Olan Thorensen - Cast Under an Alien Sun

Home wasn’t Berkeley or his parents’ house where he was raised or even Earth. It was … but wasn’t. Then where? Here in Caedellium? He didn’t know. There was a sense of having lost something he hadn’t been aware of possessing, overlaid with the sense of the need to find something he couldn’t quite identify.

Sounds coming from another room diverted his thoughts. His attention shifted to his nose. Biscuits and bacon . Elian in the kitchen making breakfast. Sourdough biscuits that could have come from his mother’s kitchen. A not-quite-bacon smoked meat made from a wild herbivore—a slothin. His stomach growled. Confusion set aside for the moment, he rose and dressed. Life went on. Breakfast and then head to the shops.

The months whirled past Yozef. The ether business had taken off, with orders coming in from a dozen provinces and ether production handled by the workshop crew with minimal oversight by Yozef. He stopped in occasionally to check whether they were maintaining safety procedures. The men acted skeptical of his early warnings, until their cavalier attitude to Yozef’s safety obsession tempered after a lesson in the explosive potential of ether. Fortunately, singed hair, missing eyebrows, red skin, and moderate shop repairs were the extent of the event.

Freed from constant attention to ether and ethanol production, Yozef’s attention had shifted to soap. The single Abersford soap maker, Pollar Penwick, produced a single bar soap used for both body and clothes. The bar cleaned but was harsh and gave Yozef a mild rash if he rubbed himself too hard. Penwick’s initial skepticism that there would be markets for different soaps converted to enthusiasm with the demand for the first two products. By the time Yozef was ready to move on to other projects, the soap maker was producing other bars, liquid soaps, soaps better for clothes, and harsher versions for industrial-level cleaning. Not all products were well received by the citizen of Abersford and surroundings, but enough were that orders increased each sixday.

The soap maker expanded into a small factory set outside Abersford and near the new spirits production facility in an area Yozef now called his “industrial park.” He wasn’t interested in following the soap business and was happy to have better soaps for himself and a cut of new profits—content to let Penwick reap most of the benefits. Months passed, and he assumed all proceeded well in the soap world, until Cadwulf noticed several wagons loading at the soap factory late one night and then moving with deliberate stealth down the road toward Gwillamer Province. Exactly what Cadwulf was doing in the middle of the night in the village Yozef never asked, but he suspected it involved one of the village’s young females. Whatever the cause of his presence, Cadwulf shared with Yozef his suspicion that not all records of soap shipments were accurate.

Over Penwick’s protests, Yozef insisted Cadwulf examine mandated operation records, which confirmed his suspicions. Penwick had recorded only half of the soap production, as required by their partnership.

Yozef, with Cadwulf and Carnigan beside him—Carnigan, in case they needed intimidation or security—confronted Penwick. After first denying any impropriety, he admitted the obvious, though instead of being apologetic, the shameless Penwick told Yozef that since they had no written agreement filed with the district registrar he was under no obligation to share anything with Yozef, and that Yozef should be grateful he was getting any share of the new business at all. Although customs and laws of Keelan were on the side of the soap maker, who had counted on Yozef’s reputation for being mild-mannered, the brazenness turned out to be a monumental mistake.

“You mean he gets away with cheating me!” Yozef ranted after the meeting with Penwick.

“I’m sorry, Yozef, but it’s not considered cheating, since you didn’t follow the requirement to register such agreements. Everyone will see Penwick as untrustworthy, but they’d see you as stupid for not protecting yourself.”

“And how about yourself?” Carnigan dug at Cadwulf, who blushed.

“Carnigan’s right. It’s also my fault. You were handling the soap making, and I was so involved with the bank, I assumed you remembered the lessons about registering all transactions. I’m sorry, Yozef, blame also has to rest on me.”

Yozef took several deep breaths. “All right. I screwed up, and you didn’t help, Cadwulf, but the result is that Penwick gets away with stealing, or whatever else you call it?”

“Sorry again, Yozef,” Cadwulf said. “But yes, that’s the way it is.”

Yozef’s fiery anger abated into cold fury . “So be it. I have enough money to live well, but I hate being screwed over by a dickhead. If I couldn’t get Penwick to give me my agreed-on share, I’ll take all of his business.”

Yozef spent the next three hours querying Cadwulf, then Filtin Fuller and brewer Galfor on Keelan business customs. Caedellium had no history with excessive monopolies. The deliberate undercutting of competition to drive them out of business was not yet so serious an issue on Caedellium as to need intervention by a district boyerman or the clan hetman. By the same time the next day, Yozef had hired away half of the workers in the soap factory, bought a building, and arranged for construction of all of the needed facilities for making soaps. Within two sixdays, they were operational and selling soap at half the price it cost to make, with Yozef easily absorbing the losses from his ether and ethanol income. Within another two sixdays, Penwick failed to secure intervention by the abbot, the district boyerman, and a final appeal to the Keelan Hetman. Two sixdays later, the soap maker attempted to meet to apologize and repay the debt. Yozef ignored the overture. A month later, the soap maker closed his shop, sold all of his holdings in Abersford, and moved to Adris Province to start a new soap business. Before he left, Yozef sent him a letter explaining that he would consider their original arrangement still active in Adris. Yozef would get his originally agreed-on share, and as long as that happened, he wouldn’t repeat driving Penwick out of business no matter where he moved on Caedellium.

As for the soap workers, all ended up working for Yozef’s soap factory at higher pay than before. The senior worker, one of the first to jump to Yozef, was given a share to manage the business, and even then, Yozef’s share of the profits was more than with Penwick.

Cadwulf and Carnigan saw to it that details of the soap maker’s fate widely circulated. The lesson learned by the Abersford soap maker was hard, and the episode became incorporated into descriptions of the strange man who had washed up on a Caedellium beach. A mild-mannered man of average appearance, except for unusual light-bluish-gray eyes. An honest man, generous to workers, teller of jokes—and ruthless if crossed.

Days grew shorter, temperatures lowered, and foliage peaked in a kaleidoscope of color. Yozef stood mesmerized, facing the forested hills north of Abersford. He’d thought New England in the fall was spectacular the one time he’d visited at the right time. But THIS!

The End-of-Harvest Festival fell on a perfect day. Wispy clouds set off a bright midday sun and a blue sky. Only the occasional tinge of coolness in the breeze foretold of the coming winter and shortening days. The two-day event bustled and sprawled across a large field between Abersford and the abbey. All work stopped for those two days, and half of Yozef’s workers had failed to show up for work the day before to prepare for various events and competitions. Now, Yozef stood among the throng attending the opening ceremony speeches, most mercifully short.