She grinned back at the girl. "That it was. Even more wonderful than you can possibly imagine. But right now, Bunny, I need to find Torkel Fiske fast."
"That's dead easy," Bunny said. "He just left the station for SpaceBase. I'll take you out there. I'm trying to be there when Colonel Giancarlo is here, and here when he's there, so he doesn't remember his threat to take away my license."
The usually silent riverbed was now a high-speed thoroughfare, vehicles skiing back and forth, passing each other. The ride to SpaceBase was nerve-racking, because it was obvious, even before Bunny began to veer out of the way of poorly driven snocles, that not every driver was as capable as she was on such a treacherous surface.
Bunny dropped Yana at the headquarters building and drove off even more cautiously through a great deal of snocle traffic, toward the infirmary, where, she told Yana, she hoped to find Diego.
As opposed to the bustle outside, headquarters was quiet- stripped of personnel, Yana thought. The door to an inner office stood open, and through it she could see Torkel's bronze hair shining in the light from his console.
"Hello, Yana," he said when she strode in, closed the door behind her, and sat down. He barely looked up at her, which under most circumstances would have been a rather refreshing change from his pronounced attentiveness of the past few days. "I'm on comm line with my father. I'll be right with you."
She waited while he returned to his conversation.
"Great, Dad, see you soon. Over and out," he said aloud, tapping the final key. He was still smiling as he turned expectantly to Yana and asked, "What can I do for you?"
"You offered me Giancarlo's job. I want it."
He grinned. "Is it my turn to say, 'But this is so sudden'?" "Torkel, he's making a balls of the whole thing. Listen, we have got to talk seriously about what's going on here on Petaybee and the company's interface with the natives
"Yana, let me remind you of a point that others seem to be forgetting: the natives are transplants of barely two hundred and fifty years ago from Earth. Johnny-come-latelies as our projects go. And from my conversation with your buddy Shongili, it seems to me they're awfully damned possessive for sharecroppers on company property."
"That's because you only know part of what's been happening. Look, Torkel, Giancarlo told me to find out what's been going on with Petaybee and the unauthorized life-forms, and I think I have. Both the natives and my own experience confirm my conclusions. I think you'll agree, after we've talked, that the mining operations can't be started precipitously, and any mass transfer of I he inhabitants of this planet is out of the question."
"Excuse me, Yana. Dear. The company makes the decisions; not you, not me, and certainly not the illiterate dregs the company was kind enough to resettle here." He gave her his best company-negotiator's poker face. The set-to with Scan had either done some serious damage to his goodwill, or that goodwill had been an act.
"Torkel. Dear. At least hear me out, okay? You did ask."
He relaxed again. "Okay. Shoot."
"Before you slap my wrist, let me remind you that I was retained by the company to investigate, and I took that as my authorization to do so, not only in what's happening here onPetaybee, but also in company records pertaining thereto."
"You accessed Lavelle Maloney's autopsy file?" He asked with a one-wolf-to-another-wolf grin.
"That's a roger."
He shrugged. "I would have preferred you to go through channels, but I see your point. And if you can explain to her friends that birth defects caused her death, rather than our interrogations, so much the better."
"They weren't birth defects, Torkel."
"No?"
"No. According to Shongili and the others, they were anatomical adaptations engendered by contact with Petaybee."
"Really? Is there any proof of this?"
"Tests on any mature Petaybean will yield similar anomalies, Scan says."
"I see. We can run the tests on Sigdhu and the other woman then, I suppose."
"You can, but you need to bring them back to Petaybee ASAP and run the tests here. From what I understand, the adaptive mechanisms making the inhabitants suitable for a cold planet of this type would make them exceedingly uncomfortable in temperatures you find normal. And recycled air would contain viruses and bacteria which their immune systems couldn't handle. That's what actually killed Lavelle Maloney, and what may soon kill the other two if they aren't returned here." Before he could say anything, she continued. "Torkel, until the company can figure out a way of adjusting these peoples' highly sensitive immune systems to all of the free-spinning viruses and bacteria on satellites or other planets, the kind of move you say the company's proposing would amount to genocide."
"That's a fairly dramatic statement to extrapolate from the autopsy of one off-planet Petaybean, Yana. Besides, it's the Petaybeans themselves who are making this necessary, with their guerilla sabotage against our geographical and mining exploration expeditions."
Yana cocked a cynical eyebrow at him. "There're no guerillas on Petaybee, Torkel, no sabotage! If anything, it's the other way round."
"How so? The company owns the planet. The company terraformed the planet. It has the right to extract mineral deposits."
"The company might own the right to inhabit the surface of the planet, Torkel, and under normal circumstances, it might have the right to harvest certain resources the terraforming process sowed. But owning the planet itself?" She slowly shook her head. "This planet was here way before Intergal was formed or terraforming was invented. You don't own this planet."
Torkel gave a scornful snort. "If the company doesn't, who does? Not the inhabitants that the company put here."
She awarded him a pitying glance. "No, they just occupy it. The planet owns itself. It's sentient, Torkel. A living entity."
"Now you sound like Metaxos and his boy." Torkel threw up his hands in exasperation.
"That's because I've seen what they saw. Or, rather, 'seen' isn't exactly the right word. Felt it, experienced it, heard it, been touched by it. Whatever. The locals say it's a way of communicating with the planet, and you have to be willing to be touched by it or you can become disoriented enough to be in the same shape as Metaxos. Or, like some of the other missing teams, if you're too far from help, die as a result."
He regarded her a long moment. "And Metaxos aged in this process?"
"That's a possibility. The phenomenon can take a lot out of someone who resists it." Something occurred to her suddenly. "Do I… look any older to you than I did the last time you saw me, Torkel?"
"No. Younger if anything. There's a glow about you that, if you had ever given me any encouragement would make me jealous." He briefly dropped his lids over his eyes.
She smiled like one of Clodagh's cats after a snootful of fish. "Other than that?"
"No. So you contend that you've been through the same thing as Metaxos? And didn't fight it, so came out revived? So where did this happen? In one of these illusive mineral deposits?"
"I didn't find any deposits." Yana was unsettled by that shot. "I-found-myself in a quite ordinary cave formation, same kind I've seen other places occurring naturally under hills. According to the spatial map I received with my briefing, the cave isn't in one of the spots where your instruments have detected mineral wealth." She tried another tack. "Look, the locals accept me to a greater degree than you, Giancarlo, or anyone else. That makes me the best qualified to organize this operation in a way that won't be harmful to the natives or the planet."