Powers That Be

by Anne McCaffrey

  He didn’t realize how tense he had been until he broke the track-cat free of the mud. Hoping his spontaneous shout of relief had been inaudible among the shouts and cries coming from the river, he immediately changed directions, driving across the gully and back into the woods. Now he steered away from the riverbank, keeping to the trees, avoiding anyone who might be struggling ashore and also avoiding surveillance by airborne rescue parties.

  Half an hour later, with the light beginning to wane, he was far enough from the river that, when the ice finally completely gave way, all he heard was a dull roar, like a far-off crowd cheering some sporting event. And he heard that only because the engine of the track-cat, which had been left running day and night since the vehicle had been commissioned, had run out of fuel.

  He stopped and listened to the distant roar, tasted smoke and ash on the air mingling with the released ozone smell of open water, felt the ground trembling beneath the track-cat as if it, too, would break open at any time. Birds screeched through the trees as if crying warnings.

  His father’s inert body looked uncomfortable in the harness that was keeping it upright on the seat beside him. Diego tenderly rearranged the passive limbs into less grotesque positions. He didn’t think his father could have been hurt by the rough journey, but he really hated to see his dad, once so athletic and fit, collapsed like a disconnected android.

  With no more fuel, the vehicle was useless. Diego let out a deep sigh. Despite his detours, he couldn’t be that far from the village at this point. He glanced around, sniffing and finally noticing the odd smells in the air: acrid, oily, definitely nonregulation. Usually by now the air started to chill off, but it was still as warm as it had been all day. Strapped as he was in the seat, Dad wouldn’t be in any real danger from chilling for at least another half hour, Diego estimated. He reached for the coat he had removed during his exertions to get the track-cat moving again and tucked it around his father, patting it in place, remembering his father doing the same service for him when he was smaller. Maybe he shouldn’t leave his father here. There were wild animals on Petaybee, wild animals strong enough to break into the track-cat, maybe. Would they be more afraid of the machine smell than they would be hungry? Suddenly Diego wasn’t sure he could take the risk. Not with his father so helpless.

  But he couldn’t just sit here, halfway to nowhere. Fretting more than ever, he turned to rummage through the track-cat’s locker, hoping there might be something useful in it. There was nothing: nothing to use to build a fire, no emergency rations, not even a canteen of water, but then the cat had been used around the SpaceBase, where such supplies had always been at hand. It wasn’t as if the motor pool had anticipated the cat being stolen for a cross-country escape. Totally demoralized, Diego flopped down on the driver’s seat, wondering how he was going to cope now. If Steve did keep his promise to come after him, he wouldn’t be there anymore. Would Steve be able to come looking for them? What could he do? He’d only wanted to help his father!

  As if to seal his depression, the first keening howl sounded through the evening.

  Bunny didn’t have to alert the village: the dogs’ wailing did it for her. People poured out of their houses to see what was wrong. She didn’t have to tell them the river had broken up. Anyone born on Petaybee and raised with Kilcoole’s long winters could smell breakup in the air, could feel the change in the pressure, and if that wasn’t enough, the ice melting from the roofs and the slush seeping through the soft soles of their boots made it all too evident.

  Bunny ran up to Lavelle’s door first. Liam opened it. “Liam, the river’s breaking early and people in snocles are trapped.”

  “The planet take them, then.” Liam shrugged angrily and started to shut the door in her face.

  “Seamus is out there helping, and Dinah’s got loose and ran off toward the river. Please, Liam, if you won’t help, at least spread the word!” When he reached for his parka on the hook by the door, she caught his hand, grinning. “You don’t need it. Come on.”

  She didn’t wait to see if he followed but ran straight to her Aunt Moira’s. Moira and her three oldest sons, Nanuk, Tutiak, and Tim, were already hitching up Charlie’s dogs while Maureen and ‘Naluk, the oldest girls, carried blankets and other provisions to the sleds. “Auntie Moira, the river’s breaking up—”

  “I know, Bunka. Don’t just stand there! Help us! Seamus is out there on that river.”

  “He’s okay for now, Auntie. The soldiers pulled him out. But they all need help.”

  Tutiak growled at her. “What do you think we’re trying to do?”

  “No need to be rude to your cousin, Tutiak,” Moira said, slapping at him. “He’s sorry, Bunka. We’re taking Charlie’s dogs to go help now. Okay with you?”

  “Fine,” Bunny said. “I have to go tell Clodagh.”

  “Hmph,” Tim grunted. “As if anyone ever needed to tell Clodagh anything.”

  Bunny paused at Aisling and Sinead’s, first noticing that the dogs were missing from the yard, then that the long daylight was finally waning. The door opened on her first rap to reveal Aisling wearing her waterproof breakup boots, with her arms full of blankets.

  “Breakup’s come early, Aisling, and—”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  “Alice B heard from the other dogs. Sinead and the dogs are on the way.”

  “It’s getting too slushy for dogs even. We’re going to need the curlies.”

  “Have you asked Adak to call Sean?”

  Bunny felt something inside her wrench suddenly. “No! I—Aisling, the soldiers kept Yana. I think Sean’s in trouble.”

  “Warn Clodagh,” Aisling said. “I’ll tell anybody else who hasn’t figured it out yet and meet you there.”

  With a wave, Bunny ran on through the dusk to Clodagh’s house. Clodagh was holding a lamp when she opened the door. None of the cats were in sight; then one appeared, taking immediate advantage of the open door to brush past Bunny and jump up on the table, where it began mewing piteously.

  “Marduk says Yana hasn’t been home to feed him,” Clodagh translated.

  Breathless, Bunny collapsed in a sprawl on Clodagh’s bed. “She was goin’ to try to reason with Captain Fiske for us, but it mustn’t have worked. Clodagh, the river’s breaking—”

  Clodagh nodded with some satisfaction. “Of course it is. The river ice has been SpaceBase’s quickest connecting route to us. The planet’s protecting us—and itself.”

  “Seamus almost drowned trying to help one of the soldiers,” Bunny said, without asking how Clodagh knew what the planet knew, or was trying to do. She just did, that was all. She always did.

  “That Seamus,” Clodagh said, shaking her head. “Of course he would try to help. Is he okay?”

  “He’s out on the ice with the others. They’re all still stranded. And not only that, Clodagh, but when I stopped by Lavelle’s to untangle Dinah from her harness, Dinah—well, it was like she talked to me. She was all upset about some boy. And that has to be Diego, but he should be safe at the SpaceBase. What are we going to do, Clodagh? Everything’s coming to pieces.” This last came out of Bunny almost like the howl of one of the dogs. That made her realize that she was very tired and keyed up to the highest possible pitch. She would give anything to be able to sleep for a week—if only someplace felt safe enough to sleep in! Even Clodagh seemed different somehow, her eyes glittering and her customary expressions underlain with agitation and a hard anger that had nothing to do with Bunny. Clodagh, Bunny felt, was actually glad about the river and wouldn’t have minded if everyone—well, not Seamus, but everyone else—had drowned. Bunny suddenly realized that she, too, wouldn’t mind if they all drowned, if all of SpaceBase suddenly sank into the planet and disappeared and the company moon vanished from the sky. They were bound and determined to ruin Petaybee. Everything Bunny cared about and counted on was changing, coming apart the way the ice, usually as much to be depended upon as the ground this time of year,
had broken away beneath her.

  Even Clodagh’s house no longer felt like the haven of comfort and reassurance it had been for Bunny ever since her parents had died and she realized she could no longer live among her cousins.

  “Bunka,” Clodagh said, touching her shoulder.

  “Why couldn’t they leave us alone, Clodagh? Why couldn’t they leave Petaybee alone? Did they have to ruin everything?”

  “They’ve ruined nothing yet, Bunka. Oh, they set a few charges about here and there, and sent soldiers out to the mountains. But until they stop and pay attention, they’re not likely to learn anything about Petaybee worth the knowin’. And meantime, the planet has means to protect itself.”

  “Clodagh, have you ever been to SpaceBase?” Bunny asked. It hadn’t occurred to her before that she had never seen Clodagh outside the village except for a time or two on journeys to Sean’s house. Clodagh couldn’t possibly understand the power the company had.

  “Of course not, alanna, now why would I want to go there?”

  “They have thousands of soldiers there right now. Yana says they mean to evacuate us. By force! Just without a by-your-leave make us all go into space someplace. Then they’ll keep blowing up things on Petaybee until they get all the minerals and stuff they want. Clodagh, I’ve seen the shuttles and the ships. I know lots of the soldiers. They can do it if they want to. They own Petaybee.”

  “Nonsense, Bunka. Nobody owns Petaybee but Petaybee.”

  Bunny was about to argue the point when something landed with a heavy thud on the roof.

  Marduk, the cat who had been living with Yana, stood on his hind feet and pedaled his front paws at the ceiling, chittering and mewing as if looking for a rafter to jump onto.

  From outside the house came a sound like a well caving in, a roar with a deep echo to it. Bunny recognized it at once as the voice of one of Sean’s big cats.

  She, Clodagh, and Marduk were at the door all at once, but before they could go outside, a huge shape landed softly in front in the doorway. The black and white bewhiskered face of the big cat regarded them quizzically.

  Marduk, far from being frightened by the larger feline, stepped forward to rub noses with it. Each brushed scent glands on the side of his face into the other cat’s fur.

  Clodagh stood away from the door, and the big cat padded inside, leapt to the bed, and circled about on her handmade quilt to make a nest for himself. Marduk hopped on top of the larger creature’s back and chirruped autocratically. Clodagh produced a pair of thawed fish and a pan of water for the cats to lap. While they ate, Clodagh sat beside them on the edge of the bed and stroked their backs.

  She crooned especially to the big cat, and it looked up from its meal with narrowed eyes and purred thunderously back at her. Marduk, annoyed at being left out, butted her hand with his head before he continued to eat.

  “Do you suppose it knows where Sean and Yana are?” Bunny asked. “When I petted Dinah, I felt as if she was talking to me.”

  “Come here, Bunka,” Clodagh said, and put Bunny’s hand on the cat’s head. “Have you an answer for Bunka, Nanook?”

  Why else would I bother coming? the cat asked her in a velvety, rumbling voice.

  The words weren’t spoken; but Bunny heard them nevertheless, inside her head, the way she had heard Dinah’s. Nanook’s diction was much better than the dog’s.

  Clodagh regarded Bunny speculatively.

  “It talked to me,” Bunny told her, blinking rapidly.

  “This cat is a he, not an it,” Clodagh told her. “He talked to you because you can understand him. Marduk, also, is a he. In fact, on our whole planet, there are no its. Some things have no gender, but they are not without names. It’s only polite to learn those names.”

  Bunny shrugged. “Well, I guess I knew that.” She had played with the big cat since he had been a kitten, actually, every time she had gone to visit Sean. She petted him again. “Sorry, Nanook, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  Having cleaned his chops of fish residue, Nanook began to tidy up the white fur of his chest. The house suddenly shook, and from under the counter came the sound of crashing glass. Marduk jumped down, and Nanook stretched beneath Bunny’s hand.

  Sean’s gone swimming, he said. Yana came with soldiers, but their chop-chop bird squawked and the soldiers took her away again. They do not have good feelings for her. They have even less good feeling about Sean. They did not like those of us who live with Sean and tried to find us, to take us away with them. We were not found. Then the ground shakes and I smell smoke-that-is-not-cooking. And shedding time is early. What are people doing to our place?

  The last thought was accompanied by a plaintive roar that sent a blast of fishy breath into Bunny’s face.

  Diego found a sturdy branch, though he knew it wouldn’t be much good as protection against wild animals. Hefting it in his hand made him feel somewhat less vulnerable, however. He could hear the river roaring, along with a crunching and grinding of the ice that set his teeth on edge. He prayed Steve would be done with his rescuing of other people and remember he had a duty to rescue his own family. Darkness was closing in.

  The distant howling picked up again and became separate sounds: keening, howling, and plain crying, like the ghost of an all-too-familiar memory. Diego glanced over at his father. For a moment he thought he had seen a flicker in his dad’s eyes, but the older man sagged against the harness as limply as ever.

  Another howl, much closer now, was answered by several others, still distant. Diego swung his stick like a baseball bat, placing himself between the track-cat and the hostile woods. As an afterthought, he reached inside and switched on the lights, grateful that the battery wasn’t drained yet. Then the lights picked up a ring of shining eyes in the woods, closing in on him.

  The howling took on a triumphant note, and suddenly something dashed from the woods and straight at him.

  Cocking the stick to make his first blow count as much as it could, Diego released it at the top of his swing as the lights picked up the red fur of the dog. Dinah crushed him against the grill of the track-cat with the weight of her body. She licked his face and the hands he tried to protect his face with and whined her relief.

  He couldn’t have said how he knew the dog was Dinah instead of any other, except that Dinah had done this sort of thing before. And behind her came answering whines and howls and a man’s voice crying “Whoa! Down, dogs.”

  Diego freed himself from Dinah’s embrace in time to see a sled pulled by four dogs break through the trees into the lights of the track-cat.

  The man driving the sled wore no coat and frowned when he saw Diego, but Dinah ran frantically between the cat and the sled until the man relaxed.

  “You’re the boy who was with my mother, aren’t you?” the man asked.

  “Your mom was Lavelle?” The guess wasn’t hard, with Dinah bouncing between them.

  “That’s right.”

  “Then please help us. I have to get my dad to Clodagh’s. He’s been dying at SpaceBase like Lavelle died when they took her off-planet.”

  The wind blew and the planet shook, whether in fear or anger or both Bunny couldn’t tell, but inside Clodagh’s house a phenomenon was taking place that Bunny would have only partially understood the day before.

  A taciturn Liam Maloney, whined and howled into submission by Dinah and the other sled dogs, had delivered Diego Metaxos and his father to Clodagh’s just after dark. Now Diego nursed a cup of tea, while his father sat tied into Clodagh’s rocker.

  Liam had returned home to feed the dogs, although Dinah had whined and made her peculiar “oooo ooo” sound when pulled away from Diego. Bunny wondered what she would hear the dog say if she stroked her. She wondered if Diego could hear Dinah yet, but thought he probably couldn’t. After all, she had lived fourteen years on Petaybee, and she had always known communication existed between certain aspects of the planet and its people. Come to that, she had communicated with the planet like ev
eryone else during the hot-springs interfaces at the end of every latchkay.

  Everyone knew that some people, like Clodagh and Sean, could talk to most of the animals. Others, like Lavelle, could certainly understand their own lead dogs. Bunny had always talked to the animals, all of them, having been brought up to think it was only polite to do so. But today was the first time the animals had ever struck up what could be called a conversation with her. Maybe it was because she had bonded with her snocle instead of to dogs or cats or curlies, or maybe Dinah was just an unusually telepathic dog. Anyway, although Dinah was evidently tuned in to Diego, the dog had talked to Bunny first, and underlying all the worry and trouble, Bunny felt a marvelous elation about that.

  The big cat, Nanook, had bounded past her as she held the door open for Liam and Diego to carry Francisco Metaxos into Clodagh’s house. Bunny had caught a flutter of thought, Wonder what’s happening out there now . . . , as the cat passed by.

  Darkness blanked the windows and the wind blew fiercely, carrying the scent of ash and fresh water, thawing earth and smoke. It howled around the house like a team of hungry dogs and rattled the roof. Inside, the stove kept the house almost stiflingly warm as it kept Clodagh’s caribou stew simmering in her biggest pot.

  Diego was wolfing down his second bowlful and Bunny making short work of hers while Clodagh stirred fresh ingredients into the pot.

  “Want to have enough for when people come in off the river,” she said. “Some of them are bound to stop by.”

  The cozy domesticity of the scene was reinforced by Clodagh’s cats, who had returned from whatever business they had been about when Bunny had first arrived.

  Diego had one on his lap, while another, Bearcat, napped on Bunny’s knees. And, of course, one of the more enterprising members of the pride twined around Clodagh’s ankles as she cooked. Marduk and the remaining five seemed fascinated by Francisco Metaxos.