“Who’d you hear that from?” Arturo asked.
“Gal goes by Maria,” Gerald explained, dropping his voice after looking around for Company staff. “She, her husband, and their two kids are hiding with Sheila and I until they can get housing in the Heritage Center. Maria’s a level two accounts processor and her husband, Fritz, just passed the level one animal care exam. The mob went after them even though they’re sub-setts born—someone accused them of ‘getting above themselves.’ Sheila knows Fritz from the worship center and he managed to get Maria and the others close enough to call Sheila. She let them in the emergency door. They almost lost one of the kids, couldn’t keep up, but security appeared and the scum chasing them hesitated just long enough to let Fritz drop back and grab the boy, then run like mad. Keep it quiet, OK?”
Pete nodded. I’ll see if Alex Danilov knows of someone who needs a vet tech.
Arturo and Don gestured their agreement. “Well, I know what we’re going to be focusing on next,” Don said louder, sweeping his hand a little in the direction of the main meeting room. The four walked in and found seats.
That evening, Pete came home to find Cynthia pacing. “What’s wrong, dear?”
She shook her head, her eyes large. “Not wrong, love, just, um, a big surprise.”
A big surprise? “Surprise?” He repeated.
Cynthia nodded. “I stopped taking hormone treatments a year ago, remember, because of my age.”
“Yeeeessss.” He felt a quiver starting in his gut.
“And I’ve been sick in the mornings for the past few weeks?”
Pete put two plus two together. “You’re pregnant?”
She gave him an enormous smile. “Yes!”
He hugged her tight, leaning back and lifting her almost off her feet.
Basil finished nursing James and shifted him to her shoulder, patting his back as she counted fleece bundles. She reached eighty-three about the time he burped. The number matched Kos and Itzak’s counts, so she initialed the tally page, wiped the baby’s mouth, and laid him in his rocking carrier. She’d volunteered to certify the count while the others were planting and working with the animals or in the gardens. Kos and Itzak had gone with Mr. Krehbiel, a neighboring farmer, to see about finding parts and getting news, so Basil took on the indoor work. James, born just before Passover, didn’t do well in the summer heat, and heavy fieldwork affected Basil’s milk supply, as she’d discovered with her first child. Task done for the moment, she picked up her spinning stick and wool weight to see what she could do.
Over the winter, through trial and error, she, Gomer, and Bethany had taught themselves how to spin sheep wool, and were experimenting with shahma fleece as well. In some ways, Basil thought shahma spun more easily, once you got it combed and clean, as long as she took her time. Shahma felt more fragile and tore if she tried to spin quickly, so Basil had decided to try a lighter drop weight on her spinning stick. She fed some of the fleece clumped on the end of the carry stick into the little bit of yarn she’d already made, then dropped the pyramid-like weight and holding stick, spinning it with a flick of her long fingers. As the weight sank, she fed more fleece into the string, rocking James and his carrier with one foot as she did. The yarn felt tight and smooth, so she wound the finished thread onto the drop stick, started a new piece, and fed more fleece into the thread. She spun almost a meter without any breaks or bumps, and decided to stop for the moment and move to her next task.
Basil triple checked the vermin traps before locking the wool shed. Everything had given birth during the spring, including the little scurrying pests that fouled what they didn’t manage to eat or carry off. No one had any of the repellant spray left, at any price, so Kos and the boys had found pictures of traps and, by using scraps of wood and wire, devised a way to reduce the number of pests that got inside the buildings, at least. The family also took great care not to leave any bits of food or other things out to tempt the wiggly, nasty reptiles and rodents. After finding one in James’s cradle, Basil no longer thought the rodents were cute.
She carried baby and workbag up to the one guesthouse that remained open. Tilde had returned to working in the restaurant kitchen because people still came to eat, breaking their travels between the new city and the mountains, but far fewer stayed overnight. Five rooms now served all the guests. Basil checked each one, making certain that they’d been cleaned to her standards, and freshening the towels in one suite, airing out another for a few minutes as she made a note about the quantity of soap. One of Tilde’s experiments, the soap proved to be very popular and guests had asked to buy any spare. Kos gave them his blessing to make more and Tilde, Bethany, and Kossina now made large batches of herb-scented soap using fat scraps and wood ash, along with the grease from the sheep wool. Shahma-fleece-fat soap refused to set into bars, so they saved it for household use.
James fussed a little and Basil stopped, picking him up and checking his nappy. He hadn’t finished processing his snack so she cuddled and rocked him, humming a little tune as she looked out the window of the guest room. She could just see the men out in the grass-field, cutting the last of the hay for the milk cows. Only one of the big mowers worked anymore, and even then they couldn’t be certain when they’d have power to charge it, so the men had improvised tools to cut the grass by hand until they could find plans for an animal-powered mowing machine. The baby burped again and smiled, then fell asleep. “You are such a good little boy,” Basil hummed, returning him to the carrier.
To her delight, when she got to the main house she discovered that they had electrical power from the grid as well as the wind chargers and solar panel. She plugged in two of the floor cleaners to charge and turned on a third, sending it out to do battle with the dirt in the rug in the main living area. Basil quickly tossed a large pailful of dirty diapers and sanitary pads into the washer/sterilizer, loaded the heavy washer with work clothes, and set it to chugging and sloshing away. The wind charger could not power the big appliances, plus the stoves, and the chargers, so they made the most of when they could get grid power. Basil sat down to watch the progress, rocking James with one foot and spinning. When the chargers’ chimes sounded, she removed the floor cleaners, launched one, and put two electronic readers and the communication boxes on to recharge. The first floor cleaner returned, so she emptied its tank and hopper before plugging it in. She fed James again, changed his nappy, tossed the clean nappies into the drier, and ate a little lunch.
“Thank you Lord!” she exclaimed when the chime for the drier sounded. She tossed the now-dry things into a basket and hurriedly loaded the heaviest of the work clothes, turning them on to tumble. Then she folded everything. The power stayed on until the heavy load dried, and Basil did a little dance with James. “And now I don’t have to try and haul all the laundry out to the drying racks by myself,” she crowed. James blinked and smiled, gurgling something happy sounding. “That’s right!”
Basil disconnected everything from the chargers and threw the breaker. Then she threw the breakers on the washer, drier, and other equipment as they finished their tasks. By now the time-consuming practice had become ingrained. No one wanted a repetition of the milking machine scare, thank you! Through the mercy of the Lord, they’d only lost two of the units instead of all twelve, and those two could be repaired with bits scavenged from older machines David found in the reprocessing yard at Donatello Township. “No thank you,” she whispered to James. “I don’t fancy milking that many cows by hand, especially since they all want to be milked at once!” Churning and running the separators was enough work. Speaking of work . . .
Basil went back to the house kitchen and found Bethany, hands on hips, glaring at a long list written on a piece of slate. “I’ve got a little wash to hang,” Basil started. “If you can help me, I’ll put James down for his nap and give you a hand.”
Bethany, tight-lipped, gave a curt nod. They carried the last still-wet work shirts, skirts, and heavy aprons out and hung them on
the lines, and draped the coveralls on the wooden rack. Basil left James in his bed in her room, tiptoeing out and walking back to the kitchen. “Where should I start?”
A loud, dramatic sigh gusted through the kitchen. “If you’ll cut up the whiteroots and herbs, Mom Baa, I’ll get the cheese and start the last peas soaking.” Basil studied Tilde’s menu and instruction list as Bethany continued, “I am soooooo tired of whiteroots.”
Basil shrugged and began counting out tubers from the bin. “Until we get the motor on the grinder repaired, it’s whiteroots or porridge,” she reminded the young woman.
“I know.” Another sigh, “I just miss noodles and sweet buns.” She disappeared into the storage room, returning with a chunk of cheese and a kilo of dried peas. “It’s the good cheese—the hard, tart one.”
“Oh good! That’s my favorite. No offense to Tildie, but I don’t like how the curd cheese squeaks on my teeth.”
Bethany flipped her braid out of the way and laughed as she tied on an apron. “Me either. And now that she leaves the salt out, there’s no taste but sour.”
“Well, Kos says we should have a good honey crop this year, so maybe we can experiment with sweetening the curd cheese some way and using it in fillings. And the boys think they’ve found a salt spring, up in the pasture area, if they can figure out how to make salt from it.”
The two women set to work. After rinsing off the tubers, Basil pulled a stool up to the huge worktable and began chopping the hard roots. Bethany rinsed the peas, picking through to get rid of any little stones or bad peas before pouring them into a large bowl and adding water. As soon as Basil filled the root bowl, the other woman whisked it out of the way, dumped the pieces into a large pot, and returned the bowl. “Hey, how am I supposed to know when to quit if the bowl never fills,” Basil protested, laughing.
“Thpppth.” After the last root vanished into the pot, Bethany consulted the list. “Mom Tildie wants lemon balm, lemon basil, thyme, and,” she stopped, peering at the slate. Her lips moved as she tried to decipher the last word. “I think it’s just a smear, but it could be sourleaf.”
Basil made a face and tucked a stray twig of hair back into place. “I vote for smear. With lemon basil and lemon thyme, sourleaf’s going to be too much. The poor peas won’t have a chance.”
“Agreed.” Basil read the next bit of assignment and fetched the mustard seeds. “How are we on white goop?”
“You mean mayonnaise, Mom Baa? We need more. I’ll get the eggs.”
Yuck. White goop reminds me too much of subsistence proteins and soya paste. She took advantage of the lull to go turn James over. He needed a nappy change, but she decided to let him keep sleeping. After three months, he seemed to be settling into a routine, and his mother liked it that way.
“By the by, what are we doing with the cheese?” she asked when she returned to the kitchen.
“Making a melt with the peas, I think.” Bethany returned to the slate. “Yes. Cut five hundred grams. Grate. After the peas are done and seasoned, toss in the cheese and keep warm until serving.”
They did as requested, covering the cheese with an upturned bowl until they needed to grate it. Bethany washed the dishes and cutting boards, Basil dried, and they shared a bottle of fruit juice.
“When’s Da due back?”
“Today, I think.”
A faint sound distracted her, and Basil leaned back toward the doorway. “Someone’s awake.”
Bethany made a little shooing motion, and Basil went to tend to James. As she did, she wondered when Bethany would find a husband. Only five years separated the two women, although Basil had “grown up” at a much younger age than Bethany. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, she shivered at the memories. The Lord must have had a reason for saving me from that pit. I don’t understand why anyone who could get out would stay a subsistence citizen. Why come to Solana just to live the same way? So much for “improved” citizens. I’d rather work and improve myself without any more Company “help,” thank you.
As hoped, Kos and the others returned late that afternoon. Basil, napping as James digested his afternoon snack, heard them come in. She debated going to help unload whatever they’d brought back, yawned mightily, and fell back to sleep. The scent of simmering peas woke her up, along with the odor of a very bad diaper—eye-wateringly bad, which explained the crescendo of unhappy noises coming from the cradle. Basil changed James and seriously considered tossing the nappy into the burn pile for the generator, but refrained. Instead she sealed it in a baggie until she could deal with it outdoors. Crisis averted, she played with James for a few minutes before laying him in his carrier and going down the hall to see what was new.
A large mound of grated cheese towered over the cutting surface, for one. And the peas appeared to be in danger of boiling over. Basil set James down and hurried over to the stove, stirring the peas and puffing over the top of the pot as she turned the heat down a notch. “Thanks, Baa,” Karina called over her shoulder. “I’m almost done with putting things into storage and I’ll take over.” Basil found a tasting spoon and sampled the peas. Needs something . . . She glanced around for inspiration and spotted the little green mound of chopped fresh herbs. Ah, there’s the problem. She turned the heat down again and added the lemon basil. A luscious, sharp and sweet scent filled that corner of the kitchen and she inhaled deeply. Fresh herbs still seemed miraculous to her, even after six years of hard work in the gardens.
“Great. Thanks, Baa,” Karina returned from her errand. “How’s James today?”
“So far so good, although his last diaper would have cleared a riot.”
The older woman laughed, nodding with sympathy. “I hate to say it, but: orangeroot.”
Basil made ferocious warding off signs with both hands. “No. Do not say that word. Do not even think of that vegetable.” Miriam’s diapers after eating orangeroot had almost inspired Basil to leave her daughter outdoors until she completed potty training. “Speaking of which, besides the whiteroot salad and the peas-n-cheese, what is for supper?”
Karina leaned over and whispered, “Seedcake. And fresh milk custard—it’s cooling in the dairy room right now.” She straightened up. “Can you keep an eye on these, please? I’ll make sure everything’s ready in the dining room.”
“Give me a moment, please.” She got her work bag and returned. She pulled a stool over to the stove and settled down with her spinning.
That evening after supper, everyone gathered in the main living room. Kos’s wives sat in their chairs and the children found seats or played on the floor. “Thank you for all your work while David, Saul, and I were away,” Kos began. “We got a lot of good trading done, and learned some things that will make our lives easier in the long run. In the short term, I’m afraid we are all going to be working harder than we ought to for the next few months.”
Basil, ensconced in one of the rocking chairs with James, wondered what that meant. Are we going to have to expand the gardens? It’s awful late in the season. They’d passed midsummer the week before.
“To begin with, at least one representative of the Company will be coming by in a few days to check on regulatory compliance.” A chorus of quiet groans and sighs arose from the family. “I agree. You know what you need to take care of, so it should not be as much of a problem as in the past. Getting the hay in takes priority, and if the inspector complains, remind him or her about the animal welfare clauses. Which reminds me, Baa?”
She finished shifting the baby. “Yes, dear?”
“Would you consider taking a veterinary course? Just basic animal care and obstetrics,” he assured her. “You don’t have to answer tonight, but I’d appreciate it if you could log on and see what the certification requirements are and how much time it would take.”
“Yes, Kos.” Looking is easy enough. I probably won’t do more than that, though, if it requires as much study as the other higher degree courses do. She had to sleep sometime!
Kos passed
on more of the news, and explained what he’d brought back. “And I downloaded several books about food preservation, cooking, and cloth making from the pre-colonial period. I brought back four cases of paper and new print-heads, so you can print out what looks useful. There’s also works on carpentry, construction, and other things we might need.”
“Da, you sound like you expect another spate of equipment failures,” Micah protested. “We should get repair chips and assistance after the next goods shipment arrives. That’s what the messages from the corporation say.”
“I hope we do, Micah,” Kos replied, stroking his short summer beard. “But there’s been trouble in the larger cities and settlements, and we may find ourselves back down on the list again. In case things wear out before we can repair what’s ailing, I want to be ready to do something besides mope and cry as the sheep go unsheared or the apples ferment in the cellar.”
That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. What we have on hand, we won’t need. After all, it was always the thing you left in the shed, or forgot to bring in from the cellar, that you really wanted so you could finish whatever it was. James wiggled a little. Already? He relaxed, smiling in his sleep, and she slipped a finger into his coverall. “Excuse me,” she took him and his carrier back to her rooms, changed him again, and put him in the cradle. “I swear, little one, you put out twice as much as you take in!”
“He’s going to grow up and be a dairy cow, then,” Kos teased from the doorway. He crept into the room and looked down at his sleeping son. “How is he?”
“Healthy and happy so far. He’s awful quiet compared to Miriam.”
He smiled and hugged her. “Are you complaining?”
She shook her head so hard her hair-net slipped off. “No! Dear heavens no. That young lady never runs out of either energy or questions.” She’d gone visiting Itzak and Gomer, giving Basil a few days of semi-quiet. “I’m glad to be part of such a large family, so we can take turns watching the children.”
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