Treecat Wars by David Weber Read Free Book Online

oak’s enormous trunk sharing the thermos of lemonade Marjorie Harrington had sent along.
    “Until she runs out of light, probably,” Stephanie replied with an answering grin. She’d become very fond of Dacey Emberly, but having a mother who was also a painter had taught her a thing or two about the breed.
    “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Anders agreed.
    He looked around, thoroughly enjoying the sunlight and the cool breeze singing through the crown oak’s leaves. He might not have felt quite so happy about perching so many meters above the ground if he hadn’t had his own counter-grav, but he’d gotten accustomed to climbing trees here on Sphinx. Stephanie and Lionheart seemed to spend at least a third of their time in the treetops, after all!
    The thought of the treecat drew his attention to where Lionheart clung to a branch just above Dacey, gazing intently over her shoulder as she worked. He knew Lionheart seemed to love watching Dacey paint, and he wondered how focused he was at the moment on Dacey’s emotions instead of Stephanie’s. Could he be distracted from his person’s emotions, or was the link between them—whatever it was and however it worked—always in the forefront of his attention? It was a question which had occupied Anders more than once, but in a lot of ways, he was grateful, since no one objected when he and Stephanie went off on a hike together, even without Karl. Apparently they assumed that Lionheart made an adequate chaperone.
    And I guess he does , Anders thought ruefully. Even if Stephanie flat-out invited me to…well…to do more than we’ve been doing, I don’t think I’d try. I saw the records of what Lionheart and his family did to the hexapuma. I don’t really want him to decide I was offering his human some sort of threat .
    Today, however, Stephanie seemed to have something on her mind other than their usual explorations of the local wildlife and each other. He hadn’t been able to put his finger on what that something else might be, but several times he’d thought her usual smile seemed a little more forced than usual. Now she looked at him for several moments, smile fading. Then she reached to hold his hand, and Anders didn’t need to be a telepath—not even a telempath—to know she was looking for comfort, not inviting a snuggle.
    His eyebrows furrowed as he searched for a way to ask what was wrong without implying that she was acting particularly weird, but he didn’t have to.
    “Anders,” she asked, “how did you feel when you realized you had a chance to go to Sphinx?”
    Anders was surprised. They’d talked about this before when comparing notes on their various trips to other planets and it hadn’t seemed to worry her any then. Why should it be worrying her now? Unless….
    Guessing this was a lead to some other topic, he answered honestly.
    “Pretty happy, really. I’d already gotten interested in treecats, you know. Here was my chance to see them—not in recordings, not some captive being brought around as a display—but where they lived. I was really excited.”
    “You weren’t nervous about going to a strange place?”
    “Not really. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going alone. Yeah, Dad can be pretty obsessive, but if I got in trouble he’d be around. Anyway, despite my mom’s impression that a colony world was going to be pretty backward, I knew Sphinx was cutting edge in a lot of ways.”
    “Manticore is even more cutting edge,” Stephanie said. “I haven’t been there since we stopped over on the way to Sphinx. I was only ten and fresh from Meyerdahl, so it didn’t seem too much to me then. Now I know lots of people on Manticore think people from Sphinx are complete rubes.”
    “Some of them probably do,” Anders replied. “I don’t remember anyone actually saying anything like that to me , but most of the people I talked to knew I was a visitor. They probably wouldn’t have talked down about their neighbors to a stranger.”