Eternity Row (46 page)

I rubbed my brow. “Oh, boy.”

“She must have overheard us speaking last night.”

Garphawayn hopped over and sat down beside my daughter. “You have frightened your parents, child. You should apologize for your impulsive behavior; it is not good to distress those you love.”

My little girl almost gave her The Pout, but Garphawayn only raised her brow ridges. Marel bowed her small blond head. “Sorry I noddy, Mama.”

“It’s okay.” I glanced at the Omorr. “Teach me how you did that.”

“It has been my observation that children as precocious as your daughter respond well to firm authority. You would do better to establish that with her yourself.” Garphawayn covered her face and sneezed. “Alunthri, if you would be so kind?”

The Chakacat took all three cats from Marel and secured them in a container at the back of the launch. I went to the helm to see how far we had traveled.

“Fifteen minutes, and we’ll have her back on the ship.”

“And grounded for another week,” I said. “Duncan, you performed a pre-launch inspection, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then would you mind telling me how in blazes she got in here?”

“I have some ideas.” He didn’t look too happy about them, either. “We’ll discuss them with our daughter after the sojourn.”

When I went back to the passenger cabin, Alunthri was still securing the cats’ container, and the female Omorr was listening to Marel as she prattled on about the “pree dars” and “fwowers.” The launch shook, then the engines made a strange sound.

“Watch her,” I said to Garphawayn, then returned to the helm.

Reever was struggling to stabilize the launch, so I strapped into the copilot’s harness and activated the board. “Duncan, we’re losing power to the engines.”

He performed another rolling manuever and turned the launch back toward the planet. “I’ll have to land it on the surface. Signal Command.”

I tried to relay our status to the
Sunlace
, but the communications array had also lost power. “Transmitter’s down. I can’t get through to them.”

Neither one of us said anything, but we were both thinking the same thing:
All these power failures were way too convenient for mere coincidence
.

“Prep for emergency landing.”

I went back to do what needed to be done in the passenger cabin. The ride into the lower atmosphere was bumpy, but Marel only giggled and bounced in her harness.

Garphawayn noticed my expression, and reached over to touch my hand with her membrane. “Your husband is a skilled pilot, is he not?”

“Yes, it’s just-” I glanced down at the tiny blonde between us. “She’s the only kid I’ll ever have.”

“I envy you her.” She sat back. “I doubt I will have any now.”

The interior of the launch turned dark as Duncan shut down power to all unnecessary systems, to prevent flash fires. Finally the surface swelled up to fill the viewports, and we landed with a series of jolts and crashes beneath our feet.

Something crackled over our heads as we unstrapped ourselves and Marel.

“Take her for me,” I said as I ran to help Alunthri retrieve the cats and grab my medical pack. I glanced back to see Garphawayn bounce out, holding Marel firmly clasped in her three arms. “Are you okay?”

“I am fine.” The Chakacat looked out through the hull doors. “We are stranded here?”

“For a while. Let’s get out of here before something blows.”

Duncan secured the helm, then met us at the docking ramp. “Any injuries?”

“I don’t think so.” I hurried down to make sure of that, then took a deep breath of cool air and finally noticed our surroundings. If the sky had been green instead of bluish-white, we could have been back on K-2. “So far so good. Duncan?”

My husband had ducked under the launch, and reappeared a few seconds later. “Power conduits to the engines are fused.”

Alunthri straightened. “Can you signal the ship?”

He shook his head. “The transmitter is in the same shape. I’ll get the survival gear from the cabin.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN From the Repository

Maggie’s world was, in fact, a milder version of Kevarzangia Two, with thick forests interspersed with rolling plains. None of the native botanicals looked familiar, but none scanned as poisonous to us, so we set up a makeshift camp in a clearing a short distance from the launch. The temporary shelters would serve as our home away from home until the rescue team from the ship arrived.

“How long?”

“They won’t be able to activate our receiver, so they’ll assume the communications array has been damaged.” Reever gazed up at the sky, then back at our disabled launch. “Xonea will send a rescue team for us in two rotations.”

“With the negotiations between Taerca and Oenrall scheduled to begin, won’t he come after us any sooner?”

“Perhaps.”

“Mama?” Our daughter darted between us, and grabbed my leg. “Caw Uncwip come down see?”

“Not yet, honey. Daddy has to fix the transmitter.”

Garphawayn declared she was famished, and Alunthri called Marel over to help it prepare an impromptu picnic for all of us.

I led Reever off a short distance, and kept my voice low. “There’s nothing else we can do?”

“No.” He kept staring at the launch. “This was intentional.” At my blank look, he explained, “The power failures, the conduits fusing. And the transmitter. The only cause of that kind of damage is a massive energy surge.”

“I don’t remember an energy surge.”

“There wasn’t one. All systems were functioning at optimum levels from the time we left launch bay.”

I noticed some small eyes watching us from the ground cover and nodded in their direction. “Someone is interested in us.”

Reever took out a proximity device and swept the area. “Four of them, six kilos in weight, warm-blooded.“ He knelt down and removed his wristcom, rolling it so that the sunlight flashed off the shiny surfaces. At the same time, he made a low, whirring sound.

Slowly, a diminutive creature crept out of the foliage, and approached, its attention fixed on the wristcom. Short brown fur covered its six-limbed body and long tail. The shape of its head reminded me a little of a cat, with the pointed ears and slanted eyes, but the body and mouth were completely alien in structure. Three more near-cats of similar sizes followed.

Once it sniffed Reever’s hand, it looked up at both of us and made an inquisitive, chittering sound.

So far Marel hadn’t noticed them, but she loved anything with fur. “Do you think they bite?”

“Let’s find out.” Reever carefully stroked a finger under the near-cat’s chin, and it made a high-pitched squeal and undulated with pleasure against his hand.

“Wook, Mama!” Marel toddled over, holding a pair of her own. They crawled up onto her shoulders, and licked her face while making more of the squealing, happy sounds. Alunthri followed, holding a couple more in its arms. “New kiddies!”

More near-cats emerged from the forest, until there were nearly a hundred in our camp. Jxinok’s only inhabitants proved too good-natured to resist, and we spent most of the afternoon watching them play with Marel, Alunthri, and each other. Garphawayn at first kept her distance, but their fur didn’t seem to aggravate her allergies, and the near-cats ended up crawling all over her, too.

“They appear to be very healthy,” I said after scanning the largest of the horde. “Stomach contents indicate they’re herbivores, and have at least six distinct gender variations. I’d love to know how they reproduce.”

“Perhaps they are like me,” Alunthri said, stroking one small near-kitten with its paw.

“Cherijo.” The female Omorr divested her lap of felines and rose on her foot. “Would you care to walk with me a short distance? I feel in need of some exercise.”

Alunthri agreed to keep an eye on Marel, so Garphawayn and I took a tour of the bushes around the clearing. She didn’t seem to notice the strange and beautiful varieties of flora, and only answered me absently when I commented on them.

“That’s pretty much it for my supply of small talk,” I said after a few minutes. “Is something on your mind?”

She plucked a flower and studied it intently. ‘This is rather like the tafar blossoms we grow on Omorr, but it is too red.“ Without skipping a beat, she added, ”I am not certain how to go about it, but I would like to renegotiate my position with Lord Mafruda.”

“Okay.” I knew as much about Omorr marriage contracts as I did the flowers. “How can I help?”

She stopped hopping. “I rather expected you to persuade me to return to Omorr. You have made your opinion of me only too plain.”

I spotted a couple of shiny pebbles and picked them up, Marel loved pretty rocks. “Squilyp is my best friend. I wasn’t sure you were good enough for him.”

“And now you do?”

I smiled. “When I first met Squilyp, he drove me nuts. He was so picky and snotty and thought he was a better doctor than I was. We spent more time arguing than we did consulting. I couldn’t stand him. And then I had to fight him.”

“He told me about forcing you to make the solicitation. He is not proud of what he did.”

“Neither am I. Still, it changed things. We apologized to each other, and started over. We learned to respect each other and became friends.” I glanced at her stiff expression. “Maybe you and I could do the same.”

“I have never had a Terran friend.” She tossed the flower away. “I have never had many friends at all.”

“So we’ll practice.”

She made a
hmmmming
sound. “That may work for friendship, but Squilyp is a different matter.”

“The relationships may be different, but the same theory works both ways.”

“You have an advantage that I do not. You share your calling with Squilyp, while I know nothing about medicine.”

“It doesn’t matter. Garphawayn, he’s a good man. Yes, he’s one of the best surgeons I’ve ever seen. It was his skill that saved many lives, including my daughter’s. But that’s not all he is.” I met her dark gaze. “He wants to share his life with someone. He wants a child.”

Her rings clinked as her gildrells curled and uncurled. “I am well-acquainted with that feeling.”

I turned to her. ‘Then you’re going to have to fight, too. Fight for him. Don’t let him go.”

Her skin turned a faint purple. “He does not love me.”

“What have you done that would make him love you?”

She thought about that for a moment. “I see your point. Yet I fear it is already too late for me to begin negotiations again.”

“Let me tell you a story about me and my husband,” I said, as we headed back across the clearing.

When we arrived back in camp, Juliet and the kittens were yowling in their container.

“They wish to come out and play,” Alunthri said as it tried to soothe the Terran cats with some dried salmon bits. Juliet, who had never been one to refuse food, only kicked them back out through the screened panel.

The near-cats were curious about them, to the point of crawling all over the container, but that didn’t mean the two species would get along.

“We can’t let them out, I’m afraid. If they take off into the forest, we might never find them again.”

My big mistake was not explaining any of that to my daughter. A few minutes later, as Garphawayn and I were debating how to arrange the sleeping pallets, I heard Marel shout.

“Juweeyed!”

Through the opening in the shelter tent, I watched the former stray female dart through the camp, followed by her two kittens, and disappear into the forest. My daughter ran after them, calling for them to come back.

“Oh, hell, she let them out. Alunthri, help!” I ran after her.

Fallen branches snapped under my feet and leaves whipped my face as I ran through the forest.

The Chakacat ran much faster than I did, so I wasn’t surprised to see it flash by a few moments later. Distantly, I heard Duncan and Garphawayn following me, but was too busy keeping my eyes on the small blond head bobbing through the foliage to pay attention to my back. Then I lost sight of her, and started yelling.