On the way back to Selegania, Righty’s elation was suddenly met by a horrifying realization. While the seeds had proven themselves a steadfast supply for his junkyard dealings—and in fact he still had a considerable amount left of the sole barrel he had opened, with eleven still untouched—the scope of his newly discovered scheme suddenly drove home the realization of the frighteningly finite nature of his current resources.
He had noticed from time to time with frustration that none of the large, fleshy green bulbs of his plants—or any other part thereof—yielded seeds. And yet so adequate had they been to meeting the demands of his small-scale operation that his frustration had never quite blossomed into making inquiries, perhaps because he suspected that would mean consulting with someone who knew his real name, and he would greatly prefer that nobody associate the name Richard Simmers with Smokeless Green.
But as clouds enveloped his face thousands of feet above the ground that imprisons most men, he realized now that he urgently needed to find a solution to this problem. He knew he had been lucky so far with the lack of any loss of plants to theft or blight in the forest, and he could not expect such good fortune to endure forever. If he were to have even a slightly realistic chance of bringing to fruition the grand operation that had elated him moments earlier, he would have to quickly begin planting on such a great scale that his clandestine acre garden would seem like a speck of ink within a thick book.
This agricultural operation would quickly exhaust the barrels of seeds, and the ensuing plants would be difficult to hide . . . and to protect. The realization of this vulnerability reinforced his incipient belief that in this business every step forward put either him or his assets at greater risk.
But since he had by now become utterly determined to achieve his poorly outlined dreams of power and riches, such obstacles as this presented no realistic chance of prompting a sincere introspection regarding whether to proceed, but left only the question of how best to do so.
His first inclination was Sally Redelmin, a small business owner who sold an array of herbal remedies. These had for a brief time included Smokeless Green—recommended mostly to men who suffered from severe fatigue due to their long hours in the lumberyard, although she was well aware many of her customers used it only so that they could both lengthen and magnify the intensity of their drinking binges.
But to the best of Righty’s knowledge, Smokeless Green had disappeared from her shelves the moment SISA was announced. As to whether she might be engaged in a little under-the-table business, he couldn’t be sure, as he had made himself virtually a complete stranger to everyone in town. He rarely stepped foot there, unless it was to go take a quick peek at his hardware store and make sure everything was running smoothly—or in order to do some tedious magical accounting to enable him to put at least a little of his junkyard earnings into the bank. Robert handled the store excellently according to his observations, and there had been little need for Righty to have any interactions with the customers.
Thus, privy to town gossip he was not.
Janie was far better acquainted with Sally and would probably have made excellent counsel as to whether it would be brash to approach Sally with a botanical question on a banned substance. In fact, Janie would have even been an excellent person to make such a daring inquiry. But accosting Janie with this logistical hurdle would likely yield little besides a divorce and a bitter enemy.
Even if Sally consented to tackle the dilemma, he would thereby betray his illicit business activities to a denizen of Ringsetter, something he was reasonably sure no one there was yet aware of. That meant a mouth and a tongue to worry about. And if a tongue wagged about Smokeless Green and Righty Rick in the same sentence in Ringsetter, it would be the hours, rather than the days, that would be counted before several men developed an itch for exploring the woods around Righty’s house.
By moving his seeds to the ranch, he had reduced the consequences of someone discovering the garden behind his house from that of a nightmare of catastrophic proportions to a severe setback that would simply freeze his cash flow until the plants at the ranch began to grow.
Perhaps you ought to wait until they have grown.
He liked this idea. It was a hard medicine to swallow, but he realized that once he had a large crop of Green going at his ranch and all of his plants from the woods transported as well, it would be considerably less risky to speak to the botanist.
But what if it takes her months to fix the problem? Or if she can’t fix it at all?
This put a new spin on things. Sally might be unable to figure out why the seeds only produced seedless plants and whether there was any way to fix the problem. And it might take her a year or more just to figure out that she had no clue. Then what? Another botanist? Who? Where?
He realized that the seemingly perfect fix of waiting to inquire relied on the premise of the solution to the problem being timely discoverable. That might be a false premise.
If you wait for your plants at the ranch to grow, then move the plants behind your home, then consult Sally, and she can’t fix the problem, you lose about a month or so. If you consult her now and she blabs, your plants will be discovered near your Ringsetter home, your cash flow will grind to a complete halt for a month or so, and you will be lucky if you aren’t arrested to boot.
This adequately convinced Righty that the risks of consulting her now seemed to outweigh the benefits.
Throughout the journey back to Ringsetter, Righty had been pleased to notice that about every few minutes he passed a konulan in the sky, which then began to accompany him and Harold. It seemed to Righty that Harold’s chain of communication was likely adequate to enable near instantaneous contact.
After Harold set Righty down in the woods, he temporarily felt a sense of relief. He believed he had come to an adequate balance between necessary action and prudent waiting, but this feeling proved illusory as another apprehension quickly assailed his mind.
Planting this acre garden had been a project done little by little, much of it at a time when he could not even be entirely sure he would ever make use of its yield. And even still it had proven itself to be a rather laborious task. If he were to begin planting at the ranch in earnest, it would be a question of massive manual labor that would make this look like a quick chore.
Are you going to ask the ranch hands for help?
He supposed there would be no way to keep the garden hidden from them. And since they could greatly ease the burden of his labor, why not go ahead and face the inevitable truth that these men were either going to have to become complicit to some extent in his operations or be replaced?