"Not much of a tree."

"It's not much of an environment. Things here have to struggle to stay alive. Not like Amazon, where the plants fight each other. Here they work too hard conserving water."

She looked around again, wincing as her injured foot touched the ground.

"No animals?"

"They're all around you. Insects, reptiles, mostly. Some antelope. Buffalo further east. I could show you a cougar lair." I doubted she had any idea what a cougar was, or antelope and buffalo, for that matter. This was a city girl through and through. About like me before I moved to Texas, three years ago. I relented and went down on one knee.

"Let me see that foot."

There was a ragged gash on the heel, painful but not serious.

"Hey, your hand is hurt," she said. "What happened?"

"Just a stupid accident." I noticed as I said it that she not only lacked pubic hair, she had no genitals. That used to be popular sixty or seventy years ago, for children, as part of a theory of the time concerning something called "delayed adolescence." I hadn't seen it in at least twenty years, though I'd heard there were religious sects that still practiced it. I wondered if her family belonged to one, but it was much too personal to ask about.

"I don't like this place," she said "It's dangerous." She made it sound like an obscenity. The whole idea offended her, as well it should, coming as she did from the most benign environment ever created by humans.

"It's not so bad. Can you walk on that?"

"Oh, sure." She put her foot down and walked along beside me, on her toes. As if she weren't tall enough already. "What was that remark about seven feet? I've got two feet, just like everyone else."

"Actually, you're closer to seven-four, I'd guess." I had to give her a brief explanation of the English system of weights and measures as used in the West Texas disneyland. I'm not sure she understood it, but I didn't hold it against her, because I didn't, either.

We had arrived in the middle of New Austin. This was no great feat of walking; the middle is about a hundred yards from the edge. New Austin consists of two streets: Old Spanish Trail and Congress Street. The intersection is defined by four buildings: The Travis Hotel, the Alamo Saloon, a general store and a livery stable. The hotel and saloon each have a second story. At the far end of Congress is a white clapboard Baptist church. That, and a few dozen other ramshackle buildings strung out between the church and Four Corners, is New Austin.

"They took all my clothes," she said.

"Naturally."

"They were perfectly good clothes."

"I'm sure they were. But only contemporary things are allowed in here."

"What for?"

"Think of it as a living museum."

I'd been headed for the doctor's office. Considering the time of day, I thought better of it and mounted the steps to the saloon. We entered through the swinging doors.