String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [4]
Unfortunately, Tom had not been able to find anyone who shared his enthusiasm. Even Harry was resistant to the serial’s peculiar charms, and B’Elanna…forget about it. When Tom had shown her the second chapter, all she could do was pick it apart: “Why are there sparks coming out of the engine? Why is it smoking? Why is the smoke drifting down? They’re supposed to be in space!”
Tom sighed. He loved B’Elanna very much, but every relationship had its challenges. Feeling that he had let her down in the entertainment department, Tom had cast about for some way to please his girlfriend and found his answer: mushrooms.
B’Elanna might not know fine entertainment when she saw it, but she appreciated good fungus when it was set down before her. He didn’t know the entire story, but from what he could tell, Miral, B’Elanna’s mother, had tried to make her daughter subsist entirely on Klingon food. Alas, B’Elanna had disappointed her, showing very little stomach for either gagh or heart of targ, much preferring less robust offerings of human cuisine, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas, and deep-fried breaded cheese. After John Torres had left his wife and the battle lines in the ceaseless war between mother and daughter began to be drawn, B’Elanna had made food one of the main weapons in her arsenal. Few things, she had told Tom, had delighted her as much as the reaction a dish of sautéed mushrooms and onions over risotto would provoke.
The last few months had been difficult ones for B’Elanna. News of the destruction of the Maquis had hit her hard, and though he hadn’t been able to devote as much time to helping her out of her funk as he would have liked, when the opportunities arose he did what he could. On one or two occasions, food had done the trick, so, at Tom’s request, Neelix had tried to find something sufficiently mushroomlike on their various resupply stops. Alas, the resourceful Talaxian had not been successful, and though replicators could do a lot of things well, mushrooms were not one of them. Then, a couple of months previously, Tom had been chatting with Tak, the Bolian who headed up hydroponics, and learned that there was a small store of mushroom spores in stores.
“Why don’t we grow some?” Tom had asked.
Tak had hesitated, then had gone the dark blue Bolians do when they’re embarrassed. “Compost,” he said.
“Compost?” Tom asked. “You mean like…”
“Organic waste matter, yes.”
“There are a lot of people on this ship,” Tom replied. “Organic matter shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Acquiring the raw matter is not the problem,” Tak said. “Processing it is. Fungus requires very precise mixtures of plant materials and organic matter. Growing spores in a hydroponics medium is difficult and time-consuming. More trouble than it’s worth, really.” He made a twiddling gesture with his fingers that Tom knew meant “resource conservation.”
“But you have spores,” Tom stated flatly.
“Sure. In cryostorage.”
“Could I have some?”
“Perhaps.”
Tom sighed. Shipboard economies could be so trying sometimes. Fortunately, he had something Tak wanted rather badly—holodeck time. A deal was struck and Tom got two tubes of spores. Harry, another mushroom fiend, agreed to let Tom build the racks in his closet in exchange for a percentage of the crop. Harry rated a single room and did not seem to mind the smell, so all went swimmingly. In less than five weeks, the creminis were full and plump. The portobellos were a full thirteen centimeters across and ready for harvesting and stuffing. And tonight, oh, tonight was the night. He had even managed to score five hundred milliliters of deck five cabernet, the kind B’Elanna liked so much. No early shift tomorrow, either, so magic might well be in the air. The portion of his brain that Tom Paris allowed to think about such things rubbed its tiny hands together in anticipation.
Three meters behind his left shoulder,