In the front circle, Florrie Brown rose to her feet. "I'll need help, of course," she said.
"Florrie, are you sure-T'
"I told you I used to live in a commune," she said, as prickly as always. She also told us it flopped miserably, Infinity thought. But maybe-I hope-not because of the cooking.
J.D. lugged a bag of oranges to the storage box. The strap cut into her aching shoulders. She eased the bag to the ground, wiped the sweat from her face, and tried to stretch the cramps from the middle of her back. It was hot out in the orchard. The heat intensified the cloying sweetness of the orange blossoms. J.D. had never lived around orange trees before; strange to see a tree with fruit and blossoms in the same season. And the ripe oranges were not orange, but still green. According to Arachne all that was normal, except that everything had happened too soon, too early in the spring, and the trees had produced an abnormal number of flowers.
At a time when the earth should be damp with spring rain, the ground was dry. Too few bees buzzed in the fragrant orange blossoms. Now that Infinity had mentioned the bees, J.D. kept seeing their small striped yellow and black corpses on the ground.
J.D. poured the oranges carefully into the storage box. She allowed herself a brief glance at the transmission from Nerno's chamber.
Nothing had changed.
Satoshi joined her, watched the transmission with her for a moment, then upended his sling full of oranges into the storage box. J.D. grabbed the sling's bottom and tipped out the last few pieces of fruit.
"I'm glad to have something to do," J.D. said. "Something physical. To keep me from worrying." She gestured toward the display.
"I keep remembering what Stephen Thomas saw," Satoshi said.
"Yes . . . . I wish we had an LTM down at the pool . . . . I wonder if those creatures are metamorphosing, too?"
"Or if they're eating each other up."
They climbed ladders on opposite sides of the same tree. The display shrank to the size of an orange and followed. J.D. moved cautiously, but she felt much better, much steadier, than yesterday. The link was still growing, but her body had accommodated itself to the change.
All in all, though, she thought, I'd rather be swimming with Zev and Victoria. . . .
Her thoughts kept returning to the morning; she found herself staring into space thinking about the flow of Zev's hair against her hand, the taste of Victoria's lips.
Enough woolgathering! she told herself sternly.
Leaves tickled J.D.'s face. She stood in the midst of the overpowering, intoxicating orange smell, blossoms and fruit, ripe and overripe and fermented.
The ladder was not designed to be used outdoors. It wobbled. Everything about this harvesting party was makeshift, from ladders borrowed from household tool storage to the bedsheet carrying bags.
For the first hour or so, everyone had regarded the work as an adventure, an entertaining physical break in days-lives-Aevoted to intellectual pursuits. After two hours, it was no fun anymore.
People used to do this for a living, J.D. thought. All day, every day.
She had never considered what that
meant. If she had thought about it, she would have imagined the experience wrong without knowing it. Now she knew she would get it wrong; she had only a taste of the Work.
On the other side of a heavily laden branch, Satoshi worked steadily. He picked each orange with a sharp snap of his wrist.
"How--" J.D. started to ask about Stephen Thomas, but changed her mind. "How are you doing?"
Satoshi glanced up. His thoughts, too, had been somewhere else.
"Victoria and I decided to have our regular potluck tonight," he said. "Try to get back to normal for a change." He laughed, quick and sharp. "Whatever normal is, these days. We haven't had one since . . . since before you arrived, I guess. Would you like to come? Zev too, of course." "I'd like to," J.D. said. "What should I bring?"
Satoshi grinned.
"Oranges," he said. "What else?"
Shouting erupted from the next row of trees. J.D. turned-she grabbed a branch to keep from overbalancing. An argument-? A fight?
Zev ran past, laughing and shouting, pursued by Chandra. In the gold and green orchard, drenched in white light, they were like fauns. Zev slipped on a rotting orange, caught himself as he fell, turned, scooped up the fermenting pulp and moldy rind, and flung it at Chandra. It caught her full on the chest, spattering her with slimy orange goo.
Chandra stopped short. J.D. had no idea what she would do: she never had any idea what Chandra would do.
Chandra burst out laughing and barreled toward Zcv, scooping up another fallen orange and throwing it at him point blank. He was already running; the orange spattered across his back, staining his sleeveless shirt.
In a moment, the harvesting party had exploded into a full-fledged food fight, fallen oranges zinging past and hitting people, trees, the ground, with a liquid sploosh.
Everybody joined in, the older adults as well as the younger people, everyone but J.D. J.D. observed it from her perch on the ladder high in the tree.
Zev definitely had the advantage, shoveling up the worst of the squashed oranges in his webbed hands, flinging them through the air as if he were playing jai alai.
He looked up at her, laughing.
"Come down!"
She laughed, too. "Don't hold your breath!"
He stopped, and thought about that, an idea that never would have occurred to him back home. In the sea, most ofthe time, he did hold his breath.
"I mean-look out!"
Chandra snuck up behind him and stuffed a handful of slimy orange pulp down the back of his shirt. He yelped and jumped away, spun around and chased after her. She had a good head start.
She almost ran into Gerald Hemminge. He stopped; she stopped; Zev stopped behind her. They looked like a couple of guilty schoolchildren, and Gerald looked like an irritated schoolmarm.
"I thought I could trust you to apply yourselves," he said. "I'm glad I came out to supervise."
"For heaven's sakes, relax," J.D. said. "Nobody was hurting anything."
"We hardly have resources to waste!" Gerald said.
Zev hefted a squashed, reeking orange. J.D. flinched, expecting him to fling it at the acting chancellor. Instead, Zev extended his hand.
"I didn't mean to waste anything," he said. "I didn't throw this one-you can have it if you want."
"How extremely amusing," Gerald said coldly.
J.D. giggled, and had to grab a tree branch to keep from failing. Satoshi started to laugh. Soon everyone was laughing except Zev. He watched Gerald with a completely straight face. J.D. suspected he got the joke perfectly well, but was still pulling Gerald's leg.
Gerald got the joke, and did not appreciate it.
"I see," Gerald said when the laughter finally died
down. "It's terribly funny that the harvest will rot on the trees and we'll all starve. Terribly funny. I see." He glared at J.D., having picked her as the ringleader. "I don't know why I waste my time."
Infinity Mendez came into the clearing where the storage boxes lay. He glanced into one and frowned slightly. J.D. figured he thought the harvesters were pathetic, taking all afternoon to accomplish so little. "That's probably enough," he said.
"On the contrary," Gerald said. "I expect the entire orchard to be picked by tomorrow at the latest."
"Why?" Infinity said.
Gerald stared at Infinity. So did everyone else.
"They store better on the trees." Infinity hesitated. "You never did this before, did you?"
"Certainly not," Gerald said.
"You can pick oranges as you need them," Infinity said. "As long as we aren't planning another frost."
"You said they needed to be picked!" Gerald said.
"I said we needed to plan harvests so we'd have something to eat."