The next morning Liam stretched and sat up. For a moment he was disoriented in the unfamiliar room, and then it came back to him that he had arrived on planet Cygnus.
He rubbed at his chestnut-brown hair until it stuck up like a feather duster before he finally threw off the blanket and climbed out of bed. He crossed to the window and pulled the curtains apart.
The morning sun poured straight into the room. Unfortunately, beyond the window there was barren ground and then more barren ground, without a trace of green anywhere in it. Liam clicked his tongue and turned away toward the bathroom.
Once he had washed and changed, he went downstairs. The house was extraordinarily quiet, and only a few things left on the dining table proved that anyone besides him lived here at all.
Liam picked up the note on the table and read it through. The handwriting was fine and soft, so Isabella had most likely written it. Only then did it occur to Liam that he had forgotten to exchange smart numbers with these two nominal siblings of his the day before.
Having finished the note, he looked at the plate beside it, which held one tube of low-grade nutrient fluid and one star-bird egg, boiled and already peeled. Liam opened the tube and drained it in a single go. The bitter, astringent taste in his mouth set his stomach heaving, and he very nearly brought it straight back up. He snatched up the egg and took two quick bites to drown out the appalling flavor.
If high-grade nutrient fluid was a heap of assorted flavorings thrown together, then this low-grade tube was purely water with tree sap stirred into it.
Liam had to eat the egg very slowly to keep his stomach from rising again. He opened the fridge to look. He had bought ten star-bird eggs in all. Three had been fried last night, one was in his hand, and six were still sitting inside.
Which meant his brother and sister had spared the time to boil that one egg especially for him, and had drunk nutrient fluid themselves. Something complicated turned over in Liam’s chest. At the start he had only wanted somewhere to stop and rest, and to see the original owner’s last wish through. Now, all at once, the two of them felt familiar to him, the way Uncle Lucas and Aunt Lucy had.
Perhaps, Liam thought, he ought to look at this from a different angle, and try accepting them as his own flesh and blood.
With that decided, Liam quickly finished off the boiled egg, which had no particular flavor to speak of, rinsed his mouth and went outside. He had barely stepped through the door before his feet drew straight back at the fierce glare of the sun.
Liam thought for a moment, went into the tool shed and dug out a specially made sun hat of woven cloth. He put it on and went out.
He found Isabella and Benjamin out in the fields soon enough.
Planet Cygnus was not small at all; had it been, the government would never have had its eye on it. The ground looked as though it had been watered and had lost yesterday’s parched appearance. But the color of the soil was still that chalky white, without the faintest trace of nutrition in it.
With only the two of them working, Isabella and Benjamin had cleared about six acres. An acre in this world was twice the size of an acre on Earth, so their six came to roughly 4.9 hectares.
Isabella had spent what money was left in the house on new farming tools, which was the only reason the two of them had managed a figure like that at all.
The plots were worked very neatly, and the planting followed proper procedure throughout. But the soil was so barren that every last vegetable had come up shrivelled and yellow, looking about ready to die.
Liam stood at the edge of the field and reached down to pull one up for a look. This variety was called Sawtooth greens. It tolerated drought well and yielded heavily. The flavor was no match for Jade greens, but it was the most widely sold vegetable on the market, for the simple reason that it was the cheapest of them all.
Isabella spotted Liam squatting at the field’s edge from a distance and hurried over to him.
"What are you doing out here? The sun’s fierce, don’t go giving yourself heatstroke."
Liam felt this much sun was well within what he could take. He shook his head: "It isn’t that bad. Is the soil like this everywhere on the planet?"
Isabella wiped the sweat from her forehead and said gloomily: "This is the best patch there is. The other places won’t even take water."
Liam scooped up a little soil, squeezed it between his fingers and lifted it to his nose. Nothing at all. The soil Isabella called the best had less nutrition in it than a bare hillside on Earth. He turned to her.
"Where’s this thorny weed you mentioned? Let me see it."
Isabella pointed off into the distance: "Over there. That’s what I’m clearing now. One night and it’s already spread across half the field. If I don’t clear it fast, these Sawtooth greens are finished."
Liam followed Isabella over to where the weeds had spread. He bent over the pile his sister pointed out and picked up a stalk to examine. This thorny weed had no leaves, and its color blended almost entirely into the color of the soil. Had it not been for the few black thorns scattered along the stem, like the thorns on a rose, he would never have been able to make it out at all.
Isabella promptly herded him over to the foot of the tree where Benjamin was sitting. This tree had not a single leaf on it either; more accurately, it had been dead a long time. It was only that the trunk had not yet rotted through, and its surface was broad enough to throw down a patch of shade.
Benjamin immediately produced a chair from his spatial bracelet, dusted it clean, and only then handed it over for Liam to sit on. Liam waved him off.
"I don’t pay any attention to that sort of thing. The two of you shouldn’t spoil me like this."
Benjamin and Isabella smiled awkwardly. They were only treasuring an Omega out of habit. Back when Elijah was at home they had always treated him exactly the same way. And Elijah had always felt they didn’t love him enough, not at all like Liam, who was telling the two of them not to indulge him.
Isabella told Benjamin to look after their younger brother and went back to clearing the weeds. There were a few thorny weeds at the foot of the tree as well. Liam bent his head and studied them carefully.
His gaze came to rest on the swollen cap at the tip of each stalk, and he asked curiously: "Why does the end of it swell out like that?"
Benjamin followed the line of Liam’s finger: "That’s its leaf. It has no color to it, but the books state plainly that the part is a leaf."
Liam went on staring at this so-called leaf of the thorny weed, and the longer he looked the more familiar it seemed. Apart from being half the size of a palm, every part of it looked like the tuft at the head of a stalk of Bermuda grass. Could it be evolved Bermuda grass?
Or else, could the reason this weed could never be cleared out for good lie not in the stem or the root, but in the leaf?
The thought sent Liam’s hand out at once. He snapped the leaf off and set about peeling it apart with his fingers. The layers did not come away easily, and he had barely put any force behind it before a red weal had been pressed into his finger. Benjamin snatched the leaf away in a hurry and scolded him under his breath.
"What are you doing playing with a thorny weed leaf? That thing is sharp, don’t go cutting your hand open."
Liam looked at the mark on his hand, then at Benjamin: "Have the two of you ever tried peeling one open? When you burned the weeds or sprayed them, did you ever go back and check whether the leaf had actually died?"
Benjamin blinked, then shook his head. Once the burning and killing was done, who had the leisure to go inspecting leaves?
A spark of light flashed in Liam’s eyes, and he urged Benjamin on quickly:
"Brother, hurry, peel this leaf open. I want to see whether it’s what I think it is!"