A Beautiful Friendship-ARC (26 page)

Tonight’s storm promised to be a doozy even by Sphinx’s standards, though. The weather forecasters had been warning everyone about it for the better part of a week, but it had veered farther south as well as speeding up, which meant it was going to make landfall less than eighty kilometers from the Harrington freehold. It was also going to track directly across the central settlement of Lionheart’s clan (she’d decided she liked Hobbard’s term for the extended treecat family groups), and worry over her friends burned in the back of her mind, distracting her from her anticipation of the upcoming visit.

Still, she was a little surprised to discover there was another element tempering that anticipation. One she felt despite the fact she’d been the one who set this meeting in motion in the first place . . . and one she didn’t much care for when she recognized it, either.

It was jealousy. She was actually
jealous
of all the newsies’ recent stories about Dr. MacDallan and Fisher, and that made her feel . . . ashamed.

You
ought
to feel ashamed
, she scolded herself.
What? Is it really all that important for
you
to be the only heroine where the treecats are concerned? You think
you
need to get all the credit? And if you’re so envious about all the news coverage and all the congratulations Dr. MacDallan got, then why don’t you make it a point to spend a little more time with all those xeno-anthropologists and xeno-biologists making sure
your
name gets into all their reports instead of his?

She didn’t like feeling that way, and she didn’t just feel ashamed. She felt
disappointed
in herself . . . and she knew her parents would have felt the same way if they’d known.

“
Bleek!
” Lionheart said softly into her ear, and she felt him stir on her shoulder. His remaining true-hand reached out, touching her lightly on the side of the head, and somehow she sensed his gentle reprimand. Not for what she’d just realized she was feeling about Dr. MacDallan but for blaming herself for feeling it. And even though she thought he was wrong to let her off so easily, she had to admit that it wasn’t as if she’d
set
out
to envy the doctor. She hadn’t even realized she did, and as she reached up to caress Lionheart’s ears, she promised herself she was going to stamp out that envy just as soon as she possibly could.

“Bleek!” the treecat said again, more cheerfully, as he sensed the shift in her emotions, and she chuckled.

“All right,” she whispered to him as the air car grounded. “All right, I’ll behave. You be sure you do, too!”

Lionheart buzzed a purr, pressing warmly against the side of her neck, and they watched the air car hatch open.

Scott MacDallan, Stephanie decided, was just about the reddest redhead she’d ever seen in her life. His hair looked like you could light campfires with it, and his skin was so liberally dusted with freckles she was surprised it didn’t glow.

Irina Kisaevna was shorter than he was, with a definitely feminine yet considerably more stocky build. Her hair was as dark as his was fiery, and she had big brown eyes that looked like they were designed to laugh a lot. She had a strong nose, too, and high cheekbones.

But it was the cream and gray-colored treecat riding in the crook of Dr. MacDallan’s arm that truly drew her attention. It didn’t seem to be quite as large as Lionheart, and it had fewer dark bars circling its tail, but aside from that and Lionheart’s missing arm, the two of them could have been twins, and the other treecat’s head came up, green eyes bright as he looked in their direction.

* * *

<
Greetings, Swift Striker!
> Climbs Quickly called. <
Welcome to Death Fang’s Bane Clan’s range
.>

<
I thank you for the greeting, elder brother
,> Swift Striker replied. <
I had not realized Death Fang’s Bane and her parents had become a full
clan,
though
.>

<
If they have not yet, they soon will
,> Climbs Quickly said. <
And Bright Water Clan has decided they are surely entitled to clan status. They have already taught us much, not to mention
—>

He raised his truncated right arm slightly, and felt Swift Striker’s acceptance of his point. Then his eyes narrowed as he and the Laughing River Clan scout sampled one another’s mind-glows. It was the treecat equivalent of what a human might have called “getting acquainted,” except that it was far quicker—and far more thorough—than any pair of humans could have managed. Of course, neither of them was a memory singer, so there were depths they couldn’t plumb, but in the time it took Swift Striker and his humans to climb out of their air car and cross to the waiting Harringtons, he and Climbs Quickly had become something very like old friends.

With that out of the way, they each turned to sampling the mind-glows of the humans they hadn’t previously met. It was an interesting experience, since both MacDallan’s and Stephanie’s mind-glows had been included in the memory songs passed from clan to clan over the previous few months. The memory songs had made it clear to every listener that the two humans had exceptionally powerful mind-glows even for two-legs, yet it was obvious now that the songs had done them less than full justice.

<
Your two-leg’s mind-glow is even stronger than I expected
,> Swift Striker said. <
I think it may burn even brighter than Darkness Foe’s, in some ways!
>

<
Darkness Foe’s mind-glow is very powerful, too
,> Climbs Quickly replied respectfully. <
I do not think either of them is truly
brighter
than the other, though. They are just . . . different
.>

He flirted the tip of his tail, thinking hard, trying to find a way to express what he felt.

<
I think
,> he said a moment later, <
that the difference is in the way in which each of them senses our bond. Death Fang’s Bane is mind-blind, and Darkness Foe is not mind-blind . . . entirely. I hear almost . . . almost an
echo
of a mind-voice from him. Yet I think Death Fang’s Bane may actually taste my
feelings
more strongly than he tastes yours. It is as if . . . as if each of them has
half
of a Person’s skill to taste a mind-glow, but neither has all
.>

<
I think you are right
,> Swift Striker replied. <
I had not thought of it in quite that way, but it makes sense now of the way in which Clear Singer was able to make him hear True Stalker’s memories of what the evil one had done
.>

<
This is good!
> Climbs Quickly said. <
Already we are learning more about the two-legs—and especially about our own two-legs! I hope
they
are learning as much about
us.>

* * *

“Dr. MacDallan, Ms. Kisaevna—Fisher,” Richard Harrington said, extending his hand to each of the humans in turn and nodding a greeting to the treecat. “Welcome! Now come inside before the rain starts!”

“That,” Scott MacDallan said in a deep, pleasant baritone, “sounds like a
very
good idea, Dr. Harrington.”

“Amen,” Irina Kisaevna echoed, then looked across at Stephanie with a grin. “And you must be Stephanie.” She winked. “Glad to actually meet you in person. Especially since you and I seem to be the only non-doctors present this evening!”

Stephanie laughed and came forward to hold out her own hand.

“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “I get a lot of that around these two.” She tilted her head in her parents’ direction, and Marjorie Harrington smacked her gently on the top of that same head.

“Just remember who’s handing out the hot chocolate later tonight,” she told her daughter in an ominous tone, and it was Irina’s turn to chuckle.

She had a nice laugh, Stephanie decided. And a nice face, too.

The Harringtons’ guests accompanied them inside and into the big, comfortable living room, where a fire crackled and popped in the huge stone hearth. That hearth wasn’t entirely a relic from the distant past, either. One thing Sphinx had plenty of was firewood. And if the house were to lose power in the middle of a Sphinx winter, that anachronistic fireplace (and the ones like it in almost every other room) might well make the difference between survival and freezing to death.

Tonight, though, the fire was simply for friendliness, and the five humans found themselves gathering around it in a shallow half-circle as the hiss of burning wood exercised its ancient, welcoming magic.

“I love those paintings,” Irina said, looking at a trio of old-fashioned oils on the living room wall.

She stepped closer, studying the painting at the right end of the line with obvious pleasure and admiring the play of sunlight and shadow, the deep greens and the gray, black, and brown of the tree trunks, in the summer landscape. The painting to its left showed the same landscape, but in the earth tones, pale green, and robins egg-blue skies of spring. And the painting at the extreme left end of the row showed the same landscape yet again, this time clad in the sun-sparked whiteness of snow and embellished with the crystalline daggers of icicles. All of them were filled with a very different sense of the vibrant, ongoing life of Sphinx as the planet swept through the slow, stately march of its seasons. It was almost as if the viewer could reach into the pictures, actually touch the seasons they portrayed, and there was a bare patch of wall to the right of the summer landscape. It was clearly waiting for autumn, she thought, and turned back to the Harringtons.

“I thought I knew most of the artists here on Sphinx,” she said, “but I certainly don’t recognize this one’s work. I’d love to get whoever did these to come out to my brother’s place and do the same kind of series for him!”

“I think that might be arranged,” Richard Harrington said with a slow smile, and nodded in his wife’s direction. “I happen to know the artist pretty well.”

“
You
did these?” Irina looked at Marjorie. “They’re wonderful!”

“Well, I’ve still got to wait another T-year or so before I can add autumn to the wall,” Marjorie responded. “It’s not exactly something you can do in a rush here on Sphinx. But if your brother doesn’t mind investing four or five T-years in the project, I can probably manage to squeeze him into my busy schedule.”

The two women smiled at each other, and MacDallan shook his head.

“We’re doomed, you know,” he said to Richard and Stephanie. Stephanie arched her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged. “Your mom paints. Well, Irina sculpts—not just clay, either. She really likes bronze, too. She’s already done three life-size studies of Fisher, and as if that weren’t bad enough, she’s a potter, too. Her place is littered with bowls, goblets, vases, plates, platters, saucers, pitchers, bowls, mugs, carafes, salad plates—did I mention
bowls
? And she gives them away at the drop of a hat, too. Fills all her friends’ platter rails and cupboards with stuff. I did mention
bowls
, didn’t I?”

“All the better for breaking over your thick skull,” Irina told him sweetly, then looked at Marjorie with a chuckle. “All the same, though, I’m sure we could work out a little trade in kind, if you’re interested. I’d love to do a sculpture of Lionheart.” Her expression turned more serious as she looked at Stephanie. “I think the way he wears his honor scars says a lot about him.”

“So do I,” Stephanie said softly, reaching up to the treecat on her shoulder.

“And on that note,” Richard Harrington said firmly, “let’s get washed up and eat.”

* * *

Supper was a decided success.

Both Harringtons were excellent cooks, and neither MacDallan nor Irina had ever experienced Meyerdahl-style cuisine. It reminded MacDallan of a sort of cross between Old Earth Oriental and Iberian cooking, combining elements of each in ways which would never have occurred to him but worked beautifully. It began with a starter course of mushrooms sautéed in olive oil, garlic, scallions, and parsley, accompanied by a salad with what his aunt from Nueva Madrid would have called romescu sauce—a tangy, tomato-based sauce with garlic, almonds, and hazel nuts. The almonds were the original Old Terran version, although the “hazel nuts” were from a local tree which offered its own variation on the original theme. The same was true of the “anchovies” in the salad, which had come from a fish which filled very much the same ecological niche on Sphinx’s sister planet Manticore, although the bib lettuce and endive were the original Old Terran article, courtesy of Marjorie Harrington’s gardens and greenhouses right here on Sphinx. The olives, like the “anchovies” had come from Manticore, whose orbital position closer to the system primary gave it a climate better suited to things like olive trees and orange groves.

The main course consisted of chicken thighs with sage, rosemary, and thyme, but served over rice in a coconut milk-based sauce with just a hint of curry, and accompanied by spinach with small slivers of pineapple and orange. Home baked bread completed the menu . . . aside from the homemade coconut milk and red bean ice-cream which followed for dessert.

“That,” MacDallan said with a sigh of repletion, sitting back from the table with an after dinner cup of coffee, “was delicious.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little more?” Marjorie Harrington offered with a smile, nodding at the sadly depleted serving dishes still mounting guard at the center of the table.

“Couldn’t,” he said. “Not after all that.”

“It was delicious,” Irina agreed. “And I’m stuffed, too.”

She had not, Stephanie noticed, eaten nearly as much as the other humans at the table. Which, coupled with her stockier figure, suggested that, unlike Stephaine’s own family, her metabolism and muscles hadn’t been genetically engineered for a heavy-gravity environment. She was obviously accustomed to Sphinx’s gravity, but Stephanie wondered what it must be like for an unmodified human to live day in and day out in a gravity thirty-plus percent higher than the one in which mankind had originally evolved.

The treecats, on the other hand, weren’t done yet. Stephanie suspected that treecat notions of cuisine were very . . . basic. She’d been a little surprised, actually, to discover that they preferred their food cooked at all, although they were perfectly capable of eating it raw if they had to. But Lionheart had almost tried to dive right into the serving bowls and
wallow
there in pure delight the first time he’d encountered her parents’ cooking, and Fisher seemed equally taken by it. He was currently working on his fifth chicken thigh, at any rate.