by Larry Niven
Karilly was silent.
Clave folded his wives into his arms and forced apples on them.
Anthon slapped an orange from Debby’s hand. Rather heard: “You took this Admiralty man aboard the carm?” before his First Mother picked him up to hug him.
“You treefeeding fool,” Minya whispered. “You fool mutineer, you. Drillbits in your brains, both of you, you and your father. He never stopped wishing he’d gone too. Are you all right?”
“I’m in good shape. Mostly.” She pulled back to look into his face. He tried to look earnest. “First Mother, I’m allergic to dry, thin air. Not enough sleep does it too. It’s like knives in the eyes. I go blind. It lasts for hours.”
She started laughing. She said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and hugged him hard, still laughing. There were tears in her eyes. She put him down and saw him smiling slyly. She said, “It’ll never happen again. We’ll keep the tree where the air’s thick. You’d better go talk to Jill.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Talk to her first. Then I think—”
Jeffer shouted for attention. “I here present Raff Belmy. Raff and Carlot are married by Admiralty law. The record is in the cassettes.”
Over the heads of his brothers and sisters, Rather saw the judging-look fade from Jill’s face. She moved forward at last. Rather said, “Harry, can you give me some privacy? Take them along?”
Harry said, “Oh. Sure.” Somehow he got his siblings moving away before Jill reached him.
The judging-look was back. She said, “Rather. How are you?”
“Fine. Nobody made me a copsik. I didn’t get killed. Jill, I wanted to tell you.”
“Were you afraid I’d run tell my father?”
“If I wasn’t, the rest of us would have been. I couldn’t, Jill.”
He saw her reject that. She asked, “What was it like?”
“I’ll be a lot of days telling you that!” And suddenly it was a pain in him, that he couldn’t tell her about the raid, ever.
“What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “I was remembering how close I came to joining the Admiralty Navy. I got out of it though. Jill, dinner has to be something special. Is there time to cook some of this earthlife?”
“Couple of days yet.”
“I’ll show you what to do.” Take the kids too? He’d thought he wanted to be alone with Jill, but now he knew he didn’t. “Harry! Gorey! Bring those bags to the cookpot.”
The Admiralty slid west below him. Kendy began his burn, then turned to his instruments.
Neudar and the telescope array caught Admiralty Headquarters as it emerged from behind the Dark. The Library didn’t respond. It must be turned off. CARM #6 was nowhere in evidence. No pressure suit responded to his query.
Sharls Davis Kendy had made more than one mistake. For half a thousand years he had been frantic to begin guiding his citizens in the Smoke Ring. Now he could begin, and now he almost knew how. Opportunities would come.
A part of his attention scanned his growing file on RESOURCES, LOCAL USAGE:
Debby described Half Hand’s kitchen for Jeffer’s benefit.
Clave carried the helmet on a slow trip through Serjent House.
The camera viewpoint spun erratically through a cloud of children. Children had knocked the helmet off its usual perch at the lift, then played with it like a basketball. Kendy viewed the commons as a series of stills. Corridor openings, the water trap, the communal cooking area, children laughing as they bounded in slow arcs.
A series of angular Clump houses, wildly various.
Mark’s hut in various stages of construction. The silver suit had been housed there for a time.
Abruptly the CARM #2 control board came to life. Kendy sent his signal. Records came back: stills of various bored Guardians in their shared pressure suits, culminating in (present time) six jungle-giant men in a half circle around the control board, wearing anxious faces and spotless new uniforms. These must be officers; and now Kendy had their insignia.
The signal disintegrated with distance.
He rounded forty degrees of Smoke Ring before he made contact with CARM #6.
The vehicle was in its wooden dock at the midpoint of Citizens’ Tree. It was empty of citizens and cargo. That was Logbearer next to the left cage, and some smaller structure next to that. Kendy “stared”: he enlarged the image and examined it in detail.
They’d built a steam rocket.
They didn’t have a metal pipe or sikenwire, so they’d used ceramics. Fired mud! The laundry vat was part of it!
Records: the CARM on its way home. Logbearer was strapped along the hull. Booce was missing. Rather was present(!). The jungle-giant stranger matched the still of Hilar Belmy’s son.
Raff Belmy’s medical readings, originally ominous, settled down over passing days. Carlot must have helped to calm him down. Rather was being abnormally polite to both, and keeping his distance. The two spent considerable time out of sight aboard Logbearer.
Records: moving toward the Citizens’ Tree midpoint. The ceramic rocket returned ahead of the CARM. It puffed toward the in tuft, pushing a huge glob of black mud, and passed out of range.
Records: “Year 384, day 2400, Jeffer speaking as Scientist. Carm and Logbearer are both docked at Citizens’ Tree. This will be my last log entry until Kendy calls.
“Kendy, for your information, Rather got out of Headquarters safely. We refueled the jets on an Admiralty pressure suit and returned it. Captain-Guardian Mickl could have had the other suits refueled too, but he never brought them. Now he’s got a pressure suit with jets. We gave him some time to play, and then we told him what to do when they run out of fuel.
“We’ve had no further trouble. Booce got a good offer on the metal. The Navy was carving it up when we left.
“Rather suggests that Mickl wants the flying suit for himself. It’s something even the Admiral doesn’t have. He’s got a secret now, and we know it, and he’ll need us to keep it flying. That gives us a certain edge with the Captain-Guardian if we ever want to exploit it.
“We have some wealth and some influence in the Admiralty. We got it without your help. We do not appreciate your abandoning Rather in the middle of the raid.
“I’ve spent as much time waiting for your call as I care to. I’ll be back from time to time. If you haven’t called by the crossyear, which is three hundred and ninety-one days from now, I will turn Voice off.”
Nobody was near the CARM. The lift wasn’t running.
The CARM drifted out of range. Kendy scanned the far arc of the Smoke Ring out of habit; he had never seen signs of industrial activity there.
The Admiralty flowed below him. The Library had been turned off again.
Their ancestors hadn’t listened to him either. They’d turned off the Voice subsystems; they’d cut the fibers that allowed Kendy to fly a CARM by remote. He’d been completely cut off for half a thousand years. As he was now.
Rather was scrubbing his teeth and thinking about breakfast when the Silver Man came into the bach hut. He spit and said, “Mark?”
“Who else?” Mark threw back his helmet. The silver suit was filthy and stank of smoke. “I tried that. I felt silly.”
“Sure, silly. Mark, I saw their teeth. The older Admiralty citizens still have half their teeth! I bet Ryllin and Mishael have been scrubbing their teeth all along.” Rather remembered that this man wasn’t his father…and didn’t know it, and had a legitimate grievance. All in a rush he said, “I stole it. We thought we needed it and we did. It was right to go. Treefodder, Mark, you’re from a bigger tree! Don’t you feel cramped here?”
“Fifteen years I’ve felt cramped. Relax. You brought back some wonderful things. You brought back the carm and the suit and you didn’t ruin the suit.”
“You looked mad enough to kill when we came down.”
“That was three good dinners ago. I never thought I’d taste potatoes again. I know a better way to
cook them.”
“You forgive me? Mark, I’m really glad.”
“What are my choices? Sure I forgive you. We’re firing the new laundry pot.”
“Is it that late? I slept like a rock. Needed it too. These first few sleeps I just lay there wondering why one of the walls was pushing against me.”
“I’ve spent some sleepless nights here myself,” Mark said. “It’s lonely in the bach hut. We built it too big. Big enough for the next crop of men.”
“Maybe that’s it.”
“Have you talked to Jill?”
“Minya asked me that. We’ve talked. Why?”
“Yeah. Well.” Mark sometimes had trouble finding words. “Citizens’ Tree is strange. None of us grew up the way you did. There are adults and children and a big gap in between, so you couldn’t tell much from just watching older children grow up. Maybe there are things we should have said—”
“I know about sex, if that’s what you mean…Maybe I need to know more. Two women have told me to feed the tree. It hurts. What could you have told me about that?”
Mark whistled. “You started young. Well, someone could have said, ‘There’s only one suitable mate for you and there’s only one for Jill in this whole tuft, and she thinks she owns you, and maybe she’s right.’”
Rather let that percolate through his head. “Jill wants to make babies with me? Did she tell you that, or are you guessing?”
“I’m guessing. All I know is, when Instant Chairman Gavving told us you’d gone off with all the wealth of Citizens’ Tree, Jill was madder than I was, and that took some doing. She wanted you thrown into the sky with no wings. A hundred sleeps later she was sure you’d all be killed and she couldn’t see for crying.”
“I’ll go see her. Where is she?”
“Go easy, stet? You know you can find other mates. Jill doesn’t.”
“I don’t either. Sectry wants no part of me—” He couldn’t say why. Secrets. “And Carlot married someone else. You can’t imagine how bad that was. All the way home, Carlot and Raff. They spent most of their time in Logbearer. It wasn’t any better when I couldn’t see them.”
Mark said, “When nobody wants you in the first place, that’s worse. Trust me.”
“Mark, I’ve gotten very good at lying. I’m trying to stop.”
“Good. Go talk to Jill.”
“Where is she?”
“Everybody’s watching us fire the laundry vat except Jill. I’ve got to go back and see if anything needs doing. Try the miz hut. Then the commons.”
The deep voice hailed him as he entered. “Hello, Jeffer the Scientist. This is Kendy.”
Shouldn’t that have been Kendy for the State? Jeffer said, “Uh-huh. You missed all the excitement.”
“Not all. A large Navy ship is moving toward your position. They’ll reach you in eighty standard days.”
Jeffer took a moment to absorb the shock. He should have known. It wasn’t over; it never would be. There was no going back from the Clump expedition. No going back from knowing about the Admiralty.
He pulled himself forward to the control board. “That gives us some time to talk.”
The square, hard face in the bow window had always lacked expression. It said, “A bad thing happened to me, Jeffer. I learned too much about myself. There was no way I could communicate until now.”
“Lie to me, Kendy. Say there was something wrong with Voice.”
Kendy said, “The glitch was in myself. I think I have it fixed. Machines go bad, Jeffer. I left you a file under HISTORY. It’s selected records from the settling of the Smoke Ring. It explains some of what went wrong. Play it after I’m out of range.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“No.”
“Your timing was lousy. We thought you’d left Rather for treefodder. If you ever—”
“I can’t talk about it. It hurts my mind. Damage might be permanent. Do you seek vengeance against me?”
The trouble was that Kendy looked and sounded as calm as death. Kendy never showed anger, nor relief, love, pain. It was hard to believe he was hurting…yet he was not a man. Maybe. Maybe.
Jeffer said, “Well, we got home. I assume you got most of it from the log. The earthlife food stopped most of the arguments. Now all the reunited couples are busy making babies. The arguments haven’t gone away, though. They’re just simmering. It won’t help if there’s a Navy ship coming.”
“It’s coming. I couldn’t resolve details of design. There’s alcohol in the exhaust, and it’s coming from the Clump. Definitely Navy. What have you done with the seeds?”
“Seeds? We’ll plant them in the out tuft. Mark’s talking about building an extension to the lift before anything gets ripe enough to pick.”
“Cut some foliage so the sunlight can reach the plants. I can show you how to use water flow to move the lifts with less effort. You haven’t mentioned the fired mud rocket.”
“That’s nice, isn’t it? We don’t need the Admiralty’s treefeeding pipes.”
“You don’t need me,” Kendy said. He knew the risk he was taking. It was acceptable. “I’ve been looking at records. Most of what can be done with materials from Discipline can also be done with Smoke Ring resources. Lifts, housing, clothing, food, domestic animals. Now rockets. The Admiralty even has a heliograph.”
“No, we don’t need you,” Jeffer said, “but I never thought you’d know it.”
“A bad thing happened to me. I don’t trust my judgment any more. My intention has always been to make a civilization in the Smoke Ring, modeled on the State that shaped your ancestors. The Smoke Ring will never be that. How can I make a State in a place where I can’t even make maps?”
“Would we even like your State? Skip it. What do we do about that ship? I hope Sectry Murphy’s aboard. We’ll get some notion of what they want if Rather talks to her—”
“Hide the CARM in another tree. Tear out the dock too, or put the ceramic rocket there. Show them that. It’s not advanced, but it doesn’t need starstuff resources. It may impress them. Keep the CARM manned. There are two ways you might need it—”
“I won’t burn them!”
“One way, then. You can’t ignore the Admiralty. You’d really like to join as officers. You may have to show them the CARM before they’ll listen to that. Demand officer status, but they may settle for giving it to just the Chairman and Scientist—”
Jeffer laughed. “For a man who doesn’t trust his own judgment, you certainly—”
“I think fast. I plan fast. I make mistakes.”
“Anything else?”
“Mark might want to join the Navy. Sound him out. See if the Navy personnel might want him. I gather they don’t like older recruits, but Mark was trained in London Tree. Karilly may benefit from going back. Is she still mute?”
“Yes, but she’s also pregnant and happy. I’m not sure I want to fiddle.”
“I’m almost out of range. Back in two days. The code is HISTORY. Tell nobody of what you are about to learn.”
“K—”
“Unless in your judgment it would be beneficial.”
Kendy had never talked like this. “Stet.”
The face faded. Jeffer didn’t move for some time. Finally he tapped the white button. “Prikazyvat Voice.”
“Hello, Jeffer the Scientist.”
“Link to the pressure suit.”
“Done.”
“This is Jeffer calling anyone. Anyone home?”
“Hello? Scientist?” It was Jill’s voice.
“I want to talk to my wife.”
“I’ll get her. She’s on the branch.”
That would take most of a day. Jeffer started the HISTORY file and listened to it all the way through. Then he started it again.
Lawri climbed in through the airlock. “I didn’t have anyone but Rather and Jill for a treadmill team. Everybody else is on the branch. Now, what’s all the excitement, Scientist?”
“Prikazyvat Voice. Ru
n HISTORY.”
Dead voices spoke. Discipline’s crew reported the discovery of a weird cosmological anomaly. Some of what followed was familiar from the cassettes. Some was entirely cryptic.
“How long have you had this?” Lawri demanded.
“Kendy only just filed it. I…I’ve been in contact with him since before we left for the Clump.”
Lawri was coldly angry. “That was mutiny! How could you not trust me?”
“I’m trusting you now. Listen.”
They heard a highly formalized quarrel. Some of the participants argued for settling the Smoke Ring; some were for moving on to an unnamed destination. Kendy spoke in favor of staying, then tried to terminate the argument. It continued.
There were parts of a broadcast from Discipline to Earth: it had been decided that they would settle the Smoke Ring environment.
There was a message from Earth: Retrieve your crew.
“And that’s it. Kendy got conflicting orders,” Jeffer said. “It tangles his mind. He can’t go for new orders because Earth is too far away, and he can’t make up his own mind because he’s a machine, and he can’t talk about it because it drives him nuts. If that’s all true, he must be close to crazy all the time. The question is, what do we do now?”
Lawri said, “We can play it through the silver suit. Play it for the whole tribe. Tell everyone.”
“It’ll start some fights.”
“Feed the—”
He rode her down. “There’s a Navy ship coming. The fights’ll have to be over when it gets here. Eighty days.”
“Stet. Play it at dinner.”
“…Stet.”
The situation was ideal in its way. They were together, but they couldn’t talk. There were only the two of them to run the lift. It took all their breath. Jill scrambled over the rungs, keeping up with him. Her tuftberry-red tunic was dark with sweat at chest and armpits. Her hair was a golden halo, as interesting and as beautiful as Sectry’s scarlet.
After the cages passed each other, they let the treadmill carry them round and round. Then it was time to throw their weight on the brake. The lower cage settled. Rather and Jill dropped into soft foliage and panted.