for all the brightness of her mind-glow, Death Fang’s Bane is mute and nearly deaf. You are the elder and, in this, must be the wiser as well.›
Chapter Five
“Over to the right,” said Ranger Jedrusinski, “you’ll see the nest of a mated pair of condor owls.”
Anders craned around-he was on the left side of the air van, in the backmost set of seats. His dad, sitting on the right, next to Ranger Jedrusinski, who was piloting, had the best view, but he didn’t pay much attention. Anders wasn’t surprised. Dad’s specialization was material remains. This specialization was sometimes called ethno-archeology, because efforts were made to draw connections between past cultures and present.
Dr. Nez who, despite his rank, had taken the other rearmost seat, specialized in living cultures, not things. To him, the other native life-forms on Sphinx were at least as important as the treecats themselves.
Now Dr. Nez grinned at Anders and pointed. “Look! Up there, near the top of that huge crown oak. Wow! That’s a messy nest. I wonder if the condor owls build heavy for insulation in the winters?”
Dr. Nez leaned back so Anders could see past him. Gratefully, Anders shifted so he could get a good look. He’d never seen a Terran oak tree, except in pictures. He wondered if the person who’d named this tree had either. He supposed that the general shape was about right, but he didn’t think that oak trees had those large arrowhead-shaped leaves. He didn’t think any Terran oak had ever reached 80 meters in height, either.
Anders wondered why the plants were so large here, especially given that the gravity was higher than Terran normal. He’d have thought all the plants would be short and squat. He’d seen how humans born on Sphinx, even with access to counter-grav units and various therapies, tended to develop stockier builds. When Karl had taken Anders back to base, they’d gotten to talking about Urako in comparison to Sphinx. Karl had mentioned in passing that he had to take all sorts of supplements to assure strong bone growth.
The condor owls had built their nest in the upper third of the tree, taking advantage of the combination of an area where the trunk was heavy enough to be stable, but the branches were lighter, allowing for good launching points.
Ranger Jedrusinski brought the van around so all the passengers could get a good look at the nest.
Maybe she’s figured out Dad isn’t really interested, Anders thought. He moved so Dr. Nez could get a view from this angle.
Meanwhile, Ranger Jedrusinski was saying, “Despite the name given by early colonists on Sphinx, the condor owl is actually mammalian. It is covered with fine down, rather than feathers. Like most animals native to the planet, its structure is hexapedal. The front set of legs have become the wings, but it retains four strong legs, each of which has a very powerful set of talons.”
“Am I correct,” asked Dr. Emberly, the team xenobiologist, “in recalling that condor owls have been known to prey on treecats?”
“We’ve never witnessed such an event,” Ranger Jedrusinski replied, “but the secondary evidence is pretty strong. We’ve found treecat bones in condor owl waste. This, of course, could be a result of scavenging on carrion. However, treecats shown what appeared to be a condor owl shadow take cover immediately. Certainly, the condor owls themselves should be capable of preying upon a treecat. They have extraordinarily keen vision and enough intelligence to realize that the picketwood serves as a highway for all sorts of creatures-treecats among them.”
“But,” protested Virgil Iwamoto, the lithics-or stone tool-specialist of the team, “treecats make stone tools. Doesn’t that argue for an ability to defend themselves?”
“Treecat tool use,” Ranger Jedrusinski replied, “seems to involve close-range tools used primarily for manipulating their environment. We haven’t seen any evidence of bows and arrows, or even spear throwers. Unlike humans, treecats are excellently equipped by nature to hunt the creatures that are their usual prey. They show no ambition to take on creatures markedly larger than themselves, except in self-defense or defense of another of their kind.”
Or Stephanie, Anders thought. He wondered what it would be like to find yourself being defended from a monster by a horde of treecats.
That morning, one of the other Forestry Service rangers had taken them to see a sort of “zoo” inhabited by native animals that, for one reason or another, needed care. Among these were captive hexapumas that were being prepared for release back into the wild. He didn’t think “monster” was too strong a word for a creature over five meters long-without the tail, which added another 250 or so centimeters-that weighed as much as a horse.
Ranger Jedrusinski was wheeling them away from the crown oak that held the condor owl’s nest. “At a meeting today, it was announced that a recently deserted treecat settlement had been located by SFS rangers inspecting the area after the Franchitti fire. We have just enough time to go by and look at it from the air.”
This interested Dr. Whittaker.
“Is the settlement in a Forestry Service district or on private lands?” he asked.
Anders could swear his dad was already calculating contacting the land owners. If so, Ranger Jedrusinski’s response must have dashed his hopes for finagling a way closer to the treecats.
“Oh, it’s safely in a Forestry Service district,” she said, obviously thinking Dr. Whittaker had wanted to be reassured that the treecats were safe. “The fire was on nearby privately held lands and, unfortunately, fire is no respecter of human boundaries.”
“Ranger Jedrusinski,” Anders asked. “I’ve been wondering. Just what is a Forestry Service district? Are they public lands? And are the treecats only protected if they’re in a district?”
The ranger looked distinctly uncomfortable, but she didn’t dodge his question.
“Forestry Service districts are lands that are actually owned by the Crown. We simply administer them. Currently, our policy is to preserve them as relatively pristine territories. This hasn’t always made us popular with some local residents who feel that Crown lands should be exploited-they prefer words like ‘utilized’-for human profit. As for the treecats…I don’t think the Crown would like to hear of anyone mistreating any wildlife, but it’s certainly a lot harder for us to enforce such policies on private lands.”
Dr. Whittaker’s interest in questions of land ownership had vanished as soon as he learned he still had to deal with the SFS.
“Ranger Jedrusinski, will we have an opportunity to get out and take a closer look at the treecat colony site?”
“We’ll just look today,” Ranger Jedrusinski replied. “Maybe later. We’ll want to observe and see if the treecats have actually abandoned it. Sometimes they leave for short periods of time. It’s possible that the fire in that area led the inhabitants to temporarily relocate.”
“I’m puzzled,” said Kesia Guyen, the linguistics expert. “Why don’t you know more about the treecats? Stephanie Harrington first encountered them in late 1518. I would think that in three years you would at least have major settlements marked.”
Something in Ranger Jedrusinski’s tone told Karl she’d answered this question a lot. “First of all, although Stephanie now admits to having first seen the treecat now called ‘Lionheart’ in late 1518, she didn’t share the information immediately. It wasn’t until March of 1519 that the rest of us were let in on the secret-and I wonder if we would have been then, except that Lionheart was so badly injured that he couldn’t escape and his clan chose to stay and support him.
“That brings me to a point you can’t overlook. Humans have been on Sphinx since 1422. We didn’t see our first treecats until nearly a hundred years later. That means they chose to hide from us.”
“But now you know they’re there.” Guyen’s protest was phrased politely enough that Anders felt pretty certain she was showing off for Dad-after all, he was the boss. “Couldn’t you do satellite surveys, use infrared to detect clusters that might indicate population density?”
Such options had been debated quite seriously when the research design for this mission was being put together. When he’d listened, Anders had thought the suggestions quite reasonable, so much so that he was surprised to hear Ranger Jedrusinski laugh in genuine amusement.
“It’s wonderful to talk to someone who’s as interested in treecats as some of us at SFS are. I wish the rest
