by neetha Napew
“Did it lead into something like this?” Yana asked, glancing about her with the wonder and sense of welcome she always felt in a Petaybean cave.
“Not directly, according to granddad’s notes, but he didn’t have as much chance to explore as he’d liked, since he was busy doing what he could to make it easier on the animals Intergal decided would adapt well to this climate.” Sean gave a snort at Intergal’s needless arrogance “Grandmother located the hot springs at Kilcoole and went looking for others, with my father strapped to her back to hear him tell it, and my oldest aunt—the one my sister, Aoifa, was named for—either on a sled or strapped to a curly-coat’s back. Grandmother really liked a decent hot bath every day and took one no matter how far she had to tramp to indulge herself.” Sean grinned nostalgically, as he had been a part of those forays. “I know she taught me how to swim . . .” He glanced quickly at Yana and winked. “My father and his two younger brothers found and mapped many of the caves we now know and use. I think I learned their where-abouts before I learned to spell.”
“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 i
t,” 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.
She did not see where the youngling went, but she saw when the airship flew into the sky again, carrying only one of the men with it.
A night passed, a day, and another night, and still Coaxtl waited, and she saw a land machine that could run very fast, and which she liked no better than the flying kind, scuttle toward a den. A man climbed out of it and she recognized him as the white-tailed one of the bad scent. He walked to a place where young ones were playing and there, so still that even Coaxtl’s searching eyes had not spotted her, sat the youngling, small and still as the tree against which she waited while the other human cubs frolicked in the snow.
After a time, the youngling rose and followed the white-tailed one to the land machine, which Coaxtl saw contained another man already and many objects. The machine sped out of the town, past the hillock where Coaxtl waited, and back out toward the plains. Coaxtl knew, without knowing how she knew, that the man was taking the youngling to that place from which she had escaped.
This seemed foolish to Coaxtl. Foolish of the white-tail to take the youngling back to where she obviously did not want to be, and foolish of the girl to go. It did not make sense to Coaxtl why the girl would return to the bad place she had fled. Therefore, since it did not make sense, it could not be true. Therefore, the child did not wish to go back. Therefore, the men did not have the youngling’s best interests in mind, and such interests were once more protected only by Coaxtl. Therefore, Coaxtl followed, keeping to cover when she could and traveling faster and more quietly than the cloud shadows she resembled.
Luzon headed in the direction of the Vale of Tears, right into the rising sun, which, despite the snow-glare goggles he wore, made driving very difficult.
The girl had been very little help, being too ignorant to know the use of a map. She could simply point out the general direction she had been traveling when he had first seen her with the cat. He hoped she would be of more use later.
The child spoke not at all now, crouching in the pull-down jump seat behind him, her ragged-nailed fingers clutching the safety webbing as if her life depended on its protection. That annoyed Matthew, who considered himself an extremely capable driver. He fixed his gaze on the so-called track he had to follow, while Braddock kept his eyes glued on the compass when the terrain made it necessary to detour about obstacles even the sturdy snocle couldn’t run over. Only once did the girl make a sound: a sort of half-stifled cry of relief.
“What was that all about, little one?” he asked, trying to sound as benign as he could.
“Nnnunununn nothing, gracious sir,” she said, and he had the vague impression that she had to turn her head back to the front to answer him. He glanced in the mirror but could see nothing but snowy plains and patchily covered mountains behind them.
“It must have been something. You haven’t said a word since we left. Are you not happy in my company?”
“You are gracious, sir.”
“Then share your thoughts with me.”
“Oh, sir, I’m most definitely not worthy to share anything with anyone. It was only that I saw a pretty shadow . . .”
Matthew immediately knew that for a prevarication, as he could see nothing anywhere that might qualify as a pretty shadow.” Because he didn’t wish to drive the timorous girl so far into her shell that she would be even less communicative than she was already, he let the matter drop.
It took four days by snocle to reach the Vale. Goat-dung rode in misery and, when she was allowed, in silence. The journey was much for her as sleep had been in the Vale—a respite, a brief time away, but always with the knowledge that she would wake within the Vale.
She was not traveling with Dr. Luzon because of his promises to free her, to adopt her. No, she knew better than to hope for such things, and besides, she was not the sort of person that anyone thought important enough to keep their promises to. She rode with him because she knew, as she had always known, with a dull, dreading certainty, that sooner or later she would wake up, end up, back in the Vale. When she had been with Coaxtl in her Home, she had for a time hoped to be free. With Coaxtl, who was free above all else, it had seemed reasonable to hope for freedom. As soon as she was back among people, even happy, laughing, squabbling people, people who were too ignorant to know that she did not deserve their pity, people who surely lied to pretend they were able to care about her, as soon as she was with them, she knew she was destined to return to the Vale.
And who better than Dr. Luzon, who was like and yet unlike the Shepherd Howling, to take her there? He did not strike her or try to touch her dirty secret places. He did not, in fact, seem interested in her at all. The only harm he did was to batter her ears constantly with questions about the Vale, about the Shepherd, about the Wisdom’s and the Great Monster. He battered her about Coaxtl, too, but she would say nothing of the big cat, even to Dr. Luzon.
During the day, mile after mile of snow sped past the snocle’s wind bubble—snowy hills, snowy plains, snowy valleys, snowy hills again. They sped past half-frozen rivers and slushy places they had to detour around, through forests and over land too high for forest to grow, past rabbit tracks and moose tracks and the tracks of horses. She wondered if these horses wore horns, like one she had glimpsed long ago. At first, it was exciting to travel over land so fast, but the excitement soon paled when she realized how quickly she was returning to the one place she did not want to be!
Nights were bad because that’s when the questions began, so that she had the Shepherd’s teachings ringing in her ears as she fell asleep, just as she always had in the Vale
Only one piece of knowledge made all bearable, something only she knew, that just behind the hill, or hunkered down in a nearby bush, or back in the trees, or watching from the rim of a valley, a lone clouded shape vigilantly followed and stood guard at night. And when she woke at night sweating in her new warm winter clothing, she would hear a purr inside her mind, from out of the darkness, and the song of Coaxtl would lull her to sleep again.
Sleep, youngling
Sleep and dream
Of when your eyes will open
Sleep, youngling
Sleep and dream
Of the day when your tail will he long
Sleep and dream
Sleep and dream
Safe in the Home you’ll be throbbed into slumber
Safe in the Home you’ll be crooned to all day
Sleep, youngling
Sleep and dream
At twilight we two will go hunting.
When this happened, sometimes the bad dreams did not return; sometimes she woke without fearing the daylight.
Such a night had passed before the day when they reached the Vale. Panic rose and choked off her breath as she looked
down into the Vale, which now was muddy, but without water, and with a new coat of ice and snow.
She wanted to say “Stop!” to Dr. Luzon, but he would not have listened. Instead, he called to Braddock to drive recklessly down into the Vale, whereupon they were immediately surrounded by the Faithful.
Most of them had never seen a snocle before. Some cried out in alarm, “The Great Monster!”
Others said, “No, an angel of the company.”
But when they saw her, people didn’t know what to think. Ascencion, whom she saw on the edge of the crowd, gave her a hard look and then turned, to appear a short time later with the Shepherd himself.
The Shepherd looked smaller, somehow, and rather ordinary, not larger than life as he usually appeared. His chin was smooth, to show his purity over other men, who must wear whiskers. His hair was cut short for the same reason, although the women were never, ever to cut theirs unless they were being shamed for some wrong.
He did not, at first, look very friendly to Dr. Luzon, though he retained that air of peaceful detachment and complete calm he carried with him at all times when he wasn’t preaching—until he fell into a terrible rage. But now he spoke softly. “We are a solitary and forsaken people, living apart on the hideous monster that is the back of this world. Why have you disturbed us?”
Matthew Luzon said, a slight yearning entering his tone that Goat-dung had not heard there before, “Why, we have come to you for wisdom, of course, good Shepherd. I am Dr. Matthew Luzon, an investigator for the company, and this is my assistant, Braddock Makem. The child you know.”
“I know her,” the Shepherd said, his calmness turning cold as his eyes touched Goat-dung’s face. “She is a traitor who has run from the light. What business has a company investigator got with her or with me?”
“I am a special sort of investigator, Shepherd,” Matthew explained. “It is my job to purge the company’s holdings of lies that corrupt and mislead the people. Many on this world lie about its nature, seek to make us believe it is not merely a planet, but a sentient organism, whose natural events have intent and intelligence behind them. The girl told me of your teachings. I believe you know the truth and would learn it from you. I would have you testify before the company about this truth, as well.”
