While Liam was still despondent over an animal husbandry plan that had collapsed before it even began, Benjamin came into the house carrying two buckets of worms.
Seeing Liam, he broke into a bright smile: "You’re up? I was about to come and wake you so we could head over to Altair and get your new identity card made."
Liam swallowed the last mouthful of Sawtooth greens and drank some water to rinse his mouth. He asked with a smile: "You look very pleased with yourself. Something good happen?"
Benjamin nodded: "It did. Liam, your deduction was right after all. The patch we burned yesterday hasn’t grown back. With nothing sucking the nutrition out of them, the vegetables look far healthier today. Another half month of care and we can sell them!"
Liam let out a breath of relief: "It’s so good."
Benjamin and Liam tidied their clothes and went out together to where the ship was parked. Benjamin patted the battered old spaceship and said:
"We don’t have a hovercar at home, only this ship we use for hauling vegetables. Put up with it for now. Once we have money, I’ll buy you a hovercar to get around in."
Liam blinked: "I don’t know how to drive. If I did, I’d have bought one myself already."
The smile froze on Benjamin’s face and he stared at Liam in disbelief: "That can’t be right. Even Elijah knows how to drive, how can you not? Did the Hall family not let you learn?"
Liam scratched his cheek awkwardly: "It wasn’t that. Back when I was about to learn to drive a hovercar, there was a horrific accident on the planet. Someone who had just started learning lost control of their speed, veered off the programmed route and hit another hovercar. Both of them blew apart into scraps of meat. So after that they didn’t dare let me learn..."
The way Mrs. Hall had put it, the family had a driver of many years’ standing, and it made no difference whether Liam learned or not. At that thought, something clenched in Liam’s chest, and a current of grief that did not belong to him swept through his ribs. But the feeling rose fast and then, just as fast, was gone.
Liam’s whole body felt lighter than it ever had. He put a hand over his chest and lowered his lashes. Perhaps that had been the last of the emotion left behind in this body, and now it had finally dispersed.
All at once he was pulled into a warm pair of arms, with a hand patting his back gently. Benjamin’s voice came steadily from above his head:
"Don’t be sad. We may not be able to give you the life of wealth you had at the Hall house, but we’ll make it up to you with love. We’ll do everything we can to give you the best life we’re able to."
Liam blinked. His brother seemed to have misunderstood something. But he didn’t pull away from the embrace either, letting himself be greedy for this warmth of family just this once.
"Brother, it’s getting late. We should go."
Only then did Benjamin let him go, ruffle his hair twice and open the ship’s door. Liam followed him in. Once the two of them were settled, Benjamin started the ship and set a course for Altair.
On the way, Benjamin talked at length about his plans for the future. Planet Cygnus was only half the size of Earth, entirely flat ground, but the usable land was all in the eastern district.
The government’s minimum area for inspection was fifteen hundred hectares. After thinking it through carefully, Benjamin and Isabella had registered three thousand hectares with the government as their actual cultivated area.
"We’ve only reclaimed about five hectares so far. By the usual rules, we have to turn at least half the registered area into arable land to qualify for inspection.
Half of three thousand is fifteen hundred, and that’s still a monstrous figure for a household like ours. When we could afford it we hired farming robots, but that money has to go on soil-restoration fluid now, so we’ll be working a good deal harder from here on."
Liam asked curiously: "What does soil-restoration fluid go for on the market these days?"
Benjamin clicked his tongue: "Twenty million eight hundred thousand silver stars a barrel, and one barrel diluted will treat three hectares. But on the black market it’s only twelve million. We’ve a barrel and a half left at home. I’m planning to make another trip to the black market once this crop of Sawtooth greens is sold. A few trips back and forth and we should have enough put together before the inspection comes round."
Liam ran the numbers and concluded that Benjamin was still saying whatever would put his mind at ease. Sawtooth greens were the cheapest vegetable on the market. Even with a crop coming in every two months, and even buying restoration fluid on the black market, there was no possible way to gather six billion silver stars in a year.
If he stepped up his livestreaming during that time, and added what the original owner had saved, he could probably put another two or three billion in alongside theirs. It would still be nowhere near enough.
Worse still was that Benjamin intended to keep going back to the black market, which was extremely dangerous.
Liam objected at once: "Absolutely not. Do you know what kind of place the black market is? The whole Empire is trying to stamp it out. You’d have to be sick of living to go there."
The people at the black market were either crooked or outright vicious; nobody went unless they were at the end of the road. Back when he was still at the Hall house, he had often heard Alexander and Mr. Hall talking about the place.
The black market had been around for centuries, and nobody knew who the owner behind it was. The military had tried to sweep it up more than once and never succeeded.
The black market didn’t just sell goods smuggled past the legitimate market. It traded weapons and banned drugs, and it ran an underground arena for anyone desperate enough to gamble their life for money. In earlier years it had sold slaves too, and it answered to no law of the Empire whatsoever. A great many people who walked in never walked out.
Over the last five years the black market’s own rules had tightened, and it was no longer a place where men were killed without a second thought, but it had not become one bit less dangerous for that.
Benjamin blinked: "I’ve been there twice already and nothing happened. Don’t worry so much."
Liam shook his head and said seriously: "I’ve read about a way to restore soil that doesn’t need restoration fluid. Give me a little more time. The two of you are not to go taking risks, or I won’t look either of you in the face again."
Seeing the stern set of his younger brother’s face, Benjamin didn’t dare say another word.
Privately he thought to himself: He really does care about us. The old Elijah would have counted it a mercy if he didn’t demand we buy him something else. There was never any question of him stopping us going anywhere.
Before, with nobody to measure him against, both Benjamin and Isabella had thought Elijah was a fine boy. Set alongside Liam, his selfishness and his hunger for status stood out in sharp relief.
Isabella had once defended Elijah when Benjamin let slip a comparison between the two of them. But when he told her to remember exactly how hard they had been struggling a year ago, she found she couldn’t get a word out.
Silence settled over the cabin. Benjamin had no idea how to carry the conversation on, and Liam had his head down, busy with his smart watch. He opened the chat window with LS and asked:
"Can you find cheap soil-restoration fluid?"
LS replied at once: [I can. Ten million silver stars a barrel, and I take a commission of five hundred thousand per barrel. It can’t be done online, though. Goods and payment have to change hands in person.]
Ten million five hundred thousand silver stars. Cheaper than what Benjamin had been paying, but still robbery overall.
Liam thought for a moment and messaged back: "Too expensive, I can’t afford it. Find out for me whether there are any mercenaries willing to collect the droppings of star-beasts and star-birds. I’ll pay two hundred thousand silver stars a ton. I’ll supply the spatial bracelets to hold it in as well."
LS: [...]
LS: [Young master, you aren’t pulling my leg, are you?]
Liam could picture the crack spreading across LS’s face at the other end, and couldn’t help finding it funny. He messaged straight back: "Of course I’m not."
LS: [...]
LS: [Fine. I’ll try putting it up on the mission board and see whether anyone takes it. The posting fee is one hundred thousand silver stars.]
Liam agreed cheerfully: "Done. Oh, and I need rotted leaves and rotted wood even more than I need the droppings. I’ll pay a hundred thousand silver stars a ton."
LS had gone quiet by then. He sent back a single [OK] and went offline. The moment he did, he messaged someone saved in his contacts as Boss:
"Boss, I’d like three days off."
Boss: [Reason?]
LS: "Some spendthrift is paying money for star-beast droppings, rotted leaves and rotted wood. Two hundred thousand silver stars a ton for the droppings, a hundred thousand a ton for the leaves and wood. Both cost nothing to get and we have them lying around, so I’d like to take the chance to pick up a little extra."
Boss: [...]
Boss: [Forget the mission board. I’m sending a squad out with you right now!]
He had no idea which idiot was throwing money at this kind of garbage, but when money comes knocking at the door, only a man whose head has been slammed in it turns it away. The star-beast droppings on their farm were piled up in a mountain, and every time it cost them a fortune to haul the stuff off for disposal. Now somebody was paying to take it. Nothing could possibly be better.
As for the rotted leaves and wood, the forest right beside the farm was full of it. Shovel up as much as you like.
Orders received, LS messaged Liam back immediately: [Someone took it the moment I put it up. How much do you need, exactly?]
Liam opened his plan and ran through the calculations once more. Figuring twenty tons of rotted leaves and animal droppings per hectare of exhausted soil, he would need at least sixty thousand tons for three thousand hectares. But microbial compost could be regenerated indefinitely. As long as he had a starter culture, he could throw in the thorny weeds and the rotted wood and leaves already on Cygnus and that would do. So he had no need at all for a figure that enormous.
Liam worked it out and messaged back: "For now I need 200 tons of droppings and 300 tons of rotted leaves. Tell them to keep the two separate for me."
He sent LS 3 million to buy two spatial bracelets, plus the hundred thousand silver stars for the posting fee.
LS set the delivery for three days later and went offline again.