Power Lines (30 page)

16

“It’s a cat, common domestic Terran-type feline, female, weighing just above a kilo, which makes it somewhat larger,” the veterinary surgeon said after doing every test he could think of on the limp orange-striped body that had been brought in. “Scanner shows no unusual organs, average brain size, average everything, except a dense fur of several layers, probably a requirement to survive in the temperatures you say exist in winter on this planet. It does have large ears, with more fur growing across—doubtless to prevent snow getting in—and a phenomenal length of whiskers. It does have heavily callused paw pads, with hair growing between the toes, and a long-haired tail, but I’ve never seen a healthier animal. And I can’t find
anything
out of the ordinary about it, given its environment. For instance, the hair between the paws would make it easier to travel over snow.”

“You have the report?” Ivan asked. The vet tapped one key of his handheld pad, and a narrow, long sheet inched its way out of the paper slot. He handed it to Ivan. “Thank you.”

“What do I do with that cat?”

Ivan hesitated. He knew what Matthew had ordered, but what had the cat done to him? “Keep it under observation. Maybe awake, it will show some deviations.”

The vet shrugged and gave a small snort. “Cats are deviant, and devious, by nature. Exactly
what
sort of aberrant behavior is this one supposed to exhibit when conscious? I mean, give me a clue to know what to watch out for.”

“Maybe one isn’t enough,” Ivan muttered under his breath, then added louder, “No other squad caught one?”

“No other’s been brought in to me.” The vet stifled a yawn.

Another was brought in two hours later, only it wasn’t a cat: it was a crossbreed feline that the vet couldn’t find mention of in his files. It was nearly the size of the lions that had once roved Africa, had a thick coat of dense fur with a clouded-spot design, had the fangs and retractable claws of a tiger, and had to be tranked again before the vet and the four troopers struggling with the half-aware creature could put it under the scan.

Awed by its size, beauty, and uniqueness, the vet, when Matthew Luzon himself came for his report, could only verify that this was an unusual breed of feline.

“In what way?” Matthew asked with an edge to his voice that put the vet on the alert.

“Size, color, density of fur, condition, in that most feral animals are less well nourished,” he answered, shrugging.

“No unusual organs? The size of the brain?”

“Normal for the size of the skull certainly.” Suddenly the vet decided not to mention that that was the one particular in which the animal varied from any other specimen in the genus: its skull was larger, to accommodate the larger brain.

“Destroy it,” Matthew said. “And do an autopsy. I’m looking for a scientific explanation of the so-called communication link these creatures have with the humans here. Implants, maybe.”

“Sir, for that sort of information wouldn’t behavioral observation be more—”

“Destroy it! Do I have to give orders twice?”

“No, sir,” The vet wheeled around and made a show of filling a syringe and plunging the sterile water into the back of the neck. There were certain orders he would not obey, not with the oath he had taken as a young idealist who planned to catalog marvelous new alien life-forms. “Takes about twenty minutes, sir, with an animal this size.”

But Matthew Luzon had already left the surgery and the vet wondered where the hell he could safely dispose of a sleeping animal this size without being noticed. He was still running through alternatives a half hour later when a major, with two soldiers, one a massive man and the other a mere slip of a lad, appeared at the door, saying they had orders to collect a dead animal. Reluctantly, he showed them the unconscious beast and desperately hoped that the second trank would wear off soon enough that the creature could escape being buried alive. Sometimes the favors one tried to do could boomerang.

He was very unhappy with what had seemed like a routine mission. None of the animals that had passed through his facility that day had been unusual except for their obvious adaptations to the climatic conditions of this peculiar place—although the purpose of that extra bony layer on the nose of the curly-coated stallion still puzzled him. The interior nasal flap was listed as a characteristic of the breed and kept icy winds from penetrating to their lungs. And now Luzon was intimating that the creatures might be—well, psychic! He never willingly destroyed an animal wantonly, and certainly not a psychic one!

Utterly depressed, he went to the cubicle allotted to him and tried to sleep. He woke up, even more depressed, for his dream had been about a clouded leopard running across a snowy waste, its effortless stride as graceful as it was powerful.

Awake, Coaxtl found, one had a dreadful thirst. One’s body was slightly sore with pricks, scrapings, and bruisings, and one’s senses were dull. Rolling over, one ducked one’s head because of the low bushes under which one lay. A sniff brought no useful information as to one’s location. The pursuers, men who rattled as they ran and shouted, were gone, though Coaxtl seemed to remember them being close enough to pounce. No mind. Now they were gone.

Unfortunately, the youngling was gone as well, still, and if Coaxtl had escaped the men, they had triumphed in preventing Coaxtl from finding the youngling.

Coaxtl had seen the little female forced into a huge bird machine, bigger than the terrible creature that had carried Coaxtl, the youngling, the seal-man, and his mate to this land where the youngling was to live with her kin. Where the black-and-white Nanook had been interested in one as a mate. Nanook had had much to tell Coaxtl, who had listened with growing wonder. More than “Home” was changing, it would seem. “Home” had indeed altered, if one could be so robbed of sense and then dumped unceremoniously under a thicket.

There was, however, some snow still left in the center of the shrubbery, and Coaxtl licked at it. The cool silvery water relieved the nasty, stinging taste and dryness in one’s mouth, while the cold snow and the water seeping into one’s fur revived one further.

Food would be a good thing. One lifted one’s head and sniffed, sneezed. Too many humans, too many bad smells. Nothing appetizing nearby. Through the wind and the distant man-made noises came the rush of water. Water always held fish, and fish were edible. Yes, one could quite easily snag many fish on clever, swift claws and relieve one’s hunger. Then one could plan what to do next. Finding Nanook would be best. This was his territory. He would know where to seek the youngling.

As dawn broke over the low hills and the new volcano, Coaxtl scooped the fourth large fish from the icy river waters, then continued standing, motionless until more unsuspecting aquatic shapes passed nearby. Coaxtl had eaten well by the time the sun was up.

Marmion did sleep well, but more because of Sean’s infallible confidence than Sally’s reassurance about demonstrable facts. When she woke the next morning, she was more than ready for the battle about to ensue.

She was not ready for Sally bursting into her room, her eyes wide with fright.

“They did it. Gathered up every one of the people Luzon calls ‘renegades and traitors,’ using the commissioners’ shuttles and troops we didn’t even suspect were on board them,” she said in a spurt. “They’ve got them in detention cells on the far side of the field.”

“Whittaker?” Marmion experienced an unusual pang of fear. Had she outsmarted herself last night? Whittaker would never have gone along with that sort of a ploy.

“No, he’s free, and so are Frank and Diego Metaxos, and I told Faber to stay with them. Millard’s dogging Whittaker, who is furious!”

Marmion bit her lower lip, ranging through alternative plans. “Who, exactly, did they seize in such a highly irregular procedure?”

“Only half the damned planet, including the wildlife,” Sally said. By the time she had completed the list, Marmion found herself grinding her teeth.

She launched herself out of her bed toward the bathroom. “Get me my usual, and buckets of coffee, and what channel are we using this morning on our personal units?”

Sally gave her the frequency. “And I’m making your breakfast with my own hands,” she said as she departed.

That made Marmion pause at the threshold of her bath. Surely Matthew . . . No, he wouldn’t, but Bal wouldn’t be beyond it. The ploy of detaining the persons the commission would call before them was a matter she
could
—and
would
—protest, since none of them could be proven guilty of any action against Intergal, unless a passive resistance was now considered a crime. All the
active
resistance had come from the planet. And Intergal doubted that this world had a mind of its own! She allowed herself a rather ruthless smile, one that had many times alarmed business colleagues who opposed her, as the hot shower water completed the process of waking her up. She was already clothed and discreetly made up by the time Sally arrived with a laden tray.

“Place is in an uproar, dama,” Sally reported, her usually cheery demeanor rather forced today. “All of Matthew’s lovelies running about with streamers of hard copy, all of which seems to upset them for some reason. I saw Braddock Makem taking one of the others to task for coming up with results that were the opposite of what Luzon had ordered. Couldn’t find out much more. The place is as well guarded as a first-touchdown camp, and more troops were shuttled in from, I think, the CISS
Prometheus
.”

Marmion paused in the act of pouring her first, badly needed cup of coffee. She stared at Sally, aghast. “They’ve called in a CISS cruiser? But they’re not authorized to call in CIS until this matter has gone through committee and up the chain of command. Otherwise, of course, I’d have preempted them and already called in CIS myself.”

“You might remember, dama, that the captain of the
Prometheus
is a nephew of Vice-Chairman Luzon.”

“Scuttled, are we?” Challenge only made Marmion sharper. “We’ll just
see
about this!”

“I must also inform you, dama—” Sally’s face was sad and angry. “I heard that a large clouded feline was seen being wheeled into the veterinary surgery early this morning.”

“Ah, not Coaxtl!” Marmion took a deep breath and, eyes glittering, added fiercely, “It’s bad enough that the humans of this world have to be mauled and pushed around like pawns, but when the beautiful animals are . . . Well, there’s a thing or two Patrick Matthew Olingarch-Luzon will not want to hear as public gossip back at Space Station One-Thirty-One!” She downed the coffee in one gulp, poured another cup, and then went to the work desk and her terminal.

17

Yana was roughly aroused by an imperative hard shaking and looked up to see two of the Omnicron troopers, truncheons in their hands. One of them gestured for her to get up. When she went toward her clothes, they each caught an elbow. She shrugged, as much as she could in their grip, and did her best to match their long strides down the hall to the end and an open door, through which she was pushed with sufficient strength to propel her several meters into the room. The smell and the appurtenances told her it was medical. A male orderly swung through the open door on the right, a paper shift in his hands. He gave it to her and gestured to the screen.

She took it with a flicker of a smile. The silent treatment continued as she stepped out from behind the screen and was marched, strong fingers gripping her elbow, through the open door.

CAT scan, she thought as she saw the huge cylinder, and she nearly burst out laughing, remembering Marmion’s observation that Clodagh would never fit in that, though the circumference of the equipment was wide enough for most human bodies.

She endured the prodding and probing, took the jars and produced the specimens, and had rather a lot of blood samples taken. She was crowned with the metal band of one of the more sophisticated brain-function devices she’d ever seen and sat through that while her reflexes were tested and she was pricked with more needles and had patches slapped on and pulled off. The doctor who performed the gynecological examination did a double take when he realized she was pregnant—at her age!—but murmured automatic reassurances that the fetus seemed to be in good shape. She was put up on a treadmill; and as it moved, she had to run faster and faster to keep from falling. When they stopped that test, she was barely puffing—and rather pleased that she was so fit. She waited passively, while the various medics had a huddle. The oldest of them, and he couldn’t be more than her own age, finally gestured to the orderly and she was taken back to collect her underwear and then marched back to her cell.

She reckoned the examination had taken approximately an hour. As she put her underwear back on, she grinned, thinking of the CAT scan and the treadmill, which wouldn’t accommodate either Clodagh or Aisling. She put the medical gown on again, rolled up in the blanket, and tried to get more sleep. She hoped the others, no doubt undergoing the same procedures, weren’t unnerved by the silent treatment, which was supposed to demoralize the recipient. She wondered who else had been grabbed in the midnight snatches and finally fell asleep listing them in her head.

An earsplitting siren hooted her awake and she dressed quickly, not wishing to be caught again. A ration bar and a plastic cup of water were delivered by a silent guard while another watched, idly tapping his left hand with the truncheon. She said nothing as she accepted the food. She did, however, sniff the water before taking a sip to roll around in her mouth; but it was good Petaybee water, and the ration bar was standard Intergal in its original wrapping, complete with bar-coding. To her practiced eye, she read an expired date, but that oddly reassured her that nothing had been “treated.”

She was sitting cross-legged, doing some relaxation exercises, when she felt the rumble under her buttocks: faint but definitely a seismic tremor.

“Good ol’ Petaybee, you’re not letting them get away with this, are you!”

“No talking!” The command was issued from a hidden speaker.

Yana reprimanded herself for not thinking to look for a bug, but of course they’d be listening in on all their prisoners, testing the efficacy of the silent treatment on the various personalities.

“Whatever!” she murmured, just to be contrary.

Commissioner Matthew Luzon had been awakened at two o’clock by Braddock as the first of the medical reports was presented. They proceeded to spew out of the remote printer in his office at regular intervals. He noted that Major Yanaba Maddock was two months pregnant and wondered just how he could use that fact to best advantage. He ignored the fact that she was in excellent physical health, no sign of the lung-tissue damage that had discharged her from active service. That was a harder issue to make viable to his needs.

Sean Shongili, too, was in excellent physical shape. The scan showed the largest of the cerebral nodes yet noticed, also, the largest brown fat concentration and an enlarged pancreas. His toes and fingers were abnormally long but could not be considered either an adaptation or a mutation; the slight increase in digital webbing was odd, but not entirely exceptional. They had been unable to get clear readings of his internal organs—the medic claimed that slight earth tremors prevented him from being able to calibrate the machine properly the whole time Shongili was being tested—but these were evidently functioning normally according to other forms of testing.

Matthew, who knew what he had seen at the Vale of Tears, had his suspicions about the internal organs, but realized he might have to win his case before he could take Shongili off-planet where sufficiently extensive invasive tests could be performed. He knew the man was not normal, but none of the tests he could legally conduct here provided enough data. Just little things: a slight anomaly in configuration noted that Shongili’s torso was inappropriately longer than his legs. If his leg bones had grown in proportion to his body, he would have been several inches taller. This was not considered unduly important, but his unusual lung capacity was, along with a high metabolic rate while his blood pressure was on the low side of normal.

They had been unable to scan the woman, Clodagh Senungatuk, and had barely managed to fit her sister, Aisling, in the device. While obese in medical terms, the women were also in excellent health and, since Aisling Senungatuk had a well-developed node and five hundred grams of brown fat, it could be concluded that her unscannable elder sister was similarly endowed.

Analysis was continuing on the various liquids and powders found in Clodagh Senungatuk’s house, but so far they tested as herbal, with some minerals, mineral salts, and occasional animal-protein additives. Nothing toxic or poisonous had yet been found. When questioned on the usage of various items, the subject had answered willingly and at some length, describing preparation when asked and the places where she obtained the ingredients. The biochemists in charge of this aspect of the investigation were clearly impressed by the almost sophisticated pharmaceuticals available in such a primitive society. In the course of questioning her, it was learned that Senungatuk’s great-grandparents had been the resident biochemists during the initial seeding of flora and fauna on Terraform B, working with the elder Dr. Shongili. Senungatuk had an exceptional memory and, although she reeled off by rote long passages of biochemical procedures, she obviously
understood
the material she recited.

Matthew Luzon excised that section from the report. In fact, if the medical procedures hadn’t also been intended to demoralize the renegades, he would have stopped the examinations as a waste of time. The “splendid physical health” was not at issue and was not to last long in the conditions to which he intended to send them all—if what Maddock had told Torkel was true: and Shepherd Howling’s unexpected demise upheld his theory. He was rubbing his hands together in pleasure when he felt the rumbling under his feet. That gave him a moment’s pause. But only a moment. Seismic activity was no proof of sentience, as Whittaker and some others claimed. It only proved that the Terraform B program had developed unforeseen problems. On the other hand, he now had plenty of proof of subversion and sabotage among the inhabitants
and
a premeditated homicide in the deaths of the four shanachies. He also had proof that the belief in the sentience of this rock was not at all universal.

“Braddock,” he called. The young man appeared immediately. “Find out how widespread this seismic activity is and how long it will last. I don’t want it affecting the conference time slot.”

Braddock gave him a startled look, then said an obedient “Yes, sir” and ducked away.

Matthew then turned to some of the other reports his minions had been organizing. The demographics were not what he had anticipated. The first settlers had been from mixed Eskimo-Irish, Scandinavians, Sherpans, Andean Indians, Slays, Somalis, Afghans, and a handful or two of other inconvenient people who had had to be removed. Most of those he considered “renegades” were Eskirish, a really absurd combination in terms of melding violence and resourcefulness. Whatever had the original Intergal committee been thinking of to allow such interbreeding!

The most recent colonists, whom he had hoped would be untouched by the local superstitions, so resented their resettlement that they had been remarkably uncooperative. They would prove hostile witnesses even if they hadn’t fallen under the mass hallucination that the planet was self-aware. They were not interested in working in mines, even at the wages Matthew, in the name of Intergal, had offered: they were interested in either getting off Petaybee or, failing that, in surviving the next year. He must find out why George, Ivan, and Hans had completely ignored the possibilities in that wish. Not like them to miss an opportunity. If he’d had a little more time, he might have used the wedge to his advantage. He did have a Scotsman on hand, antagonistic or not, and Ascencion—now that she had been thoroughly bathed and properly clothed—as witnesses that not all settlements believed as the people of Kilcoole did. But the time spent gathering most of these reports had been wasted. He tossed them
aside and picked up the files dealing with the four recently deceased shanachies.

This was more like it. Each of them, Satok, Reilly, Soyuk, Clancy, and Shepherd Howling, had been leaders of their communities and actively trying to find the ores that Intergal knew lay below the surface of the planet Torkel could verify that Satok had showed him rich samples. Satok had also found an ingenious way to neutralize the “mesmeritic” effect of the caves by the use of Petraseal, before his work had been sabatoged by what Matthew suspected was the deliberate planting of coo-brambles, which had not only broken through the Petraseal, but had murdered Satok as well. Clearly an attempt to discredit the technique, as well as silence its innovator.

Not that that murder had worked! Matthew grinned. That woman would be punished. And it had only proved that the metals were there, in these so-called “communion” caves. Of course, it was entirely typical of primitive peoples, or regressed ones, to designate valuable areas as somehow “taboo” to scientific study and use. But such thinking was backward and counterproductive on a company facility such as this planet. Part of Matthew’s mission was to expose such cultural backwardnesses for what they were and suggest reform programs to reeducate the natives while helping the company make maximum use of the resources.

Usually he felt no personal involvement whatsoever, merely a sense of satisfaction at a mission well done. But Petaybee—Terraform B—irritated him. If he had any influence at all, and he did have—a nephew captaining the CISS
Prometheus
specifically—no matter what any one of these primitives said or did or claimed that the planet said or did, it would be mined of every ounce worth even a half credit.

He’d sent Torkel Fiske to find at least one vein of ore—anything would do, copper, iron, manganese, silver, gold, platinum, germanium—in the underground passages to prove that the indigenous people had deliberately kept Intergal scientists and engineers from locating the ores; that there had been a long-standing passive resistance and discreet sabotage to prevent Intergal from reaping the financial rewards of its investment in the terraforming process. He had also sent a team to Shannonmouth with metal detectors to find where the traitors had hidden the ores they had clandestinely taken from Satok’s shuttle. He would heavily emphasize how long these Petaybeans had been bilking Intergal of its rightful gains.

That sort of accusation would strike a punitive chord in the minds of men like Bal Jostique and Nexim Shi-Tu, and quite likely affect Chas’s known softheartedness. Marmie’s little supercilious smirk last night over their bad investment had not endeared her to Bal and Nexim.

His nephew was standing by in the CISS
Prometheus.
All the troops on SpaceBase now were strangers to this planet and incorruptible, and the Petaybee-born troops that Torkel had unwittingly ordered in before had been rounded up and confined to barracks. The two arrogant copter pilots were incarcerated as well for their obstructionism and would face a court-martial for their crafty dodges. The only drawback to his revenge on O’Shay and Greene was that they wouldn’t suffer from immune deficiencies as much as the other Petaybeans soon to be removed from their “beloved” planet.

Marmion, too, felt the rumbling through the thick carpet and smiled. Just what could the planet do to impress the unimpressible, who had seen it all, done it all? Only they hadn’t, had they? She gave a light laugh, although she could not ignore the cramping of her stomach muscles as the time for the meeting approached.