by D.L. Morrese
~*~
One early autumn day about a year later, MO-126 and his boy walked in the woods along a small stream, hunting for wild grapes, berries, or anything else edible to bring home to supplement their sparse larder. A lone, elderly redfruit tree stood above the thistles and brambles on a small hillock nearby. A girl about the same age as Kolby was sitting in it.
“What are you doing, Laura?” he asked as they angled near. The village was too small for anyone not to at least recognize everyone else, and those of similar ages knew one another by name.
Pale-blue eyes looked down on them through long, straight hair and the branches of the tree.
“I’m investigating a mystery and you’re interrupting me,” she said conversationally.
“What mystery?”
“I don’t wish to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll laugh.” It sounded more like a prediction than a concern.
“Why? Is it funny?”
“No. But you’ll think it is, and I don’t need the distraction.”
Kolby shrugged. “Well, Okay.” He turned to walk away, paused and said, “Do you need help?”
She cocked a quizzical expression. “Why would you want to help?”
MO-126 wondered much the same thing. There was no doubt that Kolby was a nice boy, but he remained a bit young to have much more than idle curiosity about girls. At this age, the two genders tended to regard their opposites as little more than annoying.
“I don’t know. Because you look like you’re not having much luck by yourself, I guess.”
After a moment, she said, “I seriously doubt you’ll be of much help, but do you have any idea how trees make fruit?”
“You want to know why trees make fruit?”
“Not why. How? Why is easy.”
“Oh, right. The gods put the fruit on the trees so people—”
Her heavy sigh stopped him. “Trees make fruit to spread their seeds to grow more trees. What I don’t know is how they do it.”
Something about the girl, her voice, her appearance, or her attitude reminded the android dog of someone. He searched back through his memory until he came to a spot about two thousand years and two hundred kilometers away where he met a young woman sitting on a beach with a bowl and a sliver of magnetic stone. Paysha was older at the time than Laura was now, but equally curious. There might even be some physical similarities. Perhaps they were distantly related. It was not impossible.
“They do it slowly, I imagine,” Kolby said.
“Of course they do it slowly, but….”
“I can help you watch, if you want,” he said.
“No. There’s no point. I’ll have to figure it out a different way. It obviously happens too slowly to see. I’ll think about it later. Oh, and thank you for not laughing.”
“You didn’t say anything funny.”
She stared at his open, innocent face and smiled. “Can you help me down?”
They spent the next hour gathering some of the better looking fruit from the tree and berries from the bushes around it. They spit the spoils evenly and went their separate ways.