by D G Hervey
Jon asked, “I feel sure that you use honey bee hives that you move around to pollinate your orchards, but do you have solitary bees as well?”
“Yes we do,” replied Vrike. “Perhaps some types of the solitary bees are on Calypso to satisfy ML’s sense of duty to try to preserve as much biodiversity as possible. But some types of solitary bees seem not to be hearty, have extremely limited plants to their liking in any one plot, and were not included in our range of fauna. Our solitary bee species that we have on board do not congregate into a nice hive that can be closed and moved to another plot. They tend to just survive as well as they can on what we have in any spaces into which they are introduced. When honeybees are not present and solitary bees are active, we open windows between plots to afford the solitary bees the opportunity to move between spaces.”
“So I understand,” Jon asked, “that you have some selected species of solitary bees and ML did not try to get all kinds that are now alive on Earth?”
“You’re correct,” responded Vrike. “Some types of solitary bees exist to pollinate the flower of a single species of vernal pool plant. These tend to be plants of no utility. But others such as the blue orchard bee of North America and the horn faced bee of Japan are generalists. Whereas a worker honeybee will pollinate about fifteen flowers in a day, a fast flying blue orchard bee can pollinate about two thousand flowers in a day. Every female solitary bee is fertile. She does her own work. There are no worker solitary bees. Blue orchard bees pollinate many types of fruit trees in their four-week period as an active pollinator. These include apple trees and peach trees.”
Marie remarked, “Back in Texas, Jon’s fresh peaches were just about my favorite.”
“Back on Earth, fruits were grown to withstand transport, early harvest, and for appearance, which seemed to be somewhat to the detriment of flavor.” Jon asked, “Have you been at this long enough, out here in space, that you are getting to work on enhancing flavor?”
“Yes,” Vrike informed. “We have experimental plots that are devoted to enhancing flavor, among other attributes that we desire. It is a slow, but rewarding process and one with which the bots cannot be as helpful as they are with other aspects of what we strive to achieve with our fruit trees.”
“Oh,” responded Marie, “I was on taste panels when I was in graduate school. I bet that is what the bots lack the ability to help with.”
Vrike remarked, “That is what I was thinking about. I did not pick up that detail in your background, Marie.”
Vrike picked a couple of ripe peaches, went to a sink by the entry, washed them and held them out to Jon and Marie. Jon immediately bit into his with a drop of juice appearing at the corner of his mouth. Marie put hers into her tote bag.
“Fresh and sweet, yum,” remarked Jon. “Marie may like hers even better after she has a chance to peel it. She’s not a fan of peach fuzz. Back in the loblolly pine forest, we learned that cutting and removal of the trees is done by bots supported from the ceiling. Do you similarly use ceiling-supported bots to harvest the fruit trees?”
Vrike replied, “Absolutely. Once the bots learn what we want by way of ripeness, before any fruit is harvested, they can access the upper limbs with less damage than people can. Less damage is done to both the trees and the fruit. It also reduces the pruning that we have to do. Pruning is for the health of the tree, not for ease of human access, or to facilitate ladder support, or for removal of damage from human interaction.”
Jon remarked, “And, of course, you have no damage from the weight of climbing opossum or raccoons, or from deer rubs.”
After a short pause Vrike said, “Thanks to my Parrot, I understand what you mean by deer rubs. No, we do not have bucks rubbing the felt off of their antlers each year in here. What sort of damage do they do?”
“In my experience,” Jon replied, “they rub the bark off of a tree that bends easily. Maybe that gives the buck a sense of being powerful or perhaps it is just a convenient way to get the skin off of the crevices between the points of their antlers. I never saw a deer rub on a stiff tree. Since the white tail deer in Texas tend to follow the same path, day after day, going in the same direction, the bark tends to be rubbed off on only one side of the trunk. So they damage the tree, but they don’t usually kill it. For sure, they rub off the outer bark. No doubt they significantly harm or remove the phloem layer, and I suspect the cambium layer as well. There may be oozing all up and down the damaged region when the rub is new, so there appears to be some connectivity remaining in the sapwood. But the heartwood still supports the tree.”
“What,” asked Vrike, “did you do to minimize the harm the deer caused in your orchard back in Texas?”
Jon answered, “I approached it in three ways. Sometimes the damage was done before I thought about protecting the tree and perhaps, depending upon the productivity of the tree, I might just let it go. If it was a highly productive tree, or if I thought about it ahead of time, I sometimes put a cage of fencing, stiff wire with a close mesh, a half a meter or more away from the trunk, but completely around it. The fencing would be fixed to the ground with about four wire anchors, but there would be no posts. Digging holes for posts might have damaged the roots of the tree. The third approach was to put a high fence around part of the orchard. Although that was not cost effective, it did keep the deer out, but not the raccoons or opossum. Nothing kept the squirrels out.”
-
Vrike next took them to a space with an extensive array of raspberries. “Jon,” she addressed, “you should recognize these.”
“Looks like first-year raspberry plants to me,” Jon replied. “Are they Dorman red raspberries?”
Vrike responded, “Right you are. Would you like to pick a few?”
Jon reached for Marie’s tote bag, took out a sealable, crushproof container, and went to a row of raspberries. He commented, “In Texas I’d get production for about a month, then the canes would run for the next four months or so. Somewhere along the way, I’d try to restrict the extent of their spreading, before they put down new roots at the tips of some of this year’s canes. The canes can easily run three meters or more. If you are not careful handling the new canes, you’ll break some and, thus, reduce next year’s crop, since this year’s berries are on last year’s canes.”
“What a nice lesson you’ve just given me,” responded Vrike. “That is more than I knew about how to handle them.”
Jon replied, “You are welcome. I will eat about thirty of these at my breakfast with my cereal each morning as long as they last. Marie may try a few, but they are not one of her favorites. I’ve already picked enough for several days, and they keep well in refrigeration. Back in Texas, we’d individually freeze them on a metal cookie sheet, put them in a slider-lock freezer bag, and I’d have my thirty frozen berries with my cereal as long as they lasted.”
“Marie,” Vrike asked, “are you ready to see the decor of the winery now?”
Marie was, and off they went.
-
The winery was quaint. It could have been in Italy.
“There is much to point out here,” remarked Vrike, “that is unusual for Calypso. The dark wooden walls, the large barrel with staves, the kegs with wooden spigots, the long wooden table with its green and white checkered tablecloth, the small wooden tables set apart with their red and white checkered tablecloths, and the wooden bar with baskets of bread loaves, cheeses, fresh grapes, walnuts, and olives. Notice the pictures of the Roman colosseum on the wall, several vineyards on Italian hillsides, and the famous Italian books: The Divine Comedy, by Dante, Zeno’s Conscience, by Italo Svevo, and Fouault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. There are the bottles of wine encased in woven wicker. Look down to see what has the appearance of a terrazzo floor of Pompeii with pictures on it. Does it incite nostalgia for some such place you have frequented back on Earth?”
“I think,” considered Jon, “that it is nicer than any of this sort of place that we visited in Italy. The nice wooden
beam in the ceiling reminds me of an Italian engineer I knew who built a winery in Texas, west of Houston.”
“It is very nice,” commented Marie. “I’m glad I came to see it. When do you have a crowd in here to enjoy it? I might like to come back then. Perhaps our quilting women could have a gathering here. That nice long table would allow them to display the quilts they have made, or are working on.”
“I like that idea,” replied Vrike. “Get them to agree upon a time and I’ll be pleased to set it up for the group. Regarding when we have a crowd, we get a few who make their own lunch and want a glass of wine with it. There are typically several tables occupied between eleven-thirty and one o’clock. There is also an evening gathering with folks being here mostly between five-thirty and eight o’clock, with a smattering of European-style ladies who come around nine-thirty. But none of them drink more than two glasses of red wine in a day, the healthy, beneficial amount. And no pregnant women imbibe at all. Their Parrots would chide them if they did, and the society of Calypso would know and be opposed to their putting their fetus at risk. They might not be allowed a second pregnancy if they did. I don’t think there is a law to that effect at this time, but if it is needed, I suspect there will be. And the winery is open for those few who schedule their day differently, but they tend to be irregular customers. Then there are bots who attend them.”
“Limiting alcohol intake is not among the laws that Calypso started having at my instigation,” stated Jon. “Let’s hope that it does not become necessary. Tell me, Vrike, why didn’t you want to start this as a private business? Why leave it as a Calypso-run activity? It seems sure to succeed in the long run.”
“I’m young,” she answered. “I have not even been inseminated. I feel no need, as yet, to try to accumulate wealth. Calypso’s government seems poised to take care of all of us. We will succeed or die together, I expect. I have no children to whom I desire to pass on any advantage, monetary or otherwise. At this point in time, I expect to have children and my main concern is that they be healthy, well adjusted, intelligent, moderately athletic, happy children who grow into productive adults. Perhaps when I approach an age with some infirmity, I will feel a need to acquire enough to see to my care. But care for us as we get old will be mostly by bots anyway. Calypso has a wealth of bots and I don’t see a shortage of them in our future. They are too useful.”
“Communes have always failed in the past,” remarked Jon. “People saw others whom they judged to not be carrying their share of the load and opted out. What you have now is Big Sister looking out for everyone. And Big Sister looks out and sees everything that everyone does - well almost everything. There are already some who seek to get ahead. They have formed businesses. The situation will change as time goes along. It will be interesting to watch how it progresses. This is a collection of women only because men are more ready to fight each other for control, position, wealth, and or the ability to father numerous offspring. I wonder if Parrots are agents for Big Sister already.”
Vrike responded, “Your history is accurate. I’m glad that you have not pulled out a crystal ball, but merely await events to see how they unfold. In any event, at the present time, I am satisfied with my status quo. Marie, are you ready to return to your pod?”
“Yes,” Marie remarked, “I am. I don’t even like to think about things that Jon worries over.”
So they escorted Marie back to her pod.
Chapter 10 - Fleet Personnel Management
During a meeting with all of the officers of the fleet, Admiral Simona had commented aloud that Ek and Dui appeared to be short of staff, but she had added ‘at the moment.’ That had been a public meeting; everyone could know what she had said. But so far, it had garnered no response from any of Calypso’s ordinary citizens.
It was obvious to Simona that a lack of personnel was not a temporary situation. She intended to institute new staffing strictures to protect her contingent of pregnant and nursing fleet officers (and their children) from cosmic rays the women might be exposed to when they were off-Calypso. No pregnant or lactating women henceforth would be allowed to serve off-Calypso duty.
With the eminent beginning of Calypso women having children, the staff for the fleet of scout spaceships would be woefully inadequate as the women began taking maternity leave. She therefore needed numerous volunteers, recruits, who were neither pregnant nor lactating, who could take over the off-Calypso operations when the fleet was short-handed. She expected that any maternity leaves still would have to be quite short.
But first, before actively seeking any volunteers to join the fleet, she would meet with her staff and give them instructions for interviewing any applicants.
In the government offices, with Lieutenant Tikoa at her side, and Lt. Ebesh in Hidden, using non-public communication between Subtle and Hidden, Admiral Simona revealed her plan. Lieutenants Tikoa and Ebesh were to personally interview any prospects from Subtle and Hidden, respectively. She tasked them with trying to understand the emotional and psychological readiness of the women who applied, and assessing their likelihood of succeeding as fleet officers.
Simona’s instructions to the lieutenants were, “Learn about them. Find out what they like. Discover their motivations. Assess their physical fitness. Check out their physical and mental quickness insofar as you are able. Form your own opinion regarding your willingness to be confined with them for weeks at a time with little opportunity to get away from them. But, keep your evaluations to yourselves. After meeting with one of them, go to the government offices and make private notes, on a secure computer, of what you’ve noticed and learned about the applicant. After you’ve seen them all, Lieutenant Ebesh, you are to provide Admiral Naqvi with your recommendations for the staffing of the Hidden contingent of fleet officers. Lieutenant Tikoa, it is my plan that Captain Himadi and I will meet with you in the government offices here in Subtle to get your recommendations for adding to our staff here.”
“This is an assignment that I’m going to enjoy,” replied Lieutenant Tikoa.
-
Simona now felt she had her lieutenants ready. Once she was out of the government offices, Simona spoke aloud, “The commanders on the bridges of Subtle and Hidden are now accepting applications for women to be trained as fleet officers. Parrots, if it is likely that your woman will want to volunteer, Lieutenants Tikoa on Subtle and Ebesh on Hidden are the ones who will contact you. We hope to receive an adequate number of qualified candidates. Doubling the staff is the minimum increase I desire. Surely, there are women among our population who will relish the responsibility these jobs entail, keeping Calypso safe.”
Simona thought, with the number of Calypso’s women being so small, and the workload of our citizens increasing, it could turn out to be a tall order to double the size of my staff.
-
As a result of Simona’s public announcement, a number of women submitted their applications to join the service. Within a day of Admiral Simona’s announcement, Lieutenant Ebesh had more volunteers than Hidden needed. Twenty women indicated their interest.
Simona was pleasantly surprised by the response in both Hidden and Subtle.
The applicants were currently pursuing other occupations aboard Calypso, such as clerk, entertainer, secretary, receptionist, athlete, and research assistant. They would, of course, need to be evaluated for their physical, emotional, and mental suitability for such service. Besides her lieutenants’ assessments, she’d ask the Hidden psychologist or Subtle psychiatrist for an opinion regarding their suitability.
-
Wihem was the first Hidden resident to volunteer. Lieutenant Ebesh recognized Wihem as a fellow Hidden resident who had arrived at the same time she did, just over two years before. As an officer who was frequently out on scout duty aboard Dui, Lieutenant Ebesh had not experienced much interaction with the Hidden residents. So she did not know Wihem well. Still, before the interview, Lieutenant Ebesh researched Wihem’s service record with ML’s company
and knew a bit about her.
Lieutenant Ebesh promptly initiated the review process. Because Wihem had been the first to submit an application, the lieutenant arranged for her to be the initial woman interviewed. They met in the government offices, so they could have privacy. Then when finished, the lieutenant could make her notes as she had been instructed.
When Wihem arrived at the entrance to the governmental offices, Lieutenant Ebesh greeted her. “Welcome Wihem. There are cubby holes by the entry for your Parrot which must be removed because the government is functioning in its non-public mode. Have you been in the government offices before?”
Putting her Parrot into a slot, Wihem replied, “No, there has not been a reason for me to do so.”
Lieutenant Ebesh asked, “Would you like to have a look around?”
“Sure,” Wihem answered, “that would be nice.”
As they walked toward the vice president’s offices, Lieutenant Ebesh acknowledged, “I see that you are sort of a secretary-clerk to one of the research teams. As I understand it, that team of doctors is experimenting with various animals, in an effort to extend human life expectancy by inducing a dormant state, sort of like hibernation.”
“That is a pretty good layman’s explanation of what they are doing,” agreed Wihem.
“Okay, tell me about it in technical terms,” suggested Lieutenant Ebesh.
Wihem responded, “The fancy term the doctors use for what they are developing is reversible hypo metabolic stasis. Their term for this hibernation-like state is estivation. More to the point, they are trying to replicate the fat-tailed dwarf lemur’s ability to be quiescent for half a year at a time. There are three main aspects of the primate’s makeup which it employs to accomplish this. It has a type of fat that is different from that of other primates. It has an astonishingly low metabolism when estivating, five percent of what is normal for it when awake. And then it has a lowered core temperature as well. This native of western Madagascar can estivate for just over half a year at a time. There it may not rain for nine months straight, but the creature in its dormant state can survive such a drought. Isn’t that amazing?”
