People did not speak falsely. They could withhold information, but they did not say or think things they knew were not true, nor could one Person deceive another about what he truly desired. Two-legs could deceive one another, but it was hard for Dirt Grubber to wrap his mind around such twisted thinking.
He was also aware that he had not spent time with all the two-legs present. Windswept had spoken mostly with those who had first initiated contact. He had sensed a few malicious breezes from the minds of some who had kept their distance, but that was not unusual. He already knew that not all two-legs liked the People. Sometimes what he tasted from them almost felt like tension over territory or a particularly succulent bit of food. He thought they saw the People as competition.
Reluctantly, Dirt Grubber decided he must do his best to learn more about these new arrivals. From Windswept’s mind-glow, he could tell she expected to meet them again. For the good of the People, Dirt Grubber must try to make the most of those encounters.
Chapter Nine
The morning after the meet-and-greet, Anders felt tense. He might not be a treecat, but he was enough his politician mother’s son to feel uneasy about the hidden agendas he’d sensed the night before.
Sure, he’d expected some tension. However chastened his dad might be, he was still as protective of his permit as the mother of a newborn baby. What Anders hadn’t expected was how, well, political Dr. Radzinsky had been. He’d overheard her talking with Chief Ranger Shelton. From her questions, it was apparent that she had far more knowledge than he would have expected from an off-worlder about the implications treecat sentience could have for Sphinxian land ownership.
He didn’t want to make Stephanie edgy. Her messages were full of how demanding she was finding her classes. He didn’t doubt that she was doing great—Stephanie really was as smart as everyone thought she was—but she was working harder for those perfect grades than she ever had before. And she was so hard on herself when she did mess up. Weeks later, she was still beating herself up over some minor gaffe in forensics class.
Still, he had to let her know something was rotten on the planet Sphinx, so he gave her a quick summary. Then he went on:
“I let Christine and Chet know I thought Radzinsky, at least, has an agenda, and they’re planning to keep a special eye on her—including making notes of those times when she wants them out of the way. Meanwhile, Jess will see how many of the x-a’s we can meet in small groups. She thinks Valiant will be able to get a better read on them that way. I think it will be interesting to see just who doesn’t want to spend time in a small group with a treecat, too.
“Listen, Steph. I’d really like to keep an eye on Jess and Valiant. I’ve got this idea, though, that she thinks she’d be imposing. Could you message her, tell her it would be good to have me along? I know what my dad is capable of and—hard as it may be for you to believe—he’s actually really ethical. He’d never cook his data or anything. I’m not so sure about some of the others.
“I’ll cover things here for you. You study hard. That’s why I let you out of my reach, right? Say, hi to Karl and tell Lionheart I’m saving part of my allowance to buy him a bouquet of celery when he gets back.”
He mimed giving her a big hug. “Miss you!”
* * *
Climbs Quickly stretched out along the smooth, rocky shelf outside the nesting place they had given Death Fang’s Bane and panted quietly. The sun was unnaturally hot, burning down out of a sky which wasn’t quite the right shade of blue, and he found himself wishing he had had some warning about just how warm this new place, this new world, was going to be. At least Death Fang’s Bane’s nesting place’s window faced toward sun-rising, so the bulk of the structure threw a welcome patch of shade over this shelf each afternoon. For that matter, things in general had improved since he’d started shedding, and he could always retreat to the coolness of Death Fang’s Bane’s sleeping place. But it was still hotter here—even in the shade—than any of the people could ever have anticipated.
He disliked being separated from his two-leg so much of the time. She did not like it either; he could tell that from her mind-glow, even when she was far away. She had made it clear enough that she had no choice, however, and Climbs Quickly had learned more than enough about how the two-legs’ clans worked to understand that neither Death Fang’s Bane nor her parents could always arrange things the way they might wish to. The two-legs’ elders clearly had a great deal to say about how all two-legs lived their lives, and he had discovered that Sings Truly’s warning that it was important for the People to understand how these strange creatures thought had been even better taken than he had thought at the time.
Still, it would help me to understand them better if I could accompany Death Fang’s Bane more places, he reflected, flattening even closer to the cool, shaded shelf. It helps that she is so happy to be learning so many things—it is like watching a kitten scamper down a ground runner’s burrow! Yet I know she misses Bleached Fur, and she feels guilty about leaving me so much to my own devices.
He treated himself to a quiet mental laugh at that thought, for he was confident few of the older two-legs realized what sorts of opportunities this nesting place offered to one of the People. Death Fang’s Bane did, although she had done her very best to warn him about being careless. It had amused him, for even though their inability to communicate clearly with one another remained frustrating, she had reminded him irresistibly of old Broken Foot, the half-crippled scout who had been entrusted with teaching Climbs Quickly and his fellow kittens about the perils of the world. Of course, that had been more hands of turnings ago than Climbs Quickly really cared to think about, but the message had been clear enough. And so had the fact that Death Fang’s Bane had been fairly sure she was not supposed to be encouraging him to roam.
It was a long way from this ledge to the nearest of the strange trees growing in this place, but not so far that a healthy scout could not make the leap between them, especially when he seemed to weigh so much less than he was accustomed to. And even though he knew Death Fang’s Bane worried about him whenever he was out on his own, she also understood that he was a scout of the People. She might not like it, and he had sensed her concern about the sorts of trouble he might find to get into in this world which was so different from his own, but she had not attempted to lock him up here in her nesting place. Instead, she had trusted him not to get into trouble and he had not. For all his sister’s and Broken Tooth’s lectures about impetuosity, he was not really heedless enough to take foolish chances. So his explorations had been cautious, largely under cover of night, and more for his own amusement and to defeat boredom than anything else, when he came down to it.
Now he rolled back over, ears twitching as he sensed Death Fang’s Bane’s mind-glow coming back towards her nesting place. Her mind was already reaching out to him, despite the fact that she had no idea what she was doing or how, and the inner warmth of that touch flowed through him like a welcome sigh of wind creeping delicately through the leaves of Bright Water’s central nesting place.