The Peytabee Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “And we could work together again. I need a strong superior officer to keep me on the right track, you know,” he said, reaching over and squeezing her knee.

  “Hoo boy, you were serious about that whip-hand business, weren’t you?”

  He was negotiator enough to know when to drop the subject and give her time to think about it, which she did as they slid into SpaceBase, the lights from the landing and departing shuttles spreading multicolored pools across the snow for the miles surrounding the base.

  While a holiday air had prevailed at Kilcoole, it was definitely business even-more-than-usual at SpaceBase, where parka-clad soldiers scurried from the landing pads to a row of prefab warehouses that had not been there on Yana’s previous visit. In fact, other troops were still assembling three more of the structures, while heavy machinery moved crates into the existing buildings.

  “What’s all this?” Yana asked. “Looks like an invasion.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Torkel said, “if you want to be a positive influence for change. This is the expeditionary force I told you about. We’re using SpaceBase as a supply depot for this continent. My father will be coming down later to supervise the more technical aspects of the operation but basically, from here, we’ll launch probes and set up base camps close to the points we’ve identified from space as having the greatest potential for the resources we’re seeking.”

  “Is this going on planetwide?”

  “Not at the moment. Look, love, I can’t say any more unless you choose to renew your active-duty status and your security clearance, okay? So think about it. And, by the way, come in for a physical so I can shove your status-change papers through in a hurry. You look pretty good for someone with banjaxed lungs and a medical discharge.”

  “It’s all this clean air and country living,” she said breezily.

  “Great,” he said, with a touch of grimness. “But don’t be surprised if there are more traffic jams than usual around quaint and charming Kilcoole in the near future.”

  He plowed into an infirmary parking place willy-nilly and was out of the snocle and around to open the door for her before she could undo her seat belt. Bunny’s snocle was already there, and she and Diego looked to be engrossed in urgent dialogue inside the vehicle.

  “Can I meet Margolies without a security clearance?” Yana asked sweetly. “Just so 1 can reassure the populace as to Diego’s family situation?”

  “Of course,” Torkel said. “I imagine he’ll be in visiting Metaxos.”

  Bunny and Diego emerged, looking expectantly in their direction.

  “We might as well form a welcoming committee,” Torkel said with an overly hearty grin at the kids. “Come on.”

  Diego spotted Steve Margolies the moment they walked into the infirmary. He sprinted the length of the hall to embrace the older man, heedless of the presence of the medics, Torkel, Bunny, Yana, and even that of his father, lying on a hospital bed open-eyed and propped into an upright position with pillows. The room had only three other patients, and the ward on the opposite end of the corridor showed an unbroken line of empty beds.

  Margolies, balding, bearded, and not quite portly, looked as glad to see Diego as the boy did him. “I came as quickly as I could, Diego,” he said.

  “I knew you would, Steve. I knew it.”

  Torkel stuck out his hand. “Torkel Fiske, Dr. Margolies. I had you sent for as soon as I learned of you from young Diego and this lady. This is Major Yanaba Maddock, currently retired and, uh-“

  “Hi, I’m Bunny,” Bunny said, also soliciting a handshake. “I hope you and Diego and his dad can come and live with us in the village.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Margolies said, startled but amiable. “But right now I think Francisco needs the care he can get here.”

  “Have you found quarters yet?” Torkel asked.

  “No. I came straight here after inprocessing.”

  “Well, then, look, Colonel Giancarlo and I are going to have to have a more extensive conversation with you later but I think right now the thing for me to do is to go make sure you are lodged at least in the same building with Diego. Yana, Bunny, I think we should leave this family alone, don’t you?”

  The infirmary corridors were teeming with new personnel and new equipment, and the building itself had been enlarged with newly attached modules at either end. Technicians were feeding data to computers, and medical personnel were stocking shelves and unpacking boxes. Yana wondered briefly why, with a half-empty infirmary, they were adding to it. She didn’t like the look of that, actually. They must be expecting a great many more troops-and casualties.

  They said their farewells, Torkel taking leave with just a hint of a lingering look in his eye for her as he strode off to do whatever it was he was going to do. Which Yana had a pretty good idea was not confined to simply seeing that the Margolies-Metaxos boys were comfy.

  She and Bunny climbed in the snocle just as he turned around and waved, and Yana waved back until he was out of sight.

  Then, as Bunny started the engine, Yana said, “Develop a mechanical problem, Bunny. I’m going to go back in there for a bit. If anyone challenges you, or stops to help you, drive off and come right back on base after a few minutes. I shouldn’t be long.”

  Bunny gave her a hard, measuring look, then shrugged. “Okay, but whatever you’re up to, be careful.”

  Yana flipped her an abbreviated salute and headed into the clinic.

  For the first time since her release, Yana felt fortunate to have spent so long in a large medical facility. She walked back in as if she knew exactly where she was going. Purposefully, she pushed back thoughts of what would happen if she was discovered and her presence in the facility officially queried: Torkel might not even be able, much less wish to, bail her out, and she could easily lose her pension with Integral and face time in a detention center. But right now was the best time for her to obtain a copy of Lavelle’s autopsy-before anyone thought to doctor it up for official reasons.

  She entered the Staff Only lounge, which was as empty as it was bound to be with so much activity going on outside, pulled off her new blouse, and hung it on a hook beneath a patient gown. Pulling on a scrub top and a paper cap, and paper shoes in place of her cold-weather boots, she hung a surgical mask around her chin and, taking a deep breath-without a hint of a cough, she noted distantly-to ease the tension in her guts, padded briskly back down the hall.

  At Andromeda, as at most company infirmaries, convalescing patients did routine, nondemanding chores to save the professional staff work. Even officers did it, and were glad of it, for it helped stave off the boredom of being separated from their own work and their own lives. During her own convalescence, Yana had spent considerable time helping in medical records, requesting and transmitting data from central files. She could at least see if the autopsy had been performed on Lavelle yet-and if it had become a classified file or not.

  She walked straight into the vacant ward opposite the one containing Diego’s father, careful to keep her back to the boy and his guardian, and sat out of sight, around the corner, at the nursing-station computer. She typed in the access code she remembered from her days in the hospital-no longer than six weeks ago, which seemed incredible, considering how well she felt and how far she had come. She breathed a sigh of relief as the code worked. In a closed system, where for the most part only company troops and employees had access to the facility, the need for security was not as tight as it would have been on a world containing a variety of corporate or military entities. On shipboard, space station, or wholly owned planetary subsidiary, Inter-gal was the only game in town.

  Then the machine purred along for a moment and she punched in AUTOPSY REPORT, and suddenly the screen filled with data. She hit PRINT, scanning while the document printed.

  The lungs had been congested, so Lavelle had indeed had pneumonia, but that was not listed as cause of death. Her immune system had suddenly and fatally collapsed, unable to cope wit
h half a dozen systemic viral infections. The autopsy noted that this alone was surprising, since tissue samples-muscle, blood, skin, and bone marrow-all indicated that she had been in the physical shape of a woman half her chronological age. Also, a small inexplicable node had attached to the medulla oblongata. That was strange enough, but the autopsy report also cited the presence of an unusually large and highly developed lump of “brown fat” weighing an astonishing 502 grams: its blood vessels had ruptured. A footnote by the examining physician explained that while two hundred grams of brown fat were normally present in human babies at birth-to ensure NSHP, nonshivering heat production- the substance atrophied when babies grew big enough to adjust their own temperatures to cold. It was odd enough to find the brown fat active, and far odder to find it so enlarged. There was also a thin subcutaneous layer of a dense fatty tissue. A minor mutation to protect inhabitants against the cold? Then she remembered seeing a similar fatty layer, thin but present, in the animals she had skinned after the trapping expedition.

  Reading on, she was vastly relieved to see that there was no sign of any external injuries or evidence of drugs in the system that might have indicated that Lavelle had been tortured or abused in any way during interrogation. Stuffing the printout in her pants pocket, she shut off the computer, rose, wiped her eyes like any machine-weary tech, and made herself shuffle back down the corridor to the lounge to change again into her latchkay blouse before rejoining Bunny in the snocle.

  Chapter 11

  How do we know that this is for real?” Bunny asked when Yana showed the autopsy report to Sean, ‘Sinead, and Clodagh.

  “It is,” Sean said unequivocally.

  “Then you know about this brown fat stuff, the node, and the anomalous fatty layer?” Yana asked.

  Sean nodded and Clodagh’s eyes glistened.

  “It’s why only the young can go off Petaybee,” Clodagh said.

  “Their brown fat hasn’t developed the same mass that adults’ have?” Yana asked.

  There was a long pause while Sean, Clodagh, and Sinead exchanged secretive, and almost embarrassed, glances. Bunny just looked from one to the other, perplexed and hoping to find an answer in their faces.

  Finally, Sean nodded. “Something like that, Yana. It’s pretty complicated, and frankly nobody, including me, understands all of the functions of the adaptations. You may have noticed my research facilities for anything much beyond simple animal husbandry are a bit limited. A lot of it the planet simply seems to do on its own. I haven’t found anything about deliberately introducing such changes as the brown fat and the node in any of the notes my predecessors left behind, but I do know they exist from examining the corpses of other Petaybeans.”

  “I can understand how you might not know how the changes got here or what they consist of if you’re not responsible for them, but there are still a few things I think you can explain,” Yana told him.

  Had she not grown up on space stations and ships, where humans were the dominant life-form but by no means the only life or even the only sentient life, she might have been a little more shocked by what they were implying, that humans were being altered by a planet to suit itself. As it was, she was vaguely annoyed with herself that she was reminded of old vids of aliens who took over the bodies of innocent earthlings.

  She took a deep breath and began confronting the issues that disturbed her concerning Lavelle’s physiology. “Let me get this straight. You folks here on Petaybee are all Earth stock, right?”

  “That’s right,” Clodagh said. “My ancestors were sent here from County Clare, County Limerick, County Wicklow, and Point Barrow, Alaska. Scan’s and Sinead’s are from Kerry and Dublin and northern Canada.”

  “You know all that?”

  “If you’ll remember right, Yana, I told you most of us can’t read or write. It’s part of my job here to remember these things.” Clodagh grinned. “An old Irish profession.”

  “Well, tell me this: if you’re Earth stock, like me and like most of the company corps, how come only you people can’t be moved from where you were sent? I mean, even if the young can go and the older ones can’t, it hasn’t always been that way, has it? Why is that brown fat stuff affecting you now and it didn’t to begin with? Surely at first the company occasionally recruited people who were a little more . . . mature.”

  It was Scan’s turn to look perplexed-and somewhat worried. “Yes, they did. But mostly they’ve preferred to recruit the youngsters, and it’s never seemed to do them more harm than military service does anyone, that we know of. And you have to understand, Yana, that our people have been adjusting to the planet and the planet to us for a couple of hundred years now. The physical changes found in Lavelle’s body were adaptive changes to this world. Some people adapt more readily and more completely than others-and the more exposure they have, the longer the period they have to become accustomed to something, the greater the chance of a profound adaptation. Lavelle was very much a woman of this planet. She lived most of her life outdoors, she ate only what she caught or grew, like many of us, and she was well into her fifties. Here, she was very tough. But her body was used to cold weather, Petaybean midwinter cold, far colder even than you’ve experienced so far, to clean air and pure water and real food. I’m afraid she had lost whatever resistance she had to other conditions in the process of becoming suited to the extremes of Petaybee. Our peculiar weather conditions would never have killed her, but in exchange for that protection, her body relinquished certain other immunities. Besides which, she had a very strong emotional attachment to her home place.”

  “I hardly think emotional attachment alone could have caused her death,” Yana said.

  “It’s possible, Yana,” Clodagh said. “It’s possible. It’s hard to explain to you when you’ve been here such a short time but maybe when you witness the night chants, you’ll understand a little better. With Lavelle being the kind of woman she was, I knew, Sean knew, really all of us knew, that she was as unlikely to survive away from Petaybee as that colonel would out in the mountains without a parka. If we’d known that they’d planned to take her offplanet, we’d have protested, tried to stop them somehow.”

  “Lavelle would have protested,” Sinead said in a bitter voice, her small rough hands knotted at her sides. “She must have told them. She didn’t need to know what her insides looked like lo know she would die offplanet.”

  Yana gave a gusty sigh. “And much as 1 hate to say so, she could’ve told them till the sun turned cold and they wouldn’t have believed her.”

  “Now they do?” Clodagh asked, her face impassive.

  Yana shook her head, in anger, frustration, and a whole lot of other conflicting and negative emotions. She was tired. She was confused and disappointed and even somewhat disillusioned, something she had never thought would be possible again. This had seemed to be such a simple, happy place, and now it had a secret. All she wanted was to get some rest.

  “It’s time to go now,” Sean reminded the others as he tucked his hand under Yana’s elbow. “You haven’t missed the chanting, Yana. It will revive you.”

  Feeling the familiar surge of attraction for him mingle with all of the doubts, fears, and unanswered questions rolling through her mind, she wondered if he could be lying, if in spite of his protestations he was somehow tampering with these people’s genes so that they would never be able to leave. She had the oddest feeling that he was definitely hiding something, and that worried her more than any of the other secrets Petaybee held. Was Sean responsible for the problems Giancarlo had mentioned when she had first arrived? And if these people knew they were being changed, as some of them seemed to believe, why did they put up with it?

  Yana regarded Sean for a long moment as his silver eyes appealed to her. Gazing up at him, she tried to see him as some sort of psychopath mad-scientist monster, and all she could think of was how wonderful it had been to dance with him tonight, and before that, their encounter at the hot springs. His expression grew less
sad and serious as he watched her face, and she knew he could see her resolve to stay detached melting.

  Then, with her voice wavering with unaccustomed indecision as much as weariness, she said, “Oh, frag, Scan. I’m really bushed. Nothing short of eight hours’ sack time is going to revive me.”

  A sly smile kindled in his eyes and curved his lips. “Wanna bet?”

  Clodagh unexpectedly touched her shoulder, her eyes gentle with sympathy. “You come, Yana. You’ll see.”

  The cat came out with an authoritative “meh!,” provoking Yana to an exasperated laugh. She rubbed her forehead with an impatient gesture.

  “You guys are bent on brainwashing me into a proper Petaybean, too, aren’t you?”

  “Something like that,” Scan said in very good humor. He knew he had won. If he hadn’t exactly convinced her, she would at least let her wishful thinking override her better judgment for the time being. With a deft movement he closed the opening of her jacket, flipped her parka hood onto her head, and started pushing her hands into her gloves.

  “Lemme do that,” she said, feeling a surge of almost childish rebellion. She didn’t want to feel completely manipulated just because she was willing to be reasonable. But she didn’t resist as he guided her along, following Bunny, Clodagh, Sinead, and Aisling back to the hall, which was still resounding with the sounds of merriment within.

  Outside the door, a girl stood chatting with a man who was stirring the contents of a huge metal drum, set up over a small, fierce fire. As they passed, the man nodded, smiled, and smacked his lips appreciatively at the odors wafting up from the delicious-smelling concoction, soup or stew, in the big barrel. Clodagh took an exaggeratedly deep sniff, fanning the aroma toward her with both mittens.

  When they entered the meetinghouse, Yana had to pause to adjust to the temperature-and the odor-of the hall, which had been packed solid with energetic folk for the past eight or nine hours.

  If these dancing, singing, talking, gesticulating, laughing, crying people were really the cruel victims of a malign curse that doomed them forever to bondage to a hostile planet, they were either blissfully unaware of it or they plainly didn’t give a rat’s ass.