“But what about watering it and fertilizer, Dr. Guibedo?”
“Well, Patty, once it’s this big, the roots go down pretty far, so you don’t have to worry about watering it. The toliet gives it all the fertilizer it needs,” Guibedo said.
“Then there’s nothing to do but live in it?”
“That’s right, Patty, but you got to use it. A tree house will die if there is nobody living there. I made them that way so that we won’t have a bunch of empty slums some day. And talk to your tree, Burty. They like that.”
“Thank you, Dr. Guibedo,” Patricia said.
“So thank you, Patty. If you don’t need me any more, I got to run. I have three more tree houses here in Forest Hills and I want to look in on them.”
Guibedo left before Scratchon could say any more to him; he said it to Patricia. “So my own damned neighbors are growing these things! That jelly belly is using me for advertising.”
“You’re not being fair, Mr. Scratchon. After all, he gave you this house!”
“And now I’ve got to live in the thing. He’s a sneaky S.O.B.”
“Nonsense. He’s a very nice old man, and he’s trying to do something nice for people. These tree houses are only toys in this part of Queens, but think about what they’ll mean to the people starving in India,” Patricia said.
“Yeah. They’ll be able to raise more cannon fodder for the Neo-Krishnas to throw at us. And when they do, our economy will be in such bad shape that this time we’ll have trouble defeating them.”
“I don’t think that Dr. Guibedo looks at it that way.”
“What he thinks he’s doing doesn’t make much difference. What he is doing is destroying the free world.”
A knock sounded at the front door.
“Now who the hell?…” Scratchon opened the massive front door.
“I guess I got the right place, Burt.” Major General George Hastings was in uniform, smartly tailored class—A blues. He had the small, compact build of a fighter pilot.
“George! It’s been months! What brings you to New York?”
“Just passing through La Guardia with a little time on my hands.”
“Hey, you got your second star! Looks like somebody in the old squadron made good.”
“You haven’t done so badly yourself, Burt.” Hastings noticed Patricia. “Oh. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not in the least. George Hastings, Patricia Cambridge. George and I were in the Twenty Third Interceptor Wing over Sri Lanka. Now he’s the commander of Air Force Intelligence. Ms. Cambridge is with NBC, so watch what you say, George.”
“Here I was hoping that you would be a foreign spy and try to seduce military secrets out of me.” Hastings smiled at Patricia.
“Maybe I could take a night course and train for the job.” Patricia smiled back.
“How’s the wife and kids, George?” Scratchon wasn’t smiling.
“Fine. Actually, Margaret is one of the reasons I dropped by. She got a tree-house seed—a Laurel, I think—in the mail with a Burpee’s catalog, and she wanted me to get an idea of what the floor plan would be like.”
“My God! You, too? Don’t you realize the danger to the economy that the damned things represent?”
“Come off it, Burt. Quit trying to make your job into a holy war. Anyway, the kids planted the damned thing on our property along Lake George. On An O-8’s pay I couldn’t afford to build a house up there, so planting a tree house won’t set the economy back any.”
“But in the long run—”
“In the long run we’ll all be dead. For right now, there are more important things to worry about.”
“Like what? Is there something going on that they don’t tell us civilians?” Patricia said.
“Nothing that you don’t read in the papers. But the human race is outgrowing this little planet, and there is no place else to go,” Hastings said.
“But I heard that the moon project and L-Five were going all right.”
“There are less than ten thousand people up there. What’s that to the ten billion people on Earth? Don’t get me wrong. I support those projects. But they won’t help us out much down here,” Hastings said.
“And you think that these tree houses will?” Scratchon asked.
“They might, Burt. They just might.”
“I wish that you could have gotten here ten minutes sooner,” Patricia said. “Dr. Guibedo could have used some encouragement.”
“Guibedo was here?” Hastings said. “I’m sorry that I missed him. But how did you meet him? I’d heard that he was something of a recluse.”
“A news girl gets around. Actually, I met him through a friend of his nephew, Heinrich Copernick.”
“The same guy who raised the stink about rejuvenation a few years back?” Scratchon asked.
“Oh, yes. Genius often runs in a family.” Patricia steered the conversation to a topic that she knew something about. “Take the Bach family, for example…”
Seven months later, the fashions demanded that women wear a padded turtleneck bra with wide transparent sleeves. Keeping to the letter of the decree, Patricia’s midriff was bare to three inches below her belly button, where a black bikini bottom and transparent pantaloons began.
“This is Patricia Cambridge with The World at Large. We’re on location today in Forest Hills, Queens, doing a follow-up on an experiment initiated a year ago on this program.
“The huge tree house you see behind me is Laurel, grown incredibly from the potted plant we saw in Dr. Guibedo’s window just a year ago.
“Mr. Burt Scratchon has been living here for six months, and he will be giving us the grand tour. Tell me, Mr. Scratchon, what is living in a tree house really like?”
“Ms. Cambridge, it’s pure hell. Only my sense of duty to the American public has kept me living in this green slum. I’ll be happy when this experiment is over and I can move back into my solid brick home.
“Look at that phone line. Tight as a guitar string. What with its incredible growth, this ‘house’ has ripped off its own telephone wire twice since I’ve been here!”
“It can’t be all that serious, Mr. Scratchon.” Patricia led the way into the house.
“Serious enough when you are trying to run a business. And look at this damned stuff!” His face reddened. Control, man! Mustn’t alienate the public. Sell!
“Uh, this is being taped, Mr. Scratchon. The technicians have all night to edit out anything improper. Just go on,” said Patricia.
“This flooring material, for example.” Scratchon kicked loose a piece of the carpeting. “Totally unsanitary. It can’t be cleaned. My housekeeper filled four vacuum bags on the hall floor alone before she gave up. A bachelor has a hard enough time keeping good help without this!”
“Didn’t Dr. Guibedo say something about it absorbing foreign matter so that cleaning was unnecessary?” Patricia asked.
“Tell that to my housekeeper. She quit! And look at the floor itself. That floor is five degrees out of plumb! Not a building inspector in the country would accept that in a real house. But BOCA hasn’t even passed codes on these trees.”
“But Dr. Guibedo sent the seeds for one of these Laurel trees to every public official in the country, Mr. Scratchon. I haven’t heard any complaints yet.”
“You will. Take a look at this food. It’s supposed to be hot, but it’s really only lukewarm. This mess is supposed to be pancakes with maple syrup. The darned stuff grows with the syrup already on! Can you imagine trying to start out a day with a plate of this sloppy gruel?”
“Well, it is unsightly.” Patricia put a dainty fingertip to her tongue. “But it is real maple syrup.”