Powers That Be

by Anne McCaffrey

  “One of the biggest races they had back in those days developed from a dogsled relay that took emergency serum from a big city to a little town called Nome far away,” she told him. “People admired the stamina and skill it took to do it, and so they made a race out of it. Whole towns sponsored dogs and their drivers, and people all over the world knew about it. Another race they had ran along the route the mail sled used to take. It spanned two countries, and drivers from all over brought their teams to compete. In both races, they still took a little mail with them to deliver at the end.”

  “Why did they need to send the mail by dogsled?” Diego asked. “That’s silly when they could use computers.”

  “Some places they didn’t have computers, sometimes,” she shouted back. “And sometimes folks just liked to prove they could do things in the old ways and still survive like their ancestors did. They were learning to be tough like them, you know?” She grinned, a very white grin in her sun-darkened face. “Tough like us.”

  He grinned back, but he thought privately it was a little backward to do things the hard way instead of learning new skills. But then, he was now doing things the old hard way and he was learning new skills.

  They camped that night and he listened to his father talking about rocks and stuff for a while, over rations that were much the same as what he ate on the ship. Then Lavelle slipped him a stick that smelled strong, but very spicy and interesting.

  “Eat it,” she said. “It’s good. Smoked salmon. I caught it and smoked it myself.”

  He nibbled on it and she sang him a peculiar song about catching that particular fish. She said the song was her own song, though the tune was to an old Irish song her Grandmother O’Toole had taught her, “The Star of the County Down.”

  The chorus went:

  “From SpaceBase down to Kilcoole town

  On out to Tanana Bay

  The wild fish swims but I caught him

  And he’s our food today.”

  He fell asleep quickly in the heated shelter. The next morning when he woke up, looking forward to maybe driving the dogs again, soft powdery snow was sifting down from the sky. He knew, scientifically, that the snow was part of this world’s ecosystem, but at the same time it seemed strange that he had spent so much time above this planet and had never been on it before. His father explained that snow was white rather than clear because it was a dense accumulation of light-reflecting frozen water crystals, but Lavelle showed him that each flake was a different, beautifully ornate design. He had to ride in the sled because Lavelle said they were nearing rougher country, and she had to be vigilant for the place the expedition was seeking. She promised to let him drive again on the way back.

  He spent a lot of time lying in the sled, catching flakes on his mitten and trying to memorize the shapes before they melted.

  “Maybe tonight at camp I’ll make you some snow ice cream,” Lavelle said, bending over him so that her breath blew icily into his face. “I’ve got some seal oil and dried berries with me, and a little sugar.”

  “Seal oil?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Gives you instant energy on the trail. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

  He pulled a face, and she pushed his ruff down over his eyes.

  But the storm picked up as they moved, and twice the Petaybean guy, who seemed to be Lavelle’s husband, asked Diego’s father and the other men if they wanted to camp, but they said to keep on, that their instruments were showing them the way. The snow no longer fell in single, beautiful flakes but in clumpy sheets, so hard that it was all Diego could do to see the tails of the dogs in front of him, never mind the other sleds. All around him the world was white, and the sled moved more and more slowly, while Siggy, as Lavelle called the Petaybean guy, tried to break trail, keep track of the sleds, and persuade everyone to stop.

  The ride had become much rougher, and although he couldn’t see anything, Diego knew they had left the plains, because the dogs were tugging the sleds up and down little hills and, finally, up a long, long pull.

  He heard Siggy yell something, and then he heard Dad cry out and the woman in front, Brit, whistle and call “Whoa, you mutts! Whoa! Oh, shit!” and multiple sounds of slipping, cracking, and sliding, but by that time the dogs had reached the summit and were plummeting down, too.

  A man screamed, and several heavy things rolled and tumbled just as the sled was suddenly airborne, and Diego felt himself flying more surely than he had ever flown in the spacecraft he had lived in since he was a baby.

  Lavelle called, “Whoa, Dinah! Back girl!” and Diego felt her hand pull on his ruff. For a moment she had him; then the sled jarred again and she fell, and his hood was free, and he was falling from the sled, rolling, tumbling, into the snow, over and over, until his feet struck something soft at the same time his head struck something hard, and there was darkness.

  3

  Yana tried to take the cat back to Clodagh’s that evening when Bunny picked her up, but the cat refused to cooperate. When she tried to pick it up to carry it outdoors to Bunny’s waiting sled, the cat escaped, firing a warning volley across her knuckles with its claws, and hid.

  Yana explained this to Clodagh while the big woman finished stirring the contents of a pot on the stove. Delicious smells came from the pot and from the oven.

  “Keep him,” Clodagh advised her. Looking around the room at the four identical felines lounging on various furnishings, she added with a slight smile, “I have extras. Besides, they go where they wish and do as they choose. You seem to have been chosen.”

  “Yes, but what am I supposed to do with it?” Yana asked.

  “Feed it,” Bunny answered. “That’s the important thing. And let it in and out as it likes, unless you want to keep an indoor tray for it.”

  “They do all right outdoors for prolonged periods,” Clodagh said. “They’ve been crossbred for that, so they don’t lose their tails and ears to frostbite the way their ancestors did. But they usually prefer a fire and a lap most of the time. They’re good company.”

  “Mm,” Yana said noncommittally. “I need to find out where to get things: food, clothing, wood. Someone brought a load and left it beside my door. Do you know who it was so I can thank them?”

  Clodagh shrugged. “Could have been anyone. One of Bunka’s relatives, maybe. Someone who knows you need more than the PTBs provided for you. Speaking of that, don’t forget your pack tonight. Not that that flimsy blanket will do you a lot of good. You’ll need a proper one.”

  “Where can I buy one of those?” Yana asked.

  “Not at the company store, that’s for sure!” Bunka said. “They don’t have anything there but obsolete spacer stuff.” She crossed to Clodagh’s bed and pulled aside the standard-issue blanket to reveal another—full of lovely soft yellows, blues, and pinks—underneath. “Here, feel.”

  Yana leaned over and felt. The blanket was thickly woven or knitted—she had no idea which—of some heavy, long-haired material. It would be wonderfully warm.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Speaking of that, here comes Sinead and my sister Aisling now,” Clodagh said. “Sinead gathers the hair for spinning from the horses and dogs and sometimes the wild sheep she hunts and Aisling spins, dyes, and weaves the hair into the blankets. Perhaps they’ll make a trade.”

  Another woman entered the room. She was almost as round as Clodagh; her face and hair bore a resemblance to Clodagh’s, as well, but the newcomer had a much dreamier look about her. She was followed closely by a small, wiry woman who helped her off with her wraps.

  “Welcome, sister, Sinead,” Clodagh said, smiling at the two women. “We were just talking about you. Have you eaten?”

  “Nah,” said the shorter and slighter-built of the two women, shucking her outer garments off with great dispatch. “We heard you were entertaining tonight and came to gawk.” She stuck out a hand to Yana. “Sinead Shongili here. Nice to meet you. Did you make it home okay without falling aga
in?”

  “You were the person who showed me how to waddle!” Yana exclaimed.

  “None other. And this lovely lady is Aisling Senungatuk,” Sinead said, fussing a bit over Aisling, who was settling her ample form into a rocking chair Clodagh had pulled from a corner of the room. Aisling smiled warmly up at her partner and indicated that she was comfortable.

  “Yana was just admiring the blanket you women made for me, sister,” Clodagh told Aisling.

  “I’ll put you on my list, Yana,” Aisling promised in one of the loveliest voices Yana had ever heard.

  “Yeah, the blankets they send you from the company are all crap,” Sinead said. “I need to gather some more material for weaving, but my Aisling can make you the most gorgeous damn blanket you’ve ever seen, can’t you, love?”

  Aisling nodded, her eyes dancing when she looked at her partner. “You bet.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got much to trade you for it,” Yana told them, “apart from some obsolete insignia. Had to give away any souvenirs, and bring only what I couldn’t do without. Baggage allowance didn’t give me any latitude there. You don’t know where I can get a small computer, do you?”

  Sinead gave a merry laugh. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  Clodagh said, more gently, “Oh, no, dear, that’s not for the likes of us, goodness me no. Nobody here in Kilcoole has such a thing. We’re just poor ignorant ips you know, and the PTBs like it that way.”

  “Ips?”

  “The inconvenient people,” Aisling elaborated. “That’s who they got to colonize this place. They wanted our land on Earth, you see, and promised us a new place in exchange. Frankly, we had nothing to say about it. Evicted, we were. No one could afford to own land anymore. So we came here, as they intended.” Her eyes dropped as she finished the statement; then she turned an apologetic look to Clodagh. “Sorry. It doesn’t do to get me started. And we should be going now. We didn’t really mean to interrupt supper. We just came to see if there was anything we could do to help.” She nodded in Yana’s direction.

  “Thanks,” Yana said, and Clodagh showed them to the door, Sinead darting three steps forward and two back for each measure of her partner’s statelier progress.

  When they left, Clodagh pulled a bottle and some cups from the shelf over the cloth-draped cabinets along one wall and asked, “Will you be havin’ a drop with your supper, dear?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Clodagh’s home brew,” Bunny said. “It’s good. Gives you good dreams.”

  “I don’t know. With all the medicine I’ve had lately . . .”

  “It’ll do you good,” Clodagh said. “Has medicinal properties. You can’t get sick drunk on the stuff—just a little pleasantly blurred. You look as though you need blurring, my dear.”

  “Clodagh’s the local healer, so you can trust her on that score,” Bunny told Yana.

  “Just a little then,” Yana agreed. The spicy smells from the stove were making her long to put something in her mouth. If not food, then drink was not a bad alternative.

  But with the drink came a heaping bowl of some sort of noodles and a red meat sauce, accompanied by hot, crusty bread. She burned her lip on the first mouthful, something she had never done with prefab ship food.

  “This is delicious,” she said when she had had a few cooler bites. “What is it?”

  “Moose spaghetti,” Clodagh told her.

  There was another knock at the door. Bunny hopped up, slurping in a strand of spaghetti, and opened it. A rush of cold air and a parka-clad figure entered the room at the same time.

  The person, a woman, pointedly did not look at Yana as she unbuttoned her coat.

  “Sedna, how’s it going?” Clodagh asked her.

  “Oh, fine. Just wondered if you had some mare’s butter I could have. We’re about out.”

  “No problem. Say, Sedna, have you met Major Maddock yet?” Clodagh asked.

  Sedna shook her blond curls and then allowed herself to look squarely at Yana, a look which told Yana that meeting her was more the point of the visit than the mare’s milk. She thought she vaguely recognized the woman from Charlie Demintieff’s send-off earlier that morning.

  “Major Maddock,” Clodagh began.

  “Yanaba, please, Clodagh, or just Yana,” she said.

  “Yana, this is Sedna Quinn. How’s your boy’s earache, Sedna?”

  “Better, Clodagh, since you made up that poultice.”

  “You got time to eat?”

  “Nah, I got to get back and help Im scrape that moose hide. I’ll bring you some—”

  “Well, say, if you’re that busy, why don’t you take some of this moose spaghetti home for supper? That way you won’t have to fuss.”

  So Sedna sat at the edge of her chair with her coat half-buttoned while Clodagh dished up a containerful of the pasta.

  “So, Bunny, pretty sad about Charlie, huh?” Sedna asked.

  “Yeah, too bad. I hope he’s gonna be all right. It’ll be lonesome up there, I bet. I wish they’d given us time to send him off good, make a song for him. He’ll miss the breakup latchkay and everything.”

  “I’ll make a song for him, even if he won’t hear it,” Clodagh said.

  “Maybe you could record it or write it down and Bunny could take it in when she’s back at SpaceBase,” Yana suggested.

  Sedna straightened her back, gave Yana a pitying look, and said primly, “A song has to be sung from one person to the other to be any good.”

  “I’m sorry,” Yana said. “I don’t know your customs yet. It’s just that I could see how much you all liked Lieutenant Demintieff and I know how important it is to a soldier to hear from friends, whether they’re dirtside or on some other facility.”

  “It’s okay, Yana,” Clodagh said. “Sedna, Yana’s going to be staying with us here so she’ll find out soon enough. The fact is, Yana, nobody here knows how to record much less write.”

  Yana sputtered with surprise. “They don’t? You don’t? But how the hell can that be? The Petaybean recruits I’ve met all know how; Bunny surely must know how to have passed her snocle test.”

  Bunny shook her head. “That’s all done on comm link—verbal and visual cues. And of course the company teaches the soldiers to read, at least enough to get by in the corps, in basic training and at the officers academy down at Chugiak-Fergus, but, other than that . . .” She shrugged.

  “Surely the colonists who first came here . . .” Yana insisted.

  Clodagh shook her head. “Only those who were high officers in the company already. Oh, sure and some of our great-grandparents maybe knew a little bit at one time—maybe as much as the company teaches soldiers now—but back then, so the songs tell us, everybody had fancy machines to talk to them and show them pictures of what needed to be done. The company apparently didn’t think we needed the machines as bad as we needed other stuff when they sent us here, and such things were far too dear for the likes of us to import once we were here. So there’s just a few of those machines on the planet, the ones the company needs to keep here for their own business. As for your written books, well, I don’t suppose anybody had a clue where to find many of them anymore, except for the special ones the scientists had. So we sort of fell back into just talking and singing and telling about what happened, like people did way back a long time ago.”

  “We do okay without that stuff,” Bunny said, with a defensive edge to her voice that was immediately tempered by wistfulness. “Except, sometimes, like now, but still there are some people who can . . .” She turned to Clodagh.

  “Including, if I’m not mistaken, your own Uncle Sean, Bunka,” Sedna said. “Is that so, Clodagh?”

  “Of course. He’s a Shongili.” To Yana, Clodagh explained, “The Shongilis were originally of Inuit stock but already had careers as valued Intergal scientists when Petaybee was founded. Sean’s and Sinead’s grandda was the most respected man in our hemisphere until his death.” With what seemed undue pride she nodded empha
tically. “Shongilis definitely can read—books and books if they want to. Even Sinead can—Aisling’s seen her do it, but said Sinead told her mostly she’d rather read animal tracks instead and rely on her own sharp ears and long memory for stories and songs like everybody else.”

  Bunny bounced up and exclaimed, “I forgot! That’s right! Uncle Sean can not only write, but he has stuff to write with and a recorder. He could do it!”

  “Your uncle is an important man, a busy man, Bunny,” Sedna said, horrified. “He’s got problems to solve for the whole planet. We can’t go bothering him with every little thing.”

  “Charlie being shipped out isn’t really a little thing, though, is it, Sedna?” Clodagh asked. “No, I think that’s a good idea. If Yana knows how to read and make recordings, too, and if you’d help us do it, Yana, we wouldn’t need to bother him very much. He could just loan her the machine. You think he’d do that, Bunny?”

  “He will if I ask him and tell him it’s your idea,” Bunny said. “I’ll go up to his place in a couple of days, next time I don’t have any fares to and from SpaceBase.”

  “Maybe Yana’d like to go with you. I bet Sean would like to meet somebody else who knows writing.”

  “How about it, Yana? You’re not scared of the dogs, are you?”

  Yana shook her head, grinning. “No, I’d like to ride in that contraption.” As advertised, the home brew was starting to blur her.

  Sedna, a container of moose spaghetti in hand, said good-bye; she crossed at the doorway with yet more drop-in guests, one of whom Yana had already met. Bunny’s Uncle Seamus was less encrusted with snow and ice this time and was accompanied by a tiny woman with short, wavy silver hair.

  “Sláinte, Clodagh! Bunny said you were having the major over for dinner and Moira and me wanted to bring her some fish. Here you go, Major,” Seamus said, and handed her a string of stiff frozen fish as if he were handing her a promotion to executive vice-president of Intergal.