some sizable forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy’s a nice place, Mr. Retief.”
“It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—”
“Call me Hank. We’ve got long seasons back home. Five of ’em. Our year’s about eighteen Terry months. Cold as hell in winter; eccentric orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring; still plenty cold. Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating; and it’s the season for woodworkers. Our furniture—”
“I’ve seen some of your furniture,” Retief said. “Beautiful work.”
Arapoulous nodded. “All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil and those sulphates give the woods some color, I’ll tell you. Then comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun’s getting closer. Shines all the time. Ever seen it pouring rain in the sunshine? That’s the music-writing season. Then summer. Summer’s hot. We stay inside in the daytime and have beach parties all night. Lots of beach on Lovenbroy; we’re mostly islands. That’s the drama and symphony time. The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we’re close to the center of a globular cluster, you know….”
“You say it’s time now for the wine crop?”
“That’s right. Autumn’s our harvest season. Most years we have just the ordinary crops. Fruit, grain, that kind of thing; getting it in doesn’t take long. We spend most of the time on architecture, getting new places ready for the winter or remodeling the older ones. We spend a lot of time in our houses. We like to have them comfortable. But this year’s different. This is Wine Year.”
Arapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. “Our wine crop is our big money crop,” he said. “We make enough to keep us going. But this year….”
“The crop isn’t panning out?”
“Oh, the crop’s fine. One of the best I can remember. Course, I’m only twenty-eight; I can’t remember but two other harvests. The problem’s not the crop.”
“Have you lost your markets? That sounds like a matter for the Commercial—”
“Lost our markets? Mister, nobody that ever tasted our wines ever settled for anything else!”
“It sounds like I’ve been missing something,” said Retief. “I’ll have to try them some time.”
Arapoulous put his bundle on the desk, pulled off the wrappings. “No time like the present,” he said.
Retief looked at the two squat bottles, one green, one amber, both dusty, with faded labels, and blackened corks secured by wire.
“Drinking on duty is frowned on in the Corps, Mr. Arapoulous,” he said.
“This isn’t drinking. It’s just wine.” Arapoulous pulled the wire retainer loose, thumbed the cork. It rose slowly, then popped in the air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle. “Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn’t join me.” He winked.
Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. “Come to think of it, we also have to be careful about violating quaint native customs.”
Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked at Arapoulous thoughtfully.
“Hmmm. It tastes like salted pecans, with an undercurrent of crusted port.”
“Don’t try to describe it, Mr. Retief,” Arapoulous said. He took a mouthful of wine, swished it around his teeth, swallowed. “It’s Bacchus wine, that’s all. Nothing like it in the Galaxy.” He pushed the second bottle toward Retief. “The custom back home is to alternate red wine and black.”
* * * *
Retief put aside his cigar, pulled the wires loose, nudged the cork, caught it as it popped up.
“Bad luck if you miss the cork,” Arapoulous said, nodding. “You probably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years back?”
“Can’t say that I did, Hank.” Retief poured the black wine into two fresh glasses. “Here’s to the harvest.”
“We’ve got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,” Arapoulous said, swallowing wine. “But we don’t plan to wreck the landscape mining ’em. We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced ’em otherwise. But it took a year, and we lost a lot of men.”
“That’s too bad,” Retief said. “I’d say this one tastes more like roast beef and popcorn over a Riesling base.”
“It put us in a bad spot,” Arapoulous went on. “We had to borrow money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it’s not the same when you’re doing it for strangers.”
“Say, this business of alternating drinks is the real McCoy,” Retief said. “What’s the problem? Croanie about to foreclose?”
“Well, the loan’s due. The wine crop would put us in the clear. But we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn’t a job you can turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn’t if we could. Vintage season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in. First, there’s the picking in the fields. Miles and miles of vineyards covering the mountain sides, and crowding the river banks, with gardens here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine to the pickers. There’s prizes for the biggest day’s output, bets on who can fill the most baskets in an hour…. The sun’s high and bright, and it’s just cool enough to give you plenty of energy. Come nightfall, the tables are set up in the garden plots, and the feast is laid on: roast turkeys, beef, hams, all kinds of fowl. Big salads. Plenty of fruit. Fresh-baked bread…and wine, plenty of wine. The cooking’s done by a different crew each night in each garden, and there’s prizes for the best crews.
“Then the wine-making. We still tramp out the vintage. That’s mostly for the young folks but anybody’s welcome. That’s when things start to get loosened up. Matter of fact, pretty near half our young-uns are born after a vintage. All bets are off then. It keeps a fellow on his toes though. Ever tried to hold onto a gal wearing nothing but a layer of grape juice?”
* * * *
“Never did,” Retief said. “You say most of the children are born after a vintage. That would make them only twelve years old by the time—”
“Oh, that’s Lovenbroy years; they’d be eighteen, Terry reckoning.”
“I was thinking you looked a little mature for twenty-eight,” Retief said.
“Forty-two, Terry years,” Arapoulous said. “But this year it looks bad. We’ve got a bumper crop—and we’re short-handed. If we don’t get a big vintage, Croanie steps in. Lord knows what they’ll do to the land. Then next vintage time, with them holding half our grape acreage—”
“You hocked the
