Fire Season

Chapter Six

Since he wasn’t taking part in the hang gliding, Anders arrived at Stephanie’s birthday party dressed for dinner. His dad had meditated on renting Anders a tuxedo, so he’d be in local fashion, but had decided against it.

“You have good dress clothes with you already. I know I protested when your mother insisted we pack an outfit, but she was right. You can’t prepare after the fact.”

Dr. Whittaker himself was dressed for a day in the field-part of his “I’m just dropping the boy off before getting back to work” routine.

Dr. Marjorie met them as they landed. After greetings were exchanged, she gestured in the direction of the sky, where brightly colored hang gliders could be seen darting and hovering like dragonflies.

“The hang-gliding party got off the ground a bit late,” she said. “A couple of the guests misunderstood and came dressed for dinner, then had to change.”

She looked at Anders and smiled. “You look wonderful. Is that traditional formal wear for your planet?”

Anders nodded. “My mom picked it out,” he said. “The color, too, I mean. We don’t all need to wear tunics in tan trimmed with green. It is pretty usual for the trousers to echo the trim, though.”

“I like the combination,” Dr. Marjorie said, leading the Whittakers from the landing pad to a shaded area mid-point between the house and the flying field, where stood a long table arrayed with a tasteful variety of finger foods. “I understand that at one point on Old Terra, men all wore black to formal occasions. They must have looked like a bunch of rusty old crows.”

She gestured toward the food. “Please, help yourselves. This is just a bridge to hold us until dinner. The rest of the dinner guests should show up fairly soon.”

Anders noticed that the spread featured a wide array of very interesting-looking fruits and vegetables. He picked up one that resembled a star fruit, except this one was a dark indigo blue, rather than the more usual golden-yellow.

“Is this your work?” he asked, remembering Dr. Marjorie was a specialist in plant genetics.

“It is,” she said, “a cross between a purple berry Richard noted the treecats eat and some Terran plants. It’s rather tart, but completely safe. As you may know, humans can eat a wide variety of the native plants on Sphinx. They don’t contain all the necessary nutrients, but if you know your foraging, you could survive for a while.”

“Rather as treecats can eat human food,” Dr. Whittaker said, “and sometimes thrive. Still, do you find yourself needing to give Lionheart supplements?”

“I think we would,” Dr. Marjorie said, “if he only ate human foods. However, Richard insists that Lionheart do some of his own foraging. Lionheart doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seems to enjoy hunting. Still, his attitude may be different when winter rolls around again.”

The conversation drifted to treecat eating habits in the wild. Dr. Marjorie didn’t claim to be an expert, but admitted that since early 1519, when Lionheart had come to live with them, she had both observed what he chose to eat (other than celery) and tried out various of her hybrids on him.

“He likes that purple star Anders noticed,” she commented. “Not as much as celery, but quite a bit.”

Eventually, the hang gliders began dropping out of the air one by one. Dr. Whittaker took this as his cue to get going, although it was obvious to Anders that he had really enjoyed talking with Dr. Marjorie.

After waving good-bye to his dad, Anders drifted over to where the hang gliders were coming in for landing.

Dr. Marjorie walked with him. “Stephanie’s glider is the one with the orange-and-black striped wings. We gave her one with that pattern after she smashed up her first Sphinx model and she’s kept the theme since. She calls them all the Flying Tiger and numbers them. Very methodical, our Steph.”

Stephanie seemed to be taking her time landing, so Anders took the opportunity to observe the other flyers. He found Karl beneath a cobalt-and-white glider coming in for a slightly clumsy landing on the far side of the field.

Already landed, closer to where Anders stood, was a dark-complexioned boy about Stephanie’s age, his silky, dark curls tousled by the wind, his bright brown eyes laughing as he struggled to get the wings of his yellow-and-brown glider stowed.

Another boy, a year or so older, swooped in next to him, neatly tucking his scarlet wings as if he was some sort of human hawk. Anders guessed that this boy had used counter-grav assist at the very end, but that didn’t make it any less a neat trick. The younger boy obviously agreed, calling out, “Nice landing, Chet! You’ve got to teach me that one.”

“You bet, Toby,” Chet said. “Look at Christine. She’s going to do me one better.”

He pointed up toward where a long-bodied, slimly built girl-either a genie like Stephanie or a newcomer to Sphinx-was sweeping through the sky, her steel-blue-and-white hang glider moving through an elegant swirling pattern as it descended.

Rather like one half of a DNA spiral, Anders thought. I wonder if two really good flyers could make that into a full pattern?

He had his answer in a moment. Another glider, this one patterned in shades of green that evoked a fanciful collage of springtime leaves, echoed Christine’s pattern. The pilot-a girl, obviously, from the curves in her coverall-never came in low enough to risk fouling Christine’s wings, but nonetheless managed to make Anders “see” the other glider’s earlier progress. The illusion was so vivid that he found himself rubbing his eyes, checking for a tracer.

Chet said enthusiastically to Toby, “Jessica was a super addition to the club. I’m glad she came today. Steph’s a great flyer, but a soloist by nature. Christine loves tandem work.”

Toby nodded wistful enthusiasm.

“Someday,” he said, his tone that of a young knight making a vow, “I’m going to be as good at the three of them combined!”

Christine touched ground and folded her wings, shrugging out of her harness so that she could rush over and offer Jessica a squeeze, squealing with excitement.

“That was so hexy! Like ballet or something. We’ve got to practice it more.”

Jessica shrugged out of her leaf-patterned glider and returned Christine’s hug. “I’d like that, but later. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved!”

As she spoke, Jessica tugged off a close-fitting cap that matched her coveralls, revealing exuberantly untidy masses of long, curly light auburn hair.

When Christine pulled off her cap, she immediately began to comb her much shorter white-blond hair into a style rather like a cockatoo’s crest. Her eyes proved to be ice-blue. The light hair and eyes made a marvelous contrast to the sandalwood hues of her complexion. Anders spent an enjoyable moment contemplating this delightful proof that female beauty could come in such contrasting packages.

“I’m starved, too,” Christine agreed. “I’m sure Stephanie’s folks will have laid out plenty of food, but we should wait for Stephanie, don’t you think? I mean, this is her party.”

“Absolutely,” Jessica agreed. “Only she and Trudy are still up. I think they’re having another go at the bulls-eye target.”

Trudy must be the owner of the pale pink polka-dotted glider. It had seemed to Anders’ untutored eye that she and Stephanie were competing for who would stay up longest. Then he realized the situation was more subtle. Both were aiming to land within a large target laid out in an open field. While Stephanie was apparently merely trying to hit center, Trudy was actually impeding Stephanie’s descent. Her moves were subtle, but Anders figured if he could tell, so could the rest of the club members.

“There they go again,” Toby said, his tone one of long-suffering. “I wonder why Trudy is even here. I mean, Stephanie can’t stand her.”

“The social mystery of the century,” Chet agreed in the tones of a veteran newsie. “It’s like the Monarchists inviting the Levelers to tea.”

At that moment, the pattern of dodge and feint above changed. Stephanie broke hard right. When Trudy moved to block her, Stephanie swirled higher, cut over Trudy to the left, then dove. If Chet’s dive had resembled that of a hunting hawk, Stephanie’s looked like an orange-and-black brick hurtling toward the ground.

A scream sounded from nearer to the house. Glancing back, Anders saw a man with flaming red hair beginning to run forward. Dr. Marjorie stood stock still next to a heavyset woman with brown hair who, from her open mouth, was probably the source of the scream. Despite the adult panicking, there was no doubt in Anders’ mind that Stephanie was in complete control of the situation.

Well above the ground, Stephanie pulled out of her plummeting dive, caught a slowing air current, and came swirling in for a landing, her feet landing lightly in the very center of the black target placed on the meadow grass. Immediately, with what Anders guessed was proper etiquette in such games, she moved out of the way of the other flyer, and strode toward the gathered party, still wearing her glider harness.

Strapped in behind her, Lionheart was chittering away. Anders had listened to enough hours of recorded treecat sounds to guess that the ’cat was scolding his human.

Above, moving more like a butterfly than a hawk, Trudy came in for an elegant landing of her own, also touching down on the bulls’-eye’s center, but after Stephanie’s daredevil maneuver or Christine and Jessica’s ballet, her demo failed to be at all impressive. Most of the club members had run over to tease Stephanie about how she’d nearly not made it to fifteen and a day…

Only Dr. Richard, standing to the side, his strong features just a bit too fixed, seemed less than enthusiastic about Stephanie’s performance.

No. Make that two who looked less than happy. Karl Zivonik, his glider slung so he could carry it over one powerful shoulder, shared Stephanie’s father’s lack of enthusiasm for Stephanie’s risky acrobatics. Equally obviously, neither of them was going to call Stephanie on the incident-today.

For her part, after unstrapping Lionheart, Stephanie stowed the Flying Tiger, accepting compliments with just the right balance of pleasure and enthusiasm. If she and Trudy had indeed been involved in some sort of private joust, no one would have known it from her.

Trudy, on the other hand, looked more than a little miffed. Like Jessica, she had worn her hair under a cap. Now she pulled the cap off, combing out thick, dark tresses whose sausage curl certainly owed as much to art as to nature. Pretending to be completely absorbed in her primping, Trudy’s brilliant violet-blue eyes scanned the group.

When she noticed Anders, he could have sworn those eyes flashed. Anders was aware he was attractive. His mother had made certain he had no illusions on that point, saying that ignorance would just leave him vulnerable. He’d even had his share of what she insisted on calling “puppy loves”-girls who called him up and left messages on his uni-link. But the look Trudy gave him as she sauntered over toward him was almost hungry.

“Hel-lo!” Trudy said, pulling the word out into several syllables. “And who might you be, and where have you been all my life?”

She’d thrown her shoulders back, raising her right hand to toy with the closure on her flight-suit, ostensibly because she was warm-out on the field, Anders could see that Toby and Chet had already divested themselves of their suits-but in actuality to draw attention to what she clearly thought of as irresistible assets.

Those bouncing breasts were quite remarkable, especially on someone who was probably not much more than sixteen, but Anders thought the approach rather simplistic-and even sort of sad. What a pity she had to offer herself as if she was some sort of appetizer. Anders realized, though, that he must have been more distracted than he wanted to admit because the question still hung in the air between them.

“I’m Anders Whittaker,” he said. “I’m new to Sphinx. My father’s in charge of a team of xenoanthropologists here from Urako to study the treecats.”

Trudy clearly had to think about what that might mean to her. After consideration, she apparently decided that just because Dr. Whittaker was here to study the treecats, that didn’t mean Anders was interested in them.

“How deadly for you,” she purred, coming up next to him and somehow slipping an arm through his. “Your father really must talk to my father and brothers on the subject. After all, a balanced view is important, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is,” came the voice of Dr. Richard from behind them. “However, Anders has been very politely waiting for the rest of you before getting something to eat. Here’s the plan. Grab a snack from the buffet, then go in and change. Oh! Save some room for dinner. We’ve made some very special dishes.”

The mention of food caused a general rush, in the course of which Anders managed to get free from Trudy. He made his way over to Stephanie just as they all reached the buffet.

“Happy Birthday!” he said. “That was quite a landing.”

“I think Dad’s going to have my ears,” Stephanie said, forcing a laugh. “Lionheart has already chewed me out. I’m not supposed to do things like that.”

Anders shrugged. “Hey…It looked terrifying, but I never thought you were in trouble. Can you tell me what’s what on the buffet? I haven’t been on Sphinx long enough to know the local delicacies.”

Stephanie giggled. Not a contrived girlish giggle, just a laugh that invited him to share a joke. “You won’t find a lot of this stuff anywhere else. Some is Meyerdahl-influenced. Some are my mom and dad’s creations. They both love to cook.”

Christine, who had been spreading something orange and pink on a cracker, halted in mid-motion. “Creations in her kitchen or her lab?”

Marjorie Harrington laughed. “Kitchen and lab-but all the stuff from the lab has been cleared for human consumption. You probably have most of it in your cooler at home.”

Christine bit into the cracker and looked blissed-out. “Not this. Definitely not this. Can I have the recipe?”

Chatter became general after that. Anders had more than Stephanie helping him select treats to try. All the hang-glider club members vied to get him to try river-roe and ice-potato paste, toasted near-pine nuts, and other oddities.

Adults were arriving now. Anders was delighted to meet Scott MacDallan and Fisher, “his” treecat. MacDallan proved to be the red-haired man he’d seen rushing toward what had seemed like Stephanie’s inevitable crash-not a big surprise, since he was a medical doctor. The stocky woman with brown hair proved to be both Scott’s wife and Karl’s aunt, Irina Kisaevna, a very nice woman. Ranger Lethbridge came, making apologies for his partner, Ranger Jedrusinski, and saying that he couldn’t stay for dinner.

“We drew straws for fire watch,” he said, “and she lost. I’ve promised to bring her a dry crust or two for consolation.”

“We can do better than that,” Stephanie promised, and immediately started piling a plate with finger foods to set aside. “Mom won’t want me to cut the cake yet, but I’ll bring you both some tomorrow.”

One by one, the members of the hang-gliding club emerged, each dressed in some interesting variation on formal wear. Karl, it turned out, actually owned a tuxedo, and looked very dashing in it. Toby’s outfit consisted of flowing robes made from a pale golden fabric that set off his dark skin and flowing black hair to perfection. He seemed momentarily shy about his attire until Christine and Jessica started gushing about how they wished Star Kingdom clothes were as elegant. Chet wore something less flashy, but still quite respectable.

The girls all looked pretty good, Anders thought. Trudy-predictably, he thought, although he’d only known her for something like an hour-wore a pink-and-lavender gown with both slit seams on the sides and a plunging neckline. She claimed it was an ancestral costume from Old Earth itself.

Christine and Stephanie both wore slacks and blouses, a simpler variation on the Star Kingdom tuxedo. The cummerbunds showed off trim waists and made an asset of their relative lack of busts. Jessica emerged arrayed in frothy layers of silk and taffeta in pale yellow and green touched with hints of white lace.

“It’s actually my mom’s,” she explained shyly. “Neo-Victorian was all the rage on our last planet.”

Talking about clothing inevitably led to discussion of birthday customs. Toby admitted that his culture didn’t even celebrate birthdays.

“We celebrate Saint’s Days instead. Mine is Saint Tobias.”

Christine, Chet, Karl, and Trudy all proved to have been born on Sphinx.

“My father was one of the first children born on Sphinx,” Trudy boasted. “For a while, his birthday was practically a planetary holiday.”

“There were problems with childbirth initially,” Scott MacDallan agreed. “The heavier gravity and air pressure made it difficult for women to carry to term. However, now, between nanotherapies and wider use of counter-gravity, more and more pregnancies are successful.”

Karl added. “I remember when Scott was delivering my little brother Lev. A treecat showed up at the door all beat up. Scott ended up going to the rescue.”

“And leaving your mother to suffer?” Trudy sounded genuinely shocked.

“It wasn’t quite like that,” Scott MacDallan said. He might have explained further, but Irina called to him from the house.

“Scott! We need a surgeon to carve the roast.”

Most of the adults seemed to take this as a summons to dinner but, perhaps because Stephanie stayed outside, perhaps because there was still finger food, the younger guests lingered near the appetizers.

Trudy took a step toward Stephanie, but her gaze rested on the males in the group.

“There’s an important Star Kingdom tradition we haven’t followed for our birthday girl’s special day,” Trudy said, her voice filled with teasing laughter. “She hasn’t had her spankings…”

Something in the way Trudy said “spankings” made Anders feel she’d said something a lot more risque. Maybe it was the way she winked at him when she said it.

“In my family,” Trudy continued, “the guys hold the birthday girl and then the girls give the whacks-one for each year. If she can take it without crying out, then she’ll be lucky all year.”

“My family doesn’t do that,” Christine protested.

Karl looked uncomfortable, so Anders was willing to bet that his family practiced some variation of the rite. Chet was shifting restlessly from foot to foot. Clearly, Trudy might be overselling her point, but she wasn’t flat-out lying.

“Well, you may have been born here,” Trudy said to Christine, “but your family is relatively new. Mine is tough, pioneer stock. We don’t have any use for wimps and pansies. I’m sure Stephanie doesn’t either. After all, she goes around slaying hexapumas with her bare hands, if we’re to believe the stories.”

Stephanie looked both angry and somehow trapped. Lionheart, pressed against her leg, his ears canted in concern. Anders could see that Stephanie didn’t want to be taken as anything less than tough, but the idea of being held down and hit on didn’t appeal either.

Trudy smiled silkily. “So, Stephanie. Are you up to showing you’re a real Sphinxian girl?”

At that moment, Dr. Richard came to the door. “Are you all waiting for individual invitations? Soup’s on!”

“Saved by the bell…” Trudy murmured softly. “But then our Stephanie is always getting saved, isn’t she? What a lucky girl.”

No one replied, but more than one pair of eyes strayed to where Lionheart, his scars and mutilations all too evident, testified to the price of Stephanie’s “luck.”

Anders noticed that Stephanie was the one who looked the longest.

As dinner progressed, Stephanie realized she was enjoying her birthday party more than she had thought possible. Yeah…Trudy was there, but so were Chet, Christine, Toby, and Karl. Jessica had surprised Stephanie by not sucking up to Trudy (who had already been there when Jessica arrived), but by making herself part of the general crowd. And, best of all, Anders was there.

The weather for hang gliding had been great. Her folks had given her one of their gifts early-a modified harness that made Lionheart’s flight experience safer, while at the same time allowing Stephanie to “trim” the treecat’s weight more efficiently.

She’d used it to pull off the spectacular dive that had gotten her around Trudy. She was still flushed by the exhilarating experience, enough that she just might have taken her “spanks” if Dad’s call to dinner hadn’t saved her the humiliation. Right then, she’d felt like she could take anything.

Or was it the hang gliding that had her so high? Stephanie tried not to make her interest too obvious, but Mom had seated Anders Whittaker across the table from her, just one seat over. He looked really, really good in the green-and-cream tunic and trousers he wore, but even more admirable-because he couldn’t help being hot-he was doing a great job holding his own in a conversation with a bunch of near strangers.

Stephanie had been given a great excuse to look at Anders a lot during the first course. This featured extra-long noodles in a sesame-oil sauce served over near-lettuce, a leafy plant native to Sphinx that tasted like Romaine lettuce with a light hint of onion. The taste combination was one of Stephanie’s favorites, but the extra-long noodles were a birthday tradition on the Harrington side of the family.

“You need to eat the noodles without cutting them,” Richard Harrington explained as he expertly demonstrated how to twirl them around paired chopsticks. “The long noodles are symbolic of long life, so you don’t want to cut the noodles in case you cut off your own life! We’ve provided a variety of tools, so give it a try.”

Everyone did, with lots of giggles and a few protests when a noodle seemed to develop a life of its own. Stephanie wished she was sitting next to Anders, so she could demonstrate, but watching him-he proved to be a dab hand with chopsticks-was nearly as good. He had great lips. She found herself wondering what they’d be like to kiss.

As the noodle plates were cleared away, Irina turned to Anders.

“Dr. Hobbard,” Irina said, “has already interviewed Scott and Stephanie, who are the only living humans to have been adopted by treecats. She took advantage of the proximity of the two treecats Richard kept here for rehab after that business with Bolgeo to collect even more information. What does your father hope to add?”

Stephanie thought a lesser person than Anders would have been offended by the aggressive note that underlay the question. Stephanie knew she probably would have been, since it implied that the xenoanthropological team had nothing new to offer.

Irina was a really sweet person, but she knew how wearing being continually cross-examined could be, and she was protective of both Scott and Fisher-and probably of Stephanie and Lionheart, too. Clearly, she saw the arrival of Dr. Whittaker as more trouble for her favorite people.

However, Anders didn’t show the least sign of being offended by the question. He began by telling a bit about each of the specialists his father had brought with him, going on to explain how each individual would contribute something new to human understanding of treecats.

“Dr. Hobbard,” Anders concluded, “has and had other responsibilities than the treecats. She’s Chair of the Anthropology Department at Landing University on Manticore, for one. Although she does have xenoanthropological experience, it would be too much to expect her also to be a linguistics expert like Ms. Guyen or a specialist in anthroarcheology like my dad.”

Trudy’s voice, polite as could be, added when Anders paused, “My dad says the fact that Dr. Hobbard is associated with Landing University makes her biased. He says that Dr. Hobbard has too much invested in wanting Sphinx-and that means the Star Kingdom-to be the place where another intelligent life-form is discovered. Dad says that one reason he agreed to an outside team being sent in was because he felt a team from another system wouldn’t share that bias and so could look at the issues more clearly.”

The ways Trudy inflected “he agreed” implied that without Jordan Franchitti’s approval, no such team would have been permitted to as much as get a sniff of a treecat.

Stephanie saw a couple of the adults smile slightly at Trudy’s confident assertion that Sphinx politics revolved around her dad, but she didn’t think what Trudy said was at all funny. Trudy might have an inflated idea of her dad’s importance, but even a few months working with the SFS had shown her how much influence the First Families-especially those like the Franchittis, that held enormous amounts of land-wielded.

Trudy directed the gaze of her big violet-blue eyes on Anders. “Your dad’s unbiased, isn’t he? He isn’t going to make any pronouncements about treecat intelligence without speaking to all sorts of people-not just the ones who already keep treecats as pets.”

At the word “pets,” Stephanie stiffened. She started to say something, but Lionheart tugged gently on her ear, drawing her attention to where Scott MacDallan was very, very slightly shaking his head “no.”

Anders looked appropriately serious. “My dad is unbiased. Sure, Dad would like to be head author on the report that announces to the universe that humanity has located another intelligent species, but he’s also aware that he’d look like an idiot if he made a premature judgement. Even before humanity left Terra, humans wanted to believe they shared the universe with other intelligences. More often than not, those who declared that we did found themselves mocked.”

“I guess,” Trudy responded, “that would be interesting, but even if the treecats are intelligent, well, they’re not ever going to be like us, are they? I mean, I’ve heard they use tools, but I don’t call a broken-off bit of rock a ‘knife’-no matter what label Dr. Hobbard and the SFS have put on it in a museum.”

“Humans,” Scott MacDallan said very gently, “started out with stone knives. Treecats make nets, too, remember. And they build dens up in the trees.”

Trudy shrugged, setting her assets jiggling provocatively. “My brother says those nets aren’t real tools. He says he’s seen spiderwebs more complicated than those ‘nets.’ Heck, he says that near-beavers make more complicated dams than any treecat ‘house’ he’s seen.”

No one answered. Perhaps taking silence for agreement, Trudy turned her attention back to Anders. Stephanie felt sure that Trudy thought that if she could win Anders over, he would influence Dr. Whittaker in favor of her point of view.

“I’m not saying that treecats aren’t really interesting and clever. I’d love to have one as a…” This time Trudy stopped before actually using the ill-advised word “pet,” and amended it. “Companion. I think treecats are marvelous, really marvelous. But they’re not humans and that’s just how it is.”

More silence. Stephanie thought she knew exactly what was going on in the minds of those gathered around the long dining room table. The adults-all of whom except her mom and dad thought Trudy must be Stephanie’s friend or she wouldn’t have been invited to the party-were reluctant to argue and so ruin Stephanie’s fun. The kids, all of whom labored under no such illusion, were too polite to want to start a fight. Nonetheless, from the way his broad shoulders were shifting under his tuxedo jacket, Karl was definitely about to say something, and whatever he said wouldn’t be in agreement with Trudy.

Stephanie guessed what Trudy would say to any opinion of Karl’s…Something like, “Oh!” Giggle. Giggle. Flutter of eyelashes. Bounce of assets. “But you’re Stephanie’s special friend. Of course you’d say that…”

Trudy might even say “you’re Stephanie’s boyfriend,” and then what would Anders think?

I mean, I can’t go to him later and say, “Listen, Karl’s not really my boyfriend, no matter what Trudy said. I mean, he’s my buddy, but he’s not my boyfriend, and I want you to know this because…”

Feeling herself about to become embarrassed over a conversation that hadn’t even happened, Stephanie spoke into the uncomfortable silence. She had meant to take anything Trudy said with stoic silence, so her mom wouldn’t feel bad about inviting Trudy, but this was getting serious!

She spoke in her sweetest, most reasonable tone of voice, the one she’d perfected in what seemed like millions of interviews. “Trudy, does ‘just how it is’ mean that even if Dr. Whittaker’s study ends up showing that treecats aren’t ‘intelligent’ or ‘sentient’ or whatever term they decide to use, you don’t think treecats have any rights? They were here on Sphinx before us. This is their only planet.”

Trudy laughed, a loud, completely genuine laugh that was worse than any mockery could be.

“Oh, come on, Stephanie. I’d never take you for a hypocrite. Look at this house you’re living in! Do you think the trees that got cut down to make it wouldn’t have preferred to keep living? What about all the birds and beasts that lost their homes so your family could have this great big house-and greenhouses and vehicle hangars and gazebos. You’re not telling me you’re going to take up living in a tent so you minimize your ecological footprint? If you do, remind me not to come visit you in the winter!”

Stephanie found herself fumbling to explain. The problem was, Trudy clearly thought that the treecats didn’t have any more right than did a tree. And how could Stephanie explain that there were times she did feel bad when she considered the majestic crown oaks, near-pines, and rock trees that had died so that the space in which her family’s home now stood could be cleared? Trudy would probably laugh so hard that Scott would need to give her a tranquilizer to calm her down.

To Stephanie’s surprise, it was neither Karl nor one of her adult friends who spoke out, but Jessica Pheriss.

“Don’t be a moron, Trudy. Don’t you see? You’re making Stephanie’s point for her-or at least the Forestry Service’s point. Responsible settlers must pay attention to the local ecology. That protocol has been followed from the start of settlement here. I read speculations that one of the reasons humans didn’t find treecats sooner was because early biological surveys showed that picketwood trees might look like groves, but they’re actually one huge tree. Treecats-as I’m sure you know-prefer picketwood over other types of trees for their colonies, but since clearing picketwood was so destructive of a segment of the local ecosystem, humans tended to stay clear of them-and so the treecats stayed hidden.”

“So…” Trudy sneered. “This means what?”

“So this means,” Jessica continued speaking slowly, almost, but not quite, as if to a very small child, “that from the very start, colonization on Sphinx has been done with an awareness of the local ecology. That policy isn’t going to change. If the treecats are ruled sentient, that awareness will be adapted. I mean, we can’t just move in on the local residents.”

Trudy rolled her eyes. “Wow, Jessica, you already know so much, and your family just got here. Well, let me tell you this. Humans, not treecats, are the ones who vote in the assembly. My dad and his friends aren’t going to let a bunch of cute mini-hexapumas be used to get around their rights.”

Jessica’s intervention had given Stephanie a chance to organize her thoughts. Now she spoke up, striving with all her might to be reasonable when what she wanted to do was shout something like, “You moron! Maybe if Dr. Whittaker proves treecats are sentient, then they will get a vote. What would you do then?”

Instead, she said calmly. “Trudy, I can send you files and files about what happens when humans start forgetting that we’re only one part of the local ecosystem-one part that can be destructive all out of proportion.”

“Fizz on the files,” Trudy said, laughing dismissively. “Like I want to spend my time reading propaganda written by people who are only interested in taking away the rights of serious land-holders.”

At this point, Marjorie Harrington interrupted, using her best “mom” voice, the one that held the snap of a starship commander beneath its reasonable tones.

“I can see we have some quite varied opinions here. Perhaps we should stop before we ruin our appetites for dessert? I’ve made both chocolate cake and tanapple pie. I thought we’d move into the living room for dessert.”

The Mom Voice-or maybe the prospect of dessert-stopped the debate, but Stephanie didn’t think Trudy’s mind had been changed one bit. In the general movement to clear away dishes and move into the living room, she noticed Trudy moving over to talk to Anders. From the way Trudy was pressing close to him, she, at least, hadn’t given up her campaign.

“Ultra-stonishing,” said Jessica, speaking very quietly, but so the kids closest could hear. “Is Trudy obvious or what? I wonder if I should take a picture or two and e-mail them anonymously to Stan…”

She was grinning mischievously, but Stephanie didn’t doubt she’d do it.

“Don’t,” Chet said. He wasn’t grinning. “Stan isn’t nice. I mean, really isn’t nice. Trudy’s family seems to like to play with fire.”

Christine nodded. “Yeah. Listen, Steph. You were great there. I mean, I’ve seen you lose it a whole lot more at practice when Trudy gets dumb. This was a lot nastier than blocking your glider.”

Toby bounced in agreement. “You were great. I thought we were going to see you use Trudy’s head to mash the ice potatoes.”

Stephanie laughed. “My folks would have killed me. They take hospitality seriously-and so do I. I saw Karl carrying the tanapple pie out. I hope you’ll try it. It’s his Aunt Irina’s recipe. It’s seriously wonderful, sour at first, but with a sweet note.”

“Kinda like Steph herself,” Chet said, grinning. “Right, Christine?”

“Absolutely,” Christine said.

“Bleek!” agreed Lionheart, scampering ahead to where a tray of celery had been put out for his and Fisher’s dessert. “Bleek! Bleek!”