Dinner was indeed cold by the time they got to it.
Honor had no idea how the complex, jagged-edged situation was going to resolve itself. For that matter, she didn't even know what she herself felt. She only knew she was afraid to find out.
It was odd, especially for someone with the supportive, loving parents she'd had, not to mention her link to Nimitz, and even more her ability to sense the emotions of those about her. Odd, yet true.
There remained one thing in the universe which could absolutely terrify her: her own heart.
She couldn't understand it—had never been able to understand it. Physical danger, duty, moral responsibility . . . those she could face. Not without fear, but without the crippling sense that somehow her fear would betray her into failure. But not this. This was a different sort of minefield, one she had no idea how to navigate, and one she had no confidence in her ability to face. Yes, she could taste and share the emotions of both Hamish and Emily, but simply knowing what they felt was no magic spell to suddenly make all right.
She knew Hamish Alexander loved her. She knew she loved Hamish Alexander. And she knew Hamish and Emily loved each other, and that all three of them were determined not to hurt the others.
And none of it did a bit of good, because whatever they did, whatever happened, someone was going to be hurt. And looming over that deep immediate and personal dread of pain to come was the chilling knowledge of how many other people would be affected by what ought to be their deeply personal decisions.
Perhaps it would have been different if she'd had more self-confidence, she thought, sipping her wine as she sat across the table from Emily and Hamish. She envied Emily's serenity, especially because she'd felt exactly how dismayed and shaken Emily had been by her own admission in the atrium. The older woman had already known what Hamish felt; the sudden confirmation that Honor returned his love had hit her like a blow. There'd been anger in her reaction. Not a lot, but a sharp, knife-like flicker of fury that Honor should dare to love her husband, an automatic response that was built of raw instinct and her awareness of how much more danger Honor's emotions threw all of them into. She'd made herself accept that Hamish's struggle against his feelings was a losing battle; now she'd discovered that the person she'd hoped would be her ally had already lost the same fight. There was enormous potential for jealousy and resentment alike in that moment of realization, and the fact that she'd put her rage aside so quickly and so completely astonished Honor.
But there were a lot of things about Emily Alexander that astonished Honor. She was totally unlike Honor's mother, except in one way: both of them radiated that calm sense of knowing exactly who they were, not just in matters of duty, but in those of the heart, as well. Honor had always envied that in her mother, almost as much as she'd envied—and resented—Allison Harrington's beauty and unabashed sensuality when she herself had been an ugly-duckling, raw-boned, too-tall, gawky adolescent. She'd known even at her most resentful that she was being foolish. Her mother couldn't help her beauty any more than she could help being who she was, and even if she could have been someone else just to make her daughter feel less outclassed and homely, it would have been wrong for her to do so. Wrong for her to be anyone but herself.
She and Honor's father had taught their daughter that, almost without realizing they had. They'd done it by example and by loving her, without limit or qualification. They'd made her whole in all of the ways that mattered most, even while she was wounded in that one secret regard. The quiet place in her heart where she'd been supposed to keep the belief that anyone could truly love her . . . unless they had to.
It had been stupid, stupid, stupid, she told herself. If anyone in the entire galaxy could know that, then certainly with her parents and Nimitz she'd been that one person. But it hadn't helped, and then, at the Academy, had come Pavel Young and Mr. Midshipman Carl Panokulous—the would-be rapist and the man who had hurt her more cruelly still. The damage they'd done had been terrible, yet she'd survived it. Survived and, with Paul Tankersley's help, actually learned to heal. To know that there were people who could—and would—love her. She'd actually, physically felt the love of so many people in her life now, in so many ways. Paul. Her parents, James MacGuiness, Andreas Venizelos, Andrew LaFollet, Alistair McKeon, Jamie Candless, Scotty Tremaine, Miranda LaFollet, Nimitz . . .
Yet deep inside her, somewhere all the healing had failed to reach, there was the fear. No longer the fear that they would not love her, but that they would not be allowed to. That the universe would punish them if they dared to, for all too many of those who had loved her had also died because of it.
It wasn't logical, and she knew it, but she'd lost too many lives, and every one of them had torn its own hole in her soul. Officers and ratings who had served with her and paid with their lives for her victories. Armsmen who had died so that their liege lady might live. Friends who had knowingly faced Death—and lost to him—for her sake. It had happened too often, cost too many too much, and the terror that anyone who dared to love her was marked for death mocked her, for logic was a weak weapon when matched against the unreasoning assurance of the heart. She'd made progress in her fight against that irrational certainty. She knew that, too. But if she'd won a few battles, she had yet to win the war, and the tangled weave of emotions and needs, fear and the obligations of honor, that wrapped about her feelings for Hamish Alexander like a shroud threatened to cost her even more ground in the fight.
"So," Hamish said finally, his voice almost startling after their long, mutual silence, "did the two of you decide how we ought to tackle this?"
He kept his tone light, almost droll, but he didn't fool anyone at the table, including himself, and Honor looked at Emily.
"I think we've found a way to at least start getting a handle on it," his wife told him with a serenity Honor was half-surprised, even now, to realize was genuine. "I don't say it will be easy, and I'm not sure it will be quite as effective, under the circumstances, as I would have liked—" she glanced sideways at Honor for a heartbeat "—but I believe we can at least blunt the worst of their attack."
"There's a reason I've always relied on you for the necessary political miracles, Emily," Hamish told her with a smile. "Give me a fleet problem, or a naval battle to fight, and I know exactly what to do. But dealing with scum like High Ridge and Descroix—?" He shook his head. "I just can't wrap my mind around how to handle them."
"Be honest, dear," Emily corrected him gently. "It's not that you really can't do it, and you know it. It's that you get so furious with them that you wind up climbing onto your high moral horse so you can ride them under the hooves of your righteous fury. But when you close your knight errant's helmet, the visibility through that visor is just a little limited, isn't it?"
Her smile took most of the bite from her words, but he winced anyway, and that wince was at least partly genuine.
"I realize any good political analyst has to know when and how to be brutally honest, Emily, but somehow that particular metaphor doesn't do an enormous amount for my self image," he said so dryly Honor chuckled despite herself, and Emily looked at her with a twinkle.
"He does the affronted-but-too-polite-to-admit-it, stiff-necked, aristocratic naval officer quite well, doesn't he?" she remarked.
"I don't think I'll answer that question," Honor replied. "On the other hand, there's something to be said for the . . . directness of a Don Quixote. As long as the windmills don't hit back too hard, at least."
"Granted, granted," Emily conceded. She was eating one-handed with the grace of decades of practice, but now she paused to set down her fork so that she could point with one finger for emphasis. "I'll even grant that the political process needs people willing to shatter themselves on the rocks of conviction rather than countenance deception or deceit. We'd be better off if we had more of them, and the ones we do have have a responsibility to serve as the conscience of our partisan bloodletting. But they can do that effectively in isolation, maintaining our concepts of morality by serving as examples of it whether they ever accomplish anything else or not. But to be effective in the political process requires more than personal rectitude, however admirable that may be. You don't have to become the enemy, but you do have to understand her, and that means understanding not simply her motives but her tactics. Because when you understand those two things you can design counter tactics. You don't have to descend to the same level; you simply have to recognize what the opposition is up to and allow for it."
"Willie understands that a lot better than I do," Hamish admitted after a moment.
"Yes, he does, and that's why someday he'll be Prime Minister and you won't. Which is probably just as well," Emily said with another, wider smile. "On the other hand, much as I love Willie, he'd make a terrible admiral!"
All three of them laughed, but then Emily cocked her head and looked thoughtfully at Honor.
"I haven't had as long to observe you, Honor," she said, "but I'm a bit surprised by the fact that you seem to be rather more . . . flexible than Hamish. Not that I think you're any more willing to sacrifice your principles on the altar of expediency, but in the sense that you clearly do a better job of putting yourself inside the other person's head."
"Appearances can be deceiving," Honor replied wryly. "I don't begin to understand how a High Ridge or a Janacek thinks. And to be perfectly honest, I don't want to."
"You're wrong, you know," Emily disagreed so firmly that Honor looked at her in some surprise. "You don't understand why they want the things they want, but you can accept that they do. And once you've done that, you also do an excellent job of analyzing how they might go about getting them."
"Not always," Honor said in a darker tone. "I never saw this—" she waved one hand around the table in a gesture which encompassed all three of them "—coming."
"No, but now that it's here, you know exactly what it is they're trying to accomplish. That's why it hurts you so much to see them getting away with it," Emily said gently. "No one can fault you for being surprised by gutter tactics so alien to the way your own mind works, Honor, but even at your angriest, you haven't let anger blind you. And from what I've seen of you both in the 'faxes and on HD, as well as here, now that I've had a chance to meet you in person, I think you could turn into a very effective politician, with time."
Honor stared at her in disbelief, and Emily chuckled.
"Oh, you'd never be a natural politician the way Willie is! And, like Hamish, you'd always be most comfortable in the sort of collegial atmosphere the House of Lords is supposed to be. But I've viewed your speeches, and you're much more effective as a public speaker than Hamish is." She smiled at her husband. "That's not an aspersion on him, you understand. But he gets impatient and starts to lecture, and you don't.
"There's more to being politically effective than giving good speeches, Emily," Hamish objected.
"Of course there is. But Honor has already demonstrated her ability to analyze military threat situations and devise strategies to meet them, and just listening to her speak in the Lords, it's evident to me that she can bring that same analytical ability to bear in other arenas, once she learns the conditions which apply there. She still has a lot to learn about politics, especially the cutthroat version practiced here in the Star Kingdom, but it seems to me from watching her over the past few years that her learning curve is steep. She's spent forty T-years learning to be a naval officer; give me half that long in politics, and I'll make her Prime Minister!"
"Oh no you won't!" Honor said roundly. "I'd cut my own throat in less than ten!"
"That seems a bit drastic," Emily observed mildly. "Perhaps there's more of Doña Quixote in you than I'd realized."
Her green eyes flickered for just a moment, and Honor felt her brief flare of regret over her choice of words, but the countess brushed it off quickly.
"No, just more sanity," Hamish observed, oblivious to the quick glances the two women exchanged. He wasn't looking at them, anyway. His attention had strayed back to Samantha, as it had done periodically all evening, and he took another celery stalk from the bowl on the table and offered it to her.
"You're going to make her sick, Hamish," Emily scolded, and he looked up quickly, his expression so much like that of a guilty schoolboy caught in the act that Honor chuckled.
"Not without a lot more celery than that, he's not, Emily," she reassured her hostess. "Mind you," she went on more sternly, transferring her attention to Hamish, "too much celery really is bad for her. She can't digest it, and if she gets too much of it, she'll get constipated."
Samantha turned to give her a dignified look of reproval, and Honor was relieved to feel the female 'cat's amusement. Despite the transcendent joy of having bonded with Hamish, Samantha had been almost instantly aware of the dismay and consternation which had afflicted both Honor and her new person, and that awareness had sent its echoes reverberating through her, as well.
From the feel of her emotions, she still wasn't entirely certain why they were so upset. Which, Honor thought, only served to emphasize that despite all of their centuries of association with humans, treecats remained an alien species. For Nimitz and Samantha—as probably for all of their kind, given their ability to sense one another's emotions—there was absolutely no point in trying to conceal what one felt. Nimitz had accepted over the years that there were times when it was inappropriate, among humans, at least, to show his emotions, especially when they consisted of anger directed at someone senior to Honor in the Navy. But even for him, that was more a matter of good manners (and of making concessions to an inexplicable human code of behavior because it was important to his person) than because he saw any real sense in it. And neither he nor Samantha would have dreamed of attempting to deny how they truly felt about something—especially about something important.
Which explained the growing frustration Honor had received from both of them as the pain of suppressing and denying her feelings for Hamish grew within her. They knew how much she loved him, they knew how much he loved her, and by treecat standards, it was willfully insane for the two of them to subject themselves—and one another—to so much hurt. Which, to make things still worse, was also a hurt the 'cats had no choice but to endure with them.
Intellectually, both Nimitz and Samantha realized that all humans, with the notable exception of Honor herself, were what their own species called "mind-blind." They could even understand that because of that mind-blindness, human society had different imperatives from those of their own. But what they understood intellectually hadn't affected what they felt, and what they'd felt was not only frustration but anger at the inexplicable human willfulness which prevented Honor and Hamish from simply admitting the truth which was self-evident to any treecat and getting on with their lives without all this pain and suffering.
But now that the immediate euphoria of recognizing a human partner in Hamish and bonding to him had passed, Samantha was back face-to-face with the realities under which her human friends lived. And because Samantha was extremely intelligent, and an empath, she knew just how badly her adoption choice had disturbed those realities, even if she was still working on fully assimilating all of the reasons why it had.
"If they can't digest it, and if it, um, clogs their systems, then why do they all love it so much?" Emily asked.
"That was something that puzzled every human who ever studied 'cats," Honor said. "So once they learned to sign, we asked them, of course." She shrugged. "Part of their answer was exactly what you might have expected—they love the way it tastes. Think of the most chocolate-addicted human being you've ever met, then cube her craving, and you'll start closing in on just how much they love it. But that's only part of the reason. The other is that there's a trace compound in Sphinxian celery that they need."
"In Sphinxian celery?" Emily repeated.
"They love the taste of any celery from anywhere," Honor told her. "But back when humans first came to the Manticore System, we had to make some minor adjustments in our Old Terran flora and fauna before we introduced them into their new environments. As," she added in a dust-dry tone, gesturing briefly at herself, "we've done with human beings themselves, in a few other cases. We didn't do anything really drastic in the case of Sphinx, but a few minor genetic changes were designed into most of the Old Terran food plants to prevent the fixing of elements we didn't need in our diet and to discourage some particularly persistent local parasites and the plant diseases they carry. The basic idea was to get the genegineered plants to manufacture and store a Sphinxian organic compound that's harmless to humans but serves as a natural insect repellant. It worked in all of them, but better in some than in others, and it was most effective of all in celery, of all things. The version in the descendants of the modified Old Terran plants is slightly different from that which occurs in the native flora, sort of a hybrid. But it appears to be either necessary or extremely beneficial to the maintenance of the 'cats' empathic and telepathic senses."
"But where did they get it from before we came along with our celery?" Emily demanded.
"There's a Sphinxian plant that produces the native plants' version of the same compound. They call it 'purple thorn,' and they've known about it forever. But it's scarce and hard to find, and, frankly, they say celery just tastes a whole lot better." Honor shrugged again. "And that, it turns out, is the answer to the Great Celery Theft Mystery which first brought humans and treecats together."
"That's fascinating," Emily said, gazing at Honor raptly, and then moved her gaze to Nimitz and Samantha. She watched them for a moment, and they looked back at her solemnly until she drew a deep breath and turned back to Honor.
"I envy you," she said sincerely. "I would probably have envied you anyway, just for having been adopted in the first place, but to be answering so many questions, finding the answers to so many puzzles after so many centuries . . . That has to be especially wonderful."
"It is," Honor said softly, then surprised both Alexanders—and herself—with a giggle. "On the other hand," she explained half-apologetically as her hosts looked at her in surprise, "watching them sign can be an exhausting experience . . . especially when you get a dozen or so of them in one place! It's like being trapped inside a machine shop or an engine turbine."
"Oh, my!" Emily laughed delightedly. "I never even thought of that side of it."
Nimitz looked back and forth between the smiling humans, then rose in one of the human-style high chairs Nico had managed to dredge up for the treecats and began to sign. His spine was stiff with eloquent dignity, and Honor managed to keep any more laughter out of her voice as she translated for Emily and Hamish.
"He says that if we two-legs think it's hard to keep track of all those signs, then we should try it from the People's side. And that if we'd had the good sense as a species not to limit ourselves to 'mouth-noises' as our sole, miserable means of communication, the People might not have had to learn to wiggle their fingers just to talk to us."
The 'cat finished signing, then twitched his whiskers in disgust as all three humans began to laugh once more. He sniffed audibly, and elevated his nose, but Honor felt his inner delight bubbling up as he made them laugh, and she sent him an answering mental caress of approval.
"That's fascinating, as Emily says," Hamish said, after a moment, "and I can see that I'm going to have to go ahead and learn how to read signs myself. But all levity aside, you and Samantha and Nimitz and I have to face the fact that her decision to adopt me is going to create enormous problems. I'm grateful—awed—that she did it, anyway, but I'd truly like to know how it could have happened. And why she chose to do it at this particular moment."
"You still have a lot to learn about treecats, Hamish," Honor pointed out in a carefully neutral tone. "All of us do, actually. In fact, in some ways, those of us who've been adopted the longest have the most to learn, because we're having to disabuse ourselves of some theories and beliefs we've cherished for quite some time. And one of those beliefs was that a 'cat 'chooses' a human half as some sort of conscious process."
"What do you mean?" Emily asked intently.
"I've spent hours talking with Nimitz and Samantha about it, and I'm not entirely certain I've got it all straight yet," Honor replied. "But to boil it down to its simplest, while all treecats are both telepaths and empaths, some appear to be born with a special ability to reach out to human beings, as well as other members of their own species."
Both Alexanders nodded, but Honor could tell neither of them was fully up to speed on all of the new revelations about treecats. It might not be a bad idea, she decided, to give them a little more background before she tried to answer the question she wasn't at all sure she had an answer for in the first place.
"All 'cats are able to sense both the thoughts and the emotions of other 'cats," she began. "They call thoughts the 'mind-voice' and emotions the 'mind-glow.' Well, to be more accurate, those are the human-style words they've come up with to use when they try to explain things to us. As near as we can tell, Dr. Arif was correct in her original theory that telepaths wouldn't use a spoken language at all. In fact, that was probably the greatest single stumbling block to their ever learning to communicate with us. They knew we communicated using 'mouth-noises,' but the concept of language was so alien to them that it took them literally centuries to learn the meanings of more than a handful of words."
"How did they ever learn at all?" It was Hamish's turn to ask the question, and he reached out to caress Samantha's prick ears gently and tenderly.
"Well, that sort of brings us back to Samantha, in a way," Honor told him, and he looked up from the 'cat sharply.
"It's going to take us years and years to really square away our understanding of treecats," she went on, "but we've already learned an awful lot more than we ever knew before. There are still problems in getting complex concepts across from either side, especially when they're concepts which relate to abilities like telepathy and empathy that humans simply don't have any experiential basis with."
She carefully took no note of the thoughtful glance Hamish gave her over her last sentence.
"One thing which does seem to be clear, however, is that 'cats simply aren't innovators. Their heads don't work that way—or, at least, they haven't in the past. I suppose it's possible that that will change, now that they've begun interacting so much more fully with humans in general. But traditionally, 'cats who're capable of new insights or of conceptualizing new ways to do things have been very, very rare. That's one reason treecat society tends to have been extraordinarily stable, and also the reason that it seems to be difficult for them, as a species, to change their minds once they've embarked upon a consensual policy or way to do things."
This was not the time, she decided, to mention the fact that the treecats had spent the better part of four hundred T-years systematically concealing the true extent of their intelligence from the humans who had intruded into and settled upon their planet. Personally, she understood their motives perfectly, and she was confident Hamish and Emily would, as well, but it wouldn't hurt to get the groundwork established before they or the public at large were admitted into the full truth about that little treecat decision.
"But if they produce a limited number of innovators," she continued instead, "they have at least one huge offsetting advantage when it comes to promoting change. Once any 'cat figures out something new, the new knowledge can be very rapidly transmitted to all other treecats."
"Telepathy." White Haven nodded, blue eyes bright. "They just 'tell' each other about it!"
"Not quite," Honor disagreed. "From what Nimitz and Samantha tell me, the level of communication between most treecats is actually fairly analogous to human language, at least where the deliberate exchange of information is concerned. I doubt that most humans will ever be able even to imagine what it must be like to receive all of the emotional 'sideband transmissions' that accompany any treecat conversation. But their ability to explain things to one another on a cognitive level isn't all that much greater than it would be for humans. Faster—lots faster, apparently—but not the sort of mind-to-mind, my-mind-is-your-mind, sharing some science-fiction writers have postulated."
"So how do they do it?" the earl asked. "You said they can transmit the new knowledge very rapidly, so obviously something else is happening."
"Exactly. You see, the 'cats' entire society revolves around a particular group called 'memory singers.' They're always female, apparently because females have naturally stronger mind-voices and mind-glows, and they're almost but not quite matriarchs."
Honor frowned thoughtfully.
"The treecat clans are governed by their elders, who are chosen—by a process, I might add, which apparently bears absolutely no relationship to human elections or the hereditary transmission of leadership—primarily for their particular abilities in specific activities or crafts which are critical to the clan's survival. But the memory singers form a special craft group, almost a caste, which is treated with enormous deference by the entire clan. In fact, every memory singer is automatically a clan elder, regardless of her actual age. And because of their importance to the clan, they're protected and guarded fanatically and absolutely banned from any activity which might endanger them—sort of like a steadholder."
She grinned with unalloyed cheerfulness for the first time in what seemed to have been years, and both Alexanders chuckled sympathetically.
"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 innovators who are also memory singers in their own right. Apparently, a sister of Lionheart, the 'cat who adopted my great-great-great-whatever-grandmother, was exactly that sort of memory singer, and pretty nearly single-handedly convinced all of the other 'cats that human-'cat bonds were a good idea.
"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 connection between hands communicating information and thoughts any more than they could connect 'mouth-noises' to doing the same thing.
"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 channel, no way for her to be sure her signal hadn't been garbled.
"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."
"I see." White Haven gazed at her for a moment, then reached back across to Samantha and stroked the soft, thick fur of her spine.
"Where you lonely?" he asked her quietly. "Was that it?"
The small, slender treecat looked back up at him out of bottomless grass-green eyes, then turned those same eyes to Honor and rose to sit higher on her true-feet so that she could sign.
Her right true-hand's raised thumb tucked under her chin, then drew out and forward in a slight arc. Then both true-hands came up in front of her, little fingers upright and half a centimeter apart before she brought them together and separated them again three or four times. And then her right true-hand positioned itself horizontally below her left, palms facing and fingers curled, and circled in opposite directions.
"She says she was confused, not lonely," Honor translated, but then Samantha's hands moved more urgently.
<Listen before you tell,> the flashing fingers commanded. <You hurt. He hurts. Nimitz and I feel your pain. It hurts us as much as it does you, but understand. This is a two-leg pain, because all but you are mind-blind. Your People can't taste what People taste, and there are reasons you and he can't mate. But that doesn't change what you need to do, and not doing makes you hurt worse. When he came, your pain was very great. Great enough even mind-blind could taste it, and he did. And it made his pain much, much worse. Pain is a terrible thing, but can make the mind-glow even stronger, and did. For the first time, truly tasted him, not just on own, but through you, as well, and his mind-glow captured. Did not plan it. Did not want it. But now, is a wonderful thing. Am sorry it will make hard things harder, but would not—could not—change it.>
She stopped signing, hands motionless once more, and gazed trustingly up at Honor.
Strange how all of them have their own "accents," Honor thought almost absently, then gave herself a mental shake, castigating herself for hiding behind extraneous thoughts.
She could see why another human in Samantha's place—assuming any human could have been there—would have hesitated to explain that in such detail to Hamish. Honor herself still had no idea how the hopeless yearning she and Hamish felt could ever be assuaged, how the impossible might somehow be made possible. And if that could never happen, then telling him it was the pain caused by his love for her which had drawn Samantha to him might contaminate the adoption bond with the same hurt and unhappiness. Her ability to taste Samantha's mind-glow and those "emotional sidebands" she'd mentioned to Hamish and Emily told her that the adoption bond was independent of whatever she and Hamish might feel for one another. That it wasn't the specific cause of Hamish's pain which had brought his mind-glow into such acute focus for Samantha, but only the fact of that pain's existence. But Hamish lacked that sensitivity. He would never be able to taste the absolute proof that Samantha's bond to him was completely independent of Nimitz's bond to Honor or the complex emotional tension between himself and Honor, and Samantha knew that. Which was probably only to be expected out of someone who was also a memory singer, Honor knew. Yet even after all these years, she was both surprised and deeply touched by Samantha's sensitivity to humankind's alien codes and concepts and emotions . . . and her determination not to hurt Hamish on their sharp, bitter edges.
Now it was up to Honor to protect him, as well, and she looked up from Samantha to meet his waiting gaze.
"She says," Honor Harrington said, "that the tension you and I have been under made your mind-glow stronger. Strong enough that she really 'saw' it for the first time."
"It did?" White Haven sat back in his chair, surprised, then smiled slowly, and Honor tasted the many levels of bittersweetness inside him.
"I see," he said, looking at her, not aware even then that his very heart was in his eyes for Honor—and Emily—to see. "Well, if it brought us together," he said, "however inconvenient the timing, I can't help feeling at least a little grateful."