“I’m sorry,” Yana said. “I don’t know your customs yet. It’s just that I could see how much you all liked Lieutenant Demintieff and I know how important it is to a soldier to hear from friends, whether they’re dirtside or on some other facility.”
“It’s okay, Yana,” Clodagh said. “Sedna, Yana’s going to be staying with us here so she’ll find out soon enough. The fact is, Yana, nobody here knows how to record much less write.”
Yana sputtered with surprise. “They don’t? You don’t? But how the hell can that be? The Petaybean recruits I’ve met all know how; Bunny surely must know how to have passed her snocle test.”
Bunny shook her head. “That’s all done on comm link-verbal and visual cues. And of course the company teaches the soldiers to read, at least enough to get by in the corps, in basic training and at the officers academy down at Chugiak-Fergus, but other than that …” She shrugged.
“Surely the colonists who first came here …” Yana insisted.
Clodagh shook her head. “Only those who were high officers in the company already. Oh, sure and some of our great-grandparents maybe knew a little bit at one time-maybe as much as the company teaches soldiers now-but back then, so the songs tell us, everybody had fancy machines to talk to them and show them pictures of what needed to be done. The company apparently didn’t think we needed the machines as bad as we needed other stuff when they sent us here, and such things were far too dear for the likes of us to import once we were here. So there’s just , a few of those machines on the planet, the ones the company needs to keep here for their own business. As for your written books, well, I don’t suppose anybody had a clue where to find many of them anymore, except for the special ones the scientists had. So we sort of fell back into just talking and singing and telling about what happened, like people did way back a long time ago.”
“We do okay without that stuff,” Bunny said, with a defensive edge to her voice that was immediately tempered by wistfulness. “Except, sometimes, like now, but still there are some people who can …” She turned to Clodagh.
“Including, if I’m not mistaken, your own Uncle Sean, Bunka,” Sedna said. “Is that so, Clodagh?”
“Of course. He’s a Shongili.” To Yana, Clodagh explained, “The Shongilis were originally of Inuit stock but already had careers as valued Intergal scientists when Petaybee was founded. Scan’s and Sinead’s grandda was the most respected man in our hemisphere until his death.” With what seemed undue pride she nodded emphatically. “Shongilis definitely can read-books and books if they want to. Even Sinead can-Aisling’s seen her do it, but said Sinead told her mostly she’d rather read animal tracks instead and rely on her own sharp ears and long memory for stories and songs like everybody else.”
Bunny bounced up and exclaimed, “I forgot! That’s right! Uncle Sean can not only write, but he has stuff to write with and a recorder. He could do it!”
“Your uncle is an important man, a busy man, Bunny,” Sedna said, horrified. “He’s got problems to solve for the whole planet. We can’t go bothering him with every little thing.”
“Charlie being shipped out isn’t really a little thing, though, is it, Sedna?” Clodagh asked. “No, I think that’s a good idea. If Yana knows how to read and make recordings, too, and if you’d help us do it, Yana, we wouldn’t need to bother him very much. He could just loan her the machine. You think he’d do that, Bunny?”
“He will if I ask him and tell him it’s your idea,” Bunny said. “I’ll go up to his place in a couple of days, next time I don’t have any fares to and from SpaceBase.”
“Maybe Yana’d like to go with you. I bet Scan would like to meet somebody else who knows writing.”
“How about it, Yana? You’re not scared of the dogs, are you?”
Yana shook her head, grinning. “No, I’d like to ride in that contraption.” As advertised, the home brew was starting to blur her.