Power Lines

"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.