by Larry Niven
“Something like what?”
“Something flat with people clinging to it.”
“I see it. Could they be animals?”
“No. I’m using science,” the pilot said.
The display superimposed on the bow window showed scarlet dots clustered close. Warmer objects—salmon birds, for instance—showed more orange in that display. Ribbon birds showed as cooler: wavy lines of a darker, bloodier red…The pilot turned and caught Lawri looking.
“Learned anything, darling?”
“Don’t call me darling.” Lawri said primly/evasively.
“Pardon me, Scientist’s Apprentice. Have you learned enough to fly this ship, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t like to try it,” Lawri lied. “Unless you’d like to teach me?” It was something she wanted very much to try.
“Classified,” the pilot said without regret. He returned to his microphone. “That thing hit pretty hard. I’d say it’s not a vehicle at all. Those people may be refugees from some disaster, just what we need for copsiks. Might even be glad to see us.”
“We’ll get to you when we…can.” The Squad Leader sounded distracted, and with reason. Spindly savages taller than a man ought to be were boiling out of the green cloud, riding yellow-green pods bigger than themselves. They were clothed in green, hard to see.
There was a quick exchange of arrows as the armies neared each other. London Tree’s warriors used long foot-bows: the bow grasped by the toes of one or both feet, the string by the hands. The cloud of arrows loosed by the savages moved more slowly, and the arrows were shorter.
“Crossbows,” the pilot murmured. He played the jets, kicking the carm away from the fight. Lawri felt relief, until he started his turn.
“You’ll endanger the carm! Those savages could snatch at the nets!”
“Calm down, Scientist’s Apprentice. We’re moving too fast for them.” The carm curved back toward the melee. “We don’t want them close enough for swordplay, not in free fall.”
The Scientist had his wish, the carm would never be used for war at all. Putting his Apprentice aboard had been a major strategic victory. He’d told her, “Your sole concern is for the carm, not the soldiers. If the carm is threatened, it must be moved out of danger. If the pilot won’t, you must.”
He had not told her how to subdue a trained fighter, nor how to fly the ancient machine. The Scientist had never flown it himself.
Savages flew toward the bow window. Lawri saw their terrified eyes before the pilot spun the carm about. Masses thumped against the carm’s belly. Lawri shuddered. She would do nothing, this time. She would more likely wreck the carm than save it…and there would be hell to pay even if she got home to London Tree.
The savages were grouping to attack again. The pilot ignored them. He eased the carm into the midst of his own warriors.
“Nice going. Thanks,” said the radio voice. Lawri watched the cloud of savages advancing.
“We’re all aboard,” said the Squad Leader.
The carm turned and coasted across the green cotton, southwest. Savages screamed or jeered in its wake. They hadn’t a hope of catching up.
There was time to look, and time to feel rising fear. Gavving tried to take it all in before the end.
It was curves and billows of green wall spotted with blossoms: yellow, blue, scarlet, a thousand shades and tones. Insects swarmed in clouds. Birds were there in various shapes, dipping into the blossoms or the insect clouds. Some looked like ribbons and moved with a fluttering motion. Some had membranous triangular tails; some were themselves triangles, with whiplike tails sprouting from the apex.
Far to the east was a dimple in the green, funnel-shaped, perhaps half a klomter across; distances were hard to judge. Would a jungle have a treemouth? Why would it be rimmed with gigantic silver petals? The biggest flower in the universe set behind the jungle’s horizon as they fell.
The storm had hidden a jungle. He’d never seen one close, but what else could it be? The moby had planned this well, Gavving thought.
Birds were starting to notice the falling mass. Motionless wings and tails blurred into invisibility. Ribbons fluttered away, as in a strong wind. Larger torpedo-shapes emerged from the greenery to study the falling bark sheet.
Clave was snapping orders. “Check your tethers! Arm yourselves! Some of those things look hungry. We’ll be shaken up when we hit. Has anybody noticed anything I might miss?”
Gavving thought he saw where they’d strike. Green cloud. Could it be as soft as it looked? East and north, far away, more darting swarms of…dots at this distance…men?
“Men, Clave. It’s inhabited.”
“I see them. Treefodder, they’re fighting! Just what we need, another war. Now what’s that? Grad, do you see something like a moving box?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Gavving located a brick-shape with rounded corners and edges. It was turning in sentient fashion, moving away from the battle. A vehicle, then…big…and glittering as if made of metal or glass. Men clung to its flanks.
The Grad said, “I never saw anything like it. Starstuff.”
The aft end of the box was spiky with bell-shaped structures: four at each corner and one much larger in the middle. Nearly invisible flames, not flame-colored but the blue-white color of Voy, puffed from some of the small—nostrils? The vehicle stopped its turn and surged back into the battle.
“That should do it,” Clave said. Gavving turned and saw what he had been doing: setting his last jet pods to orient the turning raft, so that the underside would strike first. It seemed to be working, but the jungle was hidden now. Gavving clutched the bark, waiting…
His head was ringing, his right arm was banged up somehow, his stomach was trying to find something to reject, and he couldn’t remember where he was. Gavving opened his eyes and saw the bird.
It was torpedo-shaped, about the mass of a man. It hung over him, long wings stretched out and motionless while it studied him with two forward-facing eyes in deep sockets. The other side of its head bore a saw-toothed crest. Its tail was a ribbed fan; the four ribs ended each in a hooked claw.
Gavving looked around for his harpoon. The crash had bounced it free of his hand. It was meters away, slowly turning. He reached for his knife instead and eased himself out of the greenery in which he was half-buried. He whispered, “I’m meat. Are you?” intending it as a threat.
The bird hung back. Two companions had joined it. Their mouths were long and blunt, and closed. They don’t bluff, Gavving thought.
A fourth bird skimmed across the green cloud, moving fast, right at his head. He scrambled for cover as the bird dipped its tail hooks into the foliage and stopped dead. Gavving stayed where he was, half under the raft. The birds watched him mockingly.
A tethered harpoon thudded into a bird’s side.
It screamed. The open mouth had no teeth, just a scissors-action serrated edge. The bird set itself whirling as it tried to snap at its belly. A third eye was behind the crest, facing backward.
The rest made their decision. They fled.
With his toes locked in branchlets, Alfin reeled the bird into knife range. By then Gavving had retrieved his own harpoon. He used it to pin the bird’s tail while Alfin finished the kill, a performance that left Alfin’s sleeves soaked in pink blood. A wide grin stretched his wrinkles into uncustomary patterns.
“Dinner,” he said and shook his head as if he’d drunk too much beer. “I can’t believe it. We made it. We’re alive!”
During all the years in Quinn Tuft, Gavving couldn’t remember seeing Alfin grin. How could Alfin be consistently morose in Quinn Tuft, and happy while lost in the sky? He said, “If we’d hit something solid at that speed we’d all be dead. Let’s hope the luck holds.”
Missing citizens emerged from the green depths. Merrill, Jayan, Jinny, Grad…Minya. Gavving whooped and gathered her in his arms.
Alfin asked, “Where’s Clave?”
> The others looked around. The Grad tethered himself to the bark and jumped toward the storm, with a turning motion. “I don’t see him anywhere,” he shouted back.
Jayan and Jinny burrowed into the foliage. Minya called, “Wait, you’ll get lost!” and prepared to follow.
“He’s here.”
Clave was under the bark sheet. They moved it to expose him. He was half-conscious and moaning softly. His thigh bent in the middle and white bone protruded through skin and blood.
The Grad hung back, squeamishly; but everyone was looking at him, and it was clearly the Scientist’s job. He set Alfin and Jayan to holding Clave’s shoulders, Gavving to pulling on the ankle while the Grad moved the bones into place. It took too long. Clave revived and fainted again before it was finished.
“That flying box,” Alfin said. “It’s coming here.”
“We’re not finished here,” said the Grad.
The starstuff box fell toward them through the clear air between foliage and storm cloud. Men garbed in sky-blue clung to all four sides. The glassy end faced them like a great eye.
Clave’s eyes had opened, but it didn’t seem he understood. Somebody had to do something. Gavving said, “Alfin, Minya, Jinny, let’s get the bark sheet out of sight, at least.”
They turned it edgewise and pushed it down into the greenery. Gavving moved after it, and Minya after him, forcing their way through the thicket into dark green gloom. The foliage was dense at the surface. Underneath were open spaces and masses of springy branchlets.
“Grad?”
The Grad looked up. “Scientist.”
“All right, Scientist. I need a Scientist,” Alfin said. “Can you leave him for a moment?”
Clave was half-conscious and whimpering. He should be all right with two women watching him. “Call me if he starts thrashing around,” he told them. He moved away, and Alfin followed.
“What’s the problem?”
“I can’t sleep.”
The Grad laughed. “It’s been a busy time. Which of us do you accuse of sleeping well?”
“I haven’t slept since we reached the midpoint. We’re in a jungle, we’ve got food and water, but Grad—Scientist, we’re still falling!” Alfin’s laugh surprised the Grad; it had a touch of hysteria in it.
Alfin didn’t look good. His eyes were puffy, his breathing was irregular, he was as jumpy as tonight’s dinner turkey. The Grad said, “You know as much about free fall as I do. You learned it the same way. Are you about to run amok?”
“Feels that way. I’m not helpless. I killed a bird that was after Gavving.” And for that moment his pride was showing.
The Grad mulled the problem. “I’ve got a bit of that scarlet fringe from the fans. You know how dangerous it is. Anyway, you don’t want to sleep now.”
Alfin glanced at the sky. The starstuff box was taking its sweet time, but…“No.”
“When it’s safe. And I haven’t got much.”
Alfin nodded and turned away. The Grad stayed where he was. He wanted solitude to nurse his jumpy stomach. He’d never set a broken bone before, and he’d had to do it without the Scientist’s help…
Alfin made his way back toward Jayan and Merril and Clave. He looked back once, and the Grad was looking at the sky.
He looked back again, and the Grad was gone. Jayan screamed.
The darkness and the strange, dappled shadows made them almost invisible, even to each other. “We can hide in here,” Gavving said.
Minya was nodding. “Burrow deep. Stick together. What about Clave?”
“We’ll have to pull him through. What looks like a good spot?”
“None of it,” Jinny said. “It would hurt him.”
Gavving tracked a dense cluster of branchlets back to a single spine branch. “Cut here,” he told Minya.
She didn’t have room to swing. She used the sword as a saw, and it took her a hundred breaths or thereabouts. Then Gavving pushed against the freed end and found that the entire cluster moved outward as a plug. He pulled himself into open air and looked about him. “Merril! Here!”
“Good,” Merril called. She and Alfin towed Clave toward the opening, moving with frantic haste. The one-eyed box was too close. The occupants must be watching them by now.
They’d have to dig in fast, get lost in the deep branchlets. But—“Where’s Jayan? Where’s the Grad?”
“Gone,” Merril puffed. “He’s gone. Something pulled him down…into the thicket.”
“What?”
“Move it, Gavving!”
They got Clave inside and pulled the plug-bush closed. Gavving saw that Clave’s leg had been splinted with strips of a blanket and two of Minya’s arrows.
“The men on the box,” Minya said, “they’ll follow us.”
“I know. Merril, what got the Grad? An animal?”
“I didn’t see. He yelled and disappeared. Jayan snatched up a harpoon and ducked through and saw people disappearing deeper in. She’s trailing a line. Gavving, should we stop her? They’ll trap her too.”
Why did it all have to happen at once? Clave’s leg, the kidnappers, the moving box—“Okay. The soldiers on the box would be fools to come in here. It’s the natives’ territory—”
“We’re here.”
“We’re more desperate…never mind, you’re right. We go after Jayan right now, because it gets us away from that starstuff relic. Merril—” Would Merril slow them down? Probably not, in free fall. Okay. “Merril, me, Minya. We’ll follow Jayan and see what’s going on. Maybe we can bust the Grad loose. Jinny, you and Alfin follow as fast as you can, with Clave. Merril, where’s Jayan’s line?”
“Somewhere over there. Treefodder, why does it all have to happen at once?”
“Yeah.”
Chapter Twelve
THE COPSIK RUNNERS
Birds were raising an incredible ruckus. Unseen hands pulled the Grad headfirst through darkness and the rich smell of alien foliage. Branchlets no longer scratched his face; there must be open space around him.
He’d had no warning at all. Hands had grasped his ankles and pulled him down into another world. His yell was strangled by something stuffed into his mouth, something that wasn’t clean, and a rag was tied to hold it in. A blow on the head convinced him not to struggle.
His eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom.
A tunnel wound through the foliage. It was narrow: big enough for two to crawl side by side, not big enough to walk in. No need, the Grad thought. You couldn’t walk with no tide.
His captors were human, roughly speaking.
They were all women, though this needed a second glance. They wore leather vests and trousers, dyed green. The looseness of the vests was their only concession to breasts. Three of the five wore their hair very short, and they all had a gaunt, stretched-out look: two and a half to three meters, taller than any of Quinn Tribe’s men.
They held implements: small wooden bows on wooden platforms, the bowstrings pulled back, ready to fire.
They were making good time. The tunnel turned and twisted until the Grad was entirely disoriented. His directional senses wouldn’t give him an up. It presently opened into a bulb-shape four or five meters across, with three other tunnels leading off. Here the women stopped. One pulled the rag out of his mouth. He spit to the side and said, “Treefodder!”
A woman spoke. Her skin was dark, her hair a compact black storm cloud threaded with white lightning. Her pronunciation was strange, worse than Minya’s. “Why did you attack us?”
The Grad shouted in her face. “Stupid! We saw your attackers. They’ve got a traveling box made of starstuff. That’s science! We got here on a sheet of bark!”
She nodded as if she’d expected that. “An eccentric way to travel. Who are you? How many are you?”
Should he be hiding that? But Quinn Tribe must find friends somewhere. Go for Gold—“Eight of us. All of Quinn Tribe, now, plus Minya, from the opposite tuft. Our tree came apart and left us maroone
d.”
She frowned. “Tree dwellers? The copsik runners are tree dwellers.”
“Why not? You don’t get a tide anywhere else. Who’re you?”
She studied him dispassionately. “For a captured invader, you are most impertinent.”
“I’ve got nothing to lose.” A moment after he said it, the Grad realized how true it was. Eight survivors had done their best to reach safety, and this was the end of it. Nothing left.
She had spoken. He said, “What?”
“We are Carther States,” the black-haired woman repeated impatiently. “I am Kara, the Sharman.” She pointed. “Lizeth. Hild.” They looked like twins to the Grad’s untrained eye: spectrally tall, pale of skin, red hair cropped two centimeters from the skull. “Ilsa.” Ilsa’s pants were as loose as her vest. That discrete abdominal bulge: Ilsa was pregnant. Her hair was blond fuzz; her scalp showed through. Long hair must be a problem among the branchlets. “Debby.” Debby’s hair was clean and straight and soft brown, and half a meter long, tied in back. How did she keep it that neat?
Sharman mean Shaman, an old word for Scientist. Could mean Chairman, except that she was a woman…but strangers wouldn’t do everything the way Quinn Tribe did. Since when did the Chairman take a name?
“You haven’t given us your name,” Kara said pointedly.
There was something left to him after all. He said it with some pride: “I’m the Quinn Tribe Scientist.”
“Name?”
“The Scientist doesn’t take one. Once I was called Jeffer.”
“What are you doing in Carther States?”
“You’d have to ask a moby.”
Lizeth snapped her knuckles across the back of his skull, hard enough to sting. He snarled, “I meant it! We were dying of thirst. We hooked a moby. Clave was hoping he’d try to lose us in a pond. He brought us here instead.”
The Sharman’s face didn’t reveal what she thought of that. She said, “Well, it all seems innocent enough. We should discuss your situation after we eat.”
The Grad’s humiliation kept him silent…until he saw their meal and recognized the harpoon. “That’s Alfin’s bird.”
