Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [77]
A small vessel had just set down at the station, but Adak hadn’t seen any passengers emerge, just the crews loading up the sort of stores that wouldn’t be harmed by sitting out in the snow on the plascrete. Yet two people were now striding up to the door: a slim little woman with red hair, tufted with silver, lynxlike, above her ears and on her crown and lightly sprinkled with snowflakes, and a big guy who walked like a long-time spacer.
“Hello?” Dinah O’Neill smiled her most ingenuous smile at the fur-clad, round-faced little man who peered at them in round-mouthed surprise. “Is this the right place to find out how to get to Tanana Bay?”
“It’s the only place, and why would you want to be going to Tanana Bay? It’s snowing and we’ve had blizzard warnings,” the little man said. “But much as it pains me to admit it, I’m after bein’ the closest thing to a bureaucrat we got here ‘cept for the governor. Adak O’Connor, immigrations officer, more or less, at your service, ma’am. And what could I do for you, exactly?”
“I believe I may have some relatives here in a place called Tanana Bay,” Dinah O’Neill said, and altered her smile to a sad expression. “I wanted to come and see if we really are related and if perhaps I could make a home here near them, as all my other family have died out and I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“You really must be hard up to come to Petaybee then.”
“Blood is thicker than water. Even frozen water,” she added, indicating the snowfall. Privately Dinah wondered how the hell the planet could afford state-of-the-art Nakatira Structural Cubes like this one if the planet’s economy was so marginal. Still, the old man’s response had been immediate and she didn’t think him guileful. One wanted to attract folks to a planet, not send ’em running. Or maybe they did, to keep all the wealth to themselves. “Actually, I wouldn’t have dreamed of coming here until just recently. I met a man who was telling me about how he’d been down with a committee investigating a so-ca1led sentient planet settled by a lot of the people relocated by Intergal in the time of the Reunification War in Ireland, where my people come from. In the course of his work, the man I talked to had met some people he thought resembled me who shared a similar surname. So, I decided to check it out.”
“And how about you, sir?” Adak O’Connor turned to Megenda, who had been standing at bored ease behind Dinah throughout the conversation. “I take it you and the lady here are together? Would you have relatives here, too, then? Maybe some of them Andean folk on the southern continent?”
Megenda cast a wild sideways look at Dinah, and she stepped in smoothly. “He’s an old family retainer. I can’t pay him any longer, but I couldn’t convince him to leave me. He’s very protective.”
“That’s real good of you, sir, to look after the lady so,” Adak O’Connor said approvingly. Megenda nodded and glowered.
“Now then,” Dinah said brightly. “Where can I get transport to Tanana Bay? Here?”
“Here?” Adak O’Connor crowed a laugh, then sobered. “Well, here’s as good a place to hear the bad news as any. Right now, all the curlies are busy with them hunters that keep swarmin’ in like summer bite-hards. The dog teams are booked up for the next two weeks.”
“What about shuttles? Surely . . .” She waved vaguely at the spaceport.
“Dama, I don’t know where you come from, but there’s one copter available to this entire planet, and it’s borrowed and late returning from where it went to, and no other air transport at all since Intergal reclaimed all they had.”
“Really? I’ve heard this planet is full of opportunities.”
O’Connor snorted, shuffling