Powers That Be by Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Page B

that over for a moment. Then, taking a breath, she asked, “Tell me which herbs make that sort of fish palatable.”
    “Sure, but you ain’t had a chance to get any yet. So I’ll scrounge enough. Meetcha at your place.”
    Yana had her stove fire going nicely when Bunny arrived with a small sack of the things she had filched from her aunt’s kitchen.
    “Aw, don’t worry about a pinch of this and that,” Bunny said when she saw Yana’s worried expression. Then in short order, she demonstrated the art of concocting a fish stew from the herbs, a handful of rice, and chunks of what cooked into edible root vegetables. Bunny used all the fish from the string. “Because a stew gets better the longer it’s alive. All you gotta do is freeze what’s left overnight and thaw it on the back of the stove when you’re getting hungry. I’ll also show you how to make pan dough.”
    She did, and Yana ate a gracious sufficiency. Bunny was still mopping up the stew juices with some of the pan dough when Sean’s unmistakable voice called out, “Sláinte, Yana!”
    Bunny was closer to the door and, at a nod from Yana, went to open it.
    “Ah! Any left in the pot?” he asked, sniffing expectantly.
    “Wouldn’t Clodagh feed you?” Bunny asked, catching a plate and a spoon from the shelf on her way to the stove.
    “She had enough, and I needed a little space,” Sean said, undoing his coat and hanging it neatly beside the others on the door pegs.
    “Who got out this time?” Bunny asked as he settled at the makeshift table so comfortably that Yana stifled the apologies she was about to make.
    He paused long enough to ingest a spoonful before he answered.
    “The Yallup group,” he said, jamming a piece of pan bread down into the juices. “Lavelle, Brit, and Sigdhu made it; they’ll be grand with some rest and decent eating, though Siggy lost another toe. The odd thing”—Sean wriggled his spoon about as if the movement would solve the oddity—“is that two of them made it.”
    “Yeah!” Bunny looked awed by that.
    Shouldn’t outworlders survive on this planet if their native guides were efficient? Yana wondered.
    “Who?” Bunny went on.
    “The team geologist the Yallups sent, father and son, Metaxos by name, Diego and Francisco. Damn fool brought his kid along for the experience.” Sean spaced his phrases, eating in between gouts of information. Bunny snorted at the folly of folks’ notions of experience; Sean grinned, light from the mare’s-butter lamp on the table dancing in his silver eyes. “The son’ll sing about it. The father . . . now, that’s where the trouble begins. He’s aged. The boy said his dad was mid-forties. Looks closer to ninety.”
    “Ohhhhh!” Bunny drew out her exclamation, rounding her eyes, apparently finding great significance in this.
    “Does hypothermia age you?” Yana asked.
    “On Petaybee it can,” Bunny said tersely. “So did they find anything?” She leaned conspiratorially close to Sean, her eyes glistening with eagerness in the lamplight. “The usual?”
    Sean snorted, sopped up more stew on a piece of bread, and ate it before he answered. Yana thought he deliberated over his reply.
    “More or less the usual. The kid gave some pretty concise descriptions. Caves, glistening lakes of free water, horned animals, sleek water beasts—you know, the usual.” He broke off more bread, affecting keener interest in the business of eating than telling.
    “Ahhhh!” Bunny let out another of her pregnant syllables.
    “If you’re deliberately speaking in parables, I’ll go walk the cat,” Yana said, rising.
    Sean’s arm reached out and pulled her back down to her chair, grinning an apology.
    “People lost for weeks, gripped by hypothermia and close to the edge of starvation, tend to hallucinate.”
    “But you say he gave concise descriptions . . .”
    “Vivid ones, though not necessarily accurate,” Sean said, but Yana had the feeling he believed them. “Then the