Assimilate the depth of Nimitz' thought processes. Personally, I think it obvious that treecats can become invaluable to the field of psychiatry.
(Oh my, if my sister had a treecat she'd take over the world! Heaven forbid. She'd psychoanalyze all of us online all at once. )
"And she'd be right," says all of us to ourselves.
In fact, the more I think about it, pairing a treecat with a psychiatrist should be illegal. Unfair advantage. With that kind of ability, a psychiatrist hath the power to brainwash. Upstaging any MAlign nanite.
Unprecedented technological advances spawn unprecedented possibilities—a notion resting at the core of what makes something like the premise in the Eridani Edict Violation... ... thread possible. Accepting the given, of course, that a treecat's abilities are simply a form of tech, when you get right down to it.
cthia wrote:"What is the measure of a treecat's sense of rape?"
The Measure of Rape
You know, in considering the analytical depth of Nimitz' thoughts, if he did have a notion of rape then how must he have felt as the "man" in the relationship? A thought that comes to mind when I project the human nature of human foibles onto a cat.
How would you feel if someone tried to rape your girl? God forbid he succeed. No, Honor and Nimitz weren't lovers. They were love-ers—the real thing, which had to be much worse for Nimitz. An order of magnitude worse than what it would be like for you or me had our mate been raped. Although what we ourselves may feel in this circumstance would certainly be devastating, factor in the fact that Nimitz had to sit on his anger and ride it out against opening the flue. He couldn't exact the primal penalty of treecat justice. Treecats aren't exactly accustomed to having their enemies quartered and vulnerable and failing to quicken the kill. How does a treecat stifle the most raw and primal emotion? After the incident, Nimitz must have wanted to rip Pavel's throat out.
The more I consider it, the more I understand my niece's sentiments. Nimitz should have received therapy, at least some appropriate counsel. Someone should at least talk to him about it. (None of you have benefit of the overpowering concern that I witnessed in my niece's eyes and body language when she first told me that. The thought really affected her. And me too.
Never have I failed to understand how a man could feel impotent when his girl, wife, lover, sister is raped. He couldn't protect her from one of the worst acts that could be committed against her. It is whatever psychological guilt feelings a MAN would feel from a perceived failure to protect. It has been and remains an oftentimes insurmountable post-rape marital problem. Rape, also oftentimes, destroys something intangible and emotionally unrecoverable in the victim and the partner.
Nimitz likewise, couldn't protect his mate, Honor. Which you and I both know he had long since pledged to do. That pledge was made as long ago as that trip back to Nimitz' Sphinxian brush.
Thought Experiment
Would treecats as a whole have known when the North Hollow Files became a "thing." Even if they did not know what that "thing" was? I'm willing to bet that Samanatha can look back over her own memories and apply some deductive reasoning. I bet she can localize the point in time that humans fell under the power of the North Hollow Files.
The mindglows of many a segment of the population would have altered to taste more like anxiety, doom, despair, fear. Many humans would have begun to act like they're hiding something. Their fear and anxiety would have spilled onto their sleeves when they first heard they were a file of the North Hollows.
Could the treecats likewise detect the overall shift in mindglows when the North Hollow Files died?
Treecats and Slaves
Would a treecat bond with an ex-slave?
What would that mean for treecat...and ex-slave?
Another Form of Regeneration
There is an element between bonded pairs that can be missed. During Honor's death rides and many of her battles in space or groundside, storyline never failed to inform us that Nimitz and Honor radiated love for each other. Each can feel it from the other. They feed off of each other's love.
It is a perpetual energy that oscillates between the bond and radiates love. A self-sustaining, regenerating system.
Epiphany!
What do you get if you cross "faith" with "telempathic abilities?"
→
A priest bonded to a treecat.
OH MY!
This could make the Honorverse Best Seller List. We'll keep our eyes peeled.
****** *
Mission of Honor Ch. 25 wrote:Nimitz considered that for several moments, grass-green eyes thoughtful. Unlike any other member of Honor's delegation, he'd been able to sample Eloise Pritchart's mind glow even more thoroughly than Honor had, and it was obvious to her he was considering what she'd said in the light of that insight. She wasn't about to rush him, either. Unlike the steadily decreasing number of Manticorans who continued to reject the evidence of treecat intelligence, Honor Alexander-Harrington had enormous respect both for the ability of 'cats in general to follow complex explanations and for Nimitz's judgment, in particular, where human nature was concerned.
Finally, his fingers began to move again, and her eyes widened.
<The real reason you want to tell her is you like her,> he told her.
"I—" she began, then stopped as she realized that, as usual, Nimitz had come unerringly to the point.
"You're right," she admitted out loud. "Which may not be a good thing." She smiled ruefully. "I don't think hard-nosed, professional diplomats are supposed to like the people they're trying to beat a treaty out of."
<So?> Nimitz signed. <Not what Soul of Steel sent you to be. She sent you to get agreement, not just talk and argue. Besides, I like Truth Seeker, too.>
"'Truth Seeker'?" Honor repeated, leaning back and looking deep into his eyes. "Is that what you've decided her treecat name should be?"
Nimitz nodded, and Honor's eyes narrowed. As a general rule, the names treecats assigned to humans usually turned out to be extraordinarily accurate. Some of them were more evocative than truly descriptive—her own, for example, "Dances on Clouds"—but even those were insightful encapsulations of the humans involved. And now that she thought about it, "Truth Seeker" summed up her own feel for Pritchart's personality.
Slow down, Honor, she told herself firmly. That's certainly the personality you want her to have, and so does Nimitz. So maybe you're both reading more into what you're picking up from her than is really justified.
And maybe you're not, too.
"And have you come up with a name for Thomas Theisman, too?" she asked.
His right true-hand closed into the letter "S" and "nodded" up and down in the sign for "Yes," but it seemed to Honor to be moving a little slower than usual. He looked up at her for a second or two, and her eyebrows rose. She could literally feel him hesitating. It wasn't because he was concerned about how she might react to it, but more as if . . . as if he didn't quite expect her to believe it.
Then he raised his right hand, palm-in, touched his forehead with his index finger, then moved it up and to the right. As his hand rose, his forefinger alternated back and forth between the straight extended position indicating the number "1" and the crooked position indicating the letter "X" before the hand turned palm-out and closed into the letter "S" once more. Then both hands came together in front of him, thumbs and index fingers linked, before they rose to his chin, left in front of right, thumb and first two fingers of each hand signing the letter "P." They paused for a moment, then separated downward, and Honor felt her eyebrows rising even higher.
"'Dreams of Peace'?" she said, speaking very carefully, as if she couldn't quite believe what she heard herself saying. "That's his treecat name?"
Nimitz nodded his head very firmly, and Honor tasted his confidence—his assurance—about the name he'd assigned. No wonder he'd been hesitant to share it with her! If anyone in the galaxy had demonstrated his unflinching, tough-as-nails readiness to do whatever duty required of him, however grim that duty might be, it was Thomas Theisman! He was the one who'd rebuilt the Republican Navy into a war machine that could actually face the RMN in combat. The man who'd planned and executed Operation Thunderbolt. The man who'd planned Operation Beatrice! The man—
Her thoughts paused, and Nimitz stared up into her eyes with an intensity which was rare, even for the two of them. They sat that way for several, endless seconds, and then Honor inhaled deeply.
Yes, Theisman had always done his duty. Would always do his duty, without flinching or hesitating, whatever its demands. But she supposed the same thing could be said of her, and what was she doing here on this planet, of all planets in the universe, if she didn't "dream of peace?" And the more she thought about it, about what it must have been like to spend all those years trying to defend his star nation against an external enemy even while he saw State Security making "examples" out of men and women he'd known for years—out of friends—the more clearly she realized just how longingly a man like Thomas Theisman might dream of peace.
I wish Elizabeth were here, she thought. Maybe she can't taste Ariel's emotions the way I can taste Nimitz's, but she trusts Ariel. And if he told her he agreed with what Nimitz has named Pritchart and Theisman . . . .
"You do realize that what you just told me doesn't make my decision any easier, don't you, Stinker?" she asked him with a crooked smile.
He blinked once, slowly, then bleeked in agreement, radiating his love for her . . . and his simultaneous deep amusement. Nimitz understood perfectly well that they'd come to Haven on serious business. He even understood exactly what stakes they were playing for. Yet when it came down to it, this whole business of "negotiating" was a two-leg concept which had very little meaning for a race of telempaths who couldn't have engaged in diplomatic subterfuge even if they'd ever had any desire to do so in the first place. He knew Honor had to play by two-leg rules, but he found the entire process incredibly roundabout, cumbersome, and just plain silly.
"Yeah, sure," she said, hugging him once more. "Easy for you, Bub!"
.