Nebula Awards Showcase 2008

by Ben Bova

  Yet it had been Cape who transformed the family fortunes with his apples. When he was eighteen, he began attending classes at the hortischool extension in Longwalk, very much against GiGo’s wishes. He had paid tuition out of money earned doing odd jobs around the village—another pointless diversion from home chores that irritated his parents. Cape had become interested in fruit trees after brown rot spoiled almost the entire crop of Littleton’s sour cherries the year before. All the farmers in the village raised fruit, but their orchards were usually no more than a dozen trees, all of traditional heirloom varieties. Crops were small, usually just enough for home use because of the ravages of pests and disease. Farmers battled Terran immigrants like tarnished plant bugs, sawflies, wooly aphids, coddling moths, leafrollers, lesser apple worms, and the arch enemy: plum curculio. There were mildews, rusts, rots, cankers, blotches and blights to contend with as well. The long growing season of fruit trees made them vulnerable to successive attacks. Citizens across the Transcendent State debated whether or not Chairman Winter had introduced insect evil and fungal disease into his new Garden of Eden on purpose. The question had never been settled. But at hortischool, Cape learned about neem spray, extracted from the chinaberry tree, and the organic insecticide pyrethrum, which was made from dried daisies. And he heard about an amazing cider apple called Huang’s Nectar, a disease-resistant early bloomer, well-suited to the climate of Southeast but not yet proven hardy in the north. As much to spite his father as to test the new variety, he had drained his savings and bought a dozen saplings on w4 semi-dwarfing rootstock. He started his own orchard on land he had cleared near his hut. Two years later, he brought in his first—admittedly light—harvest, which nevertheless yielded the sweetest cider and smoothest applejack anyone in Littleton had ever tasted. Cape purchased a handscrew press in his third year and switched from fermenting his cider in glass carboys to huge oak barrels by his fifth. And he bought more apple trees—he never seemed to have enough: McIntosh, GoRed, Jay’s Pippin, Alumar Gold, Adam and Eve. Soon he began to grow rootstock and sell trees to other farmers. By the time Cape married Spur’s mother, the Leungs were renting land from farmsteads on either side of their original holding. GiGo and GiGa lived long enough to see their son become the most prosperous farmer in Littleton. GiGo, however, never forgave himself for being wrong, or Cape for being right, about the apples.

  Cape had given Spur and Comfort his parents’ house as a wedding present; Diligence Cottage had been empty ever since GiGa had died. Cape had long since transformed his own little hut into one of the grandest homes in Littleton. Spur had Sly drop him off just down Jane Powder Street from the cottage, hoping to avoid the big house and the inevitable interrogation by his father for as long as possible. After seeing Sly’s dismay at the news of the High Gregory’s visit, he was thinking he might try to keep the High Gregory’s identity from Cape, if he could.

  However, as Spur approached the front door, he spotted Cape’s scooter parked by the barn and then Cape himself reaching from a ladder into the scaffold branches of one of GiGo’s ancient Macoun apples. He was thinning the fruit set. This was twice a surprise: first, because Cape usually avoided the house where he had grown up, and second, because he had been set against trying to rejuvenate the Leungs’ original orchard, arguing that it was a waste of Spur’s time. In fact the peaches and the plum tree had proved beyond saving. However, through drastic pruning, Spur had managed to bring three Macouns and one Sunset apple, and a Northstar cherry back into production again.

  “DiDa!” Spur called out so that he wouldn’t startle his father. “It’s me.”

  “Prosper?” Cape did not look down as he twisted an unripe apple free. “You’re here already. Something’s wrong?” He dropped the cull to the pack of gosdogs waiting below. A female leapt and caught the apple in midair in its long beak. It chomped twice and swallowed. Then it chased its scaly tale in delight, while the others hooted at Cape.

  “Everything’s fine. There was a last minute change and I managed to get a ride home.” Spur doubted his father would be satisfied with this vague explanation, but it was worth a try. “What are you doing up there?” He dropped his kit on the front step of the farmhouse and trudged over to the orchard. “I thought you hated GiGo’s useless old trees.”

  Cape sniffed. “Macoun is a decent enough apple; they’re just too damn much work. And since you weren’t around to tend to them—but I should come down. You’re home, Prosper. Wait, I’ll come down.”

  “No, finish what you’re doing. How are things here?”

  “It was a dry spring.” He culled another green apple, careful to grasp the fruiting spur with one hand and the fruit with the other. “June was parched too, but the county won’t call it a drought yet.” The gosdogs swirled and tumbled beneath him as he let the apple fall. “The June drop was light, so I’ve had to do a lot of thinning. We had sawfly but the curculio isn’t so bad. They let you out of the hospital so soon, Prosper? Tell me what you’re not telling me.”

  “I’m fine. Ready to build fence and buck firewood.”

  “Have you seen Comfort yet?”

  “No.”

  “You were supposed to arrive by train.”

  “I hitched a ride with a friend.”

  “From Concord?”

  “I got off the train in Wheelwright.”

  “Wheelwright.” One of the gosdogs was trying to scrabble up the ladder. “I don’t know where that is exactly. Somewhere in Southeast, I think. Lee County maybe?”

  “Around there. What’s wrong with Macouns?”

  “Ah.” He shook his head in disapproval. “A foolish tree that doesn’t know what’s good for it.” He gestured at the immature apples all around him. “Look at the size of this fruit set. Even after the June drop, there are too many apples left on the branches. Grow more than a few of these trees and you’ll spend the summer hand-thinning. Have you seen Comfort yet?”

  “I already said no.” Spur plucked a low-hanging cherry, which held its green stem, indicating it wasn’t quite ripe; despite this, he popped it into his mouth. “Sour cherries aren’t too far from harvest, I’d say.” He spat the pit at the gosdogs. “They’re pulling the entire regiment back to Cloyce Forest, which is where I’ll catch up with them.”

  “Civic refreshment—you’ll be busy.” Cape wound up and pitched a cull into the next row of trees. As the pack hurtled after it, he backed down the ladder. “Although I wouldn’t mind some help. You’re home for how long?”

  “Just the week.”

  He hefted the ladder and pivoted it into the next tree. “Not much time.”

  “No.”

  He was about to climb up again when he realized that he had yet to greet his only son. “I’m glad you’re safe, Prosper,” he said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “But I still don’t understand about the train.” He held Spur at arm’s length. “You got off why?”

  Spur was desperate to change the subject. “DiDa, I know you don’t want to hear this but Comfort and I are probably going to get divorced.”

  Cape grimaced and let go of Spur. “Probably?” He set his foot on the bottom rung.

  “Yes.” The gosdogs were back already, swarming around the ladder, downy feathers flying. “I’m sorry.” Spur stepped away.

  “Prosper, you know my feelings about this.” He mounted the ladder. “But then everyone knows I’m a simple fool when it comes to keeping a woman.”

  Cape Leung had been saying things like that ever since Spur’s mother left him. On some days he bemoaned the failure of his marriage as a wound that had crippled him for life, on others he preened as if surviving it were his one true distinction. As a young man, Spur had thought these were merely poses and had resented his father for keeping his feelings about Spur’s mother in a tangle. Now, Spur thought maybe he understood.

  “Comfort was never comfortable here,” Spur said morosely. “I blame myself for that. But I don’t think she was born to be a farmer’s wife. Never was, never wi
ll be.”

  “Are you sure?” Cape sucked air between his teeth as he leaned into the tree. “She’s had a terrible shock, Prosper. Now this?”

  “It isn’t going to come as a shock,” he said, his voice tight. His father had far too many reasons for wanting Spur to make his marriage work. He had always liked both of the Joerly kids and had loved the way Comfort had remade both Diligence Cottage and his only son. Cape was impatient for grandchildren. And then there was the matter of the land, once agreeably complicated, now horribly simple. Ever since they had been kids, it had been a running joke around the village that someday Spur would marry Comfort and unite the Joerly farmstead with the Leung holdings, immediately adjacent to the east. Of course, everyone knew it wouldn’t happen quite that way, because of Vic. But now Vic was dead.

  “When will you see her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Spur. “Soon. Anyway, it’s been a long day for me. I’m going in.”

  “Come back to the house for supper?” said Cape.

  “No, I’m too tired. I’ll scrape up something to eat in the cottage.”

  “You won’t have to look too hard.” He grinned. “Your fans stopped by this morning to open the place up. I’m sure they left some goodies. I’ve been telling the neighbors that you were due home today.” He dropped another cull to the gosdogs. “Now that I think about it, I should probably ride into town to tell folks not to meet your train. I still can’t believe you got a ride all the way from…where did you say it was again?”

  “What fans?”

  “I think it must have been Gandy Joy who organized it; at least she was the one who came to the house to ask my permission.” He stepped off the ladder into the tree to reach the highest branches. “But I saw the Velez girls waiting in the van, Peace Toba, Summer Millisap.” He stretched for a particularly dense cluster of apples. “Oh, and after they left, I think Comfort might have stopped by the cottage.”

  TEN

  I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

  —WALDEN

  The refrigerator was stocked with a chicken and parsnip casserole, a pot of barley soup, half a dozen eggs, a little tub of butter, a slab of goat cheese and three bottles of root beer. There was a loaf of fresh onion rye bread and glass jars of homemade apricot and pear preserves on the counter. But what Spur ate for supper was pie. Someone had baked him two pies, a peach and an apple. He ate half of each, and washed them down with root beer. Why not? There was nobody around to scold him and he was too tired to heat up the soup or the casserole, much less to eat it. Eating pie took no effort at all. Besides, he hadn’t had a decent slice of pie since he had left Littleton. The niceties of baking were beyond the field kitchens of the Corps of Firefighters.

  Afterward he poured himself a tumbler of applejack and sat at the kitchen table, trying to decide who had brought what. The barley soup felt like an offering from sturdy Peace Toba. Gandy Joy knew he had developed a secret weakness for root beer, despite growing up in a farmstead that lived and died by cider. The Millisaps had the largest herd of goats in town. He wasn’t sure who had made the casserole, although he would have bet it wasn’t the Velez sisters. Casseroles were too matronly for the Velezes. They were in their early twenties and single and a little wild—at least by Littleton’s standards. They had to be, since they were searching for romance in a village of just over six hundred souls. Everyone said that they would probably move to Longwalk someday, or even to Heart’s Wall, which would break their parents’ hearts. He was guessing that the pies had come from their kitchen. A well-made pie was as good as a love letter. But would the Velez sisters just assume he and Comfort were finally going to split? Comfort must have decided on her own and was telling people in the village. Then Spur remembered that Sly had said he had heard something. And if Sly knew, then everyone knew. In a nosy village like Littleton, if a kid skinned his knee playing baseball, at least three moms fell out of trees waving bandages.

  Spur put the food away and washed the dishes, after which there was no reason to stay in the kitchen. But he lingered for a while, trying to avoid the memories which whispered to him from the other rooms of the cottage. He remembered his stern grandparents ghosting around the wood stove in their last years. He remembered boarding Diligence Cottage up after GiGo died, the lumpy furniture and the threadbare carpet receding into the gloom. And then he and Comfort pulling the boards down and rediscovering their new home. The newlyweds had moved almost all of GiGo and GiGa’s things to the barn, where they moldered to this day. Spur and Comfort had dusted and cleaned and scraped and painted everything in the empty cottage. He remembered sitting on the floor with his back to the wall of the parlor, looking at the one lonely chair they owned. Comfort had cuddled beside him, because she said that if there wasn’t room for both of them on the chair then neither would sit. He had kissed her then. There had been a lot of kissing in those days. In fact, Comfort had made love to him in every room of the cottage. It was her way of declaring ownership and of exorcising the disapproving spirits of the old folks.

  Now that she was about to pass out of his life, Spur thought that Comfort might have been too ferocious a lover for his tastes. Sometimes it was all he could do to stay with her in bed. Occasionally her passion alarmed him, although he would never have admitted this to himself while they were together. It would have been unmanly. But just before he had volunteered for the Corps, when things had already begun to go wrong, he had felt as if there were always another man standing next to them, watching. Not anyone real, but rather Comfort’s idea of a lover. Spur knew by then he wasn’t that man. He had just been a placeholder for whoever it was she was waiting for.

  Finally he left the kitchen. The women who had opened Diligence Cottage had done their best, but there was no air to work with on this close July night. The rooms were stale and hot. He sat out on the porch until the needlebugs drove him inside. Then he propped a fan in either window of the bedroom and dumped his kit out onto the bedspread. What did he have to wear that was cool? He picked up a T-shirt but then smelled the tang of smoke still clinging to it. He dropped it onto the bed and chuckled mirthlessly. He was home; he could put on his own clothes. He opened the dresser drawer and pulled out the shorts that Comfort had bought for his birthday and a gauzy blue shirt. The pants were loose and slid down his hips. He had lost weight in the firefight and even more in the hospital. Too much heartbreak. Not enough pie.

  Then, against his better judgment, he crossed the bedroom to Comfort’s dresser and began to open drawers. He had never understood why she abandoned everything she owned when she left him. Did it mean that she was planning to come back? Or that she was completely rejecting their life together? He didn’t touch anything, just looked at her panties, black and navy blue and gray—no pastels or patterns for his girl. Then the balled socks, sleeveless blouses, shirts with the arms folded behind them, heavy workpants, lightweight sweaters. And in the bottom drawer the jade pajamas of black-market material so sheer that it would slip from her body if he even thought about tugging at it.

  “Not exactly something a farmer’s wife would wear.” Spur spoke aloud just to hear a voice; the dense silence of the cottage was making him edgy. “At least, not this farmer’s wife.”

  Now that he was losing Comfort, Spur realized that the only person in his family was his father. It struck him that he had no memories of his father in the cottage. He could see Cape in the dining room of the big house or the library or dozing in front of the tell. Alone, always alone.

  Spur had a bad moment then. He stepped into the bathroom, and splashed some cold water on his face. He would have to remarry or he would end up like his father. He tried to imagine kissing Bell Velez, slipping a hand under her blouse, but he couldn’t.

  “Knock, knock.” A woman called from the parlor. “Your father claims you’re back.” It was Gandy Joy.

  “Just a minute.” Spur swiped at his
dripping face with the hand towel. As he strode from the bedroom, the smile on his face was genuine. He was grateful to Gandy Joy for rescuing him from the silence and his dark mood.

  She was a small, round woman with flyaway hair that was eight different shades of gray. She had big teeth and an easy smile. Her green sundress exposed the wrinkled skin of her wide shoulders and arms; despite farm work she was still as fair as the flesh of an apple. Spur had been mothered by many of the women of Littleton as a boy, but Gandy Joy was the one who meant the most to him. He had to stoop over slightly to hug her.

  “Prosper.” She squeezed him so hard it took his breath away. “My lovely boy, you’re safe.”

  “Thank you for opening the cottage,” he said. “But how did you find everything?” She smelled like lilacs and he realized that she must have perfumed herself just for him.

  “Small house.” She stepped back to take him in. “Not many places a thing can be.”

  Spur studied her as well; she seemed to have aged five years in the ten months since he’d seen her last. “Big enough, especially for one.”

  “I’m sorry, Prosper.”

  When Spur saw the sadness shadow her face, he knew that she had heard something. She was, after all, the village virtuator. He supposed he should have been relieved that Comfort was letting everyone know she wanted a divorce, since that was what he wanted too. Instead he just felt hollow. “What has she told you?”