Chapter 10

Then his face lit up. “Hi, Hazel. I am having a lovely meal with the Robertson family; more a clan than a family, I might say. The ladies are brilliant women in themselves and have already invented a new drink that I sampled today.”

He was interrupted by his wife breaking in to his ramblings. “Oh, yes, dear. What did you say? ... His eyes widened, and he replied, “Well of course I have no objections to your visitors. I leave you alone far too much as it is.”

He listened again, and eventually murmured, “If it is school friends, who am I to get in your way? The Francois twins? Well, that explains why you were close to them at school; you were the only two sets of twins.”

Another spell of dutiful listening, then, “As quick as that? If you think you can be ready for them in time ... Yes, I’ll pass you on to Frances...”

“Frances, Hazel wants a word with you.” He passed the phone over.

Frances announced her presence, then listened to what Hazel had to say.

“I like your plans, Hazel. Is Ivy cool with the idea? Good. Do you need anything from us, to help out? No? Well if anything comes up and you need something from us, please ask ... Oh, of course you can bring them to visit and see how we live ... What are their first names? ... Got that. Bye then. Be good to Ivan.”

She closed the call and handed the phone back to Ivan. He asked, “What did she want, Mrs Robertson?”

“Just telling me that she had invited a couple of school friends to come from Earth on a visit. She says you have a guest room available. As they are also twins, one room will do them.”

Ivan stood, open-mouthed, as what had already been told him by Hazel finally seeped in.

“Twins from school? Oh, yes, Hazel said the Francois twins; black girls whose parents came from the Caribbean, that they talked about so much. Being two sets of twins around the same age, and the only two sets of twins in the school at the time, it was natural for them to go about together. The Francois twins were nice friendly girls, as I recall, but not keen on going out with boys I heard; they preferred their own company. I wondered if they were gay, but the question never came up.”

Frances smiled deliciously, and looked conspiratorial, thought Reg, but she merely said to Ivan, “From what Hazel said, the other twins are not gay at all; just picky.”

“As long as they come alone, is my only concern. Space in our house is limited,” Ivan muttered.

Reg asked, “Do these girls know you well, or was it just you seeing them around, Ivan?”

“With schools, you never know people unless you were talking with them. These two, I just saw them with Hazel and Ivy, met them as a group, but my attention was all on Hazel at the time, so I don’t know how they viewed me. You know what school crushes are like, when you become totally focused. My Hazel was all I saw at the time; I fancied her immensely – you know how you can get something intense at school, with a first love.”

“Actually, no, I don’t. I never had a chance at a school romance, Ivan; not with the pressure from my widowed mother and the tight finances. I could never afford to take a girl out anywhere even if she agreed. When your patched clothes indicate your poverty level, girls don’t want to know you; at least not at school. University turned out astonishingly different, as your intellectual standard and academic achievement are the most important attributes. I was an educational sponge, and Frances decided to take advantage of my abilities as a scholar and academic ... or at least it started as that.”

Ivan offered in response, “Well, my own passion for Hazel went supersonic, and when I asked her to come with me to the colony and be my wife, she would only do so if Ivy was allowed to come too. Twins hate to be separated. The rest just seemed to happen without me doing much about it; the girls made all the decisions and I amazingly found myself with them both as wives. I have nothing to complain about, though; I love it.”

All the Robertsons could see that he was still entranced with his wives; even Reg remarked on it later, and his comment was greeted with knowing smiles.

After the meal, Ivan thanked his hosts and set off for home. He collected his rugged mountain bike from where he had stashed it, and pedaled away swiftly, wanting to be home before darkness fell.

He was back the next day, leading his crew to their start point, where he transferred his digital map of the Robertson land grant to his team leader’s phone. The map was carefully marked with symbols indicating all the decisions and locations Ivan had made yesterday in conjunction with Reginald. Now it was simply a logistical exercise to plant and set up all the fence posts before stringing the wires at their designated heights; then tensioning the wires with wire strainers to make the wire nice and taut.

The wire came in coils of a standard length, so delivery was made to the spots where joins would have to be made with a special tool; a simple wire double twist that would not slip loose.

Once Ivan was happy that his crew had all their tools and equipment, and knew where they were working, he left them to it. They had their standard times for breaks and meal times during the day, and they normally brought their food with them. They could phone Ivan if they had any difficulty with the fencing.

He reported to the Robertson house, to tell them that their fencing was in the process of making its long journey round their boundaries.

The woman who came to the door reminded him that she was Hermione, saying, “You will need time to get to know who we all are!” and thanked him for the information. “Do we need to provide meals for your crew, Mr Barclay?”

“No, I have that organised with them. They bring their own including their drinks. Have you done anything about patenting your own delicious drink?”

“Not yet. We checked the encyclopaedia to find out what to do, and there is a department within Administration – which seems to be one member of staff, so pretty basic for a department. It caters for patent applications among a number of other jobs he takes on. He doesn’t have to compare an application to millions of previous patents, as the patents only apply to Rehome, and any applicant has to refer to Earth patents for the same idea. That cuts down the applications somewhat, though if you are clever, you can ask The Personalia to do that check for you!

We also looked up about brick-making, and there is a local company that is into bricks and similar things made from fired clay. They haven’t differentiated the company between bricks, blocks, earthenware pottery, and the more decorative pottery and porcelain. A call we made to the company this morning revealed that supplies of house-bricks have a supply delay of almost a month due to demand. Bricks are in demand due to their durability compared to wood and other exterior facings. It seems that many of the mass-produced homes supplied from Earth had assumed local provision of choice for permanent exteriors, such as stone or breeze-block or brickwork. Now the owners mostly want brick walls for full protection. If you want to invest in a local firm, the brick-making company would be worthwhile, we think.”

“Thank you, Hermione. Would you inform Mrs Robertson ... Sorry, I should have said Frances, as you are all Mrs Robertson; would you tell her that my wives’ friends are arriving to visit us next week, as soon as they can book slots on a Landership to Rehome. They are apparently fascinated by what the new colony has to offer. Hazel said to tell Frances, ‘Things are progressing as we hoped’, whatever that means. You ladies sometimes seem to talk in code!”

Hermione chuckled, “You may be right about that, Mr Barclay. We women have to keep some secrets to ourselves. I will pass the message on. Will you yourself want a meal with us today?”

“If you are offering, I can be tempted, Hermione. What’s on the menu for today?”

“Omelette and salad. The grocers in the city sell eggs, but I don’t know where they come from though they appear to be chicken eggs.”

Ivan volunteered, “I was told that fertile eggs were shipped from Earth under stringent conditions, as sterile as possible, and were hatched in an incubator here, producing hens and cockerels to start a number of flocks on Rehome, and all the birds were treated with appropriate medication to kill any residual infection that may have lingered inside the eggs. Ducks and geese arrived the same way, but apparently most of the geese decided to fly off and explore this world, so goose eggs are in short supply. The ducks are happier to stick around, probably from sheer greed from free food, and don’t fly far from their roosting area.”

Hermione questioned, “Are the geese surviving in the wild?”

“Hell, I have no idea!” Ivan responded. “Does it matter?”

“Technically, no, but if they are managing to stay away from predators, it suggests they will fit well into the local ecology and find their own niche. They mostly subsist on grass shoots, so if there is enough in the way of grassy plains and water sources, they will be happy. Grass is a ubiquitous resource, so as well as the thousands of different grasses on Earth – from barley to pampas grass—Rehome seems to have a similar abundance of the same or similar genus, as near as I can make out.

I hope the geese survive and multiply rapidly. Once there are enough geese on the planet, they will be good targets for hunting for their meat, and might provide sport for hunters from Earth who will gladly pay for that sport opportunity, where at home they are prevented from shooting local wildlife.”

“Why would they be prevented that way?” said Ivan with a frown.

“Basically, the survival of the species. The passenger pigeon in the US was wiped out in a few decades by indiscriminate hunting, when once they were found in their hundreds of millions. A similar thing happened with the dodo, when sailors treated this flightless bird as a handy chicken equivalent, and killed them off through greed. They nearly did the same with some sea turtles that were good eating. Most turtles are now protected as endangered species.

Then there is the matter of where the species fits in amongst other sections of the biological system. When you don’t know enough about the local ecology, you might destroy an essential part of that ecology, like the wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. They were deliberately removed by the park authorities, as a supposed danger to human visitors, but with the wolves removed, the prey animals in the park vastly increased their numbers and began upsetting the balance with other parts of the system by eating to much of the foliage such as grass and leafy plants. The wolves were re-introduced, and a few years later the balance was gradually restored. The wolves feasted on the weak and unwell examples of their prey animals, and this improved the overall health of these species, and humans weren’t much affected except through their own stupidity by getting too close without planned protection. There are always stupid people in our world, so weeding them out is not a bad thing!

Here in the colony, you might inadvertently introduce a new species that has no predator, or reduce a predator population below its ability to recover its numbers, then bang goes your ecological balance, causing major problems for everyone and everything in the environment. Rabbits were a case in Australia. Kept for rabbit meat, a fee pairs escaped and bred, well, bred like rabbits. They eventually became a local plague on that continent. They finally were wiped out by a European disease of rabbits, myxomatosis, deliberately introduced to Australia and a couple other countries.

Later Australia had periodic plagues of mice related to available food supplies. The question of ecological balance can be complicated.

Grazing animals like deer can be a problem id they have no local predator to keep their numbers in check. Some grazers may be a nuisance when they kill young tree saplings by browsing on the growing tips, but often the removal of saplings allows a break in the forest cover, permitting many other plants to have sunlight to grow and fill that space. You can never predict what will happen when nature tries to respond to changes. Again, balance is everything.”

“Wow! You know a lot about animals, Hermione.”

“Much of it was from being brought up on a farm, Ivan, which I didn’t like, but my fellow wives and my beloved husband have broadened my view of life and improved my knowledge of ecology immensely. I have learned more in this past year about plants and animals than I ever did before in my entire life. I now know how to farm with a continuing respect for the environment around us. When I was younger, I hated living on a farm, but today I understand so much more, and can appreciate the animals and plants, both native and our introduced species. The crops we humans brought here as sterilised seeds do particularly well, as they have no inbuilt pests and diseases in the environment to harm them. The local microbes don’t recognise our crops as tasty targets yet, so we get bumper crops at the moment. Perhaps the local bugs will eventually manage to infect our cereal crops, but for now, the grains get a free run and we get these huge crops as a result.”

“Fascinating. You Robertsons are going to be a fine addition to the colony. What time should I turn up for lunch, if that was what you are offering?”

“Oh, that is a variable, depending on who is doing the cooking; but around an hour after midday. We can give you a ring half an hour before the food should be ready; would that suit you?”

“Grand. That will do me fine. I must get back home and tell my girls what you folk are up to. They’ll also need to know I won’t be needing lunch.”

“Dammit, Ivan! Make things simpler: bring them with you; we feed all three of you and we can get to meet them socially.”

“I never thought of that. Will that be all right with Frances?”

“Hey, a few more eggs and extra salad? Not a problem. Our salad is gathered from local plants on our farm. We checked the encyclopaedia for edible plants, and what they tasted like, so we have done our usual taste tests between us. We have managed to put together a salad bowl that seems to go with most palates.”

Ivan stared at her. “Why not publish your salad recipe as the Chef’s Salad? Alternatively, pick all your salad leaves and pack them for sale as Robertson’s Chef Salad at city grocery stores; or sell them direct to the restaurants – though the restaurants would probably want a daily delivery.”

Hermione jerked into action, as she considered the marketing options. She spoke as she was thinking.

“Hmm ... The salad pack would need to be in a clear sealed bag, 100 per cent compostable plastic. The bag could be sealed and topped with a cardboard header with our brand name and description on it; for example, ‘100 grams (2 servings) Chef’s Salad from the Robertson Farm.’ Do you think we can price it high as a delicacy and still sell it?”

Ivan was intensely practical, and offered, “You could do that in a grocery store, but for restaurants, it would be a bulk purchase at a much lower price. If it was, say, 100 packs, the restaurant would expect to pay less that half the retail price; even lower than the price you would be selling it to the grocery shop, so the shop can make their profit. You might get less per pack from the restaurant, but selling a hundred packs at one time is a better deal for you overall. You may not be able to sell more than a few packs to a grocer until he tests his customer market. The restaurant would probably be happy to take on that 100 pack, to cover a day or a week’s customers, depending on the clientele.”

“You had best get on your way if you are going to bring your wives for lunch.” Hermione reminded Ivan, and he shot off on that errand after phoning them to warn them of the invite.

An hour and a half later, the trio were pedalling up to the Robertson farmhouse, somewhat puffed by the long ride. The women were wearing slacks and blouses, and their early stage pregnancies were not immediately noticeable. They were encouraged to come inside and sit down for a rest, so the pregnant ladies could recover from their exertions. They were told they had at least half an hour before they would be called for lunch, so they could relax for a bit.

Frances insisted, “Lay back in these comfy chairs, girls. Take a nap if you need it. We won’t grill you for information until you have food inside you.”

The ladies were thankful for the offer, and lay back to take things easy.

Later, after their satisfying lunch, the Robertson women took the Barclay ladies through to the large kitchen to chat while the crockery and cutlery were cleaned and put away. The men were told to stay clear of the kitchen while this was happening, which they gladly did. Frances insisted the Barclay twins only watch the process today.

“We have plenty of hands to clean up, so it won’t take long, girls. You are our guests, so you remain purely as observers.”