Somewhere deep down inside, I have a conviction that making myself come to terms with the very differentness of other peoples and other places will keep me from growing old. Calisthenics for the mind. I trudged through the snow next to Kellerman, doing my brain exercises. One, two… one, two… working off the mental flab.
The village was small. A double row of buildings flanked the single-lane street, reminding me incongruously of the simple, linear towns in old Westerns. The buildings stood close to one another, as though huddled together for warmth. Some were so close that only one person would have been able to walk between them at a time. All had planks bridging the space between adjacent roofs, making the entire village, in a sense, two extended buildings, one along each side of the street. The buildings were all of wood—adaman, of course—on stone foundations.
I shook my head. The price of one of these plain wooden buildings would equal that of a mansion if it were to be transported to Earth.
Kellerman had seen me shake my head. “What? You don’t like our town?” There was an edge to his voice.
All I could do was chuckle in return. “I was just thinking that, at least in Earth dollars, you live in palaces.”
“I suppose so.” He gestured towards a building to our left, one nearly at the end of the street. “You’ll be staying with me, at least for the first week or two. Then we’ll see if someone else wants to take you over for a while. We’re not really set up for visitors. In fact, you’re the first person to ever stay over between shuttles.”
Frowning, I said, “Seems like tourism would be an obvious draw.”
He snorted. “Think it through. They come, they see the trees. In six hours they’re ready to go home. But the shuttle only comes in once every three months. What are they going to do for the rest of the time?”
I nodded. “Right.”
He stepped up onto a broad wooden porch that ran halfway across the back of his house. Stomping his boots to get the clotted snow out of the treads, he held the door open as I slipped past into a room that served as kitchen, dining room, and living room. All the cooking implements were of metal, battered and burnished from long use. The computer terminal was obsolete to the point of being an antique.
To my right there were three doors, all standing open. The ones on either side were tiny bedrooms. The one in the middle was a bathroom. That was it. The whole house might have measured four meters by eight.
I walked over to a window on the opposite wall that looked out on the street. Triple panes to keep heat loss to a minimum, I noticed.
He said, “One thing I’d like you to do to sort of earn your keep while you’re staying with me is to make sure the shutters are closed every night.”
I nodded. “Be glad to. I imagine it helps keep the heat in.”
Kellerman rubbed his hands together. “I think of it as keeping the cold out. You live here as long as I have and the cold starts to seem like a living thing.”
The next morning I followed Kellerman to his tree—one of about a dozen being actively worked. The actual entrance into the tree was an arch perhaps three meters across and four high. From any distance at all it was invisible, lost in the rough, ropy furrows of the bark. Two heavy wooden doors were spread open and footprints in the previous night’s snow indicated that we weren’t the first to pass this way. I later learned that there were between six to ten men and women working in each tree.
Just inside the door was a small cubicle, like a coat-check room in a fancy club. Kellerman stopped at the counter, leaning on it with his elbow. “Ruby, this is the man from Earth who’s come to write about us taking the wood out of the tree. His name is Michael Sokol.”
Ruby reminded me irresistibly of a German hausfrau. Although not dressed for the part, the round, cheerful face was enough to convince me. She smiled broadly at me, then turned to Kellerman. “I’ll take good care of him, Luther. Don’t you worry.”
She looked at me. “I keep the equipment back here, sell fresh blades and such. Every morning, everybody who works this tree has to check in with me—then they check out again that night. That way I know that no one is left inside when I lock up.”
“Why not just leave it open?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Animals might come in during the night. The next morning, Luther, here, might get a surprise when he turned the corner. It’s just easier to close the doors. That way we know that nothing of any size can get in.”
Kellerman said, “Make damned sure you check in with Ruby every single time you come in here. If she’s not here at this counter, you wait for her to finish lunch or whatever she’s doing. I don’t care if you have to wait an hour. Same thing on the way out.”
“Why are you so careful about people being in the tree? Seems like it’d be a pretty safe place to spend the night.”
Ruby answered, “Well, there’s several things. Say a man’s off working by himself and gets hurt, we might not know for a few days. This way, we start looking as soon as he doesn’t check out. Happens about once or twice a year. Last time was about October, I think, so it’s about time for someone else to get hurt. Just make sure that it isn’t you.”
I nodded solemnly.
“Then again,” she continued, “sometimes it’s the tree that gets them.”
My mouth twitched. “What’s it do—eat them?”
She shook her head, completely serious. “Nobody told you?”
“Told me what?”
She glanced at Kellerman, frowning. “You brought a man in here without—”
He grimaced. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I thought he knew. He says he’s worked adaman before, so I thought—”
“Humph! Small consolation that would have been.” She turned back to me. “Adaman sap is mildly hallucinogenic. Some other effects, as well, it seems.” She gestured at the open doors. “We keep these open all day, no matter how bad the weather gets, so we can keep fresh air circulating though the tree.”
Kellerman looked grim. “Accidents happen more because someone gets to seeing things and loses control of their saw than for any other reason. You don’t want to stay in a dead-end tunnel any longer than you have to.”
Ruby said, “Two or three hours aren’t enough to do much to you, but I wouldn’t stay in stagnant air for much longer than that. Take a break. Go to a window. Get yourself some fresh air. The stuff clears from your body fairly quickly. Just don’t overdo it.”
Now I was unsure of myself. My certainty that they were having a joke at my expense was wilting under Ruby’s earnest gaze. I glanced at Kellerman. On his face, too, was the look of a man who meant what he said. But still…
“If adaman has some kind of vapors, why didn’t I have a problem when I worked with it at home?”
Kellerman said, “If you have to be in the tree, here, surrounded by the stuff for several hours before it begins to affect you, a small piece like the one you messed with…” he shrugged. “There’s just not enough to bother you.”
“Why not wear a mask or something?”
“By the time you keep out the fumes, the mask gets so heavy you can’t stand to wear it for long. It’s just easier to get fresh air once in a while.”
“But what about the importers? Surely they have a warehouse full of the stuff.”
“How much they might have on hand at any one time, I couldn’t say, but you can be sure that they’re well ventilated.”
“But your house—”
He held up a ramrod straight finger. “Ah! Once the wood is dry, it’s no longer a problem. Either air or kiln-dried, it doesn’t matter. The wood used to build my house—and all the others in the village—has been stored outside for at least five or six years after being cut. Quite dry, I assure you. If you go back behind Town Hall, you’ll see a shed where boards are stacked, drying, so that there will always be cured wood on hand if someone needs to make repairs or if a new building is needed.”