Power Play (21 page)

“Hold it down,” Sean said in a loud voice. Everyone in the communion place was trying to understand who the newcomer was that the Voice had recognized so unexpectedly.

So it took minutes before Bunny could explain, and then minutes more before she made it clear that the pirate was not on Petaybee, only his first mate and Dinah O’Neill were. Then she had to calm Muktuk and Chumia down because they were so astonished, and gratified, that their kinswoman was right there in Tanana Bay. Immediately they were in a quandary about welcoming her if she wasn’t bringing good news about Louchard and his kidnap victims.

“A moment’s hush, please,” Sean said in a loud authoritative voice. He was instantly obeyed as he bowed his head to consider what to do next. Everyone tried not to fidget.

“So”—now Sean was ready to recap—“you’ve all been released and everyone is safe?”

“Thanks to the cat upstairs,” Bunny said. “I don’t know how it managed to find us—out hunting and heard me call, I suppose.”

Sean and the others exchanged sheepish glances. “We all had a map,” he admitted with a thumb jerked back to the still-glowing wall of the cave. “But the cat acted on it while the rest of us were gathering a force to protect ourselves from the pirates.”

“The only two that are here are warming themselves nearby. There’s a couple of others on ice, you might say, about where the map says.” She indicated the slowly fading spiral and line, dribbling away as the microscopic animals forming the phosphorescence deserted the map to go on to more important matters. Chumia busily sketched the whole map on the back of her hand. The portion of the map that crossed waves remained as bright and deliberate as it had been when Bunny first arrived.

“Yana talked Dinah into getting Louchard to release Marmie and Namid, too, since they’re afraid to return Marmie to Gal Three and can’t get any ransom for her.”

“Wait, wait! Who’s this Namid?” Sinead asked.

“An astronomer Louchard’s also got imprisoned.” Bunny didn’t explain about Namid being divorced from Dinah, because it wasn’t really an important detail. “We came in the
Jenny’s
shuttle, only the damned fool landed right on the edge of the ice, so they’re about to take a dive off the ice in the inlet.” At Sean’s gasp of horror, she added quickly, “Oh, Yana, Diego, and me, as well as Dinah O’Neill and the first mate, got ashore okay, but there are crewmen still inside and they can’t go nowhere right now.”

“And they’d have nowhere to go here either, so crowded we are,” Sinead said sourly.

So everyone started talking at once again until Sean, in midflight up the stairs on his way to Yana, stopped and held up his hands.

“Okay now, folks, let’s just calm down. If the ship’s disabled, we can relax. There’s just two people to be considered, and I think we can handle this, Muktuk, Chumia, Sinead, and me. Go on back to your homes and your dinners. And thank you very much for being so ready to stand on the line. Sure do appreciate your support.”

Then, followed by Bunny, Sinead, and the two Murphys, Sean swarmed up the steps two at a time.

“Where did you say you stashed them, Bunny?” Sean asked when they got outside.

“First cabin I came to.” Bunny pointed. “Megenda was shaking so bad he needed to get
warm
!”

“Oh, that’d be the Sirgituks,” Chumia said, smiling. “They won’t mind. They’re still down below. Shall I ask them to stay here, in our place, until we’ve got things all settled?”

“Would you please, Chumia?” Sean asked with an appreciative smile, but he kept right on striding toward the place where Yana was.

He was at least ten strides in front of Bunny and Muktuk when he reached the door and went in. Bunny trotted to catch up and heard a very surprised Yana call out Sean’s name. When Bunny entered the Sirgituks’ cabin, Sean and Yana were locked in each other’s arms, cheek to cheek, eyes closed, rocking back and forth and not saying a word. Yana’s face was wet with tears.

Dinah O’Neill was looking Sean up and down as if she was hunting for something she wasn’t seeing, and there was a bit of a smirk to her grin. Megenda was still shivering, though not quite as violently now he had the warmth of the soup in him. Yana and Diego had removed both the pirates’ clothing and their own in Bunny’s absence, and were wrapped in the Sirgituks’ extra clothing and blankets. A kettle boiled on the stove.

“Dinah O’Neill, this is Muktuk Murphy O’Neill and Chumia O’Neill O’Neill, your kinfolk. And the man by the fire is First Mate Megenda of the
Jenny
,” Bunny said.

“Greetings, kinswoman,” Muktuk said, “though I think we gotta do some straight talking before anyone’s going to want to welcome you proper like. Now, let’s get this fella seen to. Whatcha think, Sinead? Give him a tot of the juice?”

Sinead had followed Muktuk in and was eyeing Dinah O’Neill with a less than charitable expression on her face. She had relaxed on seeing that Yana was well enough to cling to Sean, and now she gave the shuddering Megenda her attention.

“D’you have some of Clodagh’s juice?”

Muktuk nodded. “Always keep some handy since the time it brought my brother back to life, when he fell into the fish hole that winter.”

He rummaged in one of the overhead cupboards in the kitchen corner of the house and dragged out a medium-sized brown bottle. Holding it up to the light, he twirled it, checking the level of the liquid. Satisfied, he got down a glass, poured in an exact two fingers of liquid, then handed the glass to Megenda.

“This’ll stop those shivers before you come loose at the joints.”

Megenda was evidently willing, at this point, to take anything that might reduce the chill he had taken. Grasping both edges of the fur rug in one big hand, he tossed off the contents of the glass in one gulp.

Muktuk regarded him and Megenda looked right back, sort of superciliously, until the juice made itself known down his gullet. Then his eyes bugged out, fit to pop from his head, and he gasped, exhaling, and even Bunny, on the far side of the room, recoiled as his exhalation reached her.

Dinah O’Neill looked angry. “What did you give him?”

“Just what Clodagh would have were she here,” Bunny said smugly. “You watch. It’ll clear off those shivers as if he’d swallowed a hot poker.”

Megenda, mouth still wide open, dragged in a breath as deep as the one he had just expelled, settled it in his lungs, shook his head, and stood straight and tremorless in front of the fire.

“What was in that?” he asked in a raspy voice, letting the fur drop from his shoulders. His observers could now see the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Close as he’d stood to the fire, it hadn’t been able to warm him to sweating.

Sean grinned. “Clodagh Senungatuk makes it up for dogsled drivers to use in case of a ducking. Used it a time or two myself to good effect.”

“When you come out of the water after a good swim?” Dinah O’Neill asked with an odd smile on her lips as she regarded Sean, her head tilted to one side.

He gave her a long stare. Then he smiled back at her. “I don’t need it on those occasions, Dama. I’m in my element then.” He gestured to the table, pulled out one of the chairs, and settled Yana in it. He hadn’t let go of her hand all this while and he continued to hold it during the next discussions.

“That stuff keep its whammy long?” Dinah asked, looking respectfully at the bottle as she took a seat. When Sean nodded, she asked, “That the sort of thing Petaybee does like no other culture?”

“We have developed certain medications that are effective in this sort of climate, yes. That’s one. I doubt it would have much usage on say, a tropical world, so the general demand would be small.”

“But something that when it’s needed, there isn’t anything as efficacious?” Dinah went on.

Sean inclined his head. “Like the cough syrup that cured my wife’s”—he gave Yana such a fond look that Dinah O’Neill blinked wistfully—“cough. How is it now, dear?”

“I haven’t so much as sputtered once I got back into Petaybean air, Sean,” Yana replied, squeezing his fingers.

“No, you haven’t.” Dinah O’Neill blinked again and then frowned before she gave her head a little shake. “No, you didn’t manufacture those coughing fits.”

“No, I did not,” Yana said firmly. “I definitely did not. But I’m not going to go off-planet ever again.” And this time her free hand went to the pouch at her neck. “Not for
any
reason, no matter how damned important.”

“Not that Sean’d let you,” Bunny said.

“Now, Dama, what do we do?” Sean said directly to Dinah O’Neill. “Have you indeed come to seek sanctuary here from your pirate captain?”

“Actually”—now the famous O’Neill smile broke across Dinah’s pert face—“I’m here as spokesperson for Captain Louchard to discover what, ah, shall I say, local wealth, can be used to defray his costs.”

“His
costs
?” Diego said, angrily.

“Well, yes, of course, he has to make some profit from what has turned out to be an ill-advised undertaking.”

“Won’t restoration of the half-sunk shuttle suffice?” Sean asked, a twitch of a smile on his lips.

“Oh, dear heavens, no. The shuttle can either sink on its own, or the
Jenny’s
tractor beam will lift it,” Dinah O’Neill said airily. “No, the captain expended a considerable amount of time and energy, plus rations and accommodations . . .”

“Rations and accommodations!” Diego burst out.

“Why, you were fed from the captain’s table—”

“I doubt that,” Yana muttered.

“Well,
my
table, then,” Dinah corrected herself. “And fresh fruit and good meat . . .”

“Only when we threatened hunger striking,” Diego said irately.

“Whatever,” Dinah said, dismissing his complaint. “Time and effort, as well as supplies, mean some compensation must be forthcoming, or I fear the captain will retaliate against the planet.”

“What’dya think he’ll do?” Diego asked. “Sue it?”

“Captain Louchard don’t make mistakes,” Megenda said menacingly.

“Oh, dear,” Dinah O’Neill said, pretending dismay, and she leaned conspiratorially across the table to Sean and Yana. “The first mate isn’t going to be very easy to deal with, what with all he’s gone through.”

“Then he’d better be grateful we bothered to save his skin,” Bunny said fiercely. “Because I’ll never do it again.”

“You will find, Dama, that none of your captives are ransomable.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Dinah said sweetly. “You’ve already proved conclusively that this planet has products that are lifesaving.”

“The juice is useful, that’s true, but let’s face it, how many hypothermic victims have you encountered in your line of work?” Sean asked. “And while it doesn’t cost much to produce, there’s not what you’d call a good profit margin in juice either.”

“Ah, but there may be other items with which to pay your ransom . . . like your swimming, ah, say I call, technique?”

Sean threw back his head and laughed heartily. “That’s hereditary, Dama, and not many would put up with the inconveniences.”

“Like running around starkers in minus-forty Celsius?”

“Exactly.”

“I think I need to speak to the powers that be on this place. You are, if you’ll pardon me, really not the final authority. Or so I’ve been led to believe.” Dinah had cocked her head again at Sean. Then she turned abruptly to Bunny. “You promised to guide me to one of the communion places of this planet. Do so now.” She rose. So did Megenda.

“I will guide my kinswoman,” Muktuk said, putting a hand on Sean’s shoulder to keep him seated by Yana.

Dinah gave Bunny and Diego a stern look and pointed her index finger at them. Megenda took the half step necessary to loom above them. Bunny shrugged and Diego glowered, but both rose from the bench. So did Sinead, who eyed Megenda as she idly caressed the handle of her skinning knife.

“Remember to listen carefully, Dama,” Sean said, and then paid no more attention to the group setting out to the communion place.

“Let’s go and get this over with,” Megenda growled, herding everyone before him. At the door, he looked back over his shoulder at the bottle, still visible on the worktop, and shook his head.

22

SpaceBase Petaybean Immigration Facility (PIT)

Adak O’Connor wanted nothing more than to take his bruised and aching head back to his cabin in Kilcoole and forget about the wider universe and all its problems. He was an amiable man with simple tastes, because he’d never had occasion to
have
or expect more. He enjoyed the life he had once led, as Kilcoole’s expediter, and keeping the snocles working and knowing when spaceships were coming in.

Up until this morning, he’d really enjoyed being chief immigration officer and official welcomer but, between getting conked hard on the head and now this, he felt inadequate. That didn’t set well. Neither did the unanswerable demands of these latest arrivals. In all his born days, he’d never seen anything like this! Though he’d heard that both Sinead and Clodagh had had to manage some pretty queer persons lately.

“You mean, there are no hospital facilities whatever on this planet?” the indignant personage repeated for the umpteenth time.

“I keep telling you, if someone’s sick, they stay home,” Adak replied.

He cast a jaundiced eye at the “patient,” who would have been better off staying at home, too, instead of bringing who-knew-what rare disease to Petaybee.

Right after they’d arrived, a big orange tomcat had sauntered in, sitting down beside the sick man’s unusual chair to wash itself. Then it had hopped up on the man’s lap, sniffed, lifted its lip in a disgusted way, and hopped down again to saunter out the door. Adak figured it was going to tell Clodagh there was someone sick and smelly here. Personally, he could only hope Clodagh would hurry. He was a little out of his depth, and Clodagh was the healer, after all—though he was absolutely certain she wasn’t what this high and lofty group would expect to have tend their patient.

The remarkable chair
floated
, dang it, above the floor of the cube, as he had watched it float above snow and mud and everything else people had to plow through around SpaceBase these days. And the patient—a Very Important Personage named Farringer Ball, whose helpers seemed to think that even Adak O’Connor would know who he was—was hitched up by tubes to the chair.

“Or,”
Adak continued, “they call their local healer if they don’t live in Kilcoole, or Clodagh Senungatuk if they do, which is what I’ve done, only it’ll take her time to get here.”

“Don’t you realize that in medical situations time is of the essence?”

“Sure, but he ain’t bleeding and he is breathing and those’re encouraging signs,” Adak said. “And he’s got all you here to make sure he doesn’t bleed and keeps breathing, so sit down, please, over there, until Clodagh gets herself here.”

The person in his beautifully tailored fine travel garment looked at the spartan seating arrangements, and the expression on his face when he turned back to Adak was dour and condescending. “Surely there is some kind of transit lounge—”

“You’re in it,” Adak said, rudely interrupting. It was not his normal manner, but he was getting fed up with doing this crazy sort of word dance around the subject as if the name, once spoken, would instantly provide what the speaker truly wanted—in this case, apparently, the most expensive suite in a private hospital, the most successful and omniscient doctors who would provide instant health for the patient. “I done tol’ ya, Intergal pulled everything out, including their infirm’ry, when they gave the planet back to itself. At that, us Petaybeans have more than we ever had before.” Adak gestured proudly around the cube. It was not only clean and warm but bigger than any four of the biggest cabins in Kilcoole.

“Now set yourself down and
wait
!” Adak shuffled the papers in front of him, making a good show of looking for something. Then he picked up the comm unit and turned his back on the medic man as if this was a very private call. The guy finally copped on and moved away from the counter.

“Thavian, didn’t you tell him
who
I am?” wheezed the old man in the chair, pounding the armrest with a hand liberally covered with liver spots.

Surreptitiously, Adak shot him a glance. Guy didn’t look too good, at that. All sunk in on himself. If he expected Petaybee to bring him back from whatever got him that way, he was asking for a miracle. That was sure. And, as far as Adak had ever heard, you couldn’t pay for miracles: they just happened in their own good time. Like the great big mountain that Petaybee had thrust up in the middle of the landing field . . . and then swallowed back up six weeks later.

Fortunately, just as Adak himself was getting twitchy, he spotted a trio of cats bouncing through the snow and the bulk of a fur-clad Clodagh lumbering behind them. Looking from her to the immaculately dressed medical folk—even the patient had on fine threads and was bundled in the amazingly colored pelts that no animal on Petaybee ever grew—Adak was sadly aware of a vast difference in style and appearance between Petaybeans and visitors. Not that those fancy clothes were as warm and as suitable to Petaybee as his and Clodagh’s practical, and indigenous, garments. And he almost hated to drop this problem in Clodagh’s lap after all the ones she’d had with that Rock Flock, which kept growing the way some fields will grow rocks no matter how they’re cleared.

“Sláinte, Adak, what’s up?” Clodagh asked, as she threw open the door and let in a blast of cold air, which smelled refreshingly clean to Adak. He realized then that there was a fusty stink to the air in the cube, due to the patient, no doubt, and all the funny bottles and tubes in his floating chair.

“I am Dr. Thavian von Clough,” the leader said, eyeing Clodagh disdainfully. “My patient is Secretary-General Farringer Ball.” A graceful hand introduced the patient. “We were informed by a
reliable
source that this planet has unusual therapies to assist my patient back to full health.”

Clodagh squatted down so that her face was on a level with Ball’s. “Sláinte, Farringer,” she said softly. “You looked better on the comm screen. What’s wrong?”

Ball wheezed and looked at Clodagh from under lowered eyebrows. “That’s apparently supposed to be for you to find out, young woman.”

He looked startled at Clodagh’s laugh, which was not only ripplingly youthful but beautiful.

“Thanks for the ‘young,’ ” she said, patting his hand companionably.

“It wasn’t intended as a compliment,” Dr. von Clough replied stiffly, eyeing Clodagh with distaste.

Clodagh shrugged, unconcerned. Before any of the medical team could intervene, she had her fingers on Ball’s wrist. She stooped down to look him squarely in his lined and sad face, and tut-tutted. She pinched a flap of skin on his arm and observed the rate of its relaxation.

“You’re real tired, aren’t you?” she asked.

“The secretary-general is suffering from a serious PVS condition . . .”

She nodded.
“Real
tired.” Straightening up, she added, “He should stay here awhile.”

“That’s what Luzon said, though he wouldn’t say why,” Ball wheezed.

“Him?” Clodagh snorted derisively. “Just goes to show you anybody can do something right once in a while. Don’t suppose he meant to. But the joke’ll be on him. How’d you all get here? Whit Fiske said the PTS was grounded.”

“Why, the secretary-general has a private launch for the necessary travel he must—”

“At SpaceBase? Now?”

“Of course it is.”

“Good, then you all can stay there and I think I can find space for Mr. Ball . . .”

“But—but this—individual—said you had no hospital facilities.” Von Clough regarded Adak accusingly.

“Don’t need them. So far, folks have found the whole planet pretty healthy—good food, good air, nobody havin’ to take on more’n they can handle. Sick folks can rest when they need to, exercise if they need to. That and a bit of a tonic seems to do the trick. You might say the whole planet’s a hospital facility, only it’s so good at it, everybody stays pretty well, so’s you’d never notice,” Clodagh said slowly, as if turning over the words she spoke in her own mind at the same time. “I never thought about it before, but now that I do, it’s true.” She made an expansive gesture that included everything outside the cube. “We got everything a human body should need to keep well or cure what’s ailing.”

Von Clough’s eyes bulged with indignation.

“Mind you, Farringer, you were a little late comin’, but I still think we can help you out.” She eyed the apparatus with as dubious a glance as von Clough had awarded her. “Right now, of course, as we’re getting started, we have to make do with what we’ve got.” She indicated the cube. “We’re organizing slow but sure.”

“So, where can the secretary-general go?”

“The school at Kilcoole doesn’t need
all
the rooms in their cube yet,” she said. “We’re kinda short of places to put people since Dr. Luzon”—Clodagh paused to grin—“has been so good as to send us so many unexpected guests. But we’ll find a place for Farringer, since he’s so bad off. If you wanted to help, Doctor, the men could use more hands to build more houses, unless you thought you could get some more of these for the new folks,” she added, indicating the cube, “specially now we’re getting seasonal blizzards.”

“Seasonal blizzards?” Von Clough’s eyes bulged as he saw what was slanting past the window area, as thick and earnest a snowfall as the season ever provided.

Clodagh cocked her head at von Clough, smiling her beautiful smile. “Since these are probably more like what Farringer’s used to, you might ask the cube builder to send him one. Meantime, we’ll get him started mendin’.” Low mutters of disapproval were exchanged among the lesser minions while von Clough sputtered with renewed outrage.

“But—we’re in attendance on the secretary . . .”

“Now, don’t fuss,” Clodagh said irrepressibly. “You can use his space launch to come visit whenever you want.”

Farringer Ball tried to insert a comment, but a bout of coughing took over; the discreet dials on the back of his invalid chair started to dance about.

Clodagh took a bottle from one of her capacious pockets, uncorked it, and then produced a carved wooden spoon. Before his medical advisers could protest, Clodagh had slipped a dose into Ball’s mouth. He swallowed. Instantly the cough began to subside and weakly Ball waved a hand in gratitude.

“Is this what Colonel Maddock took?” he asked, when he regained his breath, with something of the air of a schoolboy asking his grandmother about mythical animals.

Clodagh nodded. “Can’t beat it.”

Obviously swallowing his pride, von Clough executed the barest of civil bows to Clodagh and held out his hand for the bottle.

“What may I ask are the constituents of this preparation?”

Clodagh shrugged again. “This ‘n’ that,” she said vaguely. “Important thing is, it works pretty fast. Long-term results take more time, though.”

Von Clough uncorked the bottle and delicately sniffed, blinking at the aromatics that caressed his nostrils. Then he looked at Ball, who was still recovering from the spasm of coughing, although his breathing was less ragged with every passing moment.

“Amazing. Really remarkable.” He passed the bottle to one of the minions.

“We’ve been tryin’ to tell you,” she said, as if talking to a child who’d just burned himself. “Petaybee’s good for most people. Hardly anybody gets sick ever. If you want health, it only makes sense to go someplace healthy.” Her conviction and clarity in the face of so much pretension and general dog crap made Adak want to cheer.

“ ‘Struth, too,” he said, whether anyone cared for his opinion or not.