Power Play

by Anne McCaffrey

  She caught Marmion’s delighted but surprised expression out of the corner of her eye. Yana had felt damned foolish practicing both the salute and the names in front of her mirror ever since Marmion had announced that they were attending this party. But it paid off, as any good briefing did.

  The hostess had paid attention to her social secretary, too, for she got out Diego’s suddenly doubled name of Etheridge-Metaxos and Bunny’s Rourke without a quaver. She did not, of course, greet Sally or Millard as effusively, but did gracefully wave them in the direction of the vast spread of refreshments.

  “Now you must meet the guest of honor,” Pleasaunce said, linking an arm with Marmion and leading the way into the cluster of gorgeously attired men and women. She pushed her way through the crowd so smoothly that few could have taken offense; there were one or two querulous glances at being displaced—until the displacer was recognized.

  “Macci, darling, you simply must meet Marmion de Revers Algemeine and her guests, Colonel Yanaba Maddock-Shongili, Buneka Rourke, and Diego Etheridge-Metaxos, all from that incredible new world which, it transpires, is sentient. All by itself.”

  Macci, who hadn’t exactly welcomed his hostess’s interruption—he’d been talking to two adoring young women—now let the full force of a Charm 9 smile break across his sculpted features. When the two girls moved slightly away, Yana could see that he wore one of the very fashionable SecondSkins, a shimmering tight-fitting garment that only the very athletically trim could wear to advantage. And he did—though he wore a discreet—if decorative—loincloth where some of the other guests let everything hang out. He had a body almost as magnificent as Sean’s, a centimeter or two taller and broader through the shoulders: not bad, actually, she had to admit.

  “I know Marmie,” he said, giving her a paternal kiss on her forehead while his eyes locked on to the other three.

  When he took Yana’s hand, she experienced a sort of electric shock in the contact that surprised her, hand-fasted as she was to Sean Shongili and with every intention of staying that way. But the man was unfairly laden with such charisma that Yana reached for the locket under her dress and pressed it hard. Macci—she heard Pleasaunce listing his pedigree—Machiavelli (no less) Sendal-Archer-Klausewitch. And the woman rolled it off her tongue trippingly.

  “What did your parents ever have in mind when they saddled you with that mess?” Yana heard herself saying. She knew she was being terribly gauche, but she resented the effect his magnetism had on her.

  “Trying to win relative favor,” Macci said. He squeezed her hand in a very practiced and sexy manner, but let her have it back the moment she pulled away. “We were the cadet branch, you see.”

  “Ah! Still?”

  “The family motto is ‘We Shall Contrive,’ ” he replied, and his deep blue eyes danced down at her.

  “I’d say you’re a practiced hand at that,” she said, wanting to laugh because she couldn’t believe she was playing this sort of game. Then she realized that it was a game, and even if he was a much more versatile and accomplished player than she’d ever be, it could be fun!

  “I do my possible.” And he laughed with her.

  “Oh, dear Macci, we won’t detain you further,” Pleasaunce said archly, and importunately drew both Yana and Marmion away from his enchanted circle. “There are so many other people who’re dying to meet you.”

  They might have been dying to meet her, but she damned near died of the boredom of repeating herself: Yes, she came from Petaybee; yes, the planet was sentient; no, the planet did not ask or answer questions; no, she hadn’t had vile nightmares and been visited by strange thoughts; yes, the planet was cold and had very little in the way of technology because the cold banjaxed equipment; yes, everyone was healthy there and lived long lives; yes, it was possible it was the healthy diet; and no, she wouldn’t recommend it as a holiday resort—in the summer the insects ate you alive and in the winter you could easily freeze to death. No, that didn’t sound like a friendly place but it was, and yes, the planet really was friendly, too, despite its weather, which wasn’t precisely the planet’s fault. No, the Planetary Terraform B process was not at fault. Petaybee was unique as far as planets went.

  It went on all night, until the smile on her face felt pasted on and she was glad when Marmion signaled that they could leave.

  7

  The next morning Yana couldn’t remember the names of any of the people she had met, with the exception of the flirtatious and flamboyant Macci: they had all blended into such an identical blur. Their faces, their voices, their apparel had had a sameness that made identifying one from the other very difficult. Yana did remember the things she had eaten and the wines she had drunk, but the people? And those had been the ones who were important on Gal Three? It seemed strange to her that no one had appeared to want to talk about anything remotely “significant,” considering they were persons whom Marmion had said were important for her to meet. When not avidly questioning her, they had gossiped about the people who hadn’t been invited. Yana hoped that she’d never hear what was said about her or anyone else in Marmion’s group. Petaybee was coming up more and more golden and real!

  She was not the only one silent this morning. Bunny was slouched over her morning meal, and the measure of her discomfort was registered by the fact that she was wearing one of the outfits that Marmion had originally provided for her, rather than some of the Gal Three finery Charmion had urged her to purchase. She was moodily staring out the lounge window at the comings and goings of station vehicles, tugs, and the incoming traffic of all kinds.

  Yana decided not to show Bunny the comm message from Sean, which asked Yana to see if Marmion could check out a firm trading as PTS, Petaybee Tourist Service, which was so busily landing new problems in his lap. People were being dumped back of beyond, wanting hotel facilities, of all things, and he was running out of places to stash them and food to feed them. Could this influx of unwanted and generally useless self-seekers please be stopped, he wanted to know. To which Johnny Greene, who had sent the message from the space station on Whit Fiske’s credit, had added a devout “amen.”

  “Can we find out about these yabos, Millard?” Yana asked as soon as she had read the message. But she took the tone of the message as 1) amused, 2) coping, and 3) asking why she was staying away so long.

  Millard glanced at the message, made a note on his wrist pad, and smiled down at her. “Sure thing.”

  “Hey, looka that,” Diego said suddenly, pointing to a line of drones that were being shepherded by little space tugs.

  Millard smiled. “Ah, the collies at work.”

  “Why’re they called that?” Bunny asked.

  “Watch how they herd the ships in,” Millard said. “Their names are actually the Megabite and the Maggie Lauder, but we call them Meggie and Maggie.”

  The speedy work vessels did indeed seem to be nipping at the skids of the drones, angling them into the correct alignment with their ultimate destination on the lower docking circle. But he was specifically pointing to the sleek, taper-ended vessel, clearly no drone, nearly the last one on the long drone tether. “I wonder what holed that.”

  “Meteor, probably,” Millard replied, looking up and frowning slightly at the company the obvious spacecraft was keeping.

  “Looks big enough to have been holed by a shuttle craft,” Diego said. “And a big one at that.”

  “Would the crew have survived such a holing?” Bunny asked, coming out of her slump long enough to peer about.

  “Depends on the speed with which the crew reacted to the disaster,” Millard said.

  “Cost a pretty pile of credits to fix it, I’ll bet,” Diego said.

  “Someone who can afford a craft that size has the credit,” Sally said. “This is the biggest repair facility in the quadrant, so they’d have to come here for that sort of major restoration.”

  The collies bracketed the nose of the vessel now, maneuvering it carefully down half a degree, to por
t another fraction, and then forward slowly until it moved out of sight from their viewpoint.

  “Wonder what happened to it,” Bunny said.

  “We could go see,” Diego suggested.

  “Could we?” she asked, brightening and turning to Millard.

  “Bailey has some cronies down in the ship dock,” Millard said. Their faces fell. “You really will have to wait until Bailey and Charmion are available,” he said, and then his wrist set bleeped. “Excuse me.”

  He read the message that came in, then turned to Yana. “This is interesting. The PTS is newly registered as a tourist transport in the civilian section of the Intergal Station. A ‘B. Makem’ is listed as owner.”

  “B. Makem?” Yana blinked. The name was somehow familiar, but after last night’s inundation of names, she couldn’t put the name to a face.

  “Braddock Makem?” Sally asked in a startled tone as she looked up from the report she was working on.

  “One of Matthew’s little men?”

  “He isn’t one of Dr. Luzon’s men anymore,” Sally said. “Luzon fired him. Scuttlebutt is that when Luzon woke up with broken legs, loss of pride, and that massive deflation of ambition, he fired the lot of them.”

  Yana grinned. “Anything else, Millard?”

  “Funding’s low, but it’s got a waiting list and paid passages for twenty on each of three weekly scheduled flights from Intergal Station.”

  Yana gasped “There isn’t room at Kilcoole for twenty extra bodies, much less a hundred and twenty. What is Makem up to?”

  “I’d hazard Makem isn’t up to anything,” Millard said, his eyes narrowing, “but I’d suspect Matthew Luzon is. Does Sean say who’s been landed?”

  Just then Marmion came into the room, a flimsy in her hand and a look of total exasperation on her face.

  “Once again, there can be no meeting,” she said, waving the sheet.

  “But Phon Tho was coming back this morning. He said we’d hear today,” Yana said in protest.

  “We did,” Marmion said grimly, with another crisp flutter of the message. “But not at all what we hoped to hear. Really, I think we are just going to have to do something.” She tapped her index finger across her lips and then brightened. “Of course! We will put it about that you’re leaving!”

  “But—but what good will that do?” Yana asked, almost wailing with disappointment. Of course, she wanted to be back with Sean, to help him with these unexpected visitors—if only to shove them off-planet as fast as they arrived. She was feeling deprived. She hadn’t finally married herself again to spend her time away from the man of her heart and the father of her child. But she didn’t want to have to come back here again whenever the CIS Council finally got its act together and all its members in attendance, just so she, Bunny, and Diego could say their piece and have it done with.

  “Well, as long as they think you’ll just sit about and wait for them to organize themselves, that’s what they’ll do,” Marmion said, then paused thoughtfully, regarding the flimsy as if there were unseen lines there that required decoding. “Though why this delay when they were so bloody eager to get you here in the first place . . . And we came as fast as anyone can . . . Hmmm. Well, they do have the depositions to work from . . .”

  “Something’s rotten in Denmark?” Sally asked.

  “If it were on Denmark, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. But this is Gal Three . . . And it was presented to me as an in-and-out appearance.” Giving her shoulders a massive shrug, Marmion returned to her office.

  “Why,” Yana asked the room, “would B. Makem want to start trouble for us on Petaybee? I thought we’d opened his eyes to that erstwhile employer of his.”

  “Yes,” Millard said thoughtfully, and began to tap out codes on his terminal. “We’ll just see.”

  Yana began pacing restlessly, fretting about Sean. He’d have so much more to do now, with who knows how many people foisted off on Petaybee. She reread the communiqué, her free hand going automatically to the little bag of Petaybean dirt that generally provided her with comfort as she tried to get more of Sean than the words were conveying. Even if Johnny Greene had sent the message, it was from Sean and by Sean, and therefore it was Sean, and she gathered what comfort she could out of that contact. It was stupid of her, at her age, to need the man so desperately, and yet she did. Here she was in the lap of luxury, being scrupulously cared for and pampered and wined and dined, and not liking it a bit simply because Sean wasn’t there to share the absurdities with her—like Macci and his SecondSkin and loin clout. Sean would have looked just as well in such attire—probably better, since he had a second skin of his own, if it came to that. The memories that thought provoked made her smile, and she nibbled at the edge of the message, until she realized what she was doing. She really was being ungrateful, especially when Marmion was going out of her way to be so accommodating and helpful. Not that she didn’t appreciate it all—but she had managed to get accustomed to the discomforts of Petaybee! Now she’d have to learn to love them all over again. It would be snowing soon, and she’d miss it, and freeze-up and all the other wonders of Petaybee that she hadn’t yet experienced firsthand. She resented her absence terribly, and that reminded her of who might be responsible for all the delays.

  “Do you know where Matthew Luzon is right now?” she asked, stopping and turning to survey those in the lounge. “And where are Diego and Bunny, for that matter?” she asked Sally and Millard, and asked the same question of Bailey and Charmion, who entered at that critical moment.

  “Must be around here somewhere,” Millard said, swiveling about as if the two had to be in the lounge, visible or invisible.

  At that precise moment, there was a request for entry, and a resonant voice announced, “Macci Sendal.”

  Sally and Millard exchanged astonished glances.

  “You made a conquest, Yana,” Sally said, grinning. “Shall I admit him?”

  Yana was flustered. “Whatever would he want with me?”

  “I suspect business,” Sally said. “After all, Rothschild’s has always diversified. I don’t recall them having any pharmaceuticals, though.”

  “Yes, they do,” Millard replied. “They have recently acquired a major holding in SpayDe.”

  “You’re quite right.” Sally hurried to press the door release. “I’ll just replicate some refreshments.”

  Despite the fact that the man was wearing more normal station apparel instead of the formal SecondSkin, he was as devastating as ever as he came forward to greet Yana. He had a small posy for her and smiles for Sally, Millard, and Marmion’s young relatives, and he accepted Sally’s invitation for midmorningses even as he led Yana, still holding the hand he had kissed so extravagantly, to one of the smaller seating arrangements on one side of the large room. Sally passed the refreshments and then, to Yana’s amazement, left her with him. He bent a lambent gaze on her, ravishing her with his eyes, which was disconcerting to say the least. Had he been another officer, she’d have known how to handle the situation, but he was too highly placed in society as well as financial circles for her to use those forthright tactics.

  “Now, tell me more about this magical planet you come from, Yana. There was no chance to discuss anything intelligent with you last night. Especially when Ples was acting hostess.” He caught her eyes with another of his ravishing glances—she did wish he wouldn’t—and she felt herself flushing at the ardor he was projecting. Really, it was much too early in the morning—or did she mean too late?—for this sort of . . . foreplay. He was leaning forward toward her now, and she reflected that the scent he was using oughtn’t to be allowed, it was so aphrodisiacal.

  She had opened her mouth to answer when the entry chime rang again. And continued to ring with each new arrival: others who had attended the party who now wished to discuss business with Yana. Yana urgently motioned Sally and Millard to join her, and then Sally brought Cynthia, and Cynthia thought that Marmion had better be involved.

 
“You dear people, Petaybee’s only a small planet,” Marmion said, arriving not a moment too soon and instantly assessing the scene. “With very limited facilities, and it’s certainly marvelous of you to volunteer”—that word stopped any conversation as the various representatives turned blank faces in her direction—“to help the colonel set up a modern depot.” She smiled at the surprised reactions. “How good of you to offer. Mind you, who knows what a planet is willing to pay for such amenities, but it is a planet that is virtually untouched. Nakatira-san, I think you need to send at least five of those marvelous structural cubes to Petaybee, just to cope with the influx. Yana, you don’t think Petaybee would mind an up-to-date self-catering hostel? No, two, I think: north and south.”

  By the time the bemused entrepreneurs got a chance to retreat, Marmion had made sure that each had signed a contract to deliver, at a cost to be discussed later with the planet, sufficient of their products to replace what Intergal was taking off-planet. And of a higher quality and more modern design.

  “I think that about takes care of that, Yana, don’t you?” Marmion said when the door to her suite finally closed on Macci’s heels. “Macci didn’t get you to sign anything, did he?” she asked.

  Dazedly Yana shook her head. “But another two seconds and I’d’ve signed anything he put in front of me. Is he always like that?”

  “He makes a habit of it. Dangerous man,” Marmion said, “but you handled him very well, considering none of us expected him to appear quite so soon this morning.” Then she made a full circuit of the room with her eyes. “Where did Bunny and Diego get to?”

  Sally and Millard exchanged horrified glances. Marmion, however, was looking straight at Bailey and Charmion.

  “Haven’t seen them, Aunt Marmie,” Bailey said. “We only just woke up when the mob arrived.”

  “While I don’t blame them for a moment for leaving the babel—” Marmion broke off. “Where are they?”