by neetha Napew
She did have a chance to obsequiously inquire of Nexie’s latest investment projects. That gave her a chance to make a passing reference to the Omnicora Steel Venture, which she had decided was not properly based to make any sort of a profit back on the original investment. She had raised her voice just enough for Matthew to over hear her comments. That would remind him, too, that she had lost none of her acumen. She discussed with Bal the possibility of investing in one of his schemes, which she had recently investigated, though she pointed out one or two organizational problems that should be addressed before she could consider the project. By the fleeting expression on Bal Emir Jostique’s face, she had hit the very weak points he must have discovered. That should take care of that, then, if Matthew chose to call her gullible.
She was exhausted with smiling and waxing charming by the time she and Sally could leave the “gentlemen” to whatever it was gentlemen insisted on doing without female company in this stratum of interplanetary society.
“Any luck, dear?” she asked Sally as they both made for their quarters in the wing of the livid yellow building.
“We may need more than luck,” Dama,” Sally said with a sigh. “Dr. Luzon has got some twists that a Spican contortionist would envy.”
“Ah, but we knew he would.”
“My report’s on your desk, but I really think, ma’am, you need a good night’s sleep more. Bad news keeps.”
“Thank you, dear. I’ll take your advice only if you’ll take it yourself.”
Sally sighed, for the first time since the start of the tedious dinner party allowing her own fatigue to show, and nodded. “I think I’d best if I’m to be sharp up to the mark tomorrow for you. At least, we have all our facts in hard copy and not innuendoes.”
“Sleep well, then.”
Others did not. And, later, both Faber and Millard, who had stayed on as courtesy required, admitted that they had not seen the discreet accord that must have been reached during that interval by Matthew, Torkel Fiske, Bal Emir, and Nexim Shi-Tu. They knew that the four must have made a deal during that time, because not even Luzon would have dared to take the draconian measures that followed without the support of Fiske and the other two board members. Marmion blamed herself for having taunted Bal, but she had been pursuing another course of action entirely.
At midnight, the several shuttles that had brought the other commissioners from their separate capitals silently lifted from SpaceBase on their assigned missions. None of the crew or troopers had ever heard of Petaybee before, though what they’d seen of it hadn’t impressed them at all. They’d had no rest or more than a hasty meal of hard rations while they erected the detention cells that had been sent along at Luzon’s request.
As soon as the soundproofed, windowless two-by-one-meter cells had been erected in one of the empty storage facilities, the shuttles took off for their destinations. Squads had trank guns and orders to use them if any of the detainees resisted arrest. They were also ordered to secure local felines, with a bonus for each one caught.
“Whaddaya think they want cats for? muttered one enlisted man, only to be sharply reprimanded by his troop leader “If they want cats, they get ‘em.”
The shuttles separated to pick up their passengers at the Vale of Tears. Ascencion was collected, and Lonciana and her husband were dragged out of their beds and barely given a chance to clothe themselves. Loncie protested as loudly and vehemently against such an unwarranted intrusion as only a former chief petty officer could, demanding to see the detention order, while Pablo gave quick and decisive household instructions to Carmelita. At Kabul, Shanachie Chau Xing was collected; at Portage, one of the newer settlements, an irate McDouall swore eloquently that, if this was the sort of cooperation Intergal wanted on Petaybee, they’d had the last of his! At Savoy, they made three pickups: Luka, the out spoken woman, and the man, identified as Eamon Shishmareff, who had been so uncooperative in helping Luzon and Torkel Fiske get across the coo-berry forestation. Fingaard and Ardis Sounik were collected from Harrison’s Fjord. It was there that a trooper got a lucky shot into an orange cat and, throwing the stunned carcass over his shoulder, grinned at the thought of the bonus he’d get.
“You shot Shush?” The Harrison’s Fjord woman was too indignant to be cowed by the huge trooper.
“Jeez, lady, I just tranked him,” the trooper said, backing a step away from the woman, who was nearly as tall as he. But he didn’t interfere when she removed the limp cat from his shoulder; she cuddled it in her arms on the way back to SpaceBase and glared at him the entire trip.
Another shuttle picked up the Connellys—father, mother, and Krisuk—at McGee’s Pass; Liam Maloney, still visiting at Deadhorse Pass; and then the shanachies of Little Dublin, New Barrow, and Mirror Lake. The third started at Tanana Bay, went on to Shannonmouth, where they collected Aigur and Sheydil, and got to Kilcoole before the fastest cat had had a chance to get halfway there.
Since Adak was among the first taken and the cats had scattered when pursued, Clodagh, Aisling, Sinead, ‘Cita, Yana, and Sean were caught unprepared.
“Major Maddock, to you, Lieutenant,” Yana had protested furiously, wrapping the bed quilt around her while Sean swung his feet over the side of the bed and unconcernedly pulled on his pants and boots. “Now get out of here while we dress.”
“Orders, ma’am, not to let you out of my sight.”
“About face, Lieutenant, and I’m not kidding!”
“Neither am I,” he said, shifting his weapon threateningly. But to avoid her scathing glance, he stared straight forward, as if at attention.
“Okay then, fine, have it your way, you prurient bastard,” Yana said. She stood up and dropped the quilt, straight and proud in her nakedness and inordinately relieved that she was now accustomed enough to the Petaybean temperatures that her flesh did not rise up in embarrassing bumps. Sean moved between her and the offending soldier, but she was not mollified.
“We’ll meet again, Lieutenant, under other circumstances,” she said softly, and had the pleasure of seeing him flush.
Sean did nothing but stand, leaning slightly in favor of his good leg, between her and the guard, but only when she had pulled on the dress uniform she had folded so carefully in the back of the small clothespress did he drop back beside her to clasp her hand. Then, silently, they were escorted outside.
Outside, the predawn morning was brooding, fog sifting on the sun to keep it from rising to brighten the sky. Suddenly, from the edges of the buildings visible, a black and white bolt flew past.
“No, Nanook!” Sean shouted, and as the troopers, all eager to claim the cat bonus, turned to find their target, they were rewarded with a snarl of such malice that, hardened though this squad was by encounters on many strange planets with many strange beasts, they looked anxious.
The lieutenant recovered first and detailed half his squad to fan out and see if they couldn’t get a shot at the creature. Out of the corner of her eye, Yana saw the slight smile on Sean’s face. No one was likely to catch Nanook. Coaxtl? She would have been at Sinead’s, guarding her person, ‘Cita. Yana fretted over that as they passively followed their guards to the shuttle. She could also sense that everyone in the village was awake and watching. That was all they could do with such a superior force.
When Yana saw the range of her fellow captives, her heart sank. Clodagh was as composed as usual, even though she was surrounded by nets of her potions and salves and medications. Hadn’t witch-hunts gone out three centuries ago? Yana wondered numbly. Sinead looked furious, lips tightly compressed, while tears ran down Aisling’s face, making her oddly more appealing than ridiculous. ‘Cita was terrified and clung to Bunny, who had taken her cue from Clodagh and was holding her head proud. Adak looked frightened, as frightened as probably everyone else felt. He had always been the one in the know, the community’s link with the base, as well as being a responsible company employee. Now he was just another ip, an “inconvenient person,” as Bunny called hers
elf and her fellow Petaybeans. Poor Adak seemed to shrink in on himself when he saw first Yana and then Sean pushed into the shuttle. Then he seemed to gather himself and twitched his shoulders to sit more erect on the hard metal seat.
As Yana was pushed down, she wondered if Diego, Frank, and Whittaker—naw, they wouldn’t dare remand a company director, would they?—were missing from the roll of those Matthew considered dangerous dissidents. Then a large male body crowded in between herself and Sean. Looking around, she saw that every Petaybean was separated from another by a trooper—a big, heavily armed trooper.
She grinned broadly. What a back handed compliment.
“Wipe that grin off your face,” the nameless lieutenant ordered.
“Son, I outrank you and I’ve five times as many first-drop bars as you do,” Yana said, sounding quietly amused but putting commander-steel in her voice and narrowing her eyes at him. “You can barge into my private quarters and arrest me without due process, but by all that’s holy, don’t you dare try to deny me the right to react to this whole ridiculous operation!”
The lieutenant, all too aware that she had outfaced him once before and determined not to let her get under his skin again, laughed. “Nothing’s ridiculous about this operation and you’d better start believing it now . . . Major!”
“You mean, it isn’t ridiculous that it took two squads of heavily armed non-Petaybean troopers transferred from Omnicron Three, Plexus-Four, and Space Station One-Thirty-One to arrest unarmed citizens of a backward, low-tech world.”
With a snarl, the lieutenant had gone as far as drawing his hand back when a voice from the cockpit abruptly ordered him forward.
Yana was proud that she had not so much as tensed to take the immininent blow and that her smile had stayed in place. No one spoke, of course, neither Petaybean nor alien trooper, but ‘Cita and Aisling stopped weeping, and Clodagh’s lips turned up just that little bit.
The moment the shuttle took off, Yana’s courage seemed to leak out of her and fear pressed against her guts. She noticed that Clodagh’s smile vanished and her lips were set. Bunny, too, looked more apprehensive. It wasn’t until the shuttle landed a familiarly short distance away, where the heavy fog was pierced by a great quantity of bright lights of the kind employed only at SpaceBase, that her courage returned. Ah, but she was once more in touch with the planet. Somehow, some way, as yet inexplicable, the planet was aware: and Yana saw that Clodagh’s smile had returned.
Yana’s apprehensions returned, doubled, the moment they were marched out of the shuttle, which had landed right by an anonymous block of temporary housing. Though it was hard to see more than a few feet beyond her, Yana could tell from the only glance she had time for that they were at the far end of SpaceBase. It wasn’t that large a facility by company standards, but being at the far end would place them at an awkwardly long distance from the administrative area and any help from Marmion Algemeine or Whittaker Fiske, if he was still at large.
Inside the building, bare corridors were brightly lit, and lined with doors, depressingly close together. That made this, she thought glumly, a temporary detention center: small cells, no amenities, and no communication between the reluctant residents.
A sergeant with a clipboard merely pointed a stylus to the right and they were led that way. Yana was thrust in the second room, and the door closed behind her with the odd thunk of a noise-proofed construction. A single strip of bright lighting, a blanket, a toilet, and a washbasin completed the furnishings. The temperature would have been chilly to those accustomed to space stations, but Yana was comfortable in it. Score one! She used the toilet, washed her face with her hands, and dried herself on one edge of her blanket. She took off her boots, tunic, and pants and laid them neatly on the rough carpet, then rolled up in the blanket and told herself to go back to sleep.
Chapter 16
“It’s a cat, common domestic Terran-type feline, female weighing just above a kilo, which makes it somewhat larger.” the veterinary surgeon said after doing every test he could think of on the limp orange-striped body that had been brought in. “Scanner shows no unusual organs, average brain size, average everything, except a dense fur of several layers, probably a requirement to survive in the temperatures you say exist in winter on this planet. It does have large ears, with more fur growing across—doubtless to prevent snow getting in—and a phenomenal length of whiskers. It does have heavily callused paw pads, with hair growing between the toes, and a long-haired tail, but I’ve never seen a healthier animal. And I can’t find anything out of the ordinary about it, given its environment. For instance, the hair between the paws would make it easier to travel over snow.”
“You have the report?” Ivan asked. The vet tapped one key of his handheld pad, and a narrow, long sheet inched its way out of the paper slot. He handed it to Ivan. ‘Thank you.”
“What do I do with that cat?”
Ivan hesitated. He knew what Matthew had ordered, but what had the cat done to him? “Keep it under observation. Maybe awake, it will show some deviations.”
The vet shrugged and gave a small snort. “Cats are deviant, and devious, by nature. Exactly What sort of aberrant behavior is this one supposed to exhibit when conscious? I mean, give me a clue to know what to watch out for.”
“Maybe one isn’t enough,” Ivan muttered under his breath, then added louder, “No other squad caught one?”
“No other’s been brought in to me.” The vet stifled a yawn.
Another was brought in two hours later, only it wasn’t a cat: it was a crossbreed feline that the vet couldn’t find mention of in his files. It was nearly the size of the lions that had once roved Africa, had a thick coat of dense fur with a clouded-spot design, had the fangs and retractable claws of a tiger, and had to be tranked again before the vet and the four troopers struggling with the half-aware creature could put it under the scan.
Awed by its size, beauty, and uniqueness, the vet, when Matthew Luzon himself came for his report, could only verify that this was an unusual breed of feline.
“In what way?” Matthew asked with an edge to his voice that put the vet on the alert.
“Size, color, density of fur, condition, in that most feral animals are less well nourished,” he answered, shrugging.
“No unusual organs? The size of the brain?”
“Normal for the size of the skull certainly.” Suddenly the vet decided not to mention that that was the one particular in which the animal varied from any other specimen in the genus: its skull was larger, to accommodate the larger brain.
“Destroy it,” Matthew said. “And do an autopsy. I’m looking for a scientific explanation of the so-called communication link these creatures have with the humans here. Implants, maybe.”
“Sir, for that sort of information wouldn’t behavioral observation be more—“
“Destroy it! Do I have to give orders twice?”
“No, sir.” The vet wheeled around and made a show of filling a syringe and plunging the sterile water into the back of the neck. There were certain orders he would not obey, not with the oath he had taken as a young idealist who planned to catalog marvelous new alien life-forms. “Takes about twenty minutes, sir, with an animal this size.”
But Matthew Luzon had already left the surgery and the vet wondered where the hell he could safely dispose of a sleeping animal this size without being noticed. He was still running through alternatives a half hour later when a major with two soldiers, one a massive man and the other a mere slip of a lad, appeared at the door, saying they had orders to collect a dead animal. Reluctantly, he showed them the unconscious beast and desperately hoped that the second trank would wear off soon enough that the creature could escape being buried alive. Sometimes the favors one tried to do could boomerang.
He was very unhappy with what had seemed like a routine mission. None of the animals that had passed through his facility that day had been unusual except for their obvious adaptations to the climatic conditio
ns of this peculiar place—although the purpose of that extra bony layer on the nose of the curly-coated stallion still puzzled him. The interior nasal flap was listed as a characteristic of the breed and kept icy winds from penetrating to their lungs. And now Luzon was intimating that the creatures might be—well, psychic! He never willingly destroyed an animal wantonly. and certainly not a psychic one!
Utterly depressed, he went to the cubicle allotted to him and tried to sleep. He woke up, even more depressed, for his dream had been about a clouded leopard running across a snowy waste, its effortless stride as graceful as it was powerful.
Awake. Coaxtl found, one had a dreadful thirst. One’s body was slightly sore with pricks, scrapings, and bruisings, and one’s senses were dull. Rolling over, one ducked one’s head because of the low bushes under which one lay. A sniff brought no useful information as to one’s location. The pursuers, men who rattled as they ran and shouted, were gone, though Coaxtl seemed to remember them being close enough to pounce. No mind. Now they were gone,
Unfortunately, the youngling was gone as well, still, and if Coaxtl had escaped the men, they had triumphed in preventing Coaxtl from finding the youngling.
Coaxtl had seen the little female forced into a huge bird machine, bigger than the terrible creature that had carried Coaxtl, the youngling, the seal-man, and his mate to this land where the youngling was to live with her kin. Where the black-and-white Nanook had been interested in one as a mate. Nanook had had much to tell Coaxtl, who had listened with growing wonder. More than “Home” was changing, it would seem. “Home” had indeed altered, if one could be so robbed of sense and then dumped unceremoniously under a thicket.
There was, however, some snow still left in the center of the shrubbery, and Coaxtl licked at it. The cool silvery water relieved the nasty, stinging taste and dryness in one’s mouth, while the cold snow and the water seeping into one’s fur revived one further.
