Fire Season-eARC (25 page)

Heart beating strongly in her ears, Stephanie struggled against the impulse to pull out her treasured badge and throw it on the table. But that grand gesture would be far from grand. It would be a fit of temper, worthy of a child, not of a young woman who wanted to live up to the trust that badge—an emblem of a post Chief Ranger Shelton had created for her and Karl—implied.

Stephanie gave a smile that she hoped would show nothing of her inner turmoil and said. “That southern fire needs checking out. Can we have a kit for Jessica, too?”

Frank Lethbridge gave her a lopsided grin, one that revealed for the first time how much he had dreaded that Stephanie would elect to follow the prompts of her own considerable will.

“Absolutely. Report in as you find how the southern fire is spreading. You’ll have access to a version of the data here, so you’ll be able to see when we need updating. Otherwise, consider yourselves free agents. As I said, what we need is your capacity for taking initiative.”

When they collected a kit for Jessica, they were also issued bladder bags already loaded with a mixture of fire-retardant chemicals and water.

“I’m giving you,” Geraldine said, “a pair of drip torches. You know how to use the torch?”

Karl nodded. “We’ve had training.”

“Right. Just…be
careful
if you have to use them, okay?”

“We will.” Karl flashed a grin. “We have no desire to have the next big one called the Zivonik/Harrington fire.”

When they were back in the air car, Stephanie suggested they get into their fire-suits as they drove.

“If we need them,” she said, “it’s going to be when we don’t want to waste time getting into them.”

Karl immediately set the auto-pilot—they were in open space, speeding over the green canopy of a forest that did not yet know its danger—and pulled his suit on over his clothes. As Stephanie did the same, she glanced to the backseat to see if Jessica needed help. The other girl was doing fine, but Stephanie found herself feeling just a tiny bit jealous of the interesting way Jessica’s fire-suit emphasized her curvaceous figure.

On me,
she thought,
the darn thing just covers over what little curve I’ve got!

Lionheart bleeked in what Stephanie was certain was amusement.

Jessica looked up from where she had been fastening the ankle tabs on her suit. “What will we do with Lionheart if we need to go out?”

Stephanie stroked the treecat’s thick gray fur along his back, trying to hide her concern.

“I’ll try to convince him to stay in the air car, but the decision is going to be his. He’s not a pet or a child. He’s a person—a grown-up person. If I’m going to respect that, I’m going to need to allow him to make his own choices.”

“But what if he gets burned? We have these suits and goggles and respirators, but what about him?”

“Lionheart’s pretty smart about avoiding danger,” Stephanie said. “When Karl and I did our training classes, one of the things we learned to do was use a fire shelter.”

She held up a package not much larger than a folded man’s shirt. “Have you ever seen one of these?”

“No, I haven’t. How could something that small be a shelter?”

“It’s made of light thermwall material, so it folds down pretty tight. Like our fire-suits, the material is fire-resistant and protects against radiant heat. Okay, imagine the following situation. We’re out there taking a look at a tongue of a fire, judging how great a risk it offers.”

“Right.”

“The wind shifts—winds do that a lot during fires because the heat of the fire itself creates wind—suddenly, though you’d been standing ten meters from the fire, you realize a tongue of fire too wide for you to safely make it through, even in your suit, has cut you off from a safe point. Worse, you can see the flames are coming toward you. You rip open this packet and pull this tab. It opens up into a small tent. You crawl inside and seal it shut. The flames race over you, leaving you maybe a bit hotter, but unburnt. When the flames have passed, you come out and get to safety.”

“But what if the flames don’t pass?” Jessica asked. “Do I just sit in there and cook?”

Karl chuckled. “Unless you set your tent up on top of a pile of brush or a tree trunk or in a grove of trees or something, the flames will pass. No matter how powerful a fire may seem when you look at something like the holomap Ranger Lethbridge had, fires need at least four conditions or they can’t exist. Steph?”

Dutifully, Stephanie recited: “Oxygen, fuel, heat, and a self-sustained chemical reaction. Eliminate any of these and the fire will die. That’s called the ‘fire tetrahedron.’ An easier version to remember is the ‘fire triangle’—oxygen, fuel, and heat.”

“So in that lovely little story you told,” Jessica said, “I’ve had the brains not to put my tent right in the middle of a heap of fuel. Oxygen can’t really be eliminated out in the open and there would be plenty of heat, but once the fire burns up the fuel, then it can’t stay there. Right?”

“You’ve got it,” Stephanie said. “Moreover, as your teammates, we’d be doing what we could to help. The bladder bags contain water mixed with various fire-suppressant chemicals. Water eliminates heat as well. We’d spray it in the area around your shelter.”

“So these bladder bags are basically like the fire extinguisher we have in the kitchen at home?”

“Pretty much, but the sprayer has a lot more range and the chemicals have been tailored to deal with a fire that will have unlimited oxygen, unlike a structure fire, where the structure itself can dampen the fire for a time. They’re also equipped to be quickly refilled, unlike your home extinguisher, which is pretty much a one-use item.”

Jessica nodded. “You started this because I asked about how Lionheart would deal with a fire. Did you teach him how to use a fire shelter?”

“We did,” Stephanie said. “It wasn’t easy, because he has a treecat’s ingrained caution regarding fire, but he’s smart. Once he saw the demonstration a few times, I think he figured out how useful such shelters could be.”

“That reminds me,” Jessica said. “I wanted to ask about the last piece of equipment you were given, that drip torch. It sounded to me like the ranger was actually suggesting you might need to
start
a fire. That sounds crazy.”

“It does,” Stephanie agreed, “but using fire to fight fire is an old technique and one that still has its place. Remember how I said that ‘fuel’ is one of the key elements in creating a fire-ready condition?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you eliminate fuel, you can eliminate one of the directions in which the fire can spread. Sometimes you can do that by soaking the fuel in advance of the fire. Sometimes firebreaks are built—either with tools or, if there’s time, using machinery. You cut away the trees, limbs, and snags, leaving nothing but bare dirt. When fire gets to the break it’s stopped. If the fire isn’t too fierce, sometimes even a line made with the side of a boot—as long as it clears the area down to bare dirt or rock—can create a large enough break.”

Karl took over. “But there are times when it’s faster to burn the fuels up in advance of the fire. That works well with ‘light’ fuels like grass, leaves, pine needles, and dry slash. You make certain you have a fire line around them, then burn out the middle. When the main fire arrives, it finds bare earth where a meadow full of yummy dried grass would have been.”

Jessica shuddered. “It sounds horrible, transforming a meadow into a burnt waste.”

“The fire would have done it anyhow,” Stephanie said, “and this way the forest on the other side is protected.”

“Mostly, these days,” Karl said, “fire is used for clearing a safe zone. That’s what that Franchitti idiot said he was doing when he started the fire a few weeks ago.”

He glanced at the navigation screen and made a few adjustments.

“We’re closing in on the southern side of the fire. I’m going to bring us down beneath the canopy now. Time to stop talking and start watching.”

Stephanie nodded and turned her attention to the window. Lionheart climbed into her lap, equally intent.

Yet even as Stephanie turned her attention to charting the spread of a tongue of the secondary fire, a sense that she was partaking in a deep betrayal filled her. She shouldn’t be here. She should be out there, searching for someone. For one someone. For Anders.

There were times when being smart enough to know where duty lay distinctly sucked.

Chapter Eleven

Climbs Quickly sat in Death Fang’s Bane’s lap and watched with horrified fascination as fire devoured trees only a few body lengths away. He could sense that the three two-legs who rode in the vehicle with him were alert and watchful. Their certainty that they were all out of reach of the fire, that they could escape if the fire began to rage, made it possible for him to keep from panicking, although every bone in his body tingled with the urge to get away.

The People did use fire, but rather than that making them careless, certain they could control its various moods, they were extremely careful. From the time they could scrabble about, kittens were taught that when a spark landed in their fur the worst thing they could do was panic and run. That created the wind that fed the fire. Instead, they should find a patch of bare earth and roll on it, smothering the fire before it could spread. Fortunately, the natural oils in a living Person’s coat meant a spark was more likely to smoulder, giving time for such measures.

But no amount of rolling would smother the flames that now raged so close at hand. Climbs Quickly mused that he was much more tense than on the day when they had rescued Left-Striped and Right-Striped. Doubtless that was because on that day something had needed to be done, leaving no room for apprehension or fear.

Perhaps it was thoughts of that day that caused Climbs Quickly to send his thoughts roving. He had no idea where they were in relation to anywhere else, for the manner in which the air car sped over the treetops robbed him of his usual tracking abilities. He didn’t think he was anywhere near where his own Bright Water Clan denned. Not only was there no hint of Sings Truly’s mind-voice, but he thought that Death Fang’s Bane—who had taken his clan as her own—would be more troubled.

Even more troubled, he amended. Ever since she had awoken that morning, his two-leg had been nothing but a mounting bundle of conflicting emotional impulses. On the surface, she was the calm and rational person he had come to love and trust, but beneath that lay an emotional storm at least as hot and raging as the forest fire—but he hoped less destructive.

All his life, Climbs Quickly had been told he possessed a very strong mind-voice. After he bonded with Death Fang’s Bane, that voice had become even stronger. Now, as he cast his thoughts through the surrounding area, seeking any who might be in distress, he came upon far more than he had sought. This time the voices were not calling, but rather were “overheard” as they spoke loudly to each other.

<
Move quickly! Scouts report that the fire approaches.
>

<
Get those kittens away from there!
>

<
Help the aged one.
>

<
No!
>
A sense of violent protest.
<
Nothing will be lost if my bones go to earth a season before their time. Help Wide Tail instead.
>

This and more, for the People’s language was not restricted to units of communication as Climbs Quickly was coming to suspect the mouth noises of the two-legs were. Wordless images were his to comprehend. He saw a clan of the People, new, he guessed, to this dwelling area, gathering themselves for flight, yet knowing that they might not be swift enough to escape the encroaching flames.

He saw the reports of their scouts and from these pieced together the awareness that the greater fire had been thought to be no real threat since a branch of the much larger river provided a natural barrier.

Therefore, although the clan had been making preparations to move out if danger threatened, there had been no immediate urgency.

Having only been in this new location a short time, this clan had not yet had an opportunity to check the full length of the branch of the river they now trusted to keep them safe from the fire, nor had they considered how the picketwood they had used to cross the stream would also carry fire.

Climbs Quickly shook his head slightly, as if the motion would help organize all this information. He could see what the scouts had seen and knew the danger these People were in. He also realized he knew what clan this must be. This must be the Damp Ground Clan, the same clan for which Right-Striped and Left-Striped had been scouting when that other fire had caught up to them. He reached for his friends’ mind-glows, but did not find them.

Were they then dead or were they merely out of reach of even his powerful mind-voice? As young scouts, well-seasoned in the dangers of fire, they might have been chosen for some particularly dangerous mission.

All of this had come to Climbs Quickly in a few breaths. Now he tried to think how best to alert Death Fang’s Bane. He had seen the air car loaded with what he knew were devices for fighting fire. They might be enough to slow this new blaze so that the Damp Ground Clan could make their escape.

He must guide them to the endangered clan. He only hoped he was up to the challenge…and that they would arrive in time.

*
 
*
 
*

Stephanie focused hard on tracking the spreading western tongue of the South Fire against the SFS map, because if she didn’t, her mind wandered and she found herself wondering just what had happened to Anders. Where could the xenoanthropologists have gotten to? She didn’t like to consider the possibility that—as in the case of Tennessee Bolgeo—once again the SFS and Dr. Hobbard had been fooled into accepting fakes.

There was only one problem with that theory: Lionheart. The treecat had never liked “Doctor” Bolgeo, even when he was at his most charming. His reaction to Dr. Whittaker’s group had been calm and accepting. He’d seemed to like Anders during the time they’d spent together. He hadn’t bristled at Dr. Whittaker or any of his crew.