"Go ahead."

 

The Grad unwrapped his reader. He had Carther States' undivided attention. The women were awed and wary; Lizeth held her spear at the ready. He chose the records cassette, inserted it into the reader, and said, "Prikazyvat Find copsik."

 

NOT FOUND

 

"Prikazyvat Find-" the Grad said and held the reader to Kara's face. The Sharman shied, then spoke to the machinery. "Corpsik."

 

CORPSICLE?

 

The Grad said, "Prikazyvat Expound."

 

The screen filled with print. The Grad asked, "Can you read it?"

 

"No," Kara said for them all.

 

"Corpsicle is an insult-term first used to describe people frozen for medical purposes. In the century preceding the founding of the State, some tens of thousands were frozen immediately after death in the hope of someday being revived and cured. This was fothid to be impossible.

 

The State later made use of the stored personalities. Memory patterns could be recorded from a frozen brain, and RNA extracted from the central nervous system. A brainwiped criminal could thus be fitted with a new personality. No citizenship was conferred upon these corpsicles. The treatment was later refined and used by passengers and crew on long interstellar voyages.

 

"'The seeder ramship Discipline's crew included eight corpsicles. The memory sets were those of respected citizens of advanced age, with skills appropriate to an interstellar venture. It was hoped that the corpsides would be grateful to find themselves in healthy, youthful bodies. This assumption proved-' I can't make sense of all that. One thing seems clear enough. A copsik isn't a citizen. He has no rights. He's property."

 

"That's right," said Debby, to the Sharman's evident annoyance.

 

So the Sharman doesn't trust me. So? "How do they find you in here? There must be cubic klomters of it, and you know it and they don't. I don't see why you fight at all."

 

"They find us. Twice now they have found us hidden in the jungle," Kara said bitterly. "Their Sharman is better than I am. It may be that their science enhances their senses. Grad, we would be glad to have your knowledge."

 

"Would you make us citizens?"

 

The pause lasted only seconds. "If you fight," said Kara.

 

"Clave broke his leg coming down."

 

"We make citizens only of those who will fight. Our warriors are fighting now, and who knows if they will repell the corpsik runners? If we can hurt a few, perhaps they will not seek out the children and old men and women who host guests."

 

Guests? Oh, the pregnant ones. "What about Clave and the women?

 

What happens to them?"

 

The Sharman shrugged. "They may live with us, but not as citizens." Not good, but it might be the best they could get. "I can't say yes or no. We'll have to talk. Kara . . .

 

"~Wbat is it?"

 

"I just remembered something. Kara, there are kinds of light you can't see. There used to be machines that could see the warmth of a body. That's how they find you."

 

The women looked at each other in dread. Debby whispered, "But only a corpse is cold."

 

"So light little fires all through the forest. Make them check each one."

 

"Very dangerous. The fire might . . ." she trailed off. "Never mind.

 

Fires go out unless fanned. The smoke smothers them. It might be possible after all, near the jungle surface."

 

The Grad nodded and reached for more foliage. Things were looking better. If some could become citizens, they could protect the rest. Perhaps Quinn Tribe had found a home...

 

"Three groups, and they're all going deeper. The traces are getting blurred," said the pilot's blurred voice. The carm hung behind Squad Leader Patry's shoulder, bow aimed at the jungle. "Are you going after them?"

 

"Groups how big?"

 

"Three and three and a bigger group. The big group started first. You probably won't catch them."

 

In the hands of Patry's men a mass of greenery rose from the rest and floated free. Patry reported, "We've found where they dug in. Okay, we're going after them." He joined the waiting men. "Mark, take the point. The rest of you follow me. Go wide of that yellow stufl it's poison fern."

 

Mark was a dwarf the only man in London Tree who could wear the ancient armor, and thus the only possible custodian of the spitgun. Ten years ago he had tended to shy back from an attack, until he gained confidence in his invulnerability. The men had called him Tiny until Patty himself raised hell about it. Mark was born to wear the armor.

 

He'd learned to wear it well.

 

He climbed past the severed bush and into the dark with London Tree's infantry behind him.

 

The agony was real, centered above Clave's knee, but spreading in flashes throughout his body. The rest faded in and out. He was being towed through a tunnel. Soon the Scientist's plant extracts would erase the pain. But hadn't the plants died in the drought? And . . . the tree was gone. There wasn't any Scientist, and the Grad had no drugs, and the Grad was gone too. Too few survivors followed the Grad through green gloom. dave's pitiful remnant of a tribe was split, and there was no medicine for an injured man.

 

Jinny and Minya stopped abruptly, jarring his leg. The pain shouted in his brain. Then they had plunged into the tunnel's branchlet walls, and dave tumbled in free-fall, abandoned.

 

His tumble turned him and the dream turned nightmare. He faced a bulky, faceless silver thing. The apparition raised something metal? A splinter stabbed into dave's ribs. He plucked it out. His mind was muzzy . . . was it a thorn? The metal-and-glass creature forced itself through the tunnel wall, ignoring Clave. Acolytes followed it in, blue men carrying huge, unwieldy bows.

 

The pain had gone and reality was fading. Here was medicine after all

 

"I see you've caught up with the first group," the pilot said. "The forward group has stopped. The middle group has joined them. Maybe you should quit."

 

"I sent Toby back with two copsilcs. The third had a broken leg, so we left him. We're almost at full strength. Let's just see what happens."

 

"Patty, is there something unusual about your mission?"

 

Classified. . . oh, what did it matter? "Catch some copsiks. Shoot some meatbirds. Collect some spices. Pick up anything scientific." That last wasn't usual. Maybe the First Officer wanted the Scientist to owe him a favor. Patty didn't comment, not with the Scientist's Apprentice listening.

 

"Fine. You've got copsiks. How many do you need? You don't really expect to find science here, do you?"

 

"There's a big group ahead. I'm going to at least look at the situation." Patty turned the volume down. Pilots tended to argue a point to death, and Patry wanted silence.

 

Gavving hadn't burrowed far before Jayan's line led them to a tunnel carved through the foliage. They moved faster then.

 

Despite its alien smell, Gavving was hungry enough to try the foliage.

 

The taste was alien too; but it was sweet and went down well. He ate more.

 

In fact, he felt almost at home here. His toes thrust into branchlets and pushed him down the tunnel in remembered rhythm. Cheeping and croaking rose from thousands of unseen throats. They wouldn't be birds, this deep in the thicket; but they chirped, and if need came they could probably fly. The sound was the sound of Gavving's childhood, before the drought killed the small life throughout the tuft.

 

It was an effort to remember that this wasn't Quinn Tuft; that he followed enemies who knew this thicket as Gavving knew his tree.

 

Minya, it seemed, didn't have that problem. She was snatching handfuls of foliage, but the hand she used clutched an arrow, and her bow was in the other.

 

They were moving faster than the line that slithered ahead of them. Merril wound it up as they went. The coil trailed from a thumb; she used both hands to move herself. When Gavving noticed, he said, "Let me do that for a while. Eat."

 

"Keep your hands free!" A little later, perhaps regretting her sharpness, she said, "I need my hands to move. You can fight with your hands. Where's your harpoon?"

 

"On my back. We're all right as long as Jayan is still pulling on the line," he said and immediately noticed that the line had gone slack. Gavving reached for his harpoon before he moved again.

 

A disembodied white arm thrust out of the tunnel wall and beckoned. Jayan looked out through a screen of branchiets. Her voice was a hoarse and frightened whisper. "They're ahead of us."

 

"Where?"

 

"Not far. Don't take the tunnel. There's a long, straight part, then it swells out. They'd see you. Go where I go, or they'll hear branchiets breaking."

 

They followed her into the thicket.

 

Jayan had broken a trail. Twice she'd had to cut thicker spine branches. In the end they watched from behind a screen of branchiets as the Grad spoke with the weird women.

 

They were lean and elongated, like exaggerated cartoons of the ideal woman, or like a further stage in human evolution. They looked relaxed. So did the Grad. His feet and one hand were bound, but he was casually eating foliage while they talked. The carcass of a bird was mostly bones.

 

Minya's breath was warm on his shoulder. She whispered, "It looks like the Grad may have talked them around. I can't hear, can you?"

 

"No." There was too much birdsong . . . and an occasional crackling as someone moved, making Gavving glad for the birdsong. Still, someone was making too much noise . .

 

Minya leapt through the branchiets in a hideous crackling, straight into the midst of the weird women, screaming, "Monster made of starstufli There!"

 

Gavving leapt after her, ready to do battle. He'd have appreciated some warning- The weird women didn't hesitate an instant. Five of them jumped toward other tunnels and were gone in three directions. The sixth jumped clumsily. She struck the edge of the opening and tumbled away unconscious. Had she struck that bard?

 

The Grad was struggling to free his hands. Gavving felt something sting his leg. He turned to fight.

 

To fight what? A thing of glass and metal! There were men behind it - ordinary men who floated free, sighting over their toes as they pulled huge bows taut with their hands-but they didn't fire. The thing of science pointed a metal tube at Minya, then at the Grad. Gavving's harpoon bounced off its mirror-glass face. It pointed at Gavving and stung him again.

 

You can't fight science, Gavving thought, and he drew his long knife and leapt at the monster. Then everything went dreamy.

 

"You're too deep," the pilot said. "I can't get individual readings on you. I've got a hot spot, a cluster of a dozen or so. You and the copsiks together?"

 

"Sounds right. We've got six copsiks here, one already tied up for us. We'll leave the one with no legs. That gives us seven total. A bunch went off through the tunnels. Can you locate them?"

 

"Yes. It looks like they're together again. There's you, and there's a tighter, brighter spot east of you. I'd say quit now. Kill some meatbirds on the way out."

 

"There's something here . . . I've got something scientific here, something I don't understand. Too scientific by half." Squad Leader Patty picked up a rectangular mirror that didn't reflect, a mirror that shone by its own light. With some trepidation he flipped an obvious switch. The light went out, to his relief. "You're right, we've got enough. We're coming out."

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

The Scientist's Apprentice

 

 

 

LASSITUDE . . . AN ODD, PLEASANT SENSATION LIKE FIZZING IN the blood. . . constriction and resistance at his wrists and anldes... memories drifting into place, sorting themselves. The Grad waited until his mind was straight before he opened his eyes.

 

He was bound again, tension at wrists and ankles holding his body straight. Getting to be a habit~ His bonds gave as he tugged at them. He was tied to netting, face down to a wall that was hard and cold and smooth, and translucent to a millimeter's depth, over a gray substrate.

 

He'd never seen the like before; but from a distance this stuff might look like metal.

 

It was the flying box. He was tied to the flying box. He twisted his head left and saw others: Minya, Gavving, Jayan (already awake and trying to hide it), Jinny. To his right, a row of dead salmon birds and ribbon birds, Alfin smiling in his sleep, and one of the Carther Tribe women, the pregnant one, ilsa. Her eyes were open and empty of hope.

 

A jovial voice boomed at them. "Some of you are awake by now-"

 

The Grad arched his back to see over his head. The copsik runner was big, burly, cheerful. He clung to the net near the windowed end. "Don't try to wriggle loose. You'll just get lost in the sky, and we won't come back for you. We don't want fools for copsiks."

 

Minya called to him. "May we talk among ourselves?"

 

"Sure, if you don't interrupt m~ Now, you're wondering what's going to happen to you. You're going to join London Tree. There's tide when you're in a tree. You'll have to get used to the pull on things, and balancing on your feet without falling, and so forth. You'll get to like it.

 

You can heat water till it boils without it spewing all over the place, and that lets you cook things you never tasted. You always know where you are, by what a thing does if you let go of it. You can drop garbage-" From below their feet came an unnerving whistling roar. The copsik runner's voice rose "-and know it won't float back at you." He stopped talking because some of his prisoners were screaming.

 

A tide pulled toward the Grad's feet. He was not surprised to see sky wheeling past: green forest, a strip of blue, billowing white. The textured green below his feet began to contract.

 

A wet wind blew past. Mist thickened around them. The panicky screams thinned to whimpers, and the Grad heard Alfin's, "Treefodder! We're going back into the treefeeding storm cloud! Whose bright idea-" and he must have silenced himself, because nobody else could have reached him.

 

Their guard waited for quiet. He said, "It's very impolite for a copsik to interrupt a citizen. I am a citizen. I'll forget it for the duration of this voyage, but you will learn. Questions?"

 

Minya screamed, "What gives you the right?"

 

"Don't ever say that again," the copsik runner said. "Anything else?" Minya seemed to calm herself in an instant. "What about our children? Will they be copsiks too?"

 

"They'll have the chance to be citizens. There's an initiation. Some won't want to take it. Some won't pass."

 

Mist enclosed them completely. The copsik runner himself was halfinvisible. A wave of droplets each the size of a thumb swept across them, leaving them soaked.

 

Nobody else seemed inclined to, so the Grad spoke. "Is London Tree stuck in this storm cloud?"

 

The copsik runner laughed. "We're not stuck anywhere! We moved into the cloud because we need water. After we get you home we'll move out, I expect."

 

"How?"

 

"Classified."

 

Gavving was just waking up. He looked left and right and found the Grad. "What's happening?"

 

"The good news is we're going to live in a tree."

 

Gavving tested his bonds while he absorbed that. "As what?"

 

"Copsiks. Property. Servants."

 

"Huh. Better than dying of thirst. Where are we? The flying box?"

 

"Right."

 

"I don't see Clave. Or Merril."

 

"Right again."

 

"I feel wonderful," Gavving said. "Why do I feel so good? Something was on those thorns, maybe, like the red fringe on a fan fungus."

 

"Could be."

 

"You're not saying much."

 

The Grad said, "I don't want to miss anything. If I know how we get to London Tree, maybe I could get us back. I had some Carther Tribe citizens convinced that we should join them."

 

Gavving turned to Minya. They spoke together at length. The Grad didn't try to hear. It was too noisy anyway. The whistling roar had faded, but the windsong was nearly as loud.

 

"Too many changes," Minya said.

 

"I know."

 

"I can't seem to feel anything. I want to get angry, but I can't."

 

"We're drugged."

 

"It's not that. I was Minya of the Triune Squad of Dalton Quinn Tuft. Then I was lost in the sky and dying of thirst. I found you and married you and joined the Dark Tuft People. We hitched a ride with a moby and got slung into a jungle. Now we're what? Copsiks? It's too many changes. Too much."

 

"All right, I'm a little numb myself. We'll get over it. They can't keep us drugged forever. You're still Minya, the berserker warrior. Just forget it till you need it."

 

"What will they do with us?"

 

"I don't know. The Grad's talking escape. I think we'd better wait. We don't know enough."

 

She found a laugh, somewhere. "At least we don't die virgins."

 

"We met each other. We were dying, and now we're not dying at all. We're going to a tree, and it can move itself. We'll never see another drought. It could be worse. It's been worse. . . . I wish I could see Clave, though."

 

It was dark and wet around them. Lightning marched a meandering path across the bow. The vehicle swung around. Npw the wind blew up from their feet. In that direction a' bushy shadow was forming.

 

"There," said Minya.

 

The roar of motors resumed.

 

Gavving watched for a time before he convinced himself that it was one tuft of an integral tree. He'd never seen any tree from such a vantage. They were coming up on the in branch. The tuft was greener and healthier-looking than Quinn Tuft had been, and foliage reached farther to cover the branch. The bare wooden tail sported a horizontal platform of hewn wood, clearly a work of tremendous labor.

 

The roar of science-in-action wavered, rose and fell, as the flying box settled toward the platform. A great arching gap had been chopped through the branch itseli linking this platform to one on the other side. At its west end, where foliage began to sprout, a large hut had been woven.

 

The whistling roar died.

 

Then things happened fast. People left the hut on the jump. More appeared from underneath, perhaps from inside the flying box. London Tree's citizens didn't have the incredible height of the forest denizens.

 

Some wore gaudy colors, but most wore tuftberry red, and the men had smooth faces scraped clean of hair. They swarmed to what was now the roof of the flying box and began pulling prisoners loose.

 

Jinny, Jayan, Minya, and the tall Carther Tribe woman were freed in turn and escorted off the roof of the vehicle. Then nothing happened for a time.

 

They took the women first. The drug on the needles still held him calm, but that bothered Gavving nonetheless. He couldn't see what was happening on the ledge. Presently he was pulled free of the net, lifted, and walked off the roof.

 

Somehow he had expected normal tides. Here was no more than a third of the tidal force at Quinn Tuft. He drifted down.

 

Alfin's eyes popped open when the copsik runners turned him loose.

 

They were closing again when he hit the platform. He grunted in protest, then went back to sleep. Two men in tuftberry red picked him up and carried him away.

 

A copsik runner, a golden-haired woman of twenty or so with a pretty, triangular face, held up the Grad's reader and tapes. "Which of you belongs to these?" she demanded.

 

The Grad called from above Gavving's head; he was still falling.

 

"They're mine."

 

"Stay with me," she commanded. "Do you know how to walk?

 

You're short enough to be a tree dweller."

 

The Grad staggered when he touched down, but stayed upright. "I can walk."

 

"Wait with me. We'll use the carm to reach the Citadel."

 

Strangers were among them, leading Gavving and Alfin toward the big hut. The Grad's eyes followed them, and Gavving would have waved, but his wrists were still tied. A smallish, fussy-looking man in red pushed a bird's carcass into his hampered arms-it was nearly his own mass-and said, "Take this along. Can you cook?"

 

"Come." The copsik's hand shoved against the small of his back. He moved in that direction, toward where the fin flowered into tuft. But where were the women?

 

The flying box had blocked his view. Now he saw the women through the arch, on the other ledge. Minya began struggling, crying, "Wait!

 

That's my husband!"

 

The drug slowed him down, but Gavving threw the bird into the copsik's arms, sending him tumbling backward under its mass, and tried to jump toward Minya. He never completed the first step. Two men stepped in from either side and caught his arms. They must have been waiting for just such a move. One clouted him across the head hard enough to set the world spinning. They hustled him into the but.

 

The copsik was studying Lawn as she studied him. He was thin, with stringy muscles; three or four ce'meters taller than Lawri herself and not much older. His blond hair and beard were raggedly cut. He was dirty from head to foot. A line of dried blood ran from his right eyebrow to the corner of his jaw. He was very much the kind of copsik who might come spinning from the sky on a sheet of bark, and hardly a convincing man of science.

 

But his eyes inquired; they judged her. He asked, "Citizen, what will happen to them?"

 

"Call me Scientist's Apprentice," Lawri said. "Who are you?"

 

"I'm the Quinn Tribe Scientist," he said.

 

That made her laugh. "I can hardly call you Scientist! Don't you have a name?"

 

He bristled, but he answered. "I did. Jeffer."

 

"Jeffer, the other copsiks don't concern you now. Get aboard the carm and stay out of the pilot's way."

 

He stood stupidly. "Carm?"

 

She slapped its metal flank and pronounced the syllables as she had been taught. "Cargo And Repair Module. CARM. In!"

 

He got through both doors and a few paces beyond, and there he stopped, gaping, trying to see in every direction at once. For the moment she left him to it. She didn't blame him. Few copsiks ever saw the interior of the carm.

 

Ten chairs faced into a tremendous curved window of thick glass. Images were there that couldn't be outside the glass, nor could they be reflections. They must be in the glass itself: numbers and letters and line drawings in blue and yellow and green.

 

Behind the chairs was thirty or forty cubic meters of empty space.

 

There were bars set to swivel out of the walls and floor and ceiling, and numerous loops of metal: anchorage for stored goods against the jerky pull of the motors. Even so, the cabin was only a fifth the size of the carm. What was the rest?

 

When the carm moved, flame had spurted from nostrils at the rear. It seemed that something must burn to move the carm . . . a good deal of it, if it occupied most of the carm's bulk . . . and pumps to move the fuel, and mysteries whose names he'd glimpsed in the cassettes: attitude jet life support system, computer, mass sensor, echo laser.

 

The calm left by the needle had almost left his blood. He was starting to be afraid. Could he learn to read those numbers in the glass? Would he have the chance?

 

A man in blue lounged before the box window. A big-boned man of average height, he was still too tall for the chair; what would have been a curved head rest poked him between the shoulder blades. The Scientist's Apprentice spoke briskly. "Please take us to the Citadel."

 

"I don't have orders to do that."

 

"Just what are your orders?" Her voice was casual, peremptory.

 

"I don't have orders yet. The Navy may be interested in these scientific items."

 

"Confiscate them, if you're sure enough. And I'll tell the Scientist what happened to them, as soon as I'm allowed to contact him. Will you confiscate the copsik too? He says he knows how to work them. Maybe you'd better confiscate me, to talk to him."

 

The pilot was looking nervous. His glance at the Grad was venomous. A witness to his discomfiture. . . He decided. "Citadel, right."

 

His hands moved.

 

The girl, forewarned, was clutching the back of a chair. The Grad wasn't. The lurch threw him off balance. He grabbed at something to stop his fall. A handleon the back wall: it twisted in his hand, and dirty water spilled from a nozzle. He turned it off quick and met the girl's look of disgust.

 

After perhaps twenty heartbeats the pilot lifted his fingers The familiar whistling roar-barely audible through the metal walls, but still fearfully strange-went quiet. The Grad immediately made his way to one of the chairs.

 

The carm was moving away from the tuft, east and out. Were they leaving London Tree? Why? He didn't ask. He was uncharacteristically leery of playing the fool. He watched the pilot's hands. Symbols and numbers glowed in the bow window and in the panel below it, but the pilot touched only the panel, and only the blue. He could feel the response in shifting sound and shifting tide. Blue moves the carm?

 

"Jeffer. How did you get those wounds?" The blond girl spoke as if she didn't care very much.

 

Wounds? Oh, his face. "The tree came apart," he said. "They do that if they fall too far out of the Smoke Ring. We had a close encounter with Gold some years ago."

 

That touched her curiosity nerve. "What happens to the people?"

 

"Quinn Tuft must be dead except for us. Five of us now." He'd accepted that Clave and Merril were gone too.

 

"You'll have to tell me about it sometime." She tapped what she was carrying. "What are these?"

 

"Cassettes and a reader. Records."

 

She thought it over, longer than seemed necessary. Then she reached to plug one of the Grad's cassettes into a slot in front of the pilot. The pilot said, "Hey-"

 

"Science. My preogative," she said. She tapped two buttons. (Buttons, permanent fixtures in a row of five: yellow, blue, green, white, red.

 

The panel was otherwise blank, save for the transitory glowing lights within. A tap of the yellow button made all the yellow lights disappear; the white button raised new symbols in white.) "Prikazyvat Menu."

 

The familiar table of contents appeared within the glass: white print flowing upward. She'd chosen the cassette for cosmology. The Grad felt his hands curling to strangle her. Classifie4 classtfled! Mine!

 

"Prikazyvat Gold." The print shifted. The pilot was gripped by ternfled fascination, unable to look away. The Scientist's Apprentice asked the Grad, "Can you read?"

 

"Certainly."

 

"Goldblatt's World probably originated as a Neptune-like body, a gas giant world in the cometary halo that circles Levoy's Star and TeeThree, hundreds of billions of kilometers. . . klomters out. A supernova can spew its outer envelope asymmetrically due to its trapped magnetic field, leaving the remaining neutron star with an altered velocity. The planetary orbits go all to hell. In Levoy's s-scenario Goldblatt's World would have dropped very close to Levoy's Star, with its perihelion actually inside the neutron star's Roche Limit. Strong Roche tides would quickly warp the orbit into a circle. The planet would have continued to leak atmosphere to the present day, replacing gasses lost from the Smoke Ring and the gas torus to interstellar space.

 

"Goldblatt estimates that Levoy's Star went supernova a billion years ago. The planet must have been losing atmosphere for all of that time. In its present state Goldblatt's World defies description: a worldsized core of rock and metals-"

 

"Enough. Very good, you can read. Can you understand what you read?"

 

"Not that. I can guess that Levoy's Star is Voy and Goldblatt's World is Gold. The rest of it-" The Grad shrugged. His eye caught the pilot's, and the pilot flinched. He seemed shrunken into himself.

 

Dominance games. The Scientist's Apprentice had assaulted the pilot's mind with the wonders and the cryptic language of science. Now she was saying, "We have that data on our own cassettes, word for word, as far as I can remember. I hope you brought us something new."

 

A shadow was congealing in the silver fog around them. They were drifting back toward London Tree.

 

The carm's free-falling path had curved back toward the tree's midpoint. East takes you ouL Out takes you west-He had a great deal to learn about flying the carm. Because he must learn. He would learn to fly this thing, or end his days as a copsik.

 

There were structures here. Huge wooden beams formed a square.

 

Inward, four huts in a column, not of woven foliage, but of cut wood.

 

Cables and tubes ran down the trunk in both directions, further than the Grad could follow. A pond had touched the trunk: a silvery globule clung to the bark, and that seemed strange. A single pond in this region of mist? Men in red moved around it, feeding it water carried in seed pods. It too must be artificial.

 

With all these artificial structures, London Tree made Quinn Tuft look barbaric! But was it wise to.-"Scientist's Apprentice, do you cut the wood for these structures from the tree itself?"

 

She answered without looking at him. "No. We bring it from other integral trees."

 

Now she turned, startled and annoyed. He wasn't expected to judge London Tree. The Grad was developing a dislike for the Scientist's Apprentice. . . which he would try to keep in check. If she was behaving as a typical citizen toward a copsik, it augured badly for Quinn Tribe.

 

The trunk was coming at them, too fast. The Grad was relieved when he heard the motors start and felt the carm slowing. Those wooden beams would just about fit against the carm's windowed end . . . and that was what the pilot was doing, tapping at blue lights, fitting the window into that wooden frame. Watch his hands!

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

Treemouth and Citadel

 

 

 

IN THE LARGE HUT THE WOMEN WERE STRIPPED NAKED AND examined by two women taller than humans, like Ilsa of Carther Tribe.

 

Their long hair was white and thin enough to expose scalp. The skin seemed to have withered on their bones. Forty to fifty years old, Minya thought, though that was hard to judge; they looked so strange. They wore ponchos in tuftberry-juice scarlet, closed between the legs. Their walk was easy, practiced. Minya judged that they had spent many years in the tide of London Tree.

 

"It looks like people live a long time here," she whispered to Jayan, and Jayan nodded.

 

The supervisors would not answer questions, though they asked many.

 

They found dirt and wounds in plenty, but no disease. They treated Minya's bruises, and brusquely advised her to avoid offending citizens in future. Minya smiled. Offended? She was sure she had broken a man's arm before they clubbed her unconscious.

 

Lisa was clearly pregnant. Jayan was also declared pregnant, to her obvious surprise, and sent off with Usa. Minya gripped Jinny's arm, afraid that she would attempt a futile battle for her twin.

 

One of the supervisors noticed Jinny's distress. "They'll be all right," she said. "They carry guests. One of the Scientist's apprentices will have to look them over. Also, the men won't be allowed near them."

 

The what would what? But she would say no more, and Minya had to wait.

 

The Grad watched through the small windows; the big bow window now gave on to rugged bark four ce'meters distant. Things were happening outside.

 

A man in a white tunic was talking to men in blue or red ponchos that fit like oversized sacks. Presently the others all launched themselves along the bark toward the lowest of the column of huts.

 

"Who's that?" the Grad asked.

 

The Scientist's Apprentice disdained to answer. The pilot said, "That's Kiance the Scientist. Your new owner. No surprise there, he thinks he owns the whole tree."

 

Klance the Scientist was arguing with himself as he approached the carm. His white smock reached just below his hips; the ends of a citizen's loose poncho showed below. He was tall for a tree dweller, and lean but for a developing pot belly. Not a fighter, the Grad thought- forty-odd, with slack muscles. His hair was thick and white, his nose narrow and convexly curved. In a moment the Grad heard his voice speaking out of the air.

 

"Lawn." Sharp, with a peremptory snap in it.

 

The pilot tapped the yellow button and spread two fingertips apart over the resulting pattern of yellow lines (remember), beating Lawri to it. The carm's two doors swung out and in.

 

The Scientist was already in conversation as he entered. "They want to know when I can move the tree. Damn fools. They only just finished topping off the reservoir. If I moved it now the water would just float away. First we have to-" He stopped. His eyes flicked to the pilot's back (the pilot hadn't bothered to turn around), then to the Grad, then to Lawri. "Well?"

 

"He's the Scientist of a ruined tribe. He carried these." Lawn held up plastic boxes.

 

"Old science." His eyes turned greedy. "Tell me later," he said. "Pilot."

 

The Navy man's head turned.

 

"Was the carm damaged in any way? Was anything lost?"

 

"Certainly not. If you need a detailed report-"

 

"No, that will do. The rest of the Navy party is waiting for the elevator. I think you can still catch it."

 

The pilot nodded stiffly. He rose and launched himself toward the twin doors. He nearly brushed the Scientist, who held his ground, pulled himself through the doors and was gone.

 

The Scientist tapped at yellow lights. The window sprouted a display.

 

"Fuel tanks are damn near dry. We'll be filling them for weeks. Otherwise. . . looks all right. Lawn, from you I do want a detailed report, but tell me now if anything happened."

 

"He seemed to know what he was doing. I don't love the treefeeder, but he didn't bump any rocks. The foray team brought back these, and him."

 

The Scientist took the plastic objects Lawn handed him. "A reader!" he breathed. "You bring me treasure. What's your name?"

 

The Grad hesitated, then, "Jeffer."

 

"Jeffer, I'll wait for your story. We'll get you cleaned up first. All these years I've been waiting for the Navy to lose my carm, reader and all. I can't tell you what it means to have a spare."

 

The tide was lighter. Otherwise Minya couldn't tell London Tree from her own tuft. Here was the same green gloom, the same vegetable smells. Branching tunnels ran through foliage stripped bare by passersby. The tall women led them in silence. Jinny and Minya followed.

 

They passed nobody.

 

They were still naked. Jinny walked hunched over, as if that would cover her. She hadn't spoken since Jayan was taken away.

 

They had traveled some distance before Minya felt the wind. Minutes later the tunnel swelled out into a great cavity, lit by harsh daylight at the far end.

 

"Jinny. Was the Commons this big in Quinn Tuft?"

 

Jinny looked about her, dutifully, and showed no reaction. "No."

 

"Neither was ours." The cavity ran round the trunk and all the way to the treemouth itself. She could see the empty sky beyond. The shadows were strange, with the blue tinge of Voylight glaring from below. In Dalton-Quinn Tuft Voy had been always overhead.

 

All that foliage had had to be torn out. Weren't the copsik runners afraid of killing the tree? Or would they only move to another?

 

Thirty or forty women had formed a line for food. Many were attended by children: three years old and younger. They ignored Minya and Jinny as they were marched past, toward the treemouth.

 

"Tell me what bothers you most," Minya said.

 

Jinny didn't answer for several breaths. Then, "Clave."

 

"He wasn't on the box. He must be still in the jungle. Jinny, his leg has to heal before he can do anything."

 

"I'll lose him," Jinny said. "He'll come, but I'll lose him. Jayan's got his child. I won't be his anymore."

 

"Clave loves you both," Minya said, though she hadn't the remotest idea how Clave actually thought.

 

Jinny shook her head. "We belong to the copsik runners, the men. Look, they're already here."

 

Minya frowned and looked about her. Was Jinny imagining. . . ?

 

Her eye picked up something in the green curve that roofed the Commons, a dark shape hidden in shadow and foliage. She found two more four, five . . . men. She said nothing.

 

They were led to the edge of the treemouth, almost beneath the great reservoir mounted where branch merged into trunk. Minya looked downslope. Offal, garbage . . . two bodies on platforms, completely covered in cloth. When she turned away, their escorts had stepped out of their ponchos.

 

They took their charges by the arms and led them beneath the huge basin. One of the supervisors heaved on a cord, and water poured forth like a flood in miniature. Minya shuddered with the shock. The women produced lumps of something, and one began rubbing it over Minya's body, then handed it to her.

 

Minya had never experienced soap before. It wasn't frightening, but it was strange. The supervisors soaped themselves too, then let the flood pour forth again. Afterward they dried themselves with their garments, then donned them. They handed scarlet ponchos to Jinny and Minya.

 

The suds left her skin feeling strange, tingly. Minya had little trouble stepping into the poncho despite its being sealed between the legs; but it did seem uncomfortably loose. Was it made for the elongated jungle people? It bothered her more that she wore tuftberry-red. Copsik-red here, citizen-red at home. She had worn purple too long.

 

Their escorts abandoned them at the serving table. Four cooks- more of the elongated women-ladeled a stew of earthlife vegetables and turkey meat into bowls whose rims curved inward. Minya and Jinny settled themselves into a resilient arm of foliage and ate. The fare was blander than what she was used to in Dalton-Quinn Tuft.

 

Another copsik settled beside them: two and a half meters tall, mid-cue-aged, walking easily in London Tree's tide. Sile spoke to Jinny.

 

"You look like you know how to walk. You from a tree?" Jinny didn't answer. Minya said. "A tree that came apart. I'm Minya Dalton-Quinn. This is Jinny Quinn."

 

The stranger said, "Heln. No last name, now."

 

"How long have you been here?"

 

"Ten years, or something like. I used to be Carther. I keep expecting well."

 

"Rescue?"

 

Heln shrugged. "I keep thinking they'll try something. Of course they couldn't, then. Anyway, I've got kids now."

 

"Married?"

 

Heln looked at her. "They didn't tell you. Okay, they didn't tell me either. The citizens own us. Any man who wants you owns you."

 

"I . . . thought it was something like that." She moved her eyes only, toward the shadows at the outskirts. And they'd watched her naked-"What are they doing, making their selections?"

 

"That's right." Hem looked up. "Eat faster if you want to finish." Two shadowy men were coming toward them, drifting at leisure along the interlocked branchlets that formed the ground.

 

Minya watched them while she continued eating. They paused several meters away, waiting. Their ponchos fit more closely than hers and were a riot of colors. They watched the women and talked. Minya heard "-one with the bruises broke Karal's-"

 

Hein ignored them. Minya tried to do the same. When her bowl was empty, she asked, "What do we do with these?"

 

"Leave them," HeIn said. "If no man takes you, take it back to the cooks. But I think you'll have company. You look like citizens, the men like that." She grimaced. "They call us 'jungle giants.'"

 

Too many changes. Three sleeptiines ago, no man in her local universe would have dared to touch her. What would they do to her if she resisted? What would Gavving think of her? Even if they could escape later- If she strolled toward the treemouth now, Minya thought, would anyone stop her? She'd be "feeding the tree." A short sprint past the treemouth would put her into the sky before anyone could react. She'd been lost in the sky and survived . .

 

But how could she alert Gavving to jump too? He might not have the chance. He might think it was a mad idea.

 

It was mad. Minya dropped it. And the men strolled over to join them.

 

The Grad's first meal at the Citadel was simple but strange. He was given a gourd with a fair-sized slot cut in it, and a squeezegourd for liquids, and a two-pronged wooden fork. Thick stew, shipped from the out tuft, had cooled by the time it reached the Citadel. He could recognize two or three of the ingredients. He wanted to ask what he was eating, but it was Klance who asked the questions.

 

One of the first was, "Were you taught medicine?"

 

"Certainly." The word was out of his mouth before his mind quite caught up.

 

Lawri looked dubious. Kiance the Scientist laughed. "You're too young to be so sure. Have you worked with children? Injured hunters? Sick women? Women carrying guests?"

 

"Not with children. Women with guests, yes. Injured hunters, yes.

 

I've treated malnutrition sicknesses. Always with the Scientist supervising." His racing mind told him what to tell Klance. In fact he had

 

worked with children; he had inspected a pregnant woman, once; he had set the bone in dave's leg. The old copsik runner won't let me practice on citizens, will he? He'll try me out on copsik~ first! My own people...

 

Klance was saying, "We don't get malnutrition here, thank the Checker. How did you come to be found in a jungle?"

 

"Inadvertently." Eating strange food with strange implements in free-fall took concentration. Not letting it make him sick took a distraction; the Grad was glad for the chance to talk. He ate what he was given and told the tale of Quinn Tribe's destruction.

 

The Scientist interrupted with questions about Quinn Tuft, treemouth tending, musrums, flashers, the duinbo, the moby, the insects at the tree median. Lawn seemed fascinated. She burst in only once, demanding to know how one fought swordbirds and triunes. The Grad

 

referred her to Minya and Gavving. Maybe she'd let them know where he was.

 

The meal ended with a bitter black brew which the Grad refused, and he continued to talk. He was hoarse when he finished.

 

Kiance the Scientist puffed at his pipe-shorter than the one the Quinn Chairman had used-and clouds of smoke drifted sluggishly about the room and out. The room was more a cage of timber than a hut, there were narrow windows everywhere, and boards would swing to cover them. Klance said, "This giant mushroom bad hallucinogenic properties, did it?"

 

"I don't know the word, Klance."

 

"The red fringe made you feel strange but nice. Maybe that was the reason they were protecting it?"

 

"I don't think so. There were too many of those fan fungi. This one was big and nicely formed and had a special name."

 

"The Checker's Hand. Jeffer, have you ever heard that word Checker before?"

 

"My grandmother used to say, 'Treefeeder must think he's the Checker himself,' when she was mad at the Chairman. I never heard anyone else-"

 

The Scientist reached for the Grad's reader and one of his own cassettes. "I think I remember . .

 

CHECKER. Officer entrusted with seeing to it that one or a group of citizens remains loyal to the State. The Checker's responsibility includes the actions, attitudes, and well-being of his charges. The Checker aboard Discipline was the recording of Sharls Davis Kendy in the ship's master computer.

 

"This is strictly starman stufl' Hmp. The State . . . it took me four days to read the insert on the State. Have you seen it?"

 

"Yes. Strange people. I did get the feeling that they lived longer than we do."

 

Kiance snorted. "Your Scientist never tumbled to that? They had shorter years. They used one whole circle of their sun for their year. We only use half a circle, but it's still about seven-fifths of a State year. The truth is, we live a little longer than they do, and grow up more slowly too."

 

To hear his teacher so slighted set the Grad's ears burning. He barely heard Klance add, "All right, Jeffer, from now on you must think of me as your Checker."

 

"Yes, Scientist."

 

"Call me Klance. How do you feel?"

 

The Grad answered with careful half-truth. "I'm clean, fed, rested, and safe. I'd feel even better if I knew the rest of Quinn Tribe was all right."

 

"They'll get showers and food and drink and clothing. Their children may become citizens. The same goes for you, Jeffer, whether or not I keep you here; but I think you'd be bored in the tuft."

 

"So do I, Klance."

 

"Fine. For the time being I have two apprentices."

 

Lawn exploded. "It's unheard of for a freshly claimed copsik to be at the Citadel at all! Won't the Navy-"

 

"The Navy can feed the tree. The Citadel is mine."

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

London Tree

 

 

 

GAVVING WAS ON THE BICYCLE WITH THREE OTHER COPSIKS.

 

There wasn't tide enough to pull him against the pedals. Straps ran from the belt around his waist to the bicycle frame. Forcing his legs down against the pedals pushed him up against the belt. After the first session he'd thought he was crippled for life. The endless passage of days had toughened him; his legs no longer hurt, and the muscles were hard to the touch.

 

The bicycle gears were of old metal. They squealed as they moved and gave forth a scent of old animal grease. The frame was massive, of cut wood. There had been six sets of gears once; Gavving could see where two had been ripped out.

 

The frame was anchored to the trunk where the tuft grew thin. Foliage grew around the copsiks. Surrounded by sky, with most of the tuft below them, they could still snatch and eat a handful while pedaling. They worked naked, with sweat pooling on their faces and in their armpits.

 

High up along the trunk, a wooden box descended slowly. A similar box had risen almost out of sight.

 

Gavving let his legs run on while he watched the elevator descend. The mindless labor let his eyes and ears and mind run free.

 

There were other structures around the trunk. This level was used for industry, and here were all the men. Man's work and woman's work never seemed to intersect in London Tree, at least not for copsiks.

 

Sometimes children swarmed through or watched them with bright, curious eyes. Today there were none.

 

The citizens of London Tree must have kept copsiks for generations. They were skilled at it. They had chopped Quinn Tribe apart. Even if opportunity came to run, how would he find Minya?

 

Gavving, pumping steadily, watched storms move sluggishly around a tight knot on the eastern arm of the Smoke Ring. Gold was nearer than he had ever seen it, save for that eerie time when he was a child, when Gold had passed so near and everything had changed.

 

The jungle hovered hundreds of klomters beyond the out tuft: a harmless-looking green puffball. How are you doing Clave? Did that broken leg save your freedom? MerriL were those shrunken legs finally good for something? Or have you become copsiks among the jungle people or are you dead?

 

Over the past eighty-five days or so, twenty sleeps, the tree had drifted to the eastern fringes of the cloud bank. He'd been told, during the trip across the sky to London Tree, that the tree could move by itself. He had seen no evidence of it. Rain swept across them from time to time . . . surely the tree had collected enough water by now .

 

The elevator had settled into its slot and was releasing passengers. Gavving and the others stopped pedaling. "Navy men," Horse puffed.

 

"Come for the women."

 

Gavving said, "What?"

 

"Citizens live in the out tuft. When you see a boxful come down and it's all men, they're come for the women."

 

Gavving looked away.

 

"Nine sleeps," said Horse. He was in his fifties, three ce'meters shorter than Gavving, with a bald, freckled head and tremendously strong legs. He had driven the bicycles for two decades. "Forty days till we meet the women. You wouldn't believe how rancy I get thinking about it." By now Gavving was strangling the handbar. Horse saw the muscles standing out along his arms and said, "Boy, I forgot. I was never married, myself. I was born here. Failed the test when I was ten."

 

Gavving forced himself to speak. "Born here?"

 

Horse nodded. "My father was a citizen, at least mother always said so. Who ever knows?"

 

"Seems likely. You'd be taller if-"

 

"Na, na, the jungle giants' kids aren't any taller than the citizens."

 

So: children raised in the jungle grew taller, without tide to compress them. "What are the tests like?"

 

"We're na supposed to say."

 

"Okay."

 

The supervisor called, "Pedal, you copsiks!" and they did. More passengers were coming down. Over the squeal of the gears Horse said, "I flunked the obedience test. Sometimes I'm glad I didn't go."

 

Huh? "Go?"

 

"To another tree. That's where you go if you pass the tests. Heh, you are green, aren't you? Did you think your kids would stay as citizens if they passed the tests?"

 

"That's. . . yes." He hadn't been told that, he'd been allowed to assume it. "There are other trees? How many? Who lives in them?"

 

Horse chuckled. "You want to know everything at once? I think it's four bud trees now, settled by any copsik woman's kid who passes the tests. London Tree goes between them, trading for what they need. Any man's kid has the same chance as a citizen's, because nobody ever knows, see? I thought I wanted to go, once. But it's been thirty-five years.

 

"I did think I'd be picked for service in the out tuft. I should've been. I'm second-generation . . . and when they turned me down for that, I damn near lost my testes for swatting a supervisor. Jorg, there"-Horse indicated the man pedaling in front of him-"he did. Poor copsik. I don't know what the gentled ones do when the Holidays come."

 

Gavving still hadn't learned to shave without cutting himself. It was not his choice. All copsiks shaved. He had seen no man wearing a beard in London Tree, save one; and that one was Patry, a Navy officer. "Horse, is that why they make us shave? So the gentled ones won't be quite so obvious?"

 

"I never thought of that. Maybe."

 

"Horse . . . you must actually have seen the tree move."

 

Horse's laughter brought a supervisor's head around. He lowered his voice. "Did you think it was just a story? We move the tree about once a year! I've been on water details too, to feed the carm."

 

"What's it like?"

 

"It's like the tide goes slantwise. Going to the treemouth is like climbing a hill. You don't want any hunting parties out when it happens, and you have to tilt the cookpot. The whole trunk of the tree bendsalittle. . ."

 

"Lawn," said the Grad, "trouble."

 

Lawn glanced back. The pond clung to the bark, a flattened heinisphere. The Grad had run the hose into the water. Now the water was flowing up the outside of the hose, forming a collar.

 

"Don't worry about it. Just get to the bicycle and pedal," Lawn told him. "And don't call me that."

 

The Grad strapped himself to the saddle and started the pedals turning. The gears moved a pump. It was all starstufl metal, discolored with age. The collar of water shrank as water was sucked into the hose.

 

It was strange work for the Quinn Tuft Scientist, or for the London Tree Scientist's Apprentice, for that matter. Hadn't Kiance suggested that he would be better off than the standard run of copsiks? He wondered what Gavving was doing now. Probably worrying about his new andalienwife. . . andwithreason.

 

Water spurted from the hose as Lawn carried it into the carm. The Grad couldn't see what she was doing in there. He pedaled.

 

In Klance's presence the Grad was Lawn's equal. Otherwise Lawn treated him as a copsik, a spy, or both. He was clean, fed, and clothed.

 

Of the rest of Quinn Tribe he had not even rumors. He and Lawn and the Scientist explored the cassettes together for old knowledge, and that was fascinating enough. But he was learning nothing that would rescue Quinn Tribe.

 

It was night. Both Voy and the sun were hidden behind the in tuft. In the peculiar light that remained, two faint streamers of blue light fanned out from the tuft. If he stared at them they went away. He could catch them by looking near them. He could almost imagine human shapes pouring as smoke from a squeezegourd. To starboard, the Blue Ghost. To port, even fainter, the Ghost Child.

 

The Scientist (the Scientist) had told him that they were discharges of peculiar energies from the poles of Voy itself. The Scientist had seen them when he was younger, but the Grad had never been able to see them, not even from the midpoint of Dalton-Quinn Tree.

 

He was sweating. He watched the elevator climb the tree to its housing. A Navy man and two copsiks emerged. None were jungle giants; he had never seen a first-generation copsik at the Citadel, barring himself. They entered the Scientist's laboratory complex and presently left carrying the dishes from brunch.

 

Lawn called from the carm. "The tank's full."

 

The Grad moved with a briskness he didn't feel, unfastening the belt, jerking the hose free of the pond. There were lineholds, wooden hoops, set in the bark to crisscross the citadel region. The Grad used them to make his way toward the carm, calling ahead of him, "Can I help?"

 

"Just coil the hose," Lawri answered.

 

She hadn't yet let him into the carm during this operation. The hose must lead, somehow, into a water tank in the carm. They filled it repeatedly, and a couple of days later they would fill it again.

 

The Grad coiled the hose as he moved toward the carm. He heard cursing from within. Then Lawn called, "I can't move this damn fitting."

 

The Grad joined her at the doors. "Show me." That easy?

 

She showed him. The hose attached to a thing on the back wall, with a collar. "It has to be turned. That way." She rotated her hands.

 

He set his feet, grasped the metal thing, put his back into it. The collar lurched. Again. He turned it until it was loose in his hands, and kept turning. The hose came loose. A mouthful of water spilled out. Lawri nodded and turned away.

 

"Scientist's Apprentice? Where does the water go?"

 

"It's taken apart," she said. "The skin of the carm picks up sunlight and pumps the energy into the water. The water cOmes apart. Oxygen goes in one tank and hydrogen goes in the other. When they come together in the motors, the energy comes back and you get a flame."

 

He was trying to imagine water coming apart, when Lawn asked, "Why did you want to know?"

 

"I was a Scientist. Why did you tell me?"

 

She sent herself skimming across the seats and settled herself at the controls. The Grad moored the coiled hose to fixtures in the cargo area.

 

The tank must be behind the wall. The carm had been nearly out of fuel . . . which came in two "flavors"? There must be fuel by now; the artificial pond was visibly shrunken.

 

Lawri tapped the blue button as he came up behind hen. The display she'd been studying disappeared before he could see it. The Grad had half forgotten his question when she turned to him and said, "The Scientist quizzes me like that. Since I was ten. If I can't answer I get some dirty job. But I don't like having my buttons pushed, Jeffer, and that information is classified!"

 

"Scientist's Apprentice, who is it that calls you Lawn?"

 

"Not you, copsik."

 

"I know that."

 

"The Scientist. My parents."

 

"I don't know anything about marriage customs here." "Copsiks don't get married."

 

"You're not a copsik. Would your husband call you Lawri?"

 

The airlock thumped, and Lawn turned in some relief. "Kiance?" "Yes. Put that display on again, will you, Lawn?"

 

She looked at the Grad, then back at Klance.

 

"Now," said the Scientist. Lawn obeyed. She'd made her point: she'd show scientific secrets to a copsik, but only under protest. Dominance games again. If she really cared, she would have removed the hose herself~

 

Theblueightsandnumbershadtodowithwhatmovedthecarm, as green governed the carm's sensing instruments and yellow moved the doors and white read the cassettes . . . and more. He was sure that they all did more than he knew. And red? He'd never seen red.

 

Every time he saw this display, certain numbers were larger. Now they read 02: 1,664. H2: 3,181. Klance was nodding in approval. "Ready to go any time. Still, I think we'll feed in the rest of the reservoir. Jeffer, come here." He cut the blue display and activated the yellow. "This number tells you if there's a storm coming, if you watch it."

 

"What is it?"

 

"It's the external air pressure."

 

"Can't you see a storm coming?"

 

"Coming, yes. Forming, no. If the pressure goes up or down fast, over a day or so, there's a storm forming. Lets you impress hell out of the citizens. This is classified, of course."

 

The Grad asked, "Where does the tree go from here?"

 

"Out of this rain. Then on to Brighton Tree; they haven't seen us in a while. Grad, you'll get a good chance to look the bud colonies over and pick and choose among them."

 

"For what, Kiance?"

 

"For your children, of course."

 

The Grad laughed. "Klance, how am I going to have children if I spend my life at the Citadel?"

 

"Don't you know about the Holidays?"

 

"I never heard of them."

 

"Well, every year's-end, when Voy crosses in front of the sun, the copsiks all get together at the treemouth. It's holiday for six days while the copsiks mate and gossip and play games. Even the food comes from the out tuft. The Holidays start in thirty-five days."

 

"No exceptions? Not even for a Scientist's Apprentice?"

 

"Don't worry, you'll go," Klance chuckled.

 

Lawn had turned away, showing her bowed back, the wealth of blonde hair floating around her. He wondered then: How would Lawn have children? The Scientist didn't seem to be her lover; the Grad knew that he imported copsik women from the in tuft. If she never left the Citadel-How would Lawri ever find a man?

 

Me?

 

A copsik could have children, but Lawn could not. It couldn't be helped. He dared not think of Lawri as other than an enemy.

 

There was flesh against her as she woke. It happened often. Minya shifted position and refrained from wrapping her arms around the citizen who slept beside her. She might hurt him.

 

Her motion wakened him. He turned carefully-his arm was bound with cloth against his torso-and said, "Good morning."

 

"Good morning. How's your arm?" She searched her memory for his name.

 

"You did a good job on it, but it'll heal."

 

"I wondered why you came looking for me, given that I broke it."

 

He scowled. "You stuck in my head. While Lawn was setting the bone I kept seeing your face, two ce'meters away with your teeth bared like you were going for my throat next . . . yeah. So I'm here." The scowl relaxed. "Under, eh, different circumstances."

 

"Better now?"

 

"Yes."

 

His name surfaced. "Karal. I don't remember a Lawri."

 

"Lawri's not a copsik. She's the Scientist's Apprentice-one of his apprentices, now-and she treats Navy men if we get hurt."

 

One of his apprentices? Minya gambled. "I hear the new one is a copsik."

 

"Yes. I saw him from a distance, and he's not a jungle giant. One of yours?"

 

"Maybe." She stood, donned her poncho. "Will we meet again?"

 

He hesitated-"Maybe"-and added, "The Holidays are eight sleeps away."

 

She let her smile show through. Gavvingl "How long do they last?"

 

"Six days. And all work stops."

 

"Well, I have to get to work now."

 

Karal disappeared into the foliage while Minya strolled into the Commons She missed Dalton-Quinn Tuft. She'd grown almost used to the obtrusive differences: the huge Commons, the omnipresent supervisors, hen own servility. But little things bothered her. She missed cupvines, and copter plants. Nothing grew here but the foliage and the carefully cultivated earthlife, beans and melons and corn and tobacco, as thoroughly regimented as herself.

 

A dozen copsiks were up and stirring. Minya looked for Jinny and spotted her at the treemouth, just her head showing above the foliage as she fed the tree.

 

The schedules were loose. If you arrived late, you would work late.

 

Beyond that, the supervisors didn't care much . . . but Minya cared!

 

She would do nothing badly. She would be an exemplary copsik, until the time came to be something else.

 

She tried to remember nuances of Karal's speech. A citizen's accent was odd, and she had been practicing it.

 

It had been strange for Minya. Her instincts were at war: a conditioned reflex that resisted sexual assault as blasphemy incarnate, versus the will to live.

 

Survival won. She would do nothing badly!

 

Jinny stood up, set her poncho in order, then sprinted west.

 

Minya screamed. She was too far to do anything but shout and point as she ran. A pair of supervisors, much closer, saw what was happening and ran too.

 

Jinny plunged through a last screen of foliage, into the sky.

 

Minya kept running. The supervisors (Haryet and Dloris, hardfaced jungle giants of indeterminate age) had reached the edge. Dloris swung a weighted line round her head, twice and out. Haryet waited her turn, then swung her own line while Dloris pulled. The line resisted as she pulled it in, then gave abruptly. Dioris reeled back, off balance.

 

Minya reached the edge in time to see the stone at the end of Haryet's line spin round Jinny. Dlonis threw her line while Jinny was still fighting Haryet's. Jinny thrashed, then went limp.

 

Haryet pulled hen in.

 

Jinny huddled on her side~ face buried in her arms and knees. By now they were surrounded by copsiks. While Dlonis gestured them away, Haryet rolled Jinny on her back, groped for hen chin, and pulled her face out of the protection of her arms. Jinny's eyes stayed clenched like fists Minya said, "Madam Supervisor, a moment of your attention."

 

Dionis looked around, surprised at the snap in Minya's voice. "Later," she said.

 

Jinny began to sob. The sobs shook her like Dalton-Quinn Tree had shaken the day it came apart. Haryet watched for a time, impassively.

 

Then she spread a second poncho oven the girl and sat down to watch hen.

 

Dlonis turned to Minya. 'What is it?"

 

"If Jinny tries this again and succeeds, would it reflect badly on you?"

 

"It might. Well?"

 

"Jinny's twin sister is with the women who carry guests. Jinny has to see her."

 

"That's forbidden," the jungle giantess said wearily.

 

When citizens talked like that, Minya had learned to ignore them.

 

"These girls are twins. They've been together all their lives. They should be given some hours to talk."

 

"I told you, it's forbidden."

 

"That would be your problem."

 

Dlonis glared in exasperation. "Go join the garbage detail. No, wait.

 

First talk to this Jinny, if she'll talk."

 

"Yes, Supervisor. And I'd like to be checked for pregnancy, at your convenience."

 

"Later."

 

Minya bent to speak directly into Jinny's ear. "Jinny, it's Minya. I've talked to Dlonis. She'll try to get you together with Jayan."

 

Jinny was clenched like a knot.

 

"Jinny. The Grad made it. He's at the Citadel, where the Scientist lives."

 

Nothing.

 

"Just hang on, will you? Hang on. Something will happen. Talk to

 

Jayan. See if she's learned anything." Treefodder, there must be something she could say . . . "Find out where the pregnant women are kept. See if the Grad even comes down to examine them. He might. Tell him we're hanging on. Waiting."

 

Jinny didn't move. Hen voice was muffled. "All right, I'm listening. But I can't stand it. I can't."

 

"You're tougher than you think."

 

"If another man picks me, I'll kill him."

 

Some of them like women who fight, Minya thought. She said instead,

 

"Wait. Wait till we can kill them all."

 

After a long time, Jinny uncurled and stood up.

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

Rumblings of Mutiny

 

 

 

GAVVING WOKE TO A TOUCH ON HIS SHOULDER. HE LOOKED about him without moving.

 

There were three tiers of hammocks, and Gavving's was in the top layer. The daylit doorway made a black silhouette of a supervisor. He seemed to have fallen asleep standing up: easy enough in London Tree's gentle tide. In the dimness of the barracks, Alfin clung to Gavving's h~immock-post. He spoke in a whisper that wanted to shout in jubilation.

 

"They've put me to work at the treemouth!"

 

"I thought only women did that," Gavving said without moving at all. Jorg snored directly below him-a "gentled" man, pudgy and sad, and too stupid to spy on anyone. But the h~immocks were close-packed.

 

"I saw the farm when they took us for showers. There's a lot they're doing wrong. I talked to a supervisor about it. He let me talk to the woman who runs the farm. Kor's her name, and she listens. I'm a consultant."

 

"Clood."

 

"Give me a couple of hundred days and I might get you in on it too. I want to show what I can do first."

 

"Did you get a chance to speak to Minya? Or Jinny?"

 

"Don't even think it. They'd go berserk if wq tried to talk to the women."

 

To be a treemouth tender again . . . seeing Minya, but not allowed

 

to speak to hen. Meanwhile, maybe AliIn could carry messages, if he could be talked into taking the risk. Gavving put it out of his mind. "I learned something today. The tree does move, and it's the carm, the flying box, that moves it. They've settled other trees-"

 

"What does that do for us?"

 

"I don't know yet."

 

Alfin moved away to his hammock.

 

Patience came hard to Gavving. In the beginning he had thought of nothing but escape. At night he could drive himself mad with worry over Minya. . . or he could sleep, and work, and wait, and learn.

 

The supervisors wouldn't answer questions. What did he know, what had he learned? The women farmed the treemouth and cooked; pregnant women lived elsewhere. Men tended machinery and wonked with wood, here in the upper reaches of the tuft. The copsiks talked of rescue, but never of revolt.

 

They wouldn't revolt now anyway, with the Holidays eight sleeps away. Afterward, maybe; but wouldn't the Navy know that from experience? They'd be ready. The supervisors were never without their truncheons, sticks of hardwood half a meter long. Horse said the women supervisors carried them too. During an insurrection the Navy might be given those instead of swords . . . or not.

 

What else? Bicycle works wore out. Damaging them-damaging anything made of starstuff-would hurt London Tree, but not soon. Here was where the elevators could be sabotaged, but the Navy could still put down a revolt by using the carm.

 

The carm did everything. It lived at the tree's midpoint, where the Scientist kept his laboratory. Was the Grad there? Was he planning something? He'd seemed determined to escape, even before they reached London Tree.

 

Was any of that worth anything? If we were together! We could plan something- He had learned that he might spend the rest of his life moving an elevator on pumping water up the trunk. He had not had an allergy attack since his capture. It was not a bad life, and he was dangerously close to becoming used to it. In eight sleeps he would be allowed to see his own wife.

 

Carther States was setting fires halfway around the biggest flower in the universe.

 

Clave flapped his blanket at the coals. His arms were plunged elbowdeep in the foliage to anchor him. His toes clutched the edge of the blanket. He undulated his legs and torso to move the blanket in waves, exerting himself just enough to keep the coals red.

 

Eighty meters away, a huge silver petal gradually shifted position, turning to catch the sun at a sharper angle.

 

A fire would die in its own smoke, without a breeze, and breezes were rare in the jungle. The day was calm and bright. Clave took it as a chance to exercise his legs.

 

There was a knot as big as a boy's fist where the break had been on his thighbone. His fingers could feel the hard lump beneath the muscles; his body felt it when he moved. Merril had told him it couldn't be seen.

 

Would she lie to spare him? He was disinclined to ask anyone else.

 

He was disfigured. But the bone was healing; it hurt less every day. The scar was an impressive pink ridge. He exercised, and waited for war.

 

There had been tens of days of sleep merging into pain. He'd seen spindly, impossibly tall near-human forms flitting about him at all angles, green shapes fading like ghosts into a dark green background, quiet voices blurred in the eternal whisper of the foliage. He had thought he was still dreaming.

 

But Merril was real. Homely, legless Merril was entirely familiRr, entirely real, and mad as hell. The copsik runners bad taken everyone. "Everyone but us. They left us. I'll make them sorry for that!"

 

He had taken little notice, in the pain of a healing bone and the sharperacheofhisfailure. Ahuntleaderwhobadlost histeam, a Chairman who had lost his tribe. Quinn Tribe was dead. He told himself that depression always followed a serious wound. He stayed where he was, deep in the dark interior of the jungle, for fear that fluff might grow in the wound; and he slept. He slept a great deal. He didn't have the will to do more.

 

Merril tried to talk to him. Things weren't that bad. The Grad had impressed the Carthers. Merril and dave were welcome in the tribe though as copsiks.

 

Once he woke to find Merril jubilant. "They'll let me fight!" she said, and dave learned that the Carthers were p1~inning war against London Tree.

 

Over the following days he grew to know tjie jungle people. Of around two hundred Carthers, half were copsiks. It didn't seem to carry any onus. Copsiks here lacked for nothing save a voice in the council.

 

He saw many children and many pregnancies and no starvation. The jungle people were healthy and happy . . . and better armed than Quinn Tribe had been.

 

He was questioned at a gathering of the tribe. Carther States' Commons was a mere widening in a tunnel, perhaps twelve meters across and twice that long. Surprisingly, the space held everyone. Men and women and children, copsiks and citizens, all clung to the cylinder wall, covering it with an inner layer of heads, while Comlink or the Sharman spoke from one end.

 

"How can you even reach London Tree?" he had asked, but only once. That information was "classified"; spies would not be tolerated. But he could watch the preparations. He was sure these fires were part of it.

 

He had been flapping wind at the coals for half a day now. His leg was holding up. Soon he would have to shift position.

 

Kara the Sharman came skimming toward him. She dipped her grapnd into the foliage and stopped herself next to Clave. "How are you doing?"

 

"You tell me. Does the fire look right?"

 

She looked. "Keep it that way. Feed it another branch a few hundred breaths from now. How's the leg?"

 

"Fine. Can we talk?"

 

"I've other fires to check."

 

The Sharman was Carther States' equivalent to the Scientist. Maybe the word had meant Chair,nan once. She seemed to have more power than the political boss, the Comlink, who spent most of his time finding out what everybody else wanted. Getting her attention was worth a try. Clave said, "Sharman, I'm a tree dweller. We're going to attack a tree. Shouldn't you be using what I know?"

 

She considered that. "What can you tell me?"

 

"Tides. You're not used to tides. I am, and so are these copsik runners. If you-"

 

Her smile was twisted. 'Put you in charge of our own warriors?"

 

"Not what I meant. Attack the middle of the tree. Make them come to us there. I saw them fighting in free-fall, and you're better."

 

"We thought of that-" She saw his grimace. "No, don't stop. I'm glad you agree. We've watched London Tree for decades now, and two of us did escape once. We know that the copsiks live in the inner tuft, but the carrier is kept at the center of the tree. Should we go after that first?"

 

Science at the level of the carrier, the flying box, made Clave uneasy. He tried to set the feeling aside. . . "I saw how they use that thing.

 

They put their own warriors where they want them and leave yours floundering in air. Yes. Get the carrier first, even if you can't fly it."

 

"All right."

 

"Sharman, I don't know how you plan to attack. If you'll tell me more, I can give you better answers." He'd said it before. It was like talking to the tree.

 

Kara freed her grapnel with a snap of the snag line. She was moving on.Theefodder! Clave added, "One thing. If I know the Grad, he knows how to fly the carrier by now, if be's had any kind of a chance at it. Or Gavving might have seen something and told the Grad."

 

"There's no way we'll learn that."

 

dave shrugged.

 

"We'll go for the carrier and try for the Grad."

 

dave pushed a dead spine branch into the coals and resumed flapping his blanket.

 

Kara said, "You call yourself Sharman. . . Chairman of a destroyed people. I trust you know how to be a leader. If you learn things that should not be known to our enemies.. . if you ride to war in the first gust of warriors . . . what would you tell my citizens, if you were me?"

 

That was clear enough. "Clave must not live to be captured and questioned.' Sharman, I have little to lose. If I can't rescue my people, I'll kill copsik runners!"

 

"Merril?"

 

"She'll fight with me. Not under tides, though. And . . . don't tell her anything. I won't kill Merril if she's captured."

 

"Fair enough. You called the funnel a 'treemouth'-"

 

"I was wrong, wasn't I? The jungle can't feed itself that way. There's not enough wind. What is it?"

 

"It's what makes the jungle move. The petals are part of it too. Whatever side of the jungle is most dry, there the funnel wants to face. The petals reflect sunlight to swing the jungle round in that direction."

 

"You talk like the jungle is a whole creature, that thinks."

 

She smiled. "It's not very smart. We're fooling it now. The fires are to make the jungle dry on one side."

 

"There are tens of life forms in the jungle. One of them is a kind of spine for the whole thing. Its life is deep down, and it lives off the dead stuff that drifts toward the center. Everything in the jungle contributes something. The foliage is various plants that root in what the jungle-heart collects, but they rot and feed the jungle-heart and shield the jungle-heart if something big hits the jungle. We do our part too. We transport fertilizer down- dead leaves and garbage and our own dead and we kill burrowing parasites."

 

"How does a jungle move? The Grad didn't know."

 

"The silver petals turn the jungle to put the funnel where the jungle is most dry. If everything gets too dry, then the funnel spits hot steam."

 

"dave, it's time to put the fires out. I must tell the others. I'll be back."

 

Minya followed Dloris through twisting, branching tunnels. Minya's grip on Jinny's arm was relaxed; it would tighten if Jinny tried anything foolish. But the treemouth, and any chance to leap into the sky, were farther away with every step.

 

The way the tunnels twisted, Minya wasn't sure where she was. Near the midbranch, she thought; and the tuft would be narrowing toward the fin. She couldn't see solid wood, but from the way the spine branches pointed, the branch was below and to her left. Earlier she had passed a branching tunnel and heard children's laughter and the shouting of frustrated adults: the schools. She could find this place again.

 

The mouth of a woven hut showed ahead. Dloris stopped. "Minya. If anyone asks . . . you and Jinny both think you're pregnant. So the Scientist's Apprentice will examine you both. Jinny, I'll take you to your sister, and what happens then is none of my business."

 

They had reached the hut. Dloris shooed them in. Two men waited inside, one in Navy blue, the other-"Who are you?" Dioris demanded.

 

"Madam Supervisor? I'm Jeffer, the Scientist's Apprentice . . other apprentice. Lawn is otherwise engaged."

 

To meet both Minya and Jinny was more than the Grad had hoped for.

 

He introduced his Navy escort to the women; Ordon was clearly interested. Ordon and Dloris stayed while the Grad questioned Jinny. She couldn't be pregnant, the timing was wrong, and he told her so. She and Dloris nodded as if they'd expected that and departed the hut through the back.

 

He asked Minya the appropriate questions. She hadn't menstruated since a dozen sleeps before Dalton-Quinn Tree caine apart. He told the Navy man, "I'm going to have to examine her."

 

Ordon took the hint. "I'll be right outside."

 

The Grad explained what was needed. Minya stepped out of her poncho's lower loop, lifted it and lay down on the table. The Grad palped her abdomen and her breasts. He tested the secretions of her vagina in plant juices Kiance had shown him how to use. He'd practiced such an examination in Quinn Tuft, with the Scientist supervising, as part of his training. Once.

 

"No problem. A normal pregnancy," he said. "It's anyone's guess when it happened."

 

Minya sighed. "All right. Dioris said so too. At least it gives me a chance to see you. Could it be Gavving's?"

 

"The timing's right, but . . . you've been available to the citizens, haven't you?"

 

"Minya, shall I tell Gavving it's his?"

 

"Let me think." Minya ran faces past her memory. Some were blurs, and she liked it that way. Did they resemble Gavving at all? But the arrogant dwarf had claimed two of her sleeptimes-"No. What's the truth? You don't know?"

 

"That's right."

 

"Tell him that. We'll just have to see what the child looks like."

 

"All right."

 

Jinny and Dloris had gone down to the pregnant women's complex, a good, safe distance away. Luckily the Grad's guard was male. A woman might not have given them privacy during the examination. With her poncho hiked up and her legs apart, Minya said, "Stay where you are in case Ordon peeks in. Grad, is there any chance of getting us out of here?"

 

Keeping his head clear wasn't easy under the circumstances, but he made the effort. "Don't move without me. I mean it. We can't do anything unless we can stop them using the carm."

 

"I wasn't sure you were still with us."

 

"With you?" He was startled . . . though he had had doubts. There was so much to learn here! But what was it like for the others, for Gavving or Minya? "Of course I want to break us free! But no matter what we do, they can stop us while they've got the carm. And have you seen a dwarf around?" Like Harp, he thought, but Minya hadn't known Harp.

 

"I know him. Mark. Acts like he's three meters tall, but he's less than two. Thick-bodied, lots of muscles, likes to show them off." Bruises healing on her arms helped her to remember.

 

"He's important. He's the only one who can use the old armor."

 

"We'd like him to meet with an accident?"

 

"if it's convenient. Don't do anything till we're ready to move."

 

She laughed suddenly. "I admire your coolness."

 

"Really? Look down."

 

She looked, and blushed and covered her mouth. "How long-?"

 

"Ever since you pulled up your poncho. I'm going to have a serious case of lover's plaint."

 

"When I first met you I thought . . . no, don't move. Remember the guard."

 

He nodded and stayed where he was. She said, "Grad. . . my guest I hope it's Gavving's, but it's already there, no matter whose. Let's

 

-" She sought words, but the Grad was already moving. She finished in a breathless laugh. "-Solve your problem."

 

The poncho was ludicrously convenient. It need only be pulled aside. He had to bite hard on his tongue to hold his silence. It was over in a few tens of breaths; it took longer to find his voice. "Thank you. Thank you, Minya. It's been . . . she's . . . I was afraid I'd be giving up women."

 

"Don't do that." Minya's voice was husky. She laughed suddenly.

 

"She?"

 

"The other apprentice is a citizen who treats me like a thieving copsik. Either I'm dirt for the treemouth or I'm a spy. Anyway, it's my problem. Thinks."

 

"It wasn't a gift, Grad." She reached down to squeeze his hands.

 

"I'm sick of being treated like a copsik too. When do we get loose?"

 

"Quick. It has to be. The First Officer has spoken. We move the tree as soon as possible."

 

"When's that?"

 

"Days, maybe less. I'll know when I get back to the Citadel. Lawri's up there counting-down the carm's motor systems. I'd give either testicle to be in two places at once, but I couldn't miss the chance to talk to you. Can you pass a message to Gavving?"

 

"No way at all."

 

"Okay. There's a cluster of huts under the branch, and that's where the women stay when they carry guests, for more tidal pull while the baby's developing. So. Is there anyone at the treemouth that you want fighting beside you?"

 

"Maybe." She thought of Heln.

 

"Maybe isn't good enough. Skip the treemouth. if something happens, grab Jayan and anyone else you think you need and go up. A lot of the men spend their time at the top of the treemouth. We can hope Gavving and Alfin are there. But wait till something drastic happens."

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

When Birnham Wood . .

 

 

 

THE HUGE SILVER PETALS WERE RISING, FOLDING INWARD. THE funnel at their center faced east and out, and the sun was moving into line with the funnel. Gold was eastward and seemed close. The sluggish whorl of storm was a strange sight, neither mundane nor scientific, but mind-gripping.

 

Clave and Kara were alone. The other fire-tenders had gone elsewhere after the fires were quenched. The Sharman asked, "Do you know the law of reaction?"

 

"I'm not a baby."

 

"When the steam spits from the funnel, the jungle moves in the opposite direction. That would be back to moister surroundings, back into the Smoke Ring, if we weren't . . . meddling. Afterward something must be regrown: fuel, perhaps. It takes twenty years."

 

"That's why they've been getting away with the raids."

 

"Yes. But no more."

 

The petals stood at thirty degrees from vertical. The sun shone directly into the funnel, and the petals were shining into it too. The funnel cupped an intolerable glare.

 

Kara said, "The jungle-heat spits when the sun shines straight into the blossom. It's not easy to make it spit at a chosen time, but . . . this day, I think."

 

It came as if by the Sharman's command: a soft, bone-skulking fume from the funnel. Clave felt heat on his face. The jungle shuddered. Kara and Clave clung tight with hands and feet.

 

A cloud began to form between himself and the sun. A column of steam, racing away from him. He felt a tug, a tide, pulling him toward the sky.

 

"It works," he said. "I didn't . . . How long till we reach the tree?"

 

"A day, maybe less. The warriors are gathering now."

 

"What? Why didn't you tell me?" Without waiting for an answer, Clave dove into the foliage. His thoughts were murderous. Had she cost him his place in the coming battle? Why?

 

Four copsiks were running the elevator lines with their legs, and the Grad's eye caught Gavving among them. The elevator had almost reached its cradle. Was there no way to tell him? Minya's with the pregnant women. She's fine. I'm in the Citadel- Ordon said, "So you couldn't wait for the Holidays."

 

The Grad jumped violently. For a moment he was actually floating. Ordon bellowed laughter. "Hey, forget it, it's nothing. With a chance like that, how could you not? That's why Dloris got a little upset when she saw you weren't Lawn."

 

The Grad grinned a sickly grin. "Did you watch the whole time?"

 

"No, I don't need to get my kicks that way. I can visit the Commons. I just poked my head in and saw what you were poking and pulled it back out again." He put the Grad into the elevator with a friendly, forceful shove in the small of his back and followed him in.

 

He seemed friendly enough, but first and last he was the Grad's guard. The Grad was not to be harmed, the Grad was not to escape. He liked to talk, but. . . They had come to the pregnant women's complex the long way round, by way of the Navy installation on the fin. They had returned by the same route. Presumably Ordon had some business on the fin. The Grad had asked about it. Ordon had become coldly suspicious. He would not talk to a copsik about his work.

 

The tuft sank away. This was far easier than the four-day climb up Dalton-Quinn Tree. A flock of small birds was veering wide of the trunk. "Harebrains," Ordon said. "Good eating, but you have to use the carm to chase them down. The old Scientist used to let us do that. Klance won't."

 

A streamer of rain was blowing across the out tuft. Was that why the

 

First was so eager to move the tree? Wet citizens?

 

A mobile tree: it boggled the mind. Find your own weather! A fluffy green bauble hung east of the out tuft, with a strange spreading plume of white mist behind it. Within a day or two London Tree would have put it from sight. The Grad wondered if he was being unreasonably antsy. The carm could reach Carther States across any distance. if he couldn't capture the carm, he would be here forever; and if he could, what was the hurry?

 

But time had a choke hold on his throat.

 

Life was not intolerable for the Scientist's Apprentice. In a hundred sleeps he might grow into this new life. When the time came he feared he would move too slowly, or not at all.

 

Clave found Merril in the Commons. She was dipping the points of crossbow bolts in the evil-smelling brew the Carthers made from poison fern.

 

The increasing tide caught Clave jumping toward ~her. He paused, then floated back, laughing. "It's real! I sure wasn't going to call her a liar, but-"

 

"Clave, what's happening?" Merril was drifting too, arrows all about her. She managed to catch the poison pot and cap it before it spilled.

 

"We're on our way. The warriors are on the surface." Clave jumped to his pack against the pull of the strange tide. He had readied it some sleeps ago.

 

Merril barked, "What? How long have we got?"

 

She had spent her days learning how to make arrows, twist bowstrings, shape a crossbow and fire it. Clave had watched her at target practice. She was as good as most of the Carthers, and her powerful arms were faster at resetting the crossbow.

 

He said it anyway. "Merril, you're in Carther States whether you go or not. A lot of Carthers aren't citizens."

 

"You don't have to go."

 

"You can feed that to the tree, 0 Chairman!"

 

dave shoved a handful of the freshly poisoned bolts into his quiver.

 

"Then grab your gear and go!"

 

The tide was about like that in Quinn Tuft. Using the tunnels was almost like walking. But it was strange. Every branchlet and foliage tuft had the tremors.

 

Clave pulled himself through crackling branchiets and soft green turf~ through to the sky. A column of cloud raced outward from beyond the jungle's horizon. The surface was nearly vertical. He took care for his handholds.

 

Skeletal warriors emerged like earthworms out of the green billows.

 

Fifty or sixty Carthers had already chosen and boarded pods. Clave was annoyed. The Sharman had told him late, and nobody had told Merril.

 

Why? To give them a chance to back out? "Sure I'd have fought, but I didn't get the word in time-"

 

Maybe the Carthers needed copsiks more than citizens.

 

He helped Merril through the foliage. The light of battle was in her eye. She said, "The copsik runners left us behind. Not worth their time."

 

"I had a broken leg." Clave got it then, and bid his grin. "They made a terrible mistake leaving you, though."

 

"They'll find out. Don't you laugh!" She shook a harpoon; its point was stained with evil yellow. "This goop will drive you crazy if it doesn't kill you."

 

The sky was a vast sheet of cloud. Lightning flashed in dark rifts. Clave searched the western fringe until he found a thin line of shadow. London Tree was too big to hide in a cloud: fifty klomters or so, half the length of Dalton-Quinn, but five times the long axis of this puffball jungle.

 

The Comlink's chosen leader, Anthon, already had his legs wrapped around the largest pod. Anthon was brawnier than the average Carther man, and darker. To Clave he might have had a fragile look, with long bones that could be snapped at whim. But he was festooned with weaponry, crossbow and bolts and a club with a knot on the end; his nails were long and sharp; scars showed here and there on his body; and in fact he looked savage and dangerous.

 

The stem-ends of the jet pods had been pierced by wooden stakes that now served as plugs. A warrior would nestle into the inner curve of the pod and move his weight to guide it. Clave had used up a few pods practicing.

 

There were more pods than warriors, a hundred or so spaced wide apart and tied down with light line. Merril chose one and boarded it.

 

dave asked, "Shall I tether you?"

 

"I'll handle it." She swung her coil of line below her and caught it coming up. Clave shrugged and chose his own pod. It was bigger than he was but less massive: thirty kilos or so.

 

Men outnumbered women, but not by a lot. Merril said, "Notice the women? You fight for citizenship in Carther States. A citizen makes a better wife. The family gets two votes."

 

"Clave, how are they doing this?"

 

"Classified." He grinned and ducked the butt of her harpoon. "I can't tell you everything. The Sharman says the jungle will pass the tree at an angle, about midpoint, with a klomter to spare. By then we'll have launched. We'll match speed with the tree and come in while they're still terrified."

 

"How do we get back?"

 

"I asked that too." dave's brows furrowed. "Lizeth and fluid are bringing extra pods. They'll hover in the sky till they see the battle's over . . . but they'll just be caught with the rest of us if the copsik runners use the carm. We've got to take the carm."

 

"What are we trying to do, exactly? I mean you and me."

 

"Gather Quinn Tribe. We want to look good to Carther States, but Quinn Tribe comes first. I wish I knew where they all are."

 

Mist was drifting over them, seeping into the foliage. A wind was rising. Storm blurred the sky. He kept his eyes on the faint, shadowy line of London Tree . . . which was nearer and growing.

 

The out tuft was nearest: the citizens' tuft. Citizens would be first to see the oncoming terror: a green mass klomters across flying at the trunk, green warriors coming out of the sky. Not much chance of surprise here. The jungle too was too big to be hidden.

 

Realistically, they hadn't a ghost of a chance of rescuing anybody. They would do as much damage as possible and die. Why not attack the out tuft first? Kill some citizens and they'd remember better.

 

Too late now. The Sherman was klomters away, tending a pillar of fiery steam, aiming it to send the jungle a fingernail's width from the tree. Fat chance of getting to her with a change in plan!

 

The line within the fog had solidified into a tremendous integral sign tufted at the ends. Every Carther now held a sword. dave drew his.

 

"Warriors!" Anthon bellowed. He waited for silence, then cried,

 

"Our attack must be remembered! It's not enough to break some heads.

 

We must damage London Tree. London Tree must remember, for a generation to come, that offending Carther States is dangerously stupid. Unless they remember, they will come when we cannot move.

 

"Let them remember the lesson!"

 

"Launch!"

 

Sixty swords slashed at the lines that tied them to the jungle. Sixty hands pulled the plugs from the stem-ends of sixty jet pods. Pods jetted away in a wind that smelled of rotted plants. At first they clustered, even bumping into each other. Then they began to separate. Not all jet pods thrust alike.

 

Clave clung with arms and legs, tight against the screaming pod. He was wobbling a little, more than the others. Unskilled. Blood was drain. ing from his head. The tide was ferocious.

 

The sky was dark and formless, and lightning flashed nearby. They were approaching the center of the tree, as planned. There at the midpoint was the carrier, its nose against the trunk. Its tail was on fire.

 

Lawn tapped the blue button in a row of five.

 

Blue numbers flickered and steadied in the bow window. Blue lights appeared in the panel below: four clumps of four little vertical dashes each, in diamond patterns around a larger vertical bar. The array tickled at the Grad's memory. Lawn's hands hovered like Harp about to play.

 

"Strap in," Kiance said. Lawn looked back in annoyance, then tapped rapidly. The Grad got it then. He was in a chair when the carm roared and trembled and lunged.

 

Tide pulled the Grad back in his seat, then eased off. (It hadn't mattered in Quinn Tuft, but the Scientist had drummed it into his head.

 

Not tide! This was thrust! It might feel the same, but causes and consequences were different. The dead Scientist's legacy: thrust!)

 

The bow window nestled snug against the trunk. A breeze had sprung up; eddies swirled through the airlock doors. The Grad couldn't see anything of import through the side windows.

 

Lawn activated green patterns and tapped at them. Within the bow window appeared a smaller window in which an edge of sky peeped around a glare of white light. An aft view within the forward view: disconcerting.

 

Kiance was going for a better look. He made his way to the airlock, gripping chair backs as he went. The Grad followed. A few kilograms of tide. . . of thrust took the vibrating walls forward, past him, till he hit the aft wall with a solid thump.

 

Kiance was braced in the outer door, all of his fingers and toes gripping the rim. "I'll let you see in a minute, Jeffer. Don't fall out. You might not get back." He craned his head out. "Damnation!"

 

"What is it?"

 

"It's the jungle. I had no idea they could move the jungle! Hah. We'll give them a surprise. We'll just move away from them." Kiance grinned over his shoulder. He saw the Grad brace himself~ too late.

 

The Grad's foot lashed out and caught the Scientist above the hip.

 

Kiance yelled and flew outward. Long fingers and toes still clung. The Grad's heel smashed at a hand and a foot. Kiance disappeared.

 

He moved into the outer door and leaned out. The drive screamed in his ears.

 

The tree was massive, but it was moving. Klance drifted slowly aft, thrashing, trying to reach the nets on the carm's hull. In his terror he seemed to have forgotten his line. He saw the Grad leaning out and shrieked at him: curses or pleading, the Grad couldn't tell. He looked away.

 

The tree now had a slight curve to it, like Minya's bow. The carm thrust in the center, and the tufts trailed behind, . not very far. A stronger thrust might break the tree in the middle. But the carm was so much tinier than the tree; it was probably thrusting at full power now.

 

Klance was a thrashing black shadow against a brilliance like Voy brought close. The carm's main motor sprayed blue-white fire, pushing the carm forward against the mass of the tree. Klance was floating into the flame.

 

Ordon, halfway to the elevator, had seen them.

 

The jungle had become half the sky. Scores of objects moved alongside it: shapes like those he'd seen before the bark raft crashed into the jungle. Jungle giants on jet pods! But they wouldn't arrive if the carm continued to push the tree away. He had to turn off the main motor, now!

 

So he hadn't been premature, hadn't murdered Kiance for nothing.

 

Lawrll He reentered the carm and leapt toward the bow. Lawn hadn't seen him. She stiffened suddenly and half rose, staring aghast at the rear window display. A shadow was thrashing in the flame, dissolving.

 

She whirled about. She was staring him in the eye when the Grad lashed out at her jaw.

 

Her head snapped back; she bounced against her straps and hung limp. The Grad used his line to tie her to one of the chairs. He sat down at the controls and studied them.

 

Yellow governed life support systems, including interior lights and the airlock. Green governed the carm's senses, internal and external.

 

Blue had to do with what moved the carm, including the motors, the two flavors of fuel supply, the water tank, and fuel flow. White read the cassettes.

 

What had Lawri done to activate the drive? His mind had gone blank. He tapped the blue button. No good: the blue displays disappeared, but the motor's roar continued. He restored the display.

 

Through a side window he glimpsed patches of Navy blue cloth moving across the bark. No time. Think Blue vertical bar surrounded by blue dashes . . . in a pattern like the motors at the stern. He tapped the blue bar.

 

The roar and the trembling died to nothing. The tree recoiled: he felt himself pulled forward. Then it was quiet.

 

Kendy was prepared to beam his usual message when the source of hydrogen light disappeared.

 

That was puzzling. Normally the CARMs main motor would run for several hours. That, or the attitude jets would send it jittering about like the ball in a soccer match. Kendy held his attention on a drifting point within the Smoke Ring maelstrom, and waited.

 

A dozen Navy men were making their way toward the carm, using lines and the lineholds, wary that he might start the drive again. Ordon was far ahead of the rest, mere meters from the window. There was murder in his face.

 

Quick, now! Hit the yellow button. The display was too cluttered: turn off the blue. Yellow display: interior lights showed dim, internal wind on, temperature shown by a vertical line with numbers and a notch in the middle; here, a complicated line thawing of the carm's cabin seen from above. The Grad closed lines that should represent the doors, with a pinching motion of his fingertips. Behind him the airlock sealed itself.

 

Lawn stirred.

 

He heard muted clanging from the doors.

 

The Grad began playing with the green displays, summoning different views from the carm's cameras. He had precious little time to learn

 

to fly this starstuff relic. He felt Lawri's eyes on him, but would not look.

 

The clanging stopped, then resumed elsewhere. Ordon snarled through a side window. He must be clinging to the nets, pounding at the glass.

 

The Grad moved to the window. He spoke a word. Ordon reacted- puzzled-he couldn't hear. The Grad repeated it, exaggerating the motions of his lips the word that would justify murdering his benefactor Kiance, assaulting Lawn, betraying his friend Ordon, leaving London Tree helpless against attack.

 

"War, Ordon! War!"

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

The War of London Tree

 

 

 

CLAVE WAS BEING LEFT BEHIND. THE CARTHERS HAD JUDGED him a novice, and he was: he hadn't known how to choose among these strange pods. They had let him pick a slow one. He'd flown past the trunk, his path was curving back now. He would be among the last halfdozen to land.

 

Lines ran along the trunk of London Tree, and wooden boxes were rising toward the center from both ends. Clave saw both boxes break open almost simultaneously, spilling men in blue, eight to a box. The copsik runners seemed to know what they were about. They rapidly oriented themselves and fired small jet pods to send them toward the midpoint of the tree, on the eastern face.

 

Toward the carrier. Twenty-odd copsik runners already surrounded it. The flame at its tail had died, for whatever that might mean.

 

The Carthers had passed the trunk in a gust of jet pods. Now they were returning, coming up on the western side of the trunk, drastically spread out. Feathered harpoons flew from the copsik runners' long footbows. The Carther warriors sent crossbow bolts among them. They outnumbered the enemy almost two to one.

 

The jungle was tremendous, a green world passing less than a klomter away. Clave had wondered if it would actually hit the tree, but it seemed to be going past. The steam jet had stopped firing. The jungle trailed a curdled line of cloud an& a storm of birds trying to catch up, and two dark masses: Lizeth's and Hild's clusters of twenty jet pods each.

 

This close to the tree, the curve of the trunk hid the ancient carrier and its mooring; but both gusts of enemy reinforcements seemed to be converging on the carrier. They would know its value too. They flew behind a thicket of feathered harpoons.

 

The jet from Clave's pod died away.

 

Curses ran through his mind while he clambered around the pod to put it between himself and the harpoons. He was still approaching the trunk. Others were there first. Carthers were using lineholds about the clustered buildings to dodge the feathered harpoons or tearing up sheets of bark for shields. The copsik runners preferred to fire on them from the sky, where their limbs were free to work their huge bows.

 

Anthon and a dozen warriors were firing at the carrier, using the curve of the trunk as cover.

 

Merril's pod struck a wooden hut with Merril behind it. She'd used the pod as a shock absorber: good technique. Some of the copsik runners were trying to reach that building. Merril shot two from behind the building, then abandoned the shelter when the rest came too close.

 

Something valuable in that building? The copsik runners seemed to want it. Clave put an arrow among them and thought he hit someone's foot.

 

They wanted the carrier more. Clave could see it now: they were all over it, hanging on the nets and the bark.

 

Most of the Carther warriors had reached the trunk. Clave would touch down inward from the battle, presently. For now he could only watch. From the chaos of battle, patterns began to form:

 

The copsik runners were outnumbered. They hung back, for that reason and another. In close work they couldn't use the bows. They had swords, and so did the Carthers; but the taller Carthers had more reach. They won such encounters.

 

The copsik runners had small jet pods, the kind that would grow on an integral tree. They preferred to stay in the sky.

 

Clave watched Carthers leap into an eight-man gust of blue ponchos. The copsik runners used their jet pods, left Carthers floundering in the sky behind them, and fired back with the footbows. Then two Carthers were among them, slaying, and two more joined them. In free-fall the copsik runners fought like children. The Carthers robbed the corpses of their jet pods.

 

Clave drifted, and Carther States was winning without him!

 

In along the trunk, a wooden box was rising slowly. It spilled reinforcements: six blue-clad footbowman and a bulky silver creature.

 

There was a terrible familiarity to that shape . . . but they wouldn't arrive for a kilobreath yet.

 

A copsik runner spotted Clave, a sitting target. He carefully fired a harpoon through Clave's pod, then moved in along the trunk. He'd have a clear shot when Clave came nearer. Clave fired at him. No good, the copsik runner dodged and waited. Clave could see his grin.

 

The grin vanished when Merril shot him from behind. The bolt protruded below the kidney. He could have fought on . . . but his face was a silent scream; he clawed at the bolt, then went into convulsions. That poison-fern brew must be terrible stuff~

 

The pod bumped wood with Clave behind it. He turned it loose, clutched bark, and made his way toward Merril with his crossbow ready. He saw blue against storm cloud sky, fired a bolt through one man, and drew his harpoon as the other came at him with a sword.

 

The copsik runner came too fast. Clave batted him in the face with the crossbow handle and, as he recoiled, stabbed him in the throat.

 

Merril was making her way around the curve of the bark. He followed her. She stopped and crouched a moment before he saw the carrier, outward along the trunk. Copsik runners were all over it.

 

He moved up beside her. She said, "All right, why aren't they killing us with that scientific thing?"

 

"Good question." Clave watched Anthon's team launching crossbow bolts from around the curve of the wood. The carrier's guardians fired back, not very successfully.

 

He said, "Forget it. They aren't using it. They are using those wooden boxes to get reinforcements. Let's-"

 

"Cut the lines."

 

Two lines as thick as Clave's arm ran parallel along the trunk. The last box was on its way in, nearly gone from sight. Another box must be rising. Clave and Merril made their way to the nearest line and began to chop at it.

 

Six men and a silver thing were coming into footbow range. Clave and Merril set bark sheets to protect themselves. Clave stared at the silver man. It was as if he were trying to remember a nightmare: a man

 

made of starstuff, with a blank ball forahead. Clave fired at it until he saw a crossbow bolt strike and bounce away.

 

There were feathered harpoons in his shield and Merril's. Clave saw three tiny things like thorns strike her shield in a line aimed at her bare head.

 

He yelled. She ducked. Thorns spat into the trunk. She said, "Oh. The silver man."

 

"You know him?"

 

"Yes. . . keep chopping. . . he was with the copsik runners in Carther States. We don't have anything to breech that armor."

 

Another box had come into sight when the line parted. That box began to drift. Men spilled loose and flew in curves, pod-propelled, mpking for the trunk. They seemed too far in to do anything useful. The other line had gone slack. Merril said, "It's a loop. We don't have to cut the other one."

 

"Then let's get out. There was a cable running outward-"

 

"No. Let's go join the victory party. Quick, or we'll be left behind."

 

"Victory-?" Then Clave saw what she meant.

 

Green-clad warriors clustered round the carrier. Some were crawling into the doors. Men in blue floated about it with the looseness of dead men. Live copsik runners had retreated around the curve of the trunk to wait for reinforcements.

 

It looked like the war of the carrier was over. But other copsik runners were coming too near. Clave had made a lucky shot: there were five now, plus the silver man.

 

Ordon died with a bolt peeking through his chest. The Grad saw his face through the window . . . but even if Ordon could have heard him, there was nothing left to say. He turned back to the yellow display.

 

He had five floating rectangles in the bow window: aft view, dorsal, ventral, and both sides. He caught glimpses of men in blue, men and women in green; impossible to tell who was winning.

 

Three Navy men moved into the cover of the drive motors. The Grad touched blue dashes. Flames burst near them. They yelled, threw themselves clear, floundered to orient themselves . . . and one had a bolt through his hip.

 

Lawn screamed, "Murderer!"

 

"Some of us don't like being copsiks," the Grad said. "Some of us don't even like copsik runners."

 

"Kiance and I never treated you with anything but kindness!"

 

"That's true enough. What have you done for the rest of Quinn Tribe? Did you forget that I had a tribe?"