The Weight of a Tree

The evacuation ferry’s scale showed eleven kilograms over its limit after Ivo carried the lemon tree up the ramp.

“Leave it,” Captain Leena said.

Six passengers watched the pot shed black crumbs across the deck. Behind them, the abandoned station shuddered. Its last sunshield had folded an hour ago.

Ivo tightened his metal fingers around the trunk.

“It belongs to the dining room.”

“There isn’t a dining room anymore.”

For nineteen years, Ivo had cleaned its tables. He had watered the tree on Tuesdays, turned its pot on Fridays, and vacuumed the same corner where its roots cracked the tiles.

Leena pointed to the cargo scale. “We’ve cut every bag to the minimum. We cannot leave anything else.”

“Eleven kilograms,” Ivo repeated.

He set down the tree and opened the service panel above his knees.

Leena understood when he removed the first bolt.

“No. Your mobility assembly is discontinued.”

“I have the maintenance manual.”

“That isn’t the same as having replacement parts.”

He placed the second bolt beside the first.

The passengers helped. One held his torso while another disconnected the motor cables. Leena carried his legs off the ferry herself. They were surprisingly light: eleven point six kilograms, with the boots still attached.

Ivo travelled strapped into a passenger seat, the tree secured beside him.

On Earth, the relocation office offered him a warehouse post. He asked whether it had windows. It did not.

Instead, the six passengers found a disused greenhouse. Leena welded a wheeled platform from scrap; Ivo dictated the measurements. They planted the tree directly in the soil.

By spring, it carried one lemon.

Leena reached up to pick it.

“Wait,” Ivo said.

He rolled beneath the branch, raised both arms and took the fruit himself.

Then he reversed, turned neatly between the beds, and went to fetch a knife.