The Peytabee Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  Namid’s mobile face fell into solemn lines. ‘Dinah liked G&S.’ Then he added more briskly, ‘But this isn’t Penzance and she wasn’t indentured as a little lad, brave and daring. I do believe that there is a core of…’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Bunny said, sitting bolt upright and just missing the underside of the upper bunk with her pate. She began sniffing and sniffing.

  ‘What?’ Diego said and Yana echoed the query.

  Bunny sniffed deeply again. ‘We’re no longer on Gal-Three-type air.’

  ‘We’re not?’ Yana asked. Bunny’s previous mention of her olfactory impression hadn’t really registered. Well, Yana had been a bit preoccupied. The air on the shuttle would have been imported from the station’s ventilation system during the time the shuttle was in dock. But come to think of it, there was no reason she could think of why the air aboard the pirate vessel should ever have had any connection with the station. Or was there? Bunny seemed very certain and her senses, trained in the Petaybean outdoors, were extremely keen. Yana looked at Bunny, sorting through the implications of the girl’s observation. Intriguing possibilities now presented themselves. Nor was she the only one to be thinking along those lines.

  ‘Indeed,’ Marmion said, softly, her eyes dark with thought and she leaned into Namid who put a reassuring arm about her shoulders.

  ‘Indeed indeed,’ Namid said. ‘And don’t forget to breathe!’

  Kilcoole

  Three days after returning to Kilcoole with the hunters, who booked the first Intergal shuttle back since PTS was no longer in service, Sean received a second communique from the kidnappers.

  Dear Dr Shongili,

  I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I was sent the following message by the criminals who abducted Colonel Maddock-Shongili, your niece and young Etheridge-Metaxos along with Madame Algemeine. I suppose they chose to send their demands to me, as CEO of my own company, since previously I had been unaccountably released to deliver the initial message. I had the great opportunity and rare pleasure of meeting your lovely wife and speaking with her briefly while she was still here on Gal-3: she was, is, a very special lady and a competent, caring officer. The children accompanying her were a delight to us all. I fervently hope that, between the efforts of the security team here on Gal-3 and your good self, you will all be reunited soon.

  On behalf of all of us here on Gal-3, Macchiavelli Sendal-Archer-Klausevitch

  Dear Dr Shongili,

  We were most concerned to learn from your wife that there might be some difficulty with her pregnancy if she isn’t back on Petaybee soon. She is very ill and could certainly use more of that Petaybean cough syrup that cured her the first time. Also, young Metaxos has sustained minor injuries due to his own youth and inexperience. Unfortunately, we are currently between medical officers, since our last one was discharged -regrettably out the hatch and into space - for mutiny.

  Surely you must realize that your family’s lives depend upon your immediate response and compliance to our demands. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

  Most sincerely,

  Dinah O’Neill, representing Captain Onidi Louchard aboard the Pirate Jenny

  The office was filled with people when the communique arrived and all Sean could do was sit there, stricken, when he finished reading.

  ‘What is it, Sean?’ Una Monaghan asked.

  Cita, who was also there along with several other children and their parents, and Wild Star Furey, put her arm around him and asked, ‘What is it, Uncle? Is it about my sister? What does it say?’

  He held it up to her and she took it. But, of course,

  Cita couldn’t read so she turned to Wild Star who took it out of her hand and read the note aloud. The stunned silence now affected every listener.

  ‘Oh dear, I ought to have read it first to myself,’ she said, ‘before I broadcast such news.’

  Sean shook his head. ‘It’s everybody’s business.’

  ‘Well, yes, but in front of the children - especially those who’ve just arrived from the other villages to go to school. Too much of the bad side of civilization all at once, I fear.’ She continued to look guilty and cast a nervous smile at her pupils and their parents.

  Since she had taken up her post as Kilcoole teacher, Sean had learned a few facts about Wild Star Furey. She had had sufficient experience with the bad side of civilization. Her ancestors had been an Amerind tribe stubbornly clinging to a valuable piece of Terran real estate. Her husband’s family were descended from Irish travelling people who were finally removed from the planet for refusing to settle on any given piece of real estate.

  ‘It concerns Petaybee, Wild Star,’ Sean said. ‘And it’s got nothing to do with civilization. Pirates aren’t famous for being civilized.’

  ‘Pardon me, Doctor, sir,’ said a man who had arrived in Kilcoole a scant half hour before. Sean knew Muktuk Murphy slightly. He was from Tanana Bay. ‘Could the lady read that last bit again, please?’

  ‘Which part was that, Muktuk?’ Sean asked. ‘That lady’s name, sir, mentioned just before that awful pirate’s name’

  ‘Dinah O’Neill?’ Wild Star asked. Muktuk cast a significant glance at the small, round-faced woman beside him who had a wealth of curly black hair and typical Eskirish slanted blue eyes. Those eyes were dancing with excitement as she tugged her husband’s sleeve.

  ‘That would be it, Dama, thank you. Do you suppose me and the wife could send a message along with yours, sir, when you reply to the pirates?’

  Sean shrugged. ‘What did you want to say?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit hard to organize it right now, sir. It’ll take me and the missus some thinking.’

  ‘Perhaps I should help you write it down then,’ Wild Star offered.

  ‘Ah, now that would be very kind of you, Dama,’ said Muktuk.

  ‘Very kind indeed,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘I’m sure all my people will appreciate it and we’d all like to come to your school along with the children, please and thanks very much.’

  Aboard the pirate ship

  When Dinah O’Neill returned to the Captain’s quarters, she found a message from Macci Sendal waiting on her comunit.

  ‘Dama O’Neill,’ Sendal’s voice said, ‘this came in last night in response to your follow-up ransom message to the Petaybean administration. At first my stupid assistant didn’t think it was important and almost discarded it. It’s from Shongili’s office but it seems to be in some sort of code, hence the mistake. I do hope it will be good news - for both your captain’s organization and my own.’

  There was no voice message involved, just print on the screen.

  Dear Dama O’Neill of the pirate ship,

  We learned of you when your boss’s note came to Dr Sean Shongili’s office. Your name caught our ears right away and we were wondering if maybe you might be related to the County Galway O’Neills taken from Ireland at the height of the Reunification? We had a grandfather from that area and time period who, despite raising a large family here on Petaybee, never forgot his brother, Rory, who was known locally as Handy Red O’Neill, he that was involved in the battle aboard the Rosslare Ferry and was then lost from the rest of the family when the country was so-called evacuated by the powers that be.

  We know some good songs about the family you might like to hear and we were wondering if you might have some from your family as well, whether or not you’re of the same family as us.

  We were glad to learn about you but sorry to hear you are having to work for pirates. If it’s food or a place to live that you’re needing, we’d be happy to have you come to live with us here on Petaybee if you can quit your job. We would love to have you and your family, if you have one.

  Regards,

  Chumia and Muktuk of the Tanana Bay Murphys on Petaybee

  P.S. Could you please put in a word with your boss and ask that Sean’s wife and relations and the nice Company lady are kindly treated as we’re all very worried about them?

&nbs
p; Then, in another hand altogether, a second note.

  There is nothing a person can do in regard to ransom here. SS

  Dinah O’Neill ran the message through several times. This was not going the way it should have. Not in any way, shape or form. She hated to take Namid’s accusation to heart - that she was losing her touch: she preferred the Yana-woman’s suggestion that she had been badly informed.

  She pondered the brief sentence from Shongili - for who else would be ‘SS’. Nothing a person could do, huh? Well, that was certainly in line with Yana’s allegation. Wouldn’t the anxious husband of a newly wedded pair try to bargain? Not, Dinah came to the reluctant conclusion, if he had no control over this planet entity, this sentient world. Then she turned to the bulk of the message - so innocent and naive. If she could get out of her job as a pirate? What ingenuousness. Part of Shongili’s ploy? No, the words had the ring of truth.

  Further to that, which the Tanana Bay O’Neills couldn’t have known at all, was that she was a descendant of that Rory O’Neill, Handy Red O’Neill who had been so proud of fighting that battle on the Rosslare Ferry: the last stand of the Virtuous, he’d called it. And he’d composed a roaring saga which was one of the few memories she had of her own red-headed father: bellowing out the chorus to the many stanzas of that saga. Oh, she’d have a family song to sing to these O’Neills of Tanana Bay, she would indeed.

  Abruptly she clicked on the holo-shield control set in one of her rings dnd depressed another button to summon Megenda.

  ‘Yes, Captain Louchard?’ the first mate said when he reported to his ‘Aurelian’ captain.

  ‘It’s time to leave. We’re going to Petaybee, Megenda.’

  The man’s broken teeth showed in a grin. ‘Aye-aye, Cap’n.’

  16

  Kilcoole

  Contents - Prev/Next

  ‘Sean?’ Simon Furey came charging into the governor’s mansion. ‘I got someone here from…’ and Furey frowned down at the plasfilm sheets trying to curl around his gloved hand from the static in the cold air that he brought in with him, ‘… Nabatira Structural Cubes?’

  ‘Never heard of them.’

  ‘I have!’ Furey said, impressed.

  Sean reached for the film and they both had trouble unwinding it to the point where the consignment note and the invoice could be separated and read. ‘I don’t know a thing about this,’ he added, shaking his head, especially over the fat letters of the ‘NO CHARGE’ stamped on the invoice.

  Furey jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the junked cabin room. ‘They’d be damned good things to have, y’know.’

  Sean looked about him, snorting at the confusion of tiers of boxes on every available space, boxes into which Una and her helpers filed the stuff that every shuttle brought down to dump in his already stuffed premises.

  Adak came in just then, waving more plasfilm. ‘The most humungous slabs just arrived, Sean. They gotta be unloaded and put up and, I dunno,’

  Adak’s eyes were wide in his round face. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Climatically resistant and atmospherically adjustable additional autonomous units, complete with all facilities, can be erected instantly and with little or no site preparation,’ said the rangy redheaded individual who had followed Adak in. ‘But I gotta tell ya, man, we gotta fix and run or we miss the next delivery and that’s not company policy. We only got three days to site these things and you’re lucky to get delivery so quickly, considering how far in advance clients usually gotta book Nabatira Cubes. So where do we put ‘em?’

  ‘Them?’

  The redhead flicked fingers at the film in Sean’s suddenly limp fingers.

  ‘Four of ‘em,’ and the redhead held up four gloved fingers. That seemed to be his only concession to Petaybean weather although the outfit he wore was probably one of the lightweight thermal beauties which Minkus had brought with him from Herod’s. Now the Nabatiran emissary looked about him. ‘This the governor’s mansion?’ he asked incredulously, assessing the clutter in a single not quite contemptuous glance. ‘How big are these cubes?’

  The redhead snorted. ‘Hell, man, you could put six of this bitty place in one and still get a rattle.’

  ‘Then I want one right beside this,’ Sean said, suddenly decisive. ‘Adak, get some axes and…’

  The redhead held up a restraining hand. ‘No sweat, mate. Oscar O’Neill, the Great O. O., will take care of that detail. Like we claim, little or no site preparation is needed.’

  ‘What wouldja do with them trees, then?’ Adak demanded, his head protruding from his parka like a turtle’s.

  ‘You need the wood? We keep the wood,’ the Great O. O. said amiably.

  ‘That’s one down, Governor Shongili…” and Oscar O’Neill paused to receive Sean’s disposition of the others.

  ‘Make a much better school than the longhouse does…’ Simon Furey suggested appealingly.

  ‘Done!’

  ‘School’s to be near by?’ O. O. asked.

  ‘Just up the road,’ Simon replied eagerly, pointing in the right direction.

  ‘Road?’ O. O. asked condescendingly.

  ‘Road,’ Sean said firmly and wondered what to do with the others. Sometimes gifts can be more embarrassing than helpful - especially ‘free’ ones.

  ‘Kin I make a suggestion, mate?’ O. O. said and when Sean nodded, ‘Well, I spent a good deal of good daylight e-rection time trying to find you. Wouldn’t have found you at all if not for Cap’n Greene and his flyin’ machine. He came along just as I was about to mark this lot “Return to sender”. Why not install one cube at that so-called SpaceBase of yours to direct incoming traffic and take…’ he looked around him again,’ some of the paperwork outa here.’

  Sean couldn’t have agreed more though the ‘No charge’ aspect of this largesse could not be explained by O. O. All he knew ‘was what was on the dockets, man’, and ‘no charge’ meant just that, and who were they to argue with Head Office? By the time the necessary decisions were made, Sean had a new office block adjacent to the marital cabin; awed Kilcoole had a new school; Petaybee Admin had its own - if empty - premises on the edge of the SpaceBase, and Lonciana was going to find herself to be the recipient of the fourth Nabatira Structural Cube. If she was having half the trouble Sean was in the management of the Southern Continent, she needed the space to do it in too.

  As abruptly as O. O. and his men had appeared, they left.

  ‘He was as good as his word, wasn’t he?’ Una said, standing in the newfallen snow in front of the cube while the governor’s’staff’ took stock of their new premises. ‘It’s just forty-eight hours since they arrived.’

  ‘So it is,’ Sean said, totally bemused by the speed with which this had all been accomplished. O. O. and his men hadn’t even paused when snow whipped around so that at one point it had been very hard to see despite the banks of heavy-duty lights that had been put up so they could work through the night.

  The building had also been sunk into the ground, neatly placed behind a screen of Kilcoole’s conifers so that it didn’t even seem to be an intruder. A unanimous decision had voted for an outer coating of a bark-like paint so that it resembled - at least in colour - the other cabins along the road. Of course, the upper level did tower above the neighbouring buildings but there were trees behind it that were taller still. It was empty, of course, for no-one had had time to transfer anything.

  ‘What a difference a few days make!’ Sean said.

  Cautiously approaching the new building, Marduk let out a little snarl. He was pacing along the front of it, sniffing here and there and usually sneezing at the chemical smells clinging to the newly erected building, pawing at the one or two mounds of disturbed dirt left over.

  Well, no good standing around out here, is there? he said and took the three entrance steps in one.

  Gal-3

  ‘I tell you, Louchard’s real ship only just left,’ Charas vehemently insisted to Commander Nal an Hon. Once more dressed in
the gear of a station brat, there was nothing of the child in her manner as she leaned across the desk, hands gripping the edge, her white knuckles demonstrating the intensity of her belief in what she said. ‘That’s why you never found the kidnapped victims in any of the ships that had disembarked.’

  ‘Your instrumentation could be faulty, Charas,’ the Commander said patiently although he knew that the diminutive operator was the best surveillance officer money, and loyalty, could buy. In this case, the loyalty was the prominent factor since Marmion Algemeine seemed to instil that virtue in anyone who worked for her. He could have used a bit of that himself, though he tried to be as tolerant and fair-minded as he could, dealing with all sorts of psychologies and temperaments as Commander of Gal-3.

  ‘Faulty my aunt’s left toenail!’ She swung away from the desk and began pacing. ‘My instruments registered the original mayday from both Madame Algemeine and the Colonel. I followed them to Cargo Bay 30…’

  ‘And followed the shuttle…’

  ‘So I did, but the shuttle seemed the obvious escape vehicle… and we were going so fast… My implant returns only life-sign readings past a certain distance…” Charas shook her head: they all had been sure the shuttle had the victims. ‘But the signal from the implant suggests that Madame Algemeine is still on Gal-3. I got the strongest response in the Cargo Bay: only there’s some sort of a scrambler system that diffuses so one can’t accurately locate the source.’ She held up a hand when the Commander started to interrupt her, ‘Until just this past half hour. Operations say that only five ships have requested clearance in the past hour… hours, that is,’ and her smile was grim,’ since it’s taken me longer to reach you with this information. Freighters, all of them, incapable of moving at any great speed.’

  ‘Look, I want Madame Algemeine back as much as you do, but I’ve only so many forces to handle search and recover operations…’

  ‘Madame Algemeine will, of course, reimburse your costs. What are you waiting for, Commander?’