Free Powers That Be by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page A

both it and she needed something to eat. She could hardly inflict corporal punishment for a reasonable demand.
    She had a collapsible pot in her survival kit and still had the water left in the thermos jug Bunny had loaned her. She set water on to heat and retrieved one of the fish from the hook outside her door, but from there on she had no idea what to do with it.
    There were still some food pellets in her personal baggage, so she gulped down a green one and a pink one and set the fish on the stove to thaw. When it had well and truly stunk up the cabin, she gave it to the cat, who danced with delight.
    “Don’t tell Seamus,” she said to the cat. “I think he meant for me to cook it, but between you and me, I never learned how to cook a meal, just get the basic pills I need down my gullet.”
    The cat looked up through slit eyes, purring and growling over the fish at the same time, its expression clearly saying, “Your loss is my gain.”
    Yana was used to the close confinement of a living area within a hostile environment but found that despite her fatigue and illness she had trouble remaining inside her cabin for more than two hours at a time. It was cold outdoors, and the gear she had to wear to be outside was heavy and clumsy, but she could by God breathe the air, however gingerly.
    During the few hours when the sun made the sky bright blue and the snow sparkle, she would have clawed her way through the door to get out if she’d had to. With all of its current landmasses clustered near the poles, Petaybee’s light and darkness cycles closely resembled those of the polar outposts of Earth, where both extremes seemed to last for months at a time. Fortunately, she had arrived late in the dark cycle, so she got some differentiation between night and day, though not as much as she would have gotten in the artificially regulated watch cycles aboard company corps spacecraft.
    She saw someone sliding past her cabin on long skis and rushed outside without her hat to ask them where they had gotten the skis.
    The young boy flushed with more than activity. “They—uh—they’re made around here,” he said finally, but she could see the Intergal logo on his boots.
    “Could I buy a pair at the company store, do you know?” she asked, thinking she had yet to find the damned store.
    He didn’t say anything but slithered hurriedly past, which told her they probably were neither made on Petaybee nor sold at the store: more likely they had been “relocated” illegally from SpaceBase.
    Down the street, someone carrying a package emerged from the doorway of one of the houses. The figure, of rather greater mass than most, walked-waddled-glided toward her on the ice, and Yana recognized Aisling, the blanket maker she had met at Clodagh’s.
    “Sláinte, Yana,” Aisling said.
    “Uh . . . sláinte, yourself, Aisling. Say, I’m trying to find my way around the village. Can you show me where the store is?”
    “Sure. I just left there. Why, what do you need?”
    “Nothing in particular. I just wanted to know what was available.”
    “Not much, but come on, I’ll show you. Mostly, we try to make our own from what the planet provides. Some of us trade what we make at the store for the few things they have that we can’t manufacture ourselves. Our stuff never stays in the store, though. I think they’re sold for triple, maybe four times, what we’re paid, on ships and space stations and to other colonies. So mostly we deal directly with each other. You know, one of my blankets for one of the good skinning knives Seamus makes, or Sinead will trade a moose hindquarter for a mountain sheep fleece for me or enough mare’s butter for our lamps. Old Eithne Naknek often trades the sweaters she knits for food and wood, and we all trade hides to cut for boots and parkas. When I can get cloth, I can make real pretty things for latchkays. Used to do that a lot, but since the SpaceBase closed to civilians, you can’t hardly get