Gray and cloudy Dremen had been her home since before the hydrogue war, but Orli Covitz felt that anyplace would be better than here. At fourteen years old she had few points of comparison.
Her father had pulled up stakes and brought her here, following a dream, when she’d been only six. Jan Covitz maintained an unflagging reserve of optimism, but Orli had slowly come to realize that her father’s grand aspirations did not amount to much, despite his good intentions. She loved him anyway, knowing that he actually believed he would find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if he chased long enough and hard enough.
Blowing on her cold fingers to warm them, Orli stood with her father in the slushy fields they had claimed. All this land had been there for the taking, because few other Dremen farmers wanted it. That should have been their first hint, but her father was sure the two of them could do something with it. Jan and his daughter were a team.
They’d been latecomers here. The first families had arrived a hundred and ten years earlier and staked their claims. Many of them already acted like snobs, considering themselves genuine bluebloods after only a few generations. Her father had ignored the snobbery, however, accepted the available land, and made the best of it. He diligently forged ahead without much of a plan, but with a great deal of exuberance. For eight and a half years he had worked hard while insisting, “Next year will be better. We’ll make it then for sure, Orli.”
This year, though, the mushroom field was a disaster.
The ground was wet and mulchy, with standing pools of peaty brown water. Many of the giant mushrooms had been hacked down, the tender caps harvested, but most had opened their rills and dumped spores, which darkened the fungus meat with inky residue and lent it an unpleasant taste.
Now Jan shoved his spade into the soft, cold muck and flashed a bright smile at her. “We’ll salvage some of this, Orli. Fifteen percent at least.”
She smiled in response to his chipper attitude. “We can maybe push it to twenty percent if the weather holds.”
But on Dremen, the weather would not hold.
She wiped her forehead, pushing her dark bangs aside. Though she wanted to let her brown hair grow out like some of the colonists’ uppity daughters did, she knew that with her pointed chin, pert nose, and large eyes, long hair would make her look identical to pictures of her mother. Jan never talked about his faraway wife—she had left them long ago, after one of her husband’s previous schemes had failed. But Orli didn’t want to remind him, so she kept her hair short and simple.
She didn’t know why her father had chosen to come to Dremen, of all places. It was a cool world with dim skies. The variable sun waxed over the course of decades, warming the planet and making life nearly tolerable. Dremen had plenty of water; its continents were dotted with large shallow lakes that evaporated easily, keeping the air in a clammy equilibrium of fog and frequent rain showers. Woody plants had not evolved here, and the ground was covered with cold bogs, mossy groundcover, and sheets of leathery lichen.
But Orli and her father had arrived during the variable star’s waning phase, and year after year the climate had only grown colder until the variable-phase winter had set in hard. During previous waning cycles, the Dremen colonists had depended on relief supplies from Hansa merchant ships. This time around, though, the hydrogue embargo changed everything.
With great aspirations, Jan had studied Dremen’s climate and meteo-rology, and had convinced a few investors by insisting (quite rationally) that while green crops struggled in the damp and dim environment, genetically enhanced mushrooms were sure to be a bumper crop. The spores he imported to Dremen grew into broad toadstools that provided edible flesh, dense in nutrients, though they were chewy and bland. Once he’d prepared his open fields, Jan went overboard with the planting. Untempered optimism again.
The first harvest had been beyond her father’s wildest dreams—or plans, because he’d made no prior arrangements for large work crews or automated equipment to chop down and preserve the delicate mushroom meat. The fungi grew quickly, but withered just as fast. Timing was crucial.
He and Orli had worked around the clock until they were ready to drop, but half of the crop still rotted. Jan had rushed into town, asking for help, but he had nothing with which to pay the crew. In the end, he’d been forced just to open his land and let people come in and take what they wanted, hoping to earn goodwill, if not actual profits, from his fellow colonists.
The unharvested mushrooms in the fields had dumped their spores and slumped into the bog—and an even larger crop of chaotic mushrooms sprang forth the next season, ripened . . . and then rotted.
Though Jan and Orli had plenty to eat, they had overestimated Dremen’s demand for edible fungus. No one really liked the taste, and few people were willing to pay for it.
Then, as the solar cycle waned, bringing increasingly cold winters, the already chilly fog became a cold sleet that turned the bogs into slush and finally snow. For the past couple of years Orli’s world had been a sloppy, frigid mess. Now as she and her father trudged across their mushroom fields, the standing pools were covered with skins of ice.
Pausing, she looked at the transport bins of mushroom meat they had sliced and stacked. “Once it gets warm again, Dad, let’s think about choosing a different crop.”
“I’ve thought about it plenty already, girl. The sad fact is we’ll never get rid of these mushrooms now. We’d need to incinerate acres just to prep the soil again and kill all the dormant spores. Looks like it’s fungus forever.”
“Then I’ll keep working on new recipes.”
“Don’t take time away from your music.” Her father arched his eyebrows. “You’ll be a famous concert performer someday. I know it.” His compliment warmed her heart, though she didn’t exactly see how she was going to find her big break here on Dremen.
She did not deflate his cheerful opinion. “Someday.”
Together they went to the full bins and sealed them against the worsening weather. “Enough for today, girl. Let’s get back home. You deserve a rest.”
“And I have to do my homework.”
“After we eat, I’m going into town again. The big shots are gathering for their regular session to solve the world’s problems.”
“I thought you’d already solved all the problems.”
“I did, but they never listen to me. We proved that much in the last election.” He tousled her hair as if she was still a little girl.
Their small house on the edge of the cold bog had few luxuries, but plenty of homey touches. Orli had been inside the larger homes of well- established colonists, and she thought her own house was a superior place to live. They dropped their packs. Jan turned up the heat, and Orli went to start dinner.
A printed solicitation message for the Hansa’s new transportal colonization initiative was there waiting for them. Jan Covitz pretended not to notice it, but Orli saw his eyes light up.