"Could I help, so I'll know something about their care?" Yana asked, hoping to delay the onset of bleaker hours alone.

"Sure." Bunny grinned, pleased at her offer. "It's not all that hard."

"If you say so," Yana said, and bundled back up in her winter gear to walk beside the team as Bunny drove it back over to the kennels at her Aunt Moira's.

It wasn't hard, exactly, but it required Yana to concentrate as she followed Bunny's example in removing the harness, checking it for wear, oiling it, and hanging it up properly, then checking the dogs' paw pads for any cuts and applying an ointment concoction of Clodagh's between the toes before chaining the animals up.

"You're lucky," Bunny told her. "I cleaned the dog yard and put down fresh straw this morning already, so you don't have to do that part."

Having shown her what to do, Bunny retrieved some pre-chopped chunks of fish and other meat from a barrel outside her door and went into the house. When Yana had finished the dogs, she went inside and saw that Bunny was boiling the preboned meat, mixing with it what looked like hardened bread dough and fat. She finally crumbled up some suspiciously familiar pink-and-green tablets that looked like vitamin-mineral supplements of the kind issued to company troops. While the mixture heated, Bunny thawed snow on the back of the stove. Once it was melted, she and Yana used the same container to water each of the dogs in turn. By then the mixture was cooked to Bunny's liking, and they distributed it to the hungry animals.

Some of the dogs picked at their food like company diplomats at a high-level formal dinner; others wolfed it down with great gusto, growling over it, their jaws snapping as they ate.

'They-uh-seem to enjoy their food," Yana observed as the dog nearest her savagely gulped down his carefully prepared meal as if it were a bear, just-killed.

Bunny shrugged, grinning at the vagaries of her charges. "They do, right enough. And if one doesn't get it down fast, another'll try to snag it. That's one reason we chain them apart. Cuts down on meal fights."

"That cat of Clodagh's that followed me home seemed to want to eat the fish Seamus gave me frozen solid," Yana said.

"Nah! He might bat it around a little and gnaw at the edges, but he'll wait for it to thaw, or better yet, for you to cook it for him."

"The same way you cook for the dogs?"

"Of course not. The same way you cook for yourself."

"I don't," Yana admitted. "I'm ship-bred, you know. Food supplements and healthful nutrient bars for rations. Occasionally we get something else, but only the crew members assigned to cook for special functions learn to cook. So, how would you cook it to feed yourself and, uh, guests?"

Bunny grinned at the folly of the people who ran her world but didn't know how to feed themselves, then patted Yana on the hand and said, "Don't worry. It's not hard. I just stew it with a handful of my aunt's herbs and it makes right good eating."

Yana thought that over for a moment. Then, taking a breath, she asked, "Tell me which herbs make that sort of fish palatable."

"Sure, but you ain't had a chance to get any yet. So I'll scrounge enough. Meetcha at your place."

Yana had her stove fire going nicely when Bunny arrived with a small sack of the things she had filched from her aunt's kitchen.

"Aw, don't worry about a pinch of this and that," Bunny said when she saw Yana's worried expression. Then in short order, she demonstrated the art of concocting a fish stew from the herbs, a handful of rice, and chunks of what cooked into edible root vegetables. Bunny used all the fish from the string. "Because a stew gets better the longer it's alive. All you gotta do is freeze what's left overnight and thaw it on the back of the stove when you're getting hungry. I'll also show you how to make pan dough."

She did, and Yana ate a gracious sufficiency. Bunny was still mopping up the stew juices with some of the pan dough when Sean's unmistakable voice called out, "Slainte, Yana!"

Bunny was closer to the door and, at a nod from Yana, went to open it.

"Ah! Any left in the pot?" he asked, sniffing expectantly.

"Wouldn't Clodagh feed you?" Bunny asked, catching a plate and a spoon from the shelf on her way to the stove.

"She had enough, and I needed a little space," Sean said, undoing his coat and hanging it neatly beside the others on the door pegs.

"Who got out this time?" Bunny asked as he settled at the makeshift table so comfortably that Yana stifled the apologies she was about to make.

He paused long enough to ingest a spoonful before he answered.

"The Yallup group," he said, jamming a piece of pan bread down into the juices. "Lavelle, Brit, and Sigdhu made it; they'll be grand with some rest and decent eating, though Siggy lost another toe. The odd thing"-Sean wriggled his spoon about as if the movement would solve the oddity-"is that two of them made it."

"Yeah!" Bunny looked awed by that.

Shouldn't outworlders survive on this planet if their native guides were efficient? Yana wondered.

"Who?" Bunny went on.

"The team geologist the Yallups sent, father and son, Metaxos by name, Diego and Francisco. Damn fool brought his kid along for the experience." Scan spaced his phrases, eating in between gouts of information. Bunny snorted at the folly of folk's notions of experience; Scan grinned, light from the mare's-butter lamp on the table dancing in his silver eyes. "The son'll sing about it. The father .. . now, that's where the trouble begins. He's aged. The boy said his dad was mid-forties. Looks closer to ninety."

"Ohhhhh!" Bunny drew out her exclamation, rounding her eyes, apparently finding great significance in this.

"Does hypothermia age you?" Yana asked.

"On Petaybee it can," Bunny said tersely. "So did they find anything?" She leaned conspiratorially close to Sean, her eyes glistening with eagerness in the lamplight. "The usual?"

Sean snorted, sopped up more stew on a piece of bread, and ate it before he answered. Yana thought he deliberated over his reply.

"More or less the usual. The kid gave some pretty concise descriptions. Caves, glistening lakes of free water, horned animals, sleek water beasts-you know, the usual." He broke off more bread, affecting keener interest in the business of eating than telling.

"Ahhhh!" Bunny let out another of her pregnant syllables.

"If you're deliberately speaking in parables, I'll go walk the cat," Yana said, rising.

Sean's arm reached out and pulled her back down to her chair, grinning an apology.

"People lost for weeks, gripped by hypothermia and close to the edge of starvation, tend to hallucinate."

"But you say he gave concise descriptions ..."

"Vivid ones, though not necessarily accurate," Sean said, but Yana had the feeling he believed them. "Then the Spacebees arrived and took them all away. Rounded on Odark's people for not bringing them directly in to SpaceBase. But Terce was at the base and you were with me out at the lab, so what were they supposed to do? Clodagh's is certainly on the way, and closer." Sean took a deep breath, suppressing his disgust. "They needed aid as soon as could be. They got it. I'm not sure the geologist will pull through, though."

He chased the last of the juice in his bowl with the last of the pan bread. Yana debated the protocols in her mind and had her hand on the stewpot to offer more when Sean held up his hand.

"That does me fine, Yana, and you share a portion. More would be considered as impolite as too little." He pushed his chair back from the table, smiling at her.

"What did ours say?" Bunny asked eagerly, sitting forward again.

"Not much. Too busy warming up and far too glad to have been found to deal with more than that right now."

Yana nodded. She knew what Sean meant. "They'll be debriefed then?" she asked.

"Oh, and how!" He tilted the chair back, balancing himself with one foot on the table leg.

"Front, back, inside out, and outside in," Bunny agreed, shaking her head as if she felt sorry for the victims. "Did they find anything? I mean, anything real?"

"Like the deposits they thought sure they'd locate?" Sean's voice was level, but there was a silent laugh in his eyes, as if he knew something no one else did and treasured the knowledge. "No, they didn't find the sites, though Lavelle and Brit swear they should have, for they had updated and accurate readings and should have been right on site when the storm hit them. They dug in, of course." Bunny nodded, and Sean went on. "No time to make a decent icehouse, but Siggy's a dam fine survival artist."

"They owe their lives to him, I'd say," Bunny remarked stoutly in support of Siggy's abilities.

"They do indeed, and the boy, Diego, said as much several times." Sean shook his head. "I hope they go easy on the kid with this debriefing nonsense. He was telling the truth or I've never heard it."

Bunny's mouth twitched irritably. "They wouldn't know the truth if it bit them."

"And it has." Scan and Bunny locked eyes, sharing some private knowledge. "I must get back," he said, rising and walking to the door to collect his things.

"Have you a light?"

He held up the long cylinder he extracted from a pocket. "I'll be fine. That rib-sticking stew'll see me home." He grinned at Yana, tipping the cylinder to his forehead in gratitude. "Yanaba, Buneka!"

The use of formal names surprised Yana, but she smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. He was gone in a swirl of cold air. Peering out her small window, Yana saw him, the cylinder held over his head as he jogged off at an easy pace, quickly lost in the night.

"Isn't he taking a dogsled back?" she asked Bunny.

"Scan? Not that little distance."

"That little distance took us nearly two hours."

"Oh, he's a good runner. Lotta times when we go out, he breaks trail for me. Sled'd only slow him up." Bunny lifted the thermos and shook it. "I'll bring you more water tomorrow. Thanks for the chow. G'night!"

A second swirl of cold air saw her away, leaving Yana alone, confused and with plenty to think over.

Over the next couple of days she didn't see much of either Bunny or Scan, nor hear anything about the rescued men, although she did glimpse figures in Intergal regulation winter-survival uniforms lumbering through the streets more than once. The conversations she had with others in the settlement never touched on the subject she knew was in everyone's minds, as if the people thought they could will the incident into nonexistence by carefully avoiding it Clodagh appeared on her doorstep the first morning, a lumpy bundle in one big hand and four cats at her heels. They promptly entered and did a quick recon before settling near the stove while Yana politely invited her in, though she was damned if she knew what to offer in the way of hospitality. She still hadn't had a chance to get in any supplies, and her fish stew was not going to last four days if that was all she had to eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her stomach was learning to demand food, not the bloat of nutrient pills.

"Did a quick round," Clodagh said, plopping the bundle down on the rickety table and untying it. A variety of small packets, some of them squares of cloth tied with a narrow thong, were revealed, and a half-dozen small jars. Three seemed to hold salves, pink, white, and green; the largest of the others held salt crystals, the second a dark powder, and the third a red-orange powder. "We've good salt supplies from the caves so don't worry about asking anyone for more when you go short but hot stuff"-and her big fingers closed about the dark powder-"is hard to come by, and you don't need much to flavor the pot. This"-she indicated the red-orange powder-"is good for the trots. Just enough on the tip of your finger put on your tongue and swallowed with a sip of water. Tastes awful but sure stops the bo-wells." Yana had never heard the word spoken quite that way. "When your crapper's full, just tell Meqo. She's manager of the dung heap this winter. The white stuff is good for frostbite. Use it even if you're not sure you're bit. Does no good too late. The pink is for chilblain-keeps 'em from cracking. Watch your toes for the itch . . ."

"I know about chilblains."

"Sure, and I 'spect most company soldiers do at that," Clodagh said amiably. "This greeny stuff is antiseptic. You might have some of your own-no? Well, this is better'n anything Intergal ever whomped up. These," she went on, gesturing at the small packets, "are spices, hots, sweeteners: reckon you can tell which is which by the smell of 'em." Then she hauled a much larger white sack from the folds of her parka. "Flour, single ration." A small tightly covered pot followed. "Risings, and soon's you take a schmerp, add some flour to keep it going. Keep it warm at all times." After a rummage in her clothing, a small quilted wool affair appeared, and the yeast pot was wrapped inside it. "Beans." A sack was pulled out of a pocket. "Three kinds. Puto says she has more she'll add when she gets back here. Navarana and Moira say you can join them in the woods when the time's right to collect your own wood pile." From another source, a hatchet emerged and was formally presented to Yana. "I'll need it back, a'course, when you can get one of your own. Aisling'll have some yarn for you." Keen eyes peered into Yana's. "Unless you don't know how to knit?"

Yana shook her head.

"Nah, a company person wouldn't need to, would she, drawing supplies direct from Intergal? Well, Aisling's patient, and there's nothing she likes better than to start someone off on the right foot, iffen they're willin'."

"I'm willing," Yana said firmly. "And thanks, Clodagh. I really appreciate all your help."

"Pshaw! You'll do the same in your own turn. Ippies stick together, cocking a snoot at the company for all they're so superior!"

With that she swung her ample bulk about with unexpected grace and was out the door before Yana could say more.

Chapter 6

The wind roared down the pass from the mountains, through the foothills, and across the snowy plain that hid treacherous muskeg, rattling the snocle with bullying gusts. Bunny sat inside in full outdoor dress, watching the big shots prowl around and point as if they knew what they were doing.

They didn't. Even after they hauled Siggy's team back out here, way before the team had had a chance to recover from their ordeal, they knew no more than they had before. Of course, being stupid ips, Siggy and the others had no idea what the technical readings actually said, but this was where the storm swept down upon them, losing both ips and company men in a whiteout. Bunny had been in whiteout conditions herself several times along the river with the snocle and going back and forth between Scan's place and Kilcoole. White snowy ground underfoot, white sky overhead, and white haze and snowfall obscuring any other features of the surroundings, whiteout was disorienting and dangerous. It was a little like she'd heard space described, only white instead of black.

You could either keep driving, if you knew your trail, and hope you'd come out on the other side or find a landmark, or you just stopped and waited it out. The sensible thing to do, this far from any villages, would have been to bed the dogs down and wait it out, but the geologists had brought a lot of equipment and only allowed space for as much food as they felt they would need on the strict timetable they had set for themselves.

Lavelle told the company men, "We said, 'You better stop here until we can see something' but they said, 'Aw, no, we'll just be usin' our instruments.' Only problem was, their instruments broke 'cause of the cold."

The company men insisted that the instruments had been made for this climate and that it was impossible that they would break, and Lavelle had just shrugged. Thereafter she didn't know much except that the sleds had gotten separated, and the other three had been lost, drivers, dogs, geologists, equipment, food, and all. She had been driving the sled with the boy in it, so she had had room for a few more supplies. Brit had been driving the sled with the father, with Siggy running between them to keep them connected, as he had tried to do with the other sleds before they got lost back up to Moose Lake. Maybe they hit a thin patch of ice. Then, as they were coming down a pretty steep slope, the sleds overturned and both passengers were thrown out of the sleds, to roll down the hill and vanish.

"Didn't you think it was a little strange, them just vanishing like that?"

"No. What I thought was strange was that they couldn't find us. We were hollering like everything and the dogs were barking. Brit wanted to start searching, thinking maybe they were knocked unconscious, and we did look around where they should have logically been. But when we didn't find any holes or anything, Siggy said the safest thing to do for everybody was stay put, light a fire, keep warm, and make noises all the time while the whiteout lasted."

'Trying to save your own skins, huh?" asked Colonel Giancarlo, the one who had sent Charlie away.

"No, no," said a younger captain with a handsome weather-beaten face and a much pleasanter manner. "Very understandable," he said soothingly to Lavelle, who had started to bristle. "What happened then?"

Lavelle looked straight at the colonel and said, "Then the weather cleared a little and Dinah kept whimpering, so I unhitched her. She run off and pretty soon we heard her howling; then she came trotting back with the boy. He said she dug through a drift to get him but his father was hurt and could we come and help him pull his father out. He got trapped in sort of a little avalanche, but fortunately, there was a cave in the side of the hill where he was trapped. They made it to the cave, but the snow blew back against the entrance again and it was real dark. The boy said he knew we wouldn't find them there but it was shelter and he'd been afraid to leave for help for fear he wouldn't find him again. He'd called out but we didn't hear each other for the wind."

"You didn't even try to find the others?" Giancarlo snorted contemptuously.

Lavelle had started yelling then, a rare event for the gentle and mild-mannered woman. "We didn't even know where the heck we were, mister! If Odark hadn't found us, I don't know if we'd have any of us made it back alive. Siggy couldn't even walk by then, and Brit and I would never have been able to dig the father out without the dogs helping us."

All the while the conversation was going on the boy, Diego, stood out there in the cold listening to them natter on, his face closed except for the occasions when something said or done seemed to make him angry; then his dark eyes would glow like fresh-stoked embers in the snow-burned red rawness of his face.

Bunny didn't know what to make of any of it, except that she was tired of acting just smart enough to drive her snocle, but dumb enough and friendly enough so that the big shots would keep talking in front of her, continuing their interrogation as she drove them to the ill-defined area where the party had been discovered. Terce was carrying on as if he had already become part of the inquisition, and the company men didn't make a move without consulting him.

It took two days on the snocles, driving them out to where the hunting party had run across the survivors, and then, with the recent snowfall in these parts and the wind blowing drifts everywhere, they could only approximate the location. Bunny shivered. She was out of the wind here in the snocle, and the sky was clear, but outside the wind picked up veils of snow and flung them across the landscape. Behind her, the trail was already drifted over in places. The company men had sent Terce back to make camp at the halfway point with Odark and Brit. Lavelle and the boy had remained behind to "assist with inquiries," and try to help them determine what had become of the other team members.

Bunny opened the door and climbed out of the snocle, trudging over to where the men stood arguing. Diego's adrenaline seemed to have run out while the company men wrangled around him. He had been radiating tension and at times anger at the interrogation, but now he slumped against Lavelle, who put her arm around him. He looked exhausted. He really shouldn't have been out here again so soon, but his father couldn't be moved. Siggy definitely had to rest and look after his frostbite, or gangrene might get the rest of his foot. Clodagh had given him some stuff, but the company men had taken him back to SpaceBase and "accommodated" him in a separate room from the crazy man, Diego's father, until he could be moved with the others to "another facility." Bunny didn't know what that meant, but she didn't like the sound of it.

"Excuse me, folks," she said to the party, "but we better make tracks while it's daylight."

"I say when we move," Giancarlo told her. "You do realize, lady, that if I decide to, I can see to it that your license is revoked?"

"Oh, yes, sir. I know what an important man you are-how important all you people are. And that's why I'm telling you. If we don't get going now, I might lose my snocle instead of just my license, or another hunting party might have to find us. Our weather here, sir, as you may have noticed, is tricky. It has lots of-uh, different things-"

"Variables?" the captain suggested helpfully.

"Yeah. Those. Lots of variables. And right now a bad storm's making. Also, sir, that lad looks to me as if he's all done in."

"She has a point, Colonel," the captain said. "Maybe we should make for camp now that we've seen the approximate site and come back better equipped when the weather clears."

The colonel glared but waved his mitten toward the snocle.

Diego Metaxos sat by himself in the corner of the shelter while the soldiers cross-questioned Lavelle. He wished they would let her alone. She had tried to help them-in fact, he thought, she had helped him a lot. And she could help him more, if only the interrogators would go away so he could talk to her.

Dad's delirious ravings seemed incredible to those men, and Diego knew they hadn't really believed him either when he had tried to tell them about the cavern, even though he was obviously unhurt. In a way he didn't blame them. Now the whole thing seemed like a dream to him-or it would have, except that his father had emerged from the same time and place looking as if he were still trapped in a nightmare.

Diego wasn't sure exactly what he and his father had gone through. All he knew was that their experience of that time in the cave had to have been wildly different for Dad than it had been for him, because while he felt fine, something awful had happened to Dad in there. Even after the icicles had melted from his hair, it remained white, and his face was drawn and sunken, like a skull's, the skin dried and far more wrinkled than it had been. The worst part was that except for the initial babblings, he wasn't responding too much of anything, just staring straight ahead, as if he couldn't see at all. The doctors said he was in some kind of severe shock, but how could that be? He and Diego had been together, and whatever it was Diego had experienced, it hadn't been anything to produce such an effect-at least not in him.

At first, he had told the rescuers and the company investigators everything, but when he saw their immediate skepticism, he had sense enough to clam up, beginning to doubt and second-guess his own perceptions. He needed to sort it all out, and he didn't intend to say any more until he was sure Dad would be tended to by someone who cared about him as more than an employee or a subject for study. Unfortunately, civilian dependent teenaged sons didn't have much clout with the company hierarchy. Dad needed Steve, and he needed him quick.

And maybe when Steve came Diego could talk with him and go over everything again in his own mind. But right now he shied away from thinking about it.

One thing was for sure, and that was that the company investigators weren't going to be able to answer any of Diego's questions. They were too busy third-degreeing everyone for answers to listen to questions.

The girl was looking at him funny. Most of the time she stared straight ahead, pretending to listen to the men as they talked amongst themselves or barked questions at Lavelle. But when they were looking the other way, or at each other, the girl's eyes slid sideways, trying to meet his, and her mouth opened, as if she were about to speak.

Finally she got up and went outside, and he thought she had to go check on her snocle or pee or something. When she came back, she casually sat down beside him. None of the company men seemed to notice.

"I'm Bunny," she said, sideways out of her mouth.

"I know. I heard them talking to you. I'm Diego." He realized he was talking out of the side of his mouth, too. But he felt relieved that someone was finally talking to him rather than around him, and he knew immediately that this girl understood that what had happened to him and his father was not just another academic problem or fact-finding mission.

Her eyes gleamed the same way the dogs' eyes had gleamed in the darkness, and her lowered voice reminded him of the whisper of the sled runners on the snow.

"I know," she said. "Are you scared?"

"No-well, scared about Dad, maybe. But otherwise, no."

"You ought to be," she said in a tone that implied she knew something he didn't know.

"Why? Is it going to storm again or something?"

"Probably. But I don't mean that, I mean them," she said, nodding to Colonel Giancarlo and the others.

Diego shrugged. "They're just doing their jobs, trying to find out what happened," he said. He watched Giancarlo's fierce expression as the colonel tried for the fiftieth time to catch Lavelle in a lie, and added, "Not that they seem to believe anybody."

"They're like that. Look, I'll be around. If you need anything, let me know, okay? I mean, with your da sick, is your mum going to come down here, too? Does she need a place to stay? My people would help."

He felt another flare of resentment and gave her a dirty look, then decided that wasn't fair. She was just trying to be nice- maybe nosy, too, but at least she wasn't browbeating anybody the way Giancarlo and the others were. "Nah, my mom's, uh, not available-but I think Dad would want Steve here."

"Who's that?"

"His assistant, and his partner," Diego said, daring her to make something of it.

But she just nodded and said, "Okay, I'll see if I can find out what's being done officially, and if nothing is, we'll try to do something unofficially. I just wanted you to know you've got friends here. Night."

"Buenas noches," he whispered back.

You did good, Bunka," Clodagh said later, when Bunny had returned to Kilcoole. She had dropped Giancarlo off at the company station to await word from the head of the search party, and delivered the others back to SpaceBase before returning to the village. "The boy is alone. Do you think he saw anything, or was it just the father?"

"No," Bunny said. "I think he did, too. I can't say why-he's denying he remembers a thing now, but they wouldn't believe him if he told them the truth anyway. The father's in the high-security ward at the infirmary. The flot around SpaceBase is that he's crazy."

"Poor boy," Clodagh said, her eyes blinking rapidly through the steam from the teacup she held to her lips. "All alone. I can't feel much for his father, but the lad is so young to be left to the company wolves, especially when he has passed through what he has. If only we could initiate him, it would be better. Has he no one?"

"Just this Steve," Bunny said. "He is Dr. Steven L. Margolies, assigned to the same branch and regular duty station as Metaxos. I found that much out from Arnie's soldier boyfriend at the communications shed. He put up the name Metaxos on the computer and it was there, under the info on Metaxos. I don't know how we could find Steve though."

Clodagh shook her head regretfully. "It's not really our place to find him, but the boy will need help when he goes back out there-" Her head jerked up. "I wish Charlie was still here."

"Maybe Yana can help," Bunny suggested.

"Maybe," Clodagh said slowly. "But be careful. Charlie was one of us. He would know, the way you do, what the boy is going through, as well as how the PTBs are. We don't know Yana so good yet."

"Sean likes her," Bunny said.

"He does, does he? What did he say?" Clodagh smiled a very pretty smile that transformed her face, her eyes twinkling with gleefully prurient interest.

"Nothing, but I could tell," Bunny said. "Don't worry, you'll be the first to know-well, maybe not the first . . ."

"Yana could be a good ally, but she's real closed up. That's better than being too friendly, I guess, but I'd feel better about her being here if we knew more about her."

"Give her a break, Clodagh. It's not her fault she was born at the wrong time and place for you to have delivered her the way you've done half of us. I'm going to go down there now and see if she has any ideas. Don't worry. I won't give anything away."

Over the next ten days Yana gradually accustomed herself to the new environment. She slept a lot, in between the necessary chores of keeping warm and eating. She kept Clodagh's medicine near her so that every time she felt the tickle that was the prelude to a cough, she could take a swig and forestall a spasm. Whatever was in the stuff was far more efficacious than what the medics had given her on Andromeda. She practiced taking deeper breaths of the marvelous fresh air of Petaybee, expanding her capacity, flushing out the last of the gas from the depths of the lobes. She would never be much use here on Petaybee if she couldn't even breathe without coughing.

She had just finished making another futile trip to the virtually useless company store when she saw the snocles pulling into corps headquarters way up the street. Some game or the other was definitely afoot, but until the trouble came looking for her, she would conserve her strength. She needed all she could muster to withstand her own cooking, she thought, as she attempted to make a meal for herself and the cat. Other than the fish she had been given by Seamus and the one pan she had been given, she had found damned-all of any use through company channels in Kilcoole.

The trouble did indeed come looking for her a short time later. She was in the middle of browning the fish when someone pounded at her door. She opened it to see Giancarlo standing there.

"Maddock, where the hell have you been and why haven't you reported in?" he snapped before she could invite him inside.

"Nice to see you, too, sir," she said with a growl, pumping his hand and pulling him inside. On the stove, the grease she was cooking the fish in crackled and spat. The cat scooted under the bed. For some reason, Giancarlo's appearance suddenly infuriated her. Maybe it was because she was frustrated trying to keep house with the charity of the villagers because the store was so ill-stocked there was little her meager funds could buy to keep her alive. Maybe it was because they were no longer on shipboard or space station and so it didn't look like the corps to her. Maybe it was because this guy was the kind of petty martinet she had always hated and had sworn she would get back at when she retired. Maybe it was because he was such a contrast to the polite and kindly locals. But she thought it was because after killing everyone around her and half killing her, the company still allowed brass-assed spooks like him to threaten to withhold medical treatment and to dump her unprepared in a place like this in order to use her. A couple of years earlier she would have taken it for granted that they had the right, that Giancarlo had the right. Now she felt anger rising up inside her high enough to choke her if she didn't vent a little of it.

"Do sit down and tell me how, sir, I'm supposed to contact you with no radio, no computer, no transportation, no contact person, not even a bloody goddamn pen, sir, or a fraggin' piece of fraggin' bloody paper, sir. While you're at it, tell me how you expect me to maintain cover and gain the trust of the people here when you, sir, come barging in shouting my name like the ship's bloody paging program. Sir."

She sat down in the chair, leaving him to remain standing or sit on the bed, she didn't really care which, while she crossed her arms and glared up at him.

"I see discipline has relaxed after only a few days of pretending to be a civilian."

"I am a civilian, sir. Maybe an employee, if the company cares to issue me anything to do my bloody job with, maybe not."

"You, uh, seem to be feeling better," he said lamely.

"Yes, Colonel Giancarlo, I am. Even we invalids have our good days. A weapon. I forgot. If I'm doing espionage here, I ought to have a weapon. If for no other reason than to hunt my own fraggin' food. They do that here. They have to. Have you seen that company store? What's the company trying to do here, sir? Incite another Bremport?"

"That's enough of that, Major. What I want to know is why the hell you didn't inform us about this latest fiasco with the geologic team."

"Could be because I had barely arrived when it happened. Could be because I wasn't briefed on who was here and who wasn't to begin with. Could be because I have no means of communication, no liaison officer since you so impetuously dismissed the one who was already here-"

"We had reasons to believe his loyalties were divided," Giancarlo said. He was sweating now, bundled up in his outdoor clothing while the stove radiated heat throughout the room.

About then she realized that the stove wasn't just sending heat waves: the fish pan was billowing smoke. She began coughing, but she was so angry that, still bent double from the spasms, she grabbed her knife, stabbed the burning fish, and flipped it over in the blackening grease, still glaring at Giancarlo when her eyes weren't clenched shut from the spasms.

Giancarlo began coughing, too, and rose as she stumbled for the door and flung it open. They both stepped into the open air, breathing deeply, while the smoke rolled out the door.

"I want no repeat of this omission in the future," he said. "Meanwhile, I'll look into the problem of your special equipment. Good evening, Major."

She coughed and managed to blurt out "Colonel" only when he was well down the street. She covered her mouth and nose, reached around the corner of the door for the hook containing her parka, and grabbed Clodagh's cough syrup and her muffler. Downing a swallow of the syrup, she rubbed the muffler in the snow and, holding it across her mouth and nose, dashed back into the cabin. She forked the burned fish from the pan and flicked it onto the snow for the cat to salvage later. Then, with the door still open, she put on her parka and sat outside, waiting for the smoke to clear.

Fraggin' bureaucrat! He was one lousy grade above her and thought he was some kind of fraggin' deity. Idiots like him had assigned Bry that mission that had gotten him killed. Idiots like him had cut costs by shortchanging the colony on Bremer until the colonists had grown tired of watching each other and their children die of curable diseases and starvation, and had rebelled. What was that saying about "penny wise and pound foolish"? Damn!

"Are you okay, dama?" her across-the-road neighbor, whom she hadn't yet met, hollered out his door.

"Fine!" she called back.

"I saw smoke," the man ventured, diplomatically not referring to the rest of the row.

"Burned my dinner," she said.

"Want to come over while your house clears?"

"No, thanks," she called, trying not to sound as belligerent as she felt. "I'm out here for my health."

When she had literally and figuratively cooled off enough, she went back into the house. The odor of burnt fish was still very strong, but enough smoke had cleared so it didn't bring on another coughing fit. She kept swigging on Clodagh's bottle every so often to fend off hunger pains while she scoured the pan with her knife and fought off the cat, who kept climbing her leg, mewing piteously. It naturally wanted no more to do with the burnt fish than she did.

Bunny knocked on the door and let herself in before Yana could answer.

"Come in, sit down. No, better yet, I'll be glad to feed you fish if you cook the dinner," Yana told her.

Bunny shook her head and took the pan away from her, filling it with snow to melt on the stove and plopping the fish in-all of them. Yana had forgotten to take the rest of the string back outside, and they had all thawed.

"How did they expect you to live down here when they didn't teach you how to survive?" she asked.

"That's what I was just asking my good buddy, Colonel Asshole Giancarlo, when he came to give me his hail-and-farewell address."

"I heard," Bunny said.

"You did?"

"Yeah, all up and down the street. People thought you might be burning him at the stake or something until your neighbors saw him leave. They said you sure looked mad, dragging him inside. Then the smoke started billowing out of your house. You threw him out the door with burning fish and sat out in the cold."

"How could you know?" Yana asked, mortified at the picture she probably had presented. Some clandestine operative she was. Giancarlo would probably send some mercenary hit man after her after this incident, but it was worth it. Asshole. "It just happened."

Bunny shrugged. "It's a small town, Yana. By the way, your face is black all down the middle from your eyes to your chin."

"Shit." Yana pulled out the tail of her uniform blouse, dipped it in the fish water, and scrubbed. "Did I get it?"

"Not all. Your nose is still dirty."

That struck Yana as funny, and she began laughing so hard she started coughing again, realizing as she fell into hiccoughs that she was also slightly drunk from Clodagh's cough syrup. She collapsed on the bed.

"Oh, shit, Bunny, what a week," she said, her laughs subsiding into a flurry of silly intermittent giggles.

That started Bunny laughing, too. She put a plate on top of the pan for a lid and sat down at the table, laughing louder than Yana until her laughter started Yana off again.

"You're as bad as me," Yana said finally. "I'm a fine 'zample to the younger gen'ration."

"I sure would have liked to see you haul that Giancarlo in and kick him out," Bunny said. "I been driving him around for days and he's-he's-"

"Yeah, isn't he?"

"He's been browbeating Lavelle, even though she told him what happened. And he has poor Dr. Metaxos locked up in the crazy ward and won't believe what Diego tells him, and Diego's all by himself and can't find his other father ..."

"Other father?"

Bunny nodded. "His father's partner, Steven Margolies. You know, they're like Aisling and Sinead, and they're Diego's folks, but nobody's even let the other father know about Dr. Metaxos. If Charlie were here, he could maybe have gotten a message to this Steve through people he knew at SpaceBase, but now there's no one in town who can help Diego, and you can bet Giancarlo won't do it."

"My my. You've sure taken up this Diego's cause in a short period of time. I thought he was in shock and half out of it."

"He's not. He's just worried about his da and nobody will believe him."

"What's he look like, Bunny?" Yana asked her.

"He has really dark eyes, very big, and his hair is- Yana, you're laughing at me!"

"Yep, I thought so," Yana said. "He's cute, is he? 'Sokay, Bunny. So you like this boy and nobody will help him and Giancarlo was his usual charming self to your buddy, so you're glad I told him off and you came to tell me so? Or did you really just come down to cook me dinner so I wouldn't starve to death?"

"Well, I was talking to Clodagh ..." Bunny's face grew a little sly as she turned and pulled two steaming and fragrant fish out of the pan and arranged them on a plate. Carefully she picked the third one up by the tail. The cat was no laggard and had snagged it out of her hand before she could lay it on the floor for him.

"What I told Clodagh . . ." Bunny began, managing to stand between Yana and the fish.

"What?" Yana said, sobering now so that Bunny stopped playing and settled into the chair, handing Yana the knife so she could carve into her fish.

"Was maybe you could help Diego. You know, maybe you could ride in with me to SpaceBase next time I have a run and like wear your uniform and maybe Arnie's boyfriend would help you get a message to that man you said would help Charlie. Maybe he could let Dr. Margolies know what happened and-well, you did say he was in deployment. Maybe he could get him down here."

"Military deployment, Bunny."

Bunny shrugged. "It's all just PTBs anyway, isn't it? Can't they pull strings or something?"

"Hmm. Maybe they can. If anyone could, Ahmed could. Or if not, he'd find out who could." And in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that she could also use her full uniform and access to SpaceBase as an opportunity to "requisition" some of the equipment necessary to the duties Giancarlo seemed to think she was so derelict in performing. If at some later date he actually got around to issuing her duplicates, she could trade the items for other locally produced items. She wasn't really qualified for this kind of subterfuge, having never actually been a supply officer, but she figured necessity was going to have to be the mother of invention in this case.

Yana was very popular that evening. Bunny hadn't been gone more than a half an hour when there was another knock at her door. She opened it to find Scan Shongili leaning against the doorframe, astounding her again with how much less bulky he was than everyone else.

"Come in," she said. "You'll catch your death. A virus or something . . ."

The silvery eyes glinted with amusement and his mouth quirked at the corner. She had an unauthorized urge to brush back the lock of silver-brown hair that fell boyishly forward onto his forehead.

"I hear you've been taking on the Intergal high command," he said, stamping his feet outside and entering, shrugging off his light jacket before even closing the door.

"Oh, that." She waved her hand dismissively, pretending more nonchalance than she felt. She was probably going to have to do a little creative groveling over that sooner or later if she was going to be able to help the boy-or maybe not. She was no longer feeling so smug. The smart thing for Giancarlo to do was to cooperate with her if he wanted results; but, although he was far from stupid, for someone in his specialty, he did not seem to have learned the value of cooperation, though no doubt he found it in himself to cooperate with those of higher rank. She would worry about it later, she thought, realizing at the same time that the effects of the cough medicine's overdose hadn't quite worn off. She was using a lot of her mental energy to keep from throwing her arms around Shongili's neck and planting a kiss on the warm smile with which he was favoring her.

"Uh, sit down," she said, brushing her own hair back from her face and hoping her hands had gotten washed somehow in the midst of all of this and she wasn't resmearing herself with ashes. "Can I burn you some tea?"

"Please. I just got back from running with the search party."

"Any trace of the others?"

He shook his head and sat on the bed. She lifted a finger to tell him to wait, ducked outside, dipped up a pan of snow from a high drift, where animals hadn't been able to reach it, and returned to plop it back on the stove.

"No," he said. "Not a trace. And it started snowing hard again, so we had to give up for the time being. If your friend the colonel would just release Lavelle, I'll bet Dinah could help. She's the best leader of all of the dogs, and if our people are still findable, she'll locate them. We've been out for three days now."

"You must be exhausted."

"A little. I just came by to ask if you'd finished with the recorder yet."

"Oh, frag! No, I haven't, really. Clodagh came by once, too, but I completely forgot to ask her when she wanted to do the song for Charlie. If you need it, maybe I could-"

"No, no, that's okay." He peered over her shoulder. "Your water's boiling."

"Thanks."

He took a deep breath and said, "What I actually wondered was, well, while you've got it, have you given any more thought to making the song about Bremport?"

"Oh, Scan," she said, sitting back down hard. To her annoyance, she began to cough again, not because she had to but out of reflex. "Scan, I just can't do that. It's too soon. A lot of it's classified. And I just don't want to think about it. People here don't want to hear it, either, trust me."

He reclined on the bed, propping himself up on his elbow, and gave her a long hard look. "I could say the same thing, Yana. Trust me. You need to do this. We need to hear it."

"Sean, I can't. I'm no songwriter and I can barely stand to talk about it. Anyway, I only saw one small, awful part. The rest I've put together from what I was told before or since about Bremen"

"I'd like to hear about it," he said, quietly insistent.

"Did you have someone there? Did you know someone there?" she asked.

"You," he said, making and holding eye contact. "At least, I'm trying to know you."

That unsettled her for a moment. She put some of Clodagh's herbs in a bag and steeped them in the tea water while she thought. Maybe she should talk about it, not only because Shongili wanted to know, but because she was still furious about the whole thing. She couldn't keep popping off at superior officers on whose goodwill she was dependent and get away with it.

"Okay," she said. "Since you think it needs to be told to everybody else, let's turn on the recorder. I don't believe I could go through this twice." He said nothing, but raised his eyebrows inquiringly and she said, "My coat. In the pocket."

He moved with natural, lanky grace, rolling across the bed and onto his feet, striding the step or two to the doorway and extracting the recorder, rolling back across the bed with the machine in one hand. He set it on the table beside her chair and punched in the recording sequence.

She put the cup of tea beside him, then realized it was her only cup. Giving a shrug, she carefully raised the pan in both hands and sipped the tea from the lip before settling down again.

She could have gone next door and borrowed a cup, perhaps, but she didn't know the people and she felt that if she interrupted this moment, it wouldn't return. She might never again have the courage to discuss it. She certainly would never again have the kind of total attention she had from Scan Shongili.

"I'm not sure what's classified," she said to begin with. "Except that I'm not supposed to tell you how the terrorists infiltrated the station." She shrugged. "Hell, I don't know that for sure anyway, though I could speculate. The thing is, Scan, the deaths were unnecessary. None of those people had to die. None of them should have. The terrorists were after food, medicine, and supplies."

"How do you know?"

"Because I lay there on the floor playing dead, watching them loot the place, and that's all they bloody well took."

"We heard that they systematically ran through the place executing everyone they found alive," Sean said.

Yana shook her head. "There was no need of that. I think they did make sure of a few of the crew, but the station commander and supply officer just happened, by pure coincidence mind you, to be visiting another ship that day. My ship. It had just transferred supplies, and I was bringing fresh recruits over to familiarize them with a Class One station and demonstrate some of the equipment. I-um- I was just showing them how the snorkel worked."

"The what?" Scan asked, leaning forward.

Her voice had been clear and matter-of-fact so far, but suddenly she was having trouble forcing it above a whisper. Her throat began to spasm and she started coughing again. Scan held out the bottle of Clodagh's medicine, and she took a good swig before she continued.

"The snorkel. It's for short repair jobs in airless sections of the ship, so that you don't have to suit up. There's an exchange unit in it that returns oxygen for CO2, breath for breath, without the need to carry heavy tanks or wear a full space suit that might be too bulky to do some of the inside repairs in tighter places. Also, you can send snorkeled personnel into certain areas of the ship without having to flood the whole area with O2. New invention. They discovered the exchange material on Bremer."

She stopped and watched him. She had lit the lamp earlier, and now its glow and that of the moons and stars through the window illuminated the room. The planes of his face were shadowed, and his eyes held hers, silently pulling more out of her. The tension was broken when the cat jumped up onto her knees and settled down, purring, as if knowing she needed reassurance that she was here, on firm ground, with living people and in no immediate danger, instead of back there.

He nodded slowly, an almost imperceptible movement.

"I stepped back into an air lock with the mask in place and let the inner door close. The students were looking through the view plate and watching me on the screens on either side of the door, as I explained the mask to them.

"I saw the vapor pouring in through the ventilation duct before any of them did, but I couldn't speak to them because of the snorkel. I signaled them to stand back and hit the O2 button for the lock, waited a beat, and hit the exit panel for the door. But then I realized the vapor was pouring in behind me, too. 1 heard an explosion-felt it really-and the door jammed half-open between us. The recruits were coughing and crowding the outer door."

She stopped for a moment and took a swig of cough syrup, seeing the faces in front of her. "An eighteen-year-old girl blocked my way back into the hold. She was trying to get through to the outside, I guess, and was coughing so hard she couldn't straighten up. People were vomiting, crying. The girl's nametag said Samuel-son and she had almost white hair, cut into a crew cut. You know, trying to look the part of a company cadet. Her scalp was bright red through her hair, and her eyes were bulging. I exhaled into the mask, tore it off, and tried to wrestle it over her face, but she fought me. I-uh-had to knock her down to get past her, into the room. I put the mask back on and breathed into it but the O2 that came back wasn't pure. I must have let some of the gas leak in while I was trying to rebreathe her. The yellow vapor was still swirling, and through it I saw the viewscreens. Masked figures were running around, carrying weapons and containers, grabbing all the new supplies. My first thought was that they were station crew investigating the gas in the ventilation system. But that didn't jibe with the weapons and the way they were ignoring the people dying under their feet. I tried buddy-breathing with the nearest cadet who still had some life in him, and he seemed to realize what I was trying to do, but when he breathed into the mask, it fouled it, and he died too. They all died. Every damned one of them died and I just lay there, playing dead, on the floor breathing through the contaminated mask, exhaling the gas and CO2, sucking in poisoned oxygen while the terrorists ran through the station. The alarms were blaring and the station computer calling for help, but the last thing I saw was the masked face of one of the terrorists through the viewport leading to the main corridor.

She looked surprised to see us lying in there. I had my face against the floor so the mask wouldn't show, and I was wedged among the cadets' bodies. I did-not-cover myself with glory."

She didn't realize until he pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped her face that she had been weeping. She took the rag from him and scrubbed at her face vigorously, not wanting undeserved sympathy.

He withdrew gently, asking, "How did you get out?"

"The station computer alerted the ship's computer, and they sent medical teams and oxygen. It can't have taken very long, any of it, but I was unconscious by then. I woke up at Andromeda Station, unable to move. I was on an automatic respirator. Four or five of us survived, I understand, but we weren't allowed to meet. Once we were well enough to talk, we were questioned for weeks about how we managed to survive the others. At first I think they thought I was in league with the terrorists. But then some of the administrators on Bremer got scared and turned over the terrorists. We were exonerated, they were executed . . ." She shrugged, at a loss for any more to say. "Some song, huh?"

This time he rose from the bed and put his arms around her. She tried not to cry, not to play for sympathy. She had no need of it. But she developed a very sudden and crucial need for being held against Sean Shongili-since he had volunteered.

"I-urn, I can't tell you anything specific about the kids from Petaybee," she said into his shoulder.

He hugged her more tightly and she relaxed into him, closing her eyes, relieved to have talked about it. Relieved that so far he hadn't told her what she should have done instead of what she had done to save the kids who were in her charge.

He surprised her then by saying, "Get dressed."

"What?"

"You're not tired, are you?"

"I wouldn't want to try to go to sleep now, no," she said, wiping her face with the heels of her hands so she could look him in the eye.

"I want to take you somewhere."

"Where?"

"A place we use for cleansing. Come on."

She pulled on her quilted pants and parka, her mittens, hat, and muffler, and stuck the cough medicine back in her pocket.

"Let's take this, too," Scan said, sticking the recorder into his own pocket.

"You don't still think I could sing . . ."

"We'll see what you think," he said, prodding her toward the door with a hand that lingered between the bottom of her cap and her folded-down hood, at the base of her hairline. A rush of longing for him made her feel weak-kneed and ashamed at the same time, as if she were exploiting the tragedy to hold his attention.

She sat with him in the cab of his snocle, the motor obscenely loud in the silent village. In a moment they were through it, past Bunny's sleeping dogs and Clodagh's house, past the company station and out onto the snowy plain.

The machine slid over the snow and parted drifts, spraying white glitter in its wake, the engine's hum the only sound, as if they were riding the wind. After a few moments Sean leaned forward and pointed up, and she looked above her to see a long weaving band of rainbow-striped feathers undulating across the sky like the warbonnet of an old-time cinematic warrior.

They watched and rode in silence. A big cat sprang away from them; then the lights of their snocle snared a wolf and they had to tack around him to keep from injuring him. They didn't really need the lights, it seemed to Yana. The snow reflected back the light from the moons and stars and the aurora, casting deep shadows against which prominent objects were etched in a sharp relief. For the first time, she saw that the settlement was within sight of hills and mountains, off to the east and southeast. They passed between the first pair of hills and cut behind them, following a winding pass that didn't assail the mountains directly, but nudged gently into them. Within this shelter was more of the vegetation she had seen along the river, tall conifers and a great deal of brush.

It was darker here, in the shadows of the hills, and Scan stopped the snocle.

"We have to walk in," he said. "There's no way to get back there by snocle or sled, but it's an easy walk."

She nodded and followed, thinking she could use the crisp air to clear her head of cough-medicine fumes and the leaden emotional aftertaste of Bremport. She could taste the gas on her tongue again and smell it deep inside herself.

The air here was not as cold as that at the village. Stunted trees and brush grew along the man-made walkway fashioned of carefully pieced bits of flattened machine hulls and suspended over the snow and humped mounds of undergrowth.

Sean had been taking the lead, and now he reached back for her and pulled her forward.

"Look," he said, pointing to a large animal watching them from the shadows.

"It looks just like I do in this getup," she said of the burly furry form.

"That's because you look like a bear," he said, his voice husky, whether from whispering and cold or emotion she couldn't tell. "This is all muskeg underneath here, spongy, swampy. You'll soon see why. Berries stay on the bushes much later than elsewhere, which is what interests him." He nodded at the bear. "Come, we're almost there."

And around the next bend she saw the rising steam, curling above the snow-laden tops of larger trees, and two steps farther she saw the pools and the falls.

"Sean, it's beautiful," she said, taking in the upper pool, closest to them, where water bubbled up from the center in a fountain and formed a deep wide well reflecting the moons and stars in its ripples. Some hidden current sent the water cascading into a second pool and a third. A narrow path, almost free of snow, ran alongside the banks, leading in steps down to the lowest pool. Scan was already shucking his clothing. He turned and grinned at her.

"You'll dry out better if you only get your hide wet. If you can't swim, there's a lot of places where it's shallow enough to wade, but you'll prefer total immersion."

She had already begun to unfasten her outer clothing. He jumped into the water with a flash of moonlight on his pale muscular backside. She caught a shadow-darkened glimpse of him sliding over the falls and heard him laugh.

Hoping this wasn't another of those instances where everybody else was freezing their butt off while Shongili was warm and under-or in this case un-dressed, she quickly finished stripping and much more quickly waded into the pool, then glided into the water. The pool by the fountain was indeed warm, almost uncomfortably so, and it unknotted her chilled muscles and soaked her through and through with its heat until she felt lazy and languorous. The water carried a hint of sulfur and mint. She kept as much of her under the surface as possible, diving repeatedly.

The diving caused a ringing in her ears that sounded almost like music. She swam underwater as long as possible, listening to it, hoping to remember which tunes it called to mind.

She surfaced long enough to catch her breath before approaching the waterfall. It wasn't a long one, a drop of just a few feet, and the lip of the fall was smooth beneath the tumbling water. If Shongili could do it, so could she, she thought, but she flipped over and went down feet first, her knees, belly, breasts, and face momentarily tweaked with the bite of the icy air.

The water in the lower pool was a little cooler, a little easier to swim in without falling asleep, but as she was surfacing, something flashed between her legs and up behind her.

She flipped around and grabbed, thinking to find Shongili, but her hand touched wet fur instead of wet skin and she found herself looking down into the laughing silvery eyes of a large gray seal.

She hadn't thought seals liked fresh water, especially not warm fresh water, and especially not inland streams, but perhaps this was another of Petaybee's permutations that Scan wanted her to see.

The seal flipped up and back under her and dived down into the lower pool. Where the hell was Scan? She felt a cold droplet on her face, and another, and looked up to see that light snow was floating down from a sky now only partially clear. She shivered and dove under, hearing the music again. This time, perhaps because of the closeness of the falls, she could almost hear the singing of lyrics as well.

The seal somehow or other had propelled itself back into this upper pool and now came up under her, as if inviting her to hold on to it while it swam around and around.

Yes! She did hear words, not lyrics after all, but spoken words, low and murmured. She thought perhaps Scan might have returned and was talking to her from the land. When she raised her head, however, he was nowhere near, though the murmurous words continued to the soft water music. She glimpsed the seal under the falls for a moment, and she decided she would get out of the pool. But first, she'd warm up beneath the water pouring from the hot pool above.

There was a narrow ledge under the pool, and as she climbed up on it, she saw the flash of gray fur again as the seal darted in and out. Ignoring the creature, she stood and let the deliciously warm water play over her face and hair, cascading down her shoulders, back, hips, and calves, caressing her face, throat, breasts,

belly, and thighs. The water continued its tune, and listening for the rhythm, she realized suddenly that the air pressure had changed around her. It wasn't water alone that was caressing her, stroking her abdomen, counting her ribs with splayed fingers, cupping her breasts . . .

"By the powers that be, I welcome you home," Scan's voice said, as if reciting a line from a song or a poem. His lips slid beneath her ear and kissed her throat, and she turned in his arms, knowing full well that this was probably going to mean no end of trouble at some point but not caring at all.

His skin was slick with water but almost as well furred as the seal's. She turned in his arms and threw her own arms around his neck, kissing him hungrily. When the kiss was done, he held her for a moment, then looked down at her with silver eyes confusingly like those of the seal. She blinked and retreated a half step. The laughter in his eyes saddened briefly into wistfulness, then brusqueness as he held her away from him and said, "We'd better go now. You get out and get dressed. I'll be right behind you."

As if now was a time to be formal? She pulled away from him and dove back into the cooler pool, swimming briskly out and deliberately letting the cold touch her bare skin before dressing again.

Frag, what was it, anyway? Had her revelations been too much for him after all? Or had he really meant this little swim to be therapeutic and just gotten momentarily carried away when it became erotic instead? Maybe he had a serious interest elsewhere. Maybe he didn't like women. No, she had had definite evidence to the contrary. Angry and baffled, she pulled half-frozen clothing over her wet body and began walking very briskly indeed back down the pathway.

Halfway back to the snocle, he joined her, resting his hand lightly on her shoulder, the thumb of his glove brushing her cheek.

"I think you'll find you can write that song, now," he said.

She wanted to hit him but satisfied herself with pulling away and riding in silence all the way back to her cabin. But, after he left and her frustration died down, she realized he was right.

The frustration didn't stay with her. He had wanted her as much as she wanted him, she knew, and there had to be some reason why he had insisted they restrain themselves. When she thought back on it, she could see the cold snowflakes falling into the steaming water and hear the music beneath the falls again. She activated the recorder and spoke into it.

"Having only air for food, They gave us poison to breathe Even those who had never harmed them Even those who would have helped them Even those who were only children Even those who were very like them.

"Holding a piece of their own world, I survived Breathing through their own soil, I lived I could not save anybody, not even all of myself. They did not help anybody, not even themselves. They died, as those around me died, and the Food, and the medicine were taken back. In the station, people choked and died On the planet, people starved and died When captured, the killers bled and died I was sent here to die, too, here where the snows live, The waters live, the animals and the trees live, And you."

Chapter 7

Bunny knocked on Yana's door early the next morning. "I'm heading out to SpaceBase. Can you come now?" Yana had had very little sleep, between the ride out to the hot springs and back, and staying up late to record the poem. That had stimulated her far beyond her expectations; she had been unable to rest, kicking herself for not confronting Sean Shongili last night when it would have made sense. Now, except for a lingering twitchy nervousness, the encounter seemed hard to believe. She was both glad and sorry that he lived so far away: glad because she would not have to face him; sorry because there would be no chance meetings, no possibility of seeing him unless one of them deliberately sought the other one out.

What the hell! She had better things to do. She hauled herself out of her bunk and pulled on a uniform blouse that still bore insignia. She hadn't removed her rank from her fatigue jacket yet either, and she slipped it on under her parka.

"Are you feeling better this morning?" Bunny asked owlishly as they set out down the river.

"As opposed to what?" Yana snapped.

Bunny didn't seem offended; she just smiled and said, "Well, you were so upset over that Giancarlo making you burn the fish and then . . ."

"When you left me, I was doing fine, wasn't 1? Was that supposed to change?"

Bunny glanced away from the river road and over at her, then back again. She looked disappointed.

Yana heaved a sigh and leaned back in the seat. She would have preferred to sleep until they reached SpaceBase. "I'd like to know who it is who's keeping a log of my activities and guests- then I could set the record straight when necessary. I'd hate for the whole village to be wrong about something. And that cough medicine of Clodagh's should be a controlled substance, by the way."

"He really likes you, Yana," Bunny said.

"Buneka, I'm not going to discuss this with you," Yana said firmly, settling herself and closing her eyes. After a few moments of not sleeping, she asked, "He hasn't always been by himself, has he?"

"Sean? Oh no, he used to have lots of girlfriends when he was traveling around the world. He almost married Charlie Demintieff's sister Ruby once, but she changed her mind at the last minute and married a guy from Baffin Point instead. How about you? Lots of old boyfriends?"

"Bunny!"

"Well, but have you had? We know all that stuff about each other."

"I've had a few boyfriends, I guess you could call them, yes."

"Anybody serious?"

"My husband," Yana said shortly, not wanting to dig into her memories of Bry so soon after talking about Bremport. Couldn't these damn people leave anything alone? And why did she feel like she had to answer anyway? "He died," she said shortly.

"At Bremport?" Bunny asked almost reverently.

"No. Not at Bremport. Ten years ago. During a shuttle malfunction. Bunny, 1 really don't want to talk about it. Now then, what was the name of Diego's friend again?"

As Yana suspected, entering the base from the outside was different from being inprocessed through the cattle chutes. In places like this, with little of intrinsic value on the premises-by Intergal standards anyway-personnel were bored and security was lax.

"Whew, this is a hard, ugly-looking place," Yana said to Bunny as they pulled up to the gate.

Bunny's mitten described an arc around the perimeter. "There used to be lots of little businesses around here: bars, pleasure places, shops for the soldiers. Sometimes they'd bring in extra equipment that wasn't actually needed and trade it for something to send to families on other colonies or stations. But about a year ago, that all stopped and the company had the whole corridor bulldozed and you had to be a soldier or have a pass to come onto the base. We found out later about Bremport." She shrugged. "The elders were glad when the base closed. They said the soldiers were corrupting us, but heck, half of them were from here anyway, and related to us, so when their families were allowed out here, lots of us could go into the shops and buy cloth and other stuff that never makes it out to our store."

Yana's parka was uniform issue, and she opened it to let her rank show as they passed the gate guard, who nodded at Bunny's ID and saluted Yana. The guard hut was a small "instant" building of composite material in a pale pastel. In the lights of the base- and the entire base was so strongly lit that Yana wondered that they couldn't see the lights clear from Kilcoole-she noticed that the buildings all had some sort of a pastel tint: anemic pink, bilious green, jaundiced yellow. All of the colors were watered down with the familiar omnipresent gray, so that the squat, rectangular buildings merely stood out in ugly relief from the snowy surroundings but achieved nothing so frivolous as beauty or gaiety. The buildings were set in precise rows, down which the arctic wind roared. Beyond the hunkering buildings, abandoned launch gantries towered awkwardly, swaying in the wind like the writhing legs of dying insects.

Bunny pulled up to a building much like the others except that it bore a letter and a number-C-1000. "There's my fare," she said between closed teeth, then jumped out, ran around to hold the door open for Yana, and said with a large obsequious smile, "I thank you for your patronage, dama. Please remember to ask that Rourke be sent for when you wish to return to our village again."

"Don't overdo it," Yana growled between her teeth and in a louder voice said, "Could you direct me, Rourke, to the infirmary and the communications depot?"

Bunny's fare, in the usual anonymous company parka and muffler up to the eyes, walked around the front of the snocle and squinted at Yana.

"Major Maddock? Yanaba Maddock?" he asked.

Startled to be recognized so soon after arriving on the base, she counted to three and turned slowly to face the man, raising a rapidly icing eyebrow. "Yes?"

The man pressed his padding against her padding and gave her a stiff hug. "With all due respect, Major, I thought I'd never see you again. When I heard you were on Bremport. . ." He was struggling to unwrap his scarf and hood from his face.

"Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated, as the man said," she told him. By then, he had pulled the hood back to reveal the longer-than-regulation bronze hair and smiling brown eyes she recognized from her days with the survey teams. "Torkel!" she said.

"Small universe, eh?" It was a very tired but often true spacer's joke.

"What are you doing on Petaybee?" she asked.

"I was wondering that myself until I met you. Can I buy you a cup of something hot?"

"Sir . . ." Bunny began.

"I'll make it worth your while to-uh, cool your heels, Rourke. Shouldn't be too hard around here."

"Yes, Captain," Bunny said. Then she spoke more boldly, surprising Yana. "Sir, would it be possible for me to go see Diego? I mean, I just thought-"

"Good idea," Torkel said. "A pretty girl his own age ought to cheer him up some. Building ten-oh-six. If anybody questions you, tell them I authorized it."

Yana wasn't surprised that Torkel was confident in the amount of weight he swung as a mere captain. The fact was, as she and a few others had reason to know, his rank had little to do with his true degree of power. His family had developed the terraforming process used by the company to create colony worlds such as Petaybee, and his father currently sat on Intergal's board of directors. Torkel was a very competent officer, but he had been a captain longer than it took most to make general. Generals had a lot hidden from them, whereas captains tended to end up in the thick of things. No one had told Yana this, but she had figured it out, from shipboard conversation and a few remarks Torkel had made in jest.

It was a joy to sit across from him over steaming cups and energy bars in the dingy little canteen. They had removed hats, hoods, and mufflers but still wore their coats unfastened and peeled back, for the canteen was not well heated. Torkel studied her face as if he was memorizing her.

"It really is you. I can't tell you how I felt when I heard about

Bremport, and then heard that you were there that day. I wanted to execute the terrorists personally."

"I know the feeling," she said dryly.

"You're looking wonderful. Better, really, than the last time I saw you."

"Really? It's amazing what a little toxic gas can do for a girl's complexion. I did lose quite a lot of weight and I haven't gained much back, trying to-" She started to say, "trying to figure out how not to burn my food," but he was already interrupting, leaning forward and looking deeply into her eyes.

"No, it's not that. You're more relaxed-less locked up inside yourself. I guess it must have been that we met each other so soon after your husband's death . . ."

"Or so soon after your divorce," she reminded him. He had been going through the female crew members at an astonishing rate by the time she had left for another unit. He had never come on to her before, though, but always treated her as a senior officer, with respect and what friendliness she had been able to allow. Still, if he thought she was less locked-up now, she had either become much better at hiding her feelings or she must have been more of a mess than she realized back then. "What brings you here, Tor-kel?" she asked, to get the conversation back on firmer ground.

"Oh, I'm sort of troubleshooting," he said. "Nobody's sure exactly what's going on. Minerals we can spot from space but can't locate on the surface, teams disappearing, unauthorized life-forms cropping up. The company asked me to evaluate the situation. I thought maybe you might be on the same mission, and we'd be working together again?"

"Well, I am in a way, but more covertly," she said. "I'm living in the village."

"Among the locals? That's pretty rough. How badly were you injured at Bremport?"

"I got a discharge, but I'm recovering," she said, and realized that it was the truth. The pains in her chest no longer plagued her and the cough was much less frequent, thanks to Clodagh's syrup. "Anyway, Torkel, I'm glad I ran into you. Giancarlo is a little unreasonable."

"I've noticed he was pretty heavy-handed dealing with that native woman."

"How's she doing, by the way?"

"She and the others are probably going to be sent offworld to be interrogated further. Nothing anybody says really adds up, Yana. Fifty teams have been sent down here in the past ten years, and this is only the second time that we've had any survivors at all."

"How is the boy?" Yana asked quickly.

"He's scared. Alone on a hostile world . . ."

"Torkel, I think Giancarlo's been filling you full of shit about the natives here. They're nice people, and they know a few things the company could learn to its benefit."

"Sure they do. That's what this is all about," he said with a wry lift of one side of his mouth. "And I'm not surprised to hear you have a high opinion of them. I'm sure you bring out the best in them. Even the ips know a good thing when they see it." He held her hand in both of his and kissed it, which both pleased and slightly alarmed her. If Intergal had a Prince Charming equivalent, it was Torkel Fiske, but she had never expected him to come after her, even in passing.

She patted his hands with her spare one, pressing her advantage. "No, they're very caring people. They're not only worried about Petaybeans who are being held, they're also very concerned about the boy. His father, too, of course. Has anyone gotten ahold of his father's partner?"

"Partner?"

"Yes, it's on the computer. A Steven Margolies, Metaxos's assistant."

"Yana, you're brilliant as ever. I didn't know anything about this. I'll have the man sent for at once. Metaxos is no good in the condition he's in now. The boy, now, he might help us if we keep him on-site and with Margolies, a man intimately familiar with Metaxos's work. That's a good rationale for relocating the whole family unit to Petaybee."

"Won't Metaxos need better care than the infirmary here can provide?" she asked. "I heard his condition was pretty bad."

"Oh, care here's going to improve shortly. We're bringing in more troops and support teams to try to crack this case. Between the two of us, there's even some talk of evacuating the planet and doing some serious mining until it pays back."

"I thought it was a high-recruitment area."

"It is. Has been very good. But lately there have been fewer new recruits despite the austere conditions. Seems like the natives just don't want to leave." He smiled at her again, his eyes, even in this light, clear and a beautiful light brown, the color of Clodagh's tea. "If you're going to be here, I won't want to leave either."

"Good," Yana said, softening her briskness by smiling warmly at him. "I can't imagine anyone handier to run into right now. Giancarlo, as I mentioned, is being difficult. Now then, Torkel, repeat after me: 'Is there anything you need, Yana?' "

He leaned closer, and she could feel his breath as he said, stroking her palm with his thumb, "Is-there-any-thing- you-need-Yana?"

"I have a list," she said.

What sorta hold you got on the captain?" Bunny asked as she helped Yana load the snocle. "He tol' me to come back and get you."

"It's called the 'old buddy network/ " Yana said, trying not to feel smug over the haul she had just made. "By the way, a burst went out to Steve Margolies. Diego'll have company here real soon."

Bunny paused in hefting the pack of "clothing, winter wear, one of each" Yana had freed up. "That's great, Yana. Only how?" She gave Yana a searching look.

"I suggested that maybe the dad would come round faster if he had the support of his family unit." Yana hesitated then, not sure if she should confide in Bunny some of the plans for Petaybee that Torkel had mentioned. "You may be busier than ever soon," she heard herself adding.

"How so?"

"They're bringing in more troops and some support teams."

Bunny snorted. "What good'll those do 'em if they don't believe what they been told!"

"Intergal is trying damned hard to find those minerals they can see from up there."

"Yeah, they do keep trying, don't they?" That amused Bunny. "There. All your gear stowed safe and tight. Let's get home. I got dogs to feed." When they had reached the main road out of SpaceBase, she had other questions. "Who's this captain dude, anyway? The colonel really snapped to when he arrived, like he wasn't expected and not all that welcome, either."

Yana chuckled. "His name's Fiske, Torkel Fiske. Son of the family that developed the terraforming process used here."

"They did Petaybee?" Bunny turned very wide eyes on Yana. "How come you know him?"

"Served on the same ship a coupla times. That's all."

"That's "//?"

"That's all, Bunny," Yana said in a tone to discourage further queries. And yet, it started her to thinking. Torkel had sure acted glad to see her. Now, when a guy like Torkel Fiske could bed practically any female he wanted, why had he been so attentive to her, Yanaba Maddock? Mad he actually known, all along, that she was on a covert mission in the village? He had sounded genuinely surprised. Or was he just surprised to have run into her at Space-Base? Had he meant what he said, about the possibility of evacuating everyone from Petaybee so they could blast the planet apart to find the minerals they had been after for so many years? "Ever wanted to get off Petaybee, Bunny? Get to see other worlds, where the living's a bit easier?"

Bunny shot her a quick glance. "Why would I want to leave Petaybee? I belong here, Yana. Not just because I was born here. I belong here! I belong to this planet." Then she clamped her lips shut and concentrated on her driving.

She had returned to her normal cheerful self when she slowed the snocle to a stop exactly parallel with the steps to Yana's little house.

"I'll unload, Yana," she said. "You go tend your fire. Some of this stuff won't do for freezing."

"Only if you agree to eat with me?"

Bunny grinned. "You mean, you want me to cook for you again?"

Yana waggled a package of dehydrated veggies at the girl in mock threat. "I got me things even I can't ruin."

There had been a most curious selection of foodstuffs available at SpaceBase, as well as basic things like flour, beetshug, and powdered yeast in a can big enough to supply the entire village for the next decade. She had several big tins of pepper and other hot seasonings. She would use those to trade. She had acquired a ream of paper, a box of inked styluses, and a ream of message tapes: the whole village could send one apiece to Charlie. Compared to the village store, the SpaceBase BX was a cornucopia of useful and occasional unlikely commodities.

In an inside pocket she had as neat a little pair of infrared night binoculars as could be found, just the thing for seeing distances on a snow landscape. She had a first-aid kit though some of the contents had long since passed their expiry dates, but she had wanted the compact field instruments more than the medicines. She had a heavy-duty thermal sleeping bag, another quilt, clothing, skis, snowshoes, an ax, a hatchet, cross- and hacksaws, and enough nails and screws to set up a carpentry shop. And much to her delight, she had discovered, lying dusty on a bottom shelf beneath items of uniform apparel, several lengths of prettily figured fabric in bright colors, no doubt left over from the days when the soldiers' families were allowed to visit and trade on the base, too.

Also scattered among the more strictly utilitarian goods, she found other items apparently for sale or trade with civilians: beads, belts, glues for several different types of jobs, a carpenter's last in her foot size, three each of plates, bowls, and cups, a big skillet, two more pots, and a multiple knife with a six-foot run-out cord she had already attached to her belt.

She had a pail of multiple vitamins and minerals with an expiry date two years hence, and three boxes of the trail rations designed for Petaybee conditions. There had been cartons of those, newly shipped in, or so the quartermaster had told her. Plus a big can of freeze-dried coffee and another of real tea, and a few other comestibles that, as she had told Bunny, she knew she couldn't ruin in the serving.

She set about opening the cans she chose to serve, slopping the contents into appropriate pans and arranging them on the stove, which had not gone out. She had coaxed it to a more active state and was determined that this time she wouldn't be distracted from her task.

Clodagh's cat had watched her put things away with very interested eyes.

"Taking inventory, cat? How good do you count?"

The cat blinked insolently at her.

She had the meal prepared, rather proud of herself at producing more than a single pot of edible food. Bunny was certainly appreciative. Then, after dinner, Yana presented her with a length of the pretty fabric, the blue, which she felt would be a flattering color for Bunny. She was totally unprepared for the joy and prolific thanks, the hint of tears in Bunny's eyes.

"I never had anything this grand before, Yana," the girl said softly, holding the fabric to her face and rubbing it across her weather-chapped cheek. Then, with a wide smile, she beamed at Yana. "I'll be the belle of the latchkay in this." Her face dropped and she frowned. "That is, if Aisling can make it up in time for me. She's awful busy as it is."

"Aisling does your dressmaking, too?" Yana had been counting on the woman's services herself, and she ran through her barter goods to think what would be most appropriate.

"Yup, when there's something to do, and something to make with," Bunny said, still caressing the fabric in her lap. "What did ya get for yourself?"

Yana unfolded the deep-green-figured length.

"Ohhh, now that's ace, Yana, you'll look great in that!"

"Think so?" Yana held it up against her. She hadn't had much in the way of feminine frippery in a long time, not since Bry, who had liked her in nightgowns. Which he promptly took off, a habit that had tickled her errant humor.

"Yes, I think so. And Sinead has some beads that would bring out the background green. Why, I can see it made up already. Wait a tic!" And Bunny was out the door, hauling on her parka as she went.

Yana folded her length up carefully, her ringers savoring the smooth finish, and set about clearing up the remains of their supper. She saved a dollop of the protein in the pan and put it down for the cat, who sniffed it then pawed around it as if trying to bury it.

Bunny returned with a flourish, Sinead and Aisling behind her. Without taking off her parka, she rushed over to the chair where she had put the blue and held it up for the two to see, letting the folds fall about her. "See? Isn't it the most gorgeous stuff you've ever seen?"

Yana thought she had never seen anyone get so much pleasure out of cloth.

The rest of the evening was taken up by discussions of styles and decorations for both latchkay blouses. Aisling had taken charge of the two lengths, holding them up against Yana and Bunny, draping them this way and that to see how the finished design would fall and, Yana noticed, smoothing the fabric as if her hands, too, had rarely felt such quality. Sinead was sent back to their cabin to bring up certain trimmings and beads, to be sure that the colors matched, and then that the patterns of beading and decoration were approved.

"Hear you got up to my brother's place," Sinead murmured when Bunny and Aisling were deep in the consideration of cut and style. Her eyes were intent on Yana's face. "Did he show you around much?"

"I think he did. Saw the curly-coats, and those great cats of his."

Sinead grinned, but her expression was as secretive as it was inquisitive, so Yana didn't know why Sinead had brought Scan up in the conversation. Could Sinead possibly know about their trip to the warm springs? That was their business.

"No seals?"

Yana managed to hide her reaction to that softly delivered query. She turned her head and met Sinead's keen eyes easily. "One. It seemed to like fresh water, though, which I thought was a little strange."

Sinead eyed her a long moment and then, with a cryptic grin, turned away. "We got a lot o' strange beasties on Petaybee."

"Oh? Why haven't I come across any yet?" Yana asked good-humoredly, despite the fact that her pulse had begun to race. This was exactly what Giancarlo wanted to know. Did Sinead realize that?

"I think you have to discover them for yourself. Like the seals. Tell you what, why don't you come check the traplines with me sometime? You might be surprised what you see when you know what to look for. Sometime soon maybe."

"Thanks. I'll take you up on that," Yana said, careful not to sound too excited.

Sinead turned back to arranging beads, wires, and trimming for Bunny to inspect.

Then, before Yana could quiz Bunny on the barter aspects of the new clothing, Aisling and Sinead had folded up the two lengths, cleared away the trimmings, and were out the door into the dark cold night.

"I didn't discuss price with 'em," Yana said to Bunny.

"Naw, that comes later, if you like what they do. And they're good, Yana. Aisling sews like a dream, and Sinead is a wizard with the beads and trims. You don't need to worry they'd muck up material like that! And gee, I've never had such pretty stuff for a latchkay blouse." The girl's eyes shone. "I can't thank you enough ..."

"Pshaw! That's my thanks for your help, Buneka. But the latchkay's coming up soon, isn't it? Will the blouses be finished in time?"

"Sure." Bunny grinned. "They left so they could start. You wait and see. We'll be the fanciest-dressed females there!"

Diego was surprised to see the snocle-driver girl again, but at the same time, in one part of his mind, he knew he had been waiting for her. Or if not for her exactly, he had been waiting for something to happen to relieve the heaviness that had fallen on him since he had returned to SpaceBase. He had come outside, the cold air being a change from the smelly stuff inside his quarters. It was also something to do, and the only sure way he knew to keep from trying to choke that dickhead of a colonel who kept on and on with questions Diego was sure his father didn't even hear. Why didn't they leave his dad alone?

"Diego? Hi. It's me, Bunny," the girl said, keeping her voice low and looking around her, as if she was worried about being seen.

"Hi. Did you bring me a cake with a file in it?"

"Huh?" she asked.

"Just an old joke I read in a book someplace. Sorry. Nice to see you again but-"

"Look, I just came to find out if anybody told you yet."

"Told me what?" Diego demanded. He hadn't meant to be surly, but that's how it came out. He was feeling pretty impatient with all of the guessing games and little hints being passed over his head all the time.

The girl merely looked at him, exasperated, then said slowly and patiently, as if talking to a very small child, which he supposed was how he was acting, "My friend, Major Maddock, got her friend the captain to send for Steve."

"She did?" Diego sat upright, staring at her. "How d'you know?"

"She told me. Didn't anyone tell you?"

"Nope. Wow, that's great," he said. He'd be okay; Dad would be okay, if Steve was coming. Steve would straighten everything out. Steve would believe him, even if the colonel and the others didn't, and Steve would know how to handle these assholes, get them to leave him and Dad alone. His relief was so intense it scared him. Maybe this was some sort of scheme, raising his hopes like this. "You sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure." She gave a disgusted flick of her hand. "I don't go about spreading rumors. Wanna come to the latchkay?"

"Latchkay? What's that?"

"Party. Everyone's coming. Good singing, good music, good eating," she said, and Diego could see that she was excited.

"Dunno," he said. "I don't feel much like going to a party with Dad the way he is. Besides, I'm not sure Giancarlo will let me." Bunny grinned smugly. "So don't ask him. Ask Captain Fiske. Just tell him that Major Maddock told me to ask you, and he'll let you come for sure. He likes her."

"Yeah? Well, as long as my dad's condition doesn't change or anything, you know, I guess I could. Nothin' else goin' on around here."

Her grin broadened. "You'll be glad you did," she told him. "Get to meet a lot of good people and hear some good songs."

"That'd be a change. Sure is no one here you could call 'good.' What kind of songs?"

"Ones my people know. Ones they write about us and our history. Good songs," she said.

If things had been normal, if he were back on the ship and his father had never come here and he had never come here and they had never found the cave, he might have made a smart remark, might have said something to make fun of her. But now that seemed like kid stuff. She was serious, and he felt as if he owed it to her to be serious, too. "What are they like?"

"Well, some are things you sing and some are things you chant. Some rhyme and some don't. But they all tell you stuff about things that happen to people, things that happen on the planet."

"Like poems?"

"I guess so. We just call them songs. What're poems like?"

He grinned and said, "Wait a minute," and went back to his bunk, pulling one of his precious hard-copy books from his pack. His nose was half-frozen, but he didn't care. He took the book back out and thumbed it open to a page. "Here's one I bet you'll like.

" 'A bunch of the boys were whoopin' it up At the Malamute saloon . . .' "

He read her the whole poem, and she really seemed to like it, and then she recited something of hers, what she called a song. He had to admit it was pretty good, but he suddenly felt too shy to tell her then that he had tried a few himself. Besides, he was about to freeze to death standing outside the ugly blocky building talking poetry with a girl who dressed like a gorilla. "Guess I'd better go check on Dad," he said apologetically.

"Is he any better today?" Bunny asked.

"He'll be a lot better if Steve gets here. You sure you're not spoofing me about that?"

Bunny shook her head slowly. "I don't do that kind of trick, Diego. None of us would."

She left then. Diego watched her drive off in the snocle, wondering how a girl got the chance to drive one of the few decent vehicles on this iceberg. Maybe when Steve got here ... He wouldn't let himself count on that. Not that he still thought Bunny would lie to him: Why should she? Why would she? But maybe it wouldn't be as easy as she thought. Maybe Giancarlo wouldn't let Fiske send for Steve. He liked Bunny, but she hadn't been around company crews like he had-she couldn't know how untrustworthy people could be, how unreasonable. She sure was a funny girl. And she really seemed to like this place.

Chapter 8

A scratch on the door heralded Sinead's arrival at some O-dark-hundred hour. Yana was on her feet instantly and opened the door, dancing about on tiptoe as the cold of the floor ate through her bedsocks.

"I'll stir the stove," Sinead said, loosening her outer garments. "You'll need something warm in your belly today. Sometimes I think it's colder just before spring than it is midwinter. Good day to check the traplines though."

As she busied herself, pouring water from the thermos into a pot to heat, shaking down the ash from the embers, Yana inserted herself into the layers she felt she would need on this expedition.

"Wha . . . arrrre ... we trapping?" she asked, her teeth chattering. She wondered that everyone in Kilcoole seemed to have whole teeth. She was certain one morning her front ones would crack off.

"Whatever's willing," Sinead said with a droll grin.

"Which leaves me no wiser."

"It's a good time to see what's available," Sinead repeated. "The time of year when some are more happy to die than live."

"How can you tell which is which?"

"You'll see. Here, drink this!"

Yana was quite willing to, cradling the cup in her hands and occasionally, carefully, holding it close to her cheeks to warm her cold face. As carefully as she wrapped her quilts about her prior to falling asleep, her face insisted on being out in the open, and was always cold in the morning.

Sinead had made a single serving of porridge, as well. "Aisling fed me," she said with a grin. "Can't get out of the house in the morning without being stuffed."

Yana grinned back, for a moment envious of Sinead, who had a caring partner who saw to her comfort. Then, warmed by the hearty meal, she was ready to go. Sinead had damped down the energetic blaze so that there would be coal to start up again when Yana returned. Clodagh's cat went out with them and whisked away on some business of its own.

"D'you have one like that?" Yana asked Sinead as she settled in the sled.

Sinead gave a snort. "No one has Clodagh's cats. They have you."

Yana agreed heartily and pulled the fur up to her face just as Sinead shouted to her lead dog, a big shaggy brindled female she had named Alice B.

There was no one else about as the dogs pulled the sled quickly down the main track of Kilcoole, though some houses showed lights. They were soon out into the forest, and Sinead urged her team to the left, down a long slope and then onto a wide expanse of white. Here and there Yana saw what looked to be the tops of square fence posts jutting up from their winter blanket and wondered if this was where the village grew its crops in the short summer season.

When she saw the leaders suddenly drop off into nothing, she just had time to take a firmer hold on the driving bow before the sled abruptly nose-dived down the steep slope.

They crashed past more of the spired vegetation she had seen on her first ride on Petaybee; then the surface became smooth again. Another one of Petaybee's many rivers? As they then traveled up a slope on the other side, she decided her notion was correct. Frozen bushes shortly gave way to trees, growing thicker as they progressed along the trail Sinead was following. The track led slightly uphill and then dipped downward again, across another clearing and into more forest, with Sinead pulling ever left, toward the slowly brightening eastern sky.

A time or two Yana's sharp eyes caught the glimmer of lights through the trees, and she smelled woodsmoke. On and on the dogs ran, barking now and then, evidently from sheer joy. Sinead would laugh and urge them on.

They had been traveling upward of an hour, in and out of forests, when Sinead called Alice B to a halt by a small shack. More of a lean-to actually, Yana thought, rising from the sled, rather pleased to find that she wasn't as stiff as usual. Nor had cold half crippled her. Was she actually becoming acclimated to this frigid planet? Probably she would become accustomed to the cold just as summer arrived, and by that time any temperature above freezing would roast her.

She helped Sinead unhook the dogs, check their feet, and set up their picket line. Then Sinead swung to her back the pack that had been Yana's cushion on the trip out. She passed a second, smaller pack to Yana. From the sled she took a long bundle, which she unwrapped to display three spears with sharp pointed metal ends and one with a wicked-looking barb and hook that Yana thought might be a harpoon, though she had never seen such an instrument before. Two bags and a large Y-shaped affair, which she could identify as a hefty slingshot, had also been packaged with the weapons.

"Ever use one of these?" Sinead asked, passing over the slingshot.

"I spent much of my childhood in domes where something like this would have been frowned on," Yana said, testing the feel of grip in her hand and the give in the slings.

Sinead gave a snort. "You handle it like you know anyhow."

Yana grinned. "One learns." She took the bag of small stones that Sinead handed over. "What's the other? Your slingshot?"

Sinead hefted the bag. "A variant-matched stones attached to long strings. You get them swinging in circles in opposite directions like this. When you've got enough momentum going, you twirl them overhead until the tension's right, then loose them to tangle the feet of whatever you want to bring down."

"I've seen that sort of thing a time or two. And where you'd least expect it."

Her pack settled, Sinead entered the lean-to and emerged with two sets of snowshoes, handing a pair to Yana. She knelt to attach hers and then they were both ready, Sinead leading the way into the dense forest, only slightly illuminated by the rising sun.

They had traveled about half an hour, Yana judged, when Sinead stopped to kneel by a heavy evergreen bush. Hauling the skirt of branches to one side, she pulled out the oddest-looking wicker contraption Yana had ever seen, with the smaller end turning back inside itself. It held two gray-furred long-eared animals of good size.

"Thank you, friends," Sinead murmured, and then with a deft twist of strong gloved hands she wrung their necks.

Yana was startled. "They weren't dead yet?" she asked, surprised more by that than by Sinead's quick dispatch of them.

Sinead shrugged. "They came to die." She hummed-though Yana was certain she caught the sounds of words, as well-while with quick movements she wound cord from an outside pocket about their hind legs and secured them to a hook protruding from her pack.

Then, continuing her odd humming, she put a handful of pellets in the oddly shaped trap and replaced it under the bush. By then Yana had figured out that the trap let the creatures in through the clever inverted neck, which, apparently, couldn't expand as an exit. Like a fish trap she had once seen, where fish could swim in, but not out.

"You don't trap them dead?" Yana asked when Sinead fell silent. She had the oddest notion that Sinead had been singing some sort of a ritual requiem.

Sinead shook her head. "No, we live-trap. It is our way. But it means I must run the trapline every three, four days, or they would also starve."

Yana shook her head, surprised. "You said it was a good time to die? Were those rabbits waiting here for you to kill them?"

"So it would appear." Then Sinead rose and started off to the left again.

They had emptied ten similar traps, and Yana now carried a share of the catch, when Sinead, holding up her hand for Yana to tread more warily, stole toward a thicket. Parting the branches so carefully that only a few grains of snow fell, she motioned for Yana to look into the small clearing. A large buff-colored reindeer stood there-on three legs, the fourth broken at the knee and hanging at an obscene angle. The deer had been cropping the bushes around it, and the snow had turned to muddy slush where it had trampled the clearing in its food circuit.

Sinead moved back, holding up one gloved hand to indicate Yana was to stay put. She slipped out of her pack, laying it quietly in the snow, and with spear in hand, she crept around the thicket. Yana watched as she disappeared into another portion of the undergrowth. Then she heard a grunt, a whirring noise, and a thunk as the spear found its target, and then an uninhibited crashing of bushes.

"Okay, Yana," Sinead called cheerily, and Yana pushed through the thicket and saw the spear sticking out of the deer's head, right between its eyes. "Grand pelt on this buck," Sinead said, running her hand down the side and back of the dead beast.

"This isn't one of your humane traps, is it?" Yana asked, looking about the clearing as she hunkered down beside the hunter.

"Not a trap, but I've seen does have their young in places like this."

"You're a mighty hunter, Nimrod," Yana went on, observing how much of the spear's metal point had entered the beast's skull. "That was some throw."

"The idea is to cause as little pain as possible. Skull's thinnest right between the eyes. Minute the point hit its brain it was dead. Which it wanted to be with a break like that," Sinead said, pointing to the broken leg. "Hadn't done it but a day or two ago, either. Bone ends not frozen through. 'Mother thing about a head kill is the skin isn't marred. C'mon. We got real work to do now."

To Yana's surprise, Sinead had her help drag the carcass from the little clearing. "Doe might need it come spring, and it don't do to leave death scent around."

They gutted the animal, a procedure Yana found somewhat less distasteful than dissections of alien creatures she had witnessed during her search-and-discover days with company expeditionary parties. Sinead demonstrated the technique with almost ritualistic care and put the offal in a sack she had obviously brought for the need. She kept out the liver.

"Lunch," she said, "but I'll just put the rest of this-which we can use-where nothing can reach it." She hung the sack high on the branch beside the carcass, which was already stiffening with cold. "We'll come back for it. Gotta finish the line."

Then Sinead beckoned Yana to follow her as she took up her trapline again. They had acquired several more animals, two already dead in the live traps, when Sinead decided it was time to eat. She built a little fire and, with sharpened twigs, skewered slices of the liver.

The cooking smelled as good as the eating tasted. Yana licked her fingers, shoving them into her parka to dry them on her shirt when she had finished eating. Sinead heated a pan of water and made some tea, which they took turns drinking.

"So," Yana said. "So far these all seem to be fairly standard critters, the kind that would have occurred in the northernmost parts of Earth back in the old days. I had kind of hoped for something a little more unusual."

Sinead looked across at her, a slight smile on her face. "Day's early."

"Do you ever catch those freshwater seals?" The shock of Sinead's reaction to that casual question made Yana try a hasty apology. "What'd I say wrong? You're the one asked me had I seen them."

"You see a seal, dama, and you be respectful." And there was no question of the menace in Sinead's manner.

Yana held her hands up in surrender and laughed shakily. "Sorry. Didn't mean to put both feet in my mouth. Are seals special?"

"Very," Sinead said in an unequivocal tone. Then she, too, lightened up, the tension draining out of her body. "Petaybean seals are one of the more unusual beasts: on the surface they may look like the ordinary Earth species, but they're very much a product of the planet and they must be protected. Not many people ever get to see a Petaybean seal." Unexpectedly Sinead grinned, her eyes intent on Yana's face. "You see one, you be respectful," she repeated pleasantly.

"You can count on that!" Yana said fervently.

Sinead rose and neatly covered their small fire with snow; and then they were on their way again.

Nine traps later, with some carcasses whose pelts had caused Sinead's eyes to glisten with pleasure, Yana realized that Sinead was swinging to her right. Maybe they were on the homeward leg. Yana hoped so. Her back and calf muscles were beginning to protest: individually the dead animals weighed little, but she had fifteen dangling from the pack now, and her legs were feeling the strain of unaccustomed snowshoeing.

There was no way she would complain, but she was tiring. Still and all, she had surprised herself with the day's work. Far cry from what she had been like first off Andromeda. A healthy life in the outdoors, with untainted air to breathe and decent food to eat, was certainly providing cures never found in an Intergal medical cabinet.

Yana heard the cracking sound almost as soon as Sinead, who dropped to her knees. Yana did likewise and watched with bated breath as Sinead crept forward. She motioned for Yana to come up, but also signaled her to proceed quietly. Yana had done her share of stalking-of beasts in her expeditionary days, of people in her days as an investigator-and moved appropriately. The cracking continued, a cracking and a thumping. Again Sinead moved forward, stepping with extra care, inserting herself into one of the ubiquitous thickets that grew everywhere. Yana let the branches close around her as she followed Sinead. Instead of peering up over the thicket, Sinead began to part the lower branches, crouching down to look through. She waved Yana to a point beside her, and Yana realized that she could almost see through to what looked like a riverbed. With exquisite caution, she slowly made an obscured peek hole in the branches and barely stifled her gasp of astonishment.

Animals that she first thought were some of Scan's curly-coated horses were standing about on the frozen river. One was butting at the ice, obviously determined to make a hole from which it and its companions could drink-and it was butting with a short, stumpy curled horn that grew out of the end of its nose bone. The critter was putting its all into the exercise, sometimes dropping to its knees with the force of its blows, then heaving back to all fours and springing from powerful hindquarters to beat again at the ice. The rear view exposed some obvious male appendages; checking the others of the group, Yana came to the conclusion that the horn seemed to be a perquisite of the male of the species. Suddenly it gave a triumphant bellow and began rearing up, coming down hard to stomp at the ice with its sharp hooves. The others in the small herd did likewise and then backpedaled as a black hole appeared in the white surface.

Sinead turned to grin broadly at Yana and then signaled her to withdraw. They jogged quite a ways down the track before Sinead stopped.

"Was that a unicorn I saw?" Yana asked, panting and wheezing just a bit from the exertion.

Sinead grinned with humorous malice. "There ain't no such animal and neither of us is virgin, though me more than you, 1 guess."

"I didn't see any in Sean's herd. And he showed me the stallion."

"This is a wild curly. They need the horn to get water in the winter."

"Does the horn fall off in the summer then?"

"Don't know. Never saw a horned curly trying to break ice in the summer." Sinead was off down the track before Yana could press her for more information. Well, she had been promised unusual animals-and she'd got 'em.

To Yana's surprise they were back at the lean-to much sooner than she had anticipated. She helped Sinead hitch up the team to the sled and deposited the frozen small animals on the sled bench, and then they made a straight line back to where the deer was hung. Nothing had touched it.

By the time they reached Kilcoole, Yana taking turns with Sinead to ride the sled runners, it looked the same as it had when they left: no one about on the frozen track and lights coming up in the cabins as they passed.

"Need help skinning any of these?" Sinead asked as she deposited a fair half of the produce at Yana's feet.

"I wouldn't mind," Yana admitted. "Though I could probably figure it out, I've never really done it before. I have done a little trapping and hunting, but seldom for food; mostly it was for specimens that needed to remain intact for examination and analyses."

Sinead took charge, demonstrating the technique of placing the slits and peeling the coats back, stripping away connective tissue. "Ruining the hide wastes part of the critter's gift to you, so you want to do it right. Sharp knife helps." She helped Yana skin out her share, watching until she was satisfied that Yana had the knack. Yana found she learned skinning with a lot more ease than she did cooking.

Sinead pointed up to the crossbeams. "If you tie your catch up high out here on the porch, nothing'll get 'em. I'll bring back your share of the reindeer when we've butchered it. And its hide. You have more need of it than we do."

With Yana's profuse thanks trailing after them, Sinead and her dogs went on up the track to the cabin she and Aisling shared.

Chapter 9

A week later, Yana noticed unusual activity at the Kilcoole meeting hall. When she went up to investigate, she was put to work by a laughing Clodagh, who was organizing every available body to assist in the good work. By midday the place had been swept clean, the floor washed, the trestle tables set up, and the chairs placed around the walls. The platform was erected where singers and players could be seen, and heat was pouring forth from the two fireplaces and the big fuel-drum stove. The breakup betting board had been hung from its accustomed hook, the dates and two-hour sections newly inscribed, waiting for folk to place their wagers as to the day and the approximate hour when spring would crack winter's ice and the rivers would once again begin to flow with wet water.

The latchkay stewpot, the biggest kettle in Kilcoole, occupied its burner, and every time the lid rattled with steam, a delicious odor wafted free. The big coffeepot was ready to go on-no need to do it yet or the coffee would walk out of the pot and demand dancing space. Mugs waited in platoons, and someone had donated a whole pail of sweetener. Soon the cakes and pies and other baked goods would arrive, and the other dishes the village's best cooks would provide.

With the hall set up, Yana hurried back to her cabin to complete the rest of her civic duty and prepare her hot dish. Bunny had suggested beans, probably because they were relatively foolproof, Yana suspected. However Yana, who felt she was doing quite well with the cooking lessons, not only seasoned them with the pepper Bunny had recommended, but actually got cocky enough to add garlic, just because she liked the flavor. She also threw in a heaping handful of dried tomato and capsicum flakes, because the dash of color made the plain beans look more festive.

She had just taken the beans off the stove when, rather to her surprise, Aisling and Sinead came by with the finished blouses. She was amazed that they had finished the garments so quickly, especially considering the intricacy of the ornamentation. Hers fit beautifully. Its V-neck was tastefully decorated with beads cunningly sewn on to the material's design, a sort of appliqu‚. The full sleeves were gathered into a tight cuff, also beaded, and the bodice of the shirt fit close to Yana's lean frame, but not so close that it didn't soften the spare lines of her thin body. And there were pockets, also bead-trimmed, into which Yana could stuff her hands when she didn't know what else to do with them. The open collar was also cleverly decorated, with beads made from segments of some of the wires Yana had seen in the store. In exchange for the blouse, Aisling gratefully accepted Yana's proffered bags of those spices Bunny had said the two could most use.

By the time the other women left, it was time to bathe and dress for the main event. Usually, Yana just took a spit bath in kettle-heated water, but she wasn't about to put her new blouse on without a proper bath. The hot springs, while a few miles away, was not an impossible walk, and on several occasions since Scan had introduced her to it, Yana had trekked there for a dip. Usually there were other people enjoying the water, so she wasn't surprised not to encounter the "special" seal she must treat with respect Had she been properly respectful that first time? she wondered. On this latchkay morning, the entire village was in and out of the pool, sprucing themselves up for the long-awaited celebration. There were such splashing and carryings-on that the communal bathing deteriorated into a sporting event. At which time Yana left, wrapping up well for the walk back to her cabin.

"Slainte, Yana," Bunny called cheerfully as Yana reached her porch. "Want you to meet Diego," she said, pointing to the well-wrapped figure in her sled. "Here, give this to the major . . ." Bunny shoved a water thermos into his hands. "Major Yanaba Maddock, this is Diego Metaxos." She gestured with her hands for Diego to get a move on.

Yana felt for the boy, knowing how stiff a body could be after one of Bunny's sled rides, as he unfolded, a little awkwardly, balancing the water thermos.

"How's your father doing?" Yana asked, walking to the front of the porch to take the thermos from the boy. Seeing his haunted expression, she felt even sorrier for him.

"She"-and he jerked his mittened hand over his shoulder at Bunny-"said you'd made them get Steve."

"I didn't make anybody do anything, Diego," Yana said with a self-deprecating laugh, "but I did suggest-to someone who has the power to authorize such things-that it might reassure your father and improve his condition. And yours."

"Yeah, thanks." He started to turn back, noted Bunny's frown, and turned back, a halfway smile tugging his cold and cracked lips. "I mean it, Major Maddock."

Now Yana could see why Bunny could be interested in the boy. Not only was he around her age, but he was tall and well built, with longish wavy black hair and intense dark eyes with curling lashes any girl would envy. And that little smile of his held a certain charm. It was certainly an improvement on his lost, haunted look. What had he seen in the caves that had produced that effect? Not that Petaybee wasn't daunting to anyone suddenly plonked down on its surface.

The two turned to go, but Yana suddenly remembered the blouse. "Wait! You'll want this for the latchkay," she said, ducking back inside. In a moment she handed the blouse to the girl.

Tears sprang up in Bunny's eyes. "Oh, Yana! For me? It's so beautiful!" She held it up in front of her parka and swung around to show Diego, who pretended indifference, but Yana thought she saw a flicker of admiration behind the boy's nonchalance.

Bunny hugged her. "Thank you! I'll go get dressed right now."

Yana watched Bunny, with Diego walking beside her, jump onto her sled and skim down the street, the plume tails of the dogs wagging as they knew themselves near home, and food.

With a satisfied smile, Yana went inside her nice warm house, to dry her hair and get ready for the latchkay.

To Yana's surprise, there was a knock on her door just as she was about to leave. She had been hearing people going past her door, on foot and with dogsleds, for the past half hour, though it was only midafternoon. She spent the time primping, trying to make her own appearance worthy of the blouse, admiring the way the garment added sparkle to her eyes and brought out highlights in her hair, even making her skin glow with unaccustomed color. The knock startled her. Bunny, probably.

Before she could reach the latch, the door swung slowly open and a well-snowed figure-for it had begun to snow again-stood in the doorway. She recognized the finely decorated gloves as Scan Shongili lifted his hands to push back the hood of his parka.

Yana's heart did an unexpected flip-flop. And got even more agitated as Scan grinned at her.

"If you thought you were going to weasel out of singing tonight, think again," he said, stopping inside and closing the door. "But I see you have dressed for the occasion. Nice shade on you," he added, nodding with approval. He stepped up to her, putting a finger on the beaded work of her collar and tracing the design. His smile deepened and his silver eyes gleamed. "A combined effort, if I do not mistake the fine Italianate touches of Aisling and my sister." '

Yana swallowed, unaccustomed to being complimented on her appearance and inordinately pleased that Scan had. "They were very good to get it finished in time for the latchkay."

"Nothing Sinead likes better than a race against time," he said with a second cryptic smile. The intentness of his gaze reminded her of Sinead's regard across their trapping campfire.

"You-you should have seen Bunny's face when I gave her the blouse they made for her," Yana said, knowing she was babbling. She reached for her parka, which Sean took from her suddenly nerveless fingers and held for her. Feeling slightly foolish, she turned, shooting her arms out for the sleeves. Deftly he slipped the bulky parka up and onto her shoulders, settling it with a little flick of his hands across her shoulders. Then his fingers brushed the nape of her neck and she had to suppress a convulsive shudder. The memory of their hot-spring interlude flooded her, and she hoped she wasn't blushing. So she flipped her hood up, pressed shut the parka fastenings, all with her back to him, before she jammed her hands into her gloves and collected the bean pot. Turning resolutely, she smiled at him, just as if she hadn't gone through all kinds of mental acrobatics over the simple act of his helping her into her coat.

"Let's go. My debut awaits!"

"I hear the boy's alter-parent is on his way down. Good idea," he said as they stepped into the well-rutted roadway.

There were folks behind and in front of them, and every house had lights on to illuminate the way to the hall. Yana hadn't appreciated just how many people lived in and around the village.

"Is everyone on Petaybee here?" she asked, trying to estimate attendance from the steady traffic and the numbers of sleds already parked in front of the hall.

"Everyone who matters to Petaybee," he answered, grinning at her.

She mulled that over. "Why should I matter to Petaybee?" she finally asked.

"Why shouldn't you?"

She wanted him to explain that remark and to stop being so cryptic, but before she could speak, someone hailed him from a passing sled. He cupped her arm in his, shielding her from the snow spray, as he called a cheery reply. Then they had to pick their way around sleds and sled dogs, careful not to tread on animals half-buried in the lazy snow that was adding new depth to the old.

They could hear the happy noise of many cheerful voices, the scrape of fiddles, the wheeze of an accordion, the tootle of a tin whistle, the bass thrum of a bodhran as they reached the front door. Light flared out onto the sawdust that coated the well-trodden snow as the door opened, letting out a puff of warmed air, redolent of leather, clean linen, and herbal scents.

As soon as Sean was identified, he was absorbed into a welcoming group that effectively divorced him from Yana. She shrugged, impressed by his popularity, as she hauled off her outerwear and tried to find a spare hook on the line down the left-hand wall. She gave up and tossed her parka onto the growing pile in the corner, then slid out of her boots and tied their drawstrings together before setting them down beside the pile.

An arm snaked around her waist and she was pulled into a tight embrace. She was about to struggle when she realized it was Sean. Then she was guided out and onto the dance floor and found herself, willy-nilly, pumped about in an energetic polka by her grinning partner.

Those on the sidelines seemed determined to encourage him to grander feats of speed and agility. She clung for dear life to his shoulder and his guiding hand as the room swirled in dizzying circles about her. Three or four weeks earlier she would have been coughing uncontrollably after the first turn about the room, but now she didn't even feel the need to reach for Clodagh's cough medicine. She was breathless, of course, but it was with the sheer momentum of the dance as she was swept away in Scan's arms while other dancers careered around them. She had better not have a coughing fit here. She could be accidentally stomped to death if she lost her footing! But it was all very exciting. She had never-not even when Bry was being extra sociable-danced quite this uninhibitedly. It was unbelievably exhilarating-dancing with a whirlwind. She didn't know how Sean kept his balance, much less how he kept dancing so lightly, and yet she who, a mere five weeks before, had barely been able to walk without doubling over with lung spasms could now-almost-keep up with him. Whether it was due to the romance of the moment or the beneficial effects of Clodagh's cough medicine she didn't know, but she loved it.

The dance stopped only when the musicians needed to catch their breaths and moisten their throats. Weak and breathless, Yana was obliged to hang on to Sean for fear of falling, and she shivered with reaction to the closeness of the hard, strong body that supported her, and the hands that clasped her body with a touch that sent peculiar ripples up and down her arms and legs. She knew she should pull free and didn't want to-not in this lifetime.

Sweat was trickling down her face by then, and she was afraid if she didn't attend to that she would disgust her partner. Except, just then, he laid an equally moist cheek against hers and laughed in her ear.

"You offworlders sure can rob a body of breath with your dancing!" he said.

"Me?" she exclaimed in amused outrage, and pushed back to be sure he was teasing her.

His silver eyes gleamed with mischief, and he pulled her back to him, leading her off the floor toward the immense bowl of punch, which no doubt consisted largely of Clodagh's blur-maker. Yana didn't care what was in the punch: she would welcome the moisture to unparch her throat. Fastidiously, she found her one cloth handkerchief and blotted the sweat on her face. Sean was likewise engaged, nodding and grinning at folks as he released her to get them two full cups.

"This is perfect," she said, after rolling the drink around in her mouth.

Scan's arm around her waist pulled her close against him. "Helps the nervous performer," he murmured in her ear.

"You had to remind me?" she demanded in a mock-accusatory tone. She had managed to forget that upcoming ordeal.

"Stick with me, babe," he answered in a mock-gruff voice, "and you won't need to worry!"

"You intend to get me suitably drunk?"

"No one gets drunk on Clodagh's punch," he replied with fake indignation, adding with another wicked leer, "but you'll be so blurred it won't matter."

"Here's to that," she said, and chugalugged the rest of the cup. He took it from her hand and passed it to the lady serving to be refilled.

"Hey, too much of this and I'll forget the words," Yana protested.

Sean shook his head, handing her the cup. "Some words you don't forget, Yanaba." He laid his fingers lightly on her shirt above her heart. "Some words come from there and, once spoken, can't be forgotten."

She gave him a long look, awash with a few unblurred anxieties, like why he had insisted in the first place, why she had let him in the second-and in the third, should she go through with it?

"Have you placed your bet yet?" he asked, pointing to the breakup board and the knot of people about it. Someone had just chalked in a mark. Scan grinned. "Tolubi's out by two days and six hours."

"How d'you figure that?" Yana regarded him suspiciously.

He gave an indifferent shrug. "I'm not allowed to bet I've been right so often."

"Can I?" '

Sean gazed steadily at her. "You could. But, knowing that I'm always right, would you?"

Yana returned his gaze. "If you're always right, I'd be taking an unfair advantage."

"You could still place a bet." His tone was bland and his eyes lazy.

"A sure thing's not a bet," she said. "And I'm not a betting woman anyhow." She gave him a droll smile. "I always lose, and I wouldn't want to spoil your record."

Sean laughed at that, his eyes twinkling, and she knew her response had pleased him.

"What would my prize have been?" she asked.

"Don't know what it is this year," he replied. "Usually credit at the company store, or pups, if there're some good ones due in the spring whelpings."

The music started up again, a two-step, and before she could protest, Sean had her out in the middle of the floor dancing with him, one strong arm clipping her waist so that she couldn't duck away, the other hand with fingers inextricably laced around hers.

She had time during that dance to see the crowd, standing and sitting around the big hall, and she wondered if the entire "native" population of Petaybee had somehow managed to assemble in this one spot. Kids raced about the edges of the dance floor, tripping over feet, howling with hurt and being comforted by whoever picked them up and dusted them off; babies were traded off as dancing partners were claimed. Little girls danced with their grandfathers and teenaged boys asked their aunties and grandmothers to dance or showed the steps to smaller cousins; a few of the older kids, looking self-conscious, waited to be asked to dance by a member of their peer group, but often little girls and grown women danced together, as did some of the men and boys- whoever didn't have a partner danced with any other available body.

Yana spotted Bunny, who was looking remarkably lovely and feminine, in close conversation with Diego near the food table: Diego had already started to munch on a meatroll, and Bunny was nibbling on a hunk of something in one hand.

Sean was an excellent dancer, possibly the best she had ever been partnered with, and for once her feet seemed to know which way to go. She dreaded stepping on his toes, especially as he had discarded his heavy boots and was wearing some beautifully beaded moccasins.

Between dances, Sean kept her mug full and piloted her about the hall as he met and exchanged some of his cryptic remarks to men and women.

"Who are these folks?" she asked in his ear as he maneuvered her to yet another couple.

"The parents of the Bremport victims," he said.

"What the frag! That's unfair, Sean." She tried to pull free, but his grip was implacable.

"Why? They know you're going to sing. They've wanted to meet you. They have. You're their last link with their dead."

"Oh, frag it! That's not fair. To me, Sean."

"Yes, it is, because now you'll know which faces to look for when you're singing."

"Is that why you're attached to me like a limpet?" she asked bitterly. "So I can't escape this ordeal?"

"It won't be an ordeal for you, Yanaba, but a release," he said softly and with such great tenderness that she felt weak-kneed. Damn Clodagh. She was blurring.

About then, she noticed that Bunny and Diego had not once parted company.

"Yes, Diego'll sing, too. You aren't the only one," Scan said, observing the direction of her interest. Then he chuckled. "Will the miserable like some company?" He began to propel her in their direction.

Some quality of the look with which Bunny was favoring Diego made Yana dig her heels in. "No, Scan, we won't interrupt them."