by Larry Niven
Carlot and Rather came around the curve of bark. Booce called to them. “Well done, my crew! I’m crossing to Woodsman to see what Hilar wants. Carlot, why don’t you show these people the Market?”
Carlot reached him well ahead of Rather. “Speak to you in private?”
They flew clear of the others. Booce asked, “Have you been making decisions?”
She nodded, jerkily. “Raff probably expects to see me.”
“Then you decide whether to take him along. Will Rather behave himself?”
She hesitated. “It’s not a good idea.”
“I’ll make your excuses to Raff. Blame everything on me.”
Clave and Debby followed Carlot. Rather hung back a little. Flying too close to Carlot would be uncomfortable now.
They passed close to Woodsman. It was Rather’s first good look at Raff Belmy. He was dark-haired and tall, three meters or close to it, with long arms, long symmetrical legs, stiff black hair, and a short beard. His neck was like his father’s: long and graceful, but the lines of muscle showed strongly. If you liked tall. Raff was a good-looking man. He waved energetically as they flew past, then ducked into a cabin. There must have been hasty conversation in there. When Raff Belmy emerged he did not follow them.
“I’d have liked to talk to Jeffer first,” Clave said softly.
“Let him wonder,” Debby answered. “We’ll have plenty to tell him when we get the chance.”
They passed the Belmy log, and the Market was huge in their sight.
The wheel was ten to twelve klomters in diameter, and a hundred meters broad. The inner surface was partly covered with…houses? They surely weren’t proper huts. They glowed with color. Most were cubes and oblongs, but there were other, stranger shapes: a faceted hemisphere, a wooden cylinder, a larger cylinder as transparent as the carm’s bow window.
Carlot shouted back at them as they flew. “We learn all about the Market in school. It started out as a beam carved along the entire length of a log, three hundred years ago. The Admiralty ran it through a pond to soak it. Then they used tethers to bend it in a circle. Before that, the Market was only shops tethered together.”
This tremendous made thing…this was wealth. Rather felt the fear and the awe of any savage approaching a civilized city.
People were flying to meet them.
“The older shops are funny shapes. Balls and geodesies. That glass cylinder is the Vivarium. Vance Limited grows earthlife there.” Carlot noticed that all three of her charges were dropping behind. She turned in a half circle and rejoined them. “Are you all right? Tired?”
Rather answered for the others. “It’s a little frightening. Who are those people?”
“Friends. Traders. I’ll introduce you. Raym! Crew, this is Raym Wilby—”
He was an older man, a jungle giant with pale skin and dark, curly hair and beard. He shouted at the sight of Carlot, bounced into her a little too hard, and wrapped her in his arms. As he examined her companions the wide, goofy smile was lost to a look of comical amazement. “Carlot? Shorts?”
She rebuked him. “Raym, these are some of the citizens who saved our lives when our tree caught fire. Hey, John, hey, Nurse!” Others were arriving. Carlot squirmed loose; clasped hands or toes; chattered introductions. John and Nurse Lockheed were brother and sister, and looked it, with angular faces (shaved, in John’s case) and white-blond hair. Long-headed Grag Maglicco was in the Navy as a Spacer First. Adjeness Swart was small for a jungle giant. Her hair was black and straight, her nose curved and sharp. She worked in the Vivarium, Carlot said.
Half a dozen others reached them and Rather started to lose track. Raym would be thirty to forty years old; Grag would be a little younger. The rest were around Carlot’s age. Jungle giants all, and expert flyers.
Carlot told her tale as they flew toward the Market. Other strangers joined them and she had to start over. Now there were a dozen jungle giants among them, and all were strangers to all but Carlot. She stuck to her father’s story, and made no mention of Wart or carm or silver suit.
The citizens were uncharacteristically quiet. There was too much to see, and they were surrounded by as many strangers as there were adults in Citizens’ Tree.
Debby was finally ready to admit that it had been a mistake. She wanted to go home.
She hadn’t been with Anthon in hundreds of days. Booce was afraid of his wife, Jeffer seemed to be married to the carm, and Clave…the best she could tell, Clave was vastly enjoying his vacation from his wives. She was in a sexual desert.
She had other reasons for being on edge. The Market covered a quarter of the sky. No bigger than a small tree, it was obtrusively a made thing, made by the ancestors of this crew.
They didn’t look that powerful. They flew a little closer together than Debby found comfortable. Easy to guess why: they’d been flying all their lives. Raym Wilby was chattering to Rather. “The bugeyes, they get whistling drunk when the fringe blooms. You just reach out and pop ’em in a bag—” Debby tried to follow it, but she couldn’t. The Lockheeds stayed together, off to one side. Maybe they were shy?
Adjeness Swart flew alongside Debby. Cheerfully she called, “How do you like the Market?”
“Impressive.”
“Your first visit to civilization?”
“We like to think we’ve got a civilization too,” Debby said. We must be gawking like fools.
Adjeness laughed and waved around her. They had passed the rim of the Market and were crossing the central gap. “If you’ve got anything like this, the Admiralty would like to know it.” And as Debby was throttling the urge to tell this smug Clump dweller about the carm, Adjeness asked, “How much can you see of the Admiralty from your tree? Why haven’t any of you come here before?”
“Some didn’t want us to come at all. We didn’t know what we’d find. Maybe things we wouldn’t like. Excuse me.” Debby kicked hard to reach Carlot.
Chattering companions surrounded Carlot. Debby tried to ease inconspicuously among them, just to listen…but she hadn’t counted on Admiralty manners. The locals drifted away from Debby and Carlot and left them to talk.
Carlot looked at her questioningly. Debby said, “I’m afraid I’ll say too much.”
“Adjeness?”
“Yeah. It isn’t just the questions, it’s her treefeeding superior attitude. Carlot, I feel so small.”
“Can’t help you there, but…go fly next to Raym. He won’t let you talk at all.” Carlot held her voice low. “Raym Wilby is an old Dark diver. It’s gotten to his brain.”
“What’s he doing with us?”
“He’s an old friend of Mother’s. I’d hate to have her see him now! I could get rid of him, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Either I’d hurt his feelings or it’d take forever.”
“Stet. What’s a Dark diver?”
“Ask him. Or just listen.”
Debby dropped back. Raym was telling Rather, “It isn’t the dark that bothers you, it’s the thick. Your eyes get used to the light in there. It’s kind of gray, and the colors bleach out. I never heard of a diver getting wrecked unless he was a damn fool, because things don’t move fast in there. But you can’t move fast either. You drift. Sometimes you get lost, you forget which way is out. You come out never knowing how many days you were in.”
Rather asked, “Why do you—?”
“Credit. On a bad trip you only come out with mud, but Zakry pays high for mud. A good trip, you can come out with your hull covered with blackbrain or walnut-cushion or fringe.” Raym grinned, and Debby realized what it was that bothered her about Adjeness’s toothy smile.
Rather said, “This makes you—”
“No. You never hold onto it.”
“—Rich?”
Teeth. Raym was an older man, yet he still had half his teeth. Adjeness must be Debby’s age, but her smile was all teeth, with only three or four gaps. The rest were youths: no teeth missing at all.
Angular huts surrounded her
. Debby fought vertigo. Down in all directions; no tide. The Admiralty crew were forming a line as Carlot led them toward a huge transparent cylinder. They had flown all their lives. Their grace made Debby feel clumsy.
Debby eased into line behind Rather. The starstuff cylinder had an opening at one end. Debby brushed it with her wings as she went through. None of the others did.
Chapter Fifteen
HALF HAND’S
from the Citizens’ Tree cassettes, year 80 SM:
We’ve found a fungus with important medicinal properties…
Woodsman’s door had been braced hospitably open. A guest need only grip the rounded edge as he flew past, set his wings in the racks, and swing himself in. Booce entered an atmosphere rich with blackbrain tea.
Jonveev Belmy was a small woman, not much more than Clave’s height. Booce had watched her auburn hair turn gray over the years, but it was still long and thick. She was busy at a turning cookglobe. She stretched a foot to meet Booce’s hand.
Her grip was strong. “Booce, I’m so sorry about Wend. Is Ryllin all right?”
“She’s fine, Jonveev. We’re doing business with Citizens’ Tree, and that’s where she is now.” He wondered what Jonveev was thinking. Her concern was real, of course; but she had never dealt with Booce himself. In business matters Ryllin and Jonveev did the talking.
Jonveev swung the big globular teapot round her head to settle the water, then quickly opened the spigot. Steam puffed. Hilar wrapped the teapot in cloth and passed it to Booce. “I never saw a log come home like that. Do you want to talk about it?”
Booce sipped and swallowed. He liked his tea hot, and this was just off the boil. He savored old memories as much as the powerful, bitter taste. He said, “Not a lot—”
Hilar waved it off. “Oh, then we’ll—”
“I have no wish to drive you crazy at this time.”
“Tell us a story,” Jonveev said.
He told it long. Carelessness and bad luck; the fire; Wend dead, Karilly mute with shock. “There was a tuft tribe waiting to rescue us. They helped rebuild Logbearer. We found a tree.” Booce hesitated. “We were only half a thousand klomters from the Clump, Hilar, and we might’ve had to go halfway to Gold to find a better choice. It was big and it was close and we wanted to go home.”
“I never saw termites on a tree before.”
“A new breed, maybe. They’re dying now. They haven’t done that much damage, and it’s a lot of wood.”
“That it is. We have a problem,” Jonveev said.
The tea had come round again. Booce sipped and passed it on. “I notice you managed to sell some of your wood.”
“Some. Then the whole Market saw you coming and the orders dried up. I could have sold at a loss, but Jonveev thought—”
“I thought we might reach an agreement,” she said. “The merchants can’t whiplash us if one of us announces that his wood isn’t for sale.”
Booce smiled. Such things had been done. “We’d have to give them time to believe we mean it. Thirty sleeps or so. That’ll cost one of us.”
“We’re willing,” Jonveev said. “We’ll want something in return, of course.”
“Speak further.” He sipped. The bitter taste of blackbrain fungus was the taste of civilization and hospitality and homecoming. He wished with all his heart that Ryllin were here. If Hilar was tiptoeing round the edges of a risky venture, Ryllin would have known at once.
Jonveev said, “Booce, we’ll agree not to sell our tree until the next midyear. What I want is a loan at reasonable interest. Or I’ll offer you the same deal.”
Booce was silent.
“The loan would be, say, ten-to-fourth chits. Enough to keep one of us going for nearly a year.” She affected not to notice Booce’s sudden mirthless smile.
“I don’t have that much on hand. And you, I suspect, don’t need that much—”
“We’d need it if we don’t want to short-change some of our other concerns. But we can float such a loan and recoup it by selling our wood. On the other hand, whatever you’re doing with…what was it, Citizens’ Tree? It’s bound to bring you money, but not soon, stet? But you have a house that’s never been lived in.”
The tea caught in his throat. Booce swallowed carefully, managed not to sputter. He said, “Ryllin would wring my neck.”
“Well, then, you can’t do it,” Jonveev said instantly.
On second thought…he could put the house up for sale, to buy time. If he set the price high, buyers would hang back and wait, because the Serjents were supposed to be broke. If the Navy bought the Wart metal soon enough…he’d have to take a lower price, but he’d be able to keep the house.
But what did the Belmys have in mind? What would a loan do for them? It would be eating interest—“What interest?”
“We’d pay fifteen percent until the next midyear, or take the same.”
That was high but not out of line. His first niggling suspicion began to look like the truth. “I’ll sleep on it,” he said.
Wickerwork ran around the inside of the glass bottle and across the center; wickerwork everywhere, but you had to look twice to see it beneath the plants and mud. The mud was at the interstices, held in place by nets. Plants grew from the mud, bearing red and yellow spheres and cylinders. Leafy vines strangled the wickerwork, the mud, and everything else in sight.
It was a jungle with curving corridors through it. Debby felt a sudden terrible homesickness for Carther States…but the jungle of her childhood was drab compared to the Vivarium.
The old man who watched from within one of the openings was an elderly, undersized jungle giant. In the humid warmth he wore only a loose pair of short pants. His knees and elbows were knobby; his skin was yellow-brown, and there was something funny about his eyes. He watched the growing crowd in some surprise. He said, “Late, Adjeness.”
“Zakry, these are customers,” Adjeness Swart said firmly. “They’ve been living without earthlife since Checker knows when.”
“Have they.” The yellow man brightened. “Well, we can’t have that. Carlot Serjent, how good to see you! Adjeness, why don’t you show the crew what they’ve been missing?”
Carlot and the yellow man disappeared into the greenery. Adjeness Swart said, “Clave told me that. No earthlife crops. Is it true?”
“Almost,” Debby said. “We’ve got turkeys.”
Raym Wilby guffawed. Adjeness was suppressing a laugh. “Turkeys, stet. Try this.” She reached into a jungle of vines and plucked forth a red sphere. She sliced it apart with her knife and offered wedges around.
It was juicy. Its taste was strong. Debby chewed and swallowed, trying to decide if she liked it.
Rather plucked a slender yellow spike from the muck. Adjeness intervened. “Not that. Rather. You have to cook that. Try this. Don’t eat the skin.” The sphere Adjeness sliced up for him was orange outside and in. Rather bit into a wedge, and his eyes got big.
Being back on Earth would be like this, Debby thought. Alien. She recognized almost nothing.
There were people darting among the plants. They glanced incuriously at the intruders, then went back to what they were doing. Some sprayed water at the mud globules or the plants themselves. One was pushing a plant ahead of him; muddy pale appendages waved naked at one end. An older man floated slowly along an aisle, turning as he flew, to see in all directions.
Debby tried a slice of the orange sphere. The sweetness, the wonder of it almost paralyzed her. “Treefodder!”
“That’s an orange. This—”
“I can see that.” Debby reached at random. “What’s this, a yellow?”
“Plum. Not quite ripe.”
It was bitter, sour. Adjeness gave her a dark-red spheroid from another part of the plant cluster. “This should be better.”
It was.
“You wouldn’t want to spend all your funds on fruit,” Adjeness said. “You’ll want legumes too, but they have to be cooked. Let Carlot take you to Half Hand�
�s Steak House before you make any final decisions. Unless you’re really rich? Then you can buy everything.”
Clave said, “I’m not sure what we can afford. I haven’t heard any prices.”
Adjeness nodded. “Here. Eat everything but the center, and you can eat that if you want to. Apple.”
Rather asked, “Clave, did you eat like this in Quinn Tuft?”
“No. Hey, corn! We had corn before the drought. Here. Strip off the leaves. Now the silk too.” He smiled, watching Rather bite into it. “Just the outside, and it’s supposed to be cooked.”
“It’s okay this way. Leave the white stuff?”
“Stet.”
Raym’s hand sneaked into a bush as if without Raym’s knowledge. Three red objects each the size of his thumb went into his mouth all at once. Debby was nearly sure Adjeness had caught it. She only smiled.
Carlot and the slant-eyed man emerged from a leafy wall. Carlot’s voice was just slightly ragged. “Crew, Zakry Bowles is our host here. We’ll go look at the prices after we know some of what we want. How are you doing?”
“Carlot, it’s wonderful!” Rather burst out. “Oranges, plums, I think we want everything in sight. Zakry, can you eat everything here?”
“Almost. Every plant has something you can eat growing on it some of the time. These potatoes, you can’t eat what you see. The root’s down there in the mud. You don’t eat the inside of an ear of corn—”
“Clave told me.”
“Or the pit of a plum.”
“Oop.”
“What did you do, swallow it? It’ll come out all right in the end. Let me show you what else we’ve got—”
Bean vines grew mixed with the corn. They seemed to want to take over everything. “We stopped growing tobacco long ago,” Adjeness said. “Only the officers had fire handy, and they weren’t buying enough. This is lettuce.” Lettuce was leaves. It wasn’t as sweet as foliage. Strawberries were as startlingly good as oranges. Squash looked like jet pods. Zakry was enjoying himself.
They went back to the entrance to examine a list of prices. Clave memorized the numbers he was interested in. “Why so much for strawberries and bananas?”