Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [55]
“Megenda, stop! Not yet! We have to give them a chance!” Dinah O’Neill cried, tugging at him.
“Quiet, woman. I say we start sending them home in pieces now.”
Yana cocked an eyebrow at Dinah, as if Megenda needed an interpreter. “What’s he on about?”
“Please, please don’t antagonize him any more. The captain reprimanded him, and Megenda’s extremely sensitive. And it was so unfair. Calm down, Megenda! Everyone knows it isn’t your fault. It isn’t anybody’s fault but those callous and uncaring people in your company, Madame Algemeine, and on your planet, Colonel Maddock. I admit, I’m as surprised as anyone. I thought with all of Madame Algemeine’s credits and you newly wedded to your planet’s coadministrator, Colonel, that surely everyone would have been tripping over themselves to pay the ransom. I even sent a little follow-up note, just as a reminder. But so far, we haven’t even had the courtesy of a reply, much less a payment. The captain is so annoyed that there’s no living on the same ship with him. Down, Megenda!”
“I didn’t know,” Yana heard herself remarking, “that his species was capable of annoyance.”
Megenda swung on her, his eyes glinting malevolently, and Dinah O’Neill gave a small squeak as she was dragged forward on his massive arm.
“Colonel Maddock, please. This is no laughing matter,” Dinah cried.
“I know it isn’t,” Yana said quite soberly. “But when the good captain asked me to request the planet for my ransom, he couldn’t know that I have absolutely no control over the planet . . .”
“Now, now, you’re being much too modest. We’ve been told that if you really want to, if you’re really motivated, you and your new groom have the power to assign its mineral and ore deposits—”
“I can’t assign anything for an entity I don’t own, possess, dominate, order,” Yana snapped back. “Nobody even knows what there is to assign.”
Megenda made a move toward her.
“Megenda, just let me talk to these people, please,” Dinah O’Neill said. “They’re reasonable, and they don’t want to be hurt. I know it’s been months since you’ve seen real action, but please be patient.”
Megenda glowered and loomed.
Dinah O’Neill continued. “I hope you aren’t making the mistake of underestimating our organization, Colonel. We have had agents on your planet before, and we know very well that there are deposits of valuable ores available. We also have a good idea how you could obtain them. Nothing makes Megenda more cross than having someone lie to him.”
Yana shook her head carefully, keeping the cough at bay. Now was not a good time to be rendered inarticulate. “If you mean Satok and those other sham shamans, they never were able to mine enough ore to make it lucrative enough to buy their way off the planet, much less provide booty of the magnitude that would really interest Louchard. Of course, I don’t think they had the time, or the opportunity”—Yana was very sure of that, since the demise of the fake shamans had been precipitously effected by the coo-berries—“since the planet evolved some unusual natural defenses to their mining methods. Sounds to me like your captain is just trying to recoup a bad investment since he’s lost their services as illegal miners. Even the company had to see that it s no use trying to mine Petaybee for something it s not willing to give up.”
“Let go of me, woman,” Megenda said trying to shake off Dinah’s tiny beringed hand. “She’s useless Might as well make her walk the plank”
“We don’t have planks anymore, Megenda.”
“Yah, but space is a lot bigger than any puny puddle. We could put her in a suit so she’d have hours to float around and think about what she could have done to make the cap’n happy.”
Yana’s arguments had obviously gone over Megenda’s head, but his attitude only reinforced her feeling that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand the nature of the entity he was dealing with. If even the