Treecat Wars (21 page)

“You’re very welcome for dinner,” she said. “Mom and Dad haven’t gotten home yet, but they’ll be back soon. Right now, the twins, Melanie-Anne and Archie, are in charge. Mom has Tiddles and Nathan with her.”

Anders and Stephanie were both only children. They’d shared their amazement at the disorganized but somehow still functional amoeba that was Jessica’s large family. Actually, though, on Sphinx such large families were more usual than their mutual status as “onlies.” Stephanie said her parents hoped to add a child or two, but so far the time hadn’t seemed right. She’d been pretty philosophical about it.

“Actually, I’m almost out the door,” she’d said when Anders asked her how she felt about it. “College in a couple of years. After that, well, I’d really like to take some posts on parts of Sphinx I don’t know as well. There’s a lot of this world I want to experience firsthand.”

Anders was wondering if he’d feel as calm if his parents suddenly presented him with a younger brother or sister when he heard Jessica draw in her breath.

“Hang on,” she said, reaching for the controls. “There’s an air car down there I don’t recognize. The twins know they aren’t supposed to let strangers in, but Melanie-Anne in particular is just too trusting. Still, I’d rather not cause a fuss. I’ll bring us down on the back lot and we can walk in without being noticed.”

She pulled off the maneuver with such skill—and so quietly—that Anders entertained the thought that Jessica might have found it convenient to go in and out without being noticed from time to time.

Or am I just being suspicious? In a house with so many little kids, it’s probably second nature to find ways to avoid waking the baby
.

“Valiant’s not back yet,” Jessica said softly as she opened the air car door. “He’s on his way.”

Evening chill had driven everyone inside. Jessica led the way around the side of the rambling house. Anders had been here many times with Stephanie and knew enough of the basic layout to know they were heading for a side door that led into a corridor that bisected the front and back portions of the house. It was a good choice. They could enter without being seen and hear whatever was being said in most of the house.

Jessica slid the door open and motioned him inside quickly. Anders was immediately struck by the relative quiet. The Pheriss house was never quiet—too many people lived there for that to be the case—but this evening the usual lively ruckus was subdued. Music was playing somewhere, but no feet were thundering up and down the stairs, nor was cutlery clattering in the kitchen areas.

Instead, from the front of the house where there was as close to a formal living room as existed, an adult male voice was speaking. A moment later, it was answered by a piping childish voice that Anders thought belonged to Archie, the male half of the twins. They couldn’t make out the words, but everything sounded calm enough, and Anders felt his shoulders relaxing from a tension he hadn’t realized was there.

Jessica held a slim finger to her lips and motioned for Anders to follow her. Stepping over scattered toys, they went down the corridor toward the front of the house and paused outside the living room door.

The man’s voice said, “So you’ve never felt threatened, even though you’ve heard that treecats are meat-eaters?”

“No,” Melanie-Anne said thoughtfully. “Our dogs, Otis and Mookie, are meat-eaters, but we’re not scared of them.”

“Otis and Mookie,” corrected a younger voice—Billiam?—pedantically, “eat kibbles. Valiant thinks kibbles are yucky. He ate a chipmunk. I saw him. He ate it all up.”

“And did that upset you?” the man asked. “Some people keep chipmunks for pets because they’re cute.”

The voice was familiar. In a moment, Anders placed it: Duff DeWitt, assistant to Dr. Radzinsky. Just the other day, Dad had said something about him…what was it? Right!

“I wonder what sort of connections that DeWitt fellow has. He’s certainly not the best anthropologist I’ve met, not even close. Radzinsky must’ve picked him for some other reason.”

DeWitt was a good-looking man with his fair hair, dark eyes, impressive musculature, and chiseled features. The leer in Dad’s tone of voice had made it perfectly clear what reason
he
thought Cleonora Radzinsky had for bringing DeWitt along. At the time, Anders had dismissed his scorn for the other man as yet another example of Dad’s professional cattiness, but now he wondered if Dad might have been right. Certainly, this wasn’t a professional way to conduct an interview! All Jessica’s siblings were younger than her—definitely too young to be interviewed without their parents present—and these were certainly leading questions.

Billiam, bless him, was prattling happily on about how Valiant’s choice of a meal hadn’t bothered him at all. In fact, he seemed to have taken a childish delight in the fact that Valiant had “even gulped down the guts!”

Anders expected Jessica—who’d shown herself at least as fearless as Stephanie in her own way—to go charging in to defend Valiant’s character, but she hung back. Then she glanced at him, and when Anders saw the deep lines of worry etching her face, he instantly realized what held her back.

Defending Valiant would imply that there’s something to defend him
against.
Jessica—and me, too—would be just about the worst people to interrupt, because we’re known to like treecats. DeWitt would find some way of twisting it to his advantage, I’m sure
.

He reached for Jessica’s hand and tapped the uni-link strapped to her wrist. “Go and make a call,” he mouthed. “Interrupt that way.”

Jessica nodded. She could have texted, but it was likely that the absorbed group would ignore that. However, with both parents out, it was unlikely the Pheriss kids would ignore the signal of an incoming call.

She was moving toward the back of the house when a very unlikely knight came to the rescue. There was the sound of the front door—which opened into a small foyer directly off the living room—opening. Buddy Pheriss’ booted feet could be heard striding in.

“Who are you, young man? And what are you doing in my house?”

Jessica pointed to where a slight change of angle would permit them to watch the action in the living room in the reflection cast onto one of the many windows. DeWitt rose smoothly to his feet, apparently not in the least flustered, and held out his hand to Mr. Pheriss. Buddy Pheriss was a big, wiry man who made his living doing an assortment of jobs, many of them involving physical labor. Currently, he wore a beard that jutted out in a point and his dark auburn hair—as curly as his daughter’s—was longer than the current fashion. He looked rather wild, but DeWitt didn’t seem in the least intimidated.

“I’m Duff DeWitt, Dr. Radzinsky’s assistant. I called earlier and was told I could come by and talk to your family about life with a treecat.”

“And who gave permission?” The rumbling growl was addressed to the assorted children, and Melanie-Anne raised a tentative hand.

“I guess I did, Dad. I mean, he asked if anyone here knew anything about treecats and could talk to him. I didn’t realize he was coming over, but when he did….”

She trailed off.

“Ah.” The monosyllable promised repercussions later, but Mr. Pheriss wasn’t distracted.

“Mr. DeWitt, you may not have realized it, but the front window has a cracked pane. Landlord keeps forgetting to fix it, and it’s become an issue, so I won’t.”

Anders grinned. The Pheriss’ landlords were the same Franchittis Stephanie so deeply despised.

“So I just happened to hear what you were asking my children. Quite a lot of what you were asking them actually. That bit where you showed them the diagram of a treecat’s teeth was very interesting. So was the bit where you stressed how hard their claws are and how very many they have. Not exactly scientific, now, was that?”

DeWitt blinked. If he’d researched the Pheriss family at all, he’d obviously made the mistake of thinking that lack of formal education was the same as lack of brains. From the expression that flickered across his handsome features, he’d just realized that he’d made a major error.

The next few minutes were quite interesting from the observers’ point of view—especially since those observers could now be assured that Duff DeWitt was not going to leave the Pheriss household with any juicy soundbites regarding vicious treecats. Not only did Mr. Pheriss make certain that DeWitt had been recording the conversation—Billiam was quite helpful there—but he thought to make certain that not only did the whole the record get wiped, but so did the backup being made by DeWitt’s uni-link.

“I’ll be talking to your boss, young man, about scientific methods and ethical treatment of minors as subjects,” Mr. Pheriss concluded as he ushered his unwelcome guest out the door. “I will indeed. Can’t have the sample ruined, now, can we? I might even mention what I think of the sort of bottom-feeding, slime-sucking scum dogs who would frighten small children. But if you leave quietly, I might keep that to myself.”

When DeWitt, wrath lighting his dark eyes, had departed, Mr. Pheriss called out, “Well, you might as well get out here, Jessica. And that young man, too. Before your mama gets home for dinner, we’re going to have a scavenger hunt to make sure our fine visitor didn’t leave behind any other devices. Always pays to play it safe, at least that’s how I see it…”

Jessica barreled out of her concealment and hugged her father. Anders followed more slowly, thinking hard.

Now I think I understand why—despite needing to move all the time—this family works. When it all comes down to it, they can count on each other. Here I’d been pitying Jessica, but now—Now I think I actually envy her
.

* * *

The Charleston Arms was the fanciest restaurant Stephanie had ever seen. In fact, it was fancy enough to make even her a little nervous. Her mom had insisted that she pack at least one “good outfit,” although Stephanie was always most comfortable in the sort of clothes better suited to knocking around the bush. At the moment, she was glad her mother had been so inflexible on that point, but she was pretty sure her notion of “good outfit” fell a light-year or so short of the Charleston Arms’ standards.

She knew from her own experience on Sphinx that newly settled worlds tended towards lower buildings, without the hundreds of floors a proper tower might possess, but the Charleston Arms was ridiculous. Set in the midst of its own four-hectare expanse of meticulously landscaped grounds, it favored what its public site had called “neoclassic architecture,” although Stephanie couldn’t quite figure out
which
neoclassic style it had followed. It was no more than three floors tall, its roof was covered in red tile, its walls were made of native Manticoran granite, and its façade was fringed with tall, fluted columns whose bases were almost as thick as Stephanie was tall. It was the sort of place which simply reeked of wealth, power, and prestige, and despite the imposing sweep of its clear, clean lines, something about it set her teeth on edge the instant she saw it.

Probably just the fact that the people who run it won’t let you bring Lionheart
, she reminded herself.
So remember to be polite!

The incredibly superior live human who insisted on opening the taxi’s door as if Stephanie and Karl were incapable of such a complicated and demanding task managed—somehow—not to sniff audibly at their ragamuffin appearance, but it was obviously hard. She retaliated by smiling up at him sweetly as he escorted the two of them up the broad, shallow steps into the restaurant proper. She couldn’t decide if he was more worried that they’d get lost or that they might decide to steal the antique doorknobs if he didn’t keep an eye on them.

The interior had exactly the sort of wood-paneled walls, polished marble floors, and ever so quiet and discrete background music she might have anticipated, and she found herself beginning to wonder just how much she could possibly have in common with the Adair Foundation if this was where it regularly held its meetings. She was just beginning to think about beating a strategic retreat to the taxi when someone called her name.

“Stephanie! I’m so glad you and Karl could join us tonight,” Gwendolyn Adair said. She swept across the gleaming stone floor towards them, tall and beautiful in a “casual” little gown which had probably cost more than the Harrington air car, and smiled hugely. “I’m sorry you had to come by taxi. If you’d screened me the Foundation would’ve been delighted to arrange to have you picked up.”

“We managed just fine, thank you.” Stephanie smiled again, politely, though she was tempted to point out that she and Karl were perfectly capable of finding their way around the Sphinx bush on their own. The terror of finding an air taxi was probably something they were prepared to face when they absolutely had to.

“Well, now that you’re here, let me show you the way to our dining room.” Gwendolyn wrinkled her nose with a charming little smile. “Personally, I think they were a little too concerned with making certain people would be properly impressed with the establishment’s grandeur when they built this place. You need GPS just to find your way around inside it!

There was so much rich amusement in her tone that Stephanie found herself smiling back at her again, much more naturally this time. She glanced up at Karl and saw him smiling, as well, as Gwendolyn somehow made their escort/keeper disappear without saying a word. Then she turned and led the two of them across that sea of polished marble, through an arch, down two flights of shallow steps, around a corner, down a hall,
up
a flight of steps, through an atrium with its own private grove of exotic ornamental trees and flowering shrubs, past a koi pond, and—
finally!
—through another door into a cozy little dining room which probably couldn’t have seated more than three or four hundred of Stephanie’s closest friends.

It was a journey which could make even Stephanie feel more than a little out of her depth.

Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over a small, beautiful lake on the restaurant’s grounds, and the setting sun hung directly above it, pouring down a rich, golden light. A lectern had been set up at one end of the dining room, forming a small, bare island among the ice floes of tables draped in white linen tablecloths and glittering with silverware and crystal glasses. A couple of dozen people were already present, waiting for them. The attendees seemed almost lost in that enormous room and (she noted glumly) just about every one of them was as elegantly dressed as Gwendolyn.