Counter-grav units were great for getting up and down, but none of the crew was particularly skilled in doing work while floating in mid-air. Besides, such activities did put a drain on the power sources. While those could be charged from the air-van, the broadcast power didn’t reach if one went out of range.
In addition to this gear, they’d packed a lot more field gear-including a selection of envelopes and boxes into which smaller samples could be put. This told Anders that, even if Dr. Whittaker said that most of their work would be in the nature of a photographic survey, he wasn’t about to risk losing some choice artifact.
So what happens if the site isn’t really abandoned? Anders thought. What if what the treecats have done is more like moving to winter quarters after summering somewhere else? When Mom and Dad close our cabin in the mountains for the winter, we leave all sorts of stuff behind. If someone took that, we’d figure they were stealing. Why shouldn’t the treecats feel the same?
Anders wanted to ask his dad about this ethical fine point, but he knew that Dr. Whittaker would simply brush it off by denying that he intended to take anything, so why did it matter? Dad knew perfectly well that once they were in the field, Anders wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his crew. Not embarrassing either of his parents- especially his mother, who, as a politician, lived in the public eye-was something Anders had been trained in since he started to walk and talk.
I’ll ask Dr. Nez, Anders thought. He likes questions like that. I guess that’s why he’s a cultural anthropologist, rather than an ethno-archeologist like Dad.
Dr. Whittaker chose to fly them himself. He departed in the direction of the first stand of picketwood they were scheduled to investigate, then, when they were far from any of the settlements, he dipped down below the tree line, punched up the map program, and entered the coordinates for the abandoned treecat settlement which Ranger Jedrusinski had shown them.
This looped them around back south, all the way to the south side of the Makara River, hundreds of kilometers from their assigned locations.
Even with the need to navigate around the trees, they made good time. As in many first-growth forests, the under story was relatively clear. Fire activity cleared away the snags, dead grasses, leaves, shrubs, and other low- level detritus, scarring the trunks of the more massive trees, but often stimulating growth. More flammable trees- like the near-pines from which Stephanie and Karl had rescued Right-Striped and Left-Striped-actually needed fire activity to clear away weaker trees and break the hulls on their seeds.
Still, Anders thought, looking up at the sky when the air-van passed through a small clearing, I’m glad to see it’s a nice day, not a trace of storm clouds in the sky.
Dr. Whittaker took them up a little higher when they arrived near the site so they could make certain no one else was around, but he was careful to stay below the elevation of some nearby crown oaks. These provided them with sufficient cover to survey the picketwood grove and its surroundings, since picketwood averaged between thirty-five and forty-five meters in height, while crown oak regularly reached eighty meters.
“There’s a nice landing spot over there,” Dr. Whittaker said. “Level and still relatively green, but far enough from the picketwood that our landing won’t hurt valuable artifacts.”
Dr. Calida Emberly had pulled out a pair of binoculars and was surveying the area. “I don’t see any signs of use,” she began. “Maybe we should take a closer look before landing.”
Dr. Whittaker shrugged. “Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. You know, the Forestry Service’s fanatical interest in fire watch and control has gotten me thinking. How do treecats deal with forest fire? They certainly haven’t survived by waiting for Stephanie Harrington to come rescue them from burning trees.”
He laughed at his joke, politely echoed by Guyen and Iwamoto.
“Seriously,” Dad continued. “I think one of the ways we can judge whether or not treecats are intelligent would be to look for evidence of fire control features near their dwelling areas: cleared areas like this one could be just such evidence.”
On that triumphant note, he brought the air van down. The surface underfoot was thick with a springy vegetation. Dr. Emberly bent to clip a sample.
“It reminds me of wild portulaca,” she said. “I wonder if this also has a mat structure?”
Despite her silver-gray hair, her excitement made her seem girlish. Anders remembered how many new discoveries awaited science on Sphinx. Marjorie Harrington had mentioned that probably fewer than fifty percent of the plants had been typed: “And most of those we have identified fall into broad categories,” she’d said. “It will be decades, maybe centuries before we recognize sub-species and the environmental cues they evolved in response to.”
“Is that really important?” Anders had asked, not to challenge, but because he’d never really thought about plants.
“Absolutely!” Dr. Marjorie had responded. “We can learn about the life-cycle of the planet that way, anticipate, perhaps, seasonal variations and prepare for them. It’s all too usual for new arrivals to a planet to assume that what they see when they first arrive is ‘normal,’ but it’s just as likely that landfall might have been made during a time of drought or flooding. Plants can tell us far more.”
She’d had a lot more to say, but most of it had gone right over Anders’ head. What he had come away from that talk with was a realization that-despite mobile humanity’s tendency to give preference to creatures that move- the vegetative world was a whole lot more than backdrop.
Dr. Emberly was tugging at the edge of one of her “portulacas.”
“Look, Anders. They do form a mat, a pretty thick one. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that these ‘plants’ are actually one plant. In a heavily forested environment like this one, there would be a real survival advantage to being able to stretch.”
“Like picketwood,” Anders said, “only this does it sideways more than up and down.”
“Interesting comparison,” Dr. Emberly said, taking a note. “I must check if Dr. Harrington has written anything about that.”
Bradford Whittaker’s voice bellowed across the open area. “Dr. Emberly! I’ve located some bones. I’d like your opinion regarding their source.”
Dr. Emberly, who, after all, was a xenozoologist as well as a xenobotanist, hurried to go look.
Dr. Nez called to Anders. “I’m going to walk around the immediate area. Want to join me?”
Anders hurried over, happy to be needed. “What are we looking for?”
Langston Nez made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “I want to see if we can work out just how much of this grove the treecats were actively using. Your father’s thought about fire-control features is an interesting one. If the treecats are intelligent-as most of us think they are-then they should have done something.”
“What can they do?” Anders asked. “They don’t have machines to pump water or anything. They certainly can’t fly in trained crews or dump hundreds of gallons of water mixed with fire suppressant chemicals.”
“I can tell you’ve been listening to the SFS rangers,” Dr. Nez said with a chuckle.
“Well, fire control is their favorite topic these days,” Anders said. “I heard that Chief Ranger Shelton was preparing an educational broadcast about the costs of fighting even a smallish fire like the Franchitti fire. He’s hoping that those who can’t be convinced to value the wild lands for themselves will think of fire control as a way to prevent a tax increase.”
“It’s a good approach,” Dr. Nez said. “As an anthropologist, I have to agree that more people are motivated by self-interest than by altruism.”
Thinking of his dad, Anders silently agreed.
They spent the next couple of hours working on their range estimate. As they did so, they listened to the chatter on their private uni-link channel. The bones Dr. Whittaker had found proved to be fish bones, lots of them. Anders knew that his dad-despite his claims to the contrary-would be taking samples. Well, hopefully the treecats didn’t think fish bones were sacred or something.
Virgil Iwamoto had found a couple of areas where lithics scatter indicated the treecats had been in the habit of making their stone tools. These “workshops” had him almost unreasonably excited.
“It proves the treecats didn’t just whack off a chunk of stone as needed for a job. These areas indicate that they probably had specialists, perhaps older ’cats, past their best hunting days, who continued to contribute to the community in this fashion.”
“And if they have one type of specialist,” Dr. Nez added, “they might have others. Weavers, perhaps? We know they make nets. I wonder if we can find evidence of a weaving ‘shop.’”
“I saw some lace willow near where we left the van,” Dr. Emberly supplied. “We should check to see if
