Lionheart jumped up onto the back of her chair as if summoned by the sound of his name and twitched his whiskers gravely into the pickup over her shoulder. She laughed and reached up to scratch him under the chin, then turned back to the message.
“I wish we could let him run around more on his own, but Dean Charterman—she’s Dean of Students for the University—made me promise I won’t let him out without me. She says it’s for his own protection, but I think she’s little worried about what sort of trouble he might get into…or cause.” She grimaced, then shrugged. “On the other hand, it might be she’s worried about contamination, too. I know some people’re still nervous about how freely we let humans move back and forth between planets here in the Star Kingdom, and I think some of them are afraid Lionheart might be carrying disease or parasites or something.”
Her expression made her opinion of that particular worry obvious, but then she shook her head with another grimace.
“I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising after the Plague and all,” she acknowledged, trying to be at least marginally fair about it. “But you’d think all of the screening and medical inspections they still have in force would help people get past it. It darned well ought to, anyway!”
She glowered, still scratching Lionheart’s chin, while she contemplated such benighted attitudes for a moment.
“We’ve met our professors,” she continued then. “Dr. Gleason’s officially only a department head, but my impression is that he pretty much runs the School of Forestry, and I don’t think he’s too happy to see us.” She snorted. “Seems downright determined to keep as far away from Lionheart as he can, too, which I think is just plain dumb. He’s supposed to be teaching forestry and he doesn’t even want to meet a treecat?” She snorted again, louder. “On the other hand, Dr. Flouret’s Chairman of the College of Criminology, and I’m pretty sure he’s one of the good guys. Seems to be an old friend of Dr. Hobbard’s, and he had some really nice things to say about Chief Shelton, too.”
She paused, not quite sure what to say next, and felt a sudden burning sensation behind her eyes. She knew how interested Anders was going to be in everything she just told him, but she didn’t want to tell him about it; she wanted to show him, because that would have meant he was right here on Manticore where she could!
She bit the inside of her lip for a moment, then drew a deep breath and made herself go on brightly.
“In the meantime, Karl and I have been checking out the dining hall. You know how much I love to eat, and, fortunately, there are quite a few Sphinxians here with the kind of metabolism I have. At least they’re not going to starve me between official meals! And besides that…”
She trailed off. Much as she wished she could somehow make Anders be there with her, she knew wishing wouldn’t make it happen. Instead, she went back to what was really bugging her.
“I was fascinated—okay, a bit horrified, too—to hear how much trouble you had retrieving the package from the rock ravens. I don’t think anything could go that wrong with the rest of it, at least I sure hope not…Message me every step, okay?”
She wanted to say more, to say how much more fun it would be if he was there with her, but she didn’t trust herself not to break down. Instead, she blew a kiss toward the pickup. “Miss you…Lots….”
* * *
Keen Eyes was deeply worried. Over the last span of days he had searched for somewhere his clan—renamed in the depths of his mind the Landless Clan—might go. Given the hostility displayed by Swimmer’s Scourge, Keen Eyes felt that the route into the low lands was unsafe. If he had his way, he would have taken the remnants of the clan into Bright Water’s territory and traded on that clan’s known liberality. However, the older People of his clan—sadly the majority among the survivors—held firm against this.
<Better we die to the last,> said old Sour Belly, who was both the most senior hunter and the best flintknapper in the clan, <than become corrupted by the two-legs as Bright Water has.>
That Sour Belly was long past his best hunting days meant nothing to him—no more than did the fact that his current name came from the fact that he was old enough that his digestion was not what it once had been. He viewed this infirmity as an indication of his extreme age, and extreme age as reason enough for his opinion to be better than anyone else’s.
Keen Eyes couldn’t agree, but, short of reducing the clan even further—and robbing it of its source of stone tools—he had no choice. If Wide Ears or one of the other memory singers had survived, she might have overruled the elders, but Tiny Choir was less than a turning old, far too young to be recognized as an adult, much less take over as the clan’s memory singer.
Keen Eyes was also crippled in his ability to press his opinion because, before the fires, he had been among the younger scouts. The fact that many of his elders, including his beloved teacher, had died seeking the routes that had enabled the clan to get at least the elderly and the kittens to safety, did Keen Eyes no favors now. He was now the most senior scout…but not—at least in the minds of those such as Sour Belly—because he had earned the rank, but because he had been too careful of his life to die.
The decision—if any decision could be said to have been made, rather than simply made necessary by the creeping advance of colder weather—was to shift down into the lowest parts of their range and hope for the best. Keen Eyes suspected that by the reasoning of the Trees Enfolding Clan they had already violated the boundaries of their territory, but, thus far, the intrusion had been tolerated. How much longer—or further—that intrusion would be tolerated, Keen Eyes could not guess.
He could only hope that this fragile period of grace would extend until he could find them a new home.
* * *
Although the gang offered to help Anders with the rest of his scavenger hunt, none of the other clues offered the same level of threat. Probably the most “dangerous” challenge was one that took Anders to the burned out island where Stephanie and the others had fought to save Valiant’s clan. However, the danger offered by the island was due more to people than to the environment. It shared a border with lands held by the Franchitti family—a family that believed animals were for hunting, shooting, and imprisoning rather than preserving. They’d already received several reprimands for abuse of flora and fauna alike. As a result, they’d become very guarded about who crossed their airspace.
But Anders carefully kept his air car within the boundaries of public lands and, although there might have been an annoyed Franchitti or two just waiting to warn him off, he gave them no justification to intervene.
His prize in the end was worth every minute of his effort, though—as he wrote to Stephanie—the hunt in itself was a present.
“It kept you near me,” he dictated, taking care with every word. “I could feel you there before me. Sometimes you seemed so close that I felt if I hurried just a little faster I’d glimpse you, be able to reach out and hold your hand.”
He wanted to say more, but it was harder to talk about how much you wanted to kiss your girl than it was to do it. Weird.
Stephanie’s present managed to be both romantic and practical—rather like the girl herself—a custom band for his new uni-link. She’d crafted it herself in her family’s workshop and had inscribed the band so that the words would nuzzle up against his wrist, “To Anders, from his Steph. The void between worlds cannot divide hearts.”
* * *
Dad grinned when Anders showed him the custom band.
“I can’t say I’m completely surprised,” he said, admiring the careful workmanship. “She did ask me what we were getting you. She’s quite a talented young lady. I certainly wish she were still on planet.”