Power Play (14 page)

“Even when we start returning you to them a piece at a time?” Megenda asked with a leer.

Dinah O’Neill’s voice was casual and professional as she replied. “Naturally, I have counseled Captain Louchard that you should be returned undamaged, but he’s getting a little put out by the delays.”

“Gee, that’s tough,” Bunny said.

This time, before Dinah could move, Megenda lashed out and knocked Bunny flat with a backhanded blow that spun her back against the bunk frame. Roaring, Diego lunged at Megenda, but Namid and Marmion caught him: the brawny crewman already had his laser pistol aimed right at the boy’s forehead.

“My, the natives are restless,” Dinah said with a sigh. “I’m sorry but I can’t restrain them . . .”

“That’s nonsense, Dinah, and you know it,” Namid said, as if the words had been forced out of him. “What’s the matter with you? Have you finally gotten so greedy you’ve lost your own survival instinct? You know damn good and well those men don’t go to the head without your approval, so stop this stupid game and tell them to quit beating innocent children or I’ll— I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Namid?” she asked coldly. “Leave me? A hollow threat, darling.”

“This isn’t about us—it’s about what
you
call business,” Namid said, still struggling to hold Diego back. “You used to pride yourself that you’d listen to reasonable arguments.”

“And?” Dinah’s expression dared him to present one.

“I could have told you that people in Marmion’s level of society have strictly adhered to an enforced no-ransom policy. Or don’t you remember the case of the Amber Unicorn? Of those who were held for ransom, two died under torture begging their organizations to break through the restrictions put on them, to cut the red tape to save them, but the organizations were absolutely prohibited by law, which tied up all the assets in legalities so that they
couldn’t
be liquidated. The families pleaded and offered all sorts of personal assurances, but in the end, the two captives died and no ransom was ever paid. The others suicided, apparently also by prearrangement. I suspect Marmion is prepared to take similar—measures—to insure that her capture or death will profit no one.” When Namid looked in her direction, Marmion nodded, a faint proud smile on her lips.

“There’s no way at all that any funds will be released before I am,” Marmion agreed. “However, I am prepared to offer—let us call it ‘passage money’ for a safe return, and I’m quite willing to make the ‘fare’ a substantial amount . . .” She gracefully gestured to include everyone in the cabin, including Namid. “But there is no way that my people will liquidate holdings on my signature”—and she drawled the next few phrases in the most resolute of soft voices Yana had ever heard this formidable woman use—“even if I had to hold the stylus with my teeth to sign.”

“Damn that Fiske!” Dinah said in the first unrehearsed and spontaneous utterance Yana had heard from her so far. “He said this was a sure thing.” Somehow Yana was not totally surprised to learn that Torkel was involved in this fiasco.

“And I thought you were cynical enough to realize there’s no such commodity as a sure thing.” Namid regarded her sardonically. “You didn’t do enough homework on this batch of victims, Dinah. Maybe it’s time you gave it up if you’re getting careless.”

“Well, I certainly wish you’d told me all this sooner before I wasted so much time. That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked with a wounded expression, scanning the faces of her captives and her ex-husband. “You were stalling for time! Oh, really! Just because you’re in legitimate business instead of a marginalized one like us, you think our time is not as valuable as yours. I knew I should have stuck with cargo and not branched out into passengers but—but there
is
gold on that wretched ice world,” she insisted, her fists clenching at her sides. “There
are
gemstones, there
is
germaniun, gengesite . . .”

“In small quantities,” Yana said. “Just what sort of deposits were you shown?” she added, wonderingly.

Dinah O’Neill said nothing, but kept eye contact with Yana.

“Have you ever been on the surface of Petaybee?” Yana asked.

A flicker in the privateer’s eyes and a slight smile indicated that she had.

“In the winter, or what passes for summer there?” Yana continued, keeping up the pressure.

“Both.”

“And just what did you report to Captain Louchard that has made him so determined to strip that poor world?”

For just a second O’Neill’s eyes flickered again, doubtfully this time.

“I’m sure you’ve heard this one before,” Yana began, taking a deep breath, “but if you let us go, we will not press charges.” She glanced at Marmion, who nodded. Dinah’s expression was contemptuous, Megenda’s the epitome of cynical amusement. “I really do think you’ve been misled. Something Satok was good at . . .”

“He was Petaybean and he
knew
 . . .”

“He knew
doodly
,” Bunny said, still nursing her face with one hand while blood from the cut that Megenda’s finger ring had made on her cheek trickled through her fingers. “He hadn’t been on the planet since he signed on to the company, and he got discharged from that right smart. He wasn’t even very useful when he was growing up. He just talked big.”

Dinah smiled as she turned her eyes on Bunny, a sort of half-congratulatory smile at the girl’s spunk.

“You tell that captain of yours that he won’t get anywhere threatening Yana or Sean, or me or Diego here,” Bunny went on in a level voice. “He wants to make a deal involving Petaybee, he comes to Petaybee and talks it over with the planet.”

“Talks it over with the planet?” Namid’s astonishment was complete and, openmouthed, he looked from Bunny to Dinah and back again to Bunny.

Dinah gave her a pitying look. “Talk to the planet?”

“Go see your relatives,” Namid said, startling everyone, including Dinah. “Well, you always told me that some of your relations, way back, were exiled to Petaybee.”

“That was the rumor I was raised with. Which, I might add, I checked out on the company computer,” Dinah said, then shrugged. “I’m not at all sure I’d trust their records. Or anything about the planet.”

“O’Neill? There are O’Neills at Tanana Bay,” Bunny said, regarding Dinah with a keener interest.

So swiftly did Dinah O’Neill withdraw then that the heavy door panel had whooshed shut before they realized her intention. Megenda and the crewman followed smoothly, and the captives were left alone.

“Now you’ve done it,” Diego said accusingly to Bunny. “We had her . . .”

“I think Bunny may well have done it,” Marmion said quietly and respectfully.

“It’ll take time for Dinah to absorb the fact of her error,” Namid said thoughtfully. “But she’s extremely intelligent and very flexible. She’d have to be to survive so long in this business. She’s usually able to influence Louchard . . .”

“You think she’ll try to talk him into letting us go?” Bunny asked wistfully, her face crumpling into tears. Diego cradled her in his arms, stroking her hair and murmuring little endearments in Spanish.

Marmion dampened the one towel they had in the room and handed it to him to place over the cut on Bunny’s cheek just as Yana began once more to cough.

14

Petaybee

Sean swam with the single-minded fish schools until they reached the lake, where the fish all at once made a silver river into another of the underwater caves. Sean followed. When the water grew too shallow, the fish turned back, and Sean found himself in another dry grotto. As he was changing form, he saw the phosphorescence once more organize into a straight line, this time pointing inland. Once his feet were under him again, he followed it. Though Sean had swum the waterways of Petaybee all his life, these caves and passages were new to him, no doubt a result of the most recent seismic activity. The line of luminescence led him toward the cries for help that at first were only echoes like the one he had heard near Kilcoole, but soon became the faint cries of real voices.

When he turned a corner and saw the five hunters, he almost laughed at the expressions of terrified anger and frustration on their faces. One of them—de Peugh, he thought—had developed a distinct twitch, and his hair had a great deal more white in it than Sean remembered, as well as a tendency to stand straight up. Minkus was gibbering to himself, and Ersol kept looking around the cave and up at the opening they had fallen through as if it were about to eat him. The wooden bows, arrows, and lances that Sinead had substituted for their high-tech rifles were piled together in a little heap, that someone had tried to set on fire for warmth, he supposed, all but the dagger Mooney clutched in his fist as he pointed to Sean and yelled.

“You’re another damned hallucination! Go away! Nobody walks around bare-assed in this weather.”

“We have nothing for you, honestly,” Minkus cried, cringing away. “We gave the rabbit de Peugh had in his pocket to the cat. It would have eaten us otherwise. Please, please don’t harm us!”

Sean glanced apologetically down at his own now-human flesh. “Harm you? What with? I thought you lads wanted help.”

“Oh, we do, we do!” Minkus cried. “We’ve been down here days, weeks, months. It’s been the most horrible nightmare. The walls shift and melt and little lights come on and sometimes I see little volcanoes exploding and then when I look again there’s nothing . . .”

Sean shook his head. “You can’t have been down here more than a few hours. Where’re my sister and the others?”

“They abandoned us to be eaten by wild beasts,” Minkus said.

“Well, we
do
have a saying here on Petaybee that some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you, but mostly it’s not to be taken literally. Shall we find a way to get you out of here?”

“We’ll follow you back the way you came,” Mooney said.

Sean grinned. “Not unless you can hold your breath for a very long time. How’d you get down here?”

“We fell!” Ersol pointed to the hole, far above them. With the arrival of someone who was probably able to extricate them from their captivity, his dignity was restored. “We were lucky we weren’t bloody killed. We could sue . . .”

Sean laughed harder. “Sue what? The planet? You are, to all legal intents and purposes, trespassing on private property. Very private property.”

“Private . . . vat . . . vat . . . vat . . .”
The walls echoed.

“But we
applied
for hunting licenses,” Minkus complained shrilly.

“Which were not yet granted, I must warn you. Nor would they have been. However, follow me.”

Sean had spotted the dotted line that Petaybee had illuminated to guide him and now struck out through the remainder of the underground passage leading away from the lake.

“Hey, man, how come you’re not wearing anything?” Ersol asked, staring at him.

“I, er, was swimming when I heard you yelling for help,” Sean said.

“Why aren’t you freezing?” Minkus demanded. Clotworthy was also staring in disbelief at their savior.

“Oh.” Sean shrugged, looking down himself as if he might have changed shape since he last looked. “Adaptation to Petaybee. And it’s not all that cold down here, you know. You wouldn’t have frozen to death by any manner or means.”

“No, just died of starvation,” Mooney said, licking his lips.

“Not that either,” Sean said, “but I’m sure we can find you something to eat when we get where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?”

All five had fallen in a single line behind him as he strode purposefully through the passage, the little line of phosphorescence popping out just ahead of them. Petaybee was full of new tricks these days, he thought with no small degree of wonder. New passages, new ways of communicating direction, and that extremely idiosyncratic and erratic echo.

“All I know for right now is that we’re getting out of here. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine,” Sean said.

“Now . . . guess . . . guess.”

“Oh, frag, there it is again. That voice! Once it sounded like it was crying some woman’s name. Listen. What
is
it?” Mooney demanded on a semihysterical note. He crouched down, brandishing his dagger, his eyes showing whites all the way around like a spooked curly’s.

“Petaybee,” Sean replied amiably, without breaking stride. The others rushed to keep up with him. He really must discover how to bring clothing with him when he went selkie-ing. Despite his disclaimer, the temperature was not all that high in these tunnels.

“Does it do that often? Echo you?”

“It
wasn’t
echoing me.”

“It wasn’t?” Ersol lost his pomposity again.

“If it wasn’t,” Minkus said with the edge of fear in his voice, “who’s speaking?”

“I told you—Petaybee.”

“Petaybee!”

“Now, see here, Shongili, that was an echo.”

“Was it?”

“Petaybee.”

“Oh, my gawd!” Ersol said, his voice quavering badly. “Lemme outta here!”

“It can’t be far now. The passage is getting narrower and sloping up—we should be reaching the surface soon,” Sean said encouragingly.

And they did. Walking up an incline, they emerged from the side of a hill into a cool snow-laden wind; Sean required all his physical control to resist visibly shivering.

“Hey, Shongili, I don’t care what you say, your goose bumps just got goose bumps. Here—” Ersol threw a sweater around Sean’s shoulders. “You got some spare pants in your pack, don’t you, Clotworthy? Mooney, break out a pair of socks, at least.”

They paused long enough to put Sean into minimal coverings and then continued down the slope. They emerged onto a small height and a clump of wind-raked bushes to stare down at the lake, its edges now frozen, on the other side of where Sinead had left them.

“Hey, isn’t that your sister?” Ersol cried, pointing to some figures on the verge.

Somehow “your sister” sounded like a nasty epithet. Sean ignored the tone, knowing that Sinead could be a trifle difficult at times and these men, particularly, needed the kind of lesson only she could teach on Petaybee.

Sean put both hands to his mouth and uttered the ululating call they always used to cover long distances. One figure responded, straightening up, and looking around.

“Sinead!”
he called then.

The sound of her name reverberated under her feet. Then a piercing distant whistle from the far side of the lake indicated that Sinead had not only heard, but seen them.

“Let’s go.”

“Isn’t there anywhere we can go besides near her?” Minkus asked plaintively.

Sean chuckled to himself as he led the way down the slope. Somehow this encounter had restored him in a way not even the swimming could. Or maybe it was a case of both. The planet healing and then revealing what it was he had to do. Organize the influx and protect it as best he could.

He was reminded again of the influx as, halfway back to Kilcoole, they met Clodagh leading the white robes like a mother duck with her ducklings behind her. The white robes broke formation, however, and hurried forward to fuss.

“You poor men, we heard your cries!”

“You couldn’t’ve,” Mooney said. “We weren’t
that
loud.”

“It was awful,” Clotworthy said to Sister Agate. “I can’t stop shaking.”

“It’s the cold, poor dear.”

The hunters confided to the other offworlders about the cat, the unicorn, and their injuries.

“Poor Mr. de Peugh,” Brother Shale fretted. “Whatever is wrong with him?”

Clodagh shrugged. “Looks to me like he lost an argument with Petaybee.”

“The Beneficence?” Brother Shale asked. “The Beneficence did this to these poor men?”

“Oh surely not,” Brother Schist said nervously. “That wouldn’t be very . . . benevolent . . . would it?”

“Sin,” Sister Igneous Rock said firmly. “He sinned against the planet and it smote him?”

“Now, you just cut that out!” Clodagh said. The hunters weren’t the only frustrated people that day. “Petaybee hasn’t
invented
sin yet.”

“They did
what
?” Dr. Matthew Luzon said in a volume that blasted the eardrums of the party on the end of the comm link.

“The PTS transporter license has been revoked and the vehicle impounded.”

“That can’t be
done
!” Luzon angrily stamped the cane he still had to use into the thick carpet. There weren’t half enough people down on the planet’s surface yet, and he hadn’t been able to infiltrate enough of his agents to effect the sort of damage he had planned on creating. Makem hadn’t reported in since he landed either, and so Luzon had no idea if the Asian Esoteric and Exotic Company had reached the surface. They had been so eager to slay the unicorns for their horns, long believed to have aphrodisiacal and healing powers, and to acquire the whiskers of the orange cats, which they had been told had similar powers as well as life-extending properties. He had also given them a list of therapeutic plants and lichens, which incidentally included all the vegetation so far catalogued on the planet’s surface. The way those fellows worked, a forest could be hewn, chopped into splinters, and removed quicker than one of those disgusting felines could blink. And then
the “renewable wealth” of Petaybee would be past history . . . but first he had to get enough people down there to do the job!

“The remote device was removed from the cockpit and there’s one of those propulsion unit clamps that would blow the vessel into trash if someone tried a manual takeoff. That ship is grounded.”

“But that’s a totally prohibited perversion of basic Commercial Venture rights. All the proper forms have been accepted by—”

“They’ve just been disaccepted, Luzon. The credit account has had its assets frozen, and mail, messages, or credit transfers addressed to PTS are being returned to sender.”

Matthew Luzon, fuming and sputtering and sorely tempted to throw the comm unit across the room into the mock-marble fireplace, was trying to figure out how the carefully constructed and protected PTS operation could have been discovered and blocked.
Who?
Unless that twit-brained Makem had been corrupted down on the planet’s surface? The noise of his room buzzer penetrated his fury.

“Yes?”
Even Luzon was astonished at the snarl in his voice and moderated his tone. “Yes?”

“Torkel Fiske to see you,” said the sexy-voiced receptionist of this exclusive health resort.

“Ah, the very man.” Matthew’s ire settled almost as instantly as it had flared. “Enter. Enter. My dear Captain Fiske, how good of you to spare some time to visit the convalescent.”

Fiske came in, suavely dressed and smiling, with a touch of smug satisfaction that was visible to the shrewd eye of his observer. Matthew began to feel that his unexpected visitor was going to cheer him no end, and so he prolonged that pleasure until he had seen Fiske suitably supplied with the drink of his choice and some of the enticing tidbits that the resort offered its distinguished clientele.

“I came, Dr. Luzon, because I felt that you might not have heard the news,” Fiske said, still smiling unctuously. He took another sip, and accepted one of the little canapés.

“I fear the medics have required me to suspend my usual activities until my injuries are completely healed,” Luzon said, “so I’ve not kept up with general news. If anything is bad enough, someone always manages to inform the galaxy.” He smiled condescendingly over such a foible.

“Then I was right. You haven’t heard about the kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping?” Luzon leaned toward his guest, his heart pounding in suspense.

“Yes, kidnapping. And from Gal Three, where, as you may know, they have such a tight security system.” Fiske smiled at Luzon, a smile deprecating the machinations of a security system that failed to secure.

“Really? How very alarming.”

“Yes, and everyone is astounded. I mean, who would have thought that Marmion de Revers Algemeine had a single enemy in the galaxy.”

“Not her!” Luzon could scarcely contain his joy, though he expressed a horror that caused Fiske to grin more broadly.

“And . . . you’ll never guess who was kidnapped along with her?”

“No, indeed I cannot, so do tell me.” Luzon was all but bouncing about on the seat of his electronic mobility device.

“Colonel Yanaba Maddock-Shongili . . .”

“Not the doughty colonel?”

“And—”

“Oh, not more victims! How appalling!”

“Buneka Rourke and young Diego Etheridge-Metaxos, too.”

Luzon raised his eyes ceilingward. “There is justice in the universe. Truly, there is!” He bowed his head. Then he peered up at the grinning Fiske. “Who perpetrated this atrocity?”

“The infamous Captain Onidi Louchard!”

“Oh! Famous—I mean, infamous! I’ve heard the pirate was clever, but to breech Gal Three security I’m truly speechless. And?”

“And what?”

“Have the bodies been returned?”

“You are bloodthirsty, Doctor,” Fiske said, his glance tinged with censure. “The ransom has been set . . .”

“On Algemeine?” Luzon snorted with scorn. “It’ll never be paid.”

“What do you mean?” Fiske sat forward, concerned.

Luzon waved his hand at such folly. “My dear Fiske, Marmion Algemeine is one of the top financiers in the known galaxy. She would adhere to the Code out of principle, unlike the cravens on the Amber Unicorn.”