Deluge

by Anne McCaffrey

  It’s a good thing we can thought-talk, Murel said. Otherwise I’d go bonkers from boredom. Huy and Chesney can come up with some good gossip from the station, but they don’t know many songs, and the ones they know have words that don’t tell stories. I’m supplying most of those.

  Rory’s pretty interesting, her brother told her, but the other boys, even the little ones, talk about games a lot. I saw some of them on vid when we were at Marmie’s, but I can’t say I understand the excitement.

  THE SCARIEST THING about the journey for the twins was when their captors decided the prisoners should have a shower. Fortunately, it turned out to be a sonic shower, so they were able to avoid the water exposure that would have forced their change into seal form. Other than that shower, they got no exercise, so it was hard to feel tired enough to sleep.

  When Murel slept, however, she dreamed about the river at home with its clouds of ice overhead and the fish so plentiful all she had to do was open her mouth to catch some. Ronan was in the dream, and later, when he described his dream to her, it sounded like the same one.

  THE SOLDIERS ON the troop ship being rocked in its moorings by gusts of Petaybean blizzard wind were also bored. All except Spec 4 Greta Forcet. Fascinated by what she saw on the weather map, she put in a call to the bridge. “Sir, I think you should see this,” she said.

  Captain J. Wilbank replied, “What’s up?”

  “This weather pattern, sir. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Yeah, this is quite a storm. I didn’t know it was possible for snow to occur at temperatures this low.”

  “It’s not only that, sir. It’s where the storm is.”

  “What do you mean? Never mind, I’ll come and see for myself.”

  Not only the captain, but two other officers and three enlisted personnel came to see what she was talking about. The storm’s ferocity made all of them feel under siege and eager for information.

  “Look here, where the worst of it is—the heaviest snow and the highest winds are all right here, at the port and in Kilcoole. It’s like we’re being specifically targeted by the storm.”

  “The river would act as a funnel—” the captain began.

  “Yes, but the winds are not nearly so fierce along the river, nor is the snow so heavy.”

  “Hmm. So if we penetrate the barrier of bad weather around the ship, we could send out another party to search for the locals.”

  Forcet raised her eyebrows but said nothing. He might be right, but she wasn’t going to volunteer for the expedition.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Lieutenant Chu said. “It’s like this place is haunted and the ghost is really pissed off.”

  “That’s not it,” Spec 5 Ortiz said.

  “Don’t contradict me, soldier,” Chu said. He had just made rank and was touchy about his authority.

  “Sorry, sir,” Ortiz barked, saluting smartly.

  “Let her talk, Lieutenant,” Captain Wilbank said. “Well, Ortiz?”

  “It’s just that I served with a couple of guys from here, sir. From what they said, the problem isn’t anything dead. It’s what’s living. They say this world is alive and has a nasty temper.”

  “WALK A LITTLE to the left, please, Yana,” Clodagh said as she reentered the cave. “That groove you’re wearing in the cavern floor should be wider so folk with bigger boots can still walk there.”

  Yana knew her pacing was driving everyone else nuts, but once more her entire family had left her without saying where they’d gone. That drove her nuts. Waiting for news was very high on her list of things she hated to do. Or not do. It was the kind of thing her former superiors would have called “a character-building experience.” She had certainly acquired the family best designed to build her character. And now they were testing her patience by running off without a word at a time when she needed to think clearly and act without hesitation. Instead, concern for them left her feeling unable to make a decision about when to act.

  Clodagh, dressed in winter gear, had been in the outer cave, holding a veritable reception for every land creature on Petaybee from the look of it. Pairs of wild eyes stared into the cave. In height they could have been anywhere from taller than a man—a bear perhaps?—to very small indeed. The only ones Yana could identify for certain were Clodagh’s gold-striped cats, who came and went as if the snowstorm was of no concern to them. Like Coaxtl the snow leopard, they had extra-wide feet; tufts of fur padded their paws like snowshoes, and similar tufts warmed their ears.

  “Has the storm let up at all?” Yana asked Clodagh.

  “Here it has,” Clodagh replied with the enigmatic brevity that characterized most of her utterances in general and nearly all of her answers to other people’s questions. Clodagh’s tall, round body, clad in her furry snow pants and hooded parka, mittens, and mukluks, made her resemble a comical bear. This was especially true since over her parka she wore a kusbuk, a flounced, mid-thigh-length, hooded covering worn in summer as a lightweight top and in winter over the parka to protect the precious coat from damage. The villagers loved sewing their kusbuks out of the brightest fabrics they could find, making them easier to spot in a snowstorm and adding a bit of cheerful contrast to the often-bleak winter landscape.

  “How about at sea?”

  “Sean and the kids will be fine, Yana. But those company folk are socked in.”

  “They are?”

  “The ones in the village hid in the longhouse. The ones on the ship can’t get out.”

  Bunny Rourke, Sean’s niece, said, “I bet they wish we were still home to build fires for them and make them nice hot cups of rose hip tea.”

  “Rrrright,” Yana growled. Johnny Green, Pet Chan, Raj Norman, and Rick O’Shay threw down the cards they’d been shoving back and forth in a desultory imitation of poker and looked at Yana expectantly. She smiled much as a wolf viewing a pen full of fat sheep might have. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said quietly, so as not to alert the other villagers, “perhaps it’s time to extend the planet’s hospitality to our guests.”

  “I’m going too,” said Sinead Shongili, Yana’s sister-in-law.

  “Shhh,” Yana said. She didn’t want to risk any of the native Petaybeans being captured, since an adult who had adapted to the planet would die when removed from it. But Sinead was a hunter who knew the land as well as she knew her beloved Aisling. She was the game warden for their area—a cool head and a sure shot. They could use her. “Fine, but keep back in the woods and cover us. We can’t risk you getting caught.”

  “Nor can we risk you, Yana, but I don’t see that stopping you,” Sinead said tartly, pulling on her parka and shouldering her rifle.

  MISSONI AND HIS troops listened to the woman on the recorder sing her song about a Corps legend—the massacre at Bremport Station—with interest that would have been astonishment were they not still so exhausted from fighting the storm. The voice was accompanied by a drum; in the background the wind howled, moaned, and whined around the building, now and then making a sound like the ruffling of the feathers of a gigantic bird.

  When she’d finished, he cut off the recording, though there was room for plenty more data. “How did she know about Bremport, Sarge?” Inuye asked. She was fairly new to the Corps.

  “You heard the lady, Private. She was there. Before she was turned by the locals, Major Yanaba Maddock was one of us, a decorated officer who served with distinction at several bases. She was invalided out after Bremport and sent here for retirement. It’s in the data banks on the ship. You can look it up.”

  “I guess she had to stay here because the Corps wouldn’t listen to her poetry,” Murkowski scoffed. “Got herself a captive audience and didn’t want to leave.”

  “I heard it was because she fell for the head scientist here,” Parr said.

  “Sex is a lot more likely a motive than poetry,” Inuye said.

  “Shut it,” Missoni said. “She was an exemplary officer before her injury. Show a little respect for the person s
he was. Any of us could be wounded and sent to where we’d be dependent on the goodwill of the locals to survive. When and if that happens to me, I hope to show more loyalty, but I’ve seen even worse things happen to even better people once they’re no more use to the Corps. Break out your rations. We’ll eat, sleep, and by then maybe the storm will have calmed down some.”

  Murkowski grumbled, “Should have confiscated some of the food in the cabins. It’s not like they’re going to be using it any time soon.”

  They had each brought along only one ration packet, thinking to strike quickly, take their prisoners, and return to the ship. Screw that scenario. “When the storm lets up, go back and collect whatever food you can find and bring it back here,” Missoni told them. “We may need it, and we don’t want them to have it. We may have to wait them out, and a siege doesn’t work unless someone is starving. I’d rather that not be us.”

  His com crackled, but he couldn’t make out any kind of message. The verbal one was lost in the general howl, and when they tried a text message, it fragmented into an unintelligible sparkly geometric design. Pretty but useless.

  When the men finished eating, Missoni posted a sentry at the longhouse’s only door. “If the storm lets up, wake me,” he told Murkowski. Then he and the others made themselves as comfortable as possible on the building’s floor. He was asleep before his head touched the floor.

  CHAPTER 6

  MURKOWSKI GRUMBLED TO himself. He was tired too, and more than likely the storm would play out before his watch was up, so he’d have to help when the search resumed.

  He paced himself to keep awake. He walked back to the fire and added another couple of logs from the pile near the pit. The smoke made a pewter haze that hung from the roof to just above the level of the floor. Several guys coughed and sneezed in their sleep. That storm had to break soon, or they’d all die of smoke inhalation. The wind sounded like it was trying to rip the roof off. What kind of a cold-blooded idiot would want to live in this freezer, anyway?

  He slouched back to the door, and realized that in spite of the noise still coming from the roof, the storm seemed to have calmed a little. The door was flanked by two small windows, but each of them was black as space. He picked up the huge board toggle that barred the door, lifting it aside so he could see out. He hoped the draft would wake up some of the other guys.

  The door opened inward, which was a good thing since three feet of snow was now drifted against it outside. Was it his imagination or had the wind finally deafened him? Either way, he couldn’t hear it as well. He stuck his head and shoulders out over the snowdrift. Something landed on his back, forcing his face into the snow before he could yell for help.

  YANA PATTED THE track cat, Orca, on the broad black flat place between his ears. The cat sat down on his prey, draping one paw casually over the side of the man’s face. The soldier’s snow-encrusted eyes opened as he struggled to turn his head. He took in the slow extension and retraction of three-inch-long claws covering his left ear and tickling his left cheek and the corner of his left eye. Yana put her mittened forefinger to the portion of her muffler masking her lips, indicating that he should be quiet, and he responded with a flick of his eyelids since he was too intimidated by the claws to make a larger gesture.

  Meanwhile, Raj, Pet, Johnny, and Rick slipped past her and into the longhouse on padded mukluk feet. Each of them was better trained than most of the sleeping troops. They silently removed the rifles and sidearms, then returned to the doorway and joined Yana while Pet and Johnny carried armloads of snow to dump on the fire. They scuttled back to the door as the hiss and steam and sudden cold woke some of the soldiers, who grabbed at the air where their weapons used to be.

  Yana, Raj, and Rick kept weapons trained on the soldiers until their friends were clear, then stepped back and signaled Orca to release his prey. The cat stood up after a long lazy stretch and bounded over the fallen man and off toward the woods.

  The man on the ground reached for Yana’s leg, but as soon as he used his body weight to support his reaching hand, he sank deeper into the snow and his mitten fell three inches short.

  When he looked up, he found himself staring into the barrel of Raj’s weapon.

  Yana pointed to the other soldiers, and Raj barked, “Crawl.”

  When the man had backed through the snowdrift into the lodge, one of the soldiers called, “You folks are making things worse for yourselves. It’s not like we walked here on our own. There’s a ship full of more like us waiting behind. You can’t win this one. We just need to talk to the governors and straighten this thing out.”

  “That’s not how we heard it,” Johnny said. “You came to haul them off to die in prison as you did Madame Marmion. We won’t allow you to murder these people.”

  “You don’t want to go to war with the Company Corps, son,” the spokesman said.

  “I’m not your son and at least two of us here outrank you,” Johnny told him, though he didn’t explain how.

  “You got weapons trained on my people, you all outrank me,” the man said.

  “You do as we say and you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Johnny told him. He beckoned Yana, Pet, and the others inside, near the doorway.

  “One by one, step forward, you first,” Pet Chan said to the spokesman. The man obeyed. “Remove your parka and pants,” she told him.

  “You’re going to let us freeze?”

  “Just trading,” Johnny answered. He took off his own parka and snow pants, borrowed from Sean, and put on the surrendered garments, noting the stripes on the parka sleeve. “Thanks, Sarge.”

  While he changed, Pet and Raj relieved the sergeant of his com, his knife, his ID tags, and his wallet. When they’d finished searching him, they allowed him to put on Johnny’s clothing.

  They searched the other soldiers in the same manner and forced two women in the party to trade with Yana and Pet, and two other men to swap with Raj and Rick.

  Then they backed out, leaving the soldiers unharmed and unfettered, but unarmed as well. Johnny and Pet went to work constructing a bolt across the door, boarded up the windows, then called Sinead to come and stand guard, along with the villagers who’d insisted on coming with her.

  The wind was gone, but it had blown all but a light skim of snow from the ice on the river, which had frozen solid enough to ski on. Yana and the others grabbed their skis, leaning against the wall of the longhouse, strapped them on, and headed upriver to where the ship was docked at the old Space Base.

  The night was white with snow, and as they reached the head of the river, the wind rose up again, driving a horizontal wall of crystal darts across the snow-covered ice. The ship, the terminal, and everything beyond was invisible to them, just as they, Yana hoped, were invisible to the ship. From what she could recall, the Corps had no equipment capable of penetrating such a storm. A proposal to orbit a satellite around Petaybee to provide better communications and more conveniences was still on the table. If she, Sean, and the others had allowed the installation, they might have been able to foil the people who’d arrested Marmie. On the other hand, a satellite would have provided the company with better access to more-sophisticated equipment, including the kind that could have detected the presence of the five skiers approaching the ship.

  Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Petaybeans lacked the technology that could cut both ways, working for or against them, but on the other hand, the planet’s active participation in promoting their and its own welfare gave them a considerable edge as long as they could keep their feet on Petaybean soil, snow, ice, or water.

  Disguised in the soldiers’ winter clothing, they blundered through the storm to the ship under Rick O’Shay’s guidance. Although Rick hadn’t lived on Petaybee full-time since his youth, he had retained the Petaybean knack for navigating through the nastiest weather the planet dished up. They used the ID tag Johnny had taken from the sergeant to signal their desire to come aboard. Normally there would have been questions asked,
but in the howling wind and knifing snow, using the com was impossible.

  Once they were through the lock, where they brushed off their outer clothing but did not remove it, the sentry on the other end asked, “You five are it?”

  Johnny nodded.

  “I thought you were bringing back prisoners. What’s the matter? Couldn’t find them in the whiteout?”

  Johnny nodded again.

  “The rest of your guys are still searching for them?”

  Another nod. Yana resisted the impulse to roll her eyes in exasperation. If she were this kid’s C.O., she’d have him on report as a security risk. Corps training and discipline—not to mention ethics—wasn’t what it had been in her day, if he was any example.

  He used the com unit to report their return and said, “Captain wants to see you on the bridge.”

  Unmolested, they walked past him into the belly of the beast.

  CHAPTER 7

  IT’S TIME! RONAN’S mental call broke into Murel’s dream of the river. They’re unlocking our door now. Yours?

  Awakening, Murel listened. Not yet. Sky?

  Hiding, Sky replied. This place is not in space now. It is stopped on the ground, but the ground is not our ground.

  As Murel sat up, the door slid open. Two of the soldiers who sometimes brought the food stood outside. “Okay, brats, your chariot awaits,” one of them said, unnecessarily waving her stunner at them.

  They were herded to the docking bay and hustled aboard a shuttle. Ronan and the boys joined them as they were all jammed inside the small craft. From the main part of the ship they could hear barked orders, groans, and footsteps, and through the shuttle’s viewport, just before they launched, Murel saw a great crowd of adults, some in Marmie’s livery but most in civilian clothing, being forced into the bay by armed guards. She spotted Mrs. Fogarty among them.