by Larry Niven
They were. Some were still writhing, some were motionless, but all were burned black. Jeffer set the carm moving. It was too early to feel guilt.
They were in the cloud now: a thick, swirling fog, growing thicker. Jeffer could see the tree only as a wall of shadow. Kendy said, “Turn starboard. You need not steer so wide of the trunk, Jeffer. I have infrared.”
The carm moved around the trunk in a great curve. Lightning flared suddenly aft.
“I have the jungle in view, straight out by five point six kilometers. Straight out, Jeffer.”
“I can’t see.”
“Ventral. Two degrees more. Good. Accelerate. Cut! Rather has the jungle in view. Silver Man, come in.”
Rather’s tinny voice spoke from the control board. “I see a big shadow, but no detail. They can’t see us either.”
“They’ve found you somehow,” Jeffer said.
“You’re near,” said Kendy. “Swing one-eighty degrees.”
“I won’t—”
“Citizen, I don’t know where the men are! What else can we do but attack the jungle itself? Swing around.” There was something strange in Kendy’s voice.
Jeffer turned the carm. He half hoped Clave would countermand the order, but Clave said nothing.
“Main drive.” Kendy should have sounded excited. He only sounded loud.
Jeffer tapped the button. The carm surged. His face tried to crawl around to the back of his head. A yellow light bloomed in the mist behind him, and he heard Rather’s gasp. He killed the drive, but the yellow light remained.
The harsh bass said, “Done. I’m losing range—”
Clave said, “You kill too easily, Kendy.”
Kendy’s voice was becoming blurry. “Citizens, you’re missing the point. This was a mobile jungle. These happyfeet may have contacts in the Admiralty. They’ve seen the carm and the silver suit.”
“Men aren’t honey hornets, Kendy!”
There was no answer.
Rain drifted across the carm’s main window in drops the size of fists, carried by eddies in the wind. The wood outside was black with water. Inside the cabin it was soggy enough. Jeffer’s segment of pond had spread a film of water across all the walls and the cradles.
Warm, dry air blew from vents fore and aft, thrusting the water away from it. The citizens clustered around the aft jet.
Next time I’ll pump the water, Jeffer thought. Got to build a pump.
Carlot said, “We saw that huge shadow come out of the fog. It was scary enough. Then five…well, they could have been birds for all I could see, except that they were flying toward the jungle and thrashing at both ends. Waving their arms, I guess. It was the bandits who ran away from Rather. The jungle stopped to pick them up.”
“They were Lupoffs,” Booce said. “I know their clothing. I’ve met them in the Market. A big family, three jungles, and they’d colonize if they could buy another firepipe. They’re crowded.”
Clave said, “So?”
“If the Lupoffs find out what happened here, you’ll have two jungles hunting you.”
“They won’t find out.” There was no triumph in Clave’s voice. Jeffer shuddered.
They were warm enough, dry enough, if they stayed in the air jet. But the storm splashed rain across the bow window, and through the rain came the yellow glow of the burning jungle.
“I wouldn’t mind killing a bandit or two,” Booce said. “I’ve been robbed once or twice. It’s the scale of the thing that bothers me. There must have been forty citizens in that jungle, not counting children.”
Clave jumped toward the fore end of the cabin. After a moment, Jeffer followed. The fore air jet was as dry as the aft.
Clave said, “I’d had enough of that.”
“Forty people,” Jeffer said. “There just isn’t any way to make them stop talking about it.”
Clave’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Persuasive, is he? Nobody but you can be trusted to talk to Kendy, right? You burned them while they were trying to rescue their citizens!”
“They attacked us.”
“With spears. So?”
“What was I supposed to do? They were threatening our citizens!”
Clave sighed. “I’m not blaming you. And if I am, I shouldn’t be. But Kendy—” By the flick of his eyes, Clave had remembered that Kendy would hear this. He began pronouncing his words with more care. “Treefeeding Kendy killed them like a hive of honey hornets, because they were in his way. Because they might talk to the wrong people!”
Silence and discomfort. Debby came to join them. “Wet,” she said. “What did you do to get it so wet?”
Jeffer didn’t answer. To Clave he said, “I felt much worse when I killed Klance the Scientist to steal the carm. He wasn’t expecting it. These citizens were. They were making war.”
“Right!” Debby said enthusiastically. “When London Tree raided us, I used to wish we could capture this thing and set their whole tree burning. The bandits aren’t the same, but by the State, we finally did it!”
“Don’t do it again,” Clave said. Jeffer nodded.
Section Three
CIVILIZATION
Chapter Twelve
CUSTOMS
Year 384, day 1992, by heliograph:
Station Two to Gyrfalcon. Swallow reports large incoming log east of Admiralty. Master unidentified. You will rendezvous for customs duty if convenient. Location of log at day 1990 was two-nine-oh degrees flat, five degrees north, two-eight-oh klomters radial. Acknowledge.
“Rice, did this just come in?”
“Yes, sir. I was scraping the hull when I saw the light blinking near the Market. Took the message and came straight in, but I don’t know how long the helio was blinking.”
Petty Mart Wheeler thought it through. Gyrfalcon carried six crew; Swallow, two. The Navy preferred that civilians notice the big armed ships. In the act of paying customs they should remember what they were buying. So.
“Where are we?”
“I’ll find out, sir.” Spacer Rice turned toward the instrument closet.
“No, not you. Bosun Murphy, take our position.” This was not an urgent mission. He’d use it as a training exercise.
The dwarf nodded cheerfully; her flame-red hair swirled around her. Her short but powerful legs shot her across the cabin to the instrument closet. She chose what she needed and went out.
The long hair would have to go when she reached higher rank. Pity. But dwarves were rare, and Bosun Sectry Murphy must be trained quickly…
Through the hatch Wheeler could see a blue light, tiny and intense: a Navy heliograph, reflected Voy-light blinking near the east limb of the whorl. Red hair and a squarish feminine face suddenly blocked the view. “Petty, we’re at two-sixty-five flat, six south, two-forty klomters.”
“And we’ve got better than half a tank, right?” Murphy nodded. “Get on the heliograph. We’ll rendezvous with the log. Jimson, Rice, get us ready for a burn.”
The thick, disordered sky made Rather dizzy. If he fell into that he would be more than ordinarily lost. He climbed with care. Clave and Debby trailed him.
There had been hard work followed by a long climb. They were all tired. Rather’s fingers and toes were starting to cramp. But the rocket was in sight, a hundred meters out…if that direction was still out.
The log was rising through the Clump’s eastern fringes. Wind slapped at Rather from ambush, here, there, everywhere, as if he were embedded in a flock of terrified turkeys. Clouds ran in peculiar directions, not east-west, not flattened spirals, but shallow in-out curves. A line of small green puff jungles flowed in an arc that was not tidelike at all. Confronted by such strangeness, Rather’s bewildered eyes sought the one unchanging reference point.
Voy burned blue-white and steady…twenty-five degrees east of the stump of the in tuft! Choppy clouds blurred the sun. Shadows pulsed, blurring and sharpening. Overlaid on those, Voy’s faint, sharp blue shadows lay in skewed directions. Children learned not to s
ee Voy-shadows. Voy-shadows told nothing, for they never moved, never changed, never distracted the eye.
The tree had turned; the trunk was pointing wrong.
Booce and Carlot waited at the rocket. Debby called, “Booce! How can you stand it?”
“The tide? I grew up in it. You’ll get used to it. The happyfeet do.”
“The shadows are making me sick to my stomach,” Debby said.
Rather’s own stomach was queasy. “Carlot—”
“We’re almost home.” There was no mistaking her joy. She liked it here. “Look, we’ve got the pipefire going.”
“I’ll start the water.” A smaller pod had been carved into Logbearer’s new cabin. Booce crawled inside. “Tether yourselves.”
The rocket cone pointed east. Rather poked his nose into the small hatch. “Booce, are you slowing us again?”
Booce’s voice echoed. “What? No, tide’s different in the Clump. We’ll push west, straight toward the Dark.” He pulled a wooden plug from the water tank. He inhaled, put his lips to the hole, and blew.
Rather withdrew his head to watch the completed rocket in action. Yellow-white coals glowed within the iron firebox that had given them so much trouble. The iron glowed dull red. A fourth pod nearby was filled with water in case the plates didn’t hold together.
At the nozzle end of the rocket—“Nothing’s happening.”
His answer was the sound of Booce inflating his lungs. Then the rocket went Chuff! and sprayed steam.
“It’s going, Booce,” Rather said, and looked in.
Booce’s face dripped with water. He was coughing and choking while he pounded the plug in with the heel of his hand. His glare was murderous.
CHUFF, CHUFF, Chuff chuffchuffchuff…The rocket settled down. A row of cloud-puffs became a steady stream jogged by the play of capricious wind. Rather felt no acceleration. It would be gentle, with so great a mass to be moved.
Carlot came up behind him; her long fingers found his hand and enclosed it. “Father? Shouldn’t we—”
Booce sounded like his throat was still full of water. “Yes, go play lookout on the west face, you two. Watch for Navy and anything we might hit.”
The maelstrom revealed itself to them as they circled the trunk. Flying was a continuing wonder to Rather, but Carlot did it better. She kept darting ahead, then circled to urge him on. At a vantage point on the west face they doffed their wings and rested.
The Clump was a whorl like a tremendous fingerprint. Inward, matter thickened. There were puzzle trees, distorted cotton-candy jungles, the much smaller puffballs that Carlot had pointed out for him (“fisher jungles”), and greenery that was totally unfamiliar. Ponds took odd shapes in the distorted tide. The sky was thick with birds: skyhorses, triunes, and a thousand tiny red and yellow darts converging on a puff jungle. Everything moved in arcs, tighter near the center of the whorl, and darker. The center itself was almost black, but motion could still be seen there.
The triune families were hard to spot, but two had turned to observe the passing log. They were fat sky-blue cigar-shapes with wide triple fins: male and female and child, linked along their bellies. Three slender blue shapes flashed violent-orange bellies as they converged on the red-and-yellow bird-swarm: another triune family, separated to hunt.
A thin stream of cloud cut across other patterns of cloud-flow. Rather spotted it in the moment before Carlot pointed. “There. Navy.”
“How do you know?” Rather saw only a dark point at the end of the line of cloud.
“It’s coming toward us. Customs. They’ll make a burn and intercept us in a day. Oh, treefodder.”
Rather laughed. She’d borrowed his curse. “What?”
She showed him.
Far in toward the Clump’s dark center, in the thick of moving matter, was a broad, flat ring-shape with a pebbly inner surface…angular structures in pastel colors…blatantly artificial. Could it really be as big as it looked?
He judged its size by an even larger natural object nearby: a tree with one tuft missing. The log was smaller than their own, Rather thought. At its midpoint he could make out a rocket-shape, cone and tank and angular cabin.
Carlot said, “I know that rocket. Woodsman. Dad won’t like this. They could just as easily have been out another damn year.” She looked into his eyes. “We won’t have much time together. The Belmy family owns Woodsman. Dad wants to marry me to Raff Belmy.”
“Will you do it?”
“Shut up.” She pulled him against her by the slack of his tunic. “I don’t want to think about it. Just don’t talk,” she breathed into his ear, and he obeyed. It crossed his mind that Booce should be told of these things. But there would be time…
Gyrfalcon found the log easily: bigger than average, with both tufts severed. It was making its burn: a wavery line of cloud behind it was beginning to arc over. The rocket would be behind the trunk.
“Instruments,” Wheeler instructed. “Rice, get us a rendezvous track. Murphy, the neudar. That dark blemish in the wood—”
“I see it, sir.”
He waited and watched. His crew moved well, Bosun Murphy in particular. She hadn’t yet used the neudar under field circumstances. She moved slowly, but without mistakes. That would reflect well on Wheeler.
“The blemish is dense. Metal,” she said. “Kilotons.”
“Now the rocket.”
“I can’t see anything—”
“Behind the midpoint.”
“Oh! I can look through the wood!” She tried it. “Mmm…something…metal, not much. Our own iron rocket nozzle would show a mark like that.”
“Rice?”
“We need a burn, Petty. Fifty degrees planar, zero axial, a hundred breaths of burn and we’ll go just past.”
“Give us the burn, then all hands suit up. Spacer Rice, you’re in the cabin, on instruments. Murphy, on the pump.”
Gyrfalcon carried a glass alcohol tank and a pair of water tanks. Its valve system had been rifled from the hulk of an ancient Cargo and Repair Module. On long voyages, standard practice was to spray water into the alcohol flame as working mass. Water could be replaced in domains beyond the Admiralty’s reach. Alcohol generally could not, though some of the happyfeet tribes carried alcohol distilleries for trade with the Admiralty.
Wheeler and Jimson tethered themselves carefully at the steering platform above the motor. Murphy began to pedal. Pedals could be extended, but a dwarf on the bicycle always delivered more power. Wheeler put his hand in the airflow to test it, then started the alcohol flame. He checked his crew’s handholds before he increased the flow.
Thrust pulled at his skin and his bones. He ran water into the flame. Thrust rose again, and heat bathed the inner surfaces of his straining legs.
Rice called down from the cabin. “Cut it!”
Petty Wheeler reached below his feet for the alcohol valve. The roar died to a hiss: water on a hot surface. Next, the water valve. Gyrfalcon fell free.
The log was nearer; the plume of acceleration was gone. Using the binoculars, Wheeler found a pair of human shapes on the near side.
“They’re not giving us much attention,” he said.
Murphy took the binoculars. Presently she said, “They’ll have time.” She looked until he took them away.
The Navy ship was bigger and more elaborate than Logbearer. It arrived in a wave of warm steam and paused a hundred meters from the center of the midtrunk. Four men emerged and flew toward them.
Logbearer’s crew waited outside the cabin.
“They’re fast,” Debby said.
Booce chuckled. “Never try to outfly the Navy. Navy wings are different, and the men are picked for their legs.”
They were closer now. Rather suddenly gripped Booce’s arm. “Booce, they’re wearing silver suits!”
“Ah! Rather—”
Rather eased his grip. “Sorry.”
“Well, watch that. It’s only Navy armor.”
“But it looks—”
>
“Just armor. There are three vac suits in the Admiralty, and we aren’t important enough to see one. Incidentally, they’d love to make it four.”
Closer yet. The armor didn’t cover them. All wore helmets: head-and-shoulder pieces with an opening for the face. Some wore additional plates. And one was a dwarf.
Their wings! They pointed a little forward, as the foot did; they folded on the forward kick and snapped open on the back-kick. The Scientist should see this, Rather thought.
They left their wings on even after they touched bark.
The dwarf was a woman. Red hair showed around the helmet before she lifted it. Pale skin, pointed nose, and pointed chin; hair like flame streaming from a tree afire. Her chest plate stood several ce’meters out from her chest. She was five or six years older than Rather, quite lovely, and Rather’s height.
She caught him looking and smiled at him. He forgot that he could move. Her eyes were blue, and they danced.
He was blushing, and Carlot had caught it, and Rather looked away in haste. And watched a long, long man kicking toward them.
The globe helmet was much larger than his head, with an opening for his face…like the silver suit’s helmet with the faceplate missing. Separate curved pieces protected his thighs, back, upper arms, and hips. Those were wood painted in silver; but the head-and-shoulder piece was of hammered metal. Wide nose, dark skin, black cushion of hair: he might have been part of Booce’s family.
He recognized Booce (and ignored his crew). “Booce Serjent? You may remember me: Petty Wheeler. Welcome home.”
“Good to see you again, Petty. You’ll remember Carlot—”
She smiled brilliantly. “Good day, Petty Wheeler.”
“Oh, yes. You’ve grown, Carlot.”
Booce said, “These others are Clave and Rather Citizen, from Citizens’ Tree, a few hundred klomters west of us. Debby Carther we hired before we left.”
Meeting strangers was outside Rather’s experience. Booce had told him what to do. He said, “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” and held out his hand.