Power Play

5

After asking to be taken to Cita's leader, whoever that was, the white-robed Sister Igneous Rock continued to look at Cita expectantly while the others chimed in.

‘A very good idea, oddly enough, considering the source,' one of the women in very short skirts said. 'Do take us to your leader. I'd like to speak to whoever is in charge. I represent BIEX, the galaxy's leading pharmaceutical concern and…’

‘Come off it, Portia,' said one of the men in shiny pants. 'She's just a kid. Doesn't even look like she speaks English.’

‘Petaybeans don't need to speak English,' Sister Igneous Rock told the man sternly. 'They communicate instinctively with the Beneficent Source. Please take us there, dear. Can you give us a name, perhaps?’

‘This unworthy one has been called Goat-dung,' Cita began timorously, awed by the presence of such strange, if apparently ignorant, ones.

‘Not by me,' Sister Igneous Rock said indignantly, wrinkling her nose as if Cita smelled like her namesake. 'Really, dear, while natural names are pleasing to the Beneficence, I would not dream of calling the first actual denizen of Petaybee I meet by such a demeaning name as "Goat-dung".’

‘Mostly I answer to Cita.’

Sister Igneous Rock nodded and seemed gratified but the rest once more began talking as if Cita was not there.

‘Coaxtl, what shall I do?' she asked softly, hoping the big cat could hear her, for she could no longer see her friend. 'Who is it they wish to see? It is too far to take them back to Uncle Sean before nightfall and the ones in the short clothes will freeze after dark…’

‘I don't want to see any damned leader,' one of the men with the metal sticks was saying. 'They had plenty of time to answer our applications for hunting permits. That fellow I talked to said they had cats here big as horses with pelts that would fetch thousands, and unicorns that if you cut off their horns and drank them in a powder would let you do it as many times a night as you wanted.’

Do not tell them I am here, Youngling, Coaxtl said.

‘There's no need to bother this child at all,' an older woman said. 'Once we find my family, they can help us all sort out our problems. Honey, do you know a family named Monaghan? We got separated when the Company resettled us during the Troubles. I've been living on Coventry all these years and I just now heard that some of the folks from my village were settled here.’

Cita shook her head. The woman looked nice and Cita wanted to help her but this was all very confusing. 'I haven't lived in Kilcoole long, but we could ask my Uncle Sean, if he's not too busy. Or Clodagh. I guess they're leaders.’

‘No, no, child,' Brother Shale said. 'We don't mean human leaders, we want to make the acquaintance of the Beneficence. We want to offer up our service and adoration…’

‘In all due humility, of course,' added a third white-robed figure. Behind him was a fourth that Cita had not previously noticed.

‘Brothers Shale and Schist are correct,' this new person, a woman, added. 'We have no use for human leaders. I am Sister Agate, and I personally would like to state,' and as she said this, she turned about this way and that to shout over the heads of all of the people, including Cita,' that I am delighted to be here and will assist the Beneficent Entity in any way I possibly can.’

‘Hush, Agate. We all will. It's not right to put yourself forward like that,' Sister Igneous Rock said.

‘I don't know about any Beni - whatsis,' Cita said, 'or that family either. But I'm very young and ignorant. They'd know in Kilcoole. Except it's almost night now and it'll be dark before we can get there and I'm afraid I'm too stupid to find my way in the dark.’

‘That's where the Government is supposed to be,' the woman called Portia said. 'How far is it?’

‘Many klicks,' Cita said after trying to figure out how to explain distances on Petaybee.

‘Coaxtl, where can I take them to spend the night?' she asked while they argued among themselves. But the big cat didn't answer. She was all alone with these strangers. Finally, she drew them into the woods, where they would not get snowed upon, and with the help of the white-robed ones, who could be most insistent, got them to bundle together beds of leaves and needles and lie close together, the most warmly dressed to the outside.

‘Ah, rocked to sleep by the breeze of the Beneficence,' Sister Agate said through chattering teeth, as she curled near Portia Porter-Prendergrass, who kicked her viciously.

The men with the metal sticks refused to obey and sat with their backs to trees, shivering despite their winter clothing, holding their sticks menacingly in front of them. When they fell asleep, in spite of themselves, Cita crept over to them and took the sticks from their hands and buried them beneath bushes.

Brother Schist muttered constantly under his breath and the man in the shiny pants tried to snuggle Sister Igneous Rock.

Cita huddled alone in the dark, searching for a particular touch in her head, a particular pair of eyes kindling in the darkness. She had actually dropped off to sleep when she felt a familiar warmth against her side.

Help comes, Coaxtl said simply. That was when Cita noticed that Coaxtl's warmth was joined by another, smaller purring bundle.

An orange cat rubbed herself against Coaxtl who rumbled a low growly remark.

Clodagh is on her way to us with the curly-coats. She will be here soon.

Cita was so relieved she could almost cry. She was so incompetent and everyone was always helping her out of the problems she seemed to find.

Do not bow your head, Youngling, Coaxtl rumbled. You have done exceedingly well, as the Clodagh person will tell you, even as her messenger does. You have saved the furred and feathered ones from the men with the metal sticks, and the men with the metal sticks from the wrath of the Home. You have also saved these puny others from wandering unguided in lands which are unfamiliar to them and which they are unfit to travel. Clodagh is pleased with you. Then Coaxtl sighed. Even if we must return to the false caves of men.

‘Oh, Coaxtl! And you are so miserable…’

How can one be miserable when there are warm places to lie, food to eat, snow to roll in, and a youngling to lick into shape? Coaxtl interrupted her. One may prefer the inner chambers but wherever one sets one's paws they touch the Home. Coaxtl raised her head and lapped at a snowflake, the first of several now drifting from the sky. Ah! See you, Youngling? The Home, knowing that we sought snow and were prevented from reaching it, sends it to us. We are rewarded. You have brought honour to the pride and snow to us both. This is a good thing, yes?

Cita nodded, still uncertain. 'I can see that it's working out well. And it is a good thing to achieve honour even if I did it accidentally. Still, is it not better to achieve honour by being in the right place at the right time?’

Coaxtl blindsided her with a massive lick to her face. This is no time to ponder on the mysteries of life, Youngling. Now compose yourself for what sleep you may achieve with all this noise. The great clouded cat settled herself and curled about Cita's body when the girl obeyed. To Coaxtl's amusement, Cita slept, despite the snores that filled the air.

Having delivered its message, the orange cat had already disappeared.

When Cita opened her eyes again, the sky through the trees was ivory with snow and she was covered with a light coating of it. Coaxtl was not to be seen but her side where the cat had lain against her was still warm.

The people from the shuttle stirred restlessly under a thin blanket of snow.

One of the would-be huntsmen awoke with a start and reached for the weapon that wasn't there, and a moment later the head of a curly-coat appeared through the brush.

‘Clodagh!' Cita called with relief. And behind Clodagh were Uncle Seamus and three of the grown

Rourke cousins, leading what looked like every curly-coat in the village.

‘Coaxtl tells us you've been hunting, Aoifa Rourke,' Clodagh said. 'I hope you caught game enough to feed all of these while you were at it.’

Watching the newcomers trying to mount the curlies made Cita feel as though she was not the only one who was ignorant and clumsy. The woman Portia had to leave her scantily clad legs open to the snow while her short skirt rode up to her waist as she mounted, a detail not lost on the male Rourke cousins.

The men who came with metal sticks were angry when they found their sticks gone, especially when Coaxtl and Nanook appeared alongside the curlies to guide them.

‘I told you!' one of the men said to the other. 'Cats as big as horses! I told you. That's what that fellow said and it's true. Wouldn't that pelt make a magnificent rug?’

Coaxtl coughed and Clodagh said, 'No, Coaxtl, they're guests.’

‘Did it talk to you?' the third man said.

‘Oh, yes. Coaxtl and Nanook and the other track cats can be very eloquent, but sometimes not very nice.’

‘What did it say?' Brother Schist asked. Cita, who understood Coaxtl very well, thought that the cat had merely coughed.

But Clodagh said to the hunter, 'Coaxtl says your pelt is too thin and hairless to be good for much of anything.’

It took a long time to return to Kilcoole, what with having to make sure everyone stayed mounted. Poor curlies! Cita thought. She'd have to go and gather some of the late carrots from everyone's gardens to give them a treat after this.

‘Are you the mayor or the governor or whatever of this town we're going to?' the man who didn't like Portia asked Clodagh.

‘I'm Clodagh.’

‘Clodagh!' Portia stopped groaning. 'You're the one I wanted to speak to, then. The medicine woman, right?’

Clodagh shrugged.

‘Look, I'm prepared to make you an offer for your formulas and all the ingredients you can supply. That's just for now, of course, while we're in the development stage. Later on, when we've located the sources, we'll need to know the best places to set up our operations.’

‘Are you sick?' Clodagh asked.

‘No, of course not, though I'm getting sick of being on this stupid horse but…’

‘You are the planet's handmaiden!' Sister Igneous Rock screeched, interrupting Portia and scaring the horses. She jumped down from hers, and ran forward to Clodagh's curly-coat and grabbed Clodagh's hand in both of hers and began weeping over it. 'Oh, how I have longed to meet you since first we were given word of this miraculous place!’

‘When was that?' Clodagh asked.

‘About six weeks ago,' Brother Shale said. 'And believe me, since then Sister Igneous Rock has worked wonders forming our order. Why, she came straight away and told me and the others and we all knew at once that Petaybee was just what we'd been looking for. We had a little study group before, you know, about the evils of the universe and how to get back to what was natural and real - we tried talking to Terra, but it wasn't very responsive. Then, when Brother Granite told us about the Beneficence and how it caused ruin to the abominations wrought upon it by the Unworthy, well, we had to come and see for ourselves.’

‘When can we see the evidence of Petaybee's wrath, Mother Clodagh?' Brother Schist asked.

‘Scuse me,' Clodagh said with a snort. 'I don't have any kids.’

‘Please pardon our brother,' Sister Igneous Rock said. 'We mean that you are the spiritual mother of our order. Brother Granite told us of your wondrous bond with the Beneficence.’

‘What's that?’

‘I think they mean the planet, Clodagh,' Cita offered. People called it so many different things. The Shepherd Howling had reviled the planet and called it The Great Beast and said it was a man-eating monster, Coaxtl simply called it The Home, and Uncle Sean and Clodagh called it Petaybee, for the initials Pee, Tee, Bee which also stood for Powers That Be, the local name for Intergal, the Company which first settled the planet. Cita thought that, of all of the names, Coaxtl's made the most sense.

‘Why didn't they say so, then?' Clodagh asked. At once, all the white robes dismounted, loudly apologising and begging forgiveness, prostrating themselves on the ground so that Clodagh's curly-coat almost stepped on them. They were coated with another layer of snow by the time the Rourke cousins got them to their feet and onto their ponies again.

Clodagh just shook her head. 'Cheechakos,' she said.

‘What's that?' Cita asked. Her own Flock had many Spanish words and Asian words in their language, but here in Kilcoole, the people used some words in the old Irish tongue and some in the Inuit and Native American tongues of their ancestors.

‘A cheechako is a newcomer, child.’

‘Like me?’

‘No, because you're from Petaybee. You're used to the cold and all. A person is a cheechako until they've lived here from freeze-up to thaw. If they live through the winter, they know if they want to stay or go away.’

‘But the Beneficence helps you get through winters, doesn't it, Moth - Clodagh?' Sister Agate asked, a tad anxiously. 'It surely doesn't kill anyone. From what Brother Granite said, it provides for all!’

Clodagh rolled her eyes and said to Cita, 'This could be a real long winter.’

Sean Shongili was tempted to say 'Look what the cat's dragged in,' when Clodagh, Cita and the Rourkes, with curlies and feline in escort of the most recently landed visitors, stopped in front of Yana's cabin that afternoon.

The newcomers, when sorted, turned out to be representatives of two rival pharmaceutical firms whose requests for interviews were allegedly somewhere in the stack of paperwork, three more hunters, four members of what seemed to be a newly formed religious cult wishing, sight unseen, to worship Petaybee, and eleven other people who claimed to believe they had long-lost family members living on the planet somewhere.

Sean sent Cita after Sinead, who came and took the hunters in tow to put them with the others she had previously captured. He told the drug representatives firmly that they would have to go through company channels for any patents on medicines. As Intergal had first terraformed and settled Petaybee, it had prior claim to any economic windfalls the planet might generate. Any credits, that is, left over from what Intergal might decide to charge the planet for what had already been done to 'improve' it up to Intergal standards - whatever they were. The religious cult and the so-called relatives required different handling.

‘There are Monaghans living over at Shannon-mouth,' Sean told the lady who had asked. 'I can send word to them that you're here and maybe they'll come to see you in a couple of weeks.’

‘Two weeks! But I only have two weeks!' she said. 'I've already taken a week of my vacation getting here.’

Sean just told her he'd do what he could, and privately decided to have a word with Whit about having Johnny Greene stop off to leave word with the Monaghans the next time he was over Shannonmouth. But with the other relative seekers listening, he didn't want to make a promise aloud.

‘Just show us the way to the hotel and we'll find our own transportation tomorrow,' said the man who was looking for the Valdez family.

‘There's no hotel,' Sean said.

‘Well, then, where are we supposed to stay?' the drug representative, Portia Porter-Pendergrass, demanded.

He took two deep breaths before answering. 'Don't you think you should have taken that up with the people who provided you transportation to the surface?’

She shrugged off what he considered a very pertinent question and answered with what he recognized as a bald-faced lie of convenience. 'They indicated there should be no problem. It's not as if we can't pay.’

‘That's not the issue,' he told her and gestured grandly around the paper-engulfed cabin. 'This,' he said, 'is the governor's mansion, if you will. The other houses are no bigger. SpaceBase is still out of commission from the quake, or I'd send you there. I'm afraid no house in Kilcoole can accommodate more than two of you at a time, and even that's going to crowd folks. It's not too cold yet though, so there're probably extra blankets enough to go round and floor space by the fire.’

‘Very well,' Portia said. Til stay with Clodagh.’

‘Not so fast,' said Bill Guthrie, from the rival drug company. 'If you stay with her, so do I.’

‘You will both stay where I tell you to,' Sean said severely. 'My niece, Buneka, isn't using her shack right now. You, Mr Guthrie, and you, Mr Valdez, can stay there. Seamus, if you wouldn't mind staying over at the Maloneys', I'll bunk Miss Porter-Pendergrass in with Moira and the kids.’

The male Rourke cousins looked very cheered at that.

‘You gentlemen', he nodded to the five men who claimed to be looking for relatives named Tsering, Romancita, Menendez, Furey and O'Dare respectively, 'can stay with Steve Margolies and Frank Metaxos. There's only the two of them with Diego gone and they've got more floor space than most because they haven't been here long enough to fill it up yet. As for you ladies,' he looked rather hopelessly into the apprehensive faces of the women who introduced themselves as Una Monaghan, Ilyana Salvatore, Dolma Chang, Susan Tsering and Furey's wife, Wild Star, 'I'll have to see.’

‘Excuse me, Governor Shongili.' Una Monaghan stuck up her hand like a schoolchild.

‘Dama?’

‘Well, it seems to me we're causing you a lot of trouble. I never meant to actually. It was just when that man suggested that I might find some of my people… Well, I'm an orphan, you see, and my family line on Terra D died out and, well, what I mean to say is, it looks like you could use help here and I am a file clerk and if it's going to be an awfully long wait well’

‘Me too,' Susan Tsering said. 'I can file too. You look like you need help with this office.’

‘I don't suppose any of you people are teachers?' Sean asked hopefully.

‘I am,' Wild Star Furey said. 'I've been company librarian on Minnehoma Station for the last nine years and I've helped Petaybean and other colonial recruits learn the basics when they come on active duty.’

Sean smiled for the first time. 'Then, ladies, I will find a place to stay myself and you may take over the gubernatorial mansion.’

There was a meow from the top of a stack of papers. 'With the help of the resident paperweight. This is Marduk. He lives here.’

‘What a nice kitty!' Una Monaghan said.

‘But Governor Shongili, what of us? When shall we, how shall we, where shall we meet with the Beneficence?' asked Sister Igneous Rock. Sean had to hand it to the white robes. They had been very patient and quiet throughout the proceedings.

‘You're the ones who should stay with Clodagh,' he decided, knowing that he was probably going to regret it.