Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [58]
“Talks it over with the planet?” Namid’s astonishment was complete and, openmouthed, he looked from Bunny to Dinah and back again to Bunny.
Dinah gave her a pitying look. “Talk to the planet?”
“Go see your relatives,” Namid said, startling everyone, including Dinah. “Well, you always told me that some of your relations, way back, were exiled to Petaybee.”
“That was the rumor I was raised with. Which, I might add, I checked out on the company computer,” Dinah said, then shrugged. “I’m not at all sure I’d trust their records. Or anything about the planet.”
“O’Neill? There are O’Neills at Tanana Bay,” Bunny said, regarding Dinah with a keener interest.
So swiftly did Dinah O’Neill withdraw then that the heavy door panel had whooshed shut before they realized her intention. Megenda and the crewman followed smoothly, and the captives were left alone.
“Now you’ve done it,” Diego said accusingly to Bunny. “We had her . . .”
“I think Bunny may well have done it,” Marmion said quietly and respectfully.
“It’ll take time for Dinah to absorb the fact of her error,” Namid said thoughtfully. “But she’s extremely intelligent and very flexible. She’d have to be to survive so long in this business. She’s usually able to influence Louchard . . .”
“You think she’ll try to talk him into letting us go?” Bunny asked wistfully, her face crumpling into tears. Diego cradled her in his arms, stroking her hair and murmuring little endearments in Spanish.
Marmion dampened the one towel they had in the room and handed it to him to place over the cut on Bunny’s cheek just as Yana began once more to cough.
14
Petaybee
Sean swam with the single-minded fish schools until they reached the lake, where the fish all at once made a silver river into another of the underwater caves. Sean followed. When the water grew too shallow, the fish turned back, and Sean found himself in another dry grotto. As he was changing form, he saw the phosphorescence once more organize into a straight line, this time pointing inland. Once his feet were under him again, he followed it. Though Sean had swum the waterways of Petaybee all his life, these caves and passages were new to him, no doubt a result of the most recent seismic activity. The line of luminescence led him toward the cries for help that at first were only echoes like the one he had heard near Kilcoole, but soon became the faint cries of real voices.
When he turned a corner and saw the five hunters, he almost laughed at the expressions of terrified anger and frustration on their faces. One of them—de Peugh, he thought—had developed a distinct twitch, and his hair had a great deal more white in it than Sean remembered, as well as a tendency to stand straight up. Minkus was gibbering to himself, and Ersol kept looking around the cave and up at the opening they had fallen through as if it were about to eat him. The wooden bows, arrows, and lances that Sinead had substituted for their high-tech rifles were piled together in a little heap, that someone had tried to set on fire for warmth, he supposed, all but the dagger Mooney clutched in his fist as he pointed to Sean and yelled.
“You’re another damned hallucination! Go away! Nobody walks around bare-assed in this weather.”
“We have nothing for you, honestly,” Minkus cried, cringing away. “We gave the rabbit de Peugh had in his pocket to the cat. It would have eaten us otherwise. Please, please don’t harm us!”
Sean glanced apologetically down at his own now-human flesh. “Harm you? What with? I thought you lads wanted help.”
“Oh, we do, we do!” Minkus cried. “We’ve been down here days, weeks, months. It’s been the most horrible nightmare. The walls shift and melt and little lights come on and sometimes I see little volcanoes exploding and then when I look again there’s nothing . . .”
Sean shook his head. “You can’t have been down here more than a few hours. Where’re my sister and the others?”
“They abandoned us to be eaten by wild beasts,” Minkus said.
“Well, we do have a saying here on Petaybee that some days you eat the bear,