“I think that went well,” Todd said from the back. “I got a surprising number of questions about adult students.”
“I did too,” Irene responded. “There was a lot of interest in the residence supervisor positions, but I didn’t think anyone wanted to be an instructor. I was really hoping to get two or three instructors from the villages, in order to fairly represent them. That’s why I want you to come teach,” Irene said to Ben. “I want the students to see what a good life living in the villages is.”
They reached Greenbend in a surprisingly short time. Ben realized he hadn’t taken a cart between settlements in years. He only ever rode in one up to the ship and back when Irene dragged him in for medical checkups. She would probably insist he visit the medical center on this trip too.
They pulled up in front of a meat shop. Todd lumbered out of the back carrying another rolled up sheet of paper.
“We’re going to hang up our poster and take a quick stroll around the town square to see if we can answer any questions. You’re welcome to wait here if you’d like,” Irene said to Ben
“I’ll come with you,” Ben said. “I haven’t made it up here to Greenbend in a couple years. I’d like to take a look around.” Irene slipped out of the cart with a quick grace. It took Ben more effort. Irene was on his side of the cart by the time he was on his feet.
“I’ll buy us a nice piece of meat for dinner,” Irene was saying to Todd, “while you hang the poster.”
“Rump roast,” Todd said. “Try to get one with some fat on one side. I know you like it lean but that is not good for the flavor.” Todd went wandering down the sidewalk. The walks in Greenbend were paved in flat stone. Ben followed his sister into the meat shop. There were two customers already in the shop. One was being served while the second was waiting in line. Ben recognized the waiting customer as a potter he purchased dishes from before.
“Ben isn’t it?” the potter asked. “You have the bakery in Woodheart?”
“Yes,” Ben responded. “Is it Mike? Or Michael?”
“It’s Matt,” the potter replied. “What are you doing in Greenbend?”
“Sorry,” Ben replied, “I’m getting old. We're on our way up to the Speedwell,” Ben said. “I’m going to look over the oven they built to teach breadmaking in.” It was only then that Matt noticed Irene. He looked over at Ben’s sister and took note of the uniform.
“So it is really happening then?” Matt asked.
“We are getting close to opening day,” Irene responded. “Ben is a stern taskmaster and everything does have to be just so.” Ben chuckled at his sister's words.
“Irene is just kidding,” he told Matt.
“We are still recruiting instructors and residence supervisors,” Irene commented. “Student pickup and final enrollment will be in about a month.” From there the conversation followed a similar pattern to what he saw occur in his own shop that very morning. When Irene got to the counter she took an inordinate amount of time deciding which piece of meat she wanted. She ended up with a rump roast from a buffalo, with a nice trim of fat on it. She produced a length of oil cloth to wrap the meat in.
Irene left Ben fielding questions the entire time she chose her purchase. Ben was pretty sure they lost an hour in the shop. They emerged back onto the street to find Todd leaning against the cart, telling a vivid and frightening tale about an encounter with what he called an earthen cougar, but from the description was obviously a jaguar, to a small group of young people. The moral of this tale was that everyone needed to know how to defend themselves, which was why the school was offering classes in self defense.
“We call them jaguars,” Ben said from his seat as they drove out of town. “Or at least that is what your description sounds like.”
“So you’ve seen them before?” Todd asked from the back seat.
“Me? Never,” Ben responded. “The hunters spot them rarely. Their furs are highly prized because of their rarity. I can’t recall having heard of someone surviving an attack before.”
“I can understand that,” Irene said. “They are strong and fast. It is amazing how much damage their claws do.”
“Don’t remind me,” Todd responded. “Do you still have that fur? I could show it to add weight to the story.”
“It might be in the apartment,” Irene responded. “I’ll look for it before we head back out again.”
The last village of Northstar followed a similar pattern, only this time they stopped in front of a fruit market and Todd insisted on doing the shopping. Irene and Ben walked down to the village message board. Irene rolled out the new poster over the top of the old one. They didn’t manage to step away from the board before the first passerby started asking questions.
The morning was half gone when they finally made the turn west to reach the Speedwell. As they drew near the first change Ben noticed was a high stainless fence. The fence was made of just vertical components. They were placed about a foot and a half apart and marched off in both directions from the road. A gate on the road opened automatically as they approached and closed behind them. He wasn’t exactly certain what the fence was supposed to hold out or in. The spacing was too large to be a real barrier for anything.
“What’s the fence for?” Ben asked, after he gave up trying to figure it out.
“It's to mark the end of the area open to the students,” Irene explained. “It’s partly ornamental, but it is also equipped with sonic sources that should drive most large animals away.”
As they drove up to the Speedwell itself, he could see that a series of new buildings were in place around the base of the landing platform. Irene parked the car in front of one of them. The face of the building was glass and steel. The structure rose two stories high, but he could see through the glass that there was no second floor. The side walls were mostly cement, with only a line of windows high above just under the roof line to let in light. There was a door in the cement side wall. The door was equipped with a security panel.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“You should be keyed in already,” Irene said to Ben. Ben touched the panel and the door slid open smoothly. Ben stepped inside into a small entry area. There were benches built into the entry area, with lockers built in underneath. On the wall over the benches was a high shelf and wall hooks where coats, hats and aprons could be hung. The space was warm and brightly lit. Not only was light coming in from the high windows, but the ceiling was covered by a kind of dense light panel.
“I don’t remember lights like that,” Ben commented.
“They are LEDs packed tight. Only about one in ten LEDs are illuminated right now, they turned out to be uncomfortably bright. There is a control where you can change the light level if it is too dark or bright. I designed them to resemble the light panels in the structure. Actually all the new buildings are designed to look like the structure. We are expecting students from the settlements there and I wanted something familiar to them. People born and raised inside often have problems with open spaces,” Irene explained.
“Like the flight crew,” Ben observed.
“Yes exactly,” Irene replied. “That is also why you have the large end windows. I wanted these spaces to be a kind of transition for them.”
“Where does that door lead?” Ben asked, pointing to a door in the west end of the room that obviously did not lead into the rest of the building they saw from outside.
“It is a direct connection to the ship. So you don’t have to go out in the cold during the winter months,” Irene explained. “The workshop and ovens are through there,” Irene said, indicating a double door in the north wall. The doors were equipped with a complex latch that was triggered on this side by depressing a push panel.
The room beyond was a strange cross between the ultra modern and the workroom in Ben’s bakery. The floor was made out of a breathlessly smooth, sealed and polished concrete. The ceiling was held up by solid steel beams. Irene’s light panels carpeted the spaces between the beams. Heating and cooling ductwork, smoke venting and fire systems hung in plain sight, all clearly labeled. Bins, shelves and coolers held ingredients and equipment on the west wall. The south wall, on either side of the entrance they came in from, held bins of bundled twigs, bundles of twigs mixed with scrap wood and scrap wood. Light streamed in from the east wall, which was the glass he saw from the outside.
Across the center of the room were baking stations. There were thirty six of them. Each was equipped with a wooden work table, a water source and a dough trough. On the north wall, directly opposite, there were six bread ovens.
Ben found himself drawn into the room, looking at everything. He could not believe the wealth displayed. It was shiny new and had obviously never been used to make a single loaf of bread. He turned one of the taps on and pure cold water spilled into the porcelain sink below. Although smooth, the porcelain was colored to look like sandstone. It was an odd choice, but it looked good against the golden wood of the worktable. A twist of his wrist and water warmed to near scalding. He shut the tap off and moved to the ovens.
The oven he inspected was constructed of fired brick and was equipped in the front with an ash chute in the floor in front of it. The door on the front of it was made of the same dark cast iron as the door on his oven. Studying it he realized it was identical to his door. That made sense, since he purchased his door from the Speedwell’s manufactory within a year of the land grants. With that in mind, Ben realized that this was his oven, only built to a precision human hands could never match.
“Are all the ovens the same?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” Todd said. “We picked this design since it is the most common in the villages. If you want another one it is not too late to change them out. We considered making each oven a different design, but decided that might not work well for a class. There are multiple ovens so more or less of them can be fired depending on the class size.”
Irene sat a stool down next to Ben. He missed where she got it from.
“Here,” Irene said. “For you to sit on. I have a few things to check up on now that we are back. I’ll leave you with Todd. Just tell him what you need to do to fire one or all the ovens. If you get hungry there is food in the cafeteria on deck thirty. Todd can show you the way if you don’t remember.” As Irene reached the door back out to the entry area, she turned back and called, “Feel free to make a batch of bread or six if you want to. We can eat it tonight at dinner.”
Ben was left in the huge bakery with Todd. He looked at the young man who stood by, obviously eager to follow Ben’s instructions. Ben remembered that Irene called this man her heir.
“I don’t understand how you could build all this,” Ben said. “Where did all this material come from? It was always so hard for us.”
“I don’t really understand it that well myself,” Todd admitted. “The robots built it. Grandmother programmed in what she wanted. As for the material, some of it comes from the automated systems and some was bought from the villages through the warehouse system. It’s been fifty years since the landing. Grandmother has watched over, tended and slowly expanded those systems the entire time. This is the payoff, the wealth of the colony. She is using it now to invest in the next generation because you asked her to.”
“No,” Ben said. “I told her it wasn’t her responsibility to fix our mistakes.”
“I didn’t say you told her to. I said you asked. She decided to do it. Believe me, if she decided it wasn’t a good idea, it wouldn’t have mattered what you said. It wouldn't have happened,” Todd responded. Ben sat on his stool and thought about it. All the things he mentioned over the years to Irene that turned into reality in a year or two. All those times he stayed in his bakery and raised his family. This time she was asking for his help. His partner passed away ten years ago from heart failure. His daughter could run the bakery perfectly fine without him. All his children were grown and his grandchildren were getting there. There was really nothing stopping him from helping out however he could.
“We’ll fire three ovens,” Ben said. “Use the twig bundles in the first one and the wood scrap for the last. Pick one in the middle for a twig and scrap mix. We’ll light the fires now and work on the dough while the ovens heat.”
“How many bundles do you want?” Todd asked, already on his way over to the bin.
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“The wood scrap didn’t work that well,” Ben told Irene as he ate a late lunch in the cafeteria. “I may have made Todd pack it too tight. I am used to the twigs having gaps between them so the fire can breathe.”
“I can program the manufactory to cut the scrap wood into a bendy shape, so they don’t lay tight against each other,” Irene offered.
“That is worth a try,” Ben said.
“This bread is delicious,” Sarah commented. “I don’t think I have ever tasted better.” It was Grandmother, Sarah, Todd and Ben eating together. Sarah and Grandmother were working together to convert a couple apartments over for selkie use. Grandmother was hopeful that they might get a selkie student or two. The selkie pebble beds laid on the floor, so they wouldn’t be able to house as many students in an apartment.
“That’s because it is fresh from the ovens,” Ben said. “Plus Todd isn’t a half bad student.”
“I try,” Todd responded.
“What is in the other new buildings?” Ben asked.
“Anything that involves an open flame,” Irene said. “Crafts like metalworking and glassmaking. There are workshops in the old single person housing for any craft that doesn't, things like woodworking, spinning, weaving, tailoring and leatherworking. Tanning is also in an outbuilding because I didn’t want the whole ship to stink. I put in a couple spares for things we think up along the way.”
“After lunch I’d like to tour the rest of the workshops,” Ben said.
“Absolutely,” Todd said. “Do you want to see the preparations in the structure too?” Irene looked a little surprised at this offer, but didn’t say anything to counter it.
“Not today,” Ben responded. “I don’t think I’d be a qualified instructor for any of that. I need to go home, pack a few things and explain to my daughter that she has to run the bakery this winter. Have you visited all the villages with your update yet?” Ben asked
“No,” Irene said, “we started with Woodheart.”
“Then you can pick me up on the way south in the morning,” Ben said.