by Larry Niven
“Just so!” Carlot joined her. “You pull the plug. You blow in it. When the water spurts back at you, you slam the plug in quick.”
“I could get a lungful of water that way.”
“Sure you could. We’ve all done our share of choking. Father taught us this so he wouldn’t have to do it himself.”
“Why does it blow back?”
“I…Dad?”
Booce said, “The steam pushes both ways. Out the nozzle, and backward too. That churns the water so more water comes down the pipe. After the rocket settles down, it’s thrust that pulls the water through. The back-pressure holds it from going in too fast. You can let the rocket run till the water’s almost gone.”
Carlot said, “You’ve got to let the pipefire die before the tank’s empty. Otherwise you’ll char the nozzle and the tank both. It’s a mess if you have to throw water on a pipefire.”
The storm was definitely reaching out to enfold the tree …and the jungle was closer too. Booce pointed. “Carlot—”
Carlot looked. “Happyfeet?”
“Maybe. Debby, what have we got for weapons?”
“Harpoons. The rocket, I guess.”
“Not enough. All right, ladies. Maybe it’s just a loose jungle, and even if it’s happyfeet they may not have noticed anything, but I think we should hide.”
“Hide?” Debby was outraged. “Booce, that’s not much of a jungle. Carther States was twenty times that size.”
The jungle was closer now, a fuzzy green ellipsoid with a shadowy slit in it, as if foliage had been shorn away to form a window into the interior. Booce said, “A jungle that size can hold a family of twenty or thirty. Debby, a tree is big. We can vanish into cracks in the bark and never be seen. I…think we’ve got time. Help me take the rocket apart.”
“Booce, it was tough enough putting it together!”
“You think I like this?” But Booce and Carlot were already tugging at pipe and nozzle, and Debby perforce joined them.
“The pipe is…priceless. We…can’t let happyfeet…get it.” Booce gasped in the thin air. The nozzle jerked loose and tumbled along the bark with Booce wrapped around it. His voice drifted back. “The rest they can have. We’ll hide the pipe in some crack and guard it. Now we really won’t have time to make cabins.”
They pulled loose the pipe and water tank. The green puffball was closer yet, and a line of vapor trailed behind it. The vapor trail became a curve…
Debby said, “It’s dropped five men. Winged. Now it’s going away.”
Nozzle and tank floated, slowly rotating. Now Booce was free to look. “They’re making for the Wart.”
“We can’t let them have it!” Debby cried.
“Well, the truth is, we can,” Booce said. He was pushing the pipe ahead of him, kicking hard. Carlot and Debby flew to help. “Maybe the CARM can take it back for us. If not…we don’t need the Wart to reach the Clump. Those five that were dropped are after us.”
The log was far east, drifting in the fringe of a storm complex. Rather found it before Jeffer did: shadow backlit by the sun.
Jeffer chased it down. The CARM arced over the top of the out tuft, moved in along the east side of the trunk. The dock came into view: a rectangle of bare wood, ragged around the edges. Rather felt the pull of the forward jets and heard pondwater slosh toward him. Water had spread along the CARM’s walls and was creeping forward.
He wasn’t actually getting used to this, was he?
“Where’s the rocket?” Clave sounded merely puzzled.
Where they had built the rocket, there was nothing. Wait…there, drifting loose, a pale-brown bell shape: the nozzle. There, some distance away, a brown ellipsoid trailing lines. Where was Carlot? Where was anyone?
“What happened here?” Clave demanded. “An explosion?”
Had there been a fire? Rather found only the small black scar of the cookfire. The arrangements around it were undisturbed.
Jeffer said, “We can’t search the whole tree. Where’s the sun?’’ Straight east. “We won’t get Kendy for another day.”
“Take us in,” Rather said.
Jeffer looked at him. “Why?”
“Just a guess.” Carlot had gone in, last sleep.
Jeffer swung the CARM toward Voy and fired the jets.
They skimmed above the bark. The fog was around them now.
Jeffer played with the controls. “There,” he said suddenly. “Five men.” But what showed in the window was an abstraction, orange blobs on red-and-black.
“We’re seeing by heat,” Jeffer said. For an instant the normal view returned: fog sliding along black bark. Then the red-and-black was back. “Didn’t Booce say something about happyfeet?”
“Find our people,” said Clave.
“Mmm…there.” Three orange blobs in a line. By normal light they became three human shapes lined along a crack. “And the rocket pipe, I think. Rather?”
Rather quickly disengaged his seat belt and moved aft.
He pulled the silver suit out of the water and slid his legs inside. Clave said, “Good. Get the rest of it on and go join the others. Take some harpoons. They won’t have weapons. Jeffer, how did they get here?”
“Good question. I don’t see anything that could have brought them. Something could be around the other side of the bark.”
Rather waited while Clave bound six harpoons against the silver suit’s chest. Air on; voice on. “Can you hear me?”
His voice blurted from the control panel, and Jeffer jumped. “I hear you fine.”
“Let me out.”
The bark was half a klomter distant. Rather used his jets. He thrilled to the pull of thrust along his body: blood leaving his head, abdomen settling toward his feet. Not quite a comfortable sensation, but one few others could share.
Behind him, the CARM accelerated south around the curve of the trunk and was gone.
Carlot and the others had seen the CARM; they waved.
Two klomters toward the blue blur of Voy, a hundred meters out from the tree, green-clad men emerged from the fog. They flew along the bark, peering into cracks as they passed. At this distance Rather could see only that they were five jungle giants, and armed.
They saw him. Their legs stopped moving, though their motion continued. Closer now. One was a woman…
Then they were kicking again, turning back toward the storm that was reaching to engulf the tree.
He could catch them. They couldn’t know about the silver suit. His tanks were full. Rather fired his boot jets; his course became an arc.
He could catch them. Then what? Kill them? Rather’s parents had both killed. They didn’t like talking about it. When they did, old anger distorted their faces. Yet this was the Silver Man’s duty: from time to time, he killed.
One of the intruders looked back, and then all five were kicking madly, doubling their speed.
His arms were full of harpoons, hampered, while Debby and Carlot and Booce had no weapons at all. Rather swung back toward his crew.
He thumped into the bark not far from Booce. Carlot was looking at him oddly. He opened his helmet and said, “It’s me. Five of them almost found you. What happened?”
“Happyfeet,” Booce said. “A small jungle, steampowered. Lupoff family, from the look of them. They want the Wart.”
Rather thumbed his personal Voice on. “Silver Man calling the Scientist. Jeffer, they want the Wart. Go for that.”
Nothing.
“They can’t hear me. Booce, I’ll guard you on the surface, but I don’t think they’ll be back. They looked like they were running.”
Booce grinned. “They thought you were Navy.”
“What?”
“Skip it.”
Rather settled himself on the bark above their heads. Helmet closed. The invulnerable warrior (and Carlot had looked at him as at some alien bird). But the happyfeet warriors were gone from sight.
The storm enclosed the tree. The fringe of it was a fine mist, just
beginning to obscure vision. I wish I could use those other kinds of light Kendy sees by. And the ventral camera’s almost blind…hydrogen low, oxygen low, water volume low but increasing. We should have built a pump by now. Hey — “What’s that?”
Clave looked. “Jungle. Small. Just opposite the Wart.”
Now Jeffer spotted green dots around the puckered bark. Men, and one was pointing toward the CARM.
The voice of Kendy startled him. “I’m scanning in infrared. I can’t see anything human outside of the Wart area. Take the CARM closer. Give me a view.”
Jeffer accelerated in. He asked, “Did you just come into range?”
“Yes. I’m running the record of your approach. You should have killed the invaders on the east side. They could attack your people.”
As the CARM approached, the jungle jetted away on a trail of steam: north into the storm, then around the trunk, steam spraying in a wide curve. It was hidden before the CARM arrived.
Jeffer brought the CARM to rest a quarter klomter from the wooden crater. The happyfeet had been digging around one side of the Wart. Elongated men hovered around the block of black metal.
“Ten,” said Kendy. Rings of red light blinked scientifically on the bark, haloing men Jeffer had already spotted, pointing out others. Three interlocked rings circled bare wood. “Four in the open, three between the bark and the Wart, three more in a crack outside the crater.”
“We’d better follow the jungle,” Clave said. “They could find the rest of us while we’re busy here.”
Jeffer turned in his seat, but Kendy spoke first. “There’s time.”
“They’re too many to fight anyway,” Clave said.
“Nonsense. Spray them with rocket exhaust. Jeffer, have you been shown the throttle for the main drive?”
“Yes.” Jeffer didn’t know the word throttle, but Lawri had shown him how to control the push of the rockets. His fingers danced.
The CARM moved toward the Wart. The happyfeet waited, blurred by fog, spears ready. “Brace yourself, Clave.” The CARM swung around, still approaching the puckered bark, but stern foremost.
Men left the Wart, swimming hard. Others appeared from the bark beyond. Spears flew. The dorsal camera watched a bulbous-headed spear strike the hull and explode in a puff of smoky flame. Authoritative thumps could be heard through the hull.
Jeffer tapped the main drive on…
It felt like suicide. He’d nearly died the last time he did that. The CARM surged forward. Jeffer felt his chest sag, his cheeks pull backward in a dead man’s grin. But his arm was rigid above his face, fingers almost touching the control panel.
It worked! Moving his fingertip down along the green bar reduced the main drive’s thrust to something he could handle. Throttle.
A nearly invisible blue washed across ten happyfeet warriors. The invaders burst into vivid yellow flame. They were comets, the flame streaming back from them.
Explosions sent bits of men flying—
Clave cried, “Treefodder, Jeffer! Stop!”
Jeffer tapped the drive off. (Hydrogen, oxygen: both quite low. The Wart receded.) “Clave, they attacked us. They’ve got exploding harpoons.”
“They couldn’t have moved the Wart with us on their tails! We only had to take it away from them!”
“All right. Chairman.” Jeffer turned to look at Clave. “Now tell me what they’re doing to Booce and Debby and Carlot.”
“It’s time to learn that,” Kendy said. “Time to move, Jeffer. I’ve lost sight of the jungle from Discipline’s position. It circled half around the trunk and was approaching the point where you dropped Rather. We’ll have to get there fast, before I’m out of range. The invaders here are harmless enough now.”
They were. Some were still writhing, some were motionless, but all were burned black. Jeffer set the CARM moving. It was too early to feel guilt.
They were in the cloud now: a thick, swirling fog, growing thicker. Jeffer could see the tree only as a wall of shadow. Kendy said, “Turn starboard. You need not steer so wide of the trunk, Jeffer. I have infrared.”
The CARM moved around the trunk in a great curve.
Lightning flared suddenly aft.
“I have the jungle in view, straight out by five point six kilometers. Straight out, Jeffer.”
“I can’t see.”
“Ventral. Two degrees more. Good. Accelerate. Cut! Rather has the jungle in view. Silver Man, come in.”
Rather’s tinny voice spoke from the control board. “I see a big shadow, but no detail. They can’t see us either.”
“They’ve found you somehow,” Jeffer said.
“You’re near,” said Kendy. “Swing one-eighty degrees.”
“I won’t—”
“Citizen, I don’t know where the men are! What else can we do but attack the jungle itself? Swing around.” There was something strange in Kendy’s voice.
Jeffer turned the CARM. He half hoped Clave would countermand the order, but Clave said nothing.
“Main drive.” Kendy should have sounded excited. He only sounded loud.
Jeffer tapped the button. The CARM surged. His face tried to crawl around to the back of his head. A yellow light bloomed in the mist behind him, and he heard Rather’s gasp. He killed the drive, but the yellow light remained.
The harsh bass said, “Done. I’m losing range—”
Clave said, “You kill too easily, Kendy.”
Kendy’s voice was becoming blurry. “Citizens, you’re missing the point. This was a mobile jungle. These happyfeet may have contacts in the Admiralty. They’ve seen the CARM and the silver suit.”
“Men aren’t honey hornets, Kendy!”
There was no answer.
Rain drifted across the CARM’s main window in drops the size of fists, carried by eddies in the wind. The wood outside was black with water. Inside the cabin it was soggy enough. Jeffer’s segment of pond had spread a film of water across all the walls and the cradles.
Warm, dry air blew from vents fore and aft, thrusting the water away from it. The citizens clustered around the aft jet.
Next time I’ll pump the water, Jeffer thought. Got to build a pump.
Carlot said, “We saw that huge shadow come out of the fog. It was scary enough. Then five…well, they could have been birds for all I could see, except that they were flying toward the jungle and thrashing at both ends. Waving their arms, I guess. It was the bandits who ran away from Rather. The jungle stopped to pick them up.”
“They were Lupoffs,” Booce said. “I know their clothing. I’ve met them in the Market. A big family, three jungles, and they’d colonize if they could buy another firepipe. They’re crowded.”
Clave said, “So?”
“If the Lupoffs find out what happened here, you’ll have two jungles hunting you.”
“They won’t find out.” There was no triumph in Clave’s voice. Jeffer shuddered.
They were warm enough, dry enough, if they stayed in the air jet. But the storm splashed rain across the bow window, and through the rain came the yellow glow of the burning jungle.
“I wouldn’t mind killing a bandit or two,” Booce said.
“I’ve been robbed once or twice. It’s the scale of the thing that bothers me. There must have been forty citizens in that jungle, not counting children.”
Clave jumped toward the fore end of the cabin. After a moment, Jeffer followed. The fore air jet was as dry as the aft.
Clave said, “I’d had enough of that.”
“Forty people,” Jeffer said. “There just isn’t any way to make them stop talking about it.”
Clave’s voice was’a hoarse whisper. “Persuasive, is he? Nobody but you can be trusted to talk to Kendy, right? You burned them while they were trying to rescue their citizens!”
“They attacked us.”
“With spears. So?”
“What was I supposed to do? They were threatening our citizens!”
Clave sighed. “I’m not bla
ming you. And if I am, I shouldn’t be. But Kendy—” By the flick of his eyes, Clave had remembered that Kendy would hear this. He began pronouncing his words with more care. “Treefeeding Kendy killed them like a hive of honey hornets, because they were in his way. Because they might talk to the wrong people!”
Silence and discomfort. Debby came to join them. “Wet,” she said. “What did you do to get it so wet?”
Jeffer didn’t answer. To Clave he said, “I felt much worse when I killed Klance the Scientist to steal the CARM. He wasn’t expecting it. These citizens were. They were making war.”
“Right!” Debby said enthusiastically. “When London Tree raided us, I used to wish we could capture this thing and set their whole tree burning. The bandits aren’t the same, but by the State, we finally did it!”
“Don’t do it again,” Clave said. Jeffer nodded.
Section Three
CIVILIZATION
Chapter Twelve
Customs
Year 384, day 1992, by heliograph:
STATION TWO TO GYRFALCON. SWALLOW REPORTS LARGE INCOMING LOG EAST OF ADMIRALTY. MASTER UNIDENTIFIED. YOU WILL RENDEZVOUS FOR CUSTOMS
DUTY IF CONVENIENT. LOCATION OF LOG AT DAY 1990 WAS TWO-NINE-OH DEGREES FLAT, FIVE DEGREES NORTH, TWO-EIGHT-OH KLOMTERS RADIAL. ACKNOWLEDGE.
“RICE, DID THIS JUST COME IN?”
“Yes, sir. I was scraping the hull when I saw the light blinking near the Market. Took the message and came straight in, but I don’t know how long the helio was blinking.”
Petty Mart Wheeler thought it through. Gyr falcon carried six crew; Swallow, two. The Navy preferred that civilians notice the big armed ships. In the act of paying customs they should remember what they were buying. So.
“Where are we?”
“I’ll find out, sir.” Spacer Rice turned toward the instrument closet.
“No, not you. Bosun Murphy, take our position.” This was not an urgent mission. He’d use it as a training exercise.
The dwarf nodded cheerfully; her flame-red hair swirled around her. Her short but powerful legs shot her across the cabin to the instrument closet. She chose what she needed and went out.