Power Lines (17 page)

Sean laid his hand on Fingaard’s arm, looking up at the large, concerned face. “Now that I’ve seen the site, I think there’s a chance that might have happened. I was going to come here and look before, but the accident took us all by surprise and I was delayed, what with arrangements to be made for Bunka and all—and then, when we held a night chant in their honor in our village, I got a definite sense that both of them were gone. Feeling that, I couldn’t bring myself to come. Now that I have seen the tunnel, however, I get a little different sense of things. Someone could have got out, got to the other side. I owe it to myself and to the family to explore that possibility.”

They were all startled by an unearthly screeching that penetrated the thick wall of the stone house. It rose and fell, deepened and split into savage howls. Growling deep in his throat, Nanook lifted his head from his paws, and his expression was one of offended dignity and disgust. Sean started to laugh, a tuneful descant to the cacophony outside.

“Why does that awful caterwauling make you
laugh,
Sean Shongili?” Yana demanded. The noise was earsplitting.

Ardis gave a disgusted expression. “The village toms are courting, not that I ever remember them making
that
much noise before.”

Wiping tears from his eyes, Sean managed to control himself enough to explain.

“It’s Shush.” He turned to Bunny and Diego. “The McGee’s Pass cat.”

“Shush made it here?” Delighted, Bunny started to rise, only to have Sean push her firmly back into her chair.

“Don’t interfere with her right now, honey. She wouldn’t appreciate it.” And he started to rock with laughter once more.

“Sean Shongili, that’s not enough of an explanation!” Yana complained.

Unable to speak, Sean waggled his hand at Nanook who, with great condescension, spoke to Bunny. Once she got the message straight, she started to giggle, too.

“Not the pair of you!” Yana said. She felt she could use a laugh right now with the rest of them.

“Shush was the last cat in McGee’s Pass,” Bunny said, “and there were no toms for her. I think she’s making up for a lot of lost opportunities!”

“Do they have to do it here, and now?” Ardis protested.

“Now, lass,” Fingaard said, grinning as he pulled his wife close to him, “you’ve sounded somewhat like that yourself a time or two when I’ve returned from a long voyage.”

Half-irate, Ardis tried to push her huge spouse away from her, batting vainly at his hands while everyone joined in the laughter. “Never like that, you big oaf!”

One more excruciating cry jarred their eardrums, and then there was blessed silence.

“Well, then,” Sean said, “let’s turn in and get a good night’s sleep. We’ve an expedition to start . . .” He turned queryingly to Ardis.

“Oh, Johnny brought all the gear you need, and rations for twice the distance,” Ardis said, flicking her hand to the outside storage shed. Then she rose, gathering plates up as she did so. Yana and Bunny were instantly on their feet, followed almost immediately by Diego.

The cottage was very shortly occupied by sleepers, so no one noticed the small orange-striped cat who crept in wearily but utterly fulfilled and curled up near the hearth.

Johnny Greene was not at all happy to leave Geedee—how could anyone lumber a child with a disgusting name like Goat-dung—anywhere in the vicinity of Matthew Luzon, though he had perfect faith that she would be safe with Lonciana Ondelacy and her family.

He was especially worried because the child seemed far too content to be in Luzon’s presence, looking up eagerly when he spoke and tripping all over herself to answer his every question. Who the frag had ever said that kids could tell scoundrels from saints?

And Luzon, the old hypocrite, was a real smoothie when reassuring the poor frightened and self-deprecating kid, while conveying at the same time how fortunate she was that
he
wanted to talk to her. Frag, she practically apologized for breathing the same air they did.

Johnny hadn’t wanted to take Matthew along when he went to look up his old shipmate Loncie, now a grandmother and one of the community leaders of Sierra Padre. But Matthew had pompously declared that he was determined to do his duty as ranking company official in seeing that the girl had “a suitable placement,” and Geedee had looked up at him with wide eyes and clung to his hand.

In the twenty years or so since Loncie had retired and returned to Petaybee, she had acquired quite a bit of weight, an air of authority far exceeding that she had wielded as a chief petty officer, and an incredibly large family. Now almost as round as she was tall, she wore her thick black hair, still only lightly threaded with silver, in an array of braids, secured to her head with an intricately carved and immensely valuable—Johnny saw Matthew looking at the artifact covetously—ivory comb that had not come from any creature supposedly native to this planet.

“Ah,
pobrecita
!” Lonciana cried when she saw the girl. She barely acknowledged Johnny’s cautious introduction of Matthew Luzon and his assistant. Instead, she lifted and clasped to an ample bosom the startled, wide-eyed, scrawny waif. “
Qué lástima!
What has life been doing to you?” Her black eyes snapped with anger directed at Matthew.

“Easy, now, Loncie,” Johnny said. “We found her on the flats. She says she’s from some hellhole called the Vale of Tears.”

Loncie sucked her breath in between her teeth and her eyes narrowed angrily.

“We have heard of such a place,” she said. “Tsering Gonzales’s boy, who was never right in the head, he said he was going there. He had heard of the place from someone who came trading poorly made cloth for supplies—the man had a boy with him. The boy ran away and long after Jetsun left, Tsering heard tales the boy had told the family that took him in. It is a terrible place. They beat and frighten the children with the most outrageous superstitious nonsense and call it religion! Or so I’ve heard tell.”

Matthew Luzon looked as if someone had just given him a gift and opened his mouth to speak, but Loncie had returned to her new charge. “Never mind,
pobrecita,
you are safe here with Lonciana Ondelacy.”

Johnny didn’t want Loncie to take a wily bastard like Luzon too lightly, and flashed her a rather urgent glance, which she caught and immediately understood. Turning to Luzon, she radiated her own considerable charm.

“Do be seated, most gracious Señor Luzon and rescuer of this little scrap of humanity. Pablo, have you not brought the wine? Carmelita, you and Isabella see to the needs of this little one.”

She put the child on her feet and gently pushed her toward two daughters who would undoubtedly rival their mother for size and beauty. They smiled winningly at the child, who was nearly catatonic with such unwarranted treatment.

“And how is the
niña
called, Juanito?” she asked Johnny.

It took him a long moment to answer, but with Loncie looking at him so hard, he had no escape.

“She says her name is Goat-dung!”

“Ay, de mio!”
And Lonciana’s hands went heavenward. “Tsering did say that they name their young in such a way, to shame and humiliate them, but it is beyond my lips to form such a name in front of the innocent ears of my own children.”

“But,
mamacita,
we know that goats make dung,” Carmelita said, giggling.

“Goats do not make
los niños
wear such names. Pobrecita we will call you, little one. Take her, bathe her, and see what of your sisters clothing will clad her decently. I will come and see to her injuries while—Pablo, where
is
the wine? Ah, here, and biscuits. Oh, you are so clever,
mi esposo
!” And she beamed on the wiry little man who was entering the room, carrying yet another beautiful artifact to astound Luzon.

This was a silver tray, some of its fine etching cleaned to the copper below the plating, covered with a fine white lace cloth, with a glass decanter and some very plebeian shot glasses of the type to be seen in any Intergal bar.

Señor Pablo, whose last name Johnny didn’t catch—it probably wasn’t Ondelacy, since that was the name he had known Loncie by when she was a senior chief—was a perfect foil for his wife. He was as quiet as Loncie was verbose, and he showed to Matthew Luzon the deference and respect due to any sneaky and poisonous creature. Pablo gravely insisted that Don Matthew must take the heavy armchair, so incongruous among the rest of the utilitarian furnishings, and gave him first pick of the refreshments.

In his turn, Matthew seemed intrigued by Pablo, who sported a distinguished silvered goatee and sideburns. He was reminded of an extremely valuable painting that he had seen once in a museum on old Terra.

Though Matthew sipped suspiciously at the beverage served him, Johnny enjoyed the resinous flavor that was minor fire in his mouth and left a not-unpleasant aftertaste.

The biscuits were lighter than Johnny had expected, and sort of cheesy in flavor, which made sense, since there were goats in a pen in the back of the house.

He saw Luzon’s gaze roving around the room, taking in a number of uncommon objects, like the flute and the beribboned guitar hung over a fine white fur, both well above the reach of small hands. Another object, that Johnny at first assumed to be a goatskin drinking bag with various lengths of pipe stuck from it, was actually a musical instrument, too, as Pablo explained when he caught Johnny’s curious gaze: the Basque bagpipes.

However, none of them said much, since the noise of Goat-dung’s attendants made any conversation difficult, even if Señor Pablo had been so inclined. Braddock looked better after his first sip of the liquor and was casting a judicious eye on the furs that covered the walls and floor. Lonciana kept exclaiming over this and that, arguing over items of clothing and demanding others until Matthew began to wonder just how long it took to clean one scrawny child and dab ointment on a few scratches. He was totally unprepared for Lonciana’s dramatic reentrance with the clean and not only neatly but flatteringly clothed child.

Johnny Greene sat bolt upright in his chair as if he were seeing a ghost.

“This
niña,”
declared Lonciana, fists planted on her broad hips, “has been constantly beaten with rods. Her ribs have been cracked on several occasions and I distinctly feel the thickening of several bones in both arms and legs where she has had fractures. She has obviously been starved all her life—if she has had the misfortune to live in that Vale of Tears”—Loncie spat to one side—”that is not unlikely.”

Washed and attractively clothed, the child looked even more wan and undernourished.

“Now we eat,” Lonciana stated. At a clap of her hands, more children appeared from the unseen regions of this incredible house, each bearing elements of the meal and the utensils with which to eat it. Seating La Pobrecita beside her, Lonciana herself fed the child, who did not seem to know what to do with either spoon or fork.

Loncie’s maternal presence was too overwhelming not to be threatening to Luzon, who began coaxing the girl into describing her home and her companions.

“Don Matthew, perhaps it is not wise to remind the
niña
of such matters,” Pablo ventured deferentially, but Luzon swept aside his objections.

“Nonsense, my dear man. Do you know nothing of psychotherapy? Why, the very best thing for the child is to discuss her traumas and her feelings about them, to speak out fully of everything which disturbed her. Only then can she be purged of her fears. Confrontation is the very best medicine in cases like this.”

Lonciana and the daughters who had tended the child were stunned as she fairly blossomed under his interrogation. Black eyes snapped with concern as Luzon deftly elicited information from the girl. On his side of the table, among the Ondelacy boys, Johnny lost his appetite watching Luzon, who, despite all of his protests of horror and sympathy, obviously was being fed exactly the kind of dirt he had hoped to dredge up. The man’s ill-concealed relish of the child’s story turned Loncie’s savory meal into bile in his mouth.

Well, he’d done what he could and found the child safe harbor. Luzon could question all he wanted, but he wouldn’t be able to force the child away from Loncie and her family any more easily than he would be able to force her away from Johnny. Johnny was tempted to pick the kid up and take her back north with him anyway, but he figured he would do better to hightail himself back north and make his report to Dr. Fiske, collect Sean and Yana, and fully cover his own ass. But he did want them to
see
this kid. There was something about her—something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Anyway, if he was to do any real good, he would need reinforcements.

He stood, bowed elaborately to his former chief petty officer, her spouse and brood, gave the child a bit of a salute—which Luzon returned, the ass, with a sharp dismissive one—and returned to his copter. He didn’t enjoy flying it half as much on the way back as he expected. Quite aside from the lingering stench of Braddock’s puke, it felt contaminated.

Although this southern continent should have been deep into the autumnal season and its ground surfaces well frozen up for smooth snocling, the Big Freeze had not yet occurred, a matter which caused considerable concern among the Sierra Padreans. This bunch were of very mixed ethnic origins; some, like Loncie, were of Central and South American origin, mainly from the Andes, and over time they had mixed with the few volatile high-mountain Basques, the combination tempered by a great many of the imperturbable Sherpas. Pablo, despite his resemblance to one of the characters in a painting by Goya, was half Sherpa, half Basque. While Loncie, as a retired corps member, kept her birth name of Ondelacy, the family name was actually Ghompas.

All of this information Matthew Luzon and Braddock skillfully extracted from the family after the meal was over and Johnny Greene had departed, a very good thing since his presence definitely interfered with the rapport Matthew wished to establish with this family and, in particular, the girl they now called ‘Cita.