"You'd never spot half of them in this terrain" was Yana's first comment.
Sean chuckled, apparently pleased by her remark. "They're survivors!"
"What do you use them for?"
"A variety of things. Their milk we can drink, fresh, frozen, or fermented, or make into a butter which we use in our lamps."
"I have," she said, restraining herself from wrinkling her nose.
"It smells but it's better than nothing. Their coats we can comb and use for wool." Yana thought of the warm soft blanket she had seen in Clodagh's. "We can eat their flesh, drink their blood-" He glanced at her to see if that repulsed her, but she had eaten far worse than curly-coated equines in her time- worse and tougher than these little animals looked. "We can ride them, use them as pack animals, use them as extra blankets if we're caught out in bad weather. They don't object to sleeping with humans…"
She looked at him then, for the undertone to his comment was both risible and dogmatic. His silver eyes glinted with the mischief that seemed an essential part of his public self.
"They are amenable to anything we can think up for them to do. And they never complain or balk." Thai seemed to be of A paramount importance. "They've saved many a team from hypothermic death and starvation. In fact, you can bleed them quite a bit before they are weakened."
"Useful."
"Indeed."
"Were they used by the teams that disappeared?"
Sean was surprised at that question and scratched the back of his neck. "Been given a few ghouly stories to keep you awake at night?"
"Not ghouly to me," she said with a shrug. "I've been first-team on a few company planets, a couple where I'd've been glad to have a few curly-coats along."
"Oh?"
She could see interest sparking the glint in his eyes. He leaned back against the plasglas, propping his arms on the wide sills, apparently not affected by contact with the cold surface, whereas she could feel the frost of it oozing into the semi warm link.
She gave a laugh. "Don't get me started on that phase of my life. It's over." She made a cutting gesture with her hands.
"Then it's time to sing about it. You came through."
"Sing? Me?" She ducked her head in denial. "Not me- couldn't carry a tune in a bucket."
Sean smiled-almost challengingly, she thought. "Inuit chants can't be called tunes, not without a stretch of the definition, but they do grab the mind and make audiences listen. I think they'd like to hear your songs."
Yana was not affecting modesty: she just didn't think any of her experiences were worth hearing about, and certainly some of them she wouldn't talk, much less sing, about.
"I'm serious, Yana." He spoke her name with an odd lilt. She shot him a quick look and saw that he was, indeed, serious. Then his expression turned sly. "The spring latchkay's coming up soon.
You'll be coming, and there are some folks hereabout would like to hear a song about Bremport."
"Bremport?" She went rigid.
He laid a light finger on her arm. "You were at Bremport. Charlie picked up on that when he got a copy of your orders and the briefing on your medical history."
"That should have been confidential," she said, feeling less guilty about Charlie than she had the day before.
"Charlie's older brother Donal was at Bremport, too, so it was of more than casual interest to him. So were three other sons of Petaybee and two daughters, and us here knowing nothing about their deaths but that they are dead."
Damn Charlie anyway. Giancarlo had been right to transfer him-the boy's loyalties had been too mixed for him to be an effective company representative here. Still, she couldn't blame him, but-damn. She remembered to exhale then, and swallowed hard on all the things she didn't wish to remember about Bremport.
The swallow was a mistake. Somehow it went down wrong and she started to cough. Hard as she tried to limit it to the one cough, another burst past her lips, and the next thing she knew she was racked by a paroxysm. She fumbled in her coat for her syrup and dragged the bottle out. But she moved too swiftly: it flew from her groping fingers and smashed on the stone floor of the link. As if the loss of the syrup were a signal, the coughing fit intensified. Scan's very strong fingers gripped her arms, supporting her convulsing body and he began to hurry back the way they had come, though she had trouble keeping on her feet. She had to bring her knees almost to her chin to keep the spasms from tearing her abdominal muscles.
"What's the cause, Yana? The gas at Bremport?"
She managed to nod a yes. Then he was assisting her into a laboratory, flicking up lights, and settling her onto a nearby stool before he sprang across the room to the large array of cabinets there. Without fumbling, he poured out a dose of a clear yellow liquid and returned to her side.
"Something of Clodagh's that makes cowardly coughs evaporate on its fumes," he said. "We all take it now and then."
Yana was in no condition to object to anything anyone might consider remedial. Between one spasm and the onset of another, she knocked back the liquid-and rolled her eyes, inhaled, and then exhaled gustily, for the medicine had a kick in it that could only reduce any cough to tatters. And the next spasm didn't materialize.
Surprised, Yana took several short breaths, fully expecting each one to deteriorate into a cough. Scan regarded her with a growing smile curling his lips.
"See? Guaranteed effective."
"What was in it?" she gasped respectfully, still aware of the taste of it in the back of her mouth.
The mischief returned to Scan Shongili's eyes. "Well, now, that I don't know. Clodagh won't pass on the secret of her elixir. She just makes it."
Yana was aware of the plethora of laboratory equipment from slidetrays to electronic microscopes-and not obsolete ones, at that. She waved her hand at them.
"You look as if you could analyze the contents…"
"Ah…" Sean held up his hands. "It's unethical to plumb the secrets of another professional. I do animals; she does humans."
"But isn't there an overlap somewhere along the line?" Yana asked.
"How so?"
"Those cats of hers. And you've cats that are totally different."
Sean grinned so broadly that Yana knew she would never get an honest answer on that score. "So I do." Then he turned from her and went back to the cabinet. He held up the bottle. "I can spare this since it seems to have been so effective for you."
Yana hesitated. She had had to use up far too much of her personal baggage allowance for enough bottles of the syrup to see her through her recuperation. But there was no question that Clodagh's was more effective. She sighed, cutting that loss and accepting the bottle. Maybe it would suffice to see the cough to an end before she had to go back to the prescription stuff.
"Clodagh makes it up in huge batches every fall to cope with coughs," Sean said, tucking the bottle securely in the inner vest pocket. "You can get more as you need it."
Yana felt another twinge of resentment against a system that did not supply her with enough money for even basic needs, much less medicinal niceties.
"Can you give me a few helpful hints about this place?"