Cyberpunk

chores.”
    I was glad to let her lead so that she was not looking at me, although I could still watch her. I was fascinated by the sweep of her buttocks, the curve of her spine. She strolled, flat-footed and at ease, through her private jungle. At first I scuttled along on the balls of my feet, ready to dart behind a plant if anyone came. But after a while I decided to stop being so skittish. I realized I would probably survive being naked.
    Tree stopped in front of a workbench covered with potted seedlings in plastic trays and picked up a hose from the floor.
    “What’s this stuff?” I kept to the opposite side of the bench, using it to cover myself.
    “Greens.” She lifted a seedling to check the water level in the tray beneath. “What are greens?”
    “It’s too boring.” She squirted some water in and replaced the seedling.
    “Tell me, I’m interested.”
    “In greens? You liar.” She glanced at me and shook her head. “Okay.” She pointed as she said the names. “Lettuce, spinach, bok choi, chard, kale, rocket—got that? And a few tomatoes over there. Peppers, too. GD is trying to break into the food business. They think people will grow more of their own if they find out how easy it is.”
    “Is it?”
    “Greens are.” She inspected the next tray. “Just add water.”
    “Yeah, sure.”
    “It’s because they’ve been photosynthetically enhanced. Bigger leaves arranged better, low respiration rates. They teach us this stuff at GD Family Camp. It’s what we do instead of vacation.” She squashed something between her thumb and forefinger. “They mix all these bacteria that make their own fertilizer into the soil—fix nitrogen right out of the air. And then there’s this other stuff that sticks to the roots, rhizobacteria and mycorrhizae.” She finished the last tray and coiled the hose. “These flats will produce under candlelight in a closet. Bored yet?”
    “How do they taste?”
    “Pretty bland, most of them. Some stink, like kale and rocket. But we have to eat them for the good of the corporation.” She stuck her tongue out. “You want to stay for dinner?”
    Mrs. Joplin made me call home before she would feed me; she refused to understand that my mom did not care. So I linked, asked Mom to send a car to the back door at 8:30, and faded. No time to discuss the missing sixteen thousand.
    Dinner was from the cookbook Tree had been issued at camp: a bowl of cold bean soup, fresh cornbread, and chard and cheese loaf. She let me help her make it, even though I had never cooked before. I was amazed at how simple cornbread was. Six ingredients: flour, cornmeal, baking powder, milk, oil, and ovobinder. Mix and pour into a greased pan. Bake twenty minutes at 220°C and serve! There is nothing magic or even very mysterious about homemade cornbread, except for the way its smell held me spellbound.
    Supper was the Joplins’ daily meal together. They ate in front of security windows near the tunnel to the store; when a customer came, someone ran out front. According to contract, they had to stay open twenty-four hours a day. Many of the suburban malls had gone to all-night operation; the competition from New York City was deadly. Mr. Joplin stood duty most of the time, but since they were a franchise family everybody took turns. Even Mrs. Joplin, who also worked part-time as a factfinder at the mall’s DataStop.
    Tree’s mother was plump and graying, and she had a smile that was almost bright enough to distract me from her naked body. She seemed harmless, except that she knew how to ask questions. After all, her job was finding out stuff for DataStop customers. She had this way of locking onto you as you talked; the longer the conversation, the greater her intensity. It was hard to lie to her. Normally that kind of aggressiveness in grown-ups made me jumpy.
    No doubt she had run a search on me; I wondered just what she had turned up. Factfinders had to obey the law, so they only accessed public-domain information—unlike Comrade, who would cheerfully operate on whatever I set him to. The Joplins’ bank records, for instance. I knew that Mrs. Joplin had made about $11,000 last year at the Infomat in the Elkhart Mall, that the family borrowed $135,000 at 9.78 percent interest to move to their new franchise, and that they lost $213 in their first two months in New Canaan.
    I kept my research a secret, of course, and they acted innocent too. I let them pump me about Mom as we ate. I