David Weber - Honor Anth. 2 - Worlds of Honor

Worlds of Honor

by David Weber

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

1999 by Roland J. Green

form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-57786-7

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, February1999

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weber, David, 1952–

Worlds of Honor / David Weber.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books original"—T.p. verso.

Contents: The stray / Linda Evans — What price dreams? / David Weber —

Queen's gambit / Jane Lindskold — The hard way home / David Weber — Deck

load strike / Roland J. Green.

ISBN 0-671-57786-7 (hardcover)

1. Science fiction. American. 2. Harrington, Honor (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

II. Title

PS648.S3W43 1999 98-47810

813'.0876208—cd21 CIP

Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER

Honor Harrington Novels:

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

The Short Victorious War

Field of Dishonor

Flag in Exile

Honor Among Enemies

In Enemy Hands

Echoes of Honor

edited by David Weber:

More Than Honor

Worlds of Honor

Mutineers' Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empire

Path of the Fury

The Apocalypse Troll

Oath of Swords

The War God's Own

with Steve White:

Insurrection

Crusade

In Death Ground

Shiva Option

The Stray

Linda Evans

Dr. Scott MacDallan was, by dint of much sweating and swearing, trying to turn a wriggling,

ungrateful little demon of a breech-birth infant for head-down delivery, when the stray arrived on

the doorstep.

Mrs. Zivonik had a history of easy births without complications or he'd have done a simple

Caesarian, but turning an infant wasn't complicated and the monitors in place showed him neither

baby nor mother were in distress, so rather than create an incision and put the woman out of work

for several days, he simply took the time-honored step of reaching in for the baby, grabbing it in

one hand, and rotating it right-end around instead of wrong-side down. Mrs. Zivonik was doing

fine, too, was even cracking terrible jokes despite the sheen of sweat soaking her and the

occasional sharp grunts, gasps, and deeper groans when the contractions hit. Scott had just

touched the baby's toes and was wondering why he'd ever thought this would be easy—while

trying to ignore Evelina Zivonik's sounds of acute discomfort—when a wave of emotional

anguish strong enough to knock him cock-eyed rolled over Scott like a naval battle cruiser.

His involuntary grunt and sharp movement drew a startled sound from his patient. "Doc?"

Scott blinked, fighting the urge to panic, and managed, "Uh, sorry. No problems, you're fine and

the baby's fine." For God's sake, Scott, pull it together! Before your patient thinks you're as loony

as your misbegotten ancestors. Some of them had been burned at the stake . . .

Scott blinked as Evelina Zivonik leaned up far enough to peer over the top of her distended

belly. "That's good. But you don't look fine."

Just beyond the bedroom door of the Zivonik home, Fisher—who had the run of Scott's home

and office, but not of his patients' homes—began bleeking in acute distress. He'd never heard the

treecat make a sound quite like it, in fact, and the emotional wallop he was getting from his

companion was enough to shake him into blurting out the truth.

"I'm not fine. Or rather, my treecat isn't."

"Your treecat?" she echoed. A thread of fear colored those two words. Treecats were viewed

with awe and no small measure of worry by their human neighbors, who were almost universally

uncertain how to respond to their presence.

"Yes. He's upset, very upset, I'm not sure why." Careful, Scott . . . you're treading thin ice

here. "I've never heard him make a noise like that," he added, glancing worriedly toward the

closed bedroom door.

"Well, I'm not actually in serious labor yet," Evelina said uncertainly, the worry stronger this

time. "If there's a problem with the treecat, you need to go find out what it is. If he's hurt or sick .

. . well, I'm not exactly going anywhere, so you should find out what it is."

His professional ethics would permit no such conduct, of course. Abandoning a patient in the

middle of a procedure just to comfort his friend was out of the question. But Fisher's deep distress

was not to be denied. Fisher knew how to open doors, of course, and the bedroom door was

closed, but wasn't locked. Scott hesitated, torn between the need to reassure himself that a

treasured friend wasn't in peril and the need to bring this baby into the world.

"Why don't you call him in here?" Evelina suggested, correctly interpreting his hesitation.

"Irina has told us all about Fisher and showed us pictures, but I've never actually seen a live

treecat." The hint of wistfulness in her voice decided Scott in an instant.

He flashed her a grateful response. "Thanks. Fisher! Come on inside, Fisher, it's not locked!"

The door swung open and a cream-and-grey furred streak shot across the floor on collision

course with Scott's shoulder. He grunted softly at the impact, one hand still trapped in Evelina

Zivonik's womb, the baby kicking and moving under his fingers.

"Bleek!" The treecat touched his cheek with both front hands, then pointed urgently at the

window.

"What? Is there some danger outside?"

That wasn't the feeling he was getting from his companion of nearly twelve Terran months,

now. He was getting better at reading Fisher's emotional "messages" all the time, thanks to an

empathic ability of some sort that he carried in his extremely Celtic Scots Highland genes—an

"ability" that still scared him silly on a rational, scientific level. The first time it'd happened with

Fisher, he'd literally thought he was hallucinating. Only later did the truth sink in—and that was

almost worse than a hallucination. On Sphinx, the kind of legacy he'd inherited from a long line

of charlatans, parlor tricksters, and other assorted loons was met with mere skepticism and

ridicule. But there were human worlds where professing to ownership of anything remotely

similar to what his more . . . flamboyant . . . relatives (all on his mother's side of the family, thank

God, so the name MacDallan hadn't been connected with them) was punishable by incarceration

for fraud—or outright insanity.

What he was getting from Fisher now was not so much a sense that there was some kind of

danger outside as more a sense that something outside was in danger. Or distress, maybe. It was

also abundantly clear that Fisher wanted him to go outside, urgently. "Fisher, I can't go outside

right now. I'm trying to deliver a baby."

Grass-green eyes shone brilliant with distress. The treecat made a pitiful sound. Just then, a

chorus of childish voices erupted out in the main part of the house.

"Daddy! Come quick!"

"It's a treecat, Daddy!"

"Aunt Irina! Hurry! There's a treecat outside!"

"He's hurt or sick or something! Hurry, Daddy! Hurry, Aunt Irina!"

Scott and Evelina Zivonik exchanged startled glances.

"Go," Evelina said firmly. "I've had six babies. This one's going to get himself born just fine,

whether you sit here and sweat to death with worrying or take five minutes to go out there and

maybe save a life. You're the only doctor for a hundred kilometers. If there's an injured treecat

out there, then it needs you more than I do right now. Besides," and she gave him a wry, sweaty

grin, "I could use a breather from all that mauling."

Scott flushed; he'd continued working to turn the baby even while trying to determine what

was wrong with Fisher, and "mauling" was probably what it felt like to poor Evelina Zivonik.

Fisher touched his cheek again. "Bleek?" The sound tugged at his heart, not to be denied.

"Thanks," he said with heartfelt sincerity. "I've never seen Fisher this upset. I'll be right

back." He eased his hand out of Mrs. Zivonik's womb, reaching for a towel with the other. That

bit about Fisher being more upset than Scott had ever seen him wasn't exactly true; but Scott

didn't like talking about the injuries he'd suffered the day he and Fisher had first made one

another's memorable acquaintance. The treecat had saved Scott MacDallan's life. The very least

he could do was repay the favor to a treecat in trouble.

So he hurriedly scrubbed off and jogged outside, where the Zivonik brood danced around

their father and Aleksandr Zivonik's younger sister, Irina Kisaevna. Aleksandr and Irina stood a

good twenty yards to the side of the house, peering up into a picket wood tree's lower branches.

Scott had no more than cleared the doorjamb than the most anguished sound he had ever heard

uttered by a living creature smote him straight through the skull bones. The sound keened up and

down like a banshee driven insane, voice torn by more pain than can be endured. Fisher, who

huddled on his shoulder, wrapped his tail around Scott's throat and shuddered non-stop. "Bleek!"

Scott broke into a run, even while reaching up to soothe his companion with one hand.

"Where is it?"

Aleksandr pointed. Scott peered up into the tall picket wood closest to the Zivonik house,

toward one of the long, perfectly horizontal branches that made the picket wood so unusual

among trees. "Up there."

Scott had to look closely, but he spotted the treecat near the trunk, sitting up on its haunches

like an old Terran ferret, longer and leaner than one of those ancient weasels, yet with a head and

certain other characteristics far more feline—except, of course, for the six limbs, a trait it shared

with the massive and deadly Sphinxian hexapuma it so closely resembled in all but size. The

treecat keening in the Zivoniks' backyard picket wood was larger than Fisher, about seventy

centimeters long, not counting the prehensile tail, which effectively doubled its length, yet the

little arboreal was far too thin for its length. It did look sick—or injured. Its coat was mottled

cream-and-grey, like Fisher's, but even from this distance, Scott could see dirt and darker stains

that looked sickeningly like blood.

"Fisher?" he murmured, trying to soothe his small friend's violent tremors. "Is it hurt? If I

could get to it, treat it . . ."

The hair-raising cries halted. The strange treecat made a pitiful sound, tiny with distance, then

moved haltingly down the trunk toward the ground. Scott's pulse raced. He wanted to break into a

run, wanted to rush toward it, and was afraid of frightening it away.

"Aleksandr," he said in a low voice, "I think maybe you and Irina should take the children

back to the house. If anything spooks it, we may never get a chance to help, and I think that

treecat needs help very badly."

Aleksandr nodded. The set of his mouth was grim. "Come on, kids. And no arguments!"

Irina Kisaevna glanced involuntarily toward Scott, concern darkening her vivid blue eyes. Of

all the humans Scott had met before being adopted by Fisher, Irina alone seemed to grasp the

depth of the bond between himself and the remarkable creature who'd come into his life nearly a

full Terran year previously. Widowed when her husband had died in the plague that had

devastated the human population of Sphinx, Irina had become a close friend during the past

couple of years. Scott enjoyed her company, her quick, incisive mind, and her ability to make

him feel rested and at ease, even after a difficult day; but when Evelina's latest pregnancy had

turned difficult, she had moved in with her brother on the Zivoniks' farmstead—thus depriving

Scott of her delightful company and occasionally intuitive insights into his relationship with his

treecat.

"Irina," he said quickly, "I'd appreciate your help."

Warmth flashed into her beautiful eyes. "Of course, Scott. It would be my privilege." She,

too, peered toward the slowly descending treecat in the big picket wood tree above them.

Scott waited while Aleksandr herded his youngsters back toward the house. The whimpering

treecat had reached the lowest branch of the picket wood, where it stopped, bleeking piteously.

Fisher replied, then pointed. Scott made a hopeful guess at Fisher's meaning. "It's okay if I go to

him?"

"Bleek!"

He couldn't pick up anything like sense from Fisher, but the emotional response was

unmistakable. He hurried toward the picket wood trunk and peered anxiously upward. The

strange treecat was shaking where it huddled on the low branch. The dark stains were blood, long

since dried, matting the once-beautiful pelt in a leprous patchwork. The treecat was far too thin,

looked half starved, in fact. Was it an outcast, that no treecat community would help it? Did

treecats have outcasts? Whether they did or they didn't, Fisher was certainly urging Scott to help

the stranger, so there was no clue to be gleaned from his own treecat's behavior.

"Hello," Scott said quietly, speaking directly to the treecat above him. "Can I help?" He

projected all the warmth and welcome he could summon.

The reaction stunned him. The distressed treecat let out a warbling, broken sound, then

jumped to the ground and ran straight to Scott, clasping his leg with all four upper limbs and

holding on as though life itself depended on the strength of that grip. Fisher swarmed down,

touching faces with the stranger and making the soft, crooning sounds Scott recognized from his

own occasional bouts of emotional distress. Scott crouched down, offered a hand. The bloodied

treecat bumped it with his head, begging for the touch, leading Scott to wonder if this treecat had

been around humans before. He stroked the treecat gently, trying to determine from that cautious

touch how badly injured it might be.

He found no wounds to account for the blood, not even a sign of swelling or inflammation.

But the treecat clung to him and shivered and made broken little sounds that horrified Scott

nearly as much as they did Fisher, judging by the emotional aura his own treecat was projecting.

Something truly dire had happened to this little treecat—and Scott received a strong premonition

that whatever it was, it meant serious trouble for him and his companion. When Scott tried to

pick the treecat up, it let out a frightened sound that prompted Fisher to rest both of his true-hands

on the other's nearest shoulder. A moment later, the filthy, blood-matted treecat swarmed into

Scott's arms, huddling close. Fisher jumped up to his customary perch on Scott's shoulder, still

crooning gently.

Irina hesitated some distance away, biting her lower lip uncertainly. Scott nodded her closer

with a slight movement of his head and she approached slowly, while Scott stroked the painfully

thin treecat reassuringly. When Irina stood beside him, the stray let out a strange, mewling little

sound, gazing up at her through grass-green eyes as deep and wounded as a hurt toddler's.

"Poor thing," she whispered gently, offering a cautious hand.

The trembling treecat permitted her touch, arching slightly in Scott's arms as she stroked

gently down its spine. But it was Scott the stray clung to, all four upper limbs clenching in Scott's

shirt.

"Will you let me take you inside, I wonder?" Scott asked aloud, moving cautiously toward the

Zivonik house. "You're hardly more than fur and bones. You need food and water and God

knows what else." The washboard ribcage under his hands spoke of a prolonged deprivation and

he could see cracked, dried skin around the treecat's mouth, eyes, and delicate hands, indicating

dehydration, as well. Scott stroked the distraught treecat gently, whispering softly to it, as he and

Irina slowly approached the meter-thick stone walls of the Zivonik house. The most cursory

examination told him the treecat was male and—thankfully—uninjured despite the dried blood in

its fur.

Irina called out, "Alek, the poor thing's half-starved. Get some meat scraps for him, a dish of

cool water, whatever we've got left from dinner last night!"

"Karl, drag out that leftover turkey," Aleksandr said, shooing the children inside. "No, Larisa,

you can look later, after the treecat is out of danger. Nadia, go check on your mother. Stasya, get

some water for the treecat. Gregor, run some hot, soapy water and bring out a handful of clean

towels."

"Yes, Papa."

Children scattered.

"Kitchen's this way," Alek escorted him into the house.

Scott moved cautiously inside with his unexpected patient, Irina trailing anxiously at his

shoulder, and entered a brightly lit kitchen just in time to see Karl, their oldest son, setting out a

platter with an enormous, half-stripped turkey carcass. The boy set it down on a broad wooden

dining table built to accommodate a growing family.

"Dig in," the boy addressed the bedraggled treecat shyly, cheeks flushed from excitement.

"Help yourself." Stasya, the Zivoniks' middle daughter, was carrying a basin of water to the table,

eyes round with wonder as Scott set the thin treecat down. It paused for only a moment, as

though making certain the offer were genuine, then tore into the carcass with ravenous hunger.

The children hung back, staring raptly at the wondrous creature on their kitchen table; very few

humans had actually seen one in person. Even stolid, broad-shouldered Aleksandr Zivonik

hunkered down to watch the starving treecat tear into the carcass with surprisingly dainty hands,

visibly entranced by the sight of his diminutive sentient guest.

Scott smiled gently. "Fisher," he said, reaching up to stroke his friend, "I have to go back and

help deliver that baby now. Can you stay with him?" Scott had no idea how much his treecat

actually understood of what he said, but he and Fisher generally had little trouble communicating

basic things. Fisher simply swarmed down his arm and jumped to the table, crooning softly to the

battered treecat, which was busily stuffing strips and hunks of turkey into emaciated jaws. Scott

hauled his dirt-streaked shirt off, smiling gratefully at Irina when she carried it toward the

laundry room, then scrubbed his arms with hot, soapy water and disinfectant at the kitchen sink

and hurried back to check on Mrs. Zivonik.

"Mama's doing fine," Nadia, the oldest of the Zivonik daughters said at once. "How's the

treecat?" she added anxiously, edging toward the hallway.

"Eating your turkey dinner. Go on, see for yourself."

The girl darted for the door. Scott found his patient nearly as apprehensive as her daughter

when Evelina gazed up at him. "It wasn't injured?" she asked anxiously. Clearly, Mrs. Zivonik

was as worried over the sudden appearance of an ailing treecat on their doorstep as her husband.

So little was known about treecats, the abrupt appearance of a healthy one was often enough to

upset the most steady of settlers; a starvation-thin one with blood in its fur was genuinely cause

for fright—and Evelina Zivonik wasn't the only one afraid of the reasons for that treecat's

condition. Scott was considerably disturbed, himself, despite nearly a full T-year of daily contact

with a treecat to accustom him to their sometimes startling habits and behaviors.

And the last thing Evelina Zivonik needed during a breech-presentation, difficult labor was to

fret over this unexpected development. He tried to reassure her as he resumed his interrupted

work with the baby. "No, I didn't find any actual injuries. Of course, I can't hazard a guess when

he last had a solid meal and anything to drink, but he's wolfing down turkey as fast as he can tear

it off the bones, so there's nothing wrong with his appetite."

"Nadia said it's covered with dried blood?" Worry still knotted her brow into a deep furrow.

"Yes, but none of its own. Whatever's happened, we can't communicate with treecats very

effectively, so I doubt we'll ever know where the blood came from. The important thing," and he

gave her a firm, reassuring smile, "is that your little neighbor is doing just fine, so there's no

sense in worrying about it. So I want you to relax for me and let's see if we can't get this baby of

yours born, eh?"

Evelina Zivonik gave him a wan smile and nodded, then dug her fingers into the bedding and

groaned as a contraction rippled across her distended belly. Scott reached once again for the

recalcitrant infant attempting to get himself born feet-first and scowled in concentration, moving

by feel and instinct. After several minutes of awkward squirming, during which Evelina grunted

sharply only a few times—a stoic woman, Evelina Zivonik—Scott's effort and sweat finally paid

off. "Ah-hah! Gotcha!" Scott grinned as the baby under his groping hand finally cooperated

enough to turn around inside his mother's uterus. "Head down and rarin' to go. Okay, Evelina

Zivonik, let's see if we can't get this latest son of yours born!"

Humanity had discovered the existence of the Sphinxian treecats only fifteen Terran months

previously, when eleven-year-old Stephanie Harrington had caught one raiding her parents'

greenhouse—with several bunches of purloined celery strapped to its back in a neatly woven net.

No one knew why treecats were so hyped on celery, but ever since that first, fateful encounter,

treecats had been popping out of the woodwork, so to speak, all over Sphinx, importuning their

new friends for all the spare, stringy stalks humanity's kitchen gardens could grow. The sheer

number of treecats who had abruptly come calling suggested a far-flung and quite sophisticated

communications system of unknown origin, all the more remarkable because the treecats had

succeeded in hiding from a high-tech civilization for fully half a Terran century.

Enter one eleven-year-old genius with a camera and a battered, shattered glider, and fifty

years of secretive observation from the treetops had ended with treecats exploding onto the scene,

seeking out human companions in the same way little Stephanie Harrington's crippled treecat had

come to her rescue, leaving its own kind to live with her family. While the adoption rates were

not very high compared to the overall human population—perhaps one in only a million or so—

compared to fifty T-years of total secrecy, during which humanity hadn't even suspected the

treecats' existence, the sudden switch in tactics on the part of the treecats was startling.

Clearly, the treecats were as insatiably curious about people as humans were about treecats—

yet humanity still knew almost nothing about their newest neighbors. Not even their level of

intelligence could be accurately determined, although Scott had begun forming his own ideas

along those lines. Thanks to his somewhat bizarre genetic legacy—one he'd sooner have been

slow-roasted over coals than reveal to anyone, let alone the xenologists here to study the

treecats—Scott was somehow "tuned in" to the emotions of a sentient alien, one that was, he was

beginning to suspect, a whole lot smarter than any human on Sphinx had begun to guess. He also

suspected that eleven-year-old Stephanie Harrington wasn't telling the full truth about her treecat,

either, not if Scott's experiences with Fisher were any indication. And he was beginning to

suspect he knew the reason for her silence.

One of the most intense feelings close association with a treecat engendered was an

overwhelming protectiveness, an almost subliminal sense that whatever an adoptee learned about

his or her treecat, it should under no circumstances be made public knowledge too quickly.

Treecats clearly needed the help of their human friends to avoid the fate of so many other

indigenous, low-tech, aboriginal populations throughout human history. Caution and secrecy

seemed the better part of wisdom until more could be determined about the simple basics of

treecat biology, sociology, and culture. Not to mention how humanity was going to react in the

short-term, never mind the long-run.

And that was a difficult job, even for an adoptee. Even one like Scott, who had the somewhat

unexpected advantage of his ancestors' irritating tendency toward "second sight" flashes of

empathy or whatever it was that Scott experienced on a daily basis with Fisher. That the treecats

possessed some level of telepathy or empathy was obvious from the reports made by any

"adopted" human. But no instruments existed to measure a thing like telepathy, much less an

empathic trait. Understandably, the xenologists were massively frustrated.

At the moment, so was Scott MacDallan.

The "stray," as the Zivonik children had christened the emaciated treecat, had filled his

cadaverous little belly and promptly gone to sleep. After the successful delivery of squalling

young Lev Zivonik, the stray had graciously suffered Scott to plunk him into hot, soapy water to

remove the caked blood and dirt. But he—for the stray was definitely male—would not let go of

Scott afterward, no matter what enticements were offered. He simply held onto Scott's shirt,

which Irina had thoughtfully laundered for him while little Lev was getting himself born, and

shivered.

And Fisher displayed an urgent desire for Scott to go outside. Scott suspected that Fisher was

relaying what the stray was feeling; or perhaps Scott was also picking up a sense of urgency from

the thin treecat clinging to him, but what he couldn't fathom was why the treecats wanted so

earnestly for him to hike into a picket wood wilderness after a long, intensive delivery that had

left him tired enough to want to go directly home and collapse for the evening.

Each time he quietly suggested they might go back to town and return later, however, Fisher

grew nearly frantic and the strange treecat emitted choked, mewling sounds like a kitten being

mauled in the jaws of a killer dog. Scott swallowed hard and tried to sound a reasonable note.

"But Fisher, it'll be dark in a couple of hours and I really need to get some sleep. I don't want to

fly after dark, not as tired as I am."

"Bleek . . ."

Aleksandr asked, "Can you get a sense of how far away they want you to go?"

David Weber - Honor Anth. 2 - Worlds of Honor

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