At first, he had told the rescuers and the company investigators everything, but when he saw their immediate skepticism, he had sense enough to clam up, beginning to doubt and second-guess his own perceptions. He needed to sort it all out, and he didn't intend to say any more until he was sure Dad would be tended to by someone who cared about him as more than an employee or a subject for study. Unfortunately, civilian dependent teenaged sons didn't have much clout with the company hierarchy. Dad needed Steve, and he needed him quick.
And maybe when Steve came Diego could talk with him and go over everything again in his own mind. But right now he shied away from thinking about it.
One thing was for sure, and that was that the company investigators weren't going to be able to answer any of Diego's questions. They were too busy third-degreeing everyone for answers to listen to questions.
The girl was looking at him funny. Most of the time she stared straight ahead, pretending to listen to the men as they talked amongst themselves or barked questions at Lavelle. But when they were looking the other way, or at each other, the girl's eyes slid sideways, trying to meet his, and her mouth opened, as if she were about to speak.
Finally she got up and went outside, and he thought she had to go check on her snocle or pee or something. When she came back, she casually sat down beside him. None of the company men seemed to notice.
"I'm Bunny," she said, sideways out of her mouth.
"I know. I heard them talking to you. I'm Diego." He realized he was talking out of the side of his mouth, too. But he felt relieved that someone was finally talking to him rather than around him, and he knew immediately that this girl understood that what had happened to him and his father was not just another academic problem or fact-finding mission.
Her eyes gleamed the same way the dogs' eyes had gleamed in the darkness, and her lowered voice reminded him of the whisper of the sled runners on the snow.
"I know," she said. "Are you scared?"
"No-well, scared about Dad, maybe. But otherwise, no."
"You ought to be," she said in a tone that implied she knew something he didn't know.
"Why? Is it going to storm again or something?"
"Probably. But I don't mean that, I mean them," she said, nodding to Colonel Giancarlo and the others.
Diego shrugged. "They're just doing their jobs, trying to find out what happened," he said. He watched Giancarlo's fierce expression as the colonel tried for the fiftieth time to catch Lavelle in a lie, and added, "Not that they seem to believe anybody."
"They're like that. Look, I'll be around. If you need anything, let me know, okay? I mean, with your da sick, is your mum going to come down here, too? Does she need a place to stay? My people would help."
He felt another flare of resentment and gave her a dirty look, then decided that wasn't fair. She was just trying to be nice- maybe nosy, too, but at least she wasn't browbeating anybody the way Giancarlo and the others were. "Nah, my mom's, uh, not available-but I think Dad would want Steve here."
"Who's that?"
"His assistant, and his partner," Diego said, daring her to make something of it.
But she just nodded and said, "Okay, I'll see if I can find out what's being done officially, and if nothing is, we'll try to do something unofficially. I just wanted you to know you've got friends here. Night."
"Buenas noches," he whispered back.
You did good, Bunka," Clodagh said later, when Bunny had returned to Kilcoole. She had dropped Giancarlo off at the company station to await word from the head of the search party, and delivered the others back to SpaceBase before returning to the village. "The boy is alone. Do you think he saw anything, or was it just the father?"
"No," Bunny said. "I think he did, too. I can't say why-he's denying he remembers a thing now, but they wouldn't believe him if he told them the truth anyway. The father's in the high-security ward at the infirmary. The flot around SpaceBase is that he's crazy."
"Poor boy," Clodagh said, her eyes blinking rapidly through the steam from the teacup she held to her lips. "All alone. I can't feel much for his father, but the lad is so young to be left to the company wolves, especially when he has passed through what he has. If only we could initiate him, it would be better. Has he no one?"
"Just this Steve," Bunny said. "He is Dr. Steven L. Margolies, assigned to the same branch and regular duty station as Metaxos. I found that much out from Arnie's soldier boyfriend at the communications shed. He put up the name Metaxos on the computer and it was there, under the info on Metaxos. I don't know how we could find Steve though."
Clodagh shook her head regretfully. "It's not really our place to find him, but the boy will need help when he goes back out there-" Her head jerked up. "I wish Charlie was still here."
"Maybe Yana can help," Bunny suggested.
"Maybe," Clodagh said slowly. "But be careful. Charlie was one of us. He would know, the way you do, what the boy is going through, as well as how the PTBs are. We don't know Yana so good yet."
"Sean likes her," Bunny said.
"He does, does he? What did he say?" Clodagh smiled a very pretty smile that transformed her face, her eyes twinkling with gleefully prurient interest.
"Nothing, but I could tell," Bunny said. "Don't worry, you'll be the first to know-well, maybe not the first…"
"Yana could be a good ally, but she's real closed up. That's better than being too friendly, I guess, but I'd feel better about her being here if we knew more about her."
"Give her a break, Clodagh. It's not her fault she was born at the wrong time and place for you to have delivered her the way you've done half of us. I'm going to go down there now and see if she has any ideas. Don't worry. I won't give anything away."
Over the next ten days Yana gradually accustomed herself to the new environment. She slept a lot, in between the necessary chores of keeping warm and eating. She kept Clodagh's medicine near her so that every time she felt the tickle that was the prelude to a cough, she could take a swig and forestall a spasm. Whatever was in the stuff was far more efficacious than what the medics had given her on Andromeda. She practiced taking deeper breaths of the marvelous fresh air of Petaybee, expanding her capacity, flushing out the last of the gas from the depths of the lobes. She would never be much use here on Petaybee if she couldn't even breathe without coughing.
She had just finished making another futile trip to the virtually useless company store when she saw the snocles pulling into corps headquarters way up the street. Some game or the other was definitely afoot, but until the trouble came looking for her, she would conserve her strength. She needed all she could muster to withstand her own cooking, she thought, as she attempted to make a meal for herself and the cat. Other than the fish she had been given by Seamus and the one pan she had been given, she had found damned-all of any use through company channels in Kilcoole.
The trouble did indeed come looking for her a short time later. She was in the middle of browning the fish when someone pounded at her door. She opened it to see Giancarlo standing there.
"Maddock, where the hell have you been and why haven't you reported in?" he snapped before she could invite him inside.
"Nice to see you, too, sir," she said with a growl, pumping his hand and pulling him inside. On the stove, the grease she was cooking the fish in crackled and spat. The cat scooted under the bed. For some reason, Giancarlo's appearance suddenly infuriated her. Maybe it was because she was frustrated trying to keep house with the charity of the villagers because the store was so ill-stocked there was little her meager funds could buy to keep her alive. Maybe it was because they were no longer on shipboard or space station and so it didn't look like the corps to her. Maybe it was because this guy was the kind of petty martinet she had always hated and had sworn she would get back at when she retired. Maybe it was because he was such a contrast to the polite and kindly locals. But she thought it was because after killing everyone around her and half killing her, the company still allowed brass-assed spooks like him to threaten to withhold medical treatment and to dump her unprepared in a place like this in order to use her. A couple of years earlier she would have taken it for granted that they had the right, that Giancarlo had the right. Now she felt anger rising up inside her high enough to choke her if she didn't vent a little of it.