The medics were deep in consultation for a long while after the last of the examinations had been completed. One or another kept glancing at her as if she had grown tentacles or oozed slime or perhaps turned into a new sort of humanoid specimen they could dissect for the good of Mankind.
Ignoring the tension in her guts, Yana forced herself to relax—as much as anyone could on the hard examination table. She succeeded well enough so that she was jerked out of a doze by a rough hand.
The one she had come to think of as “Ornery-eyes” indicated, with a grunt and a jerk of his thick thumb, that she was to accompany him. The medics didn’t pause in their discussion to observe her departure. Then she noticed that Ornery-eyes was sweating, great circles under his armpits and down his shirt back. Out in the corridor she could appreciate why: they must have turned the heat up as high as it would go. He jerked his thumb in the direction they were to take.
Automatically she memorized the turnings as he prodded her left or right, or straight ahead, and down the stairs. She wished she’d had a chance to see a layout of the SpaceBase complex. It was ingrained in her that she should never waste the opportunity to dekko a place, even if she might never need the info. Then she felt a series of concussive shocks through her paper-slippered feet, and she winced. That wasn’t from any hard landings—unless someone was being awfully careless with shuttle vehicles.
Her escort grabbed her arm, pulling her back a pace and jamming her right up against a door. The thumb indicated she was to enter. She pondered briefly about knocking, but when the thumb jerked threateningly again, she shrugged and opened the door.
A man of medium age, medium build, and medium coloring, with the unmedium insignia of a bird colonel on his collar, sat at a small desk, studying the small screen. To her surprise, he looked up the moment she entered, waved the marine out of the room, and beckoned for her to be seated on the only other piece of furniture in the nondescript office. He also turned off the screen.
“Major Maddock, I’m Colonel Foyumi Khan, that’s K-H-A-N,” he said with a trace of a smile.
“Psych?”
He nodded. “Routine reassignment testing,” he said in a manner designed to reassure—but somehow she wasn’t. “You appear to be in excellent physical shape considering your condition just six weeks ago. This planet seems to suit you.”
“It would be more accurate to state that I suit it.”
His eyes widened just slightly. “Oh?” he asked encouragingly. “How do you construe that?”
“My improved health, of course,” Yana said, trying for innocence. This shrink was altogether too smooth. She was almost flattered that Intergal had assigned her an interrogator of his quality. “Great place for R and R.”
Through her feet she felt another of those distinct tremors. Khan noticed it, too, and he frowned slightly, glancing down, then back up at her. She returned his regard quizzically, though she had already decided that the quakes were not being caused by someone crashing a shuttle onto the landing field. Somewhere blasting was going on, and Petaybee was wincing away from Intergal’s latest assault on its mineral wealth. Damn Torkel! He hadn’t heard a word she had said.
“And you feel that this . . . ah . . . planet is totally responsible for your improved physical condition?”
“Well, breathing fresh air that hasn’t been recycled for who knows how long with what additives from however many stations it’s been serviced in is a good start when you’ve burned lungs. Then there’s regular hours, clean living, a natural diet free from technological additives, winter sports, and stress-free companionship. Those’re surefire prescriptions for renewed vitality.”
“I see. And this stress-free companionship? It means a lot to you?”
Yana shrugged. “I’m a company employee. I go where I’m told, do what I’m told, and when it’s pleasant duty with nice folk, I’m grateful.”
“Grateful enough to sell out the company to retain the nice folk?”
She chuckled then, noting the evenness of his return gaze, the blandness of his face. Behind those sat a very smart man.
“Why should I sell out a company which has provided me with what I need? Especially when I’m trying to convince the company that they’re about to throw the baby out and recycle the dirty bathwater.”
“The bathwater?”
“Colonel, I was sent out to see what I could learn. I learned something that Captain Fiske finds unacceptable. He’s evidently quite ready to take the word of the man he originally intended I would replace and a short-witted snocle driver with a beef against me. All because he’s run smack dab into something he can’t understand.”
“And you understand it?”
“No, not at all. But I do concede that it’s happened, along with my”—She chuckled. —“inexplicable return to health.”
“So you’re grateful to the planet for this?”
She could see him grappling with that notion and nodded. “The planet is more than Fiske is willing to accept.”
“But you do?”
“I do. And, if he’ll only credit an old shipmate with the sense to tighten bolts when she sees ’em loose, he’d do himself, the company, and me a stupendous favor.”
“Which is?”
“He—and Intergal—can gain a lot more from Petaybee than consumable minerals!”
“And what can they gain?”
“Working knowledge of a new sentient life-form.”
“Which is?”
“This planet.”
He brought his chin forward in a nod that ended abruptly. He looked at her and smiled: not a really reassuring smile, but the kind one might give someone who might not be playing with a full deck. Yana raised an eyebrow and deliberately laid one arm on the desk, hand relaxed on the surface, as she hooked the other arm along the back of the chair, assuming as indolent and relaxed a position as she could. She had given enough of the psych tests she knew were upcoming to know how to act: open, relaxed, easy, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She even hauled her right ankle up to her left knee, as if to leave herself completely open. This room was hot, also, and she didn’t want to show any perspiration—even if the bird colonel was.
He shot the expected questions at her and she gave him back the answers, pausing briefly now and then to consider—as was wise of her to do—but not pausing long enough for him to consider it an evasion or hesitation. It was working, with him and with her, because the more complicated the shrink-questions, the more she relaxed, since she knew exactly the sorts of answers required. They hadn’t really looked at her records, had they?
Suddenly, in the middle of posing a question designed to reveal any sexual aberrations she might have, he stopped and stared at her—as if seeing her for the first time.
“You know all the parameters of the answers, don’t you?”
“Wondered when you’d figure that one out, Colonel.”
He leaned back as far as the uncomfortable chair would let him, crossing his arms on his chest. “So what’s behind all this? Give me a straight answer.”
“I already did, Colonel. I’ve known Captain Fiske a long time. He asked me to do some nosing about for him since I was billeted in a Petaybean village. I did. I gave him my report. He doesn’t care to believe it.” She shrugged at such vagary. “It’s not the first time commanders have refused to believe reconnaissance reports and taken more comfortable rear-echelon theories.” She shrugged again, reaching up to scratch her head as if puzzled by such irrationality. She was sweating, and that wasn’t the way to put across her point of view. Except that the colonel was sweating more profusely than she. “Hey, did they turn up the heat around here just so I wouldn’t get a chill in my paper wrapping?”
Now the colonel was free to take out a cloth and mop his face and neck. “Heat’s been rising steadily. I thought this was the cold season down here.”
“The locals are already taking bets on the exact day and time the ice on the river will crack and be carried away d
ownstream.”
He gave her a side look, then grinned. “How’d you bet?’
“Me?” She chuckled. “I don’t have enough money to waste on foolish bets, Colonel. But the earliest of those dates chalked up is weeks away.” They felt another rumble underfoot, one considerably more authoritative than any of the others.
The colonel clutched at the edge of the desk as the monitor rattled on its stand. In the same second, Yana grabbed the side of the desk.
“Someone’s planting too much semtex,” the colonel said with a frown.
Yana grinned, having thought of another answer to the whammy they had just felt.
“Spill what you know, Major,” the colonel advised, “while there’s still a chance for you to get straightened out on this. Unless, of course, you think the planet’s fighting back?”
“If, that is, I was a bettor, Colonel, I think my money’d be on the planet.”
Just then the door burst open—resisting a little, for it was slightly off kilter from the last quake—and Fiske came in, his eyes narrowed in anger. Behind him were Giancarlo and Terce.
“All right, Yanaba, where is he? How’s he doing this?”
Yana took great satisfaction in maintaining her calm while three sweaty, angry perturbed men threatened to overwhelm her. “I assume that the ‘he’ you refer to is Dr. Shongili?”
“You know it is.” Fiske, jaw out, took the necessary step to loom over her in the chair.
“I don’t know where Dr. Shongili is, Captain Fiske. How could I since I’ve been . . . involved . . . here for the past four or five hours.”
“He’s somewhere on this planet . . .”
“I hope so,” Yana murmured.
“. . . and I’m going to find him and find out how he’s doing this.” Fiske flicked his fingers at the ground.
Yana did not have to pretend surprise. “You think he’s blowing his planet up to thwart you?” She actually had trouble suppressing her laughter. “He’s got no explosives. The company has ’em all. And why would he want to blow his planet up?”
“I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he’s responsible.”
“Using what?” Yana fired back at him. “Or, maybe,” she said, turning devious, “he’s told the planet to resist, to hamper, to impede your efforts to strip it of its natural resources.”
Fiske jutted his jaw out again, clenching his teeth over whatever it was he wanted to blurt out in frustration. Instead, he transferred his feelings to the grip of his fingers on her arm as he roughly hauled her up from the chair.
“You’re coming with me!” And he began to frog-march her out of the room.
“Like this?” she asked. Part of her paper skirt, soaked with her perspiration, had been left on the seat of the chair. She had also lost one of her paper shoes in his haste to get her moving.
“Captain!” the colonel barked in a tone that could not be ignored, even by Torkel Fiske. “You will permit the major to dress before she leaves this installation.”
13
No doubt in an effort to humiliate, harass, or annoy her, Giancarlo signaled Ornery-eyes to stay in the room where Yana was to dress herself. It would take a lot more than Ornery-eyes to perturb Yana. She was slightly flattered that Giancarlo thought it would! Ignoring her audience, she took advantage of the dressing-room shower to enjoy a quick wash before she dressed. She smiled as she noticed that she had been given ordinary-issue clothes, not winter gear. Torture could take many subtle forms: freezing wasn’t a common one.
When Ornery bustled her down the corridor to the assembly point, Yana was reasonably sure she’d had the best of that deal. For when they got outside, it was nearly as warm as the facility had been—and she was far more comfortable, in the lighter garments, than any of the others were.
She was shoved, just ducking her head in time to keep from cracking it on the doorframe, into a ground vehicle, which was already inhabited by several squads, sweating in their winter gear. They were conveyed out to the field where a troop copter waited. She caught a glimpse of other air-assault vehicles and some big land cruisers. She also saw two dark circles, one of considerable size, where the field, plascrete and all, had subsided. She wondered if the planet knew what to target or if it just pulled the plug where the terrain made it easiest.
They had barely gotten settled when the bulky vehicle tilted to one side.
“Lift! Lift! Lift!” Torkel yelled as the pilot made as if to investigate the damage.
Yana privately enjoyed the planet’s antics very much, though she was crammed in the backseat between Giancarlo and Ornery-eyes’s massive torso. The latter had folded his arms over his chest and was staring straight ahead, ignoring the almost-180-degree view afforded by the bubble-shaped Plexi-glas windshield. Yana, however, took the scene in eagerly.
Craters pocked the surface of the great field. As the vehicle came around and headed north-northeast toward Kilcoole, she saw the village below; then, as the copter angled off toward the mountains, she gasped as she caught glimpses of the river, seamed with dark, steaming cracks. Its surface was littered with snocles, either capsized into the cracks or stranded on larger blocks of ice. A few, back toward SpaceBase, were being off-loaded by men stripped down to their shirts, while farther ahead men and women scrambled to save each other from drowning and pulled each other ashore. A couple of snocles were attempting to find snow firm enough for the runners to ski on while one soldier broke trail, planting markers to show where the snow had not yet turned to slush.
Yana hoped that Bunny’s snocle wasn’t out there among the stranded, or that the girl hadn’t been arrested when Yana was. She also wondered just where Sean was, but one thing was sure: he wouldn’t be where this copter was taking them.
It landed in the pasture that had once held the curly-coats. She thought she caught sight of one of the dark ones, hiding in the copse, but it could have just been a big brown-branched bush the height of a curly-coat. The house, when the troopers entered it, weapons drawn, had the feeling of a deserted place. At least that was what Yana sensed from the still, cool air inside. Not so much as a whisker of one of Sean’s unusual big cats, either. Torkel led the way down the link to the laboratories, Giancarlo with him, Ornery hauling her along in their wake.
“I want every disk, file, paperwork, notebook, everything,” Torkel called over his shoulder to the lieutenant in charge of the squads. “Everything taken back to the base. I want this place under strict surveillance and rigged to catch anyone who steps inside.”
“The animals are all gone,” Giancarlo said savagely. “He obviously got back here to let them all loose. We could have learned something from them.”
Yana could see from the condition of the pens that they hadn’t been occupied for a while. That must have been the first thing Sean had done when he had separated from her.
“You certainly didn’t expect to find them here, did you, Colonel, tamely waiting for us?” Torkel asked, resuming his pose of amused condescension.
“Dammit, Fiske, I told you we should have moved in on him earlier, right after that all-night binge the natives had.”
“But I thought that was too good a chance for my undercover operative to miss,” Torkel said, leaning against the wall. Just where Sean had leaned, Yana thought, the first day they had met. “Is that where everyone got their orders, Yana? Is that where you switched sides?”
“I haven’t switched sides, Captain Fiske. I’m still a company woman, trying to help the company all I can.”
Giancarlo raised both fists, and she stared back, daring him to carry through his threat.
“You both wanted me to see what I could find out. I did just that,” Yana went on. “Not my fault I can’t tell you what you want to hear. No one’s told me what that is.”
“Terce said you’d sold out,” Giancarlo shouted. “He saw you go with the others, to plot treason.”
“Where’d he see us go?” she asked, hoping her hunch was correct. “We were in the hall until day
break and then most of us went to the hot spring to clean up.”
“That fat woman, the one with all the cats, is the ringleader.”
“Clodagh?” Yana allowed her incredulity and astonishment full rein and laughed. “If that’s what Terce told you, Colonel, you must be the only one on Petaybee who doesn’t know that he isn’t playing with a full deck.”
Just then the comm unit bleeped, and Torkel toggled it on. He listened, and in the next moment, disbelief, consternation, and finally horror swept across his face.
“Back! Back to the copter!” His arm swept them before him with great urgency. “Shuttle’s crashed!”
Yana wondered from Torkel’s reaction if his father, old Whittaker Fiske, had been due to arrive in that particular shuttle. Briefly she considered departing in the confusion. Ornery was up ahead of her in the corridor: she could slip away very easily right now. But she was certain she had weakened Giancarlo’s accusation. She could do more if she hung about. Maybe, with a little luck, she might get Torkel to listen to what she was saying. And, if his father wasn’t dead, maybe she could beat some sense in that old man’s head. She would certainly prejudice the case she had been making by doing a flit right now. Petaybee ought to have one advocate in the company’s court. Sauntering, she caught up with Ornery just as he realized she wasn’t nearby.
“Miss me, big boy?” she asked, and walked past him, out to the waiting copter, where she slid in next to Giancarlo, leaving Ornery to compress his mass into the space between her and the copter’s bulkhead. Ignoring the commotion and Torkel’s demand for more information on the accident from the copter pilot, she was perhaps the only one looking out past Ornery toward the river, newly freed from ice thrall. She sat up straight, unable to believe her eyes, as a dark object that she first thought was a boulder turned into a seal and suddenly moved with astonishing speed and grace to slip into the water.
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