by Sharon Lee
“Mrs. ana’Tak is a wizard with cookies,” Val Con said, taking one for himself.
The next few minutes were given to an appreciation of art.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Yulie said, putting his teacup gently down on the table. “I don’t know that it’s worth havin’ tea and cookies for what I come over here to ask you—not that I don’t appreciate it, Boss! But all I wanted was to find where that brother of yours is got to.”
Shan had commissioned Val Con to purchase a piece of land that had been Yulie Shaper’s death-gift from his grandmother, through his grandfather, also deceased. Yulie had signed the contract willingly enough—too willingly, in Val Con’s opinion—and had only very recently allowed himself to be persuaded to accept the purchase price stipulated therein. It had been Yulie Shaper’s intention to give the land to Shan, as Yulie claimed to have no use for it. Managing the contract and the payment had taken…determination, but Val Con had been pleased to properly finish the business in his brother’s name.
Now, however? Had Yulie changed his mind?
“My brother Shan is on the trade run. I had pinbeamed him the contract a few days ago. I am certain that we will soon receive a countersigned—”
Yulie shook his head.
“Forgot you got a bushel’a brothers. I’m talking about the other one—the boy with the metal hand, who liked the grapes so good.”
“Rys.”
“That’s him. Quiet boy. Handy in a pinch, too.”
“Indeed, he is everything that is modest and accommodating, but I regret, Mr. Shaper. Rys is off-planet at the moment.”
Unexpectedly, Yulie grinned.
“Ain’t that something? Used to be you’d never hear that: off-planet. Gettin’ so now, you can’t not hear it.”
“On our former homeworld, it was the veriest commonplace. May I inquire into your business with Rys? Perhaps, in his absence, I may be able to assist.”
“Well, I got to thinking about them grapes, and how he was a winemaker, and how we got such a short time between winter and winter, if you take my meaning. Well! Surebleak’s weather, that was the whole reason for setting up the growing rooms like been done. Supposed to feed the world, we was, or at least start to—and then the bosses…well, old stories. Thing is, Grampa…he had studies done and the binders put together, one ops binder for each room, and one binder about what the room produced and how best to see it used.
“Anyhow, thinking about them grapes and your Rys like I been doing, I went and pulled the binder. And you ain’t gonna believe this, but there’s this, right here, just made to order for what we got here on Surebleak, and I’m thinking them grapes was special picked to make this ice wine here…”
He took up the binder and flipped to a page that had been marked with a rough-toothed red leaf.
“Look right there,” he directed, passing the book over.
Val Con scanned the page, quickly coming to an understanding of the process, production, and product. He looked up and met Yulie Shaper’s eyes.
“The grapes are left on the vine after they are ripe and allowed to dehydrate somewhat, thereby concentrating the sugars and producing complexities not usually found in traditional wine. After the first frost, they are harvested and pressed while still frozen. Consumed within the year, it is a dessert wine; aging for five to ten years in the barrel will produce a smoother, dryer finish.”
“Quick study,” Yulie commented, helping himself to another cookie.
“Necessity.” Val Con closed the folder and placed it on the table next to the cookie plate.
“I wonder…do your grapes not grow in a dedicated room?”
“Sure they do—oh! You’re wondering about how we’d freeze ’em. Simple enough thing to do…just open the vents when the sugars test right. Then you got a busy six, eight hours harvesting and pressing, but that’s how work is—you either got too much or too little.”
“That has been my observation as well.”
Val Con picked up the pot and refreshed their cups.
“Now, we got some time on this,” Yulie said. “Grapes won’t be ready to go for another six weeks, maybe. Thing is, there’s autumn harvest comin’, and right after that, I got a couple o’the trickier rooms come due. No extra time to give them grapes, is what I’m sayin’. It was in my mind, see, to offer that brother o’yours the work, and the wine.” He sipped his tea and sighed. “That’s good, thanks.”
“You are quite welcome; it is a pleasant blend.”
Val Con tasted his own cup, savoring the bright green top notes, and the darker, nutty undernote.
“Mr. Shaper, I regret,” he said, lowering the cup and cradling it in his palm. “The case is that Rys may be gone for…some time.” If not forever, he added silently, to himself.
Yulie sighed and took a bite from his cookie.
“Don’t guess you know anybody else might do the work? See, now it’s in my head, I got a real urge to find how them grapes go into wine. Be a market for local wine—maybe even go into the Bazaar there at the port, where all the best things off Surebleak get offered.”
“Indeed. Let me think for a moment, if you will, Mr. Shaper. Perhaps I do know of someone who might assist us.”
“Take all the time you want,” Yulie told him cheerfully and settled back into his chair, cup in one hand, half-demolished cookie in the other.
Val Con sipped more tea, eyes half-closed.
…One of my sisters, Rys said to him in memory. An avid gardener…has brought me into an endeavor with grapes. It is very much in the nature of an experiment, and I do not entertain…very high hopes of the outcome. Still, the subject interests her…
He sat up and put his cup on the table with a small, decisive click.
Yulie looked at him with interest.
“Thought of somebody, did you?”
“I recall that Rys had spoken of one of his sisters—a devoted gardener—as having developed an interest in grapes. He had been teaching her, before he—before he was called away. I am not entirely certain, you understand, which sister, or if, indeed, she might find herself able to assist. You say we have time before the grapes require the attention of a vintner. May I have, then, a few days to locate this sister of Rys and put the question to her?”
“Sure. Hey! Another farmer? Wonder if she’d like to help with the harvest, too? Payment in produce, but it’s all good eating.”
“Assuming that I am able to locate her, I will mention that possibility as well. Is there anything else I may do for you?”
“Done everything I asked and more, is what it seems like to me. Thanks, Boss.”
“Mr. Shaper, it is I who thank you! You have given me a much needed break, and a problem which it is a pleasure to solve. I only hope that we may bring it to full closure.”
“You’ll do it,” Yulie said comfortably, putting his empty cup on the table and picking up his binder.
“I’ll take this along and put it back where it belongs, so we’ll know where to find it, when it comes time. Meanwhile, I left some bush-nuts with Mrs. ana’Tak to try in cookies and cakes and such. You let me know what you think about ’em.”
“I will, Mr. Shaper; you are too good to us.”
Val Con stood, and Yulie did.
“Grampa always said good neighbors was worth keeping,” he said, as they moved toward the door. “You’re the first neighbor I had, but I ’spect he’d say you was worth keeping.”
“We have not ourselves been accustomed to near neighbors, but I find that we are fortunate in our placement here.”
“We got an accord then.”
Val Con opened the door, and gestured the other man to precede him down the hall.
“We do, indeed,” he murmured.
* * * * *
One thing you could say about ’bleaker meetings: they were thorough.
Miri’d sat through plenty of meetings when she’d been a mercenary soldier. Merc meetings, they cut right to the chase: no shortcuts nor any lon
g detours along the back roads of what if, neither. The meeting leader told out whatever it was you needed to know, and at the end of it, they’d say, “Any questions? Dismissed.” Just like that, with no time for anybody to get their hand in the air, if they’d wanted to, between “questions” and “dismissed.”
She’d had a couple of nostalgic minutes there at the Port Authority meeting, no denying. Still, they did manage to approve the budget and vet the couple of bids for vendor space that’d come in since last meeting. The question of the port upgrade rose, like it had to, that being an ongoing cause of agitation. Usually the answer to the question was nothing yet, but tonight, the portmaster’d surprised them all.
There’d been word from the Terran Trade Commission. They’d discovered that the old survey in their files wasn’t complete, so they’d diverted the nearest team from their scheduled rounds to go straight to Surebleak and do the job right. The team, said the portmaster, ought to arrive within the quarter.
Well, there’d damn near been a riot, what with the folks who thought Surebleak was ready and those who—while understanding that there had been changes—were just too beaten down by a lifetime of hard living to believe that TerraTrade would ever give them an upgraded rating.
The portmaster had let the talk go on longer than Miri would’ve done, but in the end everybody got settled enough to concentrate on agreeing on the next meeting time, and off they went, dismissed at last, only three-quarters of an hour late.
Nelirikk’d driven them to Nova’s in-town house, where he went to the staff room behind the kitchen, and she continued down the hall to Nova’s office.
Val Con’s eldest sister—his cousin, actually, but he’d been raised a single yos’Phelium amongst a herd of yos’Galans, and according to how Liadens sorted things, that made him a son of the House. Which sort of explained why it was that Nova looked nothing and everything like him, simultaneously.
All the members of Clan Korval—the born-in members, anyway—held a strong resemblance to each other. They shared the clan’s face, according to Liadens, but like so much of what Liadens said, it wasn’t exactly what they meant. The clan’s face had less to do with each member of any given clan looking exactly like the rest as it did with a similarity in posture, body language, inflection, and mannerisms. A shared history going back dozens of generations supported all the members of a clan, and defined their place in society.
In the case of Clan Korval, which raised up traders, scouts, and pilots, the clan’s face also included a sense of humor that was sharp enough to cut, not to say blackly ironical.
Nova was behind her desk when Miri entered the office. She looked up with a faint smile and a slight nod, which for Nova was downright effusive.
“Miri. I see you well?” The question was in Low Liaden, which was how kin talked to each other. Miri answered in the same mode.
“You see me glad to be out of the meeting with my life.”
Nova’d been shorted on the clan’s sense of humor. Despite she’d come up with Val Con and Shan, sometimes she got caught by surprise. This was one of those times. Slim golden eyebrows pulled together.
“Was there violence?”
“Nothing of the sort,” Miri assured her. “I was merely hard put not to die of boredom.”
“Ah.”
Nova glanced down at her desk, and back up.
“I must ask you to forgive me, Sister; I assured Pat Rin that I would finish with this document today and put it in his hands tomorrow morning.”
Miri raised her hands, palms out.
“Believe me when I say that I understand. Is anyone else arrived?”
“You are the first.”
Miri shook her head.
“I had hoped that my meeting was the only one that had gone overtime. Of your kindness, Sister, I will amuse myself in the book room.”
“Of course,” Nova said, her eyes already straying back to her task. “I will ask that tea be brought.”
“Thank you,” said Miri, and withdrew.
* * * * *
The meeting was finally over. Ren Zel slipped out into the hallway, neatly avoiding the crowd advancing on Ichliad Brunner, Surebleak’s official weatherman. He made no doubt that Anthora would be similarly adroit, though she had been seated on the side of the table furthest from the door.
Unusual for Surebleak, the room had been stifling, and he had over the course of the meeting developed an annoying sort of itch just behind his forehead, as if he were trying to have a headache but had forgotten the way of it.
Sighing, he allowed the wall to support his weight more than was really seemly in a public hallway, and closed his eyes.
Gold glittered in the darkness there; the sweet breeze wafted the nascent headache away. He was consecrated in eternity, senses drowned in—
“’Evenin’ now, Mr. dea’Judan!”
A loud, brusque voice shattered perfection. Ren Zel started away from the wall, eyes snapping open to behold the bluff features of Oskar Ekelmit, the task force secretary.
Ren Zel produced a Terran smile, so broad as to feel a farce, and gave the secretary a nod.
“Good evening, also, to you, sir,” he said. “I believe we made progress this session.”
Actually, they had talked a number of very simple points into senselessness and gave permission for Mr. Brunner’s rather expensive next step in the satellite project with scarcely a question. Still, having obtained permission was excellent.
“Did good work,” Secretary Ekelmit agreed. “Gotta eager bunch on this thing. Wanna see it through. Well. Gotta run now, m’wife’ll have supper waitin’.”
And with that pronouncement, he bustled off down the hall.
Ren Zel turned to look into the meeting room. To the left of the door was Mr. Brunner, center of a knot of enthusiastic conversation. Across the room, his lifemate was speaking with Gayleen Vord, head of the tech team assisting the weatherman in his work.
As if she had felt his gaze upon her—which was not unlikely—Anthora turned her head and raised a hand, then turned briefly back to Technician Vord.
The gentleman laughed and made a shapeless gesture with his hand—possibly it was permission to pass, as she did just that, moving briskly toward the door.
Ren Zel straightened and offered his arm.
“Thank you for the rescue, Beloved,” she said, leaning slightly—some sticklers might even say, scandalously—against him. “Mr. Brunner praises him as an exemplary technician, but he does prose on!”
Ren Zel smiled.
“Perhaps he was fascinated.”
“Yes, well. If he had talked less of climate compressor factoring and stabilization protocols, you might have taken a point there.”
He felt her sigh lightly.
“There was a…moment, Beloved?”
“A moment only,” he said, “and quickly gone.”
That this had been due entirely to the overenthusiastic greetings of Secretary Ekelmit did not seem worth mentioning.
“Ah,” said his lady, and said nothing more.
* * * * *
Curled into a big soft chair that had used to grace, so she’d been told, Trealla Fantrol’s own library, Miri was leafing through a book of illustrations of flowering plants, which had proved unexpectedly interesting, in an undemanding and restful sort of way. The pictures were pretty, and underneath each was a short poem, printed in a text that flowed like water.
A teapot and a cup sat on the table to her right, and from time to time she’d have a sip, enjoying the echo of flowers in the tea.
She’d felt Val Con’s relief when his meeting ended, then nothing more. The lifemate link was like that—occasional, not continuous. Strong emotion lit the connection up, but subtle stuff was pretty much lost in translation. For something as innocuous as relief to come through…
Must’ve been some meeting, Miri thought, turning a page.
She was studying a picture of a large purple flower that was made up of hundreds of ti
ny purple flowers when she heard the door to the library open—and close.
“Cha’trez,” Val Con murmured a moment later, his lips brushing the nape of her neck. “I find you well?”
“Well enough,” she said, with a small shiver of delight. She tipped her head back so that she could see his face. “My meeting went long. Heard yours was a treat.”
“If one cares for curdled cream,” he said, with a faint smile. “My sister tells me that she is deep inside a document—which has developed unexpected complexities—that Pat Rin requires tomorrow morning, without fail.”
“Yeah, she was at that when I came in.” She closed the book. “Is that a hint for us to go home and find our own supper?”
“Indeed not. Anthora and Ren Zel have only just arrived, and the cook is preparing sufficient for the company entire. It is only that we are asked to forgo the after-meal discussion.”
“Works for me,” she said. “I don’t need another meeting on this day.”
“Nor do I. Are you done with the folio, or will you take it home?”
“Best leave it here for somebody else to find,” she said, handing it to him. “It’s good therapy.”
“Indeed.” He took the book and crossed the room.
Miri uncurled from the chair and stretched. “So, that’s five for dinner?”
Book reshelved, Val Con returned to her side, walking Scout-silent across the hard floor.
“Eight. Mike Golden will of course join us, as will Syl Vor and Kezzi—which is fortunate. I have a message for Kezzi to take to one of her sisters.”
“Yeah? Which sister?”
He smiled at her.
“I haven’t the least idea.”
* * *
Dinner had yet to reach the table, so Val Con went in search of Kezzi.
His intuition proved correct. The youngsters were in the kitchen while Beck, good-natured to a fault, worked around them. Not Beck’s fault was the children’s high-speed multilingual banter as they fidgeted their way around the room, playing at poaching from the multitude of pots and platters, the while engaged in a battle of exuberant motion mimicry and very unLiaden face-making, combined with a barrage of words. Their movements were pure, athletic. The words bounced between solid Terran and Surebleakean dialect while heedlessly scattering the more apt Liaden or Trade word as needed, as well as three or four oddly inflected and almost familiar sounds. Syl Vor was, Val Con thought, assaying Bedel.