Power Play (23 page)

“Thanks,” Bunny said with a little smile. “The tea will be great, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do about the rest of it.”

She finished taking off her wraps, poured her tea, and sat down, warming her hands on her cup and watching the steam rise between herself and Marmie. Marmie had a way of making you feel like you were the most important person in the world when she was talking to you. Bunny wished she could be like that.

“I wouldn’t want you to get me wrong, Dama, I love Petaybee. I never want to live anywhere else—permanently, that is.” Marmie nodded encouragingly, as the words had a hard time coming out. “But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. See, the thing is, I never knew what all was out there before. All we ever saw was SpaceBase, and that was pretty grim, and a lot of the recruits who left didn’t return and if they did, they sometimes wouldn’t even sing about it. I never dreamed there could be some place like Gal Three or some of the stations and planets Charmion showed me holos of.”

Marmie smiled. “ ‘How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’ ”

“ ‘Scuse me?”

“Another old song. Sorry, dear, it just means that once you’ve seen some of the universe, you can develop a taste for more. Is that what’s troubling you?”

“That’s part of it. I suppose I might not care so much if I thought I
could
go other places if I wished. ‘Cept, that’s not exactly true. Y’see, there’s so much to
learn
out there. I saw things I think we might be able to manage for Petaybee, and not hurt anything, if only someone knew how. But I can’t learn about them here. I’ve always been mechanical, you know, and Diego showed me some gadgets that sure would improve servicing the snocles, for instance. I don’t know. I guess I’m not saying it very well. It’s just knowing that I have to leave by a certain time or I won’t be able to . . .”

Marmie placed her hand on Bunny’s. “We all resent our limitations, dear. Actually, though, you’re starting school a little later than most do. There is no reason why you couldn’t begin long-distance studies here and then, when you find you absolutely
must
go off-planet to satisfy your curiosity, you can go—surely that will be before you’re twenty or so. And you can always come back, you know, whenever you like. Petaybean troops do. It’s just that I suppose you have to decide now instead of waiting till you’re—oh, forty.”

Bunny grinned. It had all been so obvious, but the idea was so new to her she hadn’t considered the really salient factors.

“Furthermore, it will be my pleasure to present you with a suitable study unit and all the hard-copy books you wish. Among my inheritances are the contents of several libraries. And when you’re ready to go off-planet, you can be the pilot student for the Petaybean Offworld Civilian Scholarship program.”

“I didn’t know there was one!”

“That’s because I just decided to sponsor it.”

Bunny reached across the table and gave her a hug. “You’re aces, Marmie!”

“Likewise. Tell me, you haven’t seen Namid, have you?”

“Nope. Nor Diego. But I came straight here after I got dressed.”

“Then I think I’ll get dressed as well and we’ll go find them, shall we?”

If Dinah O’Neill, aka the fearsome Captain Onidi Louchard, had known what was in store for her, she would have fought her incarceration with every one of the many combat skills she had learned since she’d been a defenseless preteen. She did hear Megenda mumbling incoherencies as she was propelled down the ladder. She did notice the odd indirect lighting, but she blithely ventured farther into the cavern, toward the warmth she felt on her face. She thought that at least this prison was comfortably warmer than the cabin she’d just left.

That was when she noticed that the holo transponder was missing. Not that she had to worry about the Petaybeans inadvertently turning it on. But Namid would know what it was. She ought to have checked, and she berated herself for such an oversight. Captain Louchard, she grinned to herself, would have plenty to say about that when next she assumed that mantle.

She and the two crewmen, Dott and Framer, came across Megenda then, all curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the cave, just where it opened up into a fair-sized chamber—a chamber that was oddly beautiful in its pastel shades and mottled walls. The beauty was of a strange, disorienting nature, however: the mottles rippled and the shades altered in an unnerving fashion. Walls were supposed to be stationary, and their coloration was generally stable, too.

“What’s the matter with him, Dinah?” Dott asked, planting a toe on Megenda and trying to turn him onto his back so the first mate’s face would be visible. He was a rather unimaginative sort, good for routine or monotonous duties, strong and unquestioning, happy to be given orders he could follow, which he followed to the letter. “Thought you said he was just cold.”

“I don’t like the look of him,” Framer said, taking a step back from Megenda’s rigid body as if afraid of contagion.

“He’s warm enough now,” Dott said, grabbing one of Megenda’s hands and trying to pull it away from his face.

“Hey, how can you have fog in a cave?” Framer asked, and pointed to the mist beginning to rise from the floor.

“These caves are supposed to be special places,” Dinah said as evenly as she could, but the rising vapor carried an aroma to it that was unlike anything she had ever encountered. Her skin began to crawl under the warm parka she’d been given. “I’d like to know what’s going on here,” she said, turning around on her heel, addressing whatever was generating all these unusual effects. She could have sworn that there’d been no mist, no odor, and no vacillating wall colors and designs when she’d first reached the cave floor. She looked behind her and saw that the mist was closing in, obscuring her view of the walls.

“Going on here?”
The phrase was interrogatory, not rhetorical, and the voice that said the words was not an echo of hers.

“Dinah?” The unimaginative Dott’s voice quavered. “How do we get out of here?”

“No way out of here.”

“Keee-rist, who’s talking?” Framer looked wildly around him. “Who’s talking?”

Dinah wanted to reassure him that it was the Petaybeans perpetrating some sort of a hoax to frighten them, but she absolutely knew, though she didn’t know how, that the voice was nothing caused by any human phenomena. It penetrated her body through to the marrow of her bones.

“Listen,”
it commanded.

“I’m listening, I’m listening,” Framer said, dropping to his knees, bringing his hands up together, probably for the first time in his life, into a prayerful position.

Dott just sat down, hard, licking his lips. He kept his head straight, but he rolled his eyes around in his head as if he didn’t quite dare look at who, or what, was speaking back at them.

Megenda began to gibber more wildly, writhing in and out of the fetal position as if his limbs and torso were attached to invisible strings.

For the first time in her adult life, since the time she had turned a weapon on a man who had threatened her with vicious and sadistic treatment, Dinah O’Neill knew fear. She forced herself to remain standing, clenching her fists at her sides as the mist crept up, over her knees, so dense now that she couldn’t see her boots. It engulfed her, a moist, permeating blanket, traveling quickly up her body until it covered her face and she could see nothing. And the sounds seemed to emanate from the vapor that enveloped her: sound that cut her skin to her blood and bones; sound that was warm and vibrated through her, and filled with darkening colors, until she heard herself scream in protest at such an invasion. There were screams around her; with an almost superhuman effort of will, she bit her lips, determined that she, unlike the crewmen, would not cry mercy. Her resolve ended when she felt the hard thwack of stone against her face and her body as she fell down. Then she whimpered and wept, as much the
lonely, confused, tormented five-year-old girl who had been abandoned by all the adults who had managed her life up until that moment.

“The planet has been speaking?” the boy whispered to ’Cita, his hands moving restlessly on the cub’s fur as if that motion were all that protected him.

In one sense, ’Cita would tell Yo Chang much later, petting the cub
had
protected him as he had valiantly protected the cub when in danger from Zing Chi.

“Yes, Petaybee does in these places,” ’Cita said in a very grown-up voice.

“And it keeps this place warm for us?” Yo Chang asked because he had to be sure. Though this girl was not much older than himself, he felt she had exhibited commendable authority and certainly bravery in walking the gauntlet of those great animals.

“The Home is always warm.”

“How? It was so cold on the surface. Why would it be warm down here? I could feel my ears adjusting to the air pressure, so I know we are down.” He gestured to the ground on which they were seated.

“The Home protects us, Coaxtl says. It takes care of us . . .
if
”—’Cita paused to permit Yo Chang to see how important her next phrase was—“we take care of it.”

“It isn’t taking care of them,” Yo Chang said, rolling his eyes and pointing to one side where the despoilers were writhing in agony and shrieking great anguish.

“I know,” ’Cita said soberly. “I used to live with people who called it the Great Monster and feared it only. Because it can be cruel to those who take without respect and give no thanks. The Shepherd Howling was the kind of man who did that all the time, so he stayed out of these caves and taught us all to fear them. But I am disobedient and selfish, and when I ran away from the flock, because they would have taken from
me
what I was too proud to freely give, I met Coaxtl, who called the Great Monster ‘Home.’ I decided that if I could, I would rather be like the Great Monster than like Shepherd Howling. The Home is proud, too, and it obeys no one. And it, too, begrudges what is taken from it against its will.” ’Cita patted his hand. “Your people have angered the Home and it has become the Great Monster. They”—she waved her hand at the writhing bodies; she was having to shout over the noise they made—“need to be shown how it feels to
be stripped and cut, slashed and dug, prodded and pulled and flayed.”

To demonstrate her point—and having had a great deal of experience with such torments—’Cita got a flap of skin from Yo Chang’s neck and twisted and pinched it as hard as she was able.

“Hey, don’t do that!” Yo Chang scrambled sideways away from her, rubbing his neck.

“I was only demonstrating how the planet feels. You were cutting and pulling, too, you know, and you are very lucky that Petaybee saw you save the cub.”

Yo Chang gave her a sour, jaundiced glance, rubbing the outraged spot of the pinch. “You didn’t have to demonstrate so hard.”

“I did because that is how we learn how the planet feels,” she replied. “You’re much luckier than they are!”

The shrieks and howls were beginning to diminish.

“They’re not dead, are they?” Yo Chang asked most urgently.

“I don’t think so,” ’Cita said, though she couldn’t be sure. “Why?”

“My—my—father is not a bad person. Not really,” Yo Chang said, his round face and eyes entreating. “We are all forced to work hard at what we do for those who dispatch us to where we must harvest plants. If we do not work hard, and if my father does not make his crew work hard, then the quotas are not filled and we do not get the rations which only hard workers deserve.”

Neither youngster would have understood the idea of being paid in credit notes, for both had toiled long and hard hours just to get enough food to fill their stomachs.

“It is hard,” ’Cita agreed, nodding her head approvingly, “to get enough to eat. Since Coaxtl found me, I have been eating so well I will soon be as fat as Clodagh.” She patted her stomach with great satisfaction. “Everyone feeds me now: Coaxtl, Clodagh, my sister, my aunties and uncles and cousins in their homes. They are very fair about the distribution of food on the plate.”

She nodded her head once more in emphasis. But thinking of the food she had shared with Sinead and Sean and Bunny reminded ’Cita that it had been a long time since she had eaten. She also wondered if the call for help had reached anyone. Not, she hastily corrected herself, that Petaybee had not come to their rescue. It had provided ample shelter and water, although one had to be careful not to drink
too
much water or one could get a stomach colic, which twisted the guts very uncomfortably.

Coaxtl emitted a slight snore, and Yo Chang leaned toward ’Cita. “Does he . . .”

“Coaxtl is a female personage,” ’Cita informed him repressively.

“Does she really talk to you?”

“Not in
loud
words like you and I are using,” ’Cita said, “but I understand exactly what she says to me.”

Yo Chang looked down at the sleeping cub in his arms. “Then, if I heard the name Montl, the cub was telling me his name?’

“Quite likely,” ’Cita said, delighting in playing the expert.

The moans and sobbings had died down to a low enough murmur that ’Cita decided she could get some sleep.

“We may be a while longer,” she told Yo Chang as she rearranged herself against Coaxtl’s long warm body. “You’d better rest.”

“Can I go see if my father’s all right?” Yo Chang asked timidly.

“He’ll be feeling very sorry for himself, I shouldn’t wonder,” ’Cita said, settling. “Sometimes, my aunt Sinead says, when people are hurting they’ll lash out at anyone else to make them hurt, too.”

Yo Chang gulped but resolutely deposited the sleeping cub by ’Cita before he made his way down to where the sufferers were enduring their penance. She was half-asleep when she heard him return, stifling sobs.

“Your father?”

“Lives, but looks like a grandfather. He doesn’t seem to know me.”

She patted his shoulder awkwardly and pulled him down, putting her thin arm over him so that he lay between her and Coaxtl and Montl the cub. She didn’t need to tell him that life was sometimes hard.

Namid felt a pang of anxiety. Though Dinah certainly merited discipline, even incarceration for their abduction, he didn’t wish her
harm.
And he did need to know more about her activities, with or without the holo of Captain Onidi Louchard. Perhaps it had been Megenda who was Louchard, although the first mate had never appeared to Namid as a man of sufficient cunning and intelligence to contrive the piratical activities that had made Louchard’s name feared all over the galaxy.