War Of Honor

"The thing that makes them so important is that they're the keepers of the 'cats' history and information base. They're able to form so deep a mental bond with any other 'cat that they actually experience what happened to that other 'cat as if it had happened to them. Not only that, but they can then reproduce those experiences in precise, exact detail, and share them with other 'cats . . . or pass them on to other memory singers. You might think of it as sort of the ultimate oral history tradition, except that the entire experience itself is transmitted, not simply from 'cat to 'cat, but actually across generations. According to Nimitz and Samantha, there's a 'memory song' which consists of the actual eyewitness experience of a 'cat scout who saw the first landing of a survey crew on Sphinx almost a thousand T-years ago."

Emily and Hamish gazed at the two treecats in something very like awe, and Nimitz and Samantha returned their looks calmly.

"So what happens," White Haven said slowly, "is that these . . . 'memory singers' are able to share the new concept or the new ability with whatever 'cat it first occurs to, and then to transmit it, like a gestalt, to all the others." He shook his head. "My God. They may be slow to think of new things, but once they do, they're certainly equipped to spread the good news!"

"Yes, they are," Honor agreed. "But the individuals who are most important of all to the 'cats are the i

"Which brings me to the point of this somewhat long-winded explanation. You see, none of the 'cats had been able to make heads or tails out of the way that humans communicate until one of their memory singers was injured in a fall."

Her expression darkened for a moment. Then she shook it off and continued levelly.

"As I'm sure you both know, Nimitz was . . . injured when we were captured, and he lost his mind-voice as a result. He can no longer 'speak' to any of the other 'cats, which was why my mother came up with the brilliant idea of teaching him and Samantha to sign. It had been tried centuries ago without any success, but that was mostly because at that time the 'cats still didn't understand how human communication worked. Since they didn't use words at all, they simply couldn't make the co

"What had changed by the time Nimitz and Sam came along was that the memory singer the 'cats call Singer From Silence had lost not her mind-voice, but her ability to hear other mind-voices. She could still taste emotions, still sense the mind-glow, but she was deaf to everything else."

She drew a deep breath.

"It must have been devastating, especially for a memory singer. She could still project, still share the memory songs she'd learned before, but she could never learn a new one. For that matter, she could never be entirely certain that anyone else 'heard' her properly, because there was no feedback cha

"So she left her clan, gave up her position as one of its elders, and moved to Bright Water Clan—Nimitz's clan, the same one Lionheart came from. She chose Bright Water because it's always been the clan with the most intimate contact with humans, and she wanted to spend time around the two-legs. She knew we communicated somehow without mind-voices, and she wanted desperately to learn how we did it in the hope that possibly she could learn to do the same thing.

"She couldn't, not in the end, because 'cats simply can't reproduce the sounds of human language. But even though she never learned how to overcome her own mental deafness, she did, after years of listening to humans speak, deduce the rudiments of how spoken language worked. And because she could still transmit memory songs, she was able to pass that knowledge along to all other treecats, which is why they were able to understand us when we spoke to them even before they had a way to speak back with their hands."

"Fascinating," Hamish repeated yet again, his voice soft and his expression rapt. Then he cocked his head and frowned. "But you said all of this relates to Sam somehow."

"Yes, it does. You see, Samantha's treecat name is 'Golden Voice.' She's a memory singer, Hamish."

"She's what?" White Haven blankly at Honor for a moment, then turned to stare at Samantha, who looked back and gave an unmistakable human-style nod.

"A memory singer," Honor confirmed. "Remember that I said earlier that 'cats who adopt don't really make any choice to do so in the human sense of the word. That extra sensitivity, or ability, or whatever that's part of the ability to taste the mind-glow that makes adoption possible, also drives those of them who have it towards us. They know what it is they're looking for from the memory songs of other 'cats who have adopted, but they don't have any idea who they're looking for. It's their choice to seek adoption—or, rather, it's the choice of 'cats for whom adoption is possible to place themselves close enough to humans that it can happen—but the actual moment of adoption is more one of recognition than of seeking someone out. It just sort of . . . happens when they meet the right person.

"Well, Samantha—Golden Voice—was, as far as she or any other treecats know, the first 'cat born with both the mental strength to be a memory singer and the whatever it is that drives 'cats to adopt. From what she's told me, it must have been a dreadful decision to give up either of those possibilities, but she chose to pursue the adoption bond, which is how she met Harold Tschu and adopted him."

"And he was killed serving with you in Silesia, after she and Nimitz had become mates," White Haven said, nodding slowly.

"Which is the only reason she didn't suicide after Harold's death," Honor agreed somberly. The earl's eyes narrowed, and she tossed her head and looked back at him almost defiantly as she sensed his instant flare of denial of any such possibility.

"That's what treecats usually do when they lose their adopted people or their mates, Hamish," she said quietly. "Suicide, or simply . . . shut down and starve themselves to death or die of dehydration. That was the enormous tragedy of adoptions for three T-centuries, until the invention of prolong made it possible for us to live as long as they do. They knew they would almost certainly be giving up decades of life, as much as a century or more, if they adopted . . . and the need for the human mind-glow drove them to it, anyway."

She saw the understanding dawn in his eyes, the shadow of all the centuries of sacrifice which had claimed its victims in the name of joy and love, and she nodded slowly.

"The fusion is so deep and so complete, from their side, at least, that it leaves a huge void deep inside them when they lose their other half. Most of them simply choose not to live after that. King Roger's 'cat Monroe would almost certainly have starved himself to death if—"

She stopped herself abruptly. The fact that Queen Elizabeth's father had been assassinated by Havenite proxies was a secret known only to a handful of her subjects. Honor was one of them, and she knew William Alexander was, too, because they'd both been told at the same time. But they'd also been sworn to secrecy.

"He probably would have starved himself to death if Prince Justin—who wasn't Prince Consort at the time, of course; he and Elizabeth were engaged, but they hadn't married yet—hadn't been attacked by a lunatic while he was trying to get Monroe to eat," she went on instead. "That roused Monroe, and in the ensuing fight against the lunatic, he and Justin adopted one another, which is the only reason Monroe is alive today. Well, the situation was similar with Samantha and Nimitz, because as far as we know, they're the only mated pair ever who have both adopted, and her bond with Nimitz was powerful enough to make her stay with us."