Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [88]
The welcome sight of cabins revived the flagging energies of everyone in the party. It helped that the snow closer to the settlement was already trampled into trails, and they followed one of these easily to the outermost cabin.
It was empty, though smoke still poured from the chimney. They all gratefully crowded inside to warm themselves by the fire. When Megenda would have crawled into the fireplace, Bunny hauled him back so he wouldn’t scorch himself; she grabbed a fur cover from the nearest bunk and draped it around his shoulders. He could not seem to stop the shivering. There was soup in the kettle on the hob, so Bunny ladled him out a cup, which he could barely hold in his hands without spilling.
“Don’t know how much of someone’s supper we can take without them going short,” Bunny said by way of explanation when she saw the hopeful expression on Dinah O’Neill’s face as she, too, crowded in to the fireplace. Bunny was right proud that neither Diego nor Yana seemed to need the fire. Just being in out of the cold was sufficient. “No one would object to Megenda having a cup of soup to stop those shivers. You all get warm while I go see where people are.” She took a parka off the peg on the back of the door. Outside, the temperature would be dropping like a stone from a height.
Tanana Bay didn’t boast half as many cabins as Kilcoole did, but Bunny had been in several empty homes before she came to the Murphys’, where the cat was sitting beside the fire and cleaning the snow from between its paw pads. The cat glanced up at her, then returned to its cleaning. She saw the raised trapdoor and the open hole in the floor. Leaning over the opening, she could hear voices, excited voices, lots of them.
“Hallooo down there?”
There was no immediate response, probably because everyone was talking so loud. After waiting a moment, Bunny descended. She’d never seen a communion place entry so bright, something that would certainly have provoked a lot of discussion on any occasion.
What she didn’t expect to see was men and women armed with all kinds of homely weapons: axes, staves, nets, and pitchforks, as well as the usual bows, lances, and knives.
“What’s happening?” she cried, touching the first man by the arm.
“Glad you could make it,” he said, giving her a scant look. “We got big trouble coming to Tanana Bay and we’ll need every body we can get to turn ’em back.”
“Turn who back?” And Bunny felt a gelid spurt of fear. What had happened while they were off-planet? Had Intergal gone back on its word?
“That pirate! Louchard!” someone else explained, leaning around the first man to put in his quarter credit.
“Hey, you don’t come from around here.”
“No, I’m from Kilcoole but—”
“Buneka!” said the Voice.
“Buneka?” And that shout came from Sean’s throat. Bunny was so astonished to hear the Voice come out with her own name that she didn’t react until Sean had her in his arms and was whirling her about, laughing and crying.
“You’re free. You’re all right!” And he was feeling her over to be sure she was, his eyes both glad and anxious. Then he looked around her. “Yana?”
“She’s all right, too, Sean, really, she’s fine.”
Sinead pushed through the crowd then and embraced Bunny as warmly as Sean had done, also asking where Yana was.
“Hold it down,” Sean said in a loud voice. Everyone in the communion place was trying to understand who the newcomer was that the Voice had recognized so unexpectedly.
So it took minutes before Bunny could explain, and then minutes more before she made it clear that the pirate was not on Petaybee, only his first mate and Dinah O’Neill were. Then she had to calm Muktuk and Chumia down because they were so astonished, and gratified, that their kinswoman was right there in Tanana Bay. Immediately they were in a quandary about welcoming her if she wasn’t bringing good