"In the parlor?" Chuck asked, watching her cuddling his daughter. "Of course. In the breakfront. Lower cabinet, first on the left. Where else?"
"I should have looked there first, without having to be reminded," Chuck said defensively. "Look, I gotta get crackin' on the mission. You two are in safe hands here, in case I don't get to see you before I go off"
"You be careful, Charles," his oldest cousin said, shaking her fin-ger at him.
"Don't worry about Chuck," Kris replied, unable to restrain the urge. "I'll protect him."
"Yeah, you and who else?" Chuck demanded, halfway to the door, shooting her a droll look.
"You don't need more than my mom," Zane responded defiantly. "That's all too true, lad, all too true," Chuck said with a final wave of his hand as he left.
"Would he be going into danger, Kris?" Rose asked timorously. "No more than any of us," Kris replied. "Now, don't you fret, ladies. You are safe here and we're so glad that Chuck found you." After listening to the two cousins cataloging his half-sister's graces, Zane returned to whatever game he had left when he'd heard his mother's voice.
"What a sturdy child he is," Rose said. "Oh, how can you leave such dear children?"
"Only because I have to," Kris said. "But knowing that you might look in on Amy will relieve me a great deal."
"Of course we will. You may be sure of that."
"Then, if you'll excuse me, I have some details to organize," Kris said and, with a little bow, left them. She had to organize some notes for the evening's meeting, but first she had to find out some details and so she made her way to the library.
"Yo, Betty? What stack are you hiding under?" she called as she came through the front door.
"Betty's not here," said Dr. Hessian. "What can I help you find?" Since the doctor's recovery from being brain-scanned by the Eosi, he had taken on extra hours at the library, helping to catalog and shelve the rather bizarre collection of books they had liberated from Barevi.
"I need to know which countries on Terra produced coffee." "Now, that is an odd one. As it happens, I once did a survey of the coffee-producing countries. Brazil, of course, was the major producer. Coffee beans take a tropical climate, you know"
Snatches of old television advertisements flashed through her mind. "Which type? Arabica or robusta?"
"Coffee beans by any name."
"There are, or should I say were, twenty-eight coffee-producing countries. Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South America, the various islands in the Caribbean-"
"Twenty-eight?" Kris breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Why?" asked the doctor, mildly curious by her relief.
"Because there will be coffee beans somewhere that haven't been seized by the Cattem. They're addicted to coffee, you see."
"Not quite, but I'm glad to know my errant memory could sup-ply you with information. If you'll wait a moment, I'll just look it up in the encyclopedia."
"Not necessary right now, Doctor, but if you could bring the ref-erence with you to the meeting tonight?"
"Yes, yes, of course."
"It's the roasting that does it, you know," he added in a helpful tone of voice. When she gave him a startled look, he expatiated. "Raw coffee beans have to be stripped of the exterior fruit pulp, which makes a good animal feed, the beans dried and roasted before grinding, you know. The coffee bean is a drupe."
She did remember about grinding, and the thought of freshly roasted and ground coffee made her inhale a deep breath, recalling just how good roasting beans smelled. Unforgettable as well as inde-scribable.
"Yes, yes, that isn't as important as knowing where to get more is." "Get more?"
"Ransom, Doctor, ransom!" she said and left on the echo of that cryptic remark.
She fortified herself by chanting "twenty-eight" all the way back to the hangar, which was now as crammed full of busy folk as it had been empty earlier. She let herself into the office she usually shared with Zainal and plunked herself down at the first available station, flipping on the computer. She only needed to type a few lists. Like all twenty-eight countries and the major producers of finished coffee products.
What measure should they use in figuring worth? Would coffee beans be as valuable to the Catteni as gold? Hmmm. Imagine a scoop of freshly roasted beans being as valuable as a similar weight of gold? She chuckled to herself and began to type. "There are twenty-eight coffee-producing countries on Earth-in South America, Africa, Indonesia, Asia, and various Caribbean countries and they can't all have been ransacked by the Catteni."
The noise of happy laughter made her look up and peer out of the open hangar door just as an air sled, crammed with young people, every one of them festooned with the limp bodies of rock squats, lurched by.
And how much were rock squats worth by the pound? The ounce? The individual critter? Had anyone ever opened a shop with such diverse commodities?
"A carton a carcass?" The slogan slipped into her mind. Well, that would do until another crossed her mind.
Chapter Six
Everyone turned out for the Council meeting. She had expected that much but she was delighted to see that even Mike Miller's miners and farmers from the northern reaches of the Retreat conti-nent as well as Chief Materu from the south were present. As she hovered by the steps to the raised dais, she saw that Clime and Peran were escorting Chief Materu and introducing him to others. She couldn't see Floss but she did spot Bazil, Ditsy, and Ferris.
Chuck came in with Dorothy on his arm, his two cousins right behind him, looking excessively proud of him. They had more color in their faces this evening so she hoped they hadn't got too much sun, then reminded herself that they were from Texas and would know to be careful of too much sunning. Zainal arrived with Peter, Iri Bempechat, Yuri Palit, and Walter Duxie, the mining engineer. Sev Balenquah followed them, and uncharitably Kris hoped no one would include him on this mission since he had so nearly jeopardized them all the last time. But he was a qualified pilot and had flown the KDLs. Some people just brought bad luck with them and he was one of those. Like Pig Pen, you could almost see the aura of dirt and dust surrounding him.
Zainal escorted judge Iri Bempechat up the steps and held out the middle chair for him. The ever courteous judge waited until Chuck had seated Dorothy and Chuck returned to his place by his cousins.
Immediately the chatter in the mess hall diminished. The new Botany Space Force additions filed in with Peter Easley, who gestured them to seats on the left before he came up to the dais. Kris took her usual end seat, nodding to the judge, who smiled sweetly back at her and took the gavel that he used for such meetings out of his pocket and put it conspicuously in front of him. Conversations went down yet another decibel and there was much scraping of chairs as people settled themselves. The last of the council members, Leon Dane, rushed in late as usual, as did Worrell, Beth Isbell, and Sarah McDouall.
The judge gave his gavel an authoritative smack on the wooden block and silence prevailed.
"Since all council members are clearly present, I shall ask Chuck Mitford to report on his recent trip to Earth. And a special welcome to the Misses Mitford. Glad to have you here."
The sisters twittered, somewhat embarrassed by the official greet-ing, then both smiled happily up at the judge.
Chuck took center stage.
"I got good news and I got bad news, folks. The bad is that most of the spare parts we need desperately to get other systems up and running on Earth are stuck as loot at Barevi.
"The good news is that there is a powerful swing to 'sharing' on our home world like nothing we've ever seen before. But then, we hadn't seen," and he swiveled to nod apologetically to Zainal, "Catteni either. Remember how the Red Cross and the other emergency units would go to disaster areas and sort things out? Well, of course you know we had disaster all over the world but that same sort of helpful, cooperative spirit got invoked.