May 12, 2440 6:15 AM
Russell waited until Ellis had coffee in him.
“Sleep okay, Dad?”
Randi stopped buttering biscuits. She had heard the cracking wood, too.
Mahata turned toward the stove with sudden professional interest in a pan that did not need her attention.
Treat Vost kept eating.
Ellis took another drink and looked over the rim of the mug at his oldest son.
“Fine.”
Russell nodded. “Good. Sounded like the couch was having trouble.”
Treat coughed into her coffee.
Apala looked between the adults. She was close enough to eleven now that calling her ten usually earned a correction.
“What happened to the couch?”
“Nothing,” Ellis said.
Russell opened his mouth.
Ellis beat him to it.
“Treat isn’t my cousin.”
There was one perfect second of silence.
Then Randi lost it.
Mahata bent over the stove laughing. Russell dropped his forehead onto the table. Treat covered her face with one hand, shoulders shaking.
Apala looked around the kitchen.
“I don’t get it.”
“That’s because you’re the smart one,” Ellis said.
Russell raised his head. “You’re still not getting away with changing the subject.”
Ellis glanced toward the garage.
Russell followed his eyes.
“Don’t.”
Ellis took another drink.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“Nope.”
Russell had met Vrig Saib two days ago at one of the drink stations at Leta.
Last night had been the first time he brought her home.
The plan had been simple. Bring her through the garage, take her upstairs, and with everyone busy getting ready for harvest, maybe nobody would notice.
It might even have worked.
Then sometime before breakfast Vrig had gone looking for his bathroom, taken a wrong turn, and wandered into the house wearing nothing but Russell’s T-shirt.
Randi had been the first person she encountered.
To Randi’s credit, she had not laughed.
Not until later.
She had grabbed a pair of sweatpants, some of Mahata’s underwear, socks, an old purple-and-yellow Marshall High T-shirt, and a new pair of Crocs off the shelf. They had been waiting for an owner since the mercantile ended up with three of one size last winter.
Then she shoved the pile at Russell with a bottle of three-in-one apple body wash, shampoo, and conditioner and told him to take it to Vrig before she kicked his ass and poisoned his coffee.
Vrig had retreated to the shower.
She had not come back out yet.
Treat smiled into her cup.
Randi pointed a butter knife at Ellis and Russell both. “You two are terrible.”
“Ravi’s worse,” Russell said.
“Ravi isn’t even here,” Mahata said.
“Exactly.”
Ravi was six miles away in Ellis’s RV with Heidi Littleton.
Dan had added a custom plate to the RV.
COUSINS.
Ellis had considered removing it.
He had also considered leaving it there forever.
He suspected Ravi would eventually steal the screwdriver.
By tomorrow morning none of it would matter much anyway.
The wheat was ready.
Eight hundred acres of winter wheat did not care that Matthew Johnathan Boone Marmaduke had decided to build a city practically next door.
There were only so many people around who knew how to run a combine properly. Ellis and Russell were two of them.
Once they started, they would stay with it until the wheat was off.
Then came the clover.
Randi and Mahata had already turned the farmhouse into a harvest command post. The refrigerators were packed, tortillas for wraps and jars of pickles filled three boxes, drinks were stacked everywhere there was room, and the back porch had acquired enough food to support a small military campaign.
The combines could take care of themselves for quite a while.
The people running them were another matter.
Treat checked the time.
“You ready?”
Ellis looked at her.
She had pinned him to the couch last night, made enough noise for Russell to comment on it at breakfast, and this morning was going to spend most of the day learning every part of the operation Ellis was handing her tomorrow.
He had been married twice.
He had learned not to confuse enthusiasm with permanence.
Still.
Third time might be the charm.
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.” Pasted markdown
Leta 2 started roughly five hundred meters north of Leta 1.
Started was the right word.
The two sitios were not touching.
A creek ran between them, down in its own strip of ground, and the land climbed again on the north side.
By the time you reached the southern edge of Leta 2, you were about eight meters higher than Leta 1.
That difference had already made the civil engineers unhappy.
Not because eight meters was much.
Because eight meters was enough.
The footing plan for Leta 2 was already calling for more deep anchor pilings than Leta 1, and the engineers had spent most of the morning arguing over where the two vehicle bridges across the creek should go.
A separate walking bridge would follow later.
Ellis had stayed out of that argument.
He knew dirt.
They knew bridges.
Everybody was happier when people remembered what they were being paid for.
The highway lay another three hundred meters beyond the western edge of Leta 2.
Marshy ground and critters.
Not puddled.
Not muddy from rain.
Wet underneath.
That mattered because April had been almost bone dry.
Less than half an inch of rain for the month, most of that near the beginning.
Then came the heat.
Seven days over ninety.
Five of them in a row at the end of the month.
If ground was still soft after that, Ellis did not need an engineer to tell him there was water under it.
The engineers were telling him anyway.
Probably because that was what engineers did.
Treat stood beside him looking across the scrub.
“We’ll need more piling on this one.”
“So I heard.”
“You sound thrilled.”
“I’m thrilled you’re the one who gets to deal with it tomorrow.”
She gave him a look.
Ellis smiled.
Apala came up behind them carrying another bundle of tags.
“You two done?”
Treat looked at her.
“Apparently we are.”
“Good. We’ve got another three kilometers to walk.”
That was the job.
Not identifying trees.
Not cataloging anything.
Not admiring them.
Walk the square.
If you could easily hug a trunk, it was not worth slowing the operation down for.
Somebody else could have it.
The dozer could have it.
The cutters could have it.
The reclamation people could have it.
Ellis did not particularly care.
If you could not easily get your arms around it, it got a tag.
That meant somebody took the trouble to bring it down cleanly and send it into the timber stream instead of simply knocking it over with everything else.
Simple rules worked.
Especially when several hundred people had to follow them.
Ellis stopped at a tree.
Wrapped both arms around it.
His fingers touched.
“Leave it.”
Apala did not even reach for a tag.
They walked another twenty yards.
The next one was bigger.
Ellis put his arms around it and came nowhere close.
Apala tagged it.
“That one.”
They kept moving.
Treat tried the next.
Her hands met.
“No.”
The next one they did not.
“Yes.”
Apala tagged it.
That was about the level of technical sophistication Ellis wanted.
By nine thirty, the line had spread across the southern third of Leta 2.
A second crew followed about an hour behind them.
Tagged trees came down under control.
Everything else came down however was fastest.
The sound followed Ellis everywhere now.
Cutters.
Dozers.
Shouted directions.
The occasional rising whine of a T-12 lifting another load away.
More shuttles had been added again that morning.
They did not need to drag trees across the ground anymore.
Once something was down and secured, a T-12 could pick it up and put it where it needed to go.
That alone had changed the pace of the work.
Russell came out of another line carrying a fistful of unused tags.
Vrig Saib was walking beside him.
Two days ago Ellis had seen her working a drink station.
This morning he had seen considerably more evidence that Russell knew her.
Ellis looked at Russell.
Russell looked at Ellis.
Vrig looked between them.
Nobody said a word.
Treat noticed.
“Runs in the family?”
“Keep walking.”
She laughed. Pasted markdown
Dan Littleton had his own RV set up not far from Ellis’s.
Erica was working from one of the medical stations.
That left their children distributed according to interest and usefulness.
Carl had been told to go play.
At eight, he had interpreted this as formal authority to organize half a dozen other boys into a fishing school.
When Ellis passed the pond that had been left outside the sitio square, Carl was standing at the bank demonstrating something to several V’ren girls with the gravity of a man teaching an essential survival skill.
Ellis kept walking.
Nobody was bleeding.
Erica’s standard for intervention was probably higher than his anyway.
Seth was harder to find.
Fourteen and already useful in ways most adults were not, he had somehow become the person new arrivals asked about snakes, edible plants, and whether something growing wild was worth picking.
He was also gathering anything useful he could find around the uncleared ground between the sitios and along the creek.
The old stone foundation was a gold mine.
Rhubarb.
Elderflower.
Mulberries.
Early gooseberries.
Early blackberries.
He was still looking for magnolia because he intended to make wine.
And he carried a small chainsaw because he was always hunting Osage orange.
His new friends traipsing along behind him needed bows.
He also had a frog gig, or maybe a snake spear.
Ellis had learned that asking Seth why usually led to more information than he wanted.
Dan could raise his own boy.
Ellis had Ravi, who was into his cousin, Russell, who had brought home a new girl last night, and a couch to replace.
That was enough entertainment.
At eleven, the sun was already hot.
Not April hot.
May hot.
A May heat that had pushed up the wheat harvest by a good ten or twelve days.
There was a difference, although Ellis could not have explained it to anyone who had not spent enough years outside.
The ground inside Leta 2 was firm enough for the tagging crews.
The scrub between the sitio and the highway was not.
Treat came back from speaking with one of the civil engineers.
“They’ve narrowed the bridge locations to three choices.”
“There are two bridges.”
“Yes.”
“So they’re making progress.”
“Slowly.”
“Engineers.”
She stared at him.
“You know what I do for a living.”
“Exactly.”
Apala laughed.
Treat pointed at the next tree.
“Go hug that.”
Ellis did.
Too small.
“No.”
They moved on.
The beauty of the rule was speed.
They did not have to know what the tree was.
They did not have to decide whether it might someday make a nice table.
They did not have to stop six hundred people while somebody found an expert.
Big enough to be worth handling separately?
Tag it.
Not big enough?
Keep moving.
By noon, most of the remaining teams were converging toward the northern side of the square.
The work looked almost absurdly ordinary from ground level.
People walking through trees.
Bright tags.
Radios.
Water jugs.
Apala complaining that somebody had taken the good marker and left her with one that barely worked.
Behind them was the less ordinary part.
Hundreds of people.
Heavy machines.
Remote shuttles.
A whole square of Missouri woodland disappearing into organized streams of timber and bulk material.
And five hundred meters south, Leta 1 was already becoming something else.
Tomorrow Treat would own this problem.
Ellis would own eight hundred acres of wheat.
He was looking forward to the change.
Mostly.
At twelve forty-seven, one of the last crews called in.
Finished.
Another followed three minutes later.
Then another.
Ellis, Treat and Apala were walking the last strip themselves.
Apala pointed.
“That one?”
Ellis wrapped his arms around it.
Easy.
“No.”
Next.
Too big.
“Tag.”
Next.
Easy.
“No.”
They reached the final marker at the north corner at twelve fifty-nine.
Treat checked the board.
Every team was in.
Every strip was covered.
Ellis looked at his watch.
“One o’clock.”
Apala dropped the remaining tags into the bucket.
“Done.”
Behind them, the cutters were already catching up.
Ellis looked south.
He could not see Leta 1 from here through everything between them, but he could see the shallow line of the creek and, farther beyond, the activity around the first sitio.
Eight meters lower.
Five hundred meters away.
Two bridges coming.
Another walking bridge after that.
Treat stepped beside him.
“You going to be able to leave this alone tomorrow?”
“No.”
She smiled.
“Are you going to?”
Ellis thought about the wheat.
Russell.
The combines.
Randi and Mahata feeding everybody.
Clover seed waiting.
Then he looked back across Leta 2.
“Yep.”
Treat nodded.
“Good.”
Ellis looked at her.
Tomorrow the city was her problem.
Tonight might still be his.
