Power Play (20 page)

Bunny shook her head. “It’s within the town someplace is all I know. When it was their turn to give the latchkay, I was sick and couldn’t go.”

“Okay, then,” Yana said, “let’s move out. On your feet, you,” she commanded, using her toe to nudge Megenda, who groaned but remained limp.

“You shouldn’t have hit him so hard,” Dinah said.

“I should have let him drown,” Yana told her. “And he’ll be the first to freeze, wet as he is. So come on, Namid, Diego, you’re strong! Let’s get him up and head on out of here.”

Gal Three

Dr. Matthew Luzon, striding along the corridor from the shuttle that had brought him back to his head offices on Gal Three, was feeling very good. Assiduous application of the physiotherapy exercises, careful diet, and self-discipline had completely restored him to the level of physical fitness that he deemed necessary for a man with his responsibilities.

He had been reviewing applicants for the positions left open by the defection of the highly paid and supposedly loyal assistants who he had brought with him on the disastrous Petaybee investigation. Those who had survived the initial stages of security clearances were awaiting him in his office. He was going to start afresh on the many tasks awaiting him as he looked ahead, for bigger and better things.

A gaggle of people coming from the passenger lounge were advancing on him in a solid phalanx. Frowning, he gestured with his right hand for them to clear to the side to allow him to pass. But then he saw the reason for such a mass: an invalid vehicle, one of the newest types, was in the midst of the people, its occupant turning from left to right as he issued a stream of orders, which were being recorded. To Matthew’s intense surprise, the man in the chair was none other than Farringer Ball, Secretary-General of Intergal: the one man he cared less about seeing than any other in the galaxy; the very one whose intransigence had resulted in the wretched planet being adjudged sentient and autonomous, ruining all Luzon’s careful plans for its future.

“Why, Farringer,” Luzon said in his heartiest voice, tingeing it with concern and sympathy, “whatever has happened to you?”

“Luzon?” Farringer’s voice was a wispy croak, and Luzon was genuinely shocked at the man’s condition. The chair obviously contained life-support devices; Luzon was now close enough to see the tubes running from the man’s body to a machine under the seat of the chair. “Recovered from your injury?”

“Indeed, and I could wish you the same good fortune. Whatever has reduced you to this sorry state?” Not that Luzon wasn’t delighted to see that justice was being served. “On your way to Petaybee, are you? For one of their miracle cures?” Luzon smiled graciously.

“To Petaybee?” Farringer Ball’s wheeze went up an octave, and he stared at Luzon in surprise. “Why should I go there, of all places?”

“Why, hadn’t you heard? Since the board so nobly decided that Intergal should withdraw and allow Terraform B its autonomy, every drug company in the galaxy is trying to sign up the exclusive rights to the therapeutic treatments only available there.” Partially true, of course, since representatives
were
on the planet, although, according to Luzon’s informants, none of them had reported back to their head offices, or anywhere, on the results of their missions.

“What therapeutic treatments?” Ball snapped, and half of the crowd around him looked expectantly at Luzon for the answer.

Luzon then realized that medics of various sorts made up most of the groupies around the secretary-general.

“Why, I thought you’d have heard. You always know what’s going on in the medical field.” Luzon could afford to be slightly condescending: poor health was Ball’s true reward. “There is something about the pure air and organically grown food products on Petaybee, not to mention the ambience, that absolutely changes a man!”

“It does?” Ball wheezed. “How?” He peered suspiciously up at the obviously robustly healthy Luzon. “You only broke your legs . . .” His tone implied that a pair of broken legs didn’t take much healing.

“True.” Luzon leaned down conspiratorially. “But then I didn’t
need
the special sort of healing that only Petaybee provides. We really shouldn’t have let the planet out of our control, you know. You’d be glowing with health again if you’d taken the cure there.”

“Taken the cure? What cure?”

“Now, that I don’t know in any particulars, I’m afraid,” Luzon replied, knowing that he had Ball just where he wanted him. “Of course, now that Intergal no longer has any rights on the planet, its administrators—if you can call such novices by that term,” he added, permitting a belittling sneer to color his voice, “are of course setting up a monopoly on the surface. I really feel that one cannot put a price on such natural benefits, and one certainly shouldn’t restrict those who are chosen to receive the cure to such a narrow category . . .”

“What category? What monopoly? What natural benefits?” Ball’s agitation made his wheeze worse and he started coughing, a dry, hard, rasping sound despite the fact that he was also spraying spit around him.

Luzon moved a discreet step to one side. “Well, I’m no longer au courant to the latest developments, but they have been amazing. Truly amazing. I wonder that none of your medical advisers have suggested the Petaybean Cure to you. It’d make a new man of you, I’m sure.” From the avid expression in Ball’s eyes, Luzon knew that his little spiel had had the desired effect. “Do hope you’re feeling better real soon, Farrie. Nice to have seen you. Must rush.”

As soon as he had left the gaggle behind him, Luzon indulged in a smugly satisfied chuckle. The transport business he had backed to get as many people to Petaybee’s surface as possible might have come to a crashing halt, but there were other ways of overloading the planet and proving that it could not take care of itself and/or its inhabitants, much less any visitors. CIS would have to step in and alter the current arrangement. Planets could not, should not, go about managing themselves, not in a well-organized intergalactic civilization. Citizens of the galaxy had the right to pursue commercial ventures whenever these were possible. Citizens were also guaranteed certain basic rights—rights that Petaybee jeopardized by its very existence.

And then there was the matter of Marmion de Revers Algemeine. Luzon had heard nothing on the news media, about the kidnapping. “Nothing” on that situation was the best news he could possibly imagine. That took care of her—permanently. When was it he and Torkel Fiske were to meet? He tapped up his engagements on his wrist pad. Ah, this evening. Very good. They had a lot to talk about. Petaybee might not be a lost world after all.

21

Tanana Bay

Muktuk and Chumia had been home ten days when Sinead arrived on skis. As she was delivering her message while wrapped in warm blankets and sipping from the hot tea Chumia brewed for her, one of the men on sea watch reported that a very funny-looking seal had just beached itself off the ice pack.

“Sean!” Sinead cried. She threw off her blankets, pulled on her still snow-wet coat, and headed out the door, the others behind her.

“Sean?” Chumia asked, open-mouthed. “Your brother Sean?”

“Bring clothes!” Sinead yelled back over her shoulder to Muktuk, but Chumia had already shoved Muktuk’s latchkay snowpants and parka into his arms.

“By all the powers that be, if it ain’t the guy himself!” Muktuk said when he saw Sean striding briskly toward them, sanguine, purposeful, and naked.

“Nobody mentioned this was a dress occasion,” Sean said, grinning. “Sis, I’m glad to see you. Have you told them what’s up?”

“She said somethin’ about that pirate kinswoman of ours maybe comin’ for a visit,” Muktuk said.

“That’s right,” Sean said, pulling on the snowpants. “And we want to make sure she has a warm reception, don’t we? We’ll need to get as many folks as possible armed with whatever they have.”

“We told her if she lost her job she should come,” Muktuk said reluctantly. “Greeting her with an armed mob doesn’t seem real hospitable.”

“Not a mob, a posse,” Sean said. “She and one of her henchmen hit Adak O’Connor over the head and stole that aerial map Whittaker Fiske gave us to get them here. I don’t think she’s coming here to settle, Muktuk. I’m hoping she’s ready to do a deal for Yana, Bunny, and the others. I doubt she’ll come without a suitable escort of her own, so we’ll need a suitable one, too.”

“Right you are, guy.”

Sean was impatient to get the welcoming organized, but Chumia was firm that he needed to be fed and dried properly. While doing that, he could still tell them what he had in mind.

“We don’t want to be rash and hurt the poor girl if she’s only running scared,” Chumia said. “Perhaps her boss made her hit Adak. Maybe that other man
was
her boss and she’s still tryin’ to get loose from him.”

“You’ve seen no sign of a shuttle? Or any strangers walking in?”

Muktuk snorted at the latter and shook his head over the former.

“Well, either way,” Sean said, “I need to visit the communion place.”

“Sure thing, guv. Chumia, you get that end of the rug and I’ll get this.” Together the Murphys pulled away the thick rug woven in shades of green and gold in a stairstep pattern. A trapdoor was revealed, opening onto well-worn steps that led to the permafrost cave Sean remembered from three former latchkays. The first time he’d come to Tanana Bay for a latchkay and had seen three villages’ worth of people pouring into the O’Neills’ tiny cabin, he’d been astounded, until he’d seen a line of folks disappearing into the floor.

Now he and Sinead descended the stairs carved out of stone and ice. Chumia held a lamp for them while the family cat scampered ahead, nearly tripping them. “It’ll be dark down there,” Chumia said.

But it wasn’t. One entire wall of the entrance chamber was glowing with a pattern of phosphorescence similar to the sort that Sean had seen in the underriver grotto.

“My goodness, will you look at that?” Chumia clucked while the cat rubbed against the wall, then stretched so that its paws touched the lower part of the design. “You’re going to think I’m a terrible housekeeper, guy, letting mold grow in the communion place. It’s never done that before. Didn’t think it could, permafrost being ice and all.”

“Never? These aren’t here from the last latchkay?”

“No, sir. What’s all these wiggles mean?”

“Looks like waves,” Sinead said, peering closely. “Here and here.”

“Waves . . .”
the cave repeated.

The cat chirruped as if it, too, was trying to say “waves.”

“It is,” Sean said, pointing to the apex. “This must be where we are now—near these waves, and this circle represents the rest of the north—then more waves outside and the outer circles—”

“Waves, circlessssss . . .”

“What about the lines that end in circles here?” Ignoring the echo, Sinead pointed to the spiraled figure somewhat to the left of the midpoint between the lines. “And here? This one’s clear down beyond the waves. What do you suppose it means?”

“Trouble spots?” Sean guessed. “Like before?”

This time the echo didn’t repeat itself. “Means trouble spots like before,” it said distinctly.

The cat jumped as if someone had thrown water on it, and bolted back up the steps and into the house. They could hear the cat-door flap still flapping as they continued studying the diagram.

Dinah O’Neill was not happy about leaving her shuttle stranded on the ice like some sort of a monstrous sea animal.

“It’s watertight, isn’t it?” Bunny asked her, and shrugged when Dinah had to admit it was. “Then even if it falls into the water, they’re all right in there, aren’t they?”

“Sink?” Dinah cried aghast.

“Well, not really,” Bunny said. There might have been some who thought she was deliberately teasing Dinah O’Neill, but she was merely thinking out loud. “Besides, I think that hole’ll freeze over as soon as it turns dark and the shuttle’ll be okay. Frozen in, of course, but safe. Speaking of freezing, we’d better get going. Yana, I’ll scout ahead. You keep the others moving, okay?”

Yana flipped her a salute. “Aye-aye, ma’am. We’re right behind you.”

What Bunny didn’t say—nor did either Yana or Diego mention—was very obvious to them: the sun was westering and they hadn’t much daylight left to get where they wouldn’t freeze. Bunny struck out at a good pace toward the general direction of Tanana Bay. She would have preferred to go straight across the frozen inlet toward the main trail but that would waste time, which they didn’t have much of. So she headed toward the nearest high ground. Maybe there she could get a good look at the lay of the land and correct their path. She was also aware—though she didn’t mention it—that her little pouch of dirt was acting like a miniature hot bottle, its heat keeping her warm.

Humans were so dense and so
slow.
Punjab didn’t know how the planet put up with them sometimes. Even drawing them a big picture wasn’t enough.

Obviously that business across the water would have to be delegated—if humans were too thick to understand, perhaps birds or walruses would have to explain it to them—but it was not a job for cats. This simple task clearly was, however.

With satisfaction, Punjab felt the snow freezing to ice with each warm touch of his heavily furred paw, as Home cooperated with its chosen messenger, the feet of the planet, as Punjab’s kind considered themselves. Confidently, he trotted on toward his quarry.

Bunny devoutly wished for her snowshoes as she blazed a trail through the two-foot-high drifts, her feet sinking through to the knees with each step. She deliberately squashed down as much snow as she could every time she made a track, but it was laborious going. After a short time, she returned to the others to encourage them and see if she could help.

Megenda was shivering so much that he staggered. She thought of giving him her jacket, since she could stand the cold better than he could. But her jacket wasn’t big enough to do him a damn bit of good. Nor was anyone else’s. And the pouch, which was doing such a fine job of making her feel warm, also wouldn’t help the first mate.

When they reached the first copse, she considered starting a fire to dry him at, but that would take too much time out of the little daylight they had left.

Bunny gave Megenda full marks for keeping up, despite his shuddering chills. It was Dinah O’Neill who was having the worst time of it, being rather short of leg and having to take little running steps to keep up with the others. But she grimly plodded, skipped, and hopped on, and didn’t fall more than a step behind.

Diego was beginning to puff, too. Those walks about the pirate ship had not been any substitute for proper exercise. He was grumbling and annoyed that Bunny didn’t seem to be as affected as he was.

But Bunny knew she couldn’t help Diego or the others by slowing down. She trudged back up the path she had made and then began laboriously cutting through the snow once more. It was heavy work and she was soon so weary that she felt like crying, but her tears would only freeze, making her more miserable. Wouldn’t it be weird to have been freed from the pirates and finally return home, only to freeze to death before she could be found? With the new-falling snow masking the fading horizon, help could be quite close and they’d never know until they found her frozen corpse. And the others. It had happened more than once.

“Helllooo, anybody!” she called into the gathering darkness. “Sláinte! It’s me, Bunny! Is anybody there? Hellooo! Come and get me now!”

Then something that wasn’t supposed to be possible happened. She was right out there in the open air, not in a cave or a valley, and an echo picked up her voice, the way it had a few weeks earlier when Phon Tho visited, the way it had at Yana and Sean’s wedding.

“HELLOO, IT’S ME, ME, ME, ME . . .”
the echo said.

And then it blended with a somewhat smaller voice, “MEOW MEOW meow!” a cat’s mew complaining over and over again.

Bunny called back, glad to hear the cat. Did that mean that Clodagh was behind? But no, the cat was alone, appearing off to the right like a little pinpoint of orange flame at first, crying impatiently for her to hurry forward. When Bunny backtracked to get the others, the cat sat at the end of the trail she had made, waiting for them.

“We’re saved!” she told Yana. “A cat came for us!”

“Good,” Megenda said. “How do you cook ’em?”

“You don’t,” Diego said. “You follow them.”

“I’ve heard of a wild-goose chase, but this is ridiculous,” Dinah said. Bunny turned her back on them and returned to the end of her trail. As soon as it saw her the cat sashayed forward, tail held low to protect the tenderest parts and brushing the snow. Single file, they slogged forward after it.

The distant lights of Tanana Bay appeared just about the time some of the party were thinking that perhaps they’d do better for a bit of a rest, despite the fact that night had already fallen and the air was growing colder by the minute, knifing through their skin until at last they were too numb to feel the pain. Only the luminous eyes of the cat guided them when it turned in its tracks to regard them with impatience. Didn’t they realize it had supper waiting and a nap to take?

The feeling in Bunny’s legs had drained away some time earlier, though she continued to piston them in and out of the snow while the others followed. Once they spotted the cabins, the cat cast her a glance, then scampered away to disappear into the town.

The welcome sight of cabins revived the flagging energies of everyone in the party. It helped that the snow closer to the settlement was already trampled into trails, and they followed one of these easily to the outermost cabin.

It was empty, though smoke still poured from the chimney. They all gratefully crowded inside to warm themselves by the fire. When Megenda would have crawled into the fireplace, Bunny hauled him back so he wouldn’t scorch himself; she grabbed a fur cover from the nearest bunk and draped it around his shoulders. He could not seem to stop the shivering. There was soup in the kettle on the hob, so Bunny ladled him out a cup, which he could barely hold in his hands without spilling.

“Don’t know how much of someone’s supper we can take without them going short,” Bunny said by way of explanation when she saw the hopeful expression on Dinah O’Neill’s face as she, too, crowded in to the fireplace. Bunny was right proud that neither Diego nor Yana seemed to need the fire. Just being in out of the cold was sufficient. “No one would object to Megenda having a cup of soup to stop those shivers. You all get warm while I go see where people are.” She took a parka off the peg on the back of the door. Outside, the temperature would be dropping like a stone from a height.

Tanana Bay didn’t boast half as many cabins as Kilcoole did, but Bunny had been in several empty homes before she came to the Murphys’, where the cat was sitting beside the fire and cleaning the snow from between its paw pads. The cat glanced up at her, then returned to its cleaning. She saw the raised trapdoor and the open hole in the floor. Leaning over the opening, she could hear voices, excited voices, lots of them.

“Hallooo down there?”

There was no immediate response, probably because everyone was talking so loud. After waiting a moment, Bunny descended. She’d never seen a communion place entry so bright, something that would certainly have provoked a lot of discussion on any occasion.

What she didn’t expect to see was men and women armed with all kinds of homely weapons: axes, staves, nets, and pitchforks, as well as the usual bows, lances, and knives.

“What’s happening?” she cried, touching the first man by the arm.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, giving her a scant look. “We got big trouble coming to Tanana Bay and we’ll need every body we can get to turn ’em back.”

“Turn who back?” And Bunny felt a gelid spurt of fear. What had happened while they were off-planet? Had Intergal gone back on its word?

“That pirate! Louchard!” someone else explained, leaning around the first man to put in his quarter credit.

“Hey, you don’t come from around here.”

“No, I’m from Kilcoole but—”

“Buneka!”
said the Voice.

“Buneka?” And that shout came from Sean’s throat. Bunny was so astonished to hear the Voice come out with her own name that she didn’t react until Sean had her in his arms and was whirling her about, laughing and crying.

“You’re free. You’re all right!” And he was feeling her over to be sure she was, his eyes both glad and anxious. Then he looked around her. “Yana?”

“She’s all right, too, Sean, really, she’s fine.”

Sinead pushed through the crowd then and embraced Bunny as warmly as Sean had done, also asking where Yana was.