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“What’s this?” Abby looked up from the conference table. The council had taken over an office suite outside medical for conducting their daily business. Easier for her to be close to patients, and more centrally located than Dante Wallace’s old lair. It was also brighter, cleaner and less freighted with the Old World for everyone else. Sinclair had called up for her and Kane to meet him there. Said he had something to show them.
“From hydroponics,” Sinclair said.
Abby frowned. “It’s a plant.” She poked at the green frond Sinclair had dropped before her. “So?”
“Look at it, Dr. Griffin.”
Abby lifted it up and twisted it in the air, the bright lights eliminating any shadows as she turned the stem, five compound leaflets radiating alternately off a thick, faintly hairy stalk. Slowly the image in an old text rose in her memory, and with it, a name.
“Is this…,” she still couldn’t quite believe it. She looked up at Sinclair, “Cannabis?”
Sinclair laughed. “Two entire grow rooms devoted to the stuff. I’m guessing they get about a metric ton per harvest.”
Andrea Cho walked in. “No need to guess. They kept meticulous records, right in the grow rooms. And yes, just under a ton, four times a year. And it’s really rich stuff, according to the notes. Fantastic THC yields.”
“What the hell did they do with it all?” Abby asked in amazement.
“Wait,” Kane started to snicker, “I know.”
Sinclair was laughing now too, but trying to remain serious. “We haven’t found the records.”
“We will,” Kane was trying not to belly laugh, but the result was barely smothered giggles. “Now that we know what to look for. God knows they accounted for everything else. Even how much shit they dumped.”
“What?” Abby demanded, wondering what in the hell was so funny about discovering you’d just inherited a four-ton-a-year cannabis operation. “You can’t eat the stuff, and you’d need a fraction of that for any useful amount of THC for their small population, even if everyone took it every day.”
“Trade!” Kane was laughing out loud again, wiping his leaking eyes as he did. “Sons of bitches. That’s what they offered. God what a world.”
“Marcus!”
Kane shook his head. “You know we’ve been wondering how their intel on what was happening in Polis, even pretty privileged stuff like the details of clan alliances and trade, was so damn good. Obviously they weren’t out there collecting it themselves. They had to be paying informants for it. We couldn’t figure out how or with what. Now,” he nodded and waved at Sinclair, chortling too hard again to keep talking.
Sinclair finished for him. “Now we know. They were their suppliers.”
“Holy shit,” Abby said. “They weren’t a functioning government at all, anymore, were they? They were nothing but a cartel!”