Power Lines
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: Petaybee #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Power Lines». Краткое содержание книги:
Only solid evidence would convince the company to leave the planet alone, and for all its sentience, Petaybee's communications were highly subjective; indeed, some outsiders seemed entirely immune to its voice. So Yana and her friends would have to find some other way to prove that the planet was worth more to the company alive than dead...
Marmion squeezed his arm again. "A field trip is what we've all needed to get the juices flowing and the lungs filling with good clean air." Luzon's shoulders twitched, and Marmion felt Whittaker's ribs moving in silent laughter. "We'll all put our minds to this little problem and sort it out in next to no time. Won't we, Matthew?"
His terse answer was lost in a screech of badly worn brake pads, as the carrier halted in front of a building, freshly painted in an aggressively bright yellow.
"Sorry about the color, Marmion," Whittaker said when he saw her wince. "All that's left in Stores, but at least it's clean and bright."
This time Matthew's snort of disgust was plainly audible. As he walked to the door, his body language spoke of displeasure, resentment, and aggravation.
"Oh, dear, we're in for it," Marmion murmured so that only Whittaker heard her. "I believe we are," he responded as quietly.
"Fore warned is fore armed," she added, and then rose to walk as gracefully as ever down the aisle and up the steps and into the incredibly yellow building.
Chapter 6
The long multi-segmented caravan divided, then subdivided, and subdivided again. The first to leave were Sinead and Aisling, who went visiting Shannonmouth, closest to Kilcoole of the three villages on the route. Although Sinead could ride all day, Aisling did not travel as well, especially on horseback. Most of the time she preferred to walk and lead her curly-horse, chatting to the mare as frequently as she addressed Sinead, Sean, Yana, Bunny, or Diego. The mare seemed oblivious to the burdens she carried: bundles of blankets, sewing things, and decorating materials, as well as a back pack and a bale of finely tanned furs from Sinead's winter hunt.
Bunny thought it was aces traveling with this particular group. She was so used to Diego now, she'd be lost without his company, and she had liked Yana Maddock since Day One and looked forward to having her as an auntie when she and Sean got hitched. And both Sinead and Sean knew all sorts of special places where they could sleep under cover. With the people traveled Alice B, Sinead and Aisling's lead dog; Nanook, one of the track-cats who lived out at Sean's lab; and Dinah, the Maloneys' lead dog, who had taken such a shine to Diego that she preferred his company to Liam's. She also liked Bunny: when Bunny stroked her, she could even receive Dinah's somewhat frenetic communications.
After leaving Sinead and Aisling in Shannonmouth, the group continued on, following the river that snaked uphill past McGee's Pass. There the river was joined by the Iffy, so called because it was iffy if it ran or not, depending on the season, and how frozen it was or how dry the weather had been. The Iffy was in full spate now, pouring its glacial white waters into the clear Shannon; the two mingled murkily all the way to Harrison's Fjord.
As Bunny and Diego parted from Sean and Yana, Sean said, "Listen, you two. By all means, visit the Connellys and, if you can do so, find out what's going on. But, if feeling is very strong in favor of the mines, leave and come find us, and we'll all do it together. I want you to meet us at Harrison's Fjord in three days' time. It's only a day to the Fjord, so that gives you two days to suss things out.
Okay? I'd like to have more time, but with the PTBs arriving soon, Yana and I have got to catch a ride down under as soon as we've finished our business and Johnny or Rick are free."
"Can we go down under, too?" Bunny asked.
"I doubt if the aircraft will be big enough to hold four passengers," Yana said. "Using one of the smaller copters is wisest. Now, get going so you'll reach the Connellys in time to be invited for supper. Sean and I have a ways to go yet."
Later, when the adults disappeared around the base of the next hill and Bunny and Diego steered their curlies toward the pass, Bunny said, "Did you hear? They didn't say no! We might get to go down under, Diego!"
"What's it like?" he asked.
"I don't know. Never been. Different from here though I think. I've never heard of anyone coming up from the southern pole. You have to cross a whole big ocean, and that just isn't smart to do in our little boats. I guess they don't have any bigger ones down there or we'd see more of them up here. My parents were trying to prove a theory about an undersea passage from the caves near Harrison's Fjord when they disappeared. Hey! What if they got through and the passage-you know, something went wrong with it, so they couldn't come home, but when we get down there we'll find them!"
"I wouldn't get my hopes up," Diego said. "It's been how many years now?"
"I dunno. Over ten. I was real little when they left."
"I'd think in all that time they'd have found somebody to bring word back, knowing how worried everybody would be. Of course, if it was my mom," he added, his tone turning wry, "she'd get so involved with her work she'd never notice she forgot to bring me with her, but you people aren't like that."
"Well, thanks a lot. But I prefer to hope, if it's all the same to you. Or isn't anybody else supposed to? You got your father back. I guess that's all that matters."
"I didn't mean for you to take it that way, Bunny. I wouldn't have got my dad back if it wasn't for you and Clodagh and everybody, and sure I hope there's people who will help your folks down under. I'd just hate to see you get all excited and be disappointed."
"I'll be excited if I want to," she said tartly. "And I've been disappointed before."
Diego didn't say anything, and Bunny regretted being so sharp with him. He was probably just showing how much he cared about her, as Aisling would say. But he was only two years older than she was, and he shouldn't treat her like a kid.
So after that, they rode in silence until they rounded the bend at the foot of the pass and were greeted by a roaring wind funneling through the cleft and almost blowing them back down to the Shannon.
Flattening themselves against the necks of the curlies, they trudged up the trail, which was some what less muddy than the flatlands. The air was also noticeably chillier. Dinah dropped behind the horses and padded along in the shelter of their sturdy bodies.
McGee's Pass wasn't very big. Not even as big as Kilcoole, Bunny thought with surprise as they rode between the first pair of houses. There were only about eight houses, situated fairly close together, lining the wide spot in the trail that passed for a road. The road was heavily churned up and tracked into ruts, ridges, and pockmarks lightly covered with a recent sprinkling of snow, making the footing extremely slippery and uneven.
The houses were unimproved original company issue, shored up with pieces of timber, stones, mud bricks, plascrete, hides, and whatever else was handy. As in Kilcoole, the ground was littered with the refuse of many long winters and warm seasons not quite warm enough to melt the snows.
"Everybody must be inside having lunch," Bunny said of the deserted streets.
But that didn't explain the quiet. She saw no dogs, no curlies, nothing except one lone marmalade cat trying to catch what warmth it could on a plascrete roof.
Dinah wandered from house to house, object to object, sniffing and whining, barking once or twice, and sniffing and whining some more. At one place, she paused to urinate near a doorstep.
The cat looked down at her as if considering jumping on her back for a ride. Dinah jumped up, pawing the house, and barked sharply. The cat rose and stretched itself, and jumped lightly down from the roof onto a barrel and then to the ground.
After a mutual sniff, the cat sauntered up the street, its tail describing arches in the air above its back, while Dinah struggled not to run over the creature in her haste to go wherever the cat was going.
Bunny and Diego followed the dog. The cat walked out of town, which wasn't all that far to go, and up toward the pass, and then abruptly disappeared into a bush beside the trail.