Anywhere but Here

12

“Lunch?” he asked Donna as they bounded through the snowdrifts after the Frenchman.

“It sounds like fun. Who else do you know who can say they’ve had lunch with a French person?”

“Nobody,” Trent said, “And that includes us if we want to stay out of jail. It may be just lunch out here, but back home it’s fraternizing with the enemy.”

“Fraternizing,” she said, and she laughed. “A French word. I’d love to see them charge us with that.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Trent said, but he couldn’t help smiling. If anybody could make the court look ridiculous over a single word, it would be Donna.

Big clouds of snow billowed up behind the other vehicle. Trent had to hang back to keep from getting blinded by it. “I wonder why they settled here?” he said. “They have the whole planet to choose from. You’d think they would pick someplace warmer.”

“It probably was warmer when they chose it,” Donna said. “Seasons change. And some people like winter.”

That was true enough. Trent didn’t mind it himself, but he appreciated easing into it a little more gradually, preferably after a long, hot summer. He’d just endured a long winter back home, and their day on Onnescu wasn’t nearly enough warmth to make him happy to see snow again.

On the other hand, it made for some excellent four-wheeling. The snow was just deep enough to be fun, and the drifts and the clumps of grass kept things interesting.

After they’d driven for ten or fifteen minutes, the terrain began to change. The ground started rising up into shallow hills, and taller plants dotted the low spots between them. They weren’t quite bushes and they weren’t quite trees; they looked more like big barrels with maybe a dozen branches sticking out like angled spokes from the top edge. A single triangular leaf flapped like a pennant from the tip of each branch.

“I’ll bet those trunks are full of water,” Trent said. “Like cactus.”

“It’d be ice this time of year,” Donna pointed out.

“Maybe. Unless they’ve got some kind of antifreeze.” “We’ll have to ask our guide when we get wherever we’re going.”

That didn’t take much longer. The barrel trees became more common over the next couple of miles, growing taller and thicker as well, until the vehicles were driving through a forest of them, winding between trunks maybe twenty feet thick and thirty feet tall. After another mile or so of that, the Frenchman pulled to a stop beside one and stepped out of his truck.

The snow wasn’t drifted nearly as much here. When Trent opened the door, he couldn’t feel any wind on his face, either. He stepped to the ground, and the smooth plastic soles of his Ziptite suit immediately slipped out from under him, landing him on his butt in the snow.

“Trent, are you all right?” Donna hollered from her side of the cab, just as the Frenchman said, “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’m okay,” he said, and he used the edge of the door for support while he pulled himself up to his feet again.

“Perhaps you would be more… grippy? No… more stable without the pressure suit,” the Frenchman suggested.

“That’s for sure.” Trent didn’t really want to remove a layer of protection, but if they were going to have lunch with this guy, he couldn’t very well stay suited up the whole time. So he took off his coat, peeled out of the suit and tossed it in the cab, then put on his coat—and promptly fell on his butt again.

“Mon dieu! You are having the bad luck today.”

Trent could either laugh or get mad, so he laughed. “I’m havin’ the cowboy boots instead of the work boots, is what it is.” He pulled himself upright again and tried a few cautious steps. If he dug in his heels it was just possible to walk. “Watch yourself,” he said to Donna. “It’s slick as snot out here.”

“Come into my home,” the Frenchman said, waving an arm behind him. “It’s warm and dry.”

“Let’s get you the mail sack first,” Trent said. “My job’s not done until it’s delivered.” He went around to the back of the pickup, opened the camper, and began pulling out the parachute.

“Would you like help to fold that?”

Trent wasn’t really sure he wanted a Frenchman handling something his life depended on, but he could use the help, and he supposed he could keep an eye on the guy. “Yeah, thanks,” he said.

Donna had peeled out of her Ziptite inside the cab. She climbed down and helped them stretch out the parachute along the length of the tire tracks they had just left, then she and Trent folded it up while the Frenchman shook the snow off the stretch just ahead of them. Trent climbed up onto the cab and packed it away in its fiberglass pod, making sure it was buckled properly to the roll bars and that the pod’s release mechanism was armed.

He climbed back down, careful not to slip this time, and hauled the mail sack out of the camper. “Here you go,” he said, handing it over.

“Merci.” The Frenchman threw the sack over his shoulder like Santa Claus. “Now, please, let us go inside where it’s warm!” He walked around his vehicle and marched straight up to the tree just beyond it.

Trent figured his house must be behind the tree, but the Frenchman reached for a stub of branch and pulled on it, and a round-topped door swung open, revealing a hollow interior filled with furniture and glowing with light from above.

“You live in a tree!” Donna said, delighted.

“I do,” said their host. “It’s… how do you say… it’s cozy, but it’s home.” He stepped aside to let Donna enter first, and Trent followed her in.

The walls were about a foot thick, and irregular, just like the outside of the tree. They were pale yellow, and they had been polished until they shone. They enclosed a space about the size of a fair-sized living room, but that space was used much more efficiently than most. There were storage cabinets to the left of the door, a kitchen beside that with more cabinets overhead and a round window over the sink, a bathroom next to the kitchen, a dining table with two chairs set in the middle of the room, and two soft chairs and several storage cabinets taking up the space to the right. Trent looked up to see where the light was coming from, and saw that the tree was hollow all the way up, with a translucent white cover over the opening at the base of the branches. A ladder ran up the wall to a circular balcony about five feet wide that ringed the tree about halfway up, and through the hole in the middle he could see a bed and a desk. The air didn’t smell musty or stuffy like the inside of a log; it smelled more like a forest on a still day, with just a hint of fresh-cut wood to it.

“This is quite the place you got here,” Trent said.

“Thank you!” their host said, closing the door behind him. He hung the mail sack from a peg next to the door and hung his coat over the sack. “But I forget my manners. I have not introduced myself. I am André Condorcet.”

“I’m Trent Stinson, and this is my wife, Donna.”

“Enchanté,” said André, making a little bow to Donna. “Let me make you something warm to drink.” He went to the kitchen and filled a pan with water, which he put on a hotplate. “Do you prefer tea, or coffee?”

“Coffee would be great,” Donna said. She slipped off her coat and draped it over the back of one of the chairs.

“Same for me,” said Trent. It was plenty warm in the tree house; he took off his own coat and laid it over Donna’s. “So does everybody here live in trees?” he asked.

“Not all,” André said. “But most of us do. It’s much more convenient than building a house, and prettier, yes?”

“And much harder to see from orbit,” Trent said.

André looked at him askance. “Yes, there is that advantage as well.”

He didn’t elaborate, and from the look on his face Trent figured he probably shouldn’t have brought up the subject, but Donna said, “Is our pickup going to cause problems? It’s bright red.”

André shook his head. “I think not. So far, only large groups are targeted. And industrial sites. We have learned not to gather in one place or to build anything that might be mistaken.”

“Or to use the radio too much,” Donna said.

“Or that, yes.” André busied himself putting a pan of milk on the hotplate, getting big bowl-shaped mugs from one of the cabinets, and preparing a chrome coffeemaker that looked like it might double as lab equipment.

There were modern appliances all through the house. Electric lights, a computer, a video screen, stereo equipment. If the walls had been square, it would be easy to forget that this was a tree house.

“How do you generate power?” Trent asked.

“Solar panels,” André said. “The dome atop the tree is painted with the flexible cells. It provides enough electricity during the day to keep me through the night, if I am careful.”

It didn’t sound like he had enough extra to let Trent top off his batteries before they jumped again. In fact, André couldn’t run that big truck of his very often if he had to charge it with solar cells. “How do you deliver the mail, then?” Trent asked. “Put it in barrels around the necks of Saint Bernards?”

André smiled. “It would be a long walk for many dogs. Our houses are kilometers apart, so we use the relay. I ski to several of my neighbors’ trees, and they ski to their neighbors’ trees, and so on until everything is passed along.”

“Sounds like it could take days to get your mail if you’re on the far end of the line.”

“Yes, it does. But life moves more slowly for us. We are in no hurry to go anywhere, for we are already here, no? Humanity’s long struggle to leave the nest is over, and Mirabelle proves very… hospital? Hospitable. We can relax and enjoy life as it was meant to be lived.” André took the pan off the hotplate, poured the water into the coffeemaker, and closed the lid, sealing it with a half-turn twist. Then he lifted a lever from the side of the canister and pressed it back down slowly, apparently squeezing the water down through the grounds.

“Doesn’t it get lonely out here?” Donna asked.

André nodded. “That is the, how do you say, the downside. But you are here today, and who knows what tomorrow may bring.”

“I’m surprised you’re so happy to see a couple of Americans,” Trent said.

André worked the lever on the side of his coffeemaker again. “I had assumed that you were ex-Americans, living now on Onnescu. Are you actually from the United States?”

“Rock Springs, Wyoming,” Trent said. “That’s just a little to the left of center.”

He tensed up, expecting André to tell them to leave, or worse. The Frenchman did seem to be considering it, but then he just shrugged and said, “Eh, bien, I think maybe you two are not the ones who send bombs. Maybe you are not your government.” He pushed the plunger on the coffeemaker again. “It’s a theory of mine that not all Americans are the… how do you say… the jingoistic conquer-monkeys.”

Donna laughed. Trent managed an embarrassed smile. “We’d like to think that, too,” he said, “but it sometimes looks like we’re the only ones who aren’t.”

André said, “Perhaps there are more than you think who feel as you. It’s always the vocal minority who have their way, while the others silently chew their beards and plot rebellion.” He poured coffee into the mugs, then before Trent or Donna could stop him, he poured an equal amount of warm milk into all three. “Ah, this should warm you up!” he said, handing them each a mug.

Trent had to admit it smelled pretty good. It looked like chocolate milk, and the mug was so low and wide that it felt more like he was drinking out of a cereal bowl, but he lilted it to his lips and took a sip. It was definitely creamy. Almost sweet. And as strong as the coffee tasted, he was glad he wasn’t drinking it straight.

“How do you get milk clear out here?” Donna asked.

“How else? We brought cows.” He waved an arm toward the table. “Sit! Relax. I will fix the lunch. Do you eat lapin?”

“I don’t know,” Trent said. “What’s lapin?”

“Rabbit. And before you get your hopes up, I have none, but the dandinant is very similar, and I do have that.”

“What’s a dandinant?” The name sounded suspiciously bug-like. Trent hadn’t heard that the French were into insects, but he knew they ate snails, which was just as bad.

André wrinkled his brow. “It’s… how to describe it? A little creature native to Mirabelle, like a skunk without the smell, but yellow and green to blend in with the grass. It’s round, and it walks like this.” He bent down and shuffled a few steps, waddling from side to side like a bear. “They are very common, and very tasty as well.”

Trent looked over at Donna to see what she thought. They had eaten some alien fish on their first trip off Earth and lived to tell about it, and André had apparently eaten these dandinants before, so it sounded safe enough. Donna nodded her agreement, and said, “Sure, it sounds great.”

“Excellent,” André said. “Sit!” he said again.

There were only two chairs at the table. Trent pulled one out for Donna, then went around to the other side of the table and sat in the other. The floor wasn’t perfectly flat—it looked like André had smoothed it with an adze or something—but Trent was able to wiggle his chair around until it rested on all four legs. André busied himself in the kitchen, taking a pan of shredded meat and several unknown vegetables from a small refrigerator and setting to work on the vegetables with a knife.

“So how come you speak English?” Trent asked.

André said over his shoulder, “When I was young, the United States was not the way it is now. Then, your country was the shining hope of the world, the strongest force for peace anywhere. You were admired. Most of my generation learned to speak English, for it seemed the entire world would soon become American.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” Trent said. “Seems like the whole worlds been pissed at us for as long as I can remember.”

André looked at Trent for a moment, giving him a onceover that had Trent wondering what the Frenchman was looking for until André said, “The change happened about the time you were born, I would guess.” He turned back to his vegetable cutting. “Terrorists attacked you on your own soil for the first time, and in response your country went insane. Instead of trying to stop the cause for terrorism, America instead began conquering other countries it considered threats to its own security. This of course worried other countries, who prepared to resist an American invasion, but that buildup of weapons made them threats in turn, and so it progressed until America went from the most admired nation to the most feared, and terrorism became the only way to fight back.”

That wasn’t quite the way Trent had learned it in school. He’d learned that terrorists were all religious fanatics, and that the United States had acted to stop them when the United Nations wouldn’t. But he didn’t want to get into an argument with André over it, so he just said, “There’s no justification for terrorism, no matter what the provocation.”

André nodded. “There, you see! All Americans are not the same.”

“I don’t think anybody supports terrorism,” Trent said.

“Someone must,” André said, “or we would not have such a nice big lake to the north of here.”

“Touché,” said Trent.

“Aha! You speak French.” André laughed.

“About two words of it.”

“What would be the other?”

“Garage.”

“Ah, of course. We have the joke in France, that when America renamed French fries ‘freedom fries,’ you also tried to rename the garage, but for some reason ‘car hole’ did not catch on.”

Trent was just about to take another sip of coffee, but his sudden laughter blew it into his eyebrows instead. Donna was already laughing at André’s joke, but she laughed even harder when she saw Trent dripping onto the table. André handed him a dishtowel and said, “My apologies! I did not mean to—”

“It’s all right,” Trent said. “You told me there was a joke comin’.” He wiped away the coffee and handed the towel back. “I’ll have to remember that one when we get back home.”

“So you are going back to America, then? I assumed that once you left, you would not go back.”

“We’re just sort of scouting around for possibilities at the moment,” Trent said. “We might move, and we might not, depending on what we find. But even if we decide to move, we’ve got to go back for our stuff.”

“Ah, yes, your stuff. ‘Etoffe,’ we say, and it’s perhaps no coincidence that our word ‘etouffer’ means to suffocate. I thought I might despair when I moved here, because I could not bear to give up all my ‘stuff,’ but in the end, I learned what was important to me and what was not. It was a valuable lesson. I sometimes think a person should move every year, and only take with them what they can carry.”

Donna said, “We met a couple on Onnescu who plan to find their own planet and play Adam and Eve, all with just one load of belongings.”

André whistled softly. “That is dedication. Maybe a bit extreme, but one must admire their ability to renounce worldly things.”

“We’ll see how long they stick to it,” Trent said. “I’d be surprised if they lasted a year before they moved back to civilization.”

André chuckled softly. “That is what my sister said to me when I moved to Mirabelle. I have eight months to go, and much can happen in that time, but I think I will prove her wrong.”

He set the chopping board full of vegetables aside and picked up the pan he had used to heat the milk. The light grew suddenly brighter in the house, and Trent assumed that the sun had just come out from behind a cloud, but it seemed awfully bright. André paused with the saucepan in his hand and looked out the kitchen window, then he whispered, “Merde.”