A slight snore emanated from Coaxtl and Yo Chang leant towards Cita.
‘Does he’
‘Coaxtl is a female personage,' Cita informed him repressively.
‘Does she really talk to you?’
‘Not in loud words like you and I are using,' Cita said, 'but I understand exactly what she says to me.’
Yo Chang looked down at the sleeping cub in his arms. 'Then, if I heard the name Monti, the cub was telling me his name?’
‘Quite likely,' Cita said, delighted at being an expert on such a point.
The moans and sobbings had died down to a low enough murmur so Cita decided she could get some sleep.
‘We may be a while longer,' she told Yo Chang as she rearranged herself against Coaxtl's long warm body. 'You'd better rest.’
‘Can I go see if my father's all right?' Yo Chang asked timidly and fearfully.
‘He'll be feeling very sorry for himself, I shouldn't wonder,' Cita said, settling. 'Sometimes, my Aunt Sinead says, when people are hurting they'll lash out at anyone else to make them hurt, too.’
Yo Chang gulped but resolutely deposited the sleeping cub by Cita before he made his way down to where the sufferers were enduring their penance. She was half asleep when she heard him return, stifling sobs.
‘Your father?’
‘Lives, but looks like a grandfather. He doesn't seem to know me.’
She patted his shoulder awkwardly and pulled him down, putting her thin arm over him so that he lay between her and Coaxtl and Monti the cub. She didn't need to tell him that life was sometimes hard.
Namid felt a pang of anxiety. Though Dinah certainly merited discipline, even incarceration for their abduction, he didn't wish her harm. And he did need to know more about her activities, with or without the holo of Captain Onidi Louchard. Perhaps it had been Megenda who was Louchard, although the first mate had never appeared to Namid as a man of sufficient cunning and intelligence to contrive the piratical activities that had made Louchard's name feared all over the galaxy.
If Dinah could give him any mitigating circumstances - beyond what he already knew of her tragic early life and hard treatment - maybe he could do some kind of a deal. She wasn't all bad. He couldn't have loved her if she had been thoroughly corrupt and sinister. That surely would have affected her personality and she had been such a loving and affectionate wife: merry, occasionally even frivolous, and often childlike in her enthusiasms during their married life. Maybe she was a split personality, schizophrenic, and that complexity, once proved, would reduce the sentence. The very thought of Dinah, encased in a space coffin, waiting for the air supply to end, appalled him. He was determined to find some way out for her. Marmion was of such a forgiving personality that she might even drop personal charges against Dinah - if she knew of factors which could mitigate the offence. Dinah hadn't actually pulled the trigger that had killed anyone. Her crew had murdered, that was true, but she had assured him, when he first found out who she 'worked for' that the pirates were under strict orders to fire only at others when they were being fired upon themselves. Of course, the ethic was that they were being fired on legally for attempting illegal activities and self-defence, accordingly, could not be claimed. Oh, my stars and sparkles, Namid thought, I'm arguing like a modern-day Gilbert and Sullivan.
He took a deep breath and opened the inner door to the communion chamber. Warm mist obscured everything, making him feel he had stepped into a steam bath and he immediately felt a strong presence that had nothing to do with Dinah or her crew. Well, he had been assured by sane and intelligent people that the planet definitely had a persona.
‘Good morning,' he said, feeling just a trifle foolish, but if the planet understood, then it would appreciate normal courtesies, too.
‘And it is morning and I expect that you've had a busy time of it lately but I did wish a few words with you.’
'Few words.'
Was that permission? Or limitation? Namid wondered.
‘They might be more than a few, actually,' Namid went on, smiling as if that would be noticed. 'I've so many questions to ask.’
'Many questions.'
Again Namid wondered if that was permission or limitation. But it had sounded, to his untutored ear, as if the speaker was slightly amused by his presumption.
‘I'm told that you do communicate, or rather go into a communion phase with… what should I call it… with supplicants? No, that's much too religious a word.
Communicants? Ah, yes, I think that is best. Now, first, is there anything I can do to assist you right now? Remove the occupants that spent the night here? I can't see them for the fog but…’
Namid had - not quite stealthily, but slowly - felt his way further into the cavern. Before he went one step further, however, the fog suddenly sucked itself back into the farthest reaches of the cave and vanished, leaving him awe-struck and speechless for several moments as he watched the play of gently singing light and colour across the surfaces of the cave.
‘You are rather stunning in appearance, you know,' he said in a hushed voice. The shifting colours of the walls were corruscations of complex blendings and wave designs. He rather suspected he could spend hours following the patterns as they made their way deeper and deeper into the cavern. The way was level now whereas before it had been on a slight downward incline. 'Am I well into this communion place now?’
'Now!'
‘Ah, then,' Namid said, 'I'm an astronomer, you see. I have spent my life observing the anomalies of stellar matter, with particular emphasis on variables. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?’
'Talk.'
‘Well, now I'm certainly willing to although I am not a lecturer by training. Still, to talk to a planet, the satellite of a rather… ah… (not ordinary, Namid said to himself, not wishing to offend Petaybee)… an excellent example of a G-type star… well, it's an extraordinary experience, if you know my meaning.’
'Know meaning. Talk.'
‘I've seen many stars - constant, dwarf, variable, binary systems - everything so far astronomically categorized, but speaking to a planet is highly unusual.’
Namid, aware that nervousness was making him more garrulous than was natural, thought he heard a whispery laugh.
'Unusual planet.'
At that sally, Namid did laugh. 'You have a sense of humour, don't you? I think we shall get on very well together.’
'Very well. Talk.'
A low moan that ended on a piteous sob interrupted any further talk at that juncture. The moan had echoed quite near and Namid, being a compassionate person, was compelled to investigate. Just beyond the bend in the passage, he saw the figure of Dinah, looking smaller and, indeed, when he turned her over in his arms, almost wizened efface. Her hair had turned completely white. She was breathing regularly and although her pulse was slow it was strong enough to reassure him. All the questions that had brimmed to his mind to ask Petaybee - could it speak with its primary, with its sister planets, communicate with its moons and how - went out of his head along with the questions he had framed to ask Dinah. She was patently in no condition to answer - even to her own name.
A guttural 'eh' made him investigate further down the corridor where he saw three more figures, each of them curled in tight foetal positions, the bodies also giving off excretal and vomital smells that made Namid glad that he had eaten nothing yet in his haste to seek Dinah.