Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [59]
“We’ll follow you back the way you came,” Mooney said.
Sean grinned. “Not unless you can hold your breath for a very long time. How’d you get down here?”
“We fell!” Ersol pointed to the hole, far above them. With the arrival of someone who was probably able to extricate them from their captivity, his dignity was restored. “We were lucky we weren’t bloody killed. We could sue . . .”
Sean laughed harder. “Sue what? The planet? You are, to all legal intents and purposes, trespassing on private property. Very private property.”
“Private . . . vat . . . vat . . . vat . . .” The walls echoed.
“But we applied for hunting licenses,” Minkus complained shrilly.
“Which were not yet granted, I must warn you. Nor would they have been. However, follow me.”
Sean had spotted the dotted line that Petaybee had illuminated to guide him and now struck out through the remainder of the underground passage leading away from the lake.
“Hey, man, how come you’re not wearing anything?” Ersol asked, staring at him.
“I, er, was swimming when I heard you yelling for help,” Sean said.
“Why aren’t you freezing?” Minkus demanded. Clotworthy was also staring in disbelief at their savior.
“Oh.” Sean shrugged, looking down himself as if he might have changed shape since he last looked. “Adaptation to Petaybee. And it’s not all that cold down here, you know. You wouldn’t have frozen to death by any manner or means.”
“No, just died of starvation,” Mooney said, licking his lips.
“Not that either,” Sean said, “but I’m sure we can find you something to eat when we get where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?”
All five had fallen in a single line behind him as he strode purposefully through the passage, the little line of phosphorescence popping out just ahead of them. Petaybee was full of new tricks these days, he thought with no small degree of wonder. New passages, new ways of communicating direction, and that extremely idiosyncratic and erratic echo.
“All I know for right now is that we’re getting out of here. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine,” Sean said.
“Now . . . guess . . . guess.”
“Oh, frag, there it is again. That voice! Once it sounded like it was crying some woman’s name. Listen. What is it?” Mooney demanded on a semihysterical note. He crouched down, brandishing his dagger, his eyes showing whites all the way around like a spooked curly’s.
“Petaybee,” Sean replied amiably, without breaking stride. The others rushed to keep up with him. He really must discover how to bring clothing with him when he went selkie-ing. Despite his disclaimer, the temperature was not all that high in these tunnels.
“Does it do that often? Echo you?”
“It wasn’t echoing me.”
“It wasn’t?” Ersol lost his pomposity again.
“If it wasn’t,” Minkus said with the edge of fear in his voice, “who’s speaking?”
“I told you—Petaybee.”
“Petaybee!”
“Now, see here, Shongili, that was an echo.”
“Was it?”
“Petaybee.”
“Oh, my gawd!” Ersol said, his voice quavering badly. “Lemme outta here!”
“It can’t be far now. The passage is getting narrower and sloping up—we should be reaching the surface soon,” Sean said encouragingly.
And they did. Walking up an incline, they emerged from the side of a hill into a cool snow-laden wind; Sean required all his physical control to resist visibly shivering.
“Hey, Shongili, I don’t care what you say, your goose bumps just got goose bumps. Here—” Ersol threw a sweater around Sean’s shoulders. “You got some spare pants in your pack, don’t you, Clotworthy? Mooney, break out a pair of socks, at least.”
They paused long enough to put Sean into minimal coverings and then continued down the slope. They emerged onto a small height and a clump of wind-raked bushes to stare down at the lake, its edges now frozen, on the other side of where Sinead had left them.
“Hey, isn’t that your sister?” Ersol cried, pointing to some figures on the verge.
Somehow “your sister” sounded like a nasty epithet. Sean ignored the