Spiggy was very, very smart, Africa had said, despite being a rather ugly man. “Which is no handicap as I have enough beauty for both of us,” she had announced, wrinkling her nose at her daughter. “I know that for a fact because you turned out fine.” Spiggy was also a manic-depressive, but Africa had checked to be sure Saturday was okay before she continued the pregnancy. Fixing MD was no harder than fixing other developmental errors. The doctor just fiddled with the DNA and injected it into the growing fetus. What Saturday couldn’t understand is why Spiggy got born without that being done, though Africa said it was something religious.
She turned left at the next comer, tripping over something and almost sending herself sprawling, catching herself on the side of a planting bed. In the lantern light she could see one of the heavy floor slabs heaved up a hand’s breadth.
“What in hell did that?” murmured Jep.
They peered beneath the stone, seeing a pallid fungus piled beneath the stone, shoving up. “I didn’t know they could do that! A little thing like that!” Saturday exclaimed. “When it dies, will the stone fall back down?”
“Maybe it’ll just keep growing,” suggested Jep. “Maybe it’ll push the stone through the roof.” He stepped over the raised stone and asked, “Why’d you leave the creely bait in here?”
“Because nobody would smell it in here,” she replied. “The whole house smells sort of decayed.” She found the sack, picked it up, and led the way back to the door.
Both of them sighed with relief when they reached the open air. The mushroom house was entirely too wet and cavelike. They galloped out of the settlement, keeping up the pace until they were well on the trail to the Gobbles.
Saturday had returned to her thoughts about Spiggy Fettle. She didn’t mind being smart as he was, but she didn’t want to look like him.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked Jep.
Jep turned to examine her brown face, the curly black hair that surrounded it, her dark glowing eyes, the imperious beak of her straight, delicate nose, her olive-rose mouth, which was usually open, usually full of words. “Sats, I think you’re beautiful. How about me? Am I pretty?” He grinned at her.
Jep always reminded her of one of the little settlement tractors, square and tough and unstoppable. His eyes were pebble-colored, like rocks seen in shallow water, but his eyelashes were long and thick and brown, and there was nothing stony about the neat, full curve of his lower lip. He looked quite a lot like Sam, and Sam was a very handsome man.
Satisfied both with his response and with the way he looked, she gave him a kiss. Jep was surprised, but not displeased, and he returned the kiss. The result astonished them both. They drew apart, unable to catch their breaths, and took up their climb again.
The way to the Gobbles was not interesting. It was a steady ascent among uniformly blobby bushes, which had neither a particular scent nor any discernable blossom or fruit. The path was littered with round, ankle-breaker rocks, too, and the smart climber kept his eyes on his feet. It was the dullness of the trip which made the climb laborious, rather than the physical effort required. Therefore, when Jep looked up from the path to find himself confronted with an enormous tree in a place where no such tree had ever been, he was startled into absolute immobility.
Saturday ran into his back with a whoof.
“Clummox,” she growled, before looking up, and then, “Ohowee, oh my. Where did that come from?”
“Them,” said Jep. “There’s about a hundred of them, plus little ones.”
She looked beyond the first huge trunk to see others standing at either side of the path and down the slopes, with smaller feathery growths beneath them, unmistakably young ones of the same type.
“They’ve never been here before,” she said unnecessarily. “Unless we’re lost.”
He nodded. There hadn’t been trees before. And they weren’t lost. The trail led to the foot of the tree and resumed at the other side of the trunk.
“Do you suppose it’s like the mushroom house, where everything sort of grows overnight?” she asked. “Like that thing that was pushing up the floor stone?”
Jep had his head back and was trying to estimate the height of the tree he had almost run into. He thought it looked about the same as the width of a scissor hockey court, which would make it about a hundred feet. It was almost as wide as it was tall, great branches spreading to every side, each one supported from below with stout growths which curved down and back into the main trunk. Some of the larger branches had several supports, some only partway grown, half-curved down toward the trunk.
“Overnight?” he asked, incredulously. “It had to take longer than that. When was the last time we came up here?”
Saturday thought about that. “It’s been a long time, but Willum R. went creely fishing about ten days ago, and this is the only way to come. If he’d seen these trees, he’d have said something. We can tell your mom. She’ll come look at them, and she can tell us what they are.”
Jep, swallowing deeply, went around the tree and proceeded on his way. If Willum R. hadn’t seen these when he came up ten days ago … Well then, it was very strange, that’s all.
As the day went on, they came back to the subject of trees, more disturbed than either of them let on, but worrying away at it as they tried to reach a solution. Though they picked at the subject of the trees, they avoided the matter of the kiss and were careful not to get too close to one another, not knowing what would happen. Anything that happened might be more than they could handle. The world they knew
