The Mystery of Ireta

by Anne McCaffrey

  Tanegli went back into the storehold and, after a noisy few moments, emerged, staggering under a plaspack full of jumbled supplies.

  “That clears the storehold, Paskutti.” Tanegli glanced around the staring faces of the captives and, laughing uproariously at some private joke, left.

  “No protests, Leader Kai? Leader Varian?” Paskutti’s tone and smile were taunting.

  “Protests wouldn’t do us any good, would they?” said Varian. She spoke so calmly that Paskutti frowned as he regarded her. The limp left arm had obviously been broken by his mishandling of her, but there was no sign of pain or anger in her voice, merely a bemused detachment.

  “No, protests wouldn’t, Leader Varian. We’ve had enough of you lightweights ordering us about, tolerating us because we’re useful.” He used a sneering tone. “Where would we have fit in your plantation? As beasts of burden? Muscles to be ordered here, there and everywhere, and subdued by pap?” He made a cutting gesture with one huge hand.

  And then, before anyone realized what he intended, he swooped on Terilla, grabbed a handful of the child’s hair and yanked her off her feet, letting her dangle at the end of his hand. At Terilla’s single, terrified scream, Cleiti jumped up, beating her fists against Paskutti’s thick muscular thigh, kicking at his shins. Amused and surprised by such defiance, Paskutti glanced down at Cleiti. Then he raised his fist and landed a casual blow on the top of Cleiti’s head. She sank, unconscious, to the deck.

  Gaber erupted and dashed at Paskutti who held the cartographer off with his other hand, all the while dangling Terilla by her hair, the girl’s eyes stretched to slits by the tautness of his grasp.

  “Tell me, Leader Varian, Leader Kai, did you send a message to the Theks? One second’s delay and I’ll break her back across my knee.”

  “We sent a message,” replied Kai promptly. “Mutiny. Heavy-worlders.”

  “Did you ask for help from our estimable supervisors?” asked Paskutti, giving Terilla a shake when he thought Kai deliberated too long in answering.

  “Help? From Theks?” asked Varian, her eyes never leaving the helplessly swinging girl. “It would take them several days to ponder the message. By then, your . . . operation will be all over, won’t it? No, we merely reported a condition.”

  “Only to the Theks?”

  Now Kai saw what Paskutti needed to know: whether or not a message had also been beamed up to the satellite. If so, he would have to alter his “operation” in accordance.

  “Only to the Theks,” said Kai, the mind-dominated part of his emotions wanting to add, “now release the girl.”

  “You know what you need to know,” screamed Gaber, still attempting to reach Paskutti and make him release Terilla. “You’ll kill the child. Release her! Release her! You told her there’d be no violence. No one hurt! You’ve killed Trizein, and if you don’t let go of that child . . .”

  Paskutti casually swatted Gaber into silence. The cartographer hit the deck with a terrible thud and rolled to one side. Terilla was dropped in a heap by Cleiti. Kai couldn’t tell if the girl had been killed by the mishandling. He glanced surreptitiously at Lunzie who was staring at the girls. Some relaxation about the woman’s eyes reassured him: the girls were alive.

  Beside him, Triv had completed the preliminaries to Discipline. Now he, too, would wait until his strength could be of use. The hardest part was the waiting until such time as this controlled inner strength would be channeled into escape. Kai breathed low in the diaphragm, willing himself to the patience required to endure this hideous display of brute strength and cruelty.

  Dimenon was rousing but, although he moaned in pain, Lunzie did not attend him. Margit, Aulia and Portegin kept their eyes front, trying not to focus on scenes they could neither stop nor change.

  Tanegli came storming up the ramp to the shuttle, his face contorted with anger, a man controlled by his emotions, no longer the calm rational botanist, interested in growing things.

  “There isn’t a power pack in any of the sleds,” he told Paskutti but he strode right up to Varian, grabbing her by both arms and shaking her. Kai willed her to feign unconsciousness. Such handling might impair any chance of that broken shoulder healing properly.

  “Where did you hide them, you tight-assed bitch?” he cried.

  “Watch your strength, Tanegli. Don’t break her neck yet,” said Paskutti, stepping forward in his urgency to arrest the angry man.

  Tanegli visibly pulled back some force of the blow he had leveled at Varian. Nevertheless, her head rolled sharply backward but as she righted herself, her eyes were still open. The mark of Tanegli’s fingers were vivid wales on her cheek.

  “Where did you hide the power packs?”

  “She’s broken her left shoulder. Use that as goad,” said Paskutti. “Not too much . . . just enough. Can’t have her passing out with pain. These lightweights can’t take much.”

  “Where? Varian, where?” Tanegli accompanied each word with a twist to her left arm.

  Varian cried out. To Kai’s ears, the echo was false since, in the throes of Discipline, Varian wouldn’t feel pain right now.

  “I didn’t hide them. Bonnard did.”

  Margit and Aulia gasped at this craven betrayal of the boy.

  “Go get him, Tanegli. Find out where those power packs are or we’ll be backing the supplies out of here. Bakkun and Berru will have started the drive. Nothing can stop it once it starts.” Paskutti twitched with a sense of urgency now.

  “She’d know where he is. Tell me, where? Varian?”

  Varian suddenly hung limply in Tanegli’s grip. He let her drop to the deck with a disgusted oath and strode to the open lock. Kai heard three more steps before the man stopped, shouting for Bonnard to come. Then Tanegli called for Divisti and Tardma to help him search for the boy.

  Paskutti looked down at Varian’s crumpled figure. Kai hoped that the man didn’t suspect that she was only pretending. An expression close to the snarl of a fang-face crossed the heavy-worlder’s face, but he was expressionless again when he turned to Kai.

  “March!” Paskutti gestured peremptorily to the lock. He motioned to Lunzie and the others to move: with flicks of his forefinger he indicated that each was to carry one of the unconscious ones. “Into the main dome, all of you!” he ordered.

  As they crossed the compound, Dandy was lying dead in his pen, back broken. Kai was glad neither Cleiti nor Terilla would see their pet. The ground was littered with scattered tapes, charts, exposed records and splintered disks. Inadvertently he trod on one of Terilla’s careful drawings of a plant. Forcing deep breaths from his diaphragm, he controlled the fury he felt at such wanton destruction.

  The main dome had been stripped of everything useful. The unconscious were laid on the floor, the others motioned to stand by the farthest arc from the iris lock.

  Outside, the search for Bonnard continued. Paskutti was now glancing first at his wrist chrono and then at the plains beyond the force-screen.

  Kai’s heightened hearing caught the faint sound of his name. Carefully he turned his head and saw Lunzie staring at him, saw her imperceptibly indicate that he was to look outside. By shifting slightly he could see out, could see two dots in the sky, the black line beneath, a tossing black line, moving black line, and then he knew what the heavy-worlders had planned to do.

  The force-screen was strong enough to keep out ordinary dangers but not the massed attack of stampeded creatures. The camp’s advantage of height above the plain and forest would be canceled. The heavy-worlders were herding the animals right up where they wanted them to do their damage.

  Then Theks, receiving Kai’s message, might react to it . . . in a few days’ time. They might, if the thinking spirit moved them, send one of the younger Theks to investigate. But Kai doubted it. The Theks would rightly consider that any intervention of theirs would arrive too late to affect the outcome of the mutiny.

  The lightweights would have to effect their own salvation. The heavy-worlders
would have to leave the compound soon. Would it be soon enough? And how would they leave their scorned captives? Could Bonnard stay out of their grasp?

  Paskutti’s fingers twitched. He glanced, almost apprehensively at the wrist chrono, squinted at the oncoming black line.

  “Tanegli? Haven’t you found that boy?” Paskutti’s bellow deafened ears made sensitive by the Discipline.

  “He’s hidden. We can’t find him, or the power packs!” Tanegli was raging with frustration.

  “Come back, then. We’re wasting time.” Paskutti was not at all pleased with this unexpected check to his plans. The look he turned on the limp figure of Varian was ominous. “How did she know?” he asked Kai. “Bakkun thought something was up when she used such a trivial excuse to bring you back early.”

  “She found the place where you spent rest day. And the wounded fang-face you couldn’t kill.” Kai’s instinct was to continue to protect Bonnard as long as he could from possible retaliation. If they all died, the boy couldn’t last on his own on Ireta. He’d have to seek what refuge the heavy-worlders would offer him.

  “Bonnard! I told Bakkun he took a risk letting the boy see the arena.” Paskutti’s face reflected many emotions now, contempt, supercilious disdain, satisfaction in past performances. His upper lip drew back from his teeth in a travesty of a smile. “You wouldn’t have appreciated our rest day. No matter,” Paskutti glanced down the valley. “The rehearsal has paid dividends . . . for us!”

  The sun put in its brief evening appearance, lighting the plain so that Kai discerned the bobbing bodies of the herbivores inexorably moving toward the encampment. The other heavy-worlders now congregated about the lock, their faces for once flushed with exertion and shiny with sweat.

  “He’s gone to earth,” said Tanegli in a savage tone, glaring at Kai. “And all the power packs.”

  “We’ve no more time to look. Move the sleds out of the direct line of the stampede. Be quick about it. Do you all have lift-belts? Good. Then keep up and out of trouble until the stampede has passed.”

  “What about the shuttle?”

  “It should be all right,” said Paskutti, glancing at the vessel perched above the encampment on its ledge. “Move!”

  The others did, in great leaping strides toward the sled park.

  Paskutti stood in the iris opening, hands on his belt, glancing with unconcealed pleasure at the docile captives. Kai knew that the moment of ultimate danger was now! Would Paskutti seal them into the dome, conscious and cruelly aware of their fate? Or would he stun them?

  His essentially cruel nature won.

  “I leave you now, to your fitting end. Trampled by creatures, stupid, foolish vegetarians like yourselves. The only one of you strong enough to stand up to us a mere boy.”

  He closed the iris lock, and the thud of his fist against the plaswall told Kai that he had shattered the controls.

  Varian, suddenly mobile, was peering over the bottom of the far window, her left arm dangling uselessly.

  “Varian?” said Lunzie, doing something to the still body of Trizein. The man groaned suddenly, shocked back to consciousness. Lunzie moved to Terilla and Cleiti, nodding to herself as she administered restorative sprays.

  “He’s at the veil,” reported Varian in a low voice. “He’s opened it. He’s left it open. I can see two others sky-borne. Bakkun and Berru probably. We ought to have a few moments when the herd tops the last rise when they won’t be able to see anything.”

  “Triv!” Kai gestured and the geologist followed him to the rear arc of the dome, motioning the others to one side.

  Kai’s sensitized fingers felt the fine seam of the plastic skin. Triv placed his fingertips farther up the seam. They both took the requisite deep breaths, called out and ripped the tough fabric apart.

  Lunzie had the two girls on their feet, staggering but conscious enough to stand. She turned to help Trizein.

  “Where could Bonnard have gone to, Kai?” asked Varian in a tight voice that betrayed an anxiety not even the Discipline could mask.

  “Well hidden enough to elude the heavy-worlders. Safe enough from what’s coming. Now,” and he turned to his comrades, “we cannot panic, but we must wait until the sky-borne heavy-worlders cannot see us or they will merely stun us down. Margit, Aulia, Portegin, you’re all able to run?” They nodded. “Lunzie, you’ll take Terilla? Is Gaber dead? Well, Aulia, you and Portegin help Cleiti. Triv will carry Trizein. I’ll help Dimenon. Varian, can you manage?”

  “As well as you. I’ll back us up.”

  “I will,” said Kai, shaking his head and looking at her hanging arm.

  “No, you’ve Dimenon. I’ll manage.” She glanced out the window again.

  It did not take sensitive hearing now to hear the approaching stampede. It did take stern control to remain calm.

  “There are four in the sky now,” said Varian, “and the beasts have reached the narrow part of the approach. Get ready.”

  Aulia stifled a cry of fear.

  “Everyone, breathe deeply from the diaphragm,” said Lunzie, “and when we give you the word to go, yell and run! Keep yelling. It stirs the adrenalin.”

  “I don’t need any more,” said Margit in a tremulous but defiant voice.

  The thunder was deafening, the very plastic shook under their feet. Aulia was trembling so noticeably, Kai wondered if she could stand the strain.

  “Now!”

  Their concerted yells would never reach the sky-borne heavy-worlders. Margit was right, there was no need of additional adrenalin. The sight of the bobbing heads of the crested dinosaurs, bearing down on them, was sufficient to have lent wings to anyone. Dimenon, yelling at the top of his lungs, wrestled from Kai’s support and outdistanced others as he made for the shuttle. Kai slowed his pace until Varian was abreast of him. Then the two leaders matched strides in the wake of the others, across a compound shuddering with the vibrations of the stampede. They vaulted the first terrace of the incline, nearly running down Lunzie as she angled Trizein into the lock. Varian steadied the physician as Kai fumbled for the lock control. The first of the herbivores reached the force-screen.

  A high-pitched scream pierced through the overlying thunder and bellowing as the screen burned, flashed blue fire and broke with a terrible whining. The bodies of herbivores flowed into the compound, and then the mass behind the forerunners surged up, over the fallen and onward. The iris closed on that scene. Only the noise and vibration did not seem to diminish inside the shuttle, telling of the chaos, death and destruction outside.

  As one now, Kai and Varian moved through the panting, shocked members of the expedition, to the pilot cabin. Varian fumbled for the hidden switch to restore power to the shuttle. Kai started to sit at the console and stopped.

  “Paskutti took no chances on another message,” he told Varian, looking at the wreckage of the board.

  “What about maneuvering?”

  “That’s still intact. He knew what circuits to break all right.”

  They felt the shuttle move, heard something banging dully against the outer hull.

  “They outdid themselves with the stampede,” said Varian with an amused chuckle. She heard the startled exclamations from the main compartment and put her head around the frame.

  “It’ll take more than herbivores to dent the shuttle ceramic. Don’t worry. But I would sit down.”

  She slid into the other seat, moving her useless arm out of her way when it flopped against the backrest. “As soon as the stampede has stopped, we’d better make our move.”

  “Bonnard?” asked Kai.

  “Bonnard!” Portegin echoed the name in a glad cry in the main cabin. “Bonnard! Kai, Varian. He got in!”

  The leaders saw the boy emerging from the lab, his ship suit dusty and stained, his face drawn with a sudden maturity.

  “I thought this was the safest place after I saw Paskutti moving you out. But I wasn’t sure who had come back in. Am I glad it’s you!”

  Cleiti w
as embracing her friend, weeping with relief. Terilla, bedded down by Trizein, called his name over and over, not quite believing his appearance. Bonnard gently put Cleiti’s clinging hands to one side and walked to the leaders.

  “They’ll never find those power packs, Varian. Never! But I thought you’d be killed when I saw Paskutti lock the dome. He smashed the control so I didn’t see how I could get you out in time. So . . . I hid!” The boy burst into tears of shame.

  “You did exactly as you should, Bonnard. Even to hiding!”

  Another shift of the shuttle sent everyone rocking.

  “It’s going to fall,” cried Aulia, hands over her ears.

  “It could, but it won’t crack,” said Kai, feeling the same postcrisis elation that had made Varian chuckle. “Stay calm. We’ve succeeded so far. We’ll survive. By all the things that men hold dear, we’ll survive!”

  11

  ALTHOUGH Kai’s wrist chrono showed that only twenty minutes had elapsed from the moment they had reached the pilot’s cabin, it had seemed an age of repeated shocks and jolts until all external noise ceased.

  After moments of silence, Kai opened the iris lock enough to peer out. And saw nothing but mottled coarse furred hide. He stepped back, gesturing for Varian to look out.

  “Buried alive in hadrasaurs,” she said, irrepressible. Her eyes were very bright, her face lined with the stain of maintaining Discipline over the agony of her crushed and broken shoulder. “Open wider. They’re too big to fall in.”

  With a wider view, they achieved only the vision of more bodies, darkness beyond. Kai reluctantly decided that they’d have to send Bonnard, who was agile and small enough to assess the new position of the shuttle. Bonnard was warned to keep a low profile in case the heavy-worlders were about.

  “You might remember that it is now full dark,” Lunzie said. “They don’t have good night vision. If they are out there.”

  “Where else would they be?” demanded Aulia, hysteria in her shaking voice. “Gloating! Delighted with themselves. I’ve never liked working with heavy-worlders. They always think they’re abused and misused, and they’re really not good for anything but heavy muscle work.”