Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

always been a very smooth liar. Where he came from, it was a survival skill.
    “We also do well on the quality of the pearls,” Hannah said. “More than sixty percent of our pearls are good. The average for other farms is thirty-five percent. Another ten percent produces junk. Our percentage of junk is just under six.”
    Archer grunted. Len must have loved throwing his pearls on the table and daring any of the other farmers to prove that they were the result of anything other than exceptional skill.
    “Len was always working on our percentages,” Hannah continued. “He said they were good, but not good enough. Even for us, pearl farming wasn’t a sure thing.”
    Absently Archer nodded, but his eyes were looking past her. She took another breath and tried to think where she had left off in describing the yearly cycle of pearl farming.
    “Growing-out area,” he said so softly that she barely heard.
    “Oh. Um. Growing out. That’s where we have long lines snaking through rows of buoys. Panels of oysters hang down off the lines. They dangle there and grow while we begin the year fishing for wild shell—oysters—in January and February.”
    “Wild oysters.” He smiled slightly. “You make it sound like something you have to chase down and lasso.”
    Hannah’s laugh was as soft as the air. And like the air, it rippled over Archer, bringing all of his senses alive.
    “Almost,” she said. “Behind a ship the men dangle off long ropes, towed only a few feet off the bottom. The trick is to stay close enough to the bottom to see the wild shell—and oysters could teach a chameleon how to hide—but not so close as to stir up the silt because then you can’t see anything at all.”
    “So you just go out there and grab what you can?”
    This time her laugh wasn’t soft or amused. “Not a chance. The government licenses growers to take a certain amount of wild shell and to raise a certain amount of domestic shell. Some growers get a higher quota than others, according to a formula only the government can understand.”
    “Politics.”
    “It’s a government, isn’t it?”
    “Which, translated, means that the licenses can be used to reward or punish.”
    “The bureaucrats will deny it to the last breath.”
    “Did Pearl Cove have trouble getting wild shell licenses?” he asked.
    “We didn’t get quite enough to survive, much less to grow. That’s why Len had to find other ways to bring up our production in relation to other pearl farms.”
    “Why was the government giving you a hard time?”
    “They thought Len was holding back the best of his pearl production and selling it outside the Australian-Japanese cartel.”
    Silently Archer wished he had never raised the question. But having done so, it would seem odd to an eavesdropper if he just let the matter drop.
    “Was he?” Archer asked, but the sudden pressure of his fingers on Hannah’s arm said, Be careful.
    “No.”
    He relaxed his grip and returned to the tiny, hidden movements on her skin that pleased his fingertips. “Governments are always suspicious.”
    “They had reason to be. Less than half of our oysters were for normal sales. The rest were experimentals. Experiments fail a lot more often than they succeed.”
    “After you collect wild shell, what do you do?” Archer asked, wanting to move on to safer topics.
    “We let it ‘rest’ for a month or two, to recover from the trauma of being handled and moved to a new place. The shells have to be watched and cleaned. And the shells we seeded the previous year have to be X-rayed to see if the bead has been rejected. If so, we seed again.”
    “One shell, one bead, one pearl?”
    “Some of the farmers use several beads, but the result is almost always inferior to just one.”
    “What’s wrong with them?”
    “The pearls or the farmers?” Hannah asked dryly.
    “The pearls. I’ve given up trying to understand people.”
    She smiled and laughed softly. Archer’s fingers stilled for a moment, then began moving again, enjoying. Caressing.
    “The Japanese started multiple seeding with their little palm-sized Akoya oysters.” Hannah’s voice hitched at the feel of his hands moving lightly on her skin. “They can get lots of pearls from one shell, but the pearls just aren’t good. Even big oysters like the ones we have in the South Seas don’t seem to be able to produce more than one quality pearl at a time. The nacre gets too thin or the shape is off or the beads are