by Jerry Oltion
He had just about convinced himself they should jump back into space when they fell out the bottom of the cloud and saw the ground laid out below them, still a mile or two away. Trent took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
They were spinning around about once every fifteen seconds or so, which gave them a good view of the countryside, but there wasn't much to see. The ground was mottled yellow-white and flat as a pancake for miles around. When they got closer, they could see big puffs of yellow grass waving in the breeze, sticking up between snowdrifts that ran in parallel lines like frozen ocean waves.
"It's definitely cold down there," Donna said.
"The wind's blowing, too." The grass clumps were all bent to the side and bobbing up and down, and snow swirled off the tops of the drifts. It was hard to tell how fast it was blowing, but if the parachute didn't collapse when they hit the ground, it could drag them sideways halfway across the continent. If they didn't have a sack of mail to deliver, Trent would have bailed out of this landing, but he had to at least give it a try.
There was no sense opening the door to look down. They could see what they were going to hit way out in front of them. Trent just made sure he and Donna were belted in tight and grabbed the steering wheel to brace himself.
The final hundred feet or so seemed to take forever, but when they hit, it felt like they had come in without a chute at all. The truck lurched up and sideways, and a huge cloud of snow billowed up around them, completely blinding them for a second before it swirled away. Trent felt the pickup tipping to the right, so he goosed the motors and cranked the wheels into the tilt and brought it upright again, but when he let off the juice the pickup kept rolling. It bounded up over a snowdrift, caught air for a second, then plowed nose-first into the next drift, throwing up another big cloud of snow.
"The chute's draggin' us!" Trent growled. He concentrated on steering, hoping that the fabric would catch in a clump of grass, but when they plowed through four more snowbanks without slowing, he decided to change tactics. The shroud lines stretched out straight ahead of them, but they slacked up for a second when the pickup crested a snowbank, which meant the wind wasn't blowing much faster than they were moving.
"Hang on!" he said, and he tromped the juice pedal. The wheels spun for a second, and the uneven power to three wheels made the truck slew around sideways, but he turned into the slide and brought it back straight before they went over. And now the shroud lines were on the ground. He aimed for them, driving right over the top of them and running up their length until he drove right onto the parachute canopy. He braked to a stop while he was still on top of it, and cloth billowed up around them, flapping like mad now that it was pinned down, but it couldn't inflate with the pickup sitting astride it.
"Can I breathe now?" Donna asked.
"I think so." Trent set the brake and waited to see if it would hold. The pickup lurched back and forth as the parachute tugged on it, but there wasn't enough cloth free to drag it anymore. The radio crackled to life. "Mon dieu! Etes vous—are you all right?" Trent picked up the microphone. "I think so. I don't dare move until we get the chute folded up, though, or it'll drag us to hell and gone again."
"Stay right there. I will be there in several minutes to help."
"Roger. Thanks." Trent popped the latches on his door and cautiously opened it, expecting the wind to snatch it out of his hands, but it wasn't blowing all that hard. Maybe fifteen or twenty miles an hour was all. There was just a hell of a lot of surface area on the parachute.
There was a lot of surface area on his hat, too. He felt it lift up, but he grabbed it before it could go anywhere and set it on the back of the seat.
He stepped outside. The air swirled down the open neck of his Ziptite and bit right through his shirt.
"Jesus," he said, "It's colder'n a witch's tit out here. Let me get our coats." Donna laughed. "How cold?"
"Very fucking cold!" Trent yelled as he closed his door and fought his way through the billowing parachute to the camper. He had to watch his footing in the snow; the Ziptite suit's plastic feet were slick as skis. The chute had wrapped itself around the whole back end of the pickup, so he had to pull it away from the camper and cram it under the truck so he could get to the door, but that actually helped cut down on the amount of it catching the wind. He popped open the door and leaned in just far enough to open the storage compartment with their sleeping bags and other cold-weather gear in it, dragged out his own coat and put it on right over his Ziptite, then grabbed Donna's coat and went back around to the cab and handed it in to her.
While she was putting it on, he went back to look at the parachute and see how they could fold it up without it getting away from them, but he would have to drive off it to even begin to fold it properly, and there was just too much wind for that.
He looked at the situation for a few seconds, his ears growing steadily colder until he pulled his stocking cap out of his pocket and tugged it down over his head. "Welcome to the Riviera," he muttered. The cloth at his feet was wedged up against the tires. Trent grabbed a handful of it and wadded it up in his arms, tugging more and more of what wasn't actually under the wheels from beneath the pickup until he had all the free cloth he could get in his hands. Maybe he could tie it up with a rope or something, and then drive off of the rest of it and do the same to that? Or . . . yeah. He got one arm around the ball of parachute cloth, opened the camper door with his other hand, and shoved the cloth in through the door.
"Drive forward a few feet!" he yelled.
Donna popped open her door. "What?"
"Drive forward a few feet. I'm gonna pull the parachute loose a little at a time and shove it inside the camper."
"Oh . . . okay." She closed her door, then a few seconds later the pickup rolled forward.
"That's good!" Trent slapped the side of the truck and she stopped while he gathered up more parachute, then he had her drive forward again and gathered some more until he finally got it all inside the camper. The shroud lines were a tangled mess, and there was no way he or Donna were going to fit in the camper themselves until they got the chute folded up and stowed in its proper place, but at least they wouldn't get dragged downwind anymore.
He climbed up on top of the pickup and unbuckled the shroud lines so he could shove the whole works inside the camper. While he was up there, he spotted motion far out across the plain. A big cloud of snow was approaching from the side.
"Company's coming," he shouted down to Donna.
"I see them."
Trent tossed the shroud lines to the ground and closed the empty parachute cover, then shoved the last of the lines in the camper along with everything else and slammed the door on the whole works. He hurried around to the cab again and climbed in, grateful for the warmth and still air inside. Donna took his hands in hers. "Man, your fingers are like icicles."
"They'll be all right." He released the brake and goosed the truck forward, turning toward the oncoming cloud of snow. Whoever was out there, he wanted it clear that he had taken care of his own parachute.
Donna had left the computer on the dashboard, and Trent could see that the emergency bugout screen was still active. One keystroke would take them out of a bad situation, but unless they were about to die it would send them into an even worse one, because the door latches weren't light. He and Donna could probably seal up their Ziptites before they passed out from lack of oxygen, but he didn't want to try it.
They could at least improve their odds. "Snug up your door," he told her. He reached over his left arm with his right and did his own latches while he drove. Then he reached behind his head and undid the bungees holding the rifle down. Donna gave him a funny look, but she did her door, too. They looked ridiculous with their winter coats over their spacesuits, but Trent didn't care. It was a hell of a lot warmer that way than with either coat or suit alone, and with any luck they wouldn't have to stay bundled up for long. He did make one concession to appearances, swapping his stocking cap for his
cowboy hat. Nothing said "Don't mess with me" quite as well as a black Stetson. The oncoming vehicle was painted white. They were almost on it before they saw it at the head of its plume of snow. Trent veered to the right, intending to pull up alongside it and talk with the driver window-to-window, but the other driver veered the same way.
"Look out, idiot!" Trent muttered, swerving the other way, but the other driver did the same thing and they wound up aimed head-on again. They both hit the brakes and skidded to a stop with just feet to spare. Trent was working up a good rant about lunatic Frogs, but then he realized that the other driver was facing him from the same side of his vehicle and he burst out laughing instead.
"The French drive on the left!" he said. They hadn't always, but the anti-American sentiment in Europe had changed many things.
He wasn't about to make Donna do the talking, not when he'd been the one to get them into this situation, so he shifted into reverse and cranked the wheels hard left, spinning the pickup around practically in its own length, then he backed up until he was even with the other truck. The other driver was laughing, too. He was bundled up in a white coat and white stocking hat, and he had a big beard to rival Trent's, except that was mostly white, too. He waited for Trent to unlatch his inner window and remove it, then roll down his outer window; then he rolled down his own and called out across the three-foot gap between their vehicles, "Bonjour! Welcome to Mirabelle." If Trent had ever doubted the need to jack up his pickup's suspension as high as he had, the last shred of doubt vanished in that moment. The Frenchman's vehicle looked like a military troop transport or something, with big tractor tires and a blunt, boxy body with an articulated frame, but Trent was able to look the driver straight in the eye and say, "Thanks. We've got your mail sack in back." The other man nodded, then simply looked at Trent, clearly expecting him to say something more. Trent couldn't think what it might be, but Donna whispered, "The password," just as the Frenchman said, his accent making the words almost comical, "That's a verra nice chapeau you have there."
"Right," Trent said, slapping himself on the forehead below the hat's brim. "Man, I'd forget my head today if it wasn't attached. Sorry about that."
The Frenchman laughed again. "De rien. You no doubt have many things on your mind at the moment. This is most unusual for us both, eh? How is it that an American brings our mail?"
"Sergei has the flu, and we were headed out this morning, so Greg asked us if we would make a side-trip long enough to drop it off."
"I see. Eh bien, he must have his reasons to trust you, and here you are with the mail after all, so that trust was not injustifié. Do you wish to transfer the mail here, or would you like to go somewhere a bit less exposed?"
Trent wondered if he meant that in terms of weather or strategically, but either way the answer was the same. "Let's get out of this wind. I've got my parachute balled up in the camper, and it'd be a damned sight easier to fold up if it wasn't flappin' all over the place."
The Frenchman nodded. "Yes, no doubt it would. Come, then, I will lead you to my sanctuary. It's only a few kilometers from here. Perhaps you would have time to take déjeuner—the lunch—with me? I seldom have the chance to practice my English with a native speaker."
"Well . . ." Trent said, but Donna leaned over before he could say anything more and said, "We'd love to."
The Frenchman smiled wide. "Ah chère madame, you will not have the regrets! Follow me!" He rolled up his window and pulled forward, swinging around to the left and heading back the way he had come. Trent hit the juice to follow, discovered the embarrassing way that he was still in reverse, then shifted into forward and took off after him.
12
"Lunch?" he asked Donna as they bounded through the snowdrifts after the Frenchman.
"It sounds like fun. Who else do you know who can say they've had lunch with a French person?"
"Nobody," Trent said, "And that includes us if we want to stay out of jail. It may be just lunch out here, but back home it's fraternizing with the enemy."
"Fraternizing," she said, and she laughed. "A French word. I'd love to see them charge us with that."
"No you wouldn't," Trent said, but he couldn't help smiling. If anybody could make the court look ridiculous over a single word, it would be Donna.
Big clouds of snow billowed up behind the other vehicle. Trent had to hang back to keep from getting blinded by it. "I wonder why they settled here?" he said. "They have the whole planet to choose from. You'd think they would pick someplace warmer."
"It probably was warmer when they chose it," Donna said. "Seasons change. And some people like winter."
That was true enough. Trent didn't mind it himself, but he appreciated easing into it a little more gradually, preferably after a long, hot summer. He'd just endured a long winter back home, and their day on Onnescu wasn't nearly enough warmth to make him happy to see snow again. On the other hand, it made for some excellent four-wheeling. The snow was just deep enough to be fun, and the drifts and the clumps of grass kept things interesting.
After they'd driven for ten or fifteen minutes, the terrain began to change. The ground started rising up into shallow hills, and taller plants dotted the low spots between them. They weren't quite bushes and they weren't quite trees; they looked more like big barrels with maybe a dozen branches sticking out like angled spokes from the top edge. A single triangular leaf flapped like a pennant from the tip of each branch.
"I'll bet those trunks are full of water," Trent said. "Like cactus."
"It'd be ice this time of year," Donna pointed out.
"Maybe. Unless they've got some kind of antifreeze." "We'll have to ask our guide when we get wherever we're going."
That didn't take much longer. The barrel trees became more common over the next couple of miles, growing taller and thicker as well, until the vehicles were driving through a forest of them, winding between trunks maybe twenty feet thick and thirty feet tall. After another mile or so of that, the Frenchman pulled to a stop beside one and stepped out of his truck.
The snow wasn't drifted nearly as much here. When Trent opened the door, he couldn't feel any wind on his face, either. He stepped to the ground, and the smooth plastic soles of his Ziptite suit immediately slipped out from under him, landing him on his butt in the snow.
"Trent, are you all right?" Donna hollered from her side of the cab, just as the Frenchman said, "Did you hurt yourself?"
"I'm okay," he said, and he used the edge of the door for support while he pulled himself up to his feet again.
"Perhaps you would be more . . . grippy? No . . . more stable without the pressure suit," the Frenchman suggested.
"That's for sure." Trent didn't really want to remove a layer of protection, but if they were going to have lunch with this guy, he couldn't very well stay suited up the whole time. So he took off his coat, peeled out of the suit and tossed it in the cab, then put on his coat—and promptly fell on his butt again.
"Mon dieu! You are having the bad luck today."
Trent could either laugh or get mad, so he laughed. "I'm havin' the cowboy boots instead of the work boots, is what it is." He pulled himself upright again and tried a few cautious steps. If he dug in his heels it was just possible to walk. "Watch yourself," he said to Donna. "It's slick as snot out here."
"Come into my home," the Frenchman said, waving an arm behind him. "It's warm and dry."
"Let's get you the mail sack first," Trent said. "My job's not done until it's delivered." He went around to the back of the pickup, opened the camper, and began pulling out the parachute.
"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 i
t 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.