by Ginger Booth
Eli rocked a hand so-so. “Measuring each amino acid concentration – it isn’t like a quick pH meter check. Takes some quality lab time.”
“Do you have a solution?”
“Not a quick one. We need to develop a soybean that bears the complete protein profile it needed all along. Two variants – one for Aloha’s sunlight, and another for the star drive spectrum. Or neither. It may be that only the original Earth strain provides the full protein suite. Anyway, years of selective breeding. And once we have a winner, we need to grow a seed crop. Then sow the fields.”
“Five years, at least,” Sass murmured.
“Optimistically,” Eli agreed. “I’m sorry. The magic beanstalk formula should have had a happy ending.”
Sass looked toward the grow room, frowning. “But the nutrients of the other plants?”
“So far, it all looks great except for vegetable protein. We don’t eat your garden for protein.”
“And you have a report written? Or nearly.”
Eli shrugged. “We have no communications with MA.”
Sass raised a finger. “Hold that thought.”
“Didn’t we vow not to do this?” Clay asked from the far end of the supper table. “Not ask for more things until MA got the creches done?”
“This isn’t an ask,” Eli pointed out. “And it would only divert a few agronomists. Shouldn’t conflict with the creche.”
“So long as word doesn’t get out,” Sass cautioned. “If people knew the food supply was bad…”
“As they surely would if you beamed that report Mahina-wide,” Clay said.
Into the contemplative lull after that statement, Kassidy said, “I could send my video.”
“After MA refused to let you send video,” Clay argued.
Kassidy held up a finger. “They can only forbid me to broadcast to the city. Sass, you’re saying I could bypass them, and send to the settlers. MA has no right to control what settlers broadcast.”
Sass and Clay exchanged a look. Sass spoke the concern. “Kassidy, the settlers can’t broadcast without some urbs seeing it. But rebuilding the orbital is a huge undertaking. If MA starts receiving demands for that, they might yank support from our new atmo factory and the creches. That’s the agreement Clay was referring to. We promised not to rouse any more rabble.”
Kassidy stabbed the table with a finger. “You’re saying they need to know about the soybean whatever. Quietly. But they can’t know what dire straits MO is in. I’m saying the urbs deserve to know all of that to make good decisions. We’re a democracy.”
Sass pursed her lips. The bureaucracy in MA never struck her as overly concerned about the will of the people. Urbs mostly kept their heads down and tried not to catch the ire of the elected Directors. Settlers rarely gave a damn about elections for local office. They had no direct voice in the underpowered confederacy between settlements.
“Mobs don’t make good decisions,” Clay argued. “They react. They get angry. Like that mob in Schuyler. We managed that crowd carefully. But if it’s been the food supply all along on Mahina, killing settlers. And if it was MA’s job to ensure quality protein stocks. And they failed. My guess? The settlers would be out for blood.”
“Do we even dare send Eli’s report?” Sass asked.
Eli broke in, frustrated. “My report won’t make any sense to the average settler. Someone would have to…” He trailed off as he realized Sass understood full well what his report meant. Atlas would, too, and Hunter. The average settler got his information from whoever explained it to him, same as the average urb. Any reporter worth her pay could get that report explained. And if she wanted good ratings, she’d spin it for maximum impact.
“Damn.” He fell against the back of his seat.
“You could do it,” Sass urged. “Start breeding new soybeans from the Thrive. Save the world, Eli.”
“I don’t even have an Alohan…”
“Grow lamp?” Sass suggested, grinning. She pointed to the hull. “We could provide sunlight, Eli. Shines 7 days a week at the moment. Right, Copeland?”
“Sure, cap. Just let me know your priorities.” Copeland’s to-do list grew seemingly without bounds. Fortunately the man had an even temper and a sense of humor. “You know. If that’s more important than hull integrity.”
“Eli?”
The scientist sighed. “I don’t need sunlight today. Protect the hull.”
Copeland grinned back lazily, chewing his supper.
“But it is interesting that we could contact Mahina,” Clay backtracked.
“How so, if we’re not allowed to tell them anything?” Kassidy complained.
“We’ve been looking at this wrong,” Clay mused. “That only MA could trade with other worlds. But why? I don’t know of any law that says MA has sole right to negotiate off-world. Say we found something on Sagamore that settlers want on Mahina. Eli, maybe they’ve even solved that soybean protein thing. Now with the Thrive, settlers have a ship available to pursue a deal.”
“If it generates profit for Thrive.” Abel was stuck on the bridge. Sass voiced the objection for him. “It’s hard to imagine a cargo worth trading between worlds.”
Wilder piped up. “I’ve heard things about the drugs on Hell’s Bells.”
Sass scowled at him. “And you’ve learned things about the owners of this ship. Straight-laced profit drive, cop, and other cop. Drug running isn’t in the cards.”
Eli offered, “Actually, captain, there were historical cases where the drug and slave trade greased the wheels of other commerce. Something in China, maybe? I think the issue was currency conversion.”
“No slaves,” Sass insisted. “No drugs.”
“I just thought it was interesting.” Eli subsided, contrite.
The table subsided into a few moments of thoughtful chewing.
“I know, Kassidy!” Jules cried out in triumph. “I know a show that’s safe for you to send to Mahina. Two of them!”
The crew turned indulgent eyes on their youngest member. Kassidy urged her to continue.
“First,” Jules said. “Our gravity games in the hold. I bet everybody would like to play back home!”
Kassidy’s eyes widened. “What a great idea, Jules! And they could play at home, couldn’t they? Go on a space walk with us!”
Jules never left the ship on EVA. Abel described his trips outside the hull in glowing detail. But as the most sensible member of Sass’s crew, Jules refused to go out there herself. Now she nodded eagerly.
Cortez offered, “We could patch in some footage from real EVA practice from you and Abel, Kassidy. Excite the imagination! Don’t call it Quidditch. Nobody reads Earth lit anymore. Those books don’t make any sense. Call it EVA!”
Emphatic nods greeted this verdict around the table. Clay and Sass were the only Earth lit aficionados. Benjy and Eli especially loathed the stuff, having been forced to study it at the university level. Sass suspected Benjy dubbed the game ‘Quidditch.’ He complained bitterly about stories where he couldn’t tell fact from fiction, because it was all alien to him.
“That’s awesome, Jules!” Kassidy praised her. “And the second idea?”
“Talk about the Ganymede diaries,” Jules said proudly. “I mean, not boring, like summarizing them. But the way we tell each other on the ship. What it means to us. I love listening to somebody’s reaction to their Ganny.”
“That’s true,” Sass breathed. “Jules, sometimes I think you have more good ideas than the rest of us put together.”
Jules glowed under the praise.
“And,” Kassidy pointed at Jules, “that’s something we have in common. They’re not urb stories or settler stories. It’s Mahina’s story. All of us. Jules, I could kiss you!”
As though Kassidy would refrain. She ran around the table and grabbed the younger girl up in a hug and kissed her smack on the lips. “I adore you!”
Jules bit her lip and pushed away. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“O
h, sweetie,” Kassidy crooned, hastily letting her go. “No, I apologize. Nobody should touch you without permission.”
Jules nodded firmly. The girl reclaimed her seat with dignity. “Um, captain? I had one more thing.”
Benjy – Ben – beat her to the punch. “About this food we’re eating now?”
“Yeah, that,” Jules agreed.
They considered their plates. When they left Mahina, they never thought twice about relying on the printer stocks for most of their protein. Back at the farm, Sass supplemented the convenient printed meats with fresh eggs and chicken. She butchered a pig now and then, and traded for beef and dairy. Most prosperous settler families followed the same habit, though they bought from the butcher if they lived in town. The urbs tended to be a bit more squeamish about eating animals. But then, most of them never cooked their own food and had no idea what was in it.
“I brought dried eggs,” Jules offered. “For a change of pace. And recipes.”
“The stocks we got from the orbital,” Sass said. “After we fed the plumbing crew for a few days. Is that…this?”
Jules nodded awkwardly. “The box was already open. So when I finished the last box of our own stock, I started using theirs. Did I understand right? Our own printer stock is better than what we gave MO? And neither is good enough?”
Sass nodded, and looked to Eli.
“Maybe you should open one of our boxes,” he suggested gently. “Do we have enough of the dried eggs to eat every day?”
“Not really. I usually print eggs,” Jules replied. “You know, if we’re all eating them for breakfast. Make them up fresh from oil and printer stock.”
“I’ll look into,” Eli promised. “In the meantime, it’s not like we’ll get sick very fast. When we get back, let’s all eat a lot from the butcher.”
His eye caught on Wilder’s as he finished this statement. Wilder, Cortez, Griffith, and Seitz all glared at him. Eli dropped his eyes.
Seitz concluded, “We’re wasting away on MO. Just like the settlers on Mahina. If we quit dying of the cancers –”
“Stop,” Sass ordered, standing abruptly. She wasn’t tall, but everyone else was seated, so she towered over them. “Seitz, all of you from MO. You are on this crew at this time. We’re out here to learn. We already knew we had health problems. Our new insight does not make your life worse than it was. Do not for one moment think you’re a separate case. You’re on my crew. I do my best for you.”
Four angry pairs of eyes, freshly bereft of their accustomed diet of unlimited VR porn, turned to glare at her instead of the botanist.
“Even when you don’t want me to,” Sass finished lamely.
27
There are 9 essential amino acids needed in the human diet because we can’t produce them. The human body produces tens of thousands of other proteins from those few building blocks.
Hunter Burke, newly appointed settler spokesman to the urbs, paused Kassidy’s video to answer a face call.
Josiah gazed at him from one side of his desk. “Burke, what is this crap?” The mob boss and resistance leader from Schuyler glowered at him.
“You’re watching Kassidy Yang’s show?” They’d had it from the radio beam long enough to watch a quarter of the footage.
“Yeah,” Josiah agreed. “The botanist getting all misty about some Ganymede tech touching him across decades. Fascinating. Not.” Sarcasm dripped from his bared teeth. “What are your idiots doing?”
“They’re not my idiots,” Hunter argued. “There’s more they aren’t sharing, Josiah. This is for public consumption, no waves. I kinda like it. Interesting.”
“Yeah, I’m not so high brow as you,” Josiah countered. “Tell me the juice.”
Hunter shrugged. His own missive from his dad, Clay Rocha, was encrypted so that prying eyes couldn’t read it en route. “They found clues. One is pure dynamite. As in, we can’t say anything, because it might derail the creche and atmo spire. But you’ll hear about it, believe me. And it’ll matter. Just not ready to go public yet.”
“I’m not the public,” Josiah retorted. “I put up funding for this circus act. And in case you forgot, I’m your equal in the resistance.”
“How could I forget? Alright. Dad asked me to do certain things. I do it cagily. After the Petticreek Massacre, there were concessions, right? One of them added vitamin supplements to the protein printer stock. What we’re going to do – quietly, and with all due red tape – is get a nutrient assay done.”
“Say what?”
“We’ll get the food supply re-examined. From different sources. Looks like there might be a difference between field soy and the stuff grown in the star-side tunnels.”
“Dammit, I always thought that mine-grown stuff was poison!”
“Probably,” Hunter allowed. “It’s contaminated. But it also has better proteins.”
“Do I look like a scientist?”
Hunter chuckled. “The point is, we’re weak from a nutrient deficiency.”
“That’s not news. That was part of the Petticreek – oh, I got ya. You’re using that excuse. But you’re looking for some other whatchamacallit.”
“Right. Protein, not vitamins. C’mon, Josiah, you eat printed protein every day.”
“So it’s what, not really protein?”
“There’s like 5 proteins – yeah, I don’t know either. One of them is kinda missing. And missing that would cause failure to thrive syndrome.”
“They found it? Jeez, Hunter, you’re telling me they found it?”
“Hey, don’t get crazy on me, Josiah. This was the secret part, right?”
“I don’t get it,” Josiah growled. “They fix the protein, and we’re golden. Why would you sit on this?”
Hunter sighed. “Because the fix is to create a better soybean. And then grow it under the right conditions. That will take years. Or eat…meat.” He paused in thought.
“So? We got meat. Had a burger for lunch.”
Hunter flashed a grimace at him. “Your burger came off a protein printer. Look, Josiah. Is there some way we can tell people – Completely on the QT. We can’t tell them why. We can’t tell them where this is coming from. Just eat meat and dairy and eggs. Pass the word. Settler patriots, go eat more animal protein. Lighten up on the soy printer.”
“Half the settler patriots grow soybeans for a living.”
“Yeah, me too. Well, the wife’s brother does, anyway.”
Josiah smirked. “That Sass Collier know you’re married?”
Hunter matched his leer. “Didn’t come up. Dad claims he didn’t tell her.”
Josiah shrugged, then narrowed his eyes. “OK. We can put out the good word on eggs. Real eggs from chickens. You’re sure they don’t have the same issue?”
Hunter frowned. “Pretty sure. Dad wants me to feed eggs and milk to his grandkids. And real meat.”
“Could give an economic excuse,” Josiah mused. “Keep your food out of the city factories. Buy local. Promote settler to settler agriculture.”
“I like that,” Hunter agreed. “And maybe for kids, we could pull a program together. Free milk and eggs. Make sure your kids grow up strong and smart.”
“Free.” Josiah scowled and waved the suggestion away. “You’re on your own with that.” His half of the desk went dark, and Kassidy’s show grew to desk size again.
Hunter shrugged and resumed the video, searching for clues. What did you find up there, Dad, that you’re not telling me?
“Atlas! Good to see you!” After Hunter finished watching Kassidy Yang’s specials, he called Atlas Pratt, their point man on the new creche program for settler children.
He caught Atlas at home. Hunter fought himself not to resent that the medical administrator now lived in Clay’s old place by the botanical gardens in Mahina Actual. Hunter’s childhood home. By age nine, his mother grew old, and Hunter was evicted from the Garden of Eden.
He didn’t want to return. He wanted that garden out here, where the set
tlers lived, for everybody. And he wasn’t going to stop until he succeeded.
As usual, Atlas was oblivious to his caller’s quiet rage against his grassy living room. He beamed warmly. “Hunter! Social call?”
He always said that, Hunter reflected. “No, other news from on high. Private word from my dad. I wanted to ask you – how do I get something called a ‘protein assay’ of our soy printer stock?”
Atlas blinked, then laughed. “Wow, there, Hunter. Look at you, talking all science-y. Mind backing up? Tell me what’s going on.”
Hunter paraphrased that part of Clay’s letter. “So if I understand this – and I probably don’t – I want to get soy samples from all the different factories, and test them. For proteins and…whatever else is in food. Including the vitamins the city agreed to add after Petticreek. Did that make sense to you?”
“My God, Hunter,” Atlas breathed. “It certainly does!”
Hunter frowned, distracted by other things he’d seen in the videos.
Atlas picked up on it. “Something else?”
“Yeah…maybe. Did you get a chance yet to see those videos I shared with you?”
“No, you asked that I wait and view them off city grounds.”
“Well, foreground stuff is typical, kinda vapid. You know, rah-rah Kassidy Yang rego stuff. Take a walk out in the stars. Play zero-g games in the cargo hold. Voices from the Ganymedes who carried us here.”
“That sounds excellent.”
“I haven’t decided whether to broadcast to the settlers,” Hunter admitted. “But I was watching around the edges. Mahina Orbital looks like a wreck drifting in space. Sass’s crew, a couple of them look haunted. Jules, Benjy, Kassidy, even Copeland. They’ve changed. In just a few weeks. The inside of their cargo hold looks like a meteor smashed through. Wreckage waiting to be recycled, brand new front bulkhead. And they’ve got new crew. Looks like hired muscle picked up at the orbital.”
“You’re a detective’s son, alright,” Atlas acknowledged.
