by neetha Napew
“Think of the things we did do, Zainal! Not too shabby,” Kris replied. Lord, was everyone down in the dumps? Postsomethingorother depression? Kathy Harvey very much wanted to achieve more miracles of repair on satellites, especially with that nice young fellow at the green coordsWendell? Wasn’t that his name? Yes, John Wendell. Kathy had been mopey now and then. It was Jax who had clued Kris in to her interest in the attractive young communications expert who was worlds away from them right now. Oh, well.
Many people came up to have a few words with them and the general drift of the comments suggested to Kris that the majority of Botanists were impressed with the visible results of this first mission, even if it had not been as successful as Zainal had anticipated. He had returned the remaining gold nuggets and flakes to Mike Miller, who had been extremely surprised to receive them. He’d also asked about what other metals were available in good supply: not that anything wouldn’t be welcome on orestarved Earth.
“Shucks. You coulda used it all, Zainal. We don’t need it here.” “I couldn’t use it all, Mike, as most countries are no longer on a gold standard. Coffee beans were more acceptable. And the copper, tin, lead, and zinc.”
“Who’da thought it?” Mike said, slack jawed with surprise, but he carefully signed a receipt for the gold, and Zainal told him the combination of the digital lock on the safe box.
“Got more of those lesser metals if you need them.”
Zainal did not remark on that, which implied that Mike, for one, approved of further expeditions. Kris smiled and thanked Mike. “You know,” she said, “I got the impression from the green coord that the problem might not just be that there is no transport for what resources Earth has left. They need more miners, too. I suspect he could use all who would come.”
She could see that Zainal was turning things over in his mind. He’d been doing a lot of thinking lately, more silent than usualeven for him. Still, she had a few things to ponder herself.
This time she’d bring a lot more flour and rock squats. She began to itemize the other natural supplies of Botany’s bounty in terms of how they would trade on Earth. They could share more until Earth recovered its own agriculture.
Leon Dane’s appearance at their table seemed only natural to her, and she broached the subject of their mission to Kenya and the typhoid epidemic. She knew that Leon and his staff had been busy try ing to catalog the therapeutic herbs and roots of Botany. They had done so to provide alternatives for the medicines they’d used on Earth. So far there had been no epidemics of anything except for measles. That had run its coursethrough the creches, of course, but there had been no serious side effects for any of the children.
“Is it true that some pharmaceutical companies are still operating
down on Earth?” Dane asked, sliding into an empty chair and sipping his coffee. “Best thing you could have brought back,” he added with a grin. “Really good beans, too.”
Kris sniffed. “You have some of the Kenyan robustas. My nose got better in Barevi.”
“So I heard,” Leon said with a broad grin. “So, can I possibly get some stuff on your next trip?”
“You assume there will be one?” Zainal asked, raising his brows in surprise.
“Hell’s bells, man, I think that was just the start. You are going to bring back coffee plants, aren’t you?”
“Where’d you hear that?” Zainal asked.
Leon scratched his head, contorting his face to aid his memory. “Dunno now. Probably Sarah McDouall or possibly Chuck. He reminded us about the equatorial peninsula. She thought it would be climatically appropriate for coffee beans and maybe even bananas and sugarcane. Say, that unrefined brown sugar you brought in is the best treat. I did scrounge an orange.”
“Good for you, Leon.”
“Bananas went down well in the pediatric ward. Not that the kids knew what they were. They just liked the taste.”
“Wish we knew more about banana and coffee culture,” Kris said, wistfully.
“Just give us a chance. Ol’ trial and error is a great instructor,” Leon said airily.
“Ain’t it just,” Kris replied, sneaking a glance at Zainal to see his reception of such ideas.
“We’d have to trade for what you need,” Zainal was saying. “Maybe something you’ve been using here on Botany would work.” “I’ll get Sarah to do up some botanical files and slides and see how we can send specimens for their investigation,” Leon said, and slapped his hand on the table as he rose to his feet. “Gotta go. Just wanted to say thanks.” He drained the last of his coffee and detoured on his way out the door to put his cup in the dirtydishes basket.
“I wish we could do something spectacular for Earth,” Floss said. “While you were off in Manhattan, we got to talking to some of the airport crews. None of them knew anything about Botany or the Cat teniforced colonies. I think everyone wanted to smuggle on board the BASS1 and come back here.”
“Neither world is problemfree, Floss,” Kris said.
“No, but we got a better deal going here than they do,” Floss remarked. “C’mon, Clune, I’m due for my shift.”
“And me for mine,” Clime said, checking whether the other mugs on the table were empty before clearing them off, deftly slotting his fingers through the handles.
Zainal turned a surprised expression to Kris. “She’s due for kitchen cleaning and she goes willingly? My, what is it you say about wonders?”
“May wonders never cease,” Kris said. “I think she learned something from our travels.”
“It would appear so. Now, my dear heart, we have some planning to do.”
“I rather thought we might. You’ve been very thoughtful lately.” “More of my”he raised his right arm in an expansive gesture”wild imaginings.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I have time before the Farmers collect their harvest. And we have gathering of our own to do.”
just at that moment, Gino Marrucci entered the mess hall and came over to Zainal with a clipboard, on which a sheaf of papers fluttered from the speed of his entrance.
“Hi, glad I caught you, Zainal.” He looked down at his notes. “Got supplies lined up for all of the KDMs and the KDLs. Did you plan to use Baby, too?”
“She should be ready to fly in case we need her. Did Peter and Aarens manage to figure out a longdistance homing device?”
“Not for the distances we’ll have to travel.”
“Well, we can use Baby to check out that old Eosi excavation on our moon.”
“D’you think an Eosi actually hid stuff there, too?” “It’s a remote possibility,” Zainal admitted.
“So were the breadloaf chests in the junkyard,” Kris reminded him. He gave a diffident shrug.
He went over the supply sheets with Gino and initialed the crews. “This is all contingent, you know,” he reminded Gino.
“Every kid, including your own, is out hunting rock squats and the kitchen is prepared to roast and toast until they’re all done.” “Hope someone finds some nests and eggs. We can get an incubator for the trip out and present them with rock squat chicks,” Kris remarked. “Personally, I don’t like rock squat eggs but they’re better than nothing.” She had a vision of rock squat farms taking over from the piggeries on the Secaucus meadows, and Murray as a squat farmer. She giggled and waved off Zainal’s look of inquiry. There was of course the problem of bringing alien life forms to Earth. The first incursion had not been a success.
Zainal got touchier and touchier during the afternoon and she worried about him. He had done so much already. What did he expect of himself? Certainly far more than others expected of him. Sally Stoffers called in briefly to deliver a note.
“There never was a quotation on the stock market for the value of Catteni bunts against American dollars or English sterling. But Mike suggested we use the gold rate as a standard: those coins are twenty carat gold, just enough impurity to keep them from being too soft for use or clipped.” She handed him her note. “That gives the equiv
alent, and it’s far more than we borrowed from Mike Miller. That doesn’t even include the jewelry, just the coin. The stones in some of those necklaces and rings and stuff would buy what’s left of Manhattan. If it was still on the gold standard.”
When Zainal finally decided it was time to go to the evening meeting, he looked more woebegone than ever and Kris couldn’t think of anything to cheer him up.
“I didn’t get everything I said I would get,” he remarked as they reached the hall. Then he squared his shoulders and walked boldly into the meeting.
It was even better attended than the previous one, which encouraged Kris even if Zainal did not seem to notice. Brone sat in the front row with the two boys, who waved wildly to catch their father’s at tention before Brone murmured something to them. They both sat on their hands then and tried to contain such unCattenilike reactions. Ditsy, Clune, and Floss sat behind them, and Floss, her hair trimmed and neat around her face, wore the second of her two new dresses: the bright blue patterned one. Their shipmates had taken seats in the same row and were beaming at the entrance of Kris and Zainal, which caused a ripple of comment throughout the hall.
Dorothy Dwardie, Dr. Hessian, and the other members of the Botany Management Board, including Worry, took their places on the platform, so this time judge Iri Bempechat was last in, raising his gavel, preparatory to starting the meeting. A respectful silence fell over the hall.
“As you know, Zainal and his exploratory crew have safely returned and our coffee mugs are full. He wishes to explain in detail what occurred and why. Please give him your complete attention.”
Zainal did not go up on the platform but faced the audience on their level.
“We did well, but not as well as I led you to believe we would,” he said and was surprised when someone booed.
“You got back, you brought us coffee and a whole raft of materi
als we can’t get anywhere else, Zainal. What’s your problem with that?” It was Worry who had spoken, and Kris was relieved that it had not been one of the more vocal detractors.
“Sally Stoffers has a record of what I traded the Botany resources for,” Zainal said, pointing at Sally in the audience.
“He did real good, folks. We all did. Got quite handy with bargaining, even when those Barevian merchants were being damned stingy.”
Zainal gave her a grateful nod for her comment.
“I didn’t do as much as I promised you I would and could.” He was not apologizing, Kris realized, but explaining. “Barevi’s a different world now than the one I knew” “Yeah, they lost the war.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Zainal replied, exasperated and possibly unable to explain what was prompting him to make this confession. “Though on balance, I think your planet has made the better adjustment.”
“Good for Earth!” Someone hoisted a clenched fist skyward in an old gesture of supremacy.
“Botany is in an extraordinary situation,” Zainal went on. “Both worlds are at a crossroads, I think. I know” Kris could see his chest rise as he took a deep breath. “I would like to think that we can do more ... both for Earth, your planet, and for mine.”
“Invade them?” someone called.
“The Eosi were manipulative and ... and evil,” Zainal said. “They perverted my world and subjugated many more. Many more.” “That’s their problem.”
“No, it is ours as well. We inhabit the same galaxy. There is more we can do to assist recovery on your own world. I would like to have the same discretion to help mine ... and ours!” He hurried on lest someone interrupt him. “The Botany Space Force would be invaluable to both worlds, or I should say, all three, including Barevi.”
“Mike?” Kris said, pointing in the direction of the men. “Practical specialists like agrarians to see what Terran things, like potatoes, would do well here and what might be sent back to Earth to be propagated.” “And a dentist. With his equipment. Where is Eric Sachs?”
“Doing a very good business on Barevi. He didn’t care to desert his patients at short notice.”
“We’ll pick him up on our next visit,” Kris remarked, though she wondered if they would repatriate the ebullient Dr. Sachs.
“I’m sure we need time to discuss the details of these ideas,” Judge Iri said, banging his gavel so he could be heard, “but let us be resolved, here and now, to do what we can to relieve Earth’s problems as best we can and to try to establish harmonious relationships with the Catteni government and the Barevi merchants. What say you?” There was a roar of approval, much stamping of feet, and loud applause.
“You’re stuck with it, Zainal,” the judge said, with a tap on Zainal’s shoulder for the work that he had cut out for himself. “You asked for it. You got it.”
Kris rushed forward, ahead of the crowd, to hug Zainal, who was now grinning widely with relief.
Maybe this exceptional man could indeed manage the feats he had promoted himself for. He returned her embrace, not embarrassed to be seen displaying such an unCatteni demonstration of affection. “I dropped, I stay.”