Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [5]
“I’m not suggesting you change your style, dear,” Marmion said in a conciliating tone, “and that blouse is certainly lovely, but you can’t appear every day in it. So Sally and I scrounged around to see what would be you as well as, ah . . . not too conspicuously different. Oh . . .” She gave an exasperated sigh as she saw the defiant look on Bunny’s face. “For all I’m supposed to be so diplomatic, I’m not putting this in the right words, am I? But then, where we’re going, one is not often judged by what one is, but what one seems to be. You know what I’m talking about, Colonel Yana dear, don’t you?” And Marmion appealed to Yana on more than the one count she was trying to explain.
“I do, indeed, Marmion.” Yana tried to pull a fold over her belly from the material of her one-piece suit and failed with a laugh. “I’ll need a size larger, I know.”
“Oh, you’re easy to do, Yana,” Marmion said. “Wasn’t she, Sally?”
The aide laughed and nodded. “With trouser pleats for expansion,” she said. “And a tunic tailored just that little bit fuller across the . . . ah . . . hips.”
“It isn’t my hips that worry me,” Yana said with a grin, hoping to clear Bunny’s troubled expression.
“Diego, we’ve ordered you the very latest,” Marmion went on, and then giggled in one of those displays of amusement which charmed her friends. “In fact, the whole operation was a great deal of fun. Why don’t you and Bunny go see what’s in your wardrobes? We’ll still have time to discard what you really can’t possibly be seen in before you have to be seen in it.”
Diego escorted Bunny firmly to the cabins they’d been assigned. Only when the panel had slid shut behind them did Marmion’s expression alter to one of concern.
“You do know what I mean, Yana?”
“Oh, yes, Marmion. I know precisely what you’re trying to do, and so does Diego. He knows the drills. So do I. So, now what? Or do we wait for the others to return before you tell us the bad news?”
“How ever did you know there is some?”
“Because you’re taking such especial pains to make us seem normal, look normal, and yet different enough so we’ll still be ‘original,’ as well as acceptable.”
Marmion, hands loosely clasped in her lap, considered that. “It will not be smooth sailing, although I have every confidence that common sense, at least this once, will prevail. Intergal, as well as other holding companies that have vast numbers of star systems held in fief as Petaybee is, will be watching. The scientifically acute are fascinated by the idea of a sentient planet. You must know that, with all the paper that’s flooded your desk once they had a name to send messages to.”
Yana nodded ruefully. “No kidding. There’s been so much of it I haven’t even begun to read it all, much less answer it. Sean’s been doing a lot of the footwork, I suppose you’d call it, and that leaves Diego as the only other literate person in the north, other than his father and Steve Margolies, who are busy enough with their own work. Loncie Ondelacy is able to do some in the south. Diego’s been teaching Bunny to read and write, but fast as she is, she can’t learn enough in a couple of months to do more than help with alphabetical filing. Most of the letters seem to be from people who want to come to Petaybee for some reason or the other—I can’t believe there’s so many out there all of a sudden when the planet’s been so quiet for years.
“We’ve had several inquiries from drug companies, too, and I have no idea how Clodagh’s cures can be reproduced at this point. Even with a good growing season this year, the planet so far has provided just about enough to keep native Petaybeans supplied. If we’re actually going to try to farm some of Clodagh’s plants and produce her cures for a wider population, we’ll have to do it in some way that doesn’t overtax Petaybee. Clodagh’s not even sure, at this