Worlds of Honor

'Roger that, they'll lift you out, no problem.'

'Thanks. Am I acting as official coroner for the crash?'

'Yes, you've got the job and thanks, Scott. I'd appreciate the help out there.'

'Right. I'll begin the preliminary medical exams and investigation, although it's pretty obvious what the cause of death was.'

'Copy that, and I'm sorry you had to be the one to find them.'

'Yeah. Thanks. Just get that crash team out here, will you? It's going to be a long night.'

'Roger that. The cavalry's on the way.'

Their com units fell silent. Young Karl looked like a boy who needed to be violently ill and was holding himself under control by willpower alone. Scott sympathized. 'Somebody should stand watch outside. With that hatch open, God knows what will be drawn by the scent. What else,' he added, since it was clear that small scavengers had already found their way through the broken windows to take advantage of a macabre meal. 'Take a spare rifle, too.' He handed his to Karl.

'Yessir,' the boy slurred out through his surgical mask. He took the rifle with a hand that was steady enough to suit, but exited hastily.

'What can I do?' Aleksandr asked heavily.

'Dig through the cargo and the storage bins, see if you can find a portable generator and some lights. This is going to take a while and the sun's going down. And call Irina, let her know what's happened.'

The elder Zivonik nodded and started his search, keying his wrist com to call his waiting sister and wife. His voice, speaking softly, drifted back to Scott as Aleksandr broke the news to his family.

Scott tried to comfort the grieving treecat one last time and had to fight blurriness in his eyes when the 'cat clung to his hand, looking up with such a pleading expression he could hardly bear to meet the treecat's steady green gaze.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'There's nothing I can do for him. I'm sorry.'

Thin, three-fingered hands tightened briefly around his fingers. 'Bleek . . .'

He crouched down, face-to-face with the treecat. 'What?' he asked a little hopelessly, hating the language barrier that put such an uncrossable chasm between them. 'Surely you understand there's nothing anyone can do? I can't help him. What is it you're trying to tell me?'

'Bleek!'

Scott listened hard with his emotions, with that sixth sense he'd inherited from generations of Scottish 'sensitives,' trying to make some sense of what he was feeling reflected through Fisher and perhaps even directly from this treecat. The chaotic emotions churning through him were far stronger now than they'd ever been with just Fisher alone. Overwhelming grief and loneliness . . . pain and exhaustion . . . and threading through it all like a trickle of hot, spilt blood, unending, anguished rage. He shut his eyes, trying to fathom the anger he was all but tasting, it was so strong. Why anger? Was this little treecat merely expressing the anger felt by many another victim of disaster, who'd lost a loved one in a senseless vehicle crash? Or was it something else, something deeper? More . . . sinister?

Scott blinked at the agitated treecat in sudden surprise. Sinister? Why had that particular word popped into his mind? The treecat was clutching tightly at his hand, clawtips just barely unsheathed, pressing into his skin. Scott stared into eyes the color of summer grass and wondered why he was feeling a dark suspicion that something about this seemingly ordinary crash was not quite right. What wasn't right, he couldn't begin to hazard a guess—and trying to pin down concrete reasons from the nebulous feelings received from a treecat was almost as difficult as trying to travel between star systems without Warshawski sails.

But suspicion lingered, a strong undercurrent of the anger reflected so powerfully by the treecats. Was the grieving 'cat suspicious of the circumstances of his friend's death? Or had the co-pilot been suspicious of something and the treecat was trying to pass along that feeling to Scott? According to the air car's markings, this was a BioNeering cargo vehicle. Scott didn't know very much about BioNeering, other than they'd set up business a couple of T-years back and had been expanding their business steadily, providing welcome jobs and cashflow for the Sphinxian export economy.

Other than that, he'd paid little attention to the company, having more than enough to keep him busy, what with his far-flung, madly pro-creative and fairly accident-prone patients, his occasional escapes into the wilds to go fishing, and—ever since that last, disastrous fishing expedition—learning everything he could get his hands on about Sphinxian treecats while recording his own daily, ever-wondrous discoveries. He hadn't had time to go fishing since and hadn't really missed it, not with his remarkable new friend to try and understand.

Huddled on the buckled floor plates of a blood-stained wreck, Scott gazed quietly into a heartbroken stray treecat's luminous green eyes and found himself vowing that he would get to the bottom of this mystery, whatever it took. If suspicion existed in this treecat's mind, then a careful investigation was warranted. If suspicion had existed in the human co-pilot's mind . . . then an even more cautious investigation was called for. People didn't carry around suspicions strong enough to leave a treecat in this pitiful state without good reason.

And if a reason existed, Scott MacDallan intended to unearth it.

In the sepulchral darkness beyond the blaze of artificial lights, they gathered, arriving silently to sit in the branches of the trees overlooking the place of disaster. The hunters and scouts of Walks in Moonlight Clan mourned, even as they listened to the voices of the two-legs who had finally discovered the flying machine which had come crashing down from the sky two hands of days before. The two-legs had come at last to this clearing of sorrow to reclaim their own. Walks in Moonlight Clan had come to learn the song of their grieving brother from Bright Heart Clan.

Within the ring of alert hunters and scouts, Clear Singer sat with her tail curled primly around her true-feet, ears cocked toward the alien voices, which she had never heard directly before. Memory singers did not leave a clan's central nesting place without great cause, but True Stalker would not leave the remains of his friend until the two-leg responsible for that friend's death was punished—and for that to happen, the other two-leg, who walked with Swift Striker of Laughing River Clan, must somehow be made to understand what had happened.

It was beyond the hope of a starving, grief-stricken hunter and a simple scout, even working together, to make a mind-blind two-leg understand the evil done here. But if Clear Singer added her own mind voice, perhaps enough could be communicated to the mind-blind two-leg called 'Scott' that the truth would be discovered? Clear Singer could hope, for a grievous wrong had been done and if she succeeded, that wrong might at least be known, even though it could never be righted.

Clear Singer seethed with frustration, unsure of herself as she had never been when questions of right and wrong among the People were at issue. They knew so very little of the two-legs! There were those among the People, some in her own Clan, who had called for an immediate withdrawal from the two-legs, as too dangerous to risk further association with, when word had spread of the disaster in this clearing and its dreadful cause.

Yet retreat was not the wise course, Clear Singer could see that as clearly as Sings Truly of Bright Water Clan had seen it when the spring was still new and Climbs Quickly had first bonded with a two-leg youngling. Yes, two-legs could be dangerous. The People had known that when the decision to reveal themselves, to actively seek out more bonds with two-legs, had been made and carried out. That decision had been the right one, Clear Singer knew that in her heart, for the two-legs could be tremendous allies, as well. Already the People had learned things that had improved countless lives, in dozens—hundreds—of clans.

And murder was not unknown, even among the People.

What Clear Singer did not know was how the two-legs viewed the deliberate killing of their kind by one of their own number. If Clear Singer accomplished the impossible, if she somehow communicated with a mind-blind creature like the two-leg Scott, if she somehow made him understand that murder had been done in this tree- shattered clearing, what would the two-legs do? A creature that would murder three of its own companions could not be trusted to remain at large amongst its own kind, nor could the People risk letting such a creature walk loose. A mind-sick two-leg who would destroy its companions could never be trusted to refrain from committing murder against the People—and after what True Stalker had seen and heard and had done to him, he had more than ample reason to fear for his very life.

If True Stalker went back with the two-legs, trying to bring the killer's actions to light—without the two-leg Scott understanding what True Stalker returned to—Clear Singer feared the grieving Bright Heart hunter would not