Marmion nodded, waving her understanding with elegant fingertips while her mind was already leaping ahead on the problem. Fiske in unwitting collusion with pirates? How far was he prepared to go for these little mining projects? She almost wished she didn’t know as much as she did now, because the whole issue brought her into something of a conflict of interests. She felt great sympathy for the Petaybeans, but realized that her position as a nonpartisan investigator for the commission was already severely compromised.
“Ah well,” she said. “The exchange was, of course, a very clever idea, although naturally I would have been forced to forbid it, had I known. Did Aisling and I give you enough time?”
Sinead snorted at the very notion that she couldn’t organize a simple exchange like that, even if it had taken every available villager and every rock they could find in the clearing.
“I think we better start back now, Dama,” Sinead said.
“I would be honored if you would call me Marmion, as my friends do,” she told Sinead, including Aisling, Luka, and Aigur in her glance.
Sinead gave her a thoughtful glance and for one dreadful moment, Marmion thought perhaps that she might not live up to the criterion Sinead Shongili expected of “friends.” Her smile was much like her brother’s and oddly shy, as if she did not give her friendship that often.
“Then we are honored … Marmion. May we stop at Kilcoole first, though?”
“Of course, I was going to suggest that. Clodagh and Whit will have to be informed … unless,” Marmion added, smiling ruefully at the still able-bodied orange cats who had slipped in to join the big cat in its attentions to their fallen brother, “they already know.”
“Some, but not all,” Sinead replied with a smile, as she and Aisling began to pack up their belongings.
At first light, the weather did not look too encouraging, but Yana gave Johnny an appealing look as he turned from the window, and he threw up his hands in surrender.
“Might be damned bumpy,” he told her.
“I’d risk more than that,” Yana told him.
“Me, too,” Bunny added. Diego only gave a sharp nod of his head.
Loncie insisted on packing them some food, which Johnny said he’d replenish on his next trip north.
“Ay, de me, and someone will go hungry here in the meantime? Off with you, amigo, and do not concern yourself with such details at a time like this. Find La Pobrecita, and that is more than enough.”
When they were strapped into their seats, with Nanook crouched again in the rear, enduring his discomfort valiantly, Johnny took off. Once on a south easterly course, he handed Yana an aerial map.
“I want you to double-check something for me. It seems to me the Lacrimas River runs pretty straight from the mouth, which is almost directly opposite Harrison’s Fjord. Am I right?”
“I see what you’re getting at,” Yana said, unfolding the chart and giving it a shake as she searched it. “You think that the undersea tunnel might come up near the Vale of Tears?”
“Well, it’s more of a possibility than you might think,” Johnny said, not sure enough to mention why he thought it a possibility, even as he mentally matched the face of ‘Cita with Bunny sitting behind him.
He shook his head. Shongilis all had unusual bone structure, so, unless Granddaddy Shongili had warmed a few beds he hadn’t dared mention to his possessive wife, Johnny could think of only one logical conclusion.
Yana perused the map and gave a yelp of triumph as she found the two relative points; then, with a worried frown, she said, “Johnny, there’s two thousand miles between the two continents!”
“Uncle Sean thought there’d be that at least,” Bunny said, releasing her seat belt to lean over Yana’s shoulder.
“Belt up!” Johnny said in a roar that reverberated in the small cabin and made Nanook snarl. “Sorry.”
Yana passed the map over her shoulder to Bunny.
“We made it in about a hundred and fifty miles to the cave-in …” Bunny began, her voice trailing off. “That isn’t very far … considering …” Her voice went on, slightly muffled as she bent down to Nanook’s head. “You did say Uncle Sean was alive, didn’t you?”