“Diego? Hi. It’s me, Bunny,” the girl said, keeping her voice low and looking around her, as if she was worried about being seen.
“Hi. Did you bring me a cake with a file in it?”
“Huh?” she asked.
“Just an old joke I read in a book someplace. Sorry. Nice to see you again but-”
“Look, I just came to find out if anybody told you yet.”
“Told me what?” Diego demanded. He hadn’t meant to be surly, but that’s how it came out. He was feeling pretty impatient with all of the guessing games and little hints being passed over his head all the time.
The girl merely looked at him, exasperated, then said slowly and patiently, as if talking to a very small child, which he supposed was how he was acting, “My friend, Major Maddock, got her friend the captain to send for Steve.”
“She did?” Diego sat upright, staring at her. “How d’you know?”
“She told me. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Nope. Wow, that’s great,” he said. He’d be okay; Dad would be okay, if Steve was coming. Steve would straighten everything out. Steve would believe him, even if the colonel and the others didn’t, and Steve would know how to handle these assholes, get them to leave him and Dad alone. His relief was so intense it scared him. Maybe this was some sort of scheme, raising his hopes like this. “You sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure.” She gave a disgusted flick of her hand. “I don’t go about spreading rumors. Wanna come to the latchkay?”
“Latchkay? What’s that?”
“Party. Everyone’s coming. Good singing, good music, good eating,” she said, and Diego could see that she was excited.
“Dunno,” he said. “I don’t feel much like going to a party with Dad the way he is. Besides, I’m not sure Giancarlo will let me.” § Bunny grinned smugly. “So don’t ask him. Ask Captain Fiske. Just tell him that Major Maddock told me to ask you, and he’ll let you come for sure. He likes her.”
“Yeah? Well, as long as my dad’s condition doesn’t change or anything, you know, I guess I could. Nothin’ else goin’ on around here.”
Her grin broadened. “You’ll be glad you did,” she told him. “Get to meet a lot of good people and hear some good songs.”
“That’d be a change. Sure is no one here you could call ‘good.’ What kind of songs?”
“Ones my people know. Ones they write about us and our history. Good songs,” she said.
If things had been normal, if he were back on the ship and his father had never come here and he had never come here and they had never found the cave, he might have made a smart remark, might have said something to make fun of her. But now that seemed like kid stuff. She was serious, and he felt as if he owed it to her to be serious, too. “What are they like?”
“Well, some are things you sing and some are things you chant. Some rhyme and some don’t. But they all tell you stuff about things that happen to people, things that happen on the planet.”
“Like poems?”
“I guess so. We just call them songs. What’re poems like?”
He grinned and said, “Wait a minute,” and went back to his bunk, pulling one of his precious hard-copy books from his pack. His nose was half-frozen, but he didn’t care. He took the book back out and thumbed it open to a page. “Here’s one I bet you’ll like.
” ‘A bunch of the boys were whoopin’ it up At the Malamute saloon …’ “
He read her the whole poem, and she really seemed to like it, and then she recited something of hers, what she called a song. He had to admit it was pretty good, but he suddenly felt too shy to tell her then that he had tried a few himself. Besides, he was about to freeze to death standing outside the ugly blocky building talking poetry with a girl who dressed like a gorilla. “Guess I’d better go check on Dad,” he said apologetically.
“Is he any better today?” Bunny asked.