Petaybee 2 - Power Lines by McCaffrey Anne & Scarborough Elizabeth Ann

Author:McCaffrey, Anne & Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann [McCaffrey, Anne & Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women political activists, Fantasy - General, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Genetic Engineering, Life on other planets - Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Fiction - Fantasy, Fiction, Anne - Prose & Criticism, Arctic peoples, General, Adventure stories, Women political activists - Fiction, Epic, Life on Other Planets, Mccaffrey
ISBN: 9780345381743
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2010-01-22T04:54:24+00:00

Johnny raised his eyebrows, hoping for a little off-the-record advice, but Whittaker's expression suggested that he tend to his current orders.

Contrary to Whittaker's expectations, he received neither call nor visit from Matthew Luzon, nor was there a complaint officially logged in against Captain John Greene. Nor, during that day, was there any message from his son or a whisper concerning his where abouts. Only the matter of a concussed guard found at one of the side access gates to SpaceBase.

Torkel Fiske was angry enough, but Satok was livid with rage, kicking at the crates, splintering half a dozen, and paying no attention to the rocks that bounced down on his boots, as if he welcomed the pain. Torkel also listened to the invective Satok cast on the head of that slatternly Luka and what he intended to do to her when he found her again. From the brief glimpses he'd had of the girl, Torkel could not quite believe that she had had the intelligence, much less the strength, to remove all the genuine ore samples, which Torkel had himself handled and seen, in the time they'd been absent from the shuttle.

Without proof of the find, however, the commission would pay scant attention to Satok and might reach their decision before the man could gather more samples. There were other ways to assert company control of this planet, of course—the company—built and maintained roads, power plants, hospitals, and schools Torkel suggested to Marmion. All in the name of taking care of the colonists, of course. If they were better treated, more civilized, they'd be more cooperative. Especially when the planet was over run with corps troops—not originally from Petaybee: he'd make sure of that this time—doing the building and maintaining. Especially if company doctors also made sure that the physiological aberrations peculiar to Petaybeans were studied and eliminated, and if birth control was strictly monitored so that the Petaybeans at no time grew too numerous to control. Company teachers would slant their curriculum to insure the loyalty of their students, and company communications systems would insure that inhabitants, both original and new to the planet, accepted the company agenda and kept the company side of any dispute foremost in their minds at all times. And if they didn't, troops could travel by company roads to make sure people remembered their manners.

And the planet? The living planet? Within himself, Torkel didn't sneer at the idea. Petaybee was sentient. He knew it. He had felt it, seen it, heard it himself. But that didn't mean he liked it. That Satok had stolen ores from the body of the beast itself impressed Torkel no end—but only if the man could show the lodes. All they had in the shuttle were common rocks and dust. The ore was no better than the fairy gold of Grandmother Fiske's bedtime stories.

He would have preferred to play with his coin collection or dissect a roundworm before bedtime, but Grandmother Fiske, who, he supposed, was responsible for the

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