“They’re our knowledge base,” Jane said. “They’re the ones who know how to operate all the nonautomated machinery and make things without pressing buttons. I don’t want them getting eaten.”
“If you want to keep an extra close watch on the Mennonites, I don’t have a problem with that,” I said. “But if you think you’re going to get them to stop being who they are, you’re in for a surprise. And it’s because of who they are that they’re in a position to save our collective bacon.”
“I don’t understand religion,” Jane said.
“It makes more sense from the inside,” I said. “Anyway, you don’t have to understand it. You just have to respect it.”
“I respect it,” Jane said. “I also respect the fact this planet still has ways to kill us we haven’t figured out yet. I wonder if other people respect that.”
“There’s one way to find out,” I said.
“You and I haven’t talked about whether we plan to do any farming ourselves,” Jane said.
“I don’t think it would be a smart use of our time,” I said. “We’re colony administrators now, and we don’t have automated equipment here we can use. We’ll be busy enough. After Croatoan empties out a bit we’ll build a nice little house. If you want to grow things, we can have a garden. We should have a garden anyway, for our own fruits and vegetables. We can put Zo? in charge of it. Give her something to do.”
“I want to grow flowers, too,” Jane said. “Roses.”
“Really,” I said. “You’ve never really been into pretty things before.”
“It’s not that,” Jane said. “This planet smells like an armpit.”
SEVEN
Roanoke revolves around its sun every 305 days. We decided to give the Roanoke year eleven months, seven with twenty-nine days and four with thirty. We named a month for each of the colony worlds our settlers came from, plus one for the Magellan. We dated the first day of the year to the day we arrived above Roanoke, and named the first month Magellan. The Magellan crew was touched, which was good, but by the time we named the months, it was already Magellan twenty-ninth. Their month was already almost over. They weren’t entirely pleased about that.
Shortly after our decision to start allowing the colonists to homestead, Hiram Yoder approached me for a private meeting. It was clear, he said, that the majority of the colonists were not qualified to farm; they had all trained on modern farming equipment and were having difficulties with the more labor-intensive farm equipment the Mennonites were familiar with. Our stores of fast-growing, genetically modified seed would allow us to begin harvesting crops within two months—but only if we knew what we were doing. We didn’t, and we were looking a potential famine in the face.
Yoder suggested we allow the Mennonites to cultivate crops for the entire colony, thus ensuring that the colony wouldn’t turn into an interstellar Donner party three months down the line; the Mennonites would apprentice the other colonists so they could receive on-the-job training. I readily agreed to this. By the second week of Albion, the Mennonites had taken our soil studies and used them to plant fields of wheat, maize and any other number of vegetables; they woke honeybees from their slumber to begin doing their pollination dance, pastured the livestock and were teaching the colonists of nine other worlds (and one ship) the advantages of intensive and companion planting, carbon and calorie farming and the secrets of maximizing yields in the smallest amount of space. I began to relax a little; Savitri, who had been making jokes about “long pig,” found something new to snark about.
In Umbria, the fuglies discovered that fast-growing potatoes were good eatin’, and we lost several acres in the space of three days. We had our first agricultural pest. We also completed the medical bay, with all its equipment in its own black box. Dr. Tsao was delighted when within hours she was using her surgery ’bot to reattach a finger a colonist had inadvertently sliced off with a bandsaw during a barn raising.
In the first weekend of Zhong Guo, I presided over Roanoke’s first wedding, between Katherine Chao, formerly of Franklin, and Kevin Jones, formerly of Rus. There was much rejoicing. Two weeks later I presided over Roanoke’s first divorce, fortunately not of Chao and Jones. Beata had finally gotten her fill of antagonizing Jann Kranjic and let him off the hook. There was much rejoicing.