Hands sweating, Aleksander reached over the shining metal cart to offer the young lady his dollars. She smiled and gave him an apple the size of a frag grenade, impaled on a wooden spike and drenched in caramel. Mister Counselor Henders said that the apples were best now, when the leaves on the maples and oaks changed color—trees, in a city! These people cut holes in the sidewalk to plant trees! They left this open plaza just to have a place for people to see trees and sell apples and sit on benches and drink their weak coffee.
He’d seen trees half a lifetime ago, before the war made everyone horrible. But never in the sidewalk, right next to long cars and gleaming signs and woven wire drums just for trash. You could have so much food that you didn’t want it all, and the city put out spec
