Back at the Valentine Detective Agency office:
"This is amazing!" Ellie marveled as she read. "Beans, beets, cabbage, cucumbers—you really have seeds for all these things?"
"Yes," Raina replied. "And there are different varieties, too. I figured, the first few years, it would be better just to get things to people without offering two dozen different kinds of beans, for example."
"I have to agree there, Greenie," Piper put in.
"Greenie?" Raina looked at the reporter. She had opted to tag along from the moment Nick, Raina and King entered Diamond City, and she had offered to help compile the final draft.
"I don't know, it seems like you need a nickname, and 'Queenie' is too obvious. You're new to Topside, so in that way, you're green, and you're bringing back green things, plus you're what they call olive-skinned. So, Greenie."
The agroecologist thought about it a moment and shrugged. "Okay. To you I can be Greenie."
"I wonder about whether you ought to offer flowers," Nick tightened the screws in his naked metal wrist. The housing was stripped, which was why they kept coming loose. Someday they'd refuse to stay in at all, and then he would be….screwed. He grimaced at the unintentional pun.
"Most of them have practical uses," Raina said. "Nasturtium blossoms are edible, sort of peppery tasting, and they go good in salads. Pot marigolds are good as seasoning in soups, and feverfew reduces fevers. You can use stewed boneset stalks to make casts, and as an herb it has a lot of uses. I admit zinnias don't do anything besides look pretty, but they're easy to grow. Life ought to be about more than just survival."
"I'm not against flowers or a bit of beauty in life, it's just that with so little land cleared for planting, will people really want to spare any for something they can't eat or use in other ways?" Nick put the screwdriver back in his pocket and took out his cigarettes.
"Yes, they will," Ellie said staunchly, "even if it's just a few in a bed by their front door. I have to agree with Nick when it comes to putting a price on things. You have to. Have you ever heard the expression, 'You get what you pay for?' If you give these seeds and plants away, people will either think they're worthless, or that it's some kind of Institute trap and you're an Institute agent. And believe me, you don't want that."
"Yeah, Greenie. You don't." Piper echoed. "Besides, you're having trouble scraping together enough caps to pay for the printing. Nick said you sold your hair to Daisy in Goodneighbor to help fund it."
"Oh, I was wondering what happened to her hair," Ellie said, enlightenment dawning in her voice.
Nick screwed up his face in a sympathetic wince. "Raina, I get the impression you think charging money, I dunno, taints what you're doing. It doesn't, as long as you keep prices within what people can afford either in caps or trade. You ought to at least make enough to cover your expenses. After all, you're hurting for fusion cores, aren't you?"
"Yes," she said, drawing out the word, "but—."
"Imagine this scenario," he waved a hand, sending tendrils of smoke around the room. "Somebody comes by and takes several sacks of your best seed potatoes. They say 'Thank you', but they snicker as they walk away because they're actually raiders who look at you and see a sucker. All they're going to do is eat them or make them into moonshine, and come back in a few weeks for more with some sob story. Believe me, that's exactly what's going to happen—if you just give it away."
"I hadn't thought of that," Raina admitted, sounding very young and small.
"Well, like Piper said, you're green in the sense of inexperienced. The point is, you can be a do-gooder and still make money. Take me as an example. Speaking of which, I have to go tell my client his daughter is with Skinny of her own free will. I'll bring you all back Nuka-Colas and noodle cups."
He left the office and made his way to the house on the upper stands, pausing to greet people along the way, most of whom were surprised to see he was back. Darla's father was not pleased, which Nick had anticipated, but he paid half the promised fee, which Nick had not foreseen. A pleasant surprise, and it more than covered the colas and noodles. He got four of each and dropped a soda and cup of soup off with Nat, Piper's sister before he went back to the shack he called home.
The three young women were hard at work when he returned, and fortified with lunch, soon worked out what was going to stay and what would be cut.
"I really can't fit everything about beekeeping in a booklet," Raina said with regret, "so we might as well cut that part out entirely. If someone wants one for their settlement, they'll have to come and spend six months working with me. I can only manage maybe five new hives this coming year, anyhow."
"That you have any at all is just fantastic. Literally. Will you have enough seeds and plants to go around, though?" Ellie looked up from the pages she was marking.
"I asked Preston how many settlements he thought there were, and he said about thirteen to fifteen, and perhaps as many more places which would do for new ones, so I planned for an average of five acres each," Raina replied, rearranging the order of her pages. "Next year I can plant the other big Envirovault, after the five thousand Super Ginko seedlings are set out. After that I hope people will be saving their own seeds, trading with each other and replanting from their stock. It'll be exciting to see new hybrids and varieties….why are you all staring at me?"
"Five thousand whats, Greenie?" Piper voiced what was on everyone's mind.
"Super Ginkos. They're trees," Raina's face lit up. "They may be my family's greatest development. Y'see, ordinary ginko trees are living fossils, unchanged for over two hundred million years. They shrug off pollution and radiation, they thrive in practically any soil, and they even produce edible fruits and seeds—okay, the fruits may smell like vomit, but you can eat them and the seeds have medicinal properties as well. Six ginkos survived the bombing of Hiroshima within two kilometers of the blast site without major physical or chromosomal damage—too much information, huh?
"Super Ginkos differ from regular ginkos in that they don't need sunlight as long as there's sufficient ambient radiation. They clean up their environment by absorbing the rads—call it radiosynthesis rather than photosynthesis, and the more radiation there is, the faster they grow. I estimate that in five hundred years, the Glowing Sea will be as inhabitable as the rest of the Commonwealth. Because one male tree can pollinate a lot of female trees, the ratio will be one male for every four females, and—."
"Who—why?" Ellie struggled to put words together. "Your family were scientists who developed plants?"
"Yes. The mut fruit and razorgrain were two of ours. My cousins brought them out when they went Topside, and those two caught on, but the Super Ginko wasn't ready until fairly recently. I just wish I wasn't the only one of us left," Raina finished the broth in the bottom of her noodle cup.
"I thought it was just a small Envirovault," Piper said.
"It goes without saying," Nick cut through the conversation, "that none of this is to leave my office."
He was looking at Raina with new eyes. The one person who was the most important to the future of the Commonwealth and probably a lot more than just the Commonwealth, was sitting on his floor at that moment, drinking a Nuka-Cola and rearranging her notes on keeping chickens.
And she doesn't know how important she is. Hah, she'd probably scoff and depreciate it if I told her that. She's a sweet goofy kid, a genius in intellect but innocent as a child when it comes to the world. Anything could kill her—a stray bullet, a lucky blow, a germ in impure water, radiation sickness, cancer… and she'd be as dead as her sisters. She's the only one who has the knowledge, both the theory and the practical know-how. Hell, she's the only one who even knows where her Vault is.
All right. I know what my job is. I have to keep her alive. I have to. Nothing I've ever done, nothing the real Nick Valentine ever did, comes close to it.
"About this Glowing Sea business," he said. "How are you planning on carrying that out? Because if you thought one Deathclaw was bad—well, the Sea has dozens of them, all of them bigger and meaner than the one you ran into in Concord. I've been to the Glowing Sea, looking for a man who joined up with the Children of the Atom, these religious nuts who live out there. It's not just Deathclaws. All the insects and creatures out there are bigger and meaner than the ones you find around here. Then there's the radiation, the Children of the Atom, who, quite frankly, are mostly maniacs and won't like you planting trees that clean up the area, the radiation, the feral ghouls, the radiation, the uneven terrain which you can't even see because noon on a clear day in there is as dark as dusk out here, the radiation, the Supermutants—oh, and did I mention the radiation? It's bad."
"I have a radiation suit," she said, "and Jonny, my Mr. Handy, would be going along, as well as a couple of agrobots."
"When are you planning on doing this?" he asked.
"In February, before it's time to break ground for spring planting out here."
"Raina, if I had hair you'd make me tear it out," Nick pinched the bridge of his nose, not because he had a headache but because the gesture expressed what he was feeling. "Okay. You and I, we get along, right?"
"Yes," she said. "You're a good person, you're good company and you're a very good shot."
"Good, because I'm sticking to you like your shadow and not leaving you unless there's somebody equally reliable who'll have your back. No arguments."
Piper made a sound of sheer frustration and exasperation that sounded like a train whistle combined with a boiling tea kettle at close quarters. "I can't believe this! This story gets better and better and it'll be years before I can tell it. Can I at least interview you as to what Topside is like to a Vault Dweller? I won't say anything about plants—I'll write that you came from that vault right by Sanctuary. There weren't any other survivors, so nobody will be able to say otherwise. It was 111, wasn't it?"
"Yes. Sure, why not?"
Little did they know that one innocent little statement would do more to call the attention of the Institute than anything else, because someone there had a vested interest in anything to do with that particular vault…
A/N: Yes. Kellogg will be sent out to look for her. Probably not next chapter, though. Next chapter ought to be meeting Danse, but the plot bunnies are hopping.
Guestman—Yes! That O-wakizashi will be hers, and I just have to write an appropriately harrowing account of how she gets it. Plus a bunch of other things. Anyone fancy a Monet for their walls? I think you have the beginning of a very good story going there. Dialog—it took a while to come to me, too, but when you find the right voice, it will fall into place. I am *sure* the Brotherhood is as down on clones as on other deviants from the human norm. Yes, Danse is loyalty, King unconditional love, Curie=curiosity, Deacon, imagination…
Thank you, Guest! Hope you like this chapter.
Hyperventi—yeah, the supply will be growing fast.