Power Lines (3 page)

One leaned forward, resting on one’s chest, and extended one’s neck to meet the bit rising on claw tip and—it slipped! It was trying to get away! The other paw lashed forward, claws extended, to help the first, and one instinctively leaned forward, one’s jaws coming into play to assist one’s claws and—and—the thing slipped again before one could sink a tooth into it. The pelt was flimsy stuff and tore out of the claws just as the other paw grabbed the morsel in a second place. The morsel let out a terrified squeal, rather like a rabbit. One was about to smack it to silence and lean forward for the fatal chomp.

Then the cave shook, the ledge broke under one’s overbalanced weight, and one tumbled tail over nose into the pool, relinquishing the morsel, which yelped again. Inconvenient and embarrassing to be so indisposed in front of the food. One climbed out of the pool and shook the water from one’s coat and began to wash before one’s meal.

The morsel began to flail frantically toward the den’s entrance. One padded nonchalantly after. The cave, the ground, the world, shook again. One knew when one was being addressed. One sat on one’s haunches and perceived.

The morsel was also arrested in midflight. “Did you—d-do that?” it asked. “Are—are you the G-Great Monster?”

One yawned.

The world shook again and one realized that one had understood the speech of the morsel. One also understood that it was a youngling, and female.

One waded forward while the youngling waded backward, outlined in the dusk outside the mouth of the cave. One’s paws dripped water, albeit warm water. One lapped a bit. The youngling stood still.

“You’re not so terrible,” it said. “You’re nothing but a big cat.”

One had one’s dignity to maintain. One lashed one’s beautifully and delicately marked tail and growled.

And from beneath one’s sodden paws, the world growled back at one and bucked, sending a wave of water to swamp one, knocking one onto one’s back, causing one to drink more deeply of the spring than one cared to, paws over head, and be propelled backward, away from the youngling.

When one got to one’s feet, one saw that the youngling—it no longer seemed safe to think of it, no,
her
as a morsel—had not used the opportunity to run away. Indeed, it, too, was just arising from the water, sputtering and snorting. Ah, good. It had not seen one’s discomfiture. Dignity was preserved.

“I’m not afraid of you,” the youngling declared as one advanced—claws sheathed, teeth safely contained within one’s lips, growl little more than a polite, enquiring rumble in one’s throat. A mere purr, actually, one corrected, as the waters bubbled and sloshed ominously. “I used to know a cat. A little one. I was a baby then. Shepherd Howling made my mother kill my cat. He—he tried to, anyway. He—she wouldn’t and—and . . .” Something odd was happening to the youngling now. It began leaking again, saltiness into the fresh sulfurous water covering it. “My mother was not like Ascencion. She was brave. The Shepherd punished her for disobedience and both she and my cat went away. So—so I’m not afraid of you. You live where the Great Monster is supposed to dwell and lie in wait for the foolish superstitious minds of the flock to be warped and maddened into everlasting wickedness while our bodies are tormented by the
great fires from within. But you’re not the Great Monster—you couldn’t be. Are you—are you the Guardian of the Underworld?”

One was so disgusted by her ignorance and silly misapprehension of one’s self and one’s relationship to one’s Home that one was startled into answering,
I am Coaxtl! That is enough.

“I am Goat-dung, Coaxtl,” the youngling said with the cunning of her race. She knew, one saw, the power of names. She had one’s name, one had hers. She could not be food.

But one’s Home had already decreed that she could not be food, which was what Home meant with the rumbling of the ground and the raising of the waters. One knew what was done and what was not done.

Very well, Goat-dung,
one said.
Goat-dung is not food but undoubtedly she eats. Therefore we must leave the Home and hunt.

3

With the river flowing freely, close to flooding, the people of Kilcoole had more water at their disposal than they were used to. Normally, even in the height of summer, the channel remained frozen at the deeper levels. Now the planet had cut additional channels from new, warmer tributaries, and there was sufficient water to drink, to wash, to bathe in if you didn’t mind a little sediment.

Since so much water was close to hand and the hot springs were a distance from town, Yana and Sean had the place to themselves.

As they rode through the brush, which was beginning to leaf out, Yana smiled at the wildflowers that peeked up from the less sodden places where they’d been buried under the snow all winter.

The hot springs were where she and Sean had first come together, where she had first had an inkling of his other nature, and where they had first made love. Beneath the waterfall was the secret subterranean chamber where the villagers gathered during the latchkay night chants to communicate directly with the planet. The mere sight of the slipping silvery waters, steaming only slightly in the warmer air, and the sweet rippling peal of the falls and streams were miraculous enough for Yana.

In this warmer weather, undressing did not have to be so hastily done. She and Sean took their time—time to undress each other, time for a kiss and a caress—before entering the waters, he with a muscular dive, she with a slow sliding from the bank, feeling the waters rise up the length of her until she stooped and allowed the liquid to cover her head. The water shut out the sounds of the birds and insects, the small animals scrabbling in the bushes, the stamping and champing of the curly-coats, and filled her ears with its own music.

Then a wet, warm silky form twisted about her and broached the surface of the water, silver eyes gleaming at her with a challenge and a sensuousness that were so perfectly “Sean” that even his selkie form did not dismay her.

“Oh you!” she said, laughing and splashing water at him. “Do you automatically change the minute you hit water?”

A pleased murmur came from the throat of Sean-Selkie as he continued to weave against her body, his furry touch arousing unusual sensations in her.

“Oh, is that all you can say?” Then Yana gave a ki-yi of amusement. “You can’t talk as a selkie?” She chortled and, using both hands, sent a wave to flood him.

He dove, not to get away from the water, but to caress her where she least expected it. Startled, she tried to maneuver away from him, but his sinuous form made evasion impossible.
He
was the swimmer, she the paddler.

But she caught him firmly by a fold of silky wet skin and pulled him to the surface.

“Look, mate, I don’t mind what form you take. I don’t even mind what you do in that form . . .” Sean-Selkie made a pleased purring sound, the silver eyes dancing, as she went on: “But listen up! It’s the man I want, not the seal. And we do have things to talk about. So, if you can’t talk in this form . . . especially if you can’t . . . well, you know what I mean . . . change back.”

The selkie nudged her, in a rather sweetly apologetic way, toward the falls, and swam sinuously alongside as she began to swim, feeling very ungraceful beside him, in the direction he indicated. He obviously restrained himself to keep pace with her. He was so graceful, so powerful, and the touch of his fine fur against her was unfairly sensual. She increased the speed of her own stroke. She couldn’t wait to get to the privacy of the place behind the falls: she couldn’t wait to get him back into a
useful
form.

He dove under the falls and she followed, escaping the battering of the water. They surfaced together but Sean-Selkie seemed to ooze up the bank and stood there, proud in his altered form, so that she could admire him. All of him. Then he shook himself and the transformation she had seen once before, near the cave where they had taken refuge from the volcano, began.

“I get it, Sean,” she murmured, a trifle apologetic. “You wanted me to see you in all your glory. And you are glorious,” she added, smiling as the man emerged. She went to him, stroking skin instead of fur, and twining herself around him as his selkie self had done to her in the water.

“Give me a moment to adjust, will you?” he said, laughing, holding her tightly against his wet skin.

Yana gave a sniff. “As far as I’m concerned, you are adjusted.” She glanced down significantly.

“Ah, but a selkie makes love differently than a man,” he said, murmuring into her ear and nibbling her throat

“How differently? I’m game.”

It
was
decidedly different, wildly sensual, and extremely satisfying, and took rather more time than she had assumed, knowing something of “animal” behavior. She hadn’t known nearly enough to prepare her for all of the loving possibilities of Sean’s dual nature, both animal and man, but he understood himself thoroughly and was most adept at using all of his resources to guide her into uncharted channels of pleasure. It took her a
long
time to slow her pulse and heart rate and come, slightly unwillingly, back to the other reason they had gone off.

“We have to do our part in this scheme, you know,” she said, looking up at Sean’s face. They were still interlocked; it was comforting and comfortable and she didn’t really want to break the mood, but the dutiful part of her character prodded her into “active duty” now that the R&R was over.

“Which scheme?” he asked, smiling lasciviously down at her. “All right, all right,” he said, easily warding off the fist she shot up at him. His hands were very strong. “First we have to find out where Johnny Greene and Rick O’Shay are. Would Fiske Junior have it in for them for their part in seeing you all got into the special place?”

She sighed. “That’s what we have to find out. If Adak’ll let me use the comm unit, I can probably roust them out of wherever they are—BOQ on SpaceBase, probably.”

“Both Johnny and Rick
believe
in Petaybee,” Sean said, musing aloud, his fingers playing an idle tattoo on her shoulder, “or they wouldn’t have helped us then. So, perhaps they’ll help us again. How hard would it be for them to abscond with a copter or two?”

Yana shrugged. “Both struck me as pretty clever. Copter pilots tend to be a tad devious. If they could stash enough fuel in a cache somewhere, they could help us and still appear to be on duty at the base. No matter how you slice it, it’s going to take a few days for Marmion and that bald buzzard to organize themselves and their escort, so we have a few days. Unless Torkel clamps down on all SpaceBase activity.”

“How can he do that when the place is in such a mess? They’ve still got folks to rescue from mudslides and stuff.”

“Good point, Sean, so the sooner we get in touch with Johnny and Rick, the better. We can provide for
our
expeditions before Torkel knows we’re setting them up.”

“Fiske Junior doesn’t strike me as a forgetful man. Would he have thought of that, and slapped a hold on all unauthorized copter runs?”

Yana thought. “If he has, Whittaker still carries more clout than Junior. I know Whittaker will help as much as he can.” Then she laughed, her chest heaving against his. “Junior! Don’t ever call Torkel that in his hearing, Sean.”

Sean’s eyes sparkled with malice. “No? When we need every advantage we’ve got?”

The expression on his face, her current position, and the word “advantage” warned Yana that she’d better curtail this session right now or they’d lose a lot more time. She hoped they hadn’t dallied too long already. But it had been . . . remarkable. Resolutely she pushed him away and got to her feet.

“Adak is our first stop, Sean,” she said in a don’t-contradict-me tone.

“Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am. As you say, ma’am.”

She gave him one long look in her sternest mode before she realized that this respite might have to last both of them a long time.

She went into his arms. “Oh, Sean Shongili Selkie, I do love you so much!”

“I, you, alannah,” he said softly and kissed her. But it was a kiss of exceeding gentleness and no passion whatsoever. He, too, accepted the inevitable.

“We can do a lot together,” she offered as a token apology.

“We already have,” he said, laughing. But his hand on her back guided her firmly out of their private retreat.

Coaxtl must be a very bad animal, Goat-dung realized, or he would have devoured such a wicked person as herself instead of sharing his catch of small game with her as if she were a cub. Maybe Coaxtl wasn’t male. Goat-dung sneaked a look. It was hard to tell. The cat was extremely furry, with extra tufts on the ears and a thick, bushy tail. Its coat was dense and very soft-looking; the coloring white with large spots of different sizes, according to the muscle they were on: long rectangular ones on the neck, big circular ones on the shoulders, smaller, more regular ones on the abdomen, all shaded from gray to black, blurred and clouded by the length and thickness of the fur. The paws were also extremely large, though the face was sweet, with large golden eyes and a black nose and black-lipped mouth that seemed to be perpetually smiling. The cat
looked
female enough to Goat-dung, and there was nothing obvious showing under the belly to convince her otherwise, so she decided that she knew the reason why the
cat hadn’t eaten her. It was because Coaxtl was a
mother
cat, and probably she had lost her kittens and was willing to accept Goat-dung as a substitute. That must be why. The cat certainly showed no compunction about killing anything else.

With a mighty leap and a swipe of a muscular foreleg, a deft hook of the paw and a single economical crunch, the cat had bagged each victim—three snow geese and a brace of rabbits. When the final kill was made, Coaxtl sat with the rabbits at her feet and looked expectantly at Goat-dung, who took it she was being invited to partake.

“I—I can’t eat raw meat,” she said. Even hungry as she was, she really didn’t think she could. Life was hard in the flock, but they plucked their birds and skinned their animals before cooking. She looked around at the awful openness of the mountain meadows and thought of the Shepherd Howling and the beating she would get if she was found—and, worse, having to be the Shepherd’s wife and all that meant. “Besides, I don’t want to be in the open. Can’t we go back to the cave?”

Coaxtl gave her a long golden-eyed stare. Goat-dung wished the cat would speak to her again—not that the beast spoke actual words out loud. But Goat-dung
heard
words in her mind, and while the big cat’s conversation was terse, it was conversation, and it was not angry or accusatory, which was the sort Goat-dung was used to. It wasn’t that the cat
liked
her precisely, but Coaxtl did not so far appear to
dis
like her. Of course, people in the flock never said that they disliked her. On the contrary, they all claimed to love her and said they were pointing out the error of her ways so that she would not become a victim to the evils of the world, but they did indicate, by deed and word, that they thought the task of trying to save her was quite hopeless.

She followed the cat back along the swollen streambed to the cavern. The snow had not all melted by any means, and now, suddenly, the air was colder, and the light drizzle that had been falling throughout the day turned to sleet, then snow. Only partially dressed in wet rags, Goat-dung began shivering so hard that she had difficulty walking.

The cave was warmer, perhaps warmed by the water pooling in its center. But it was not warm enough to combat the temperature dropping as night approached. She needed a fire to keep her from freezing as well as to cook her food.

Coaxtl took the rabbits in her mouth and hopped lightly onto the ledge, looking down at Goat-dung, who stood knee deep in the pool on the floor. The birds were clutched in her hand.

Coaxtl had already torn the head off one of the rabbits. Goat-dung looked back up defiantly.

“Well, I’m sorry, cat, but this water leaves me no place to stand and no place to eat the birds even if I wanted to eat them uncooked with all the feathers on. I know I’m spoiled and selfish, but I’m also cold, and I think if I don’t have a fire I really will die.”

This time the cat did speak.
Youngling—I will not call you Goat-dung if you are in my charge. That is no fit name for a cub. Names are important and having yours, I am charged not to eat you but really, who would want to eat someone named Goat-dung anyway? You must choose another name. I digress . . . Youngling, you seem to have trouble making up your mind what will kill you. Out on the plains you feared the openness. In here you say you are cold and cannot take the water. Probably beyond in the cave it is warmer. You could explore, like any other cub, and leave me in peace to finish the meal I have so graciously provided.

“Beyond lies the Great Monster,” Goat-dung said, and then realized that she didn’t care. “Very well, I will go alone, but it is dark back there and I may become lost and die, as well.”

You are inconveniently frail,
the cat growled, abandoning the bird to hop down from the ledge with a splash.
Follow me. I will not endure this string of constant complaints.

Goat-dung knew she was disgusting and whining and weak, but at least Coaxtl had not yet cuffed her, even with sheathed claws, much less bitten or clawed her. That was an improvement over the Shepherd and his flock.

The cat padded rapidly ahead, and for a time Goat-dung could follow by the splashing of the big paws in the pool; but then her own, now bare, feet touched dryness, and the cat’s pads were nothing but a whisper that soon disappeared. “Coaxtl! Where are you?” she called. “I can’t see you.”

Can you not? Silly cub. I’m right in front of your eyes.

“Yes, but I can’t see in the dark.”

Can you not?
the cat asked, her voice in Goat-dung’s head genuinely surprised.
No fur, a stupid name, no claws, puny teeth that can’t bite through feathers, and half-blind as well. You would have been better off if I’d eaten you, child.