Power Lines

Chapter 12

Dr. Whittaker Fiske received the coded messages from Johnny Greene with concern and no little dismay-particularly the second one, the one Johnny sent him after he first returned to the north. He had quickly approved the pilot's scheme and given him all due assistance. By calling in a few personal favors owed the pilot and promising the supply sergeant R amp;R to the tropical planet of her choice, he had ensured that all Petraseal available at and to SpaceBase had been urgently requisitioned elsewhere. At Johnny's suggestion, the Petraseal cans had been emptied into a single tank for immediate shipment, while the empty containers still labeled "Petraseal" had been filled with the last consignment of white paint, which was rarely used on Petaybee except for camouflage purposes. However, between implementing Johnny's scheme and work at SpaceBase, he had been too fully occupied to be able to return to Clodagh to warn her of the grave implications of what had taken place at McGee's Pass.

He was concerned about how Clodagh would take it. She was an amazing woman, unconventionally beautiful, intelligent, wise, and kind, but she felt everything that happened to Petaybee personally. Maybe if everybody did the same, there wouldn't be any problem, but even after his experience in the cave, he still retained a detachment that kept him from that sort of bond with what he had once thought of as the creation of his family. He did, however, feel a bond with Clodagh-a closer one than he had with anyone in a long time-including, maybe especially, his own son.

He walked into Kilcoole the morning after Greene's second transmission. The river was down a bit now that much of the initial thaw had already taken place, but it was still full and fat with water.

He knew Clodagh wasn't at home before he knocked on the door. No cats in the windows, on the rooftop, or perched on the various objects in the yard. He peeked through the open door into the neat, empty house and looked down Kilcoole's one muddy street. The town seemed even more deserted than it had before. He called Clodagh a couple of times, but when he received no answer, he strolled down to Yana Maddock's place. There, at least, her cat Marduk sat on the stoop, and sprang up as if it had been waiting for him. Well, knowing these cats, maybe it had been.

At that point, the door of the house across the street opened and Frank Metaxos poked his prematurely white-haired head out. The man's speech was still a little slow, but he was a far cry from the wreck he had been only a few weeks earlier.

"How's it going, Frank?" Whit asked.

"I hate being stuck here," Frank told him. "You heard anything of my boy?"

"Matter of fact, I did," Whit replied affably. "He's doing fine. Been a great help to everybody. Say, you haven't seen Clodagh, have you?"

"She went out to the springs, I think. Marduk there"-Frank nodded at the cat-"knows the way. Though you'll have to walk. All the curlies are carrying the people to visit the neighbors."

"Visiting the neighbors" was the term the Kilcoole people were using to describe their mission to the other villages. Whit wasn't overly surprised. After all, these people were half-descended from the Irish who had described their own centuries-old guerrilla conflict as "the Troubles" and a massive international war as "the Emergency."

He followed Marduk through knee-high weeds that had been lying in ambush under the snow, waiting for the thaw.

Birds sang and dived overhead, both small, pretty song-birds and swooping, squawking ravens. Small creatures rustled the underbrush; a red fox darted across his path. Marduk scurried up a tree when the fox passed, and hissed and spit at the silvery wake the creature cut in the tall grass.

Whit found Clodagh beside the springs, surrounded by not only her cats but all sorts of animals, including a large, strong curly-coat. They stood, lay, or sat and watched her as she pulled and separated, pulled and separated a profusion of plants growing rampant around the hot-springs banks. Her bountiful wavy black hair was braided and coiled on top of her head; sweat ran down her face and neck as she worked.

''Slainte, Whittaker," she said without looking up.

"Slainte yourself, my dear. What the devil are you trying to do?"

"I'm pullin' weeds," she said.

"So I see," he responded dryly. "Are you just pulling these particular weeds around the springs, or did you plan to personally defoliate the entire area between here and Kilcoole?"

She stood up, hands planted on her broad back. "Just these," she said, smiling. "I could use a hand. I'm kinda in a hurry."

"Be glad to. I'm afraid, however, that I've come as the bearer of bad tidings."

"You going to tell me about that guy that sealed up some of the communion places? Silenced the planet and fooled all those people at McGee's Pass and so on?"

"Well, yes."

"Yeah, well, I heard about that."

"You did?" he asked, dumbfounded at first and then shaking his head as understanding set in. "Of course. I suppose your usual informants told you.

"Kinda. It took the cats a long time to find out, because he killed all but one of 'em. But that one got word out to mine and they told me. They say he put some white junk on the inside of the cave that fuses the rock-stuff they use to shore up walls in mines."

"Yes. Petraseal. Johnny Greene also reported that to me. It's very bad news, Clodagh. If our adversaries at Intergal learn that there is something that can defeat your communication with the planet, they're apt to go overboard on using it."

"Yeah," she nodded gravely. "That's what I thought. I was pretty worried about it, too, so I came out here to talk to Petaybee."

"I don't suppose it's very happy about all this."

"It's sure not."

"Did it have any ideas?"

"Well, not in so many words. Except, I just started wondering, what if this stuff doesn't always work? What if there's something stronger than it is, that can go through it? And you know, all of a sudden, I looked down and saw where this coo-berry bramble was growin' right up through the floor of the cave, and when I came out here, why I noticed what I hadn't seen before. You know how that is?"

"I do," Whit nodded.

"Anyway, we never had a problem with coo-berries here before. And coo-berries are a problem. Just about impossible to destroy and they'll go through anything. You see what I'm getting at?"

"I think I do. You're sure it'll work?"

She shrugged, then directed him where to pull. The berries had sharp thorns. "After we get a bunch pulled up, we wrap 'em in leaves and our bigger, faster friends here will see that they get delivered." She nodded at the animals.

It was Whit's turn to shrug as he buttoned down his sleeves and started pulling.

Satok had no problem eluding the trackers from McGee's Pass. For one thing, he was wily, with a lot of friends and resources. For another thing, one of those resources was a shuttle hidden in a secret camouflaged shed about a half hour from his house, close enough that he could get to it in a hurry, and far enough away from the center of things that it was unlikely to be found.

He flew first to Deadhorse, then Wellington and Savoy. There former shipmates of his, all of whom he had set up as replacements for the recently expired shanachies, were in various stages of converting the people in the towns to their version of "what the planet wanted."

"I don't see what the problem is," said Reilly, Savoy's new headman, as he sat drinking with Satok. "These people believe anything they're told. Just tell 'em the people at McGee's Pass have gone nuts or something."

"Your problem is you don't think far enough ahead, Reilly," Satok said. The brats got away. The McGee's Pass people scattered to a lot of places. They know about the cave. Now, the problem is not so much what they think of us as the possibility of competition. Using the Petraseal was my idea. Finding out how to use the Petraseal without the planet freaking us out of our fraggin' minds was my idea. I want credit and credits. You boys will get yours, as well, of course. But if this committee that's investigating things sees the Petraseal before we claim our finders' fee, Intergal will have everything and there'll be nothing for anybody else."

"So what do you need from us?"

"Ore samples, of course, and a low profile until I can show up with some company big wig to buy our method." He snapped his fingers for the slattern who was serving the booze to bring another round. This was stronger stuff than the blurry, even considering the effect this stupid planet had of neutralizing intoxicants with every other native beverage or food consumed. Fortunately, Satok had had little else to eat or drink for a couple of days. The girl looked familiar-one of his cast offs, no doubt. Sure had let herself go, though. Moped around with down cast eyes, ugly shapeless clothes, dirty lank hair, sallow skin mottled with bruises. Some women just had no self-respect. If she'd looked like that when he first came to the village, he'd never have touched her.

"Okay, so when do you need the samples?"

"Now," Satok growled. "Or haven't you been listening? I want the shuttle loaded with the best you've got."

"How do we know you won't just take it and take off?"

"Because there's a lot more to be made here than what we could gouge out of the ground by ourselves. You have to think big. Besides, I'll need some of you along to help me unload."

"So where are you taking this stuff?"

He shrugged. "SpaceBase, for a start."

The cold of the icy waters was more of a shock than usual because Sean had just been so warmly wrapped about Yana. But it was always the first part of him to enter the water that experienced the trauma. Despite the almost stupefying cold, he forced himself to drop into the freezing dark waters. The change occurred more abruptly than ever: self-preservation at its highest level.

Once the waters closed over his altering head, the sounds he hoped to hear pinged back and forth. He sent out his call and felt the stir of water as a tube whale responded. The brush of the huge mammal against him in human form would have been crushing, but the selkie was less vulnerable. Stroking one flipper on the firm flesh of the whale, Sean-Selkie floated forward until he came to the proportionally small whale eye. One flipper-hand reaching as high up on the skull above the eye as possible, Sean communicated his need.

Do you remember the place before it fell?

Yes.

Take me to the other side.

As you wish.

Sean-Selkie had time to secure a hold on the side fin before he was propelled forward at amazing speed. For what seemed a very long dark time in this lightless medium, Sean-Selkie clung there. Finally the tube whale halted, so abruptly that he was sent flipping end over end, past the whale's bright unblinking eye and skidding up the icy slope of a tunnel that gaped open onto the sub-arctic seas.

You have been of great assistance and have my gratitude.

You are known and your needs considered.

Then the whale departed, once more singing its weird song, one that Sean-Selkie heard faintly, distantly answered. In that direction the tube whale now swam. Sean-Selkie watched until the churning of its flukes was no longer visible in the dark sea. He climbed up into the maw of this section of the underground link between the continents, with its luminous walls and slightly misted footing.

He had gone no more than a few hundred meters before he knew that both Aoifa and her track-cat had managed to get this far. A neat pile of animal dung, frosted over but identifiable, lay in a little hole, claw marks around it to show that the track-cat had not lost its sense of propriety despite its inability to cover its feces. And four paces beyond the cat's were human excretions. Sean-Selkie sighed with relief and lumbered on up the long slope, through immense caverns and more upward corridors. He saw other signs-fish skeletons-by lakesides and, diving into the same places, found food for himself to keep strong for this long and lonely journey. He saw the crumpled envelopes of travel rations, too.

How far and how long the journey took, Sean-Selkie could not gauge. He traveled more safely and economically as a selkie; having no clothes for his human manifestation was the best reason to continue as he was.

When he eventually emerged into daylight, the sun dazzling him, he had no warning of the danger into which he had blundered. He was always particularly vulnerable as he changed, the transition altering his senses-especially his eye sight and heating. The first arrow took him in the thigh while it was still elongating from a flipper, still covered with spotted fur; the second would have been fatal but for the fact that a feline knocked him to one side. Snarling, the feline guarded him, facing the ragged humans who surrounded the mouth of the cave, one paw, its claws unsheathed, raised against their advance.

Thanks, clouded one. I owe you a life.

Can you run with me?

Must finish transition first. Can't run or swim, not as is, not wounded in the leg. You go. There is a rifle aimed now at you. Go quickly. They think me helpless.

Giving one last forward leap, which sent the ragged creatures screaming backward though the armed man did not move, the feline whirled and sped back into the cave and disappeared from sight.

"Don't bother with the cat. They're a half credit the dozen. Secure that monster! He mustn't escape!"

So Sean-Selkie, neither man nor seal at this point, endured the indignity of being bound limb to limb and the agony of having the arrow yanked out of his flesh. Even a selkie can faint.

When Sean recovered consciousness, he wished he had not, for he seemed to be lying in a pile of slushy cold water in a dank-smelling and dark place. His enhanced selkie vision told him that he was alone with some bundles and crates, in a tent made of badly cured skins; the air stank of that, as well as of the mold of continued damp. He had been pegged down, and the wound in his haunch ached.

Continuing the transformation to human would not be useful, Sean realized, for his limbs as a seal were thinner and more graceful. The bindings would be tighter on human wrists and ankles. He wallowed in the water beneath him, trying to wet himself enough to encourage the full transformation to seal, despite his wound, but it was useless. The melted slush was too shallow and he remained half-transformed, with his lower legs and his arms those of a man, while most of him remained seal.

Exterior sounds began to filter through to his awakened senses. He could smell fire, a big one, and had a horrible premonition of what a big fire might mean for a captured "monster." He could hear sounds of quite a few people moving about without much energy, and two male voices, which seemed to punctuate the muted noises of the others with orders, too muffled for him to understand.

It was while he was trying to decipher the noise into conversations and understand the orders that he heard other small noises and then felt something sawing at the bindings of his feet.

"I'm cutting you free, monster," a frightened whisper told him above the sawing. "Coaxtl said I must free you. That you are not a true monster but a proper creature, and you can save me. Coaxtl was my friend and kind to me. They are not kind to me here. There was a small hiccup and sob, and suddenly the efforts of the frightened whisperer were rewarded and the thong parted. Fumbling fingers unwrapped the rest of the wet leather from Sean-Selkie's feet. "Please don't eat me, monster. I must help you."

I won't eat you, little one, Sean said, for if she had been talking to Coaxtl, whom he had now identified as the clouded leopard that had saved him, she would hear him speak. I am grateful to Coaxtl. I am also no monster who harms those who rescue him.

"Shepherd Howling says they are going to roast you in the fire." Another piteous sob broke from the child's lips as she snaked herself along his length to his hands. "And Dr. Luzon is trying to talk him into surrendering you for scientific study. I think that means cutting you up. Dr. Luzon said he would adopt me, but instead, he's given me over to the Shepherd Howling. When Dr. Luzon is gone, I will be punished and then I will be married. If Shepherd Howling prevails, you may be my wedding supper. I would hate to see you suffer. Coaxtl says that if you die, other monsters will avenge you, and the flock would suffer. I know life is supposed to be suffering, but we suffer very much already and I think it is enough. More would be too much."

Enough is too much, Sean-Selkie said, trying to assist her sawing efforts by holding his bound wrists as far apart as possible to strain the leather thong. She had to be using the dullest knife in the world to take so long at her job, but he blessed her arrival and her attempts at rescue.

The wrist thong snapped and he inadvertently slapped her face. She gave a little gasp but no more than that, and it occurred to Sean that she was accustomed to blows. The thought infuriated him.

My apologies, little one, for my clumsiness in striking the one who frees.

'No apologies are needed for one so unworthy as I, for I am sworn by Coaxtl to rescue you."

The dominant male voices were getting loud, and there seemed to be more noise outside the tent.

We must leave.

"This way." She scrambled backward with a speed he was unable to emulate, stiff and sore as he was, with the wound in his haunch hurting even more. But the threat of discovery was a great spur, and blocking the pain in his leg, Sean-Selkie reached the place where she had entered the tent. But his rescuer was a good deal smaller than he. Frantically digging with his hands, he managed to make a large enough opening in the slush to allow him to pass under the edge of the tent. Then, carefully, he reached back inside and, as well as he could, scooped the slush back over the hole.

"Coaxtl waits," the girl said, and rising to a crouch. beckoned him to follow.

Are there man clothes nearby? The arrow wound will not let me run as quickly as I should.

"Man clothes?"

Yes, and the quicker the better, dear child, Sean-Selkie said, hearing the noises converging on the tent.

"This way."

The child changed direction, and Sean completed the transformation to his human form as he limped as fast as he could after her. The wound hurt more in his human form. At last she stopped and thrust a pile of filthy clothing at him. The pants were for a much shorter man, but the leather jacket and fur jerkin would be sufficient.

The girl had disappeared again. While he was struggling with the clothing, wishing he had something to cover the wound before it turned septic from the dirt impregnated in the pants, she returned and thrust some loose wrappings at him.

"Wrap these about your feet so that-oh! But you have real feet. Are you not really a monster?"

"Not really, little one. And as a human I am much safer right now among people who are looking for a monster"

"Oh, but you are not one of us, and everyone would see that you are a stranger."

"At night and in the dark?"

"This night the fire is very bright. Coaxtl said that she would hide you. You are safer with her."

"If I could reach her, yes, but the arrow wound slows me down."

"Yes, of course it would. How stupid of this unworthy one… Come with me. There is one place where you will be safe. At least for a little while." She giggled. "And even hot water to clean the wound."

"There is?"

"Yes, I was given hot water in which to bathe myself since I am to be made wife to Shepherd Howling-" Her voice broke.

Rage suffused Sean so that for a moment he couldn't speak; he almost cut off the circulation at his ankles as he wound the foot covering on.

"I must be back there, at my tent. Ascencion said a maiden must be private to bathe on her wedding night."

Poor terrified mite, Sean thought, as he cautiously followed her in a crouch that put more strain on his wound. He could feel fresh blood seeping down his leg. They were, however, going away from the noise and the excited mob about to discover that their quarry had disappeared. When they reached their destination, the child struggled with a tent peg so that Sean would not have to crawl again. He took it from her hand and heaved it loose from the slush, and they both entered easily. Fumbling, he managed to get the peg back into place from the inside.

In the dim light from a small lamp, Sean could see steam still rising from a copper tub, large enough for a good-sized body. He could also look at the pitiful little waif who was going to be forced into an unwanted marriage. Maybe if he could just dress the wound, he'd take her with him to wherever Coaxtl could hide them both.

A savage ululation startled both of them, and the child grew rigid with fear.

"You were just in time, my dear… what is your name?"

"I am Goat-dung, lowliest-"

"You are what?" Sean exclaimed, quite forgetting that there might be someone beyond the partition. Her wide, frightened eyes regarded him with embarrassment.

"I am called-"

"Not by me. Turn your back, little one, while I dress my wound. Then we are both leaving this place, and they will be minus one monster for roasting and one maiden for… well. We'll both go."

As he was washing the blood from his leg, he heard a tearing noise and a little hand came from around him, holding out a clean white strip. He turned his head over his shoulder and saw her industriously tearing up what must have been either her wedding dress or, more probably, her night gown. Maybe both.

"Can you spare several more strips, little one?" he asked.

"All can be yours, man-monster."

Since they were going to escape together, he figured he could risk telling her his name now. "I am called Sean Shongili, little one."

Once he had cleaned the wound in the warm water, he had made two thick pads of the first strips, listening all the time to the frenzied outrage of the disappointed monster-burners. Then he wound more strips until he had a secure bandage on his leg.

Suddenly, the noise changed its direction and came toward them.

"Oh! They will search everywhere for you. That is why you ought to have gone to Coaxtl," she cried.

"Get undressed and into that tub, child," Sean ordered, "and throw your things over the stool against the wall. I can crouch half in and half out, and they won't be looking for me here, now will they?"

Courage the child did not lack, and between them, they arranged her clothing so that its folds afforded shadows where he could hide. Unless someone with very bright lanterns searched the entire little cubicle, he doubted he would be seen.

The child's screech was warning enough, and he huddled even more closely in on himself as the blanket across the opening was thrown open and a variety of bodies stepped in.

"Well, it couldn't have got this far with that wound," said a voice that Sean instantly recognized as Matthew Luzon's. The shock of hearing that voice in this environment kept him frozen motionless.

"It must have had help," snarled an angry voice. "It can't have gnawed through leather like that…"

"Ah, but Brother Howling, these monsters are capable of many things mere mortals cannot imagine."

So, Matthew has found a soul mate, Sean thought, and the very kind he could best use against us.

Goat-dung kept on screeching, a sound that occasionally became a gargle as she tried to keep as much of herself beneath the water as possible.

"Be quiet. You are not in danger, Goat-dung. Wait here. The monster has escaped. You are not to move until Ascencion comes for you. Hear me?"

"I hear and obey," the child said in a gargle. Sean heard the blanket being replaced; the intruders made a noisy exit out of the tent, going off in yet another direction.

Before Sean could even make his suggestion, the child was out of the bath and reaching for the scrap of a towel. She had discreetly turned her back on him, which gave him an even better view of the bruising and welts that marked her back from shoulders to buttocks, and even down to the calves of her tiny legs.

He handed her her clothing, and she was dressed and jamming her feet into boots with astonishing speed.

They exited the same way as Howling and Luzon, Goat-dung's hand curled trustingly in Sean's. They ran in a crouch, seeking the shadows whenever possible, past the last of the tents that comprised the new locations of the Vale of Tears, and into the night.

Johnny explained as politely as possible that Lonciana could not accompany them to rescue La Pobrecita.

"Then Buneka must, for she will know her'' Lonciana said.

"Well you're not leaving me behind if I have to ride on top," Diego said staunchly. "If Bunny goes, I go, too."

No one even tried to deny him.

Carmelita and her sisters had told Bunny enough about La Pobrecita that Bunny was quite willing to help rescue her.

"Look, worst comes to worst," Bunny said, peering into the copter. "The Major has every reason to be down here, too, checking folks out, same as Matthew Luzon. And if Luzon doesn't help us get 'Cita out of the clutches of that pervert, he certainly won't want all his fine friends knowing he went along with a vile thing like that, now will he?"

Johnny looked at Yana, not as certain as Bunny that Luzon could be shamed into helping free Pobrecita just because she was in a tough spot and it was the right thing to do. From what Johnny had seen, Luzon was unacquainted with shame. Probably Luzon's friends, if he had any, were no more disturbed by doing "vile things" than he was.

"There is a CIS rule about forcing prepubescent children into marriage," Yana said. "Are we sure she is pre-puberty? She looked at Lonciana.

"She has no breasts, but that, starved as she was, is not the final test," Lonciana said with a scowl. "But she knows nothing about her courses, though she knows that there is a bleeding sickness and that some girls remain barren. She knows too much of the wrong things, La Pobrecita!"

"Okay, I'm game," Johnny said. "Checking up on Luzon's current whereabouts 'cause he's-late to our rendezvous is within the scope of my orders from Dr. Fiske."

Precious time was spent in gathering the ore and loading it onto the shuttle so it could be hauled to SpaceBase. First Satok had to take the shuttle out to each village and set down in a remote area, make contact with the shanachie, and wait for the stuff to be brought and loaded. He certainly couldn't show his face at this stage, since the people of McGee's Pass had been turned against him by those outsider kids and half the village was trailing his ass with murder on their minds. He had to keep alert not only for human trackers but also for any of the spying, slinking felines that he knew carried information back and forth between the villages, though he'd never learned how they did it. Ought to have vivisected one of the sneaky buggers and tried to figure it out, he thought.

He ended up back at Savoy for the last load, and as the faded woman-Luka, that was her name; frag, you'd never know she was the same neat piece he'd first had-loaded the last of the ore on the shuttle, he thought of how much work it would be and announced to Reilly that he was taking her with him. "We'll look like a regular mom-and-pop placer mining team then," he told Reilly. "Besides, I need someone to help me unload the ore and do the grunt work."

"You're welcome to her," Reilly said. "Work's about all she's good for anymore, though she's a lazy slut and never lifts a finger without a beating."

"I'll bear that in mind," Satok told him, as he raised a mock-threatening fist to Luka, who cringed away from him as she obediently climbed into the shuttle.

It took four hours to fly to SpaceBase under ordinary circumstances, and with the craft loaded with ore, it took six. The base, which had always before been open, now boasted a fence and a gate, just beyond the bend in the swollen river that used to be the road to Kilcoole. The shuttle was an unauthorized one, and the ore was too valuable to simply put it within reach of the fingers of any passing soldier, so he set the craft down in the strip between the gate and the woods, where trees and underbrush had been recently cleared and burned-for security reasons, he suspected. The company seemed to be taking these hicks seriously. He left a cowering Luka locked in the shuttle and strode to the gate as if he were a bird colonel, at least.

The MP at the gate took in Satok's furs and leathers and his long hair, his shaman's feathers, and the cat skull, and shook his head while using a firm, sweeping motion of his forearm and index finger to indicate that Satok should go back the way he came.

"No unauthorized personnel allowed on base, sir. Orders of Captain Fiske.

The officious little jerk was more helpful than he meant to be. "Yeah. but that's who I came to see Captain Fiske. Tell him Lance Corporal James Satok is here to see him about his mining operations." What the hell. He had been a lance corporal in the corps once

"A little old to be a corporal, aren't you?" the kid asked, not bothering to add "sir" this time. "And I'd say you were way out of uniform."

"Is that what you'd say, lad? Is it really?" Satok leaned forward confidentially, his arm resting casually on the window of the gate house. "Well, now, that may all be very true, but I was a lance corporal just as you'll soon be if you're smart and don't interfere with me. I've a load of raw ores of just the sort the company has been looking for, and I can tell your Captain Fiske where the company can get more of them here."

"Oh, sure," the kid said with a sneer.

"Hey, if you don't believe me, come and look for yourself."

"I can't leave my post, and if you'd ever been in the corps, you'd know that."

"Son, I was in the corps long enough to know that playing by the rules too strictly can get you in as deep a pile of shit as not playing by them at all. The ore's in my vehicle, just over by the trees there. You can keep one eye on the fraggin' gate all the way. Just come and look and you'll see why you have to tell Fiske I'm here. Look, I might even be able to cut you in…"

Without a word, the guard unfastened the door and followed him to the shuttle.

"Now, the ore is back here," Satok said, pointing to the cargo area. The moment the guard turned, he hit him over the head with a thick lump of ore he'd set aside for such a use. Then he stripped him of his uniform and put it on. He also took the badge and weapon, which might come in handy. Throughout all this. Luka said nothing. As soon as Satok had the uniform and the weapon, he shook the boy awake.

"Now then, asswipe. How do I find this Captain Fiske?"

The boy, in thermal underwear only, looked about sixteen and his eyes were a little crossed. "He's not on the base," he said.

Satok turned the boy's weapon on him. "I'm tired of playing games with you. punk. You will answer at length and in depth. Where is Fiske and how do I get to see him?"

"But he ain't here. He's gone to Shannonmouth to meet with the special investigative team from the company. They're probably at the village meeting house."

"You've been so helpful," Satok said. He almost blasted the kid, then thought that if his sell out was going to lead to his being a solid citizen, maybe a fresh homicide wasn't the best way to begin his new life. So he tapped him with another piece of ore, gently but at the physiologically correct point to insure long unconsciousness, and left him in the woods.

Torkel Fiske danced attendance on Marmion de Revers Algemeine, giving her the complete lady-killer treatment, much to her well-concealed amusement. Though he looked much as Whit had looked at his age, and was really quite a charming boy, Marmion decided that he was totally lacking in his father's finesse. There was a some what febrile boyish quality about him that was not unappealing. However, it was coupled with a certain calculation and a certain lack of… depth? Soul? She wasn't sure.

She had prevailed on him to escort her to Shannonmouth because Sinead Shongili, sister of Sean, and Aisling Senungatuk, sister to Clodagh, were still there and she did want a chance to chat with them, as well as visit another of the small communities. She suspected they would be all much the same, but she couldn't present an in-depth report without some comparison.

There was something to be said about a landscape that was still a landscape, fresh-smelling and softly chartreuse as trees and shrubs responded to the precipitated springtime. There wasn't even that much mud on the trail to Shannonmouth: maybe "trace" was the better word, for the way they followed could barely be called a "road."

"Why aren't there connecting roads between the communities, Torkel?" she asked as her curly-coat delicately made its way.

Torkel regarded Marmion with something like open-mouthed surprise, but the smile that followed gave her an uneasy feeling. "The very thing, Marmion, the very thing. I do believe we have short changed the locals by keeping them in virtual isolation." And he continued to smile until the houses of Shannonmouth appeared where the trace became wide enough to be termed a road, muddy and churned as it was, with rough board walks and stepping-stones connecting the houses and forming bridges from one side to another.

They could hear the dogs barking long before they caught sight of any humans, though there were curly-coats browsing here and there. Marmion was certain she saw the flick of an orange tail or two disappearing in the under-brush. She must get one of Matthew's boys-they did so like to do graphs and charts and reports-to do a census of the cat population of this planet, if the cats would stay still long enough in one place to have their orange noses counted. And dogs. And curly-coats.

With the animal "early-warning system" in excellent working order, most of the population had turned out by the time the visitors arrived. Marmion was delighted, but Torkel seemed less than pleased, especially as Sinead Shongili stood, feet braced as official welcoming committee, partially eclipsing Aisling Senungatuk.

"Slainte, all. I do hope you don't mind us coming down here," Marmion said, smiling a greeting first to Sinead and Aisling and passing it around the circle of people. "But Shannonmouth is so close, and Clodagh didn't think you'd mind if we visited. Torkel was kind enough to show me the way, though I think now I could have found it on my own. The cats, you know. They wouldn't have let me make a wrong turn, nor Curly here." She affectionately slapped the pony's neck. Curly's ears twitched back and forth at the sound of her voice, but pricked forward again as it turned to Sinead.

Sinead's lips curved in a smile. "Slainte, Marmion. You were expected and are welcome." She gave only a curt nod to Torkel. "Dismount here and Robbie'll take care of your curlies." She signed for a gawky youngster to come forward.

When both Marmion and Torkel had swung down onto the boardwalk, Sinead put one hand on Marmion's shoulder.

"This is Marmion de Revers Algemeine, of whom we have spoken, and you all know Captain Fiske," she said and there was a murmur of slaintes and hesitant smiles "Come." And with that Sinead turned on her heel and led the way.

Torkel muttered something under his breath about primitive manners and looked pointedly away from the swaying backside of Aisling. The villagers fell in behind the guests.

"Did all the plants survive the journey?" Marmion asked.

"Oh, yes, they did,'' Aisling said, bubbling with pleasure. "And Aigur and Sheydil have some for us to take back. It'll be such a marvelous summer for plantings. One of the best we've had."

"To that point," Torkel said, striding to Aisling's side and smiling broadly, something Dama Algemeine mentioned, you know, I think Intergal really should see to building good roads between villages, and proper greenhouses so you don't have to wait until full spring to have your gardens started."

''Really?" Sinead stopped in her tracks to stare at him. Aisling nearly ran into her before she did, Sinead was once more striding forward, or, rather, stretching to meet the next board on the haphazard walkway. "How nice!"

Marmion saw Torkel Fiske flush at such an unenthusiastic reaction to what was, for him, an extraordinary concession. She thought she approved of Sinead's patent skepticism. However, before Torkel could get himself in deeper or prejudice the notion completely, Sinead was marching up the porch steps of a house that had cats sunning themselves all over its patchwork roof of recently replaced shingles, their orange coats an odd contrast to the raw wood. Lounging on the sunny end of the porch were two intertwined track-cats. Marmion saw Torkel give a little shudder. They were large, Marmion realized, but so intelligent. She could see it in the eyes of the one whose head was toward them: open only to slits, but the expression looked deliberate. The cats had probably known when she and Torkel had set out from SpaceBase, she mused.

"You'll be hungry," Sinead said, opening the door into a house that was rather sparsely furnished even by the Petaybean standards Marmion had observed thus far.

Then she saw the huge loom that took up most of the available floor space. Benches and chairs hung from nails on the walls; other things were up off the floor, too, to allow easy access to the loom. A woman was working shuttle and batten with a deftness that made the individual motions a blur-only the clack-clack as she changed combinations of harnesses provided any noise. She looked up from her work, nodded, smiled, and continued to concentrate on what she was doing.

"We brought provisions," Marmion said. "Oh! How silly of me not to grab my-"

The door opened again and the gawky youngster lowered the saddlebags to the floor and departed so swiftly that Marmion had to shout her thanks to the closing door. She then glanced apprehensively at the intent weaver to be sure she hadn't distracted the woman.

Sinead smiled. "That was good of you, but I think our larder can stand two extra mouths tonight."

"But I insist that you have the use of our supplies, Sinead. Clodagh said you were probably out of five-spice and-oh, what was the name of the other seasoning?" Marmion made for the saddlebags and began pulling out the bottles and sacks, and the dried foods that Clodagh had told her would be acceptable to any host. When she added the five-kilo sack of sugar, she said meekly, "I take so much sugar in my tea that I insist you have this. I promise not to use it all up. because there'll be berries to conserve so very soon now."

"That is very welcome indeed, Dama,'' the weaver said. "For we'll have a fine crop, and soon, and there's nothing like a bit of jam to make pan bread a real treat."

"Aigur, this is the Dama I told you about, and Captain Torkel Fiske."

Marmion's quick mind mused over the implication that no one had talked about Torkel at all, but then, her appearance would be more unusual than his. Still, she could see by the twitch of his lips that he caught the subtle insult. Really, the Shongilis were a delight, Marmion thought. A pity to have to spoil them. For that matter, why should they be spoiled? They were marvelous just as they were.

Tea was brewed and drunk, sweetened by Marmion's gift. Marmion brought Aigur's cup to her loom so that she could have a closer look at the intricate pattern. She couldn't resist fingering the texture and exclaimed at its softness.

"Curly-coat," Aigur told her.

"It's such an amazing pattern. Some special order?"

"My daughter's marrying and this will be for their wedding bed," Aigur said proudly.

"Oh, it is stunning, but-" Marmion cut off the rest of her intended remark about how much weaving of this beauty and intricacy would bring in the sophisticated shops of her usual environment. "-such a labor of love," she concluded, smiling.

The problem with coming from her usual ambiance to this one was that even the most mundane items were unusual, from and of this world, and that was where they should stay. She should not contribute to the despoiling of Petaybee. She was becoming more and more certain of that.

"As I said, Sinead," Torkel was saying, "we should really look into a network of roads between settlements, particularly over the passes."

"Oh?" Sinead raised her eyebrows in polite surprise. "Then Intergal has come up with an all-weather surface that can survive the temperature, wind-chill factors, perma-frost sinkholes, and ice intrusion?"

Torkel ducked his head, smoothing his hair. "We will. We will. It's only a matter of time, Sinead, but a road system would certainly help."

"SpaceBase folks, perhaps, while you're 'investigating' Petaybee, but snocles in the winter suit us fine and can go many places you couldn't put a road that'd last a year or two, and the curly-coats manage slush, mud, and summer hard tracks. No, Captain Fiske, though we will all appreciate the thought, I don't think any road works are necessary. 'Sides which we don't have the personnel you'd need to construct them."

"The company has enough manpower and machinery for that and all it takes is convincing the board to spend the money to solve the surfacing problem, Sinead," Torkel repeated, and Marmion thought his voice just a trifle sharp. "Meanwhile, you wouldn't say no to teachers, and schools, and libraries, and viewers.

Aisling's mouth made a perfect O. "Oh, books would be marvelous, and schools for the children."

"They learn what they need to learn from their parents about how to live here," Sinead said bluntly.

"There is such a wide world out there," Marmion put in. Surely knowing more about the inhabited galaxy wouldn't really harm the children; it would merely give them other interests than the limited ones of this planet, however beautiful and diverse.

"Which they see soon enough if they join the company," Sinead finished blightingly.

"But, Sinead, there's more in books about how to do our things differently. And more stories… "

"And old songs from many ethnic traditions," Marmion put in. "And different instruments to play on…"

"We could sure use a few more decent fiddles," Aigur remarked, and then continued hesitantly, "and I'd like to know how to read and write. That way I'd be able to figure out some of the old patterns my great-great brought with her."

"Schools, teachers, reading, writing, arithmetic," Torkel said emphatically. "We've not paid sufficient attention to your needs." And he bowed smilingly at Aigur, whose eyes still shone with the prospect of being able to read.

Aisling leaned across the table and appealingly touched her partner's arm. "That would be good to know, Sinead dear. For everyone, and not having to join the company to get the learning."

"You must ask Clodagh," Marmion said firmly. She ignored the look Torkel shot her.

Sinead gave Marmion a long searching look. "We all admire and respect Clodagh, make no mistake, but something like this is decided by all the shanachies, not just one."

It was Marmion's turn to lean with an air of gentle petition to Sinead. "It is, however, a way of spreading this news to all the other villages for them to make up their minds, isn't it?" Marmion didn't smile at Sinead, but let her eyes dance with challenge.

To her surprise, Sinead threw back her head and laughed out loud, shaking her head and refusing to explain.

"Schools and elementary education, and power stations, too," Torkel went on, slowly building his case.

"Power stations?" Sinead was immediately antagonistic. "What for? To break down in a blizzard, to crash down on our homes in the high winds?"

"We've more sophisticated power sources than pylons, my dear," Torkel began.

"I'm not your dear, and we'd have no use for such power."

Torkel gave back as good as she gave, with raised eye-brows and a mocking expression. "No use for lighting that doesn't stink like sour milk? No use for power tools that cut your work load, could drive the harnesses of that big loom and save Aigur hours, heat your houses, water, so you could have a hot bath in your own home without having to trudge two miles to the volcanic springs?"

A silence fell in the room-even the cats on the roof ceased to move about-for one long moment while Sinead, face utterly expressionless, regarded Torkel. Marmion took good note of the shock, surprise, and consternation on the other two faces. Then suddenly Sinead shrugged, grinned, and made a good attempt to toss off her reaction.

"The hot springs are sort of social, Captain, and we don't have the need for power tools as you do at SpaceBase. Too expensive for us to buy, even with what trade items we have, but the matter is something for the villages to decide for themselves, the way we always decide what is good for us, and for our planet."

The sound of an air shuttle over flying the village distracted everyone.

"What the…" Torkel was on his feet and to the nearest window, craning his neck to get a view of what he knew had to be an unauthorized flight. Sounded like a light shuttle, too, and there shouldn't have been any of that type vehicle down here.

"'Scuse me," he called over his shoulder and was out the door before he heard a response.

He caught a good glimpse of the battered rear end, of the craft and its trajectory. Frag it! The loon was landing just outside Shannonmouth. As he plowed a direct course across the mud road, ignoring the boardwalks, he also caught just a flick or two of orange tails. Turning to look back over his shoulder, he saw that there wasn't a single cat on any of the roofs. The next thing he knew, he had tripped over a rock in the mud and measured his length in the thick gooey mud.

This did nothing to improve his humor. He got to his feet, scraping off as much as he could with his bare hands, then with a branch he savagely broke from a shrub, and finally with handfuls of moss from the trunks of trees. In a way, he realized, the accident had just helped him frame what he would say to the misbegotten ass hole fly boy who had illegal possession of an illegal-size vehicle and-He stopped dead at the clearing where the craft had landed, and at the man sauntering across the bracken toward him, unshaven, despite the clean guard uniform he wore and the badge that identified him as SpaceBase personnel.

"Captain Torkel Fiske?" the man asked, and the voice somehow set off a memory in Torkel's mind: the voice, the stance, the swaggering insolence of a man in a common soldier's uniform.

"What in hell do you think you're doing, soldier? In an illegal vehicle, and here at a village site against the strictest orders…"

Take it easy, Captain, I've got something on board this shuttle that you've been after for a long time."

"I doubt it." Torkel said. Then, before he could continue to outline the penalties and fines the man had already accrued against specific regulations, he saw a slatternly female figure appearing to lean casually against the frame.

"What the frag!"

"Oh, I don't mean her," the man said, dismissing, the woman with a wave of his hand, "but I've heard you can't find ore on this planet, not no way and no how."

Torkel had started moving toward the man and the shuttle again for the purpose of ending this farce when the man's taunting offer made him falter a stride or two. If he'd found ore on this bleeding planet…

"You have?" Torkel moved forward again, aware that his unkempt state was being observed by the man, who was now grinning. "Don't-mention-it," Torkel warned, with a pause between each word.

"Why should I care if you tripped and fell in the mud?" the man said, shrugging his shoulders and lifting his hands high, but he had the wisdom to remove the smile as Torkel approached him.

"You are…" Fiske paused for the man to identify himself.

"Satok… shanachie of McGee's Pass." The man narrowed his eyes at Torkel, immediately resuming his cocky manner. Then be pulled out a fold of the clean uniform he was wearing by way of explanation for his present garb. "Needed to find out where you were. You're a hard man to contact."

"The ore, man…"

"Trouble's been, you Intergal guys been going about your searching all wrong, and looking in the wrong places."

"Oh, have we?"

Satok gestured for the girl to back out of the way to let Torkel enter.

The shuttle was in no better condition inside, but the moment Torkel saw the crates of varied shapes and colors netted safely away from the piloting area, he ignored everything else. He had studied just enough geology to be able to recognize the variety of ores known to be available on Petaybee, even if none had actually been found here. He touched greeny copper-bearing rock, grayish tin, copper-red-orange germanium; he saw the gold vein through rock, and even emeralds embedded in clay.

"I can't deny you've found a variety of very interesting items, Satok," he said with a nonchalance that was far from the exultant surge that he was experiencing at the sight of what they had spent years trying to locate on this ice ball.

"Small as this cargo is…"

"This cargo's a very small portion of what's easily available-if you know where and how to look for it."

"And you do?" Torkel challenged him.

Satok contented himself with a smug smile. "I can show you enough lode-bearing sites to make your eyes bug out."

Torkel jerked his head at the girl, wondering if Satok should be so blatant. Satok merely shrugged. Then his expression changed so abruptly that Torkel drew back in surprise; as Satok was raising a weapon, Torkel was already reaching for his own side arm, but Satok was not shooting at him. He was aiming out the shuttle door at small darting orange figures, and firing until the clip was empty.

"Hate them bloody orange mothers!" His face was a rictus of an intense hatred. He calmly slammed another magazine into the hand weapon, and then gave a surprised exclamation. "What the…"

Torkel looked around to see the slatternly girl racing toward the cover of the trees, her sobs trailing back like the sounds of a lost soul, a tail protruding from one side of her body. But there were no corpses of orange cats on the ground-and that surprised Torkel as much as it did Satok.

"Frag it, I can't have missed!" Satok was shouting as he stared about. He jumped to the ground to peer under the shuttle's slanting prow.

"Forget them, Satok. They're unimportant."

"Yeah?" Satok snarled. His loss of poise gave Torkel a chance to seize control of the situation.

"Yeah! I want to see more of this sort of stuff," he told Satok. "And I want to see it as fast as you can get me to these mother lodes you rave about. But, first, I've got to go back to the village for a moment…" And Torkel cursed the necessity. He pegged Satok as an opportunist and unreliable. But if he'd come to find Torkel Fiske, he must also know that Torkel was the best officer at SpaceBase to deal with.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess so. But do we have a deal?" The man's eyes glittered with greedy anticipation.

Torkel assumed a casual pose. "That depends on how accessible this ore is."

"Far more accessible than you've any idea, Captain dear," Satok replied with the oily smile Torkel would have liked to wipe off his face.

''If that's the case, you may be sure that Intergal will be appreciative.'

"As always?" The sneer was back as Satok leaned against the door frame.

"Why don't you accompany me to town?" Torkel began, adding quickly when he saw the apprehension flash in Satok's eyes, "There's woods enough to hide you from prying eyes while I make my farewells… And there's no one to hear us talk out here." He gestured at the open clearing, the forests deserted even by small animals after the arrival of the shuttle.

Satok punched the button to close the shuttle door and gestured ironically for Torkel to lead the way.

During their walk, Satok mentioned that there were sixteen different locations where ore had been collected, claiming that all the deposits were extremely rich and, furthermore, were so accessible that the company had simply over looked them time and time again. The man wouldn't be more specific, but the hold full of ore was proof in itself.

Torkel was both delighted and infuriated. If the deposits had all been there, and so accessible, why had the best geological teams of Intergal failed where this miserable excuse for a man succeeded?

He left Satok on the edge of the village while he went on, resuming his attempt to brush the mud off his clothing as he walked. This time Torkel took the boardwalks, which were noticeably empty of pedestrians, and the long way around to Aigur's house. The damned cats were back, he noticed. As well he'd left Satok screened from the village and the tempting display of orange cats, or the man's hatred of the beasts might have over come any sense he had.

Torkel noticed a mud scraper on the first step of the house and dutifully used it on his shoes. He heard some odd scurryings inside the house, and it seemed to him that he also heard a faint hissing over head. Too late now. He rapped on the door: courtesy was always appreciated.

When the door opened to him, he wasn't so sure about that from the stony looks he received.

"I'm extremely sorry, Marmion, but an emergency's come up and the shuttle has come to collect me," he said with a disarming smile. "I really hate to abandon you like this." He turned to Aisling, and only then noticed that Marmion and the large woman were the only two in the place.

"Oh dear," Marmion said, "I had hoped to have longer…"

"I don't see why you can't, dear lady," Torkel said, smiling at Aisling. "Is it possible Sinead could guide Madame Algemeine back to SpaceBase, or would it upset her schedule too much?"

"Oh, and isn't it a shame, with you in a hurry, and Sinead not here to ask, but sure I couldn't speak for her and me, I'm hopeless in the out-of-doors," Aisling said, gushily, twitching her fingers through the fabric of her voluminous dress. "She won't be that long, and you've hardly had a chance to finish your coffee. Let me just heat it up a bit for you." She had already taken the cup and was lifting the kettle lid to check the water. "Ah, and that will be more pleasant to drink…"

"Really-" Torkel held up his hand, trying to forestall the courtesy. "I absolutely must return immediately to the shuttle and-"

"Good heavens, Torkel, did you fall in the mud?" Marmion asked. "Is there a brush about, Aisling?" She'd taken up a kitchen towel and was advancing on him. "A stiff one, so we can get the rest of this off. You don't want to ruin your reputation by appearing back at SpaceBase looking like something a cat dragged in, do you, Torkel?"

Torkel tried to reassure her that he could change the moment he returned, and anyway, it had dried out and wasn't a problem, but this did not suit Marmion de Revers Algemeine. Controlling his temper, Torkel was forced to submit to their ministrations. He hoped that Satok didn't take it into his head to disappear.

It took a long time to get him neat enough for Marmion's satisfaction, and by that time Sinead had returned from her errand immediately, she agreed that she and Aisling had better return to Kilcoole and could certainly guide Marmion back to the SpaceBase.

Torkel was nearly quivering with rage and frustration by the time he was allowed to leave. As if to deliberately delay him further, Marmion thought of a message she'd better send to keep others from worrying about her. It took time to find paper and a stub of a pencil Aigur used for making pattern drawings. but in the end, with the note in his cleanly brushed pocket, he was allowed to leave.

"Where the frag have you been?" Satok demanded. "I didn't expect you to take the rest of the day to get back to me." His hirsute face turned even slyer than before. "You didn't make some private deal for yourself in there with the company on a private comm unit, did you?"

"Don't be stupid," Torkel snapped, striking out toward the clearing and the shuttle. They walked in tense silence for the twenty minutes or so it took to reach the shuttle. Torkel banged the Open button, then swung into the shuttle and took the passenger seat while Satok closed the door and assumed the pilot's place. They took off and headed northward.

Back in Aigur's cabin, Marmion looked sadly down at the limp body of the orange cat. Her throat was tight; she really wanted to weep at the sight of the beautiful intelligent little animal laid low by such a savage attack. A track-cat was gently licking the graze wound across the smaller creature's spine. She and Aisling had shielded the cats from Torkel's view by hiding them behind the covered loom frame, but now the big cat tended its smaller cousin while the girl who had first brought it to Aigur's house looked on agitatedly.

"Can't we do more for the poor thing?" she asked, wringing hands covered with rock dust and bleeding from scrapes and scratches.

"Now, now, the cat's already getting the best treatment possible, really, Luka," Sinead told her. Sinead's hands, like Aigur's, were covered with dust, scrapes, and bruises. She'd had to keep them in her pocket while Torkel was present. "Takes a lot to kill one of these cats, and the others all escaped without injury."

"But will this one be all right?" Luka sobbed. "Satok killed all there were in McGee's Pass, you know."

"We'll know if the spine has been damaged when it regains consciousness, but I don't think Patchog would be cleansing the wound if he didn't think the cat had a chance."

Marmion watched the exchange with interest. Shortly after Torkel had left to investigate the arrival of the shuttle, Luka had arrived, bearing the cat's limp body in her arms and crying. Entrusting the cat to Aisling's tender ministrations, she had turned away from Marmion to whisper urgently with Sinead and Aigur.

Immediately Sinead had turned to Marmion. "There's something we have to do now. I can't tell you what or why but Aisling will stay with you and help you, if you'll agree to detain Fiske and any guest he might have with him when he returns for as long as you possibly can."

"But why can't you tell me?" Marmion had asked, a little offended.

Sinead gave her a warning look, which told Marmion enough right there. This was not something that they didn't want her to know, but something that, for the sake of her position, she should not want to know. She had nodded agreement and quickly helped Aisling conceal the cats as the other women disappeared into the village.

Now Torkel and his companion had gone, leaving Luka, who had been weeping for many reasons, only one of them the injury to the cat. She seemed ashamed and frightened, chagrined and relieved, and wept with all of these emotions, stopping finally as her tears fell on Marmion's soothing hand. She looked at that elegant hand on her filthy, torn dress and then up at the kindliness in the beautiful face.

She looked to Sinead and the others. Sinead, searching Marmion's face, nodded sharply.

"All right, ma'am, I'll tell you now," Luka said. A sly smile curved her mouth until the recently cut lip made her wince. She snuffled, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and then began to explain what facts she knew, repeating, evidently verbatim, conversations she had overheard.

She spoke of a man who had been one of the out casts of Petaybee, who had never known what even Marmie had experienced in the cave, who had joined the company after turning against his own planet, and joined pirates after turning against the company, as well. Luka herself had been dazzled by him when he first came to McGee's Pass, claiming he was there to help them over the grief following their great tragedy. "That was before I knew he was after causin' it himself, ma'am. He as much as killed the McConachies he did, and convinced us all, the devil, that the planet had turned against us. All the time he was takin' from the sacred place, though I didn't know how or why until I was well away from there, I swear I didn't. When I started gettin' suspicious and would have returned to my own people, he gave me to one of his bloody accomplices, as if I was a sack of beans, and that man told all in the village that I my own self was a reject, one Petaybee cast out and made mad. All the time they were takin' stuff out of the planet, and I learned that they was killin' it in bits, so that it couldn't harm them when they took from it. But I heard him say that when the little girl from Kilcoole came and he was found out, that now was the time to sell out to the company, and he brought everything to show yer man the captain. So I got the notion, even then, that maybe when the captain looked, what was in the shuttle wouldn't be of any interest to him, but would have changed to common rock. Sinead and Aigur here helped me, as did others in this town. But I fear we were too late, for the captain already saw the real stuff."

"Which you didn't," Sinead said. "So all you have is hearsay from us."

Marmion nodded wisely. "I see."

"But I am that worried about what they'll do now, ma'am," Luka said. "For that evil man knows where more's to be found, and if the captain believes him.. "

Marmion nodded, waving her understanding with elegant fingertips while her mind was already leaping ahead on the problem. Fiske in unwitting collusion with pirates? How far was he prepared to go for these little mining projects? She almost wished she didn't know as much as she did now, because the whole issue brought her into something of a conflict of interests. She felt great sympathy for the Petaybeans, but realized that her position as a nonpartisan investigator for the commission was already severely compromised.

"Ah well," she said. "The exchange was, of course, a very clever idea, although naturally I would have been forced to forbid it, had I known. Did Aisling and I give you enough time?"

Sinead snorted at the very notion that she couldn't organize a simple exchange like that, even if it had taken every available villager and every rock they could find in the clearing.

"I think we better start back now, Dama," Sinead said.

"I would be honored if you would call me Marmion, as my friends do," she told Sinead, including Aisling, Luka, and Aigur in her glance.

Sinead gave her a thoughtful glance and for one dreadful moment, Marmion thought perhaps that she might not live up to the criterion Sinead Shongili expected of "friends." Her smile was much like her brother's and oddly shy, as if she did not give her friendship that often.

"Then we are honored… Marmion. May we stop at Kilcoole first, though?"

"Of course, I was going to suggest that. Clodagh and Whit will have to be informed… unless," Marmion added, smiling ruefully at the still able-bodied orange cats who had slipped in to join the big cat in its attentions to their fallen brother, "they already know."

"Some, but not all," Sinead replied with a smile, as she and Aisling began to pack up their belongings.

At first light, the weather did not look too encouraging, but Yana gave Johnny an appealing look as he turned from the window, and he threw up his hands in surrender.

"Might be damned bumpy," he told her.

"I'd risk more than that," Yana told him.

"Me, too," Bunny added. Diego only gave a sharp nod of his head.

Loncie insisted on packing them some food, which Johnny said he'd replenish on his next trip north.

"Ay, de me, and someone will go hungry here in the meantime? Off with you, amigo, and do not concern yourself with such details at a time like this. Find La Pobrecita, and that is more than enough."

When they were strapped into their seats, with Nanook crouched again in the rear, enduring his discomfort valiantly, Johnny took off. Once on a south easterly course, he handed Yana an aerial map.

"I want you to double-check something for me. It seems to me the Lacrimas River runs pretty straight from the mouth, which is almost directly opposite Harrison's Fjord. Am I right?"

"I see what you're getting at," Yana said, unfolding the chart and giving it a shake as she searched it. "You think that the undersea tunnel might come up near the Vale of Tears?''

"Well, it's more of a possibility than you might think," Johnny said, not sure enough to mention why he thought it a possibility, even as he mentally matched the face of 'Cita with Bunny sitting behind him.

He shook his head. Shongilis all had unusual bone structure, so, unless Granddaddy Shongili had warmed a few beds he hadn't dared mention to his possessive wife, Johnny could think of only one logical conclusion.

Yana perused the map and gave a yelp of triumph as she found the two relative points; then, with a worried frown, she said, "Johnny, there's two thousand miles between the two continents!"

"Uncle Sean thought there'd be that at least," Bunny said, releasing her seat belt to lean over Yana's shoulder.

"Belt up!" Johnny said in a roar that reverberated in the small cabin and made Nanook snarl. "Sorry."

Yana passed the map over her shoulder to Bunny.

"We made it in about a hundred and fifty miles to the cave-in…" Bunny began, her voice trailing off. "That isn't very far… considering…" Her voice went on, slightly muffled as she bent down to Nanook's head. "You did say Uncle Sean was alive, didn't you?"

Nanook sneezed, and Bunny sighed, not completely reassured.

They traveled a long way in silence broken by Diego, who whistled odd little snatches of tunes and muttered to himself. The others respected that he might be working on a new song. Bunny looked out her window at the endless snow, shaded blues and grays and occasionally lavenders in the shadows. She could see the distant jagged teeth of spiky up thrusts and wondered which set of them rose above the Vale of Tears.

Then, just as they were approaching the general location of the Vale of Tears, they saw the glow of a huge campfire, sparks rising high above it. Bunny shouted unintelligibly grabbing Johnny by the shoulder and pointing downward; at the same time, Nanook made a sudden attempt to squirm out from under the seat. Johnny issued loud orders for everyone to keep their places and shut their faces. Following Bunny's screeched directions, he circled the copter to starboard. Below, it was possible to see the three figures stumbling and falling down a hill, actually rolling in one case, leaving a pattern of bloody circles on the snow. One of the figures was feline. Nanook let out an ear-piercing yowl, a sound Bunny had never before heard a track-cat utter.

To her astonished gaze, the cat on the ground looked up, and she could see its jaws opening as if to give voice to a similar cry.

"Tighten your fragging seat belts, all of you," Johnny cried. His warning was unnecessary: his passengers could feel the turbulence he was fighting as he tried to land.

He was making a low pass to examine the dangerously uneven terrain below when Yana pointed to the bleeding man lying on the ground and cried out, "That's Sean down there!"

"And La Pobrecita with him," Johnny said. "I've still got to have a reasonably flat space to put this bird down without splintering a skid. Bear with me."

Using the three figures as the center, Johnny circled until he spotted a suitably level place. As soon as he landed, Yana, medi-kit in one hand and a bundle of extra winter clothing in the other, was out of the plane. Bunny and Nanook right behind her. Just as Johnny was about to follow, Diego pulled at his shoulder and pointed to the top of the rise and the swarm of folks coming over it, brandishing an odd assortment of armaments.

Johnny motioned for Diego to take the LD-404 down from its brackets over the entrance to the cargo bay as he checked that he had clips for his hand weapon and the spare automatic he hauled out from under his seat. Then the pilot and Diego followed the women and the track-cat.

Yana was kneeling beside Sean, wrapping him in the winter clothing and tending his wound. Bunny assisted in the medical chores, searching for the items in the medi-kit Yana demanded. The track-cats stood about six meters from each other, sniffing, tails twitching amiably enough. The child, in a fur jacket much too large for her, was huddled against the clouded cat, wide eyes in a frightened white face.

Diego caught Johnny's arm, staring a question at him as he pointed his free hand at the child. Johnny grinned and nodded, and then turned to watch the progress of the mob slipping and sliding down the hill toward them.

See 'Cita, Senior Luzon is as bad a man in his own way as Shepherd Howling," Johnny said in a gentle voice, bending down to the child. "Loncie was real upset to see you got talked into going with him. So we came to take you away back to your own people."

"This unworthy one has no people," 'Cita said, getting an even firmer grip on Coaxtl's fur.

'That's where you're wrong, kiddo," Johnny said. "Bunny, come here. Now, pronto!"

Both Yana and Bunny looked around, their faces showing disgruntlement at being interrupted. Both stared, and Bunny's mouth dropped wide open.

"You must be-you can't be anything else…" Bunny's hand wandered to her cheek, her nose, her lips.

"Your mother made it through, niece of mine," Sean said, nodding solemnly, looking from Bunny's face to the thin gaunt one of a child who was so obviously a blood relative.

"But I am Goa-"

"Don't you dare use that name for yourself, Pobrecita," Johnny said, angrily shaking his finger at her. "Buneka Rourke, this is your sister, though I think we can find a better proper name for her than 'Cita, or Nina, don't you think?"

"A sister!" And Bunny was folding the startled child into her arms. "A sister of my very own! Everyone I know has at least a sister or a brother, and all I've ever had were cousins…"

"And uncles and aunts," Sean prompted through gritted teeth as Yana yanked the bandage to make sure it was firm about the jagged arrow wound.

"Hey, we got trouble," Diego said, staring up the hill. "If that isn't Matthew Luzon, my name's not Diego Metaxos, and I do know my own name!"

"And the good and reverent Shepherd Howling, too, I'll wager," Johnny added, noticing the man in flowing robes beside the Intergal vice-chairman

"Oh, he's come for me. He'll make me marry him…"

"Marry him!" burst from five throats.

"Not while we live!" Johnny said in a voice that sounded much like the snarls issuing from both track-cats. "Bunny, get your sister into the copter and stay there!"

"She's my sister and I've the right-"

"Go," Sean said and pointed to the copter. "Lock the doors."

"There's a box of flares, Bunny. Get 'em out, and if you see me circle my hand, aim 'em at that crowd."

"Gotcha!" And, lifting her sister into her arms, Bunny sprinted back to the safety of the copter. Push come to shove, she'd fly it out of there herself-she'd watched Johnny often enough to understand the principles of the yoke and the gearing. No one was going to get her little sister, not when she'd just found her.

Johnny handed Yana the automatic and the clips, slapping Sean's hand away when he tried to get the weapon.

"You handle the cats, Sean. That is, if the clouded one will take orders like Nanook will," Johnny suggested.

Both cats growled low in their bellies, making their necks vibrate as they took positions on either side of Sean Shongili.

The crowd's noise had died to a murmur. Matthew and Shepherd Howling led the pack by several strides.

"Well, Dr. Luzon, you've led me quite a hunt," Johnny called when the men were near enough to hear him.

"While you, Captain Greene, did not reappear as you promised."

"Oh, I reappeared. Dr. Luzon, just as I said I would, but you'd taken off in old Scobie's beat-up snocle. My compliments on your driving to get that snow bucket this far."

Shepherd Howling raised one arm, his robe falling back over his bony wrist, pointing to the copter. "The child Goat-dung is one of my flock and is about to become one with me, to the salvation of her humanity. You must return her to my protection. I don't care what error you infidels fall into or what the Great Monster does to you, but she must be returned to me, and the monster who abducted her, as well."

"Well, now, sir, I can't rightly do that," Johnny said.

"Watch who you're calling a monster, you abomination," Sean snarled. "This child is my niece, and she is and will remain with her closest relative. I, her uncle, and male guardian, did not condone and will not condone a marriage for the child to anyone."

Shepherd Howling looked from Sean's face to the wound on Sean's leg, and back to his face again, his eyes widening with horror. "You! You were the monster! The seal man! Then the girl-she, too, is a monster."

"Monster?" Yana challenged, inserting herself between the injured Sean and the self-proclaimed Shepherd. "I only see one monster here, and it isn't Dr. Shongili. Do you always throw lethal weapons at visitors, Mr. Howling?"

"He was no visitor when we first saw him," Shepherd Howling blathered. "He looked like a seal at first and then started-growing. And he came from the underworld via the portal from which all of the damnable abominations of this planet emanate!"

"Nonsense," Yana snapped. "He was exploring an under-ground passage where his pregnant sister and brother-in-law disappeared many years ago. You're making up this incredible story to prevent further inquiry into your own abominable activities."

"I very much doubt that," Matthew Luzon said, smiling unctuously. "When I arrived, all of the Shepherd's flock were exclaiming about the monster they had found and were preparing to burn it over an open fire. I didn't see the beast myself, but I was naturally trying to prevail upon the Shepherd to allow me to study it rather than destroy it, to take it back to the laboratory and run some tests. Since Dr. Shongili's wound corresponds with that of the beast, I'd say he has some explaining to do."

"I'd say you had more, Dr. Luzon," Yana said in a voice so cold it made Johnny shiver, "for I'm reasonably certain you would know the paragraphs in Collective Interplanetary Societies' regulations-which apply to Intergal as well as the rest of inhabited space-about forced or child marriages."

"But, Major Maddock, all during her return trip to her home here in the Vale of Tears, Goat-dung-"

"Phah!" Sean exploded.

"The child," Matthew went on, "told me how happy she was to be coming home to such an auspicious marriage."

"How many wives have you at the moment, Shepherd Howling?" Yana demanded.

"'Cita mentioned five," Sean said icily. "Also against the customs of this planet which do not, to the best of my knowledge, sanction polygamy."

"Now now, Dr. Shongili. We mustn't be ethnocentric," Matthew said with his smile still in place. "We must allow religious communities their own mores and folk ways and rites, however strange they may seem to us."

"Not with my niece," Sean said.

"And how can you prove that you are her uncle?" Matthew demanded.

"Hell, man, that's so obvious, it's the stupidest question you've asked so far," Diego Metaxos said, sputtering in his rage and turning the LD-404 in the Shepherd's-and Matthew Luzon's-direction.

"Young man," Matthew began, "you are in grave danger of-"

"Let's save the talk for a more appropriate time," Yana said, noticing Sean beginning to sway with fatigue and pain. "Captain Greene came to collect you, Dr. Luzon, so we'll do just that and leave these people to sort their sordid little folk ways by themselves in what ever way they care to, so long as it doesn't involve Dr. Shongili or his niece or any of the rest of us, for that matter."

Matthew Luzon turned his back on her to appeal to the Shepherd, who was swelling with righteous indignation and anger. "Shepherd, you can see what the investigation is up against. These people all justify each other's views, and no dissenting voice is allowed to be heard. If only you would appoint an apostle to lead your people while you come with me and speak to the commission on your views of the effects this planet has on people, justice would be far better served."

The Shepherd's eyes widened with interest, and he nodded as Matthew spoke.

Johnny Greene cut them off short. "If you think I'm bringing that one back in the same plane with that little girl, Dr. Luzon, I'd think again very carefully," Johnny said. "Not to mention the fact that we'd be grossly overloaded for the fuel I have on board."

"You can refuel at Bogota, man." Matthew snapped back, "and you know it as well as I do."

"I have a wounded man, Dr. Luzon, which requires me to take the straightest route back north." Johnny jerked his head at Yana and Diego to help Sean back to the copter. "So this captain limits his passengers to those in jeopardy and those he originally ferried over. You, of course, are one, sir, but I can't authorize another passenger. So if you don't care to join this flight, Dr. Luzon, I'll be happy to request that other transport collect you, and your guest, ASAP!"

"Why, you…" Luzon's eyes sparked with suppressed anger.

"Captain Greene, sir, yes, sir, attached to the exclusive service of Dr. Whittaker Fiske, sir." Johnny held the eye contact.

Suddenly, suspiciously, Luzon capitulated, saying in a deceptively pleasant tone of voice, "Then, as soon as you are airborne, you will contact SpaceBase and request the immediate departure of a copter to collect myself, my assistant, and my guest. Is that plain? Any delay in the dispatch of that request will be a matter of record and dealt with appropriately. Do I make myself clear to you, Captain Greene, in the service-for the time being, that is-of Dr. Fiske?"

"Plain as day, sir. Thank you. sir. Good day, sir. And to you, sir," Johnny said, snapping salutes at both Luzon and the astonished Shepherd Howling.

Then with a smart about face, he leapt over a hillock and proceeded as fast as the terrain permitted back to the copter.

He took off, aware of the moans of Coaxtl, who had never endured such an experience, and the purring reassurances of Nanook, who found himself suddenly braver about flying.

No sooner was Johnny in the air than he switched channels on the comm unit, grinning as he did so. "Hey, there MoonBase, this is Bravo-Jig-Fox-trot four-two-nine-one, Captain Johnny Greene, calling in for the immediate-I repeat-the immediate dispatch of a copter to these coordinates-" He read them out. "-to collect Intergal Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon, assistant, and guest passenger. This is top priority Please log in request immediately as of 1940.34 30 "

"You got yourself in Luzon's bad books, honey? asked a female voice.

"Me, MoonBase? Not me," Johnny replied in his most ingenuous tone. "Is that Neva Marie's voice in my ears?"

"The very one."

Well, listen up, Neva Marie, because Luzon is in urgent need of transport, and I cannot seem to make contact with either SpaceBase or any airborne copters planetside. So cut loose one of those light shuttles and let one of your bushpilots have some fun. Landing's dicey, so tell him to be careful where he sets down. Oh, and off the record, bring a real strong deodorizer!"

"Beg pardon?

Johnny repeated his last remark and grinned at Yana over his shoulder. "You got this request logged in proper and on the dot?"

"Like you said-and the off the record is off the record."

"Neva Marie, I owe you."

A low chuckle preceded the sign-off as the dispatch officer purred, "I'll give a good deal of thought to that, Johnny. Over and out. Shuttle pilot scrambling as of right now. 1943.30.02."

"Won't he get back to SpaceBase faster than we will?" Bunny asked anxiously from the snocub, where she had strapped herself and her sister in. That way, Sean had room to stretch out his injured leg while Yana cushioned his upper body against hers. Diego sat up front with Johnny.

"Possibly," Johnny replied carelessly. "The important aspect is that the request was logged in as we were taking off. And I know for a fact that all the SpaceBase copters are being used by Luzon's men for 'field research.'" He chuckled to himself and then raised his voice. "Bunny, how's your sister traveling back there?"

"Fine, Johnny, just fine! I'm thinking what name we should give her."

"Why not give her your mother's, Bunka?" Sean asked in a low tone that hid much of the fatigue he was feeling from all save Yana. She could feel his body spasaming and shivering from his recent ordeal and clasped him more tightly to her. "Your dad had his way with yours."

"Aoifa Rourke!" Bunny savored the name, which she pronounced properly as "Eeefa." "Your name, your real name, your heart's name, is Aoifa, 'Cita. But, if you feel safer, we will only call you 'Cita."

There was a sleepy mumble, and very shortly there was silence from all Johnny's passengers, though Diego's lips moved frequently, soundlessly.