by Larry Niven
“I think he likes it,” Renho chortled.
The corridors twisted like wormholes through an apple. The Sun circled unseen. How far had they traveled, for how long? Impossible to tell…but Maxell’s knees recoiled from springy solidity. He reached down to touch interlaced spine branches.
Then the corridor opened out.
He’d grown used to the dark. The sudden light was painful. He had to guess some of what he was seeing:
All the outlines were soft and rounded, overgrown. Stevn Newbry bounded through the open space toward a westward-facing conical pit…the treemouth, no doubt, as this must have been the Commons. The smell was earthy, faintly unpleasant. Yellow-white Sunlight glared through sparser foliage in radial beams.
Stevn said, “Wow. I grew up here. It’s like there were never people here at all.”
A whirring, a steady mechanical sound from overhead. Maxell asked, “What’s that?”
“Let’s go see,” Harp said instantly.
They followed the sound up toward the light.
Above the foliage, the trunk seemed to rise forever. Water collected all along its length and thundered down the east face into the tuft. And here on the north side, a bigger version of Flutterby’s motor spun round and round in the ceaseless west wind.
“Clever,” Maxell said.
Harp examined the structure with some care. A line ran round a wheel that turned on the propeller’s axis, then straight out along the trunk. She said, “I was here two years ago. They wouldn’t let any of us see the lift mechanisms. They wanted to trade their secrets for ours. We don’t have any.”
“What, none?”
She smiled at him. “Whatever you want to know, just ask. We used a treadwheel and a line with loops along it. Cages are for effetes.”
Stevn popped up nearby. He said, “In about two days we’ll have a thousand refugees coming down at us. Misters Renho and Dunninger have gone hunting. We’ll want to feed them.”
Harp said, “Good. Did you have a garden?”
“Yah. The bad news is, you’re in it.”
Harp looked around her. “Hah! Well, we can search. Guardian, would you rather hunt? Mister Dunninger says he’s hunted trees…”
“I’ll help you look for crop plants.” The silver suit made him too clumsy to hunt anything more agile than a carrot, and he wasn’t about to take it off among strangers. “Let’s see, branchlets migrate along the branch into the treemouth, so if the garden used to be here—”
Stevn was climbing. He called back, “Actually it was on top and forty meters east. Earthlife needs sunlight. We’d let it drift for a year and then replant. But the way the branchlets move, any plant that lived through the famine is going to be all over the top of the tuft. Like…here!” He dropped something the size of Maxell’s head. “Most of the crops died, but there should be something.”
The object drifted down; Maxell jumped and caught it halfway. A big mushroom.
They searched, burrowing through the greenery like worms in an apple, while the sun arced from west to east. There were runner beans, and little red beans, and oats. Harp found a corn plant, but nothing was growing on it. The find of the day was a string of small trees, the roots twined intimately with the foliage, bearing tiny red apples.
Harp looked tired, drained…hardly surprising, given what she’d been through. Her voice still set Maxell’s nerves singing. “They’ll want food and warmth and a bath and rest. Even if the hunters get nothing, we’ve got food. Let’s do something about warmth.”
Harp and Stevn burrowed back down into the wicker-floored open space, the Commons. They searched, half-burrowing. Stevn began tearing at foliage, throwing it behind him. Maxell joined him, for lack of a better idea. Suddenly his knuckles brushed stone.
Big stones formed a ring three meters across, buried beneath the foliage.
“Rock must be hard to find in a tree,” Maxell said.
“They were pried out of the trunk,” Stevn said. “After we moved to the out tuft, we kids had to find more. There weren’t enough, so Captain Rennick took some wingmen out to a dried-up pond. But you’ve got to have something, because you sure don’t want a fire getting loose in a tree tuft!”
Harp and Stevn had run out of strength. They settled into the foliage while Maxell continued to expose the stone ring. “What do we burn here?” he asked.
Stevn laughed. “What have we got plenty of?”
Burning branchlets threw an orange light through the Commons, a light kinder than the daylight pouring in from above. Maxell let it warm his hands. “Take a break,” he called to Harp, who had wandered away and was searching through foliage.
A head popped through the Commons floor. Dunninger looked around him and said, “Ah! A fire!” His hand rose too. “There are angel moles everywhere! I got these in a few minutes of just following the rustling.”
Maxell took the bundle: five narrow short-furred bodies. “Where’s Renho?”
“Underside. He still thinks he can catch a turkey or something.”
“That’d be good. Otherwise we could use a few more angel moles.”
Harp called, “Come back in half a day, we’ll have a bath.”
“Oh, lady-bard, that would go nicely!”
Maxell asked, “Won’t they want food and sleep first?”
Stevn said, “If we’re going to cook anything, we may want to dig out the bath and use it as a vat.”
Harp objected. “No, Stevn, the bath is important! It binds us together. For that matter, we should be clean before the refugees get down. Treefodder, where did they put it? Stevn?”
“Maybe they didn’t have one,” Maxell suggested. “Not all climber cultures are alike.”
“Oh, we had a bath,” Stevn said. He jumped high, clutched foliage and began crawling down. Maxell realized that he was following the waterfall. “Here,” he said suddenly.
Again they tore away foliage. The work was getting to Maxell’s back. He took it for granted that he was doing most of the work. Dwarves were stronger than normal men. He continued uprooting foliage until they had exposed a hemispherical ceramic bowl.
“Big enough to boil a dozen citizens at once,” he said.
“Right. Help me move this.” Harp had found a massive wooden wall, hinged at one end. The foliage that half-hid it impeded its swing. They pushed it across the waterfall, and were soaked before they finished.
The diverted waterfall began to fill the bowl.
“And we still don’t have a cookpot,” Maxell said.
“Nope.” It didn’t bother Harp. She seemed half-asleep, watching the bowl fill.
Would they expect him to take off the pressure suit? He couldn’t do that; but it looked like he’d better have a damn good excuse. The silver suit was his uniform and his defenses and the measure of his value.
Renho and Dunninger returned. Dunninger had another cluster of angel moles. Renho pulled a respectable mass up through the foliage: a half-grown triune a bit smaller than he was. They moved away to butcher their catch.
On no visible signal, Harp and Stevn began taking off their clothes.
She was wonderful. Maxell tried to keep his jaw closed, his eyes half-lowered; he certainly couldn’t keep them off Harp. Normal women had always seemed fragile to him, too long and narrow; and while they might admire his muscle, they chose taller men.
Renho and Dunninger noticed what was going on. They began to strip too. They all set their bundled clothes handy and entered the pool.
Harp grinned at him. “Doesn’t it come off?”
“Classified,” the Silver Man said automatically. But anyone who might steal a silver suit was here within his sight. Right? And a Navy-trained dwarf was the equal of any four citizens, right? And any fool could see that if he didn’t get into that bath he’d be ostracizing himself, very bad vibes for the Admiralty, and he certainly couldn’t do it with the suit on, because water might damage something inside—
He stepped into the foliage to get it off
. The means were certainly classified.
If he’d had his life to live over again, he’d have been first into the bath. The way he’d hesitated, everyone watched him swim out of the foliage and enter the water. It was cold. He masked a grimace and submerged himself. He asked, “Is body heat supposed to make this warmer?”
Harp laughed. Stevn said, “Sitzen Tree is supposed to have their fireplace next to the bath, so one side gets hot.”
“The whole grove thinks they’re effetes,” Harp said.
She didn’t know about Admiralty practices. Renho and Dunninger were grinning, avoiding his eye and each other’s. Maxell said, “What do we use for soap?”
“Soak a bit, then we rub each other clean. I’ll show you.”
Maxell didn’t swallow his grin, because the rest were grinning too. Harp was going to be sparkingly clean.
“Guardian,” she said, “How do you like tree life?”
“It’s all new to me. Has its attractions, though. How are you feeling? It must have been a nightmare, your tree coming apart.”
“Oh, yes.” She took his hand underwater. Maxell was surprised, then pleased.
“Did you get any warning?”
She was silent for a few breaths. Then, “The whole tree was lurching around. The floor of the Commons twisted and ripped apart under us. We could hear a kind of bass scream, the sound of tearing wood, I guess. So we had some time, some warning, but what were we going to do with it? We tied the children in the loops and ran the treadmill to get them up quick, and then rode the line ourselves. Some of us snatched wings before it all ripped loose. I grabbed my windpipe instead.
“Some of us didn’t want to come, and some of the children hid when we tried to gather them up. We weren’t going to force them. We didn’t have room. They’re still in the tuft, I guess.”
Stevn left the water to pluck spine branches. These he distributed with ritual precision. The ritual continued: the five fed each other foliage until the branches were bare, then began scraping each others’ backs with the springy branchlets. Backs and shoulders, and then they scraped themselves.
Maxell, last to scrape Harp’s back, took it easy. The skin was already pink. And while he was close enough, he half-whispered, “When I was surrounded by foliage and starving—”
“Yes?” Her head turned; her lips were very close.
“Thank you for not laughing.”
“I’ve visited half the trees in the grove, you know. They’re all different. I don’t laugh at anyone.”
“I try not to.”
“Guardian, would you like to find some privacy with me?”
Though they were both naked and whispering, this seemed very sudden. Maxell felt a stutter coming on. He made himself say, “Yes. Absolutely. Can I take my suit?”
She was surprised, but she didn’t laugh. “Something inventive?”
“No, I have to guard it. Standing orders.”
“Oh.”
Chapter Three
YEAR 419 DAY 118
Sounds trickled through his sleeping mind: snores, voices, complaints, crying children; wind, growing gradually louder; “Kitemaster? Kitemaster?” all faintly irritating, all “Kitemaster?”
“Yuh.” He was standing half-upright in a wobbly lift cage. Everything hurt. He felt beaten half to death…but not sleepy. Alert. His eyes were crusted and the Sun was too bright, west and a little in. The Sun had been west and a little out when the cage began to fall.
Between waking and waking was generally about four and a half days…standard days: orbits of Goldblatt’s World. Nearer Levoy’s Star the days ran shorter. Farther out, they ran longer. A sleep was a day and a half to two days; but a voyage from the midpoint to the in tuft took longer than that. He must have slept for two days and a little, because the tuft was coming up fast—
“Kitemaster, what do we do?”
“Brake. There’s a brake. Ling, it’s hardwood, eyeball height in one corner. I think it’s behind those two white-haired—” Ling dove into the crowd; they made way. “Found it? Two flat pieces of wood. Squeeze them together.” The lift cage jerked and surged, and everyone still sleeping woke. “Not so hard, Captain, you’ll break it! Just gently, with both hands…a little harder. Remember, you’re not just braking a cageful of citizens, you’re braking the whole system. Spit on it if it smokes.”
The cage slowed.
Below was a Navy spinner ship, deeply nested, the first Alin had seen so close. For a made thing, it was big. A windmill turning on an oddly curved box, a tank, an octagonal hut, all decorated unimaginatively in letters and numbers, like Admiralty wings; all festooned with rope. Green billows rose up to hide it.
The channel for the cage and lift lines had grown closed. No, there it was, just a pucker, and next to it the windmill spinning merrily, its blades almost cutting foliage. He’d seen it this way a hundred times…
When Alin was eight years old, the Scientist caused a windmill to be built and hooked to the treadwheel that ran the lift lines. After that the lift lines were simply left running. They only called the kids to the treadwheel for extra power to lift a loaded cage.
Alin had liked the treadwheel, the companionship, the chance to show off muscle. Maybe that was why he’d become the Liftmaster’s Apprentice.
He was twenty when the crops failed. The tribe had migrated to the out tuft, traveling naked for fear of bringing contamination. Those had been frantically busy days. Lift lines had to be run to the out tuft, and a windmill built, and eventually a treadwheel and more lift cages; foraging parties on the truth needed transportation, and so did any food they found; and everything needed to be lifted to the midpoint and then out…
He’d been Liftmaster’s Apprentice when ten Admiralty kitemen came sailing out of the sky to touch down at Brighton’s midpoint. He’d known his destiny in that instant.
He’d asked for a pair of kites.
They’d laughed. It must have seemed funny to these tourists, a climber thing, this unspoken understanding that a gift would be repaid, eventually, somehow. But the kiteman Chet Bussjak had offered a trade.
It was all arranged in advance, carefully spelled out. For Bussjak’s set of kites, plus several sleeps spent teaching Alin how to make and bind more kites, Bussjak would take the kites they made together (proof that the making was taught well!) plus Alin’s wings.
It was easy to see why Bussjak wanted those. The wings bound to the kitemen’s backs were crude things, unpainted, ugly.
So Liftmaster Kent had taken another apprentice—
“Brake!” Alin shouted. He’d never descended the tree with such a load. The cage plunged into the foliage, into darkness and a roar of shattering branchlets loud enough to drown out the yelling, and slapped down hard. With his head ringing, Alin leapt to disconnect the cage before the lift line could pull it back out.
“Sorry,” he said.
Ling bellowed, “I can’t see a damn thing! Kitemaster, you’ve really…All right, so you’ve been gone for two years, but this place is really…What’s next?”
Alin’s sight was coming back. Parallel beams of sunlight flared from out. From in, from below…the red glow of a fire?
There were five shadows perched around the orange-white light of a rock firepit. Then one was flying toward him, backlighted by the glow. Stevn.
Alin caught him in the air. They drifted backward, and settled into green cloud.
“Boy, are you all right?”
“Sure. Well, I hurt.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. My hands. Wrists.”
The cage had emptied. The chatter of Linnet’s people faded as they all streamed toward the fire.
“Me too, but we did good. Everyone came back. What’s going on here? Who’s the—” In his concern for Stevn, Alin had only glimpsed the others at the fire. “Who’s the gleaming…silver man? It’s a Guardian!”
Stevn tugged at his arm. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
“No, hold a breat
h. I should know a little more. The Guardian?”
“He flew out to get me when I got close enough. They hadn’t seen the tree. When I pointed it out they went right in, but all we found was Harp.”
“Did you have any trouble with the kites?”
“No, Dad, it was just a straight shot, just set the kites and wait. I was afraid the fog would thicken up, but it didn’t. Riding back in a Navy ship was a kick. Noisy, though. When the windmill spins it’s like a thousand little men pounding with hammers.”
“There’s supposed to be little explosions going off in that box.” Alin was watching while he listened. Captain Ling and his men and women and children had only paused at the fire. There was a flurry of activity back…“Isn’t that where we had the bath?”
“Yes. We ripped out the foliage and filled it. Harp thinks it’s important, ‘important bonding ritual,’ and maybe she had another reason too.”
“Capability’s Harp?”
“Right. Dad, there’s food at the fire.”
At the rock firepit the overgrowth of foliage had been torn away to prevent the fire’s spreading, and used to feed the fire itself. There were angel moles and apples broiled on spine branches. The horde hadn’t left much.
Stevn said, “Not all the earthlife died. We’ve got oats and two kinds of beans, but we couldn’t figure how to cook them.”
“Not to mention enough foliage to strangle us all if we don’t eat fast enough. I’d say the tuft’s ready for occupancy. What else don’t I know?”
“This tuft’s infested with angel moles. We should take some back. And we got the bath going.”
“Who did you bring? Who didn’t you bring?”
“Captain Murphy and one of the crew stayed with Flutterby. We’ve got two crew and Guardian Curtz and Harp.”
From the blurred activity in the dark beyond the fire, one separated and climbed toward sunlight. Alin’s dark vision must have been improving. He saw Capability’s Harp with fire in her hair, vivid as his memory, where every other human shape had been a blur. She perched herself above the bath: a creature of magic, backlit by yellow-white sunlight, playing a windpipe in the low breeze. Half-heard music wafted toward them.
