Power Lines (23 page)

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

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

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

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

“Power stations?” Sinead was immediately antagonistic.

“What for? To break down in a blizzard, to crash down on our homes in the high winds?”

“We’ve more sophisticated power sources than pylons, my dear,” Torkel began.

“I’m not your dear, and we’d have no use for such power.”

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

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

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

The sound of an airshuttle overflying the village distracted everyone.

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

“ ‘Scuse me,” he called over his shoulder and was out the door before he heard a response.

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

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

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

“What in hell do you think you’re doing, soldier? In an illegal vehicle, and here at a village site against the strictest orders . . .”

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

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

“What the frag!”

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

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

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

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

“You are . . .” Fiske paused for the man to identify himself.

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

“The ore, man . . .”

“Trouble’s been, you Intergal guys been going about your searching all wrong, and looking in the wrong places.”

“Oh, have we?”

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

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

“I can’t deny you’ve found a variety of very interesting items, Satok,” he said with a nonchalance that was far from the exultant surge that he was experiencing at the sight of what they had spent years trying to locate on this iceball. “Small as this cargo is . . .”

“This cargo’s a very small portion of what’s easily available—if you know where and how to look for it.”

“And you do?” Torkel challenged him.

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

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

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

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

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

“Forget them, Satok. They’re unimportant.”

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

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

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

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

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

“If that’s the case, you may be sure that Intergal will be appreciative.”

“As always?” The sneer was back as Satok leaned against the doorframe.

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

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

During their walk, Satok mentioned that there were sixteen different locations where ore had been collected, claiming that all the deposits were extremely rich and, furthermore, were so accessible that the company had simply overlooked them time and time again. The man wouldn’t be more specific, but the hold full of ore was proof in itself. Torkel was both delighted and infuriated, if the deposits had all been there, and so accessible, why had the best geological teams of Intergal failed where this miserable excuse for a man succeeded?

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

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

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

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

“Oh dear,” Marmion said, “I had hoped to have longer . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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