Still, the relief behind Bunny’s joy reinforced Yana’s recognition that not everyone found the communion wonderful, or even pleasant. The cave-no, the planet-could and did damage those it rejected, or those who rejected it; she wasn’t sure quite what the criterion was. She was just immensely glad to have been found satisfactory.
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 on Petaybee, 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.”