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smoked, again in the middle, and now once again at the end.
    “Fine cigars are aged properly from the best tobacco. There’s never a big supply of them to begin with, so they’re always more expensive. I understand mine are considered by many to be the best in the Janus String.”
    I nodded. I was experiencing my first nicotine high. A thought crossed my mind. I asked, “How much do these go for?”
    “Last I heard, about a hundred credits.”
    I coughed for a few seconds. “A hundred credits?”
    For perspective, a large meal for two in one of the nicer restaurants on New Texas might run ten credits. I was finishing up the equivalent of ten nice meals, all going up in smoke. I looked over at Kalinowski in astonishment. He barked his laugh again.
    “Who can afford hundred credit cigars?”
    “Who else? State officials. Higher level bureaucrats. Redwood tobacco never makes it to the black market on the streets, m’boy. Stuff this good is only consumed by people like The Old Man and other heads of State.”
    My cigar was winding down, with about an inch left. I did the math and figured I was holding about twenty credits worth of tobacco.
    “Care for another one?”
    “I don’t think I can afford it.”
    He barked his laugh. “Perk of the job, m’boy. One of the many benefits of being out here. All the cigars you could possibly want. It’s probably best we stop for the night anyway. Remember Ulysses S. Grant.”
    I gave him a blank look.
    “You know who Ulysses S. Grant was? Union general … Eighteenth President of the United States?”
    “Yeah, I took American history. Why should I remember U. S. Grant?”
    “Well, he was very popular once he started winning battles for the Union in the American Civil War. A reporter commented in a story about how he liked cigars, and with the technology of the day, early photographs and lithographs, he was sometimes portrayed with one. Legions of adoring fans started sending him cigars. He received boxes upon boxes of them. More than he could possibly smoke. But he tried. At one time he was smoking up to twenty sticks a day.”
    He paused to put down his own dwindling cigar in an ashtray between us, cracked his knuckles then folded his hands behind his head.
    “Eventually he developed throat cancer and died. Very painful. Too many cigars.”
    I looked down at what was left of my own cigar and hurriedly threw it in the ash tray. All the propaganda the State put out about tobacco came back to me.
    “Why are we smoking these things, then?”
    He smiled. “Moderation in everything, m’boy. A cigar every now and then likely won’t kill you. Twenty a day is simply not healthy. The same goes for wine, beer, whiskey, steaks or other fine foods. The lesson from Ulysses S. Grant is, ‘Don’t overdo it.’”

Chapter Five
    The days raced by as I helped Kalinowski gather and tend to the crops and his tobacco warehouse. Although it was still menial labor, the work was different from my duties in Redwood City somehow, out here in the middle of nowhere. For one thing, nobody was forcing me to work. For another, nobody was there to watch my every move. I spent hours and hours in splendid isolation. The food he prepared was great, too. Every three or four nights he’d grab a couple cigars out of the humidor and we’d enjoy them late into the evening.
    After a couple more weeks I made my way back to the QC. It was still where I left it, undisturbed. I fetched a couple vials of Schmidt’s blood and satisfied my needs.
    Time raced on and before I knew it, I’d been at AES 3 for over a month.
    One morning over breakfast Kalinowski said, “Well, got a delivery coming. I’ll send you back with the foodstuff.”
    “Back where?”
    “The Ranger station. In the trees.”
    I finished eating my bacon thinking about this.
    “What if I don’t want to go? What if I just stayed here?”
    “You were heading for the trees when I first saw you, m’boy. Surely you still want to see