken Tooth’s tail had stopped its lashing, for it had never occurred to him to consider what the two-legs could do
for
the People. He’d been too aware of all the threats the intruders posed
to
them, and Sings Truly felt her hope rise higher as she tasted the shifting emotions of his mind-glow.

<
If others of the People can—and choose to—form such links, we will learn much. If they go with those with whom they link to live among the two-legs, they will see far more than we can ever see spying upon them from the shadows. They can report to us, tell us of all they learn, help us to understand the two-legs. And remember the nature of such links. The two-legs do, indeed, appear to be mind-blind. Certainly this one is. Yet for all its blindness, it senses the link. It feels and recognizes Climbs Quickly’s love for it . . . and returns that love. I think it is clear from Climbs Quickly’s original report that this two-leg thought him no more clever than the ground runners or lake builders when first it met him. It knows better now, yet it cannot know how
much
more clever the People are. Perhaps it would be as well if we do not let it or its elders know just how clever we are, for it is always wise to let those we do not know well underestimate us. But let us also build more links with the two-legs, if such we can. Let us learn, and let those of the People who share such links with them teach them that we do not threaten them. There is much room in the world. Surely enough for us to share it with the two-legs if we can make them our friends
.>

The mental silence lingered, hovering in the wet, rapidly darkening woods. And then, in the way of the People, it was broken by mind-voices in ones and twos, choosing their course.

12

Richard Harrington’s face was white as the air car’s powerful lights picked the wreckage trail from the darkness.

The icon of Stephanie’s emergency beacon glowed in the dead center of his air car’s HUD, indicating that it lay almost directly below him, but he didn’t really need it. Bits and pieces of the mangled hang glider were strewn through the tops of three different trees, and the continued silence from his daughter’s end of the com link was suddenly even more terrifying.

He didn’t know what Stephanie had been doing out here, but she’d clearly been trying to reach the clearing ahead when she went down, and he sent the air car scudding forward. Marjorie sat tense and silent beside him, twisting the control that swept the starboard spotlight in a wide half-circle on her side of the car. Richard was just reaching for the control to the port light when Marjorie gasped.

“Richard!
Look!
”

His head snapped around at his wife’s command, and his jaw dropped.

Stephanie sat huddled against the base of a huge tree, clasping something against her with one arm. Her clothing was torn and bloody, but her head rose as he looked at her. She stared back into the lights, and even from his seat in the air car, he saw the bottomless relief on her bruised and bloody face. Yet even as he recognized that, and even as his heart leapt to a joy so sharp it was anguish, stunned surprise held him frozen.

His daughter was not alone.

A grisly ruin of white bone and mangled tissue lay to one side. Richard had done enough anatomical studies of Sphinxian animal life to recognize the half-stripped skeleton of a hexapuma. But neither he nor any other naturalist had ever seen or imagined anything like the dozens and dozens and
dozens
of tiny “hexapumas” who surrounded his daughter protectively.

He blinked, astonished by his own choice of adverb, yet it was the only one which fitted. They were
protecting
Stephanie, watching over her. And he knew—as if he’d seen it with his own eyes—that
they
, whatever they were, had killed the hexapuma to save her.

But that was all he knew, and he touched Marjorie’s arm gently.

“Stay here,” he said quietly. “This is more my area than yours.”

“But—”

“Please, Marge,” he said, still in that quiet voice. “I don’t think there’s any danger—now—but I could be wrong. Just stay here while I find out, all right?”

Marjorie Harrington’s jaw clenched, but she fought down her unreasoning surge of anger, for he was right. He was the xeno-veterinarian. If the problem had been plant life, he would have deferred to
her
expertise; in this case she must defer to his, however her heart raged at her to rush to her daughter’s side.

“All right,” she said grudgingly. “But you be careful!”

“I will,” he promised, and popped the hatch.

He climbed out slowly and walked very carefully towards his daughter, carrying the emergency medical kit. The sea of furry, long-tailed arboreals parted about his feet, retreating perhaps a meter to either side and then flowing back in behind him, and he felt their watchful eyes as he stepped into the small clear space about Stephanie. A single creature crouched by her side—smaller and more slender than the others, with a dappled brown-and-white coat instead of their cream and gray—and he felt its grass-green eyes bore into him. But despite the unnerving intelligence behind that scrutiny, his attention was on his daughter. This close, the bruises and blood stains—few of the latter hers, thank God!—were far more evident, and his stomach clenched at the evidence of her injuries. Her left arm hung beside her, obviously badly broken, and her right leg was stretched stiffly before her, and he had to blink back tears as he dropped to his knees.

“Hello, baby,” he said gently, and she looked at him.

“I messed up, Daddy,” she whispered, and tears welled in her own eyes. “Oh, Daddy! I messed
everything
up! I—”

“Hush, baby.” His voice quivered, and he cupped the right side of her face in his palm. “We’ll have time for that later. For now, let’s get you home, okay?”

She nodded, but something in her expression told him there was more. He frowned speculatively—and then his eyebrows shot up as she opened her jacket to reveal another of the creatures hovering all about them. He stared at the brutally mauled animal, then jerked his eyes to his daughter’s.

Stephanie read the question in her father’s gaze. There wasn’t time to explain everything—that would have to come later, when she also accepted whatever thoroughly merited punishment her parents decided to levy—but she nodded.

“He’s my friend.” Her voice trembled, heavy with tears—the voice of a child begging her parents to tell her the problem could be fixed, the damage mended . . . the friend saved.

“He . . . he saved me from the hexapuma,” she went on, fighting to keep that fraying voice steady. “He
fought
it, Daddy—fought it for
me
all by himself
—
until the others came, and he got hurt so
bad
. I—”

Her voice broke at last, and she stared at her father, white-faced with exhaustion, pain, fear, and grief. Richard Harrington looked back, his own heart broken by her distress, and cupped her face between both his hands.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he told his daughter softly. “If he helped you, then I’ll help
him
any way I can.”

* * *

Climbs Quickly floated slowly, slowly up out of the blackness.

He lay on his left side on something warm and soft, and he blinked. He felt the pain of his hurts and knew they were serious, yet there was something strange about the
way
they hurt. The pain was distant and far away, as if something were making it less than it should have been, and he turned his head. He looked up, seeking what he already knew was there, and made a soft sound—a weak parody of his normal, buzzing purr—as he saw the face of his two-leg.

She looked down quickly, and the brilliant flare of her joy and relief at seeing him move blazed through the odd, pleasantly lazy haziness which afflicted his thoughts. She touched his fur gently, and he realized the blood had been cleaned from her face. White bits of something covered the worst of her cuts and scratches, and her broken arm was sheathed in some stiff, equally white material. He tasted an echo of pain still coloring her mind-glow, but the echo was almost as muted as his own. She opened her mouth and made more of the sounds the two-legs used to communicate, and he rolled his head the other way as another, deeper voice replied.

His person was seated on one of the two-legs’ sitting things, he realized, but it took several more breaths to realize the sitting thing was inside one of the flying things. He might not have realized even then, without his link to his person. But that same link—and the haziness—kept him from panicking at the thought of tearing through the heavens at the speed at which the flying things regularly moved.

Two more two-legs—his two-leg’s parents—sat in front of them. One looked back at his two-leg, and he blinked again as their link helped him to recognize her as
his
two-leg’s mother. But it was the other adult—his two-leg’s father—who spoke. The deep, rumbling sound still meant nothing, and Climbs Quickly wondered vaguely if he would ever really learn to understand these strange creatures.

* * *

“He looked at me, Daddy!” Stephanie cried. “He opened his eyes and
looked
at me!”

“That’s a good sign, Steph,” Richard replied, putting as much encouragement as he could into his voice.

“But he looks awfully weak and groggy,” Stephanie went on in a more worried tone, and Richard turned his head to exchange glances with Marjorie.

Despite the painkillers, Stephanie still had to be suffering fairly extreme discomfort, but there was no concern at all for herself in her voice. Every bit of it was for the creature—the “treecat”—in her lap, and it had been ever since they’d found her. She’d insisted that her father examine the “treecat” even before he set her arm, and given the vast, silently watching audience of
other
treecats—and the fact that Stephanie, at least, was in no immediately life-threatening danger—he’d agreed. Neither he nor Marjorie could make much sense of the bits and pieces of explanation they’d so far heard, but they’d already concluded that Stephanie was right about one thing. Whatever else they might be, these treecats of hers were another sentient species.

God only knew where
that
was going to end, and, at the moment, Richard and Marjorie Harrington didn’t much care. The treecats had saved their daughter’s life. That was a debt they could never hope to repay, but they were quite prepared to spend the rest of their lives trying to, and he cleared his throat carefully.

“He looks weak because he
is
, honey,” he said now, turning back to his HUD as the air car sped towards the Twin Forks infirmary and his own veterinary office. “He’s hurt pretty badly, and he lost a lot of blood before you got that tourniquet on him. Without that, he’d be dead by now, you know.”

Stephanie recognized the approval in his voice, but she only nodded impatiently.

“The painkiller I used is probably making him look a little groggy, too,” he went on. “But we’ve been using it on Sphinxian species for over forty T-years without any dangerous side effects.”

“But will he be
all right
?” his daughter demanded insistently, and he gave a tiny shrug.

“I’m pretty sure he’s going to live, Steph,” he promised. “I don’t think we’ll be able to save his forelimb, and he’ll have some scars—maybe some that show even through his fur—but he should recover completely except for that. I can’t
guarantee
it, baby, but you know I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this.”

Stephanie stared at the back of his head for a moment, then swiveled her eyes to her mother. Marjorie gazed back and nodded firmly, backing up Richard’s prognosis, and a frozen boulder seemed to thaw in Stephanie’s middle.

“You’re
sure
, Dad?” she demanded, but her voice was no longer desperate, and he nodded again.

“Sure as I can be, honey,” he told her, and she sighed and stroked the treecat’s head again. It blinked wide, unfocused green eyes at her, and she bent to brush a kiss between its triangular ears.

“Hear that?” she whispered to it. “You’re gonna be all right. Daddy said so.”

* * *

Yes, Climbs Quickly thought fuzzily, he really did have to start learning what the two-legs’ sounds meant. But not tonight. Tonight he was simply too tired, and it didn’t matter right now, anyway. What mattered was the mind-glow of his two-leg, and the knowledge that she was safe.