by Larry Niven
"Citizens, this is Kendy for the State. Speak, and your reward will be beyond the reach of your imagination."
The passengers looked at each other.
"I am Sharls Davis Kendy," the face said. "I brought your ancestors here to the Smoke Ring and abandoned them when they made mutiny against me. I have the power to send you into Gold, to your deaths. Speak and tell me why I should not do so."
Too many were looking at the Scientists. Was this some trick of Lawri's? The Grad could feel the hair rising in a halo around his head but somebody had to speak. He said, "I am the Quinn Tribe Scientist—"
"And I am the London Tree Scientist," Lawri said firmly. "Can you see us?"
"We are lost and helpless. If you want our lives, take them."
"Tell me of yourselves. Where do you live? Why are you of different sizes?"
The Grad said, "We are of three tribes living in two very different places. The three tall ones—" He kept talking while his mind sought a memory. Sharls Davis Kendy?
Lawri broke in. "You were the Checker for Discipline"
"I was and am," said the spectral face.
"The Checker's responsibility includes the actions, attitudes, and well-being of his charges,'" Lawri quoted. "If you can help us, you must."
"You argue well, Scientist, but my duty is to the State. Should I treat you as citizens? I must decide. How did you come in possession of the CARM? Are you mutineers?"
The Grad held his breath…and Lawri said, "Certainly not," contemptuously. "The carm belongs to the Navy and the Scientist. I'm the Scientist."
"Who are the rest of you? Introduce me."
The Grad took over. He tried to stick to lies he could remember, naming the copsiks of London Tree — Jayan, Jinny, Gavving, Minya — as London Tree citizens; Clave and Merril as refugees who had become copsiks; himself as a privileged refugee; the jungle giants as visitors. Too late, he remembered Mark tied motionless in his chair.
"Now, Mark is a mutineer," he said. "He tried to steal the carm."
Would the dwarf brand him a liar? But the rest would back him up except Lawri…Mark let his eyes drop. He looked sullenly dangerous.
Sharis Davis Kendy began to question Mark. Mark answered angrily, belligerently. He created a wild tale of himself as a copsik barred from citizenship by his shape; of trying to steal the carm by activating the main motor, hoping to immobilize all but himself, then finding that the ferocious thrust left him as helpless as the rest.
The face seemed satisfied. "Scientist, tell me more of London Tree. You keep some who are barred from citizenship, do you?"
Lawri said, "Yes, but their children may qualify."
"Why does a tree come apart?" the face asked, and "How does London Tree move?" and "Why do you call yourself Scientist?" and "Are many of you crippled?" and "How many children do you expect to die before they grow to make children?" It wanted populations, distances, durations: numbers. Lawri and the Grad answered as best they could. With these they could stick close to the truth.
And finally the voice of Kendy said, "Very well. The CARM will reenter breathable atmosphere in eleven hours. The air will slow it. Keep the—"
"Hours?"
"What measure do you use? The circuit that Tee-Three makes around the sky? In about one-tenth of a circuit, you'll be falling through air. Air is dangerous at such speeds. Keep the bow forward. You'll see fire; don't worry about it. Don't touch anything at the bow. It will be hot. Don't open the airlock until you've stopped. By then you'll have fuel to move about. Do you understand all of that?"
Lawri said, "Yes. What are our chances of living through this?"
The face of Kendy started to answer-and froze with its mouth halfopen.
Update: Cabin pressure has returned to normal.
They had blocked the leak! How? A man without glands might naturally feel curiosity and duty as his strongest emotions. For Kendy these were now in conflict. And the CARM was about to pass out of range.
Kendy had never intended to tell them that they would not live to see reentry. Medical readouts implied that they had lied to him too…and he dared not accuse them of it.
This changed everything. The savages might actually return to describe Kendy and Discipline. He could stop them, of course, by beaming some wild course change to the CARM. Or he could spend the next few minutes…indoctrinating them into the State? Impossible. He could take one trivial step in that direction, then try to impress them with the need to talk to him again.
And when they did that-years from now, or decades-he could begin the work that had waited for half a thousand years.
The face said, "You have stopped the leak. Well done. Now you must kill the mutineer. Mutiny cannot be tolerated in the State."
Mark went pale. Lawri started to speak, the Grad rode her down. "He'll face trial on our return."
"Do you doubt his guilt?"
"That will be decided," the Grad said. At this point he probably became guilty of mutiny himself, but what choice did he have? If Mark didn't talk to save himself Lawri would. And I captain the carm!
"Justice is swift in the State—"
The Grad countered, "Justice is accurate in Quinn Tuft."
"Our swiftness may well depend on instant communication, which you clearly do not have." The face began speaking louder and more rapidly, as if in haste. "Very well. I have a great deal to tell you. I can give you instant communication and power that depends on sunlight instead of muscle. I can tell you of the universe beyond what you know. I can show you how to link your little tribes into one great State, and to link your State to the stars you now see for the first time. Come to me as soon as you can…”
The voice of Kendy died in a most peculiar fashion, blurring into mere noise, as the brutal face blurred into a wash of colored lines. Then the voice was silent, and the storm pattern around Gold glowed blue and white through the bow window.
Chapter Twenty-two
Citizens' Tree
KENDY'S READINGS WERE BEGINNING TO BLUR. FRUSTRATINGLY, the CARM's aft and ventral cameras worked perfectly. He had two fine views of the stars and the thickening Smoke Ring atmosphere. Plasma streamed past the dorsal camera, and Kendy sought the spectral lines of silicon and metals: signs that the CARM's hull was boiling away. There was some ablation, not much more than he would have expected when the CARM was new.
Inside the cabin the CO2 content was building. The jolting looked bad enough to tenderize meat. The passengers were suffering: mouths wide, chests heaving. Temperature was up to normal and rising. A blurred figure snapped its safety bands loose and struggled to tear its clothing away. Kendy couldn't get medical readings through the growing ionization, but the pilot had been under terrific tension earlier.
It looked chancy, whether the CARM would live or die. Kendy wasn't sure which he preferred.
He had bungled.
The principle was simple and had served the State before. To further the cause, a potential convert was ordered to commit some obscene crime. He could never repudiate the cause after that. To do so would be to admit that he had committed an abomination.
The caveat was simple too. One must never give such an order unless it would be obeyed.
Kendy was ashamed and angry. He had attempted to bind their loyalty to him by ordering an execution. Instead, he had almost turned them all into mutineers! He'd had to back down gracefully and fast.
He'd had no chance to recover from that, with the ionosphere building up around the CARM, cutting communications. His medical readings told him that they had lied to him, somewhere. He shouldn't have forced them to do that either! He didn't know enough even to guess at what they were hiding.
Too late now. If he sent some lethal course correction now, ionization would garble it. If they lived, they would tell of a Kendy who was powerful but gullible, a Kendy who could be intimidated. If they died Kendy would remain a legend fading into a misty past.
The forward view was a blur of fire as the CARM plowed deeper into
atmosphere. He was losing even the cabin sensors.
There was flame in front of them, transparent blue, streaming to the sides. The Grad felt the heat on his face. They'd be losing air again: the black ice around the rim of the bow window had turned to mud, mud that bubbled. He'd been wrong. The screaming flame-hot air massed before the bow was coming in.
Things came at them. Little things were hopeless; they hit or they didn't. Blood spots turned black and evaporated. Larger objects could be avoided.
His hands strangled the chair arms. Trying to steer the carm through this would have been bad enough. Watching Lawri steer was distilled horror. From her rigid posture, the knotted jaw and bared teeth, she was just at the edge of screaming hysterics. Her hands hovered like claws, reached, withdrew, then tapped suddenly at blue dashes. His own hands twitched when she was slow to see danger.
The chairs were full. Citizens had objected, but the Grad had simply kept yelling until it got done: the corpse of Horse moored to cargo fixtures; Mark the silver man in back, gripping cargo moorings with his abnormal strength; Clave beside him, swearing that his own strength was enough; everyone else strapped into seats that would give some protection, even to jungle giants, against thrust from the bow. Reentry wasn't like using the main motor. It was an attack. The air was trying to pound the carm into bits of flaming starstuff.
Lawri had lived half her life with the carm. She hadtobebetterat this than the Grad, she'd insisted, and she was right. He gripped the chair arms and waited to be smashed like a bug.
The carm fell east and in. Integral trees showed foreshortened, as three…four pairs of green dots, hard to see…she'd seen them: jets fired. A bit of green fluff; dead ahead…Lawri fired port jets the carm swung sluggishly around, shuddering as the flpming air blasted the nose off-center. Forward jets: the carm eased backward, too slowly, while the fluff swelled to become an oncoming jungle.
A grunt of pain, aft. Clave had been jarred loose. The silver man was holding him in place with a hand on his chest.
The Grad saw birds and scarlet flowers before the jungle was past. Lawri let the bow face forward again. A pond a klomter across just missed swatting them; droplets of fog in its wake rang the hull like a myriad tiny chimes. The debris was growing ever thicker.
And it was moving past them more slowly.
Something barred their path like a green web. It might have been half of an integral tree with the tuft gone wild, the foliage spreading like gauze, the trunk ending in a swollen knob. Small birds played in the slender branches. Swordbirds hovered at the edges. He'd never seen such a plant…and Lawri was steering clear of it.
The Grad said, "Lawri?"
"It's over," she said. "Damn, I'm tired. Take the controls, Jeffer."
"I have it. Relax."
Lawri rubbed her eyes fiercely. The Grad touched blue dashes to slow the cairn further. A fingertip touch set the cabin warmth control to normal. The cabin was already warm. If it hadn't been lethally cold when they entered atmosphere, they might well have roasted.
He looked back at his passengers. Six of Quinn Tribe remained.
Twelve total, to start a new tribe…'We're back," he said. "I don't know just where. Are we all alive? Does anyone need medical help?"
"Lawri You did it!" Merril chortled. "We lived long enough to get thirsty!"
The Grad said, "We're low on fuel and there's no water at all. Let's find a pond. Then pick a home."
"Open the doors," Jayan said. She released her straps and moved aft, with Jinny following.
"Why?"
"Horse."
Right." He opened the airlock to a mild breeze that smelled fresh, clean, wonderful. The carm's air stank! It was stale, a treefodder stink, fear and rotting meat and too many people breathing in each other's faces. Why hadn't he noticed?
The twins released the corpse from its mooring, wincing at the touch. They towed it through the doors. The Grad waited while they sent the bones of the salmon bird after it.
Then he fired the aft motors. If I met his ghost, he wouldn't even recognize me. How can I say I'm sorry? Never use the main motor unless—
Horse dwindled into the sky.
The pond was huge, spinning fast enough to form a lens-shape, fast enough to have spun off smaller ponds. The Grad chose one of the smaller satellites, no bigger than the carm itself. He let the carm drift forward until the bow window just touched the silver sphere.
What happened then left him breathless. He was looking into the interior of the pond. There were water-breathing things shaped like long teardrops with tiny wings, moving through a maze of green threads. He turned on the bow lights, and the water glowed. There was a jungle in there, and swimming waterbirds darting in flocks among the plants.
Lawri roused him. "Come on, Jeffer. Nobody else knows how to do this. Pick two mutineers with good lungs."
He followed her aft and didn't ask her about lungs until he'd figured it out himself. "Clave, Anthon, we need some muscle. Bring the squeezegourds. Better than lungs, Scientist."
"Squeezegourds, fine. If you'd planned your mutiny better, you'd have dismounted the pump and stored it aboard."
He laughed and thought, Should I have asked your advice too? and didn't say it. After all Lawri had been through, it was good to hear her joking, even in treemouth humor.
While she mounted the hose to the aft wall, the Grad carried the other end outside. He saw no sign of the nets that had covered the hull. Even the char had been burned off. He tethered himself before he jumped toward the water a few meters away. Clave came after him, also properly moored, carrying squeezegourds, followed by Jinny and Jayan.
Everyone was coming out. Mark was out of his pressure suit and tethered to Anthon. Merril, Usa, Debby…In a tangle of lines they plunged into the water and drank. The Grad hadn't let himself think of his thirst. Now he surrendered to it, submerging head and shoulders and doing his best to swallow the pond. The carm's headlamps lit the water around him.
It was playtime. Why not? He tugged on his line, pulled himself out before he drowned. The rest of the citizens were drinking, splashing, washing themselves and each other.
Was Lawri alone in the carm?
Alone with the controls of a vehicle that could hover near the pond, spraying fire on men and women who would have to choose between burning and drowning-He saw Lawri emerge with Minya and Gayving behind her. He'd been careless; they hadn't. The Grad kept an eye on her thenceforth to be sure she didn't return alone.
She splashed in the water. She and the dwarf washed each other and talked a little, in earshot of Anthon. Her motions were jerky, twitchy.
She looked wire-tense in the aftermath of reentry. His suspicions seemed silly; she was in no shape to contemplate a countermutiny. He wondered if she would have nightmares.
They took turns pumping. The technique was to shove the neck of a squeezegourd into the hose, warily, because there were three gourds in motion; squeeze; duck it under water, squeeze, wait while it filled; into the hose, squeeze.
"My arms just quit," Minya said and handed her gourd to Merril.
With her archer's muscles she had lasted longer than most. Gavving was some distance from the others, motionless in the water. He'd already speared four peculiar, supple, scaly waterbirds. She watched him and wondered how he really felt about the guest growing in her.
How did she feel? Her impregnation was part of her past. The past was dead for anyone, but stone dead for these citizens, with hundreds of thousands of klomters and the storms of Gold itself between them and their homes. She would have a child. Time was when she had given up hope of that…but how did Gavving feel?
Merril said, "Nobody's talking about Sharls Davis Kendy."
"What for?" Debby wondered. "He never bothered us before and he never will again."
"Still, it's something to have seen the Checker, isn't it? Something to tell our children. Someone that old must have learned a lot—"
"If he wasn't lying, or crazy."
"He had the facts right," the Grad said. "We did take him at his word, didn't we? Maybe he only had cassettes, like me. A dwarf Scientist, stuck out there in a carm, like we almost were. He's not all that bright, either. He swallowed Mark's story—"
"Come on, I was brilliant!" the silver man bellowed.
"You tell a fine story. Mark, why did you back me up?"
It was a breath or two before the dwarf answered. "You understand that I can't support a bloody copsik revolution."
"Okay. Why?"
"It was none of this Kendy's business. Whoever he is. Whatever he is.”
"Yeah…He did have some interesting machinery. Maybe he got stuck aboard Discipline itself, somehow. I'd have liked to see Discipline."
Lawri hadn't even tried pumping. She flexed her fingers, wondering if they would heal. She had smelled the stink of fear on herself. That at least was gone.
She said, "I wouldn't deal with Sharls Davis Kendy if he gave me Discipline. Ugly, arrogant treefeeder. He wanted Mark dead like you'd kill a turkey, because it's time. Convenient. And he ordered us around like copsiks!"
They laughed at that. Even Mark.
At the end of three hours their forearms were distilled pain. The blue indicator inside read H20: 260. The Grad asked Lawri, "Enough?"
"For what we've got in mind—"
"We wondered about going home," Debby said.
Clave snorted, but they waited for Lawri's reply. She said reluctantly,
"I'd never find London Tree again. Carther States is even smaller, and they're both on the wrong side of Gold. We'd have to accelerate west, drop in from the Smoke Ring, and let Gold pull us around. Do you want to go for Gold again?"
She smiled at their reactions. "Me neither. I'm tired. We can get to another tree and moor the carm. We'll build a pump before we need more water than that."
"We'd prefer a jungle, of course," Ilsa said.
One of the women bristled. "Nine of us and three of you! If—"