Even Clodagh's house no longer felt like the haven of comfort and reassurance it had been for Bunny ever since her parents had died and she realized she could no longer live among her cousins.
"Bunka," Clodagh said, touching her shoulder.
"Why couldn't they leave us alone, Clodagh? Why couldn't they leave Petaybee alone? Did they have to ruin everything?"
"They've ruined nothing yet, Bunka. Oh, they set a few charges about here and there, and sent soldiers out to the mountains. But until they stop and pay attention, they're not likely to learn anything about Petaybee worth the knowin'. And meantime, the planet has means to protect itself."
"Clodagh, have you ever been to SpaceBase?" Bunny asked. It hadn't occurred to her before that she had never seen Clodagh outside the village except for a time or two on journeys to Sean's house. Clodagh couldn't possibly understand the power the company had.
"Of course not, alanna, now why would I want to go there?"
"They have thousands of soldiers there right now. Yana says they mean to evacuate us. By force! Just without a by-your-leave make us all go into space someplace. Then they'll keep blowing up things on Petaybee until they get all the minerals and stuff they want. Clodagh, I've seen the shuttles and the ships. I know lots of the soldiers. They can do it if they want to. They own Petaybee."
"Nonsense, Bunka. Nobody owns Petaybee but Petaybee."
Bunny was about to argue the point when something landed with a heavy thud on the roof.
Marduk, the cat who had been living with Yana, stood on his hind feet and pedaled his front paws at the ceiling, chittering and mewing as if looking for a rafter to jump onto.
From outside the house came a sound like a well caving in, a roar with a deep echo to it. Bunny recognized it at once as the voice of one of Sean's big cats.
She, Clodagh, and Marduk were at the door all at once, but before they could go outside, a huge shape landed softly in front in the doorway. The black and white bewhiskered face of the big cat regarded them quizzically.
Marduk, far from being frightened by the larger feline, stepped forward to rub noses with it. Each brushed scent glands on the side of his face into the other cat's fur.
Clodagh stood away from the door, and the big cat padded inside, leapt to the bed, and circled about on her handmade quilt to make a nest for himself. Marduk hopped on top of the larger creature's back and chirruped autocratically. Clodagh produced a pair of thawed fish and a pan of water for the cats to lap. While they ate, Clodagh sat beside them on the edge of the bed and stroked their backs.
She crooned especially to the big cat, and it looked up from its meal with narrowed eyes and purred thunderously back at her. Marduk, annoyed at being left out, butted her hand with his head before he continued to eat.
"Do you suppose it knows where Sean and Yana are?" Bunny asked. "When I petted Dinah, I felt as if she was talking to me."
"Come here, Bunka," Clodagh said, and put Bunny's hand on the cat's head. "Have you an answer for Bunka, Nanook?"
Why else would I bother coming? the cat asked her in a velvety, rumbling voice.
The words weren't spoken; but Bunny heard them nevertheless, inside her head, the way she had heard Dinah's. Nanook's diction was much better than the dog's.
Clodagh regarded Bunny speculatively.
"It talked to me," Bunny told her, blinking rapidly.
"This cat is a he, not an it," Clodagh told her. "He talked to you because you can understand him. Marduk, also, is a he. In fact, on our whole planet, there are no its. Some things have no gender, but they are not without names. It's only polite to learn those names."
Bunny shrugged. "Well, I guess I knew that." She had played with the big cat since he had been a kitten, actually, every time she had gone to visit Sean. She petted him again. "Sorry, Nanook, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
Having cleaned his chops of fish residue, Nanook began to tidy up the white fur of his chest. The house suddenly shook, and-from under the counter came the sound of crashing glass. Marduk jumped down, and Nanook stretched beneath Bunny's hand.
Bean's gone swimming, he said. Yana came with soldiers, but their chop-chop bird squawked and the soldiers took her away again. They do not have good feelings for her. They have even less good feeling about Sean, They did not like those of us who live with Sean and tried to find us, to take us away with them. We were not found. Then the ground shakes and I smell smoke-that-is-not-cooking. And shedding time is early. What are people doing to our place?
The last thought was accompanied by a plaintive roar that sent a blast of fishy breath into Bunny's face.
Diego found a sturdy branch, though he knew it wouldn't be much good as protection against wild animals. Hefting it in his hand made him feel somewhat less vulnerable, however. He could hear the river roaring, along with a crunching and grinding of the ice that set his teeth on edge. He prayed Steve would be done with his rescuing of other people and remember he had a duty to rescue his own family. Darkness was closing in.
The distant howling picked up again and became separate sounds: keening, howling, and plain crying, like the ghost of an all-too-familiar memory. Diego glanced over at his father. For a moment he thought he had seen a flicker in his dad's eyes, but the older man sagged against the harness as limply as ever.
Another howl, much closer now, was answered by several others, still distant. Diego swung his stick like a baseball bat, placing himself between the track-cat and the hostile woods. As an afterthought, he reached inside and switched on the lights, grateful that the battery wasn't drained yet. Then the lights picked up a ring of shining eyes in the woods, closing in on him.
The howling took on a triumphant note, and suddenly something dashed from the woods and straight at him.
Cocking the stick to make his first blow count as much as it could, Diego released it at the top of his swing as the lights picked up the red fur of the dog. Dinah crushed him against the grill of the track-cat with the weight of her body. She licked his face and the hands he tried to protect his face with and whined her relief.
He couldn't have said how he knew the dog was Dinah instead of any other, except that Dinah had done this sort of thing I before. And behind her came answering whines and howls and a? man's voice crying "Whoa! Down, dogs."
Diego freed himself from Dinah's embrace in time to see a sled pulled by four dogs break through the trees into the lights of the track-cat.
The man driving the sled wore no coat and frowned when he saw Diego, but Dinah ran frantically between the cat and the sled until the man relaxed.
"You're the boy who was with my mother, aren't you?" the man asked.
"Your mom was Lavelle?" The guess wasn't hard, with Dinah bouncing between them.
"That's right."
"Then please help us. I have to get my dad to Clodagh's. He's been dying at SpaceBase like Lavelle died when they took her off-planet."
The wind blew and the planet shook, whether in fear or anger or both Bunny couldn't tell, but inside Clodagh's house a phenomenon was taking place that Bunny would have only partially understood the day before.
A taciturn Liam Maloney, whined and howled into submission by Dinah and the other sled dogs, had delivered Diego Metaxos and his father to Clodagh's just after dark. Now Diego nursed a cup of tea, while his father sat tied into Clodagh's rocker.
Liam had returned home to feed the dogs, although Dinah had whined and made her peculiar "oooo ooo" sound when pulled away from Diego. Bunny wondered what she would hear the dog say if she stroked her. She wondered if Diego could hear Dinah yet, but thought he probably couldn't. After all, she had lived fourteen years on Petaybee, and she had always known communication existed between certain aspects of the planet and its people. Come to that, she had communicated with the planet like everyone else during the hot-springs interfaces at the end of every latchkay.