David Weber - Fire Season

Karl did and was easily convinced to stay overnight as well, since he and Stephanie both had been asked by the SFS if they’d help with fire clean-up, and the Harrington freehold was a great deal closer than his own family home.

That evening, Karl showed Stephanie some images he’d taken of her going into the fire. By necessity, the pictures were wobbly and choppy, since he’d had to leave his uni-link balanced on the dashboard while he concentrated on keeping the vehicle steady. Even so, it was impressive. Stephanie hadn’t realized just how close the flames had been or how badly burnt she would have been without her fire-suit. A couple of times, even knowing that everything had worked out in the end, she found herself distinctly scared.

Still, she knew that if circumstances demanded, she’d do it again.

Sphinx! Anders Whittaker felt delight shiver through him as the shuttle touched down, followed some moments later by a not unexpected heaviness as the planet’s higher gravity took effect. He switched on his belt-mounted counter-grav unit, already adjusted to compensate, and felt his weight return to normal.

It shouldn’t be so easy, Anders thought, to adapt to an alien planet.

Of course, it really hadn’t been easy. The counter-grav unit could compensate for weight, but lightening a person didn’t do anything to help the lungs deal with the denser atmosphere’s concentrations of gases. For that he’d needed nano-tech treatments. Then there had been all the immunizations, not just against the plague, which had wiped out so many of the original settlers, but against anything else his parents could think of.

I bet I could swim in raw sewage and come out without the least trace of infection.

He grinned at the image, thinking how horrified his mother would be. She’d been worried about him accompanying his father to Sphinx on this research expedition. However, she hadn’t been able to deny that it made more sense for Anders to spend the time in his father’s company. She’d just been named to a post as a cabinet minister of the newly elected president of Urako. She’d been busy before, as Counselor Whittaker, senior representative for one of the highest population zones on the planet. As Cabinet Minister Whittaker, she was going to be nearly unreachable for the next six T-months.

In light of his wife’s appointment, the timing for Dr. Whittaker’s trip to Sphinx hadn’t exactly been the best. However, although Bradford A. Whittaker could be called many things, “professionally uninvolved” would never be one. A rising light in the field of xenoanthropology, he’d long griped that his career had been held back by the lack of a new intelligent alien species to study.

When the earliest reports of the Sphinxian treecats had come to his attention, Dr. Whittaker had seen the opening for which he had longed. He had all but memorized every word of every press release, every report. He’d begun immediate correspondence with Dr. Sanura Hobbard, Chairwoman of the Anthropology Department, Landing University, on Manticore, the official head of official Crown inquiry into treecat intelligence. He’d fumed that his own responsibilities as a faculty member of Urako University on the planet Urako in the Kenichi System didn’t let him take ship right away-this despite the fact that the Sphinxian Forestry Service wasn’t allowing anyone much access to the treecats.

Anders had been infected by his father’s fascination. Like Dr. Whittaker, he agreed that treecats just had to be intelligent, maybe not humanly intelligent, but no one was certain where they would fit on the sentience scale. Human exploration had turned up too few other intelligent species-and in at least one case, the species had been wiped out before it could become inconvenient. Long before there had ever been a chance to go to Sphinx, Anders had become an advocate for treecats’ rights.

Then had come the fiasco with “Doctor” Tennessee Bolgeo, ostensibly of Liberty University in the distant Chattanooga System. Not many people knew what had happened, but enough had leaked out-especially within xenoanthropological circles-to create a scandal. In response, the Star Kingdom had decided that the best damage control would involve two steps.

First, they changed their policy of permitting relatively free access to the treecats. Second, they decided to bring in an officially sanctioned off-planet xenoanthropological team. Needless to say, Dr. Whittaker had immediately applied for this newly created Crown consultancy.

It was a long shot. There were many other xenoanthropologists with more seniority-and with a better chance at landing additional grants that would assure detailed investigations. However, Anders was certain that no other applicant had more passion than his dad.

So had begun several T-months of pure agony.

Between Dr. Whittaker waiting to hear if he had been selected for the Sphinx project and Counselor Whittaker waiting to hear if soon she would be Cabinet Minister Whittaker, the tension in their household had been thick enough to cut into bricks.

Very much the son of a politician and the son of an anthropologist, Anders had weathered the situation with skill. From the politician side, he’d learned to say the right things and not commit himself to any course too soon. From the anthropologist side, he’d learned to step back and observe, weighing the data with as little added emotion as possible.

So it was that Anders was more prepared than either of his parents when-miracle of miracles-both of them had found themselves with fascinating new professional opportunities and the topic of “What do we do with Anders?” had arisen.

Anders knew his mother would want him to stay on Urako. He loved his mom, but he also knew how much time he’d spend alone-and that much of the time he’d spend with his mother would be within the context of official functions. Compared to the lure of treecats and a chance to live on a barely settled alien world within the fascinating Star Kingdom of Manticore, well, even regular dinners with the president of Urako and all the perqs that came with high public office held no attraction.

Bradford Whittaker wasn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy parent-there was too much of the anthropologist in him for that. But he did believe in exposing his son to every possible experience, and he’d already taken Anders with him on trips to anthropological sites both on planet and in a few nearby systems. Given all of this, it wasn’t hard to convince the new cabinet minister that her son would be better off accompanying his father. What had surprised Anders was how enthusiastic Dr. Whittaker had been about taking Anders with him.

“Anders is interested in treecats,” he’d said. “I’m certain he’ll be a real asset to the team.”

Anders had glowed like a sun going nova. It wasn’t often his father approved of him within the context of the anthropology that was his first love. Even Mom had been won over.

“But you’ll write me every week,” she’d fussed as she’d helped Anders to pack. “And I’ll write, too. Send lots of pictures and make certain you don’t fall behind on your studies. University may seem impossibly far off to you, but you’re nearly sixteen and entrance exams will be on you before you realize it.”

There was a lot more of this. Anders let it flow over him. He knew it was just his mom making sure he knew he was important to her. He’d let her pack him extra socks and underwear without protest. On some atavistic maternal level Mom seemed convinced that a relatively newly settled planet like Sphinx would lack such basic items.

Unspoken was her concern that Dr. Whittaker would forget such things as clean underwear and regular meals once he was within reach of his new test subjects. He’d always been a bit obsessive. Now, with his entire professional reputation resting on this trip (as he repeatedly stated), Dr. Whittaker had taken to addressing his son as if he was simply an unusually young graduate assistant.