by Larry Niven
It would surely see him, waving in that vivid scarlet blouse. Gavving thought, hopefully, We’ll miss it, and then it’ll be past. But he would not show cowardice on his first hunt.
He pulled his line loose from his back. He burrowed into the foliage to pound a spike into solid wood, and moored the line to it. The middle was attached to his waist. Nobody ever risked losing his line. A hunter who fell into the sky might still find rest somewhere, if he had his line.
The creature hadn’t seen them. Laython swore. He hurried to anchor his own line. The business end was a grapnel: hardwood from the finned end of the branch. Laython swung the grapnel round his head, yelled, and flung it out.
The swordbird must have seen, or heard. It whipped around, mouth gaping, triangular tail fluttering as it tried to gain way to starboard, to reach their side of the trunk. Starving, yes! Gavving hadn’t grasped that a creature could see him as meat until that moment.
Harp frowned. “It could work. If we’re lucky it could smash itself against the trunk.”
The swordbird seemed bigger every second: bigger than a man, bigger than a hut—all mouth and wings and tail. The tail was a translucent membrane enclosed in a V of bone spines with serrated edges. What was it doing this far in? Swordbirds fed on creatures that fed in the drifting forests, and there were few of these, so far in toward Voy. Little enough of anything. The creature did look gaunt, Gavving thought; and there was that soft green carpet over one eye.
Fluff was a green plant parasite that grew on an animal until the animal died. It attacked humans too. Everybody got it sooner or later, some more than once. But humans had the sense to stay in shadow until the fluff withered and died.
Laython could be right. A head injury, sense of direction fouled up…and it was meat, a mass of meat as big as the bachelors’ longhut. It must be ravenous…and now it turned to face them.
An isolated mouth came toward them: an elliptical field of teeth, expanding.
Laython coiled line in frantic haste. Gavving saw Harp’s line fly past him, and tearing himself out of his paralysis, he threw his own weapon.
The swordbird whipped around, impossibly fast, and snapped up Gavving’s harpoon like a tidbit. Harp whooped. Gavving froze for an instant; then his toes dug into the foliage while he hauled in line. He’d hooked it.
The creature didn’t try to escape: it was still fluttering toward them.
Harp’s grapnel grazed its side and passed on. Harp yanked, trying to hook the beast, and missed again. He reeled in line for another try.
Gavving was armpit-deep in branchlets and cotton, toes digging deeper, hands maintaining his deathgrip on the line. With eyes on him, he continued to behave as if he wanted contact with the killer beast. He bellowed, “Harp, where can I hurt it?”
“Eye sockets, I guess.”
The beast had misjudged. Its flank smashed bark from the trunk above their heads, dreadfully close. The trunk shuddered. Gavving howled in terror. Laython howled in rage and threw his grapnel ahead of it.
It grazed the swordbird’s flank. Laython pulled hard on the line and sank the hardwood tines deep in flesh.
The swordbird’s tail froze. Perhaps it was thinking things over, watching them with two good eyes while the wind pulled it west.
Laython’s line went taut. Then Gavving’s. Spine branches ripped through Gavving’s inadequate toes. Then the immense mass of the beast had pulled him into the sky.
His own throat closed tight, but he heard Laython shriek. Laython too had been pulled loose.
Torn branchlets were still clenched in Gavving’s toes. He looked down into the cushiony expanse of the tuft, wondering whether to let go and drop. But his line was still anchored…and wind was stronger than tide; it could blow him past the tuft, past the entire branch, out and away. Instead he crawled along the line, away from their predator-prey.
Laython wasn’t retreating. He had readied his harpoon and was waiting.
The swordbird decided. Its body snapped into a curve. The serrated tail slashed effortlessly through Gavving’s line. The swordbird flapped hard, making west now. Laython’s line went taut; then branchlets ripped and his line pulled free. Gavving snatched for it and missed.
He might have pulled himself back to safety then, but he continued to watch.
Laython poised with spear ready, his other arm waving in circles to hold his body from turning, as the predator flapped toward him. Almost alone among the creatures of the Smoke Ring, men have no wings.
The swordbird’s body snapped into a U. Its tail slashed Laython in half almost before he could move his spear. The beast’s mouth snapped shut four times, and Laython was gone. Its mouth continued to work, trying to deal with Gavving’s harpoon in its throat, as the wind carried it east.
The Scientist’s hut was like all of Quinn Tribe’s huts: live spine branches fashioned into a wickerwork cage. It was bigger than some, but there was no sense of luxury. The roof and walls were a clutter of paraphernalia stuck into the wickerwork: boards and turkey quills and red tuftberry dye for ink, tools for teaching, tools for science, and relics from the time before men left the stars.
The Scientist entered the hut with the air of a blind man. His hands were bloody to the elbows. He scraped at them with handfuls of foliage, talking under his breath. “Damn, damn drillbits. They just burrow in, no way to stop them.” He looked up. “Grad?”
“Day. Who were you talking to, yourself?”
“Yes.” He scrubbed at his arms ferociously, then hurled the wads of bloody foliage away from him. “Martal’s dead. A drillbit burrowed into her. I probably killed her myself digging it out, but she’d have died anyway…you can’t leave drillbit eggs. Have you heard about the expedition?”
“Yes. Barely. I can’t get anyone to tell me anything.”
The Scientist pulled a handful of foliage from the wall and tried to scrub the scalpel clean. He hadn’t looked at the Grad. “What do you think?”
The Grad had come in a fury and grown yet angrier while waiting in an empty hut. He tried to keep that out of his voice. “I think the Chairman’s trying to get rid of some citizens he doesn’t like. What I want to know is, why me?”
“The Chairman’s a fool. He thinks science could have stopped the drought.”
“Then you’re in trouble too?” The Grad got it then. “You blamed it on me.”
The Scientist looked at him at last. The Grad thought he saw guilt there, but the eyes were steady. “I let him think you were to blame, yes. Now, there are some things I want you to have—”
Incredulous laughter was his answer. “What, more gear to carry up a hundred klomters of trunk?”
“Grad…Jeffer. What have I told you about the tree? We’ve studied the universe together, but the most important thing in it is the tree. Didn’t I teach you that everything that lives has a way of staying near the Smoke Ring median, where there’s air and water and soil?”
“Everything but trees and men.”
“Integral trees have a way. I taught you.”
“I…had the idea you were only guessing…Oh, I see. You’re willing to bet my life.”
The Scientist’s eyes dropped. “I suppose I am. But if I’m right, there won’t be anything left but you and the people who go with you. Jeffer, this could be nothing. You could all come back with…whatever we need: breeding turkeys, some kind of meat animal living on the trunk, I don’t know—”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No. That’s why I’m giving you these.”
He pulled treasures from the spine-branch walls: a glassy rectangle a quarter meter by half a meter, flat enough to fit into a pack four boxes each the size of a child’s hand. The Grad’s response was a musical “O-o-oh.”
“You’ll decide for yourself whether to tell any of the others what you’re carrying. Now let’s do one last drill session.” The Scientist plugged a cassette into the reader screen. “You won’t have much chance to study on the trunk.”
&nb
sp; PLANTS
Life pervades the Smoke Ring but is neither dense nor massive. In the free-fall environment plants can spread their greenery widely to catch maximum sunlight and passing water and soil, without bothering about structural strength. We find at least one exception…
These integral trees grow to tremendous size. The plant forms a long trunk under terrific tension, tufted with green at both ends, stabilized by the tide. They form thousands of radial spokes circling Levoy’s Star. They grow up to a hundred kilometers in length, with up to a fifth of a gee in tidal “gravity” at the tufts and perpetual hurricane winds.
The winds derive from simple orbital mechanics. They blow from the west at the inner tuft and from the east at the outer tuft (where in is towards Levoy’s Star, as usual). The structure bows to the winds, curving into a nearly horizontal branch at each end. The foliage sifts fertilizer from the wind…
The medical dangers of life in free fall are well known. If Discipline has indeed abandoned us, if we are indeed marooned within this weird environment, we could do worse than to settle the tufts of the integral trees. If the trees prove more dangerous than we anticipate, escape is easy. We need only jump and wait to be picked up.
The Grad looked up. “They really didn’t know very much about the trees, did they?”
“No. But, Jeffer, they had seen trees from outside.”
That was an awesome thought. While he chewed it, the Scientist said, “I’m afraid you may have to start training your own Grad, and soon.”
Jayan sat cross-legged, coiling lines. Sometimes she looked up to watch the children. They had come like a wind through the Commons, and the wind had died and left them scattered around Clave. He wasn’t getting much work done, though it seemed he was trying.
The girls loved Clave. The boys imitated him. Some just watched, others buzzed around him, trying to help him assemble the harpoons and the spikes or asking an endless stream of questions. “What are you doing? Why do you need so many harpoons? And all this rope? Is it a hunting trip?”
“I can’t tell you,” Clave said with just the proper level of regret. “King, where have you been? You’re all sticky.”
King was a happy eight-year-old painted in brown dust. “We went underside. The foliage is greener there. Tastes better.”
“Did you take lines? Those branches aren’t as strong as they used to be. You could fall through. And did you take a grown-up with you?”
Jill, nine, had the wit to distract him. “When’s dinner? We’re still hungry.”
“Aren’t we all.” Clave turned to Jayan. “We’ve got enough packs, we won’t be carrying food, we’ll find water on the trunk…claw sandals…jet pods, I’m glad we got those…hope we’ve got enough spikes…what else do we need? Is Jinny back?”
“No. What did you send her for, anyway?”
“Rocks. I gave her a net for them, but she’ll have to go all the way to the treemouth. I hope she finds us a good grindstone.”
Jayan didn’t blame the children. She loved Clave too. She would have kept him for herself, if she could…if not for Jinny. Sometimes she wondered if Jinny ever felt that way.
“Mmm…we’ll pick some foliage before we leave the tuft—”
Jayan stopped working. “Clave, I never thought of that. There’s no foliage on the trunk! We won’t have anything to eat!”
“We’ll find something. That’s why we’re going,” Clave said briskly. “Thinking of changing your mind?”
“Too late,” Jayan said. She didn’t add that she had never wanted to go at all. There was no point, now.
“I could bust you loose. Jinny too. The citizens like you, they wouldn’t let—”
“I won’t stay.” Not with Mayrin and the Chairman here, and Clave gone. She looked up and said, “Mayrin.”
Clave’s wife stood in the half-shadows on the far side of the Commons. She might have been there for some time. She was seven years older than Clave, a stocky woman with the square jaw of her father, the Chairman. She called, “Clave, mighty hunter, what game are you playing with this young woman when you might be finding meat for the citizens?”
“Orders.”
She approached, smiling. “The expedition. My father and I arranged it together.”
“If you’d like to believe that, feel free.”
The smile slipped. “Copsik! You’ve mocked me too long, Clave. You and them. I hope you fall into the sky.”
“I hope I don’t,” Clave said mildly. “Would you like to assist our departure? We need blankets. Better have an extra. Nine.”
“Fetch them yourself,” Mayrin said and stalked away.
Here in the main depths of Quinn Tuft there were tunnels through the foliage. Huts nestled against the vertical flank of the branch, and the tunnels ran past. Now Harp and Gavving had room to walk, or something like it. In the low tidal pull they bounced on the foliage as if it and they were made of air. The branchlets around the tunnels were dry and nude, their foliage stripped for food.
Changes. The days had been longer before the passing of Gold. It used to be two days between sleeps; now it was eight. The Grad had tried to explain why, once, but the Scientist had caught them at it and whacked the Grad for spilling secrets and Gavving for listening.
Harp thought that the tree was dying. Well, Harp was a teller, and world-sized disasters make rich tales. But the Grad thought so too…and Gavving felt like the world had ended. He almost wanted it to end, before he had to tell the Chairman about his son.
He stopped to look into his own dwelling, a long half-cylinder, the bachelors’ longhut. It was empty. Quinn Tribe must be gathered for the evening meal.
“We’re in trouble,” Gavving said and sniffled.
“Sure we are, but there’s no point in acting like it. If we hide, we don’t eat. Besides, we’ve got this.” Harp hefted the dead musrum.
Gavving shook his head. It wouldn’t help. “You should have stopped him.”
“I couldn’t.” When Gavving didn’t answer, Harp said, “Four days ago the whole tribe was throwing lines into a pond, remember? A pond no bigger than a big hut. As if we could pull it to us. We didn’t think that was stupid till it was gone past, and nobody but Clave thought to go for the cookpot, and by the time he got back—”
“I wouldn’t send even Clave to catch a swordbird.”
“Twenty-twenty,” Harp jeered. The taunt was archaic, but its meaning was common. Any fool can foresee the past.
An opening in the cotton: the turkey pen, with one gloomy turkey still alive. There would be no more unless a wild one could be captured from the wind. Drought and famine…Water still ran down the trunk sometimes, but never enough. Flying things still passed, meat to be drawn from the howling wind, but rarely. The tribe could not survive on the sugary foliage forever.
“Did I ever tell you,” Harp asked, “about Glory and the turkeys?”
“No.” Gavving relaxed a little. He needed a distraction.
“This was twelve or thirteen years back, before Gold passed by. Things didn’t fall as fast then. Ask the Grad to tell you why, ’cause I can’t, but it’s true. So if she’d just fallen on the turkey pen, it wouldn’t have busted. But Glory was trying to move the cookpot. She had it clutched in her arms, and it masses three times what she does, and she lost her balance and started running to keep it from hitting the ground. Then she smashed into the turkey pen.
“It was as if she’d thought it out in detail. The turkeys were all through the Clump and into the sky. We got maybe a third of them back. That was when we took Glory off cooking duties.”
Another hollow, a big one: three rooms shaped from spine branches. Empty. Gavving said, “The Chairman must be almost over the fluff.”
“It’s night,” Harp answered.
Night was only a dimming while the far arc of the Smoke Ring filtered the sunlight; but a cubic klomter of foliage blocked light too. A victim of fluff could come out at night long enough to share a meal.
“He
’ll see us come in,” Gavving said. “I wish he were still in confinement.”
There was firelight ahead of them now. They pressed on, Gavving sniffling, Harp trailing the musrum on his line. When they emerged into the Commons their faces were dignified, and their eyes avoided nobody.
The Commons was a large open area, bounded by a wickerwork of branchlets. Most of the tribe formed a scarlet circle with the cookpot in the center. Men and women wore blouses and pants dyed with the scarlet the Scientist made from tuftberries and sometimes decorated with black. That red would show vividly anywhere within the tuft. Children wore blouses only.
All were uncommonly silent.
The cookfire had nearly burned out, and the cookpot—an ancient thing, a tall, transparent cylinder with a lid of the same material—retained no more than a double handful of stew.
The Chairman’s chest was still half-covered in fluff but the patch had contracted and turned mostly brown. He was a square-jawed, brawny man in middle age, and he looked unhappy, irritable. Hungry. Harp and Gavving went to him, handed him their catch. “Food for the tribe,” Harp said.
Their catch looked like a fleshy mushroom, with a stalk half a meter long and sense organs and a coiled tentacle under the edge of the cap. A lung ran down the center of the stalk/body to give the thing jet propulsion. Part of the cap had been ripped away, perhaps by some predator; the scar was half-healed. It looked far from appetizing, but society’s law bound the Chairman too.
He took it. “Tomorrow’s breakfast,” he said courteously. “Where’s Laython?”
“Lost,” Harp said, before Gavving could say, “Dead.”
The Chairman looked stricken. “How?” Then, “Wait, Eat first.”
That was common courtesy for returning hunters; but for Gavving the waiting was torture. They were given scooped-out seedpods containing a few mouthfuls of greens and turkey meat in broth. They ate with hungry eyes on them, and they handed the gourds back as soon as possible.
“Now talk,” the Chairman said.
Gavving was glad when Harp took up the tale. “We left with the other hunters and climbed along the trunk. Presently we could raise our heads into the sky and see the bare trunk stretching out to infinity—”