Powers That Be

by Anne McCaffrey

  The volcano was almost out of sight behind them, obscured by the foothills, when Nanook suddenly picked up the pace, from an amble to a working lope. Then, abruptly, he halted at a fast-running stream to lap up the clear water. The others were glad to follow his example.

  Clodagh did more than drink: she immersed her face in the stream. She was so long about it that Bunny got worried, but when she finally lifted her dripping head, she wore a broad smile.

  “That way,” she said, pointing uphill in a more northerly direction as she wiped her face, leaving dark gray smudges on her forehead and down her cheeks.

  Ash clung to all their clothing and rendered their complexions ghostly gray.

  “Let me see if I can get a message through, Clodagh,” Steve said, starting to unsling his radio equipment.

  “Not now,” she said, shaking her head, and began to follow the stream. Steve shrugged and resettled the radio equipment.

  The stream disappeared into a narrow opening at the bottom of the first terrace of the cliff. When Clodagh indicated that they would have to climb, they discarded the snowshoes. Bunny marveled that Clodagh calmly prepared herself to climb, hitching her skirts high enough so that her sturdy legs, clad in woolen pants knitted in a variety of quite lively colors, were visible. She was slow, true enough, but she made certain progress upward. Nanook reached the top of the terrace in three graceful leaps, Dinah scrabbling close behind him. Fortunately they didn’t have all that far to go. On the second terrace, Nanook turned to his right and led them around an escarpment, ducked into a hole in the stone, and disappeared from sight. Only then did Clodagh groan, for she would have to go down on hands and knees to follow the big cat. She did.

  Once inside, they could all stand up again. Clodagh paused, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. Bunny thought the pace was telling on the large woman. It was certainly beginning to wear Bunny down a bit, and she was much more used to running about than Clodagh.

  “Hey, this is like the other place,” Diego said, looking about him. A curious luminescence gave enough light for them to see.

  “Quite a few subterranean networks did appear on the last scan that was made of this planet,” Steve was saying as he examined the rock walls, wiping off a light film, which he rubbed between his fingers. “They weren’t on previous ones, but they do account for the subsidences. Or do they? Most unusual. I wish Frank had been well enough to travel with us. He’s more familiar with such geological anomalies than I am.” He walked on a few more strides before he stopped completely, forcing Diego, walking behind him, to hurriedly step aside. “Or perhaps there was a flaw in the original terraforming that has produced unforeseen long-range crustal defects. A shame that Dr. Fiske was killed on the shuttle crash.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Bunny said. “Only that Captain Fiske was going to try to find his father, so he could still be alive.”

  “Is Fiske’s father the company big shot who’s supposed to know more about Petaybee than anyone else?” Clodagh asked, pausing to lean against the stone.

  “Yes,” Steve said. “He’s Dr. Whittaker Fiske, grandson of the Dr. Sven Whittaker-Fiske who developed the Whittaker Effect, the process that perfected the accelerated terraforming technique used to make Petaybee habitable.” When Clodagh gave Steve a long and thoughtful look, he corrected himself. “Or at least he thought he had perfected it.”

  “Why didn’t he name it the Fiske Effect then?” Bunny asked.

  “He named it for his mother, Dr. Elsie Whittaker. I guess he thought it was appropriate, considering the generative nature of the project.”

  Clodagh gave a satisfied grunt and, pushing herself off the wall, was about to move forward again when she stopped, holding her hand up for silence. “Listen!”

  The sounds were muted but obviously human. Bunny and Sinead dashed forward, Diego, with Dinah at his heels, just behind them. The voices had suddenly risen in excitement, and as Bunny turned the next bend, she stopped in surprise. Nanook had found Yana and was attempting to lick any part of her he could!

  “Yana! You’re alive!” Bunny cried, but she had taken no more than one step before she realized that Yana was not the only inhabitant of the large, low cave. And judging by the way the camp had been set up, Yana and her companions had been here a few days. “Who’re all of you?” she demanded.

  A sturdy man in a torn uniform and a bandage covering almost all his black hair stood up by the fire, where he had been stirring a pot. “Captain John Greene of the shuttle Sockeye,” he said with a wry smile. “Who’re you?”

  “Buneka Rourke of Kilcoole,” Bunny said in stunned courtesy.

  “From Kilcoole? Of all the bloody luck,” groaned a disgruntled voice, and a battered, blistered, half-naked, filthy man barely recognizable as the dapper Torkel Fiske rose painfully from his seat on the ground. He placed himself protectively between the rescue party and an older man, who had one arm bound across his chest.

  Before either Bunny or Sinead could respond to Torkel’s hostile reaction, Steve Margolies, and Diego, and an excitedly barking Dinah rushed into the cavern, followed more slowly by Clodagh.

  To the man behind him, Torkel said, “Just keep calm, Dad. I’ll handle this. These are the rebels I was telling you about. The ones who brainwashed Maddock into helping them.”

  “Nonsense, son,” the older man said, stepping gently but firmly past his tottering son. “That’s Steve Margolies there, and Frank Metaxos’s boy, Diego. They’re no more rebels than I am.”

  “Dr. Fiske,” Steve exclaimed, rushing toward the older man and pumping his good hand excitedly. “I can’t believe you survived.”

  “Neither can I,” the older Fiske replied in a droll voice.

  “Dr. Fiske, in the past few days, Diego and these people have showed me the most amazing developments. You simply won’t believe what I have to tell you . . .”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Dr. Fiske said. “Stop posturing for a moment, son, and sit down before you fall down.” He gently pushed Torkel back to the floor. “And for the love of Mike let these people clean you up and dress your wounds. You’re no damned good to me dead. You, young Diego, lend me a hand here to clean up my son’s wounds before they fester. I’ve only got the one that’s useful now, myself. I’ll debrief Dr. Margolies.”

  “Yes, sir,” Diego said, taking over the bowl of water and the cloth. Having learned a few things from caring for his father, Diego went about the duty both gently and conscientiously, cleansing the portions of Torkel’s body that Torkel couldn’t have reached. The captain wearily protested every dab, as if Diego were deliberately trying to inflict more pain than was absolutely necessary. Diego’s private opinion was visible on his face: the captain was acting like a big baby.

  Dr. Fiske settled down to one side of Torkel, and Steve hunkered down and began talking in a rapid-fire explanation full of words Bunny didn’t understand even when she could make them out.

  Yana caught Clodagh’s eye and urgently beckoned the healer over, indicating Giancarlo’s bundled figure on the ground by her feet.

  Clodagh examined the colonel’s terrible burn wounds briefly, pursing her lips at the irremediable damage.

  “I can do something to make him comfortable, no more,” she said, shaking her head. “Intergal may know something.” She started to work, pulling various unguents and potions, bandages and splints from her knapsack.

  Yana would never have expected to be sorry for a man like Giancarlo, but she was. Hurting as badly as he was, he had not uttered a sound.

  For herself, Yana was so glad to see Clodagh and the others from Kilcoole that she could have cried. She and Torkel had made it to the cave several hours before, and she had been unutterably relieved to see the shuttle crash survivors. However, once Torkel had reassured himself that his father was safe, he began ranting about Yana’s treachery and warning the shuttle crew to ignore anything she might say and to watch her. Considering the fact that Yana had obviously taken
on most of the physical burden of dragging Giancarlo, as well as supporting Torkel, as they staggered into the cave, the shuttle crew didn’t pay much attention to his ravings. Still, the atmosphere had been extremely tense. Even the cave itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something. The calm before the storm? Yana wondered. A lull before the mountain blew again? It didn’t feel exactly like that, and she was too tired to analyze the feeling, but it definitely added to the tension.

  Once Clodagh finished ministering to the unconscious Giancarlo, she rounded on Yana, clucking over the scabby sores crusting Yana’s left arm and over her appearance in general.

  “When did you eat last, girl?” Clodagh demanded.

  “I had a piece of ration bar just before we got here,” Yana said.

  “You look like you could eat a whole moose by yourself and sleep for a month. You were skinny as a skeleton when you got to Kilcoole, but we fattened you up good. Now you look like a lame doe after a hard winter again.”

  Yana jerked her arm away from Clodagh. “Don’t fuss over me. I’m all right. There are others who could really use your help, Clodagh.” She nodded beyond her to others wearing makeshift bandages. “The shuttle survivors have been here for three days, and they’ve had zip to look after themselves with. All they could do for Dr. Fiske was immobilize his arm and wash off his wounds.”

  “Is that him over there Steve’s talkin’ to?” Clodagh asked. When Yana nodded Clodagh said wryly, “He looks better off than Torkel to me.”

  Sinead joined the two women then, her face anxious. “Have you seen him?” she asked Yana. “I thought he’d be with you.”

  “No, if you mean Sean,” Yana said with an odd smile. “But I’ll tell you both something. We didn’t find them”—and she gestured to the crash victims—“we were led to them.”

  Hope bounced back into Sinead’s eyes. “Led to this place?”

  Yana nodded. “What’s more, they swear they were led here, too. I can only think of one person not here at the moment who might have engineered this rescue, and I’ve been wondering, Sinead, how the hell he did it.” Her eyes were keen on the other woman’s face. “Dr. Fiske told Torkel he believes that there’s an underground network of rivers. That’s why there were so many subsidences when the mining charges weakened subterranean supports. If there’s a network, one river flowing into another, then someone who knew his way around could go from one end of the system to the other without ever being seen—couldn’t he?”

  Sinead gave Yana a long look. “If there was such a network, that’s possible, I suppose. I don’t go underground much. I like horizons.” Then she reached to heave her pack off her back and began rummaging in it. “I’ve got spare clothes you can use. And some stuff Clodagh will want.”

  “No one looked beyond this cavern?” Clodagh asked with quiet urgency.

  Yana shook her head. “We’d enough to do without going exploring!”

  “That’s as well,” Clodagh said with a satisfied snort, and asked Yana who was the worst of the injured. She cleansed, stitched, anointed, and listened as gradually the two separate incidents were reported in detail.

  The shuttle had been on the point of landing when the volcano blast had caught it, throwing the vehicle heavily to its side. Nine passengers had not survived the impact, but the others, hastily mobilized by the resourceful young pilot, Captain Greene, had got the living out of the shuttle before the air locks were submerged. They had managed to leave the area, the hot mud only centimeters from their heels as they plunged out of the western end of the valley. They had paused only to distribute supplies and attend to burns, scalds, and broken bones, before force-marching themselves as far from the erupting volcano as their strength would take them. The wind was easterly: they had picked the only safe direction to flee. And that had been only by chance, since the pilot had thought he was directing them toward the mining site that had been their destination, but a knock on the head, from the crash landing, had skewed his sense of direction.

  “Remarkable that we were all led to this particular spot,” Steve Margolies said. “This appears to be the opening of a vast system of caves. The two parties could have ended up in widely separated spots. Are there other entrances to this particular cavern?” he asked, glancing toward the back of the cavern.

  Greene shrugged. “Could be. We didn’t need to explore with that fresh stream right outside.”

  “We’ll return later, properly equipped, and do a thorough investigation,” Dr. Fiske said in a firm command tone. “Right now, we’d better report these coordinates and get our wounded back to SpaceBase. I believe this may be one of the places for which our teams have been searching all these years. Dr. Margolies, I trust you brought some means of communication with the base, didn’t you?”

  “Of course, of course,” Steve said. He jumped to his feet. “We’ll have to go outside and get some height for the best possible signal—” Then he stopped, as Torkel latched on to the comm set at his belt and hauled himself wearily to his feet, using Steve to balance himself.

  “I initiate any communications,” Torkel said curtly. Then he caught his father’s frown and managed a ghost of his old diplomatic smile for Margolies. “That is, I’ll report in while you and my father continue the debriefing.”

  Captain Greene nodded to the least injured of his crewmen, a short black man, who helped Steve and the fumbling Torkel untangle the comm set from Steve’s belt.

  “And while you’re exercising your jaw, Dr. Fiske, I’ll just see to your arm,” Clodagh told the scientist. She crouched down in front of him and began untying the sling.

  “Dama, I’ve waited this long,” Fiske said with great dignity, resisting her ministrations. “I can certainly—Ouch! How did you do that?” He stared at his newly set arm and then at Clodagh, eyes wide with respect.

  “It’s a knack I’ve developed,” she said. Then she dipped a length of bandage in a pot of her boneset potion and quickly and deftly wrapped the area about the break. By the time she had done that and rinsed her hands off, the bandage had hardened. “This will be more comfortable for you until you get back.”

  “But this hardened . . . I don’t believe this,” Fiske said, tapping the shell experimentally.

  Gently but firmly taking his arm again, she replaced it in the sling and tied it across his chest. Then she began to undo the blood-soaked bandage on his thigh.

  “This wants stitching,” she said, examining the gaping wound.

  “It’s been cleaned and dressed,” Fiske said testily, inhaling quickly at the sight of his parted flesh.

  “That was well done,” Clodagh agreed, and let a handful of a moist salve slip onto the wound.

  Fiske started to hiss and then stopped in surprise. “That didn’t hurt.”

  “Medicine need not hurt, or taste bad, to be effective. Never did know who started that stupid old superstition,” she said with all the scorn of an experienced practitioner. From another packet she took a needle already threaded and began to make neat sutures.

  Despite an initial distaste, Fiske gradually became fascinated by her swift movements. “Where did you get your training?” he asked respectfully.

  “Living on Petaybee teaches you many useful things,” she said serenely, and tied off the last stitch. “Not perhaps what your medical folk might use, but it works. That’s all we ask of any medicine, isn’t it?” she added. “Anywhere else?”

  He had a less serious laceration farther down the leg, and she put in two neat sutures to close that. Then she applied a wet aromatic compress to the swollen, bruised flesh of his ankle.

  While Torkel and the crewman called for a copter and Clodagh fussed over Dr. Fiske, Yana helped Bunny warm up some of the provisions the rescue party had brought with them. By the time a rich meaty stew had been reconstituted with water and was simmering in a flight helmet stripped of its lining, Clodagh had finished administering to Whittaker Fiske. Yana offered the old man some of the stew, and he thanked her without a hin
t of his son’s surliness.

  Yana had food for Clodagh, as well, and put it into the healer’s hands with a firmness and a look in her eye that told Clodagh that she had better eat or else!

  “Is it just that I am very hungry and tired of energy bars, or is this really as good as it tastes?” Whittaker Fiske asked amiably.

  “Hunger is a good sauce,” Clodagh said. “Here’s a spot of seasoning that’ll add an extra zap to it.” From her capacious medicine bag, she took an herb bottle and sprinkled some powder into his bowl and hers, then offered it to Yana.

  Settling down beside her, Yana grinned around her spoon. “Clodagh’s far too modest, Dr. Fiske. Food generally tastes better on Petaybee because most of it’s fresh! Even the frozen stuff.”

  “I thought the growing season was a little short for that,” Whittaker Fiske said, chewing thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” Clodagh said. “But we get more daylight than usual during our growing season, so things get big fast. And the fishes and animals we eat grow all year-round.”

  “And maybe you have a lot of access to hydroponic gardens on the space stations, Dr. Fiske,” Yana said, “but to me anything that hasn’t been freeze-dried and stored in a food locker for several ship-years tastes downright ambrosial.”

  They had just finished eating when Torkel and the crewman returned to the cavern, Torkel’s step somewhat more confident than it had been.

  “All right, everyone, gather what you want to take with you,” he began.

  “Not much of that,” one of the crash survivors muttered.

  “There’s a jumbo copter on the way with medical staff,” he continued, frowning as he tried to identify the wit. Then he saw that Yana was sitting next to his father. “Maddock, you’re to consider yourself under arrest.”

  Yana looked up at him quizzically.

  “Oh, come now, Torkel,” his father said with some asperity. “Surely you can’t hold any of these people, least of all Major Maddock, responsible for Petaybee’s geological vagaries! I tell you quite frankly your allegations have no scientific foundation.”