Page 11 of Alien's Heart
Odd that she trusted the stranger in a purple velvet jacket sitting next to her.
She shouldn’t. He grabbed that guy by the throat and looked ready to strangle him just for being rude to her.
For her.
Damn if that sneaky little thought didn’t make her giddy, which said more about herself than Nox and his purple velvet jacket.
Facing forward, she watched Nox from the corner of her eye. He looked polished, completely unfazed by the heat. One arm rested on the open windowsill. The rushing wind from the cracked window tousled his curls like it was a glamor photo shoot, and not the same chaotic tornado whipping Ruth’s hair into her face. His tail seemed to occupy all the space between them.
“Tell me about your research,” Nox said.
“It’s not that interesting.” People only asked to be polite. Their eyes glazed over when she explained monoculture crops and their vulnerabilities.
“You must find it so, to stay despite the hostility of a disinherited kit and a community turned against you.”
“Well, you make it sound dramatic. It’s really not a soap opera. Oh, a soap opera is a—”
“A melodramatic program. I have heard this term before.”
Embarrassment rose in her cheeks. She didn’t mean to talk down, butlecture modewas one of her default settings, right up there withsuper focusedandbitter sarcasm. She got excited by an idea or new information and had to share.
Rather than dwell on her embarrassment, she launched into an explanation. “There’s this fruit on Earth called a banana. It’s a monoculture, meaning there are huge farms of the same plant. Genetically the same, because bananas don’t reproduce on their own. New plants are cuttings from older specimens. So massive farms of the literal same crop. It’s efficient and cost-effective, but if the crop gets a disease, like a fungus, it’s a goner. It was called Bananageddon. Banana armageddon,” she added, in case the word did not translate. Implanted translation chips were good, but they had hiccups when it came to idioms and portmanteaus. “This fungus wiped out the commercial banana, the Gros Michel. It was replaced with the Cavendish, which didn’t taste as good but was good enough.”
She glanced over to Nox to see if he was bored or still listening. He was still with her, but Ruth thought it best to cut the lecture short.
“Anyway, no lessons were learned. The same thing happened to the Cavendish and that’s why bananas are blue now.” She paused. “They used to be yellow.”
Nox’s lips twitched with a grin. “Interesting. I take it that bananas are relevant to your current situation.”
“Sorry. I tend to overexplain when I’m excited.”
“Do not apologize. I find it interesting.”
“Wow. I can’t believe you’re just going to sit there and lie to me like that. No one finds bananas and fungus interesting.” Was she flirting? That sounded flirty. Nerdy but flirty.
She glanced at Nox again, to see if he noticed the flirty and if he was receptive. Which didn’t matter because he was her employee and flirting was completely inappropriate. There was a fundamentally unbalanced power dynamic between them. Although she doubted that the meager wages she offered, plus room and board, would pressure Nox into doing something he didn’t want to. He struck her as the type who did as he pleased.
She cleared her throat. “Long story short, the main grain of Corra is in a similar situation. All these fields are a single organism connected by a massive root system.” She waved a hand at the green fields as the vehicle rolled past. “There’s a fungus that’s destroying crops. It’s resistant to most treatments. Right now, it’s contained on the southern continent, but it’s only a matter of time before it makes its way north. We need a crop that’s resistant to infection. That’s what the professor and I were working on.”
He scratched under his chin. “Have you been successful?”
“Maybe. In a controlled environment, yeah.” She skipped explaining all the technical details. Absolutely no one was interested in that, not even curious nerds. If they really wanted to know, they could read the journal articles she’d co-authored over the last two years. “Right now, we’re—I’m—testing our specimen in real-world conditions. It needs to hold up with extremes of Corravian weather.”
“And be resistant to fungus.”
Warmth spread through her chest. He was listening to her. “Yeah,” she agreed. “The current crop is doing well but I need to test that. I’ll keep one field as a control and infect another field with the fungus. I just haven’t been able to get to it because of everything.” She waved a hand to indicate her general busyness. Running around fixing security systems and scrubbing graffiti kept her from more important work. “It worked in the past on Earth. Not grain but trees. The American Chestnut went extinct from blight, and an engineered blight-resistant variety brought it back.”
“You need me to ensure that no one interferes,” he said.
“Basically. I can’t tell you how bad it would be if the planet lost its stable crop. We’d have to import grain. Food prices would soar. People would go hungry. This is important,” she said, turning off the main road. “My work matters.”
“Is this why the kit is upset with you? He plans to steal this research?”
It took Ruth a second to realize that Nox meant Geral. “Probably not. The research wasn’t the professor’s intellectual property. There’s a contract with a large agricorp. They technically own it.”
“It is information. There will always be a buyer,” Nox said.
“Corporate espionage? Maybe,” she said, even if she didn’t think so. Geral wanted her off the property. If he wanted to steal the research and sell it to the highest bidder, he could disable the security system and have at it. No making her life hell necessary.
