Read The Sheep Look Up for Free Online

Roland had ever stumped around in the slush below a derrick. The fortune had long ago grown to the point where it was not only self-supporting but capable of fission, like an amoeba. Roland's portion was his own, greedily clung to, and destined to descend to his only son Hector (whom Hugh regarded on the strength of their sole meeting as a cotton-wool-wrapped snob…but that couldn't be his fault at fifteen, must be his father's); Jacob had vested his in the Bamberley Trust Corporation twenty years ago, since when it had multiplied cancerously.
    Hugh had no idea how many people were involved in cultivating the funds of the Trust, since he had never been to the New York office where its tenders hung out, but he pictured a blurred group of several hundred pruning, manuring, watering. The horticultural images came readily to hand because his adopted father had turned the former family ranch, here in Colorado, into one of the finest botanical gardens in the country. All that had taken on reality in his mind, however, as far as the Trust was concerned, was the central fact that the sum was now so vast, Jacob Bamberley could afford to run this, the world's largest hydroponics factory, as a charitable undertaking. Employing six hundred people, it sold its product at cost and sometimes below, and every last ounce of what was made here was shipped abroad.
    Lord Bountiful. Well, it was a better way to use inherited money than the one Roland had chosen, lavishing it all on yourself and your son so that he would never have to face the harsh real world…
    "Cheese," Mr. Bamberley said again. They were overlooking a number of perfectly round vats in which something that distantly resembled spaghetti was being churned in a clear steaming liquid. A masked man in a sterile coverall was taking samples from the vats with a long ladle.
    "You give it some kind of chemical treatment here?" Hugh ventured.
    He hoped this wasn't going to drag on too long; he'd had diarrhea this morning and his stomach was grumbling again.
    "Minor correction," Mr. Bamberley said, eyes twinkling. "
    'Chemical' is full of wrong associations. Cassava is tricky to handle, though, because its rind contains some highly poisonous compounds.
    Still, there's nothing extraordinary about a plant some bits of which are safe to eat and other bits of which are not. Probably you can think of other examples?"
    Hugh repressed a sigh. He had never said so outright, being far too conscious of the obligations he owed to Jack (orphaned at fourteen in an urban insurrection, dumped in an adolescents' hostel, picked apparently at random to be added to this plump smiling man's growing family of adopted sons: so far, eight), but there were times when he found his habit of asking this land of question irritating. It was the mannerism of a poor teacher who had grasped the point about making children find out for themselves but not the technique of making them want to ask suitable questions.
    He said tiredly, "Potato tops."
    "Very good!" Mr. Bamberley clapped him on the shoulder and turned once more to point at the factory floor.
    "Considering the complexity of the treatment which is required before cassava yields an edible product-"
    Ah, shit. He's off on another of his lousy lectures.
    "-and the unlikelihood of anyone stumbling on it by accident, it's always struck me as one of the clearest proofs of supernal intervention in the affairs of primitive mankind," Mr. Bamberley declaimed. "Here's no comparative triviality like oxalic acid, but the deadliest of poisons, cyanide! Yet for centuries people have relied on cassava as a staple diet, and survived, and indeed flourished! Isn't it marvelous when you think of it like that?"
    Maybe. Except I don't think of it like that. I picture desperate men struggling on the verge of starvation, trying everything that occurs to them in the faint hope that the next person who samples this strange plant won't drop dead.
    "Coffee's another case. Who, without