It was irresistible. She received from him a, packet of astonishingly immense lusavender seeds, great shiny things as big around as a Skandar's eye, and planted them in a remote corner of her land, where there was no likelihood of their cross-pollinating with her normal lusavenders. The seeds sprouted rapidly and from them came plants that differed from the usual kind only in having stems of a thickness two or three times normal. When they flowered, though, the ruffled purple blossoms were enormous, as broad as saucers, and the flowers brought forth pods of awesome length, that at harvest time yielded huge quantities of the giant seeds. Aximaan Threysz was tempted to use them for the autumn planting, and cover all her acreage with the new kind of lusavender in order to reap an amazing bumper crop next winter. But she could not, for she had agreed to turn most of the oversize seed over to Caliman Hayn for laboratory study in Mazadone. He left her enough to plant perhaps a fifth of her land. This season, however, she was instructed to mix the augmented plants among the normal ones to induce interbreeding: the augmented characteristics were thought to be dominant, but that had never been tested on so large a scale.

Though Aximaan Threysz forbade her family to speak of the experiment in Prestimion Vale, it was impossible for long to keep the other farmers from learning of it. The thick-stemmed second-generation plants that sprang up everywhere on her plantation could hardly be concealed, and in one way and another, news of what Aximaan Threysz was doing spread through the Vale. Curious neighbors wangled invitations and stared at the new lusavender in amazement.

But they were suspicious. "Plants like that, they'll suck all the nourishment from the soil in two or three years," some said. "She keeps it up, she'll turn her place into a desert." Others thought the giant seeds surely would yield tasteless or bitter lusavender-meal. A few argued that Aximaan Threysz generally knew what she was doing. But even they were content to let her be the pioneer.

At winter's end she harvested her crop: normal seeds, which were sent off to market as usual, and giant ones, which were bagged and set aside for planting. The third season would tell the tale, for some of the big seeds were of the pure clone and some, probably most, were hybrids between normal and augmented lusavender; and it remained to be seen what sort of plants the hybrid seeds would produce.

In late winter came the time for planting rice, before the floods arrived. When that was done, the higher and drier lands of the plantation received the lusavender seeds; and all through the spring and summer she watched the thick stems rising, the huge flowers unfolding, the heavy pods elongating and turning dark.

From time to time she broke open a pod and peered at the soft green seeds. They were large, no question about that. But their flavor? What if they had no flavor, or a foul one? She had gambled an entire season's production on that.