That made him clamp his mouth shut, and he turned away rather than watch Nev follow me out.
In spite of Eton’s grudging compliance, my anger surged again like a solar flare. These offworlders. They were going to drive me crazy, if Shadow didn’t do it first.
The wind as I leaned outside the ship was like a slap to the face, making tears spring to my eyes. It was supposed to be early summer, but this wasn’t like early summer at home. Wherever the last long rays of the sun hit, there was the vague sensation of warmth, but every shadow was a brisk reminder that if you spent the night outside without the proper gear you’d not see the morning.
A metallic clank rang out as Qole landed on the dock beneath us. Thanks to the equipment failure I had initiated on the canisters, the cargo hold was sealed off until the decon unit from the cannery gave the all clear. So instead of using the usual ramp that dropped down from there, we were exiting the ship from a small emergency airlock situated near the crew’s quarters.
The fall was farther than what could be prudent for day-to-day use, but Qole didn’t seem to notice. I refused to pause where she hadn’t and jumped down after her, tucking my body into a roll as I landed.
Once I’d righted myself, I got my first good look at the Kaitan in the weak afternoon light. The ship was long and lean, in stark contrast to the bulkier freighters around it. The bridge viewport at the bow gave way to a sweeping dip on the back where the boom for the net was housed. The engine intakes on either side of the hull curved back to join in in neatly riveted plating. Like every ship I had seen here, it was an offworld design that had been customized, but the others were strewn with cabling and power couplings, and covered in poor patchwork. Despite the hull’s various dents and scrapes, everything on the Kaitan was neatly attached and accounted for.
Qole wasn’t waiting for me. Hands in her pockets, slightly hunkered against the wind, she was resolutely striding away. She might have agreed to go get a drink, but she evidently didn’t see the need to walk there with me.
I sighed and started after her.
As soon as I moved, someone seized my arm with a rasping breath that sounded like air being sucked into space. A person, if he could be called that, was huddled on the icy dock in the shadow of the Kaitan. He was wasted, and thin, with eyes that were entirely black, sunken like coal pits above the protruding cheekbones—the eyes of the Shadow mad. Ragged scraps were all that stood between him and the brutal elements, and the only sound that came from the cracked lips was a hair-raising rattle.
I jerked my arm away instinctively, then was immediately ashamed of myself. But what could I do? I had encountered too many of these Shadow-ravaged people, and I knew they were well beyond any form of care that would do them any real good. The Shadow-poisoned didn’t come back from the brink, once madness took them. They were better off dead.
Or so I thought. Qole was suddenly there in front of me, kneeling down and pressing a heatpack into one of his hands. He turned his black eyes on her, trying to say something, but only a groan came out of his mouth.
“He’s drawn to the Shadow on the ship,” she murmured to me, and then spoke softly to him over his rattle. “Hold this; it’ll keep you warm. I’ll comm someone to take you home. I’m sorry, Gavril. You’ll be out just a little longer.”
I might have imagined it, but the man’s face relaxed a fraction, and he hunched over the heatpack. As promised, Qole produced a communit in her hand and was spitting terse instructions to someone by the time she stood and once again set off at a brisk pace toward town.
I hurried after her, struck by what I had witnessed. I had always been taught that one’s time was better spent on things that would have a larger impact, but Qole had bothered to do something small when she’d had no time to spare. It wasn’t exactly efficient, just…incredibly kind.
She cared for her broader community, and that boded well for convincing her I could help. And I could. If we finally figured out how Shadow bound to organic material when it wasn’t trying to destroy it, not only could we make it available to the mass market—and have their profits skyrocket as a result—we could also make it safer for humans working in forced proximity to it.
Maybe if she knew I cared too, she’d appreciate that. When I caught up to her on the pockmarked gravel road, I chose my words carefully. “If Shadow profits were more exceptional, do you think that would help the situation here?”
Qole snorted derisively. “The profits are exceptional, just not for us. Those of us who risk our lives daily do okay; the rest scrape by. It’s the people who buy it from us who are making money hand over fist. Maybe on your planet, the royals let their money trickle down to you like scat in an outhouse. But out here, we don’t have any blasted royals, and so much the better.”
I winced, glancing at the rusted-out hulk of a more ambitious building, snow still pooled in the deep shadows, where construction had obviously halted after funds had done the same. Money, royal or otherwise, was definitely not in surplus here. “Shadow is in high demand in some larger industrial applications.” And would soon be in much higher demand, if I had any say in the matter. “Couldn’t you negotiate for better prices?”
“Sure. The same way that you could argue with me for a better cut of the run. Try and see what happens.”
I laughed at the truth of it, impressed with how she had so neatly expressed the problem and put me in my place. “All right then, I’ll just make sure to excel at my duties and hope for the best from there.”
“If you suck up any harder, I’ll think we’re already back out in the vacuum of space.” Qole’s lips twitched, her eyes still focused on our path between the buildings. I felt a glow of pleasure at that small reaction.
The rest of the walk was too short for much conversation, or maybe too cold. Alaxak was in the grip of an ice age, and Gamut was one of the most isolated communities on it. The village was mostly a small, featureless collection of buildings from the past century that had been kept in functioning condition with considerable patchwork, cannibalization of other structures, and pure creativity. The serrated edges of the cannery tower were the only defining part of the landscape that was man-made. What dominated the eye outside were distant mountains blanketed in snow and the ice that lay everywhere shadows lingered.