Recovery of Rez 13

There were other jobs, and none of them were half so complicated as his first. He ended up spending a lot of time working ship and equipment recovery. Things could be uncomfortable working with difficult people on some of the longer assignments, but nothing compared to the fembot. Still, it was good for his own sanity he was able to go right back and face the same monster within him which nearly devoured him the first time. It helped him learn to be much more careful about subtle cues which could send the wrong message.
Recovery work was time intensive only in the sense it tied up the entire team of specialists, each member doing relatively little in short spurts, and everyone had to be on-site the whole time. Rez found himself volunteering to assist anyone whose job held up everyone else, and learned a great deal about the whole recovery process. He also had a knack for moderating squabbles. Despite his utter lack of ambition, he was often treated as de facto team leader on missions, where he was typically the youngest member of the team.
At the end of three standard years, his devotion to recovery missions left him financially set for a visit home. He signed on as standby crew for the first ship headed toward his home planet. To his utter surprise, the steward escorted him past crew quarters to the junior officer’s cabins. When he turned to ask if the crew quarters were full, the steward was gone. Once inside his cabin, he checked over the routine messages most people ignore and discovered the Recovery Operations Chief on his last job had added an Operations Management cert to his file. He echoed out loud one of the most commonly heard refrains: “A management cert opens a million doors.” There was also an efficiency bonus added to his earnings account.
Upon arriving home, Rez found Randell Colony had changed some, as the charter was contingent on turning a profit. Where humans could live without any actual wholesale modifications to the ecosphere were planets which could also support agriculture of one kind or another. There had been an increase in demand for “real food” sources and Randell was a fish and land animal producer initially. The colony was built on a coastal shelf with lots of native grassland supporting something resembling earth cows and fish which had been found edible, if requiring a bit of processing. Meanwhile, testing for the possibilities of raising more favored animal species brought in from elsewhere was almost complete.
However, the social life of the colony was pretty much the same, though there were more people, both locally born and immigrating from elsewhere. One family was starting from scratch out on the edge of the currently occupied area, having more or less escaped another colony where things had fallen apart. They had escaped a situation where some conflicts which had devolved into a bloody feud. The family seemed quite happy being isolated for their first few months, and everybody understood that well enough. Rez added a supporting voice to the administration’s decision to leave them alone while keeping an eye out for their safety. Besides, there was too much work at hand without poking around in other people’s lives.
Still, it was time for this new household to report progress toward something profitable. Rez volunteered to go, for which everyone else was grateful.
He quite enjoyed the long hike across the rolling grasslands. The native animals didn’t herd together at all. They seemed to prefer isolation from each other, yet at the same time appeared to totally ignore humans. As he walked closely past a few here and there, he could have been a mere gust of wind for all the reaction he got. At the edge of the rising hills, he could see a covering of some sort of scrub vegetation. The family in question had been exploring these hills and cataloging the flora and fauna for future testing as food sources. Rez had been told the man was a PhD in one of the life sciences.
Taking a look around the place as he approached, Rez spotted an exposed framework with thin lines strung throughout. Hung from the lines were the carcasses of several different kinds of animals, as far as he could tell. Some distance away was a similar structure with various types of vegetation drying in the wind. As he drew closer to the dome which most families used as living quarters, he saw other types of testing equipment standing on the other side: an incinerator, a greenhouse, several cages and pens, and a couple of enclosed small buildings.
He stopped some distance away in the open, waiting to see if anyone would spot him and signal or greet him in any way. A message had been sent to their communication device, but there had been no response.
Some movement off to one side caught his eye. Coming down off the slope, threading the brush, were a half-dozen figures. They were carrying tall slender objects, which turned out to be baskets, apparently woven from the local grasses. They must have spotted him, as the largest of the figures handed off a basket and came toward Rez, while the others disappeared behind the dome.
Rez had never seen a man who appeared more rustic. Even the videos and images of ancient history back on earth could not prepare him for a man who looked weathered and brown, wearing overalls of blue fabric and a button front shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Rez had learned by now to suppress any visual reaction, and simply offered his right hand, hoping it would be grasped in the standard form of greeting.
Sure enough, the man stopped a full stride away, smiled and leaned forward with his own hand. They shook and Rez introduced himself as a wandering son returned for a visit home. The man answered with a dialect which matched his appearance. “Nice to meecha, Rez. I’m Henry Checkers.”
The man seemed to sense Rez’s unasked questions and began explaining they had discovered edible berries in season just over the other side of the nearest ridge line. He tried, but decided he could not explain the taste to someone who lacked a common background in fruits of other worlds. So he invited Rez to follow him and taste for himself.
Rez was amused to see they had added a covered porch on the back side of the dome. It was made of local materials — scrub wood lashed together with woven grasses in a fairly random pattern rather like an ornate blind on each side, and open on the side facing out from the dome. The roof seemed made of grass matting. The baskets stood in a row, each nearly full. Rez sampled a few and agreed it was impossible to describe, familiar and alien at the same time. Nonetheless, they were utterly captivating in taste, and he had to restrain himself to keep from eating any more.
Henry laughed when he saw Rez’s reaction. He drawled, “That right there could make a lot of money!”