She tried to sound reassuring while wondering how the evacuation was going.
There was no sense mentioning the latest emergency until Charlene's husband returned anyway. The fact that Perfect Village had had no part in the relocation would not necessarily make them exempt from the scrutiny of the corrupt PTBs who had arrested Marmie and meant to arrest her own family and apparently most of Kilcoole besides. But even if a ship was landing at this very moment, it wasn't any more likely to be able to find the village in this blizzard than she would have been if Charlene hadn't fetched her.
As they sat and watched the snow pile up to the windowsill, then halfway up the pane, she felt the big Kanaka lad relax beside her.
She, on the other hand, grew increasingly tense and wondered all the while what she would do if her family didn't come back. Handle the crisis, certainly. Without Sean and the kids, she didn't care whether or not she died offworld, if she saved the world and her friends in the process.
If Johnny, Pet, and the warlike Raj had not been taken, she could put them to good use. Her skills might be a little rusty, but she thought with four of them they could hijack any ship sent to arrest more people. First they would set traps for the would be arresting troops. Petaybeans were used to setting traps and, she thought, would make excellent guerrilla fighters-especially when aided and abetted by the planet.
Then she, Johnny, Pet, and Raj should be able to hijack the invaders' ship. Once they were away from Petaybee's communication problems, it shouldn't take them long to find allies among the Federation to secure the release of Marmie and the Piaf's human cargo.
The same allies could stop the invaders from harassing the Petaybeans, although she wondered who might be harassing whom by then. Maybe they could go into space and complete their mission in a short enough time that she wouldn't sicken and die. Other Petaybeans had done so in the past, but they were native born and she was not.
Clodagh said that wouldn't make any difference, but Yana thought that under the circumstances, it was worth the risk.
She wasn't sure she could bear to live on Petaybee without Sean and her kids anyway. Without them, it would be as cold and bleak as the snowstorm. She looked up at the window, expecting to see it completely covered. Instead she could see the sky again, still white but without snow blowing out of it. There was even a snowball of a sun.
The door banged and Charlene's husband called out, "Hey, look what I just found!"
Something wet and brown squirmed out of his arms and ran to Yana and back to the door again.
"It's Sky!" she cried, leaping up so fast her tea sloshed the table. "This is the kids' otter friend. They must be back."
"I had a feeling it was something like that," Charlene's husband said, and added to his wife, "I tried to unhitch the dogs and they started going nuts. Turns out this little guy was slogging through the drifts toward the house. I thought he was about frozen but he looks fine now."
"Hitch mine up too!" Charlene said. "We'll get Sean into one basket and the kids into the other."
"I'm coming," Yana said, even though she feared she might slow them down. "We have to take extra clothes and blankets too."
"I'll get the neighbors to bring their sled," Charlene said.
"I want to come," Ke-ola told them.
"Okay, I'll get two neighbors then," Charlene said.
"They won't be far," Ke-ola told Yana, his eyes shining now with joy. "I'll bet Sean's taken them to the new seal lagoon.
"The new what?" Yana asked.
WITH THE SKY clear, the temperature dropped sharply, so the new snow packed well. They took turns breaking trail and the horizon looked a long way away to Yana as they crested a hill she could have sworn was part of a snowy plain.
Sky jumped down from his perch on her shoulder and disappeared over the hill in his undulating run.
The sleds stopped. Ke-ola and Yana unstrapped themselves and she followed the boy. The lead dogs looked down their noses into a steamy lagoon where three seals swam in circles. The rescuers brought the clothing and blankets from the sleds and they all carried the supplies down the hill. Yana nodded to Charlene and she called the villagers to return to their sleds.
One by one the seals rose from the steaming water and shook themselves off, making the change which was by now as familiar to Yana as seeing them rising from their bedclothes in the morning or taking off their winter clothing when they came into the house. "Where have you lot been?" she asked as she hugged them.
"Quite a lot has happened while you've been away."
CHAPTER 28
BACK AT CHARLENE'S, everyone crowded around her tiny table, sitting on whatever could be used as a chair: upended logs, toolboxes, and a stool made from a single whale vertebra. The conversation was far from cheerful.
Their coats and pants hung steaming beside the stove, drying. Their boots were on the stone hearth and their mittens on a line Charlene had rigged around the chimney. Charlene and her husband, Dan, were outside unhitching and feeding their dogs and helping the neighbors with the other teams. It was snowing again, and through the cabin's window, already halfway snowed in, the people out there were hard to make out, little more than shadows moving clumsily within the heavily layered draperies of falling snow.
Mum tried the mobile but shook her head in frustration as she pocketed it again. "I hope Sinead and the others haven't started from Kilcoole to pick us up in this."
"If they have, they'll be grand, love, sure they will," Da reassured her. "A whiteout is no big thing to Sinead and her team, or the others, for that matter."
"Any more news about Madame's ship and the kids?" Ke-ola asked.
"What about them?" Murel and Ronan said, startled by the question and alarmed by the looks passing from Mum to Ke-ola and Da.
Mum swallowed a gulp of tea. "While we were out at the volcano and the copter with Rick, Johnny, and Pet, and Raj was coming back to help the uninjured survivors back to base, Marmie and her crew were arrested and the Piaf was impounded with all passengers aboard."
"They can't do that!" Murel exclaimed. "That's against Federation law."
"Which statute?" Ke-ola asked anxiously.
"I dunno! I can't remember everything," Murel said impatiently. "But it just is. It has to be."
"It's against common decency and common sense," Da agreed. "But that doesn't always have a great deal to do with the law."
Mum sighed. "We've had no luck trying to raise other ships or any of Marmie's allies because of the interference, but the crew was able to keep the channels open for us until the ship got out of range of the clear signals we can receive. It's looking pretty grim. They're apparently being hauled off-secretly from what we can tell-to Gwinett Incarceration Colony."
"On what charges?" Ronan demanded indignantly.
"Kidnapping the Kanakas and stealing the turtles and sharks."
"I wish we could give them the sharks back," Murel muttered. "In fact, I'd like to see the punters swim in and get them."
"Gwinett?" Ke-ola looked stricken. "That's a terrible place. They're taking the kids there too?"
Mum nodded. "From what I can gather. And you're right, Ke-ola: it's bloody brutal there. I hate to think of Marmie there, much less the kiddies. But we can't do a blessed thing about it, and furthermore, I'm afraid that's not all there is to it." She told them about the transmission she'd overheard.
Da grunted. "Arrest us all so they can take over Petaybee? Must be a new generation of bullies who haven't heard how well that works." He looked at the window. There wasn't much of it left uncovered by snow. "In fact, I'd say offhand that Petaybee may be taking evasive action right now."