Leo Frankowski by Copernick's Rebellion

sandstorm can do to a
fine car like this.” Hank picked up her suitcases and led Patty to a neighboring tree
house. “You ever lived in a tree house, Patty?”
    “No, but I know
my way around one.”
    “Then I’ll just let you rest up for a
while.” He set the bags in the middle
of the forty-foot room. “If you’ve a mind, later, Meg and I would truly enjoy your stopping by.”
    “Thanks. I
might.” Patricia got out her NBC credit card. “What do I owe you?”
    “Owe me? Why,
you don’t owe me anything, ma’am.”
    “But surely,
some small gratuity…”
    “Ma’am, my
social security pays me ten times what I spend, and I don’t think anybody in
the valley’s set up to use plastic money.”
    “But I…”
    “Paid in full
by the pleasure of meeting you. But like I said, drop by. Meg would like
it.”
    After he left,
Patricia showered, then took a long soak in a ten-foot tub. Jet lag was catching up
with her and she was asleep by sunset.
    She was up at dawn,
and, dressed in a rustic fushia leotard and thigh-high sandals, she went
exploring.
    There were no street
numbers on the houses. There weren’t even any streets. People had mostly just planted their houses where it
suited them and the houses had mostly grown to within a dozen feet of each other, somehow respecting each
other’s space. The paths between them rarely went for two hundred feet
without branching at odd angles, and those two hundred feet were never straight. A far cry
from Manhattan Island!
    Among the tree
houses, the air had a pleasant temperature, neither hot nor cold, dry nor humid.
    There were a lot of
people out, and in western fashion, they all seemed to have time to stop and
chat. But nobody
had ever met Dr. Guibedo.
    At noon she had lunch
with a tall bachelor who was disappointed when she wouldn’t stay, and she went on, talking to people,
asking questions.
    By five she decided it was time to head
back and asked directions.
    “The parking
lot? Well, it’s in that direction. About eight miles as I
recollect.”
    By six it was in this direction, and about ten miles away. The walls pressed in on her, a horrid
green jungle.
    By seven she knew
that she was hopelessly lost. She sat down, exhausted, on a park bench and
fended off three pickup attempts in the growing dusk. She started to drift off
into sleep.
    “Land sakes, child!
Are you sick?”
    Patricia looked at
the tiny, shriveled old woman in front of her. “What? Oh, no. I’m not
sick. I’m just tired. Tired and lost.”
    “Lost, huh?
Well, you shouldn’t be out here in the dark. Ain’t proper, not for a young woman of
any breeding.”
The woman’s dress was thirty years out of date.
    “Is it
unsafe?”
    “Unsafe? Well,
I don’t recollect anybody being hurt. But there’s boys in this neighborhood who
are downright rambunctious! Singing and carrying on till all hours! You just come along with
me. My house is just around the corner, and there’s a spare room hasn’t been
used in months.
Well, up, child!”
    Patricia obediently
followed the old woman home.
    At the end of the
second day, she was told that she was sixteen miles from the parking lot.
    On the third day,
she hired a twelve-year-old boy to guide her back. Children had plenty of uses
for money, and no social security checks.
    She spent a day
recuperating and cursing her boss at NBC. Then she went out again.
     
    Patricia Cambridge
parked her bicycle in the growing dusk by the largest private tree house she
had ever seen. She was very unsure of herself as she knocked on the door. Two weeks of
dead ends and false leads were telling on her. It opened.
    “Can I be of
service to you, my lady?”
    Patricia was shocked
by the creature’s appearance. While transparent blouses were in that season,
going about bare-breasted was not. It was a minute or two before she noticed that while
from the waist up her greeter looked like a well-developed adolescent, from the
waist down she was more goat than human. And her ears