by neetha Napew
That was when she noticed the holo transponder was missing. Not that she had to worry about the Petaybeans inadvertently turning it on. But Namid would know what it was. She ought to have checked, and she berated herself for such an oversight. Captain Louchard, she grinned to herself, would have plenty to say about that when next she assumed that mantle.
She and the two crewmen, Dott and Framer, came across Megenda then, all curled up in a foetal position on the floor of the cave, just where it opened up into a fair-sized chamber: a chamber that was oddly beautiful in its pastel shades and mottled walls. The beauty was of a strange, disorientating nature, however; the mottles rippled and the shades altered in an unnerving fashion. Walls were supposed to be stationary and their coloration was generally stable, too.
‘What’s the matter with him, Dinah?’ Dott asked, planting a toe on Megenda and trying to turn him on to his back so the first mate’s face would be visible. He was a rather unimaginative sort, good for routine or monotonous duties, strong and unquestioning, happy to be given orders he could follow, which he followed to the letter. ‘Thought you said he was just cold.’
‘I don’t like the look of him,’ Framer said, taking a step back from Megenda’s rigid body as if afraid of contagion.
‘He’s warm enough now,’ Dott said, grabbing one of Megenda’s hands and trying to pull it away from his face.
‘Hey, how can you have fog in a cave?’ Framer asked and pointed to the mist beginning to rise from the floor.
‘These caves are supposed to be special places,’ Dinah said as evenly as she could but the vapour rising carried an aroma to it that was unlike anything she had ever encountered. Her skin began to crawl under the warm parka she’d been given. ‘I’d like to know what’s going on here,’ she said, turning around on her heel, addressing whatever was generating all these unusual effects. She could have sworn that there’d been no mist, no odour, and no vacillating wall colours and designs when she’d first reached the cave floor. She looked behind her and the mist was closing in so that she couldn’t see the walls now.
‘Going on here?’ The phrase was interrogatory, not rhetorical and the voice that said the words was not an echo of hers.
‘Dinah?’ The unimaginative Dott’s voice quavered. ‘How do we get out of here?’
No way out of’here.’
‘Keee-rist, who’s talking?’ Framer looked wildly around him. ‘Who’s talking?’
Dinah wanted to reassure him that it was the Petay-beans perpetrating some sort of a hoax to frighten them but she absolutely knew, though she didn’t know how, that the voice was nothing caused by any human phenomenon. It penetrated her body through to the marrow of her bones.
‘Listen, it commanded.
‘I’m listening, I’m listening,’ Framer said, dropping to his knees, bringing his hands up together, probably for the first time in his life, into a prayerful position.
Dott just sat down, hard, licking his lips. He kept his head straight but he rolled his eyes around in his head as if he didn’t quite dare to look at who, or what, was speaking back at them.
Megenda began to jibber more wildly, writhing in and out of the foetal position as if his limbs, and torso, were attached to invisible strings.
For the first time in her adult life, since the time she had turned a weapon on a man who had threatened her with vicious and sadistic treatment, Dinah O’Neill knew fear. She forced herself to remain standing, clenching her fists at her sides as the mist crept up over her knees, so dense now, and almost substantial in its covering, that she couldn’t see her boots. It engulfed her, a moist, permeating blanket, travelling quickly up her body until it covered her face and she could see nothing. And the sound seemed to emanate from the vapour that enveloped her: sound that cut her skin to her blood and bones: sound that was warm and vibrated through her, and filled with darkening colours, until she heard herself scream in protest at such an invasion. There were screams around her and, with an almost superhuman effort of will, she bit her lips, determined that she would not cry mercy from whatever was happening as the crewmen did. Her resolve ended when she felt the hard thwack of stone against her face and her body as she fell down. Then she whimpered and wept, as much the lonely, confused, tormented five-year-old girl who had been abandoned by all the adults who had managed her life up till that moment.
‘The planet has been speaking?’ the boy whispered to Cita, his hands moving restlessly on the cub’s fur as if that motion were all that protected him.
In one sense, Cita would tell Yo Chang much later, petting the cub had protected him as he had valiantly protected the cub when in danger from Zing Chi.
‘Yes, Petaybee does in these places,’ Cita said in a very grown-up voice.
‘And it keeps this place warm for us?’ Yo Chang asked because he had to be sure. Though this girl was not much older than himself, he felt she had exhibited commendable authority and certainly bravery in walking the gauntlet of those great animals.
‘The Home is always warm.’
‘How? It was so cold on the surface. Why would it be warm down here? I could feel my ears adjusting to the air pressure so I know we are down.’ He gestured to the ground on which they were seated.
‘The Home protects us, Coaxtl says. It takes care of us… if’, and Cita paused to permit Yo Chang to see how important her next phrase was, ‘we take care of it.’
‘It isn’t taking care of them,’ Yo Chang said, rolling his eyes, and pointing to one side where the despoilers were writhing in agony and shrieking in great anguish.
‘I know,’ Cita said soberly. ‘I used to live with people who called it the Great Monster and feared it only. Because it can be cruel to those who take without respect and give no thanks. The Shepherd Howling was the kind of man who did that all the time so he stayed out of these caves and taught us all to fear them. But I am disobedient and selfish, and when I ran away from the flock, because they would have taken from me what I was too proud to give freely, I met Coaxtl, who called the Great Monster “Home”. I decided that if I could, I would rather be like the Great Monster than like Shepherd Howling. The Home is proud too and it obeys no-one. And it too begrudges what is taken from it against its will.’ Cita patted his hand. ‘Your people have angered the Home and it has become the Great Monster. They’ She waved her hand at the writhing bodies. She was having to shout over the noise they made, ‘need to be shown how it feels to be stripped and cut, slashed and dug, prodded and pulled and flayed.’
To demonstrate her point - and having had a great deal of experience with such torments - Cita got a flap of skin from Yo Chang’s neck and twisted and pinched it as hard as she was able.
‘Hey, don’t do that,’ and Yo Chang scrambled sideways away from her, rubbing his neck.
‘I was only demonstrating how the planet feels. You were cutting and pulling, too, you know, and you are very lucky that Petaybee saw you save the cub.’
Yo Chang gave her a sour, jaundiced glance, rubbing the outraged spot of the pinch. ‘You didn’t have to demonstrate so hard.’
‘I did because that is how we learn how the planet feels,’ she replied. ‘You’re much luckier than they are!’
The shrieks and howls were beginning to diminish as the strength of the condemned, or the planet’s ministrations, eased.
‘They’re not dead, are they?’ Yo Chang asked most urgently.
‘I don’t think so,’ Cita said, though she couldn’t be sure. ‘Why?’
‘My… my… father is not a bad person. Not really,’ Yo Chang said, his round face and eyes entreating. ‘We are all forced to work hard at what we do for those who despatch us to where we must harvest plants. If we do not work hard, and if my father does not make his crew work hard, then the quotas are not filled and we do not get the rations which only hard workers deserve.’
Neither youngster would have understood being paid in credit notes, for both had toiled long and hard hours just to get enough food to fill their stoma
chs.
‘It is hard,’ Cita agreed, nodding her head approvingly,’ to get enough to eat. Since Coaxtl found me, I have been eating so well I will soon be as fat as Clodagh.’ She patted her stomach with great satisfaction. ‘Everyone feeds me now - Coaxtl, Clodagh, my sister, my aunties and uncles and cousins in their homes. They are very fair about the distribution of food to the plate.’
She nodded her head once more in emphasis. But thinking of the food she had shared with Sinead, Sean and Bunny reminded Cita that it had been a long time since she had eaten. She also wondered if the call for help had reached anyone. Not, she hastily corrected herself, that Petaybee had not come to their rescue. It had provided ample shelter and water although one had to be careful not to drink too much water or one could get a stomach colic which twisted the guts very uncomfortably.
A slight snore emanated from Coaxtl and Yo Chang leant towards Cita.
‘Does he’
‘Coaxtl is a female personage,’ Cita informed him repressively.
‘Does she really talk to you?’
‘Not in loud words like you and I are using,’ Cita said, ‘but I understand exactly what she says to me.’
Yo Chang looked down at the sleeping cub in his arms. ‘Then, if I heard the name Monti, the cub was telling me his name?’
‘Quite likely,’ Cita said, delighted at being an expert on such a point.
The moans and sobbings had died down to a low enough murmur so Cita decided she could get some sleep.
‘We may be a while longer,’ she told Yo Chang as she rearranged herself against Coaxtl’s long warm body. ‘You’d better rest.’
‘Can I go see if my father’s all right?’ Yo Chang asked timidly and fearfully.
‘He’ll be feeling very sorry for himself, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Cita said, settling. ‘Sometimes, my Aunt Sinead says, when people are hurting they’ll lash out at anyone else to make them hurt, too.’
Yo Chang gulped but resolutely deposited the sleeping cub by Cita before he made his way down to where the sufferers were enduring their penance. She was half asleep when she heard him return, stifling sobs.
‘Your father?’
‘Lives, but looks like a grandfather. He doesn’t seem to know me.’
She patted his shoulder awkwardly and pulled him down, putting her thin arm over him so that he lay between her and Coaxtl and Monti the cub. She didn’t need to tell him that life was sometimes hard.
Namid felt a pang of anxiety. Though Dinah certainly merited discipline, even incarceration for their abduction, he didn’t wish her harm. And he did need to know more about her activities, with or without the holo of Captain Onidi Louchard. Perhaps it had been Megenda who was Louchard, although the first mate had never appeared to Namid as a man of sufficient cunning and intelligence to contrive the piratical activities that had made Louchard’s name feared all over the galaxy.
If Dinah could give him any mitigating circumstances - beyond what he already knew of her tragic early life and hard treatment - maybe he could do some kind of a deal. She wasn’t all bad. He couldn’t have loved her if she had been thoroughly corrupt and sinister. That surely would have affected her personality and she had been such a loving and affectionate wife: merry, occasionally even frivolous, and often childlike in her enthusiasms during their married life. Maybe she was a split personality, schizophrenic, and that complexity, once proved, would reduce the sentence. The very thought of Dinah, encased in a space coffin, waiting for the air supply to end, appalled him. He was determined to find some way out for her. Marmion was of such a forgiving personality that she might even drop personal charges against Dinah - if she knew of factors which could mitigate the offence. Dinah hadn’t actually pulled the trigger that had killed anyone. Her crew had murdered, that was true, but she had assured him, when he first found out who she ‘worked for’ that the pirates were under strict orders to fire only at others when they were being fired upon themselves. Of course, the ethic was that they were being fired on legally for attempting illegal activities and self-defence, accordingly, could not be claimed. Oh, my stars and sparkles, Namid thought, I’m arguing like a modern-day Gilbert and Sullivan.
He took a deep breath and opened the inner door to the communion chamber. Warm mist obscured everything, making him feel he had stepped into a steam bath and he immediately felt a strong presence that had nothing to do with Dinah or her crew. Well, he had been assured by sane and intelligent people that the planet definitely had a persona.
‘Good morning,’ he said, feeling just a trifle foolish, but if the planet understood, then it would appreciate normal courtesies, too.
‘And it is morning and I expect that you’ve had a busy time of it lately but I did wish a few words with you.’
‘Few words.’
Was that permission? Or limitation? Namid wondered.
‘They might be more than a few, actually,’ Namid went on, smiling as if that would be noticed. ‘I’ve so many questions to ask.’
‘Many questions.’
Again Namid wondered if that was permission or limitation. But it had sounded, to his untutored ear, as if the speaker was slightly amused by his presumption.
‘I’m told that you do communicate, or rather go into a communion phase with… what should I call it… with supplicants? No, that’s much too religious a word.
Communicants? Ah, yes, I think that is best. Now, first, is there anything I can do to assist you right now? Remove the occupants that spent the night here? I can’t see them for the fog but…’
Namid had - not quite stealthily, but slowly - felt his way further into the cavern. Before he went one step further, however, the fog suddenly sucked itself back into the farthest reaches of the cave and vanished, leaving him awe-struck and speechless for several moments as he watched the play of gently singing light and colour across the surfaces of the cave.
‘You are rather stunning in appearance, you know,’ he said in a hushed voice. The shifting colours of the walls were corruscations of complex blendings and wave designs. He rather suspected he could spend hours following the patterns as they made their way deeper and deeper into the cavern. The way was level now whereas before it had been on a slight downward incline. ‘Am I well into this communion place now?’
‘Now!’
‘Ah, then,’ Namid said, ‘I’m an astronomer, you see. I have spent my life observing the anomalies of stellar matter, with particular emphasis on variables. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?’
‘Talk.’
‘Well, now I’m certainly willing to although I am not a lecturer by training. Still, to talk to a planet, the satellite of a rather… ah… (not ordinary, Namid said to himself, not wishing to offend Petaybee)… an excellent example of a G-type star… well, it’s an extraordinary experience, if you know my meaning.’
‘Know meaning. Talk.’
‘I’ve seen many stars - constant, dwarf, variable, binary systems - everything so far astronomically categorized, but speaking to a planet is highly unusual.’
Namid, aware that nervousness was making him more garrulous than was natural, thought he heard a whispery laugh.
‘Unusual planet.’
At that sally, Namid did laugh. ‘You have a sense of humour, don’t you? I think we shall get on very well together.’
‘Very well. Talk.’
A low moan that ended on a piteous sob interrupted any further talk at that juncture. The moan had echoed quite near and Namid, being a compassionate person, was compelled to investigate. Just beyond the bend in the passage, he saw the figure of Dinah, looking smaller and, indeed, when he turned her over in his arms, almost wizened efface. Her hair had turned completely white. She was breathing regularly and although her pulse was slow it was strong enough to reassure him. All the questions that had brimmed to his mind to ask Petaybee - could it speak with its primary, with its sister planets, communicate with its moons and how - went out of his head along with the questions he h
ad framed to ask Dinah. She was patently in no condition to answer - even to her own name.
A guttural ‘eh’ made him investigate further down the corridor where he saw three more figures, each of them curled in tight foetal positions, the bodies also giving off excretal and vomital smells that made Namid glad that he had eaten nothing yet in his haste to seek Dinah.
Megenda and the two crewmen had succumbed to Petaybee’s justice. But Namid felt that Dinah had not, because she had both not assumed the protective womb-position and not soiled herself. He was glad of that for she was most fastidious about her person.
He carried her up the stairs, banged on the trapdoor to be re-admitted into the cabin, and found it crowded with Marmion, Bunny, Diego and the Murphys.
‘Oh, dear, what has happened to her?’ Marmion said, reaching out compassionate hands to Namid’s limp burden.
Muktuk took her from Namid and carried her to the bed he and Chumia shared. ‘Petaybee’s happened to her,’ he said with the resigned tone of someone who has accepted judgement, fair or undeserved.
‘I found a portable holo-projector that produces an image of the pirate we all thought was Louchard,’ Marmion told him. ‘It was in Dinah’s pocket. She was Louchard all along.’
Muktuk stroked the white hair back from Dinah’s face and Chumia took her hand.
‘Poor lass,’ Muktuk said. ‘But us kindred of Handy Red have all got a wild streak.’
‘Hitch the team, Muktuk,’ Chumia said. ‘She’s beyond my skill. Clodagh in Kilcoole is best at this.’
Namid turned away from them and left the cabin, still agitated but reassured that Dinah would receive here maybe not just what she deserved but what she had needed all along.
25
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Sometime in the middle of the blizzard, Nanook clawed at the shuttle hatch and Yana opened it wide enough for him to jump the drift blocking it and land with a thud on the deck. He seemed to have brought half of the great outdoors in on his coat and paws, but as Sean rubbed him dry, he reported good news.
