“Sir, you manage the planet and I’ll manage the investigation. Maddock’s turned against the company and is actively aiding the—”
“Who, you say, make their headquarters in Kilcoole?” Fiske asked in a mild tone, looking up at his son who towered over him. “The same town that organized this very efficient, if unorthodox”—and he smiled at Clodagh—“rescue party? I find that hard to believe.”
Clodagh chuckled, and Torkel gave a deep, disgusted sigh and sank down beside his father.
“You wanted me to get to the bottom of the team disappearances . . . sir,” Torkel said with exaggerated patience in a hoarse weary voice, “and the biological anomalies on this planet. You saw that big cat that came with these people, the one that’s even now sunning itself on the ledge outside this cave? And keeping watch, I wouldn’t doubt. That cat’s one of those same anomalies. It’s one of Shongili’s little pets, and there’ll be no mention of such a breed in your files. Major Yanaba Maddock’s been thick with Shongili since shortly after she arrived here, and I believe she’s fallen under his influence and become his accomplice. I don’t have Shongili, but I do have Maddock, and with her in custody I’ll get my hands on Shongili, too.”
Fiske raised his hand to silence Torkel, but he looked directly into Yana’s eyes.
“Are you guilty as charged, Yanaba Maddock?”
“Me, sir? No, sir,” Yana replied with a wry smile. “Trouble is your son didn’t like hearing what I had to report.”
“Sir, this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the situation,” Torkel continued in a low, strained tone, his eyes boring into Yana as if his stare could force her to silence. “It’s not what it seems!”
“I’ll go along with that,” Yana said fervently.
“Sometimes when you create life, it does not fit the form you chose for it,” Clodagh said with an enigmatic smile at Whittaker Fiske.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dr. Fiske asked, frowning.
“You’ll be given to understand that soon.” She rose, putting an end to that subject. “Come, Yana, we must speak to Sinead. She, and perhaps Bunny, better drive those curly-coats back. They won’t find much to eat around here now that the volcano’s finished.”
“The volcano’s finished erupting? How can you know that?” Fiske tried to get up, but he was stiff from sitting so long and couldn’t stop her.
“She’s bad as the rest of them, Dad,” Torkel said, looking rather pleased that Clodagh had damned herself out of her own mouth.
“Bad?” Whittaker Fiske exclaimed. “Bad doesn’t come into this, son! Margolies, a word with you!” He limped over to Steve, who, with Diego, was helping get some of the injured ready for transfer.
Yana remained near Clodagh. Captain Greene snagged Torkel to organize an orderly transfer of the survivors from their cave refuge to the nearest possible copter landing site, and that kept the captain occupied. There was a flurry of activity when the copters arrived, stretcher bearers whipping back and forth, people getting loaded. Yana noticed Clodagh in deep conversation with Sinead, Greene, and Bunny, but she thought nothing of it. She just made damned sure she stayed out of Torkel’s way, a task made easier when Greene strong-armed the exhausted man aboard the copter while insisting on giving him a preliminary report.
“I left my medicine bag in the cave,” Clodagh said just as the last folk were waiting to load up.
“Sure thing,” Yana said, turning back to the cavern entrance. But inside, she found Sinead, apparently gathering up the last of the debris. Sinead smiled at her, an odd sort of smile, and then Yana heard voices in the passageway.
“It is something that you must see right now, Dr. Fiske,” Clodagh was saying as she entered the cavern, the scientist limping impatiently beside her, “to begin to understand what Petaybee is beneath the surface you folk gave it.”
“Beneath the—what are you talking about, woman?” Fiske, anxious to return to SpaceBase, was getting grumpy. “Are we going to miss the copter?”
“It will wait,” Clodagh said easily, and Yana realized that the big woman had come on a mission that had an urgent purpose extending beyond the initial search and rescue.
17
Trailing behind Clodagh and Fiske, Yana heard the copter lift off. She paused, listening until the sound was barely audible, then turned back to follow Clodagh. As she started walking, she became aware that the atmosphere inside the cave had subtly altered and lightened: the whole cavern was flooding with a sense of release—the exhalation of the breath she had felt it holding since she had first arrived.
At the same time something splashed and she swiveled, but she could see nothing, and decided that the sound must have come from outside the cave. Backtracking, she peered out along the little stream that flowed into the cavern, through the low, dark opening.
Something was rising from the stream out there. Sparkling droplets of water splashed around a long, silver-brown body energetically shaking itself dry as it rose from the water. Yana watched in fascination as the droplets flew, clearing a finely sculpted head with ears flat against the skull and bright eyes that seemed to search the entrance of the cave. Then the moisture was gone and the head seemed to, well, fluff out, she supposed, and the body lengthened into that of a man—a man who seemed to be wearing a fine silky pelt of hair. Or, perhaps, a gray wet suit. But as he walked closer to her, she saw with joyful surprise that the man was Sean, clad in nothing at all save volcanic ash, which he must have been trying to wash off in the spring before coming inside.
“You always travel that way?” she called out, not quite trusting what she thought she had seen and hoping that either he would explain sometime soon or she could somehow find a subtle way to ask.
He grinned down at her. “Not always, but it’s very convenient if you know how.” He looked down at himself. “Can get a little drafty once I’m out of my element, though.”
The cave was littered with bits of uniform that had been discarded by survivors as not worth transporting. Sean rifled through them until he found a flight suit riddled with holes. He pulled it on, and it served as a social covering.
“Ashes as disguise and swimming as transport? Clever of you,” she said, making a wild guess.
“More or less,” he said, coming to stand very close to her and putting his hands on her shoulders.
She wasn’t quite ready yet to be distracted by his touch, still bewildered and intrigued by the way he had appeared and by what she felt surely had to be her perfectly ridiculous perceptions of it. “You know—I was wondering about that raven that guided us here—I sort of had a sense of you then. You don’t by any chance own a black wet suit and hang glider, do you?” she asked, lifting her brows in a query that practically demanded that he confide in her.
He remained amused and enigmatic. “And make myself small, as well? Gracious no, I couldn’t do that. I don’t go in for wings. I’ve a definite water affinity. But I do have friends in high places.”
Yana decided to pursue that mystery later and concentrate on more urgent matters for the time being. She laid a hand on his arm and said, “Sean, I’d better brief you as to what’s happening here. Torkel Fiske is ready to court-martial me for trying to defend Petaybee and Clodagh’s taken Torkel’s father into the cavern—”
“I know, Yana, I know. And I’ll explain as soon as there’s time. Right now we’ll do better to help Dr. Fiske and Clodagh.”
His hand made a reassuring warm spot on the middle of her back as he guided her toward the passageway.
Yana became suddenly aware that the sound of the helicopter, which had grown faint by the time she had found Sean, was suddenly louder again. Instinctively she lengthened her stride. Sean heard it, too, and increased his pace to match hers until both were well within the passage.
The luminescence was brightening, and ahead of them she could hear Clodagh saying soothingly, “. . . someone who wants to meet you, Dr. Fiske.”
The copter thud grew louder and
louder, then suddenly began fading again, but from behind, Yana heard quick footsteps entering the cave.
“Come out with your hands up, Shongili, Maddock! I saw you rendezvous!” Torkel yelled. “And my father had better be unharmed or—”
“Are you with me?” Sean asked Yana quickly. She nodded, and they stood, one on either side of the passage, flush against the wall, while Torkel, forgetting all training in his agitation, barreled into their ambush. Yana disarmed him easily and caught him in a wristlock, while Sean, on the other side, did something that made Torkel sag against them. Other footsteps could be heard in the outer cave then, but Sean ignored them as he dragged Torkel onward. Yana stepped forward to help, and together they steered him through the passage and into the inner cave, where Clodagh, Bunny, Sinead, Nanook, and Dinah surrounded Dr. Fiske.
A warm mist was already rising from the rivulets running down the cavern walls and along the sides of the floor. It was scented with earth, ozone, plant life, both green and decaying, and the faintest hint of the perfume of exotic flowers. The mist trickled along the floor and twined up the knees of the people in the cavern, gently tugging them down.
The luminescence on the cavern walls danced with shadow play as if lit by firelight; the walls themselves seemed to pulse. The mist thickened and rolled up around them, veiling their faces: heavy, warm, scented mist; the distilled essence of the caves, the ground, the water, the air, moving in and out of their bodies with each breath they took.
Feet shuffled briefly behind Yana, and the disturbance in the air pressure told her that yet others had entered the room. They said nothing, and when she could bring herself to glance over her shoulder, she saw that the late arrivals were cloaked by the mist as well, their nostrils and mouths and lungs and hearts adding to the rhythm with which the cave pulsed.
Every sound was magnified, the trickle of the water rattling like rain on a roof or rustling leaves, a whispered accent to the measured throb in the cave.
Suddenly Torkel writhed in Yana’s hands, and she felt him wake, heard his ragged breathing tear against the fabric of the thing that was happening here.
“No!” he cried. “No, stop! This is how they brainwash you. Dad, don’t listen!”
Dr. Fiske’s voice sounded muffled and distracted as he answered, “ ‘M fine. Don’t be such a horse’s ass.”
And Clodagh murmured encouragingly, “You’re both just fine, just fine.”
From behind Yana, other hands joined hers on Torkel and other arms wrapped around him—in reassurance, not restraint.
“Don’t fight, Captain,” Diego’s voice whispered. “Please don’t fight. Listen. It doesn’t mean to hurt you, it just wants you to listen.”
“I’m here, Captain Fiske,” Steve Margolies whispered in a less solicitous tone. “I’m a scientist, and so is your father. If this is all bull, we’ll know. You’re safe with us. Greene and the other pilot just joined us. You’re safe.”
“You’re safe and well and here because Petaybee has much to tell the sons of those who first woke the planet to life,” Clodagh said.
Torkel started to struggle again, and the whole cave suddenly vibrated with a thumping tremor that repeated over and over to the beat it had established from their breathing. The walls swirled with images, and Yana once more felt the jolt of contact running up her spine, exploding in her nervous system with blossoms of pure joy as she experienced a greater unity than she had ever known. A part of her heard Torkel gasp as he was infused with it, too, and then others became included. Contact was made with them now, each touching another; warm skin or warm cave, warm mist or warm breath, all were mingled in the heavy beat of the planet’s great heart.
In the cold cave floor she felt the ice-and-rock shell that had once imprisoned that heart. Then a shock rocked through her, over and over again, the world’s greatest orgasm, this world’s great orgasm. She was so full of life and joy that her body could not contain it all and lovely things began growing from her skin, her hair, her eyes and mouth and ears and nose, her womb and anus and fingers and toes and hair, giving birth to thousands of new beauties every second, flowering things and furred things, winged things and hoofed things, soft dense creeping mosses and towering trees with undulating sweet-scented fronds. And through each thing, with no more than a whim of a try, she could speak and sing, act and dance, love and laugh and live. Even dying was a kind of life, and she felt that, too, with regret but no grief.
Lovely things sent shivers over her skin, caressed her surfaces, brought warm pleasure to her orifices, dove and swam through her blood, nourished her. And all was well and all was one and she was glad of life.
Then a little pain started—just a small one, near her heart. At first it only troubled her once in a while. It grew worse when some of the things that grew from her were removed, though she could bear even that at first. But it grew worse and worse as time passed and other, sharper, deeper pains shot through her, as if someone had suddenly plunged a knife into her. She seized up and screamed and tried to cry out through the things growing on her, and some heard and cried for her and some were scorched by the force of her cries. Panting, she waited for the pain to pass and it did, until the next time.
Then the first pain, the main pain, the central pain, a pain much like the start of the ecstatic release that had freed her from her ice and rock, intensified, deepened, drove through her until she could stand it no more. At last she lanced her own boil by applying more and more pressure, sending blood and the strength of her muscle and bone, igniting nerves until the area blew, and she lay bleeding, but relieved. The things that nourished her surface rushed over her and centered on the spot to console her, and she felt the consolation, the oneness, the comfort of releasing her pain through those who had first released her.
Gradually the images of a volcano erupting on her left breast dissolved into the image of the pain flowing through the pores of her skin and out. That image dissolved into one of herself accepting Petaybee’s pain from within it and releasing it through herself, until she lay spent on the floor, Torkel Fiske sobbing on one side of her with Diego between them, Sean and Steve Margolies on the other side.
The mist had vanished now, and Dr. Fiske sat looking up at the luminous walls, tears coursing down his cheeks, his bad arm draped awkwardly across Clodagh’s back and the other one around Bunny.
Slowly they rose and left the cavern. O’Shay and Greene, as last in, were first out to reboard the waiting helicopter. Yana hauled herself aboard and crowded in next to Giancarlo’s stretcher, where Nanook lay stretched lengthwise next to the colonel, purring and doing the job usually reserved for his marmalade brethren. Then Sean squeezed in on her other side, and they made the journey in silence.
“What was terraformed, Dr. Fiske, was a sentient entity which just happened to be a planet,” Sean said when they were comfortably reassembled in Clodagh’s house.
“Scientifically, I find that very hard to believe,” Dr. Fiske said, sitting as erect as possible on Clodagh’s bed.
Clodagh, meanwhile, was stirring up another batch of medicine for the abrasions and burns suffered by Torkel and Yana. Giancarlo had been delivered to the hospital at SpaceBase. O’Shay had taken off again, neglecting to mention to the receiving officer that he had several other passengers, passengers who were attempting to digest a great quantity of new information. He landed the copter at Kilcoole, and those who had been present for Petaybee’s revelations disembarked.
Torkel was slowest to revive from the experience, remaining extremely quiet and contemplative when he did. But he also quietly and contemplatively used Steve Margolies’s comm unit to order from the contingent of soldiers stationed in Kilcoole an armed guard around Clodagh’s house.
He was confused, Yana thought, and she didn’t much blame him. She was a little confused herself, and at the same time much more enlightened as to the nature of the bond between this planet and its people. She had, after all, directly experienced in microcosm everything the pl
anet had experienced.
“Scientifically, there probably is no explanation,” Sean said, calmly agreeing with Whittaker Fiske. “And I’ve spent most of my boyhood and all my adult years examining the pertinent sciences with little success and no . . . scientifically acceptable. . . answers. I just know that Petaybee works for us, and for itself, in a unique symbiosis.”
“Yes, it could be a form of symbiosis, at that,” Whittaker Fiske said, nodding as he absently stroked a marmalade cat. “A most remarkable one. Definitely unique. However, I would still very much like to have more details: Was your grandfather aware of the planet’s sentience and reactions? Did he establish whether or not its sentience occurred during, or after, the terraforming process? How did you become aware of its sentience, and most of all, what protocol is now involved? I don’t believe that Intergal has ever encountered such a phenomenon in any system it has explored to date. I do, at least I think I do, understand now why our totally unprepared and scientifically oriented teams could not psychologically cope with their—shall I call it . . . psychic initiation to Petaybee’s sentience? Poor Francisco Metaxos is a good scientist, but he has always been extremely didactic.”
“He’s better, by the way, Whit,” Clodagh told the man. “Better all the time and now, I think, he’s more accepting.”
A curious, affectionate sympathy had grown up between Clodagh and Whittaker since the event in the cave. Dr. Fiske had held Clodagh’s hand all the way back to the copter. The pair had sat together, staring out the copter window, now and then exchanging long, searching looks. Yana would have liked to exchange similar searching looks with Sean—but not with a crowd of people around.
“Aisling will bring Frank over,” Clodagh went on, “soon’s they’ve finished feeding and grooming the curly-coats. Any chance of bringing Colonel Giancarlo to Kilcoole, too, when he’s stable? Being contrary the way he is, he’d never have survived the cave in his weak condition, but strengthen him up a bit and introduce him to Petaybee gradual like, he might even come to understand a bit.”
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