Power Lines

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Looks like you know all about how to get those goodies too, huh?” Bunny asked with her impression of girlish enthusiasm, an imitation of her boy-crazy cousin Nuala. The technique featured opening her eyes very wide and looking a little like a rabbit that’d been suddenly blinded by the lights of an oncoming snocle. “How’d you learn to do something like that if you’re from Petaybee?”

  “In the company corps, how else?” he said. “I did the standard hitch until I got in trouble. Lucky for me I managed to find more lucrative employment before my court-martial.”

  “Here, you mean?”

  “No, this came later, when I was ready to settle down with a good woman.”

  Bunny made something that she hoped could be construed as a cooing noise. She thought it was very strange that he hadn’t found this at odds with her struggle on the way up here, but she did know that where girls were concerned, some fellows didn’t consider that logic or even thinking entered into their behavior. He probably thought she had been protesting out of form, but now that she was here she was as overwhelmed by all this stuff and his manly charms as she pretended to be.

  She gave him Nuala’s one-shouldered shrug and asked hesitantly, “Well, yeah, but where then?”

  “Intergal’s not the only one who can do business, baby. I joined up with an independent firm engaged in the import­export business. Ever heard of—Onidi Louchard?”

  Bunny shrugged again. As long as she could keep him talking, maybe he’d say something useful. The conversation also gave her a chance to tuck something as pointed as an ice pick into the back of the band of her pants.

  “Maybe,” she said in a semi-interested tone of voice to keep him talking. “I think maybe some of the soldiers mentioned that name—not a businessman though . . .”

  He laughed, showing a lot of his yellowed teeth—kept strong and even by company dentistry, no doubt.

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, baby. Onidi knows supply and demand like no woman in the world.”

  He seemed to be drifting off into a reverie of his own. Bunny noticed that, oddly enough, there was a rug spread across a small area of the unswept desolation of the house’s floor.

  “Ah!” Bunny said. “Yeah, I remember now. She’s sort of a pirate, isn’t she . . . a black marketeer? Didn’t they say she’d supplied the gas and the arms to the rebels at Bremport?”

  He seemed pleased at the recognition. “That’s her, okay.”

  “Wow, you worked with her? That must have been so exciting. I’ve never been off—this planet—myself,” she said, managing to sound regretful.

  “Oh, that can be arranged, baby. I’ll teach you a few things. Then I know lotsa people who’d be glad to show a cute little thing like you around.”

  “What’s it like—out there?” she asked wistfully.

  She thought she could hear sounds beneath the floor, fortunately muffled and indistinct, for Satok didn’t seem to hear them.

  He picked up a bottle; not Petaybean blurry like Clodagh made, but off-planet stuff that Bunny could smell clear across the room. He locked the front door from the inside, something she had never seen anyone do before except herself when she’d had to barricade herself against her cousins. He settled down on the mattress alone with the bottle.

  “You wouldn’t appreciate most of it,” he said with a lewd grin, then shrugged and gave her a hideous wink. “Or who knows, by the time I’m finished with you, maybe you will.”

  Bunny suppressed a shudder and continued to inspect his tools and computer screen while he told her about whore-houses on planets in several different galaxies, not excluding the impressive tricks he’d seen performed by humanoid alien exotic entertainers with a wide variety of sex organs and practices.

  The subject made her a little queasy, especially the lip-licking relish with which he related it and the way he kept eyeing her as if she were already undressed. She realized he was in no hurry at all. In fact, he seemed to be relating these stories with the expectation that she might want to try some of the things he was talking about. They did give her a good excuse to make loud, shocked exclamations, which covered up the noises coming from beneath the rug. Still trying to appear fascinated, she worked her way backward while he swigged from his bottle until she shoved a corner of the rug back with her foot. A rectangular trapdoor was concealed beneath it.

  Maybe the lout would drink himself to sleep.

  No such luck though. Having exhausted the topic, he kept patting the mattress, then hoisted himself up, his expression growing ugly again.

  “So,” Bunny said quickly. “What made you decide to give up something as glamorous as shipping with Onidi Louchard to come back to Petaybee?”

  He was less steady on his feet now than he had been, and his next words were slurred. “When my shipmates found out I was from Petaybee, they told me what idiots we all were to be sitting on the biggest cache of raw ores in the known universe and pretending it wasn’t there. I told ’em the company kept us all barefoot and pregnant, so to speak, which is what I heard all the time I was growing up here. Then I realized I’d bought into the whole Petaybee trip ever since I was a kid: how the planet doesn’t want us to take this and the planet doesn’t want us to take that.” His voice slipped into a mocking whine. “So I thought, screw the planet. The company’s going to do it sooner or later, so how about me? I knew how the planet and the people get around the company, and how the company could get around the planet and the people if it had the balls to come down and take what it wants, so I ‘borrowed’ a little company technology, showed up in one village or another on foot, parking my shuttle out on the tundra, looking wise and finding out who might be in need of a shaman. McGee’s Pass had come in for a few of the planet’s less benign tricks and they had no shaman. I did a little recon, set up my base, and arranged for a disaster in the local communing place.”

  Bunny strove to keep her voice steady and sound shocked instead of simply furious as she asked, “W-why? Why did you do that?”

  “Because, the first time I saw the way raw ore looks before it comes out of the ground, I realized I’d seen it back when I was a kid and the planet was scaring the shit out of me for not being real interested in all the little mind tricks it plays on people around here. Don’t you get it? There’s a good reason your so-called elders feed you all this bunk about the communing places that makes you scared to go in there without them.”

  Bunny thought he must have had a much different elder than Clodagh to think that anyone was barred from talking to Petaybee any time they felt like it, but most times people just got by on what was offered on the surface until it was time for everybody to go visiting.

  “The communing places are also the entryway to the planet’s goodies. Frag it, girl, you don’t even have to dig very deep or blast your own tunnel in the surface. Ore’s right there staring at you every time you go talk to the rocks.”

  “Really?” she asked. But she was running out of things she wanted to know and trying to think of what to ask next to keep him talking. “Well, I’ve got another question. Why take me? Aren’t there local girls . . .”

  “That’s just the problem. They’re local. You’re from a powerful family in Kilcoole, and they think you’re special because you drive a snocle. Your family and friends in Kilcoole shoot their mouths off a lot about how mines are so evil for the planet. Maybe if they know mining the planet is in your best interests, they’ll be a little quieter. Really,” he said. “It’s been real nice chatting with you, baby, but now that we know each other better, I want to get to know you real well. So are you going to come over here to me, or are you going to tempt me to get a little rough? Both ways are fine with me.”

  Bunny backed away from him, and he rose and lunged across the table she’d been using as a shield.

  She dodged and ran, but was as trapped as she’d ever been. She knew she couldn’t elude his grasp forever, and even though she had the weapon, he was bigger and stronger than she and not much
out of shape either. She knew she had no chance against him in a fight, but she could keep out of his way as long as possible. She jumped back to where the trapdoor was and risked slowing long enough to pull at the ring. She pulled the door partially open, hoping against hope that she could slide down into it before he caught her.

  The door was heavier than she thought, and he was quicker. He grabbed her hair and jerked her across the open door, as she screamed and beat at him with one hand while reaching for the ice pick with her other.

  The planet had not been Petrasealed to death in the lower cavern, but it had been gouged and blasted. There was a pool there, too, foul from chemicals and dense with residue from the damage that had been done.

  Diego touched the scars and felt as if he were seeing the wreck his father had been all over again: he was so full of sadness and pain.

  Krisuk, who had grown up with this particular place, but grown gradually accustomed to its death through Satok’s machinations over the years, touched the blasted areas once and reeled back as if he’d been punched.

  Both boys stood at the juncture to the corridor, shaking.

  “How could you let him do that?” Diego accused.

  “We didn’t know he was doing anything in here!” Krisuk said. “We thought it was all buried, like he said. You forget there’s a wall between this and the outer cave, and a lot of tunnel between. There’s got to be. We feel the mountain shake sometimes, but it’s not like you hear anything.”

  The truth of the last statement was sharply illustrated for the boys as they stepped from the Petrasealed inner cave into the meeting room and through the bush, out into the cold wind whipping down the pass. The rock Bunny had been sitting on was empty.

  “Bunny?” Diego asked. “Dinah?”

  A whimper rode down the wind from the path above them.

  Diego scrambled up the path, almost tripping over Dinah’s prostrate form. He began feeling the dog all over, which was difficult because there was a lot of blood. She was terribly still when he first began, but her respirations picked up a bit as he handled her.

  Then he called for Bunny and called again, but he didn’t see her. Meanwhile, Krisuk ran back down the hill to his own house and flung the door open.

  Diego picked Dinah up in his aims and stumbled down the hill after him. Krisuk had a lamp lit. The family was not in bed but hunched together around the table, staring guiltily toward the door.

  Diego entered the house and carried Dinah’s body to the table. He knew from the expressions of the Connellys that they knew exactly what had happened to the horses, the dog, and Bunny.

  “What kind of people are you anyway?”

  “Don’t ask them anything,” Krisuk said disgustedly. “She’s at Satok’s. You can bet on it. He took her.”

  “Then I’m going to get her,” Diego said.

  “You can’t!” Iva said. “He can kill you—kill us all—he might turn the planet against us again, make it swallow us up. He’s too powerful for any of us to fight.”

  “He sure is if you just sit there,” Diego said. “And the planet has no reason at all to like him. If you looked a few yards beyond the ends of your noses, you’d know that.”

  “You’re not going alone,” Krisuk said.

  “No?”

  “No. Come on, Da, Mother. You kids,” Krisuk added, addressing his younger brothers and sisters. “You go wake the neighbors. Bring them to the meeting cave.” His siblings looked up at him as if they’d been stunned, unmoving till his five-year-old sister, Maire, jumped to her feet.

  “I’ll go!”

  “Me, too,” one of the younger brothers said.

  Diego had stripped one of the quilts from the beds to cover Dinah, while one of the older sisters began cleaning the dog’s wound.

  Seeing that the dog was in good hands, Diego grabbed a knife from its hook above the stove and ran out the door again and up the path.

  “Wait!” Krisuk said. “Diego, not that way. You’ll be too good a target.”

  “I’m not going to just let him have her because you’re all scared of him,” Diego shouted back, never shortening his stride though the wind battered him. He didn’t hear what Krisuk said in response.

  Diego was about to pass the cave entrance when Krisuk caught up with him and pulled him back.

  “Look, you can’t just go confront him,” he hollered above the wind. “But remember the upper passage? I’ll bet it leads up to his house.”

  Diego paused for a moment. He had read a lot of hardcopy books, and many of his favorites had secret passages and tunnels in them, something he had previously related only to the ventilation systems in ships and space stations. “Maybe so,” he said. “But if it doesn’t, we lose a lot of time. We don’t know how much we’ve lost already.”

  Krisuk said, “According to Da, they heard Bunny hollering about an hour ago. Look, I can get them to follow me into the cave. I want to show them what Satok’s done. But they’re to scared to go to his house. It’s a strong house and he’s armed.”

  Diego shook his arm loose. “If you want to go that way, then you go that way. I’m going straight to the house. I’m not going to risk Bunny’s life again because your folks don’t want me to stand up to Satok.”

  “Okay then, I’ll try the cave and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll come up and help you, so take it easy, okay? Unless you see he’s actually—well, unless she really needs you right then, don’t jump in until I get there.”

  Diego was already striding forward. “I’ll handle it,” he said, and began to climb up the hill leading to Satok’s.

  The house was visible from the top of the path, a stone building about a half a mile away set back in a meadow. The windows were lit, and as Diego approached, a banshee chorus of howls heralded his arrival.

  Satok pinned Bunny to the mattress and snatched at the band of her trousers. She tried to kick him, but he’d pinned one of her knees down with one of his own. Her right arm, stuck between her back and the mattress, groped for her weapon, which was digging into her hip.

  All of a sudden the dogs began to howl. Satok swore and rose, grabbing a weapon as he turned toward the door. Almost as an afterthought, he turned on Bunny. As he struck her openhanded across the face, her teeth bit into her cheeks with an explosion of pain.

  “Don’t move,” he said, waggling his finger with mock playfulness.

  Of course, she did move the moment he threw the bolt on the door. It was hopeless to dart past him into the night, and the trapdoor was too far away, but at least she was able to pull out her ice pick.

  “Shut up, you lazy pack of mutts, or you don’t eat for another week!” he bellowed out the door. The howling quieted to a whine. He took a long look around, then turned back to Bunny.

  Fresh out of more subtle tricks, she jumped up and ran back to the trapdoor. She was smart enough not to show her weapon.

  “Don’t you touch me again, mister,” she said, lisping a little through her cut lip.

  The dogs began howling again, but this time Satok refused to be diverted. He reached Bunny in two seconds flat, and Bunny, backing up, found she was against a wall with nowhere to run, not a good position for any animal to be in. Furthermore, Satok was standing on the trapdoor as he closed in on her, his hands going for her throat.

  The front door slammed open, flooding the room with strong icy wind.

  Bunny punched upward with her ice pick and felt the pointed tip sink into meat. Satok’s grip on her loosened, but he had twisted away from her to face the front door and her weapon didn’t make the lethal strike she intended. She was trying to loosen her neck from his arm and her weapon from his wound when another body crashed into them, almost strangling her as the impact drove Satok’s arm against her windpipe.

  As Satok whirled to meet the new attacker, Bunny dove out of the way, searching for another weapon.

  Diego was riding the big man’s back, punching at him with a dagger, but Satok reached back and wrested the dagger from th
e boy’s hand as if he were taking a rattle from a baby. Bunny groaned. Diego was good with books and computers—he wasn’t a fighter.

  She picked up a wrench and danced around the two of them, trying to get in a lick here and there, but she was afraid of hitting Diego.

  Satok looked annoyed, but hardly worried. Still standing on the trapdoor, he reached back and grabbed Diego’s head in both hands and started pulling him over his shoulder.

  Bunny dropped to her knees, threw herself forward, and whacked the big man hard with the wrench, first on the knees, then the shins. He whirled around, still holding Diego’s head in a vise, and she slammed the wrench against the backs of his knees. He fell to the ground with a crash that swept Diego’s legs against the computer table and toppled the machine to the floor.

  But when he and Diego fell forward, they cleared the trapdoor, and the pounding under the door that had been obscured by the sounds of the fight became clear. Bunny crawled to the door and pulled up the ring. Through the widening crack, Krisuk’s arms and head appeared, and with a shove he pushed the door back across Satok’s calves.

  Satok was slamming Diego’s head against the floor.

  Gaining confidence at the sight of Krisuk climbing out of the hole, followed closely by his father, Bunny dove toward Satok’s head and brought her wrench down over it. Again, the man twisted at a crucial point, and Bunny’s wrench only tore loose the back of his ear just as a third person emerged from the secret passage.

  Satok grabbed the injured ear, staggered to his feet, and ran, Krisuk and the others after him.

  Bunny knelt beside Diego. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He blinked at her twice, rubbed the back of his head, and said ruefully, “I came to your rescue.”

  She kissed him, bloody nose and all. “You sure did. Are you hurt bad?”

  His hand came away bloody. “Not bad, I think. My dad always said my skull was the hardest part of me.”