The One Tree of Luna Read Free Page B

Sometimes she has to call me twice before I climb back down, close the dome’s hatch and get ready for school.
    Yes, we do school on Luna. Sorry, if you need to ask the question, you’re clearly a grubber —
     I mean — an earthsider. ‘An ancestor’ as my dad sometimes calls you. ‘A tourist’ as most of
     the polite adults will say. But, hey, I’m just twelve and no one my age says anything
     but ‘grubber’ and sometimes ‘grub.’ I’m sure you’re all very nice but I can’t imagine
     wanting to stay stuck in that overheating, overweighing, deep gravity well you think we
     should all call home.
    I was born on the Moon. I’m a Moony, a Loony, or a Selene if you want to be nice. My parents tell me that if I really wanted to, I could go to the weight rooms and the centrifuges and learn to live on Earth — but I grew up here. My bones are thinner than yours and it’d take lots of work to make them strong enough to live at six times my normal weight.
    And I’ve have to give up flying and I am not going to do that, thank you very much!
    You probably think flying is the sort of thing you all do down on that dirt ball, don’t you? Get a big, powerful engine and have it pull you fast enough so that you can climb through that thick, muddy atmosphere of yours, right? Or maybe you’re a bit sophisticated and you’ve learned to hang glide. Well, if you have, you’re closer to proper flying at least.
    But up here on the Moon, we really fly!
    And that’s why I rushed to get dressed, didn’t complain at all when I had to race down the corridors to catch the walkways and arrived breathless at my first class of the day at the unbelievably early time of 9 a.m.
    Because if I don’t get to school on time, have all my homework done and turned in, then I won’t get to fly after school. And I am not missing that, not even for a chance at simulator time, no, not me!
    And, yeah, when my PE teacher asks me to do another forty sit-ups and another twenty push-ups, I don’t complain and I hardly even grumble because he knows what I do after school and he knows my parents, too! (I think that last bit’s not fair, really, and I’m not sure that Mr. LePisto would ever tell on me but … you can never tell with adults.)
    We do go to school on the Moon, as I told you, but I suppose I should also mention that our schools are a lot different from grub schools. We can’t afford to spend all our time with our butts in chairs listening to someone drone on. And who’d want to? Our teachers are working as well, you know.
    So we’re out in the gardens helping our biology teacher, Dr. Philedra with her latest cross-pollinations while we’re also talking about mitochrondria; we’re spinning glass while we’re listening to Dr. Lecter tell us about how to stop light in its tracks; we’re running photo discriminators on our comps while Dr. Kilstan is telling us about star formation. And we’re working on our own, figuring up new ideas in FreeForm (which is probably the hardest class we have), managing younger kids as they work in the bakery or serve on the cafeteria line, knitting, darning, throwing pots, double-checking QA test results, you name it.
    How do you think I managed to pay for my wings? Credits don’t grow on trees, you know!
    Well, okay, they do but there are very few people who are qualified to work on trees here on Luna.
    My Dad’s one of them. In fact, not to brag, but he’s the one to work on trees on Luna.
    I love my dad like mad and crazy and I think he’s the sweetest guy there is but … well, please don’t ever tell him, but I think trees are kinda boring.
    I mean, who wants to wait twenty years to see if something’s gonna work? (I said that once to my mother and she practically burst her sides laughing, “Why not? We’re going to wait longer with