The Science Fiction anthology. Andre Norton
place, darling? I would like to watch the rest of this rather rare phenomenon, but if you’re not interested, we can go on. And truly I won’t mind.”
“Of course we’ll stay!” protested Nodalictha. “I want to do anything you want to. I’m perfectly happy just being with you.”
And, unquestionably, she was.
Carson, though bored, was a bit upset by the recorded conversation he’d listened to. Lon Simpson had been almost incoherent, but he obviously meant Cathy to take him seriously. And there were some things to back it up.
He’d reported his generator hopelessly useless—and hadn’t bought a new one. He’d reported all his food spoiled—and hadn’t bought more. Carson thought it over carefully. The crop inspection helicopter reported Simpson’s fields in much better shape than average, so his tractor was obviously working.
Carson asked casual, deadpan questions of other colonists who came into the Company store. Most of them were harried, sullen and bitter. They were unanimously aware of the wringer they were being put through. They knew what the Company was doing to them and they hated Carson because he represented it. But they did answer Carson’s casual questions about Lon Simpson.
Yes, he’d tried to borrow food from them. No, they couldn’t lend it to him. Yes, he was still eating. In fact he was offering to swap food. He was short on fruit and long on frozen green peas. Then he was long on fruit and frozen green peas and short on frozen sweet corn and strawberries. No, he didn’t want to trade on a big scale. One package of frozen strawberries was all he wanted. He gave six packages of frozen peas for it. He gave six packages of frozen strawberries for one package of frozen sweet corn. He’d swapped a dozen parcels of sweet corn for one of fillet of flounder, two dozen fillet of flounder for cigarettes, and fifty cartons of cigarettes for a frozen roast of beef.
It didn’t make sense unless the conversation on the beamphone was right. If what Lon had told Cathy was true, he’d have his frozen food locker filled up again by now. He had some sort of device which converted the indigestible local flora and fauna into digestible Earth products. To suspect such a thing was preposterous, but Carson suspected everyone and everything.
As representative of the Company, Carson naturally did its dirty work. New colonists bought farms from the central office on Earth and happily took ship to Cetis Gamma Two. Then Carson put them through their instruction course, outfitted them to try farming on their own, and saw to it that they went bankrupt and either starved or took jobs as farmhands for the Company, at wages assuring that they could never take ship away again.
It was a nasty job and Carson did it very well, because he loved it.
While he still debated Lon’s insane boasts to Cathy over the beamphone system, he prepared to take over the farm of another colonist. That man had been deeper in debt than Lon, and he’d been less skilled at repairs, so it was time to gather him in. Carson called him to Cetopolis to tell him that the Company regretfully could not extend further credit, would have to take back his farm, house, and remaining food stores, and finish the cultivation of his thanar leaf crop to repay itself for the trouble.
The colonist, however, said briefly: “Go to hell.”
He started to leave Carson’s air-cooled office. Carson said mildly:
“You’re broke. You’ll want a job when you haven’t got a farm. You can’t afford to tell me to go to hell.”
“You can’t take my farm unless my fields are neglected,” the colonist said comfortably. “They aren’t. And my thanar leaf crop is going to be a bumper one. I’ll pay off all I owe—and we colonists are planning to start a trading company of our own, to bring in good machinery and deal fairly.”
Carson smiled coldly.
“You forget something,” he said. “As representative of the Trading Company, I can call on you to pay up all your debts at once, if I have reason to think you intend to try to evade payment. I do think so. I call on you for immediate payment in full. Pay up, please!”
This was an especially neat paragraph in the fine print of the colonists’ contract with the Company. Any time a colonist got obstinate he could be required to pay all he owed, on the dot. And if he had enough to pay, he wouldn’t owe. So the Trading Company could ruin anybody.
But this colonist merely grinned.
“By law,” he observed, “you have to accept thanar leaves as legal tender, at five credits a kilo. Send out a truck for your payment. I’ve got six tons in my barn, all ready to turn in.”
He made a most indecorous gesture and walked out. A moment later, he put his head back in.
“I forgot,” he commented politely. “You said I couldn’t afford to tell you to go to hell. With six tons of thanar leaves on hand, I’m telling you to—”
He added several other things, compared to which telling Carson to go to hell was the height of courtesy. He went away.
Carson went a little pale. It occurred to him that this colonist was a close neighbor of Lon Simpson. Maybe Lon had gotten tired of converting dhil weed and shiver leaves into green peas and asparagus, and had gotten to work turning out thanar.
Carson went to Lon’s farm. It was a very bad road, and any four-wheeled vehicle would have shaken itself to pieces on the way. The gyrocar merely jolted Carson severely. The jolting kept him from noticing how hot the weather was. It was really extraordinarily hot, and Carson suffered more because he spent most of his time in an air-conditioned office. But for the same reason he did not suspect anything abnormal.
When he reached Lon’s farm, he noticed that the thanar leaves were growing admirably. For a moment, sweating as he was, he was reminded of tobacco plants growing on Maryland hillsides. The heat and the bluish-green color of the plants seemed very familiar. But then a cateagle ran hastily up a tree, out on a branch, and launched its crimson furry self into midair. That broke the spell of supposedly familiar things.
Carson turned his gyrocar in at Lon Simpson’s house. There were half a dozen other colonists around. Two of them drove up with farm trucks loaded with mixed foliage. They had pulled up, cut off and dragged down just about anything that grew, and loaded their truck with it. Two other colonists were loading another cart with thanar leaves, neatly bundled and ready for the warehouse.
They regarded Carson with pleased eyes. Carson spoke severely to Cathy.
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on duty at the beamphone exchange! You can be discharged—”
Lon Simpson said negligently, “I’m paying her passage. By law, anybody can pay the passage of any woman if she intends to marry him, and then her contract with the company is ended. They had rules like that in ancient days—only they used to pay in tobacco instead of thanar leaves.”
Carson gulped. “But how will you pay her fare?” He asked sternly. “You’re in debt to the Company yourself.”
Lon Simpson jerked his thumb toward his barn. Carson turned and looked. It was a nice-looking barn. The aluminum siding set it off against a backing of shiver trees, dhil and giant sketit growth. Carson’s eyes bugged out. Lon’s barn was packed so tightly with thanar leaves that they bulged out the doors.
“I need to turn some of that stuff in, anyhow,” said Lon pleasantly. “I haven’t got storage space for it. By law you have to buy it at five credits a kilo. I wish you’d send out and get some. I’d like to build up some credit. Think I’ll take a trip back to Earth.”
At this moment, there was a very peculiar wave of heat. It was not violent, but the temperature went up about four degrees—suddenly, as if somebody had turned on a room heater.
But still nobody looked up at the sun.
Rattled, Carson demanded furiously if Lon had converted other local foliage into thanar leaves, as he’d made his green peas