by Larry Niven
“Pleased.” The Navy man’s handshake was strong for a jungle giant. “I’ll speak to you later. Rather. Clave, Debby, a pleasure. Booce, do you have anything to declare?”
“Yes. One log, forty klomters or thereabouts. If you want to measure it yourselves—”
“No, we’ll just take half the manifests as you sell it off.”
“And the Wart,” Booce said complacently. “Our one bit of luck, and a happyfeet tribe almost made off with it.”
“That mucking great chunk of metal halfway in?”
“Heh. You’ve found it already? We haven’t measured that either, but it’s thousands of tons. Petty, we’d like the Wart classified. We won’t get so many thieves that way.”
“All right, but if happyfeet attacked you—”
“I don’t want to file charges. They got away, but we hurt them, and I don’t want them to know who. They might want to come after us with friends.”
“That attitude makes life difficult for the Navy, Booce. We’d rather chase them down. You’re sure?…All right. We’ll want our taxes in metal.”
“Fine. I want to keep that makeshift firebox until I can buy more sikenwire. It’s not pretty, but it works. Barring that, I’ll sell the entire lode to the Navy right now, if you can tear it out and tow it home. Take it off my hands,” Booce said.
Rather couldn’t help himself: he stared. But what if he takes you up on it?
Petty Wheeler laughed. “I don’t have alcohol to tow it, and I can’t authorize that kind of expenditure. But we’ll inspect it now, and I’ll send a team to cut our share loose after you’re moored.”
Petty Wheeler’s crew began searching Logbearer inside and out. Rather’s momentary impulse was to stop them. But Booce showed no surprise…and of course there was nothing aboard Logbearer to be found. Meanwhile the Navy officer turned to Rather and said, “Rather, wasn’t it? You should consider joining the Navy.”
“Why?”
The man smiled. “The pay is good, particularly for a tree dweller, if you can get in. We’ll shape you up and teach you things you should know, like how to win a fight. You’ll be holding civilization together. The personal advantage is, you’re the right shape. You noticed Bosun Sectry Murphy? Short, with red hair—”
“Yes?”
“She’ll be wearing a vac suit within six years. Guardian is the highest rank there is, unless you were born an officer. You could do the same.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Talk to her yourself. Ask Booce, for that matter. Booce, we’ll fly down and inspect your Wart. Would you like to ride with us?”
“I’d be delighted.” Booce looked around at his crew and added, “We’d all be delighted.”
Gyrfalcon’s hull sported handholds everywhere. The Navy men spaced Logbearer’s people high along one flank. There were shelves for feet and straps to circle a waist (or just under the armpits on Rather). “Fighting vessel,” Clave whispered to Debby. “They can cover the hull with archers.”
Three Navy worked aft, around the motor. They ignored the civilians.
Something green was trying to grow on the wooden hull. Fluff, maybe. The wood had been scraped recently. Rather noticed that much before the rocket fired.
If Wheeler was trying to impress a barbarian dwarf, he succeeded. The rocket roared and spat flame. Rather felt his blood settling into his legs. The log’s rough bark surged past, accelerating. Aft, Wheeler and Murphy used toothed gears to point the nozzle. In a way it was more impressive than the carm. You could see how it all worked.
The roar of the motor would cover his voice (and the fear in it). Rather asked, “Why don’t they let us inside?”
“Classified. Nobody knows what’s in a Navy ship,” Carlot said. “We haven’t seen the whole crew, I’m sure of that. Rather, I noticed you staring at the, um, red-haired woman?”
Rather told a half-truth. “She looks short. I mean, it’s surprising, because she’s the same size I am. Mark never looked short.”
Carlot seemed to relax. “Well, no. He was bigger than you when you were growing up.”
Wheeler moved the nozzle ten degrees to port. The ship slewed around, spraying flame. He swiveled the nozzle starboard; the rotation slowed and stopped, and Gyrfalcon decelerated. It eased to a stop less than a hundred meters from the blister in the trunk.
“The bandits almost had it torn loose,” Wheeler observed.
Booce nodded.
The same four Navy personnel accompanied them to the Wart. Three set to examining the blister that had grown up around the metal and the matchet-chewed wood that extended far back behind it. The fourth sought out Rather. “Petty Wheeler said you might have questions to ask me,” said Bosun Murphy.
Rather was not really thinking of joining the Navy. He didn’t say so. “I don’t know enough to ask good questions.”
She smiled enchantingly. “Ask bad ones. I don’t mind.”
“What are the vac suits? Why are they important?”
“They’re old science, as old as the Library. They’re invulnerable,” she said. “The highest fighting rank is Guardian, and that’s the rank that wears the vac suits. There are supposed to be nine Guardians. We’ve got eight. This—” She rapped her helmet, then the plates on her thighs. “—It looks like this, but all over. You’ll get as high as Petty just because you’re the right shape, and then you find out if you actually fit into a vac suit.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got that far yet.” She looked down at her protruding chestplate unhappily. “Maybe I won’t fit. I’d still keep my rank as Petty. Understand, you have to be qualified, you have to be trained. It’s just easier if you’re the right size.”
“Training. What’s it like?”
“They’ll put you through exercises. You may think you’re strong—you’re a tree dweller? I can see the muscles. But Petty Wheeler could tie you in knots. After you’ve been through training you could tie him in knots. I could, I think, and you’re stronger. Your people, do they use polar coordinates to find themselves?”
“No.”
“They’ll teach you how to find yourself in the sky. You’ll learn how to count, if you don’t know—”
“I can count.”
“You’ll learn how to work a rocket, not a steam rocket but a Navy rocket. They teach you how to obey too. You want to go in braced for that, Rather. A superior officer tells you to fly, you fly, wings or no.”
It sounded unpleasant. “Where do the Navy ships go?”
“Mmm…Where do you come from?”
“Citizens’ Tree. A little west of the Clump.”
“You’re not likely to visit your family. We don’t see many tree dwellers. We send ships outside the Clump, but not often, and never more than a few thousand klomters. Mostly we cruise the Clump itself. We collect taxes, of course—”
“Yeah.”
“We fight the wildlife. Dark sharks and other things. Citizens find a drillbit nest, or honey hornets, they call us and we burn it out.”
“Triunes too?”
“Oh, no, the triunes got the idea fast. They never attack us. Some of them like us. There’s a guy, Exec Martin, he hunts swordbirds with triunes. Nobody knows how bright they really are, but they can be trained.”
“Why do you burn honey hornets? Booce says they’re valuable.”
Her expression soured. “Honey is contraband. Put just a tip of a fingernail’s worth on your tongue, you dream wonderful dreams. Then you can’t stop. Use a little more and you die in ecstasy. Some people will pay a lot for that.”
Honey is suicide. Rather hadn’t realized that Booce meant it literally. He thought it over, then said, “But it’s their choice—”
She shook her head. “Not my decision. Then there’s detective work, and riot control, and rescue work. We don’t specialize much. You learn to do all of that, but first you learn how to fly a ship.”
“What happens to cadets who fail? Murphy
, what happens to dwarves who fail?”
“Nothing. I mean, they’re out of the Navy, of course. They hire out or they build a business, maybe they go diving in the Dark for mushrooms and fan fungus, or they go logging. Hell, what does a logger do if he fails at something?” She looked closely at him. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m having trouble with this. There’re more people here, so there’s more places for people, right? If you can’t hunt or do earthlife farming, you just try something else?”
Murphy nodded brightly. “Next question?”
Would we see each other if I joined up? May I call you Sectry? “Thank you, Bosun.”
“Any time,” she said, and sprang away. She coasted parallel to the bark, toward Wheeler as he emerged from behind the Wart.
“It’s big,” Wheeler called. “Booce Serjent, you’ve made your fortune.”
“Recouped it, anyway. The first thing I’ll do is rebuild Logbearer.”
“Yes…Well, I’ve seen enough. Eight thousand tons or so. Those scars on the metal—”
“We used the saw to get the slabs that make up the firebox. It worked better than I’d hoped. It’s a good substitute for sikenwire, and the saw’s not damaged.”
Wheeler nodded, satisfied. “Can we lift you back to your ship?”
“No, we need to cover this somehow before we reach the Market.”
“I think you’re worrying over nothing. How could anyone steal anything this big?”
“With saws…Well, you may be right.”
They watched Gyrfalcon steam toward the Clump interior. Something bright twinkled at the bow. “He’s calling home,” Booce said. “They use mirrors to bounce Voy-light where they want it.”
“What happens now?” Clave asked.
“Wheeler thinks I sawed off more metal than just those plates for the firebox. He’ll watch to see if I sell it on the black market. He could have bought the Wart on the spot, but he thinks I’ll give him a better price if he waits. A few days after we dock I’ll get an offer. It’ll be too little, and I’ll boost them a bit and then take it so I can stop guarding the metal—”
“What do we do now, Booce? Jeffer must be going crazy waiting for us to call in.”
“We’re still being watched.”
Gyrfalcon was tiny now. Its steam trail was dissipating. Clave asked, “Can they still see? Have they got something like the carm windows?”
“A box they hold to their eyes. Clave, we’d like some way to disguise this mucking great chunk of metal.”
So Logbearer’s five crew swarmed over the Wart, taking their time, just looking at it from all angles, as if there were some way to hide a conspicuous pucker in the honest wood of a tree. The sun crept from zenith to pass north of Voy. And presently Debby said, “Booce, you’ve seen more trees than any of us. What kind of a thing causes this kind of scar?”
“Something hits the tree…could be stony, it doesn’t have to be metal. I’ve seen this kind of gap with nothing in it at all, just chewed wood healing over. I never did figure it out.”
Debby wondered, “Ice?”
Booce’s face went…stupid? Mouth agape, eyes drifting. He said, “Heh. Yes! A chunk of ice could smash a tree, then melt.”
“Still doesn’t do anything for us. What else? Disease? Is there something that builds nests? Or the tree bugs could chew just in one place—”
“Sure, a honey pod could hit a tree, and the bugs would chew a huge hole…give me a breath, Debby.” Stupid again: thinking. “We can do it. Twenty days to reach the Market. Okay. We need a fisher jungle that’s got termites, and we need to look like we’ve been through a disaster, but we’ve got that already. I never thought I’d come home with a pod for Logbearer’s cabin!”
“What do you need from us?” Clave asked.
“Stay here, talk to Jeffer. The rest of us will fly up the trunk. This is nice. If Wheeler wonders why we’re still hovering around the Wart, he’ll see us hiding it!”
Rather swallowed his protest, because Clave was saying, “You don’t need Rather. I want him.”
“Stet.” Booce had his wings on. “Come, children.”
Chapter Thirteen
THE TERMITE NEST
from the Citizens’ Tree cassettes, year 5 SM:
THE LAGRANGE POINTS
Matter tends to collect in the fourth and fifth Lagrange points (L4 and L5) of Goldblatt’s World. These regions appear less turbulent than the storms around Goldblatt’s World itself, but we have postponed exploring them in depth.
We inspected only L4. The more or less stable region is 600 km across. Mapping the equipotential tide curves gets us nested crescents. What shows to the eye is a misshapen whorl dwindling east and west into the arc of the Smoke Ring proper.
The whorl is green around the periphery, darker and browner near the center, where accumulated matter becomes thick enough to block sunlight. Tide-stabilized plants don’t thrive here. We’ve found familiar life-forms—triunes and cotton-candy jungles—but also some specialized life-forms not seen elsewhere.
Deep radar indicates solid masses within the dark inner region. None are large.
We have wondered why the Clumps never condensed into one large body. Perhaps life itself acts to remove matter from the inner regions. The fisher jungles’ roots disrupt large ponds. Saprophytes feed in the dense core, then fire spore packages away into the Smoke Ring. Birds are forced out by famine or population pressure…
It made his head hurt.
Jeffer ate as he read. When he reached the end he doggedly scrolled back to the beginning. His students had found it bewildering. So did Jeffer, but he had an advantage over his students. He had Kendy.
If Kendy would call!
Today he had hunted the sky. He’d returned to the dead fisher jungle trailing a sizable shieldbird. A small fire near the carm had cooked his catch. He was getting good at it. Sandwiching the meat between two of the shieldbirds’ bone plates cooked it tender without scorching it.
He almost choked when the carm suddenly spoke. “Jeffer? This is Clave. Jeffer, can you hear me?”
Jeffer swallowed hard and said, “Prikazyvat Send to pressure suit. And about treefeeding time too! Are you alive?”
“Jeffer, we couldn’t get to the helmet. The Navy searched Logbearer. Even after they left they were watching us. Where are you? Are you hidden?”
“Clave, I found something good. Do you remember Booce’s description of a fisher jungle? A green puffball a klomter across, with a long coiled root. It reaches out to put the root in a pond, but there’s poison on it and it can attack life forms and kill them and draw them in to rot—”
“Right. They’re not supposed to live outside the Clump.”
“Maybe so. This one’s fifty klomters from the Clump fringes, and it’s dead. The axis trunk is hollow. There’s a Navy ship coming this way. It’s not likely they’ll want to sniff around a fisher jungle, but I’ve got the carm moored inside the hollow anyway. When it goes away I’ll tether it above the root so the carm can get some sunlight. Where are you? I can’t see anything.”
“I’m in the dark. I’m in that channel we chopped past the Wart. We haven’t moved the silver suit yet.”
Jeffer remembered extending the work done by the happyfeet. His back and shoulders still ached. “We should have let the happyfeet do more of the carving.”
“It was worth it. Booce was right. The Navy knows if you’re carrying metal. This Petty Wheeler citizen knew about the Wart, but he didn’t look for anything behind it.”
“What’s the Clump like?”
“Crowded. We’ll have the log moored in twenty days. Booce has a way to hide the Wart. He’s afraid of thieves, and we can’t use the silver suit to win a fight, because—”
“No, of course not.”
“—Because they’d recognize it. Jeffer, they’ve got three silver suits. It’s a mark of high rank. Dwarves are in good shape if they join the Navy, and Rather’s had an offer.”
An offer? “Rather, you there?”
Jeffer heard Clave’s distant yell. Presently Rather said, “Here.”
“You had an offer to join the Navy? What was said? What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t take the Petty seriously. The idea is to learn something about the Admiralty, buy some earthlife seeds, and get back to Citizens’ Tree!”
“We want to know about the Navy too.”
“I learned a little—”
Clave interrupted. “How serious are we? Booce, what has the Navy got that we want to see? I’m not so eager to see the inside of a Navy rocket that I’d feed one of my—”
“The Library! The cassettes! What’s on the Admiralty cassettes?”
“All right, Jeffer. What makes you think Rather could get to any of that? Booce might know, but he isn’t here to ask.”
Jeffer finished the shieldbird meat while he thought. “Ask him when you get the chance. Now, I’m getting terminally bored here. Are you free to move the silver suit into the rocket?”
“No. It’s too easily recognized,” Clave said.
“How about just the helmet?”
“We’ll have to ask Booce, but…I think not. Let’s get Kendy in on this. Are you in contact?”
“He said he was changing orbit. He’ll be back in another day. Clave, I wish you could give me some kind of a view.”
“I’ll think of something. Jeffer, Rather’s waving at me.”
“Scientist out.”
“Clave? You’d better see this,” Rather said.
“What? I was talking to Jeffer.” Clave crawled out of the cavity behind the Wart. “Oh.”
From out of the crowded sky came a shapeless thing colored a dead yellowish brown. Its outline was fuzzed with a jittering motion that caused the optic nerves to twitch. It was coming straight at them, and Logbearer was behind it.
“Get out of its way, Rather, it’s going to hit! Got your wings?”
They fled. The thing fell toward the Wart with a faint, frightening buzzing sound. Myriads of black flecks swarmed around it, insects much smaller than honey hornets.