Retief Unbound by Keith Laumer Read Free Book Online Page A

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 gettin' 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 on barges 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 and
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 and 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, and swallowed. "It's Bacchus wine, that's all." 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, and 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 the 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; we had to start exporting art work too.
Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when