Power Lines (18 page)

One thing that particularly excited Matthew was that the girl in no way resembled any of the Ghompas/Ondelacy family. Nor could he see her gray eyes and light hair as placing her among the African or Afghani residents of this sector. No, she belonged to a different ethnic group than he had seen down here thus far, and he was eager to learn if others at the Vale of Tears were as different—both in appearance and outlook—as she seemed to suggest.

He took polite leave of them that night, and spent all the next day, with only Braddock to help him, trying to find alternative air transport. Finally he settled for a snocle. He was warned that, since the thaws of autumn had lasted unusually late this year and winter was not yet fully upon the continent, they might require many detours.

“Planet should be colder in the high country though,” granted the man who rented them quite a battered machine. Luzon suspected that the man had no right to have access to one at all and, to add insult to injury, he charged them a large enough deposit to buy a small space station. Matthew smiled sourly but paid, knowing he could easily confiscate the machine if he so desired. But just now he desired to keep a low profile.

In his preparations, he had already gathered that Sierra Padre would be as fruitless as Bogota in his quest for those who didn’t speak of “the planet” or “Petaybee” as if it were a friend or neighbor or possibly a close relative. Such superstitious idiocy! He had high hopes for the girl’s Shepherd Howling, however, whose nonsense was no less superstitious but in a more useful vein for Matthew’s purposes.

Once provisions and other appropriate gear had been acquired and stowed in the machine, Matthew awaited the moment to acquire the final piece in this phase of his investigation.

The girl played right into his hands. While the other children in the huge woman’s huge family played at building a snow fort from the new snow of the night before, Goat-dung—he, at least, would give her the proper name bestowed upon her by her culture—sat alone beside a spindly birch next to the pen containing goats. Maybe there was more to her name than just a convenient identity.

Matthew strolled up to her casually, saying, “Goat-dung, I require your assistance.”

“Sir, I am told my name is now ‘Cita.”

“By those who mean it kindly but do not know the significance of your true name, yes. But you and I know that their kindness is nevertheless a falsehood, do we not? You were given your name for a reason.”

She dropped those pale calf-eyes of hers and said in a tiny voice, “Yes, sir.”

“I wish to speak to this Shepherd Howling.”

“I won’t go back there!” she said with more spirit than he thought she had left. “I won’t!”

“Of course not, of course not, my dear child. I understand your feelings. You are deeply ashamed to have left the community under a cloud, to have been unable to measure up to the simple things your shepherd required of you. But I’m sure he will forgive you and allow you to separate from the community once I explain to him that you are more valuable out here, to me.”

“To you, sir?” she asked, the hysteria fading from her voice and being replaced by awe.

“Why, yes,” he said. “I need a research assistant who is native to this planet, and who better than yourself? If you work out, I will adopt you as my daughter.”

“Your daughter, sir? This unworthy one?”

“Through hard work and appropriate behavior, you may yet become worthy. But first you must be very brave. Come along and I will show you what is required.”

She got to her feet and took his hand, with only one backward glance at the house of her erstwhile guardian. He knew very well what he was doing. By replacing the feared figure of the Shepherd Howling in her mind with himself, someone stronger, probably better spoken, and certainly more rational, he placed himself in the role of both master and protector. Oh yes, she would certainly obey him as unquestioningly as she had ever obeyed her—he smiled at the quaint crudity of the primitive notion—betrothed.

On the way back north, Johnny radioed in a coded report to Whittaker Fiske, along with an inquiry about the clouded big cat that had kept Geedee company. It wasn’t like any track-cat he’d ever seen. He received a terse acknowledgment.
“Received and acknowledged. I designed no such cat. Ask Shongili. Happy buzzard-watching. W.F.”

When Johnny finally stretched his legs at Harrison’s Fjord, Sean, Yana, Bunny, Diego, and Nanook had already started on their journey down the cave that had swallowed up Bunny’s parents twelve years before. The presence of Liam Maloney’s lead dog sleeping by the fire in the Souniks’ house naturally resulted in Johnny being brought up to date on all that had happened at McGee’s Pass.

“Satok used Petraseal to block the planet off?” Something very cold descended Johnny’s backbone. “Frag it, Fingaard. Do you know how much of that stuff is stocked at SpaceBase? Have you any idea what could happen if anyone, Matthew Luzon in particular, found out what Petraseal can do to our caves?”

Ardis’s face was stricken. “The boy, Diego, has made a song of it.”

“Well, let’s just bloody hope he doesn’t sing it.”

“He already has. What he had finished of it, at least,” Fingaard said in a deep bass whisper.

“Frag!”
was Johnny’s explosive response. He was pensive for a long moment and then, with one blink of his eyes, became the affable, carefree copter pilot they knew so well. “I’d better get back and report in. Gotta get refueled, and then I just gotta come back this weary way again. See ya!” He tipped his peaked cap at Ardis and strode back to the copter, hands in his pockets, whistling.

With Nanook padding along in front of them, occasionally taking a short tangent before coming back, the four of them made forty klicks down into the cave at Harrison’s Fjord. Within the first hour they had swung away from the path that led to the fjord’s planet place and started descending. The slope was fairly steep at first, but soon began to have an easier gradient. Once the luminescence lit their way, they had no need of the artificial hand beams and carefully stowed them away.

“This isn’t at all like the other caves I’ve been in,” Diego remarked when they reached the easier gradient.

“I doubt you’ll find two even vaguely similar,” Sean said with a smile.

“Have you been in all of them?”

“No, I haven’t. That’d take a lifetime, I think,” Sean replied with a grin. “My grandfather found the first one, more of a cleft in the rock than a real cave. He knew, of course, that there were cave systems just under the surface. That’s the way Terraform B works, but his finding the cleft was pure chance.”

“Did it lead into something like this?” Yana asked, glancing about her with the wonder and sense of welcome she always felt in a Petaybean cave.

“Not directly, according to granddad’s notes, but he didn’t have as much chance to explore as he’d liked, since he was busy doing what he could to make it easier on the animals Intergal decided would adapt well to this climate.” Sean gave a snort at Intergal’s needless arrogance. “Grandmother located the hot springs at Kilcoole and went looking for others, with my father strapped to her back to hear him tell it, and my oldest aunt—the one my sister, Aoifa, was named for—either on a sled or strapped to a curly-coat’s back. Grandmother really liked a decent hot bath every day and took one no matter how far she had to tramp to indulge herself.” Sean grinned nostalgically, as he had been a part of those forays. “I know she taught me how to swim . . .” He glanced quickly at Yana and winked. “My father and his two younger brothers found and mapped many of the caves we now know and use. I think I learned their whereabouts
before I learned to spell.”

“What happened to all your relatives?” Diego asked, rather amazed that anyone could have so many.

Bunny tried to shush him, but Sean shook his head. “What else? My younger uncles joined Intergal, and my father continued his father’s work as I continue his.”

“And the other Aoifa?” Diego was persistent

Sean drew his brows together. “We never did find out. She went off on one of her solo trips—she did a lot of hunting with her track-cats. About a year later, someone found the fur and bones of one of the cats, but we couldn’t tell how it had come to die. That was all we ever found of her?”

When they made camp for the night, Diego went off into what Bunny was beginning to call his “creative trance.” His lips moved now and then and odd sounds blurted out, but he offered no performance. One respected a singer’s concentration.

They traveled two more days, steadily downward, past lakes bordered by strange shapes, some like trees dipped in silver or gold, leaves, flowers, and all. Occasionally a mist would rise to accompany them, flowing around their feet as they moved and then, as abruptly as it had risen, disappearing. Twice they had to find their way to the narrowest parts of rushing rivers and, with Sean throwing the hook and line to some high point, swing over to the farther shore.

The fourth day down they came to a thick barrier of fallen stalagmites and stalactites, jumbled willy-nilly on top of each other like unstacked firewood. Sean recognized this from Fingaard’s description as the cave-in area. Beyond was a boom and a whooshing that suggested that the sea might have flooded in after the collapse. Sean and Diego tried to work their way over and around the various broken pieces, hacking occasionally at the molded limestone. Only Diego’s quick thinking kept Sean, in the lead, from tumbling headlong into the dark waters held back by the obstacles they had managed to pass. For a long moment, while Diego recovered his breath at Sean’s near escape from a dunking, Sean looked out across the waters, searching for some glimmer of a distant shore.

They vaguely heard the shrill voices of the women and Nanook’s odd snarl.

“We’re all right!”
Sean yelled, cupping his hands, and his cry reverberated. Then he looked chagrined when they both heard the thunder of a rockslide. “Most likely an ice calf,” Sean said in a moderate tone. “Let’s get back. They’re not in trouble, but something’s upset them.”

They found the others near one of the rock piles at the outer edge of the cave. Yana stood, hands clasped behind her back, looking down, her face bleak.

“Nanook found it,” she said, nodding to where Bunny was kneeling over some object. Yana stepped aside so that Sean could see the sobbing girl, who suddenly prostrated herself in a paroxysm of grief to touch with shaking, tear-wet fingers the heel of a booted foot. The sole of another stuck out from under a boulder of ice. Scored across the ice in all directions were the ruts of the claws of Gonish the track-cat who had vainly tried to dig the man out of his tomb. Frozen blood, still red, stained many of the deeper grooves.

Sean knelt beside Bunny, one arm around her as his other hand reached out to touch the boot; he ran his fingers along the sole and what could be seen of the ankle. The leather had long since frozen to the hardness of stone.

Finally, distressed by his silent grieving, Yana touched his shoulder. He looked up at her, tears running down his cheeks.

“We could dig . . .”she began.

Sean shook his head and rose, his arms hanging down by his sides. “He already rests in the planet.”

“Which
killed
him,” Diego blurted out, and then stepped backward from the look on Sean’s face.

Sean sighed deeply, his expression repentant as he stepped forward to touch Diego’s arm. “No, it is not a question of ‘kill’ here.”

Bunny rose then, rubbing her wet cheeks against her arms. Diego immediately went to hold her in a close embrace. She relaxed against him, her body still shaken with sobs.

“I do know that,” Diego said over her bent head to Sean. “Bunny’s showed me that even though Petaybee can be a hard planet, it’s fair. I understand, Bunny, I really do,” he said to the top of her head. “When you hear my song, you’ll know.”

“And mine,” Sean said softly.

Diego’s eyes widened in respect. “I’d like to hear you sing, sir.” Almost absently, he smoothed Bunny’s disheveled hair back from her face in a way that touched Yana deeply. Sean didn’t miss it, either.

“Uncle,” Bunny asked in a very tentative voice, “does that mean . . . my mother . . .”

Sean looked to the big cat, who scratched around the site, sniffing, then brushed hard against Sean’s leg and hand.

“Nanook says no,” Sean said finally and the track-cat emphasized that with a clear
No
and a sneeze.

Yana held her arms wide in helplessness. “So what do we do now?”

“Well,
I,”
Sean said, “go on. It’s possible for me. You three go back.” He clasped Diego’s shoulder firmly when the boy would have argued. “You three can help spread the word of what happened at McGee’s Pass. We can’t have that happening anywhere else. Or, if it has”—Sean’s expression turned even bleaker than it had when he accepted the death of his brother-in-law—”keep the problem from spreading. Yana, could you find out what dissolves Petraseal? Something has to. We’ve got to clean up McGee’s Pass’s cave system.”

“I’ll find someone who knows how, but—” Yana caught back the thought at first, until Sean’s querying eyes made her continue. “What if Luzon finds out what Petraseal can do to the planet?”

“All the more reason for us to know how to clean it up, but the people, especially those who are with us already,
must
be warned so they can protect their places. With their lives, if necessary.”

“You can count on us, Uncle Sean,” Bunny said, standing upright in Diego’s embrace, her face stern with resolve.

“I know that. Now, let’s eat and get some rest,” he said, adroitly guiding everyone away from the ice mausoleum.

Sometime during an uneasy sleep that night, Yana felt Sean’s lips on her cheek and forehead, his hands stroking her, pausing on her gravid belly. When she woke the next morning, his clothing, empty of his body, was arranged against her as if he still occupied it.

When the others woke, Yana had had time to bundle up Sean’s things so that Diego wouldn’t ask unanswerable questions. The boy was appalled enough to think that Sean Shongili had gone on all by himself.