Yana took a couple of steps toward the tent before the smoke from the fires wafted toward her. She felt her throat seizing up and stepped back, silently cursing her weakness. How the frag was she going to survive on a cold planet if she couldn’t breathe in the presence of fire?
Bunny, her shoulders bowed as she hauled one of the thermoses with both hands so that the container bumped against her shins, nodded to Yana to return to the snocle. Yana was relieved not to put her lungs through any further ordeal. She turned with more enthusiasm than was prudent and her feet promptly slid on the ice underlying the thin covering of drifted snow. She placed her feet more cautiously then, and managed to make it back to the snocle without falling.
Seamus set the other water thermos in beside her and ran a mitten across his face, an accustomed gesture that dislodged some of his facial icicles. “Welcome to Petaybee, such as it is, Major. You need something, you just ask Bunny here.”
Yana nodded. “Thanks.” It was just possible that, if her official guide turned out to be anywhere near as inept as she herself was in this environment, she would find Bunny’s unofficial assistance more useful.
They arrived at Yana’s new quarters long after darkness had fallen, though by Yana’s calculation it was no more than late afternoon. She looked at the small single house standing alone on pilings beside others of similar construction. It had one window and one door that she could see in the gloom, and the window was small. Whatever. It was bound to be roomier than some of the berths she’d had, and compared to her place on the ward at the space-station hospital; it looked palatial, as well as incredibly private.
Bunny hefted her duffel out of the snocle for her and pushed open the door. The interior was spare, white as the outdoors, and contained a cot, a small table on which rested her survival pack, a chair, and a stove for heating and cooking.
“It’s too late for you to inprocess today. Sorry it took so long,” Bunny said. “Look, wait here and I’ll get some blankets. You’d better take this water, too. No one’s given you your ration.” She nodded toward the thermos on a shelf beyond the stove. – “That’s for your auntie, isn’t it?” Yana asked. “And I can scarcely take your blankets, too.”
Bunny shook her head. ‘They won’t care about the water, and I can spare the blanket. You’ll be issued your own tomorrow.”
She drove away in the snocle and, in a short time, returned on foot, carrying a bundle of puffy cloth and a packet. “Smoked salmon strips,” she said, indicating the packet.
“What?”
“Fish. It’s good,” Bunny said patiently. “You’ll like it.”
Yana’s day had started back at the station hospital nearly thirty hours earlier, and she couldn’t face anything more taxing than rolling up in blankets and going to sleep as fast as possible. “Thanks,” she said.
“Okay, then. Shall I pick you up in the morning to meet your guide? I could get the blanket then, too.”
Aha, Yana thought, a little blackmail here to ensure the continuing custom. Very enterprising. “That’ll be fine,” she said with a weary lift of her eyes that would have to pass for a smile. Bunny showed her how to light the stove before she left and promised to help her organize more fuel the next day.
Without waiting for the room to warm up enough for her to remove her outerwear, Yana arranged the chair at the head of the cot, sat down, and stretched her legs out on the bed. She had chewed only a couple of bites of the oddly spiced salmon strip before she fell asleep, as she had for the last few weeks, sitting up.
Bunny Rourke returned to her aunt’s house after delivering the blankets to her client and returning the snocle to its special shed.
“I’ll need to check it out again in the morning,” she’d told Adak O’Connor, the dispatcher and guard.
“No shuttles due from SpaceBase for another week,” Adak said, removing his headphones and turning away from the radio that connected him to SpaceBase and the few other places on Petaybee that had such advanced equipment. He scowled at his record book, which contained the schedules for the port and kept track of the whereabouts of the vehicles-both of them. Bunny was licensed to drive one, Terce the other: they were the only authorized drivers to and from Kilcoole. The shuttles belonged to InterGalactic Enterprises, known as Intergal, the omnipresent if not omnipotent corporation responsible for the existence of Petaybee, and the boss of all Bunny’s people. Bunny had qualified for her license only because one of her uncles was an important man and owned his own snocle as well as dogs. When Bunny’s parents had disappeared, Uncle had taught her to drive the snocle to help her make her own way in the village so she wouldn’t be a burden. She was Uncle’s driver on the rare occasions when he preferred the snocle to his team. She also made the trip out to his place to keep the machine running for him and repair it when it broke down-usually from neglect. Her uncle was a brilliant man but not mechanically inclined. Bunny took after her Yupik granddad: she could fix anything. And six months ago, on her fourteenth birthday, she had obtained her license to ferry passengers from SpaceBase to Kilcoole and back.