Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [74]
“Oh, did you hear that, Pablo?” Johnny asked. “They’ll pay us handsomely. I could get my copter door repaired, and you and Loncie could reinsulate your hacienda.”
“I don’t know, Captain Johnny,” Pablo said, shaking his head. “Once the secret is sold, it is no longer a secret, and it is very dangerous.”
Loncie grabbed her husband’s arm. “We could build new bedrooms for our fourteen youngest offspring, corazón,” she said.
’Cita looked up at her curiously. Loncie and Pablo had only Carmelita and Isabella.
“That is true,” Pablo said. “Very well. But we are Petaybeans, remember, and you gentlemen perhaps should not risk your lives professionally. It must be said that taking polar bear balls is done only when one has dire personal need, as I did. The secret, you see, is . . .” He beckoned the man forward and whispered fairly loudly in his ear. “The polar bear must be alive when you take his balls. You sneak up behind the bear and quickly tie a string around his balls. Then you must follow him around until they drop off.”
“Why not just kill the bear and harvest the balls?” Zing Chi asked, not whispering.
Johnny pretended to be shocked. “You didn’t tell him that part, did you, Pablo? Well, I guess as long as the bear’s out of the bag, you ought to know. My great-granddad, when he first came to Petaybee, needed bear balls but he was in a big hurry and he killed the bear. He got what he wanted okay but only used it once before he dropped dead in bed. Did die happy, though.”
“And have we the correct ingredient for youthfulness?”
Johnny looked at the list sideways and smirked. “Cat whiskers? Who was the joker who made this list out anyway? No, mate, cat whiskers are no good to anybody but the beastie that wears ’em most of the time. The way I figure it, your informant felt something sticky and figured it must be cat’s whiskers without checkin’ his source. What they use for prolonging youth and health up north is coo-berry thorns. And I’ll tell you the secret to that for free. You got to get the protected ones, in the middle of the patch, to get the best results.”
“Thank you,” Zing Chi said with a bow, extending his hand and pointing the object in it at Johnny. “What you see in my hand, and in the hands of my workers, is a laser harvester, which is capable of flaying a man as easily as a tree. With the use of these implements, we will gladly take your suggestions under advisement and procure the items you suggest in addition to those we seek. First, however, we require transportation to the sources of these things. This you will provide us while the county council, as you call them, stay here as the guests of my company.”
19
On the Pirate Jenny
“We’ve stopped,” Bunny said, suddenly sitting up straight on the edge of her bunk. She’d been leaning against the bulkhead and watching Diego write down the lyrics of the patter song. Some of the words Diego was transcribing, like “Major General,” were new words to her, but it helped to watch him put them down. She could sound out the syllables, as he’d been teaching her to do, and then later, when they were allowed out to walk the corridors—Louchard’s latest relaxation of the Rules of their Incarceration—he would teach her the proper pronunciation. Sometimes words didn’t sound the way they looked, which only made the chore of reading them harder. She had complained bitterly that words should look like they sounded.
“Whaddya mean, we’ve stopped?” Diego demanded, laying his hand, palm flat, against the metal wall. “I still feel vibrations.”
“Yeah, but they’ve changed,” Bunny said.
“Yeah, and how much spaceflight have you done?”
“Enough!”
“Children,” Marmion said, in her most reasonable, let-us-not-quibble-over-trivia, tone.
She’d had to use a lot of that lately as the confinement became less and less bearable. Even learning The Pirates of Penzance and the other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas that Namid knew was beginning to pall. At first it had been great fun, entertaining and