Maelstrom

CHAPTER 27

THE COPTER WAS deserted when Yana reached it. Rick would be looking for Johnny and Pet, she thought. She wasn't sure whether she hoped they were with Marmie on the Piaf or would be relieved to find they were still assisting with the refugees.

The snow became a blizzard and then a whiteout, and she had to fly by instrument all the way to Perfect. Her gas gauge ran dangerously low by the time she judged herself close enough to safely set down. She kept transmitting that she was on her way but in return received only a signal as snowy as the weather.

She did manage to land the copter blade side up, however, which was no mean feat. She and the copter were encased within a directionless cocoon of white sky, snow-blanketed landscape, and, most dangerously, sheets and sheets of snow blown hard against her windshield.

She shouldered a survival pack of warm clothing, blankets, rations, and fuel and strapped on her snowshoes again. How was she going to find Perfect in this weather? She could walk in circles within a few feet of the copter and never know the difference.

Her good sense was still warring with her need to find Sean and the kids when a team of harnessed dogs punched through the whiteness. An ice-encrusted figure ran a mitten along the harness until she reached the copter, then peered up at Yana and beckoned.

Yana jerked open the copter's door and jumped the short distance into the snow piling up around it. Her snowshoes sank from the jump, but with the help of the newcomer, she pulled her feet up one by one onto the top layer of snow. Following her rescuer back to the sled, she allowed herself to be strapped in and driven a short distance to a place she could barely see until the newcomer opened the door to a small, blessedly warm cabin. Another parka-clad figure met them at the door, and a man yelled against the wind, following them inside, snow piling up behind them,

"You warm up and make our guests comfortable, will you, Charlene, while I tend to the dogs?"

Yana's driver nodded exaggeratedly so the man could see the gesture even with the parka's hood up.

When the man had closed the door behind him, the woman's parka hood went back and a woman with icicles on her eyelashes, brows, and the fringe of hair around her face smiled a welcome. "Hi, Yana. It's me, Charlene. We met at your twins' last birthday latchkay, but I can't expect you to remember. You were that busy!"

Yana remembered her; Charlene Flood, before her recent marriage. Pretty woman, she showed her Eskimo/Tlingit heritage in her round face, high cheekbones, and almond eyes, but talked faster than an Irish fiddle tune. "Oh, sure. Charlene, hi. I don't think I'd have made it if you hadn't come to get me. Whew!"

"Winter isn't messing about this year, is it?" Charlene asked. "We saw you land.

Fortunately, we hadn't unhitched the dogs yet from picking up the new lad Sean called about or I doubt I'd have still been able to spot you by the time I got there."

They peeled off mittens, hats, scarves, and coats and hung them on hooks inside the door.

"Did Sean come too?" Yana asked, doubting that could be so but hoping. "And how about my kids?"

"I'm afraid not. Cold as he was, it was all we could do to get the young lad to come with us. He's warming his nose over a cuppa now. You look like you could use one too."

Ke-ola sat at the family table near the stove. He wouldn't look up until Yana sat down opposite him.

"I'm sorry, missus-I mean, Colonel," he said miserably. "I was useless. I c couldn't help anyone at all, not Murel or even Sean."

She took a deep breath of nonfrozen air fragrant with the balsam-scented warmth from the fire and said, as if she hadn't another care in the world, "Oh, yes. I know that feeling. They have a way of making you feel like a total waste of space sometimes, don't they?"

"Not you, surely, ma'am!" he said, his lashes dripping water from melted snow or maybe tears when he widened his eyes at her. He was such a big fellow it was hard to remember he was only a little older than Murel and Ronan.

"I'll tell you something, Ke-ola," she said. Charlene poured a cup of tea for both Yana and herself and sat down with them. A track cat slightly smaller than Nanook nudged her knee and curled up under the table, warming all of their feet with its tiger-sized body. "After all those years I spent in the Company Corps and all the action I saw, I never thought when I moved here and finally married I'd settle down to be not only the little woman but the little human in my family. Not that Sean and the kids aren't human too, at least most of the time when I'm with them, but you know what I mean."

She tried to sound reassuring while wondering how the evacuation was going.

There was no sense mentioning the latest emergency until Charlene's husband returned anyway. The fact that Perfect Village had had no part in the relocation would not necessarily make them exempt from the scrutiny of the corrupt PTBs who had arrested Marmie and meant to arrest her own family and apparently most of Kilcoole besides. But even if a ship was landing at this very moment, it wasn't any more likely to be able to find the village in this blizzard than she would have been if Charlene hadn't fetched her.

As they sat and watched the snow pile up to the windowsill, then halfway up the pane, she felt the big Kanaka lad relax beside her.

She, on the other hand, grew increasingly tense and wondered all the while what she would do if her family didn't come back. Handle the crisis, certainly. Without Sean and the kids, she didn't care whether or not she died offworld, if she saved the world and her friends in the process.

If Johnny, Pet, and the warlike Raj had not been taken, she could put them to good use. Her skills might be a little rusty, but she thought with four of them they could hijack any ship sent to arrest more people. First they would set traps for the would be arresting troops. Petaybeans were used to setting traps and, she thought, would make excellent guerrilla fighters-especially when aided and abetted by the planet.

Then she, Johnny, Pet, and Raj should be able to hijack the invaders' ship. Once they were away from Petaybee's communication problems, it shouldn't take them long to find allies among the Federation to secure the release of Marmie and the Piaf's human cargo.

The same allies could stop the invaders from harassing the Petaybeans, although she wondered who might be harassing whom by then. Maybe they could go into space and complete their mission in a short enough time that she wouldn't sicken and die. Other Petaybeans had done so in the past, but they were native born and she was not.

Clodagh said that wouldn't make any difference, but Yana thought that under the circumstances, it was worth the risk.

She wasn't sure she could bear to live on Petaybee without Sean and her kids anyway. Without them, it would be as cold and bleak as the snowstorm. She looked up at the window, expecting to see it completely covered. Instead she could see the sky again, still white but without snow blowing out of it. There was even a snowball of a sun.

The door banged and Charlene's husband called out, "Hey, look what I just found!"

Something wet and brown squirmed out of his arms and ran to Yana and back to the door again.

"It's Sky!" she cried, leaping up so fast her tea sloshed the table. "This is the kids' otter friend. They must be back."

"I had a feeling it was something like that," Charlene's husband said, and added to his wife, "I tried to unhitch the dogs and they started going nuts. Turns out this little guy was slogging through the drifts toward the house. I thought he was about frozen but he looks fine now."

"Hitch mine up too!" Charlene said. "We'll get Sean into one basket and the kids into the other."

"I'm coming," Yana said, even though she feared she might slow them down. "We have to take extra clothes and blankets too."

"I'll get the neighbors to bring their sled," Charlene said.

"I want to come," Ke-ola told them.

"Okay, I'll get two neighbors then," Charlene said.

"They won't be far," Ke-ola told Yana, his eyes shining now with joy. "I'll bet Sean's taken them to the new seal lagoon.

"The new what?" Yana asked.

WITH THE SKY clear, the temperature dropped sharply, so the new snow packed well. They took turns breaking trail and the horizon looked a long way away to Yana as they crested a hill she could have sworn was part of a snowy plain.

Sky jumped down from his perch on her shoulder and disappeared over the hill in his undulating run.

The sleds stopped. Ke-ola and Yana unstrapped themselves and she followed the boy. The lead dogs looked down their noses into a steamy lagoon where three seals swam in circles. The rescuers brought the clothing and blankets from the sleds and they all carried the supplies down the hill. Yana nodded to Charlene and she called the villagers to return to their sleds.

One by one the seals rose from the steaming water and shook themselves off, making the change which was by now as familiar to Yana as seeing them rising from their bedclothes in the morning or taking off their winter clothing when they came into the house. "Where have you lot been?" she asked as she hugged them.

"Quite a lot has happened while you've been away."