Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [118]
“As if we dared take Namid away from his educational duties with Petaybee!” Then he pointed. “Ah, the best is about to begin.”
After the custom of latchkay singings on Petaybee, Buneka Rourke accompanied Diego Metaxos to the dais.
“Diego has a song to sing,” she said with more than her customary dignity, and the assembled Petaybeans settled down to listen.
Diego’s song was different from any other Petaybean song. It was neither a chant nor an old Irish melody with new words, but a tune all his own, with Irish influences and Spanish and the beat of the Inuit as well, but also hints of the music of the other peoples of Petaybee and parts beyond. It spoke of growth and change, pain and discovery, the pain that had accompanied the awakening of the planet, the near-death of his father, the actual deaths of others, the cost of too much change too quickly to Petaybee, but how good a thing the change could be if it altered someone as it had Dinah O’Neill. And lastly, it spoke of his fear of change if it meant losing Bunny. He concluded with a hope that he could be like the planet and let the changes awaken himself and his beloved to lives limitless in possibility for adventure and love.
There was a chorus to this song, with its repetitive theme of change and growth, and on every chorus, the voices of the people were joined by another voice, a big, melodious, joyous voice that contained all of theirs in a resonance of its own.
The kaleidoscope turns
The patterns change
All we learn
That once was strange
Some will go and some will stay
Some will cling, some turn away
Some will wither some will grow
New friends come and old friends go
Seeds and saplings, kit and pup
Some grow down and some grow up
Some fly away and some touch down
While Petaybee planet spins around . . .
The “around” echoed particularly long and happily throughout the rest of the latchkay.
EPILOGUE
Oddly enough, it was the word “come” invading her dreamless sleep as an undeniable imperative that woke Yana. And the rumbling purr of the orange cat, Marduk, unexpectedly sitting right beside her head on the pillow. She felt the muscles in her belly shifting, not painfully, but definitely contracting, and she woke Sean. The cat jumped off the bed and stood imperiously by the door—as if she hadn’t guessed what needed to be done.
“It’s time. I’ve been called,” she said.
He was up and half-dressed before she could swing her legs to the side of the bed. But then, advanced pregnancy had slowed her once-quick, precise movements to awkward fumblings, which she sometimes resented.
Sean grabbed up the fine polar-bear rug that Loncie had given her and threw it about her shoulders. He picked up the satchel that contained the necessary items and opened the door.
Nanook was there, and Clodagh had her foot on the bottom step.
“I wondered . . .” she began, smiling in the dawn light up at Yana.
When Yana and Sean reached the ground—the path to the cave well trampled in preparation for this moment—Clodagh moved to her other side. “Do you feel like walking?” Clodagh asked.
“It’s good for me.”
“Yes, but is it what you feel like doing?”
“Well, I have to walk as far as the cave, don’t I?”
“Yes,” Sean said. “That you must do.”
Looking sideways, Yana saw that Sean’s lips were tight against the anxiety he was feeling.
“It’s okay, Sean,” she said gently, patting his hand. “It’s really okay. Hell, we know I’ve never been fitter.”
“But you are not, so Sister Iggierock says, in your first youth.”
“Iggierock has learned a great deal,” Clodagh said with a chuckle.
And then they were in the cave, which began to glow, a soft lambent shine, welcoming, soothing, and the little twitch of apprehension that Yana had so vocally denied eased.
I believe in you, she told the planet. I believe in you.
“I believe in you,” the planet echoed reassuringly.
“Oh, I believe,” Sean said beside her. He must have thought the planet was speaking to him, she reflected.