Power Lines

by Anne McCaffrey

  Iva was kneeling beside them now. “Come on and I’ll bandage that for you,” she said. “We’ve seen what Satok did to the planet. Some talk he had! The others will catch him and he’ll tell his lies no more.”

  “No,” Diego said. “We’ve got to get to Sean and Yana and tell them what Satok’s done.”

  “How did you know he was a pirate?” Bunny said.

  “If we go back through the cave, you’ll—” Diego stopped and stared at her. “What do you mean, pirate? As in pirate pirate?”

  “He’s one of Onidi Louchard’s shipmates,” Bunny said. “I think he’s still working with them to loot Petaybee.”

  “Frag! We gotta warn the others!”

  “Shh,” Iva Connelly said. “You’re not going anyplace till I bandage your wounds. You, too, young lady.”

  Diego and Bunny insisted on leading the curlies back down to the village. Meanwhile Krisuk and some of the others returned, empty-handed.

  “Satok got away. Kev Nyukchuk and his sons are trying to trace Satok by the tracks and blood in the dark,” Krisuk told them.

  “Where’s your father?” Iva asked.

  “He stayed to feed the dogs. You remember Satok taking Tarka’s pups?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re half-starved and mean now, but Da recognized them and he’s going to try to tame them again. The curlies were in bad shape, too, and we found more cat skulls . . .”

  The next morning at first light, Bunny and Diego, carrying a carefully bandaged and bundled Dinah, were back out on the trail away from the river, the Petaybean wind at their backs, pushing them toward the fjord.

  Matthew Luzon was as amused as he was capable of being that Marmion Algemeine thought she was controlling him by contradicting his theories, cultivating the enemies of the company, and trying to seduce his staff away from him.

  Of course, she was incapable of understanding a man like him. She was nothing but an overaged debutante whose inherited greed made her good at acquiring more wealth. She couldn’t begin to understand someone like him, someone motivated not by money or personal aggrandizement, but by a strong, totally altruistic commitment to truth and the scientific process.

  Others laughed when he called himself a scientist, but Matthew was devoted to science in a way that few were. A literal-minded man, he was nevertheless fascinated by the lies people were fond of telling themselves about the universe in which they lived, despite all of the evidence pointing to the fact that the average human being was powered by electrochemical impulses in the same way that computers were powered by electronic ones, and the universe itself was a large, marvelous accident.

  Most of the scientists and troops within the company believed as Matthew did, but few had his zeal not only for believing the truth, but for exposing the lies and self-deceptions that weakened the sentient mind, every inhabited sector of the universe, and the company, as well.

  There was a sort of brain fever that people contracted once they left civilization. Matthew had seen it again and again, not just among the inhabitants of colonial outposts like this, but also on space stations and ships too long away from port. People encountered a few mysteries that had not yet been properly investigated, and they suddenly decided that even the things they understood had some sort of strange causation. They started believing in myths, anthropomorphized machinery, and nonsentient life-forms; they talked to plants and animals. Ridiculous, but there it was. Matthew considered himself to be something of a deprogrammer/reformer/reformationist.

  Usually, he had found, there was a ringleader, or maybe more accurately, an opinion maker, generally someone suffering from the borderline schizophrenia that passed for “creativity.” These people had to be stabilized and adjusted, or eliminated. Elimination was not the preferred option, simply because one such person would invariably be replaced by another leader, whereas if one used the power they had already built up among their fellows for one’s own purposes, results were much quicker.

  As an anthropologist, he had made a particular study of the sort of beliefs people were apt to indulge in, and from what he’d heard of Petaybee, their mass illusion was not an especially unusual one.

  They thought their planet was sentient. Quite likely all these seemingly remarkable incidents of meteorological and geological shifting were merely coincidental, possibly a delayed reaction to the TerraB process—and he faulted Whittaker Fiske for not remarking on that probability. Certainly these natural occurrences should not be attributed to some gigantic powers or some sort of immense alien life-form, dabbling in so-called adaptive changes.

  He was no fool. He had studied the autopsies and all of the Kilcoole group’s other “evidence.” He was more inclined to think that the claims were more in the nature of a local belief than a planetwide one. The “adaptive changes,” which bordered on extremes, were no doubt mutations from some latent toxins contained by this world which had previously gone undetected. They would, of course, need to be eliminated—or the inhabitants removed, which would suit Intergal’s purposes quite well.

  But the commission wouldn’t do so on his unsupported opinion. His wisest course was to find other opinion leaders who held beliefs different from those of the people in Kilcoole, to demonstrate to the commission that local superstition on the part of one group should not be allowed to be taken as a planetwide condition.

  To that end, he ordered a helicopter for his own use while Marmion was out and busy charming the locals. He was told that a pilot named Greene could be made available to him.

  “Destination, sir?”

  “I wish to travel to the settlements on the southern hemisphere,” Matthew said. “I will need transport and accommodations for myself and three assistants.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said with an apologetic wince. “The only craft now available has room for the pilot and two other people. That’s all.”

  “Then make another craft available. Do you think my work is so trivial it can be performed unaided?”

  “You said that, sir, not me.”

  “What is your name?” Matthew sputtered.

  “Rhys-Hall, sir. Captain Neva M. Rhys-Hall, communications officer. No offense intended, sir. If it’s the pilot’s name you’re wanting, sir, it’s John Greene. He’s scheduled for Harrison’s Fjord anyway at 1220 hours, can refuel there and take you southward. If you can be ready and at the field by then, you’ll save time and be there before dark.”

  “And accommodations?”

  “You’re on your own there, sir. Up till recently, the company never considered this planet worth two depots and command centers. I’d take a sleeping bag and a survival tent, if I were you.”

  “Thank you for the advice, Captain. I will not forget it.” Or you, you impertinent bitch, he told himself.

  One assistant, then? The decision was not difficult to make. Braddock Makem, a man who thought much as Matthew himself did, was the most trusted and resourceful of his assistants. He found Braddock in his spartan quarters, studying the various reports, and to1d him what was required of him, in perfect confidence that the gear and Braddock would be ready at the appointed time.

  9

  When Marmion arrived at the building—which was painted a really awful murky dark green—where Matthew Luzon had set up his office, she found only his five minions, all industriously tapping out commands while their screens showed curves and graphs and columns of figures. She didn’t approve of statistics of any kind: they only proved what the statistician wished them to. Credit reports and prospectuses were, of course, in an entirely different category.

  They had the good manners to stand when she entered the room, so she smiled at them while she made a show of peering about.

  “I don’t see Dr. Luzon, and I did so wish to have a word with him,” she said, beaming at the nearest of the lot. “You are . . .” She struggled to remember Sally’s tips on how to distinguish them one from another. “Ivan, aren’t you?”

  “Yes’m.”


  “And where is Dr. Luzon?” Marmion noted the absence of one—Braddock Makem—and began to realize she might have underestimated Matthew’s devious zealotry. How embarrassing. “Has he gone off into the wilds on adventure and left you here, slogging away at the tedious details?”

  One after another of the physically fit young men cleared their throats.

  “Ah, I see that he has, and it’s very much too bad of him, as I’d arranged for Captain O’Shay to take all of us to that so-mysterious cave for an on-site investigation. Matthew’s so keen to do on-sites,” she put in, managing a little moue of disappointment, “and this is one of the most important ones, so Whittaker Fiske assured me.” She paused to consider her disappointment. Then, brightly, she smiled around at them. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t come with me, since it’s so hard to get a big enough copter to take us all. In fact, just us will take up all the room. So, come on, now. Save those important programs, laddie bucks, grab your anoraks and let’s be off . . .” When another of them—ah, yes, the very blond one was Hans—started to object, she said, “Now, now, I won’t hear any excuses from you, Hans. This is as important as all those figures, because it’s subjective, not objective, and it will certainly show the commission how diligent you are in examining every facet of this investigation.”

  Sally and Millard had deftly slipped in behind her and were handing out outerwear to the men, who were so accustomed to obeying authority that they automatically complied. They were out the door and in the personnel transport and on their bumping way across to the big copter before they knew what had happened.

  Rick O’Shay hurried them aboard, directing the seating in order to balance the load. “Real glad you fellows could make the time for this side trip, because you don’t see much from a shuttle. Blink your eyes and you’re past the interesting points. Miz Algemeine, you’re up front . . . Hey, where’s Dr. Luzon?” Rick looked around, surprise and disappointment on his face. “I thought he was the one wanted so much to come.”

  Marmion could have kissed the young man—he was very attractive, anyway—because Ivan and Hans were obviously having second thoughts about the advisability of this sojourn.

  “Hell’s bells.” Rick shook his head, a lugubrious expression on his face. Then he brightened up and took a deep breath. “Well, you guys can give him a full report on what he’s missing. That’s it, now buckle up.”

  The big copter swung up and headed north by east, barely troubled by the turbulence.

  Sally was wedged between Hans and Marcel, with Millard at the window and facing Ivan, George, Jack, and Seamus Rourke, whom Marmion had introduced as their expedition guide. Seamus had been Clodagh’s suggestion. “He’s as good, bar Sean or myself, as you’d want or need,” Clodagh had assured her.

  “You’ve often been to this cave site, Mr. Rourke?” Sally asked conversationally when she saw the first hint of “should we really be here?” anxiety on Jack’s well-tanned, handsome face. With Marmion out of earshot in the front, Sally felt responsible for keeping things running smoothly in back.

  “Not this particular one, Miz Sally,” Seamus said affably, twiddling his thumbs: sitting down, doing nothing while traveling a long distance was new to him. “Been in most on the east coast, whenever the folk there invite us to a latchkay. We exchange hospitality like, us in Kilcoole and them on the coast, once a year. Good things, latchkays,” he went on when he saw her look of inquiry. “Gets folks from nearby and as far away as the weather permits figurin’ out how to solve any problems that’ve come up since the last one. And we get some fine singing done. Too bad you weren’t all here for the last one we had. Fine songs from Major Maddock and young Diego. Kind of songs that ease the heart and mellow the soul. Maybe we could fix it that we have another one, sort of to welcome you all to Petaybee,” he added. “What with the early thaw, we couldn’t’ve planned another short of June, but I don’t see why we can’t show you lads a bit of Petaybean hospitality while you’re here. You do like dancing, don’t you?” He asked that with such skepticism that one of Luzon’s men had to reply.

  “I think we all do, sir,” Hans told him.

  “We wouldn’t expect you to sing a’ course, unless,” Seamus hastily added, not wishing to insult anyone, “you had a song you wanted to share with us.”

  Luzon’s men looked totally out of their depth. Sally and Millard managed to keep their expressions merely receptive, but they dared not look at each other.

  “Ah well, you can always listen,” Seamus said, “and eat some real good chow, and a’ course, Clodagh makes the best blurry on Petaybee.”

  “Blurry?” Hans jumped on the word.

  Everyone turned toward Seamus.

  “Blurry’s a tradition here,” Seamus said, warming to his subject. “Drink it cold, warm, hot, and it soothes the cockles of the heart. Doesn’t take a man’s senses from him like al-ki-hall-ics do—” He frowned. “—and no one’s ever had a hangover like the SpaceBasers get from that rotgut they drink. You could say . . .” He considered his next words carefully. “. . . that it’s a tonic for what ails you. Give it to the kids when they’re feeling puny, and next day they’re up and out again. ’Bout the only thing it can’t cure is frostbite, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Clodagh’ll figure out how to do that soon, too.”

  Sally and Millard exchanged significant glances. Marmion Algemeine would have to hear every detail of this.

  “Is this blurry of yours good for indigestion?” Sally asked, seizing on the common complaint as the safest.

  “Sure it is, and as good for labor pains as it is for flatulence, heartburn, and yer all-purpose bellyache,” Seamus assured her, turning his face toward her so that she alone saw the broad wink.

  “Do you use many . . . local remedies here, Mr. Rourke?” Ivan asked, his eyes sharp on the old man’s face.

  “We’ve not much else to use, laddie,” Seamus said, hitching his hands up under the slight sag of his belly on his thighs. “And I’m not criticizing SpaceBase folk if they keep their own medicine for their own people. We got ours and it works for us. Petaybee takes care of us real well, you know.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re here to decide,” Hans said, setting his jaw at an obstinate angle.

  Inwardly Sally groaned. Maybe kidnapping these young men out from under Matthew’s rigid authority had not been such a good idea after all. Certainly having Seamus Rourke as a guide was turning disastrous, since he had already implied the existence of one questionable substance in the “blurry.” The wink had indicated that perhaps he was simply having a joke on them, but people like Matthew Luzon had no sense of humor, and Sally knew that Luzon would be delighted to learn of blurry’s “miraculous” properties and suggest the possibility of “drug-induced hallucinations.” First thing she would do when they returned to SpaceBase would be to get herself some blurry and run it through exhaustive tests, just to be safe. Sometimes even innocuous elements, when combined, produced potent, if not lethal, results.

  A glance at Millard told her he was thinking the same thing.

  Fortunately, before any other dangerous subjects could be raised, the helicopter went into hover mode and began its descent. The cliff loomed over them higher and higher, rock crags like upturned claws avoided by inches as Rick Arnaluk O’Shay neatly put the skids in the footprint of his previous landing.

  There was the bustle of disembarkation, with Rick and Millard distributing hand torches, a blanket—”to sit on during the show”—and a packet of rations, so that Sally didn’t have a chance to report to Marmion. When Seamus enthusiastically urged them to follow him into the cave, there was no option to refuse or hang back, especially with Rick acting as rear guard.

  One of Luzon’s lads was talking into a handheld recorder, but when Sally got close enough to hear him, he was merely mumbling about the composition of the rock surfaces and reminding himself to look up examples of luminescent rock types.

  Suddenly they were in a cavern that stretched i
ncredibly far in all directions, with Seamus chivying them to find themselves a comfortable spot, in case they had to wait a bit.

  “What? No blurry?” one of the lads murmured.

  “You don’t need no blurry in a cave, boy,” Seamus said severely. With a sniff of disgust, he found himself a comfortable knob to settle on.

  “What’s this ‘blurry’?” Marmion asked Sally.

  “It’s a native drink,” Sally began. Then she noticed the mist rising from the water, and started taking note of their surroundings. “Why, Marmion, this is just like—”

  Marmion’s hand on her arm stopped her surprised exclamation. “Exactly what Whittaker Fiske and that doubting Thomas of a son of his reported . . . We’ll talk later.”

  Marmion always sat upright and managed to do so even on the hard surface of the cave, crossing her legs and resting her hands lightly on her knees. Sally felt that the ancient meditational position was quite suitable and copied it as the mist began to thicken and swirl around them.

  She remembered sniffing deeply, wondering if there was some sort of hallucinogenic in the very air they were breathing, but if there was, it was nothing she had ever encountered anywhere. And she had been just about everywhere Intergal went.

  Everyone heard the thwump-thwump of the copter echoing back and forth across the fjord. Yana rushed out of the kitchen where she’d been helping cut veg for the evening meal. Shielding her eyes against the westering sun, she saw the flash of sunlight off the rotors.

  Fingaard and some of the other men were rushing down the switchback road to the wide terrace of the wharf area. Sean had gone out with the fishermen that morning. Turning her back on the incoming copter, Yana looked down the long high-walled fjord for a glimpse of returning fishing boats. She’d been appalled when she’d seen how insubstantial the curraghs were: no more than hides bound to a larchwood framework with a wide slat, bored through the center so a slim mast could be stepped into the hole and a small sail attached. The current carried them out with the tide and in with the tide; otherwise it was a long, hard paddle up the fjord unless the wind was just right to use the sail.