That was one of several reasons her personal wealth was expanding at an almost geometric rate. There were others, of course. As Willard had promised her, once her working capital passed a certain point, it became almost a self-sustaining reaction. She was even beginning to understand the inner workings of high finance, though she remained far out of the class of a wily old financier like Neufsteiler. But the impact on Grayson had been to provide an enormous expansion in safe habitats and relax many oj the traditional restrictions on birth rates.

Now she, or, more precisely, Nimitz's clan, proposed to introduce a second intelligent species into that mix. To be sure, it might be some time before most Graysons fully grasped that the 'cats were another intelligent species, but Honor expected them to make the leap at least as quickly as Manticorans would have. She and Nimitz had been entirely too visible here for the people of Grayson to be able to ignore the fact of his intelligence, whereas few non-Sphinxians came face-to-face with 'cats back in the Star Kingdom. In a sense, the fact that treecats were an accepted part of the "scenery" there actually made it easier for native Manticorans to overlook their intelligence. Where the Graysons saw Nimitz as a new, fascinating species to be carefully studied and enjoyed, Manticorans were almost blase, comfortable with what they already "knew."

It had been rather refreshing for both Honor and Nimitz to meet an entire planet of people who were willing to accept the 'cat on his own terms, but it did mean the Graysons were also more likely to grasp that Nimitz and Samantha's new friends were, in effect, the opening wedge of an invasion. A friendly one, perhaps, but still an invasion. One of Honor's traditional authorities as Steadholder Harrington was to decide how many and which emigrants would be allowed into her steading. In Graysons grim, early days, it had also been the steadholder's harsh duty to determine which of his steaders had to die if that was what was required to balance population against the maximum strain his steading could bear, and Honor was unspeakably grateful that decisions like that were no longer necessary.

Yet Grayson remained a planet with a commitment to the tradition of balancing people against resources which would have delighted the most rabid of Old Earth's pre-space Greens, and that was the environment into which Honor proposed to introduce treecats.

The good news was that 'cat populations grew far more slowly than their multiple-birth reproductive patterns might suggest. Samantha’s four-kitten litter was of about average size, but most females littered no more than once every eight to ten T-years. Given that they lived about two hundred years and remained fertile for a hundred and fifty, that still meant a single mated pair could produce a staggering number of offspring, but the process took much longer than initial impressions might suggest. And it was inevitable that human and 'cat societies were going to be much more intimately intertwined here on Grayson, which lacked the endless forests that provided Sphinx with virtually unlimited habitat for its native sentients. Here, 'cats would have to share the life-sustaining enclaves of humanity, and Honor wondered just how that would affect their adoption rate.

But whether they adopted in larger numbers or not, they were going to have to find their own niche in this new, radically different environment. From what she knew of 'cats, she was confident they could, and would. And, she thought, do it in a way which made them valued citizens. In the meantime, she had the legal authority to start their colony out in Harrington, and given her steaders' fascination with and pride in "their" treecat Nimitz, she expected the initial stages to go quite well.

In fact, she thought with a lurking smile, the biggest problem was likely to be that there were too few 'cats to go around!

The pinnace touched down with delicate precision.

The waiting greeters stood patiently outside the yellow warning line as the pilot brought up his belly tractors, killed his counter-grav, and powered down his other systems, and then the hatch slid open. This was the point, under other circumstances, at which the band would have broken into the Steadholder's March, but Lady Harrington had issued stern orders to leave the band home... and accompanied them with remarkably grisly threats about what would happen if it wasn't. Instead, Howard Clinkscales and Katherine Mayhew, as the two senior members of the greeting party, headed for the foot of the ramp as soon as the green safety light flashed. White Haven, as the senior Manticoran representative, and Honor's personal maid Miranda LaFollet, as the next most senior member of Honors Grayson household, followed on their heels.

Lady Harrington's treecat rode her shoulder, but that was to be expected. What White Haven hadn't expected was that she would wear RMN uniform, not that of the Grayson Navy, and his eyes narrowed in approval. The last time he'd seen her in Manticoran uniform, her collar had carried a single gold planet and her cuffs had borne the four narrow stripes of a senior-grade captain. Today, there were paired planets on her collar, and her fourth cuff stripe was the broad one of a commodore. No one had told him her promotion had come through, but he was delighted to see it. It still fell far short of the rank she deserved, yet it was certainly a step in the right direction... and an indication that the Opposition's political vendetta against her had weakened even further.

She also, he noted, had acquired the Saganami Cross to go with her Star of Grayson, Manticore Cross, Order of Gallantry, Sidemore Presidential Medal, and CGM with cluster. She was assembling quite a crop of medals, he reflected, and his eyes darkened at the thought. He knew better than most how hard earned each of those bits of metal and ribbon had been, and he had nightmares enough of his own, on the bad nights, to guess how much she still paid for them from time to time.

Then his mood lightened, and he hid a potentially impolitic smile as Katherine Mayhew hurried forward. Virtually all Graysons were short by Manticoran standards, but Katherine was small even for a Grayson woman. Protector Benjamin’s senior wife, effectively the Queen Consort of Grayson, was almost fifty centimeters shorter than Lady Harrington, and her gorgeous gown and vest were jewel-bright beside Lady Harrington's black and gold. But silly as they could have looked next to one another, there was no sense of awkwardness between them, and their obvious friendship went well beyond the official cordiality to be expected between a head of state's wife and one of his most powerful vassals.

Then Harrington turned from Madam Mayhew to Howard Clinkscales, and White Haven's eyebrows rose as she hugged the old dinosaur. Such public physical familiarity between the sexes was virtually unheard of on Grayson, and Harrington had never struck the earl as the sort given to casual gestures of affection. But then he saw Clinkscales' expression and realized there was nothing casual about it.

He was still filing that bit of information away when another treecat flowed through the pinnace hatch. For a moment, White Haven assumed the newcomer must be the mate of Harrington's... Nimitz. That was the name. But that assumption vanished as a second, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth 'cat followed. A veritable procession of treecats, four of them carrying the tiny, wigglesome shapes of treekittens, trooped down the ramp, and no one had mentioned anything about this to him. From the reactions of the people around him, no one had mentioned it to anyone else, either, and White Haven felt a sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to laugh at Honor Harrington's unending ability to stand the status quo on its head.