"Nothing in particular. I just wanted to know what was available."
"Not much, but come on, I'll show you. Mostly, we try to make our own from what the planet provides. Some of us trade what we make at the store for the few things they have that we can't manufacture ourselves. Our stuff never stays in the store, though. I think they're sold for triple, maybe four times, what we're paid, on ships and space stations and to other colonies. So mostly we deal directly with each other. You know, one of my blankets for one of the good skinning knives Seamus makes, or Sinead will trade a moose hindquarter for a mountain sheep fleece for me or enough mare's butter for our lamps. Old Eithne Naknek often trades the sweaters she knits for food and wood, and we all trade hides to cut for boots and parkas. When I can get cloth, I can make real pretty things for latchkays. Used to do that a lot, but since the SpaceBase closed to civilians, you can't hardly get fabric anymore."
"I can see where I need to get to know who to go to for what," Yana said. She could also see that she was going to need some barterable commodity other than company scrip to get by. She had never tried hunting for food before. Most planets where she had touched down had still been too new for anyone to be sure what was palatable and what was poisonous; and anyway, there was always the awkward possibility of ending up inadvertently lunching on one's host species.
Aisling took her into the store. From the outside, it looked like just another house; inside it seemed even tinier, with the stove dominating the room and counters all around the edges. Flanking the stove were two tables, sparsely littered with bags of nutrient tablets and uniform neckties and buttons, as well as trousers in
very small sizes. Aisling was scanning the shelves beyond the counters.
"Look, Yana. There's a good small pot. You better grab it. We've got one, but anything useful goes quick."
Yana purchased the pot. Looking further for something useful, she saw only small machine parts, burned-out chips, and multicolored wires.
"Sinead takes the wire and welds it into designs on tools and pots," Aisling told her as they left. "And uses the chips for jewelry. You should come over for supper sometime and we'll show you. Though everybody will be bringing things to trade or gift with at the latchkay."
Yana said she would like to do that, and Aisling continued on her way.
Two days later, as Yana was slowly waking up with a cup of hot watery beverage between her hands, she was jolted out of her semi-trance by the sound of dog feet and dog whines and howls outside. Bunny's face, framed by her parka ruff and mittens, appeared in the window. Yana waved at her to come in, and Bunny stuck her head in the door.
"If you still want to come with me up to Uncle Sean's place, come on. I'll wait out here with the dogs, but you better hurry. It's a good two-hour trip, and we may have to track him down once we get there."
Yana nodded and, after throwing two more logs in the stove for good measure, pulled on her boots and tugged her coverall and coat over her uniform. Grabbing mittens, hat, and muffler, she walked outside. The cat followed her.
"You sit there," Bunny told her, indicating the appropriate place in the sled. She wrapped furs and quilts around her. "It'll be cold sitting still. Later on, when you're feeling better, I'll show you how to drive dogs. Driving keeps you warm."
Then Bunny put in Yana's lap a pair of the big oval nets Yana had seen hanging over Clodagh's door. "You always want to have all your survival gear with you when you leave the village," Bunny said. "I don't think we'll need snowshoes, but you never know."
Something warm landed on Yana's thighs and burrowed under the furs. She bent over and saw a familiar orange face peeping out at her.
"Oho! Bunny, can you get rid of the cat?"
"It's okay. That's one of Clodagh's cats, and they go everywhere." With that she whistled up the dogs, pulled the brake up from the ice, and pushed with her foot, as if the sled were a scooter. With much wagging and anxious whining, the foxy-looking red dogs began pulling the sled down the icy expanse between the houses, around a corner, and out onto the river again.
For a while the ride was serene, the sled swooshing over white still lit by the light of moons and stars, Bunny occasionally calling to the dogs or to Yana to look at one set of tracks or another and pointing out "snow goose," "fox," or "moose," accordingly. Then she whistled more sharply, shouted "Ha!," and the dogs made a rather sharp turn up over the bank of the river and through the slender, snow-draped trees.
The sled bounced along from there, the dogs frisking up hills and running down them, the sled sometimes suspended breathlessly in midair for a moment as it went over a bump. Bunny kept control with the brake and her voice, and once the lead dog, Maud, turned back to look at her and whined when Bunny called out "Gee!" Bunny promptly called out "Ha!" instead, and Maud, satisfied, turned back to the trail. Mostly the dogs trotted at a leisurely pace, and Yana got a good view of their excretory functions as they stopped to mark the trail every once in a while.
Finally, however, the trail turned downward for a long time, and then a vast treeless straightaway of ice and snow stretched clear to the horizon, broken only by huge, jagged, upright ice teeth that seemed to be shifting ever so slightly against the brightening sky. The howling of dogs close at hand occasioned answering howls from Bunny's dogs.
Bunny whistled the dogs to a stop then, and Yana saw that the coral-tinted squarish hill between them and the giant ice teeth was not actually a mound of snow kissed by the rising sun, but a building painted in that unlikely shade. As the dogs trotted to a halt, they rounded the corner of the building, and Yana saw a snocle similar to Bunny's sitting before half a dozen small houses, each with a howling red fox-hound on top of it, caroling a greeting to the newcomers.
"Here we are," Bunny said. "And it looks like he's at home, too."
Yana had formed no preconceptions about Bunny's relative, apart from expecting him to vaguely resemble someone of the blood kin she had already met. But Dr. Sean Shongili wasn't like anyone she had ever met, either here on Petaybee or anywhere else in her lifetime-despite the fact that she had the distinct feeling that she had encountered him before.
Bunny had rapped on the door, singing out a cheerful "Slainte, Uncle Sean," a greeting lost in the canine chorus. She urgently beckoned Yana to hurry up, but Yana had to disentangle herself from the furs and the cat before she could stagger to her feet. That long, cold ride in a less-than-comfortable position had stiffened all her joints. She hated to appear less than agile and forced her body to move with something near a semblance of normality.
The door she approached pulled inward, and with snow glare impairing her vision, Yana could distinguish only a medium-sized form, for once not distorted by layers of clothing. The man was actually in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the collar open.
"Uncle Scan, I gotcha home! I've brought Yanaba Maddock to see you. And 1 gotta favor to ask. In Clodagh's name." On those words, Bunny put a hand on Yana's back and propelled her into the house.
Blinking to adjust her eyes, Yana looked about a room that sprouted unusual shapes from every surface, wall and ceiling, a veritable djinni's cave of wonders and a heinz of unassorted utensils, tools, parts, and, as usual, felines. These were six times the size of the one left curled in the sled furs and not a one of them was orange-colored. Fine heads turned, and autocratic amber, yellow, and green eyes assessed her. In a basket near the fire, a black and white bitch with a harlequin face lifted her head, sniffing, moved her foreleg to hide the pups that nursed her, and remained alert the entire time the visitors remained in Scan's cabin. That was the sum of Yana's first impression. Then the man dominated the scene.