Regards,
Chumia and Muktuk of the Tanana Bay Murphys on Petaybee
P.S. Could you please put in a word with your boss and ask that Sean's wife and relations and the nice Company lady are kindly treated as we're all very worried about them?
Then, in another hand altogether, a second note.
There is nothing a person can do in regard to ransom here. SS
Dinah O'Neill ran the message through several times. This was not going the way it should have. Not in any way, shape or form. She hated to take Namid's accusation to heart - that she was losing her touch: she preferred the Yana-woman's suggestion that she had been badly informed.
She pondered the brief sentence from Shongili - for who else would be 'SS'. Nothing a person could do, huh? Well, that was certainly in line with Yana's allegation. Wouldn't the anxious husband of a newly wedded pair try to bargain? Not, Dinah came to the reluctant conclusion, if he had no control over this planet entity, this sentient world. Then she turned to the bulk of the message - so innocent and naive. If she could get out of her job as a pirate? What ingenuousness. Part of Shongili's ploy? No, the words had the ring of truth.
Further to that, which the Tanana Bay O'Neills couldn't have known at all, was that she was a descendant of that Rory O'Neill, Handy Red O'Neill who had been so proud of fighting that battle on the Rosslare Ferry: the last stand of the Virtuous, he'd called it. And he'd composed a roaring saga which was one of the few memories she had of her own red-headed father: bellowing out the chorus to the many stanzas of that saga. Oh, she'd have a family song to sing to these O'Neills of Tanana Bay, she would indeed.
Abruptly she clicked on the holo-shield control set in one of her rings dnd depressed another button to summon Megenda.
‘Yes, Captain Louchard?' the first mate said when he reported to his 'Aurelian' captain.
‘It's time to leave. We're going to Petaybee, Megenda.’
The man's broken teeth showed in a grin. 'Aye-aye, Cap'n.’
16
‘Sean?' Simon Furey came charging into the governor's mansion. 'I got someone here from…' and Furey frowned down at the plasfilm sheets trying to curl around his gloved hand from the static in the cold air that he brought in with him, '… Nabatira Structural Cubes?’
‘Never heard of them.’
‘I have!' Furey said, impressed.
Sean reached for the film and they both had trouble unwinding it to the point where the consignment note and the invoice could be separated and read. 'I don't know a thing about this,' he added, shaking his head, especially over the fat letters of the 'NO CHARGE' stamped on the invoice.
Furey jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the junked cabin room. 'They'd be damned good things to have, y'know.’
Sean looked about him, snorting at the confusion of tiers of boxes on every available space, boxes into which Una and her helpers filed the stuff that every shuttle brought down to dump in his already stuffed premises.
Adak came in just then, waving more plasfilm. 'The most humungous slabs just arrived, Sean. They gotta be unloaded and put up and, I dunno,’
Adak's eyes were wide in his round face. 'What are they?’
‘Climatically resistant and atmospherically adjustable additional autonomous units, complete with all facilities, can be erected instantly and with little or no site preparation,' said the rangy redheaded individual who had followed Adak in. 'But I gotta tell ya, man, we gotta fix and run or we miss the next delivery and that's not company policy. We only got three days to site these things and you're lucky to get delivery so quickly, considering how far in advance clients usually gotta book Nabatira Cubes. So where do we put 'em?’
‘Them?’
The redhead flicked fingers at the film in Sean's suddenly limp fingers.
‘Four of 'em,' and the redhead held up four gloved fingers. That seemed to be his only concession to Petaybean weather although the outfit he wore was probably one of the lightweight thermal beauties which Minkus had brought with him from Herod's. Now the Nabatiran emissary looked about him. 'This the governor's mansion?' he asked incredulously, assessing the clutter in a single not quite contemptuous glance. 'How big are these cubes?’
The redhead snorted. 'Hell, man, you could put six of this bitty place in one and still get a rattle.’
‘Then I want one right beside this,' Sean said, suddenly decisive. 'Adak, get some axes and…’
The redhead held up a restraining hand. 'No sweat, mate. Oscar O'Neill, the Great O. O., will take care of that detail. Like we claim, little or no site preparation is needed.’
‘What wouldja do with them trees, then?' Adak demanded, his head protruding from his parka like a turtle's.
‘You need the wood? We keep the wood,' the Great O. O. said amiably.
‘That's one down, Governor Shongili…" and Oscar O'Neill paused to receive Sean's disposition of the others.
‘Make a much better school than the longhouse does…' Simon Furey suggested appealingly.
‘Done!’
‘School's to be near by?' O. O. asked.
‘Just up the road,' Simon replied eagerly, pointing in the right direction.
‘Road?' O. O. asked condescendingly.
‘Road,' Sean said firmly and wondered what to do with the others. Sometimes gifts can be more embarrassing than helpful - especially 'free' ones.
‘Kin I make a suggestion, mate?' O. O. said and when Sean nodded, 'Well, I spent a good deal of good daylight e-rection time trying to find you. Wouldn't have found you at all if not for Cap'n Greene and his flyin' machine. He came along just as I was about to mark this lot "Return to sender". Why not install one cube at that so-called SpaceBase of yours to direct incoming traffic and take…' he looked around him again,' some of the paperwork outa here.’
Sean couldn't have agreed more though the 'No charge' aspect of this largesse could not be explained by O. O. All he knew 'was what was on the dockets, man', and 'no charge' meant just that, and who were they to argue with Head Office? By the time the necessary decisions were made, Sean had a new office block adjacent to the marital cabin; awed Kilcoole had a new school; Petaybee Admin had its own - if empty - premises on the edge of the SpaceBase, and Lonciana was going to find herself to be the recipient of the fourth Nabatira Structural Cube. If she was having half the trouble Sean was in the management of the Southern Continent, she needed the space to do it in too.
As abruptly as O. O. and his men had appeared, they left.
‘He was as good as his word, wasn't he?' Una said, standing in the newfallen snow in front of the cube while the governor's'staff' took stock of their new premises. 'It's just forty-eight hours since they arrived.’
‘So it is,' Sean said, totally bemused by the speed with which this had all been accomplished. O. O. and his men hadn't even paused when snow whipped around so that at one point it had been very hard to see despite the banks of heavy-duty lights that had been put up so they could work through the night.
The building had also been sunk into the ground, neatly placed behind a screen of Kilcoole's conifers so that it didn't even seem to be an intruder. A unanimous decision had voted for an outer coating of a bark-like paint so that it resembled - at least in colour - the other cabins along the road. Of course, the upper level did tower above the neighbouring buildings but there were trees behind it that were taller still. It was empty, of course, for no-one had had time to transfer anything.