Free Treecat Wars by David Weber Page B

about her. She’d kept her cockatoo crest, and it looked as good in indigo and violet as it ever had in white-blond. If Christine’s graceful, willowy figure had changed at all, it had been to smooth her curves into something more delightfully feminine. Silver contact lenses were hardly an improvement over her naturally ice-blue eyes, especially when contrasted with the warm sandalwood hue of her skin, but if she wanted to experiment, Anders wasn’t going to complain.
    Stephanie and Jessica arrived in Jessica’s junker just as Anders was unfolding his glider. He turned to meet them, his heart lifting as always when he saw Stephanie smile at him.
    How am I ever going to let her get on the shuttle without me? I’ve got to do it. I know I’ve got to do it, but I can’t let her know just how very much letting her go is going to hurt .

Chapter Four
    When Keen Eyes ventured into the foothills he found himself fighting the sensation that he had moved in time, rather than space. In the mountains, snow was falling at night. The icy whiteness was neither deep nor dense, and it melted within a short time after the sun’s rising. But the coming of snow meant that many of the small ground grubbers bark chewers upon which the Swaying Fronds Clan had been relying to augment their food were harder to find.
    Some of those creatures slept all through the winter. Others were simply spending more time in burrows beneath the earth. When true snowfall came, many of them would make tunnels in the snowpack itself, their foraging concealed from all but the sharpest-eared hunters. Knowing this time of relative safety was coming, they waited patiently for the same snow that Keen Eyes dreaded.
    Here in the relative lowlands, even though the trees showed signs of damage from the fires that had raged so much more powerfully in the higher elevations, opportunities for hunting and foraging were more plentiful. Leaves were shading into yellow and red, but still bore traces of green. In some sheltered areas, trees were sending up shoots through the thick soil. More quick living plants were taking advantage of the damper weather and rich ash, and some of the grasses and shrubs were adorned with fat seeds. Although the people could not subsist wholly on a diet of leaves, seeds, and shoots, these would help to bulk up their bellies—and they attracted prey animals.
    The difficulty did not come from the lowlands themselves. Rather it came from those People who had already claimed these lands as their own. Keen Eyes met up with the first of those one afternoon as he sat on the net wood branch enjoying a small but plump bark-chewer he had caught.
    < We thought we smelled something sour. > The mind-voice came without warning. < How do you name yourself, poacher? >
    Keen Eyes sniffed the air, but these People must be approaching from upwind, because he could not catch their scent. True, a mind-voice could call over a far greater distance than anyone could detect with certainty the mind-glow of another Person, but these People had obviously sensed his mind-glow and realized that it did not belong to someone they knew.
    Relaxing over his meal, Keen Eyes had taken the obvious precautions, but he had not been actively searching for other People. Now he attempted to do so. Distantly, he sensed at least two People. The fuzzy quality of the contact indicated that they were attempting to mute their mind-glows, but one of the pair was upset enough that his anger came through strongly. Even as Keen Eyes sought to get a clearer reading, this one moved deliberately to take his mind-glow out of range.
    Keen Eyes shaped his reply carefully. < I am not so much a poacher as a traveler. I was not aware I had crossed into another clan’s range. May I ask to whom I am speaking? >
    < I am Nimble Fingers of the Trees Enfolding Clan. > The voice of the person with the less angry mind-glow shaped the answer. < My uncle, Swimmer’s Scourge, hunts with me. What are you called?