Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [104]
“I was only demonstrating how the planet feels. You were cutting and pulling, too, you know, and you are very lucky that Petaybee saw you save the cub.”
Yo Chang gave her a sour, jaundiced glance, rubbing the outraged spot of the pinch. “You didn’t have to demonstrate so hard.”
“I did because that is how we learn how the planet feels,” she replied. “You’re much luckier than they are!”
The shrieks and howls were beginning to diminish.
“They’re not dead, are they?” Yo Chang asked most urgently.
“I don’t think so,” ’Cita said, though she couldn’t be sure. “Why?”
“My—my—father is not a bad person. Not really,” Yo Chang said, his round face and eyes entreating. “We are all forced to work hard at what we do for those who dispatch us to where we must harvest plants. If we do not work hard, and if my father does not make his crew work hard, then the quotas are not filled and we do not get the rations which only hard workers deserve.”
Neither youngster would have understood the idea of being paid in credit notes, for both had toiled long and hard hours just to get enough food to fill their stomachs.
“It is hard,” ’Cita agreed, nodding her head approvingly, “to get enough to eat. Since Coaxtl found me, I have been eating so well I will soon be as fat as Clodagh.” She patted her stomach with great satisfaction. “Everyone feeds me now: Coaxtl, Clodagh, my sister, my aunties and uncles and cousins in their homes. They are very fair about the distribution of food on the plate.”
She nodded her head once more in emphasis. But thinking of the food she had shared with Sinead and Sean and Bunny reminded ’Cita that it had been a long time since she had eaten. She also wondered if the call for help had reached anyone. Not, she hastily corrected herself, that Petaybee had not come to their rescue. It had provided ample shelter and water, although one had to be careful not to drink too much water or one could get a stomach colic, which twisted the guts very uncomfortably.
Coaxtl emitted a slight snore, and Yo Chang leaned toward ’Cita. “Does he . . .”
“Coaxtl is a female personage,” ’Cita informed him repressively.
“Does she really talk to you?”
“Not in loud words like you and I are using,” ’Cita said, “but I understand exactly what she says to me.”
Yo Chang looked down at the sleeping cub in his arms. “Then, if I heard the name Montl, the cub was telling me his name?’
“Quite likely,” ’Cita said, delighting in playing the expert.
The moans and sobbings had died down to a low enough murmur that ’Cita decided she could get some sleep.
“We may be a while longer,” she told Yo Chang as she rearranged herself against Coaxtl’s long warm body. “You’d better rest.”
“Can I go see if my father’s all right?” Yo Chang asked timidly.
“He’ll be feeling very sorry for himself, I shouldn’t wonder,” ’Cita said, settling. “Sometimes, my aunt Sinead says, when people are hurting they’ll lash out at anyone else to make them hurt, too.”
Yo Chang gulped but resolutely deposited the sleeping cub by ’Cita before he made his way down to where the sufferers were enduring their penance. She was half-asleep when she heard him return, stifling sobs.
“Your father?”
“Lives, but looks like a grandfather. He doesn’t seem to know me.”
She patted his shoulder awkwardly and pulled him down, putting her thin arm over him so that he lay between her and Coaxtl and Montl the cub. She didn’t need to tell him that life was sometimes hard.
Namid felt a pang of anxiety. Though Dinah certainly merited discipline, even incarceration for their abduction, he didn’t wish her harm. And he did need to know more about her activities, with or without the holo of Captain Onidi Louchard. Perhaps it had been Megenda who was Louchard, although the first mate had never appeared to Namid as a man of sufficient cunning and intelligence to contrive the piratical activities that had made Louchard’s name feared all over the galaxy.
If Dinah could give him any mitigating circumstances—beyond what he already knew of her tragic early life and