Bram understood Kerthin’s feelings. He had gone back with her for one more of Penser’s meetings at the former sculptor’s studio and found a much-reduced membership of dispirited people. Two-thirds of the new recruits had melted away, leaving only a hard core of dedicated fanatics like Pite. Penser’s pep talk about human supremacy had been perfunctory. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. There had been no talk of weapons or violence. Bram had managed a peek into the storeroom off the corridor and found that it had been cleared out.
“Dreams can’t be destroyed,” Bram said. “Penser’ll have to pick up the pieces and start over again, that’s all. But without all the destructive elements. He has the same chance as anybody else for political influence. All he’s got to do is behave himself. The Ascendists are willing to forgive and forget — in spite of a man’s death. They’ve already said they’re willing to intercede with the Nar and take steps to legitimize Penser’s presence here. Maybe he turned himself into a fugitive on Juxt One, but now he has the chance for a fresh start.”
“Pygmies,” Kerthin said. “They’re pygmies tearing down a giant. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to finish roughing this out.” She savagely slapped more clay on the form, patted it into place, and began to pare it down with a knife.
Bram watched her for a few minutes, then shook his head and left.
Through Bram’s port, Lowstation loomed ahead, a six-sided piece of carpentry that some giant had left hanging against the stars. It was doing a lot of business today. A dozen or more ferries hovered like tiny barbs around the common apex of the six wooden triangles, waiting their turn at the hub docking facilities.
“I’m afraid they’re going to leave us parked for a while,” he said, looking across to the adjoining acceleration nests where Marg and Orris were lying. “There’s quite a jam ahead of us.”
“They may take us out of turn,” Marg told him. “They do that sometimes. Passengers first, freight second.”
Orris was unfastening his webbing and struggling to sit up, though it wasn’t strictly within the rules. As an old hand of five or six round trips during the past months of acclimatization, he didn’t take the gentle accelerations of docking maneuvers very seriously.
“Last minute rush,” he said. “It’s mostly freight an this voyage. All the things you need to open up a new world — even though Juxt One’s been settled for generations. Seeds, tools, frozen soil organisms, heavy machinery. It never stops. There’re still whole undeveloped continents, new moons to get started on, and the industrial base there just can’t handle it yet.”
“How many Nar are making the trip?” Bram asked.
He gave half his attention back to the window. The great timbered hexagon filled half the black sky. Bram could see the wriggling silver specks swarming around the parked shuttles: space-suited Nar manhandling the cargo flats out of the bays and lashing on the booster units that would send them along to the tree.
“A couple of thousand,” Orris said. “Close to the minimum for their kind of social dynamics on a seven-year trip. Most of them are still planetside for final touch ceremonies. They’ll be ferried up en masse just before the tree spreads its leaves for departure.”
Marg gave a tinkling laugh. “At this point, we humans have the tree practically to ourselves. There’s only a skeleton crew of Nar aboard.”
“That’s right,” Orris said. “With two hundred colonists and all the well-wishers, we outnumber the Nar temporarily.”
“Do they have their own branch?” Bram asked.
“No, they’re several miles upstairs from us — same branch, closer to the trunk. Ecology control and life support are more efficient that way — just one set of lines to the sapwood. They’ll be living at about nine-tenths of a gravity. They’ve got a cross section of three or four miles with I don’t know how many levels. Of course, they need a lot more living space than we do.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted,” Bram said.
“Good distance makes good neighbors,” Marg said, quoting a Quarter poet who was known for his crusty Resurgist views.
Bram was shocked. In his involvement with the Ascendists and with Penser’s Schismatist extremists, he’d forgotten that there were others in the human community who had their own reasons for wanting to have little to do with the Nar.
“Well, humans have their own social institutions,” Bram said diplomatically, “but as kids we all had Nar playmates.”
“Oh, I have nothing against the Nar,” Marg said hastily, belatedly remembering Bram’s friendship with Tha-tha and his close relationship with Voth. “It’s just that we have our own lives, don’t we?”
“What Marg means,” Orris said, laughing, “is that she doesn’t really trust anyone she can’t cook for.”
Outside the port, the enormous mitered joints of the space station’s hub grew until they filled the view. They were among the parked shuttles now. Bram saw a cluster of space-suited Nar dock workers, like a bouquet of double-ended flowers, swimming outward on their thrusters with the wide circular mouth of a docking tube. But it wasn’t meant for Bram’s ship. As Bram watched, they hitched the free-turning collar of the tube to the nose of a shuttle that had just arrived.
Orris was beside him at the port. “They’re going to make us wait,” he said. “You might as well get out of your webbing and move around.”
“The human traffic was heavier than anticipated,” the Nar attendant said apologetically. “And now I’m afraid there’ll be another wait while additional transfer vehicles are brought over.”
Orris sighed. “We might as well go to the passenger lounge. There’s a fairly good human canteen there. Though from the look of this mob, it’s going to be overcrowded.”
Bram looked at the crowd that was swarming around the attendant to ask questions. But they were not the ones who were worrying him. He was disturbed by some of the shuttle passengers who came through the disembarkation tube one at a time and avoided the reception area, swimming along the walls toward the drop chutes, carrying oddly shaped luggage — long narrow parcels or bulbous padded shapes that even in free fall could be seen to mass a lot for their size. Bram didn’t know any of them by name, but he recognized two or three faces from Penser’s earlier gatherings.
He considered saying something to the Nar attendant, but that being was busy with other passengers, and besides, there was really nothing definite Bram could say. At any rate, the stopover at Lowstation would last at least a couple of hours, and there would be time to find out more.
“This way,” Orris said.
They joined the rivulet of mostly Nar passengers heading rimward. There might be a temporary jam of human stopovers bound for the Juxt One tree, but Lowstation still carried its usual quota of intrasystem traffic and traffic to Ilf and the moons of the lesser sun’s system.
At the heads of the drop chutes, friction mittens had thoughtfully been provided for human transients. The Nar had ten braking surfaces to alternate with, but human beings had to make do with hands and feet unless, of course, one panicked and wrapped oneself completely around the pole.
Orris made a protective fuss over Marg, though the implanted blastocyst that she was host-mothering could scarcely have been causing her any inconvenience yet. But she would have none of it. She jumped into the tube without hesitation, caught the central pole with her mittened hands, and drifted blithely downward, her opulent body buoyed horizontally against the air resistance. Orris gave Bram a proud smile and jumped in after her.
At the quarter-g level they transferred to a bucket and rode the rest of the way sedately to the rim. The passenger lounges were near the spokes, fortunately. The gradient in the artificial gravity caused by the difference between a spinning hexagon and a spinning wheel could be a bit disorienting for a human being; besides, there was that uphill walk back to the spoke just when one was in a hurry and trying to get out.
The lounge was a dramatic slice of the thousand-foot triangle, rising all t
he way to the hub, with a cliff of solid wood for one wall and two window walls looking out on space. Seating was arranged in tasteful conversational groups — multipedestals for Nar, banquettes for humans.
“We’re not going to get into the canteen,” Orris said. “Look at that howling mob around the entrance.” He scanned the lounge. “There’re some empty seats over there next to the vertex. Why don’t you two grab them? I’ll see if I can fight my way through to the service font and bring back some refreshments for us.”
He scurried off. Bram smiled at Marg and steered her over to the vacant banquette. Halfway there she stopped and put a hand on his arm.
“Look,” she said. “Isn’t that Kerthin?”
Bram’s smile froze in place. He looked across the crowded lounge and saw her, standing next to the group with the oddly shaped luggage.
“Yes,” he said, hiding his dismay. “She must have made it, after all. You go on ahead and claim those seats. I’ll go get her.”
Marg gave Kerthin a broad, unreturned wave and proceeded onward. Bram, feeling hollow, walked with a heavy step over to where Kerthin was standing.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
She gave him a sullenly defiant stare. “I left about an hour after you did. I didn’t think there’d be this jam at Lowstation. I thought I’d see you at the tree and everything could be explained then.”
“Explained? Explain what?”
“Relax, Brammo,” a detested voice cut in. “You’re right on schedule. When Kerthin told us you’d be coming up to the tree under your own power, it saved us the trouble of coming to get you. We’re going to need a biological technician.”
Bram whirled to face him. He wouldn’t have recognized Pite at a casual glance. The short blond beard had been shaved off. Pite looked a lot older, with a tight little V-shaped mouth and a pair of deep lines coming down from the corners of his nose.
“I’m having nothing to do with any of your schemes. Penser promised to drop them, whatever they were. Where is he? Is he here?”
“You don’t have any choice, gene brother,” Pite said softly. “You’ve been conscripted. So have your friends over there, though they don’t know it yet.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bram said. “But a man’s dead back in the Quarter, and there’s not going to be any more violence. I think the Lowstation authorities need to know you’re here.”
One of the Penserites, a large man carrying a long cylindrical parcel with a bulge at one end, moved closer and put a hand on Bram’s arm. It was Spak. He looked different, too. Instead of a mono with sawed-off sleeves, he wore ill-fitting holiday garb.
“That’s not a good idea, Brammo,” Pite said, smiling with his new, narrow little mouth. “You wouldn’t want to make any of the gene brothers nervous. Think what a firebottle would do in a crowded place like this.”
“You’re crazy,” Bram said. “You people are crazy.”
“Now, there’s a useful thought, gene brother. Keep hanging on to it in case you’re tempted to do something foolish. We’ll see you at the tree.”
Bram shook off Spak’s hand and took a backward step. “Are you coming, Kerthin?” he said stiffly.
“That’s right, Brammo,” Pite said. “You just go back to your friends there and keep your mouth shut, and no one will get hurt. Remember, you’re being watched all the way. Why, if you got any wrong ideas, there’s no telling who might get in the way while you were being dealt with. That pretty little lady over there, for instance.”
As Bram walked back across the teeming floor with Kerthin at his side, he felt his heart pounding. He would have to wait his chance, that was all. Perhaps he could manage to slip out of Pite’s surveillance long enough to slip a warning to a Nar officer later on — while boarding the transfer vehicle or docking at the tree. Till then he would have to be cautious.
“How could you do it, Kerthin?” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve been lying to me all along, haven’t you? I thought you’d come to your senses. You saw what happened back there in the Quarter. These people are outside any concept of interspecies or even human comity.”
She gave her bronze hair a toss. “You can’t make an omelet —” she began.
“I know,” he sighed. “Without stirring an egg. There’s Marg. Try to put a smile on your face, if you can.”
There were no opportunities to break away and inform Nar personnel about the dubious nature of some of their human transients. One or more of Pite’s spurious merrymakers seemed to be at Bram’s elbow at all times. They mingled with the other tourists and tree dwellers, bearing their odd packages, bunching up in groups of not more than two or three. Bram thought there had been nine or ten in his own shuttle load and probably about the same number in the shuttle that had ferried Pite and Kerthin. How many other shuttles had contained a contingent of Penserites, he could not guess.
Once, as his group of passengers filed through the embarkation area for the orbital transfer vehicle, Bram had caught sight of a Nar communications officer with a portable sleeve slung from his waist in one-tentacle conversation with a pod-festooned port official, and he had tried to edge out of the flow toward them. But Spak was hovering close behind him, and another burly Penserite moved up, hemming him in.
“Pite doesn’t trust you,” Kerthin said with something like entreaty in her voice, “but he says it won’t matter after we get to the tree. They’re not going to let you out of their sight till then. Please don’t do anything foolish. I’m — I’m afraid of him.”
“Why won’t it matter?” Bram said. “What’s going to happen in the tree?”
“It’ll be all right, you’ll see. Nobody has to get hurt.”
“You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you? What did Pite mean about all of us being conscripted?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but at that point Orris bumbled over to them and said, “Don’t let’s get separated. We can get seats together on the transfer boat.”
Orris bobbed impatiently around them in the almost nonexistent gravity of the departure bay and, lifting them delicately off the floor with a hand under their elbows, towed them over to where Marg was doing an efficient low-gravity shuffle toward the tube mouth. Three big Penserites closed in around them and moved right along with them. One of them bumped into Marg, but she didn’t seem to notice.
During the long process of matching orbits with the tree, Bram had no chance to talk to Kerthin alone. Orris babbled on unchallenged about the marvelous qualities of the blastocycst that Marg was carrying and its glorious future on Juxt One, while Marg glowed at them, looking smug. The three Penserites hemmed them in, sitting stiffly and trying to look like tourists. Bram tried to pick out other Penserites among the passengers. He counted up to eleven — about half the number he’d seen at Lowstation. Pite was not among them; they must have split up into different contingents again. Bram wondered how many Penserites were already aboard the tree.
He thought he might have another chance to alert the Nar authorities when the ground crew wrestled the transfer boat into the hangar in the tree. There would be a certain amount of confusion as the vacuole repressurized and the passengers disembarked. He watched tensely as the silver-suited Nar winched the boat inside and the great living doors flapped shut and sealed the chamber off from space. The tree breathed air into the chamber, and the passengers were on their feet and milling around impatiently before the hurricane ceased. Bram spilled out of the vehicle with the rest and with incredible luck managed to find himself separated briefly from Orris, Marg, Ker, thin, and his watchdogs.
The Nar personnel who had jockeyed the boat inside were still swarming around, casting off hawsers, checking the boat, assisting passengers. But they were all still in their space suits. None of them would have been able to hear a word he might say.
A Nar dock worker saw Bram looking around distractedly, glided smoothly over to take him by the arm, faced him in the right direction, and started him on hi
s way to the inner lock door. Bram looked helplessly at the row of mirror eyes behind the suit’s waistplate and tried to pantomime the idea that the Nar should lift the visor. But the dock worker didn’t understand human body language. He guided Bram firmly toward the open lock, and then the Penserites had caught up with him, and Orris was loping toward him, yelling, “Hey, wait for us.”
And then the door closed behind him, and his last chance was gone.
The great hall had been fitted out as a farm chamber since the last time Bram had been there. Tall aisles of sunflowers quested toward the lightpipes overhead. A potato field was a grid of burgeoning dark green foliage. Tanks of lettuce marched in multilevel rows along the borders. Winged beans climbed the stalks of the soycorn.
“We’ll have our first crop in a few more Tendays,” Orris said. “I’m on the pollinating committee.”
“Of course, we’re self-sustaining already,” Marg said. “We grow enough microbial protein and industrial fungi to feed an army.”
“I’ll take you through later and show you the brewvats,” Orris said. “Jao’s in charge. He’ll want to give you the grand tour.”
“But first we’ll show you our quarters,” Marg said. “I’ll whip up a little something for us.”
They strolled down an avenue of squash tubs that were already spilling a profusion of growth over the edges. People sat around on the rims of the tubs talking and sipping drinks. The enormous chamber still seemed to be the favorite gathering spot in the tree. All the greenery made it a pleasant place to loiter. It would do until the voyagers got a proper park going elsewhere.
As they walked, Bram took stock of the vacuole’s bright interior, listening with half an ear to what Marg and Orris were saying. Several hundred people were scattered among the garden patches or ambling along the paths. He could see Penserites everywhere among them, identifiable by their purposeful demeanor and by the parcels most of them carried.
The three who had been shadowing him seemed to have disappeared. Maybe it was because they had nothing more to fear from him. There were no Nar in the human sector of the tree. At least Bram hadn’t seen any so far.
The Genesis Quest Page 25