“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.”