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.