Powers that Be

Chapter 16

Yana and Torkel dragged Giancarlo back to the uncertain safety of the boulder, the three of them hostage to the hot mud surrounding them. Yana bound up Giancarlo's pulped arm and leg, but the heat of the mud and flying rock had pretty well cauterized the wounds inflicted by the blast-or so she would have to hope, she thought ruefully. The colonel would be lucky to live long enough to get infections.

Torkel had taken a worse beating than she, for although her back was pretty well skinned, her hair hadn't been as badly singed and her scalp hadn't been peppered with ash because she'd had sense enough to protect her head. Torkel's face was scored and swollen where rock had hit it before she had pulled him down, and he was ravaged with grief besides.

She had had to prod him painfully to get him to move enough to help her with Giancarlo.

"Look, Torkel," she said in her best bracing tone. "If your dad survived the crash and the first blast, it's likely he survived I he second one, as well. At any rate, we can't do anything about it one way or the other unless we survive. Here, eat this so we do!" She thrust a battered ration pack at him, somewhat amazed that the wrapping was still intact. It seemed years ago that she had stuffed them in the front of her shirt.

She wasn't sure when she slept, but she knew that sometime within that interminable period, the searing heat from the mud dissipated and the sunless air grew cold again. She and Torkel Fiske put the unconscious Giancarlo between them and hunched over him, sharing their warmth with him. In her sleep she dreamed that she was holding Scan rather than Torkel, and he was bathing her wounds with water from the hot springs, telling her, "I'm here, Yana. Trust me. Nothing of this world means you harm. Listen to its voice. Remember now…"

The dream and others like it repeated as she slept or half dozed, shivering, clinging to the warmth and life in the two other bodies for more time than she could count or was conscious of.

Then, without knowing how or when it happened, she woke from the dream of Scan, feeling warm again. She smelled a freshening in the air and realized that her hand was touching something cool, hard, and smooth; and, rousing, she found that she was touching the once scalding mud.

Torkel was still sleeping, and Giancarlo moaned in a fever. Yana sat up and placed both palms against the mud. The sensation wasn't unpleasant. It still retained some warmth, but was otherwise hard and seemed stable. Standing, she tested other areas, pressing her fingers into the layer of ash overlying the previously steaming rivulet. It gave with a slight hiss and a hint of smokiness, but once the crust was broken, solid hard mud was only an inch or two down. She carefully hauled herself up on top of the flow and found that it held her weight.

The air was clearer. She could definitely smell and see the difference at this height. A strong wind whipped at her, blowing the ash back away from them and over to the north and east. Torkel sat up and blinked lashless eyes at the sudden change. Yana rubbed cautiously at her arms, avoiding the burn blisters but needing to increase blood circulation and reduce hypothermia. She was glad of the visibility, glad of the ability to travel again, if only they knew where they were going. Then she opened the remaining ration pack, twisted it into two more or less equal halves, and let him choose.

"We'll have to drag Giancarlo," she told Torkel when they had finished their scanty meal.

"He'll slow us down," Torkel said.

"You want to leave him?" she asked. She didn't like being directly responsible for anyone's death. On the other hand, if she was to be responsible for someone dying here, she wouldn't much mind if it was Giancarlo.

Torkel looked down at the colonel, then shruggedand bent to hoist him by the arms up the wall of mud, where Yana helped support the unconscious man.

"We'd better get him back to where a copter can land, I hen." Yana said.

But he shook his head stubbornly, unreasonably. "Dad may still be out here."

"You can come back afterward," she insisted.

But just then a fresh gust of wind from the west carried a raven toward them. The bird swooped, diving so low that its wing brushed Yana's hair.

Its cry was no doubt only the usual raucous caw, but to her, wounded, shocked, and probably a little delirious, it seemed to be saying " 'ana, 'ana," or maybe it was "Sean, Sean." Then it made an abrupt turn and flew back the way it came. Abruptly she recalled Sean's dream message.

"Okay, you win," she told Torkel. "But we spell each other dragging the son of a bitch and you get first shift."

She was pleased when the crow's west eventually turned out to be the right direction. Even so, both she and Torkel were at the end of their strength from dragging Giancarlo's heavy and unresponsive body when she caught the first gleam of open water. She hadn't realized how parched she was until that moment. Then her throat took over, reminding her that she was so dehydrated it didn't know if it would ever come unstuck. Up closer, Yana saw that the water was a little stream, running from one edge of the mud and on into the side of a hill. Yana fully expected the water to be milky with ash and mud and clogged with debris, but in fact it was so clear she could see the stones at the bottom. Somehow this stretch had escaped all of the ravages of the volcano. Where the stream emerged from the hill, she could make out a deep, cavelike opening, into which her crow guide disappeared as she watched.

Judging by the way the ash had drifted, Bunny thought that the wind had been westerly for some time, possibly the entire two and a half days it had taken them to make it this far. Nanook even began to touch down on the mud from time to time, and when the humans walked on it, they felt only a tolerable warmth through the soles of their boots. It certainly wasn't hot enough to damage the snowshoes, which were proving their worth through the heavier ash deposits.

They were moving steadily to one side of the smoldering cone. Smoke or steam was windborne away from them to the east, so that the air was not so clogged with ash and sulfur stench.

Seen from this safe distance, the volcano didn't, to Bunny's way of thinking, look all that dangerous. It was actually not very big.

"It doesn't have to be big to be dangerous," Steve said when she voiced her observation. "I'm no expert on vulcanism-Petaybee is not supposed to be labile," he added in a sourly amused tone, "but, on a world which does have considerable activity, a volcano can rise up one day and disappear the next. After raining ash, lava, rock, or whatever all across a landscape. We're just lucky this is only an ash-and-mud type. Some rise for the one blowoff and then remain dormant."

"Is this one dormant now?" Bunny asked, eyeing it nervously.

"We hope," Steve said with a grin.

"Clodagh?" Bunny persisted.

Clodagh shrugged and plowed on tirelessly. Nanook skirted a vast lake of hardening mud that steamed more than did most of the rivulets and puddles of the stuff.

The volcano was almost out of sight behind them, obscured by the foothills, when Nanook suddenly picked up the pace, from an amble to a working lope. Then, abruptly, he halted at a fast-running stream to lap up the clear water. The others were glad to follow his example.

Clodagh did more than drink: she immersed her face in the stream. She was so long about it that Bunny got worried, but when she finally lifted her dripping head, she wore a broad smile.

"That way," she said, pointing uphill in a more northerly direction as she wiped her face, leaving dark gray smudges on her forehead and down her cheeks.

Ash clung to all their clothing and rendered their complexions ghostly gray.

"Let me see if I can get a message through, Clodagh," Steve said, starting to unsling his radio equipment.

"Not now," she said, shaking her head, and began to follow the stream. Steve shrugged and resettled the radio equipment.

The stream disappeared into a narrow opening at the bottom of the first terrace of the cliff. When Clodagh indicated that they would have to climb, they discarded the snowshoes. Bunny marveled that Clodagh calmly prepared herself to climb, hitching her skirts high enough so that her sturdy legs, clad in woolen pants knitted in a variety of quite lively colors, were visible. She was slow, true enough, but she made certain progress upward. Nanook reached the top of the terrace in three graceful leaps, Dinah scrabbling close behind him. Fortunately they didn't have all that far to go. On the second terrace, Nanook turned to his right and led them around an escarpment, ducked into a hole in the stone, and disappeared from sight. Only then did Clodagh groan, for she would have to go down on hands and knees to follow the big cat. She did.

Once inside, they could all stand up again. Clodagh paused, leaning against the wall to catch her breath. Bunny thought the pace was telling on the large woman. It was certainly beginning to wear Bunny down a bit, and she was much more used to running about than Clodagh.

"Hey, this is like the other place," Diego said, looking about him. A curious luminescence gave enough light for them to see.

"Quite a few subterranean networks did appear on the last scan that was made of this planet," Steve was saying as he examined the rock walls, wiping off a light film, which he rubbed between his fingers. "They weren't on previous ones, but they do account for the subsidences. Or do they? Most unusual. I wish Frank had been well enough to travel with us. He's more familiar with such geological anomalies than I am." He walked on a few more strides before he stopped completely, forcing Diego, walking behind him, to hurriedly step aside. "Or perhaps there was a flaw in the original terraforming that has produced unforeseen long-range crustal defects. A shame that Dr. Fiske was killed on the shuttle crash."

"We don't know that for certain," Bunny said. "Only that Captain Fiske was going to try to find his father, so he could still be alive."

"Is Fiske's father the company big shot who's supposed to know more about Petaybee than anyone else?" Clodagh asked, pausing to lean against the stone.

"Yes," Steve said. "He's Dr. Whittaker Fiske, grandson of the Dr. Sven Whittaker-Fiske who developed the Whittaker Effect, the process that perfected the accelerated terraforming technique used to make Petaybee habitable." When Clodagh gave Steve a long and thoughtful look, he corrected himself. "Or at least he thought he had perfected it."

"Why didn't he name it the Fiske Effect then?" Bunny asked.

"He named it for his mother, Dr. Elsie Whittaker. I guess he thought it was appropriate, considering the generative nature of the project."

Clodagh gave a satisfied grunt and, pushing herself off the wall, was about to move forward again when she stopped, holding her hand up for silence. "Listen!"

The sounds were muted but obviously human. Bunny and Sinead dashed forward, Diego, with Dinah at his heels, just behind them. The voices had suddenly risen in excitement, and as Bunny turned the next bend, she stopped in surprise. Nanook had found Yana and was attempting to lick any part of her he could!

"Yana! You're alive!" Bunny cried, but she had taken no more than one step before she realized that Yana was not the only inhabitant of the large, low cave. And judging by the way the camp had been set up, Yana and her companions had been here a few days. "Who're all of you?" she demanded.

A sturdy man in a torn uniform and a bandage covering almost all his black hair stood up by the fire, where he had been stirring a pot. "Captain John Greene of the shuttle Sockeye," he said with a wry smile. "Who're you?"

"Buneka Rourke of Kilcoole," Bunny said in stunned courtesy.

"From Kilcoole? Of all the bloody luck," groaned a disgruntled voice, and a battered, blistered, half-naked, filthy man barely recognizable as the dapper Torkel Fiske rose painfully from his seat on the ground. He placed himself protectively between the rescue party and an older man, who had one arm bound across his chest.

Before either Bunny or Sinead could respond to Torkel's hostile reaction, Steve Margolies, and Diego, and an excitedly barking Dinah rushed into the cavern, followed more slowly by Clodagh.

To the man behind him, Torkel said, "Just keep calm, Dad. I'll handle this. These are the rebels I was telling you about. The ones who brainwashed Maddock into helping them."

"Nonsense, son," the older man said, stepping gently but firmly past his tottering son. "That's Steve Margolies there, and Frank Metaxos's boy, Diego. They're no more rebels than I am."

"Dr. Fiske," Steve exclaimed, rushing toward the older man and pumping his good hand excitedly. "I can't believe you survived."

"Neither can I," the older Fiske replied in a droll voice.

"Dr. Fiske, in the past few days, Diego and these people have showed me the most amazing developments. You simply won't believe what I have to tell you…"

"I'll be the judge of that," Dr. Fiske said. "Stop posturing for a moment, son, and sit down before you fall down." He gently pushed Torkel back to the floor. "And for the love of Mike let these people clean you up and dress your wounds. You're no damned good to me dead. You, young Diego, lend me a hand here to clean up my son's wounds before they fester. I've only got the one that's useful now, myself. I'll debrief Dr. Margolies."

"Yes, sir," Diego said, taking over the bowl of water and the cloth. Having learned a few things from caring for his father, Diego went about the duty both gently and conscientiously, cleansing the portions of Torkel's body that Torkel couldn't have reached. The captain wearily protested every dab, as if Diego were deliberately trying to inflict more pain than was absolutely necessary. Diego's private opinion was visible on his face: the captain was acting like a big baby.

Dr. Fiske settled down to one side of Torkel, and Steve hunkered down and began talking in a rapid-fire explanation full of words Bunny didn't understand even when she could make them out.

Yana caught Clodagh's eye and urgently beckoned the healer over, indicating Giancarlo's bundled figure on the ground by her feet.

Clodagh examined the colonel's terrible burn wounds briefly, pursing her lips at the irremedial damage.

"I can do something to make him comfortable, no more," she said, shaking her head. "Intergal may know something." She started to work, pulling various unguents and potions, bandages and splints from her knapsack.

Yana would never have expected to be sorry for a man like Giancarlo, but she was. Hurting as badly as he was, he had not uttered a sound.

For herself, Yana was so glad to see Clodagh and the others from Kilcoole that she could have cried. She and Torkel had made it to the cave several hours before, and she had been unutterably relieved to see the shuttle crash survivors. However, once Torkel had reassured himself that his father was safe, he began ranting about Yana's treachery and warning the shuttle crew to ignore anything she might say and to watch her. Considering the fact that Yana had obviously taken on most of the physical burden of dragging Giancarlo, as well as supporting Torkel, as they staggered into the cave, the shuttle crew didn't pay much attention to his ravings. Still, the atmosphere had been extremely tense. Even the cave itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something. The calm before the storm? Yana wondered. A lull before the mountain blew again? It didn't feel exactly like that, and she was too tired to analyze the feeling, but it definitely added to the tension.

Once Clodagh finished ministering to the unconscious Giancarlo, she rounded on Yana, clucking over the scabby sores crusting Yana's left arm and over her appearance in general.

"When did you eat last, girl?" Clodagh demanded.

"I had a piece of ration bar just before we got here," Yana said.

"You look like you could eat a whole moose by yourself and sleep for a month. You were skinny as a skeleton when you got to Kilcoole, but we fattened you up good. Now you look like a lame doe after a hard winter again."

Yana jerked her arm away from Clodagh. "Don't fuss over me. I'm all right. There are others who could really use your help, Clodagh." She nodded beyond her to others wearing makeshift bandages. "The shuttle survivors have been here for three days, and they've had zip to look after themselves with. All they could do for Dr. Fiske was immobilize his arm and wash off his wounds."

"Is that him over there Steve's talkin' to?" Clodagh asked. When Yana nodded Clodagh said wryly, "He looks better off than Torkel to me."

Sinead joined the two women then, her face anxious. "Have you seen him?" she asked Yana. "I thought he'd be with you."

"No, if you mean Scan," Yana said with an odd smile. "But I'll tell you both something. We didn't find them"-and she gestured to the crash victims-"we were led to them."

Hope bounced back into Sinead's eyes. "Led to this place?"

Yana nodded. "What's more, they swear they were led here, too. I can only think of one person not here at the moment who might have engineered this rescue, and I've been wondering, Sinead, how the hell he did it." Her eyes were keen on the other woman's face. "Dr. Fiske told Torkel he believes that there's an underground network of rivers. That's why there were so many subsidences when the mining charges weakened subterranean supports. If there's a network, one river flowing into another, then someone who knew his way around could go from one end of the system to the other without ever being seen-couldn't he?"

Sinead gave Yana a long look. "If there was such a network, that's possible, I suppose. I don't go underground much. 1 like horizons." Then she reached to heave her pack off her back and began rummaging in it. "I've got spare clothes you can use. And some stuff Clodagh will want."

"No one looked beyond this cavern?" Clodagh asked with quiet urgency.

Yana shook her head. "We'd enough to do without going exploring!"

"That's as well," Clodagh said with a satisfied snort, and asked Yana who was the worst of the injured. She cleansed, stitched, anointed, and listened as gradually the two separate incidents were reported in detail.

The shuttle had been on the point of landing when the volcano blast had caught it, throwing the vehicle heavily to its side. Nine passengers had not survived the impact, but the others, hastily mobilized by the resourceful young pilot, Captain Greene, had got the living out of the shuttle before the air locks were submerged. They had managed to leave the area, the hot mud only centimeters from their heels as they plunged out of the western end of the valley. They had paused only to distribute supplies and attend to burns, scalds, and broken bones, before force-marching themselves as far from the erupting volcano as their strength would take them. The wind was easterly: they had picked the only safe direction to flee. And that had been only by chance, since the pilot had thought he was directing them toward the mining site that had been their destination, but a knock on the head, from the crash landing, had skewed his sense of direction.

"Remarkable that we were all led to this particular spot," Steve Margolies said. "This appears to be the opening of a vast system of caves. The two parties could have ended up in widely separated spots. Are there other entrances to this particular cavern?" he asked, glancing toward the back of the cavern.

Greene shrugged. "Could be. We didn't need to explore with that fresh stream right outside."

"We'll return later, properly equipped, and do a thorough investigation," Dr. Fiske said in a firm command tone. "Right now, we'd better report these coordinates and get our wounded back to SpaceBase. I believe this may be one of the places for which our teams have been searching all these years. Dr. Margolies, I trust you brought some means of communication with the base, didn't you?"

"Of course, of course," Steve said. He jumped to his feet. "We'll have to go outside and get some height for the best possible signal-" Then he stopped, as Torkel latched on to the comm set at his belt and hauled himself wearily to his feet, using Steve to balance himself.

"I initiate any communications," Torkel said curtly. Then he caught his father's frown and managed a ghost of his old diplomatic smile for Margolies. "That is, I'll report in while you and my father continue the debriefing."

Captain Greene nodded to the least injured of his crewmen, a short black man, who helped Steve and the rumbling Torkel untangle the comm set from Steve's belt.

"And while you're exercising your jaw, Dr. Fiske, I'll just see to your arm," Clodagh told the scientist. She crouched down in front of him and began untying the sling.

"Dama, I've waited this long," Fiske said with great dignity, resisting her ministrations. "I can certainly- Ouch! How did you do that?" He stared at his newly set arm and then at Clodagh, eyes wide with respect.

"It's a knack I've developed," she said. Then she dipped a length of bandage in a pot of her boneset potion and quickly and deftly wrapped the area about the break. By the time she had done that and rinsed her hands off, the bandage had hardened. "This will be more comfortable for you until you get back."

"But this hardened… I don't believe this," Fiske said, tapping the shell experimentally.

Gently but firmly taking his arm again, she replaced it in the sling and tied it across his chest. Then she began to undo the blood-soaked bandage on his thigh.

"This wants stitching," she said, examining the gaping wound.

"It's been cleaned and dressed," Fiske said testily, inhaling quickly at the sight of his parted flesh.

"That was well done," Clodagh agreed, and let a handful of a moist salve slip onto the wound.

Fiske started to hiss and then stopped in surprise. "That didn't hurt."

"Medicine need not hurt, or taste bad, to be effective. Never did know who started that stupid old superstition," she said with all the scorn of an experienced practitioner. From another packet she took a needle already threaded and began to make neat sutures.

Despite an initial distaste, Fiske gradually became fascinated by her swift movements. "Where did you get your training?" he asked respectfully.

"Living on Petaybee teaches you many useful things," she said serenely, and tied off the last stitch. "Not perhaps what your medical folk might use, but it works. That's all we ask of any medicine, isn't it?" she added. "Anywhere else?"

He had a less serious laceration farther down the leg, and she put in two neat sutures to close that. Then she applied a wet aromatic compress to the swollen, bruised flesh of his ankle.

While Torkel and the crewman called for a copter and Clodagh fussed over Dr. Fiske, Yana helped Bunny warm up some of the provisions the rescue party had brought with them. By the time a rich meaty stew had been reconstituted with water and was simmering in a flight helmet stripped of its lining, Clodagh had finished administering to Whittaker Fiske. Yana offered the old man some of the stew, and he thanked her without a hint of his son's surliness.

Yana had tood for Clodagh, as well, and put it into the healer's hands with a firmness and a look in her eye that told Clodagh that she had better eat or else!

"Is it just that I am very hungry and tired of energy bars, or is this really as good as it tastes?" Whittaker Fiske asked amiably.

"Hunger is a good sauce," Clodagh said. "Here's a spot of seasoning that'll add an extra zap to it." From her capacious medicine bag, she took an herb bottle and sprinkled some powder into his bowl and hers, then offered it to Yana.

Settling down beside her, Yana grinned around her spoon. "Clodagh's far too modest, Dr. Fiske. Food generally tastes better on Petaybee because most of it's fresh! Even the frozen stuff."

"I thought the growing season was a little short for that," Whittaker Fiske said, chewing thoughtfully.

"Yes," Clodagh said. "But we get more daylight than usual during our growing season, so things get big fast. And the fishes and animals we eat grow all year round."

"And maybe you have a lot of access to hydroponic gardens on the space stations, Dr. Fiske," Yana said, "but to me anything that hasn't been freeze-dried and stored in a food locker for several ship-years tastes downright ambrosial."

They had just finished eating when Torkel and the crewman returned to the cavern, Torkel's step somewhat more confident than it had been.

"All right, everyone, gather what you want to take with you," he began.

"Not much of that," one of the crash survivors muttered.

"There's a jumbo copter on the way with medical staff," he continued, frowning as he tried to identify the wit. Then he saw that Yana was sitting next to his father. "Maddock, you're to consider yourself under arrest."

Yana looked up at him quizzically.

"Oh, come now, Torkel," his father said with some asperity. "Surely you can't hold any of these people, least of all Major Maddock, responsible for Petaybee's geological vagaries! I tell you quite frankly your allegations have no scientific foundation."

"Sir, you manage the planet and I'll manage the investigation. Maddock's turned against the company and is actively aiding the-"

"Who, you say, make their headquarters in Kilcoole?" Fiske asked in a mild tone, looking up at his son who towered over him. "The same town that organized this very efficient, if unorthodox"-and he smiled at Clodagh-"rescue party? I find that hard to believe."

Clodagh chuckled, and Torkel gave a deep, disgusted sigh and sank down beside his father.

"You wanted me to get to the bottom of the team disappearances… sir," Torkel said with exaggerated patience in a hoarse weary voice, "and the biological anomalies on this planet. You saw that big cat that came with these people, the one that's even now sunning itself on the ledge outside this cave? And keeping watch, I wouldn't doubt. That cat's one of those same anomalies. It's one of Shongili's little pets, and there'll be no mention of such a breed in your files. Major Yanaba Maddock's been thick with Shongili since shortly after she arrived here, and I believe she's fallen under his influence and become his accomplice. I don't have Shongili, but I do have Maddock, and with her in custody I'll get my hands on Shongili, too."

Fiske raised his hand to silence Torkel, but he looked directly into Yana's eyes.

"Are you guilty as charged, Yanaba Maddock?"

"Me, sir? No, sir," Yana replied with a wry smile. "Trouble is your son didn't like hearing what I had to report."

"Sir, this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the situation," Torkel continued in a low, strained tone, his eyes boring into Yana as if his stare could force her to silence. "It's not what it seems!"

"I'll go along with that," Yana said fervently.

"Sometimes when you create life, it does not fit the form you chose for it," Clodagh said with an enigmatic smile at Whittaker Fiske.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dr. Fiske asked, frowning.

"You'll be given to understand that soon." She rose, putting an end to that subject. "Come, Yana, we must speak to Sinead. She, and perhaps Bunny, better drive those curly-coats back. They won't find much to eat around here now that volcano's finished."

"The volcano's finished erupting? How can you know that?" Fiske tried to get up, but he was stiff from sitting so long and couldn't stop her.

"She's bad as the rest of them, Dad," Torkel said, looking rather pleased that Clodagh had damned herself out of her own mouth.

"Bad?" Whittaker Fiske exclaimed. "Bad doesn't come into this, son! Margolies, a word with you!" He limped over to Steve, who, with Diego, was helping get some of the injured ready for transfer.

Yana remained near Clodagh. Captain Greene snagged Torkel to organize an orderly transfer of the survivors from their cave refuge to the nearest possible copter landing site, and that kept the captain occupied. There was a flurry of activity when the copters arrived, stretcher bearers whipping back and forth, people getting loaded. Yana noticed Clodagh in deep conversation with Sinead, Greene, and Bunny, but she thought nothing of it. She just made damned sure she stayed out of Torkel's way, a task made easier

when Greene strong-armed the exhausted man aboard the copter while insisting on giving him a preliminary report.

"I left my medicine bag in the cave," Clodagh said just as the last folk were waiting to load up.

"Sure thing," Yana said, turning back to the cavern entrance. But inside, she found Sinead, apparently gathering up the last of the debris. Sinead smiled at her, an odd sort of smile, and then Yana heard voices in the passageway.

"It is something that you must see right now, Dr. Fiske," Clodagh was saying as she entered the cavern, the scientist limping impatiently beside her, "to begin to understand what Petaybee is beneath the surface you folk gave it."

"Beneath the-what are you talking about, woman?" Fiske, anxious to return to SpaceBase, was getting grumpy. "Are we going to miss the copter?"

"It will wait," Clodagh said easily, and Yana realized that the big woman had come on a mission that had an urgent purpose extending beyond the initial search and rescue.