Power Lines

by Anne McCaffrey

  “It’s unstable, sir. You saw the glaciers. They make sure that the earth always moves for you, that’s one thing. You get rocked to sleep every night, though some rockings’re harder than others. Then there’s the bears. They mostly live on fish, but they’ll take anything that’s handy, including human beings if they’re hankerin’ for a change of menu.”

  Braddock, looking nauseated again now that the effect of the pill had worn off, had exited the copter. With an effort, he tried to assume some of his usual assistance duties, his expression carefully neutral. “Do you suggest that we use this place as a base headquarters?”

  The pilot scratched his head, pushing his cap forward over his forehead. “Well, this place is as good as any on this continent. It ranks as a depot, not that it has all the amenities SpaceBase offered. Mostly it’s a drop point to collect recruits and to return soldiers from these parts who are demobbing. I haven’t done a lot of flying around here except to Bogota, to tell you the truth, and Sierra Padre. The warm rivers make the ground swampy in the summer and create powerful turbulence the rest of the year, and you don’t go far before you get into the mountains. Sierra Padre is a little bigger, a little more comfortable, and the place a lot of southern folks call home. Of course, you understand, lots of people aren’t settled real permanent but move from hunting camps to fish camps and back again, according to the season.”

  “Thank you, Captain Greene,” Matthew said. “In that case, we have no time to lose in reaching Sierra Padre before we run out of daylight. Let us climb back aboard and continue on.”

  Braddock did not quite stifle a groan, and Matthew gave him a reproving glare. Really, he had thought his chief assistant was made of sterner stuff.

  “Well, sir, I gotta tell you,” Johnny Greene said. “This is going to get me in trouble back at headquarters. I’ve got another mission to fly soon’s I get back.”

  “May I remind you that I am your mission right now, Captain, and my business has the highest possible priority.”

  “Yes, sir, so let’s get going right now and I’ll tuck you in at Sierra Padre before I take off again.”

  “I was expecting you to stay and act as our transport during this vital research mission, sir.”

  “My orders were just to fly you here, sir, and return north for my next mission. Tell you what, though. It shouldn’t take very long. Why don’t you gents settle in at Sierra Padre, get the lay of the land in the snocle, talk to a few folks, and I’ll be back in a few days to collect you?”

  “I’d prefer you to be more specific than that, Captain.”

  “Yeah, me too, sir. But everything’s pretty unsettled right now. You’ve got a portable comm unit with you, haven’t you?”

  “Braddock does. Naturally.”

  “Then if you don’t see me by the time you’re ready to go on to one of the other villages, you just ring up to the station and they’ll give me a holler or dispatch someone else.”

  “In case of emergency, I will go to that extreme inconvenience, Captain Greene. However, it is your responsibility and your sole responsibility to see that I have transport to my next destination within three days. If I am at all discommoded by your absence, you will find yourself busted back to flying paper aircraft. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I know how foolish it would be to get crossways of an important man like yourself, sir,” Greene said with not quite enough humility to suit Matthew.

  Braddock suddenly came to life. “Wait a moment. Greene? What is your first name?”

  “Why, it’s Johnny, dear heart. What’s yours?” Greene replied, batting his eyelashes in a way that was mocking and impertinent in the extreme.

  “Sir,” Braddock said, turning to Matthew. “Wasn’t there a Captain John Greene piloting the copter carrying Dr. Fiske when he crashed in the volcanic blast area?”

  Matthew was relieved. His judgment in bringing Braddock was vindicated. The boy might whine and puke, but his mind was unaffected by his physical discomforts. Matthew himself should have referenced the name but had been too preoccupied in gathering new data.

  Before he could formulate the questions he wanted to ask, the captain went on.

  “Yes, sir, that’s me, and to tell you the truth, Dr. Fiske sort of loaned me to you as a courtesy. Normally I’m attached to his exclusive service.”

  Matthew smiled. “Ah well, then, Captain Greene. Please thank my old friend Whittaker for his kindness and tell him that I wish to deprive him of you for a while longer to assist me with my inquiries. If you’ll please drop us at Sierra Padre, we can at least make use of our time there to further our investigations. But make sure that you do return!”

  Greene snapped him a salute.

  Shush awoke, killing and devouring a vole before she set out on the trail once more, following the spoor of the curlies and the track-cat of Kilcoole.

  She was far from her territory, among wild things that would kill her and eat her as casually as she had killed and eaten the vole, and yet, the farther from the pass she traveled, the better she felt. The very mud and snow beneath her paws seemed to put spring in them, to make her step lighter and her gait swifter.

  Shortly after she began walking again, she found the used campsite of the people: cold ashes, churned snow and mud, grasses scattered on the ground from the horse’s meals, and a few small bones from the track-cat’s. A tentative, fearful sniff relieved her mind that these were rabbit bones, not cat. She sniffed the track-cat’s sign and trotted onward.

  She thought of Satok, of her massacred race, and of the girl as she walked, but she had to be careful not to drift too long into reverie. Once she noticed barely in time that a wolf was watching her from the bushes. Fortunately, wolves could not climb trees and she could. She slept in a tree that night, and in the morning walked on.

  That night, as she stalked a squirrel, she pounced and somersaulted in the air just in time to catch the whiff of the fox a spare few feet away. Her distraction caused the squirrel to bolt for its hole in the tree roots and she bolted after it, squeezing in the tip of her tail just as the fox’s nose appeared at the hole.

  As she lay there panting, heedless of the squirrel, which had burrowed deeper, she wanted to wail. This was too hard. It was too far. There were too many things that wanted to eat her and she was all alone, and furthermore, she felt as if she just might be going into heat again.

  I am all alone, she cried, and something said, But I designed you to be alone.

  Not all the time, she said and it said, No.

  I am afraid, she cried. A man would kill me, beasts would eat me, and the Kilcoole cats are far away and their people are Satok’s prey.

  Did someone speak of the Kilcoole cats? a voice—a different voice—asked. A big voice, a cat voice, a tom voice, but a big voice. Who are you, little sister?

  I am Shush, the last of my race at McGee’s Pass, she said. Who are you?

  Nanook. What do you know of the people protected by the Kilcoole cats?

  I know they strayed into danger. Satok will kill them, as he killed us. He took the girl. He will surely kill the boy or make him submit, as he made all of those under my protection submit.

  Ah. And the dog? There was a dog? For a dog, she was good.

  She is dead. Are you—far? she asked.

  Two days’ lope from where we left the boy and girl.

  I have traveled two days.

  Your legs are short.

  I am afraid. I am alone.

  I am coming, Nanook’s voice said. And as an afterthought it added, And no, I do not eat my small cousins.

  Bunny and Diego saw the cat tracks in the snow but were too preoccupied to pay them much attention. Both of them had slept badly, but once out of the village, Diego brooded and Bunny couldn’t stop talking.

  Diego was just attuned enough to her to notice that her hands trembled on the reins. Her face, like his, was scraped and bruised, her mouth swollen so that she kept biting her lip. He didn’t know if she had
the pounding headache he had. She talked a lot, but she hadn’t said anything about a headache, or her aches and pains. Mostly, she was angry, raving about how those people could have let Satok get away with what he had! How had he been able to do that to them, and how could he do that to the planet?

  Diego didn’t answer. He listened with part of his mind to what she said, and with the other part, he was composing a song. Again, he longed for an instrument, wishing to make a song with angry music which even the biggest drum could not emphasize strongly enough.

  When they camped for the night, he began writing his song down, while Bunny looked on curiously, still talking. Her voice was like rain falling now, or the drone of a ship’s engine. He nodded and grunted, but the song was at the front of his consciousness.

  Buried alive, screaming,

  The stone smothered

  The roots strangled,

  The soil smothered

  White death like

  Your snow-skin

  From one like

  But unlike

  A son.

  Diego stopped writing. The planet should have a song for that murdered part of it, but this was not complete, not right. It needed a better song than this. He sang it to Bunny and she thought it was good, but then, the critical side of his nature reminded him, she was also proud of her jingle about her snocle license. This song must be the very best that could be sung, for it was of terrible injuries that must be healed.

  The next morning, riding toward Harrison’s Fjord, they were silent.

  You are not a cub and you cannot live forever with me in the Home, Coaxtl told Goat-dung.

  “I understand why you would not want me,” Goat-dung said, “for I am nothing and no one. But if I cannot live with you, then go ahead and eat me now, for I’d rather be eaten by a friend than by strange beasts, and I will not return to Shepherd Howling.”

  Did I say that you should, foolish youngling? But there are others in the village at the mouth of this river.

  “They’ll make me go back,” she said, full of fear, but Coaxtl said she would wait, and if they tried, she would kill them and take her to a farther village.

  So there was nothing for it. She submitted to the will of the cat as she had submitted to the will of others eventually on every occasion but one. Coaxtl walked with her for a way; but on the open plains, where only cold waters fed the river, she lay along Coaxtl’s back, hands locked in her mane, knees pressing against the cat’s ribs, so that they could cross to cover more quickly.

  The sky was still pale pink from the setting sun when they heard the beating heart of one of the company’s hummingbird airships. Coaxtl wanted to run away, but the plain was vast and the airship faster even than the big cat’s great strides.

  Goat-dung watched with awe as the airship approached. She had seen other aircraft in the sky, and the Shepherd had told them those were the Guardian Angels of the Righteous, sent by the company to oversee them. She had seen a hummingbird ship only once before, however, when it delivered supplies to the Vale one hopeless winter when a team of the men had walked into Bogota seeking relief. The Shepherd Howling had agreed to this only reluctantly, for she heard him arguing with his advisers: but they knew they would starve without assistance. When the airship came, it was wonderful. Food, more food than they had had in months, and even warm clothing and toys for the children.

  So Goat-dung was not afraid when the airship hung above them, close enough that she could see two men arguing through the glass bubble that formed the hummingbird’s single eye.

  She climbed off Coaxtl’s back, feeling the soft warmth of the cat’s fur through the rents in her clothing. Her feet were bound up in uncured rabbit skins now, fur side in; the skins stank, but they kept her feet warm. Stunned with fascination, she watched the airship set down.

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Coaxtl?” she asked the cat. When there was no reply, she turned to see the cat bounding back across the tundra.

  A thought whispered back to her across the distance. Your own are here. Good hunting and warm sleeping places, youngling.

  “Good hunting and warm sleeping places, Coaxtl,” she whispered back, under her breath, but already she was watching the handsome pilot emerge from the aircraft and the tall, thin man with the high forehead and long white tail of hair walking toward her. Another man lingered in a second doorway in the back of the airship.

  “Remarkable!” the white-haired man said, staring at her. “Look at her clothing! Why, she should be freezing. And here alone except for a wild animal which would probably have eaten her when hunger overcame it. Amazing! I would have liked a closer look at that cat, though. It seems totally unlike any of the others I’ve noticed.”

  The pilot didn’t respond to what the elder said but came forward to kneel before her. Before her and so unworthy for such an honor! He even looked her in the eye and spoke in a kind voice that almost made her weep.

  “You look a long way from home, alannah. Are you lost? Was that big ol’ kitty what you folks down here use for a track-cat?”

  Goat-dung sank to her knees before him and bowed her head. “Please forgive the companion of this ignorant and despicable child, O Captain of Angels. Coaxtl befriended me out of pity, but now that my own kind are here, she has fled from fear of the righteous. For are not all animals to be meat and fur for the company men?”

  “Where did you hear such drivel?” the captain replied in a disgusted tone of voice. Goat-dung did not expect that.

  “Did I get it wrong?” she asked fearfully. “Forgive me if I misquoted the Shepherd Howling. I am the stupidest of girls, as has often been said of me.”

  “If you ask me, you’re the luckiest of kids,” the pilot said. “And we’re lucky to have found you before you froze to death. Now come aboard, darlin’, and stop cringin’. Sure, no one will hurt you now.” And he looked back at the tall white-haired man with an expression Goat-dung could not see in the descending shadows.

  “Of course they won’t, my child,” the white-haired man said. And while the pilot had quite correctly refrained from touching such filth as she, the white-haired man took her hands in his and raised her in his arms, carrying her to the plane. “You will come with us to Sierra Padre.”

  “You won’t make me go back to the Vale of Tears?”

  “Not if that’s how they teach you to talk about yourself. Especially if you’ve run away from all those bruises and cuts I see on you, no, we won’t take you back,” the pilot said.

  “What and where is this Vale of Tears?” the white-haired man asked.

  “You won’t make me go back there, sir? I don’t deserve to. I fled from being the bride to the Shepherd Howling.”

  “Bride? You’re no more than a baby!” The pilot sputtered with outrage.

  But the white-haired man said, “We go now to Sierra Padre, where I will begin my work, and you, my dear, will have a hot bath, clean clothing, a decent meal, and a good night’s sleep.”

  “She certainly will,” the pilot said. “An old shipmate of mine, Lonciana Ondelacy, lives in Sierra Padre with her kids and grandchildren. Loncie will be glad to take this little one in.”

  The white-haired man smiled at her, helping her climb into the big plane beside the other man, who did not smile. This reassured her more than anything the pilot had said because, of course, it was only right since she did not deserve to be smiled upon. Then, with a great deal of noise and wind, the Captain of the Angels and the white-haired patriarch sent the hummingbird ship aloft, where, for that night, all was miraculously as wonderful as they had said it would be.

  10

  Marmion, led by Seamus Rourke, flanked by Sally and Millard and followed more slowly by Matthew’s five assistants, emerged into early-morning sunlight. Rick O’Shay was the last to leave the cave.

  “My word! It is the next day?” Marmion exclaimed. She turned to Seamus, who grinned, a smile that had little to do with the day or anything else immediately obvious to Marmion.

 
“Sure is, missus.”

  “But we weren’t in there long . . .” Sally began, glancing down at the digital on her wrist. Her eyes widened. “Good heavens.”

  “The next day?” Ivan grabbed her wrist to peer at her digital before checking his own. The other four men apprehensively conferred over this unexpected loss of time. “But we’ll be behind in our work . . .” Ivan wheeled accusingly on Seamus. “You had no right to take us away from our work for a whole day.”

  “This cave is a mere hour’s flight from SpaceBase,” Hans said, his expression decidedly aggressive and his anger focused on Seamus Rourke, because he didn’t dare accuse Marmion.

  “How could we have lost so much time . . . sitting in mist?” That aggravated him even more.

  “Why, I found it—” Marmion stopped, cocked her head, and then regarded Sally and Millard. “You know, I’m not sure I found anything.”

  Seamus let out a mighty guffaw. Mischief, as well as satisfaction, twinkled in his eyes.

  “You got ‘found’ anyway, missus. Now, let’s not lose more time.” He made a whooshing gesture at Rick to start back to the copter.

  “How could I get ‘found,’ Mr. Rourke, when I haven’t been lost?” Marmion asked, a quaver in her voice as she allowed Rick and Millard to take her arms as they made their way across the uneven terrain.

  “Oh, I ‘spect it’ll come to you, missus.” Seamus chuckled again.

  “Mr. Rourke, nothing at all of the nature described by Dr. Metaxos, his son, or even Major Maddock and Dr. Fiske occurred to us,” Sally said in an even voice that held just a hint of carefully controlled surprise and disappointment.

  Seamus eyed her, his lips curving slightly: she was a very attractive young woman, and he could still appreciate looking.

  “Sure hope you wouldn’t now the planet’s calmed down with no one gouging and blasting holes in it. But you were spoken to,” he assured her.

  “That’s utter nonsense,” Hans said. Rick made a noise that sounded like a patronizing rebuke, and Hans whipped around. “I experienced nothing once the mist rose to obscure everything. And then it cleared. You’d have us believe that this—this show took nearly thirty hours?”