A New Clan

Book : Star Kingdom (Weber)

by David Weber, Jane Lindskold

Genres: YA Science Fiction

Synopsis

A NEW NOVEL FEATURING STEPHANIE HARRINGTON IN HONORVERSE PREQUEL SERIES 

Sex! Drugs! Rock ‘n’ Roll! And Treecats!

Freshly home from an internship on Manticore, teenaged Stephanie Harrington is up to her eyebrows in trouble.

There’s the new treecat adoptee who needs to be kept from becoming a risk to the carefully guarded secret of just how smart the arboreal inhabitants of Sphinx really are.

There’s the overeager journalist whose campaign to protect the treecats from exploitation as the newest, coolest pet on any planet could threaten the very creatures he seeks to defend.

And there’s the mysterious rash of weird accidents that are plaguing Sphinx’s younger inhabitants—including some of those nearest and dearest to Stephanie.

In trying to get enough proof to get the understaffed authorities of her pioneer planet to act, Stephanie will be called upon to attempt things she never imaged doing—including going undercover into the wilds of the late-night club scene, a realm where her faithful treecat guardian, Lionheart, cannot follow….

About Fire Season: 
“I loved it. A thrilling, edge-of-the-seat read—I couldn't put it down!” Tamora Pierce, author of New York Times best-selling Beka Cooper series

About series debut novel A Beautiful Friendship:
“[A] stellar introduction to a new YA science-fiction series set in the Honorverse of Weber’s popular adult novels. It’s rare to find teen science fiction that strays beyond popular dystopian fare. The environmental messages, human-animal friendship, humor, action, and inventive technology will make this series starter an easy hit with teen sf readers.” –Booklist

About David Weber and the Honor Harrington series:
“. . . Everything you could want in a heroine . . . plenty of action.”—Science Fiction Age

“Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!”—Anne McCaffrey

“Compelling combat combined with engaging characters for a great space opera adventure.”—Locus

“Weber combines realistic, engaging characters with intelligent technological projection. Fans of this venerable space opera will rejoice.”—Publishers Weekly

Comprehensive Teacher's Guide available.

Release date: June 7, 2022

Publisher: Baen

Print pages: 352

Sample

1

HEART OF STONE

 

<You must go, Stone Shaper.>

<No.>

<You must!>

<I am here. I am staying here.>

<Please, beloved. Please leave me.>

<No.> Stone Shaper ran his true-hand gently down Golden Eye’s muzzle, his eyes dark. <You are my life. I will not leave you. I will never leave you, so you must not leave me.>

<But I have no choice.> His mate’s mind-voice was weaker, her mind-glow darker, and he lay down beside her, wrapping her limp body in all six of his limbs, burying his muzzle against the side of her neck. <I have no choice,> Golden Eye repeated, <but you do. Our children, the clan. They need you, and you must stay.>

<I am in the only place I “must” stay,> he told her. <You are my life. I will never leave you.>

<I do not want you to die, too.>

<I know that.> He tasted the pain in her mind-glow, her desperate wish for him to live, but he could not give her what she wanted. Not after so many hands of hands of seasons when she had been the center of his entire world. He could not save her, and he knew that, but this much he could give her, that she did not die alone.

<I know that,> he repeated gently, <but we are one. We have been since first I tasted your mind-glow, and we have always been there for one another. I will not be less than we have been here, at the very end. So rest, beloved.> His arms tightened about her. <Rest, and I will be here, holding you safe.>

<I love you.> He could scarcely hear her mind-voice now, and he pressed his muzzle closer against her neck. <I love you.>

<I know.>

****

 

“Have either of you seen Mack or Zack this morning?” Lady Danette Schardt-Cordova, Baroness Schardt-Cordova, asked, poking her head into the farmhouse breakfast nook.

“Mom, it’s not even nine o’clock and it’s a Saturday,” Dana, the oldest of her three daughters replied, looking up from her book reader. “You really think we’re going to see either of them before noon?” She cocked her head. “You haven’t been sampling the hard cider again, have you?”

“I have not,” Danette retorted with admirable calm. “I never sample it before ten a.m., and you know it, young lady!”

“Just wondering what makes you think either of them are going to show before afternoon on a weekend. I honestly don’t think Zack got back much before dawn. Is there something you need that Natalie and I”—she twitched her head in her youngest sister’s direction—“could take care of?”

“Oh, Gee, thanks,” Natalie said, looking up from her corn flakes. At fourteen T-years, she was ten T-years younger than Dana. She was also ten centimeters taller, which Dana considered a gross miscarriage of genetic justice. “It’s not like I had anything planned this morning, either.”

She rolled her eyes, and her mother chuckled.

“Actually, I need to talk to the boys about the logging pattern for the firebreak. Do either of you know if Mack got the software upgrade on the saws loaded?”

“No,” Dana said in a more serious tone. “I know he copied it, but he said something about needing to tweak it.” She snorted suddenly. “I think what he actually said was ‘Those saws are so ancient they wouldn’t even recognize this app if they—you should pardon the expression—saw it.’”

It was Danette’s turn to roll her eyes. She could just hear Mack Kemper saying exactly that in the full expectation that Dana would repeat it to her. Zack was the more flamboyant brother, but Mack had a quietly mischievous streak which had served him well over the years.

The temptation to smile faded. The Schardt-Cordova and the Kemper families had been friends since before the colony ship Jason ever departed the Solar System. They’d invested in the colony early and settled adjacent claims, and Danette and Bart Kemper had both been first-generation Sphinxians.

But the Plague Years had been hard on both families. Danette had lost three siblings and her mother in the first wave, and the Kempers had suffered an equally severe death rate. She was one of the people (there were quite a few of them, especially on Sphinx) who’d thought the new Constitution’s provision ennobling the survivors of the original shareholders was silly, and it certainly couldn’t compensate for all the loss and grief they’d suffered, but it had been ratified only after the worst was over. She’d thought of the title as the bookend for the long, bitter battle against the Plague. After all, they’d finally perfected an effective vaccine in 

1496, hadn’t they? Which had only made the final outbreak on Sphinx in 1510—the one that had hit fourteen years after the vaccine, when everyone thought it was over, the monster had been slain; the one the vaccine hadn’t stopped dead in its tracks—hurt even worse.

Stringent quarantine and a medical system built and honed in the face of the Plague’s original onslaught had kept it tightly confined, restricted to an isolated geographic area on a single one of the Star Kingdom’s inhabited worlds, and prevented the sort of pandemic which had made the original plague so horrific. The death rate had been only a hiccup, compared to the staggering death tolls of the Plague Years, but it had hit hard before the medics managed to tweak the vaccine…and Danette had found herself a single mother at the same time Zack and Mack had found themselves orphans.

It had seemed so bitterly unfair, so cruel, of the universe to deal them such a blow once they’d finally begun to trust life once more. To be confident there would be a tomorrow, and another tomorrow after that, for the people they loved. Yet Danette had survived that blow as she had so many others, and she’d done it by refusing to give in. By refusing to break and fail the people she still had to love.

That had been twelve T-years ago, when Mack had been only six and Zack had been only four. There’d never been any question who was going to take the boys, and not just because they were on adjacent claims, and “Aunt Danette” had never regretted her decision.

Like many of the Plague’s survivors, they had their own share of psychic wounds. Mack was very much the quieter of the two, but even Zack—who delighted in his exuberant, artistic (or “artsy-fartsy,” to use Mack’s occasionally repressive term) personality—had people to mourn, and not just his own parents. Neither of them allowed that to get them down, however, and they had injected a welcome dose of mischief into the Schardt-Cordova household.

Oh, they could be a handful, and she would never admit to them how big a place they had in her heart. They knew; she’d just never admit it! And they’d more than earned their keep as she struggled to keep both claims up and running. She was going to miss them—a lot—when they moved back onto their own claim again in another T-year or so. The Kemper homestead was located on the East Ridge River in the now-Barony of Kemper’s southeastern quadrant, only about ninety kilometers (barely ten or eleven minutes by air) from this very breakfast nook, and she knew they’d still be around, if only because neither of them was a particularly good cook. But it wouldn’t be the same, somehow.

“You say Zack didn’t get back until dawn?” she asked after a moment, and Dana nodded. “And you know this because—?”

“Because she got back about the same time the boys did,” Natalie offered.

“You did?” Danette looked at her older daughter speculatively, and Dana flushed slightly.

“Mom, I’m twenty-three!”

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” Danette said mildly. “I was only…expressing a parental interest. Do you plan on introducing him—whoever he is—to us sometime soon? I only ask so that I can plan the number of place settings for dinner tomorrow, you understand. No rush.”

“Mom!”

“Okay. Okay! Just teasing.” Danette smiled broadly, but the truth was that she had a pretty fair idea where—and with whom—Dana had been, and she approved wholeheartedly. Not that she had any intention of giving up such excellent ammunition!

“And do either of you know where Cordelia might be this fair morning?”

“She’s out on that survey you asked for. She grabbed some cold cereal and left about thirty minutes ago. She took a couple of sandwiches with her, too. Said she probably won’t be back until after lunch.”

“She went alone?” Danette frowned, and Dana shrugged.

“I offered to go with her, but she said she’s fine. She took her rifle and Barnaby.”

Danette nodded, although not in complete satisfaction. They really needed that survey along the Red Bank Bottoms completed before the loggers moved in, but it was a long way from the house—or help—if something went wrong. On the other hand, all three of her girls were excellent shots—people in the Sphinxian bush tended to take marksmanship seriously—and Barnaby was a Meyerdahl Rottweiler. The huge dog stood almost eighty centimeters at the shoulder and, at seventy-three kilos, outweighed Natalie by a considerable margin. He was also both smart and fiercely protective. Between him and her rifle, Cordelia should be fine, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to experience a rather firm mother-to-daughter counseling session when she got home.

Or maybe not, Danette thought. She is eighteen now, and you know darned well she’s an awfully mature eighteen. All the girls are. That’s what happens when you grow up on a planet where forty percent or so of the people died in a plague before you were even born.

And aren’t I a cheerful soul this early in the morning?

“Okay,” she said out loud. “What are you two planning for the day?”

“I told Nat I’d run her into Twin Forks after lunch,” Dana replied. “That swim club they’ve been trying to set up is having an actual organizational meeting at the Y this afternoon.”

“Great!” Danette nodded enthusiastically. The planetary data net, coms, uni-links, and computerized classrooms let kids from all over Sphinx “meet” one another, but the Schardt-Cordova claim—only it was now the “Barony of Schardt-Cordova,” of course—was a hundred kilometers on a side, and it was still smaller than a dozen other claims she could think of right off hand. Distances like that meant young folks stuck out in the bush got less physical “face time” with their age cohorts than she wished they could. VR was better than nothing

, but it just wasn’t the same. She’d experienced the same sort of isolation, growing up, and she was in favor of anything that might involve actual group activities for her kids, although swimming wasn’t the very first one that would have sprung to mind.

Sphinx’s enormous orbit imposed lengthy seasons, and its average temperature was significantly lower than that of either Manticore or Gryphon, the Manticore Binary System’s other two habitable worlds, to begin with. Gryphon experienced a far more extreme seasonal swing each year, but Sphinx was the dictionary definition of “really, really, really cold” over the course of its sixteen-T-month-long winter. Even at the height of summer, Sphinx’s natural bodies were scarcely what anyone would call warm, but at the moment, they were halfway through autumn. True, this summer had been exceptionally hot (for Sphinx) and dry, with far too many forest fires. The fall weather was continuing the same drought pattern, but at least it was cooling toward something a native-born Sphinxian considered comfortable…and anyone else would call “brisk.” Which meant that even though Twin Forks was almost four hundred kilometers away from Schardt-Cordova—a good forty-five-minute flight, one way—the Y’s indoor heated pool had much to recommend it.

And so does the ice cream at the Red Letter Café, she reflected. Well, they work hard, my girls. They deserve an afternoon or two off, especially on the weekend.

“All right, that works for me. But let me know before you leave. I need a few things from town. I’ll put a list together.”

“Gotcha,” Dana agreed.

“And now to go beard the hexapuma. We’ve got to get those saws up and running by Monday, so wish me luck!”

“Dang, I wish you hadn’t kept us out so late,” Mack Kemper groused as he landed the air car in the clearing. The original Kempers and Schardt-Cordovas had chosen their claim sites in no small part because of how well watered they were, and despite the drought, enough moisture hovered in the air to produce a cool mist, and sunlight slanting through the towering crown oak canopy created gilded bars of gold.

“I kept us out so late?” Zack looked at him. “Who was that guy you were sitting with, again?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mack pressed the button and his nostrils flared appreciatively as the canopy slid back and the earthy scent of the forest reached them. “And his name, as you know perfectly well, was Brad. Jealous?”

“Not my type, man,” Zack replied. “Way too nerdy.”

“Nerdy?” Mack looked at him in disbelief as he climbed out of the air car and took his rifle from the rack. “This from the guy who came in second in the planetary ‘Call of Earth’ 

competition? You seriously want to call someone else ‘nerdy’?”

“Asks the guy who came in first in the planetary competition,” Zack observed to no one in particular as he collected his own weapon—he preferred a shotgun rather than a rifle—and checked the chamber. “I, unlike certain other people, game because my sensitive and artistic nature craves expression. Some people, on the other hand, game because they don’t have much of a life outside VR. I mention no names, of course. That would be tacky.”

“I am so gonna smack you upside the head the next time we square off in ‘Death Match,’ buddy!” Mack warned him with a chuckle.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard it all before.”

Mack tapped the remote and the canopy slid shut. Most dangerous Sphinxian wildlife tended to be on the large side, like hexapumas and peak bears. There were a few smaller critters who could be decidedly unpleasant, however, and finding one of them perched in the air car when they got back to it was not high on his Good Things list. Besides, they weren’t far from several of the bigger near-beaver ponds. The sleek, six-limbed beasties had a pronounced fondness for chewing air car upholstery into shreds, and the near-possums were even worse.

“So, let’s go kick some saws in the ass,” he said, and Zack shrugged.

“I’m just here because someone dragged me out of my hard-earned sleep to make sure nothing ate him,” he replied. “But that’s okay! Don’t mind my sleep-deprived state. Nothing I’d rather do than keep an eye on my brother’s back!”

“I sure wish Cordelia hadn’t grabbed Barnaby this morning,” Mack said thoughtfully, leading the way through the misty sun shafts toward the hulking mass of the nearest robotic logger. “He’s a lot quieter than you are!”

Stone, who had once been called Stone Shaper, lay stretched along the net-wood branch in the sunlight. He would have to change position soon if he wanted to stay in its warmth, and he did. The world had moved into leaf-turning hands of hands of days ago. The cold days would not be upon him tomorrow, but soon enough. Soon enough.

So I have seen yet another green season, he thought, looking out through the forest. I suppose that is an achievement.

He rolled onto his back, presenting his belly fur to the sun, and closed his eyes as he remembered. There were memory songs about others like him. Not many, but a few. He had always wondered why those other People had so stubbornly survived. Now it was his turn, and he could no more answer the question now than he could have then.

I should have ended and gone with her, he thought yet again. It was not a helpful thought. He knew that…and he could no more stop thinking it than he could have flown.

The truth was that he had expected to do exactly that, even if the gray death had not taken him, as well. People seldom survived the loss of their mates, especially when they were as deeply bonded as he and Golden Eye. Indeed, he had not wanted to survive when he realized he must lose her.

The gray death struck only rarely, but the People knew its signs well…and that almost all of those touched by it died. None of the memory songs told what caused it. It wasn’t like eating death weed or any of the other poisonous plants. It didn’t come from bad water, or from death sting venom. It just…happened, and it spread like wildfire in fire season. The only defense against it was to stay away from those afflicted by it. That was why the rest of Bright Water Clan had moved its nests from the golden-leaf in which he and Golden Eye had built their own nest. Neither he nor Golden Eye had blamed them for that decision. The clan’s hunters and scouts had brought food and left it for them at a safe distance, and their friends and the mind-healers had stayed close enough to mind-speak them every day. Bright Water had not abandoned them. In fact, it had refused to, and it had done only what it must to save the rest of the clan.

Stone Shaper understood that. It was what had happened later that had driven him from the clan and its central nesting place forever.

And that was not Bright Water’s fault, either. It was his own, because he had not died.

The gray death was not the only sickness that could kill. True, it killed far more of those it struck than most of those other sicknesses. Yet what made it especially terrifying to the People was what happened to so many of the tiny number of People it did not kill.

He remembered the day he had finally reemerged from the darkness he had thought was death. He remembered awakening, remembered the aching, awful silence where his beloved mate’s mind-glow had been. Remembered the terrible grief, the need to follow her back into the darkness, never to emerge.

Yet he had not. Something had stopped him. Perhaps it was Golden Eye’s forever-silent mind-voice whispering to him out of the stillness, telling him to live. Perhaps it was simple obstinacy on his own part. Golden Eye had always told him he was the most stubborn Person she had ever known, so perhaps that was the reason.

Or perhaps I just needed to make my life a curse upon the world. Proof that it cannot kill everything I love only because it could kill the Person I loved more than all the rest of it combined.

He had borne Golden Eye’s still, stiff body up from their nesting place to the fork at the very top of the golden-leaf and placed her where the cleansing wind, the bright sunshine, could bear her spirit to that other place where he hoped she awaited him. And then he had returned to their empty nest, waited the double-hand of days that proved the gray death had left him, mourning her in silence, before he went out once more to meet the clan.

The truth was that he had expected to do exactly that, even if the gray death had not taken him, as well. People seldom survived the loss of their mates, especially when they were as deeply bonded as he and Golden Eye. Indeed, he had not wanted to survive when he realized he must lose her.

The gray death struck only rarely, but the People knew its signs well…and that almost all of those touched by it died. None of the memory songs told what caused it. It wasn’t like eating death weed or any of the other poisonous plants. It didn’t come from bad water, or from death sting venom. It just…happened, and it spread like wildfire in fire season. The only defense against it was to stay away from those afflicted by it. That was why the rest of Bright Water Clan had moved its nests from the golden-leaf in which he and Golden Eye had built their own nest. Neither he nor Golden Eye had blamed them for that decision. The clan’s hunters and scouts had brought food and left it for them at a safe distance, and their friends and the mind-healers had stayed close enough to mind-speak them every day. Bright Water had not abandoned them. In fact, it had refused to, and it had done only what it must to save the rest of the clan.

Stone Shaper understood that. It was what had happened later that had driven him from the clan and its central nesting place forever.

And that was not Bright Water’s fault, either. It was his own, because he had not died.

The gray death was not the only sickness that could kill. True, it killed far more of those it struck than most of those other sicknesses. Yet what made it especially terrifying to the People was what happened to so many of the tiny number of People it did not kill.

He remembered the day he had finally reemerged from the darkness he had thought was death. He remembered awakening, remembered the aching, awful silence where his beloved mate’s mind-glow had been. Remembered the terrible grief, the need to follow her back into the darkness, never to emerge.

Yet he had not. Something had stopped him. Perhaps it was Golden Eye’s forever-silent mind-voice whispering to him out of the stillness, telling him to live. Perhaps it was simple obstinacy on his own part. Golden Eye had always told him he was the most stubborn Person she had ever known, so perhaps that was the reason.

Or perhaps I just needed to make my life a curse upon the world. Proof that it cannot kill everything I love only because it could kill the Person I loved more than all the rest of it combined.

He had borne Golden Eye’s still, stiff body up from their nesting place to the fork at the very top of the golden-leaf and placed her where the cleansing wind, the bright sunshine, could bear her spirit to that other place where he hoped she awaited him. And then he had returned to their empty nest, waited the double-hand of days that proved the gray death had left him, mourning her in silence, before he went out once more to meet the clan.

And discovered that the gray death had taken something far crueler than his life. It had stolen his mind-voice. And not just the ability to mind-speak, as was most common among those who survived the gray death. No. It had taken his ability to mind-hear, as well. The constant flow of mind-voices, the presence of all those other mind-voices around him, among him, part of him…

Gone. Simply…gone. Gone into a great, dark emptiness. Into a silence he had never known. And, perhaps worse even than that, he could still taste mind-glows. He knew exactly what the People around him felt, but for the first time in his life, he did not know what they thought. They could not speak to him, tell him, and he could not ask.

They had been horrified by how the gray death had maimed him, and his very presence had only added to their horror. There was no hatred, there was no resentment, no one wanted him away from them…yet his mere presence had frightened them, however hard they strove against their fear. Or against sharing it with him. He was the reminder of what might happen to any of them, as well. Almost worse, he had tasted their compassion—their pity. Their need to somehow comfort him…and the knowledge that they could not. They could no more avoid sharing their mind-glows than he could avoid tasting them, and the guilt they felt—the guilt about which neither he nor they could mind-speak—had only made it worse.

And so he had left.

Those same mind-glows had implored him not to go. The People well knew how unlikely a single Person was to survive. There were so many perils in the world, so many of them bigger and far stronger than any Person. Without the rest of the clan to watch and ward and aid, death almost always came quickly, and despite his silence, he was a part of their lives and their hearts. They had already lost Golden Eye, and their hearts had cried out against losing him, as well.

Yet he could not stay. Not tasting their mind-glows so deeply from his world of silence. Besides, without his mind-voice, he could no longer serve as the leader of Bright Water’s flint shapers, anyway. How could he, when he could no longer hear what was needed or explain the other flint shapers’ tasks to them? And so his place as one of Bright Water’s elders had passed to Stone Biter. That was good. Stone Biter was his and Golden Eye’s eldest surviving kitten, with a good heart, a strong mind-glow. He would do well by the clan.

And so he had changed his own name, in the silence of his own mind. It was not the name by which the rest of the clan might know him, but he no longer knew what they might call him now. So he had become simply Stone. A stone wrapped in stony silence, cast out not by the clan, but by his own heart and will as he set out to find the death awaiting him.

But it had refused to find him, and he had discovered that he could not simply wait passively for it. He had nothing left except the stony determination that the world would not 

slay him as easily as it had slain his beloved. He would fight death, every step of the way, with bared fangs and claws, because it was the only purpose left to him.

He knew that. He accepted it. And yet that empty, bleeding silence within him longed for the day when he lost that fight at last.

And is that not a pleasant way to begin your day? he asked himself. Perhaps you should be thinking about your next visit to the two-legs, instead.

Stone doubted the rest of Bright Water would have approved of his raids upon the two-legs, but he was far away from Bright Water’s range. Nothing that happened with these two-legs was likely to impact the rest of the People. Besides, the People had been raiding the two-legs’ plant places for cluster stalk long before Golden Eye left him. True, Stone had been a flint shaper, without the stealthiness of a scout or hunter, but there was also only one of him, and he had been careful in his forays.

And the two-legs were the only reason he had survived so long, actually. Their plant places provided many plants, some of them pleasant tasting and some not so pleasant, even at the height of the cold days. And there were other…interesting possibilities.

He had been very tempted to sample one of the long-eared creatures who reminded him of grass runners. They were somewhat smaller than a Person, yet large enough that one of them might have fed him for quite some time, and they smelled delicious. Unfortunately, he was sure the two-legs would notice if any of them disappeared, and while they might blame it on bark-chewers or sharp-snouts, it was unlikely. Neither of them would have been able to open the simple but effective closures the two-legs had constructed to keep them out. And so, regretfully, he had left them unsampled.

On the other hand, there were the flutter-wings. It wasn’t a very good name for them, but it was the only one he had. They were ridiculous creatures—fat, excitable, and for something with wings, unbelievably clumsy. Certainly they were nothing at all like a death-wing or wind-glider! They smelled even more delicious than the long-ears, though. And unlike the long-ears, they also laid eggs. Whatever the flutter-wings might smell like, their eggs truly were delicious, and they produced a lot of them. A short visit to the flutter-wing nest place with his carry net could feed him for a full hand of days without taking more than an egg here or an egg there.

He had also availed himself of other treasures courtesy of the two-legs. There was a place behind the main nesting place where they seemed to discard things they no longer wanted. They had some sort of made-thing that crunched up their discards, for some reason. Perhaps it was simply to make them take up less space, but a flying thing collected the eaten pieces every double-hand of days. The important point was that they only used their made-thing the day before the flying thing came, and he had found any number of useful things while prowling through the discard place. He had used them to build a nest that was both larger and warmer than anything a single Person truly needed—enough to shelter him easily 

even through the coldest of cold days—and he had gathered up other tools he needed to survive inside it, like the marvelous blade he used now instead of the stone tools of the People.

There were actually days when he was almost content.

Almost.

He suspected that he had learned more about two-legs than any other Person. It was a pity he would never be able to share what he had learned with the memory singers. But—

His thoughts broke off and he rolled over onto his hand-feet and true-feet as he felt the approach of a mind-glow. That was one of the things he could never share with a memory singer—the discovery that two-legs had mind-glows. Well, of course they did! Every creature that lived had a mind-glow, of sorts, at least. But two-leg mind-glows were much stronger than those of any other creature Stone had ever encountered. In fact, they were at least as strong as those of the People, although they were very different. Of course, he had no mind-voice, nor any ability to listen for their mind-voices, so he had no idea how similar to or different from the People the two-legs might truly be, but it was interesting.

Now he watched as one of what he’d come to think of as “his” two-legs made its way along the streambank with a thunder-barker slung over its shoulder. The big, black barker Stone took great pains to avoid in his excursions into the flutter-wing’s nesting place scampered in and out of the low growing brush, ranging ahead of the two-leg but always circling back to it.

Now what are you doing out here today, two-leg? he thought.

No doubt the answer was some other incomprehensible two-leg thing, but at least following it would give him something to do.

“There!” Mack said.

“Oh? Are you finally done?” Zack inquired.

“I didn’t notice you breaking a sweat to help,” Mack observed.

“Not my job! You’re the software guy. I’m the bring-my-shotgun-and-watch-your-back-with-steely-eyed-concentration guy. Remember?”

Since at that very moment Zack was sprawled comfortably in the shade of one of the logging robots with his hands clasped behind his head while he chewed a near-sage stem, his older brother might have been excused for the eye roll he gave him.

“Yeah, sure. But, as it happens, we are done here. So why don’t we head back? It’s almost lunchtime. Besides, I need to talk to Aunt Danette.”

“

And you broke your uni-link!” Zack said sorrowfully, spitting out his near-sage stem and climbing to his feet. “I didn’t even notice!”

“You really are full of yourself today, aren’t you?” Mack shook his head. “In this instance, however, I need to show her some diagrams on my pad while we talk. You know how visually oriented she is. There are a couple of trim patterns in this software I didn’t realize were included. I think we’re going to have more flexibility than we thought we were, but I really need her input to decide which ones we want to prioritize.”

“Makes sense,” Zack said a bit more seriously. “But you know she’s really going to want to hear from Cordelia before she makes any decisions about that.”

“Yeah, she is.” Mack nodded.

Unlike some Sphinxians, Aunt Danette took her responsibilities as a custodian of the planetary wilderness dead seriously. That was why she wanted an eyes-on report from the ground to back up the drones’ aerial scans. She wanted to know exactly what needed to be cut and what didn’t, rather than resorting to the “cut it all down and let God sort it out” approach some of her fellow “nobles” would have adopted.

“There’s enough daylight left we can still get back out here this afternoon to make any tweaks she wants,” he pointed out, and Zack nodded. Sphinx’s day was the next best thing to twenty-six hours long and, despite their late start, it was barely midday. “We need to start cutting Monday,” Mack continued, “and I have plans for tomorrow.”

“Plans that include what’s-his-name? Brad?” Zack asked mischievously.

“Plans,” Mack said repressively, and his younger brother relented.

“All right. Then why don’t you and I head on over and give Cordelia a hand? I know she really prefers wandering around the woods alone, but she’d probably forgive us for horning in on her this afternoon. As long as we don’t get into the habit!”

“You know, that’s not a half-bad idea,” Mack agreed. “C’mon.”

Cordelia Schardt-Cordova made her way cautiously along the game trail. The Sphinxian near-deer, which she understood didn’t look a great deal like the terrestrial species it had been named for, preferred flight to fight in the face of any threat. It also ran to around ninety kilos, however, and upon occasion its version of “flight” might be more accurately described as “run-right-over-the-threat-and-trample-it-on-my-way-out.”

She figured the odds of any such encounter today were slim, partly because the trail didn’t seem to have seen much recent use but even more because Barnaby would spot any near-deer—or anything else large enough to pose a threat—well before Cordelia did. The Meyerdahl Rotties had been genetically modified for a heavy-gravity environment, and although it hadn’t been part of the modification’s original objectives, the breed’s already 

considerable intelligence had been tweaked in the process. The result was the almost perfect settler’s dog for Sphinx, in Cordelia’s opinion.

Now Barnaby came bounding back down the trail toward her like a furry, black-and-tan thunderbolt. He slid to a halt, and she braced herself as he rose on his back feet and planted his front paws on her shoulders, tail wagging and ears pricked.

“Don’t even think it!” she warned him as he cocked his massive head, clearly contemplating whether or not to give her a lick. She scratched him behind his right ear and he decided to close his eyes and luxuriate in the caress, instead.

“Smart move,” she told him.

He chuffled happily, then dropped back to all four feet and nosed her rucksack. She glanced down at him—it wasn’t that far; he stood well above waist-high on her—and he waggled his head, flapping his ears at her.

“Well,” she checked the time on her uni-link and discovered it was later than she’d thought, “I guess it is about lunchtime. Let’s find a place with a view.”

Barnaby sneezed explosively in agreement and went trotting along the trail ahead of her once more, and she shook her head as she followed him. She kept her eyes open as she went, ...