McCaffrey, Anne & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough – Powers That Be. Chapter 11, 12

Chapter 11

How do we know that this is for real?” Bunny asked when Yana showed the autopsy report to Sean, ‘Sinead, and Clodagh.

“It is,” Sean said unequivocally.

“Then you know about this brown fat stuff, the node, and the anomalous fatty layer?” Yana asked.

Sean nodded and Clodagh’s eyes glistened.

“It’s why only the young can go off Petaybee,” Clodagh said.

“Their brown fat hasn’t developed the same mass that adults’ have?” Yana asked.

There was a long pause while Sean, Clodagh, and Sinead exchanged secretive, and almost embarrassed, glances. Bunny just looked from one to the other, perplexed and hoping to find an answer in their faces.

Finally, Sean nodded. “Something like that, Yana. It’s pretty complicated, and frankly nobody, including me, understands all of the functions of the adaptations. You may have noticed my research facilities for anything much beyond simple animal husbandry are a bit limited. A lot of it the planet simply seems to do on its own. I haven’t found anything about deliberately introducing such changes as the brown fat and the node in any of the notes my predecessors left behind, but I do know they exist from examining the corpses of other Petaybeans.”

“I can understand how you might not know how the changes got here or what they consist of if you’re not responsible for them, but there are still a few things I think you can explain,” Yana told him.

Had she not grown up on space stations and ships, where humans were the dominant life-form but by no means the only life or even the only sentient life, she might have been a little more shocked by what they were implying, that humans were being altered by a planet to suit itself. As it was, she was vaguely annoyed with herself that she was reminded of old vids of aliens who took over the bodies of innocent earthlings.

She took a deep breath and began confronting the issues that disturbed her concerning Lavelle’s physiology. “Let me get this straight. You folks here on Petaybee are all Earth stock, right?”

“That’s right,” Clodagh said. “My ancestors were sent here from County Clare, County Limerick, County Wicklow, and Point Barrow, Alaska. Scan’s and Sinead’s are from Kerry and Dublin and northern Canada.”

“You know all that?”

“If you’ll remember right, Yana, I told you most of us can’t read or write. It’s part of my job here to remember these things.” Clodagh grinned. “An old Irish profession.”

“Well, tell me this: if you’re Earth stock, like me and like most of the company corps, how come only you people can’t be moved from where you were sent? I mean, even if the young can go and the older ones can’t, it hasn’t always been that way, has it? Why is that brown fat stuff affecting you now and it didn’t to begin with? Surely at first the company occasionally recruited people who were a little more … mature.”

It was Scan’s turn to look perplexed-and somewhat worried. “Yes, they did. But mostly they’ve preferred to recruit the youngsters, and it’s never seemed to do them more harm than military service does anyone, that we know of. And you have to understand, Yana, that our people have been adjusting to the planet and the planet to us for a couple of hundred years now. The physical changes found in Lavelle’s body were adaptive changes to this world. Some people adapt more readily and more completely than others-and the more exposure they have, the longer the period they have to become accustomed to something, the greater the chance of a profound adaptation. Lavelle was very much a woman of this planet. She lived most of her life outdoors, she ate only what she caught or grew, like many of us, and she was well into her fifties. Here, she was very tough. But her body was used to cold weather, Petaybean midwinter cold, far colder even than you’ve experienced so far, to clean air and pure water and real food. I’m afraid she had lost whatever resistance she had to other conditions in the process of becoming suited to the extremes of Petaybee. Our peculiar weather conditions would never have killed her, but in exchange for that protection, her body relinquished certain other immunities. Besides which, she had a very strong emotional attachment to her home place.”

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