“No idea. And this isn’t the time to start trying to figure that out. Whether or not Valiant knew this treecat isn’t important. What we need to figure out is what we should do that won’t make him more unhappy.”
“Can you ask Valiant what we should do?”
Jessica shook her head. “Nothing that complex. The best I can do is see how he reacts if we try something like burying the body. Valiant knows how to let me know not to do something, just like he knows how to encourage me if I’m doing something he likes.”
Anders sighed. “Still, I feel funny not knowing how this treecat died. What if there’s a plague? Shouldn’t someone know?”
Jessica shook her head again, this time so violently her curls bounced and covered her face. “Not necessarily. Anders, as much as people like your dad and the other xeno-anthropologists like to forget it, the treecats were dealing with issues like death and dying for a long time before humans came to this planet. Just because this is the first dead treecat either of us have seen doesn’t mean there haven’t been others.”
“I understand.” Anders frowned. “Okay. How about this? We see how Valiant reacts if we try to bury this guy. If he doesn’t mind, we do it. But before this fellow goes in the ground, I take some images. I won’t give them to my dad or anything like that. I’ll just have them on file. We’ll mark the coordinates here, too. That way if something happens—like disease breaking out—we can at least add information.”
Jessica considered for a long while, staring at Valiant as she did so. Anders wondered if she was trying to guess her companion’s reaction. Eventually, she nodded.
“Okay. But the images don’t go to your dad. Promise?”
“Not without your permission. Not to my dad, not to anyone else on the team, not to anyone at all without your permission.”
Jessica smiled at him. “Thanks. You know, I wonder if we should ask Stephanie?”
“I don’t think so. Steph’s pretty busy with getting ready for finals. Besides, what could even Stephanie tell from a bunch of images?”
Jessica turned toward the air car. “Well, one good thing about being out collecting plants. We have shovels. I’ll get them.”
“I’ll start taking images.”
“Stop if Valiant seems unhappy.”
“Right.”
But Valiant didn’t seem to care in the least when Anders started recording images.
When Jessica returned with the shovel and started digging a hole over where the grave would neither be obvious nor interfere with her mother’s test area, Valiant loped over and started digging with her.
“I guess he agrees,” Anders said. “Unless he just thinks you’re getting ready to plant another garden bed and he’s eager to help.”
“No, it’s not that,” Jessica replied. “I think he knows why I’m doing this. I can’t explain how, since it’s just a feeling, but I think I’m right. He’s helping and he’s eager we get this taken care of. I wonder if he was so worried because he thought we were just going to leave the body to rot out in the open.”
Anders finished with his images and came over to help with the digging. They didn’t need as large a hole as they would have for a human body, but the ground had been baked hard enough that even with the modified vibro blade cutting edge on the shovel, it was hard work.
Valiant wandered off once both humans were at work and returned as they were finishing up. He’d filled one of his larger carrying nets with the reddish autumn leaves from the picketwood trees. When the humans stepped back, he dropped most of these in to line the grave.
“Well, I guess he approves,” Jessica said. “If we lift the body on one of the shovels, we can disinfect the blade afterwards. Better than using our hands. We didn’t see any bugs, but there might be some.”
“I’ll do it,” Anders said. “You stay in tune with Valiant and make sure I’m not doing anything wrong.”
But the stout treecat didn’t do anything in the way of protest. Instead, he sprinkled the last of his picketwood leaves over the corpse, then began digging the dirt back into the grave. The two humans helped him. Before long, only a small mound of broken dirt remained to mark where a fellow creature had ended his life’s journey.
“I wonder if treecats pray?” Jessica said. “My family’s lived on so many planets, I don’t really have any set religion. Still, I don’t suppose it would hurt to be quiet for a moment.”
“Not at all,” Anders agreed.
They bent their heads but kept their thoughts to themselves. Anders wondered what Valiant made of this, but he figured that the treecat was enough in touch with Jessica’s emotions to sense that respect was intended.
When Jessica raised her head her hazel-green eyes were bright with tears, but she only shook back her curls and raised her chin as if defying Anders to comment.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to record those images for my mom and take samples. I want to be back in time to help cook dinner.”
* * *
“And what do you have to say about Ms. Harrington and Mr. Zivonik now, Harvey?” Mordecai Flouret inquired genially.
Smoke drifted from the barbecue grill between him and Harvey Gleason and the shouts of children splashing in the waves rolling in from Jason Bay competed with the curious, warbling cries of the wave-cresters circling overhead. The wave-cresters were the planet Manticore’s equivalent of Old Earth’s seagulls, and the silver and brown bird analogs were just as determined when it came to scavenging any tasty bit of garbage that came their way. Which was probably why they were keeping such an avid eye on Flouret’s grill at that very moment. He rather doubted they’d have any objection to snatching one of the sauce-coated chicken breasts if the chance came.
At the moment, though, he was more interested in Gleason’s response. They might be colleagues on the Landing University faculty, and their wives and children might like one another (which was the reason for this afternoon’s picnic), but there were times he wasn’t very fond of Gleason.
The other man was very good in his field, and LUM was fortunate to have him, especially this early in the process of developing its curriculum, but he was also full of a sense of his own importance, and he sometimes seemed to resent the fact that Flouret was the chairman of a fully established department. He’d tried to downplay his irritation at being required to make room for “runny nosed kids” (as he had rather injudiciously expressed himself on one occasion) into his forestry studies courses, but he hadn’t fooled anyone who knew him. And he had a well-developed capacity to cherish grudges for a long, long time, as well, but this time he surprised Flouret.
“Actually,” he said, “I’ve been very impressed with them. Both of them, to be honest, although given how young she is, I suppose its inevitable people are going to be even more impressed with her.”
He met Flouret’s gaze levelly as he made the admission, and the criminology professor found himself forced to reconsider a few prejudices of his own. Maybe Gleason had something rather closer to an open mind than he’d thought.
“Really?” he asked.
“She’s mastered every bit of the course material without breaking a sweat,” Gleason said. “And to be honest, she already knows more about Sphinx’s flora than ninety percent of my students know after they graduate. More holes on the Manticoran side of her knowledge, but that was only to be expected, and she’s worked hard to fill them. Despite—” he acknowledged dryly “—a certain suspicion on her part that she’s never going to need that particular body of knowledge and that a certain professor’s only insisting she learn it to be a pain. And Zivonik’s just as sharp as she is, in his own way. Not as quick, perhaps, but…steadier, I think. The two of them are a team, of course. You only have to glance at them to see that. But I think his job is to be the balance wheel while hers is to go rushing off to find the next challenge. They’re surprisingly formidable for such youngsters, when you come down to it.”