Free Earth Legend by Florence Witkop

looked around in a seemingly
aimless way that took in everything, then he stepped closer to me
and slipped one arm around my waist, a seemingly casual gesture but
no one was fooled. I was under his protection and no one had better
mess with me. His gesture would keep them well behaved while he was
there. After he left would be a different matter.
    "Mind if we take a look around?" he asked
mildly. The head grower blinked and then nodded reluctantly. He
couldn't very well start an argument with the head of Security,
which meant Cullen was higher up in the pecking order of the
Destiny. So all he did wak made a half turn to indicate where we
should start our tour. Cullen's arm around my waist tightened as he
moved us in the direction the grower had pointed. The heart of the
greenhouses.
    As we neared the first table in the first
greenhouse, I felt something. A wrongness. An itch at the back of
my neck. Everything looked fine to the untrained eye, but my eye
was trained and had been honed over a lifetime of watching things
grow. Of helping them grow. Of fixing problems when they didn't
grow right. So I knew that the plants in that greenhouse were in
trouble and that trouble was worse than Wilkes Zander had
intimated.
    I felt their pain in my gut but any
experienced botanist even those without my extra senses could see
the slight droop to the leaves and the thinness of the stems. There
was also a lack of health in the roots that I couldn't see but
could sense. The scientists in the other room knew I saw it because
they saw it. And they didn't like the fact that I knew they had a
problem.
    The head grower had followed us. I turned,
still wrapped in Cullen's arm, and gave him a questioning look. He
shrugged. "A small problem. Nothing we can't handle." He dared me
to argue further.
    "I'm sure you'll fix things." I subsided and
let Cullen sweep me away from the grower and the others still
standing where we'd left them. We went to the other side of the
main room, into a second greenhouse. I cried privately for the
plants that were struggling in this alien environment but there was
nothing I could do. Not now. My only influence at the moment was
with the apple orchard and the cherry bushes. They were fine and
once I was back home in New Rochelle I'd try to figure out a way to
help the poor plants in the greenhouses without appearing to do so.
Because the botanists who worked there would tear me limb from limb
if I did anything noticeable.
    The head grower left us alone as Cullen
half-dragged me between the rows of tables to still a third
greenhouse filled with tomato plants. There were acres of them, all
red and ripe but with something subtly wrong, something I could see
and the other botanists could see but Cullen was clueless about. He
stopped. "Sorry about their stupidity, Elle."
    He turned me until I stood before him. We
were inches apart. He'd probably not been this close to another
human being for years, at least not willingly. A whiff of his
uniform, the soap he used to wash it, the leather belt and the
metal buttons washed over me. And something else. Cullen Vail
himself.
    He clearly hadn't expected us to be so close
when he brought me around and it rendered him speechless for a
moment. He took a step backwards and bumped into a table filled
with growing tomatoes. They'd been watered recently, they were wet,
and droplets cascaded over him, spotting his immaculate uniform,
beading on his perfect hair, pearling his skin. Not knowing what
else to do, we both stared at the drops until they soaked into his
uniform or evaporated. It took a while.
    "I didn't know they'd react so badly." He
scowled at the wet spots on his uniform as if staring would scare
them into drying faster. "They shouldn't do that. They are
professionals."
    "That's the problem."
    He slumped as he realized what I'd said. "I
brought someone into their domain and they feel threatened."
    "Yes."
    He sighed, a sound pulled from his toes.
"Every time I try to do something