So he was uncharacteristically curt with her as he said, ‘Take me to this cave at once. Shanachie Satok’s business is with me and I’ve come to meet him.”
“Ah, well, sir, I’m too old a woman to take you on that sort of a hike, sure I am. But my son now, he’d be after takin’ ya on his way up to the fields with the sheep like.”
“Then let him take us, but let’s go,” Torkel snapped.
A boy appeared abruptly, a human island in a white woolly sea. He shook his head when Torkel wanted to use the copter to get them there. “Coo-berries’ll take that, too. C’mon!”
It irritated Torkel no end that Rick O’Shay had the time to relax, drink tea, and exchange gossip with the woman while he traipsed after the boy. About a mile from the end of the vil1age, the boy started swinging in a wide arc around the lake of weeds.
“Just where is this cave, son?” Torkel asked him, panting slightly at the uphill climb. He’d have to get back into working out again at the station.
“Over there, sir, but you won’t want to go there, sir. Only shanachies go there.”
“Are all you people nuts? I already told your mother I have business with the shanachies. Now then, how do we get through this shrubbery and into the cave?”
“Ah, sure and I couldn’t be doin’ that, sir. Coo-berries is dead poison to sheep, and they’ve not sense enough to keep from eatin’ them. Worse, I’d never get the stickers and thorns out of the wool.”
“Then don’t take the sheep, son. Did that ever occur to you?”
“But like, what would I do with ‘em then, sir?”
Torkel was about to make a suggestion when he heard the engine of another copter. Seeing it over fly their position and head for the village, he abandoned the boy and sprinted back down the hill to intercept it.
He arrived winded, back where he’d started from, in time to see the pilot shut down the copter and jump down, followed by the imposing figure of Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon; one of his entourage, who looked a bit pale; and an individual dressed in ragged leather and fur. As Torkel approached, his nose twitched at the rancid stench that exuded from the creature.
“Dr. Luzon, thank you for coming. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a delay, however.”
Luzon smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes, the vines. I encountered the same problem when I serendipitously ended up at McGee’s Pass on my way to meet you. It’s a small problem, but a bit tricky, Captain. You simply enlist the aid of the villagers to throw boards and stones on top of the weeds to form a path. We found that worked fine when we landed in the middle of a patch ourselves.”
‘You went to the cave at McGee’s Pass?”
“Cave? Ah, was that what the locals were singing about? No, we didn’t examine the cave. When we discovered that you were, in fact, here, we came as soon as that … ah … song was over. I did, however, make a quite satisfying discovery during our brief stay which I’ll discuss with you later. Now then, where’s this fellow we were supposed to meet?”
“He’s in the cave,” Torkel said. “Beyond the weeds. Though I’m damned if I know how he got through.”
“Easy enough if you think about it,” Matthew said superciliously. He turned to the villagers who had gathered to watch the company men confer. “I want a work party to gather boards, stones, sheets of plasglas, anything that can be thrown across the weeds for a path. Now, step quickly, will you! We must reach the cave.”
“Sure, carryin’ enough things to get back there, that’s a week’s work you’re talkin’ about, sir,” said a local man with the broad weathered face of an Eskirish cross, scratching his head at the prospect.
“We’ve used all that sort of stuff we had building bridges across the streams when they flooded,” the woman said. “There’s not a scrap left hereabouts.”
“Then we’ll send back to SpaceBase,” Torkel said with a curt nod to O’Shay. “You radio for a team.”