A Beautiful Friendship-ARC (10 page)

He stood for one more moment, heart racing, ears flat with mingled excitement and fear, then decided. He abandoned his original task and bounded off along the outstretched net-wood limb, racing to meet the approaching two-leg well away from the rest of his clan.

* * *

Stephanie’s attention was locked on the trees below her now. Her flight had lasted over two hours, but she was drawing close at last. She could feel the distance melting away—indeed, it almost seemed the treecat was coming to meet her—and excitement narrowed the focus of her attention even further. The crown oak had thinned as she’d left the foothills behind and begun climbing into the Copperwalls proper. Now the woods were a mix of various evergreens, dominated by shorter species of near-pine and the dark, blue-green pyramids of Sphinxian red spruce, and the crazyquilt geometry of picketwood.

Of course they were, she thought, and her eyes brightened. The rough-barked picketwood would be the perfect habitat for someone like her little celery thief! Each picketwood system radiated from a single central trunk which sent out long, straight, horizontal branches at a height of between three and ten meters. Above that, branches might take on any shape; below it, they always grew in groups of four, radiating at near-perfect right angles from one another for a distance of ten to fifteen meters. At that point, each sent a vertical runner down to the earth below to establish its own root system and, in time, become its own nodal trunk. A single picketwood “tree” could extend itself for literally hundreds of kilometers in any direction, and it wasn’t uncommon for one “tree” to run into another and fuse with it. When the lateral branches of two systems crossed, they merged into a node which put down its own runner.

Stephanie’s mother was fascinated by the picketwoods. Plants which spread by sending out runners weren’t all that rare, but those which spread
only
via runner were. It was also more than a little uncommon for the runner to spread out through the air and go down to the earth, rather than the reverse. But what truly fascinated Dr. Harrington was the tree’s anti-disease defense mechanism. The unending network of branches and trunks should have made a picketwood system lethally vulnerable to diseases and parasites. But the plant had demonstrated a sort of natural quarantine process. Somehow—and Dr. Harrington had yet to discover how—a picketwood system was able to sever its links to afflicted portions of itself. Attacked by disease or parasites, the system secreted powerful cellulose-dissolving enzymes that ate away at connecting cross-branches and literally disconnected them at intervening nodal trunks, and Dr. Harrington was determined to locate the mechanism which made that possible.

But her mother’s interest in picketwood meant very little to Stephanie at the moment beside her realization of the same tree’s importance to treecats. Picketwood was deciduous and stopped well short of the tree line, abandoning the higher altitudes to near-pine and red spruce. But it crossed mountains readily through valleys or at lower elevations, and it could be found in almost every climate zone. All of which meant it would provide treecats with the equivalent of aerial highways that could literally run clear across a continent! They could travel for hundreds—thousands!—of kilometers without ever having to touch the ground where larger predators like hexapumas could get at them!

She laughed aloud at her deduction, but then her glider slipped abruptly sideways, and her laughter died as she stopped thinking about the sorts of trees beneath her and recognized instead the speed at which she was passing over them. She raised her head and looked around quickly, and a fist of the ice seemed to squeeze her stomach.

The clear blue skies under which she had begun her flight still stretched away in front of her to the east. But the western sky
behind
her was no longer clear. A deadly looking line of thunderheads marched steadily east, white and fluffy on top but an ominous purple-black below, and even as she looked over her shoulder, she saw lightning flicker.

She should have seen it coming sooner, she thought numbly, hands aching as she squeezed the glider’s grips in ivory-knuckled fists.

Idiot!
she told herself sickly.
You should’ve checked the weather reports! You
know
you should have! Dad’s pounded that into you every single time the two of you plan a flight!

Yes, he had . . . and that, she realized sickly, was the point. She was used to having other people—
adult
people—check the weather before they went gliding, and she’d let herself get so excited, focus so intently on what she was doing, pay so little attention—

A harder fist of wind punched at her glider, staggering it in midair, and fear became terror. The following wind had been growing stronger for quite some time, a small logical part of her realized. No doubt she would have noticed despite her concentration if she hadn’t been gliding in the same direction, riding in the wind rather than across or against it, where the velocity shift would
have
to have registered. But the thunderheads were catching up with her quickly, and the outriders of their squall line lashed through the air space in front of them.

Daddy!
She had to com her father—tell him where she was—tell him to come get her—tell him—!

But there was no time. She’d messed up, and all the theoretical discussions about what to do in bad weather, all the stern warnings to avoid rough air, came crashing in on her. But they were no longer theoretical; she was in deadly danger, and she knew it. Counter-grav unit or no, a storm like the one racing up behind her could blot her out of the air as casually as she might have swatted a fly, and with just as deadly a result. She could die in the next few minutes, and the thought terrified her, but she didn’t panic.

Yes, you have to com Mom and Dad, but it’s not like you don’t already know
exactly
what they’d tell you to do if you did. You’ve got to get out of the air, get yourself down on the ground,
now
!
And the last thing you need,
she thought sickly,
staring down at the solid green canopy below her, is to be trying to explain to them where you are while you do it!

She banked again, shivering with fear, eyes desperately seeking some opening, however small, and the air trembled as thunder rumbled behind her.

* * *

Climbs Quickly reared up on true-feet and hand-feet, lips wrinkling back from needle-sharp white fangs as a flood of terror crashed over him. It pounded deep into him, waking the ancient fight-or-flight instinct which, had he but known it, his kind shared with humanity. But it wasn’t
his
terror at all.

It took him an instant to realize that, yet it was true. It wasn’t his fear; it was the two-leg youngling’s, and even as the youngling’s fear ripped at him, he felt a fresh surge of wonder. He was still too far from the two-leg. He could never have felt another of the People’s mind-glow at this distance, and he knew it. But this two-leg’s mind-glow raged through him like a forest fire, screaming for his aid without even realizing it could do so, and it struck him like a lash. He shook his head once, and then flashed down the line of netwood like a cream-and-gray blur while his fluffy tail streamed straight out behind him.

* * *

Desperation filled Stephanie.

The thunderstorm was almost upon her—the first white pellets of hail rattled off her taut glider covering—and without the counter-grav she would already have been blotted from the sky. But not even the counter-grav unit could save her from the mounting turbulence much longer, and—

Her thoughts chopped off as salvation loomed suddenly before her. The black, irregular scar of an old forest fire had ripped a huge hole through the trees, and she choked back a sob of gratitude as she spied it. The ground looked dangerously rough for a landing in conditions like this, but it was infinitely more inviting than the solid web of branches tossing and flashing below her, and she banked towards it.

She almost made it.

* * *

Climbs Quickly ran as he’d never run before. Somehow he knew he raced against death itself, though it never occurred to him to wonder what someone his size could do for someone the size of even a two-leg youngling. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the terror, the fear—the danger—which confronted that other presence in his mind, and he ran madly towards it.

* * *

It was the strength of the wind which did it.

Even then, she would have made it without the sudden downdraft that hammered her at the last instant. But between them, they were too much. Stephanie saw it coming in the moment before she struck, realized instantly what was going to happen, but there was no time to avoid it. No time even to feel the full impact of the realization before her glider crashed into the crown of the towering near pine at over fifty kilometers per hour.

9

Climbs Quickly slithered to a stop, momentarily frozen in horror. But then he gasped in relief.

The sudden silence in his mind wasn’t—quite—absolute. His instant fear that the youngling had been killed eased, yet something deeper and darker, without the same bright panic but with even greater power, replaced it. Whatever had happened, the youngling was now unconscious, yet even in its unconsciousness he was still linked to it . . . and he felt its pain. It was injured, possibly badly—possibly badly enough that his initial fear that it had died would prove justified after all. And if it was injured, what could
he
do to help? Young as it was, it was far larger than he; much
too
large for him to drag to safety.

But what one of the People couldn’t do, many of them often
could
, and he closed his eyes, lashing his tail while he thought. He’d run too far to feel the combined mind-glow of his clan’s central nest place. His emotions couldn’t reach so far, but his mind-voice could. If he cried out for help, Sings Truly would hear, and if she failed to, surely some hunter or scout between her and Climbs Quickly would hear and relay. Yet what message could he cry out
with
?
How could he summon the clan to aid a two-leg—the very two-leg he had allowed to see him? How could he expect them to abandon their policy of hiding from the two-legs? And even if he could have expected that of them, what right had he to demand it?

He stood irresolute, tail flicking, ears flattened, as the branch behind him creaked and swayed and the first raindrops lashed the budding leaves. Rain, he thought, a flicker of humor leaking even through his dread and uncertainty. Was it
always
going to be raining when he and his two-leg met?

Strangely, that thought broke his paralysis, and he shook himself. All he knew so far was that the two-leg was hurt and that he was very close to it now. He had no way of knowing how bad its injuries might actually be, nor even if there were any
reason
to consider calling out for help. After all, if there was nothing the clan could do, then there was no point in trying to convince it to come. No, the thing to do was to continue until he found the youngling. He had to see what its condition was before he could determine the best way to help—assuming it required his help at all—and he scurried onward almost as quickly as before.

* * *

Stephanie recovered consciousness slowly. The world swayed and jerked all about her, thunder rumbled and crashed, rain lashed her like an icy flail, and she’d never hurt so much in her entire life.

The pounding rain’s chill wetness helped rouse her, and she tried to move—only to whimper as the pain in her left arm stabbed suddenly higher. She’d lost her helmet somehow. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it had. She felt a painful welt rising under her jaw where the helmet strap had lain, and her hair was already soaking wet. Nor was that all she had to worry about, and she blinked, rubbing her eyes with her right palm, and felt a sort of dull shock as she realized part of what had been blinding her was blood, not simply rainwater.

She wiped again and felt a shiver of relief as she realized there was much less blood than she’d thought. Most of it seemed to be coming from a single cut on her forehead, and the cold rain was already slowing the bleeding. She managed to clear her eyes well enough to look about her, and her relief vanished.

Her brand new glider was smashed. Not broken:
smashed
. Its tough composite covering and struts had been specially designed to be crash survivable, but it had never been intended for the abuse to which she’d subjected it, and it had crumpled into a mangled lacework of fabric and shattered framing. Yet it hadn’t quite failed completely, and she hung in her harness from the main spar, which was jammed in the fork of a branch above her. The throbbing ache where the harness straps crossed her body told her she’d been badly bruised by the abrupt termination of her flight, and one of her ribs stabbed her with a white burst of agony every time she breathed. But without the harness—and the forked branch which had caught her—she would have slammed straight into the massive tree trunk directly in front of her, and she shuddered at the thought.

But however lucky she might have been, there’d been bad luck to go with the good. Like most colony world children, Stephanie had been through mandatory first-aid courses . . . not that any training was needed to realize her left arm was broken in at least two places. She knew which way her elbow was
supposed
to bend, and there was no joint in the middle of her forearm. That was bad enough, but there was worse, for her uni-link had been strapped to her left wrist.

It wasn’t there anymore.

She turned her head, craning her neck to peer painfully back along the all too obvious course of her crashing impact with the treetops, and wondered where the uni-link was. The wrist unit was virtually indestructible, and if she could only find it—and
reach
it—she could call for help in an instant. But there was no way she was going to find it in that mess.

It was almost funny, she thought through the haze of her pain.
She
couldn’t find it, but Mom or Dad could have found it with ridiculous ease . . . if they’d only known to use the emergency override code to activate the locator beacon function. Or, for that matter, if
she’d
thought to activate it when the storm first came up. Unfortunately, she’d been too preoccupied finding a landing spot to bring the beacon up, and even if she had, no one would have found it until they thought to look for it.