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...
"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 rock slide. "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. Yar a 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.
"He's mad. How could he possibly survive in an arctic ocean? I don't understand you, Bunny. How can you just sit there eating breakfast as if this was just another day, when your own uncle-"
"My own uncle has ways not possible for us," she said equably.
"What'd he do? Call a tube whale for a ride?" Diego asked sarcastically.
Yana and Bunny exchanged glances.
"Something like that," Bunny said, gnawing on her jerky meat.
"I've seen him do it," Yana said, seeing that Diego was working himself up into quite a state. "You know he's got a way with animals."
"Yes, but he's left Nanook here."
Nanook gave Diego a long and measuring look and a soft soothing sound started deep in the track-cat's belly, half purr, half reassurance.
"I just don't understand you people!" Diego said, throwing his hands up in the air in resignation.
"You're getting closer, though," Bunny said. She smiled up at him and patted the rock beside her. "Sit and eat. We've a ways to go today. And you've got to finish your song before we get back to Harrison's Fjord."
"You've one to do, too, you know," he snapped at her.
"Diego!" Yana snapped right back as she would to an insolent trooper.
"Sorry," he muttered, and sat down and gnawed his anger away on his own strip of jerky.
Coaxtl did not entirely desert her youngling. The airship was similar to other machines she had expertly dodged before. They often held people who had proved dangerous to her kind. She followed it on swift paws, venturing perilously near to a human-place, and there, on a hillock over looking the habitations, she found herself a place where she and the Home seemed as one, and watched and waited.