by Larry Niven
“She could have her pick of us.” Clave speaking, and he was amused. “All but me, of course. You wouldn’t like that, would you, loves?”
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Jayan or Jinny. The other twin said, “It’s—hopeful.”
“Gavving, you are not old enough to know what you’re doing!”
“Feed it to the tree, Alfin.”
Gavving noticed Minya when she stirred and pulled herself back to the bark. “Hello,” he called. “Ready?”
“Yes!” Too eager? It was a little late to be coy! “What kind of ceremony will it be? We can’t use mine. I left our Scientist in the Tuft.” And he’d have me killed.
“There’s that too,” said Alfin. “The Scientist—”
The Grad said, “I’m the Scientist now.”
Ignoring Alfin’s contemptuous snort, he opened his pack and spread the contents. Packed in spare clothing were four small flat boxes of starstuff—plastic—and a flat, polished surface that was glassy, like the Chairman’s mirror, but didn’t reflect.
Quinn Tribe seemed as surprised as Minya. Gavving asked, “Have you been carrying that all along?”
“No, I materialized it from thin air. We Scientists have our ways, you know.”
“Oh, sure.”
They grinned at each other. The Grad picked up the mirror and one of the boxes. He fitted the box into the thick rim of the mirror. “Prikazyvat Menu.”
The Grad’s pronunciation had shifted; it was odd, archaic. Minya had heard the Dalton-Quinn Scientist speak like that. The mirror responded: it glowed like the diffuse nighttime sun, then bloomed with tiny black print.
Minya couldn’t read it. The Grad apparently could. He pulled the box loose and substituted another. “Prikazyvat Menu…Okay. Prikazyvat Record,” he said briskly. “First day since sleeptime, the first sleep following the breakup of the tree, year three hundred and seventy. Jeffer speaking as Scientist. Quinn Tribe consists of eight individuals…Prikazyvat Pause.”
Then nothing happened, until Minya couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s wrong?”
The Grad looked up. His face was a mask of pain. A keening moan tore through his throat. Crystal lenses trembled over his eyes. Tears didn’t run here, without tide to pull them.
Clave put his hand on the Grad’s shoulder. “Take a minute. Take as long as you need.”
“I’ve been trying not to…think about it. The Scientist. He knew. He sent these with me. What good does it do if we’re dying too?”
“We’re not dying. We’re a little thirsty,” Clave said firmly.
“We’re all dead except us! I feel like recording it makes it real.”
Clave glared around him. The tears were about to become contagious. Jayan and Jinny were sniffling already. Minya had to remind herself that Dalton-Quinn Tuft still lived, invisibly far, somewhere.
Clave snapped, “Come on, Scientist. You’ve got a marriage to perform.”
The Grad gulped and nodded. Teardrops broke loose and floated away, the size of tuftberries. He cleared his throat and said in a creditably crisp voice, “Prikazyvat Record. The tree has been torn in half. Seven of us survive, plus a refugee from the outer tuft. Marriage between Minya Dalton-Quinn and Gavving Quinn exists as of now. No children are yet born. Terminate.” He pulled the box from the mirror and said, “You’re married.”
Minya was stunned. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. My first act as Scientist. Tradition says you should consummate the marriage the first chance you—”
“Just what have you got there?” Alfin demanded.
“Everything I need,” the Grad said. “This cassette is recent records. It used to be medicine, but the Scientist ran out of room and erased it. We couldn’t use that stuff anyway. Starmen got sick in ways nobody ever heard of and used medicines nobody ever heard of either…This cassette is life-forms, this one is cosmology, this one is old records. They’re all classified, of course.”
“Classified?”
“Secret.” The Grad started rolling the gear in clothing again.
Clave said, “Hold it.”
The Grad looked at him.
“Is there anything in your classified knowledge that we might need to know, to go on living?” Clave paused, not long enough for the Grad to answer. “If not, why should we guard that stuff, or let you carry it to slow you down?” Pause. “If so, you’re hiding knowledge we need. Why should we protect you?”
The Grad gaped.
“Grad, you’re valuable. We’re down to eight, we can’t spare even one. But if you know why we need a Scientist more than an apprentice hunter, you’d better show us now.”
It was as if the Grad had been frozen with his mouth open. Then…he gave a jerky nod. He chose a cassette and fitted it into the rim of the nonmirror. He said, “Prikazyvat Find moby: em, oh, bee, wye.”
The screen lit, filled with print. The Grad read, “‘Moby is a whale-sized creature with a vast mouth and vertical cheek slots that are porous, used as filters. It feeds by flying through clouds of insects. Length: seventy meters. Mass: approx. eight hundred metric tons. One major eye. Two smaller eyes, better protected and probably near-sighted for close work, on either side of a single arm. It stays near ponds or cotton-candy jungles. It prefers to be spinning, for stability and to watch for predators, since there is no safe direction in the free-fall environment. Moby avoids large creatures and also shies from our CARMs. When attacked it fights like Captain Ahab: its single arm is tipped with four fingers, and the fingers are tipped with harpoons grown like fingernails.’”
Clave glanced over his shoulder. They had a side view of the flying mouth. Despite the swarm of insects near the raft, it was going around them. “That?”
“I’d think so.”
“Carms? Captain Ahab? Whale-sized?”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess. So. It’s timid, and it eats bugs, not citizens. Doesn’t sound like a threat.”
“And that is why you need a Scientist. Without the cassettes you wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“Maybe,” said Gavving, “we don’t want it to go around us.”
He explained, stumbling a little. Nobody laughed. Maybe they were too thirsty. Clave studied the massive bug-eater, pursed his lips, nodded…
Clave stood as Minya posed him, gripping the steel bow in his left hand, drawing the bowstring halfway back toward his cheek. It felt awkward. Instead of one of Minya’s mini-harpoons, a meter and a half of his own harpoon protruded before him.
The moby was watching him. He waited until the creature’s spin put the major eye on its far side. “Throw the line,” he said.
Gavving hurled the coiled line toward the moby. Clave let it unroll for a moment, then sent the harpoon after it.
The harpoon wobbled in flight, until the trailing line dragged it straight again. With the steel bow and Clave’s muscles to propel it, the massive harpoon might have flown as far as the moby. It didn’t. It didn’t even come close.
“Reel it in and coil the line,” he told Alfin. To the others he said, “Arrows. Put some arrows in the beast. Get it mad. Get its attention.”
The Grad’s arrow went wide, and Clave stopped him from wasting another. Gavving’s and Minya’s were flying true, and each had fired another when Clave said, “Stop. We want it mad, not scared, not injured. Grad, how timid is that thing likely to be?”
“I read you everything I know.”
Classified! The first chance he got, Clave was going through all of the information on all of those “cassettes.” He’d make the Grad read them to him.
The moby’s gauzy tail was in motion. It had spotted the harpoon’s motion and was edging away. Then the first arrows reached it. One struck the fin, one a cheek, neither with any great force.
The moby convulsed. Its fins thrashed and it turned. A third arrow struck near its major eye. It turned to face them.
“Alfin, have you got that li
ne coiled?”
“Not yet.”
“Then hurry, you copsik! Are we all tethered?”
The sky had opened a mouth; it gaped and grew huge. A skeletal arm folded forward, presenting four harpoons. Alfin asked, “Do we want to hurt it now?”
Clave discarded the metal bow and took up the harpoon. “Treefodder. I want this in its tail.”
The moby obliged. Its tail flicked forward—and they felt the wind—as it circled to examine the situation. As the tail came into sight, Clave cast. The harpoon struck solidly in the meaty part, ahead of the spreading translucent fin. The moby shuddered and continued to advance.
The “hand” lashed forward. Gavving whooped and leapt from between closing horn harpoons, away into the sky, until his tether went taut and pulled him around the edge of the bark. Minya yelled and slashed at the “hand.” “Feels like bone,” she reported and swung again.
Clave snatched up another harpoon and jumped toward the tremendous face. He pricked the creature’s lip before his line pulled him back. The great skeletal fingers curled around behind him. Minya’s sword slashed at a joint, and one of the harpoon-fingers was flying loose.
The moby snatched its hand back fast. Its mouth closed and stayed that way. The creature backpedaled with side fins.
Gavving reeled himself back to the bark. They watched the moby turning, retreating.
The bark raft surged. The moby stopped, turned to look back. The raft was following it. It began swimming strongly against the air.
A point of sunlight blazed near the edge of the pond. Vagrant breezes rippled the surface. Shadows moved within. A distant seed pod sent a tendril growing across a klomter of space toward the water. Gavving licked his lips and yearned.
Tens of thousands of metric tons of water dwindled in their wake.
Clave was cursing steadily. He stopped, then said, “Sorry. The moby was supposed to dive into the water and try to lose us.”
Gavving opened his mouth, reconsidered…and spoke anyway. “My idea. Why aren’t you blaming me?”
“I’d still get the blame. I’m the Chairman. Anyway, it was worth a try! I just wish I knew where the beast was taking us.”
They waited to learn.
Gavving’s eyes traced the line of the Smoke Ring, congealing out of the background of sky into the pale blue of water vapor and distance. Toothpick splinters, all aligned, might have been a grove of integral trees. Tens of thousands of klomters beyond, a clot of white storm marked Gold. A thickening halfway down the arch toward Voy would be the far Clump.
Here were all the celestial objects a child had once wondered about. Harp had told him that he might see them someday. More practical heads had denied this. The tree moved at the whim of natural forces, and nobody left the tree.
He had left the tree, and was married, and marooned, and thirsty.
Quinn Tribe clung along the forward edge of the bark raft. At Clave’s insistence they had donned their packs. Anything could happen…but nothing had, except that the pond continued to dwindle.
“So near and yet so far,” the Grad said. “Don’t we still have a few jet pods?”
“Not enough.” Clave looked around him. “At least we haven’t lost anyone. Okay. We’re moving, and we’re moving out; that’s good, isn’t it, Scientist? Thicker air?”
“Thicker anything,” said the Grad. “Air, water, plants, meat, meat-eaters.”
The moby was turning, swinging gradually east, and slowing. Tiring. Its fins folded against its side, presenting a streamlined egg-shape to the wind; it continued to fall outward, towing the bark raft. The pond had become a tiny jewel, glowing with refracted blue Voylight.
Clave said, “We’ll cut loose as soon as we get near anything interesting. Integral tree, pond, forest, anything with water in it. I don’t want anyone cutting the line too soon.”
“Cloud ahead,” Merril said.
A distant, clotted streamer of white fading into blue. Clave barked laughter. “How far ahead? Sixty, seventy klomters? Anyway, it isn’t ahead, it’s straight out from us. We’re aimed almost east.”
“Maybe not,” said the Grad. “We’re aimed out from east and moving pretty fast. Gavving, remember? ‘East takes you out, out takes you west, west takes you in, in takes you east, port and starboard bring you back.’”
“What the treefodder is that?” Clave demanded. Gavving remembered, but he said nothing. It was “classified”…and the Grad had never told him what it meant.
But Minya was saying, “Every child learns that. It’s supposed to be the way to move, if you’re lost in the sky but you’ve got jet pods.”
The Grad nodded happily. “We’re being pulled east. We’re moving too fast for our orbit, so we’ll fall outward and slow down. I’ll bet the moby is making for that cloud bank.”
The moby’s fins were spread and flapping slowly. There was nothing at all ahead of them, out to where the arch of the Smoke Ring formed from infinity. Minya moved her tether to bring herself alongside Gavving. They clung to the rim of the bark and watched the wisp of cloud out from them, and hoarded their thirst.
The sun circled behind Voy.
Again. Already they had moved many klomters outward; the day-night cycle had grown longer.
The cloud bank was growing. It was!
“It’ll try to lose us in the fog,” the Grad said with more hope than conviction.
The moby hadn’t moved for some time. The spike that tethered the harpoon was working itself loose. Clave pounded another into the wood and wrapped the slack line around it. But the cloud bank was spreading itself across the sky.
Details emerged: streamlines, knots of stormy darkness. Lightning flashed deep within.
Jayan and Jinny took off their shirts. Alfin, enjoying the sight without questions, suddenly said, “They’re right. Get our shirts off. Try to catch some of that wet.”
Darkness brightened as the sun emerged below the edge of the cloud. It continued to sink. They watched the first tenuous edge of mist envelop them and began flapping their shirts. Gavving asked, “Do you feel damp?”
Merril snarled, “I feel it, I smell it, I can’t drink it! But it’s coming!”
Lightning flashed, off to the west. Gavving felt the mist now. He tried to squeeze water out of his shirt. No? Keep swinging it. Now? He wrung the shirt tight and tried to suck it, and got sweaty water.
They were all doing it now. They could barely see each other. Gavving had never in his life seen such darkness. The moby was invisibly far, but they felt the tugging of the tether. They swung their shirts and sucked the water and laughed.
There were big fat drops around them. It was getting hard to breathe. Gavving breathed through his shirt and swallowed the water that came through.
Light was gaining. Were they emerging from the cloud? “Clave? Maybe you want to cut that tether. Do we want to stay in here?”
“Anybody still thirsty?” Silence. “Drink your fill, but we can’t live in here, breathing through our shirts. Let’s trust the moby a while longer.”
The pale green light was getting stronger. Through thinning fog Gavving thought he could see sky…green-tinged sky, with a texture to it. Green? Was this some effect in his eyes, due to the long, abnormal darkness?
Clave bellowed, “Treefodder!” and swung his knife. The harpoon tether sang a deep note, cut short as Clave slashed again. The line whipped free; the bark sheet shuddered.
Then they were out of the mist, in a layer of clear air. Gavving glimpsed the moby flapping away, free at last, and spared it only a glance. He was looking at square klomters of textured green, expanding, growing solid. It was a jungle, and they were going to ram.
Chapter Eleven
THE COTTON-CANDY JUNGLE
The carm was like nothing else in the universe. It was all right angles, inside and out; all plastic and metals, unliving starstuff. The white light that glowed from the dorsal wall was neither Voylight nor sunlight. Weirder lights crawled across the control panel
and the bow window itself. The carm was mobile, where London Tree moved only with the help of the carm. If London Tree was a living thing inhabited by other living things, then Lawri saw the carm as a different form of life.
The carm was a mighty servant. It served Klance the Scientist, and Lawri. Sometimes it went away into the sky with Navy men as its masters. This time it carried Lawri too.
It grated on her nerves that she was not the carm’s master here.
Seen through the picture-window bow, the jungle was green, dotted with every color of the rainbow—including overlaid scarlet dots that were heat sources. The Navy pilot pushed the talk button and said, “Let go.”
Several breaths went by before Lawri heard, “We’re loose.”
The pilot touched attitude jet keys. A tide pulled Lawri forward against her straps. Warriors had been clinging to nets outside the hull. Now they swept into view of the bow window as the carm decelerated. A cloud of sky-blue men fell toward undulating clouds of green.
The pilot released the keys after (by Lawri’s count) twelve breaths. She’d watched numbers flickering on a small display in front of him. He’d released at zero. And the jungle was no longer moving toward the carm’s bow window.
“The savages haven’t moved yet,” he reported. He was ignoring Lawri, or trying to; his eyes kept flicking to her and away. He’d made it clear enough: a nineteen-year-old girl had no place here, no matter what the First said. “They’re just under the greenery. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“We don’t know who they are.” The ancient microphone put a squawk in the Squad Leader’s voice. “If it’s just fighters, we’ll retreat. We don’t need fighters. If it’s noncombatants, hiding—”
“Right.”
“Have you found any other heat sources?”
“Not yet. That greenery is a pretty good reflector unless you’re looking right into it. We can pick up some meat. Flocks of salmon birds…Squad Leader, I see something off to the side. Something’s falling toward the jungle.”