Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

“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.