“Have they?”
Sean cocked his head, his amusement not one whit diminished. “I’d say there have been … adjustments made. Learning what furs, for instance, are most suitable for the purpose of keeping human bodies warm.”
“That’s intellectual, not biological,” Yana said.
“Mankind’s intelligence distinguishes us from the animals, my dear major. And allows adjustments much faster than animals can alter their genetic codes.”
“Do they? Here on Petaybee?”
“Over the last two hundred years, they’d have to, to survive. Wouldn’t they?” He drained his cup. “Of course, the original Admin was sensible about some of the species they sent, which helped.”
“Which ones?” Yana asked.
Bunny snorted, obviously knowing the answer.
Scan grinned, a grin of pure unadulterated mischief. “Why, the curly-coats.” When Yana cocked her head at him inquiringly, he beckoned to her. “I’ll show you.”
“They’re his pride and joy, Yana. You’re in for it,” Bunny said, propping her feet up on a footstool and obviously not intending to join Scan and Yana.
“I asked.”
“The curly-coats are equines,” Sean said, and as he cupped her elbow with his hand, she experienced the same electric shock of contact. “Originally from the Siberian area of the Eastern Hemisphere. They exist comfortably in extreme temperatures, having a spare flap in their nose that closes off frost. They survive on vegetation that wouldn’t keep a goat alive. Small, sturdy, able to maneuver on tracks even a sled has trouble running.”
He led her down a corridor from the main room, past closed doors, and into a link between the house and a spread of other buildings that she took for research and laboratory facilities. The link passed in front of other closed doors, some with security keypads. She was adept enough at sussing her immediate surroundings without appearing to do so, yet she had the sense that Sean was aware of her automatic scanning. They came to the end of the link, which opened onto a paddock with snow fences keeping the drifts from its surface. In the paddock were a dozen small horses, curly-coated to the point of being shaggy, with long fur icicled under their throats, and long feathers curling down from their sturdy barrels and down their short thick legs. At first she wasn’t sure which end was which, since the manes were as long as the tails and just as thick. There were several brown animals, but most were a creamy color; they were all browsing on what looked much like the icicled spines she had seen on the riverside three days before.
“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.”