With a head full of manure courtesy of his sister, Liam hurried back to the house and dived straight into the bathroom to wash.
He scrubbed for a full hour and got through half a bottle of shampoo before he grudgingly felt clean.
Out of the bathroom, Liam climbed straight onto the bed, and while towelling his hair he checked the spatial bracelet again.
A moment ago the bracelet, linked to his mental power, had sent through a brief burst of interference before returning to normal. Liam quickly swept the inside of it with his mental power.
He went over every part of it and found absolutely nothing wrong. He set it back down and went to dry his hair, and once his hair was dry he lay back on the bed and opened the Interstellar Connection network to read the news.
The first thing that jumped out at him was a message from the top gifter. The man had sent him 99+ messages, all of them screaming in despair.
[What the hell did you send me? Is this revolting thing supposed to be edible?]
[Why? Why? Why? Seasonings that precious, and you use them to cook the insectoid race?]
[Aaaah! You did this to me on purpose, didn’t you? I want a refund!]
[Aaah! I’m going to be sick! I’m going to expose you!]
Further down it slid into obscenities that the platform’s smart filter had censored, and Liam laughed at the sight of them. Seeing the line the other man was still typing, he messaged back at once: "I told you that if you didn’t dare eat them you could send them back to me untouched. You were the one who beat your chest and swore you’d finish the lot, so why turn around and blame me now? What’s the matter, all mouth and no stomach? Is that really the best you’ve got? Then stop calling yourself the number one restaurant. Shut the place down."
The top gifter on the other end was furious enough to send a voice message straight over: "Who the hell are you calling gutless? I’m going to go and eat it right now, watch me!"
Liam smirked. A young master who had never seen the world, falling for a provocation that simple. Whether the man really ate it or only pretended to, Liam couldn’t have cared less, because he was already very sleepy. He yawned hugely, disconnected from the network, lay down and closed his eyes, and before long his breathing had gone slow and even.
The lights in the room dimmed and went out, and the space sank into ink-black darkness. In that darkness, a blue sphere dropped out of the spatial bracelet Liam had left at the head of the bed and fell onto the soft carpet. It rolled round and round for a while, then turned into a streak of blue light and flew into the center of his forehead.
[Ting. Compatible soul resonance detected. Establishing contract... Contract successful...]
...
The next morning, Liam woke groggily to the chugging of the plough.
He wandered half-asleep into the bathroom and splashed a little water from the automatic tap onto his face. The instant the cold water touched his skin, the blue pattern on Liam’s forehead vanished of its own accord, as though it had never been there at all.
By the time Liam opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror, his forehead had gone back to normal. He had no idea whatsoever that while he slept, some strange thing had flown into his head.
Once he had washed, Liam swayed his way downstairs. He had worked his body far too hard the day before, and today every muscle ached as though someone had been punching him, so at a glance he looked thoroughly worn out.
Downstairs, Isabella was staring at a smart screen, occasionally adjusting the angle of the smart camera that was recording every image of Benjamin at work. Seeing how listless Liam looked, she stopped and asked in concern: "Liam, is something wrong? Are you unwell?"
Liam shook his head: "I’m all right. I moved around too much yesterday, so my muscles ache today."
At that, self-reproach came over Isabella’s face: "How careless of me. I should have thought of it sooner. If I’d let you sleep in the medical pod, you wouldn’t be suffering like this today."
Liam waved a hand to stop his sister blaming herself and said with a smile: "Don’t read so much into it. Aching muscles are a good sign, they mean the muscle is developing. This body has always been far too weak, and a bit of exercise is exactly what it needs to get stronger."
Only then did Isabella stop feeling guilty. She got up to reheat her brother’s breakfast, privately resolving that tonight she would make the boy lie in the medical pod for a while whether he liked it or not.
Breakfast today was two boiled eggs and a plate of stir-fried Sawtooth greens. Liam ate every last scrap of it and then craned his neck toward the kitchen.
"Sister, is there anything else to eat?"
Isabella’s finger, working the smart controls, stopped in mid-air. She turned to look at the bowl scraped clean in front of her brother, then at his perfectly flat stomach, and an indescribable bewilderment rose in her. A few days ago the boy had been claiming his stomach was about to burst after a few chopsticks of greens, and today he had cleared an entire tableful and still hadn’t stopped.
But thinking it over, it was probably because he had worked so hard the day before. Isabella stood up and said: "I’ll boil you another two eggs."
Liam waved a hand at once: "No need. A tube of nutrient fluid will do."
Isabella didn’t press him, since eating fresh food every single morning would be living rather too well anyway, so she handed Liam a tube of high-grade nutrient fluid.
Liam took the tube happily, and while he sipped at it he opened his smart watch to check his messages. The moment it came up, a long row of blazing red notifications hit him in the eye. They had been sent during the night, still from the top gifter, though the tone had changed entirely from what it had been before he went to sleep.
[Sir.]
[Sir, sir, sir.]
[Big brother. Boss. My honored ancestor.]
[What is that thing called? Where does it come from? How much? I’ll buy the lot!]
[I had my head chef try it. He licked the plate clean and didn’t leave me a single piece. Your cooking is good enough to make a five-star chef lick a plate, do you have any idea what that means in commercial terms?]
Liam took a mouthful of the bland nutrient fluid and messaged back at his leisure: "And who was it saying yesterday that he was going to expose me?"
The other side went silent for exactly three seconds, then sent over a photograph. In it, a young man in an immaculate suit was kneeling in front of a dining table with his hands pressed together at his chest, and behind him stood an entire row of restaurant staff bowing solemnly.
[I was wrong. I’m a man with no eyes in his head. You’re generous and magnanimous, so let me off this once.]
Liam very nearly sprayed the nutrient fluid in his mouth across the table. He tipped his head back, drained what was left in the tube, and only then typed his reply slowly: "It’s a parasite that lives in the leaves of the thorny weed, and it doesn’t have a name yet. There are more of them on my planet than anyone could count, but I’m not selling yet. Wait until I’ve finished my own work."
[How long?]
"Half a month."
[Fine, half a month it is! I’ll wait! But make sure you don’t sell to anyone before me, I’ll pay the highest price!]
Liam switched off the screen, and the corner of his mouth curved up without his meaning it to. Half a month was exactly when the first batch of compost would be ready, and at that point he would have fertilizer for the fields and a steady buyer at the same time, which counted as one arrow through two birds.
Breakfast finished, Liam put on his sun hat and walked out to the composting site to see how things stood. Today was only day two, so the heap was still sitting quietly with nothing much happening, and only the readings on the sensors were creeping upward bit by bit.
"Sunflower, how’s the moisture?"
[Reporting, master. Core temperature is currently forty-two degrees and humidity is fifty-eight percent, both within the safe range. At the current rate, the temperature is projected to reach the fifty-five degree threshold in ten hours.]
"Good. Keep it as it is."
Liam sat down on the edge of the bed and rested his chin in his hand, looking at the enormous heap in front of him. In his previous life he had composted too, but in a pit behind Uncle Lucas’s garden, covered over with a torn tarpaulin, and it had taken three whole months to get one batch.
Back then he had never imagined a day when he would sit supervising a pile of manure with sensors and a smart unit, and still less that the composting technique he had picked up in those years would one day be capable of saving an entire planet.
He sat there lost in thought for a long while, and only when the sun started to bite did he stand up and brush off his trousers to head home. But he had barely turned around before everything in front of him went dark.
It was not the swimming dizziness of standing up too fast. The whole world in front of him cut out, as though someone had pulled a switch. Liam threw out a hand by reflex to catch the the edge of the pit, and his hand closed on empty air.
There was no edge of the pit, no sunlight, and no chugging of the plough out in the fields. He was standing in the middle of a vast white expanse, with no ground beneath his feet and no sky above his head.
Liam’s whole body went rigid, because he had stood in this white expanse once before. It was where he had wandered before he opened his eyes in that hotel room, before he became Liam Hall.
"You have got to be joking." His own voice came out dry and flat in the emptiness: "Seriously? I haven’t even managed to grow one vegetable yet!"
At that very moment, a blue light flared up in front of him. It coiled in on itself and slowly took on the shape of a sphere, hanging level with his eyes. Across its surface, blue veins brightened and dimmed in turn, as steady and regular as breathing.
A stiff voice, like something reading off a document, sounded inside Liam’s head, neither male nor female:
[Welcome, inheritor.]
[Restoring data... Restoration failed. Remaining energy reserve: 3%. Host is required to supply energy to activate the Cross-World Trading Hall.]
Liam looked at the sphere hanging in front of him and stayed silent for a long time. Then he slowly opened his mouth and asked one question:
"Are you... my Papa’s iron sphere keepsake?"