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AVA GARNEYS checked the display on her tablet against the survey marker she had just inserted into the ground to ensure it was securely placed. This was the last marker she needed to set today. Satisfied, she swung an armored-clad leg over the seat of her personal airsled and headed back to base camp. Ava was a mapmaker and explorer attached to the Outlawed Colony of Barsoom. She was the last one to return to base today.
“There you are girl. I was beginning to think we needed to send out search parties,” Mathilde Dale, a petit blond and one of her fellow mapmakers chided as Ava slid her airsled into its customary place outside the Pop-up dome they shared with the other female member of the team, Thomasine Willys, who was busily preparing tonight’s meal. Thomasine was about medium height with a chunky body and light brown hair which she wore in a short bob for easier care and maintence out in the field.
“Not likely,” Ava retorted before disappearing into their dome to shed the armor she wore during the day, re-emerging in the leggings and sweatshirt she customarily wore when off duty. Ava had inherited her height and lanky build from her father as well as his ginger hair.
“I leave for town tomorrow, remember?” she said.
“Yeah, a month off to laze around and try on clothes,” Constantine Bryan, one of the two male members of the team and the only one who looked the part of the intrepid explorer, said.
“I see you’ve never been at ground zero during the weeks before a wedding,” hooted Jacques Brunelle, a tall, skinny nerd. “I remember when my sister got married! Ordinarily she’s okay for a sister—but talk about turning into Bridzilla! Ava’ll probably want to come back here to relax!”
“Now that Ava’s back, we can turn on the security field,” Constantine announced, staring pointedly at Jacques.
“I did it last night. It’s your turn,” Jacques told him.
“We need to redo next month’s chore rotation, anyway,” Mathilde who was senior stated. “We’ll do that after dinner, so don’t anyone run off immediately.”
“Yeah, the deserter here will be gone for a month,” Constantine said.
Ava sank into her customary camp chair, stretching her long legs out toward the Crystal heater. “You’re breaking my heart, Bud,” she snorted.
Compared to down near Savona, the colony’s capital city, which nestled in the hot and humid tropic zone, it was chilly up here in the mountains, especially at night. She would be glad of her insulated sleeping bag later.
When she left the next morning, dawn was just breaking. The twin moons could still be seen in the sky and the rising sun had turned the horizon a splendid orange, fading into lavender, and then into the dark blue of night.
Jacques had been right, damn him—she wasn’t looking forward to the weeks before her baby sister’s wedding. Judith was marrying Randal Langton, the son of one of her dad’s business partners, who she had been affianced to since they were children. The marriage was an arrangement between their parents, as was the custom in the colony which adhered as closely as possible with the way things had been done in the Renaissance.
They would have done the same for Ava; indeed, they tried—but she had been singularly uncooperative. She had managed to torpedo all the arrangements her parents tried to make for her. Gossip and innuendo had done the rest. No one wanted to try and marry their son to her. Ava was glad for Judith, but she knew she was going to have to endure the humiliation of her parents looking for a husband for her among the wedding guests and any single young men of the right age. The trouble was her taste and that of her parents simply didn’t fit well together.
Her unpleasant thoughts were interrupted by a fracas going on below her. Swooping lower on her sled, she saw several Kevlar had cornered what looked like a furry catamount. Why didn’t the silly creature simply climb the tree behind her to get away? She wondered. Then she spotted the litter of pups half-hidden under the bush next to the tree.
Kevlars were a Medium to large carnivore, with shaggy, green mottled fur, pointed ears and Predator eyes. After an incident earlier in the year when someone had attempted to kidnap Judith, her new brother-in-law to be had insisted on installing some weapons on their personal sleds. He had done Ava’s first since she intended to leave as soon as her father had been cleared, but for some reason had put off adding weapons to Judith’s personal sled. Ava suspected this was because Randal didn’t want his fiancée to go looking for trouble.
Ava squeezed the handlebars and a plasma bolt shot out, clipping the rear of the Kevlar pack. With a squeal of rage and fright, they ran away. They would be back, she knew. Kevlar’s were hunters; they might have been frightened away, but the pack would soon overcome their fear and return.
The Catamounts found around Savona were nearly hairless an evolutionary adaption to the heat, but this one had a short, dense coat of golden fur fading to white around the paws and face. Intending to document the creature, she stopped her sled close to the tree, dissolved the wind-blocking force bubble over the sled and pulled out her vid-cam to take pictures. Up close the resemblance to a Catamount was even more pronounced. The skin under the dense fur was still wrinkled. Either this was a previously unknown variant or an entirely new species. The colonists had only been in residence on Barsoom for about 150 years; there was a lot they didn’t know about their new planet.
The mother was thin to the point of emancipation, and she was weakening rapidly. Ava dismounted her sled and crouched in front of the dying animal. Cautiously she reached out to touch the kits. The first three she touched were dead, cold and stiff, but one of them was moving, attempting to nurse, even though it was plain her mother had no milk to feed her. When Ava touched the kit, the mother hissed feebly and then simply closed her eyes and died. Ava gently slid a hand under the live kit and lifted it. It was cold but still alive. She tucked it inside her shirt, next to her skin and re-mounted her sled. She could see the Kevlar pack peeking out at her from across the clearing, and hastily hit the lift button on the sled. It wasn’t unknown for a Kevlar pack to attack a lone human on the ground or even one on a one-man sled like hers if it was flying low enough. She re-instated the force bubble and gunned the engine. Behind her she could hear the Kevlar fighting among themselves for the corpses of the dead creatures.
In town, her first stop was the veterinarian used by her sister for Licorice, her pet Catamount.
Like Ava, Dr. Helewis Peele was tall, with short-cropped dark hair and a fit body. She looked up as Ava gently removed the animal from inside her shirt and laid her on the examining table. “A Hairy Catamount!” she exclaimed. “Wherever did you find it?”
“A pack of Kevlars were fighting her mom as I passed over on the way home. I scared them away with a plasma bolt across their tails and they ran. The mom died in front of me. This was the only kit still alive. I couldn’t leave her there to die or be eaten, so I brought her with me.”
“Was she still nursing?”
“Well, she was trying to, but I doubt if the mom had any milk. She was awfully skinny.”
Dr. Peele nodded. She ran a scanning wand over the small animal. “Female, about three weeks old. We’ll put her on a formula we use for Catamounts. I take it you’re planning to adopt her?”
“I guess so,” Ava said, feeling a tug on her heartstrings. She’s a fighter.”
“What are you going to name her?”
Ava looked down at the small body with its dense golden fur, fading into white around her face and paws. “Sunrise, for the time I found her.”
“I’ll send a vet-bot with nursing supplies and a few other things I think you will need over to your house. In the meantime, just keep her warm and her tummy full.” She handed Ava a half full glass bottle with a nipple and showed her how to get the kit to drink. Sunrise latched on fiercely, swallowing nearly the entire bottle, after which she burped and went to sleep.
Ava looked up with a smile. “I guess she was hungry.”
On the way home from the vets, she stopped off at a local pet store and purchased a pet bed, some food dishes and litter box supplies which she had sent to her parents’ home.
The house her father had built for their mother was just the same as she remembered; a 3-story edifice nestled on the water, with the bottom floors open to the air, with tall trees, whose enormous broad leaves shaded the house from the sun and heat, rising around it. She parked her sled on the deck where two robot servers waited for her.
“Welcome home, Miss Ava,” the one in the butler’s livery said. “How was your trip home?”
“A little exciting Marston,” she told the senior robot. Even though the servers were only robots, Tamara Garneys demanded her family address them as if they were real people. “Dr. Peele will be sending over a vet bot and a few essential items for my new Catamount. My clothes and stuff are in the saddle bags and side storage.”
She extracted Sunrise from inside her shirt. The small animal blinked still blurry eyes at him.
“He has fur,” Marston said, his robot voice showing surprise. Most robots on Barsoom had been programmed to interact with humans as their programing dictated another human would.
“Yes, she is a different variety than Licorice,” Ava replied referring to her sister Judith’s pet, whose fine, transparent hair revealed his nearly blue-black skin.
She had no chance to say more; Judith and Tamara became impatient for her to come inside and rushed out. Judith showed her inheritance from her parents as clearly as Ava did, she resembled their mother, except for her flame-tinged hair. Ava had always felt her sister looked like one of the fairies in the stories Tamara liked to read to them as children. She was tiny, like their mother, with the same Rubenesque figure. Tamara’s once voluptuous figure had softened into matronly lines, and her hair, once a platinum blond, was now simply white.
“Ava!” Judith cried, throwing her arms around her sister to hug her.
“Careful! You’ll squash Sunrise,” Ava exclaimed in her turn.
Judith drew back. “Oh, what is it?”
“She’s a catamount, like Licorice, but a different variety. Dr. Peele called her a Hairy Catamount.”
“What an ugly name for such a sweet-looking creature,” Tamara had given her daughter a much gentler hug. Now she stroked a finger over the kit’s tiny head.
“Come inside and let’s get you and Sunrise settled in your room. We’re having some friends over for tea later. I’ve laid out some fresh clothes for you. All you need to do is take a shower and freshen up.”
Ava sighed. The wedding circus was starting already. “Who’s coming?”
“Oh, the usual crowd.” Judith answered.
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