David Weber - Changer of Worlds

She fell silent, and a great stillness seemed to hover in the central nesting place of Bright Water Clan. It lingered endlessly, and then Wind of Memory shook herself like a kitten caught in the rain. She turned and gazed about her at the assembled elders and all the other adults who listened and watched, then looked back to Golden Voice.

she observed in a mind voice made of mingled worry, resignation, hope, and deep amusement.

Golden Voice replied so demurely that even many of those she had shocked most deeply bleeked with laughter.

Wind of Memory said much more seriously.

Crooked Tail, another of the elders, put in,

Wind of Memory replied. she darted a humorous glance at Golden Voice <���—I have no intention of attempting to convince a mated female, with kittens of her own, who has also bonded to a human, to do what all of Sun Leaf Clan's elders could not convince an untried kitten to do so many turnings ago! And there must be hunters and scouts . . . three hands, at least, I would say. But it is not the numbers that matter in this – not truly. What matters is the change. I would not think it would come immediately, for I would still advise moving with caution, yet such a move would require the People to show our true cleverness to the humans. And that will change the entire relationship between all humans and all People, everywhere, forever.>

Golden Voice agreed.

Wind of Memory asked in a mind voice from which all hostility had faded.

Golden Voice replied.

Bark Master said slowly.

Bark Master conceded,

Golden Voice told him.

Laughs Brightly put in, his pride in his mate burning bright in his mind glow as he tucked an arm about her. There was not as much shock or surprise at hearing such an announcement from a scout as there might have been in other clans. This was Bright Water Clan, after all . . . and its elders knew Laughs Brightly of old.

Wind of Memory told him now, her mind voice and mind glow rich with resigned laughter,

Laughs Brightly assured her with a bleek of amusement.

Honor Harrington looked up from her book viewer as the oldest 'cat door on Sphinx opened. Her great-great-great-etc.-grandmother Stephanie and Lionheart had first used that door hundreds of T-years before, and she smiled as the two latest treecats to use it flowed through it.

"Hi, Stinker!" she said, setting down her mug of cocoa. "Have a nice visit with the folks?"

"Bleek!" Nimitz agreed, flowing across the floor to her with an air of almost unbearable complacency. He looked like someone who had just discovered he owned an entire celery patch of his own, Honor thought, and shook her head with a grin.

"He really can be sort of full of himself, can't he?" she asked the smaller, dappled treecat who had accompanied him, and Samantha bleeked an agreement of her own. She crossed to the couch and hopped lightly up on it to peer down into the basket at Honor's side. Four adorable balls of fluffy fur slept deeply in it – one of them snoring faintly – and Samantha bleeked again, softer and more gently, and reached out a wiry, true-hand to stroke one of her children tenderly.

"I promised to keep an eye on them," Honor told her, reaching out to caress Samantha's ears in turn, and Nimitz's mate turned to gaze up at her with brilliant green eyes. For a moment they looked so serious and thoughtful Honor blinked in surprise, but then Samantha seemed to shake herself. She turned away from her sleeping children and flowed into Honor's lap, curling herself into a neat circle, and Nimitz leapt up beside his mate and his person.

Samantha buried her nose against Honor and gave a huge sigh, then closed her eyes and began to buzz a slow, deep purr as Honor's long fingers stroked her fluffy coat. Within less than five minutes, the purr had faded into slow, deep breathing, and Honor gazed down at the utterly relaxed, silken warmth so trustingly asleep in her lap. Then she looked at Nimitz, curled neatly beside her on the couch, and shook her head.

"Look at her!" she said softly, and chuckled. "Sleepy as she is, you'd think she'd been out changing the world or something!"

"Bleek!" Nimitz agreed, and then rested his own chin on his person's thigh beside Samantha's, and the soft buzz of his purr rose over his mate's slow breathing as Honor chuckled again and laid her hand on his head.

Helen used the effort of digging at the wall to control her terror. She thought of it as a variation of Master Tye's training: turn weakness into strength . Fear drove her, but she shaped it to steady her aching arms instead of letting it loosen her bowels.

Scrape, scrape. She didn't have the strength to make big gouges in the wall with a pitiful shard of broken rubble. The wall was not particularly hard, since it was not much more than rubble itself. But her slender arms and little hands, for all their well-honed training under Master Tye's regimen, were still those of a girl just turned fourteen.

So what? She couldn't afford to make much noise, anyway. Now and then, she could hear the low sound of her captors' voices, just beyond the heavy door which they had placed across the entrance to her "cell."

Scrape, scrape. Weakness into strength. The root breaks the rock. Wind and water triumph over stone.

So she had been trained. By her father, as much as by Master Tye. Decide what you want, and set to it like running water. Soft, slight, steady. Unstoppable.

Scrape, scrape. She had no idea how thick the wall was, or even whether it was a wall at all. For all she knew, Helen might simply be digging an endless little tunnel through the soil of Terra.

Her abductors had removed the hood after they got her into this strange and frightening place. She was still somewhere in the Solarian League's capital city of Chicago, that much she knew. But she had no idea where, except that she thought it was in the Old Quarter. Chicago was a gigantic city, and the Old Quarter was like an ancient Mesopotamian tel . Layer upon layer of half-rubbled ruins. They had descended deep underground, using twisted and convoluted passageways that she had not been able to store in her memory.

Scrape, scrape. Just do it. Running water conquers all.

Eventually.

While she scraped, she thought sometimes of her father, and sometimes of Master Tye. But, more often, she thought of her mother. She could not really remember her mother's face, of course, except from holocubes. Her mother had died when Helen was only four years old. But she had the memory – still as vivid as ever – of the day her mother died. Helen had been sitting on her father's lap, terrified, while her mother led a hopeless defense of a convoy against an overwhelming force of Havenite warships. But her mother had saved her, that day, along with her father.

Scrape, scrape. The work was numbing to the mind, as well as the body. Mostly, Helen didn't think of anything. She just kept one image before her: that of her mother's posthumously-awarded Parliamentary Medal of Honor, which, in all the many places they had lived since, her father always hung in the most prominent place in their home.

Scrape, scrape. Helen would get no medals for what she was doing, true. But she didn't care, anymore than her mother had cared.

Scrape, scrape. Running water.

When he spotted the figure he was looking for, Victor Cachat was swept by another wave of doubt and hesitation.