"Oh, have we?"
Satok gestured for the girl to back out of the way to let Torkel enter.
The shuttle was in no better condition inside, but the moment Torkel saw the crates of varied shapes and colors netted safely away from the piloting area, he ignored everything else. He had studied just enough geology to be able to recognize the variety of ores known to be available on Petaybee, even if none had actually been found here. He touched greeny copper-bearing rock, grayish tin, copper-red-orange germanium; he saw the gold vein through rock, and even emeralds embedded in clay.
"I can't deny you've found a variety of very interesting items, Satok," he said with a nonchalance that was far from the exultant surge that he was experiencing at the sight of what they had spent years trying to locate on this ice ball.
"Small as this cargo is . . ."
"This cargo's a very small portion of what's easily available-if you know where and how to look for it."
"And you do?" Torkel challenged him.
Satok contented himself with a smug smile. "I can show you enough lode-bearing sites to make your eyes bug out."
Torkel jerked his head at the girl, wondering if Satok should be so blatant. Satok merely shrugged. Then his expression changed so abruptly that Torkel drew back in surprise; as Satok was raising a weapon, Torkel was already reaching for his own side arm, but Satok was not shooting at him. He was aiming out the shuttle door at small darting orange figures, and firing until the clip was empty.
"Hate them bloody orange mothers!" His face was a rictus of an intense hatred. He calmly slammed another magazine into the hand weapon, and then gave a surprised exclamation. "What the . . ."
Torkel looked around to see the slatternly girl racing toward the cover of the trees, her sobs trailing back like the sounds of a lost soul, a tail protruding from one side of her body. But there were no corpses of orange cats on the ground-and that surprised Torkel as much as it did Satok.
"Frag it, I can't have missed!" Satok was shouting as he stared about. He jumped to the ground to peer under the shuttle's slanting prow.
"Forget them, Satok. They're unimportant."
"Yeah?" Satok snarled. His loss of poise gave Torkel a chance to seize control of the situation.
"Yeah! I want to see more of this sort of stuff," he told Satok. "And I want to see it as fast as you can get me to these mother lodes you rave about. But, first, I've got to go back to the village for a moment . . ." And Torkel cursed the necessity. He pegged Satok as an opportunist and unreliable. But if he'd come to find Torkel Fiske, he must also know that Torkel was the best officer at SpaceBase to deal with.
"Yeah, yeah, I guess so. But do we have a deal?" The man's eyes glittered with greedy anticipation.
Torkel assumed a casual pose. "That depends on how accessible this ore is."
"Far more accessible than you've any idea, Captain dear," Satok replied with the oily smile Torkel would have liked to wipe off his face.
''If that's the case, you may be sure that Intergal will be appreciative.'
"As always?" The sneer was back as Satok leaned against the door frame.
"Why don't you accompany me to town?" Torkel began, adding quickly when he saw the apprehension flash in Satok's eyes, "There's woods enough to hide you from prying eyes while I make my farewells . . . And there's no one to hear us talk out here." He gestured at the open clearing, the forests deserted even by small animals after the arrival of the shuttle.
Satok punched the button to close the shuttle door and gestured ironically for Torkel to lead the way.
During their walk, Satok mentioned that there were sixteen different locations where ore had been collected, claiming that all the deposits were extremely rich and, furthermore, were so accessible that the company had simply over looked them time and time again. The man wouldn't be more specific, but the hold full of ore was proof in itself.
Torkel was both delighted and infuriated. If the deposits had all been there, and so accessible, why had the best geological teams of Intergal failed where this miserable excuse for a man succeeded?
He left Satok on the edge of the village while he went on, resuming his attempt to brush the mud off his clothing as he walked. This time Torkel took the boardwalks, which were noticeably empty of pedestrians, and the long way around to Aigur's house. The damned cats were back, he noticed. As well he'd left Satok screened from the village and the tempting display of orange cats, or the man's hatred of the beasts might have over come any sense he had.
Torkel noticed a mud scraper on the first step of the house and dutifully used it on his shoes. He heard some odd scurryings inside the house, and it seemed to him that he also heard a faint hissing over head. Too late now. He rapped on the door: courtesy was always appreciated.
When the door opened to him, he wasn't so sure about that from the stony looks he received.
"I'm extremely sorry, Marmion, but an emergency's come up and the shuttle has come to collect me," he said with a disarming smile. "I really hate to abandon you like this." He turned to Aisling, and only then noticed that Marmion and the large woman were the only two in the place.
"Oh dear," Marmion said, "I had hoped to have longer . . ."
"I don't see why you can't, dear lady," Torkel said, smiling at Aisling. "Is it possible Sinead could guide Madame Algemeine back to SpaceBase, or would it upset her schedule too much?"
"Oh, and isn't it a shame, with you in a hurry, and Sinead not here to ask, but sure I couldn't speak for her and me, I'm hopeless in the out-of-doors," Aisling said, gushily, twitching her fingers through the fabric of her voluminous dress. "She won't be that long, and you've hardly had a chance to finish your coffee. Let me just heat it up a bit for you." She had already taken the cup and was lifting the kettle lid to check the water. "Ah, and that will be more pleasant to drink . . ."
"Really-" Torkel held up his hand, trying to forestall the courtesy. "I absolutely must return immediately to the shuttle and-"
"Good heavens, Torkel, did you fall in the mud?" Marmion asked. "Is there a brush about, Aisling?" She'd taken up a kitchen towel and was advancing on him. "A stiff one, so we can get the rest of this off. You don't want to ruin your reputation by appearing back at SpaceBase looking like something a cat dragged in, do you, Torkel?"
Torkel tried to reassure her that he could change the moment he returned, and anyway, it had dried out and wasn't a problem, but this did not suit Marmion de Revers Algemeine. Controlling his temper, Torkel was forced to submit to their ministrations. He hoped that Satok didn't take it into his head to disappear.
It took a long time to get him neat enough for Marmion's satisfaction, and by that time Sinead had returned from her errand immediately, she agreed that she and Aisling had better return to Kilcoole and could certainly guide Marmion back to the SpaceBase.
Torkel was nearly quivering with rage and frustration by the time he was allowed to leave. As if to deliberately delay him further, Marmion thought of a message she'd better send to keep others from worrying about her. It took time to find paper and a stub of a pencil Aigur used for making pattern drawings. but in the end, with the note in his cleanly brushed pocket, he was allowed to leave.
"Where the frag have you been?" Satok demanded. "I didn't expect you to take the rest of the day to get back to me." His hirsute face turned even slyer than before. "You didn't make some private deal for yourself in there with the company on a private comm unit, did you?"
"Don't be stupid," Torkel snapped, striking out toward the clearing and the shuttle. They walked in tense silence for the twenty minutes or so it took to reach the shuttle. Torkel banged the Open button, then swung into the shuttle and took the passenger seat while Satok closed the door and assumed the pilot's place. They took off and headed northward.
Back in Aigur's cabin, Marmion looked sadly down at the limp body of the orange cat. Her throat was tight; she really wanted to weep at the sight of the beautiful intelligent little animal laid low by such a savage attack. A track-cat was gently licking the graze wound across the smaller creature's spine. She and Aisling had shielded the cats from Torkel's view by hiding them behind the covered loom frame, but now the big cat tended its smaller cousin while the girl who had first brought it to Aigur's house looked on agitatedly.
"Can't we do more for the poor thing?" she asked, wringing hands covered with rock dust and bleeding from scrapes and scratches.
"Now, now, the cat's already getting the best treatment possible, really, Luka," Sinead told her. Sinead's hands, like Aigur's, were covered with dust, scrapes, and bruises. She'd had to keep them in her pocket while Torkel was present. "Takes a lot to kill one of these cats, and the others all escaped without injury."
"But will this one be all right?" Luka sobbed. "Satok killed all there were in McGee's Pass, you know."
"We'll know if the spine has been damaged when it regains consciousness, but I don't think Patchog would be cleansing the wound if he didn't think the cat had a chance."
Marmion watched the exchange with interest. Shortly after Torkel had left to investigate the arrival of the shuttle, Luka had arrived, bearing the cat's limp body in her arms and crying. Entrusting the cat to Aisling's tender ministrations, she had turned away from Marmion to whisper urgently with Sinead and Aigur.
Immediately Sinead had turned to Marmion. "There's something we have to do now. I can't tell you what or why but Aisling will stay with you and help you, if you'll agree to detain Fiske and any guest he might have with him when he returns for as long as you possibly can."
"But why can't you tell me?" Marmion had asked, a little offended.
Sinead gave her a warning look, which told Marmion enough right there. This was not something that they didn't want her to know, but something that, for the sake of her position, she should not want to know. She had nodded agreement and quickly helped Aisling conceal the cats as the other women disappeared into the village.
Now Torkel and his companion had gone, leaving Luka, who had been weeping for many reasons, only one of them the injury to the cat. She seemed ashamed and frightened, chagrined and relieved, and wept with all of these emotions, stopping finally as her tears fell on Marmion's soothing hand. She looked at that elegant hand on her filthy, torn dress and then up at the kindliness in the beautiful face.
She looked to Sinead and the others. Sinead, searching Marmion's face, nodded sharply.
"All right, ma'am, I'll tell you now," Luka said. A sly smile curved her mouth until the recently cut lip made her wince. She snuffled, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and then began to explain what facts she knew, repeating, evidently verbatim, conversations she had overheard.
She spoke of a man who had been one of the out casts of Petaybee, who had never known what even Marmie had experienced in the cave, who had joined the company after turning against his own planet, and joined pirates after turning against the company, as well. Luka herself had been dazzled by him when he first came to McGee's Pass, claiming he was there to help them over the grief following their great tragedy. "That was before I knew he was after causin' it himself, ma'am. He as much as killed the McConachies he did, and convinced us all, the devil, that the planet had turned against us. All the time he was takin' from the sacred place, though I didn't know how or why until I was well away from there, I swear I didn't. When I started gettin' suspicious and would have returned to my own people, he gave me to one of his bloody accomplices, as if I was a sack of beans, and that man told all in the village that I my own self was a reject, one Petaybee cast out and made mad. All the time they were takin' stuff out of the planet, and I learned that they was killin' it in bits, so that it couldn't harm them when they took from it. But I heard him say that when the little girl from Kilcoole came and he was found out, that now was the time to sell out to the company, and he brought everything to show yer man the captain. So I got the notion, even then, that maybe when the captain looked, what was in the shuttle wouldn't be of any interest to him, but would have changed to common rock. Sinead and Aigur here helped me, as did others in this town. But I fear we were too late, for the captain already saw the real stuff."
"Which you didn't," Sinead said. "So all you have is hearsay from us."
Marmion nodded wisely. "I see."
"But I am that worried about what they'll do now, ma'am," Luka said. "For that evil man knows where more's to be found, and if the captain believes him . . "
Marmion nodded, waving her understanding with elegant fingertips while her mind was already leaping ahead on the problem. Fiske in unwitting collusion with pirates? How far was he prepared to go for these little mining projects? She almost wished she didn't know as much as she did now, because the whole issue brought her into something of a conflict of interests. She felt great sympathy for the Petaybeans, but realized that her position as a nonpartisan investigator for the commission was already severely compromised.
"Ah well," she said. "The exchange was, of course, a very clever idea, although naturally I would have been forced to forbid it, had I known. Did Aisling and I give you enough time?"
Sinead snorted at the very notion that she couldn't organize a simple exchange like that, even if it had taken every available villager and every rock they could find in the clearing.
"I think we better start back now, Dama," Sinead said.
"I would be honored if you would call me Marmion, as my friends do," she told Sinead, including Aisling, Luka, and Aigur in her glance.
Sinead gave her a thoughtful glance and for one dreadful moment, Marmion thought perhaps that she might not live up to the criterion Sinead Shongili expected of "friends." Her smile was much like her brother's and oddly shy, as if she did not give her friendship that often.
"Then we are honored . . . Marmion. May we stop at Kilcoole first, though?"
"Of course, I was going to suggest that. Clodagh and Whit will have to be informed . . . unless," Marmion added, smiling ruefully at the still able-bodied orange cats who had slipped in to join the big cat in its attentions to their fallen brother, "they already know."
"Some, but not all," Sinead replied with a smile, as she and Aisling began to pack up their belongings.
At first light, the weather did not look too encouraging, but Yana gave Johnny an appealing look as he turned from the window, and he threw up his hands in surrender.
"Might be damned bumpy," he told her.
"I'd risk more than that," Yana told him.
"Me, too," Bunny added. Diego only gave a sharp nod of his head.
Loncie insisted on packing them some food, which Johnny said he'd replenish on his next trip north.
"Ay, de me, and someone will go hungry here in the meantime? Off with you, amigo, and do not concern yourself with such details at a time like this. Find La Pobrecita, and that is more than enough."
When they were strapped into their seats, with Nanook crouched again in the rear, enduring his discomfort valiantly, Johnny took off. Once on a south easterly course, he handed Yana an aerial map.
"I want you to double-check something for me. It seems to me the Lacrimas River runs pretty straight from the mouth, which is almost directly opposite Harrison's Fjord. Am I right?"
"I see what you're getting at," Yana said, unfolding the chart and giving it a shake as she searched it. "You think that the undersea tunnel might come up near the Vale of Tears?''
"Well, it's more of a possibility than you might think," Johnny said, not sure enough to mention why he thought it a possibility, even as he mentally matched the face of 'Cita with Bunny sitting behind him.
He shook his head. Shongilis all had unusual bone structure, so, unless Granddaddy Shongili had warmed a few beds he hadn't dared mention to his possessive wife, Johnny could think of only one logical conclusion.
Yana perused the map and gave a yelp of triumph as she found the two relative points; then, with a worried frown, she said, "Johnny, there's two thousand miles between the two continents!"
"Uncle Sean thought there'd be that at least," Bunny said, releasing her seat belt to lean over Yana's shoulder.
"Belt up!" Johnny said in a roar that reverberated in the small cabin and made Nanook snarl. "Sorry."
Yana passed the map over her shoulder to Bunny.
"We made it in about a hundred and fifty miles to the cave-in . . ." Bunny began, her voice trailing off. "That isn't very far . . . considering . . ." Her voice went on, slightly muffled as she bent down to Nanook's head. "You did say Uncle Sean was alive, didn't you?"
Nanook sneezed, and Bunny sighed, not completely reassured.
They traveled a long way in silence broken by Diego, who whistled odd little snatches of tunes and muttered to himself. The others respected that he might be working on a new song. Bunny looked out her window at the endless snow, shaded blues and grays and occasionally lavenders in the shadows. She could see the distant jagged teeth of spiky up thrusts and wondered which set of them rose above the Vale of Tears.
Then, just as they were approaching the general location of the Vale of Tears, they saw the glow of a huge campfire, sparks rising high above it. Bunny shouted unintelligibly grabbing Johnny by the shoulder and pointing downward; at the same time, Nanook made a sudden attempt to squirm out from under the seat. Johnny issued loud orders for everyone to keep their places and shut their faces. Following Bunny's screeched directions, he circled the copter to starboard. Below, it was possible to see the three figures stumbling and falling down a hill, actually rolling in one case, leaving a pattern of bloody circles on the snow. One of the figures was feline. Nanook let out an ear-piercing yowl, a sound Bunny had never before heard a track-cat utter.
To her astonished gaze, the cat on the ground looked up, and she could see its jaws opening as if to give voice to a similar cry.
"Tighten your fragging seat belts, all of you," Johnny cried. His warning was unnecessary: his passengers could feel the turbulence he was fighting as he tried to land.
He was making a low pass to examine the dangerously uneven terrain below when Yana pointed to the bleeding man lying on the ground and cried out, "That's Sean down there!"
"And La Pobrecita with him," Johnny said. "I've still got to have a reasonably flat space to put this bird down without splintering a skid. Bear with me."
Using the three figures as the center, Johnny circled until he spotted a suitably level place. As soon as he landed, Yana, medi-kit in one hand and a bundle of extra winter clothing in the other, was out of the plane. Bunny and Nanook right behind her. Just as Johnny was about to follow, Diego pulled at his shoulder and pointed to the top of the rise and the swarm of folks coming over it, brandishing an odd assortment of armaments.
Johnny motioned for Diego to take the LD-404 down from its brackets over the entrance to the cargo bay as he checked that he had clips for his hand weapon and the spare automatic he hauled out from under his seat. Then the pilot and Diego followed the women and the track-cat.
Yana was kneeling beside Sean, wrapping him in the winter clothing and tending his wound. Bunny assisted in the medical chores, searching for the items in the medi-kit Yana demanded. The track-cats stood about six meters from each other, sniffing, tails twitching amiably enough. The child, in a fur jacket much too large for her, was huddled against the clouded cat, wide eyes in a frightened white face.
Diego caught Johnny's arm, staring a question at him as he pointed his free hand at the child. Johnny grinned and nodded, and then turned to watch the progress of the mob slipping and sliding down the hill toward them.
See 'Cita, Senior Luzon is as bad a man in his own way as Shepherd Howling," Johnny said in a gentle voice, bending down to the child. "Loncie was real upset to see you got talked into going with him. So we came to take you away back to your own people."
"This unworthy one has no people," 'Cita said, getting an even firmer grip on Coaxtl's fur.
'That's where you're wrong, kiddo," Johnny said. "Bunny, come here. Now, pronto!"
Both Yana and Bunny looked around, their faces showing disgruntlement at being interrupted. Both stared, and Bunny's mouth dropped wide open.
"You must be-you can't be anything else . . ." Bunny's hand wandered to her cheek, her nose, her lips.
"Your mother made it through, niece of mine," Sean said, nodding solemnly, looking from Bunny's face to the thin gaunt one of a child who was so obviously a blood relative.
"But I am Goa-"
"Don't you dare use that name for yourself, Pobrecita," Johnny said, angrily shaking his finger at her. "Buneka Rourke, this is your sister, though I think we can find a better proper name for her than 'Cita, or Nina, don't you think?"
"A sister!" And Bunny was folding the startled child into her arms. "A sister of my very own! Everyone I know has at least a sister or a brother, and all I've ever had were cousins . . ."
"And uncles and aunts," Sean prompted through gritted teeth as Yana yanked the bandage to make sure it was firm about the jagged arrow wound.