by Jerry Oltion
"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."
Andr�
� 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."
13
The light grew brighter.
"Baissez-vous!" André yelled, dropping to the floor. "Go down!" Trent dived for the floor, his chair clattering over backwards, and threw his arm around Donna as she dropped down beside him. Coffee poured off the table onto their legs from their overturned mugs, but they didn't have time to move. The ground heaved underneath them, throwing them and everything else in the house into the air for a second, then just as they landed again, there was a deafening explosion and they were thrown sideways into the kitchen cabinets.
Wood and rocks and dirt rained down over them. Trent pulled Donna close and covered her head with his arms, realizing in a moment of wry clarity that she was doing the same for him. A chunk of branch the size of his leg smashed down beside them and tumbled away. The table had overturned; Trent grabbed it by a leg and pulled it over the top of their bodies, and they felt the jolts as more debris bounced off it.
After what seemed like half an hour, but was probably only ten seconds or so, the patter of falling rubble stopped. Trent stuck his head out from under the table and looked up. The top half of the tree had vanished as if a giant's fist had just swatted it away, and clouds roiled overhead like smoke over a wildfire.
"Are you okay?" he asked Donna.
"I . . . I think so." Her voice sounded thin and distant through the ringing in his ears.
"André?" He turned to the Frenchman, who was sitting up and shaking the dirt out of his hair.
"Je vis," he croaked. Blood ran down his left arm from a gash in his shoulder. Trent staggered to his feet and helped Donna up, then turned to André and extended his hand. André looked at Trent's hand, then looked up into his face, and for a moment Trent thought André was going to come up swinging, but he took a deep breath and grasped Trent's hand and pulled himself to his feet.
"My apologies," he said. "I évidemment miscalculate the risk."
"You've got no reason to apologize to us," Trent said. "We're the ones that owe you the apology, and a whole lot more than that." He looked up at the gaping hole where the top of the tree had been.
"Son of a bitch. I can't believe those bastards would drop a bomb on us just for . . . for what? Parking two trucks side-by-side?"
"One of which just arrived from off-planet," André said. "It must have looked like a rendezvous militaire." He kicked aside an overturned chair and staggered to the door. "And since they did not kill us with their first attempt, we should expect another. We must go."
He tried to open the door, but it was wedged tight. He kicked at it, and it moved a little, but not far enough. Trent stepped up beside him and the two of them kicked together, knocking it another few inches before it stuck again. Donna slipped in between them and said, "All three at once. One, two, three
!" They kicked in unison, putting everything they had into it, and the door cleared the jamb. Two more good kicks shoved it wide enough to squeeze out through.
André grabbed his coat and the mail bag on his way out. Trent and Donna scooped up their coats from the floor where they had fallen and followed him outside, to look in stunned amazement at the destruction all around them. None of the trees had their branches anymore, and most of them were missing the top part of their trunks as well. Several had been uprooted and toppled, making instant hollow-log habitat for brontosaurs. And all around, the ground was strewn with chunks of wood, huge boulders, rocks, and dirt.
Trent's pickup was on its side. He ran over to it and looked for damage, but it didn't look like it had been hit with anything bigger than his fist. There were dents all over, and when he climbed up onto the passenger side, which now pointed straight up, he found a bull's-eye crack in the window, but it looked like ground movement had tipped the pickup, rather than something knocking it over. It actually looked like they had been lucky: a boulder the size of a refrigerator lay right where they had parked. If the pickup hadn't already been on its side, the boulder would have smashed it flat. André's truck was still on its wheels. There was an eight-foot-long log sticking out of the roof just behind the articulated joint in the middle, but when André climbed into the cab and fed power to the motors, it rolled forward without hesitation.
Through the blasted trunks of the trees beyond him, Trent could see the rim of the crater the meteor had made. It was at least twenty feet high, and there didn't seem to be much curve to it. It looked more like a dam than a crater, with steam or smoke or vaporized rock rising up in a big white plume behind it. How big a rock had the U.S. dropped on them, anyway?
André circled around and called out from his window, "I will winch your vehicle upright."
"I don't think that'll work," Trent said. "We'd have to drag it forward first to clear this boulder, and that could do more damage than tippin' over did."
"You have no choice," André said. "You must move within ten or fifteen minutes, or risk the next shot is being more accurate."
That's how long it would take to do a tangential vector translation with another big rock. Instead of matching velocity with the ground, the bomber would be maximizing the difference, sending a piece of asteroid straight down at orbital velocity or more, but it was the same basic idea. Let the planet's gravity do the work, and incidentally create a near-infinite supply of bombs. They wouldn't even have to sacrifice a hyperdrive engine. They could program that to detach itself and jump to sa
fety once the rock was on the right trajectory.
Trent looked up into the sky. The clouds were too patchy to offer much cover. Whoever was watching them could jump wherever they wanted to in order to see the ground. Trent felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck at the thought that someone was looking at him right now, bringing another meteor to bear on him.
He raised his right hand and gave them the one-finger salute. Donna laughed, and he looked over at her with a sheepish grin. "The last great act of defiance, eh babe?"
"I think we've got a lot more defiance in us yet," she said, and there was fire in her voice. She was hefting a rock in her hand as if she was thinking about pitching it all the way into orbit to knock down whoever had bombed them.
"You have to survive to fight another day," André said. "Damage or no, you must move now."
"We can jump straight into space without havin' to drag the truck anywhere," Trent said. Provided they hadn't sprung any leaks. The cracked window wouldn't matter; that was just the regular glass. The Lexan inner window was still stout as ever. Trent had no idea how the door seals had fared, but he didn't see that he had much choice. If they righted the pickup and tried driving anywhere, they would just be inviting another strike the next place they stopped. They had to get off the planet for the colonists' safety as well as their own, and they had a better chance of staying sealed up if they didn't drag the pickup on its side first.
"You are right," André said. "Go quickly, then. And when you get home, well, perhaps it is time for revolution, yes?"
"No perhaps about it," Trent said. "Heads are gonna roll when word of this gets out." André smiled grimly. "The metaphor amuses me. France will gladly provide the guillotine. Now go!" Trent bent down to give Donna a hand up, but she passed him the rock she was carrying first. It was about the size of a baseball, almost black, deeply pitted, and way heavier than it looked. "I think this is part of the meteor that hit us," she said.
"Sure looks like it." Trent had seen pictures of meteorites before, but he had never held one in his hand. It weighed at least three or four pounds, and was cold as ice. Whether that was from the snowy ground, or if it was still cold from being part of an asteroid that had been way the hell and gone away from the sun just a few minutes ago, he couldn't tell, but it felt like he was holding a little bit of space in his hand. He opened the passenger door and dropped the meteorite carefully into the pickup's cab, making sure it hit the side of the driver's door and not the window.
