by Larry Niven
Stevn said, “She went off into the bushes with the Guardian. Right out of the bath, naked, hauling that silver suit after them.”
Alin suppressed a guffaw.
“But she got the bath set up first. The silver suit has a smell to it that must be four hundred years old. Yug! Getting the suit off him was like pulling teeth, and getting the smell off took awhile, and now he’s back in the suit.”
“He did save her life…yours too.”
“Sorry.”
Harp recognized Alin, or maybe Stevn, and waved. They both waved back. Alin asked, “Did anyone ever tell you about bards?”
“What about bards?”
“Bards don’t marry. It seems to be that way in every tree. There’s always a bard, and bards belong to everyone. Nobody gets mad if his wife rubs up against a bard, and of course they’re usually men. Harp is the only woman bard I know about.”
“Have you rubbed up against Capability’s Harp?”
Alin nodded.
“Does Mom know?”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t care?”
“It makes Natlee furious every time she thinks about it. But it’s not supposed to. Stevn—”
“We don’t mention her.”
“She’ll ask. She’ll know what tree came apart. Stick with me, stet? Harp will never speak a word to me without you right beside me.”
“Stet.”
“I wonder why the dwarf? They all saved her life. Did she—”
“Just the dwarf.”
The little man was a power in the Admiralty. And he was short.
They worked their way down a slope of foliage half-shaped into ledges. Stevn and the rest had uncovered just the rim of the hemispherical bowl. It was very crowded. Above the sloshing and murmuring Alin called, “Captain Ling?”
“Who asks?”
“Your companion in flight.”
“Kitemaster! Join us by all means!” Ling lolled in a soup of bodies. “I must say, it’s startling to find such luxury beneath the mask of overgrown foliage. The seats above the treemouth, for instance. And the firepit. Elegant.” Something in his tone suggested that Captain Ling did not quite approve.
Alin stripped and entered the water. It wasn’t jarringly cold. Thirty-odd bodies must have warmed it.
He must have been in body contact with half that many. He let his eyelids fall and savored sensations. His head lolled on someone’s shoulder, somebody’s child wiggled under his arm, a near-infant stood on his knee and studied him. Ripples marched as someone scrubbed someone’s back. A foot caressed his calf and a woman smiled. Sleepy eyes were all about him, the sloshing and the faintly heard music and the quiet.
And the Silver Man settling himself on a ledge above the bath. “Captain Ling, what’s going to happen to the rest of your tribe? Just how much rescue are they going to need? Harp tried to tell me a little—”
“Yes. Well, splitting is how integral trees breed.” Ling showed no anger at being confronted in his bath. “They fall apart. Now, the half that’s falling in, it’s got only the in tuft, stet? The other end was the midpoint; it’s just broken wood.
“So the wind is blowing just on the in tuft, so it blows the whole tree east, the way the Smoke Ring turns. You push the tree east, it wants a wider orbit. East takes you out. Likewise the other half-tree, which is falling out—”
“So they’re both being pushed back to the median.”
“Exactly. The wind blows it west, against its motion, so it wants a narrower orbit. Then again, the out half-tree had the rocket motor. It can get back by itself.”
“So now you’ve got two Capability Trees?”
“Maybe. Maybe inhabited by corpses. We’ll be very glad of your rescue maneuvers.”
A man began scrubbing Alin’s upper back; a woman started on his lower back. Then they traded. Body language and blooming romance across Alin’s back. It would have been fun without the treefeeding Silver Man…who…
He said, “Guardian, thank you for your courtesy to my son.” Fair’s fair.
Maxell Curtz was glad that he had bathed earlier. Older citizens often said that the Clump had grown crowded; but they never got as close together as this! His inclination was to loll in the foliage somewhere and remember Harp while he listened to Harp’s voice. Instead, with Renho and Dunninger, he perched on the rim of the bowl and tried to make conversation.
To Alin Newbry he said, “Not at all. Stevn guided us to where we could do some real good.” The so-called Kitemaster was in his thirties, short (but not dwarfed) and muscular, like any climber, but with a kiteman’s startling muscular development in his wrists and forearms. Maxell asked, “Your people used to live here?”
“Up to a couple of years ago. A little after we joined the Grove, most of the crops died. We had to move out. Sitzen and Research and Capability Trees gave us seeds, but we still had to get to the Admiralty and buy more. It’s the only time any of us have gone to the Admiralty.”
“Good thing you were already in reach,” Maxell said. Give. Buy. For sixty people in a tree, it was easy to keep obligations straight. For eleven trees in a Grove, not so easy. A tree might move, or come apart. For two thousand people in a region that changed shape faster than any artist could draw a map…
Money was less fragile than memory; money lost shape less easily than an obligation.
Admiralty ships had contacted a good many trees over past centuries. Some moved into the East Grove, for access to the Admiralty and the benefits of civilization. Too many did not. For that matter—“How did you get into the Grove, Kitemaster? We looked for a steam rocket.”
“Guardian, that’s classified.”
The man was within his rights. Maxell changed the subject. “Captain Ling, we are gathering civilization. Why is it that any tree doesn’t come to us right away?”
Harp’s music had faded: she was listening.
“Our ships go out through the Smoke Ring to find the places of Man. We talk. We leave word how to find the Admiralty. We leave plans for steam rockets. You need a way to move your tree anyway, because any passage past Gold can hurl you out into the gas torus where you’ll suffocate.”
“We built our rocket without help,” Ling said. Alin Newbry said nothing.
A tree couldn’t just drift into the Grove, could it? Sure it could. It wasn’t likely, but it could happen…and a treeful of climbers might well enjoy bewildering the all-powerful Admiralty.
“The Admiralty is the center of knowledge throughout the Smoke Ring. Why would any tribe hesitate?”
Harp was quietly settling between Curtz and Stevn.
Ling said, “I wouldn’t want to offend our rescuers.”
“I seriously want to know, Captain.”
Captain Ling said, “Well, your Admiralty isn’t all good.”
“How so?”
“The air’s thick with garbage.”
“There are garbage collectors.”
“They don’t collect it all.”
Ling had hit a nerve. The garbage problem had increased with the population, even in Maxell’s brief lifespan.
Ling said, “We don’t visit the Clump that often, but word does pass among the trees, Guardian. We’re told about the garbage, the crime rate…theft…violence…fringe addiction.”
“Don’t you have these things in a tree?”
“Not really. We know each other, don’t you see? You can’t use what you steal. It’ll be recognized. If you’re a bully, six of us other bullies will give you flying lessons, and if it keeps up, you’ll do it without wings. Fringe…well, fringe is fun, but it messes up your head. But nobody robs somebody for fringe. He finds it on the trunk. If he gets too fond of the stuff, we’ll still take care of him. He’ll be keeping the cookpot clean instead of hunting.”
He was getting reasonable answers. Joy! Maxell asked, “Couldn’t you be robbed by another tree?”
“They’d face hunting tools. Knives, harpoons, bows. But your Navy doesn’t like it whe
n climbers carry those things in the Clump, so we can be robbed there.”
“Rescue?”
Harp spoke just beside him. “We hear stories about that too. We’re in debt now, aren’t we?”
Again? “Well, yes and no, Harp. The Admiralty thinks that charity works best if it pays for itself.”
“If I don’t understand that right away, it’s because Capability Tree never heard about money until we reached the Grove. So how are we expected to pay?”
“Labor, and there’s no hurry. You’ll pay some of the debt in mud.”
“Mud?”
“You have property rights in the mud that was the core of your tree. That stuff makes fine fertilizer.”
Harp laughed.
Dunninger said, “I hauled mud myself before I joined the Navy.”
Alin Newbry asked, “Can that be done with kites?”
“That’s how we did it.” Dunninger lifted his arms. “See?”
“Kiteman?”
“Right.”
“If Brighton had had money, we could have just bought kites from a passing citizen. And kite-making instructions. And flying lessons. I don’t mind how hard I had to work for my kites,” Newbry said, “but what are we missing that we never thought of? We should have gone to the Clump long before. Then again…mud. We’d be competing with Admiralty kitemen. And you’ve been at it a lot longer than we have.”
“Yup. And we’ve got ships to haul the bigger blocks. Too bad,” said Dunninger.
Renho said, “You’re closer, though.”
“About ten times closer.” Newbry was suffering badly from indecision.
“You could be in there now,” Dunninger said. “Can’t deal with the Admiralty unless you tree has money. The Vivarium pays money for mud. Half goes to the hauler. And if you’re in there pulling mud around, you might run across a last refugee, the one who’s injured and can’t yell for help.”
Curtz was wishing he’d planned this. He thought he knew what would end Newbry’s hesitation. “The Admiralty merchants won’t even be in the easterly fringes for twenty or thirty days. Take some time to rest, you’d still make it.”
“Maybe.” Newbry pulled himself out of the water. “Time we were going. Come on, Stevn.”
YEAR 419 DAY 121
Where the lift lines turned at the midpoint, Alin and Stevn let go and kept coasting along the bark. Their kites were furled in their hands.
“You’re going,” Stevn said.
“I think so. Tow some of the mud from Capability Tree to the Vivarium. You want to come along?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Alin heard bitterness and didn’t like it. “This isn’t lives at stake, and the other boys have had time to rest. So?”
No answer.
“Bertam and Gilly and Marlow must have had five days’ sleep already. I’m dead tired, but I’m the Kitemaster, and Hell can freeze over before I let the Admiralty take all our mud. You’re dead tired too. So stay in the tuft.”
Stevn said, “I was scared all the time.”
“Ah.”
“I got the sails set, and I was never sure they were right. At first I was going way wide of the Navy ship, but I got myself turned, and then I still wasn’t sure. How far in can I go before the tree’s too far behind me to ever get back? What if the fog thickens up and I get lost? The sky goes on forever. What if the navvies never see me? The Scientist says if I get too far from the air I’ll pass out. Then what?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t want to say so.”
The other pulley was near. Alin snatched at an edge of bark sheet with one hand, got Stevn’s ankle with the other, and stopped their flight. “Here’s your ride down.”
Stevn didn’t move.
“I thought I was going to die, my first solo flight,” Alin said. “Everything I did took me farther from the tree. A triune family looked me over and never even bothered to separate.”
Stevn laughed.
“The only reason I was out there was, I didn’t want to be Liftmaster’s Apprentice the rest of my life. It looked like Liftmaster Kent was going to live forever. Still does.
“So you go on. Tell the Captain what’s going on, and ask him to send the other boys up. Tell your mother I’m going to make Brighton rich—”
“Dad, why don’t you tell them yourself?”
“No, I’ll stay on the trunk. I need the rest.”
“The Silver Man says you’ve got twenty or thirty days to rest! Talk things over with the Captain. See what we want from the Clump. You might even talk Mom into something.”
“Hah.”
Stevn’s face closed down. He reached for the lift line.
Alin said, “Hold it. I see a lob. Let’s get a meal before we go down.”
“Where?”
“He’s poking an eye over the bark, just there. That must be where his burrow is. Got your harpoon?”
“Yeah.”
“I just don’t like arguing,” Alin said. “I’d rather fly away, and I damn sure know some places nobody can follow me. I know I have to talk sometime, but it’s…it’s just…But if I can’t talk to your mother, my children’s mother, then I can’t talk to anyone, can I? Even you.”
“You’re coming down?”
“Yeah. But first I’ll show you how to boil a lob in zero tide.”
About The Author
larry niven was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, California. In 1956, he entered the California Institute of Technology, only to flunk out a year and a half later after discovering a bookstore jammed with used science-fiction magazines. He graduated with a B.A. in mathematics (minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Kansas, in 1962, and completed one year of graduate work before he dropped out to write. His first published story, “The Coldest Place,” appeared in the December 1964 issue of Worlds of If. He won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1966 for “Neutron Star,” and in 1974 for “The Hole Man.” The 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novelette was given to The Borderland of Sol. His novel Ringworld won the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmar, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.