Worlds of Honor

seeing some sign of daylight coming down from above by now, shouldn't I? Am I even still going up? Or did I get turned around somehow by those limbs? Have I started digging downward again? 

She didn't know. She only knew she couldn't stop.

'What is it, Stinker?' Honor asked. She knelt beside Nimitz in the gathering twilight, and the 'cat sat up on his rearmost limbs, reaching up to pat her chest urgently. His eyes bored into hers like augers, and she knew he was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't quite bring herself to believe the most logical explanation. Treecats had been used over the years in search and rescue efforts on Sphinx, but not as often as one might have expected, for the range at which they could sense human beings they'd never met before appeared to be limited. There had been instances of 'cats who were able to home in on total strangers at distances of up to a hundred or even two hundred meters, even under the most adverse conditions, but such cases were extremely rare—more the stuff of rumors and legends than recorded fact. More to the point, perhaps, Honor couldn't recall ever having seen any indication from Nimitz that he might be capable of such a feat. Besides, they were over three hundred meters beyond the line the alpine SAR teams had calculated as the furthest any of the lift cars might have been carried from the lift tower. The shouts and machinery sounds of the rescue effort were small and lost here, little stronger than the whine and moan of the gathering wind, and she looked around, trying to see anything that might have brought him here.

The 'cat made a sound, half-pleading and half-commanding, that dragged her attention back to him. He captured her eyes once more, and then he took his right true-hand from her chest and made an unmistakable gesture with it. A gesture that pointed straight down into the snow.

'Here?' As well as she knew him, Honor couldn't quite keep the doubt out of her voice. 'You think there's someone down there?'

Nimitz bleeked loudly, then chittered at her and nodded hard. She looked around once more, back to where the stump of the lift—the better part of two kilometers from where she knelt—poked up out of the snow, tiny with distance. There was no way a lift car could have been carried this far, she told herself. Was there? Yet Nimitz seemed so positive. . . .

'All right, Stinker,' she sighed. 'What do we have to lose?'

The 'cat bleeked again, even louder, as she keyed her com once more. And then, as she started to speak into it, he turned and began to burrow into the snow himself. Snow tunnels were a game he and Honor had played often during her childhood on Sphinx, and it was remarkable how rapidly a six-limbed creature with centimeter-long claws could tear through snow. By the time Honor was done speaking on the com, he was two meters down and going strong.

Susan froze. For a moment, her mind was too foggy and confused to tell her why it had stopped her, and then she realized she'd heard something. It seemed impossible, after so long sealed up alone with the sound of her own breath roaring in her ears, yet she was certain she truly had heard something. She strained her ears, and then her heart gave a tremendous lurch. She had heard it! A scraping, scratching sound, like something moving through snow—something moving towards her! 

She screamed, lunging suddenly in her dark little world, thrusting towards the sound, fighting her way up out of the endless blackness. She punched and kicked and ripped at the snow, and then, suddenly, her right fist broke through some final barrier into open air and she froze once more, unable to move, paralyzed with a strange terror which dared not believe she might actually have clawed her way back into the upper world at last. She wanted to shout, to move, to cry out for help, to do something. . . and she couldn't. She couldn't move at all, and so she simply lay there.

But then something touched her hand. Strong, wiry fingers closed on her wrist, holding it, and something soft and silken pressed against her torn and bleeding palm. A half-heard, half-felt croon of comfort burned into her, and Susan Hibson went limp, sobbing in a sudden torrent of relief like agony as the reassurance of that touch filled her.

'Where do you want us, Ma'am?' Sergeant Wells panted as she and her squad slithered to a halt beside Honor. The sergeant carried a powerful hand lamp against the gathering darkness, and her people carried hand tractors and pressers and shovels. Honor ran her eyes over them once, then nodded for them to follow her.

'Over this way,' she said, leading the way back towards Nimitz.

'We're a long way beyond the search line, Ma'am,' Wells pointed out diffidently, and Honor nodded.

'I know. Call it a hunch.'

'A hunch, Ma'am?'

'That's right, but it's not really mine. It's—'

She stopped dead, so abruptly Wells almost ran into her, but neither of them really thought about that. They were staring down into the hole burrowed into the churned white surface, to where a small, dark-skinned hand, torn and bloodied, thrust out of a wall of snow and a cream-and-gray treecat cradled it against his chest while his eyes blazed like green fire in the glow of the sergeant's lamp.

Ranjit Hibson's eyelids fluttered open.

For a long moment he simply lay there, drowsy and content and warm. For some reason it seemed wrong for him to feel that way, but he couldn't quite remem—

'Susan!'

His eyes flew wide, and he jerked up in the bed. Susan! Where was—?!

'It's all right, Ranjit,' a familiar voice said, and his head snapped around as someone touched his shoulder. 'I'm fine,' the voice told him, and he gasped in terrible relief as his sister sat down on the edge of his bed and smiled at him. It was her old, indomitable smile—almost . . . with just a shadow of remembered darkness behind it—and he reached out to touch her bruised face with gentle, wondering fingers.

'Sooze,' he half-whispered, and her green eyes gleamed with suspicious wetness as she caught his hand and held it to her cheek. Her own hands were heavily bandaged, and his mouth tightened as he saw how carefully she touched him. But she saw his borning frown and shook her head quickly.

'It's not that bad,' she reassured him. 'I skinned them and cut them some and broke one finger, but the quick heal's already working on them. They'll be all better a long time before your legs will. And speaking of legs—' a spark of true anger glittered in her eyes '—why didn't you tell me you were bleeding like that!'

'I didn't know for sure that I was,' he replied, still drinking in her face and the fact that she was alive. 'Besides, there wasn't anything you could've done except what you did do—go for help—so why should I have worried you with it? You had enough on your mind, Sooze.'

'Yeah,' she said after a moment, and lowered her eyes to his hand. 'Yeah, I guess I did, at that.'

'Indeed she did,' another voice said, and Ranjit's head snapped around toward the hospital room's door. Kalindi and Liesell Hibson stood there, each with an arm around the other, and Kalindi's smile seemed to waver just a bit as he tried to keep his voice steady. 'You both did. And we're proud of you both. Very proud.'

'Mom—Dad—' Ranjit stared at his parents and, to his horror, heard his own hoarseness and felt the hot burn of tears. He was too old to bawl like a baby, he told himself, and it didn't do any good at all as he felt his face crumple. Horrible embarrassment engulfed him, but there was nothing he could do about it . . . and a moment later, it didn't matter, for his mother was there, with her arms around him, hugging him close while he sobbed into her shoulder. Her hands stroked his back, and he heard her murmuring the words of comfort he was much too old to need . . . and needed anyway. He raised his head, staring at her through his tears, and his father reached across her shoulder to ruffle his hair as he had when Ranjit was only a boy.

'I-I'm sorry,' he got our finally. 'I promised . . . promised I'd take care of Sooze, and instead—'

'Forgive me for intruding,' another voice said dryly from the open door, 'but I tend to doubt they expected your promise to be binding on a mountain, Ranjit.'

He blinked on his tears, and Csilla Berczi smiled at him. The teacher's expression commiserated with his wounded adolescent pride, yet it also congratulated him for having the good sense to ignore it.

'May I come in?' she asked.

'It's Ranjit's room,' Liesell said with a small smile, and looked at her son.