by E. M. Foner
“I never actually heard of people owning bots. I thought they were an advanced species thing,” Georgia said.
“People have been building robots for centuries, though Genie was manufactured by the Sharf as an add-on accessory for this type of ship. Don’t be disappointed when you see her. She’s basically just a box with mechanical arms for cargo manipulation, but she’s pretty strong.” There was a loud buzz, and Larry explained, “That’s the alarm for when the hatch between the bridge and the cargo hold opens. I usually leave it open all the time once we’re underway, but it’s good practice to close it during arrivals and departures because that’s when most accidents happen.”
“Here she comes,” Georgia said, watching as the bot emerged from the hatch. “Good, Genie. Come here and rescue me.”
“She’s not a dog,” Larry said, but to their mutual surprise, the bot navigated directly to the reporter and closed a pincer around one of her wrists. “Don’t worry, Genie won’t hurt you.”
“I wasn’t worried, but how can I make her take me back to the garbage locker?”
“See how the ship controller is able to parse your meaning?” Larry said, as the bot gently propelled Georgia towards the safety line that ran between the lockers.
“You’re sure it’s not artificial intelligence?”
“I’ve been living on board for eight years and I would have noticed. And why would an AI agree to stay on a little tin can like this? They have better things to do.”
“Well, I’m going to thank her anyway. Thank you, Genie.”
“You’re welcome,” the ship’s controller replied.
“You can return to your charging bay, Genie,” Larry said.
As the bot floated off towards the hatch, Georgia put her empty water box in the recycling bag, this time being careful to hook the safety line with her elbow to keep her hands free, and then she opened her food locker again and began rummaging through the squeeze tubes.
“Hey, they won’t stay put!”
“Actually, stuff remains exactly where you place it in Zero-G, but only if you’re not moving yourself when you let it go. Kids who grow up on small spaceships can do it without thinking, but people who experience weightlessness for the first time as an adult may never get the hang of it.”
“This is too much work, I’m just going to pick one at random,” Georgia said. She proceeded to do just that, and then quickly closed the locker before the rest of her food could drift off. “Chicken cacciatore with rice?” she read off the label.
“Chicken in tomato sauce with bell pepper and onion,” Larry told her. “I thought you said you were a food writer.”
“I know what chicken cacciatore is, I just never expected to be eating it out of a squeeze tube. Do you know if they use real chicken, or is it vegetable protein.”
“Kind of late to be asking that if you’re a vegetarian, but I think the brand stocked in the chandlery uses vat-grown meat.”
“I’m not a vegetarian, I just wondered because the chandler didn’t say anything about refrigeration.”
“It’s all irradiated, lasts for years without spoiling. So here’s the thing,” Larry continued, easing off the pedals and twisting to watch her. “You can warm it in the microwave, but if you overdo it the tube will burst and we’ll have a real mess to clean up. They make the squeeze tubes with a little steam release valve so you can heat them within reason before the contents get pressurized, but do me a favor and be really careful since it’s your first time.”
“I’ll set it for five seconds and keep checking it,” Georgia said, stretching for the next safety line, and then pulling herself in front of the microwave. “Where’s the keypad?”
“I can operate the microwave for you,” the ship’s controller announced. “Will five seconds on ‘warm’ be sufficient?”
“Yes, thank you,” the reporter said, placing the transparent squeeze tube, which was about the size of a burrito, into the small microwave. “Ready when you are.”
The light in the microwave turned on, it hummed for five seconds, and the light blinked off and the ship’s controller announced, “Ding.”
“I taught it that,” Larry said from halfway between the exercise bike and the rock climbing machine to which he was transferring.
“Not even lukewarm,” Georgia complained, and returned the tube to the microwave. “Can we do that again, Controller?” Three iterations later, she turned her head towards Larry and asked, “How long is this going to take?”
“I usually go for ninety seconds. The red mouthpiece will pop up when it’s done.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s better to learn this stuff on your own, at least, that’s the way my parents taught me.”
“Could I get, uh, seventy seconds, Controller?” Georgia requested. A little over a minute later, there was a ding, and she had a hot, but not too hot, tube of chicken cacciatore with rice in her hand. After a brief inspection, she asked, “How do I break the seal in the mouthpiece?”
“Just squeeze it gently between your thumb and forefinger on the flats until you feel it give. The mouthpiece is actually semi-rigid, and the seal is a hard plastic disc that’s been scribed to break easily. The halves remain attached, so if you don’t finish off the tube, you can push them closed and then stick a cork in the mouthpiece.”
A few more minutes passed, and then Georgia said, “I can’t believe how good this tastes. Are all of the squeeze tubes like this?”
“They aren’t bad, but you kind of started with the best one. It’s hard to beat chunks of anything in tomato sauce.”
Five
“I hate Earth,” Ellen complained, rubbing the sore spot on her head. “It’s cold, it smells funny, and it just dropped something on me!”
“That something is why we’re here,” John reminded her, “and if you let your hair grow out again, the acorn wouldn’t have hurt half as much.”
“How many male traders do you know with long hair?” she countered. “It’s a pain in the butt in Zero-G. Getting a buzz cut at the festival on Dorf Seven is the smartest thing I’ve done in years.”
“No, the smartest thing you’ve done in years was agreeing to meet me here. I know, I know,” he added before she could respond. “I owed you for stealing your blanket perch at the Corner Station gadget festival, but I did get there first.”
Ellen bent to pick up the acorn that she was sure had left a dent in her skull and examined it carefully. “Are you sure there’s a market for these things?”
“The Huktra are nuts about them,” John said, and pulled a face when she didn’t react. “I ran into one of their traders who visited Earth on a culinary tour package deal and he happened to pick a bunch of acorns off the ground. Myort said they were better than anything he ate in any of the restaurants.”
“Why isn’t he here now if he thinks acorns are so great, or better yet, why isn’t he setting up an export business?”
“Because Myort hated Earth even more than you do. The rain turned his scales blue and people kept screaming and running away when they saw him.”
“Earthers are afraid of blue scales?”
“They’re afraid of quarter-ton aliens who look like hungry dragons. Besides, Myort didn’t know that acorns were good to eat until he got back home and found a few left in a side pocket of his luggage. I guess he originally picked them up to have something to throw at people who pointed at him, and it was pure chance I ran into him before he ate the last one.”
“That sounds more like the Huktras I know,” Ellen acknowledged. She waved her hand to indicate the expansive, badly overgrown town green where they had both landed their trade ships. “So who owns all of this?”
“My parents claim to have been the last residents to pay taxes, but since my mother was the town treasurer and my father was the mayor, they were just transferring money between pockets. This whole area was losing population even before the Stryx opened Earth, and after that, it was like a dam broke. By
the time my parents boarded up the house and left for a Dollnick ag world as contract workers, pretty much the whole county was abandoned.”
“So who tends the acorn trees?” Ellen asked, dropping her shoulder bag to the ground and accepting a rake from John.
“They’re oaks, and they take care of themselves. Listen, the only reason I brought you in on this is because I know it’s a one-time deal and I owed you a favor. By the time we finish selling our cargos, word will spread across the tunnel network, and one of the big export businesses here will start harvesting acorns. They’ll drive the price down to where you and I couldn’t afford to compete.”
“So you’re saying that if you thought you could keep it secret and get rich by yourself, you would?”
“Of course, and you would too. I don’t see you traveling with a partner.”
“You know why that is,” Ellen replied, giving him a look. “So where’s your rake?”
“I’ve got this shoulder thing from my mercenary stint,” John said, moving his right arm through an abbreviated throwing motion and faking a pained grimace. “I figure that you can rake and I can shovel. We’ll fill the sacks in no time.”
“And you’ll load them into my cargo hold first.”
“I’ll alternate,” he countered.
Ellen made a ‘ptew’ sound as if she were spitting on her palm and offered her hand to shake. “Deal,” they both declared solemnly, and then she set to work raking acorns off the old asphalt.
A small herd of deer moved about in the high grass not a stone’s throw away, working on their own harvest. Occasionally, the oldest doe would stop feeding and eye the humans, though it was unclear if she was checking to make sure they maintained their distance, or simply annoyed by the intrusion.
“Break time,” John declared after two solid hours of shoveling acorns into the lightweight Frunge cargo sacks that could hold anything from grain to ball bearings without ever ripping or even becoming discolored. “I’ve only been filling your bags half as full as mine so you’ll be able to lift them without help.”
“Maybe I’ll find a buyer in Zero-G,” Ellen said, sitting down on a sunken granite curbstone and stretching out her legs. After a sip from her canteen, she asked, “I wonder if there’s anywhere around here to get some fresh water, just for a change?”
“Even if the pipes hadn’t frozen and burst by now, the pumps haven’t been on since my parents left, and there wouldn’t be any power to run them in any case.”
“I thought little towns on Earth had wells and you could just haul the water up in buckets.”
“In rural areas like this, it was a mix of wells and reservoirs, but the wells were deep boreholes with electric pumps at the bottom, and the reservoirs had filter systems that needed to be maintained. My father was only in his thirties when they pulled up stakes, but he told me a story about putting on climbing gear as a teenager and painting the water tower.” John leaned on his shovel and pointed at a rusty metal tank mounted on a steel framework at the top of a rise behind the skeletal remains of some houses.
“It doesn’t look like anybody’s painted it in twenty-five years.”
“Because that would have been fifty years ago. It’s kind of surprising that it’s still standing, but I guess now that those trees growing around it are getting big, either their roots will lift the concrete pad until it tips over, or one of them will fall on it.”
“How come you know so much about Earth stuff?”
“I brought my dad back to visit a couple of times after I got my ship, and you know I read history books on my tab while I’m on the exercise equipment. What do you do with the time these days?”
“I watch alien dramas or work on my freelance stuff. I can’t read while I’m exercising, and I’ve gotten to where audiobooks put me to sleep.”
“You can fall asleep while you’re working out?”
“Not sleep-sleep, but I kind of drift off, if you know what I mean,” Ellen said. “Anybody who didn’t know you would think you grew up on a trade ship. You just give out that kind of vibe.”
“I guess I work at it,” John admitted. “We’re both in a business where it’s important to get people to trust us. Speaking of work…”
“You’re the one who called this break,” Ellen reminded him, pulling her gloves back on and taking up the rake. “I’d just as soon keep going until it gets dark so we aren’t here all week.”
“It’s not lion country if that’s what you’re worried about. That’s the other side of the planet.”
“How about the other two?” she asked, as John stretched a new sack over the collapsible holder.
“Other two what?”
“Tigers and bears. Aren’t they the big three?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the woods are crawling with bears but they’re probably shy of people. If there was anything dangerous around, I think our neighbors there would tell us,” he added, motioning towards the deer. “Another trader I know makes regular visits to rural locations on Earth to barter for cheese and smoked meats, and he says that the farmers are always complaining about wolves and coyotes.”
“So this area isn’t completely abandoned.”
“It’s a patchwork. Towns like this that were never more than a couple of churches and stores serving the local mill didn’t have much reason to continue when the population dropped too far. You’ve never been to Earth?”
“Never had a reason.”
They worked on in silence, saving their breath for the job. Ellen raked together huge piles of acorns and John shoveled them into sacks and humped them back to one or the other of their holds. By the time they’d put a dent into the bumper crop on the remains of the old pavement, the sun was dropping below the horizon.
“Not a bad day’s work,” John said. “Your hold has plenty more room but I’m not sure about the weight. What are you carrying in the bins?”
“Don’t remind me,” Ellen groaned, flexing her tired shoulders. “I got talked into taking a consignment of ore to Borten Four—”
“Are you following me everywhere now?”
“You’re going too? The ore needs to end up at the mining habitat that supports the asteroid belt operations. It’s a favor for Big Kim, and I think he was doing it as a favor for somebody else. Those bins have seen the inside of more holds the last cycle than a crooked customs inspector.”
“You’re literally carrying rocks to a mining habitat?”
“Ore. I think it’s all part of an elaborate prank and I can’t help wondering if the joke is on me.”
“It just seems like a lot of wear and tear on your fuel pack to land on Earth with that kind of mass when you’re going to have to carry it back into space.”
“How about you?”
“What?”
“Something came up with the paper and I’m going to be staying on Earth until Rendezvous. Want to take my ore to Borten Four? You’ll be doing Big Kim a favor.”
“I need a little more reason than that, Ellen.”
“You can keep half of my acorns, but you have to make me dinner.”
“Are you serious? Those sacks are worth real money.”
“What I mean is you can take all of my acorns, but I’ll settle for half of the money from them if the Huktras are really buyers. At least I’m eliminating my risk if the trade is a bust.”
“If they don’t sell, I can always throw them at obnoxious people. My father said something about weevils, but hopefully by sticking to the acorns on what’s left of the roads and parking lots we can reduce the number.”
John carried the last sack back to his ship and Ellen accompanied him with the rake and the shovel.
“Hey, did ground control even contact you when we were coming in?” she asked. “I didn’t hear a peep.”
“I told tunnel traffic control where I was going when I exited. Didn’t you get queried?”
“Yeah, but that’s Stryx traffic control, not Earth. Or don’t they even care here?”
“I hear about that all the time but I’ve never actually met a trader who makes a living at it.”
John dumped the sack on top of the others and stretched a piece of cargo netting across the load out of habit, even though he had no intention of lifting off that night. “I think the traders with established customer lists for antiques tend not to talk about it because they don’t want to invite competition. Did you hear about that crazy new scheme for sharing market data?”
“I signed up,” Ellen said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve already earned a nine-star trust rating.”
“Sounds like you’re working on a story, but I know better than to pry. Why don’t you go clean up while I make us something? If you put out your camp gear, we can eat outside.”
“If you’re implying I stink, you stink twice as bad, so do us both a favor and take a shower while the grub is warming up.”
A half an hour later, John emerged from his two-man Sharf trader carrying a large tray with both hands. Ellen had already set up folding chairs and a table between their ships and was sipping wine from a metal cup.
“You went all out,” John observed, indicating the wine bottle. “I thought you preferred quantity over quality.”
“I took two cases in trade for an industrial spool of copper wire,” Ellen replied, ignoring the dig at her drinking habits.
“The standard spool? Doesn’t sound like much of a deal on your part.”
“The wine is surprisingly good, and I’d been trying to unload that wire ever since I took it in trade for a broken Frunge wing set.”
“Where did you get the wings?” John asked, propping one edge of the tray on the folding table while unloading it with the other hand.
“Failed vacation,” Ellen told him. “I signed the waiver to skip flying lessons because I was short on time and I ended up crashing before I got off the ground.”