"What have you done, Captain Greene?" Yana asked, resuming her military attitude.
"Nothing, Major sir, to bother your head about." He laid a finger alongside his nose and winked at her. But for all the amusement in his eyes, his expression told her she'd get no more out of him and to let the matter be.
She nodded. "Something which will no doubt please me in days to come?"
"I devoutly hope so, considering the effort I've put into it. Now, since I've had my bath, food, sleep, and more food, let's load up. Nanook wants you south, he gets you south. Ah, and you're coming along with us, are you, Nanook?" The black and white track-cat had strolled up to the copter and was peering inside it. "He doesn't much like flying, you know," Johnny added. "Looking won't change the flight process, pal."
Nanook crawled under the second row of passenger seats, tucked his tail tight against his body, and laid his head on his paws. His whole attitude was one of patient resignation to an inevitable fate.
"Well, he's stowed. Get yourselves aboard." Johnny gestured for Bunny and Diego to sit over Nanook, while Yana took the other front seat. Then he handed around headphones so they could all communicate during the long journey south They knew something was wrong the moment Loncie carne to the door.
"Luzon?" Johnny asked simply, and got a stream of Andean invective that was both colorful and inventive, the gist of it being that the son of a scabrous tarantula had stolen La Pobrecita. Pointed inquiry around Sierra Padre by the entire Ondelacy/Chompas clan had brought forth the information that the vomitus spewings of an excrement-devouring long extinct reptile which would eat its own mother without shame or serious second contemplation had taken the only snocle in all of Sierra Padre, Lhasa, or any place this side of Bogota, which was, as Juanito knew, a very long journey, especially at this uncertain time of year.
"When did all this happen?" Johnny asked quickly.
"The day after you left, Juanito. I thought she would be safe playing with my own ninos! I was a fool! A fool!"
Johnny was too angry to say anything more. Mostly he was angry at himself. He should have known Luzon would stop at nothing. At least the man hadn't hurt Loncie or one of her family in the kidnapping-not that they'd ever be able to prove it was a kidnapping. He nearly, but not quite, regretted the two days he had taken to make his private arrangements. One thing was certain: They'd have to move, and move fast, if they were to get the girl away again. This time he was leaving her nowhere near Luzon.
"Didn't she scream? Or-or anything?" Bunny asked, pushing herself out from behind Johnny's back.
"She went willingly, from what my children know of it," Loncie said. "She feared the man, one could see that, but he was the sort she would follow because he is what she is used to, what she has been taught to love. Well, perhaps not love, but someone who acts as she expects people to act. She cannot imagine anything else and so allows him to return her."
"She didn't accept it, though, did she?" Bunny demanded, not just of Loncie but of all the adults and Diego. "She ran away, didn't she? We've got to help her!"
Yana put her arm reassuringly around the girl's shoulders. "That's what we're here to do, Rourke. All the lady is saying is that the poor kid had been so brainwashed, she rejected happiness because the concept was so unfamiliar that it was scary."
"Ah!" And Lonciana nodded vigorous1y. "You have said it. But, come, enter. The evening meal is prepared and you must eat. You will never find this secret place from which she comes in the darkness. Also, you must tell us all that is happening to bring such a planet-defiling dung-sucking leech as this Luzon to our world, and we must sing together."
"Our timing's great, kids," Yana said, trying to inject a little bravado into the currently demoralizing state of affairs. "We may have a song or two to pass along ourselves. Was anyone from this village at Bremport?"
Loncie's eyes brimmed suddenly, and Yana understood the term "dolorous" as she never had before. The woman's chins trembled and her mouth contorted with sudden grief. Yana would have touched her arm, but Pablo was there already, his small frame supporting his wife's larger one like steel scaffolding.
"Our second son, Alejandro."
To Yana's count that made the last of those from Petaybee who had died in that incident. She heaved a sigh of relief and allowed herself to be escorted into the house.
"Hey, a guitar!" The exclamation burst from Diego's lips and then he flushed, realizing that his excitement was not quite suitable following mention of those who died at Bremport.
"You like guitar?" Lonciana asked, her whole expression brightening.
"Do I like guitar? I've been trying to make one." Diego reached into his backpack and brought out the neck he had been so patiently shaping.
"Que hombre!" Lonciana embraced him as if he were a long-lost friend. Diego, momentarily engulfed by her, grinned-more with acceptance of her enthusiasm than embarrassment.
They ate first, of course, and various young Ondelacy-Chompases were sent to inform the entire village that there would be a special singing this evening: too late to make it a latchkay, but certainly there would be blurry and a bite or two to go down with it.
"I thought blurry was Clodagh's specialty," Yana commented as she washed up before dinner.
Johnny grinned. "The north doesn't have a corner on the market of all good things, Yana. Had you come up from the ranks as I did, instead of training at an officer's academy with so few Petaybean candidates, you'd have learned something of the joys of comparative Petaybean blurry drinking. Every time Loncie returned from leave, she used to bring back a stash: Old Armadillo is what we nicknamed her recipe, because it armors you so well against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The spice she uses gives it a little more kick than the mulled-cider kinda thing you get up north."
Bunny, who was watching Pablo demonstrate to an enraptured Diego first the techniques of playing the guitar and then the sound made by the bagpipes, said, "They have more than a few things down here that we don't have up north.''
Lonciana did something with a mess of beans that Yana, sensitive now to such subtleties, would have given her right big toe to discover. It was tasty and filling, satisfying even their hearty appetites.
Immediately afterward, the table was dismantled and taken out of the main room, and chairs, benches, stools, and odd crates were placed about the room. The guitar came off the wall again, and Yana identified one round object with jingling bits fastened in its lip as a tambourine.
Lonciana was busy in the kitchen end of the house, mixing the blurry with the help of her eldest daughters, while Pablo, Johnny, and the older Ondelacy boys began to greet the visitors as they began to pour in.
Once again Yana wondered at the way a small Petaybean house could seem to expand infinitely to contain so many people. Eventually there was only a small space around the high stool that had been placed in the center of the room for the singers-of which Yana was one, and probably the first. Bunny and Johnny both kept her mug as well as Diego's full of blurry once Diego announced that he had his song, too.
Yana missed Sean desperately, but Johnny took her to the stool and settled her on it, taking the mug when she drained the last of the blurry.
"This is Major Yana Maddock, who was at Bremport and who is now one of us," Johnny began simply. "She has a song for you."
Silence has different qualities, Yana knew, from the absolute one she'd not heard on her few space walks to that of expectancy, either a hopeful or happy one, or a mean and miserable show-us-your-stuff kind. This was expectant and almost reverent. That startled her so much that she began to sing to stop what her ears weren't hearing.
After the first few lines got past her teeth, she actually began to enjoy the act of singing, not that she would ever truly enjoy the song that she must sing. Maybe one day soon, as Sean had suggested, she'd find joy in making a song.
"I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live, The waters live, the animals and trees live.
And you And now I live."
The last words came out before she realized she had added them to the song.
Then Lonciana and Pablo made their way to her and took her hands, holding them to their cheeks, their tears moistening the backs of her fingers. Each of the Ondelacy children, smiling shyly with their misty eyes, touched her hands. too.
Other voices lifted in appreciation of her song and she was able to get down off the stool without any help.
Bunny led Diego to the stool. There was a purpose in the young man's eye now, Yana noticed, that hadn't been there before. He was growing into his true manhood, and what had happened at McGee's Pass had tempered him.
"This is Diego Metaxos, who was with me at McGee's Pass and risked his life to save me," Bunny said, giving Diego's hand a squeeze before she released it. "He has a song that all must hear."
Diego tipped his head back, closed his eyes to slits, and rested his hands on his thighs with his feet hooked on the lower stretcher of the stool.
"Deep is the place of communion Where mist and ice and stone are warm With what is more than friendship, More than father or mother love, With nurturing and understanding.
We all treasure this place of communion.
It is our place, our place, our place."
His voice, now firmly baritone, raised to the top of his range and intensified as he repeated the phrase. Then his tone altered to that of a story teller who is forced to relate truths that disturb him.
"There are others who do not believe that our place Is ours and has been since men and women came here.
They were once of us, and knew of communion.
They left and in their years of leaving learned Much of evil and selfishness and unsharing, uncaring, un- kind, self-seeking, self-helping self-first and always.
Having knowledge of things that bind and score and cover They have returned to make evil what was good"
Again his voice changed, colored with a bitterness that made Yana twitch uneasily, a bitterness that roused all his listeners.
"Why steal what is ours for no purpose but to keep it for only one?
Why deprive the many of communion and hope and peace in times of worry?
Why bury truth?
Why bury our planet alive!"
Gasps of horror greeted that phrase, but Diego did not falter.
"For it has been buried alive, screaming unheard At McGee's Pass.
The stone smothered, The roots strangled, The soil smothered White death like Your snow-skin From one like But unlike A son.
What son wishes death to his father?
What son demands honor unearned?
Women raped and villages frightened And deprived of their place of communion And the gentle mists that heal, The gentle touch that soothes, The spirit that nurtures us. All of us!"
Diego's song roused the indignation of every listener that evening. Bunny was so proud of his song and his singing she almost vibrated. Then, when he had rested from the exertions of his singing, both young people related what had happened at McGee's Pass, and described Satok's treachery.
Well and truly blurred, Yana was still quite conscious of some of the discussion that went on late into the night, to the accompaniment of guitar, fiddle, flute, tambourine, maracas, and castanets. But she, Loncie, and Johnny-possibly Bunny, too, at one point-had decided that the most important thing they could now do was rescue La Pobrecita from Shepherd Howling.
From Lonciana's description, the man was worse than Satok, but only marginally, if he insisted on marrying a pre-pubescent child when he already had four or five wives. Yana had been well drilled in leaving alone the customs and mores of indigenous populations, but she was not indigenous, and the whole concept of forced wife-hood was abhorrent. That night they pieced together what La Pobrecita had said and came up with a fair idea of where the Vale of Tears might be, judging from where she had been found, how long she said she'd been traveling, and from what direction. By Johnny's reckoning, the place should be a valley set in the Sierra Padres somewhere near the head of the Lacrimas River. Given decent weather, they should have no problem flying right to the place. And if they met Luzon, at least two of them could give chase on the snocub, a two-person snocle that Johnny had fit handily in the cargo net.
Chapter 12.
Dr. Whittaker Fiske received the coded messages from Johnny Greene with concern and no little dismay-particularly the second one, the one Johnny sent him after he first returned to the north. He had quickly approved the pilot's scheme and given him all due assistance. By calling in a few personal favors owed the pilot and promising the supply sergeant R&R to the tropical planet of her choice, he had ensured that all Petraseal available at and to SpaceBase had been urgently requisitioned elsewhere. At Johnny's suggestion, the Petraseal cans had been emptied into a single tank for immediate shipment, while the empty containers still labeled "Petraseal" had been filled with the last consignment of white paint, which was rarely used on Petaybee except for camouflage purposes. However, between implementing Johnny's scheme and work at SpaceBase, he had been too fully occupied to be able to return to Clodagh to warn her of the grave implications of what had taken place at McGee's Pass.
He was concerned about how Clodagh would take it. She was an amazing woman, unconventionally beautiful, intelligent, wise, and kind, but she felt everything that happened to Petaybee personally. Maybe if everybody did the same, there wouldn't be any problem, but even after his experience in the cave, he still retained a detachment that kept him from that sort of bond with what he had once thought of as the creation of his family. He did, however, feel a bond with Clodagh-a closer one than he had with anyone in a long time-including, maybe especially, his own son.
He walked into Kilcoole the morning after Greene's second transmission. The river was down a bit now that much of the initial thaw had already taken place, but it was still full and fat with water.
He knew Clodagh wasn't at home before he knocked on the door. No cats in the windows, on the rooftop, or perched on the various objects in the yard. He peeked through the open door into the neat, empty house and looked down Kilcoole's one muddy street. The town seemed even more deserted than it had before. He called Clodagh a couple of times, but when he received no answer, he strolled down to Yana Maddock's place. There, at least, her cat Marduk sat on the stoop, and sprang up as if it had been waiting for him. Well, knowing these cats, maybe it had been.
At that point, the door of the house across the street opened and Frank Metaxos poked his prematurely white-haired head out. The man's speech was still a little slow, but he was a far cry from the wreck he had been only a few weeks earlier.
"How's it going, Frank?" Whit asked.
"I hate being stuck here," Frank told him. "You heard anything of my boy?"
"Matter of fact, I did," Whit replied affably. "He's doing fine. Been a great help to everybody. Say, you haven't seen Clodagh, have you?"
"She went out to the springs, I think. Marduk there"-Frank nodded at the cat-"knows the way. Though you'll have to walk. All the curlies are carrying the people to visit the neighbors."
"Visiting the neighbors" was the term the Kilcoole people were using to describe their mission to the other villages. Whit wasn't overly surprised. After all, these people were half-descended from the Irish who had described their own centuries-old guerrilla conflict as "the Troubles" and a massive international war as "the Emergency."
He followed Marduk through knee-high weeds that had been lying in ambush under the snow, waiting for the thaw.
Birds sang and dived overhead, both small, pretty song-birds and swooping, squawking ravens. Small creatures rustled the underbrush; a red fox darted across his path. Marduk scurried up a tree when the fox passed, and hissed and spit at the silvery wake the creature cut in the tall grass.
Whit found Clodagh beside the springs, surrounded by not only her cats but all sorts of animals, including a large, strong curly-coat. They stood, lay, or sat and watched her as she pulled and separated, pulled and separated a profusion of plants growing rampant around the hot-springs banks. Her bountiful wavy black hair was braided and coiled on top of her head; sweat ran down her face and neck as she worked.
''Slainte, Whittaker," she said without looking up.
"Slainte yourself, my dear. What the devil are you trying to do?"
"I'm pullin' weeds," she said.
"So I see," he responded dryly. "Are you just pulling these particular weeds around the springs, or did you plan to personally defoliate the entire area between here and Kilcoole?"
She stood up, hands planted on her broad back. "Just these," she said, smiling. "I could use a hand. I'm kinda in a hurry."
"Be glad to. I'm afraid, however, that I've come as the bearer of bad tidings."
"You going to tell me about that guy that sealed up some of the communion places? Silenced the planet and fooled all those people at McGee's Pass and so on?"
"Well, yes."
"Yeah, well, I heard about that."
"You did?" he asked, dumbfounded at first and then shaking his head as understanding set in. "Of course. I suppose your usual informants told you.
"Kinda. It took the cats a long time to find out, because he killed all but one of 'em. But that one got word out to mine and they told me. They say he put some white junk on the inside of the cave that fuses the rock-stuff they use to shore up walls in mines."
"Yes. Petraseal. Johnny Greene also reported that to me. It's very bad news, Clodagh. If our adversaries at Intergal learn that there is something that can defeat your communication with the planet, they're apt to go overboard on using it."
"Yeah," she nodded gravely. "That's what I thought. I was pretty worried about it, too, so I came out here to talk to Petaybee."
"I don't suppose it's very happy about all this."
"It's sure not."
"Did it have any ideas?"
"Well, not in so many words. Except, I just started wondering, what if this stuff doesn't always work? What if there's something stronger than it is, that can go through it? And you know, all of a sudden, I looked down and saw where this coo-berry bramble was growin' right up through the floor of the cave, and when I came out here, why I noticed what I hadn't seen before. You know how that is?"
"I do," Whit nodded.