Something very gentle, like a feather flicking dust from a delicate surface, flowed across her mind, chiding her for being greedy. All she really needed would be given.
Yana blinked her eyes open, for the thought was alien to her: it had been implanted in her mind. She blinked again. The mist had dissipated. And so had the people who had accompanied her to the cavern. Clodagh was gone, Bunny and Diego, Sinead and Aisling! Before she could panic, there was pressure against her right shoulder.
“I’m here,” Sean said, a ripple of laughter in his low voice. When she turned her head, his silver eyes caught hers and then he nodded. Exhaling a totally worldly sigh, she let herself sag, no longer upheld by whatever had had her in its thrall. She felt a shaft of regret for what was no longer in touch with her.
“How long?” she asked Sean, gesturing about her.
“How long did it feel?” he asked, taking her hand in his warm one.
“Like one deep breath.”
He nodded again, his eyes slightly hooded, but his smile was full of satisfaction. Then he held her hand up, examining it closely before he turned it palm up and kissed it. She could not control the shudder that crackled up her spine. He laid her palm against his warm cheek and made eye contact.
“It was more than one breath, wasn’t it?” she asked.
He nodded, and she could tell from his caution that the time that had passed had been much longer than he felt it safe to admit, before gauging her reaction.
Slowly, carefully, sorting through her memory of the experience and her reactions, reaching the logical conclusion of something that defied logic, she asked, “You people weren’t just being poetic when you said Petaybee is alive, were you? It is, isn’t it? And it-it hypnotizes you or puts you in a trance or something. Like Diego?”
Sean nodded. “Most of the time it’s like it was for you and for Diego, but for those too rigid to accept the possibilities, it can be extremely traumatic-induce shock, madness, even death. Not just with outworlders. You may have noticed young Terce, the other snocle chauffeur?”
Yana nodded. She hadn’t seen much of Terce since she had arrived, but she remembered Bunny saying the boy wasn’t too bright.
“He didn’t react well to this experience. Most children easily accept it, but Terce … Maybe he just had too linear a turn of mind or something, but it terrified him and he’s never tried again. He sometimes lurks on the edge of the latchkays but he won’t join in. But there was no malice involved-just a … lack of communication.” He shrugged. “There’s much more to this planet than instrumentation can detect, Yanaba. You’ve experienced a central part of it tonight.”
“A rite of passage?” She wanted to sound skeptical or cynical or even facetious, but that wasn’t the way her words sounded even in her own ears. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I passed?”
Scan laughed with such real mirth that she had to grin. Then he pulled her against him, arms tightly cradling her body to his chest, rocking both of them back and forth.
“What do you think?” he asked teasingly.
“I don’t know what to think. I’m not exactly the religious type …”
“Religion has nothing to do with it, Yana. We weren’t worshiping. The planet is alive. It’s only courteous to communicate. There’s-a relationship involved,” he said, quite lightly and happily. She realized that he was more relieved than he cared to admit that she had come through her-introduction-without trouble. He continued his rather nonchalant explanation while draped around her, nibbling her ear. “The company wants us to think that everything on the planet came from them, but that’s not the case.
This planet has a mind, and has developed resources, of its own. Living here, most of us know that and accept the gifts, the protection, and in return, we offer it companionship and-I don’t know, expression, I suppose.”
“But why? Why does it not only accept you but give you so much? If it really is a living, thinking being, it could as well resent you for occupying its surface. What does the planet get out of you-us-being here?”