Power Lines

Chapter 9

When Marmion arrived at the building-which was painted a really awful murky dark green-where Matthew Luzon had set up his office, she found only his five minions, all industriously tapping out commands while their screens showed curves and graphs and columns of figures. She didn't approve of statistics of any kind: they only proved what the statistician wished them to. Credit reports and prospectuses were, of course, in an entirely different category.

They had the good manners to stand when she entered the room, so she smiled at them while she made a show of peering about.

"I don't see Dr. Luzon, and I did so wish to have a word with him," she said, beaming at the nearest of the lot. "You are…" She struggled to remember Sally's tips on how to distinguish them one from another. "Ivan, aren't you?"

"Yes'm."

"And where is Dr. Luzon?" Marmion noted the absence of one-Braddock Makem-and began to realize she might have underestimated Matthew's devious zealotry. How embarrassing. "Has he gone off into the wilds on adventure and left you here, slogging away at the tedious details?"

One after another of the physically fit young men cleared their throats.

"Ah, I see that he has, and it's very much too bad of him, as I'd arranged for Captain O'Shay to take all of us to that so-mysterious cave for an on-site investigation. Matthew's so keen to do on-sites," she put in, managing a little move of disappointment, "and this is one of the most important ones, so Whittaker Fiske assured me." She paused to consider her disappointment. Then, brightly, she smiled around at them. "But that doesn't mean that you can't come with me, since it's so hard to get a big enough copter to take us all. In fact, just us will take up all the room. So, come on, now. Save those important programs, laddie bucks, grab your anoraks and let's be off…" When another of them-ah, yes, the very blond one was Hans-started to object, she said, "Now, now, I won't hear any excuses from you, Hans. This is as important as all those figures, because it's subjective, not objective, and it will certainly show the commission how diligent you are in examining every facet of this investigation."

Sally and Millard had deftly slipped in behind her and were handing out outer wear to the men, who were so accustomed to obeying authority that they automatically complied. They were out the door and in the personnel transport and on their bumping way across to the big copter before they knew what had happened.

Rick O'Shay hurried them aboard, directing the seating in order to balance the load. "Real glad you fellows could make the time for this side trip, because you don't see much from a shuttle. Blink your eyes and you're past the interesting points. Miz Algemeine, you're up front… Hey, where's Dr. Luzon? Rick looked around, surprise and disappointment on his face. I thought he was the one wanted so much to come."

Marmion could have kissed the young man-he was very attractive, anyway-because Ivan and Hans were obviously having second thoughts about the advisability of this sojourn.

"Hell's bells." Rick shook his head, a lugubrious expression on his face. Then he brightened up and took a deep breath. "Well, you guys can give him a full report on what he's missing. That's it, now buckle up."

The big copter swung up and headed north by east, barely troubled by the turbulence.

Sally was wedged between Hans and Marcel, with Millard at the window and facing Ivan, George, Jack, and Seamus Rourke, whom Marmion had introduced as their expedition guide. Seamus had been Clodagh's suggestion. "He's as good, bar Sean or myself, as you'd want or need," Clodagh had assured her.

"You've often been to this cave site, Mr. Rourke?" Sally asked conversationally when she saw the first hint of "should we really be here?" anxiety on Jack's well-tanned, handsome face. With Marmion out of earshot in the front, Sally felt responsible for keeping things running smoothly in back.

"Not this particular one, Miz Sally," Seamus said affably, twiddling his thumbs: sitting down, doing nothing while traveling a long distance was new to him. "Been in most on the east coast, whenever the folk there invite us to a latchkay. We exchange hospitality like, us in Kilcoole and them on the coast, once a year. Good things, latchkays," he went on when he saw her look of inquiry. "Gets folks from nearby and as far away as the weather permits figurin' out how to solve any problems that've come up since the last one. And we get some fine singing done. Too bad you weren't all here for the last one we had. Fine songs from Major Maddock and young Diego. Kind of songs that ease the heart and mellow the soul. Maybe we could fix it that we have another one, sort of to welcome you all to Petaybee," he added. "What with the early thaw, we couldn't've planned another short of June, but I don't see why we can't show you lads a bit of Petaybean hospitality while you're here. You do like dancing, don't you?" He asked that with such skepticism that one of Luzon's men had to reply.

"I think we all do, sir," Hans told him.

"We wouldn't expect you to sing a' course, unless," Seamus hastily added, not wishing to insult anyone, "you had a song you wanted to share with us."

Luzon's men looked totally out of their depth. Sally and Millard managed to keep their expressions merely receptive. but they dared not look at each other.

"Ah well, you can always listen," Seamus said, "and eat some real good chow, and a' course, Clodagh makes the best blurry on Petaybee."

"Blurry?" Hans jumped on the word.

Everyone turned toward Seamus.

"Blurry's a tradition here," Seamus said, warming to his subject. "Drink it cold, warm, hot, and it soothes the cockles of the heart. Doesn't take a man's senses from him like al-ki-hall-ics do-" He frowned, " and no one's ever had a hangover like the SpaceBasers get from that rot gut they drink. You could say…" He considered his next words carefully. "… that it's a tonic for what ails you. Give it to the kids when they're feeling puny, and next day they're up and out again. 'Bout the only thing it can't cure is frostbite, but I wouldn't be surprised if Clodagh'll figure out how to do that soon, too."

Sally and Millard exchanged significant glances. Marmion Algemeine would have to hear every detail of this.

"Is this blurry of yours good for indigestion?" Sally asked, seizing on the common complaint as the safest.

"Sure it is, and as good for labor pains as it is for flatulence, heartburn, and yer all-purpose bellyache," Seamus assured her, turning his face toward her so that she alone saw the broad wink

'Do you use many… Local remedies here, Mr. Rourke?" Ivan asked, his eyes sharp on the old man's face.

"We've not much else to use, laddie," Seamus said, hitching his hands up under the slight sag of his belly on his thighs. "And I'm not criticizing SpaceBase folk if they keep their own medicine for their own people. We got ours and it works for us. Petaybee takes care of us real well, you know."

"That's exactly what we're here to decide," Hans said, setting his jaw at an obstinate angle.

Inwardly Sally groaned. Maybe kidnapping these young men out from under Matthew's rigid authority had not been such a good idea after all. Certainly having Seamus Rourke as a guide was turning disastrous, since he had already implied the existence of one questionable substance in the "blurry." The wink had indicated that perhaps he was simply having a joke on them, but people like Matthew Luzon had no sense of humor, and Sally knew that Luzon would be delighted to learn of blurry's "miraculous" properties and suggest the possibility of "drug-induced hallucinations." First thing she would do when they returned to SpaceBase would be to get herself some blurry and run it through exhaustive tests, just to be safe. Sometimes even innocuous elements, when combined, produced potent, if not lethal, results.

A glance at Millard told her he was thinking the same thing.

Fortunately, before any other dangerous subjects could be raised, the helicopter went into hover mode and began its descent. The cliff loomed over them higher and higher, rock crags like upturned claws avoided by inches as Rick Amaluk O'Shay neatly put the skids in the footprint of his previous landing.

There was the bustle of disembarkation, with Rick and Millard distributing hand torches, a blanket-"to sit on during the show"-and a packet of rations, so that Sally didn't have a chance to report to Marmion. When Seamus enthusiastically urged them to follow him into the cave, there was no option to refuse or hang back, especially with Rick acting as rear guard.

One of Luzon's lads was talking into a handheld recorder, but when Sally got close enough to hear him, he was merely mumbling about the composition of the rock surfaces and reminding himself to look up examples of luminescent rock types.

Suddenly they were in a cavern that stretched incredibly far in all directions, with Seamus chivvying them to find themselves a comfortable spot, in case they had to wait a bit.

"What? No blurry?"' one of the lads murmured.

"You don't need no blurry in a cave, boy," Seamus said severely. With a sniff of disgust, he found himself a comfortable knob to settle on.

"What's this 'blurry'?" Marmion asked Sally.

"It's a native drink," Sally began. Then she noticed the mist rising from the water, and started taking note of their surroundings. "Why, Marmion, this is just like-"

Marmion's hand on her arm stopped her surprised exclamation. "Exactly what Whittaker Fiske and that doubting Thomas of a son of his reported… We'll talk later."

Marmion always sat upright and managed to do so even on the hard surface of the cave, crossing her legs and resting her hands lightly on her knees. Sally felt that the ancient meditational position was quite suitable and copied it as the mist began to thicken and swirl around them.

She remembered sniffing deeply, wondering if there was some sort of hallucinogenic in the very air they were breathing, but if there was, it was nothing she had ever encountered anywhere. And she had been just about everywhere Intergal went.

Everyone heard the thwump-thwump of the copter echoing back and forth across the fjord. Yana rushed out of the kitchen where she'd been helping cut veg for the evening meal. Shielding her eyes against the westering sun, she saw the flash of sunlight off the rotors.

Fingaard and some of the other men were rushing down the switch back road to the wide terrace of the wharf area. Sean had gone out with the fishermen that morning. Turning her back on the incoming copter, Yana looked down the long high-walled fjord for a glimpse of returning fishing boats. She'd been appalled when she'd seen how insubstantial the curraghs were: no more than hides bound to a larchwood framework with a wide slat, bored through the center so a slim mast could be stepped into the hole and a small sail attached. The current carried them out with the tide and in with the tide; otherwise it was a long, hard paddle up the Fjord unless the wind was just right to use the sail.

She breathed a sigh of relief to see black blobs on the horizon raise small white triangles of sails as they made their way up the fjord. Then she turned again to head in the direction of the approaching copter. She had her foot on the first step when Nanook casually barred her way.

"C'mon now, I need a word with Johnny, Nanook!"

From the big black-and-white cat issued a noise that was half snarl, half voice command. Bunny had said Nanook could speak to those he chose to have listen to him. This comment didn't need words. Nanook's warning was too clear.

"Something's wrong with the copter, Nanook?" Yana asked.

Nanook sneezed and sat down, barring her way up the steps.

She peered more intently and saw two men in the front of the copter. And only one of them was someone she wanted to see.

"Ooops!" She turned and hurried back into the house. Nanook followed. That did surprise her. "I won't go out if you don't want me to," she told him.

He sneezed again and settled himself by the hearth.

"Ardis, is there any way you can hint to Johnny Greene that I'm here, and Sean's out with the curraghs? They're on their way in."

"Sure, if that's what's needed," Ardis said, grinning as she hauled off her apron. "Johnny might just have a letter for me from my sister up New Barrow way. She's expecting-again."

The last cat in McGee's Pass was named Shush, because in her youth she had been a noisy kitten. Those days were long past. Shush was not the last cat left in the pass because she lacked discretion. She was silent as smoke, quick as a spark, and very, very discreet. She had learned discretion shortly after Satok came to live among the people. The skull on his staff had once graced her father's shoulders.

It was she who had sent word to the Kilcoole cats that the people of McGee's Pass would vote to mine, as Satok had been urging them to do. Frankly, she didn't know if they would or not, but saying so could have brought someone to challenge Satok. Stupid cats of Kilcoole to send only two half-grown kittens! And now Satok had taken one of them. Perhaps soon her skull would be an ornament for him, as well.

Shush's family had been murdered. More critically from her viewpoint, all the toms had been murdered. She had gone through heat after heat alone, risking death in the woods to keep her cries from reaching the ears of Satok. Krisuk Connelly commiserated with her occasionally, but everyone else had been told the cats were spies; which, of course, they were, since it was only natural to lurk and spy and satisfy one's curiosity.

Until she had heard from the Kilcoole cats, in fact, she had imagined herself the last cat on Petaybee.

Well, the last proper cat anyway. There were lynxes, of course, and bobcats, and she had once or twice heard the hunting cry of a track-cat, but her mother had told her that those sorts of creatures, if you caught them on a bad day or when they had nothing in particular to socialize about, would eat you as soon as look at you.

So Shush stayed solitary for years, living off her wits, spying on the village and making herself invisible whenever Satok was around. It had taken a great deal for her to lead the Kilcoole cats' people to the cave, but she had in mind that somehow, being from elsewhere, these ones might not succumb to Satok.

When the girl was taken there was no one to cry to. The dog lay stricken, as Shush's own family had been stricken, by Satok's cruel staff. Krisuk and the Kilcoole boy were in the dead place. Not even to save a litter of her own would Shush brave that place.

Instead she bounded off in the opposite direction, down the road and out of town, back tracking the hoofprints of the big horses, already nearly lost in the snow. When she was tired, she rested, licked the snow from her feet, and thought. The Kilcoole cats had contacted her, but she didn't know how they had done it. She had been trying to flush out a rabbit at the time, pawing at the half-thawed ground, when a voice spoke to her in her own tongue, within her mind. She asked the voice who it was, thinking it was perhaps the ghost of one of her relatives, asking if it was safe to spend another life there, but the voice replied that although it was, like herself, a cat, it was from the village of Kilcoole.

The voice belonged to a tom. She was sure of that. The question was not highly detailed. It wanted to know if the people of McGee's Pass would mine for the company or not. She said they would if they were told to, which had been her experience of them. They weren't bad people, but Satok had taken away their partnership with the planet and creatures like herself and turned it to his own purposes and against them.

The tom had said nothing about people coming, but Shush sensed that there would be visitors. They had come! And now Satok was dividing them and destroying them as he had so much in the village.

So Shush left, having nothing more to wait for. She leaped from one horse track to another. She sniffed when the track disappeared; she felt the howling wind roughing her fur the wrong way.

Late that night she found where the horse and dog tracks met with other tracks, including those that made her lift her lips in recognition. A track-cat, quite likely a Kilcoole cat, since the people had come from Kilcoole. A large one. And more horse tracks, like those of the people. She clawed at the cat tracks, rubbed her head against them, marked them with her scent. From the other scents mingled with the big cat's, he had been among others of her kind and probably was unlikely to eat her.

Thinking that these new folk might be camped just ahead, she followed the tracks. But she was small and the trail was long, and Satok had won again. She yowled for the Kilcoole cats to answer her, but none did.

Finally, at daybreak, she slept for a few hours, then began moving again, though the tracks were older and much harder to follow. What other choice did she have?

Matthew Luzon felt aggrieved and aggravated by the pilot's attitude. He had felt from the first that this Captain Greene did not take him and his mission with sufficient gravity. He did not exude a positive attitude. He also appeared to be an uncommonly bad driver, hitting every pocket of turbulence no matter which altitude he attained, flying far too close to mountain tops at times and into cloud banks at others.

And that was after they were finally on their way. The man had dawdled an unconscionably long time loading various items into the cargo net behind the seats. In fact, the copter would have been quite large enough for all of Matthew's assistants, had it not been for this cargo.

"Here, can't you leave that behind?" he'd demanded at one point when his patience was strained, but the pilot just smiled and said, "No can do, sir. The villagers at the Fjord need this stuff. Be with you in a jiff."

Then had come the dreadful flight and Braddock regurgitating all over the floor, so they'd had to smell it during the entire first leg of the trip.

When they landed at Harrison's Fjord, a pretty little place, he disembarked from the aircraft to allow Braddock to clean up his mess and found himself a boulder to occupy up wind, where he could continue his annotations. The pilot opened all the windows and doors to flush out the rest of the stench.

"Gotta unload, Dr. Luzon," the man said, although Matthew had assumed an attitude that few would have bothered to interrupt. "And refuel. Might as well take on some grub now." Then he lowered his voice so that his words would not carry to Braddock, lying on a mossy stretch of ground, legs drawn up to his aching belly. "They do good fish fries." Matthew waved his hand dismissively at the mention of such greasy fare. "And," the pilot went on, indicating Braddock, "get him an air sickness pill. He ought to have mentioned the problem before we took off."

Matthew nodded, wondering why the pilot had not had the courtesy to inquire before they took off from SpaceBase. Then the village folk arrived to help unload, and the pilot turned to greet the one woman in the group. She was a slightly different rustic type from those Matthew had seen in Kilcoole. She chatted affably with the pilot as he and some of the men unloaded the helicopter. Matthew wrote down the iniquities of the flight he had just endured to be sure they were entered onto the pilot's record. He noticed that someone had given Braddock a blanket to keep off the chill of wind stirred by the idly rotating propeller blades.

Scanning the village, Matthew assumed that the chief industry was fishing. No doubt this would present a fruitful sub-culture to study, since coastal peoples occupying somewhat more temperate areas undoubtedly had customs, mores, and folkways that differed from those in the interior. He made a note, since Braddock was in no position to take dictation, to return for a proper investigation later.

When he made one more sweeping scan of the village before reboarding the newly lightened copter, he was surprised to notice, sunning itself in the doorway, a very large cat. About the size of a panther, he supposed, except that it did not have the conformation of one of those sleek, predatory, and now almost extinct beasts. Though large, it was more like an immense domestic feline, with rather common black and white markings. Possibly one of the track-cats he had heard so much about: one of the miraculous beasts said to have aided in the rescue of the Fiskes and to have been instrumental in the healing of Frank Metaxos.

He stood up, closing his notepad and wondering if it was wise to approach the beast. It did not seem to be under anyone's control. If it happened to be a stray, perhaps he could acquire it for the laboratory and extensive examination. He was about to order the pilot to have the beast caged until he could return for it when the pilot beckoned urgently to him and unceremoniously boosted him back aboard. Braddock was already belted in, thankfully looking more sleepy than nauseated. Before Matthew could mention the cat or protest their precipitous departure, the rotors were whirling and the aircraft was up over the deep waters of the fjord, well above the masts of some primitive sailing craft.

Oddly, the flight to the southern continent was markedly absent of the turbulence they had encountered over land. Matthew attempted to shout over the noise in the cabin, a query about the village they had just left. He finally resorted to touching Greene's shoulder to get his attention. The man merely smiled affably. tapping his earphones, and shrugged. Matthew subsided in his seat and tightened his seat belt-then had to loosen it slightly or risk cutting off the circulation in his torso. He did not like being isolated by the exigencies of travel and wondered why there was only one headset. So he made a tremendous effort to contain himself during what was likely to be a very dull and long journey. Fortunately the cold air and the smells of machine oil covered the faint residue of Braddock's indiscretion.

Every time Matthew flew in one of these vehicles, he resolved to take flying lessons, for the procedures seemed ridiculously simple, but he never seemed to find the time for the formal course. Once, a long-gone member of his bevy of assistants, a perhaps too easily influenced young man, had showed an aptitude for flying. Unfortunately, as soon as he had learned to fly, his personality changed, and he no longer demonstrated the qualities of unswerving loyalty and unquestioning obedience Matthew insisted upon in an assistant.

He suspected that the man flying the copter was not of the caliber required in an aide either. Matthew's opinion was confirmed when he retrieved a report from his case and noticed, stowed under his seat, the headphones that should immediately have been offered to him by Greene. At once, he plugged these into the socket on the armrest and placed them over his ears. A burst of static poured through them that made him wrench them off.

Tapping the pilot authoritatively on the shoulder, he pointed at the headset. Grinning, the pilot shook his head, moved his mouth piece aside, and leaned over to say, "Don't work!"

Matthew's reactions included amazement, anger, frustration, and total disgust with the inefficiency and indifference shown by the inhabitants of this world. People were scattered all over the universe, some of them living in highly sophisticated, totally engineered environments, all scrupulously maintained by Intergal. He ended up on an incredibly primitive world with a headset, similar to hundreds he had used before, that failed to work due to what was surely an easily remedied technical difficulty.

Of course, this sort of aircraft was only slightly improved over its ancient counterpart. The old ones had had neither speed nor range and had been limited in the altitudes they could achieve. This particular one, with its incidental malfunctions, was by no means state-of-the-art: it hadn't the power to lift out of the planet's atmosphere, and was excruciatingly noisy.

However, it required very little space to land, could hover, and could set down safely, if necessary, at night unaided by light from the ground. That ability, he reflected, as he studied the map printout on his wrist unit, was a necessary requirement.

He wanted to ask the pilot if flights to the southern continent were frequent. Surely they must be. This planet north and south, had long been used for troop recruitment, an occupation the so-called sentient world did not seem to obstruct. Ah, and he qualified that as he remembered his notes. It was the young who answered recruitment drafts: those who had not yet been mutated by whatever toxins in their soil produced the glandular deformity and the deposit of "brown fat" that supposedly allowed older members of the population to survive the extreme temperatures.

The nearest city to Harrison's Fjord on the southern continent was Bogota, at the mouth of the Lacrimas River. The sizable peninsula on which the city was situated extruded like a big, clumsy thumb into the sea. He had, of course, scrutinized the maps of this region, now entering its winter season. Most of the population centers-one could hardly call them cities-were situated on the coastal plains near the major rivers: Bogota on the Lacrimas, Kabul on the eastern fork of the New Ganges, and Lhasa on the Sierra Sangre. Another village called Sierra Padre was located farther up the Sierra Sangre at the foot of the Sierra Padre Mountains. A settlement known as Kathmandu was isolated within yet another mountain range, optimistically dubbed the Shambalas.

Kathmandu seemed a likely place to look for culture uncontaminated by the crackpot pseudo-mystical theones of the natives of the north. Bogota, being the largest and most accessible population center, was the most likely to have been influenced.

For hours after they left the warm harbor of Harrison's Fjord, flanked by the ice-packed coast of the rest of the northern continent, they skimmed the cold gray of the ocean, which didn't particularly depress Matthew, as cold gray was one of his favorite colors. Huge chunks of ice floated in these waters, as large as islands or small continents themselves. Initial reports had suggested that the southern edge of the northern continent had many glaciers which constantly calved into the unobstructed oceans that girdled the planet.

The sun struck sapphires from the clefts in the ice, and the gray of the clear salt waters was sequined with darting fish. Schools of dolphins followed the copter's shadow across the breast of the sea. Matthew was oblivious to them, as he was to the blowing and sounding of the Petaybean tube whales: so called because their ancestors had been bits of cells frozen and later incubated in test tubes. Brought to maturity in controlled environments, the large, strong mammals had then been released into the planet's newly formed ocean. The whales, like the dolphins, seemed attracted by the novelty of the copter.

At last, toward evening, they were within sight of the southern coast, a sight so spectacular that even Matthew was forced to admire its grandeur.

Though the harbor, like its counterpart at Harrison's Fjord, contained water warmed by the geothermal springs and rivers the planet seemed to have in abundance, the rest of the coastline was glacial. Huge cliffs of ice glittered white and crystal: deepest indigo in the recesses. and a rich bright cobalt where the setting sun struck the crevasses. Glaciers calved, huge chunks splintering off, plummeting into the sea with a roaring crack, surfacing through a rush of displaced waters, displaying new surfaces. On other floating chunks, seals and otters and big tusked walruses basked and swam in the frigid sea.

As the copter drew nearer the southern continent, the sun began setting, burning across the water to recast the scene in shades of mauve and tangerine.

Nearer yet, they saw herds of caribou race across the coastal plains, huge white bears lumbering across the ice or swimming in the lakes that studded the plains like chips of coral.

From those spectacular vistas, the sight of Bogota was a massive let down.

It contained a double row of barracks-type buildings, no more than a kilometer in length, a landing pad with a pile of fuel cans perilously near, and a number of small hide boats not dissimilar to the ones Matthew had seen at Harrison's Fjord. As they over flew the town, they were close enough to observe those inhabitants who were lounging about. The native costume seemed to consist of cast-off uniform pieces from the company corps. The copter's arrival caused no particular excitement: few heads even turned up to observe its passage.

With great delicacy, the pilot set the copter down right beside the fuel cans, shut off the engines, and without a word, climbed out and began to refuel. Oddly enough, no one came to check, though Matthew could see people less than a hundred meters away watching the process. While Greene fueled up, Matthew disembarked, demanding a few answers now that the man could not pretend he didn't hear him.

"Shouldn't someone be logging you in or something, Greene?"

"Why? They knew the copter, and they know it's the one I fly. If I had something to deliver here, I'd have flashed my lights and someone would have come to make a pickup."

Matthew digested that explanation-yet another example of the nonchalance and indifference that were so rife on this planet and that would be rectified.

"Is this all there is to this town?" He gestured about the landing area and toward the two rows of dwellings.

"Bogota? Yes, sir. Nobody much lives in Bogota."

"Why not?"

"It's unstable, sir. You saw the glaciers. They make sure that the earth always moves for you, that's one thing. You get rocked to sleep every night, though some rockings 're harder than others. Then there's the bears. They mostly live on fish, but they'll take anything that's handy, including human beings if they're hankerin' for a change of menu."

Braddock, looking nauseated again now that the effect of the pill had worn off, had exited the copter. With an effort, he tried to assume some of his usual assistance duties, his expression carefully neutral. "Do you suggest that we use this place as a base headquarters?"

The pilot scratched his head, pushing his cap forward over his forehead. "Well, this place is as good as any on this continent. It ranks as a depot, not that it has all the amenities SpaceBase offered. Mostly it's a drop point to collect recruits and to return soldiers from these parts who are demobbing. I haven't done a lot of flying around here except to Bogota, to tell you the truth, and Sierra Padre. The warm rivers make the ground swampy in the summer and create powerful turbulence the rest of the year, and you don't go far before you get into the mountains. Sierra Padre is a little bigger, a little more comfortable, and the place a lot of southern folks call home. Of course, you understand, lots of people aren't settled real permanent but move from hunting camps to fish camps and back again, according to the season."

"Thank you, Captain Greene," Matthew said. ''In that case, we have no time to lose in reaching Sierra Padre before we run out of daylight. Let us climb back aboard and continue on."

Braddock did not quite stifle a groan, and Matthew gave him a reproving glare. Really, he had thought his chief assistant was made of sterner stuff.

"Well, sir, I got to tell you," Johnny Greene said. "This is going to get me in trouble back at headquarters. I've got another mission to fly soon's I get back."

"May I remind you that I am your mission right now Captain, and my business has the highest possible priority."

"Yes, sir, so let's get going right now and I'll tuck you in at Sierra Padre before I take off again."

"I was expecting you to stay and act as our transport during this vital research mission, sir."

"My orders were just to fly you here, sir, and return north for my next mission. Tell you what, though. It shouldn't take very long. Why don't you gents settle in at Sierra Padre, get the lay of the land in the snocle, talk to a few folks, and I'll be back in a few days to collect you?"

"I'd prefer you to be more specific than that, Captain."

"Yeah, me too, sir. But everything's pretty unsettled right now. You've got a portable comm unit with you, haven't you?"

"Braddock does. Naturally."

"Then if you don't see me by the time you're ready to go on to one of the other villages, you just ring up to the station and they'll give me a holler or dispatch someone else."

"In case of emergency, I will go to that extreme inconvenience, Captain Greene. However, it is your responsibility and your sole responsibility to see that I have transport to my next destination within three days. If I am at all discommoded by your absence, you will find yourself busted back to flying paper aircraft. Do I make myself clear?"

"Oh, yes, sir, I know how foolish it would be to get crossways of an important man like yourself, sir," Greene said with not quite enough humility to suit Matthew.

Braddock suddenly came to life. "Wait a moment. Greene? What is your first name?"

"Why. it's Johnny, dear heart. What's yours?" Greene replied, batting his eyelashes in a way that was mocking and impertinent in the extreme.

"Sir, Braddock said, turning to Matthew. "Wasn't there a Captain John Greene piloting the copter carrying Dr. Fiske when he crashed in the volcanic blast area?"

Matthew was relieved. His judgment in bringing Braddock was vindicated. The boy might whine and puke, but his mind was unaffected by his physical discomforts. Matthew himself should have referenced the name but had been too preoccupied in gathering new data.

Before he could formulate the questions he wanted to ask, the captain went on.

"Yes, sir, that's me, and to tell you the truth, Dr. Fiske sort of loaned me to you as a courtesy. Normally I'm attached to his exclusive service."

Matthew smiled. "Ah well, then, Captain Greene. Please thank my old friend Whittaker for his kindness and tell him that I wish to deprive him of you for a while longer to assist me with my inquiries. If you'll please drop us at Sierra Padre, we can at least make use of our time there to further our investigations. But make sure that you do return!"

Greene snapped him a salute.

Shush awoke, killing and devouring a vole before she set out on the trail once more, following the spoor of the curlies and the track-cat of Kilcoole.

She was far from her territory, among wild things that would kill her and eat her as casually as she had killed and eaten the vole, and yet, the farther from the pass she traveled, the better she felt. The very mud and snow beneath her paws seemed to put spring in them, to make her step lighter and her gait swifter.

Shortly after she began walking again, she found the used campsite of the people: cold ashes, churned snow and mud, grasses scattered on the ground from the horse's meals, and a few small bones from the track-cat's. A tentative, fearful sniff relieved her mind that these were rabbit bones, not cat. She sniffed the track-cat's sign and trotted onward.

She thought of Satok, of her massacred race, and of the girl as she walked, but she had to be careful not to drift too long into reverie. Once she noticed barely in time that a wolf was watching her from the bushes. Fortunately, wolves could not climb trees and she could. She slept in a tree that night, and in the morning walked on.

That night, as she stalked a squirrel, she pounced and somersaulted in the air just in time to catch the whiff of the fox a spare few feet away. Her distraction caused the squirrel to bolt for its hole in the tree roots and she bolted after it, squeezing in the tip of her tail just as the fox's nose appeared at the hole.

As she lay there panting, heedless of the squirrel, which had burrowed deeper, she wanted to wail. This was too hard. It was too far. There were too many things that wanted to eat her and she was all alone, and further more, she felt as if she just might be going into heat again.

I am all alone, she cried, and something said, But I designed you to be alone.

Not all the time, she said and it said, No.

I am afraid, she cried. A man would kill me, beasts would eat me, and the Kilcoole cats are far away and their people are Satok's prey.

Did someone speak of the Kilcoole cats? a voice-a different voice-asked. A big voice, a cat voice, a tom voice, but a big voice. Who are you, little sister?

I am Shush, the last of my race at McGee's Pass, she said. Who are you?

Nanook. What do you know of the people protected by the Kilcoole cats?

I know they strayed into danger. Satok will kill them, as he killed us. He took the girl. He will surely kill the boy or make him submit, as he made all of those under my protection submit.

Ah. And the dog? There was a dog? For a dog, she was good.

She is dead. Are you-far? she asked.

Two days' lope from where we left the boy and girl.

I have traveled two days.

Your legs are short.

I am afraid. I am alone.

I am coming, Nanook's voice said. And as an after-thought it added, And no, I do not eat my small cousins.

Bunny and Diego saw the cat tracks in the snow but were too preoccupied to pay them much attention. Both of them had slept badly, but once out of the village, Diego brooded and Bunny couldn't stop talking.

Diego was just attuned enough to her to notice that her hands trembled on the reins. Her face, like his, was scraped and bruised, her mouth swollen so that she kept biting her lip. He didn't know if she had the pounding headache he had. She talked a lot, but she hadn't said anything about a headache, or her aches and pains. Mostly, she was angry, raving about how those people could have let Satok get away with what he had! How had he been able to do that to them, and how could he do that to the planet?

Diego didn't answer. He listened with part of his mind to what she said, and with the other part, he was composing a song. Again, he longed for an instrument, wishing to make a song with angry music which even the biggest drum could not emphasize strongly enough.

When they camped for the night, he began writing his song down, while sunny looked on curiously, still talking.

Her voice was like rain falling now, or the drone of a ship's engine. He nodded and grunted, but the song was at the front of his consciousness.

Diego stopped writing. The planet should have a song for that murdered part of it, but this was not complete, not right. It needed a better song than this. He sang it to Bunny and she thought it was good, but then, the critical side of his nature reminded him, she was also proud of her jingle about her snocle license. This song must be the very best that could be sung, for it was of terrible injuries that must be healed.

The next morning, riding toward Harrison's Fjord, they were silent.

You are not a cub and you cannot live forever with me in the Home, Coaxtl told Goat-dung.

"I understand why you would not want me," Goat-dung said, "for I am nothing and no one. But if I cannot live with you, then go ahead and eat me now, for I'd rather be eaten by a friend than by strange beasts, and I will not return to Shepherd Howling."

Did I say that you should, foolish youngling? But there are others in the village at the mouth of this river.

"They'll make me go back," she said, full of fear, but Coaxtl said she would wait, and if they tried, she would kill them and take her to a farther village.

So there was nothing for it. She submitted to the will of the cat as she had submitted to the will of others eventually on every occasion but one. Coaxtl walked with her for a way; but on the open plains, where only cold waters fed the river, she lay along Coaxtl's back, hands locked in her mane, knees pressing against the cat's ribs, so that they could cross to cover more quickly.

The sky was still pale pink from the setting sun when they heard the beating heart of one of the company's hummingbird airships. Coaxtl wanted to run away, but the plain was vast and the airship faster even than the big cat's great strides.

Goat-dung watched with awe as the airship approached. She had seen other aircraft in the sky, and the Shepherd had told them those were the Guardian Angels of the Righteous, sent by the company to over see them. She had seen a hummingbird ship only once before, however, when it delivered supplies to the Vale one hopeless winter when a team of the men had walked into Bogota seeking relief. The Shepherd Howling had agreed to this only reluctantly, for she heard him arguing with his advisers: but they knew they would starve without assistance. When the airship came, it was wonderful. Food, more food than they had had in months, and even warm clothing and toys for the children.

So Goat-dung was not afraid when the airship hung above them, close enough that she could see two men arguing through the glass bubble that formed the hummingbird's single eye.

She climbed off Coaxtl's back, feeling the soft warmth of the cat's fur through the rents in her clothing. Her feet were bound up in uncured rabbit skins now, fur side in; the skins stank, but they kept her feet warm. Stunned with fascination, she watched the airship set down.

"Isn't it wonderful, Coaxtl?" she asked the cat. When there was no reply, she turned to see the cat bounding back across the tundra.

A thought whispered back to her across the distance. Your own are here. Good hunting and warm sleeping places, youngling.

"Good hunting and warm sleeping places, Coaxtl," she whispered back, under her breath, but already she was watching the handsome pilot emerge from the aircraft and the tall, thin man with the high forehead and long white tail of hair walking toward her. Another man lingered in a second doorway in the back of the airship.

"Remarkable!" the white-haired man said, staring at her. "Look at her clothing! Why, she should be freezing. And here alone except for a wild animal which would probably have eaten her when hunger overcame it. Amazing! I would have liked a closer look at that cat, though. It seems totally unlike any of the others I've noticed."

The pilot didn't respond to what the elder said but came forward to kneel before her. Before her and so unworthy for such an honor! He even looked her in the eye and spoke in a kind voice that almost made her weep.

"You look a long way from home, alannah. Are you lost? Was that big ol' kitty what you folks down here use for a track-cat?"

Goat-dung sank to her knees before him and bowed her head. "Please forgive the companion of this ignorant and despicable child, O Captain of Angels. Coaxtl befriended me out of pity, but now that my own kind are here, she has fled from fear of the righteous. For are not all animals to be meat and fur for the company men?"

"Where did you hear such drivel?" the captain replied in a disgusted tone of voice. Goat-dung did not expect that.

"Did I get it wrong?" she asked fearfully. "Forgive me if I misquoted the Shepherd Howling. I am the stupidest of girls, as has often been said of me."

"If you ask me, you're the luckiest of kids," the pilot said. "And we're lucky to have found you before you froze to death. Now come aboard, darlin', and stop cringin'. Sure, no one will hurt you now." And he looked back at the tall white-haired man with an expression Goat-dung could not see in the descending shadows.

"Of course they won't, my child," the white-haired man said. And while the pilot had quite correctly refrained from touching such filth as she, the white-haired man took her hands in his and raised her in his arms, carrying her to the plane. "You will come with us to Sierra Padre."

"You won't make me go back to the Vale of Tears?"

"Not if that's how they teach you to talk about yourself. Especially if you have run away from all those bruises and cuts I see on you, no, we won't take you back," the pilot said.

"What and where is this Vale of Tears?" the white-haired man asked.

"You won't make me go back there, sir? I don't deserve to. I fled from being the bride to the Shepherd Howling."

"Bride? You're no more than a baby!" The pilot sputtered with outrage.

But the white-haired man said, "We go now to Sierra Padre, where I will begin my work, and you, my dear, will have a hot bath, clean clothing, a decent meal, and a good night's sleep."

"She certainly will," the pilot said. "An old shipmate of mine, Lonciana Ondelacy, lives in Sierra Padre with her kids and grandchildren. Loncie will be glad to take this little one in."

The white-haired man smiled at her, helping her climb into the big plane beside the other man, who did not smile.

This reassured her more than anything the pilot had said because, of course, it was only right since she did not deserve to be smiled upon. Then, with a great deal of noise and wind, the Captain of the Angels and the white-haired patriarch sent the hummingbird ship aloft, where, for that night, all was miraculously as wonderful as they had said it would be.