Powers That Be (2 page)

“You guys dig a new road here, huh?” she asked her driver.

Rourke snorted. “Not a bit of it. Do you think they’d be spendin’ money on improvements for the likes of us? This—is the river!”

“No kidding?” Yana looked out and down. Where the snow had blown away in one patch, she saw the translucence of powder blue ice. “Anybody ever fall through the ice?”

“Not lately. Even this late in the winter it’s still between minus seventy-five and minus thirty most of the time.”

“If everything is frozen, what do you do about drinking water?” Company leaders automatically considered such details.

“Oh, that. I’ll show you.” The girl grinned and continued on.

After a few moments the ground had more rise and fall to it. Beside it, stunted trees, rooted and branched in billows of snow, began appearing closer and closer together until they formed a sparse forest on either side of the snocle. The girl veered the machine over toward the trees, and around the next bend, Yana saw a little pavilion set up on the ice, smoke rising from a hole in the top. Rourke had been decreasing the speed of her snocle and now drifted to a gentle stop.

The tent shook slightly from within and what looked at first like a bear emerged.

“Sláinte, Bunny!” the bear said with a wave, dispelling the illusion. The fur-clad man lumbered forward, lifting his great fur boots high above the snow. His face bristled with icicles from the ruff around his mouth and nose, which was only lightly frosted, to his beard, eyebrows, and mustache, which were thickly encrusted with ice.

“Sláinte, Uncle Seamus!” The girl waved back and cut the motor. The man’s eyes flicked up through his personal icicles to glance at Yana, a searching look for all its brevity. “This is Major Maddock, Uncle. She’s going to be staying at Kilcoole.”

“Is she now?” He included Yana in his wave, and she nodded at him.

“Do you have some thermos or two for me to take to Auntie, since I’m passing her way?” Bunny asked.

“Now, that would be very good of you, Bunny. I’ve two now, and I’ll have more later when Charlie and the dogs come along. This dama doesn’t mind stopping on her way, does she?”

“Nah! She won’t mind. Will you, Major? You wanted to see how we got water. Come look in the shed.”

Moving a little more slowly than she would have liked, Yana climbed from the snocle. Out here, on the river, the cold immediately clenched its fist around her face and thighs, the only parts of her that weren’t encased in synfur. She hoisted the muffler around her nose, but the sweet smell of woodsmoke still came through. She wondered if it would set her coughing again. But there was Bunny, encouragingly holding up the flap of the tent and pointing to the fire burning in a circle around the rim of a long black hole in the ice. An insulated container on a length of line stood beside the hole, along with two other containers, which Seamus now gave Bunny.

Yana took a couple of steps toward the tent before the smoke from the fires wafted toward her. She felt her throat seizing up and stepped back, silently cursing her weakness. How the frag was she going to survive on a cold planet if she couldn’t breathe in the presence of fire?

Bunny, her shoulders bowed as she hauled one of the thermoses with both hands so that the container bumped against her shins, nodded to Yana to return to the snocle. Yana was relieved not to put her lungs through any further ordeal. She turned with more enthusiasm than was prudent and her feet promptly slid on the ice underlying the thin covering of drifted snow. She placed her feet more cautiously then, and managed to make it back to the snocle without falling.

Seamus set the other water thermos in beside her and ran a mitten across his face, an accustomed gesture that dislodged some of his facial icicles. “Welcome to Petaybee, such as it is, Major. You need something, you just ask Bunny here.”

Yana nodded. “Thanks.” It was just possible that, if her official guide turned out to be anywhere near as inept as she herself was in this environment, she would find Bunny’s unofficial assistance more useful.

They arrived at Yana’s new quarters long after darkness had fallen, though by Yana’s calculation it was no more than late afternoon. She looked at the small single house standing alone on pilings beside others of similar construction. It had one window and one door that she could see in the gloom, and the window was small. Whatever. It was bound to be roomier than some of the berths she’d had, and compared to her place on the ward at the space-station hospital, it looked palatial, as well as incredibly private.

Bunny hefted her duffel out of the snocle for her and pushed open the door. The interior was spare, white as the outdoors, and contained a cot, a small table on which rested her survival pack, a chair, and a stove for heating and cooking.

“It’s too late for you to inprocess today. Sorry it took so long,” Bunny said. “Look, wait here and I’ll get some blankets. You’d better take this water, too. No one’s given you your ration.” She nodded toward the thermos on a shelf beyond the stove.

“That’s for your auntie, isn’t it?” Yana asked. “And I can scarcely take your blankets, too.”

Bunny shook her head. “They won’t care about the water, and I can spare the blanket. You’ll be issued your own tomorrow.”

She drove away in the snocle and, in a short time, returned on foot, carrying a bundle of puffy cloth and a packet. “Smoked salmon strips,” she said, indicating the packet.

“What?”

“Fish. It’s good,” Bunny said patiently. “You’ll like it.”

Yana’s day had started back at the station hospital nearly thirty hours earlier, and she couldn’t face anything more taxing than rolling up in blankets and going to sleep as fast as possible. “Thanks,” she said.

“Okay, then. Shall I pick you up in the morning to meet your guide? I could get the blanket then, too.”

Aha, Yana thought, a little blackmail here to ensure the continuing custom. Very enterprising. “That’ll be fine,” she said with a weary lift of her eyes that would have to pass for a smile. Bunny showed her how to light the stove before she left and promised to help her organize more fuel the next day.

Without waiting for the room to warm up enough for her to remove her outerwear, Yana arranged the chair at the head of the cot, sat down, and stretched her legs out on the bed. She had chewed only a couple of bites of the oddly spiced salmon strip before she fell asleep, as she had for the last few weeks, sitting up.

Bunny Rourke returned to her aunt’s house after delivering the blankets to her client and returning the snocle to its special shed.

“I’ll need to check it out again in the morning,” she’d told Adak O’Connor, the dispatcher and guard.

“No shuttles due from SpaceBase for another week,” Adak said, removing his headphones and turning away from the radio that connected him to SpaceBase and the few other places on Petaybee that had such advanced equipment. He scowled at his record book, which contained the schedules for the port and kept track of the whereabouts of the vehicles—both of them. Bunny was licensed to drive one, Terce the other: they were the only authorized drivers to and from Kilcoole. The shuttles belonged to InterGalactic Enterprises, known as Intergal, the omnipresent if not omnipotent corporation responsible for the existence of Petaybee, and the boss of all Bunny’s people. Bunny had qualified for her license only because one of her uncles was an important man and owned his own snocle as
well
as dogs. When Bunny’s parents had disappeared, Uncle had taught her to drive the snocle to help her make her own way in the village so she wouldn’t be a burden. She was Uncle’s driver on the rare occasions when he preferred the snocle to his team. She also made the trip out to his place to keep the machine running for him and repair it when it broke down—usually from neglect. Her uncle was a brilliant man but not mechanically inclined. Bunny took after her Yupik granddad: she could fix anything. And six months ago, on her fourteenth birthday, she had obtained her license to ferry passengers from SpaceBase to Kilcoole and back.

“I know there’s no shuttles,” she told Adak, “but my fare has to inprocess in the morning.”

“Can’t she walk or go by sled?”

“Nah. She’s an important dama. An officer. But she’s puny. Said something about being at Bremport.”

“The massacre where the Shanachie’s boy was killed? Ah, the poor dama. And how is she puny?”

“She coughs. Bad. But she seems nice. Anyway, the snocle is authorized for official functions, so I want to take her round to the outpost as quick as possible so she can settle in, like.”

“Good child. You’ve taken to this dama, have you?”

“She’s sleepin’ this night under the quilt Auntie Moira made me.”

“Then by all means take the snocle in the morning, but mind you, no sight-seein’.”

“Thanks, Adak,” she said. “I’ll bring you one of Auntie Moira’s cakes in the morning when I come, shall I?”

“That would be very welcome, Bunny. Good night now.”

“Good night,” she said, and headed back to the shed behind her aunt’s house.

Ever since her older male cousins had turned a little too inquisitive about her development, Bunny had preferred to sleep out here, in back of the kennel where Charlie kept his team of noisy and protective dogs, who warned her of anyone approaching. She wasn’t really scared, though. Most of the people who came to see her brought her things—fish or moose chops, zucchini or tomatoes in the summer—though some came just to visit. She was personally related to a large percentage of the village, and she knew who would help her and who to avoid. There were a few people she didn’t want coming to her place—Terce, for one, but he was scared of Charlie’s dogs. Mostly, everyone looked out for her. That would have made her feel like a child except that she looked out for them, too. That was how it was in Kilcoole. She was actually very adult for someone her age, trusted with the responsibility of living on her own and holding down her own job.

Approaching her house, she was greeted by the hounds, who set up a good welcoming howl as she walked quickly through them, unclipping the lines from Pearse and the lead dog, Maud.

She was pleasantly surprised to see smoke rolling up from her chimney to the sky. As she followed its path she saw the lights were on display tonight: a simple pale green band whipping across the black sky, dancing and twisting and sequined with stars. The smoke from the chimney smelled grand—nutty and warm. Maud whined and stuck her long muzzle in Bunny’s pocket. The dogs were more used to Bunny, who had time for them and who usually fed and exercised them, than they were to Charlie, who was their owner. Bunny petted Maud absently. Even with her stove getting a head start on the chill, without her quilt she would need the dogs for warmth tonight. She would let them in to get toasty by the fire while she ate her supper.

The big red dogs with their thick soft coats took up most of the floor space in the little shed. It contained her berth, a scrounged unit cut out of one of the dead ships at SpaceBase, a shaky tabletop pegged into the wall and placed so she could sit on her berth to eat, plus the stove and the shelves she had built from old storage crates to hold her few belongings. She had the three books left her by her parents, a set of tools—a gift from her uncle upon obtaining her license—and a selection of shells, rocks, and mushroom-shaped tree tumors, as well as hand-me-downs from the cousins and what little gear she had. On the table was a mare’s-butter candle; it gave a fairly bright light, though it didn’t smell very good. Her shed was built of stone, of which Petaybee had plenty. She had caulked it with mud two breakups earlier and reinforced it with some plasti her Cousin Simon had scrounged for her at the SpaceBase when he first joined the corps, before he shipped out. The plasti had originally been used to repair the bubble around the SpaceBase garden, and it did well in the cold, never cracking or contracting.

Something plopped down beside her onto the table and mewed up at her. She reached down to stroke the rust-and-cream stripes of one of Aunt Clodagh’s cats, though which she couldn’t say since so many of the Kilcoole felines were orange-marmalades. The cat pawed the door, and Bunny smiled and followed, chattering to the cat.

“So Clodagh already knows about my passenger, does she, and left you here to tell me to report? Glad to, cat, as long as there’s a bite in it for me.”

The dogs in the shed had ignored the cat; the ones in the yard did not bark as it led her through the kennels. No one’s dogs ever barked at Clodagh’s cats. They went where they pleased and knew where everything was and what everyone was doing—as did Clodagh.

2

The official guide—only a second lieutenant, Yana noted—stood up when she entered the room.

“Major Maddock,” he said, saluting and flashing her quite an energetic smile. “Lieutenant Charles Demintieff, first Petaybee military liaison officer, at your service, dama.”

“Relax, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’m reporting to you, not the other way round.”

“Yes’m. It’s just that I’ve read your file, and we don’t get many heroes back here.”

“Most heroes don’t make it back anywhere,” she said.

He laughed as if she had said something extremely witty. “Then we’re luckier still to have you, Major. Colonel Giancarlo from SpaceBase snocled in this morning to welcome you personally. When you’ve had your chat with him, we’ll go over the routine stuff.”

Walking into the adjoining room, Yana felt as wary as if she were entering the bridge of an enemy-held ship. If the SpaceBase brass wanted to talk to her, why hadn’t he done it at Inprocessing and saved himself, a long, cold ride?

The colonel, in contrast to the lieutenant, did not look happy to see her. His insignia was one she had seen only occasionally: Psychological Operations, a euphemism for the Intelligence branch. She reported, and he waved her into a chair while he continued typing something into a terminal.

“Well, Major,” he said after she had been sitting there long enough to become impatient and uncomfortable in her heavy gear. “What do you think of Petaybee so far?”

“Seems friendly,” she said cautiously. He was testing her somehow, but she wasn’t sure for what. “The air is clean, pretty cold. Fairly primitive technologically. New recruits from here need extensive training in the simplest equipment, and it’s pretty obvious why, from what I’ve seen of my quarters and the village. Am I missing something?”

“If you are, you’re not alone,” he said, his eyes shifting from the terminal to hers and boring into them. “There shouldn’t be anything here that we didn’t put here. This planet was nothing but rock and ice when Intergal claimed it. The company terraformed it, upgrading it from frozen uninhabitable rock to a merely arctic climate. For the last two hundred years, it’s been useful as a replacement depot for troops, a relocation center for the peoples who were being displaced by our other operations. Because the climate is rough on machinery, only SpaceBase contains much in the way of modern comforts. The transportation needs of the inhabitants are mostly supplied by experimental animals bred for the purpose.”

“Experimental?” Yana asked. “Like lab animals?” She had been born on Earth but had spent her childhood being shunted with her parents from one duty station to the next. Lab rats and monkeys were somewhat familiar to her, along with a number of different alien species, but she was unfamiliar—except from pictures—with the beasts she had seen on her way here today.

“Not exactly, although I suppose their ancestors did some time in a lab—originally. The company hired Dr. Sean Shongili to alter certain existing species to adapt to this climate. That’s how the resident equines, felines, and canines, and many of the aquatic mammals, come to be here.”

“I see,” she said, but she didn’t. The dogs obviously worked as sled animals, the cats to keep down rodents. But she couldn’t understand why Petaybee supported equines, too. Horses, from what little she knew of them, seemed rather inappropriate for such a climate. And considering the need for hacking and burning holes in ice to secure water, wasting such effort on domestic pets seemed totally unproductive.

“Well, Intergal doesn’t, entirely,” the colonel said, as if he had read her thoughts. “The animals we commissioned are here, but there have been sightings of other types that indicate perhaps Dr. Shongili and his assistants were a trifle more creative than was covered by their authorization. The current Dr. Shongili, also Sean, is certainly an odd bird, not what you’d call a team player. We’ve monitored his records, however, and can’t find any evidence that he’s been exceeding his instructions. We could, of course, move him, but this is not a research area favored by many in our employ, and the Shongilis have done so well at producing viable species for arctic conditions that we’re reluctant to remove the current Shongili without more concrete evidence. Trouble is, unauthorized species are not the only anomaly. Something else is going on here—our satellite monitors have detected deposits of important minerals on this planet. When we dispatch teams, they either can’t find the location of the deposits, or else they simply don’t return.”

“That’s why psyops is interested?” she asked, relaxing a little.

“You got it.” Suddenly he grinned at her, an expression that did not make him any more attractive. “That’s where we can help each other, Major.”

“Sir?”

“You’re here this morning technically to be demobilized. You’re a medical retiree due to spend the rest of your days on this iceberg, which is unfortunate for you. However, your experience as an intercommand investigator, and your earlier work with preliminary data-gathering landing teams, is of some interest to us, despite your disability, as is your record of combat experience. You don’t realize it yet, of course, but being a combat veteran carries considerable cachet in this place where most families have at least one, and usually several, relatives in the corps. Furthermore your genetic stock is similar to these people’s.” He eyed her, and Yanaba knew he was assessing the sprinkle of white in the black hair that Bry used to claim had an auburn cast under bright light, the high cheekbones, the rather bleached-out olive complexion, and the slightly tilted green-gold eyes. Her body had once been lean and athletic, but weeks of illness had reduced her to brittle gauntness at a weight she might have enjoyed had her strength not deserted her along with the extra kilos.

“How’s that?” she asked, mystified.

“The people on this continent are a mixture of Irish and Eskimo—we’ve resettled cold-weather natives all over the planet to assist the others in assimilation. In this area it’s Eskimo: in other settlements, ethnic Scandinavians and Indo-Asians.”

“I don’t exactly fit then,” she said, smiling as tolerantly as possible.

“Well, of course, you were practically born into the company, but your father was Irish and your first name,
Yan
aba—”

“Ya
na
ba,” she corrected. “That’s Navajo—my mother’s people. It’s a war name, like a lot of traditional Navajo names. Means ‘she meets the enemy.’ The Navajo, by the way, were desert dwellers, not snow people.”

“Close enough,” he said. “Desert can get damned cold midwinter.” He dismissed her objection with a wave.

That told her she had made a tactical error by showing up his ignorance before she heard what he wanted. But she had a fierce loyalty to her family. All she had of them now was the history recorded in the computers for her by her parents before their deaths. It was about all she had had in her life that hadn’t been Intergal-issued.

“We think you can fit, Maddock,” he told her. “And we want you to do just that, because we need to know what’s going on. We want you to get to know the people, find out what or who exactly is responsible for these problems: if Shongili is concealing experiments in producing new life-forms on this planet, we need to know about it. If the geologic survey teams are being deliberately ambushed and eliminated, we want to know that, and we want to know whom we have to deal with. You don’t have enough technical knowledge to locate the deposits yourself, but we want you to find out who’s preventing our teams from locating them. If there’s some kind of sabotage or incipient insurrection brewing, help us put a stop to it.”

“Wouldn’t it have been more effective to recruit a local informant?” she asked.

Giancarlo snorted. “There’s something screwy about all of them. They all stick together all the time, and every time I’ve had one of them in my office for any length of time, they start sweating and turn red. Why would that happen if they’re not scared, hiding something? Even Demintieff sweats like crazy every time he comes in while I’m here. This office is always freezing when I arrive, and even while I’m here, he keeps that outer office way too cold. These people also have gatherings that nobody from SpaceBase is invited to, and if you ask one of the new recruits from here about it, they just shrug.”

“You haven’t actively interrogated anyone yet, then?”

“No real excuse so far. What would I ask? Why do you people sweat so damned much, and how come I don’t get invited to your parties?”

Yana nodded.

He leaned forward and stabbed at the desk with his finger, as if the gesture would somehow make his words plainer. “We need someone loyal to the company to gain their confidence, find out what’s going on.”

“What if they just sweat because they’re used to the cold, and they have orgies or something at their parties and don’t want to mingle with outsiders out of embarrassment?”

“Major, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. You were injured at Bremport; you saw what happened there. I shouldn’t have to tell
you
what swamps of insurgency these colonial planets can be. Unauthorized life-forms
have
been spotted on this planet. Research-and-development teams
have
disappeared into nowhere. You can’t tell me these circumstances aren’t related. What you have to tell me instead is how they
are
connected with each other. Do you read me?”

She nodded, cautiously, and evidently mistaking her caution for hesitation he pressed on.

“You said something about your quarters. They’re pretty standard for down here, but we certainly have the wherewithal to make them more comfortable. Also, you’re not full retirement age yet, nor eligible for full pension.”

“I have a medical discharge, sir.”

“Not exactly. Not yet. Actually your disability status as of now is”—He tapped a key. —“only twenty-five percent. That won’t generate much of a pension. If you were on covert active duty, however, you could do a lot better. We could even throw in hazardous-duty pay.”

“Sir, with all due respect, while I wouldn’t sniff at the money, the doctors back at the hospital . . .”

“You can’t contact them from here, Maddock. And in the event you need further, fairly expensive care, the transport from here back to there would be beyond your means, unless, of course, Intergal foots the bill. I’ll expect progress reports via Demintieff on a weekly basis unless, of course, something comes up that I should know about instanter. Demintieff will take you around, introduce you to people . . .”

Whatever this guy’s specialty was, Yana reflected, it wasn’t the gentle art of psychological persuasion. He was about as subtle as a photon torpedo. But she owed Intergal her life and had spent her life in its service. She wasn’t going to turn them down just because this hammerhead thought he was blackmailing her. Besides, she
could
use the pay.

“With respect, sir, I think maybe Demintieff should do the bare minimum of guiding me around. Seems to me I’d be better off on my own. I’d be less suspect to any possible terrorists within the area if an indigenous civilian helped me acclimate rather than a uniformed professional.”

“Good thinking, Maddock. This conversation never happened, of course.” He dug a sheaf of old-fashioned hard copy from a case at his feet. “However, this contains a full briefing on what we know and suspect thus far. Familiarize yourself with it and burn it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Enjoy your retirement, Maddock.”

Bunny Rourke was sitting on the edge of Lieutenant Demintieff’s desk when Yana and Colonel Giancarlo emerged. Neither Bunny nor Demintieff was perspiring unduly as far as Yana could see, although at the sight of the colonel, Bunny fled through the doorway with barely a nod to Yana.

“Demintieff!” the colonel snapped.

“Sir!”

“You’re to report to SpaceBase. Congratulations, son, you’ve been chosen for duty shipside.”

“But, sir . . .” The lieutenant, formerly so cheerfully obsequious, looked as stunned as if the colonel had suddenly kicked him in the balls. He evidently did not feel that congratulations were in order.

“Grab your gear on the double and you can ride back with me, soldier.”

“Permission to say good-bye to my family, sir,” Demintieff said with some difficulty.

“Permission granted as long as you can do it within the next forty-five minutes. Duty calls, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Maddock, in view of this man’s reassignment, you are authorized to requisition civilian assistance during your civilian orientation process or until the position can be reassigned.”

“Yes, sir. May I suggest my driver, Miss Rourke, sir?”

“Sure, Colonel, Bunny will look after the major,” Demintieff put in, rather gallantly, Yana thought, in view of his own evident distress. “She’s my own sister’s cousin-by-marriage and a very good girl.”

Seeing this side of Demintieff, and realizing how well-connected he was locally, Yana cursed herself for making suggestions before she got the lay of the land. He would have done as well as Bunny from the standpoint of gaining the trust of the villagers, but now he was being sent away from home, an assignment he obviously did not relish, to provide a reason for the change in routine. Damn fool shouldn’t have enlisted if he didn’t want to serve shipside, she thought fiercely, but she had trouble meeting his eye. Giancarlo returned to the inner room, and Demintieff’s eyes were brimmng shamelessly as he turned toward her.

“Dama, would you and Bunny mind very much givin’ me a lift up to Clodagh’s? My gear’s there, and Clodagh’ll see to it that my family in Tanana Bay get notified.”

Yana could only duck her head as the lieutenant scooped up a tightly wrapped bundle from his desk, started to hand it to her, then carried it out to the snocle.

Bunny was starting the engine when Yana and Demintieff emerged from the building. She started to say something when Demintieff climbed in beside her, leaving Yana the back section, but Demintieff cut her off with “Take me to Clodagh’s quick, Bunny. They’re shipping me into space.” In his distress, his voice had thickened into the same oddly precise brogue coloring of Bunny’s and her Uncle Seamus’s speech.