"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 brimming 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.
Brilliant start, Major Maddock, Yana told herself. Everybody on this damned planet seemed to be related to everybody else.
"Okay, Charlie, but I'll have to drop you and Yana off and take the snocle back. I'm only checked out for another fifteen minutes. I'll hitch up the dogs to take Yana home and bring you back over here."
"If there's time. Giancarlo may requisition your snocle to take us back to SpaceBase, though Terce brought him out. You'll look after my dogs, won't you, Bunny? They already think you belong lo them, and I want them to be well cared for; they've been with me since they were pups." He dug through layers of fur and found
•i wallet, then handed her a wad of bills. "Here's to help you with their food."
She released one hand from the wheel and accepted the money, stuffing it in her parka. "No problem, Charlie. I'll keep on looking after them. You didn't know about this reassignment?"
"No idea. He decided just like that."
Yana found herself leaning forward, wheezing into Demintieff s ear: "You'll be going to Andromeda Station to inprocess and for assignment. When you get there, unless he's gone now, the master sergeant in charge of deployment is Ahmed Threadgill. Tell him Yana Maddock sends her love and reminds him of the time she alerted him to the Ship Police raid. He'll know what I mean." Ahmed would know she was calling in the favor and that he was to look after her friend. It wasn't much, considering the way she had caused however so inadvertently the situation, but it could keep his hide intact.
"Yes, Major Maddock. Thank you, dama."
She clapped him on the shoulder, a little feebly, and sat back until Bunny skidded to a halt outside a house a little larger than Yana's own quarters. The morning's exertions had left her panting and trembling with fatigue, but she still took note of this house. The snow in front of it was full of huge strangely shaped lumps, and the crusted snow all around them was lightly dotted with what looked like some kind of shit, which vaguely shocked ship-bred Yana. Stiff oval nets with points at each end hung over the door, three pairs of what were unmistakably skis leaned against the side of the house, and from the back of the house issued a high-pitched keening, like a woman screaming.
"I'll take you back in a minute, Major, if that's okay," Bunny called back as Yana climbed out of the vehicle. "Besides, you'll want to meet Clodagh. She was asking after you last night at supper."
Charlie Demintieff grabbed the bundle of cloth from the snocle, and Bunny drove away.
The screams erupted again and Yana hung back, tensed, listening. Charlie, who had already taken a step toward the house, turned ponderously in his furs, saw her staring, and touched the elbow of her coat with his mitten.
"That's just the dogs," he said, his mouth spilling clouds of condensation into the air, as if his words were freezing there. "When our dogs were first made, our grandfathers called them banshee-dogs because of that sound, but they're just saying hello."
Yana nodded, hearing her own breath rasping in her ears above the screams of the dogs, and willed herself to relax and follow Charlie to the house. A feline with rust and cream markings stood on the roof above the doorway and looked down at them as if considering a pounce. On another corner of the house sat the cat's twin, resembling pictures Yana had seen of the gargoyles decorating ancient Terran architecture. Another of the creatures sat in each of the windows flanking the door.
Just as Charlie reached the door, it opened before him and was filled by the largest woman Yana had ever seen. Of course, people on shipboard were required to keep their body weight to a certain level, a requirement necessitated by the narrow passages, small hatches, and the close confinement of the rooms. Also, anyone in space had to be able to fit into the suits and, should it become necessary, the cold-sleep shells. The rigors of shipboard life plus the uninspiring quality of the nutritious but mostly tasteless rations guaranteed that regulations were easily met by all personnel.
But this woman! She was like a planet herself, or at least an ovoid meteorite, a large round entity unto herself-imposing, to say the least.
"Charlie," the huge woman said as she opened the door. "I hear you're leaving us." She threw a hard look over his shoulder to Yana, as if divining her role in the matter.
The woman fell back, and Charlie Demintieff stepped into the house, holding aside the standard-issue gray military blanket that covered the inside of the door so that Yana could enter.
Demintieff stripped off his hat, muffler, and gloves and loosened the front of his coat; Yana followed suit. The house was small and close, but not as warm as Yana would have expected. Nevertheless, as Giancarlo had indicated, the woman's upper lip and brow were dewed with perspiration. Yana wasn't sure, however, if the moisture on Demintieff's face was sweat, tears, or melting ice from his hair and eyelashes.
The woman embraced Demintieff, her caress oddly delicate and tender for such a massive being. Demintieff returned her embrace with every evidence of affection.
"Don't worry, Charlie," the woman said. "Natark is hitching his team now. He should be in Tanana Bay by tonight."
Demintieff showed no surprise that the woman had anticipated his news, but simply said, "Thanks, Clodagh. I just wanted to say good-bye. Bunny's taking my dogs."
"Good. Good. Bunny treats them well," Clodagh said, making no further attempt to comfort him but seeming to share his sadness. She offered neither a look nor a word of false encouragement that he was likely to return: they all knew he probably wouldn't.
"This is Major Maddock, Clodagh."
"Ah, the dying woman," Clodagh said. It should have sounded tactless except that her tone was vaguely ironic, indicating that she was only referring to Yana's own opinion of herself, as if they had already had a long discussion about it. A soft smile and the penetrating gaze of Clodagh's tilted blue eyes also showed that she meant no offense but simply cut straight to the heart of Yana's concerns as she had to Demintieff's.
"Come, sit, have tea. Charlie's sister and the rest of the family are on their way. Bunka will bring you to supper tonight, if you'll come, but right now we have to talk about Charlie."
Even as she spoke people began arriving, until the room was crowded with bodies that smelled of wet fur, smoke, and wet dog. Clodagh's house boasted a big table with four chairs set close to the stove. Yana, still in her parka, was soon stifling from the heat of the stove, but as the room filled up, she had no elbow room to remove her coat. One of the cats jumped up on the table and began sniffing her coat and her face. She let her hand drop to its marbled fur and it purred and took her gesture as an invitation to settle onto her thighs.