"My deal is that if you take that: KDM did you call it?: you can keep ten percent of whatever you bring back to me."
"How do you know we'd come back with a KDM-load of coffee beans?" Chuck asked, grinning.
"You're the only one I'd trust to do so, Mitford," Dan Vitali said, looking straight into the sergeant's eyes. "Now I've met you, I believe everything I been told about you."
"Thank you," Chuck replied with a nod of his head, but the grin hadn't left his face.
"Of course, Jelco will come with you as he's dealing for me," the coord added with a sly grin of his own.
"Of course," Chuck agreed affably. "Is ten percent much?" Zainal asked. "That'd be one in every ten sacks of raw beans."
"Not raw, Chuck," the coord said firmly. "Roasted. And I don't want to split more than I have to. Each sack of beans weighs fifty pounds."
Kris sighed and Vitali laughed.
"We could do a lot with a KDM-sized load."
"They made a deal for a plane load," Chuck reminded him, "not a spaceship full."
"Jelco will handle that detail. The stuff we bring is more than they asked for but it will stop the epidemic of typhoid they got on their hands right now"
"Typhoid?" Kris said. "Is that back?"
"I don't think it ever went away in some parts of the world," Chuck said.
"There's broad-spectrum antibiotics in the package, polio, the lat- est cholera vaccine, on account of that's endemic where there's so lit-tle hygiene and lots of starvation, and some other stuff ointments for the kind of sores that are rampant in Africa, which the laboratory said could be useful there. But Kenya is willing to trade for it. Espe-cially as there won't be any ships going that way for a while. Not even by sea."
"Then we can be, as you said, philanthropists as well as haulers," Chuck said and looked at Kris and Zainal to see if they agreed. "Coffee," Kris said with a sigh. "Wow!"
"There is an area down by the Masai encampment on Botany," Zainal mentioned idly, "hot enough and with sufficient rain on the mountains to grow coffee beans. It might be worth it to try cultivat ing our own coffee on Botany. If we were going straight back to Botany, I'd risk bringing some plants," Zainal said and shook his head in regret.
The coord leaned forward across the table. "How can someone get into Botany?"
"Like, immigrate?" Chuck asked. "We discussed that before we left, sir. We can only accept so many invalids before our economy is disrupted. We took in a shipload of those folks the Eosi tried to brain wash and they've integrated well into our population. We agreed to accept applications, preferably people who have some sort of skill that can help the commonweal," at which Vitali nodded sagely, "but we could use a discreet number of young folk to increase the gene pool for future generations."
"All sorts?" Vitali asked, his expression intense.
"All sorts," Chuck agreed. "We're pretty representative of races, creeds, and colors to begin with, on account of we had no choice in the first place getting dumped there."
"Hmm. So, what sort of occupations are you aiming for?" "Anyone trained in biology, botany, medicine. Even another dentist."
"Will you be coming back here soon?"
"Oh, we'll be back when we spring loose some of the stuff the Catteni heisted," Chuck said with a wave of his hand. "We can also send back more wheat, I think." He looked for approval at Zainal and Kris, who nodded solemnly. "Maybe some protein. We got these loo-cows. Got six feet and no milk, but they make good eating." "Meat? Red meat?" Vitali asked in an almost wistful voice.
"I like the rock squats better myself," Chuck said amiably, "but any kind of steak goes down easily."
"Even rhinoceros, I hear tell," Kris murmured, overcome by whimsy. Vitali flashed her a startled look.
"Yes, well, I can see that this might be the beginning of a mutu-ally profitable association," Vitali said. He lifted the medicinal package toward them and some papers, including a map and airplane charts.
"Got these from one of the airlines in case they'd be any use to a spaceship," he said, handing them across to Chuck, who slipped them inside his shirt before shaking hands with the coord. "We don't, by the by, intend to hog all the coffee beans to ourselves, you know"
"Glad to hear it, Vitali," Chuck said, and then the man offered his hand to Kris and Zainal.
Jelco came forward and plucked the medicines from the desk and accepted his superior's handshake.
"Glad we could make a deal, Mitford "
As they left the coord's office he was calling his assistants back in, searching through clipboards to see which had the priority of his im-mediate attention.
"Coffee'" Chuck said under his breath as Jelco led them down cor-ridors and steps and eventually back onto the deserted expanse of the airfield. "We can sure use ten percent of what the KDM can hold."
Kris was wondering about improving on a mere ten percent. She couldn't quite sort fifty pounds of beans into individual portions, nor now much weight the KDM could haul, but she did believe that they could probably sell any coffee they could bring to Barevi.
She wondered if the Kenyan coffee merchants might do a deal with them for tires, batteries, and spark plugs. She didn't want to be greedy but so much depended on their success. For both Earth and Botany.
She found herself rushing up the ramp of the KDM, grateful to hear voices, experiencing an unexpected nostalgia for the ship as a haven. Good Lord, what had gotten into her?
Then Kathy was there, giving her a big hug, Jax was beyond, grin-ning like a fool, and the boys rushed to greet their father, demanding his attention with glad cries at his return.
Kris and Zainal thanked Jelco and asked him to thank Wylee, Murray, and Dover for their assistance.
"Miss Kris," and for the first time she detected his southern ac-cent, "it was a real pleasure. 'Sides, you bake a mean loaf of bread! I'll see you tomorrow. Until then, ciao."
And with another salute of two fingers to his eyebrow, he left them, lounging away toward the terminal building.
"We managed to trade for fresh food," Jax told Kris excitedly. "You should have seen Ferris and Ditsy. They just knew where stuff was growing." She waved a hand toward distant green fields. "And they brought back carrots! And potatoes! I haven't had them in years! We know you were successful with the dental stuff, and boy, did those guys covet the lifts."
"I don't know how we would have gotten those units down eight-een flights without them. And, Kathy, thanks for helping me with the rolls," Kris said, squeezing her arm gratefully, "because they opened doors everywhere."
"Those simple rolls?" Kathy was amazed.
"We'll do a full report at dinner, as we've a lot to discuss, but right now, is there enough hot water for me to have a shower? I feel sticky."
"You don't look sticky," Kathy said with mock horror and whooshed her down the corridor to her quarters. "We filled all the water tanks, and there should be plenty of hot by now."
The water was hot and Kris let it sluice down her body, soaping herself well, luxuriating in the warmth until Zainal tapped on the shower door. The amenity was not large enough for them to share the shower as they often did at home, but she gave herself one more rinse before she emerged and let him in.
While dressing, Zainal said that they would discuss the upcoming coffee-bean project with the entire crew. Considering the benefits of such an excursion for the commonweal, she doubted anyone would object to the detour.
Before they left, Kris had told Ferris to barter another sack of wheat for a good supply of carrots and potatoes. They did taste un-believably good. She wished they could take seedlings back to Botany but not with a long stopover at Barevi. There was a green salad as well with early lettuce (greenhouse lettuce, which Clime said was evi-dently a thriving business, delivering crates of fresh produce to be taken into the city) and spring onions, crunchy and sweet. She won-dered about dried beans. Well, besides coffee beans.