They agreed and not long after, as they sat munching on sandwiches piled high on thick-cut bread, Jessica asked, “So, off the record, what do you think of treecats?”
Doctor Hidalgo stopped disassembling his sandwich and considered. “Off the record?”
Jessica held up her uni-link as if to show she wasn’t recording.
“Very well.” Doctor Hidalgo slowly rolled a slice of roast capri-cow and considered. “I think that there’s no doubt that the treecats will place somewhere on the sentience scale. They’re tool-users and tool-makers. They also show a desire for more tools to fill their basic needs. Some of the potsherds and fragments of gourds Dr. Whitaker’s collected show definite ornamentation. It’s not elaborate, true, but it serves no other function than a desire for, if not beauty, then at least differentiation.”
“And that raises them up the sentience scale?” Jessica asked.
“Especially at this primitive level,” Doctor Hidalgo agreed. “Watching Valiant has been very interesting. I chose these gardens because they contain plants that are purely ornamental as well as some that are both ornamental and edible. While Valiant shows a preference for those that are edible, he doesn’t seem to be immune to beauty.
“Of course,” he added, sounding embarrassed, “some of my colleagues would say I’m being subjective.”
“How do the others in your group feel about the treecats?” Anders asked.
“They’re proving more difficult to convince,” Doctor Hidalgo said sadly. “I indicate the artifacts, and Dr. Radzinsky counters with examples of other creatures that make tools or elaborate dens. I mention the ornamentation, and Dr. Darrolyn asks if I see any evidence of written language—or even spoken language.”
He sighed, tore a small square of bread from his sandwich, squashed it into a pill, and swallowed it. “Then there’s the problem that we’re dealing with contaminated samples.”
“Contaminated?” Jessica asked.
For reply, Doctor Hidalgo pointed to where Valiant was carefully sliding some seeds into one of the sample bags.
“Where once there was a potentially pristine culture,” he said, “we now have one irrevocably contaminated by its contact with humans. I’m not blaming you, young lady. The SFS gave tools to treecats before you ever set foot on this planet. However, once the damage is done, it becomes more difficult to judge just how intelligent a species is. Take Valiant’s interest in gardening. There’s some evidence the treecats observed humans practicing agriculture and decided to imitate. That’s quite different from evolving the skill on their own.”
Jessica looked uncomfortable as Doctor Hidalgo went on.
“I, personally, would like to see two things. First, I’d like to see the treecats recognized as sentient. Then I would like to see some effort made to protect them in their uncontaminated state. Populations that haven’t had human contact should be kept from human contact. Populations that have had human contact—for example, the clans from which Valiant and Lionheart originated—should be relocated to areas where they can practice their indigenous lifestyles in a manner uncontaminated by human influence. Only in this way can they evolve into the people they were meant to be. Otherwise, they’ll become poor imitations of humanity.”
“You must be joking!” Jessica exclaimed. “Treecats are treecats. They could never become humans.”
“Precisely,” Doctor Hidalgo said. He pulled at one ear lobe and smiled sadly. “Earlier you mentioned the care you’d taken to make sure Valiant developed his thick winter coat. However, if something happened to interfere, would you let him freeze?”
“Never!”
“So you’d either keep him indoors—an unnatural state for a treecat—or you’d provide him with clothing of some sort. Even in Dr. Whitaker’s most careful excavations, we’ve seen no evidence the treecats need clothing other than their natural fur. Therefore, your desire to protect him would introduce an alien element into his life. If treecats do have some form of communication—something I believe is so, although Doctor Darrolyn differs with me—that idea would be spread further.”
Jessica looked stunned. It seemed to Anders that she was wilting where she sat. He knew how much care both Jessica and Stephanie took to make sure that their treecat partners visited not only with each other, but with their clans. What would happen if treecats were isolated on reservations for their own good? Would those treecats who had adopted humans become exiles?
Valiant set aside his sample bag and bleeked softly. Then he loped over to Jessica and snuggled his furry head into the wild mass of her hair. However, he neither snarled nor growled at Doctor Hidalgo, so Anders guessed that the treecat could tell the man meant him no harm.
No harm. Only imprisonment. Only isolation from his own people and those people sealed away in tidy little reservations where they can practice their folkways in peace. Anders swallowed hard. And you can bet that the lands “given” to treecats wouldn’t be the best. They’d be destroyed by the “kindness” of people like Doctor Hidalgo.
He remembered a section from the book Dr. Nez had given him for his birthday. There’d been an entire chapter on how less advanced cultures had been destroyed by forced assimilation into more advanced ones. But that same chapter had also offered up examples of how often well-intended efforts to protect those less advanced cultures had ended up confining, strangling, and ultimately destroying them just as thoroughly as assimilation possibly could have.
“I’m sorry, Anders,” Doctor Hidalgo said. “Did you say something?”
“No, sir.” Anders tried hard to sound normal. “Just thinking about some of the long-term implications.”
“Ah. A natural anthropologist, following in your father’s footsteps.”
Anders forced himself to grin, but inside he winced. He thought about Stephanie’s reports about how Lionheart was shedding. When Stephanie and Lionheart came home, would she put the ’cat in a sweater? He imagined the x-a’s reaction, how Hidalgo would be sorrowful about the contamination of culture, how some of the others would certainly sneer.
For the first time since Stephanie had left, he found himself wishing her return could somehow be delayed.
* * *
In addition to his usual scouting duties, Keen Eyes went out of his way to patrol along the sun-setting edge of the clan’s range where he had sensed Swimmer’s Scourge and Nimble Fingers of the Trees Enfolding Clan. Aware that this was a dangerous area, Keen Eyes requested that the other members of the Landless Clan keep back from it. He did not meet with any complaint, for he had shared Swimmers Scourge’s warning with the rest of the clan. Moreover, the loss of their home meant there were tasks enough to keep every set of true-hands and hand-feet busy every waking moment of the day.
Keen Eyes himself hunted when he could, setting traps and snares for small game. He was removing a tree-hopper from one of his snares when a mind-voice spoke.
<Those snares may catch you more than tree-hoppers and bark-chewers, Keen Eyes of the Landless Clan. You might want to move a little further towards sun-rising.>
Keen Eyes recognized Nimble Fingers of the Trees Enfolding Clan, but when he searched for the other’s mind-glow, he did not touch it. He wondered if Nimble Fingers had a mate, for one benefit of such a partnership was that both the mind-voice and ability to detect the mind-glows of others intensified. That would explain why Nimble Fingers could find him while he could find no trace of the other. He suspected Nimble Fingers was at extreme range, but, nonetheless, he took care to dampen his own mind-glow, uncomfortable that someone who was not a clan member or a friend would have such an advantage over him.
He replied politely. <May I keep my prey, or do you claim it?>