Worlds of Honor

"How's Evelina?" Aleksandr asked, voice rough with exhaustion.

"Sleeping. So's Lev."

Aleksandr just nodded.

Irina kissed her brother's cheek and said, "Go on to bed. I'll see to Scott."

The big farmer made his apologies, then stumbled down the hall in the direction of his bedroom. Irina took Scott's arm and braved the stares of both treecats to kiss him, too, although not on the cheek. Irina tasted of home and warmth and sanity; Scott pulled her closer and just held her for a moment, not wanting to think about murders or autopsies or investigations yet to be made. Both treecats crooned anxiously where they rode his shoulders.

"You're exhausted, all of you, poor things," Irina said softly, pulling away to smile up into his eyes. "Come on, Scott, let me show you where there's a spare bed." She led him down a short hall to an open doorway. The bed was wide enough to accommodate three, without risk of colliding with elbows or knees; it was more than roomy enough for one exhausted doctor and two bleary-eyed treecats.

"Thanks, Irina." His own voice was hoarse with weariness. Scott stumbled into the darkened bedroom, groping his way out of his clothes and into bed, hardly registering the soft latch of the door as Irina closed it behind him. When he next opened his eyes, strong sunlight poured in through the windows and the smells of frying bacon and steaming coffee tickled his nostrils. According to the clock, he'd been asleep for five hours, not enough to catch up to himself, but better than none. He suspected it was the gnawing in his belly—and his little friends' bellies—that'd wakened him. Scott found a shower just off the bedroom and stood under it for a full quarter of an hour, just letting hot water sluice over him. He didn't want to remember the previous night, knew he couldn't run away from the grim responsibility waiting for him in this morning's blinding sunlight.

Today, he had to find a killer.

Someone—probably Irina, again—had laundered his filthy clothes while he slept. Scott greeted Fisher and the thin treecat, both of whom had curled up to sleep beside him, and reassured the stray with caresses and low murmurs, then dressed and headed for the Zivonik kitchen, accompanied by two ravenously hungry treecats. The oldest Zivonik girl was pouring coffee and the second-oldest boy was dishing up platters of eggs, bacon, and flapjacks. Irina, barefooted and wearing an apron, with stray tendrils of hair escaping the ribbon she'd used to tie it back with, was piling a stack of generously laden plates, bowls, coffee cups, and juice glasses onto an enormous tray, doubtless for her brother and sister-in-law. Bright smiles greeted him as he paused in the doorway.

"Good morning, Dr. MacDallan!"

" 'Morning. Mind if I wrap myself around a plateful of that?"

"Help yourself," the tow-headed short-order cook gri

"Thanks." Scott smiled. He dragged out a chair and plowed into the food as Irina carried the heavy tray out.

"Eat up, Scott. I'll just take this down to Alek and Evelina and be right back."

He nodded and smiled, mouth too full of fluffy flapjacks and crisp bacon to say anything. The treecats ate hungrily, as well, then bleeked in open delight when Stasya brought over a tray piled high with celery.

"I heard treecats like it." She smiled shyly.

Both 'cats were already chewing in ecstasy, shredding the celery into a sticky, wet mass.

"They do." Scott nodded. "God knows why. I never did."

The children giggled, tempting the treecats with more stringy, springy stalks. Irina returned and poured a cup of coffee for herself, then joined him at the table, blowing gently across the steaming liquid. "Will you be going back to town today?"

"I'll have to. Mind if I borrow your computer before I go? I want to check a few things on the net before I leave."

"Sure. I'll show you when you're done eating."

Scott was aware of her close scrutiny as he finished off seconds. Irina knew him well enough to realize something was up, something more out of the ordinary than weariness after an unpleasant business like last night's. Tiredness, she'd have expected, but Scott couldn't quite hide the tension gripping him as he struggled with the best way to attack the problem of acquiring the proof he needed. He tried to smile at her and she returned the gesture easily enough, but her eyes remained dark and concerned. But she didn't ask, which was one of the reasons Scott appreciated her company: she didn't pry. Maybe it was only that frontier folk minded their own business or maybe it was more a matter of Irina's i

Whatever the reason, Scott appreciated it, now more than ever.

She set him up at the family's computer terminal and dropped a kiss on the top of his head, then left him to "go check on Evelina and the baby." Scott smiled and hooked into planetary data net. A short while later, Scott was pulling up aerial surveys and maps, delving into public records on BioNeering's corporate structure and export activities, and learning everything he could about the company's research facility southwest of the Zivonik farmstead. He was aware that he raced the sun if he hoped to fly from here to the site of the BioNeering plant, then make it back to town by nightfall. Scott did not want to be anywhere near that plant after dark.

When he checked the message queues on his home and business datanet accounts, wanting to be sure no professional emergencies had arisen demanding immediate attention—although any true emergency would've been automatically forwarded to his wrist-com—he found a message from the newly founded Xenology Institute, marked with the personal account code of Dr. Sanura Hobbard, chief xenologist of the team dispatched by the Star Kingdom of Manticore to study the treecats. Clearly, word about how they'd found the crash site had spread with lightning speed. That message was time-stamped less than ten minutes after he and Aleksandr Zivonik had called in the news the previous evening.

Scott frowned as he read the politely phrased request for a meeting to discuss "important behavioral developments with your treecat and Arvin Erhardt's, regarding the discovery of the crash site." He'd have to tell her something, he knew that much; but after a year in Fisher's company, his instincts about keeping quiet on the subject of treecat intelligence and other unique traits had been honed to razor kee

He did, however, set down a fair approximation of the full story in a coded file, which he started to route to his computer at home, so it could be retrieved if anything untoward happened to him. If anything went wrong out there, he wanted someone to know what had happened, so the murder investigation would still go forward. He was just about to press the "send" command when he paused, reconsidering the wisdom of sending it over the datanet, even in code. If anything did happen to him, he wanted to be sure the file was read by someone he could trust, someone who would actually believe him. That meant either someone who'd been adopted by a treecat—relatively few and far between, and Stephanie Harrington, the likeliest person to comprehend the full truth, was only a child—or someone who knew him well enough to believe the story even without direct experience with a treecat bond.