Futures Near and Far Read Free Page A

trees and walkways still threaded among
the houses in a vaguely gridlike pattern, following the courses of vanished
streets. My assignment took me to a roomy old two-story Post Quake Revisionist
set on a full third of an acre.
    I asked the Net to play back the job request while I
inspected the house and its grounds. The resident must have had some job rating to have scored all this for himself. A programmer, maybe, or even a regional
policymaker. Talk about perks. There wasn’t even a co-occupant
registered.
    I wanted to tear my hair
out. Here was I, a journeyman landscape architect for forty years,
getting ready for my master certification, and the only housing the Net would grant
me was an apartment. What I wouldn’t give for my own yard.
    I double-checked the instructions. They didn’t make any sense to me. The yard’s present motif was the
ultimate in western Oregon
xeriscaping. The flora and microfauna were not much different from what might have inhabited the neighborhood
in the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first centuries, or whenever this part
of Portland had been settled. Someone, maybe
even a maestro landscaper, had gone to a great deal of effort to create
an environment perfectly suited to the house, to the city, and to the climate.
    And I was supposed to change it?
    I was still staring at the existing design, brows furrowed,
when the occupant emerged. “Any problems?” he asked.
    He was tall, blond, and muscular, the very epitome of
maleness, yet he walked with a mincing gait. Maybe “he” was really a woman — the
name on the job request was not gender-specific — but I didn’t think so. A
woman who goes to the trouble of adopting a male morph usually does not use it
to project female body language.
    “Actually, yes,” I said. “This says you want lots of sun, but the foliage you’ve asked for is all
deep-shade stuff. Hydrangeas,
rhododendrons, azaleas. Your nanogardeners are going to have to compensate
every summer to keep those thriving.”
    “Isn’t that what they’re there for?” he asked.
    I opened my mouth to reply, but closed it. I could tell
already that I wasn’t going to win this one. “I’ll just get started,” I said
evenly.
    “Of course,” he said, as if I’d had no choice but to comply.
He lingered. Oh, God. He was going to watch. I hated that.
    His grounds control box lay half-hidden under a honeysuckle
vine by the side of the house. I opened up the programming port, identified
myself, and set to work.
    I deconstituted the broad ash and walnut trees around the
property line first, set the soil parameters for higher acidity and moisture,
and assembled the new plants while the old ones dissolved. For ground cover I
selected a Geary Classic strain of baby’s tears — one of those with the aqua undertones
— from the maestro’s catalog of journeyman creations.
    The resident pointed to a camellia bush. “I want that over
by the steps.”
    “But—” I stopped short of explaining how that positioning
destroyed the front yard’s balance, but he seemed to guess what I would have
said.
    “Look, if this is that hard for you, I can request a new
landscaper.”
    “That won’t be necessary,” I said with false cheer.
    “Fine,” he said. “I’ve got an errand to run. I’ll be back
later for the fine-tuning.”
    A pod arrived for him and soon whisked him away. I was
grateful.
    Mother Nature was going to hate me for this day’s work.
    As I labored, the high
cloud cover withdrew, heralding a gorgeous afternoon. Time passed
quickly. That was a rare blessing. In the two days since Cheryl had come at me
with the axe, I’d spent every moment of it obsessed over her. It was good to be
able to focus on something else.
    I was programming the sunscreens on a bed of primroses when
a pod descended into the cradle at the end
of the lane. I kept my back turned, not looking forward to another
encounter with the resident.
    The footsteps behind me stopped. No voice. I