She went on, “What no one has ever told me, however, is what coin, what medium of exchange we here on Haven use to purchase these off-planet things.”
The footman knocked over an empty cup, making a clatter. “Your pardon, lady,” he said, righting it with a slightly trembling hand.
The noise had drawn Genevieve’s attention away from Veswees’s face, and she missed the glance he shared with the footman, rapt attention mixed at once with apprehension and elation. When she looked up, he was as he had been, pleasantly interested, nothing more.
He said in an innocent tone, “I have wondered about it, too. Perhaps we have artists or singers or people with other talents whose services can be sold,” he murmured.
“Wouldn’t we have heard of this? If someone were that talented, wouldn’t that person have a local reputation? Wouldn’t we have known of him, or her?”
The footman bowed himself away. Veswees waited until the door had closed behind him. “Perhaps the talents are … private ones, Your Ladyship.”
She considered him over the rim of her cup. The sexual innuendo had been explicit. She could neither have missed it nor misinterpreted it. “Do you think so?” she asked, as casually as she could.
He sipped, turned the cup on the saucer, played with the spoon. “Don’t you think our medium of trade must be something like that? This world of ours is poor, as you say. There were no prehistoric forests to store oil and coal for our use, but we have large rivers to provide hydroelectric power. We have a few mines to supply metal, a few forests that give us wood for burning in our stoves. Our population is kept at a level that can be sustained by these rivers, these mines, and these forests. Nonetheless, we must import certain needed minerals for food additives and for our agriculture. We have no gems of note. We have no rare foods or seasonings or wines. We have no rare ores or biologicals that are in demand— or at least none that are mentioned in the marketplace.” He sipped again.
“And then, too, you must have noticed how few . . . pretty young women we have at court.”
She thought back to the recent dinner party. There had been no young woman but herself. The others had all been well past middle age, though they would not have thanked her for so judging them. “I do not consider Havenor to be the most healthful environment, Mr. Veswees. It is chilly here, I am told, even in summer. Young women are of an age to have babies, and perhaps they prefer to stay in the provinces with their children.”
“Perhaps. Certainly motherhood proves difficult for many of our noblewomen.”
She frowned. “Why so?”
He shrugged. “It seems to be a pattern among some of my favorite clients, young women who came here for a time, who returned home to have their children and who never returned. All too often I have heard that they succumbed, usually to batfly fever …”
“But the court has off-planet doctors,” she said.
“Who can do nothing for batfly fever, or so I’ve heard.”
“Well then,” she said. “Tell me about batfly fever, for it is one of the subjects I must learn about.”
“Where did you live, before you came here?”
“At school in Wantresse. Or at Langmarsh House, also in Wantresse.”
“Wantresse is hill country, and you were fortunate to live high up,” he said. “I am told the batfly flourishes at lower altitudes, especially in the moist herbage along the rivers and the lakeshores. The flies are said to carry the fever virus in their blood, which would do us no harm if it stayed there. The flies, however, are said to be infested with mites that suck up the virus, and when the batflies are flying, they are also shedding mites onto everything below, trees, people, animals. The mites are tiny, transparent, almost invisible, and when they burrow into a person seeking blood, the person gets the virus.”
“But not in the hills?”
“Evidently not, nor along the shore of salt seas. The batflies, I am told, prefer rainy woods along freshwater rivers and ponds and lakes and during wet years there are millions of batflies dropping zillions of mites onto people, though in drier years, one hardly hears of a case.”