Power Play by Anne McCaffrey Page B

at Clodagh, interrupting Portia and scaring the curlies. She jumped down from her mount and ran forward to Clodagh’s curly-coat, grabbed Clodagh’s hand in both of hers, and began weeping over it. “Oh, how I have longed to meet you since first we were given word of this miraculous place!”
    “When was that?” Clodagh asked.
    “About six weeks ago,” Brother Shale said. “And believe me, since then Sister Igneous Rock has worked wonders forming our order. Why, she came straightaway and told me and the others, and we all knew at once that Petaybee was just what we’d been looking for. We had a little study group before, you know, about the evils of the universe and how to get back to what was natural and real—we tried talking to Terra, but it wasn’t very responsive. Then, when Brother Granite told us about the Beneficence and how it caused Ruin to the Abominations Wrought Upon It by the Unworthy, well, we had to come see for ourselves.”
    “When can we see the evidence of Petaybee’s wrath, Mother Clodagh?” Brother Schist asked.
    “ ‘Scuse me,” Clodagh said with a snort. “I don’t have any kids.”
    “Please pardon our brother,” Sister Igneous Rock said. “We mean that you are the spiritual mother of our order. Brother Granite told us of your wondrous bond with the Beneficence.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I think they mean the planet, Clodagh,” ’Cita offered. People called it so many different things. The Shepherd Howling had reviled the planet and called it the Great Beast and said it was a man-eating monster, Coaxtl simply called it the Home, and Uncle Sean and Clodagh called it Petaybee, for the initials Pee, Tee, Bee, which also stood for Powers That Be, the local name for Intergal, the company that had first settled the planet. ’Cita thought that, of all of the names, Coaxtl’s made the most sense.
    “Why didn’t they say so, then?” Clodagh asked. At once, all the white robes dismounted and prostrated themselves on the ground so that Clodagh’s curly almost stepped on them, and loudly apologized and begged for forgiveness. They were coated by another layer of snow by the time the Rourke cousins got them to their feet and onto their curlies again.
    Clodagh just shook her head. “Cheechakos,” she said.
    “What’s that?” ’Cita asked. Her own Flock had many Spanish words and Asian words in their language, but here in Kilcoole, the people used some words in the old Irish tongue and some in the Inuit and Native American tongues of their ancestors.
    “A cheechako is a newcomer, child.”
    “Like me?”
    “No, because you’re from Petaybee. You’re used to the cold and all. A person is a cheechako until they’ve lived here from freeze-up to thaw. If they live through the winter, they know if they want to stay or go away.”
    “But the Beneficence
helps
you get through winters, doesn’t it, Moth—Clodagh?” Sister Agate asked, a tad anxiously. “It surely doesn’t kill anyone. From what Brother Granite said, it provides for all!”
    Clodagh rolled her eyes and said to ’Cita, “This could be a real long winter.”
     
    Sean Shongili was tempted to say “Look what the cats dragged in” when Clodagh, ’Cita, and the Rourkes, with curlies and felines, in escort of the most recently landed visitors, stopped in front of Yana’s cabin that afternoon.
    The newcomers, when sorted, turned out to be representatives of two rival pharmaceutical firms whose requests for interviews were allegedly somewhere in the stack of paperwork; three more hunters; four members of what seemed to be a newly formed religious cult wishing, sight unseen, to worship Petaybee; and eleven other people who claimed to believe they had long-lost family members living on the planet somewhere.
    Sean sent ’Cita after Sinead, who came and took the hunters in tow to put them with the others she had previously captured. He told the drug company representatives firmly that they would have to go through