Fire Season

Chapter Fourteen

Stephanie was as startled as any of them when a treecat landed on the cab of the air truck, but when he bounced down and the collective green-eyed gaze of the treecats turned to him, she knew he was no stranger to the clan.

“I think he’s giving a report,” she said. “I can’t tell what he’s saying, but Lionheart is really intent. Funny…This ’cat looks sort of familiar. Karl, I’m going to send you a picture via my uni-link.”

Karl’s voice came back promptly. “I still have trouble telling them apart, but I think that’s Left-Striped. His pattern is atypical.”

Toby’s voice followed. “Karl just showed me pictures he took and I agree. It’s the same ’cat, I’m sure of it.”

“Interesting,” Stephanie said. “Lionheart just turned to me. He’s motioning that we should speed up. All of the other ’cats are hunkering down, so they’re clearly waiting for it. Also, a fat and fluffy female is giving me the evil eye and pointing. I think she’s helping with navigation.”

“Any change in direction?” Chet asked. Stephanie could see Christine’s face pressed to the rear window of the trunk cab, looking back in fascination at the passengers, all of whom were now facing front, bodies held low, evidently so that the side of the truck would cut any wind.

“Direction continues south,” Stephanie reported, “but I think she’s going to want us to cross the river to the south again.”

“South,” Christine said, “as in toward the fire?”

“The fire hasn’t gotten this far west yet,” Karl said. “We’re still safe.”

Stephanie was glad to hear this. She would have gone into the heart of the fire if that was what was needed, but could she have risked a clan of treecats and her human friends?

She said, “I’ll keep an eye on the ’cats and let you know if they start to panic. Otherwise, let’s go as fast as we can while staying beneath the tree line. This is not the time to get seen by anybody tracing the course of the southern fire.”

“Seen with a truckload of treecats?” Chet laughed loudly. “I don’t think so…Karl, take point. Remember, my truck needs more clearance than your runabout.”

“Gottcha,” Karl said. “Let’s burn atoms.”

Anders was tinkering with some odds and ends from the cooking kit when the creature Dr. Calida had dubbed the Sphinxian swamp siren made its next move. Although the swamp siren had remained beneath its cloak of water weed and murky water, Anders felt certain that not only was it still there, but that it was studying them.

It might not be smart, not like a treecat is smart, but it’s a predator, and predators need to learn how to stalk or they won’t get very many meals. This one is stalking us. I’m sure of it.

Turned out the swamp siren wasn’t just stalking, it was doing some pretty good thinking, too. Somehow-maybe because the device was so strange-it had made the connection between those rods set in neat ranks around the hummock where its prospective dinner (including a tasty treecat) now huddled. When it moved, it slid down under the muddy water, working under and around the tussocks and hummocks, keeping its hearing receptors under the water so that the annoying high-pitched whine was muffled.

When the swamp siren lashed out, it brought one flipper into contact with the closest rod. Had it watched when they set the things up? Had it noticed the device didn’t work unless the rods were anchored correctly? Or did it just slap at something that annoyed it the way a human swats at a fly? Anders would always wonder.

But he was also ready. He noticed when the swamp siren had started moving because the sodden area to which it had retreated looked flatter. The water weed moved sluggishly, not in the ripples that indicated the swamp siren in motion, but as if the muddy liquid had been stirred.

He frantically looked around just in time to see the weed-spotted flipper come out of the water and slap at the rod. Another flipper came up and another rod went down. If Anders had needed any evidence that the device was deactivated, he would have had it when the treecat’s ears unfurled and it sat upright, hissing and snarling.

Anders brought his hand down on the bottom of the pot he had resting in his lap. He’d spent the short hiatus the sonic barrier had won them in rigging himself a drum kit, complete with cymbals made from any bit of jangly metal he could find. Now he beat on his drum with a spoon, while his free hand vigorously rattled a mismatched collection of camping gear.

The noise slowed the swamp siren. Kesia-her voice a bit hoarse-started in on the song about the bear. She was joined by the others, the eclectic collection of half-remembered words and tune making a god-awful racket. But either this time the swamp siren was ready or maybe it was just too hungry to care. Whatever the reason, it kept coming.

Their mini-island was surrounded by doubtfully solid bits of grass and water weed that (as Dr. Whittaker had discovered too late) created the illusion of solid ground. The still comatose form of Langston Nez was ample illustration that the mud could be as dangerous as the teeth-gnashing, whistling monstrosity boiling up at them, but at that moment, Anders had to fight an impulse to trust his luck and run.

He didn’t. The hummock on which they’d made their camp didn’t allow for a lot of moving about. Even so, a front and rear line of sorts had formed. In the front were Anders himself, Virgil, Kesia, and Dr. Calida. In the back, protectively huddling over Langston Nez, were Dacey and the treecat. Also in the back, protectively standing over the case holding his best artifacts, was Dr. Bradford Whittaker.

Everyone who could had grabbed something to use as a makeshift weapon. Everyone was shouting or singing or shrieking. The swamp siren alternated between hauling itself out of the water and shrinking back when someone hit a particularly discordant note.

Like most native Sphinxian creatures, the swamp siren appeared to be hexapedal. At least that was what Anders guessed when first one set of sea-turtle-like flippers, then another appeared-and the monster still seemed to be bracing itself against something that remained beneath the mud.

The swamp siren resembled a turtle in other ways as well, though instead of a shell, its body was a huge curving mass of rubbery flesh. Plants seemed to grow directly from its back, or maybe they were just stuck on. Instead of a turtle’s long neck, the swamp siren had an elongated ovoid head, the entire front of which appeared to be teeth. If the creature had eyes, Anders couldn’t figure out where they were, but along the top of the head was a fungoidal crown of flesh.

The swamp siren snapped at Virgil. Virgil danced back, stumbling into one of the bedrolls. This inspired him. He scooped it up and tossed the lot: doubled blankets, ground cloth, and pillow, over the swamp siren’s head. The pillow flopped off and started sinking into the ooze, but the rest hung tight.

The swamp siren cast about, obviously confused.

“Its sensory apparatus,” gasped Dr. Calida, “must be in the head. Perhaps those fleshy masses…Sonar, perhaps? Radar? A combination.”

Anders really liked Dr. Calida and, even better, over the last couple of days, had come to respect her too. However, at this moment, he was seriously tired of fanatical scientists.

Virgil was more practical. The swamp siren was tossing its head wildly. Pretty soon it would either have gotten the bedroll off or those nasty teeth would have shredded it. Either way, he was readying another bedroll. Anders looked for rope.

Maybe we can tie the blinder on. Don’t know if that will stop it, but at least it will slow it…

He grabbed a length of line, trying to remember how to make a slipknot. Dacey was out of reach or he could get her to do it.

Loop the rope, he thought. Push an end through…

Anders was partway into making his makeshift lasso when an air car burst through the trees. It was smoke-blackened, but he thought he recognized it. He had hardly registered this miraculous arrival when a second vehicle followed the first, swerved to go around it, and jerked to a halt.

I’m hallucinating, he thought. That’s Karl’s car and that truck…It’s full of treecats?

The car was moving forward now, heading in their direction. Trusting Virgil and Kesia to deal with the swamp siren, Anders waved his hands over his head, then held both palms out, pushing back, trying to remember what Lionheart’s gesture for “stop” had been. Whether or not Anders had remembered it right, Karl caught on. The car stopped and doors flew open.

Meanwhile, from the bed of the truck came a boiling mass of treecats. Stephanie Harrington was with them, running hard. She was dressed in a fire-suit, but the headpiece was down and her short curly hair flew wild about her face. As she ran, she was ripping open the front of her suit, digging inside toward her shoulder, and emerging with a really lethal-looking handgun.

By this time, the swamp siren had succeeded in a combination of shredding and tossing that had effectively rid it of the encumbering bedroll. However, the sound of the arriving vehicles had distracted it. Lacking a turtle’s long neck, it had to turn partially around to see what was going on behind it.

“Stiff motion,” Dr. Calida was muttering, probably, Anders realized, into a recorder. “Could there be armoring under there? Note alteration of growths on head; from relatively tight knots, they’ve expanded, revealing multi-colored clusters.”

Anders shouted toward the shore. “Don’t come out here. Dad thought it was a meadow and landed our ’van, but it’s actually a bog. We’re on a pretty solid spot, but…”

He didn’t have the strength to explain that he worried that even taking the air car over the bog might disrupt their fragile island.

Stephanie called back. “Right! What is that thing?”

“All I know,” Anders said, talking as fast as he could in case Dr. Calida decided to go all zoological, “is that it thinks we’re edible and that it doesn’t like loud noises. Oh…And it has lots of teeth.”

“I see that.” Stephanie had been holding the handgun-which looked far too big for her-as if she’d like to get a shot off. “I’d try to hit it, but, well…”

Virgil cut in quickly. “If you don’t mind, I’ve heard you’re a killer shot, but we’re right on the other side of that thing…If you miss or it ducks…”

Stephanie nodded. “I know.”

Anders saw her cast around for an angle from which she could get a shot without endangering anyone. The bog stretched out on all sides, effectively hemming them in. Stephanie would need to run a fair distance and even then might not find a clear line of fire.

While talking to Stephanie, Anders had noticed who was with her. Karl was there, of course, and with him Toby. The truck had been piloted by Chet, who now hurried up, hand in hand with Christine. Jessica was there, too, but she hadn’t moved from the back of the truck. Neither had one of the treecats.

Meanwhile, the other treecats-Anders recognized Lionheart by virtue of his scars-were lining up along the edge of the bog. There were a lot of them. A whole clan, he guessed.

Behind him, Anders heard his father burrowing through the gear and realized to his embarrassment that Dr. Whittaker was searching for their best camera.

The center of the treecat line was a very fat and fluffy brown-and-white treecat. Despite the fact that she waddled when she moved, there was an enormous dignity to her that told anyone watching that she was a person of importance.

As far as Anders could see, the treecat leader made no gesture of direction, but at exactly the same moment all the adult treecats, as well as a few of the larger kittens, began to sing.

“Sing” might not have been the exactly right word for it. The sound was more like classic caterwauling. Anders didn’t just hear it with his ears, he felt it in his bones. His eardrums ached and he stretched his jaw to take off the pressure. Behind him, still sitting protectively by Dr. Nez, the treecat who had first warned them of the swamp siren added a shrill piping note to the chorus.

For chorus it was, a chorus evidently created to home in on the auditory sensitivity of the swamp siren and hit it where it hurt.

It doesn’t feel so good here, either, Anders thought watching the swamp siren contract, pull back, and dive back beneath the murky surface of the bog, but I think it just might be the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.

From the satisfied reaction of “their” treecat, those gathered on the hummock had no doubt that the swamp siren was gone.

“I suppose,” Dr. Calida said a touch wistfully, “that they gave it the mother of all migraines.” She brightened. “Still, I did get some footage. What remarkable creatures!”

This last was said with a fond smile for the treecat who-just in case the humans hadn’t gotten the point-was now motioning toward the shore.

Anders bent heavily to help raise Langston’s stretcher, then he remembered.

“Stephanie! We’re out of juice for our counter-grav units. Can we sync with your vehicle’s broadcast power?”

“You bet!” came the welcome reply. “Go for it.”

So it was with light hands, as well as light hearts, that Anders and Virgil carried Langston Nez back to the shore. Stephanie hurried over to help.

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

Anders explained. “We think he got mud particles in his lungs, but by now he’s also dehydrated and weak from lack of nourishment. We’ve gotten a little water into him, but he hasn’t had anything to eat for five days.”

Stephanie nodded. “Slide him up into the bed of the truck next to Jessica and Valiant. The kit Dad set up for us is pretty good. We can at least get Dr. Nez on fluids. And we’ll go directly to Twin Forks and get him to a doctor.”

Karl came up. “I called. Uncle Scott’s at Twin Forks on stand-by in case there are any bad casualties from the fire. He said he’d drop everything when we got Dr. Nez there.”

“Great…” Anders felt himself tearing up and looked away so that Karl and Stephanie wouldn’t see. He saw Dr. Calida helping Dacey into the back of Karl’s air car. Kesia was nearby, her very useful overnight bag dangling from one arm, her head tilted back so she could look up into the picketwood where the treecats-now that the emergency was over-sat, staring down at her with equal interest.

“Where’s Dad?” Anders asked, even as he knew.

Dr. Whittaker remained alone out on the island in the middle of the bog, surrounded by his cases of artifacts. Now that the crisis was over, he seemed unaware that there were real living, breathing treecats within a few meters.

Seeing Anders turn his way Dad bellowed, “Well, aren’t you going to help me with this? Certainly you can’t complain anymore now that we have counter-grav.”

Anders exchanged a glance with Virgil, then called, “We’re on our way.”

“We’ll help,” Chet said, his words clearly including all the rescuers.

“We will,” Stephanie said and something in her brown eyes made Anders realize that she’d guessed at least part of what he’d gone through-and pitied him.