by Garth Owen
"Tree!"
"We'll work on that, shall we." She put Luke down on the slatted wood walkway and slouched down when he reached a hand up to her.
The town didn't have an orphanage the way so many others did. There had been years of taking them in one or two at a time, but this influx of children was the biggest they'd ever had in one go. They had been put up in a pair of adjoining chalets in the still underpopulated up valley part of town.
Tony and Veronique had spent the morning emptying wagon two, filling shelving in some old warehouse with wares. It had been an enlightening exercise. They never did stock takes when they were on the road, and some of the pieces that had been pulled from the depths had been thought long lost. They had been helped by the Scouts, though some of the time it felt like their assistants were only there to see what treasure would come from the back of the wagons. When everything that wasn't bolted down had been removed, they had called it a day. Tomorrow they would strip out the fittings and start conversion for the trip over the hills.
When they had split from the weary workers heading for a late lunch, and Veronique had led him along a street that ran up river, Tony had quickly guessed where they were going. "You just want to see how he's doing, of course." he said as he hooked his arm through hers.
"I want to see what he looks like when he's been cleaned up."
The wooden A frames of the chalets were nearly grey with age, almost matching the plaster facing and the cinder blocks walls. Despite the rough frontage, however, the buildings were still solid. The sounds of children playing could be heard before they even saw the buildings.
The woman they had talked to when they had arrived in town was refereeing a game of boules on a gravel strip between the chalets' shared veranda and the pavement. She spotted Tony and Veronique and waved to them. As they drew nearer, she pointed to a group of the smaller children crowded around a plastic table. One of the children stopped playing with the wooden bricks she was building a tower with, and stared at the newcomers. One by one, the other kids looked up as well, until Luke turned to see them.
His face was very pink, now all the muck had been washed from it. His hair had been cut to a more manageable length, but he had compensated by getting it ruffled up so spikes stuck out in all directions. He looked up at Tony and Veronique, and his mouth formed a little O. Then he turned and ran into the nearest chalet.
"Oh." Veronique felt a horrible, quick loss as the child clambered up the steps. She hadn't expected to be rejected.
The woman got up from her refereeing and stepped over. "That was odd. He has come on so well since we got here. Just a couple of days and he's picking up words really quickly. Or perhaps he's remembering them, who knows. Should I go and get him for you?"
Before Veronique or Tony could reply, Luke appeared back in the door to the chalet. Holding something in his right hand, he carefully made his way down the steps. Serious expression on his face, he walked up to them and held out the object. It was the torch Tony had given him. Veronique bit her bottom lip, holding in a laugh and wondering why the back of her eyes stung.
Tony took the offered torch and tested it. It still worked. Kneeling down, he put it into the little front pocket on Luke's shirt and pressed the stud closed. "You keep on looking after that for me, okay." Luke grinned and nodded, holding out his arms to be lifted up.
When he was on a level with Veronique, Luke held out a hand, trying to reach across and touch her cheek. "jour" he said.
"Bonjour to you too, Luke. I hear you've been learning some new words. What new words do you know?"
Luke thought about this for a while, then pointed at the front of the chalet and said, "Ah."
"I suppose so. So, do you want to go and have a look around the town?"
Luke didn't seem to understand the question, until Veronique pointed down the street. "Erm, it is okay if we take him away for a while, isn't it?"
"Of course. But next time, we might make you take all the children and show them the sights. We're looking for good families for all of them."
"Families, eh?" Tony was trying to get Luke's hair to sit neatly, and failing. "We'll see how that goes. Where shall we take the little one? Can you show me part of the town I haven't seen yet?"
"Let's go to the greenhouses." Veronique said. "I loved them when we lived here."
The greenhouses were built on the expanse that had previously been car and coach parking around the wheel house for the cable cars. The cables were still strung from pylon to pylon up the hillside, and, a few times a year, a gondola would edge its way up to the wheel house's mate far above. But that wasn't going to happen any time soon, so they made their way to the mass of glass structures under the cables.
Veronique remembered the routine of old. There was a handle that visitors had to pull, that would set bells gently ringing in all corners of the structure and, if anyone was working in there, someone would come to decide whether to let them in. She tugged the handle all the way down, then watched as it clicked its way back into position. As always, she couldn't hear the bells, so didn't know whether they had rung. She resisted the impatient temptation to pull again.
While they waited, Tony was making nonsense conversation with Luke. "Look at that tree." he said, "And that one. That tree's even taller. I wonder if any of these trees give any fruit or nuts at the end of the year." He was a Picker, not a botanist.
Luke pointed at the short hedge that ran along the side of the wheel house. "Tree?"
"Sort of. I guess."
"Tree?"
"Oh, what the hell. Yes. If you say it's a tree, then it's a tree."
"Tree!" exclaimed Luke, triumphantly.
So now, everything with deep green leaves was a tree, no matter what size it was. Including the cannabis bush a row back that Tony was having a conversation about with Myriam. It had been a surprise when her aunt had answered the door. She had explained it simply enough as they walked through the flower dense entrance hall, "When I decided I was settling down here, I wanted to choose something that, well, symbolised it. You can't get much more symbolic than a job that involves, well, roots. It turns out I'm really good at it as well." Stopping by the door into the main body of the greenhouses, she had to ask, "Who's this little charmer, then?"
"Tree!"
"This is Luke. We picked him up on the way here." Tony said. He put the child down and let him shoot ahead of them as the doors opened.
"He's one of the lost children you rescued on your way in? Or did you find him before then?"
"One of the kids from the lorries. He hitched a ride with us for the trip into the Valley."
"We're thinking about keeping him." Veronique added. "I'm not sure how that works, though."
"It's not as if there's a lot of paperwork. Just be sure no-one objects and then get on with raising him. That's the way I joined my family."
"Albert mentioned his tante Lola last night."
"I have been middle sibling to Lola and Fabien for a long, long time. Their family took me in back when Fabien was about that one's size and Lola was Remy's age. We were Pickers until their parents died, then we decided we wanted to settle down rather than carry on with it. I think I told you the rest last night." Myriam looked like she felt guilty admitting that she had ever wanted to settle down, particularly to another Picker.
"We're thinking of settling here, too." Tony said. "After this next big pick. If they'll let us."
They were walking between rows of leafy greens, stacked on shelves three tiers tall. They were such a pale green that Luke hadn't decided, yet, that they were trees. He was looking at the space under the lowest tier, which was moist and muddy and just high enough for him to stand up in. "Out of there, you." Veronique commanded, hoping she was projecting authority without sounding too harsh. He held out his hand and she took it.
Now they were in one of the other galleries of the greenhouses, surrounded by tomatoes and peppers. Tony and Myriam came around the corner from the cannabis patch. "I
t's all medicinal?" he was asking.
"You'd need a prescription to get yourself any. Except at the harvest festival, when we crop a load of it and work out how much we can spare for fun."
"We are staying at least until the harvest festival." Tony told Veronique as they drew level. He looked down as he felt tugging at his trousers, to find Luke looking up at him and holding out a hand. When Tony and Veronique had a hand each, they lifted Luke off the ground, and he laughed as he waved his feet around.
"Come through here." Myriam pointed to a door leading to another section of greenhouse.
Luke walked between Tony and Veronique, though, three abreast, they were almost too wide for the walkway. Myriam opened the door, and Luke let go to be the first one to jump across the threshold.
The room was full of row after row of stalks, mostly in shades of gold, but with flecks of unripened green still in them. "Wheat and barley." Myriam announced. "We're trying to get the highest yield possible from them, because they are supplying some of our seeds for next year. Our seed bank is tiny, but we think these strains are resistant to the blight."
"This is what you'll do with what we bring back?" Tony asked.
"With the most promising strains. In here we should be able to get a crop for planting out next year before it gets too cold."
"How have you done this year?"
"We've been lucky. It helps that we planted barrier crops at the foot of the Valley and we've culled and burnt any plants that showed the slightest sign.... The yields are down on previous years, but we'll be okay. Not like places out there that were fully hit. We usually trade with some of the nearer farms outside the Valley, to top up grain supplies, but this year they don't have anything. We're going to have an excess of produce that doesn't keep, and a shortfall of grain."
"If it all works out, they can have seeds for the year after next." Veronique said. "It's a long time to wait with important crops destroyed, but...."
The stalks that filled the greenhouse weren't green enough for Luke to call them trees. He tugged at one, to see how it bent, until Veronique knelt down to stop him. Lifting him, she brought him up to the level of the seeds. "This is wheat." she said. "This is wheat, isn't it?"
"It is."
"This is wheat. Can you say wheat?"
"Wit." Luke said, then pointed at the door. "Trees."
"If he wants to see trees, let's take him for a walk through the rest of the greenhouses." Myriam said, running fingers through the child's hair.
"Trees!"
* * *
Maxine zipped her bike off the track and ran it along the ridge line a little way. Pulling on the front brake and pushing her weight forwards, she forced the rear wheel to rise, and rode a short way with it in the air. When she came to a halt and the wheel bounced down again, she held the bike upright and still as she lined up with a rock. A blip of the throttle and a quick move of her body, and the bike came halfway around. More playing with her balance and she was speeding back toward the road again.
She had been showing off, of course. Georges was approaching her position, finally catching up with her, and he would have seen her display of bike control. She kicked the stand down and stood the bike up, hanging her open face helmet from the handlebars. As Georges came to a halt beside her, she smiled innocently at him. He turned off his bike's rasping motor and stood it up as well.
"You're a crazy woman." Georges said when he had removed his helmet.
"I just have a faster bike than you." she lied. She had raced ahead, taking risks on a track she didn't know. She had been showing off for him, or trying to prove that she was better- faster and more skilful- than he was on a bike. There had been a couple of hairy moments, when she had crested a rise without knowing what was on the other side, or entered a corner too fast, and her heart rate was still high from the last one. But she maintained a cool- as cool as possible- exterior around Georges.
"It is a nice bike." Georges stepped closer, standing awfully close to Maxine as he studied the bike. "Where did you get it?"
"I stole it from a raider. He'd just have broken it." Why was her heart rate heading up again? She moved away from him, around to the other side of the bike. "You want to have a go on it?"
"Maybe when we're back down there, and I can't send myself off a cliff because I don't know how to control it." He pointed back the way they had come. The town was behind trees to their left, but they had a grand view of the river as it wandered down the valley to the larger reservoir. The artificial lake engulfed the old road, which had run alongside the river, and a new one had been carved out of the steep hillside. Continuing scanning right, it was possible to see the older, smaller reservoir, further down the valley. They could, just, make out the people working in the fields and spot the white dots that were sheep and goats.
Turning around, they could look out over the land they would be travelling in their coming expedition. The track was a faint grey and brown line through the green, heading down into a short, shallow valley. It disappeared then, but, somewhere, climbed again over a lower peak into another small valley, then over a larger barrier, beyond which lay the prize. There were clouds approaching from the Northwest, rolling over that far barrier, then dripping down into the smaller valleys.
Georges had a copy of one of the maps which had given them the routes of the old trails. He held it up, so that it overlaid, in a way, the landscape, then traced the route of the road in the air with a finger. "It's hard to tell whether it gets better or worse from here on. What do you think, after coming along here- can your wagons get over this?"
"If it's all like this, then not a problem. We've crossed worse before. The question is, how accurate are those old maps?"
"We find out when we try to follow them, I guess. This is as far as any of us has come in this direction. As far as anyone thought we needed. I was going to suggest a recce to see what sort of force of Raiders there are out there. But it was more important to see how the farms on the other side of the tunnel were doing, and to look for salvage in the empty towns." Georges' tone was almost apologetic, as if he was embarrassed to not have travelled far and wide, as Maxine had done.
"It sounds like you've been working as Pickers." Maxine offered. She hoped that it didn't sound condescending. She didn't want him to feel that she looked down on him, just because he hadn't had her itinerant life.
"I suppose so. We did bring some good stuff back, too. Do you want to go a bit further?"
"Not today. If we go on, it starts to be a real expedition, and I haven't brought everything I'd want for one of those."
"Not enough guns?"
"Not enough guns. And no bivouac, or food."
"Maybe tomorrow. Or we could set off the day before everyone else, and scout ahead."
"And share a bivouac over night." Georges reddened at Maxine's suggestion. She had been half serious, and, it seemed, he hoped she was completely serious. Maybe it wasn't just her feeling nervous and excited around him. Perhaps it went both ways. She resisted the urge to ask straight out if he wanted to sleep with her. Even as a blunt child, she had learnt long ago that some questions never received a simple answer. "Did I see another track join this one, about a kay back?"
"The map shows another track, but I didn't spot it." Georges unfolded the paper. "It runs down to the reservoir and then back to town."
"Shall we find it?"
"Okay. But no race this time, let's go at a sensible speed. I like being alive and unbroken."
* * *
There were reminders of the building's time as a hotel in the dark wood of the doors and panelling, and the decoration on the walls. At the far end of this room, there was a line of stuffed animal heads looking down on the lathes and milling machines. Heavy work tables, with vises bolted to them and tools loaded into little baskets, pointed the way to the machines.
"So, you finally got yourself a proper workshop." Remy said. "It must have been quite a job for some lucky Pickers."
"The Sc
outs found it all, locked up and undamaged, on one of their first trips out after we reopened the tunnel. Myriam, Lola and Fabien got to do one last run in their truck to collect it all."
"What do you make?"
"Not me, sadly. Being mayor takes up too much time. But there are a few of the youngsters who are teaching themselves by making what's needed. Mostly small components. It's surprising how many things get abandoned for want of one little bit. What the junk yard can't provide, sometimes they can build it here." Julien walked over to a cabinet of wide, shallow drawers, he opened one of them and pulled out the topmost sheet of paper it held. With a flourish, he laid it on one of the work tables. It was a design for a bracket of some form, carefully marked up with dimensions and angles. There were notes in the bottom left hand corner of the sheet, which Julien checked. "Electric motor mount for conversion of a couple of pickups that now run produce back from the fields. Really useful. We might move into gun components, if we can find the right grades of metal."
"You're going to quit as mayor and come in here to just make shit, aren't you."
"I wish." Julien said with a sigh. "You saw how the vote went yesterday. The town is still about evenly balanced on opening up to the outside. If I stood down, I don't think there's as loud a voice for continued trade and contact. Catellin and her little gang would be happiest if we closed the tunnel and blocked ourselves in here again. It took a lot to get people to go out there. Your leaving didn't help, I'll tell you." Julien had more to say, but he was biting back an argument that was ten years old, and no longer worth having.
"How are they going to feel when we bring back everything we find in the vault?"
"Gutted, probably. They hope you fail. They'd probably be happy if you died out there and we never heard anything about you ever again. Then they could crow on about wasted resources and the dangers of contact beyond the Valley."
"We're not going to die out there."
