Yana was used to the close confinement of a living area within a hostile environment but found that despite her fatigue and illness she had trouble remaining inside her cabin for more than two hours at a time. It was cold outdoors, and the gear she had to wear to be outside was heavy and clumsy, but she could by God breathe the air, however gingerly.
During the few hours when the sun made the sky bright blue and the snow sparkle, she would have clawed her way through the door to get out if she’d had to. With all of its current landmasses clustered near the poles, Petaybee’s light and darkness cycles closely resembled those of the polar outposts of Earth, where both extremes seemed to last for months at a time. Fortunately, she had arrived late in the dark cycle, so she got some differentiation between night and day, though not as much as she would have gotten in the artificially regulated watch cycles aboard company corps spacecraft.
She saw someone sliding past her cabin on long skis and rushed outside without her hat to ask them where they had gotten the skis.
The young boy flushed with more than activity. “They-uh-they’re made around here,” he said finally, but she could see the Intergal logo on his boots.
“Could I buy a pair at the company store, do you know?” she asked, thinking she had yet to find the damned store.
He didn’t say anything but slithered hurriedly past, which told her they probably were neither made on Petaybee nor sold at the store: more likely they had been “relocated” illegally from SpaceBase.
Down the street, someone carrying a package emerged from the doorway of one of the houses. The figure, of rather greater mass than most, walked-waddled-glided toward her on the ice, and Yana recognized Aisling, the blanket maker she had met at Clodagh’s.
“Slainte, Yana,” Aisling said.
“Uh … slainte, yourself, Aisling. Say, I’m trying to find my way around the village. Can you show me where the store is?”
“Sure. I just left there. Why, what do you need?”
“Nothing in particular. I just wanted to know what was available.”
“Not much, but come on, I’ll show you. Mostly, we try to make our own from what the planet provides. Some of us trade what we make at the store for the few things they have that we can’t manufacture ourselves. Our stuff never stays in the store, though. I think they’re sold for triple, maybe four times, what we’re paid, on ships and space stations and to other colonies. So mostly we deal directly with each other. You know, one of my blankets for one of the good skinning knives Seamus makes, or Sinead will trade a moose hindquarter for a mountain sheep fleece for me or enough mare’s butter for our lamps. Old Eithne Naknek often trades the sweaters she knits for food and wood, and we all trade hides to cut for boots and parkas. When I can get cloth, I can make real pretty things for latchkays. Used to do that a lot, but since the SpaceBase closed to civilians, you can’t hardly get fabric anymore.”
“I can see where I need to get to know who to go to for what,” Yana said. She could also see that she was going to need some barterable commodity other than company scrip to get by. She had never tried hunting for food before. Most planets where she had touched down had still been too new for anyone to be sure what was palatable and what was poisonous; and anyway, there was always the awkward possibility of ending up inadvertently lunching on one’s host species.
Aisling took her into the store. From the outside, it looked like just another house; inside it seemed even tinier, with the stove dominating the room and counters all around the edges. Flanking the stove were two tables, sparsely littered with bags of nutrient tablets and uniform neckties and buttons, as well as trousers in
very small sizes. Aisling was scanning the shelves beyond the counters.
“Look, Yana. There’s a good small pot. You better grab it. We’ve got one, but anything useful goes quick.”