and a half
And so, to her considerable bemusement, she'd returned to Grayson not aboard an RMN or GSN cruiser or destroyer and not accompanied by a single treecat. Instead, she'd returned in state aboard the fifty-k-ton, private registry
She was helping Samantha and Nimitz establish the first extra-Sphinxian colony of treecats. For whatever reason, her two friends and, obviously, the rest of Nimitz's clan had decided it was time to plant their kind on another planet, and that represented a quantum leap in their relationship with humanity. It might also prove that they were more intelligent than even Honor had suspected.
She knew Nimitz, at least, understood that the Star Kingdom was at war, and he'd had entirely too close a view, on occasion, of what humanity's weapons were capable of in ship-to-ship combat. It was entirely possible that other 'cats had seen what could happen when those weapons were used against planetary targets and shared the information with him, or perhaps he'd simply extrapolated the possible consequences from what he'd seen himself. Whatever anyone else might think, Honor had always known he was brighter than most two-footed people, and she'd asked him pointblank if an awareness of the military threat was behind this extraordinary departure in the behavior of his species. As always, there'd been a frustrating fuzziness to some of the nuances of his reply, but the gist of it had come through clearly enough.
Yes, he and Samantha
Did Nimitz report back to his clan on all that he'd seen and done with her between their visits home? Had the 'cats decided long ago that they needed to keep an eye on the humans, who had invaded their world? Given the ability of humanity's technology to destroy, as well as help, observing and studying the newcomers certainly would have made sense. Honor had never asked Nimitz outright if he reported to his clan, but she'd gradually become certain he did. Not that it bothered her.
But his clan's decision to establish extraplanetary colonies suggested a more highly developed policy- making ability than even the most free thinking 'cat experts had been prepared to posit. Not only did it require them to carry out some pretty sophisticated threat analysis, but it presupposed an ability to formulate a
In the meantime, however, she had to deal with the more immediate consequences of the decision to immigrate. At least it had provided Samantha and Nimitz with a generous number of baby-sitters, and given the appalling energy and inquisitiveness of their offspring, that was a not inconsequential benefit. More than that, the others had shown a far greater willingness to interact with humans than most 'wild' 'cats did. Honor hadn't tried them in a large crowd yet, but neither MacGuiness nor her twelve armsmen bothered them in any way. In fact, each of the eight newcomers had been taken around the entire crowd of humans and formally and individually introduced by Nimitz or Samantha. Most of them had followed Nimitz’s example and adopted the custom of shaking hands, and the nods and ear flicks and flirted tails of the ones who hadn't had clearly been intended as formal gestures of greeting.
They'd taken the move aboard ship with equal aplomb, and they'd abided by Honor's strict injunctions not to go running about unaccompanied by a human. Like Nimitz and Samantha, they clearly understood human technology could kill by accident, as well as design, and they'd not only exhibited their own willingness to avoid such dangers but guarded the kittens against any similar risk with undeviating attentiveness.
But within thirty minutes, the GSN pinnace which had come up to collect Honor and her party from the
Graysons human settlers had always faced serious environmental limitations. In many respects, the entire planet could have been considered a vast toxic waste dump, where human-habitable enclaves could be carved out only through unremitting effort and where draconian birth control had been required for a millennium. The situation had grown steadily better over the past three T-centuries and, especially, the last decade. When Grayson first joined the Manticoran Alliance, it had been laboriously pulling itself up by its own bootstraps via space-based industry and orbital farms. That process had been hugely accelerated when a youthful engineer named Adam Gerrick came to his newly installed Steadholders office with a proposal to build entire planetary farms under domes constructed of the advanced materials the Alliance had made available. His audacious plan had been well beyond the resources of Harrington Steading... but not beyond the off-world resources of
That was one of several reasons her personal wealth was expanding at an almost geometric rate. There were others, of course. As Willard had promised her, once her working capital passed a certain point, it became almost a self-sustaining reaction. She was even beginning to understand the inner workings of high finance, though she remained far out of the class of a wily old financier like Neufsteiler. But the impact on Grayson had been to provide an enormous expansion in safe habitats and relax many oj the traditional restrictions on birth rates.
Now she, or, more precisely, Nimitz's clan, proposed to introduce a second intelligent species into that mix. To be sure, it might be some time before most Graysons fully grasped that the 'cats were another
It had been rather refreshing for both Honor and Nimitz to meet an entire planet of people who were willing to accept the 'cat on his own terms, but it did mean the Graysons were also more likely to grasp that Nimitz and Samantha's new friends were, in effect, the opening wedge of an invasion. A friendly one, perhaps, but still an invasion. One of Honor's traditional authorities as Steadholder Harrington was to decide how many and which