Powers that Be

Chapter 11

How do we know that this is for real?" Bunny asked when Yana showed the autopsy report to Sean, 'Sinead, and Clodagh.

"It is," Sean said unequivocally.

"Then you know about this brown fat stuff, the node, and the anomalous fatty layer?" Yana asked.

Sean nodded and Clodagh's eyes glistened.

"It's why only the young can go off Petaybee," Clodagh said.

"Their brown fat hasn't developed the same mass that adults' have?" Yana asked.

There was a long pause while Sean, Clodagh, and Sinead exchanged secretive, and almost embarrassed, glances. Bunny just looked from one to the other, perplexed and hoping to find an answer in their faces.

Finally, Sean nodded. "Something like that, Yana. It's pretty complicated, and frankly nobody, including me, understands all of the functions of the adaptations. You may have noticed my research facilities for anything much beyond simple animal husbandry are a bit limited. A lot of it the planet simply seems to do on its own. I haven't found anything about deliberately introducing such changes as the brown fat and the node in any of the notes my predecessors left behind, but I do know they exist from examining the corpses of other Petaybeans."

"I can understand how you might not know how the changes got here or what they consist of if you're not responsible for them, but there are still a few things I think you can explain," Yana told him.

Had she not grown up on space stations and ships, where humans were the dominant life-form but by no means the only life or even the only sentient life, she might have been a little more shocked by what they were implying, that humans were being altered by a planet to suit itself. As it was, she was vaguely annoyed with herself that she was reminded of old vids of aliens who took over the bodies of innocent earthlings.

She took a deep breath and began confronting the issues that disturbed her concerning Lavelle's physiology. "Let me get this straight. You folks here on Petaybee are all Earth stock, right?"

"That's right," Clodagh said. "My ancestors were sent here from County Clare, County Limerick, County Wicklow, and Point Barrow, Alaska. Scan's and Sinead's are from Kerry and Dublin and northern Canada."

"You know all that?"

"If you'll remember right, Yana, I told you most of us can't read or write. It's part of my job here to remember these things." Clodagh grinned. "An old Irish profession."

"Well, tell me this: if you're Earth stock, like me and like most of the company corps, how come only you people can't be moved from where you were sent? I mean, even if the young can go and the older ones can't, it hasn't always been that way, has it? Why is that brown fat stuff affecting you now and it didn't to begin with? Surely at first the company occasionally recruited people who were a little more… mature."

It was Scan's turn to look perplexed-and somewhat worried. "Yes, they did. But mostly they've preferred to recruit the youngsters, and it's never seemed to do them more harm than military service does anyone, that we know of. And you have to understand, Yana, that our people have been adjusting to the planet and the planet to us for a couple of hundred years now. The physical changes found in Lavelle's body were adaptive changes to this world. Some people adapt more readily and more completely than others-and the more exposure they have, the longer the period they have to become accustomed to something, the greater the chance of a profound adaptation. Lavelle was very much a woman of this planet. She lived most of her life outdoors, she ate only what she caught or grew, like many of us, and she was well into her fifties. Here, she was very tough. But her body was used to cold weather, Petaybean midwinter cold, far colder even than you've experienced so far, to clean air and pure water and real food. I'm afraid she had lost whatever resistance she had to other conditions in the process of becoming suited to the extremes of Petaybee. Our peculiar weather conditions would never have killed her, but in exchange for that protection, her body relinquished certain other immunities. Besides which, she had a very strong emotional attachment to her home place."

"I hardly think emotional attachment alone could have caused her death," Yana said.

"It's possible, Yana," Clodagh said. "It's possible. It's hard to explain to you when you've been here such a short time but maybe when you witness the night chants, you'll understand a little better. With Lavelle being the kind of woman she was, I knew, Sean knew, really all of us knew, that she was as unlikely to survive away from Petaybee as that colonel would out in the mountains without a parka. If we'd known that they'd planned to take her offplanet, we'd have protested, tried to stop them somehow."

"Lavelle would have protested," Sinead said in a bitter voice, her small rough hands knotted at her sides. "She must have told them. She didn't need to know what her insides looked like lo know she would die offplanet."

Yana gave a gusty sigh. "And much as 1 hate to say so, she could've told them till the sun turned cold and they wouldn't have believed her."

"Now they do?" Clodagh asked, her face impassive.

Yana shook her head, in anger, frustration, and a whole lot of other conflicting and negative emotions. She was tired. She was confused and disappointed and even somewhat disillusioned, something she had never thought would be possible again. This had seemed to be such a simple, happy place, and now it had a secret. All she wanted was to get some rest.

"It's time to go now," Sean reminded the others as he tucked his hand under Yana's elbow. "You haven't missed the chanting, Yana. It will revive you."

Feeling the familiar surge of attraction for him mingle with all of the doubts, fears, and unanswered questions rolling through her mind, she wondered if he could be lying, if in spite of his protestations he was somehow tampering with these people's genes so that they would never be able to leave. She had the oddest feeling that he was definitely hiding something, and that worried her more than any of the other secrets Petaybee held. Was Sean responsible for the problems Giancarlo had mentioned when she had first arrived? And if these people knew they were being changed, as some of them seemed to believe, why did they put up with it?

Yana regarded Sean for a long moment as his silver eyes appealed to her. Gazing up at him, she tried to see him as some sort of psychopath mad-scientist monster, and all she could think of was how wonderful it had been to dance with him tonight, and before that, their encounter at the hot springs. His expression grew less sad and serious as he watched her face, and she knew he could see her resolve to stay detached melting.

Then, with her voice wavering with unaccustomed indecision as much as weariness, she said, "Oh, frag, Scan. I'm really bushed. Nothing short of eight hours' sack time is going to revive me."

A sly smile kindled in his eyes and curved his lips. "Wanna bet?"

Clodagh unexpectedly touched her shoulder, her eyes gentle with sympathy. "You come, Yana. You'll see."

The cat came out with an authoritative "meh!," provoking Yana to an exasperated laugh. She rubbed her forehead with an impatient gesture.

"You guys are bent on brainwashing me into a proper Petaybean, too, aren't you?"

"Something like that," Scan said in very good humor. He knew he had won. If he hadn't exactly convinced her, she would at least let her wishful thinking override her better judgment for the time being. With a deft movement he closed the opening of her jacket, flipped her parka hood onto her head, and started pushing her hands into her gloves.

"Lemme do that," she said, feeling a surge of almost childish rebellion. She didn't want to feel completely manipulated just because she was willing to be reasonable. But she didn't resist as he guided her along, following Bunny, Clodagh, Sinead, and Aisling back to the hall, which was still resounding with the sounds of merriment within.

Outside the door, a girl stood chatting with a man who was stirring the contents of a huge metal drum, set up over a small, fierce fire. As they passed, the man nodded, smiled, and smacked his lips appreciatively at the odors wafting up from the delicious-smelling concoction, soup or stew, in the big barrel. Clodagh took an exaggeratedly deep sniff, fanning the aroma toward her with both mittens.

When they entered the meetinghouse, Yana had to pause to adjust to the temperature-and the odor-of the hall, which had been packed solid with energetic folk for the past eight or nine hours.

If these dancing, singing, talking, gesticulating, laughing, crying people were really the cruel victims of a malign curse that doomed them forever to bondage to a hostile planet, they were either blissfully unaware of it or they plainly didn't give a rat's ass.

And suddenly, neither did she. She liked this lot better than the whole Intergal company corps and the board of directors put together, and if there was something wrong with them, well, she had been told to investigate and that was what she was doing. Sort of.

The room was hot, but she didn't mind; it was redolent with food, sweat, and other odors, but there was also a sensation that defied a name, although she thought it had something to do with the great good humor, the fun, the joy these people were projecting. How they had kept it up the whole time she had been gone, she didn't know. But patently they had! She grinned up at Scan and saw that he was sweating; she felt the first moisture beading her brow, too.

As if their entrance were a signal, the music ground to a wheezing stop and the dancing couples stood looking toward them expectantly. Clodagh, Scan, and the others stripped off their parkas, and Yana removed hers. In a corner of the room a bodhran rumbled like marching thunder and a banjo began playing in a minor key. Someone began singing in a husky tenor, as if his throat had endured too many cold winds and the smoke from too many fires. He sang a lonely, homesick sort of song about the green fields of planet Earth, then followed with a rollicking, humorous parody contrasting Earthbound living to life on Petaybee. The next song was a similarly silly one about the last man on the planet who could read, which Yana knew was an exaggeration since at least the company-sponsored people read memos and orders and such.

That song changed the mood of the evening, and every instrument but the drum stilled. The drum slowed from the bouncing beat of bodhran to the steady muted thump of a heartbeat.

Without exchanging another word with anyone, Clodagh began singing the song she had sung for Yana over dinner the first night.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The drum pounded in even, measured time as Clodagh was joined by everyone else as soon as she had sung the first line.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. The air swirled with smoke from the fire, on it riding the evaporated breath and sweat of the two or three hundred people cramming the hall. Yana felt them so strongly around her that it was as if they all wore the same skin; the drum was the beat of their collective heart.

As the last droning word of Clodagh's song died away, someone else took up a new song, one that Yana had not heard before.

The voices swelled around Yana as several more drums took up the beat, so that the walls of the lodge itself seemed to pulse with the tempo. Sean's voice sang in her right ear, Bunny's in her left, Clodagh's in front of her, and Aisling's behind her. She found it difficult to think of the report, difficult to think of anything, in fact, except exactly what was happening all around her, inside her. She breathed in the air that the others had breathed before her, she swayed to the beat of the drum, and although she didn't know these songs, she realized that her own mouth was opening with all those other mouths. This was a sort of spiritual communion, with those around her, that had nothing whatever to do with a religion, or a ritual of any sort. Happening, that's what it was. A Happening. It was happening just as much to everyone else in the hall as it was to her. Words were irrelevant: feeling was important. She just had to be singing something as the song continued, a new voice leading it.

Yana had no idea how long or how often the song had been repeated, but suddenly everyone was putting their parkas on and, to the continued beat of the drum, filing through the door, out into the night. A brilliant band of light snaked overhead, punctuated occasionally by small dots of colored lights descending. More traffic at SpaceBase, she realized. It seemed incongruous and unreal after the chanting to think about ships landing.

Scan was nudging her forward, sandwiched between himself and Clodagh. "Is it over now?" she asked.

"Not yet."

"Where are we going?"

"To the hot springs. We chant as we walk. You'll see. It's very beautiful."

He squeezed her shoulders encouragingly, and she was not at all surprised, for some reason, to find that she was no longer tired.

With the beat sustaining her, and everyone else, they marched on; totally unlike any Christian soldiers, she thought irreverently. She was surprised when they reached the hot springs in what seemed like a very short time. She had thought the springs were much farther away from Kilcoole. The rising steam occluded any details that daylight might have illuminated. The procession- no, procession was not the right word any more than "ritual" or "religion." Okay, she thought, this informal early-morning-after-the-night-before gathering made its way around the spring and seemed to disappear. Startled, she blinked, felt Scan's fingers tighten in reassurance, and then realized that the line led under the waterfall. She hadn't suspected before that there was any access there. But then with the steam and the sheeting of down-spilling water, she hadn't looked.

There was just sufficient space for a body, knowing where to go, to sidle past the actual cascade of water without getting more than a dusting of spray. Then she had to adjust her vision to a curious lambent light that was both soft and clear. She could see the walls of a passage curving gradually downward, and the bobbing of heads as people descended. The air was remarkably fresh and invigorating.

The downward movement continued, with people silently merry. Yana tried to figure out why those words seemed so appropriate: "silently merry." But they all were glad to be here, together, and moving toward whatever destination lay down there. She became aware that Scan was giving her occasional quick glances, as if reassuring himself that she was accepting this "happening." She didn't know what else she could have done but go along with everyone else, if only to discover what she could of the hidden places of Petaybee, and its secretive inhabitants. Yet… the palpable merriness of everyone around her denied the prospect of threat or harm. And she felt so good about coming!

How long the downward slope wound its way, she couldn't tell, for the soft rhythmic beat of the bodhrans urged them onward, yet the drum sound did not echo, but was oddly absorbed by the walls. Then, suddenly, they were there! In a vast luminous cavern, all blues, greens, soft pastel variations of those hues in serrated layers, streamers, bands, patterns. She wished she could ask Diego if all of this looked familiar to him. She was certain she was in the cavern he had described-if not the same one, then a similar one. For there was the water he had mentioned, the odd formations that did look like natural vegetation in their apple green, and ice-sculptured animals in weird and bizarre shapes. People were seating themselves in random groups, murmuring pleasantly, merrily, to each other, with an air of expectation about them.

Clodagh moved to the right of those in front of her and Scan guided Yana in that direction. Sinead, Aisling, and Bunny veered, too. Clodagh went beyond any other group, to a sort of promontory of pale sea green ice, and plumped herself down, cross-legged, a position that Yana found both remarkable and enviable in a woman of such proportions. Clodagh settled herself solidly and smiled as Scan, propelling Yana in front of him, moved beyond and above her. He motioned for Yana to be seated. She was somewhat surprised to find that the surface wasn't the least bit cold. Scan folded himself down beside her, close enough so that their shoulders were touching. She wondered about his constant tactile contact with her: she had never noticed him being touchy-touchy with anyone else. She didn't know if she was offended- no, she wasn't. Not at all. When he wasn't being just plain reassuring, even possessive, she found she liked Scan touching her for any reason. She had always maintained a physical aloofness with most people, male or female, saving touch for caress, rather than for identity or possession. When Bry turned touchy-touchy, she knew what would soon follow. She folded her arms about her legs and hooked her knees up to her chin. Sean assumed a similar posture, as close to her as possible. He grinned and gave her a totally impious wink.

The surface under her buttocks seemed to get warmer. She wiggled, realized the heat was all over, and undid her parka, only then noticing that everyone else had already done the same. A steam or mist seemed to be rising all around them, hiding the people on the other end of this crescent. She didn't think the body heat of even so many people could have such an effect on this huge cavern.

Sean was watching her, a half smile curving his lips as if he expected, and was pleased by, her actions.

"So? What now?" she asked, leaning into his strong shoulder so that only he heard her.

"Relax, Yanaba. Just take it easy, and take it all in. We're including Petaybee in the latchkay and introducing you. In a moment the planet will respond-just accept it, okay?" His lips barely moved, but she heard each word distinctly. His fingers flicked out in a subtle gesture.

That was when she became aware of the change in the lighting. Whether it was a trick of the mist or not, the lambency had taken a deeper, golden hue, and through her tailbone she felt a vibration. Conversations died off, and a respectful silence spread. Clodagh seemed to elongate from coccyx to poll. Bunny, too, straightened her spine. Much as she wanted to, Yana could not turn her head to see if Scan was responding, for she herself was caught up in whatever it was. And what was it? she asked herself, as she felt each vertebra in her back stiffening. Vibration and warmth pulsed up her spine to her brain stem. Then she was taking deep breaths, inhaling from the gut, filling her lungs-lungs that could now expand to full capacity with neither pain nor wheeze.

She had the weirdest sensation that her brain was expanding, too, the scalp lifting from her head bones-not at all an uncomfortable feeling; more as if she was lightening up all over. Of their own accord her eyes closed-so that she could concentrate on these internal expansions. She was aware, too, of her blood flowing in her veins, juices moving throughout her organs, as if some agency was cleansing her inside out-the way one inflated a mattress, a survival bubble tent, or the tire of a ground-effects machine. There was no pain or discomfort involved-only this sense of being filled in every physical crevice and bodily cavity, this lightening.

She was then inexplicably aware of a different sensation: one of completeness, one of belonging, one of perception and acceptance beyond her physical self. She fought that briefly, lost, and was rewarded with a euphoria she had never experienced even in her closest moments with Bry. It was like, yet unlike, orgasm; inexpressibly satisfying and rewarding. She exhaled slowly-for the lightening feeling had apparently occurred during the course of her one deep inhalation. Immediately she pulled air into her lungs again, wishing to achieve that almost vertiginous state of full extension, that delicious lightening, that… quasi-mystic belongingness.

Something very gentle, like a feather flicking dust from a delicate surface, flowed across her mind, chiding her for being greedy. All she really needed would be given.

Yana blinked her eyes open, for the thought was alien to her: it had been implanted in her mind. She blinked again. The mist had dissipated. And so had the people who had accompanied her to the cavern. Clodagh was gone, Bunny and Diego, Sinead and Aisling! Before she could panic, there was pressure against her right shoulder.

"I'm here," Sean said, a ripple of laughter in his low voice. When she turned her head, his silver eyes caught hers and then he nodded. Exhaling a totally worldly sigh, she let herself sag, no longer upheld by whatever had had her in its thrall. She felt a shaft of regret for what was no longer in touch with her.

"How long?" she asked Sean, gesturing about her.

"How long did it feel?" he asked, taking her hand in his warm one.

"Like one deep breath."

He nodded again, his eyes slightly hooded, but his smile was full of satisfaction. Then he held her hand up, examining it closely before he turned it palm up and kissed it. She could not control the shudder that crackled up her spine. He laid her palm against his warm cheek and made eye contact.

"It was more than one breath, wasn't it?" she asked.

He nodded, and she could tell from his caution that the time that had passed had been much longer than he felt it safe to admit, before gauging her reaction.

Slowly, carefully, sorting through her memory of the experience and her reactions, reaching the logical conclusion of something that defied logic, she asked, "You people weren't just being poetic when you said Petaybee is alive, were you? It is, isn't it? And it-it hypnotizes you or puts you in a trance or something. Like Diego?"

Sean nodded. "Most of the time it's like it was for you and for Diego, but for those too rigid to accept the possibilities, it can be extremely traumatic-induce shock, madness, even death. Not just with outworlders. You may have noticed young Terce, the other snocle chauffeur?"

Yana nodded. She hadn't seen much of Terce since she had arrived, but she remembered Bunny saying the boy wasn't too bright.

"He didn't react well to this experience. Most children easily accept it, but Terce… Maybe he just had too linear a turn of mind or something, but it terrified him and he's never tried again. He sometimes lurks on the edge of the latchkays but he won't join in. But there was no malice involved-just a… lack of communication." He shrugged. "There's much more to this planet than instrumentation can detect, Yanaba. You've experienced a central part of it tonight."

"A rite of passage?" She wanted to sound skeptical or cynical or even facetious, but that wasn't the way her words sounded even in her own ears. She dropped her voice to a whisper. "I passed?"

Scan laughed with such real mirth that she had to grin. Then he pulled her against him, arms tightly cradling her body to his chest, rocking both of them back and forth.

"What do you think?" he asked teasingly.

"I don't know what to think. I'm not exactly the religious type…"

"Religion has nothing to do with it, Yana. We weren't worshiping. The planet is alive. It's only courteous to communicate. There's-a relationship involved," he said, quite lightly and happily. She realized that he was more relieved than he cared to admit that she had come through her-introduction-without trouble. He continued his rather nonchalant explanation while draped around her, nibbling her ear. "The company wants us to think that everything on the planet came from them, but that's not the case.

This planet has a mind, and has developed resources, of its own. Living here, most of us know that and accept the gifts, the protection, and in return, we offer it companionship and-I don't know, expression, I suppose."

"But why? Why does it not only accept you but give you so much? If it really is a living, thinking being, it could as well resent you for occupying its surface. What does the planet get out of you-us-being here?"

He smiled lazily again and ran his finger the length of her spine. "Scientifically speaking? I haven't a clue. But I do have a theory: I think that the reason probably is-maybe-that Petay-bee likes us."

"That's it? It provides for you, lets you live here and allows you this…" She searched for a word. "This blissful form of communication just because it likes you?"

"That's about the size of it." He nodded. "And it protects us from its own extremities as well, don't forget, with the adaptations." He gave her a delicate nibble on the back of her neck to punctuate his remark.

"That didn't ultimately provide enough protection for La-velle," she reminded him, trying to sound rational when all she wanted to concentrate on was how to twist in order to nibble him back.

"It can only protect its people here, Yana. Miracles are seldom things."

"Will I grow the adaptations? The-what was that ugly term?-brown fat and the protective layer under the skin?"

"If you need them."

She pressed a thumb roughly across his bare forearm and gave him a quizzical look.

"Oh, yes I have it," Scan said comfortably. "And a few other accommodations you'll just have to find out for yourself. Some of us are more fully adapted than others. I, for instance, am even more a creature of Petaybee than Lavelle."

"I don't believe it! You don't look different. And you don't carry an extra ounce of flesh anywhere," she said, almost accusingly. She was remembering his body all too vividly.

"Are you sure?" he said in a teasing voice, and his hands began to wander across the skin of her back and arms.

That was the first moment she realized that she was as naked as he was. When had that happened? Yet their nudity did not surprise her, seeming as natural as if they had just shared a sauna- and she had wanted to see his finely muscled body again. Did this damned planet grant three wishes? Had she taken hers without knowing what she really wanted?

Of their own accord, her hands began to caress his warm silky flesh, the muscles excitingly firm beneath her fingers. Then Sean added the persuasions of his lips to those of his hands, and Yana responded with an ardor she thought she had lost too long ago to ever regain it. He was so silky, so strong, so agile, suddenly so demanding, and she found she had a few demands of her own. His chuckle seemed to beat against her diaphragm and against her breasts, forcing an echo from her as he rolled himself into her with a speed and skill she had to admire. He filled her as she had never been filled before, and the ascent into ecstasy was almost more than she could bear… than they could bear, for Sean, in mind and body, was subtly, and impossibly, linked to her in a way that she had never experienced before. She was herself, matching the urgency of his rhythm; she was him, sheathing and unsheathing with a power that he, too, had never encountered in a long life of couplings.

They both called out at the same time, in the same voice of joy that was colored with an agony of regret for so ephemeral a moment. As they clung to each other, breathless, unbelieving, that moment seemed uncannily elongated-and all too brief.

"Yana!" Sean murmured in her ear, his tone reverent.

"Oh, Sean!" With strengthless arms, she pressed him against her, burying her face in his neck. The million things she wanted to tell him remained unsaid, for words would shatter the sense of bonding and she felt she had to preserve it, extend it.

For the first time in her adult life, sleep overcame her after sex. Sometime later, Sean shook her gently by the shoulder, kissing the corner of her mouth.

"Hmmmm." She didn't wish to move. She wanted more of him and put her hand out to pull him back to her. But he was dressed. That effectively brought her fully awake.

"We must leave now, Yanaba," he said, his eyes tender and his hand gentle as he began to dress her.

That, too, was a novel experience, being dressed by a lover. She helped him even though she didn't want to.

When she was jamming her boots on, he took her hand, pressing it against his leg, and with his free hand, tilted her chin up so she met his eyes. She had to catch her breath against the lovingness in their silvery depths. He stroked her cheek with a touch that reminded her of another one.

"Sean, if you were taken off-planet-if they hauled you in for questioning like Lavelle? Would you die, too? Torkel was-"

He put a finger to his lips. "I know. And I can't stay here-" And she knew he meant Kilcoole, not just this cavern. "But I will return to you"-and the slight emphasis made her heart bump- "whenever I can, Yanaba Maddock." He dropped his hand to her breast, over her heart, and pressed in hard. "Am I in yours as you are in mine?"

"Yes." Why she could admit it so easily she didn't know. Except that it was true. And it didn't matter if he never did return to her. She would love Sean Shongili for the rest of her life.

His lips brushed hers as gently as he had stroked her cheek.

"Come, we have to hurry." He turned abruptly and led the way out.

As they moved up the slope, it seemed to her that the light behind them gradually dimmed. It was dawn when they ducked out from under the cascade. Dawn of which day, Yana wondered.