“Yes, well.” Gleason gave himself a shake, then regarded the class as a whole. Fortunately, Karl had his expression back under control.
“As Ms. Harrington has so…competently described, picketwood has a highly unusual mode of reproduction. It provides certain obvious survival advantages, but it also exposes the entire picketwood system to disease and parasite threats. There are additional drawbacks, such as susceptibility to fire, as recent events on Sphinx have demonstrated, but the speed at which picketwood grows and propagates is really quite remarkable. Since picketwood is so widespread and central to Sphinx’s arboreal biosystem, and since over half of you will be returning to Sphinx after you complete your course work here, I thought it would be a good idea for this class if we began by considering those advantages and risk factors.
“Now, Ms. Telford, building on what Ms. Harrington’s shared with us, how would you describe—”
* * *
“I thought old Gleason’s jaw was going to hit the floor, Steph!” Carmen Telford chortled as she, Stephanie, and Karl headed for their next class.
“What’s his problem, anyway?” Karl asked, and Carmen shrugged.
She was in her mid-twenties, at least five or six T-years older than Karl, and like him she was a nativeborn Sphinxian. Her father was Eduardo Telford, Baron Crown Oak, and he and her various uncles and aunts owned several thousand square kilometers of virgin woodland. They intended to develop the timber resources, but they also intended to be certain they didn’t destroy the habitat, and Carmen was here on Manticore to learn the best silviculture techniques for reforestation and sustained timber production. Despite her age advantage and the fact that Stephanie was a mere yeoman’s daughter, the two of them had hit it off well.
“I’m not really sure,” she said now, “but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably that he figures the two of you only got here because of who you know. I don’t think anyone here on Manticore was paying a lot of attention to the news when you guys were involved in those forest fires this summer. Gleason sure as heck wasn’t, anyway!”
She made a face.
“He knows your dad’s a baron, Karl, and I think he figures your father pulled strings to get you and your little buddy here—” she twitched her head at Stephanie with a grin that took the sting out of “little buddy”—“seats that should’ve gone to someone else. He doesn’t take the whole ‘provisional ranger’ thing very seriously, I’m afraid. But Steph rang his chimes pretty good, didn’t she?”
“I shouldn’t have done it.” Stephanie shook her head with a sigh. “Mom keeps telling me ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’”
“Hey, I know your mom!” Karl said, thumping her on the shoulder. “If she’d heard that look-down-my-nose-at-you tone of his, she’d’ve been standing in the back of the room cheering you on, and you know it!”
He probably had a point, Stephanie decided. And even if he didn’t, it was nice of him to be on her side. Of course that, she’d discovered over the last T-year or two, was one of the things friends did for each other, and she smiled warmly up at him.
“Well, at least Mom wouldn’t have whacked me for it,” she conceded. Then she looked down at the time display on her uni-link, and her eyes widened. “Cripes! We’re going to be late for class if we don’t get a move on—come on!
Chapter Eight
The days following Stephanie’s departure turned slowly into weeks. Although he missed her, Anders kept himself busy helping out on his father’s project and going on outings with his Sphinxian friends. Just about every day he messaged Stephanie, trying to provide her with a link to the people and events she’d left behind. She was incredibly busy but did her best to squeak off a message of her own most days.
Anders made sure he was on hand when the “tourist” xeno-anthropologists arrived on Sphinx. Chet and Christine were there, too, as official wilderness guides in the new program established by the SFS and the Sphinx Department of Tourism. Until recently, the SFS had been able to handle what wilderness tourism there’d been, but the aftermath of the severe fire season put an extra strain on the Forestry Service’s resources, even now, and the treecats had raised the profile of the Sphinxian bush.
Never mind that the known treecat areas were restricted. That didn’t keep some poorly informed visitors from thinking they could find a group of treecats and get themselves adopted—and have a nifty pet to take back home. There’d always been those tourists who wanted to “bag” a hexapuma, a peak bear, or some other sample of Sphinx’s oversized wildlife, as well. Happily, the majority of the wilderness tourists were content with less dramatic goals: taking images of condor owls or of Crown Oaks in full autumn foliage, or viewing the magnificent vistas of Megana Canyon or Mikal Falls.
There were still plenty of ways people could come to grief in the bush, however, and the overworked and undermanned SFS rangers couldn’t be everywhere at once. That was where the tourist escort program came in. The guides received a modest stipend for showing tourists the sights, answering questions, and forwarding special requests to the Rangers. They could also help with things like hunting or fishing permits and do a preliminary review of “new species” tourists were certain they’d discovered. And, in the wake of the Bolgeo incident—and the Whitaker incident, for that matter—they kept an eye out for potential poachers and for those visitors stupid enough to try to “pet the hexapuma,” as Frank Lethbridge put it.
And there would always be someone stupid enough to try to pet the hexapuma.
Or feed the swamp siren, Anders thought now with a mental chuckle. Although, he admitted, it hadn’t seemed quite so funny at the time.
Actually, he was glad the guides program had been established. It kept Sphinx’s visitors from coming to grief, and the pay provided a little extra pocket change for Chet and Christine. Jessica wasn’t an official part of the program, but Dr. Whitaker had arranged for her to receive a retainer from the Urako University for assisting his expedition and making her own—and Dirt Grubber’s—expertise available to him on request. She’d argued against accepting it, initially, but Dr. Whitaker had convinced her to agree pointing out that the time she spent as his expedition’s liaison with the treecats was time she couldn’t spend doing anything else. That was certainly true, and Anders was glad his dad had thought of it, although he did wonder sometimes if part of Dr. Whitaker’s generosity wasn’t intended to give the Whitaker team first call on her time rather than the newcomers. Either way, though, it had created a welcome increase in the Pheriss family’s income stream. Jessica didn’t talk about that much, but Anders knew, and he was happy for her.
At the moment, the four young people stood toward the back of the group which had come to greet the new arrivals. Doctor Whitaker and Dr. Nez were up front to represent the Whitaker expedition. Probably Doctor Emberly should have been there, too, but Doctor Whitaker had insisted that work go on at the site.
Chief Ranger Shelton was present to represent the SFS, accompanied by Ainsley Jedrusinski, who’d been assigned as direct liaison between the new arrivals in the SFS. There were various other people Anders didn’t know, including the woman from the tourist office and a small cluster of people who he guessed had something to do with the Manticoran foundation which had arranged to have VIP treatment extended.
The first person off the shuttle was Dr. Sonura Hobbard of Landing University. She was an old friend and member of the unofficial “friends of treecats” group. Following her came a pert woman with tanned skin and obviously artificially red hair. She had a large button nose that gave her face a rather clownish look, but her dark eyes seemed to see everything.