Freedom's Ransom

Chapter Fourteen

Everyone was awake on the call and came out quickly to eat their first meal of the day. Then Peran went to see if Natchi had arrived with his lift as he had agreed the previous evening. Peran had sneaked a piece of good Botany bread, well lathered with honey, to give to Natchi. They had struck up quite a friendship. Natchi was there and grateful for the bread, which he said he had never tasted the like of. Peran had accessed a recipe for the stuff from the ship's library but didn't know where some of the ingredients might be had. He didn't know what "butter" was, or "flour" or "yeast."

However, Natchi knew a great many things and would work on the problem. At least they had the method to make bread and knew its ingredients. You couldn't know if you could make things until you knew what they were comprised of. Which was why Peran's father was here on Barevi-to find the component parts needed for the comm satellites and other such highly technical things, which were supposed to make a vast number of things "better." Peran already thought "life" was different and "better" when he recalled-which he did not often do-that time of his life spent without his father and being punished by his aunt and uncle for things that, for the most part, Peran didn't even know he'd done wrong. He'd warned Bazil and thus prevented his brother from receiving like measures of "corrective" discipline. Now that his father was here, it was always "better." He would have liked being with his father sooner, but life in the Masai camp had been very interesting, too, and Chief Materu fair in his judgments. He never had understood what his father, who acted in all ways honorably, had done to deserve being an outcast from his family.

Peran, with Bazil's assistance, transferred the cartons of packed beans to the lift. By then everyone was ready to go, Clime carrying the hottle of coffee left over from breakfast. He had poured a cup for Natchi, who was quite willing to drink it down with the bread Peran had given him.

"The last of the bread is in today's sandwiches," Kris announced as she deposited the basket-a hand-woven one from Botany-on the lift bed.

"Is it hard to make bread, Kris?" Peran asked, winking at Natchi. "No, but you need certain things one can't find here on Barevi." "I thought Barevi had everything," Bazil replied, eyes wide in surprise.

"Not quite everything," Zainal said, laughing and ruffling his son's hair.

"What, for instance?" Peran asked. "Milk. "

"That white stuff you made us drink. The cow's milk? From Kenya?"

"Very nutritious," Kris said firmly.

"Doesn't it come in cans, too?" Ferris asked.

"It does, but I haven't seen any here in the food stalls," Kris replied.

"What else?"

"Flour, usually fine ground from wheat or corn."

"And?" Ferris prompted since Kris's intonation suggested flour was not the final missing ingredient.

"Yeast. Which I haven't ever seen here. Yeast is a leavening, which causes the bread flour to rise in the baking. Similar, I think, to your meal cakes."

"Meal cakes. Phooey," Bazil said, having eaten too many under-and overdone meal cakes as a child.

"But you like bread," Kris countered.

"Botany bread, yes," Bazil agreed amiably, qualifying his taste. "Surely we can find a substitute for yeast, and maybe cans of milk," Ferris said.

"Quite likely," Zainal replied, noticing Ferris's speculative expres-sion. "But these are not things easily found or: acquired."

Kris rolled her eyes because Ferris was not above proving doubters wrong, and Zainal had probably just piqued him professionally. She devoutly hoped that Ferris would take the hint, and he must have, be cause he shot her a hurt, accusing look. She wondered whether she should warn Floss and Clime to reinforce her warning to curb his ac-quisitive tendencies. On the way to their stalls, she made sure to point out the triangle, where minor market offenses were punished with lashes of a particularly nasty whip. There were no such things as trials or sentences in Barevi. Corporal punishment for infractions of the market laws, like thieving, was swift and did not allow for appeals. While Ferris looked sturdier than Ditsy, his undernourished bones were fragile. She didn't want to think of him under the whip.