Power Lines (11 page)

“Is there any chance that the planet’s intelligence can be
proved?
Without scientific doubt?”

“Early spring, volcanoes, and earthquakes aren’t proof enough?” Clodagh asked.

“I am not the only person investigating the unusual occurrences on Petaybee, Clodagh,” Marmion began slowly. “Is there someplace, someone you could visit, somewhere inaccessible? For a week or so?”

“What for?” Clodagh stared at Marmion as if she’d lost her mind, then rose indignantly half out of her seat. “Why should I leave? When Kilcoole needs me the most it’s ever?” She plumped down again, her jaw set, spreading her fingers possessively and protectively on the table’s surface. “No, ma’am. I stay! I stay
here!
No one’s moving me from
my
home!”

“No, I don’t guess that would be easy, Clodagh, but impossible it is not, I fear.” Marmion leaned across the table to the healer. “If somehow, I could . . . experience . . . the planet myself . . .”

“Like Whit and the others did in the cave?” Clodagh asked, relaxing a bit more but crossing her arms firmly across her formidable bosom.

“Yes, something subjective so that I can come down as heavily on your side as possible.”

“Ah!” Clodagh said. “So you can stand for us against whatsisname, the one Yana calls the buzzard.”

“His name’s Matthew Luzon, Clodagh,” Whittaker Fiske said with a not-quite-reproving grin as he appeared in the doorway. He paused to wipe the clods of mud off his boots, mopping his sweaty forehead as well, before he entered. “Do I smell cinnamon buns? I do.” Snaking a cup from the many hanging underneath the wall cabinet, he sat down at the table, angling the chair so he didn’t have his back to Faber. He poured coffee and took two big bites out of the cinnamon roll from the plate Clodagh passed him. “We’re lucky you decided to come, Marmie. You’ve got more common sense in one strand of your hair than Luzon has in that egg head of his,
but
—” and Whit emphasized that with a pound of his fist on the table.

Marmion noted the crumbs jumping on the surface. How
would
a planet do such a thing on a larger scale? Shift tectonic plates? But those shifts were minute and occurred under specific conditions . . . She turned her attention back to Whit.

“
But
 . . . the one we have to contend with is Matthew Luzon, and you know what he’s like. He’s never been one to let the truth, even if his nose is rubbed in it, stand in the way of his preconceived notions. If you hadn’t come, Marmie, I’d’ve—no, by God, I
wouldn’t
have left Petaybee.” The fist came down again.

“If, however, Whit, we—Faber and I, plus Sally and Millard—can be convinced, we are a united force on
your
side.”

Whit inhaled deeply, obviously mulling over the arguments for and against. “They’d say you’d flipped, Marmie.”

“Ha! I’ve too many PIHP—that stands for persons in high places, Clodagh—for even Matthew to succeed. But it is
he
who has to be convinced.”

“Convincing
that
man will take considerable effort, time, and probably a miracle, although we’ve had the next best thing to one, and that doesn’t seem to have impressed him either.” Whit paused, his shoulders slumping in momentary defeat. He saw Clodagh’s eyes on him and straightened up, his attitude once more decisive. “We’ll just have to outwit him.”

“Or,” Faber put in, turning to Clodagh, “let the planet do it?”

She pulled at her lower lip. “A man doesn’t hear what he doesn’t want to hear. Your son’s like that, too, Whit, sorry as I am to say it to your face.”

“I’m sorry, as well, Clodagh, but for your sake, not mine.”

“Matthew’s not begun his investigations,” Marmion said, breaking off pieces of another cinnamon bun and chewing to aid her thoughts, “so we’ve a little time in hand. He loves to have plenty of hard copy to support his claims even before he makes them. He’s got all those physically fit young men running about SpaceBase. I wonder . . .” She turned to Faber. “I wonder if
they’d
be the place to start. And as soon as possible. We’ll leave Braddock Makem till last. I thought at first I might win him over, but since then I’ve noticed that he apparently rather relishes Matthew’s brand of management, instead of resenting it as one would expect. Indeed, of all of the minions, he appears to be the most in accord with Matthew and the least open-minded. Doing the others first will slow Matthew down to a crawl.” She began to smile at everyone around the table, as she popped the last of her roll into her mouth and happily chewed it down.
“Well, let’s get started. Clodagh?”

8

Dinah heard the noise before Bunny, footsteps coming down from the hill above. The dog strained forward, listening, doing the whine-yip, whine-yip that preceded her full-throated “woo-wooing” cry.

Bunny, still feeling queasy from her experience in the cave, held on to a handful of brush to pull herself to her feet. She heard Dinah scrabbling up the path, icy rock slipping under her paws.

“What is it, girl?” Bunny began, turning toward the sound of the dog. But about then, Dinah yipped and fell silent.

“Dinah?” Bunny whispered into the dense shadows, reaching for the comforting warmth of the dog’s coarse thick fur “Dinah?”

Her outstretched hand was suddenly clasped in a vise and Satok stepped out of the shadows.

“Sláinte, pretty Shongili snocle driver. How sweet of you to come and meet me. Where’s your boyfriend?”

“What have you done to Dinah?” she hollered at him. “Let go of my hand.”

Instead, he captured the other one. “The dog? I knocked her fraggin’ skull shut. She should know better than to bark at the shanachie. The other dogs learned. Go ahead, scream. I’m waiting for your boyfriend to come to the rescue, and then I can send him to keep his dog company.”

Bunny did scream, and kicked, and hollered, but the whole time he dragged her up the path to his house, no lamps lit in the darkness of the village below, no faces peered out windows or doors to see what the commotion was about. Not at the Connellys’, nor anywhere else.

As he dragged her away, her hand brushed against Dinah’s still warm fur, sticky with what could only be the faithful dog’s blood.

But the boys must have heard her. They must have.

Once, she thought she saw the shine of coppery eyes from one of the surrounding rocks, but otherwise, there was no witness to her abduction at all.

When they were well above the village and beyond the cave mouth and no help appeared, she decided to save her strength for later, and allowed herself to be led with only token resistance to the man’s house.

Several outbuildings dotted the rocky mountain meadow where the sturdy stone house stood. It was the finest Bunny had ever seen, without a bit of scavenged material in its makeup. Thick stone walls, a roof of some sturdy material Bunny recognized from her trips to SpaceBase as similar to the stuff on the barracks buildings, and real windows of thick plasglas, heavily draped.

A high corral fence contained many curlies, among them Diego’s Cisco and Bunny’s Darby. A team of dogs, snarling and snapping and for all their red fur as unlike the gentle and intelligent foxhounds of Kilcoole as they were unlike caribou, were tied in the open, a short distance from the house. She could smell the filth of their leavings even through the icy wind.

Satok misinterpreted her lack of struggle and perusal of his holdings.

“Ah, so you’re impressed, eh? Well, girl, all this comfort and luxury can be at your disposal if you’re nice and do as you’re told. Come in now, while the night is still young.”

She tried to struggle again, but he was very much stronger and she was in the wrong position. She knew that once he got her indoors, her chances of escape and her danger from him were much greater, but she also thought that perhaps the secret of his hold over these people who wouldn’t come help a girl when she was screaming bloody murder was inside this fine house.

She was surprised at herself, at how analytical and calculating she was being. Her anger at what he had done to Dinah, to the planet, and to these people had turned to cold calmness, as cold as the profound loneliness she had felt in the cave. It was even lonelier here, with a man who had to be crazy to even attempt to do this to the planet. Bunny knew that she needed to keep her wits about her, if she was going to learn what she needed to and keep him from killing Diego and Krisuk as ruthlessly as he had murdered Dinah.

He hauled her indoors. She didn’t give up all show of reluctance, feeling that that would alert him, and indeed, she had trouble suppressing the panic she felt at being alone with him in his house.

The first thing she thought was it was no wonder he wanted a woman there. The place was a mess. The second thought she had was that it was an interesting mess. She hadn’t known there was this much technical gear on Petaybee outside of SpaceBase and, maybe, Sean’s lab.

Two computers and a vast array of hand tools, scales, and rock samples were interspersed with bones, a couple of small skulls, feathers, and desiccated bits of animals. She noted that there was a wide choice of objects that would make good weapons.

The tools were spread across several makeshift tables, but there was no proper eating table, and no chairs, though there were cooking facilities—greasy and covered with dirty utensils—and a large mattress spread on the floor.

Once inside, Satok released her and she edged as far away from that mattress as possible, though she’d had enough run-ins with her pubescent cousins to know that a mattress was not strictly required for her to be in deep dogshit.

Before he could say anything, she decided how to act in the same deliberate way she decided what to do when she was stranded on her snocle, or she and her dogs were attacked by a moose. She wouldn’t provoke him until necessary. In fact, if he thought she was stupid just because she was a girl, she was prepared to let him go on thinking that for a while.

“Wow!” she said, with a nervous giggle she hoped didn’t sound too forced. “What a place!”

“What’s the matter, little Dama Shongili? Not good enough for you?” he sneered, setting his staff by the door and shedding a couple of layers of clothing.

“No, it’s
great
,” she said, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t calling her by her own name. She wasn’t sure she wanted her name in his filthy mouth, much less any of the rest of her. “I’ve never been anywhere except SpaceBase where they had
two
computers. Are they both yours?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Gosh, where’d you get them?”

“They were part of my retirement benefits,” he said and started for her, but she danced away and picked up another piece of equipment. It was fairly heavy and made of steel.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Come off it. You’re not interested in that stuff. I got something to show you over here,” he said, and grabbed his crotch.

She pretended not to notice while she was examining the heavy object more closely. “I am too interested in this stuff. I take mining expeditions out all the time and they always have the most interesting stuff. Usually they disappear before I get to see it work, though.”

“Don’t worry, baby, I’m not about to disappear. I know this planet’s ways, and I’m way too smart to fall into its traps.”

He started walking toward her and she put one of the many workbenches, little more than two sawhorses and a flat piece of junk, between her and the self-proclaimed shanachie.

“How do you do that, really?” she asked, casually, though the very thought of what he could have possibly done to the cave made her furious. But not afraid. She couldn’t afford to be afraid. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“I was born on this planet, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I know about the caves. I also know that’s the easiest access to the goodies Intergal and other companies are ready to pay big dinero for.”

“Looks like you know all about how to get those goodies too, huh?” Bunny asked with her impression of girlish enthusiasm, an imitation of her boy-crazy cousin Nuala. The technique featured opening her eyes very wide and looking a little like a rabbit that’d been suddenly blinded by the lights of an oncoming snocle. “How’d you learn to do something like that if you’re from Petaybee?”

“In the company corps, how else?” he said. “I did the standard hitch until I got in trouble. Lucky for me I managed to find more lucrative employment before my court-martial.”

“Here, you mean?”

“No, this came later, when I was ready to settle down with a good woman.”

Bunny made something that she hoped could be construed as a cooing noise. She thought it was very strange that he hadn’t found this at odds with her struggle on the way up here, but she did know that where girls were concerned, some fellows didn’t consider that logic or even thinking entered into their behavior. He probably thought she had been protesting out of form, but now that she was here she was as overwhelmed by all this stuff and his manly charms as she pretended to be.

She gave him Nuala’s one-shouldered shrug and asked hesitantly, “Well, yeah, but where then?”

“Intergal’s not the only one who can do business, baby. I joined up with an independent firm engaged in the import­export business. Ever heard of—Onidi Louchard?”

Bunny shrugged again. As long as she could keep him talking, maybe he’d say something useful. The conversation also gave her a chance to tuck something as pointed as an ice pick into the back of the band of her pants.

“Maybe,” she said in a semi-interested tone of voice to keep him talking. “I think maybe some of the soldiers mentioned that name—not a businessman though . . .”

He laughed, showing a lot of his yellowed teeth—kept strong and even by company dentistry, no doubt.

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, baby. Onidi knows supply and demand like no woman in the world.”

He seemed to be drifting off into a reverie of his own. Bunny noticed that, oddly enough, there was a rug spread across a small area of the unswept desolation of the house’s floor.

“Ah!” Bunny said. “Yeah, I remember now. She’s sort of a pirate, isn’t she . . . a black marketeer? Didn’t they say she’d supplied the gas and the arms to the rebels at Bremport?”

He seemed pleased at the recognition. “That’s her, okay.”

“Wow, you worked with
her
? That must have been so exciting. I’ve never been off—this planet—myself,” she said, managing to sound regretful.

“Oh, that can be arranged, baby. I’ll teach you a few things. Then I know lotsa people who’d be glad to show a cute little thing like you around.”

“What’s it like—out there?” she asked wistfully.

She thought she could hear sounds beneath the floor, fortunately muffled and indistinct, for Satok didn’t seem to hear them.

He picked up a bottle; not Petaybean blurry like Clodagh made, but off-planet stuff that Bunny could smell clear across the room. He locked the front door from the inside, something she had never seen anyone do before except herself when she’d had to barricade herself against her cousins. He settled down on the mattress alone with the bottle.

“You wouldn’t appreciate most of it,” he said with a lewd grin, then shrugged and gave her a hideous wink. “Or who knows, by the time I’m finished with you, maybe you will.”

Bunny suppressed a shudder and continued to inspect his tools and computer screen while he told her about whore-houses on planets in several different galaxies, not excluding the impressive tricks he’d seen performed by humanoid alien exotic entertainers with a wide variety of sex organs and practices.

The subject made her a little queasy, especially the lip-licking relish with which he related it and the way he kept eyeing her as if she were already undressed. She realized he was in no hurry at all. In fact, he seemed to be relating these stories with the expectation that she might want to try some of the things he was talking about. They did give her a good excuse to make loud, shocked exclamations, which covered up the noises coming from beneath the rug. Still trying to appear fascinated, she worked her way backward while he swigged from his bottle until she shoved a corner of the rug back with her foot. A rectangular trapdoor was concealed beneath it.

Maybe the lout would drink himself to sleep.

No such luck though. Having exhausted the topic, he kept patting the mattress, then hoisted himself up, his expression growing ugly again.

“So,” Bunny said quickly. “What made you decide to give up something as glamorous as shipping with Onidi Louchard to come back to Petaybee?”

He was less steady on his feet now than he had been, and his next words were slurred. “When my shipmates found out I was from Petaybee, they told me what idiots we all were to be sitting on the biggest cache of raw ores in the known universe and pretending it wasn’t there. I told ’em the company kept us all barefoot and pregnant, so to speak, which is what I heard all the time I was growing up here. Then I realized I’d bought into the whole Petaybee trip ever since I was a kid: how the planet doesn’t want us to take this and the planet doesn’t want us to take that.” His voice slipped into a mocking whine. “So I thought, screw the planet. The company’s going to do it sooner or later, so how about me? I knew how the planet and the people get around the company, and how the company could get around the planet and the people if it had the balls to come down and take what it wants, so I ‘borrowed’ a little company technology, showed up in one village
or another on foot, parking my shuttle out on the tundra, looking wise and finding out who might be in need of a shaman. McGee’s Pass had come in for a few of the planet’s less benign tricks and they had no shaman. I did a little recon, set up my base, and arranged for a disaster in the local communing place.”

Bunny strove to keep her voice steady and sound shocked instead of simply furious as she asked, “W-why? Why did you do that?”

“Because, the first time I saw the way raw ore looks before it comes out of the ground, I realized I’d seen it back when I was a kid and the planet was scaring the shit out of me for not being real interested in all the little mind tricks it plays on people around here. Don’t you get it? There’s a good reason your so-called elders feed you all this bunk about the communing places that makes you scared to go in there without them.”

Bunny thought he must have had a much different elder than Clodagh to think that anyone was barred from talking to Petaybee any time they felt like it, but most times people just got by on what was offered on the surface until it was time for everybody to go visiting.

“The communing places are also the entryway to the planet’s goodies. Frag it, girl, you don’t even have to dig very deep or blast your own tunnel in the surface. Ore’s right there staring at you every time you go talk to the rocks.”