Nathan Lowell - Quarter Share

“So that’s your game. I knew you were up to something. Changing the whole trading culture isn’t enough?”

I just chuckled and shrugged. “What can I say, I’m frugal. My mom raised me not to waste anything and when I heard we were giving away sludge cakes as terraforming base, I got this wild idea that there must be something better we could do with it.”

Diane laughed. “You want to make money on sewage?”

I shrugged. “The more money the ship makes, the more money I make. I don’t care what it starts life as, so long as it ends as a cred in my account.”

She looked me up and down before speaking, “Ishmael Wang, I like the way you think.”

Margary Station

2352-January-12

When we got to the Lois’ lock, I turned to Diane. “Come on, I’ll buy ya a coffee.”

“Coffee’s free, ya cheapskate.”

“Okay, then you buy.”

We went to the mess deck where Pip was setting up for lunch. He looked up when we entered. “Where have you two been?”

“We took a tour of a mushroom farm,” I told Pip.

Diane nodded. “Yeah, it actually was quite interesting.”

We settled into a table just as Brill and Francis came in for lunch. Diane waved them over. “You’ll never guess where we’ve been.”

Francis looked at her for a heartbeat. “Mushroom farm.”

Diane started to say, “How-”

Brill interrupted her, “We heard you as we were coming up the passage. I recognize the symptoms so you better spill your beans before your head explodes.”

Diane tried to look innocent. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

It didn’t work. Brill and Francis just looked at her.

She shrugged. “Okay, we’ve been thinking about sludge.”

“Sludge?” Francis repeated.

“Yeah.”

Brill looked at me. “Let’s try you. Do you know what she’s talking about?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s just like Diane said…sludge.”

Brill and Francis started chuckling. Brill looked back and forth between the two of us. “Can you give us a bit more of a clue?”

I took pity on them. “Ever since I heard that we were giving away sludge cakes I’ve had this idea that we might be able to use it in some way. When I learned that Margary is a huge producer of mushrooms it occurred to me that the only thing they have out here is tunnels, dark, and sludge.”

Diane nodded with a rueful grimace on her face. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“So I called up the supplier who sold us the mushrooms for the galley and asked if we could see the facilities. He was nice enough to run us over in his shuttle this morning and we saw a mushroom farm.”

Francis looked at Diane. “And you just went along for the ride?”

She shrugged. “Mr. Cameron was a sweet man who was more than happy to show lil’ ol’ me his great big logs,” she said in her cutie-pie voice.

Brill almost snorted coffee out of her nose laughing. “I wish you would warn me before you do that.”

Francis ignored the performance and prompted me, “I still don’t get it.”

“All their farms are in the residential asteroids. They get the sludge from their environmental sections and use it as the base for a growing medium for the mushrooms.”

Brill frowned. “But it’s sterile.”

I nodded. “That’s actually a good thing. There are plenty of nutrients left in the waste and they’re concentrated. What it is, is dense. They run the sludge cakes through a chipper and then mix it with hydroponics leftovers to add moisture and texture. That keeps the flakes from clumping up tight again. Cameron seemed to indicate it was for nutrients for the mushrooms, but he had a lot of misconceptions.”

Francis and Brill both looked at Diane then.

“What? Why are you lookin’ at lil’ ol’ me?”

Francis snorted. “Yeah. Right.”

I continued without letting them get me off track, “Anyway, they extrude this chipped sludge mixture into loose netting. It looks like sausages only a lot bigger. They inoculate them with…what did he call it, Diane? Not spores.”

“Spawn.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Then they send them into the tunnels to grow. When ready for harvest, the logs are brought back and run through a shaker to separate the mushrooms from the dross. Finally, they freeze dry the results.”

Brill nodded and looked back and forth between Diane and I. “Okay, sounds interesting. But I still don’t see what that has to do with our sludge.”

I shrugged and looked into my coffee mug. “I don’t know. But I just keep thinking there’s something we could do with it. Make it into compost and grow something. I don’t know.”

Francis snorted a laugh. “Really? What would you compost it with? You need plant material, don’t you?”

Diane and I looked at each other before Diane looked back at Francis. “Used algae matrix.”

Brill sat her coffee cup down gently. I could see her and Francis lock eyes across the table and they were both nodding slowly, apparently following the same logic path.

Finally Francis spoke, “That’s brilliant.”

Despite my initial enthusiasm, I was shocked. “You mean it could work?”

Francis shrugged. “I don’t know. We’d have to play with it to find the right mixture, but I can’t imagine why not. All the chemicals are there. The question is structure.”

Brill said what we were all thinking, “Holy crap.”

We all nodded.

My tablet bipped to remind me about my plans for the flea market. “I’m going shopping with Bev. Anybody want to join us?”

Brill shook her head. “Other plans.”

Francis nodded. “You bet.”

Diane popped up from her seat. “Count me in.”

I followed her lead and stood. “Okay, let me see if Bev is ready. Meet you at the lock in what…fifteen ticks?”

They all nodded and I left them there talking about sludge and algae while I headed to deck berthing.

Bev was just buckling into her leathers when I got to the berthing area. “Hey, where have you been all morning?”

“Checking out a mushroom farm.”

“You’re kidding, right?” She shook her head and answered her own question. “No, you’re not. I’m getting to know you well enough by now.”

“Right. I’m not kidding, but I’m ready to go shopping. Is it okay if some others join us.”

She shrugged. “Sure, the more the merrier.”

“Francis and Diane will meet us at the lock. They wanna stock up for St. Cloud.”

She chuckled. “Let’s hope we have as good of luck here as we did in Gugara, eh?” She slammed her locker and we headed for the lock.

The flea market was in full swing and the four of us caravanned through the aisles. There were a lot of stone and metal goods. It didn’t surprise me given the nature of the system. The trick would be to find stuff with low enough mass that we’d be able to get it aboard. As we strolled along, I really began to appreciate Pip’s idea of filling the empty container with freeze-dried mushrooms.

We hadn’t been there long when we came to booth two-sixteen. I recognized the workmanship on display before I realized where we were. Bev introduced us to Ingo Reihtman the guy who made them. He had shocking red hair, redder even than Diane’s and a slight limp. There was no question he was a master of the belt buckle. The majority of them were the size and shape that Beverly had showed us but the variation in use of stone, polish, and pattern were amazing.

I stepped up to him and shook his hand. “Mr. Reihtman, my friend, Philip Carstairs will be around tomorrow-”

He nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes, Pip. I talked with him yesterday and I understand you have mass requirements that need to be satisfied. I look forward to doing business with you. This is a good opportunity for my work to get exposure beyond this system. I am quite excited.”