Power Lines (20 page)

Bunny, who was watching Pablo demonstrate to an enraptured Diego first the techniques of playing the guitar and then the sound made by the bagpipes, said, “They have more than a few things down here that we don’t have up north.”

Lonciana did something with a mess of beans that Yana, sensitive now to such subtleties, would have given her right big toe to discover. It was tasty and filling, satisfying even their hearty appetites.

Immediately afterward, the table was dismantled and taken out of the main room, and chairs, benches, stools, and odd crates were placed about the room. The guitar came off the wall again, and Yana identified one round object with jingling bits fastened in its lip as a tambourine.

Lonciana was busy in the kitchen end of the house, mixing the blurry with the help of her eldest daughters, while Pablo, Johnny, and the older Ondelacy boys began to greet the visitors as they began to pour in.

Once again Yana wondered at the way a small Petaybean house could seem to expand infinitely to contain so many people. Eventually there was only a small space around the high stool that had been placed in the center of the room for the singers—of which Yana was one, and probably the first. Bunny and Johnny both kept her mug as well as Diego’s full of blurry once Diego announced that he had his song, too.

Yana missed Sean desperately, but Johnny took her to the stool and settled her on it, taking the mug when she drained the last of the blurry.

“This is Major Yana Maddock, who was at Bremport, and who is now one of us,” Johnny began simply. “She has a song for you.”

Silence has different qualities, Yana knew, from the absolute one she’d
not
heard on her few space walks to that of expectancy, either a hopeful or happy one, or a mean and miserable show-us-your-stuff kind. This was expectant and almost reverent. That startled her so much that she began to sing to stop what her ears weren’t hearing.

After the first few lines got past her teeth, she actually began to enjoy the act of singing, not that she would ever truly enjoy the song that she must sing. Maybe one day soon, as Sean had suggested, she’d find joy in making a song.

“I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live,

The waters live, the animals and trees live.

And you. And now I live.”

The last words came out before she realized she had added them to the song.

Then Lonciana and Pablo made their way to her and took her hands, holding them to their cheeks, their tears moistening the backs of her fingers. Each of the Ondelacy children, smiling shyly with their misty eyes, touched her hands, too.

Other voices lifted in appreciation of her song and she was able to get down off the stool without any help.

Bunny led Diego to the stool. There was a purpose in the young man’s eye now, Yana noticed, that hadn’t been there before. He was growing into his true manhood, and what had happened at McGee’s Pass had tempered him.

“This is Diego Metaxos, who was with me at McGee’s Pass and risked his life to save me,” Bunny said, giving Diego’s hand a squeeze before she released it. “He has a song that all must hear.”

Diego tipped his head back, closed his eyes to slits, and rested his hands on his thighs with his feet hooked on the lower stretcher of the stool.

“Deep is the place of communion

Where mist and ice and stone are warm

With what is more than friendship,

More than father or mother love,

With nurturing and understanding.

We all treasure this place of communion.

It is our place, our place, our place.”

His voice, now firmly baritone, raised to the top of his range and intensified as he repeated the phrase. Then his tone altered to that of a storyteller who is forced to relate truths that disturb him.

“There are others who do not believe that our place

Is ours and has been since men and women came here.

They were once of us, and knew of communion.

They left and in their years of leaving learned

Much of evil and selfishness and unsharing, uncaring, unkind, self-seeking, self-helping self first and always.

Having knowledge of things that bind and score and cover

They have returned to make evil what was good.”

Again his voice changed, colored with a bitterness that made Yana twitch uneasily, a bitterness that roused all his listeners.

“Why steal what is ours for no purpose but to keep it for only one?

Why deprive the many of communion and hope and peace in times of worry?

Why bury truth?

Why bury our planet alive!”

Gasps of horror greeted that phrase, but Diego did not falter.

“For it has been buried alive, screaming unheard

At McGee’s Pass.

The stone smothered,

The roots strangled,

The soil smothered.

White death like

Your snow-skin

From one like

But unlike

A son.

What son wishes death to his father?

What son demands honor unearned?

Women raped and villages frightened

And deprived of their place of communion

And the gentle mists that heal,

The gentle touch that soothes,

The spirit that nurtures us. All of us!”

Diego’s song roused the indignation of every listener that evening. Bunny was so proud of his song and his singing she almost vibrated. Then, when he had rested from the exertions of his singing, both young people related what had happened at McGee’s Pass, and described Satok’s treachery.

Well and truly blurred, Yana was still quite conscious of some of the discussion that went on late into the night, to the accompaniment of guitar, fiddle, flute, tambourine, maracas, and castanets. But she, Loncie, and Johnny—possibly Bunny, too, at one point—had decided that the most important thing they could now do was rescue La Pobrecita from Shepherd Howling.

From Lonciana’s description, the man was worse than Satok, but only marginally, if he insisted on marrying a prepubescent child when he already had four or five wives. Yana had been well drilled in leaving alone the customs and motes of indigenous populations, but she was not indigenous, and the whole concept of forced wifehood was abhorrent. That night they pieced together what La Pobrecita had said and came up with a fair idea of where the Vale of Tears might be, judging from where she had been found, how long she said she’d been traveling, and from what direction. By Johnny’s reckoning, the place should be a valley set in the Sierra Padres somewhere near the head of the Lacrimas River. Given decent weather, they should have no problem flying right to the place. And if they met Luzon, at least two of them could give chase on the snocub, a two-person snocle that Johnny had fit handily in the cargo net.

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&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 felt 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.

“Sláinte, Whittaker,” she said without looking up.

“Sláinte 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 bigwig 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 castoffs, no doubt. Sure had let herself go, though. Moped around with downcast 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 subarctic 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 eyesight and hearing. 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.