He only grunted and shoved the tablet in his pocket.
We stopped by the tool shed and he handed me a narrow tree planting shovel, taking an odd-looking rake for himself. I had no idea what the black plastic box affixed to the handle near the tines could be for.
The truffle orchard was down by the shore, staggered rows of hazelnuts and Garry oaks marching toward the high tide mark.
“My nose may be big but it’s not all that sensitive,” I said, accustomed to other collectives’ use of trained dogs to sniff out the tasty underground fungi.
“We spent most of last year’s discretionary funds on this baby.” He patted the rake’s black box proudly, then flicked a switch. The box emitted a cheery pew pew pew sound.
“Raygun?” I asked. I approved of the new trend of replacing the annoying dings and beeps of most electronics with music but this concert was disconcerting.
“Texan elf owl,” he answered.
After a while, we got it down to a routine. He used the fancy sniffing device like it was a metal detector wand to locate the truffles under the trees. It would go pew pew pew when it sensed truffle spores and he’d rake away leaves and twigs and other detritus, exposing the good dark soil. I’d dig up a handful or two of thumb-sized deliciousness, and then he’d carefully rake the duff back over.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” I said, when I felt the moment was ripe. “Don’t get to relying on me.” My brother would trace me through the publicly available images the gate’s smartcam had taken of my face, probably in a day or two. I could be far up island by then. I bit down on the usual wave of failure, humiliation, and regret. I’d cracked under the strain of leading his foundation and I was continually paying the price. Or pricing the pain. Or something.
“Julie.” Aaron swung the rake under the next tree. “I’m…thinking of quitting, too. Collapse the community trust and give their money back. Let them run it like a democracy, with voting and everything.”
“And run off?”
“Travel. Like you are.”
Pew pew pew.
His raking this time was vicious, sending crisp, dry oak leaves flying in all directions.
“I’ve got my reasons,” I said. I didn’t need a home, not me, I was as self-sufficient as a…well, as a…come to think of it, nothing was truly self-sufficient. But this conversation wasn’t about me. “Without you, Aaron, that bunch would fall apart in a week. You just need to work on a few arbitration skills,” I said.
“I need you,” he countered with a firmness that belied his shaking hands. “If you stay, I’ll stay. You could give me advice behind the scenes. Just feed me what to say and I’ll spout it out to them.”
I dug a few cautious shovelfuls. “Like Cyrano de Bergerac? Or like Edgar Bergen?”
He frowned. “Who—”
“Never mind.” I carefully eased several black lumps from the near-dry soil. “You’d really want to run things that way?” The musky funky truffles wafted their funky musk over us and we both breathed deeply.
“I’ll just tell them that you’ve bought your way in but I won’t actually charge you a single loonie.”
“And one farmhand washes the other? Doesn’t sound very benevolent to me.”
“No one will know. Look, the night you came, I was about to kick Laura out for non-compliance to the rules.”
“So you’re giving yourself a choice between being Charlie McCarthy or Joe McCarthy?”
“Who are—”
“Never mind. You haven’t studied history. You just know how to grow cabbage and broccoli. You’re doomed to repeat.”
He looked at me suspiciously. “I don’t know if that was a fart joke or what, but I’m serious. I’m offering you a permanent place here.”
“You don’t need me, damn it.” I laid the truffles in the wicker basket. “The only thing you have to fear is…spiders. How about I give you some books to read—”
“Books! That won’t help, not right away. But you can! Please.” He grabbed my cuff and I jerked away instinctively. “At least say you’ll think about it.”
He kept on badgering me as we filled the basket.
“Enough!” I finally said and handed him the shovel.
My pulse was racing like a racecar and I couldn’t think straight. I had to get away from him. I tore off across the orchard like a deer in flight, if deer could fly.
A few gallops and gulps later I was out of the bright sun and in my tiny cabin. The blankets were itchy-scratchy and the air was hot and close. Just outside the window, the rest of Henkel’s was busy with the bustle of people. Finally, I strode out to the back pasture and commenced pretending to ignore the one resident—a goat on a staked rope. Its face was as surly as mine must be.
As the goat tore at the grass within reach, my mind raced a mile an hour…which actually seems a pretty fast speed if it’s circling the same tiny topic.
What was I doing here?
Before my travels had started, I’d been a bit of a homebuddy and getting used to the road had been hard. My fancy would be tickled pink to settle down somewhere and not have to pitch a tent every night. I’d parked my big city pay cheques in a credit union and left it alone ever since I’d fled the city lights—maybe signing it over to Henkel’s Trust would be enough to get me in legitimately? After all, good things come to those with a bird in the hand.
I licked my lips, still tasting the omelet’s wild chanterelles—it really had been a breakfast of champignons.
Yesterday, I’d borrowed Aaron’s tablet and looked up some stats. According to the Simon Fraser University Collective, more than half of the people in BC’s Lower Mainland, both urban and rural, had changed to collectives. More than a third in the interior and a quarter of Alberta, too. The cognitive limit that a person could maintain interpersonal relationships, known as Dunbar’s number, was about one hundred and fifty, and such small communities had proved both viable and robust—to expropriate some of my former corporate vocabulary. At that size, you always knew what your neighbor was doing so crime wasn’t a problem. Basically, with Dunbar’s number, the criminal element’s number was up.
And, Henkel’s Wold ranked near the top of all the collectives I’d stopped at. With good reasons (as well as good raisins). Over the last few days, I’d spent time with Laura and learned she’d been evicted from her Winnipeg apartment when her alcoholic ex-husband had destroyed her front door. Riley had been raised in Kelowna by parents who were strong on a self-sustaining lifestyle but supplemented their indifferent crops with a break-and-enter during his final year of high school. Of course, they’d been caught right away. Riley had worked at various high tech jobs around the country for years before ending up at Henkel’s. Aaron’s mother’s up-close-and-personal government was a combination that worked for him.
The others I’d talked to here had similar stories—they’d joined due to personal beliefs, total commitment, and a work ethic that would leave a colony of ants speechless.
In the distance, Laura carried a pail of goat’s milk to the cheese shed. My mouth watered while my thoughts tumbled like mismatched socks in a dryer. Opportunities like this didn’t come along like streetcars.
But, maybe I couldn’t see the forest for the cheese.
I’d always known that, as an introvert in a world of extroverts, I’d needed to adapt more than most folks to meet social expectations. Why would I think that Henkel’s would be any different? After my soothing life in the woods, the daily interactions would rub me raw. It wouldn’t smooth off my rough edges but it would rough up my soothed edges. I should retreat back to the forest where the only aggression came from the hummingbirds when their nests got disturbed. Let someone else step up to the plane.
But, then, I’d be letting down Aaron, and Riley, and Laura, and all the rest, just like I’d let down Willi and all the wildlife his foundation helped protect.
Maybe I should stay.
For once, I’d found a place I might fit in.
It wasn�
�t just wistful thinking this time.
It was possible. And, in the back of my heart, I’d always known that Willi would find me eventually.
“Hey!” While I’d been cogitating, the goat had eaten through its rope, some bamboo fencing, and most of the raspberry bushes beyond. I grabbed its collar and yanked it back into the pasture. “Well, you sure learned to adapt to your environment,” I told it. Then I stood humming and hawing until the dinner gong rang clear as a bell.
***
Pedaling hard, I got a ways past Nanaimo by nightfall. At first, Aaron’s refurbished cellphone in my pack had weighed me down much more than its hundred grams should have but, after it didn’t ring and didn’t ring, I began to whistle while I pumped along past brown grasses and dull-leaved trees. Aaron wouldn’t phone unless he needed to, and perhaps just being able to would mean he didn’t need to. Meanwhile, I could nestle in the solitude of giant fir trees and huge ferns like the tough old woodlands creature I was.
As the sun dipped below a ridge, I pulled in by a narrow creek that chortled at my whirlpool of thoughts. I began to set up camp, a twinkle in my step. My travels were confirming that humanity, once on the path to doom, was instead becoming what both Willi and I had envisioned it could be. The new-style collectives were a success, phasering out some old-school beliefs, yet retaining the good stuff along with new tech. And—I glanced at the cell phone perched on a log—I was energized again. If I felt like chatting to Laura about cheese flavorings or Riley about enviro-politics, they were only a phone call away. And, after a bit of back-and-force, Aaron had agreed that my future advice would be presented openly to the collective, without hiding or pretense. I sat on the log and popped the last bite of Laura’s truffle-smothered cheese in my mouth.
At some point, the phone would ring with an unknown call display. And Willi’s soft, persuasive voice would ask me to come back. I knew what I’d tell him. My sanity needed both peopling and solituding, and, like a clown on a beach ball, I’d finally managed to find my balance point.
***
Holly Schofield travels through time at the rate of one second per second, oscillating between the alternate realities of city and country life. Her short stories have appeared in Analog, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and many other publications throughout the world. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes. Find her at hollyschofield.wordpress.com.
Camping with City Boy
by Jerri Jerreat
This was my first time taking Rich out, bare-arm, to show him my world. I’d grown up with summer camping trips with family, loved it. He was from Toronto, that monster city with people living in the air, connected by pedestrian walkways. Some people rarely touched down. Oh, sure, his Skycities had gorgeous parklands on their rooftops, a paradise of small woods, pruned topiary gardens, even Japanese gardens with brooks. There were fiscus game fields and massive play structures designed like undersea worlds. It was amazing, but still…
I grew up in Bancroft, only 300,000 people strong. We had a small Skycity downtown of twenty-two buildings, but none higher than ten stories. My family lived in one, a nice three-bedroom with a river view. Their greenways were connected, and although ours weren’t fancy-pants Toronto, they were something. We grew most of our food up there. My grandparents were on the team of caretakers, so I’d grown up fixing greywater systems (every drop to the food gardens), or repairing southern walls where the solar paint wasn’t creating enough energy. I understood the giant rain catchment system off the roofs, and the water cyclator. I’d gone to schools and shopped in the stores on the ground floor.
Still, compared to Rich, I was a hick. Secretly, I nurtured that image. My favourite part of the year had always been the time I was heading into the woods and lakes. So, bringing newbies on a canoe trip was fine. I was finally introducing Kojo, one of my friends to Rich, but this was a tricky time—Rich had been hinting he wanted to make the Exclusive patch permanent. I just wasn’t sure I was ready. It’s a big step.
It’s not an e-boat, I wanted to shout at Kojo’s new boyfriend, Luiz. You have to actually paddle.
I forced myself to stop looking. Watching that canoe zigzag was painful. I’d offered a few tips but Luiz had shrugged them off.
“I’ve got it,” he’d said, and used a delicate curved paddle tip to shove off the rocks.
I cringed. At least he wasn’t my boyfriend. My boyfriend had been irrepressibly cheerful despite having to refill at water stations twice on the way. (Something wrong with the fuel cell engine.) Rich was handsome, fit, and confident. He was the fastest thrower on his fiscus team, and one sexy jolsta dancer. I’d practically drooled the first time I’d watched him. So had everyone else. He was the centre of fun, always making people feel a little bit better. I don’t know how he did it, touching a shoulder here, dropping a question there, but it was a gift. I was quiet, had met him while taking a pre-astro course to see if I’d like it. He knew someone who knew my sister. I’m just ordinary, no fashion sense. (Loved his striped silver and gold hair and the wavy tattoo across his teeth.) I was smart, perhaps, but not like him.
Rich was in LifeFinance and could do weather stats in his head while I was still pulling on socks. And romantic? Yes. He’d brought me a real basil plant in a genuine clay pot after our first date six months ago. Classy, right?
We’d gone dancing a few times (me, content to watch his solos), and to 5-sense films but there were a lot of nostalgic ones that year about the failed Mao25 settlement. Tragic, right? Who can watch those without tearing up? We’d also taken many hikes through that incredible Skycity. He’d shown me hidden statues, little known trails through desert gardens where you’d swear you were in the plains of New Jersey, complete with cacti. We Ziptrained with his friends to Collingwood and Quebec City for his fiscus tourneys and explored the cities. Beautiful. The GreenStrips beside us looked rich with life. Repairing the planet. Just imagine—they used to be paved highways, jammed with Solo cars. Maybe our best date was the concert in Montreal, just two of us, for the month anniversary of our Exclusive patch. (You can barely feel it on your inner thigh, and it ensures that his sperm, coded to his DNA, weren’t dancing with my eggs.)
There weren’t any Ziptrains north of Bancroft yet, so I’d booked a Solo and let it take us on the back roads past Algonquin Park to the larger Peace and Reconciliation Park (from North Bay to New Liskeard). Despite the water stops, we were in good spirits. Luiz seemed friendly, reticent compared to Rich, who could charm vivarium off a shiptrader. We had to stop at the Temagami checkpoint to get directions and serious reminders about no garbage/no zaps etc.
Finally we unloaded two canoes into Long Lake, one a plasbred lighter than a baby, and the other painted red with fake wood gunwales to look antique. My grandfather’s, and it weighed a few grams more, mostly duct tape. I’d learned to J-stroke in that canoe, watched fireflies (“magic lights”), and fallen asleep, snuggled up to my sister. Mom would paddle us around, looking up. She loved the stars, an astropilot. An early pregnancy had grounded her temporarily. I used to tease Lorid that it was her fault we weren’t born on Proxima B. (Frankly, I prefer Earth. When mom’s on a mission we don’t see her for two years. Seriously. Plus, they don’t have trees or lakes like ours). Nana Mpenzi and Gramps were Park Volunteers, and took us on many overnights from toddler age. Great people, despite their music.
Kojo’s boyfriend went right for the stern. System error.
Rich helped me get everything to the shore, then asked which end to get into. I tossed him a chuksnack for not tipping us (close call) when he clambered in. I snapped our gear in, gave us a push and slipped aboard. It took a moment to get my knees comfortable, then straighten the canoe. There.
It felt fantastic, like I’d been holding my breath for a year and could finally exhale. I gave some tips to Rich, then felt myself move into the rhythm of the 2-blade paddle. Loved that spin of water off each stroke. Art.
I’d seen water as art in that Skycit
y Japanese garden—a hundred fountains blowing water into shapes. Stunning. But give me this feeling of pulling the water myself, pushing it behind me, setting it free. Breathing in the river smell, seaweed, fish, these scents like a silk scarf run across your face.
Rich’s knuckles were white, so I suggested he widen his grip and trace the horizon line.
“Stay in the centre,” I called to Kojo as their canoe zigzagged drunkenly. “There’s branches to snag you on the sides.” I gave a few hard pulls to move away. “You okay, Rich?” I asked. “Shoulders comfortable?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
***
We rafted up under a maple tree. “It’s going well, eh?” I asked Rich, passing him the food.
He nodded. “Easy. Making camp soon?”
I almost snorted water, laughing. “We’re about halfway.”
“We’ll get there before bugfall, though, right?” asked Luiz, bumping their canoe into ours.
“I hope to. But we all had vaccines, and I have pills and net hats.”
“I’m not depending on nets,” scoffed Luiz. “I packed Z420.”
“That’s illegal!”
“Tough. Skeeters ought to be eliminated. The feds are considering mass sprays. I’m just helping them along.”
I blinked, wondering whether to smack him with my paddle or try logic. I tried logic. “Look, Luiz. People come out here to appreciate the wild in all its—diversity. We can protect ourselves. If we use Z420, it’ll wipe out skeeters and the dragonflies and bats who feed on them, then the next level of predators. Sicken the whole water ecosystem. The point is—”
“So I won’t offer it to you, but don’t push your religion on me.” He pushed off from our canoe. “C’mon Kojo. Let’s make some time.”
I hissed at Rich. “Can you believe that asshole?”
“Well, he’s not spraying the entire woods. Just himself.”
“Did you hear a word I said?”
Rich lifted his hands. “I didn’t pack a secret can of Nature Killer. I’m just saying it’s a small thing.”
Glass and Gardens Page 9
