The Smoke Ring t-2

by Larry Niven

  “Dangerous,” Jeffer said. “You’ll have Mickl desperate to meet them.”

  “Not if I read him right. Scientist, you know the story now, and you can back me up. Give him details I didn’t.”

  Clave asked, “Jeffer, did Kendy get the records he wanted?”

  “I haven’t heard from him.”

  “If we’re lucky the treefeeder never will call back. Anyway, we must have looked innocent enough. We never did anything odd because we didn’t know anything. So. Twenty days ago three dwarves pulled up to Logbearer in a Navy rocket. Mickl and another man and awoman, all the same size. Weird. They gave us the pressure suit and went away. We’re supposed to get the jets going and pay off the Seekers. Would you like ten years’ supply of fringe?”

  “No. You’d better leave it here if you’re supposed to.”

  They carried the suit and helmet into the dead foliage. Rather and Carlot set to moving their cargo while they looked about.-

  Entropy and parasites had eaten a deep cavity into the fisher jungle’s dead trunk. The CARM was there, and Jeffer’s camp: rocks for a fireplace, a rack of poles for smoking meat, a midden a decent distance away. Jeffer had made a third wing for himself, a prudent move for a man alone. From the blackened look of it he’d been using it to fan his fire.

  Jeffer had the pressure suit splayed like a bird’s flayed skin. “Rather, did you try it?”

  “It’s too big for me. — And the air feed doesn’t work. I got the panel open. A little wheel isn’t connecting to anything, and there’s a spoke with nothing on it.”

  Jeffer grinned. “I see.”

  Rather laughed. “Mickl doesn’t want the Seekers stealing his silver suit! If they try it they’ll find out nobody’s worthy!”

  “I’ll refuel it. No guarantee the jets still work.”

  “Well, if they do work, I get the impression that Booce will get a decent offer for the Wart. Mickl never actually said so.”

  “Three pressure suits?”

  Clave said, “Stet. We may have to do this twice more. And they’re searching Dark and sky for a fourth pressure suit. They must be looking hard at where Logbearer went.

  You may want to move the CARM.”

  Carlot arrived pushing the last of the cargo: not seeds, but tools. “You’re going to love this, Scientist.” She separated something out.

  Jeffer took it with glad cries. “A pump! Wonderful! The CARM’s low on water, and I hate the way I filled it last time. Can I keep it?”

  “Stet. We’re supposed to bribe the Seekers with it. Here, this is a bellows from the Market. You anchor one end. It’s easier.”

  “Nice. Can you stay for a couple of sleeps? I’ve got food and—”

  “Lonely?”

  It showed in his face. “You know it.”

  “We’ve got food you never tasted. Dark fungus and earthlife. You’ll love it.”

  Their exotic dinner was nothing unusual for Rather, not any longer. What made it fun was watching Jeffer react.

  Jeffer talked while he ate. “I had some trouble getting the silver suit. I found it okay, but it was right in the fire. I had to get the bow up against it and push it out along with a kilton of burning goo. I just wonder how many Admiralty citizens saw me.”

  “The stories won’t match,” Clave said. “In sixty days it won’t matter at all. I’ve been thinking. We’ll bum the fringe here. If a Navy ship comes they’ll find that the Seekers had a hell of a party and then went away.”

  “Good. I’ll have to take the CARM someplace you can find it—”

  “No. You find us. Logbearer will be returning to Citizens Tree in due course, maybe another thirty days. Keep watch. Pick us up well outside the Clump.”

  “Another fifty days of this? Treefodder. And I never even saw the treefeeding Clump.”

  “We’ll leave you most of our food,” Clave said.

  Carlot carefully wasn’t looking at Rather. “I’ll be bringing a guest. Raff Belmy and I’ll be married as soon as we get back to the Admiralty. I want to bring him back to the tree. What he tells his father is up to him, but he’ll have at least a quarter year to think about it.”

  “So you decided,” Rather said. He felt he had almost gotten used to the loss.

  “I’m like you. I’m tired of secrets.”

  “There’s a plant here that grows good foliage,” Jeffer offered. “Dessert.”

  Carlot tossed an orange sphere at him.

  Jeffer’s acting like a happy eight-year-old. Rather thought as he tethered himself into a foliage patch for sleep. Being alone out here must be rough on him. Maybe all adults stay children someplace in their heads…

  “Rather?”

  “Yuh. Carlot?”

  She wriggled under the lines and was alongside him. Rather opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he said, “I don’t like lying to you.”

  “What now?”

  “I was going to not say, ‘What would Raff think?’ ”

  She didn’t move away. Presently she said, “You don’t understand us.”

  “Nope.”

  “We like to spread the genes around. Nobody talks about it in public, but you hear. A man and a woman get engaged. They make babies together. Sixty, seventy days later, they get married. Maybe the first kid looks like the rest and maybe he doesn’t.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s the last chance. See, I’m going to marry Raff, but there are men I turned down. They’re not going to just vanish. I wasn’t with Raff off those sleeps I was away. Raff’s been seeing friends too, I don’t know who. Rather, it’s just different. The officers say it’s good. They talk about gene drift.”

  “Okay.”

  “What Raff thinks about it is, he’d rather not know. I never did wonder what Jill would think.”

  Jill. “We never made promises.”

  “Sure. But who else is there? There’s nobody anywhere near her age in the tuft. Just you.”

  “I suppose. I wish I could have told her I was leaving.’’

  She said nothing. Rather couldn’t drop it. “I wish I could tell her it was worth it. You never wanted that raid on the Library. You were right. If Kendy’s really gone, then why did it happen? The Navy’11 never stop being suspicious ofus,and we didn’t learn anything, and I can’t even tell Jill about the raid because I can’t tell her about Kendy.”

  She stirred. “You don’t want me?”

  “Sure I want you. Every sleep we’re here, I want you. I wanted you for keeps.”

  “You can’t have that. When we marry, that’s the end of that. Understand?”

  “Stet.”

  Kendy had run the records from CARMs #2 and #6 over and over. He’d built up a sublibrary of sorts under RESOURCES, LOCAL USAGE.

  Here: Citizens Tree was firing mud to make a cookpot.

  Here: firing the laundry vat. Both had been recorded by the silver suit as it moved unharmed through the fire. One clip every ten minutes.

  Here: curing the lines from the spaghetti jungle. Mark the Silver Man unharmed in the smoke.

  Here: the elevator in Citizens Tree. Here, recorded years earlier by Klance the Scientist: the London Tree elevator, run with stationary bicycles.

  Here: CARM #6 changing the integral tree’s orbit.

  Here: Logbearer moving another tree.

  Here: Rather collecting honey. Booce’s voice explaining that it was usually done with handmade armor. Here: a set of hornet armor made to show the Navy customs collectors, lest they seek for such and find the silver suit instead.

  The natives used materials from Discipline when they had it. When they didn’t, they made do. They were doing very well without Kendy.

  Discipline was making its second aerobraking pass, ass-backward through the gas torus. The cone of the fusion drive approached fusion temperatures. That was hardly a danger, but the plasma streaming back along the hull had to be watched.

  Velocity, Smoke Ring median: 11 kps. Velocity at Kendy’s distance: 3 kps. Disci
pline’s, relative velocity: 20 kps and falling. Discipline reached perihelion and began to rise, embedded in hot plasma. The animals were frantic. Kendy couldn’t spare attention for them. Nothing had melted on his first pass…but the gas ahead of him thickened as he rose, because Goldblatt’s World was ahead.

  Visual: a raging, endless storm the size of Neptune.

  Neudar: a core the size of two and a half Earths spun once every seven hours, carrying the storm around with it, until the atmospheric envelope trailed off into the Smoke Ring. Instruments: impacting plasma increased in temperature and density; velocity decreased. The ship was surviving. There’d been the risk that he would have to blow hydrogen ahead of him for cooling.

  Goldblatt’s World passed below, warping the ship’s path into something nearer a circle. Now the plasma density dropped fast.

  Fifteen minutes of that was enough excitement for any computer program. In an hour he’d be over the Admiralty and out of the gas torus. He’d make his last short bum then. It would hold him near the Admiralty for a good half hour.

  Discipline would be glowing bright enough to see, if anyone looked in just the right direction. That might or might not be good. Kendy had taken his time returning.

  His long-range plans were in tatters and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Beginnings

  from the Citizens Tree cassettes:

  YEAR 384, DAY 2250. BOOCE RECORDED OUR HOLDINGS BEFORE WE LEFT. HE’S APPALLED THAT WE NEVER ASKED. BAD BUSINESS PERSONS, HE CALLS US. WE DON’T USUALLY BOTHER TO SPELL OUT WHO OWNS WHAT IN CITIZENS TREE. IT DRIVES BOOCE CRAZY.

  WE SPENT A LOT ON SEEDS AND POOD AND WIDGETS, BUT WE STILL HAVE CREDIT — IMAGINARY MONEY — IN SOME VAGUE AMOUNT THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT BOOCE ACTUALLY GETS FOR THE WOOD AND THE METAL. WE’LLLEARNTHATWHEN, AND IF, WERETURN TO THE ADMIRALTY.

  —JEFFER THE SCIENTIST

  THE LIFT CAGE DROPPED. IT WAS CROWDED WITH EIGHT people and several bags from the CARM. Lawri and Gavving, Scientist and Chairman Pro Tern, seemed distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn’t hard to guess why. Raff Belmy was uncomfortable too. Carlot clung tight to his arm, possessively, protectively.

  “I had some trouble finding the tree,” Jeffer said.

  “Your problem,” Gavving answered. “After all, you took the silver suit. How were we supposed to tell you where we were?”

  “Yeah, but you moved the tree, didn’t you? That thing next to the lift, is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes. Lawri’s doing, mostly.”

  “Hah. Scientist, I thought you’d be twiddling your toes waiting for me to come home.”

  “We found ways to occupy ourselves, Scientist.” Lawri’s pregnancy was growing conspicuous. The formality between her and her husband did not seem unfriendly.

  Gavving said, “I hope you brought something to make us look good.”

  The rest of them laughed; but Clave said, “Trouble?”

  “Treefodder, yes, trouble! I’d have flown to a new tree if I’d been sure they’d let me have wings. One thing, the children are on our side. They’ve been crazy with waiting to see what you bring back. And Minya stuck with me.”

  “She did? Good,” said Clave.

  “She did, in public.”

  Clave reached into a bag. He sliced an apple in half and passed it to Gavving and Lawri. They bit, distrustfully, and continued eating. “That’ll do it,” Gavving said.

  “Fine. Here. Don’t eat the hull.” He’d cut an orange into quarters.

  They gnawed the insides out of the oranges. Lawri chewed and swallowed a bit from the peel, but did not take another. Gavving said, “Yeah!”

  “We’ve got seeds,” Clave said. “This and a lot of other earthlife. We’ll plant them in the out tuft.”

  Faces like afield of flowers below the falling cage. Two meteor-trails of golden blond hair: Jill next to Anthon, she a meter shorter than her father, both scanning the faces in the lift cage. Rather knew when -Till’s eyes met his, but her face didn’t change.

  The cage thumped into its housing. Children piled out of the treadmill, and Mark with them. Everyone in Citizens Tree was here.

  They looked short: a field of dwarves in which Anthon and the Serjent women stood out as normal. Rather had become used to giants. Children and some adults crowded around the cage. Jill and Anthon hung back, not quite hostile, but suspending judgment. Mark had that look too.

  For all these hundreds of days Rather had wondered what the tribe would think of his mutiny. He’d almost managed to forget that he had never told Jill, could not have told her that he was going to leave the tree.

  His mothers were crowding close around the lift, and Karilly and Ryllin with them. The Serjent women hugged Carlot, then Carlot’s new husband. Karilly hung back a little. She was conspicuously carrying a guest. Raff beamed like sunlight at seeing someone he knew. They fell into rapid conversation, moving away, taking Karilly with them. “Damn, but I missed oranges…Booce had to stay? I’m not surprised, but…”

  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 carmT’ 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 thejudging-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 alm
ost 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.