All of this had come to Climbs Quickly in a few breaths. Now he tried to think how best to alert Death Fang’s Bane. He had seen the air car loaded with what he knew were devices for fighting fire. They might be enough to slow this new blaze so that the Damp Ground Clan could make their escape.
He must guide them to the endangered clan. He only hoped he was up to the challenge…and that they would arrive in time.
Stephanie focused hard on tracking the spreading western tongue of the South Fire against the SFS map, because if she didn’t, her mind wandered and she found herself wondering just what had happened to Anders. Where could the xenoanthropologists have gotten to? She didn’t like to consider the possibility that-as in the case of Tennessee Bolgeo-once again the SFS and Dr. Hobbard had been fooled into accepting fakes.
There was only one problem with that theory: Lionheart. The treecat had never liked “Doctor” Bolgeo, even when he was at his most charming. His reaction to Dr. Whittaker’s group had been calm and accepting. He’d seemed to like Anders during the time they’d spent together. He hadn’t bristled at Dr. Whittaker or any of his crew.
Stephanie hadn’t realized how much she had come to trust the treecat’s judgement until this moment. Now she’d have given almost anything to remember some incident of Lionheart demonstrating anger or disapproval, but there was nothing, and that meant…
In her lap, Lionheart suddenly stiffened, shifting from his comfortable sitting position onto his hindmost pair of legs. Swiveling his flexible torso, he turned so he could meet her eyes with his own. Assured that he had her attention, he very carefully pointed along the line of the fire.
“Bleek,” he said, then more urgently, “Bleek!”
“Lionheart seems to be suggesting we move along the edge of the fire. Since that’s what we’re doing already, maybe he wants us to go faster.”
Jessica leaned forward from the backseat, clearly fascinated. “Is this what he did when you rescued those treecats?”
Karl sped up, nodded. “Pretty much, but that time he wanted us to change course. I wonder what he wants this time?”
Lionheart had turned and was watching intently out the air car’s front window, his hand-feet braced against the dashboard.
Stephanie shrugged. “I have no idea, but especially after last time, I figure we’d be idiots not to take him seriously.”
Her uni-link signaled an incoming call. Although she was reluctant to take even a little of her attention from Lionheart and the call wasn’t from her parents-they had their own unique chimes-she glanced at the readout.
“Chet Pontier!” she said, surprised, recognizing the name of one of the hang-gliding club members. “What could he want?”
“Maybe he and Christine had a fight and he wants to ask you out,” Jessica said impishly. “Go on, answer it!”
Blushing and looking sideways at Karl, though she had no idea why, Stephanie took the call.
“Stephanie here.”
Chet’s holo appeared floating above the tiny screen. “Hi, Steph. Listen, I don’t know if you’ve been listening to the reports, but the fire up north has gotten bad enough that they’ve expanded the call for volunteers. Christine and I qualify for the age cut-off, easily, and Toby wants to try. They said fifteen and up, and he’s just a few months shy. We wondered if there was anywhere in particular you thought we should go so we don’t get stuck pouring punch somewhere.”
Stephanie considered. “They’ve posted more than one place where you can report?”
“Yeah, they’re handing out kits in downtown Twin Forks, even.”
“Don’t waste time going to Forestry Service headquarters,” Stephanie said. “When we were there really early this morning, they were already swamped. You’d probably do better at the Twin Forks general recruitment post. They’d be more likely to overlook Toby’s age, too.”
“Thanks.” The tiny holo generated by Stephanie’s uni-com didn’t show much detail, but she could see Chet looked a little sheepish…Or was that embarrassed?
“We all admired what you and Karl did during the last fire,” Chet said, “so, well, we wanted to ask your advice. Maybe we’ll see you on the fire lines.”
Stephanie wanted to start reminding Chet that this was no time for heroics, but Lionheart was shifting nervously in her lap. She settled for “Good luck. Be careful!” and commed off.
At their greater speed, they had probably missed some smaller details of the fire, but now they had arrived at the leading edge of this particular tongue. It wasn’t advancing very fast. The dominant wind was pushing it more to the west, conflicting with the earlier southern wind.
Stephanie was not particularly surprised to see Lionheart now pointing for them to turn west, to go past this edge of the fire and into a zone that was, as yet, unburned. The key phrase here was “as yet.” If the wind whipped up, that area would certainly be more dangerous than their current location.
“Lionheart wants us to go toward that island,” Stephanie said. “From the SFS map, that region should be mostly safe, at least for now. The Makara River will provide a natural firebreak.”
“I can take the air car up if we run into trouble,” Karl said, changing their direction, but giving the fire a wide berth. “We’ve got to try something. Lionheart is really upset.”
“Let’s go in a ways,” Jessica urged. “Like you said, we can always pull up. The fire here is mostly burning the lower reaches. It hasn’t gone up into the crown like it has in the northern fire.”
Lionheart relaxed slightly after Karl made the turn, but he did not settle back into Stephanie’s lap. Instead, he continued to focus forward, suggesting occasional course corrections with motions of his remaining true hand. Eventually, he directed them to cross the southern branch of the Makara River to the island.
Stephanie scanned the area below and saw something that filled her with dismay.
“Damn! Look down near the eastern tip of the island. See where the picketwood crosses from the mainland to the island?”
“You mean where the river branch gets narrow?” Jessica said.
“That’s it.” Stephanie said a word she wasn’t supposed to use six times. “Given the wind direction, the fire’s going to hit right there. The picketwood will be as good a bridge for fire as it is for any of the local wildlife.”
“One of the weaknesses of picketwood,” Karl agreed. “Your mom’s research shows it can seal off diseased sections within itself but it can’t do anything about fire. I wish it could create natural firebreaks that way, too, instead of actually helping the flames spread.”
None of them felt any doubt that the fire would reach this point. Although they were farther from the actively burning areas, the air was thick with smoke. Karl was relying heavily on the air car’s navigation systems to help him avoid the trees. It was almost maddening to see him looking at the heads-up display, not through the windshield, as he steered.
Stephanie leaned forward as if somehow that would help her see more clearly. She might have felt foolish but for the awareness that Jessica was doing the same thing.
Occasionally, they saw shadowy forms moving through the smoke. Most were indistinct, but once or twice Stephanie could clearly make out one of the mid-sized herbivores the colonists lumped together under the name “near-deer.” Another time, more heartbreakingly, she saw a pair of near-otters pushing along. Bodies well-adapted to water struggled on land as they strove to reach the Makara River.
“They don’t think this area’s going to stay safe much longer,” Jessica commented, her voice tight and choked. “I wish we could give them a ride.”
“They’d just panic,” Karl said, but he also sounded miserable.
When Lionheart “bleeked” loudly and pointed, at first Stephanie thought he was indicating another near-otter, which, for some reason had climbed up into a tree.
No, she realized. That’s not a near-otter.
“A treecat,” she gasped aloud, gesturing in unconscious imitation of Lionheart. As Jessica and Karl turned to look, forms within the smoke moved. They saw clearly furry masses staring down at them. “No! It’s not one treecat. There are at least four of them. They must be part of a clan, trying to escape the fire.”