Power Play

by Anne McCaffrey

  The easiest place to give the distraught Portia and Guthrie a dry, bramble-free place to sit while washing and treating their wounds was the inside of the cave. The “rock flock,” as Clodagh was beginning to think of the white-robed pilgrims, eagerly assisted in “ministering,” as they called it.

  “What did you want samples of anyway?” Clodagh asked Portia Porter-Pendergrass, just to distract her from screeching in the ear of her rescuers whenever Clodagh daubed a little sting-bush leaf on a scratch.

  “That stuff you’re putting on me now, for starters,” she said. Her face and hands were a mess, and one thorn had narrowly missed her left eye. Clodagh felt bad for her.

  “That’s okay then, alannah,” she said as if to a child, being as gentle as she could with a very deep scratch on the leg. “You can have the rest of this when we’re done here. You’ll need it anyway to make those scratches go away.”

  “How about me?” Bill Guthrie asked plaintively.

  “You, too,” Clodagh said, patting his knee. “Just be brave and hold on till I’m finished here, and I’ll gather some more for you to take home.”

  “And that cough medicine you gave Yanaba Maddock?” Portia asked.

  “Why? You got a cough?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, giving a forced hack.

  “Me, too,” Bill Guthrie said.

  “That stuff you sprayed on the bushes,” Portia began as pitifully as she could.

  But she got no further, for Sister Agate threw herself between the two coo-bramble victims and Clodagh.

  “Do not harken to the false words of these infidels, Mother Clodagh . . .”

  “I told you, I’m not your mother!”

  “Clodagh, she’s right,” Brother Shale said, taking her shoulders and attempting to pull her away from the pharmaceutical reps. “These people are out only to exploit the Beneficence. They want to strip it of its miracles and synthesize its wonders for base motives of pecuniary profit.”

  “They’ll desecrate the Beneficence,” Sister Igneous Rock howled.

  “Be quiet,” Clodagh said.

  “You mustn’t—” Sister Agate began.

  “They’re crazy,” Bill Guthrie said, shaking off Brother Shale.

  But both were drowned out by a booming echo of Clodagh’s voice, rebounding through the cave: “QUIET!! QUIET! Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! Quiet! . . . Et! . . . Et . . . Et! . . . Et . . .”

  “It spoke!” Sister Igneous Rock whispered, clasping her heart.

  “That was an echo, you idiot!” Portia Porter-Pendergrass snarled.

  “QUIET, IDIOT!” the echo said just once. And this time nobody spoke.

  Finally, Clodagh said, “You people quit fighting and stop being so silly. You lot—” She nodded at the rock flock. “The planet isn’t a Creator any more than any of you. It’s part of creation—the Powers That Be at Intergal even helped make it how it is now, though they only woke it up, they didn’t create its life.”

  “But how do you know, Clodagh?” Brother Agate asked. “You are but a mere mortal, though favored . . .”

  “I know ’cause the planet told me so, of course,” she said. “And if you want it to tell you anything, you’re gonna have to get rid of some of your funny ideas long enough to make room for what it’s got to say. As for you folks,” she added, nodding to Portia and Bill, “you can have any medicine you need and welcome to it.”

  “They’ll Analyze it,” Sister Agate moaned.

  “They’ll Synthesize it,” Brother Shale groaned.

  “So?” Clodagh asked. “If there’s sick folks needing medicine and they can make up stuff like we got here to cure them, that’s a good thing.”

  “You don’t understand!” Sister Igneous Rock wailed. “We’ve seen it happen before on other worlds! Our own worlds! We even aided in the desecration, may the Beneficence forgive us, before we realized what we had wrought and saw the light. Brother Shale was a geologist for the intergalactic energy rapists, and I myself engineered plants with which they could steal the treasures of other worlds. Even when I learned there were Better Ways I could not convince my masters. They want only to destroy. Oh, believe me, Clodagh, for I have seen how they work. We have all seen it. They’ll build factories here and pollute the waters, clog the voice of the Bene—the planet, they’ll strip it bare of its healing plants and minerals!”

  “It’d just be a small factory,” Bill Guthrie said, holding up his thumb and forefinger with an inch spread between them to show how small the factory would be.

  “And if we took all of the mature plants, well, they’re plants, they’ll grow back, right? We call it a renewable resource, Clodagh,” Portia said, as if she were talking to someone dumb enough to go out in midwinter without a coat on. “It’s a growing thing.”

  “So’s your skin,” Clodagh said, shaking her head. “But if the coo-brambles stripped it all off you, it wouldn’t grow back—at least not fast enough to keep you alive. Petaybee’s just like you. You take off its skin and it’ll be back to what it was—not dead maybe, but not awake, neither.”

  “But, don’t you see, there are real lives, human lives, being wasted for want of the cures Petaybee has to offer. You owe it to them . . .” As if in support of that argument, the cave began to echo with the cry, “Help! Help, please! Somebody help us.”

  10

  Gal Three repair bay

  Bunny tried to get the ship’s computer to sound an alert while Diego attempted to persuade the hatch to reopen. His bracelet didn’t do the job, nor did any amount of trying different button combinations on the pad located beneath a smooth metal panel. Finally, something clicked—he wasn’t sure what—and the panel irised open. He heard footsteps in the corridor and looked to see where they were coming from.

  “Bunny, quick, we’ve got to hide!” he said. “The white suits are coming back. They’re carrying things. More bodies, it looks like.”

  “Can we run for it?”

  “You can’t outrun a laser.”

  “Diego, they’ve all got on the pressure suits. If they open the outer hatch while we’re here, we’re goners.”

  “That, too, although with them carrying stuff, they aren’t likely to have free hands to pull the lasers on us.”

  “Come on, Diego. If we stand here arguing about it, we’re goners for sure.”

  “They’re too close!” he said. He saw them clearly now, the white-suited figures carrying two women—Yana and Marmie! One of the figures, a tall man, wore the helmet but no white suit. Diego was pretty sure he hadn’t been with them earlier.

  “Let’s go,” Bunny said, and pushed him out the door. They were halfway down the corridor when a cloud of sweet-smelling pink gas overtook them.

  Yana awoke coughing so hard she thought for a moment her life of the last few months had been a dream and she was still in the infirmary following the Bremport massacre. She had a sickly-sweet taste in her mouth and a constriction about her chest, which, she found when she stopped coughing, was caused by another body lying across her. She reached out and her hand was full of face—smooth, unlined face and a tangle of hair.

  A chorus of coughing, not as violent as her own, erupted all around her, and then Bunny’s voice grumbled in a sleepy-headed childish tone, “Ouch, your finger’s in my eye.”

  Bunny wriggled away, provoking an “ouch” in turn from someone else. “Sorry, Diego,” she said. “It’s a little crowded in here.”

  “Yana . . .” Marmion’s voice was faintly slurred, and she, too, began coughing, but daintily. “Was that party of Ples’s much better than I thought it was?”

  “I don’t think so, unless she uses pink perfumed gas on her guests afterward,” Yana said, coughing again.

  “Merde alors! Is that what it was? Where are we?”

  “I don’t know.” Cough. “It’s dark.”

  Then suddenly it wasn’t, and a chirpy voice said, “Oh, good, our guests are awake. Tell me, none of you have any food allergies, do you? Anyone a vegetarian?” />
  Yana blinked fast and focused on the small port where a pert face dimpled in at them. Yana had seen hundreds of faces like that pushing everything from shampoo to specific spacecraft for flights to anywhere you cared to mention.

  “What’s it to ya?” Bunny asked, surprisingly pugnacious on such short notice.

  “Now, honey, that’s no way to be. Just because you have to be our guests for a while doesn’t mean the experience has to be unpleasant. Sorry to crowd you all in like that, but we thought you’d feel reassured to find each other nearby when you woke up. I’m afraid the boys were a little careless how you landed. So, let’s try again, shall we? Any food allergies?”

  The tangle on the floor sorted themselves out. “I demand to know where we are and why we’ve been detained in this fashion,” Marmion said.

  “I’ll be glad to explain, but really, the crew is going to be cross if they don’t get their dinners on time, so could you please answer my question first?” the person at the port said with a trace of irritation.

  “I would dislike causing your crew any inconvenience,” Yana said in a trenchant tone. “None of us is a vegetarian but I—” She paused for a coughing fit. “—am sensitive to any sort of gas!”

  “Fine, good. Wonderful. Back in a jiff,” the person said, and left.

  “Marmion,” Yana said sotto voce, and when she had Marmion’s attention in the dimly lit room, she gestured to where she had hidden her alarm. It was gone now; she’d have been surprised if it had still been there; that would have been a gross oversight on their captors’ part.

  Marmion gave the most imperceptible of nods and a sly smile. So, Yana thought, both of them had had a chance to send signals. Help ought to be on its way. Wherever they were.

  “Macci’s not here,” Marmion said suddenly. “What have they done with him, do you suppose? There’s just us four.”

  “Oh!”

  Then Pert-face, as good as her word, was back. When she opened the hatch, she had two armed guards with her and the three of them stayed outside the room. The guards wore orange coveralls with no identifying patches. Pert-face wore a bodytight in green, with an aqua tunic of what appeared to be crocheted lace. Her hair was light brown, with lynxlike gray tufts at the ears and in a diamond pattern at the crown, extending into the fringe of hair accenting earnest brown eyes.

  “I’m Dinah O’Neill,” she introduced herself. “I represent Louchard Enterprises—”

  “As what?” Yana asked.

  “Oh, Public Relations, Legal, Administrative, what have you. I’m the representative. And you, I take it, must be Colonel Yanaba Maddock?”

  Yana nodded but declined to shake her hand.

  “And the famous Marmion de Revers Algemeine!” Dinah O’Neill said, the stars practically dancing in her eyes. “I’m thrilled to meet you.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Marmion said.

  “Now, now, Madame Algemeine, I’m sure you’ve been unavoidably detained for business reasons before. Think of this little interlude as another minor delay. And these lovely youngsters must be—let’s see, Diego Metaxos? Right? Right! And Buneka or Bunny—my, that really suits you—Rourke. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have you here.”

  “I’ll bet,” Yana said, coughing again.

  “And where is Macci Sendal?” Marmion asked. “He was with us when we were gassed.”

  “Ah, yes, that glamorous one. As far as I know he’s all right, but really, I felt the four of you would be crowded enough in here despite misery loving company so much.”

  “There’s a reason for all of this nonsense?” Marmion asked, totally unamused.

  “The reasons are rather complicated and really nothing you need to worry about now. You’re all safe and well, and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? Except that poor Colonel Maddock seems to be catching cold.” Yana had launched into another paroxysm.

  “It’s not a cold,” Bunny said, wrapping her arm protectively across Yana’s hunched shoulders while she coughed. “She’s only just over a gas poisoning at Bremport, and you—you can’t just go around indiscriminately gassing people!”

  “I’m so sorry,” Dinah O’Neill said. “The boss fancied a disabling laser bolt through the knees, but I suggested that gas provides less wear and tear on the cargo—I mean, the guests. I do apologize.” She snapped her fingers at one of the guards, who had a tray in one hand and a four-liter bottle in the other. “Here’s your dinner. Quite nourishing, I assure you. And just what the captain ordered. Enjoy!”

  The guard laid these supplies on the floor and backed away.

  “I have a dog named Dinah,” Diego said softly to no one in particular. “She’s a nice bitch!”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere, youngster.” There was an edge to Pert-face’s bubbly tone. The door clanged shut.

  Marmion lifted up the tray and peered at its contents. “Nutritional bars and some vitamin cubes.”

  “What was all that crap about allergies and vegetarianism then?” Diego wanted to know.

  “Here, Yana,” Marmion said, passing over the water bottle. “See if it’ll soothe your throat.”

  Yana gratefully swigged a big mouthful and let it trickle down her dry throat.

  “What are you doing?” she asked Bunny, who was now audibly sniffing, turning her head to smell each corner of the small room.

  “Wherever we are, we’re still on the space station,” Bunny said.

  “How ever can you arrive at that conclusion?” Marmion asked, surprised and skeptical.

  “Air,” Bunny said, and grinned. “I’m a good sniffer, and this is the same air that we were breathing on Gal Three. Your launch had different-smelling air. But this”—she sniffed again—“is the same as Gal Three.”

  “You know, she might be right,” Marmion said.

  “I devoutly hope she is,” Yana said with an unobtrusive gesture to her bra.

  Marmion considered this. “I wonder . . . You could be right, Bunny.”

  “D’you think they do have Macci next door or someplace?” Diego asked.

  “You mean, could he be in this with our dear Dinah?” Marmion asked. “Really, Diego. Macci’s Rothschild’s, not a pirate.”

  “Is that who’s kidnapped us? Pirates?” Bunny was torn between astonishment and dismay. Then her expression changed into a disgusted grimace. “Water! I chewed that cube, and it’s one you’ve got to swallow. Urgh.”

  They finished their repast, swigging water to wash down the last of the dry bars and cubes, and then arranged themselves about the small room. They sat two on a side, facing each other, their legs meeting in the center of the small space.

  “Now what?” Bunny asked in a brave voice that had only a slight tremor in it.

  Yana scratched at her shoulder, in an unobtrusive gesture toward where the alarm pad had been. Surely there’d been enough time to trace their whereabouts—that is, if they were on the station, as Bunny felt they should be. And where was the unseen eye that Marmion had mentioned in her launch that would be watching out for their safety?

  She started coughing again. Bunny handed over the water, but Yana couldn’t stop coughing long enough to take a sip.

  “Dinah? Dinah O’Neill?” Bunny cried, rising and pounding on the hatch with both fists. “The colonel needs a doctor. She’s coughing blood! Damn it! Answer me!”

  The hatch was hauled open so abruptly that Bunny lost her balance; then she lurched back away from the angry faces that looked in at them: the two men who had brought the “food.”

  “Let’s see the blood,” one of them demanded.

  Yana was barking so hard and painfully that she was bent over her knees, trying to ease the spasms that racked her belly. She was hoping that coughing wouldn’t provoke a spontaneous miscarriage. That thought made her clasp her belly protectively as the compulsive tickle kept up its irritation and she kept up her coughing.

  “You see! You see!” Bunny cried, outraged. “Get her a doctor. She’s no good
to you dead!”

  The hatch shut with a resounding clang.

  “She’ll be all right?” Diego asked, his voice taut. “She won’t lose the baby or anything?”

  Yana shook her head, denying that to him as well as to herself. And kept right on coughing, gasping for breath, her ribs aching from the exercise.

  “We must be able to do something!” Bunny cried pounding on the hatch. She had pounded twice when it opened again and a soulful face, long and aristocratic, framed with silvery hair and a well-trimmed beard, looked in briefly. He was pushed aside by Dinah O’Neill.

  “What’s this? What’s this? Blood?”

  “She can’t stop coughing from all that gas you poured into us,” Bunny said angrily. “Do something.”

  “This is Dr. Namid Mendeley,” Dinah began.

  “I’m a doctor of astronomy, not medicine, Ms. O’Neill,” he said contritely. “But your infirmary must have some sort of linctus. Even pirates get coughs . . .”

  “Privateer,” Dinah O’Neill corrected primly. She spoke over her shoulder. “Bring the first-aid kit.”

  “That’s for injuries—”

  “Get it.”

  “Codeine stops the cough reflex,” Diego said helpfully. “Most first-aid kits have something of that sort in them. Mild. Useful.”

  “What she needs is to get back to Petaybee, and Clodagh’s syrup,” Bunny said.

  “Ah, yes,” Privateer Dinah O’Neill said brightly. “Well, we can see our way clear to do that, after certain basic arrangements have been made.”

  “Ransom demands, you mean,” Marmion said stiffly. Dinah O’Neill twinkled at her as if she’d said something very witty. “First, we really must do something to stop that coughing, or we won’t be able to get her to agree to anything.”

  Yana violently waved both arms, trying to indicate that despite her coughing she wasn’t about to agree to anything. Then the guard returned and was thrusting the first-aid container, a sizable one, too, at Dinah, who sidestepped so that the box went to Dr. Mendeley.