Assisted Living

by E. M. Foner

  “But the work is already done,” Lynx protested.

  “The terraforming is done. It’s the work of creating the engineering change orders that’s expensive. Say a hundred creds a head.”

  “Let me offer you something to go with your drinks,” Lume interjected smoothly, though it was obvious to his fellow Dollnicks that he was buying time for Lynx to communicate with Flower. He lifted the cake dish with his lower set of hands and proceeded in the traditional fashion, slicing with a knife held in one upper hand and removing a wedge with a sterling silver cake server he produced from somewhere. The delegation, all of whom had been sipping their liquor, watched this process closely, and Lume deposited the first slice of heavy cake on the prince’s gold plate.

  “What do I do?” Lynx subvoced in the meantime. “You didn’t say anything about paying.”

  “Ask him how many Humans we’re talking about,” Flower instructed over the third officer’s implant.

  “How many workers do you have who aren’t already signed up for a contract somewhere else?” Lynx asked.

  The prince raised a forkful of fruitcake to his mouth with one of his upper hands while slipping a lower arm under the table. The steward flinched from the unexpected contact.

  “The prince is using tap speech on the steward’s leg,” Flower reported privately. “There are over four hundred and twenty thousand workers who haven’t committed to a new project, but the prince told Durbe to start at a hundred thousand and see how you react.”

  “I could offer you a hundred thousand at that price, assuming they are willing to go along with it,” the steward said. “After all, they are contract workers, not slaves.”

  The prince took a larger forkful of fruitcake and held it in front of his eyes, seemingly puzzled by the density of different ingredients. Then he moved it into his mouth and nudged the quiet Dollnick, who held his own plate out to Lume.

  “I’m not an engineer, but it seems to me that ten million creds would pay for a lot of change orders,” Woojin ventured.

  “Quadruple the number of Humans and payment due at Union Station,” Flower instructed Lynx via her implant.

  “As my husband points out, that is quite a lot of money,” Lynx said. “While the sum isn’t out of the question,” she paused to make sure she had the prince’s attention, “we had hoped to attract at least four times as many workers. Also, given the, er, inherent dangers of space travel, we keep our ready funds at Union Station.”

  The steward glanced at his superior, who was now forking fruitcake into his mouth as fast as he could chew, and gave a low whistle to get the prince’s attention. Kuerda looked annoyed by the interruption, but he folded the thumb across the pinkie on his upper left hand, poked at an invisible barrier with the three extended fingers, and then curled his fingers into a fist.

  “We’d need some sort of premium for the risk you speak of, given that your silent partner recently brushed off a trio of process servers going about their lawful duties,” Durbe countered. “Who’s to say you’ll reach Union Station without encountering an impound fleet?”

  “Fiddlesticks,” Flower told Lynx. “Four hundred thousand Humans, and a twenty-five cred rebate for every worker who decides to transfer at Union Station. You can throw in a case of that Dollnick tequila. It’s over a thousand years old.”

  “We’ll take all of the uncommitted workers you have for ten million if you can come up with four hundred thousand of them,” Lynx said. “We’ll need to get fifty creds a head back for any of them who leave the ship at Union Station.”

  “Ridiculous,” the prince whistled, speaking directly to the humans for the first time. “If they all transfer, I would end up owing you ten million creds. A twenty-five cred rebate is my best offer, and I’ll take this bottle with me.”

  “You can have a case of it,” Lynx said graciously. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Wait,” the prince said. “Is this cake I’ve been eating, or some sort of congealed cocktail? I’ve never had so much alcohol in solid form. What do you call it?”

  “Harry’s Fruit Cake,” Lume replied.

  “And where does one shop for such a thing?”

  “Ten creds,” Flower prompted the third officer over her implant. “And tell him it has an extraordinary shelf life.”

  “We can sell it for twenty-five creds a cake,” Lynx said. “And it keeps forever.”

  “I’ll take all you can make, but I get the monopoly in Dollnick space.”

  “Deal,” Lynx declared.

  Prince Kuerda extended both of his lower arms across the table and shook hands with Woojin and Lynx simultaneously.

  “You contacted us just as I was preparing to leave Trume Six, and I must be on my way,” the prince continued, rising to his feet. “My steward will return to the planet and explain your offer to our contract workers. Accompany us to the docking bay, Lume, and bring the cake. One of you grab the bottle,” he added to his aides. “Where’s that case?”

  “In the kitchen,” Woojin said. He brought it out and gave it to the steward. “I guess we’ll be hearing from you after you get a chance to talk with the workers.”

  “I did that as soon as you contacted us,” the smallest Dollnick replied smugly. “I kept it to myself as a negotiating tactic. You can start sending down shuttles anytime.”

  The four Dollnicks exited the cafeteria and Lynx breathed a deep sigh of relief. “That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

  “And you’re a better negotiator than I expected,” Flower said. “How did you know he would go for the higher numbers?”

  “I didn’t, but I was a trader for ten years, and you develop an instinct for these things. How are you going to get hundreds of thousands of cabins ready in a week?”

  “They’ve been prepared for months now,” the Dollnick AI said. “I used bots because there weren’t enough people on board to do the work, and when there’s a shortage of labor, I keep the biologicals working with food production.”

  “What if they all stay?’ Woojin asked. “Can you really come up with ten million creds when we get to Union Station?”

  “If even half of them stay, I’ll make my first population milestone, and the bonus will more than cover the cost. Besides, something tells me that Prince Kuerda would accept payment in Harry’s Fruit Cakes. Not my first choice for a brand name, but I can work with it.”

  Nineteen

  “When Flower said she may have planted too many fruit trees, she wasn’t kidding,” Julie said. “Is this whole deck citrus?”

  “It’s not all oranges, if that’s what you mean. There are grapefruits, lemons and limes too,” Bill replied.

  “Those are all citrus. Didn’t she plant any apples, plums or pears?”

  “That’s the next deck up. She took me and Harry on the grand tour yesterday, and there are three full decks dedicated to fruit, if you include grapes. Flower separated each deck into sections, and she controls the lights and the climate for each section separately, so the trees think they’re in different seasons.”

  “Do trees really think?”

  “Razood says that Frunge trees do. There’s always a section where the trees are flowering, and there are ape-something bots that help the bees pollinate.”

  “She probably said apiary bots, and I’m allergic to bees, so don’t ask me to go look at them in this dress.”

  “It looks great on you,” Bill said. “You should wear dresses more often.”

  “I went shopping with Rinka and she picked it out for me,” Julie said, but she wondered if Bill would read more into her wearing a dress than she had intended. “I told her I wanted something practical I could wear at work, and she said that this fabric is almost indestructible. It’s also guaranteed to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter, if I ever go anywhere with weather again.”

  “I quit the package delivery business,” Bill announced suddenly. “I think Flower only started it because she doesn’t have enough to keep herself busy an
d she likes telling me what to do. And I told Razood I would come in and help whenever he has a big order, but I want to give baking a serious shot, and Harry doesn’t have that much time.”

  “You mean he’s too busy to teach you?”

  “I mean he’s pretty old. Flower is going to make him retire in a few years because the Dollnicks have rules about old people working, but first, she wants him to help set up a commercial baking operation to use up all this fruit.”

  “So you’re quitting delivering packages for Flower to bake fruit cakes for Flower?”

  “No. I mean, yes, for now, but I’ve already told her that once I get good at baking, I want to open my own shop and be my own boss. Harry worked for himself almost his whole career, his wife too.”

  “His wife worked for him her whole life?”

  “For them, like a team. Just think about it.”

  “Think about Harry and Irene working together?”

  “About us. Do you want to work for other people your whole life? We could be partners, just like Harry and Irene. I’ll do the baking and you can handle the customers.”

  Julie hesitated, a dozen answers and excuses jumbled together on her tongue, but in the end, all she could come out with was, “I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”

  “How could you not know? Don’t you see the way I look at you?”

  “Guys have always—that’s not what I meant to say. But we’ve barely known each other for three months and you’re talking about spending our lives together like Harry and Irene. You don’t even know me.”

  “So who knows you better than me, other than Flower? That Zick guy?”

  “Is that what this is about? Don’t worry, he’s with Renée now. They’re already living together.”

  Bill finally stopped walking and surprised Julie by reaching for her hand, the first time she could remember him intentionally touching her skin. “I’m not like those other guys, Julie. You know that Flower gives me advice whether I want it or not, but I also asked Harry and Razood, and they both said I should talk to you. Well, Razood actually said I should have my parents talk to your parents, but you don’t have any and I haven’t seen my Mom since she remarried. I’m not trying to get you into bed. I just want you to take me seriously as a man, not as some friend who hangs around doing whatever Flower tells him. Can you do that?”

  “I’m just surprised is all,” Julie said. “I know that Flower wants to stick us together, but I thought you were just going along with it.”

  “Well I’m not. Caring about you is my idea, and I don’t want to wait for some other Zick to come along and then it will be too late. I’m sorry I threw up on your sneakers, but I want to date you, and I want to be able to talk about our future without worrying that you’ll think that I’m just saying what Flower tells me to say.”

  “Okay, Bill. I’d like to try that. But I swapped shifts with Renée at The Spoon so I have to get to work. She’s probably in a hurry to spend the jump with Zick.”

  “I’ll go with you partway, but I’m meeting with Harry and the captain’s wife. We’re going to look at one of the industrial decks for the baking business.”

  “And Flower is planning to hire some of the workers we picked up at this stop to be bakers?”

  “I guess there will be all sorts of jobs, from cooking and cleaning up to marketing and package design, not to mention picking fruit,” Bill said, as they headed back for the lift tube. “Harry says that commercial baking is as different from working by yourself in a kitchen as taking a bath is from swimming in the ocean.”

  “Have you ever swum in the ocean?”

  “I thought I did once, but then I found out it was just a harbor. The water was salty, though.”

  “Flower said we can swim on the reservoir deck if we tell her first so she can warn the fish off. I don’t think I could.”

  Bill started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Julie demanded as they entered the lift tube capsule. “Those Dollnick fish are killers.”

  “Do you realize that Flower hasn’t interrupted once since I picked you up at your cabin?”

  “She didn’t even say anything over your implant?”

  “No, you either?”

  “No. Food court,” Julie instructed the lift tube capsule.

  “Do you think she was listening? Maybe she’s too busy with getting all of the newcomers settled in. Harry said it amounts to more than doubling the ship’s population, though a lot of them will probably leave at Union Station.”

  “Are you too busy to spy on us, Flower?”

  “I don’t spy, I supervise, and my Stryx mentor advised me to give you more room,” the Dollnick AI replied immediately.

  “Attention all shoppers,” the captain’s voice announced. “We will be departing Trume Six in forty-five minutes. Visitors who fail to disembark on time will be charged the cost of passage to our next destination at commercial rates and be subject to ship’s law. This is your final warning.”

  “Quiet shift for me,” Julie commented. “I’ll probably spend most of my time restocking and doing prep.” She looked at Bill out of the corner of her eye, and added, “I can give you a free coffee if you stop by.”

  “Deal,” Bill said, breaking into a smile.

  The doors slid open and the girl exited, and then without instructions, the capsule started off again. After picking up Lynx and Harry, Flower brought the three of them to Deck Forty.

  “I’ve had my bots transferring equipment from some of the kitchens at the other end of the ship,” the Dollnick AI explained. “It’s all very preliminary.”

  “Why couldn’t we just do the baking in those unused kitchens?” Bill asked.

  “Efficiency,” Harry explained. “Commercial baking is like running a factory assembly line with food as the product. Since we’re working with crops grown on board that need to be processed into ingredients, it adds a layer of complication that I’ve never had to deal with. Flower has had plenty of experience grinding wheat and making sugar for five million Dollnicks so I’m not going to worry about it.”

  “I’m sure that I’ll find some good candidates to train up for operations management in our haul from Trume Six,” Flower said. “My reason for bringing you all the way down here is to help you make the linkage between the recipes you develop and the processes that will turn them into saleable products. You and Bill will be working in dessert research. We’re going to launch with a line of fruitcakes because I know Prince Kuerda will buy our production, and I have a bumper crop of fruit to harvest that’s only going to get bigger. Ultimately, I’ll adjust what I grow according to demand, both on-board consumption and in the packaged food market.”

  “How many of the new workers do you think you can find jobs for?” Lynx asked.

  “All of them,” Flower replied, as the lift tube doors opened. “On my last real mission, there were over a hundred thousand Dollnick colonists employed on this deck in a micro-weaving operation. They took the equipment with them.”

  “I have a hard time picturing all those Dollnicks working at manual labor,” Harry said. “I thought that’s why they hired so many of us.”

  “Did you think every member of an advanced species can be a scientist or a poet, or even that they want to be?” the ship’s AI challenged the baker. “Take Lume. He runs a lunch counter.”

  “But that’s just a cover job so he can work as an intelligence agent.”

  “Ask him sometime. He was on the verge of taking early retirement to become a street food vendor when this opportunity to combine his passions came up. And most of the other Dollnicks on board work in the distribution business. Do you think selling Gem nanobots and Verlock magnetic bearing replacements in bulk is that different from weighing out nails or mixing paint?”

  “What is that thing?” Bill asked, pointing at a giant oval machine with a short section of exposed conveyor belt.

  “It looks like a commercial dishwasher for a banquet facility,” Harry sai
d. “A single person can stack dirty dishes in the racks as they pass and take clean ones when they come back out. But I’ve never seen one so big, or with so much of the track enclosed.”

  “That, my Human employees, is the pinnacle of Dollnick food preparation technology,” Flower said proudly. “It can do everything from mixing dough and baking bread to shelling nuts and grinding flour. It has the temperature range to make ice cream or melt aluminum, and as Harry guessed, it can also wash the dishes. They’re popular on colony ships as a backup for manual labor in case of emergencies.”

  “But I thought your goal was to employ as many people as possible.”

  “You’re correct. I just wanted you to see the machine before I had the bots reconfigure it into a linear oven for the fruitcake production line. We’ll start with a hundred and take it from there.”

  “A hundred ovens?” Lynx asked. “How many people will that employ? Ten? Twenty?”

  “How long would it take you to walk from where you’re standing to the next structural spoke?”

  “I guess a couple minutes. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Given the speed of the conveyer and the required baking time for Harry’s current recipe, the linear ovens I’ve designed will just fit between two spokes,” Flower said. “I expect that each oven will require at least twenty workers preparing the ingredients, mixing the batter and pouring it into molds, and another ten workers on the other end boxing the finished product. That doesn’t count the office staff, warehouse employees, quality control, sales support, and of course, research and development. I estimate that each linear oven will employ fifty workers per shift, or over a hundred and ten if we run around the clock.”

  “Why not a hundred and fifty?” Lynx asked.

  “Sales support, research and development, and some of the office tasks will only work one shift. Now, let’s take a look at the printing operation.”

  By the time Flower finished showing off her nascent fruitcake factory, the countdown to entering the tunnel had begun. Lynx and Harry headed back to their cabins to sleep through the disconcerting transition to hyperspace, and Bill headed for The Spoon. When he got there, Julie was nowhere to be seen, but he took a stool at the counter. He noticed a napkin with some printing on it draped over the register, and after a guilty look around to see if anybody was watching, he snagged it and puzzled out the scrawl.