This book is dedicated to Robert Forward, for the stories he's sparked in me, for his help in working out the parameters of the Smoke Ring and for his big roomy mind.

 

 

A Del Rey Book

 

Published by Ballantine Books

 

 

 

 

 

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

 

Diagrams by Shelly Shapiro

 

Contents

 

Prologue: Discipline

Chapter 1: Quinn Tuft

Chapter 2: Leavetaking

Chapter 3: The Trunk

Chapter 4: Flashers and Fan Fungus

Chapter 5: Memories

Chapter 6 Middle Ground

Chapter 7. The Checker's Hand

Chapter 8: Quinn Tribe

Chapter 9: The Raft

Chapter 10: The Moby

Chapter 11: The Cotton-Candy Jungle

Chapter 12: The Copsik Runners

Chapter 13: The Scientist's Apprentice

Chapter 14: Treemouth and Citadel

Chapter 15: London Tree

Chapter 16: Rumblings of Mutiny

Chapter 17: "When Birnhain Wood

Chapter 18: The War of London Tree

Chapter 19: The Silver Man

Chapter 20: The Position of Scientist's Apprentice

Chapter 21: Go For Gold

Chapter 22: Citizens' Tree

Dramatis Personae

 

Glossary

 

Prologue

 

 

 

Discipline

 

IT WAS TAKING TOO LONG, MUCH LONGER THAN HE HAD EXPECTED.  Sharis Davis Kendy had not been an impatient man. After the change he had thought himself immune to impatience. But it was taking too long! What were they doing in there?

 

His senses were not limited. Sharis's telescopic array was powerful; he could sense the full electromagnetic spectrum, from microwave up to X-ray. But the Smoke Ring balked his view. It was a storm of wind, dust, clouds of water vapor, huge rippling drops of dirty water or thin mud, masses of free-floating rock; dots and motes and clumps of green, green surfaces on the drops and the rocks green tinges of algae in the clouds; trees shaped like integration signs, oriented radially to the neutron star and tufted with green at both ends; whale-sized creatures with vast mouths, to skim the green-tinged clouds .

 

Life was everywhere in the Smoke Ring. Claire Dalton had called it a Christmas wreath. Claire had been a very old woman before the State revived her as a corpsicle. The others had never seen a Christmas wreath; nor had Kendy. What they had seen, half a thousand years ago, was a perfect smoke ring several tens of thousands of kilometers across, with a tiny hot pinpoint in its center.

 

Their reports had been enthusiastic. Life was DNA-based, the air was not only breathable, but tasted fine

 

Discipline presently occupied the point of gravitational neutrality behind Goldblatt's World, the L2 point. This close, the sky split equally into star-sprinkled, black- and green-tinged cloudscape. Directly below, a vast distorted whirlpool of storm hid the residue of a gas giant planet, a rocky nugget two and a half times the mass of Earth.

 

Sharis would not enter that inner region. The maelstrom of forces could damage his ship. He couldn't guess how long the seeder r~mship must survive to accomplish his mission. He had waited more than half a thousand years already. The L2 point was still within the gas torus of which the Smoke Ring was only the densest part. Discipline was subject to slow erosive forces. He couldn't last forever in this place.

 

At least the crew were not extinct.

 

That would have hurt him terribly.

 

He had done his duty. Their ancestors had been mutineers, a potential threat to the State itself. To reeducate their descendants was his goal, but if the Smoke Ring had killed them . . . well, it would not have surprised him. It took more than breathable air to keep men alive. The Smoke Ring was green with the life that had evolved for that queer environment. Native life might well have killed of those Johnny-come-lately rivals, the erstwhile crew of the seeder ramship Discipline.

 

Sharls would have grieved; but he would have been free to return home.

 

They'd call me an obsolete failure, he thought gloomily while his instruments sought a particular frequency in the radio range. A thousand years out of date by the time I'm home. They'd scrap the computer for certain. And the program? The Sharls Davis Kendy program might be copied and kept for the use of historians Or not.

 

But they hadn't died. Eight Cargo and Repair Modules had gone with the original mutineers. Time and the corrosive environment must have ruined the CARMs; but at least one was still operational. Someone had been using it as late as six years ago. And-there: the light he'd been searching for. For a moment it reached him clearly: the frequency of hydrogen burning with oxygen.

 

He fired a maser in ultrashort, high-powered pulses. "Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State."

 

The response came four seconds later, sluggish, weak, and blurred. Kendy pinpointed it and fine-focused his telescopes while he sent his next demand.

 

"Status. Tell me three times."

 

Kendy sorted the garbled response through a noise-eliminator program. The CARM was on manual, mostly functional, using attitude jets only, operating well inside its safety limits. Once it had been a simplified recording of Kendy's own personality. Now the program was deteriorating, growing stupid and erratic.

 

"Course record for the past hour."

 

It came. The CARM had been free-falling at low relative velocity up to forty minutes ago. Then, low-acceleration maneuvers, a course that looked like a dropped plate of spaghetti, a mad waste of stored fuel. Malfunction? Or . . . it could have been a dogfight-style battle.

 

War?

 

"Switch to my command."

 

Four seconds; then a signal like a scream of bewildered agony. Massive malfunction.

 

The crew must have disconnected the autopilot system on every one of the CARMs, half a thousand years ago. It had still been worth a try, as was his next message.

 

"Give me video link with crew."

 

"Denied."

 

Oh ho! The video link hadn't been disconnected! A block must have been programmed in, half a thousand years ago, by the mutineers. Certainly their descendants wouldn't know how to do that.

 

A block might be circumvented, eventually.

 

The CARM was too small to see, of course, but it must be somewhere near that green blob not far from Goldblatt's World. A cotton-candy forest. Plants within the Smoke Ring tended to be fluffy, fragile. They spread and divided to collect as much sunlight as possible, without worrying about gravity.

 

For half a thousand years Kendy had watched for signs of a developing civilization-for regular patterns in the floating masses, or infrared radiation from manufacturing centers, or industrial pollution: metal vapor, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen. He hadn't found any of that. If the children of Discipline's crew were developing beyond savagery, it was not in any great numbers.

 

But they lived. Someone was using a CARM.

 

If only he could see them! Or talk to them-"Give me voiceover. Citizen, this is Kendy for the State. Speak, and your reward will be beyond the reach of your imagination."

 

"Amplify. Amplify. Amplify," sent the CARM.

 

Kendy was already sending at full amplification. "Cancel voiceover," he sent.

 

Not for the first time, he wondered if the Smoke Ring could have proved too kindly an environment. Creatures evolved in freefall would not have human strength. Huin~nc~ could be the most powerful creatures in the Smoke Ring: happy as clams in there, and about as active.

 

Civilization develops to protect against the environment.

 

Or against other men. War would be a hopeful sign...

 

If he could know what was going on! Kendy could perturb the environment in a dozen different ways. Cast them out of Eden and see what happened. But he dared not. He didn't know enough.

 

Kendy waited.

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

Quinn Tuft

 

 

 

GAVVING COULD HEAR THE RUSTLING AS HIS COMPAMONS Tunneled upward. They stayed alongside the great flat wall of the trunk. Finger-thick spine branches sprouted from the trunk, divided endlessly into wire-thin branchlets, and ultimately flowered into foliage like green cotton, loosely spun to catch every stray beam of sunlight. Some light filtered through as green twilight.

 

Gavving tunneled through a universe of green cotton candy.

 

Hungry, he reached deep into the web of branchlets and pulled out a fistful of foliage. It tasted like fibrous spun sugar. It cured hunger, but what Gavving's belly wanted was meat. Even so, its taste was too fibrous . . . and the green of it was too brown, even at the edges of the tuft, where sunlight fell.

 

He ate it anyway and went on.

 

The rising howl of the wind told him he was nearly there. A minute later his head broke through into wind and sunlight.

 

The sunlight stabbed his eyes, still red and painful from this morning's allergy attack. It always got him in the eyes and sinuses. He squinted and turned his head, and sniffled, and waited while his eyes adjusted. Then, twitchy with anticipation, he looked up.

 

Gavving was fourteen years old, as measured by passings of the sun behind Voy. He had never been above Quinn Tuft until now.

 

The trunk went straight up, straight out from Voy. It seemed to go out forever, a vast brown wall that narrowed to a cylinder, to a dark line with a gentle westward curve to it, to a point at infinity-and the point was tipped with green. The far tuft.

 

A cloud of brown-tinged green dropped away below him, spreading out into the main body of the tuft. Looking east, with the wind whipping his long hair forward; Gavving could see the branch emerging from its green sheath as a half-klomter of bare wood: a slender fin.

 

Harp's head popped out, and his face immediately dipped again, out of the wind. Laython next, and he did the same. Gavving waited. Presently their faces lifted. Harp's face was broad, with thick bones, its brutal strength half-concealed by golden beard. Laython's long, dark face was beginning to sprout strands of black hair.

 

Harp called, "We can crawl around to lee of the trunk. East. Get out of this wind."

 

The wind blew always from the west, always at gale velocities.

 

Laython peered windward between his fingers. He bellowed, "Negative!

 

How would we catch anything? Any prey would come right out of the wind!"

 

Harp squirmed through the foliage to join Laython. Gavving shrugged and did the same. He would have liked a windbreak. . . and Harp, ten years older than Gavving and Laython, was nominRily in charge. It seldom worked out that way.

 

"There's nothing to catch," Harp told them. "We're here to guard the trunk. Just because there's a drought doesn't mean we can't have a flash flood. Suppose the tree brushed a pond?"

 

"What pond? Look around you! There's nothing near us. Voy is too close. Harp, you've said so yourself!"

 

"The trunk blocks half our view," Harp said mildly.

 

The bright spot in the sky, the sun, was drifting below the western edge of the tuft. And in that direction were no ponds, no clouds, no drifting forests . . . nothing but blue-tinged white sky split by the white line of the Smoke Ring, and on that line, a roiled knot that must be Gold.

 

Looking up, out, he saw more of nothing . . . faraway streamers of cloud shaping a whorl of storm . . . a glinting fleck that might indeed have been a pond, but it seemed even more distant than the green tip of the integral tree. There would be no flood.

 

Gavving had been six years old when the last flood came. He remembered terror, panic, frantic haste. The tribe had bufrowed east along the branch, to huddle in the thin foliage where the tuft tapered into bare wood. He remembered a roar that drowned the wind, and the mass of the branch itself shuddering endlessly. Gavving's father and two apprentice hunters hadn't been warned in time. They had been washed into the sky.

 

Laython started off around the trunk, but in the windward direction.

 

He was half out of the foliage, his long arms pulling him against the wind. Harp followed. Harp had given in, as usual. Gavving snorted and moved to join them.

 

It was tiring. Harp must have hated it. He was using claw sandals, but he must have suffered, even so. Harp had a good brain and a facile tongue, but he was a dwarf~ His torso was short and burly; his muscular arms and legs had no reach, and his toes were mere decoration. He stood less than two meters tall. The Grad had once told Gavving, "Harp looks like the pictures of the Founders in the log. We all looked like that once."

 

Harp grinned back at him, though he was puffing. "We'll get you some claw sandals when you're older."

 

Laython grinned too, superciliously, and sprinted ahead of them both. He didn't have to say anything. Claw sandals would only have hampered his long, prehensile toes.

 

Night had cut the ffluniin~tion in halL Seeing was easier, with the sunglare around on the other side of Voy. The trunk was a great brown wall three klomters in circumference. Gavving looked up once and was disheartened at their lack of progress. Thereafter he kept his head bent to the wind, clawing his way across the green cotton, until he heard Laython yell.

 

"Dinner!"

 

A quivering black speck, a point to port of windward. Laython said, "Can't tell what it is."

 

Harp said, "It's trying to miss. Looks big."

 

"It'll go around the other side! Come on!"

 

They crawled, fast. The quivering dot came closer. It was long and narrow and moving tail-first. The great translucent fin blurred with speed as it tried to win clear of the trunk. The slender torso was slowly rotating.

 

The head came in view. Two eyes glittered behind the beak, one hundred and twenty degrees apart.

 

"Swordbird," Harp decided. He stopped moving.

 

Laython called, "Harp, what are you doing?"

 

"Nobody in his right mind goes after a swordbird."

 

"It's still meat! And it's probably starving too, this far in!"

 

Harp snorted. "Who says so? The Grad? The Grad's full of theory, but he doesn't have to hunt."

 

The swordbird's slow rotation exposed what should have been its third eye. What showed instead was a large, irregular, fuzzy green patch. Laython cried, "Fluff! It's a bead injury that got infected with fluff. The thing's injured, Harp!"

 

"That isn't an injured turkey, boy. It's an injured swordbird."

 

Laython was half again Harp's size, and the Chairman's son to boot. He was not easy to discipline. He wrapped long, strong fingers around Harp's shoulder and said, "We'll miss it if we wait here e.rguing! I say we go for Gold." And he stood up.

 

The wind smashed at him. He wrapped toes and one fist in branchlets, steadied himself, and semaphored his free arm. "Hiyo! Swordbird! Meat, you copsik, meat!"

 

Harp made a sound of disgust.

 

It would surely see him, waving in that vivid scarlet blouse. Gavving thought, hopefully, We'll miss it, and then it'll be past. But he would not show cowardice on his first hunt.

 

He pulled his line loose from his back. He burrowed into the foliage to pound a spike into solid wood, and moored the line to it. The middle was attached to his waist. Nobody ever risked losing his line. A hunter who fell into the sky might still find rest somewhere, if he had his line.

 

The creature hadn't seen them. Laython swore. He hurried to anchor his own line. The business end was a grapnel: hardwood from the finned end of the branch. Laython swung the grapnel round his head, yelled, and flung it out.

 

The swordbird must have seen, or heard. It whipped around, mouth gaping, triangular tail fluttering as it tried to gain way to starboard, to reach their side of the trunk. Starving, yes! Gavving hadn't grasped that a creature could see him as meat until that moment.

 

Harp frowned. "It could work. If we're lucky it could smash itself against the trunk."

 

The swordbird seemed bigger every second: bigger than a man, bigger than a hut-all mouth and wings and tail. The tail was a translucent membrane enclosed in a V of bone spines with serrated edges. What was it doing this far in? Swordbirds fed on creatures that fed in the drifting forests, and there were few of these, so far in toward Voy. Little enough of anything. The creature did look gaunt, Gavving thought; and there was that soft green carpet over one eye.

 

Fluff was a green plant parasite that grew on an ~nin'i~1 until the animal died. It attacked humi~nc too. Everybody got it sooner or later, some more than once. But hnmRns had the sense to stay in shadow until the fluff withered and died.  Laython could be right. A head injury, sense of direction fouled up and it was meat, a mass of meat as big as the bachelors' longhut. It must be ravenous . . . and now it turned to face them.

 

An isolated mouth came toward them: an elliptical field of teeth, expanding.

 

Laython coiled line in frantic haste. Gavving saw Harp's line fly past him, and tearing himself out of his paralysis, he threw his own weapon.

 

The swordbird whipped around, impossibly fast, and snapped up Gavving's harpoon like a tidbit. Harp whooped. Gavving froze for an instant; then his toes dug into the foliage while he hauled in line. He'd hooked it.

 

The creature didn't try to escape: it was still fluttering toward them.

 

Harp's grapnel grazed its side and passed on. Harp yanked, trying to hook the beast, and missed again. He reeled in line for another try.

 

Gavving was armpit-deep in branchlets and cotton, toes digging deeper, hands maintaining his deathgrip on the line. With eyes on him, he continued to behave as if he wanted contact with the killer beast. He bellowed, "Harp, where can I hurt it?"

 

"Eye sockets, I guess."

 

The beast had misjudged. Its flank smashed bark from the trunk above their heads, dreadfully close. The trunk shuddered. Gavving howled in terror. Laython howled in rage and threw his grapnel ahead of it.

 

It grazed the swordbird's flank. Laython pulled hard on the line and sank the hardwood tines deep in flesh.

 

The swordbird's tail froze. Perhaps it was thinking things over, watching them with two good eyes while the wind pulled it west.

 

Laython's line went taut. Then Gavving~'s. Spine branches ripped through Gavving's inadequate toes. Then the immense mass of the beast had pulled him into the sky.

 

His own throat closed tight, but he heard Laython shriek. Laython too had been pulled loose.

 

Torn branchlets were still clenched in Gavving~s toes. He looked down into the cushiony expanse of the tuft, wondering whether to let go and drop. But his line was still anchored . . . and wind was stronger than tide; it could blow him past the tuft, past the entire branch, out and away. Instead he crawled along the line, away from their predatorprey.

 

Laython wasn't retreating. He had readied his harpoon and was waiting.

 

The swordbird decided. Its body snapped into a curve. The serrated tail slashed effortlessly through Gavving's line. The swordbird flapped hard, making west now. Laython's line went taut; then branchlets ripped and his line pulled free. Gavving snatched for it and missed.

 

He might have pulled himself back to safety then, but he continued to watch.

 

Laython poised with spear ready, his other arm waving in circles to hold his body from turning, as the predator flapped toward him. Almost alone among the creatures of the Smoke Ring, men have no wings.

 

The swordbird's body snapped into a U. Its tail slashed Laython in half almost before he could move his spear. The beast's mouth snapped shut four times, and Laython was gone. Its mouth continued to work, trying to deal with Gavving's harpoon in its throat, as the wind carried it east.

 

The Scientist's hut was like all of Quinn Tribe's huts: live spine branches fashioned into a wickerwork cage. It was bigger than some, but there was no sense of luxury. The roof and walls were a clutter of paraphernalia stuck into the wickerwork: boards and turkey quills and red tuftberry dye for ink, tools for teaching, tools for science, and relics from the time before men left the stars.

 

The Scientist entered the hut with the air of a blind man. His hands were bloody to the elbows. He scraped at them with handfuls of foliage, talking under his breath. "Damn, damn drillbits. They just burrow in, no way to stop them." He looked up. "Grad?"

 

"Day. Who were you talking to, yourself?"

 

"Yes." He scrubbed at his arms ferociously, then hurled the wads of bloody foliage away from him. "Martal's dead. A drillbit burrowed into her. I probably killed her myself digging it out, but she'd have died anyway . . . you can't leave drillbit eggs. Have you heard about the expedition?"

 

"Yes. Barely. I can't get anyone to tell me anything."

 

The Scientist pulled a handful of foliage from the wall and tried to scrub the scalpel clean. He hadn't looked at the Grad. "What do you think?"

 

The Grad had come in a fury and grown yet angrier while waiting in an empty hut. He tried to keep that out of his voice. "I think the Chairman's trying to get rid of some citizens he doesn't like. What I want to know is, why me?"

 

"The Chairman's a fool. He thinks science could have stopped the drought."

 

"Then you're in trouble too?" The Grad got it then. "You blamed it on me."

 

The Scientist looked at him at last. The Grad thought he saw guilt there, but the eyes were steady. "I let him think you were to blame, yes. Now, there are some things I want you to have-"

 

Incredulous laughter was his answer. "What, more gear to carry up a hundred klomters of trunk?"

 

"Grad . . . Jeffer. What have I told you about the tree? We've studied the universe together, but the most important thing in it is the tree. Didn't I teach you that everything that lives has a way of staying near the Smoke Ring median, where there's air and water and soil?"

 

"Everything but trees and men."

 

"Integral trees have a way. I taught you."

 

"I . . . had the idea you were only guessing . . . Oh, I see. You're willing to bet my life."

 

The Scientist's eyes dropped. "I suppose I am. But if I'm right, there won't be anything left but you and the people who go with you. Jeffer, this could be nothing. You could all come back with . . . whatever we need: breeding turkeys, some kind of meat animal living on the trunk, I don't know-"

 

"But you don't think so."

 

"No. That's why I'm giving you these."

 

He pulled treasures from the spine-branch walls: a glassy rectangle a quarter meter by half a meter, flat enough to fit into a pack four boxes each the size of a child's hand. The Grad's response was a musical "O-ooh."

 

"You'll decide for yourself whether to tell any of the others what you're carrying. Now let's do one last drill session." The Scientist plugged a cassette into the reader screen. "You won't have much chance to study on the trunk."

 

 

PLANTS LIFE PERVADES THE SMOKE RING BUT IS NEITHER DENSE NOR MASSIVE. IN THE FREE-FALL ENVIRONMENT PLANTS CAN SPREAD THEIR GREENERY WIDELY TO CATCH MAXIMUM SUNLIGHT AND PASSING WATER AND SOIL, WITHOUT BOTHERING ABOUT STRUCTURAL STRENGTH. WE FIND AT LEAST ONE EXCEPTION...

 

THESE INTEGRAL TREES GROW TO TREMENDOUS SIZE.

 

THE PLANT FORMS A LONG TRUNK UNDER TERRIFIC TENSION, TUFTED WITH GREEN AT BOTH ENDS, STABILIZED BY THE TIDE. THEY FORM THOUSANDS OF RADIAL SPOKES CIRCLING LEVOY'S STAR. THEY GROW UP TO A HUNDRED KILOMETERS IN LENGTH, WITH UP TO A FIFTH OF A GEE IN TIDAL "GRAVITY" AT THE TUFT'S AND PERPETUAL HURRICANE WINDS.

 

THE WINDS DERIVE FROM SIMPLE ORBITAL MECHANICS.

 

THEY BLOW FROM THE WEST AT THE INNER TUFT AND FROM THE EAST AT THE OUTER TUFT (WHERE IN IS TOWARD LEVOY'S STAR, AS USUAL). THE STRUCTURE BOWS TO THE WINDS, CURVING INTO A NEARLY HORIZONTAL BRANCH AT EACH END. THE FOLIAGE SIFTS FERTILIZER FROM THE WIND.

 

THE MEDICAL DANGERS OF LIFE IN FREE-FALL ARE WELL KNOWN. IF DISCIPLINE HAS INDEED ABANDONED US,

 

IF WE ARE INDEED MAROONED WITHIN THIS WEIRD ENVIRONMENT, WE COULD DO WORSE THAN TO SETTLE THE TUFTS OF THE INTEGRAL TREES. IF THE TREES PROVE MORE DANGEROUS THAN WE ANTICIPATE, ESCAPE IS EASY.

 

WE NEED ONLY JUMP AND WAIT TO BE PICKED UP.

 

The Grad looked up. "They really didn't know very much about the trees, did they?'

 

"No. But, Jefi'er, they had seen trees from outside."

 

That was an awesome thought. While he chewed it, the Scientist said, "I'm afraid you may have to start training your own Grad, and soon."

 

Jayan sat cross-legged, coiling lines. Sometimes she looked up to watch the children. They had come like a wind through the Commons, and the wind had died and left them scattered around Clave. He wasn't getting much work done, though it seemed he was trying.

 

The girls loved Clave. The boys imitated him. Some just watched, others buzzed around him, trying to help him assemble the harpoons and the spikes or asking an endless stream of questions. "What are you doing? Why do you need so many harpoons? And all this rope? Is it a hunting trip?"

 

"I can't tell you," Clave said with just the proper level of regret. "King, where have you been? You're all sticky."

 

King was a happy eight-year-old painted in brown dust. "We went underside. The foliage is greener there. Tastes better."

 

"Did you take lines? Those branches aren't as strong as they used to be. You could fall through. And did you take a grownup with you?"

 

Jill, nine, had the wit to distract him. "When's dinner? We're still hungry."

 

"Aren't we all." Clave turned to Jayan. "We've got enough packs, we won't be carrying food, we'll find water on the trunk . . . claw sandals jet pods, I'm glad we got those . . . hope we've got enough spikes what else do we need? Is Jinny back?"

 

"No. What did you send her for, anyway?"

 

"Rocks. I gave her a net for them, but she'll have to go all the way to the treemouth. I hope she finds us a good grindstone."

 

Jayan didn't blame the children. She loved Clave too. She would have kept him for herself, if she could . . . if not for Jinny. Sometimes she wondered if Jinny ever felt that way.

 

"Mmm . . . we'll pick some foliage before we leave the tuft-"

 

Jayan stopped working. "Clave, I never thought of that. There's no foliage on the trunk! We won't have anything to eat!"

 

"We'll find something. That's why we're going," Clave said briskly. "Thinking of changing your mind?"

 

"Too late," Jayan said. She didn't add that she had never wanted to go at all. There was no point, now.

 

"I could bust you loose. Jinny too. The citizens like you, they wouldn't let-"

 

"I won't stay." Not with Mayrin and the Chairman here, and Clave gone. She looked up and said, "Mayrin."

 

Clave's wife stood in the half-shadows on the far side of the Cornmona. She might have been there for some time. She was seven years older than dave, a stocky woman with the square jaw of her father, the Chairman. She called, "Clave, mighty hunter, what game are you playing with this young woman when you might be finding meat for the citizens?"

 

"Orders."

 

She approached, smiling. "The expedition. My father and I arranged it together."

 

"If you'd like to believe that, feel free."

 

The smile slipped. "Copsik! You've mocked me too long, dave. You and them. I hope you fall into the sky."

 

"I hope I don't," Clave said mildly. "Would you like to assist our departure? We need blankets. Better have an extra. Nine."

 

"Fetch them yourself," Mayrin said and stalked away.

 

Here in the main depths of Quinn Tuft there were tunnels through the foliage. Huts nestled against the vertical flank of the branch, and the tunnels ran past. Now Harp and Gavving had room to walk, or something like it. In the low tidal pull they bounced on the foliage as if it and they were made of air. The branchiets around the tunnels were dry and nude, their foliage stripped for food.

 

Changes. The days had been longer before the passing of Gold. It used to be two days between sleeps; now it was eight. The Grad had tried to explain why, once, but the Scientist had caught them at it and whacked the Grad for spilling secrets and Gavving for listening.

 

Harp thought that the tree was dying. Well, Harp was a teller, and world-sized disasters make rich tales. But the Grad thought so too... and Gavving felt like the world had ended. He almost wanted it to end, before he had to tell the Chairman about his son.

 

He stopped to look into his own dwelling, a long half-cylinder, the bachelors' longhut. It was empty. Quinn Tribe must be gathered for the evening meal.

 

"We're in trouble," Gavving said and sniffled.

 

"Sure we are, but there's no point in acting like it. If we hide, we don't eat. Besides, we've got this." Harp hefted the dead musrum.

 

Gavving shook his head. It wouldn't help. "You should have stopped him~'

 

"I couldn't." When Gavving didn't answer, Harp said, "Four days ago the whole tribe was throwing lines into a pond, remember? A pond no bigger than a big hut. As if we could pull it to us. We didn't think that was stupid till it was gone past, and nobody but Clave thought to go for the cookpot, and by the time he got back-"

 

"I wouldn't send even Clave to catch a swordbird."

 

"Twenty-twenty," Harp jeered. The taunt was archaic, but its meaning was common. Any fool can foresee the past.

 

An opening in the cotton: the turkey pen, with one gloomy turkey still alive. There would be no more unless a wild one could be captured from the wind. Drought and famine.. . Water still ran down the trunk sometimes, but never enough. Flying things still passed, meat to be drawn from the howling wind, but rarely. The tribe could not survive on the sugary foliage forever.

 

"Did I ever tell you," Harp asked, "about Glory and the turkeys?"

 

"No." Gavving relaxed a little. He needed a distraction.

 

"This was twelve or thirteen years back, before Gold passed by. Things didn't fall as fast then. Ask the Grad to tell you why, 'cause I can't, but it's true. So if she'd just fallen on the turkey pen, it wouldn't have busted. But Glory was trying to move the cookpot. She had it clutched in her arms, and it masses three times what she does, and she lost her balance and started running to keep it from hitting the ground. Then she smashed into the turkey pen.

 

"It was as if she'd thought it out in detail. The turkeys were all through the Clump and into the sky. We got maybe a third of them back. That was when we took Glory off cooking duties."

 

Another hollow, a big one: three rooms shaped from spine branches. Empty. Gavving said, "The Chairman must be almost over the fluff."

 

"It's night," Harp answered.

 

Night was only a dimming while the far arc of the Smoke Ring filtered the sunlight; but a cubic klomter of foliage blocked light too. A victim of fluff could come out at night long enough to share a meal.

 

"He'll see us come in," Gavving said. "I wish he were still in confinement."

 

There was firelight ahead of them now. They pressed on, Gavving sni~ing, Harp trailing the musrum on his line. When they emerged into the Commons their faces were dignified, and their eyes avoided nobody.

 

The Commons was a large open area, bounded by a wickerwork of branchiets. Most of the tribe formed a scarlet circle with the cookpot in the center. Men and women wore blouses and pants dyed with the scarlet the Scientist made from tuftberries and sometimes decorated with black. That red would show vividly anywhere within the tuft. Children wore blouses only.

 

All were uncommonly silent.

 

The cookflre had nearly burned out, and the cookpot-an ancient thing, a tall, transparent cylinder with a lid of the same material- retained no more than a double handful of stew.

 

The Chairman's chest was still half-covered in flufl but the patch had contracted and turned mostly brown. He was a square-jawed, brawny man in middle age, and he looked unhappy, irritable. Hungry. Harp and Gavving went to him, handed him their catch. "Food for the tribe," Harp said.

 

Their catch looked like a fleshy mushroom, with a stalk half a meter long and sense organs and a coiled tentacle under the edge of the cap. A lung ran down the center of the stalk/body to give the thing jet propulsion. Part of the cap had been ripped away, perhaps by some predator; the scar was half-healed. It looked far from appetizing, but society's law bound the Chairman too.

 

He took it. "Tomorrow's breakfast," he said courteously. "Where's Laython?"

 

"Lost," Harp said, before Gavving could say, "Dead."

 

The Chairman looked stricken. "How?" Then, "Wait, Eat first."

 

That was common courtesy for returning hunters; but for Gavving the waiting was torture. They were given scooped-out seedpods containing a few mouthfuls of greens and turkey meat in broth. They ate with hungry eyes on them, and they handed the gourds back as soon as possible.

 

"Now talk," the Chairman said.

 

Gavving was glad when Harp took up the tale. "We left with the other hunters and climbed along the trunk. Presently we could raise our heads into the sky and see the bare trunk stretching out to infinity-"

 

"My son is lost and you give me poetry?"

 

Harp jumped. "Your pardon. There was nothing on our side of the trunk, neither of danger nor salvation. We started around the trunk. Then Laython saw a swordbird, far west and borne toward us on the wind."

 

The Chairman's voice was only half-controlled. "You went after a swordbird?"

 

"There is famine in Quinn Tuft. We've fallen too far in, too far toward Voy, the Scientist says so himself. No beasts fly near, no water trickles down the trunk-"

 

"Am I not hungry enough to know this myself? Every baby knows better than to hunt a swordbird. Well, go on."

 

Harp told it all, keeping his language lean, passing lightly over Laython's disobedience, letting him show as the doomed hero. "We saw Laython and the swordbird pulled east by the wind,, along a klomter of naked branch, then beyond. There was nothing we could do."

 

"But he has his line?"

 

"He does."

 

"He may find rest somewhere," the Chairman said. "A forest somewhere. Another tree . . . he could anchor at the median and go down well. He's lost to Quinn Tribe at least."

 

Harp said, "We waited in the hope that Laython might find a way to return, to win out and moor himself along the trunk, perhaps. Four days passed. We saw nothing but a musrum borne on the wind. We cast our grapnels and I hooked the thing."

 

The Chairman looked ill with disgust. Gavving heard in his mind, Have you traded my son for musrum meat? But the Chairman said, "You are the last of the hunters to return. You must know of today's events. First, Martal has been killed by a drillbit."

 

Martal was an older woman, Gavving's father's aunt. A wrinkled woman who was always busy, too busy to talk to children, she had been Quinn Tribe's premier cook. Gavving tried not to picture a drillbit boring into her guts. And while he shuddered, the Chairman said, "Alter five days' sleep we will assemble for Martal's last rites. Second: the Council has decided to send a full hunting expedition up the trunk. They must not return without a means for our survival. Gavving, you will join the expedition. You'll be informed of your mission in detail after the funeral."

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

Leavetaking

 

 

 

THE TREEMOUTH WAS A FUNNEL-SHAPED PIT THICKLY LINED with dead-looking, naked spine branches. The citizens of Quinn Tuft nested in an arc above the nearly vertical rim. Fifty or more were gathered to say good-bye to Martal. Almost half were children.

 

West of the treemouth was nothing but sky. The sky was all about them, and there was no protection from the wind, here at the westernmost point of the branch. Mothers folded their babes within their tunics. Quinn Tribe showed like scarlet tuftberries in the thick foliage around the treemouth.

 

Martal was among them, at the lower rim of the funnel, flanked by four of her family. Gavving studied the dead woman's face. Almost calm, he thought, but with a last lingering trace of horror. The wound was above her hip: a gash made not by the drillbit, but by the Scientist's knife as he dug for it.

 

A drillbit was a tiny creature, no bigger than a man's big toe. It would fly out of the wind too fast to see, strike, and burrow into flesh, leaving its gut as an expanding bag that trailed behind it. If left alone it would eventually burrow through and depart, tripled in size, leaving a clutch of eggs in the abandoned gut.

 

Looking at Martal made Gavving queasy. He bad lain too long awake, slept too little; his belly was already churning as it tried to digest a breakfast of musrum stew.

 

Harp edged up beside him, shoulder-high to Gavving. "I'm sorry," he said.

 

"For what?" Though Gavving knew what he meant

 

"You wouldn't be going if Laython wasn't dead."

 

"You think this is the Chairman's punishment. All right, I thought so too, but . . . wouldn't you be going?"

 

Harp spread his hands, uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

 

"You've got too many friends."

 

"Sure, I talk good. That could be it."

 

"You could volunteer. Have you thought of the stories you could bring back?"

 

Harp opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged.

 

Gavving dropped it. He had wondered, and now he knew. Harp was afraid. . . "I can't get anyone to tell me anything," he said. "What have you heard?"

 

"Good news and bad. Nine of you, supposed to be eight. You were an afterthought. The good news is just a rumor. Clave's your leader."

 

"Clove?"

 

"Himself. Maybe. Now, it could still be true that the Chairman's getting rid of anyone he doesn't like. He-"

 

"dave's the top hunter in the tuft! He's the Chairman's son-in-law!"

 

"But he's not living with Mayrin. Aside from that. . . I'd be guessing."

 

"What?"

 

"It's too complicated. I could even be wrong." And Harp drifted off.

 

The Smoke Ring was a line of white emerging from the pale blue sky, narrowing as it curved around in the west. Far down the arc, Gold was a clot of streaming, embattled storms. His gaze followed the arm around and down and in, until it faded out near Voy. Voy was directly below, a blazing pinpoint like a diamond set in a ring.

 

It was all sharper and clearer than it had been when Gavving was a child. Voy had been dimmer then and blurred.

 

At the passing of Gold, Gavving had been ten years old. He remembered hating the Scientist for his predictions of disaster, for the fear those predictions raised. The shrieking winds had been terrible enough but Gold had passed, and the storms had diminished. . The allergy attack had come days later.

 

This present drought had taken years to reach its peak, but Gavving had felt the disaster at once. Blinding agony like knives in his eyes, runny nose, tightness in his chest. Thin, dry air, the Scientist said. Some could tolerate it, some could not. Gold had dropped the tree's orbit, he was told, the tree had moved closer to Voy, too far below the Smoke Ring median. Gavving was told to sleep above the treemouth, where the rivulets ran. That was before the rivulets had dwindled so drastically.

 

The wind too had become stronger.

 

It always blew directly into the treemouth. Quinn Thit spread wide green sails into the wind, to catch anything that the wind might bear. Water, dust or mud, insects or larger creatures, all were filtered by the finely divided foliage or entangled in the branchiets. The spine branches migrated slowly forward, west along the branch, until gradually all was swallowed into the great conical pit. Even old huts migrated into the treemouth to be crushed and swallowed, and new ones had to be built every few years.

 

Everything came to the treemouth. The streams that ran down the trunk found an artificial catchbasin above, but the water reached the treemouth as cookwater, or washwater, or when citizens came to rid themselves of body wastes, to "feed the tree."

 

Martal's cushion of spine branches had already carried her several meters downslope. Her entourage had retreated to the rim, to join Alfin, the treemouth custodian.

 

Children were taught how to care for the tree. When Gavving was younger his tasks had included carrying collected earth and manure and garbage to pack into the treemouth, removing rocks to use elsewhere, finding and killing pests. He hadn't liked it much-Alfin was a terror to work under-but some of the pests had been edible, he remembered. Earthlife crops were grown here too, tobacco and maize and tomatoes, they had to be harvested before the tree swallowed them.

 

But in these dark days, passing prey were all too rare. Even the insects were dying out. There wasn't food for the tribe, let alone garbage to feed the insects and the tree. The crops were nearly dead. The branch was nude for half its length; it wasn't growing new foliage.

 

Alfin had had care of the treemouth for longer than Gavving had been alive. That sour old man hated half the tribe for one reason or another. Gavving had feared him once. He attended all funerals . . but today he truly looked bereaved, as if he were barely holding his grief in check.

 

Day was dimming. The bright spot, the sun, was dropping, blurring. Soon enough it would brighten and coalesce in the east. Meanwhile yes, here came the Chairman, carefully robed and hooded against the light, attended by the Scientist and the Grad. The Grad, a blond boy four years older than Gavving, looked unwontedly serious. Gavving wondered if it was for Martal or for himself.

 

The Scientist wore the ancient falling jumper that signified his rank: a two-piece garment in pale blue, ill-fitting, with pictures on one shoulder. The pants came to just below the knees; the tunic left a quarter meter of gray-furred belly. After untold generations the strange, glossy cloth was beginning to show signs of wear, and the Scientist wore it only for official functions.

 

The Grad was right, Gavving thought suddenly: the old uniform would fit Harp perfectly.

 

The Scientist spoke, praising Martal's last contribution to the health of the tree, reminding those present that one day they must all fulfill that obligation. He kept it short, then stepped aside for the Chairman.

 

The Chairman spoke. Of Martal's bad temper he said nothing; of her skill with the cookpot he said a good deal. He spoke of another loss, of the son who was lost to Quinn Tuft wherever he might be. He spoke long, and Gavving's mind wandered.

 

Four young boys were all studious attention; but their toes were nipping at a copter patch. The ripe plants responded by launching their seedpods, tiny blades whirring at each end. The boys stood solemnly in a buzzing cloud of copters.

 

Treemouth humor. Others were having trouble suppressing laughter, but somehow Gavving couldn't laugh. He'd had four brothers and a sister, and all had died before the age of six, like too many children in Quinn Tuft. In this time of famine they died more easily yet. . . He was the last of his family. Everything he saw today squeezed memories out of him, as if he were seeing it all for the last time.

 

It's only a hunting party! His jumpy belly knew better. Hero of a single failed hunt, how would Gavving be chosen for a last-ditch foraging expedition?

 

Vengeance for Laython. Were the others being punished too? Who were the others? How would they be equipped? When would this endless funeral be over?

 

The Chairman spoke of the drought, and the need for sacrifice; and now his eye did fall on selected individuals, Gavving among them.

 

When the long speech ended, Martal was another two meters downslope. The Chairman departed hurriedly ahead of the brightening day.

 

Gavving made for the Commons with all haste.

 

Equipment was piled on the web of dry spine branches that Quinn Tribe called the ground. Harpoons, coils of line, spikes, grapnels, nets, brown sacks of coarse cloth, half a dozen jet pods, claw sandals . . . a reassuring stack of what it would take to keep them alive. Except... food? He saw no food.

 

Others had arrived before him. Even at a glance they seemed an odd selection. He saw a familiar face and called, "Gradi Are you coming too?"

 

The Grad loped to join them. "Right. I had a hand in plsiinning it," he confided. A bouncy, happy type in a traditionally studious profession, the Grad had come armed with his own line and harpoon. He seemed eager, full of nervous energy. He looked about him and said, "Oh, treefodder."

 

"Now, what is that supposed to mean?"

 

"Nothing." He toed a pile of blankets and added, "At least we won't go naked."

 

"Hungry, though."

 

"Maybe there s something to eat on the trunk. There'd better be."

 

The Grad had long been Gavving's friend, but he wasn't much of a hunter. And Merril? Merril would have been a big woman if her tiny, twisted legs had matched her torso. Her long fingers were callused, her arms were long and strong; and why not? She used them for everything, even walking. She clung to the wicker wall of the Commons, impassive, waiting.

 

One-legged Jiovan stood beside her, with a hand in the brauchiets to hold him balanced. Gavving could remember Jiovan as an agile, reckless hunter. Then something had attacked him, something he would never describe. Jiovan had returned barely alive, with ribs broken and his left leg torn away, the stump tourrnquetted with his line. Four years later the old wounds still hurt him constantly, and he never let anyone forget it.

 

Glory was a big-boned, homely woman, middle-aged, with no children. Her clumsiness had given her an unwanted fame. She blamed Harp the teller for that, and not without justice. There was the tale of the turkey cage; and he told another regarding the pink scar that ran down her right leg, gained when she was still involved in cooking duties.

 

The hate in Alfin's eyes recalled the time she'd clouted him across the ear with a branchwood beam, but it spoke more of Alfin's tendency to hold grudges. Gardener, garbage man, funeral director . . • he was no hunter, let alone an explorer, but he was here. No wonder he'd looked bereaved.

 

Glory waited cross-legged, eyes downcast. Alfin watched her with smoldering hate. Merril seemed impassive, relaxed, but Jiovan was muttering steadily under his breath.

 

These, his companions? Gavving~s belly clenched agonizingly on the musrum.

 

Then Clave entered the Commons, briskly, with a young woman on each arm. He looked about him as if liking what he saw.

 

It was true. Clave was coming.

 

They watched him prodding the piled equipment with his feet, nodding, nodding. "Good," he said briskly and looked about him at his waiting companions. "We're going to have to carry all this treefodder. Start dividing it up. You'll probably want it on your back, moored with your line, but take your choice. Lose your pack and I'll send you home."

 

The musruin loosed its grip on Gavving's belly. Clave was the ideal hunter: built long and narrow, two and a half meters of bone and muscle. He could pick a man up by wrapping the fingers of one hand around the man's head, and his long toes could throw a rock as well as Gavving's hands. His companions were Jayan and Jinny, twins, the dark and pretty daughters of Martal and a long-dead hunter. Without orders, they began loading equipment into the sacks. Others moved forward to help.

 

Alfin spoke. "I take it you're our leader?"

 

"Right."

 

"Just what are we supposed to be doing with all this?"

 

"We go up along the trunk. We renew the Quinn markings as we go. We keep going until we find whatever it takes to save the tribe. It could be food-"

 

"On the bare trunk?"

 

Clave looked him over. "We've spent all our lives along two klomters of branch. The Scientist tells me that the trunk is a hundred klomters long. Maybe more. We don't know what's up there. Whatever we need, it isn't here."

 

"You know why we're going. We're being thrown out," Alfln said. "Nine fewer mouths to feed, and look at who-" dave rode him down. He could outshout thunder when he wanted to. "Would you like to stay, Alfin?" He waited, but Alfin didn't answer. "Stay, then. You explain why you didn't come."

 

"I'm coming." Alfln's voice was almost inaudible. dave had made no threats, and didn't have to. They had been assigned. Anyone who stayed would be subject to charges of mutiny.

 

And that didn't matter either. If Clave was going, then. . . Alfin was wrong, and Gavving's stomach had been wrong too. They would find what the tribe needed, and they would return. Gavving set to assembling his pack.

 

Clave said, "We've got six pairs of claw sandals. Jayan Jinny, Grad Gavving. I'll take the extras. We'll find out who else needs them. Everyone take four mooring spikes. Take a few rocks. I mean it. You need at least one to hammer spikes into wood, and you may want some for throwing. Has everybody got his dagger?"

 

It was night when they pulled themselves out of the foliage, and they still emerged blinking. The trunk seemed infinitely tall. The far tuft was almost invisible, blurred and blued almost to the color of the sky.

 

Clave called, "Take a few minutes to eat. Then stuff your packs with foliage. We won't see foliage again for a long time."

 

Gavving tore off a spine branch laden with green cotton candy. He stuck it between his back and the pack, and started up the trunk~ dave was already ahead of him.

 

The bark of the trunk was different from the traveling bark of the branch. There were no spine branches, but the bark must have been meters thick, with cracks big enough to partly shield a climber. Smaller cracks made easy grip for fingers.

 

Gavving wasn't used to claw sandals. He had to kick a little to seat them right, or they slipped. His pack tended top~ him over backward. Maybe he wanted it lower? The tide helped. It pulled him not just downward, but against the trunk too, as if the trunk sloped.

 

The Grad was moving well but puffing. Maybe he spent too much time studying. But Gavving noted that his pack was larger than the others'. Was he carrying something besides provisions?

 

Merril had no pack, just her line. She managed to keep up using her arms alone. Jiovan, with two arms and a leg, was overtaking Clave himself, though his jaw was clenched in pain.

 

Jayan and Jinny, above Gavving on the thick bark, stopped as by mutual accord. They looked down they looked at each other; they seemed about to weep. A sudden, futile surge of homesickness blocked Gavving's own throat. He lusted to be back in the bachelors' hut, clinging to his bunk, face buried in the foliage wall...

 

The twins resumed their climb. Gavving followed.

 

They were moving well, dave thought. He was still worried about Merril. She'd slow them down, but at least she was trying. She'd find it easier, moving with just two arms, when they got near the middle of the trunk. There would be no tide at all there; things would drift without falling, if the Scientist's smoke dreams were to be believed.

 

Alfin alone was still down there in the last fringes of tuft. Clave had expected trouble from Alfin, but not this. Alfin was the oldest of his team, pushing forty, but he was muscular, healthy.

 

Appeal to his pride? He called down, "Do you need claw sandals, Aifin?"

 

Alfin may have considered any number of retorts. What he called back was, "Maybe."

 

"I'll wait. Jiovan, take the lead."

 

Clave worked his pack open while Alfin moved up to join him. Alfin was climbing with his eyes half-shut. Something odd there, something wrong.

 

"I was hoping you could at least keep up with Merril," Clave said, handing Alfin the sandals.

 

Alfin said nothing while he strapped one on. Then, "What's the difference? We're all dead anyway. But it won't do that copsik any good! He's only got rid of the lames-"

 

"Who?"

 

"The Chairman, our precious Chairman! When people are starving, they'll kick out whoever's in charge. He's kicked out the lames, the ones who couldn't hurt him anyway. Let him see what he can snag when they kick him into the sky."

 

"If you think I'm a lame, see if you can outclimb me," Clave said lightly.

 

"Everyone knows why you're here, you and your women too."

 

"Oh, I suppose they do," Clave said. "But if you think you'd like living with Mayrin, you can try it when we get back. I couldn't. And she didn't like that, and her father didn't like it either. But you know, she was really built to make babies, when I was just old enough to notice that."

 

Alfin snorted.

 

"I meant what I said," Clave told him. "If there's anything left that can save the tribe, it's somewhere over our heads. And if we find it, I think I could be Chairman myself. What do you think?"

 

Startled, Aim peered into Clave's face. "Maybe. Power hungry, are you?"

 

"I haven't quite decided. Let's say I'm just mad enough to go for Gold. This whole crazy . . . well, Jayan and Jinny, they can take care of themselves, and if they can't, I can. But I had to take Merril before the Chairman would give me jet pods, and then at the last minute he wished Gavving on me, and that was the last straw."

 

"Gavving wasn't much worse than the other kids I've had to train. Constantly asking questions, I don't know any two people with that boy's curiosity-"

 

"Not the point. He's just starting to show beard. He never did anything wrong except be there when that damn fool Laython got swallowed . . . Skip it. Alfin, some of our party is dangerous to the rest."

 

"You know it."

 

"How would you handle that?"

 

It was rare to see Alfin smiling. He took his time answering. "Merril will kill herself sooner or later. But Glory will kill someone else. Slip at the wrong time. Easy enough to do something about it. Wait till we're higher, till the tide is weaker. Knock against her when she's off balance. Send her home the fast way."

 

"Well, that's what I was thinking too. You are a danger to us, Alfin. You hold grudges. We've got problems enough without watching our backs because of you. If you slow me down, if you give any of us trouble, I'll send you home the fast way, Alfin. I've got enough trouble here."

 

AllIn paled, but he answered. "You do. Get rid of Glory before she knocks someone off the trunk. Ask Jiovan."

 

"I don't take your orders," Clave said. "One more thing. You spend too much energy being angry. Save it. You're likely to need your anger. Now lead off." And when Alfin resumed climbing, Clave followed.

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

The Trunk

 

 

 

DAY BRIGHTENED AND FADED AND BRIGHTENED AGAIN WHILE they climbed. The men doffed their tunics and tucked them into their pack straps; somewhat later, so did the women. dave leered at Jayan and Jinny impartially. Gavving didn't leer, but in fact the sight distracted him from his climbing.

 

Jayan and Jinny were twenty-year-old twins, identical, with pale skin and dark hair and lovely heart-shaped faces and nicely conical breasts.

 

Some citizens called them stupid, for they had no fund of conversation, but Gavving wondered. In other matters they showed good sense. As now: Jinny was climbing with Cave, but Merril had dropped far behind, and Jayan stayed just beneath her, pacing her.

 

Jiovan had lost ground after Clave resumed the lead. He cursed as he climbed, steadily, monotonously: the wind, the bark handholds, his missing leg. Alfin should have been one of the leaders, Gavving thought; but he kept pausing to look down.

 

Gavving's own shoulders and legs burned with fatigue. Worse, he was mpking mistakes, setting his claw sandals wrong, so that they slipped too often.

 

Tired people make mistakes. Gavving saw Glory slip, thrash, and fall two or three meters before she caught an edge of bark. While she hugged herself ferociously against the tree, Gavving moved crosswise until he was behind and to the side of her.

 

Fear held her rigid.

 

"Keep going," Gavving said. "I'll stay behind you. I'll catch you." She looked down, nodded jerkily, began climbing again. She seemed to move in convulsions, putting too much effort into it. Gavving kept pace.

 

She slipped. Gavving gripped the bark. When she dropped into range he planted the palm of his hand under her buttocks and pushed her hard against the tree. She gasped, and clung, and resumed climbing.

 

Clave called down. "Is anybody thirsty?"

 

They needed their breath, and the answer was too obvious. Of course they were thirsty. Clave said, "Swing around east. We'll get a drink."

 

Falling water had carved a channel along the eastern side of the trunk. The channel was fifty meters across and nearly dry over most of its water-smoothed surface. But the tree still passed through the occasional cloud; mist still clung to the bark; wind and Coriolis force set it streaming around to the east as it fell; and water ran in a few pitiful streams toward Quinn Tuft below.

 

"Watch yourselves," Clave told them. "Use your spikes if you have to. This is slippery stuff."

 

"Here," the Grad called from over their heads.

 

They worked their way toward him. A hill of rock must have smacked into the tree long ago, half embedding itself. The trunk had grown to enclose it. It made a fine platform, particularly since a stream had split to run round it on both sides. By the time Merril and Jayan had worked their way up, Clave had hammered spikes into the wood above the rock and attached lines.

 

Merril and Jayan worked their way onto the rock. Mcml lay gasping while Jayan brought her water.

 

Glory lay flat on the rock with her eyes closed. Presently she crawled to the portside stream. She called to Clave. "Any limit?"

 

"What?"

 

"On how much we drink. The water goes-"

 

Clave laughed loudly. Like the Chairman hosting a midyear celebration, he bellowed, "Drink! Bathe! Have water fights! Who's to stop us9 If Quinn Tribe didn't want their water secondhand, we wouldn't be here." He worked their single cookpot from his pack and threw streams of water at selected targets: Merril, who whooped in delight; Jiovan, who sputtered in surprise; Jayan and Jinny, who advanced toward him with menace in their eyes. "I dare not struggle on this precarious perch," he cried and went limp. They rolled him in the stream, hanging onto his hands and feet so that he wouldn't go over.

 

They climbed in a spiral path. They weren't here just to climb, Clave said, but to explore. Gavving could hear Jiovan's monotonous cursing as they climbed into the wind, until the wind drowned him out.

 

Gavving reached up for a fistful of green cotton and stuffed it in his mouth. The branch that waved above his pack was nearly bare now. The sky was empty out to some distant streamers of cloud and a dozen dots that might be ponds, all hundreds of klomters out. They'd be hurting for food when sleeptinie came.

 

He was crossing a scar in the bark, a puckering that ran down into the wood itself An old wound that the bark was trying to heal. . . big enough to climb in, but it ran the wrong way. Abruptly the Grad shouted, "Stop! Hold it up!"

 

"What's the matter?" Clave demanded.

 

"The Quinn Tribe markings!"

 

Without the Grad to point it out, Gavving would never have realized that this was writing. He had seen writing only rarely, and these letters were three to four meters across. They couldn't be read, they had to be inferred: DQ, with a curlicue mark across the D.

 

"We'll have to gouge this out," the Grad said. "It's nearly grown out. Someone should come here more often."

 

dave ran a critical eye over his crew. "Gavving, Alfin, Jinny, start digging. Grad, you supervise. Just dig out the Q, leave the D alone. The rest of you, rest."

 

Merril said, "I can work. For that matter, I could carry more."

 

"Tell me that tomorrow," Clave told her. He made his way across the bark to clap her on the shoulder. "If you can take some of the load, you'll get it. Let's see how you do tomorrow with your muscles all cramped up."

 

They carved away bark and dug deeper into the wood with the points of their harpoons. The Grad moved among them. The Q took shape. When the Grad approached him, Gavving asked, "Why are the letters so big? You can hardly read them."

 

"They're not for us. You could see them if you were a klomter away," the Grad said.

 

Alfin had overheard. "Where? Falling? Are we doing this for swordbirds and triunes to read?"

 

The Grad smiled and passed on without answering. Alfin scowled at his back, then crossed to Gavving's position. "Is he crazy?"

 

"Maybe. But if you can't dig as deep as Jinny, the mark will look silly to the swordbirds."

 

"He tells half a secret and leaves you hanging," Alfin complained. "He does it all the time."

 

They left the tribal insignia carved deep and clear into the tree. The wind was beating straight down on them now. Gavving felt a f~mi1i~r pain in his ears. He worked his jaw while he sought the old memory, and when his ears popped it came: pressure/pain in his ears, a score of days after the passing of Gold, the night before his first allergy attack. These days he rarely wondered if he would wake with his eyes and sinuses streaming in agony. He simply lived through it. But he'd never wakened on the vertical slope of the tree! He pictured himself climbing blind.

 

That was what distracted him while a thick, wood-colored rope lifted from the bark to wrap itself around Glory's waist.

 

Glory yelped. Gavving saw her clinging to the bark with her face against it, refusing to look. The rope was pulling her sideways, away from him.

 

Gavving pulled his harpoon from his pack before he moved. He crawled around Glory toward the living rope.

 

Glory screamed again as her grip was torn loose. Now only the live rope itself held her from falling. He didn't dare slash it. Instead he scampered toward its source, while the rope coiled itself around Glory, spinning her, reeling her in.

 

There was a hole in the tree. From the blackness inside Gavving saw a thickening of the live rope and a single eye lifting on a stalk to look at him. He jabbed at it. A lid flicked closed; the stalk dodged. Gavving tracked it. He felt the jar through his arm and shoulder as the harpoon punched through.

 

A huge mouth opened and screamed. The living rope thrashed and tried to fling Glory away. What saved Glory was Glory hersell~ she had plunged her own harpoon through the brown hawser and gripped the point where it emerged. She clung to the haft with both hands while the rope bent around to attack Gavving.

 

The mouth was lined with rows of triangular teeth. Gavving pulled his harpoon loose from the eye, with a twist, as if he had practiced all his life. He jabbed at the mouth, trying to reach the throat. The mouth snapped shut and he struck only teeth. He jabbed at the eye again.

 

Something convulsed in the dark of the hole. The mouth gaped improbably wide. Then a black mass surged from the hole. Gavving flung himself aside in time to escape being smashed loose. A hut-sized beast leapt into the sky on three short, thick legs armed with crescent claws.  Short wings spread, a claw swiped at him and missed. Gavving saw with amazement that the rope was its nose.

 

He had thought it was trying to escape. Ten meters from its den it turned with astonishing speed. Gavving shrank back against the bark with his harpoon poised.

 

The beast's wings flapped madly, in reverse, pulling it back against its stretching nose . . . futilely. The foray team had arrived in force. Lines wrapped Glory and trapped the creature's rope of a nose. Lines spun out to bind its wings. Clave was screaming orders. He and Jinny and the Grad pulled strongly, turning the beast claws-outward from the tree In that position it was reeled in until harpoons could reach its head.

 

Gavving picked a spot and jabbed again and again, drilling through bone, then red-gray brain. He never noticed when the thing stopped moving. He only came to himself when dave shouted, "Gavving, Glory, dinner's on you. You killed it, you clean it."

 

You killed it, you clean it was an easy honor to dodge. You only had to admit that your prey had hurt you .

 

Jayan and Jinny worked at building a fire in the creature's lair. They worked swiftly, competently, almost without words, as if they could read each other's minds. The others were outside, chopping bark for fuel. Gavving and Glory moored the corpse with lines and spikes, just outside the hole, and went to work.

 

The Grad insisted on helping. Strictly speaking, he didn't have the right, but he seemed eager, and Glory was tired. They worked slowly, examining the peculiar thing they had killed.

 

It had a touch of trilateral symmetry, like many creatures of the Smoke Ring, the Grad said. A smaller third wing was placed far back: a steering fin. The forward pair were motive power and (as the Grad gleefully pointed out) ears. Holes below each wing showed as organs of hearing when the Grad cut into them. The wings could be cupped to gather sound.

 

It was a digger. Those little wings would barely move it. Everything in the Smoke Ring could fly in some sense; but this one would prefer to dig a hole and ambush its prey. Even its trunk wasn't all that powerful. The Grad searched until he found the sting that had been in its tip. The size of an index finger, it was embedded in Glory's pack. Glory nearly fainted.

 

They kept the claws. dave would use them to tip his grapnels. They cut steaks to be broiled and passed to the rest, who by now were moored on spikes outside. They set bigger slabs of meat to smoke at the back of the wooden cave.

 

Gavving realized that his eyes were blurry with exhaustion. Glory was streaming sweat. He put his arm over her shoulders and announced, "We quit."

 

"Good enough," dave called in. "Take our perches. Alfin, let's carve up the rest."

 

dave's team was well fed, overfed. They drifted on lines outside the cave. Meat smoked inside. The carcass, mostly bones now, had been set to block the entrance.

 

dave said, "Citizens, give me a status report. How are we doing? Is anyone hurt?"

 

"I hurt all over," Jiovan said and scowled at the chorus of agreement.

 

"All over is good. Glory, did that thing break any of your ribs?"

 

"I don't think so. Bruises."

 

"Uh-huh." Clave sounded surprised. "Nobody's fallen off. Nobody's hurt. Have we lost any equipment?"

 

There was a silence. Gavving spoke into it. "Clave, what are you doing here?"

 

"We're exploring the trunk, and renewing the Quinn markings, and stopping a famine, maybe. Today's catch is a good first step."

 

Gavving was prepared to drop it, but Alfin wasn't. "The boy means, what are you doing here? You, the mighty hunter, why did you go out to die with the lames?"

 

There was muttering, perhaps, but no overt reaction to the word lame& Clave smiled at AIim. "Turn it around, Quinn Tribe's custodian of the treemouth. Why was the tribe able to spare you?"

 

The west wind had softened as they climbed, but it was still formidable; it blew streamers of smoke past the carcass. Alfin forced words from himself "The Chairman thought it was a good joke. And nobody nobody wanted to speak up for me."

 

"Nobody loves you."

 

Alfin nodded and sighed as if a burden had been lifted from him.

 

"Nobody loves me. Your turn."

 

Gavving grinned. Clave was stuck, and he knew it. He said, "Mayrin doesn't love me. I traded her in for two prettier, more loving women. Mayrin is the Chairman's daughter."

 

"That's not all of it and you know it."

 

"If you know better than I do, then keep talking," dave said reasonably.

 

"The Grad can back me up. He knows some tribal history. When things go wrong, when citizens get unhappy, the leader's in trouble. The Scientist himself almost got drafted! The Chairman is scared, that's what. The citizens are hungry, and there's an obvious replacement for the Chairman. dave, he's scared of you."

 

"Grad?"

 

"The Scientist knows what he's doing."

 

"He blamed it all on you!" Alfin cried. "I was there!"

 

"I know. He had his reasons." The Grad noticed the silence and laughed. "No, I didn't cause the drought! We rounded Gold, and Gold swung us too far in toward Voy, down to where the Smoke Ring thins out. It's a gravity effect-"

 

"Many thanks for explaining it all," Clave said with cheerful sarcasm. Gavving was irritated and a bit relieved: nobody else understood the Grad's gibberish either. "Is there anything else we should settle?"

 

Into the silence Gavving said, "How do we cause a flood?"

 

There was some laughter. dave said, "Grad?"

 

"Forget it."

 

"It'd solve everybody's problems. Even the Chairman's."

 

"This is silly. . . well. Floods come when a pond brushes the tree, somewhere on the trunk. A lot of water clings to the trunk. The tide pulls it down. Usually we get some warning from a hunting party, and we all scurry out along the branch. The big flood, ten years ago. most of us got to safety, but the waterfall tore away some of the huts, and most of the earthlife crops, and the turkey pens. It was a year before we caught any more turkeys.

 

"And I wish we'd have another flood," the Grad said. "Sure I do. The Scientist thinks the whole tree-never mind. You can't catch a pond. We're too far into the gas torus region-"

 

"There," Gavving said and pointed east and out, toward a metalcolored dot backed by rosy streamers of cloud. "I think it's bigger than it was."

 

"What of it? It'll come or it won't. If it did come floating past, what would you do, throw lines and grapnels? Forget it. Just forget it."

 

"Enough," Clave said. "That meat's probably done. Let's get the smoke out and get inside."

 

Gavving woke in the night and wondered where he was.

 

He half remembered the sounds of groans. Someone in pain? It had stopped now. Sound of wind, sound of many people breathing. Warm bodies all around him. Rich smells of smoke and perspiration. Aches everywhere, as if he'd been beaten.

 

A woman's voice spoke near his ear. "Are you awake too?"

 

And another, a man's: "Yes. Let me sleep." Alfin?

 

Silence. And Gavving remembered: the cave was just large enough to accommodate nine exhausted climbers, after they flung the nose-arm's bones into the sky. By now the offal might have reached Quinn Tuft, to feed the tree.

 

They huddled against each other, flesh to flesh. Gavving had no way to avoid eavesdropping when Aim spoke again, though his voice was a whisper. "I can't sleep. Everything hurts."

 

Glory:"Me too."

 

"Did you hear groaning?"

 

"Clave and Jayan, I think, and believe me, they're feeling no pain."

 

"Oh. Good for them. Glory, why are you talking to me?"

 

"I was hoping we could be friends."

 

"Just don't climb near me, all right?"

 

"All right."

 

"I'm afraid you'll knock me off."

 

"Alfin, aren't you afraid to be so high?"

 

"I am."

 

Pause. "I'm afraid of falling off. I'd be crazy not to be." There was quiet for a time. Gavving began to notice his own aching muscles and joints. They must be keeping him awake. . . but he was dozing when Alfin spoke again.

 

"The Chairman knew it."

 

"Knew what?"

 

"He knows I'm afraid of falling. That's why the copsik bastard kept sending me under the branch on hunts. Nothing solid under me, trying to hang on and throw a harpoon too . . . I got even, though."

 

"How?" Glory asked while Gavving thought, So did the Chairman.

 

"Never mind. Glory, will you lie with me?"

 

A strained whisper. "No. Alfin, we can't be alone!"

 

"Did you have a lover, back in the tuft?"

 

"Most of us didn't. Nobody to protect us when the Chairman thought this up."

 

A pause, as for thought. "I still can't. Not here."

 

Alfin's voice rose to a shout. "Clave! Clave, you should have brought a masseuse!"

 

Clave answered from the darkness. "I brought two."

 

"Treefodder," Alfin said without heat, perhaps with amusement.

 

Presently there was quiet.

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

Flashers and Fan Fungus

 

 

 

IN THE MORNING THEY HURT. SOME SHOWED IT MORE THAN others. Alfin tried to move, grunted in pain, curled up with his face buried in his arms. Merril's face was blank and stoic as she flexed her arms, then rose onto her hands. Jayan and Jinny commiserated with each other, massaging each other's pains away. On Jiovan's face, amazement and agony as he tried to move, then a look of betrayal thrown in Clave's direction.

 

From Glory, wild-eyed panic. Gavving tapped her shoulder blade (and flinched at his own agony-signals). "We all hurt. Can't you tell? What are you worried about? You won't be left behind. Nobody's got the strength."

 

Her eyes turned sane. She whispered, "I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking I hurt. That's normal, isn't it?"

 

"Sure. You're not crippled, though."

 

"Thank you for taking care of me yesterday. I'm really grateful. I'm going to get better at this, I promise."

 

The Grad spoke without trying to move. "We'll all get better. The higher we get, the less we weigh. Pretty soon we'll be floating."

 

dave trod carefully among citizens who were awake but not mobile. Gavving felt a stab of envy/anger. Clove didn't hurt. From the back of the nose-arm's burrow he selected a slab of smoked. meat ragged with harpoon wounds. "Take your time over breakfast," he instructed them.

 

"Eat. It's the easiest way to carry provisions-"

 

"And we burned a lot of energy yesterday," the Grad said. He moved like a cripple to join dave and began tearing into a meter's length of what had been the nose-arm's rib. It made sense to Gavving, and he joined them. The meat had an odd, rank flavor. You could get used to it, he thought, if your life depended on it.

 

Clave moved among them, gnawing at his huge slab of meat. He sliced a piece off and made Merril take it. He listened to Jiovan describing his symptoms, then interrupted with, "You've got your wind back.

 

That's good. Now eat," handing him more of the steak. He cut the rest in half for Jayan and Jinny and spent a minute or two doing massage on their shoulders and hips. They winced and groaned.

 

Presently, when all had eaten something, Clave looked around at his team. "We'll circle to the east and get water half a day after we start. There's no room in here to do warm-up exercises; we'll just have to start moving. So saddle up, citizens. We'll have to 'feed the tree' in the open, and whether you actually feed the tree is up to the tide and the wind. Alfin, take the lead."

 

Alfin led them on an upward spiral, counterclockwise. Gavving found his aches easing as they climbed. He noticed that Alfin never looked down. Not surprising if Alfin didn't give a damn for those following him-but he never looked down.

 

Gavving did, and marveled at their progress. Two extended hands would have covered all of Quinn Tuft.

 

They delayed to repair the Q in a 1x mark. The sun had been horizontal in the east when they started. It was approaching Voy before they reached water-smoothed wood.

 

A rivulet flowed down a meandering groove. This time there was no natural perch. Nine thirsty citizens pounded spikes into the wood and hung by their lines to drink, wash, soak their tunics, and wring them out.

 

Gavving noticed dave speaking to Alfin a little way below. He didn't hear what was said. He only saw what Alfin did.

 

"And suppose I don't?"

 

"Then you don't." Clave gestured upward, where the rest of them hung. "Look at them. I didn't choose them. What do I do if one of my citizens turns out to be a coward? I live with it. But I have to know."

 

Alfin looked white with rage. Not red with fury. There isn't any "white with rage"; white means fear, as dave had learned long ago. A frightened man can kill. . . but Alfin's hands were clenched on his line, and Clave's harpoon was over his shoulder, easily reached.

 

"I have to know. I can't put you in the lead if you can't make yourself look down to see how they're doing. See? I'll have to put you where you don't hurt anyone else if you funk it. Tail-end Chancy. And if you freeze, I want to be sure nobody-"

 

"All right." Alfin dug in his pack, produced a spike and a rock. He pounded the spike in beside the one he was hanging from.

 

"Make sure you can depend on it. It's your life."

 

The second spike was in deeper than the first. Alfin tied the loose end of his line to both spikes and knotted it again. "And I leave you next to it?"

 

"You take that chance too. Or you don't. I have to know."

 

Aim leapt straight outward, trailing loops of line. He thrashed, then threw his arms over his face.

 

He fell slowly. We're all lighter, Gavving realized. It's real. I thought I was just feeling better, but we're lifting less-And Alfin was still falling, but now he'd uncovered his face. His arms windmilled to turn him on his back. Gavving noticed Clave's hand covering the spikes that moored Alfin's line. The line pulled taut and swung Alfin in against the tree.

 

Gavving watched him climb up. And watched him jump again, limbs splayed out as if he were trying to fly. It seemed he might make it, he fell so slowly; but presently the tide was pulling him down against the tree again.

 

"That actually looks like fun," Jayan said.

 

Jinny said, "Ask first."

 

Alfin didn't jump again. When he had climbed back up to Clave's position, and both had climbed to rejoin the team, Jinny spoke. "Can we try that?"

 

Alfin sent her a look like a harpoon. Clave said, "No, time to get moving. Saddle up-.-"

 

Alfin was in the lead again when they set out. He made a point of pausing frequently to look back. And Gavving wondered.

 

Yesterday Alfin had swarmed all over the nose-arm, hacking like a berserker maniac, like Gavving himself. It was hard to believe that Allin was afraid of Clave, or of heights, or of anything.

 

The sun circled the sky, behind Voy and back to zenith, before they came to lee again. The water-smoothed wood was soft here, soft enough that they could cross with a spike in each hand, jab and yank and jab. They veered down to avoid scores of birds clustered on the wood. Scarlet-tailed, the birds were otherwise the grayish-brown of the wood itself.

 

When they reached the rivulet, it was smaller yet, but it was enough: they hung in the water and let it cool them and run into their faces and mouths. Clave shared out smoked meat. Gavving found himself ravenous.

 

The Grad watched the birds as he ate. Presently he burst out laughing. "Look, they've got a mating dance going."

 

"So?"

 

"You'll see."

 

Presently Gavving did see; and so did others, judging by dave's bellowing laugh and the giggles from Jayan and Jinny. A gray-brown male would approach a female and abruptly spread his gray wings like a cloak. Under the gray was brilliant yellow, and a tube protruding from a splash of crimson feathers.

 

"The Scientist told me about them once. Flashers," said the Grad. His smile died as he said, "I wonder what they eat?"

 

"What difference does it make?" Alfin demanded.

 

"Maybe none." The Grad made his way upward toward the birds. The birds flew off, then returned to dive at him, shrieking obscenities. The Grad ignored them. Presently he returned.

 

Allin asked, "Well?"

 

"The wood's riddled with holes. Riddled. The holes are full of insects. The birds dig in and eat the insects."

 

"You're in love," Alfin challenged. "You're in love with the idea that the tree's dying."

 

"I'd love to believe it isn't," the Grad said, but Alfin only snorted.

 

They spiraled around to the western side while the sun dipped beneath Voy and began to rise again. The wind was less ferocious now. But they were getting tired; there was almost no chatter. They rested frequently in crevasses in the hark.

 

They were resting when Merril called, "Jinny? I'm hung up." A pincer the size of Clave's fist gripped the fabric of Merril's nearly empty pack. Merril pulled back against it. From a hole in the bark there emerged a creature covered in hard, brown, segmented plates. Its face was a single plate with a deeply inset eye. The body looked soft behind the last plate.

 

Jayan slashed where its body met the bark. The creature separated. It still clung to Merril's pack with idiot determination. Jayan levered the claw open with her harpoon and dropped the creature into her own pack.

 

When they had circled round to water again, Clave set water to boiling in the small, lidded pot. He made tea, refilled the pot, and boiled Merril's catch. It made one bite each for his team.

 

They wedged themselves into a wide crack with the shape of a lightning-stroke and moored themselves with lines. Together but separate, head to foot within the bark, they had no chance to converse, and no urge. Four days of climbing since breakfast left them too tired for anything but sleep.

 

At waking they ate more of the smoked meat. "Let's look for more of those hard-shelled things," Clave suggested. "That was good." He didn't have to urge them to get moving. He never would, Gavving realized, as long as they couldn't sleep where water flowed.

 

This time Jiovan was given the lead. He took them on a counterclockwise spiral that brought them back to lee within half a day. Again the wood was soft and riddled with holes, and flashers swarmed below them. Alfin and Glory tended to lose ground in the leeward regions. Jiovan remarked on it and earned a look of dull hatred from Alfin.

 

The thing was that Alfin took more care setting his spikes than the rest did. And Glory didn't, so she lost time slipping and catching herself- They moored themselves in the stream and drank and washed.

 

Alfin spotted something far above them: gray nubs reaching out from the bark on both sides of the rivulet. He climbed, doggedly pounding spikes into the wood, and came back with a fan-shaped fungus, pale gray with a red frill, half the size of his pack. "It could be edible," he said.

 

Clave asked, "Are you willing to try it?"

 

"No." He started to throw it away.

 

Merril stopped him. "We're here to keep the tribe from starving," she said. She broke a red-and-gray chunk from the fringe and ate a meager mouthful. "Not much taste, but it's nice. The Scientist would like it. You could chew it with no teeth." She took another bite.

 

Alfin broke off a piece of the grayish white inside, and ate that, looking as if he were taking poison. He nodded. "Tastes okay."

 

At which point there were more volunteers, but dave vetoed that. When they departed, Clave veered upward to pick a bouquet of the fanshaped fungi. A meter-square fan rode like a flag above his pack.

 

The sun was rising up the east.

 

It was below Voy-you could look straight down along the trunk, past the green fuzzball that was Quinn Tuft, and see Voy's bright spark at the fringe of the soft sun-glow-and the west wind was blowing almost softly across the ridges of the bank, when Gavving heard Merril shout, "Who needs legs?"

 

She was holding herself an arm's-length from the bark by a onehanded grip. He shouted down. "Merril? Are you all right?"

 

"I feel wonderful!" She let go and began to fall and reached out and caught herself "The Grad was right! We can fly!"

 

Gavving crawled toward her. Jinny was already below her, pounding in a spike. When Gavving reached them, Jayan was using the spike for support, with her line ready in her other hand. They pulled Merril back against the tree.

 

She didn't resist. She crowed, "Gavving, why do we live in the tuft? There's food here, and water, and who needs legs? Let's stay. We don't need any nose-arm cave, we can dig out our own. We've got nose-arm meat and those shelled things and the fan fungus. I've eaten enough foliage to last me the rest of my life! But if anyone wants it, we'll send down someone with legs."

 

We'll have to be careful of that fan fungus, Gavving thought. He was pounding spikes into bark, on the other side of Merril, Jiovan was doing the same. Where was Clave?

 

Clave was with Alfin, high above them, in furious inaudible argument.

 

"Come on, let's get going! What are you doing?" Merril demanded while Gavving and Jiovan bound her to the bark. "Or, listen, I've got a wonderful idea. Let's go back. We've got what we want. We'll kill another nose-arm and we, we'll grow fan fungus in the tuft. Then set up another tribe here. Claaave!" she bellowed as dave and Alfin climbed down into earshot. "How would I do as Chairman of a colony?"

 

"You'd be terrific. Citizens, we'll be here for a while. Moor yourselves. Don't do any flying."

 

"I never thought it could be this good," Merril told them. "My parents-when I was little, they were just waiting for me to die. But they wouldn't feed me to the treemouth. I thought about it too, but I never did. I'm glad. Sometimes I thought of me as an example, something people need to be happy. Happy they have legs. Even one leg," she whispered hoarsely to Jiovan. "Legs! So what?"

 

Jiovan asked Clave, "How long do we have to put up with this?"

 

"You don't. Take, ah, take the Grad and find us a better place to sleep."

 

Jiovan looked about him. "Like what?"

 

"A cave, a crack or a bulge in the bark . . . anything that's better than hanging ourselves here like smoking meat."

 

"I'll go too," Alfin said.

 

"You stay."

 

"dave, you do not have to treat me like a baby! I only ate from the middle of the thing. I feel fine!"

 

"So does Merril."

 

"What?"

 

"Never mind. You feel grouchy, and that's fine. Merril feels fine, and that's-"

 

"Alfin, I am so glad you didn't stop me from coming." Merril smiled radiantly at him. In that moment Gavving thought her beautiful.

 

"Thank you for trying, though. Feel sleepy," Merril said and went to sleep.

 

Alfin saw questioning eyes. He spoke reluctantly. "I, I thought I could talk the Chairman out of this idiocy. Sending a, a legless woman up the tree! Clave, I do feel fine. Wide-awake. Hungry. I'd like to try some more."

 

dave removed a fan from his pack. He tore away some of the scarlet fringe, then offered Alfin a hand-sized piece of the white interior. If Alfin flinched, it was for too short a time to measure. He ate the whole chunk with a theatrical relish that had Clave grinning. Clave broke off the rest of the red fringe and pouched it separately.

 

Jiovan and the Grad returned. They had found a rQ mark overgrown with fungus like a field of gray hair. "Infected. We'll have to burn it out," the Grad said.

 

"Suppose it keeps on burning? We don't have any water," Clave said. "Never mind. Let's have a look. Jayan, Jinny, stay with Merril. One of you come get me if she wakes up."

 

They examined the fungus patch dubiously. Scraping out all that gray hair would be a dull job. Clave pulled up a wad and set fire to it. It burned slowly, sullenly.

 

"Let's try it. But get some of our packs emptied in case we have to beat it out."

 

The fungus patch burned slowly. The west wind wasn't strong at this height, and the smoke tended to sit within the fungus "hairs," smothering the fire. It kept putting itself out. Yet it crept around in glowing fringes, restarting itself. They had to back away as foul-smelling smoke built up in the vicinity.

 

The smoke was dissipating. Gavving moved in and found most of the fungus gone, the rest left as black char. The Q was two meters deep.

 

Clave made a torch from a chunk of bark and burned out some remaining patches. "Scrape that out and I think we can all sleep in it. Gavving, Jinny, you go back for Merril."

 

When they started to move her, Merril woke instantly, happy and active and bubbling with plans. They coaxed her across the bark, ready for anything, and presently moored her in the scraped-out bottom of the Q.

 

Then there was nothing for it but to settle into the Q for early sleep.

 

Merril slept like a baby, but others shifted restlessly. Desultory conversations started and stopped. Presently dave asked, "Jiovan, how are you doing?"

 

"How do you mean?"

 

"I mean the whole trip. How are you doing?"

 

Jiovan snorted. "I'm hungry. I hurt a lot, but I'm used to that. I can climb. Do you mean how are we doing? We won't know that till we get home. Merril's out of her head right now, but she could be right too."

 

Clave was startled. "You mean, live here?"

 

"No, that's crazy. I mean go back now. Kill something and smoke it and collect more fan fungus and go home. We'd be heroes, as much as any hunt party that comes home with meat, and I don't mind telling you, I'm ready. I'm tree feeding sick of being one of the-the lames. I used to be the one who fed the tribe... and if the fan fungus will grow in the tuft-"

 

By now the whole troop was listening. dave knew he was talking for an audience. He said, "Merril could be pretty sick, you know."

 

"She feels great."

 

"Oh, let's see how she feels when it wears off. I might want to try it myself," dave chuckled. He was hoping it would drop there.

 

No chance, not with Alfin listening. "What about going home? We've got what we came for."

 

"I don't think so. We sure haven't scraped out all the tribemarks, have we, Grad?"

 

"They're supposed to run all along the trunk."

 

"Then let's go at least as far as the middle. We already know we can feed ourselves. Who knows what else we'll find? The nose-arm was good eating, but we've only found one, and we couldn't feed him in the tuft. We can pick up some fan fungus on the way back. What else? Are the flashers good to eat? Could we transplant those shelled things?"

 

The Grad was catching fire. "Get them growing just above the tuft. It might work. Sure I'd like to go on. I want to see what it's like when there isn't any tidal force at all."

 

"We already know what Merril would say. Anyone else?"

 

Alfin grunted. Nobody else spoke.

 

"We go on," Clave said.

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

Memories

 

 

 

IT WAS THERE AGAIN. THERE WAS A SPECIAL FREQUENCY OF light that Sharis Davis Kendy had sought for five hundred years. He had found it fifty-two years ago, and forty-eight, and twenty, and six certain sightings and another ten probable. The locus moved about. This time it was west of his position, barely filtering through the soup of dust and gas and dirt and plant life: the light of hydrogen burning with oxygen.

 

Kendy held his attention on a wavering point within the Smoke Ring. Rarely did the CARM even acknowledge that his signal had penetrated the maelstrom but he never considered not trying. "Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State."

 

The CARJvI's main motor would run for hours now. It would accelerate slowly, too slowly: pushing something massive. What were they doing in there?

 

Had they entirely forgotten Discipline and Sharls Davis Kendy?

 

Kendy had forgotten much, but what remained to him was as vivid as the moment it had happened. These futile attempts at contact needed little of his attention. Kendy took refuge in memory.

 

The target star was yellow-white, with a spectrum very like Sol's, circling an unseen companon. At 1.2 solar masses, T3 was minutely brighter and bluer than Sol: about GO or 01. The companion, at half a solar mass, would be a star, not a planet. It should at least have been visible.

 

The State bad telescopic data from earlier missions to other stars. There was at least a third, planet-sized body in this system. There might be a planet resembling the primordial Earth; in which case Discipline would fulfill its primary mission by seeding its atmosphere with oxygenproducing algaes. On a distant day the State.would return to find a world ripe for colonization.

 

But someone would have come anyway, to probe the strangeness of this place.

 

Discipline was a seeder ramship, targeted for a ring of yellow stars that might host worlds like the primordial Earth. Its secondary mission was a secret known only to Kendy; but exploration was a definite third on the list; Discipline would not stop here. Kendy would skim past T3, take pictures and records, and vanish into the void. He might slow enough to drop a missile with a warhead of tailored algae, if a target world could be found.

 

Four of the crew were in the control module. They had the telescope array going and a watery picture of a yellow-white star on the big screen, with a pinpoint of fierce blue-white light at its edge. Sam Goldblatt had a spectrum of T3 displayed on a smaller screen.

 

Sharon Levoy was lecturing for the record, nobody else was listening. "That solves that Levoy's Star is an old neutron star, half a billion to a billion years beyond its pulsar stage. It's still hotter than hell, but it's only twenty kilometers across. The radiating surface is almost negligible. It must have been losing its spin and its residual heat for all of that time. We didn't see it because it isn't putting out enough light.

 

"The yellow dwarf star might have planets, but we can expect that their atmospheres were boiled away by the supernova event of which Levoy's Star is the ashes-"

 

Goldblatt snarled, "We're supposed to be the first expedition here! Prikazyvat Kendy!"

 

The crew were not supposed to be aware that the ship's computer and its recorded personality could eavesdrop on them. Therefore Kendy said, "Hello, Sam. What's up?"

 

Sam Goldblatt was a large, round man with a bushy, carefully tended moustache. He'd been chewing it ever since Levoy found and named the neutron star. Now his frustration had a target. "Kendy, do you have records of a previous expedition?"

 

"Well, check me out. Those are absorption lines for oxygen and water, here, aren't they? Which means there's green life somewhere in that system, doesn't it? And that means the State sent a seeder here!"

 

"I noticed the spectrum. After all, Sam, why shouldn't plant life develop somewhere on its own? Earth's did. Besides, those lines can't represent an Earthlike world. They're too sharp. There's too much oxygen, too much water."

 

"Kendy, if it isn't a planet, what is it?"

 

"We'll learn that when we're closer."

 

"11mph. Not at this speed. Kendy, I think we should slow down.

 

Decelerate to the minimum at which the Bussard ramjet will work. We won't waste onboard fuel, we'll get a better look, and we can accelerate again when we've got the solar wind for fuel."

 

"Dangerous," said Kendy. "I recommend against it." And that should have been that.

 

For five hundred and twelve years Kendy had been editing clumps of experience from his memory wherever he decided they weren't needed. He didn't remember deciding to follow Goldblatt's suggestions. Goldblatt must have persuaded Captain Quinn and the rest of the crew, and Kendy had given in . . . to them? or to his own curiosity?

 

Kendy remembered:

 

Levoy's Star and T3 circled a common point in eccentric orbits, at a distance averaging 2.5 x lO~ kilometers, with an orbital period of 2.77 Earth years. The neutron star had been behind the yellow dwarf while Discipline backed into the system. Now it emerged into view of Discipline's telescope array.

 

He saw a ring of white cloud, touched with green, with a bright spark at its center. The spectral absorption lines of water and oxygen were coming from there. It was tiny by astronomical standards: the region of greatest density circled the neutron star at 26,000 kilometers-about four times the radius of the Earth.

 

"Like a Christmas wreath," Claire Dalton breathed. The sociologist's body was that of a pretty, leggy blonde, but her corpsicle memories reached far back . . . and what was she doing on the bridge? Captain Dennis Quinn might have invited her, the way they were standing together. It indicated a laxity in discipline that Kendy would have to watch.

 

The crew of Discipline continued to study the archaic Christmas wreath. Until Sam Goldblatt suddenly crowed, "Goldblatt's Worldl Prikazyvat Kendy, record that, Goldblatt's World! There's a planet in there."

 

"I'm not close enough to probe that closely, Sam."

 

"It has to be there. You know how a gas torus works?"

 

It was there in Kendy's memory. "Yes. I don't doubt you're right. I can bounce some radar off that storm complex when we pass."

 

"Pass, hell. We've got to stop and investigate this thing." Goldblatt looked about him for support. "Green means life! Life, and no planet!

 

We've got to know all about it. Claire, Dennis, you see that, don't you?" The crew included twelve citizens and eight corpsicles. The corpsicles might argue, but they had no civil rights; and the citizens had less than they thought. For reasons of morale, Kendy maintained the fiction that they were in charge.

 

Goldblatt's suggestion was not worth considering. Kendy said, "Think. We've got fuel to decelerate once and once only. We'll need it when we reach Earth."

 

"There's water in there," Dennis Quinn said thoughtfully. "We could refuel. I bet the water's rich in deuterium and tritium. Why not, it's circling the ashes of a supernova!"

 

Claire Dalton was gazing at the screen, at a perfect smoke ring with a tiny hot pinpoint in its center. "The neutron star has cooled off, lost most of its rotation and most of its heat and most of that ferocious magnetic field the pulsars have. It's bright, but it's too small to be giving off much real heat. We could probably live in there ourselves." She looked around her. "Isn't this what we came for? The strangeness of the universe. If we don't stop now, we might as well be back on Earth." The contempt in her voice was unmistakable.

 

Kendy's memory jumped at that point. Hardly surprising. That must have been the true beginning of mutiny.

 

He remembered reviewing and updating his files on gas torus mechanics.

 

Two planets circled wide around the twin stars: Jupiter-style gas giants with no moons. The old supernova must have blasted away anything smaller.

 

A body did circle the neutron star. One limb of the Smoke Ring was curdled, a distorted whirlpool of storm. Hidden within was a core of rock and metals at 2.5 Earth masses. There was s6me oxygen and some water vapor in its thick, hot atmosphere. Goldblatt's World was tidally locked, and uninhabitable. Strip away its atmosphere and it might have harbored Earthly life-but its atmosphere was tremendous, dwindling indefinitely into the Smoke Ring itself.

 

The strong oxygen-water lines were coming from the gas torus.

 

A gas torus is the result of a light mass in orbit around a heavy mass, as Titan orbits Saturn. It may be that the light mass is too weak to hold its atmosphere. The faster molecules of air escape-but they go into orbit about the heavy mass. Thus, Titan circles Saturn within a ring of escaped Titanian atmosphere, as lo orbits Jupiter within a ring of sulfur ionized by Jupiter's ferocious magnetic field.

 

A gas torus is thin. The gas must be so rarefied that each molecule can be considered to be in a separate orbit: it must reasonably expect to circle halfway round the primary mass without bumping another molecule. Under such circumstances, a gas torus is stable. The occasional stray photon will bump a molecule into interstellar space; but the molecules are continually reencountering the satellite body.

 

Titan-smaller than Mars, no larger than Ganymede-carries an atmosphere of refined smog at one and a half times Earth's sea level pressure. The atmosphere is continually being lost, of course, but some of it continually returns from the gas torus.

 

Levoy's Star was an extreme case, and a slightly different proposition too.

 

The Smoke Ring was the thickest part of the gas torus around Levoy's Star. At its median it was as dense as Earth's atmosphere a mile above sea level: too dense for stability. It must be continually leaking into the gas torus. But the gas torus was stable: dense, but held within a steep gravitational gradient. Molecules continually returned from the gas torus to the Smoke Ring, and from the Smoke Ring to the storm of atmosphere surrounding Goldblatt's World.

 

"Goldblatt's World must have started life as a gas giant planet like, say, Saturn. Probably it didn't fall into range until the pulsar had lost a good deal of its heat and spin." Sharon Levoy's crisp voice spoke within Kendy's memory. "Then it was captured by strong Roche tides. It may have dropped close enough to lose water and soil as well as gas. For something like a billion years Goldblatt's World has been leaking gas into the Smoke Ring, and the Smoke Ring has been leaking to interstellar space. It's not stable, exactly, but hell, planets aren't stable over the long run."

 

"It won't be stable that much longer," Dennis Quinn interrupted. "Most of Goldblatt's World is already gone. Ten million years, or a hundred million, and the Smoke Ring will be getting rarefied."

 

Kendy remembered these things. The records had been made while Discipline's instruments probed the Smoke Ring from close range. Already some of the crew were exploring the Smoke Ring via CARMs. Their reports were enthusiastic. There was life, DNA-based, the air was not only breathable, but tasted fine.

 

Kendy didn't remember bringing Discipline into orbit around Levoy's Star. He must have expended his onboard fuel, postponing by several years his arrival at the target stars along his course. Why?

 

Claire Dalton's voice: "We've got to get out of this box. It's running down. A little of what we recycle is lost every time around. There's more than water in there; there's air, there's probably even fresh fertilizer for the hydroponics tanks!"

 

It was Sharis Davis Kendy who ruled Discipline~ Discipline's crew of twenty was hardly necessary to run a seeder ramship. The State had chosen them as a reservoir of humanity: a tiny chunk of the State, far removed from any local disaster. One planet, one solar system, were too fragile to ensure the survival of the State or humankind itself. Every ship in the sky had a crew large enough to begin the human race over again: their secondary mission, if it ever became necessary. The State expected no such disaster, ever but the investment was trivial compared to the reward.

 

When had he lost control? Perhaps they had threatened to bypass the computer and go to manual control. They couldn't; but morale would disintegrate if they ever learned how little control they really had. Kendy might have surrendered on that basis.

 

Or he might have been curious.

 

He did not remember any part of what must have been a mutiny. He must have been played for a fool; he might not want to remember that. The crew had departed with eight of the ten CARMs and rifled the hydroponics to boot! It should never have been allowed.

 

He was reasonably sure that seven of the CARMs were inoperable. Some equipment might have been salvaged . . . and the last CARM had now ceased its spray of incandescent water vapor. Kendy ceased beaming his message. The Smoke Ring glowed white and featureless beneath him.

 

One day he would know. Would they remember him at all?

 

Kendy waited.

 

 

 

Chapter Six

 

Middle Ground

 

 

 

THE PATCH OF OLD-MAN'S-HAIR SHOULD HAVE BEEN TENDED long since. It was fifty to sixty meters across and had eaten half a meter deep into live wood. Parasol plants had rooted in the resulting compost, and matured, and spread their brightly colored blossoms to attract passing insects.

 

Minya watched the fire spread in intersecting curves within the fungus patch. Breezes tossed the choking smoke in unpredictable directions. The smoke drove clouds of mites out of the fungus and into the open. She was wishing Thanya's triad would arrive with water.

 

There were three triads of the Triune Squad now on the trunk. Minya, Sal, and Smitta were nearing the median. Jeel's triad traversed up and down the trunk, ferrying provisions from the tuft, while Thanya's brought water from the lee.

 

Fire was usually no problem, but mistakes could happen.

 

"I love these climbs," Smitta said. She floated with her toes gripping an edge of bark. This close to the median, it was enough to hold her against the feeble tide. "I like floating . . . and where else can you see the entire Smoke Ring?"

 

Minya nodded. She didn't want to talk. When a problem couldn't be solved and wouldn't go away, what could one do but run? She had run as far as a human being could go. It was working: she felt at peace here, halfway between infinities.

 

The tree seemed to run forever in both directions. The Dark Tuft, backlit by Voy and the sun, was a halo of green fluff with a black core. Outward, Dalton-Quinn Tuft was barely larger. A few drifting clouds, wisps of green forest, whorls of storm were all outward. Eastward was a point of bright light off-center in a dark rim: the same small pond that had been drifting tantalizingly closer for a score of days.

 

Maybe, maybe it would come. They didn't talk about it. Bad luck.

 

Between the drought and the recent political upsets, it had been too long since the Triune Squad had been free for treetending duty. They had been needed as police. One could hope that the executions had settled the troubles; but now the triads were finding parasites and patches of old-man's-hair everywhere on the trunk. Today they were burning virtually a field of the horrid stuff.

 

Motion caught Minya's eye, outward and windward. Blue-againstblue, hard to see, something big. The sun was nearly at nadir, glaring up. She held a hand beneath her eyes, and squinted, and presently said, "Triune."

 

Smitta snapped alert. "Interested in us? Sal!"

 

Sal sang out from behind the smoke cloud. "I see it."

 

Minya said, "They're interested. They're pretty close already."

 

Smitta had pulled herself against the trunk and was readying her weapons. "I fought a triune once. They're smarter than swordbirds. You can scare them off. Just remember, if we kill one, we'll have to kill all three."

 

The torpedo-shaped object was closer now. It was nearly the blue of the sky, slowly rotating. Six big eyes showed in turn around the circumference, and three great gauzy fins . . . one smaller than the other.

 

That would be the juvenile. Minya whispered, "What do we need?"

 

"Bows and arrows ready? Tether your arrow and scoop up some burning old-man's-hair on the point. Lucky we had a fire going. Know where your jet pods are, you may need them."

 

Minya could feel her heart pulsing in her throat. It was her second trip up the trunk . . . but Smitta and Sal had been up many times. They were tough and experienced. Sal was a burly, red-haired fortyyear-old who had joined the Triune Squad at age twelve. Smitta had been born a man; she was a woman by courtesy.

 

Stay clear of Smftta~ Minya told herself. Smitta was slow to anger, but under pressure something could snap in her mind. Then Smitta fought like a berserker, even among her own, and the only way to at her was to pile on her. Minya strung her hardwood bow and used an arrow point to dig a gob of burning fungus. Ready-? The torpedo split in three. Three slender torpedoes flapped laz toward them, showing small lateral fins and violent-orange bellies; male and a female, forever mated, plus a single juvenile who would on body mass fast, then mature more slowly. They divided only to ht or fight. The Triune Squad itself was named for the triune family: interdependence.

 

The juvenile would be the smallest, the one hanging back a little. T~ adults swept forward.

 

"Aim for the male," Smitta said and loosed, the line trailing c behind the arrow. Which was male? Minya waited a moment to jud Smitta's target, then loosed her own weapon. She judged that U, weren't in range yet . . . and she was right; the male's body rippi him free of the arrows' paths, while the female bored in. Sal had hi back. Now she loosed, and the veering female caught an arrow in 1 fin.

 

She bellowed. She flapped once, and the arrow snapped free, appeared from the smoke, yanked into the sky. It didn't seem to bother as she reeled in, her ancient metal bow slung safe over her should The smoldering old-man's-hair had been left on the female's tail, a she was flapping madly.

 

Smitta sent a tethered arrow winging at the juvenile.

 

Both adults screamed. The female tried to block the arrow. Too slow The juvenile didn't seem to see the arrow coming. Smitta yanked at the line and stopped it a meter short.

 

The female gaped.

 

The women were reeling frantically, but it wasn't necessary. I adults moved in alongside the infant, infinitely graceful. Small has reached out from their orange bellies to pull them together. Tb moved away like a single blurred blue ghost against the blue sky.

 

"See? They're smart. You can reason with them," Smitta said.

 

Sal pulled a teardrop-shaped jet pod from one of the cluster of po eta that ran down and across the front of her tunic. She twisted the t A cloud of seeds and mist spurted away from her, thrusting Sal be toward the bark.

 

She coiled line and stowed her weapons, including the valuable be Springy met, it was, handed down from old to young within the Squad for at least two hundred years. "Will done, troops, but I think the fire is getting to the wood. I wish Thanya would get here. She couldn't have missed us, could she?"

 

To Minya's eye, the fire might have reached wood by now, or not. Hard to tell where old-man's-hair shaded over into rotted wood. "It's not bad yet," she said.

 

"I hate to waste jet pods, but . . . treefodder. I want to look for them," Sal decided. She gathered her legs under her, hands gripping the bark to brace herself, and jumped. She waved her arms to~p herself around until she could see the trunk. They watched her drift along the trunk, out toward Dalton-Quinn Tuft.

 

"She worries too much," Smitta said.

 

Seventy days had passed since Clave's citizens had departed Quinn Tuft.

 

The tree fed a myriad parasites, and the parasites fed Clave's team. They had killed another nose-arm, easily, chopping through its nose, then jabbing harpoons into its den. There were patches of fan fungus everywhere. Merril had slept a full eight days after eating from the red fringe of a fan fungus. The subsequent throbbing headache didn't seem to affect her climbing, and presently it went away. So the fan fungus served them as food, and they had found more of the shelled burrowers and other edibles.

 

The Grad saw it all as evidence of the tree's decline.

 

They had found a jet pod bush, like a mass of bubbles on the bark. Clave had packed a dozen ripe pods in a pouch of scraped nose-arm hide.

 

They had taken to camping just outside the water-washed wood. Clave laughed and admitted that they should have been doing that all along. They'd slept three times more on the tree: last night in a nosearm's den, twice before in deep wounds in the wood, cracks overgrown with "fuzz" that had to be burned out first. The char had turned their clothing black. They had learned not to try to boil water. The bubbles just foamed it out in a hot, expanding mass.

 

Tidal gravity continued to decrease until they were almost floating up the trunk. Merril loved it. Recovering from the fan fungus hadn't changed that. You couldn't fall; you'd just yell for help, and someone would presently throw you a line. Glory loved it, and Alfin smiled sometimes.

 

But there were penalties. Now water had grown scarce too. There was no wind this high, and thus no leeward stream of water. Sometimes you found wet wood, wet enough to lick dry. There was water in fan fungus flesh.

 

Here was the mark Jinny had found. Good: it looked nearly clean.

 

And half a klomter farther up the trunk, a fan-shape showed like a white hand against the sky. It must be huge. The Grad pointed. "Dinner?"

 

Clave said, "We'll find smaller ones around it."

 

"But wouldn't it look grand," Merril asked, "coming into the Commons?"

 

The Grad was pulling himself toward the tribal mark when Clave said, "Hold it."

 

"What?"

 

"This mark isn't overgrown like the others were. Grad, doesn't it look funny to you? Tended?"

 

"There's some fuzz growing, but maybe not enough." Then the Grad was close enough to see the real discrepancy. "There's no takeout mark. Citizens, this isn't Quinn territory."

 

Gavving and Jiovan had been left behind to tend the smokefire.

 

Hard-learned lessons showed here. Bark torn from the rim of a patch of fuzz served as fuel. Healthy bark resisted fire. A circle of coals surrounded the meat, all open to the fitful breezes. A sheltered fire wouldn't burn. The smoke wouldn't rise; it would stay to smother the fire. Even here in the open, the smoke hovered in a squirming cloud. The heat of burning stayed in the smoke, so the fire didn't need to be large. Gavving and Jiovan stayed well back. A shift in the breeze could smother an incautious citizen. The meat should be rotated soon. It was Gavving's turn, but it didn't have to be done instantly.

 

"Jiovan?"

 

"What?"

 

Even Gavving wouldn't ask Jiovan how he lost his leg-nobody would; but one thing about that tale had bothered him for years. And he asked.

 

"Why were you hunting alone, that day? Nobody hunts alone."

 

"I did."

 

"Okay." Topic closed. Gavving drew his harpoon. He pulled air into his lungs, then lunged into the smoke. Half-blind, he reached over the coals with the harpoon butt to turn the nose-arm legs-one, two, three. He yanked hard on his line to pull himself into open air. Smoke came with him, and he took an instant to fan it away before he drew breath.

 

Jiovan was looking in, past the small green tuft that had once enclosed his life, into the bluish white spark that was Voy. His head came up, and Gavving faced a murderous glare. "This L~n't something I'd want told around."

 

Gavving waited.

 

"All right. I've got . . . I had a real gift for sarcasm, they tell me. When I was leading a hunt . . . well, the boys were there to learn, of course, and I was there to teach. If someone made a mistake, I left him in no doubt."

 

Gavving nodded.

 

"Pretty soon they were giving me nothing but the fumblers. I couldn't stand it, so I started hunting alone."

 

"I shouldn't have asked. It used to bother me."

 

"Forget it."

 

Gavving was trying to forget something else entirely. This last sleep period he had wakened to find three citizens missing. He'd followed a sound . . . and watched Clave and Jayan and Jinny moor lines to the bark, and leap outward, and make babies while they drifted.

 

What lived in his head now was lust and envy balanced by fear of Clave's wrath or Jinny's scorn (for he had fixed on Jinny as marginally lovelier.) He might as well dream. Any serious potential mate was back in Quinn Tuft, and Gavving couldn't offer anyway; he hadn't the wealth or the years.

 

That would change, of course. He would return (of course) as a hero (of course!). As for the Chairman's wrath . . . he hadn't been able to send Harp. Possibly Clave could have resisted him too. If they could end the famine, the Chairman could do nothing; they would be heroes.

 

Gavving could have his choice of mates- "So I was hunting alone," Jiovan said, "the day Glory busted open the turkey pen."

 

For an instant Gavving couldn't imagine what Jiovan was talking about. Then he smiled. "Harp's told that tale."

 

"I've heard him. I was down under the branch that day, with one line to tether me and another loose, nibbling a little foliage with my head sticking down into the sky, you know, just waiting. It was full night at the New Year's occlusion. The sun was a wide bright patch shining up at me, and Voy drifting right across the center.

 

"Here came a turkey, flapping against the wind, still moving pretty fast, and backward. I put a net on my free line, quick, and threw it. The turkey's caught. Here comes another one. I've got more nets, and in two breaths I've got a turkey on each end. But here come two more, then four, and they're coming from above, and by now I can guess they're ours. I throw the end of the line I'm moored to, and I get a third turkey.-"

 

"Good throwing," Gavving said.

 

"Oh, sure, there wasn't anything wrong with my throwing that day. But the sky was full of turkeys, and most of them were going to get away, and I still thought it was kind of hilarious."

 

"Really."

 

"That's why I never told this story before."

 

Gavving suddenly guessed what was coming. "I can live with it if you don't want to finish."

 

"No, that's okay. It was funny," Jiovan said seriously. "But the sky was full of turkeys, and a triune family came to do something about all that meat on the wing. They split up and went after the loose turkeys.

 

There wasn't a thing I could do but pull in my three."

 

Jiovan certainly wasn't smiling now. "The male went after one of my turkeys. Swallowed it whole and tried to swim away. It got the wrong line . . . picture one end of a line spiked deep in the branch, and that massive beast pulling on the other, and me in a loop in the middle. I suddenly saw what was happening, and I pulled the loop open and tried to jump out, and the loop snicked shut and my leg was ripped almost off and I was falling into the sky."

 

"Treefodder."

 

"I thought I was treefodder, all right. Remember, I still had a line in my hands? But with a turkey on each end, flapping like crazy, and I was falling. I tried throwing a turkey, I really did, I thought it might get caught in the branchlets, but it didn't.

 

"Meanwhile the triune male's been caught by something, and it doesn't know what. It pulls back against the line and feels a tug in its belly and throws up. I think that's what must have happened. All I know is something smacks me in the face, and it's a dead turkey covered with goo, and I grab it-I hug it to me with all my heart and climb the line back into the tuft."

 

Gavving was afraid to laugh.

 

"Then I tie off what's left of my leg. What's hanging loose, I had to cut off. Well, kid, did Harp ever tell you a story like that?"

 

"No. Treefodder, he'd love it! Oh."

 

"He'd make me famous. I don't want to be famous that way."

 

Gavving chewed it over. "Why tell me now?"

 

"I don't know. My turn," Jiovan said suddenly. He filled his lungs and disappeared into the smoke.

 

Gavving felt burdened. Always he asked too many questions. He grinned guiltily, picturing Jiovan trying to throw a line with a turkey flapping at each end. But what if Jiovan regretted telling it?

 

He saw Clave appear from behind the curve of the trunk.

 

Jiovan emerged, bringing smoke, and Gavving held his breath while it cleared. Jiovan coughed a little. "It's been so long," he said. "Maybe it doesn't hurt as much. Maybe I just wanted to tell it. Maybe I had to."

 

"They're coming back," Gavving said. "I wonder what's got them so excited?"

 

Clave bellowed, "I will not go home without learning something about them!"

 

"I know quite a lot about them," the Grad answered. "We all lived in the far tuft once. The Quinns left after some kind of disagreement. Before that, it was Dalton-Quinn Tribe."

 

"Then they're relatives."