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"Another world," the strangely dressed man says, "and you can never come back. I don't know where; I don't control it. But you can send others on, as will they in turn. The sharing and the sending are one."
There are a hundred things that should go through her head. He's crazy; it's a street performance; it's a con; it's a joke; it's a prank. None of them do.
It's never really a choice.
She takes his hand—
and she's gone.
"And looking at it the other way, if it turns out to be harmless, this is liable to be profitable somehow."
"Yes. I can't imagine it wouldn't be, magic – comparative advantage! There's got to be something."
"So, yes, I think I will ignore my discomfiture and go up front and explain. Be back in a few minutes."
He's back in a few minutes. "It happened again. She felt it too. Very abstract sort of feeling isn't it? She said it was 'like touching a star'."
She smiles. "It is. What a great phrase for it. Tall night and the burning heart –"
– roots, stone, mountain, drums, the endless sea –
– she blinks. "...was I... out of it, just now? It's... huh.
It's a very strong – idea."
"At the risk of being a broken recording, I'm not entirely sure I like the idea. Or at least the strength it came on with. Here's hoping for the best."
"Any change so far? It really could take hours to. Do anything. That might be what we ought to do - not worry about it for hours and move on for now."
"I don't think I can feel any difference. And, yeah, moving on sounds like a good idea."
"Yeah."
Conveniently, they are already in the greenhouse. She is attentive and repeats things back to him in different words.
Nick is much more knowledgable about the watering systems than the actual plants.
"I'm especially proud of how I can send turbine backflow up here, and to the kitchen. Lots of delicious, useful warmth basically for free as long as we're running the engines anyway."
"Very efficient.
How much manual oversight does the watering system need? Do I have to know how much water each plant wants, or is that handled automatically?"
"You have to know how much they each want. I've been meaning to do a - drainage type thing so it just drains away if you give them too much, or an automatic waterer, but none of my attempts work very well."
Nod. "Hm. I've heard of – sprinkle hoses, for watering slowly, I think they're made of a sort of spongy material maybe? You might be able to get it down to 'turn on the water for a certain amount of time' with different plants being watered at different rates. Or maybe you already tried that and it didn't work."
"The timing part is the hard part. I do not have anything resembling an actually accurate clock. Also I haven't put that much effort into this, if the plants are suboptimally watered, so it goes. Ah, a few more tomatoes are ripe today! Good stuff." He starts picking them.
"Sure, why not. Hmm... Well, perhaps if I use a level meter... But the ship's sway would throw that off..." Nick is now thinking about tinkering with the watering system, apparently.
"Wound springs? ...might be too expensive, with the price of metal.
Maybe you could do something with measuring the level of the water in a reservoir tank, so you're measuring out an amount of water, regardless of how long it takes... oh. That's what you meant by a level meter, isn't it.
Maybe a tank with a narrow taper near the level you're trying to measure? So any slosh stays in the lower tank, mostly."
"That has possibilities! But it would be limited to a fixed set of lengths. Maybe a small secondary tank that fills from the main tanks and then is fed to the sprinkers a set number of times. Still rough, but potentially workable."
"Yeah, that could work. And with two or three tanks of different sizes, you could get pretty precise with not too many refills."
"It'll turn into a bit of a valve nightmare, but I bet I can keep that down."
Tomatoes are picked. They head back downstairs.
It's getting to be time for lunch. Lilith plans out sandwiches. Tomatoes, hummus, olives, a little salt, spinach...
She needs a protein. Which reminds her – "By the way, how scarce are eggs? Should I be treating them like meat?" (Eggs probably wouldn't go well on this, but he's here and she remembered that she wanted to ask.)
"No, eggs are fine. I can get eggs pretty cheap. They just don't freeze well and go bad relatively easy so I don't keep a lot at once."
"Excellent. I assume milk's the same way, then?" She can make two kinds of sandwiches. Egg salad and tomato-hummus, on toast. (The hot-water stove can make toast, right? She doesn't actually know how much heat that takes.)
"Yep. If you're worrying about protein, roya beans are good for that. They're the small brown ones. I appreciate your cooking."
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