Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [109]
Sister Igneous Rock had the quite heretical thought that perhaps the planet might have willed something else if it had been aware of other options—like more fast transportation, easier access to intravenous fluids, just a few basic medical necessities. Clodagh’s medicines could work wonders of recuperation, once the patients got past the critical stage, but fast transit, a source of not-quite-so-spiritual power, and convenient plumbing could do a lot toward remedying many sorts of emergency situations.
And here was all that geothermal energy the planet had to spare. It seemed a shame and a bit of a waste, really. But who was she to say?
She felt less modest about it within the next forty-eight hours, as the shuttle flew back and forth to the South until it was finally grounded for lack of fuel. Meantime, it had fetched patients from the south and taken fuel to Johnny Greene so he could also assist in the airlift. Even though everyone in Kilcoole helped, all of the water carrying, wood chopping, water boiling, heating of irons, lighting of lamps and candles, carrying and disposal of wastes, changing and washing linen—especially since most of it was not linen or anything resembling it, but wool or fur or someone’s down sleeping bag and not that easily washed—left her totally exhausted.
Indeed, under such hard conditions, it took her, along with Agate, Schist, Shale, Clodagh, and Dr. von Clough, who never ceased complaining about the conditions, every waking hour for three days to save two-thirds of the patients. The man who had been the foreman of the work crew in the South died, as did the father of a lost-looking young boy who cried into the coat of a young wildcat while little ’Cita patted him on the back.
The woman from Tanana Bay lived, and the big black man, though just barely, but the other two died. Clodagh said it would be a long haul for her and the other survivors.
The chief engineer on board the Jenny had been uneasy for days. He could run the administrative bits of the ship, but when all the senior officers just took off like that without so much as a by-your-leave, well, what was a bloke to think? Miss Dinah usually passed on the captain’s orders, or Megenda, or failing that Second Mate Dott, but they were all gone now, weren’t they? He’d assumed, naturally, that the captain had stayed on board and sent Miss Dinah off with Dott and Framer. But when he himself had checked the captain’s quarters and discovered them empty, and Louchard nowhere on board, the lads had broken into the Haimacan rum and gotten legless. No one had attempted to clean up the resultant mess, despite his warning that there would be hell to pay when the captain returned.
And now the reckoning was due. There was the captain on the comm screen.
“Good to see you, sir. We thought you was on board wif us, sir, till we noticed you wasn’t, like.”
“Very observant,” came the captain’s gurgly alienish voice from out of his octopussy head with that funny eye channel running all around it. The reason he had Miss Dinah to front for him, everyone reckoned, was that too much looking at the captain would have been bad for morale. “But obviously, I am not there, as I am here on board the shuttle. Our mission is accomplished, but there is still the matter of payment for the Algemeine woman.”
“Framer said as how them high-class people wouldn’t pay no ransom.”
“Framer talked too much. Framer has paid the consequences of indiscretion. Even dignitaries have families who do not wish to see them . . . detained—or to suffer any . . . inconvenience. Besides which, outside parties had an interest in this detention. Patch through the following transmissions to these codes and rendezvous with me at the following coordinates.”
“Aye-aye, sir. And may I say, sir, that it will be good to have you aboard again, sir.”
Torkel Fiske was entertaining aboard his suite in his father’s star-yacht when the call came in on the