War Of Honor

"It is," Honor said softly, then surprised both Alexanders—and herself—with a giggle. "On the other hand," she explained half-apologetically as her hosts looked at her in surprise, "watching them sign can be an exhausting experience . . . especially when you get a dozen or so of them in one place! It's like being trapped inside a machine shop or an engine turbine."

"Oh, my!" Emily laughed delightedly. "I never even thought of that side of it."

Nimitz looked back and forth between the smiling humans, then rose in one of the human-style high chairs Nico had managed to dredge up for the treecats and began to sign. His spine was stiff with eloquent dignity, and Honor managed to keep any more laughter out of her voice as she translated for Emily and Hamish.

"He says that if we two-legs think it's hard to keep track of all those signs, then we should try it from the People's side. And that if we'd had the good sense as a species not to limit ourselves to 'mouth-noises' as our sole, miserable means of communication, the People might not have had to learn to wiggle their fingers just to talk to us."

The 'cat finished signing, then twitched his whiskers in disgust as all three humans began to laugh once more. He sniffed audibly, and elevated his nose, but Honor felt his i

"That's fascinating, as Emily says," Hamish said, after a moment, "and I can see that I'm going to have to go ahead and learn how to read signs myself. But all levity aside, you and Samantha and Nimitz and I have to face the fact that her decision to adopt me is going to create enormous problems. I'm grateful—awed—that she did it, anyway, but I'd truly like to know how it could have happened. And why she chose to do it at this particular moment."

"You still have a lot to learn about treecats, Hamish," Honor pointed out in a carefully neutral tone. "All of us do, actually. In fact, in some ways, those of us who've been adopted the longest have the most to learn, because we're having to disabuse ourselves of some theories and beliefs we've cherished for quite some time. And one of those beliefs was that a 'cat 'chooses' a human half as some sort of conscious process."

"What do you mean?" Emily asked intently.

"I've spent hours talking with Nimitz and Samantha about it, and I'm not entirely certain I've got it all straight yet," Honor replied. "But to boil it down to its simplest, while all treecats are both telepaths and empaths, some appear to be born with a special ability to reach out to human beings, as well as other members of their own species."

Both Alexanders nodded, but Honor could tell neither of them was fully up to speed on all of the new revelations about treecats. It might not be a bad idea, she decided, to give them a little more background before she tried to answer the question she wasn't at all sure she had an answer for in the first place.

"All 'cats are able to sense both the thoughts and the emotions of other 'cats," she began. "They call thoughts the 'mind-voice' and emotions the 'mind-glow.' Well, to be more accurate, those are the human-style words they've come up with to use when they try to explain things to us. As near as we can tell, Dr. Arif was correct in her original theory that telepaths wouldn't use a spoken language at all. In fact, that was probably the greatest single stumbling block to their ever learning to communicate with us. They knew we communicated using 'mouth-noises,' but the concept of language was so alien to them that it took them literally centuries to learn the meanings of more than a handful of words."

"How did they ever learn at all?" It was Hamish's turn to ask the question, and he reached out to caress Samantha's prick ears gently and tenderly.

"Well, that sort of brings us back to Samantha, in a way," Honor told him, and he looked up from the 'cat sharply.

"It's going to take us years and years to really square away our understanding of treecats," she went on, "but we've already learned an awful lot more than we ever knew before. There are still problems in getting complex concepts across from either side, especially when they're concepts which relate to abilities like telepathy and empathy that humans simply don't have any experiential basis with."

She carefully took no note of the thoughtful glance Hamish gave her over her last sentence.

"One thing which does seem to be clear, however, is that 'cats simply aren't i

This was not the time, she decided, to mention the fact that the treecats had spent the better part of four hundred T-years systematically concealing the true extent of their intelligence from the humans who had intruded into and settled upon their planet. Personally, she understood their motives perfectly, and she was confident Hamish and Emily would, as well, but it wouldn't hurt to get the groundwork established before they or the public at large were admitted into the full truth about that little treecat decision.

"But if they produce a limited number of i

"Telepathy." White Haven nodded, blue eyes bright. "They just 'tell' each other about it!"

"Not quite," Honor disagreed. "From what Nimitz and Samantha tell me, the level of communication between most treecats is actually fairly analogous to human language, at least where the deliberate exchange of information is concerned. I doubt that most humans will ever be able even to imagine what it must be like to receive all of the emotional 'sideband transmissions' that accompany any treecat conversation. But their ability to explain things to one another on a cognitive level isn't all that much greater than it would be for humans. Faster—lots faster, apparently—but not the sort of mind-to-mind, my-mind-is-your-mind, sharing some science-fiction writers have postulated."

"So how do they do it?" the earl asked. "You said they can transmit the new knowledge very rapidly, so obviously something else is happening."

"Exactly. You see, the 'cats' entire society revolves around a particular group called 'memory singers.' They're always female, apparently because females have naturally stronger mind-voices and mind-glows, and they're almost but not quite matriarchs."

Honor frowned thoughtfully.

"The treecat clans are governed by their elders, who are chosen—by a process, I might add, which apparently bears absolutely no relationship to human elections or the hereditary transmission of leadership—primarily for their particular abilities in specific activities or crafts which are critical to the clan's survival. But the memory singers form a special craft group, almost a caste, which is treated with enormous deference by the entire clan. In fact, every memory singer is automatically a clan elder, regardless of her actual age. And because of their importance to the clan, they're protected and guarded fanatically and absolutely ba

She gri