Piper glanced at the newcomer as they entered the city, seeing where the woman's eyes went and where they lingered. She hadn't memorized Nick's file on Theodosia Queen and her look-alikes, but she remembered certain details. Callused hands—Piper had felt them when they shook hands. Well-nourished where most people were rail thin, but more muscular than fat—she was that too.

"So how long have you been out of your Vault?" Piper began by asking.

"Since May, so about seven months ago. I live on the outskirts of Sanctuary, which is northwest of Concord," Raina Queen replied.

"What are your impressions of the world Topside?"

"It's big, it's often noisy, always dirty, and practically everything and everyone is trying to kill me. Big, noisy and dirty are not problems. Trying to kill me is another matter."

Piper stifled a laugh, but then she noticed the syringer hanging off the other woman's shoulder, and she remembered the stories about bodies turning up without bullet holes or stab wounds in them, just syringer darts, and about the bloody froth around the eyes and ears of those bodies, and gouts of blood around the mouths. Those stories had been going around for…about six months now. Maybe seven. The one and only reporter for the one and only newspaper in the Commonwealth was headstrong and even foolhardy at times, but she wasn't stupid.

"So why did you decide to leave your Vault?" she pressed on.

"My sister Vicky hit her head and died. She and I were the last ones left, and we were getting low on fusion cores, so instead of waiting around for the power to fail, I thought I'd come up and have a look around. We—," Queen's voice faltered. "We had an elder sister, Joanna, who left the Vault when I was quite small. She was one of those who never came back. Learning what happened to her—it would mean a great deal to me. Did any of those women appear about twenty years ago?"

"Um—." Piper thought for a moment. "No. I think the last was about forty years ago, maybe? You don't have to rely on my memory. Nick has all the details. Let's talk about your booklets first, then we'll go see him. Okay?"

"Fine with me," Raina answered.

They had reached the shack which was both the office of Publick Occurrences and the home of Piper Wright and her sister Nat. Nat was taking a Nuka-Cola break when they came up on them.

"Hey, Piper!" The girl bounded to her feet. "Who's this? New in town? First issue's on us!" She practically threw a paper at Raina.

"Easy there, kiddo!" Piper said. "This is Raina. She wants us to print up some booklets for us, so she and I are going to talk details. Keep up the good work!"

"Booklets? You mean, like paid work?" Nat asked, looking surprised.

"Yes," Raina smiled at her.

"Whoa!" Then Nat noticed the dog. "Oh, you have a dog! Is he friendly?"

"Yes. His name is King and he loves to chase balls and sticks. Shall I leave him with you while your sister and I talk?" Raina offered.

"Thanks!" Nat's face lit up.

Once inside the office, Piper offered her guest a chair and pulled up one herself. They could hear King and Nat playing together outside, his happy barks and her joyous laughter. Piper was glad to hear her sister laugh like that, but she put that aside for the moment. "Okay, let's talk turkey. Have you got a manuscript or an example of the illustrations you want?"

"Yes. Not a complete manuscript, but enough to give you an idea of what it's like, and a few pages of layout with illustrations, to show how I want them to look," the woman replied. She took a sheaf of papers from her satchel and handed them over to Piper.

The first few pages were the samples with illustrations, some in color and some in black and white. The first one had a big yellow flower with a dark brown center on it, and the text below it read:

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

This hardy annual is extremely easy to grow, perhaps the easiest of all crops, as long as you remember they are called sunflowers for a reason. They need to be planted in full sun. That is the most important consideration. They aren't fussy about soil, and you can plant a lot of them very close together. As long as the earth is not actually soggy, they will do well, but naturally they will do better in better soil.

There are two major varieties: the dry, which bear large seeds in white and black striped hulls, and the oily sort, which bear smaller seeds in pure black hulls. The drier variety can be hulled easily when fully dry by splitting the hull apart with a fingernail, and the seed can be eaten raw, ground up and added to flour, roasted and salted as a snack, sprinkled on salads or mixed into bread dough. They are tasty and nutritious, rich in protein, vitamins and minerals, and store well once dry. They also are better than corn as animal feed.

The oily sunflower seed is even more valuable as a source of edible oil. An acre's worth of sunflower seeds can yield as much as 714 lbs. of oil, or 102 gallons, as opposed to corn, which yields 129 lbs. of oil per acre, or 18 gallons. They are not as easily hulled, however. Pressing them in their shells is more efficient when making oil. After being pressed for oil, the remaining mash can be used to supplement animal feed. Chickens love sunflower seeds and they can form a valuable supplement to rabbit feed as well, especially in the winter. Use as a supplement to feed and not a substitute.

If you plan to save your own seed for planting every year, it would be best to choose either one kind or the other and specialize, as they are cross fertile, and the resulting seeds next year are likely to be neither as dry and tasty as the one nor oily enough to press well like the other.

Plant directly in the earth in spring after the last frost, in average to rich soil with good drainage where they will get full sun. You will need three or four pounds of seed to plant an acre. Both varieties can grow as tall as 20 feet high, and their single flowers can measure as much as two feet across. These cheerful flowers turn to face the sun throughout the course of the day. This is entirely normal, so do not be alarmed. A field in full bloom is magnificent to see. Their petals are usually yellow but can be any warm-toned color from white to a very dark red-brown, and their centers can be just as varied.

Harvest in fall once the seedheads release their seeds easily when prodded with a thumb.

There was more about how to press the seeds for oil and refine the oil after pressing, but Piper didn't bother to read any further. "This is…What is this? Why are you writing about something that's extinct? Who do you think is going to want to read about something they can never grow? Oh…"

Raina had brought out a drawstring bag and undone the knot at the neck, spilling out a quantity of small black seeds. "I harvested these a month ago from my steading in Sanctuary," she explained. "This is about a pound of seed, one big seedhead's worth. I've a lot more stored at home."

"But where did you get them?" Piper stared at the seeds.

"From the Vault. It's an Envirovault, meant to replicate an entire ecosystem. We—my family—have kept it going since, and even before the War."

Piper's brow creased. "An Envirovault? I thought none of them survived. Too fragile, or too expensive, or hard to maintain, or something. They were this granola-eating treehugger thing…"

Raina frowned in thought, her brows furrowing together. "I don't know about any others. Ours survived."

The reporter skimmed through more of the pages, the ones which were just manuscript without illustrations. Stinging Nettle (Urtica diocia): It is hard to overstate how valuable this plant is, as a vegetable, after it has been cooked to remove the spines, as animal fodder, as a tea, as enrichment for the soil, even as a medication to increase milk… Raspberry (Rubus idaeus), This fruit grows on thorny canes…Strawberry (Fragaria ananassa orFragaria vesca)…Flax (Linum usitatissimum)…

Each had detailed descriptions and instructions. A few even had recipes.

"This is not simply the story of the year or even the story of the century," Piper looked at her guest. "This is… I can't even find the words. I've got to start writing—."

"I'm sorry," Raina Queen said, firmly. "Someday, you can publish everything for the entire world to read, or as much of the world as can be reached. For the next few years, you'll have to keep this under wraps."

"Why? This is important!"

"I know. That's why you can't tell everyone. A friend of mine told me all about the Institute yesterday, everything he knew about it. It suits them to keep the Commonwealth poor and ignorant, grubbing for what little food they have. They have tech, but they hoard it. They create synths to replace people rather than helping them survive, don't they?" Raina raised an eyebrow.

"Yes…"

"What if they found out that dozens of food crops were returning, high yield food crops which mean that people can do things besides just barely get by? What if they found out who was responsible?"

"They'd hunt those people down, take everything for themselves, and make synths of them to send home and ruin their reputations while they…got rid of the real ones." Piper realized.

Raina nodded. "I imagine so. But if every settler has a hutch full of rabbits, a flock of chickens, and a couple dozen different crops planted before they even notice—."

"They won't be able to take all of it from everyone, once it's everywhere." Piper concluded. "So the booklets are for the ordinary settlers who'll be growing things?"

"Yes. Now, let's talk caps. I'd like the booklet on animal care printed first. The agriculture booklet can wait until spring."

A half hour later, they had a deal hammered out. The price would be three caps per booklet, two hundred of the planting guide and two hundred of the animal care guide. Raina would pay Piper two hundred caps now, another four hundred when she delivered the finished manuscripts, and the balance once the booklets were printed. In return, Piper promised complete confidentiality, and that she would have them ready a month after she received the full manuscripts. Any reprints would be at two caps per booklet, unless there were major revisions. It was a substantial addition to the Wright sisters' income.

As they were finishing up, Piper remembered the syringer. "Raina, are you the one who's going around with deadly poison darts? Is that something else from your Vault?"

"Yes," Queen replied. "But keep that under your hat, too."

Shouting in the street brought them out to witness a terrible scene. Two men were yelling at each other, one insisting the other was a synth and not his brother, while the putative synth was arguing back, swearing up and down that he was human. Several guards were backing up the one making the accusation, and it ended with the shooting death of the accused. Raina wondered if there was any of telling someone was a synth before it led to an autopsy, and tucked it away in a corner of her mind with the other things she would work on when she got a spare moment.

"I've got to cover this!' Piper's eyes gleamed. "Oh—you can go to Nick's on your own. Head to the weapon dealer's, he's called Arturo, then take a left and follow the heart signs. You can't miss it. Tell him you're a friend of mine."

"All right," Raina agreed. She could tell that at some point, Theodosia Queen had been in that very stadium, because her memories of it lay over the present like a transparency. Mama Murphy had had to explain to her, gently and in private, that most people had only their own memories to draw on. Until then, she had not realized it was not normal. Or, rather, not normal for those who were conceived in the usual way, with all their chromosomes split and mixed up every which way. For her it was perfectly normal.

She made her way through the market, stopping here and there to browse. To Raina's surprise, the vendors had much the same merchandise as Carla, only more of it. She had expected to find better things in the city. One of the merchants, a woman named Myrna, was particularly paranoid about synths. Given what had just happened, was she overreacting? King was happy to trot along beside her though, and even happier when she bought him a meaty marrow bone.

The butcher's eyes bulged when she immediately gave King the bone, and the man sputtered out something like, "You're wasting it on the dog?"

"This dog is the reason I'm still alive," Raina told the man. "He saved my life three times this morning alone. Come on, King!"

Once she had made the round of the shops, her initial impression was confirmed. Nothing was new except the fresh produce and meat; everything else was salvage from two hundred years ago. Rubbish, in other words.

Something had to be done. Someone ought to start something new. For example, was there no clay left in the world, that people had to make do with cracked, chipped dishes and mended coffee mugs? Coming up with some kind of glaze couldn't be that difficult. Wasn't there a book on pottery making back in her Vault somewhere? Then there was soap. It was easy enough to make: fats or oils combined with potash. She and her sisters made a batch once every year or so. All the soap she'd found Topside was two hundred years old.

She shelved those ideas for later. As she had told Piper, a large part of the problem was that the current food crops were low-yield and poor quality. Too many people had to spend their entire lives farming at barely subsistence level. First things first: people had to eat. More food and better food would make a huge difference in their quality of life. Then it would be time to look into possible cottage industries.

As Piper had said, there were signs pointing the way to Nick Valentine's. They made her smile, because they were both clever and creative. They led her to a shack in a back alley, although it was really more like a back corridor. There she knocked on the door and waited until a woman invited her in.

"If you're looking for—Oh!" the young woman began and then broke off, staring at Raina as if at…well, as if at a ghost.

"Hello, my name is Queen," Raina said and smiled as warm and friendly a smile as she could..

"Uh, yeah. I kind of guessed that," the girl said, and sat down in a chair like she really needed the support. "Nick always said…he said you—or one of you, I mean, someone who looked like you, would turn up again. He just hoped it would be alive that time. Are you… actually Theodosia?"

"No, I'm Raina Queen. Theodosia was my however-many-great-great grandmother," she told the young woman. "She survived the war in our Vault, but we were cut off. Several of my relatives left over the years to try and make contact with others. None of them ever returned. We've always wanted to know what became of them."

"I understand," said the young woman. "Oh, I never introduced myself. I'm Ellie Perkins. I'm Nick's assistant, but he's not here."

"When will he be back?" Raina asked.

"That's just it," Ellie nearly moaned. "I don't know. He's missing, and I'm afraid something has happened to him. I do know where he was going." She went on to explain about the missing daughter, the gangster, and Vault 114. "I'd go myself, because Nick is a really great guy, the best boss I've ever had, but I'm not brave enough. Someone like you, though…"

Raina nodded. "Not nearly enough people have tried to kill me yet today. I've come to expect it. I'll do my best."

"Thank you!" Elllie gasped.

A/N: All the details about sunflowers are accurate, but there's a lot greater variety than Raina wrote down. She can't offer all of them at once, so she's picking two and going with it. Same thing with other fruits and vegetables. Ever look through a big garden catalog? There are literally dozens of different varieties of things like potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and onions. Some are good for frying, some for baking, some for salads, others for sauces. The Repository has all of them and more.

Guestman, you hit the nail on the head. Johnny Appleseed was one of my inspirations for Raina, and the reason why her Mr. Handy is called Jonny.