The Last Green Tree

by Jim Grimsley

  “Here we go,” Kitra said. “We’re off to see the wizard.”

  “Beg pardon?” asked Dekkar.

  “A reference to a fairy tale. Something from pre-Transit.”

  “Then we’re off to see the wizard,” Dekkar agreed, and Keely giggled as Penelope crawled onto his lap off Figg’s head. The spider sat there in pleasure as Keely rubbed its back and belly. Outside, the peaceful landscape streamed by, and Figg did his best to catch his breath.

  1 Movements of the allied heavy artillery ambient called “chalcyd” and flocks of the airborne allied units called “calcept” have been sighted throughout the Ajhevan continent, in contravention of the treaty between People for a Free Aramen and the Dirijhi Collive. Allied troop movements are restricted by treaty to one corridor along the river David. Protests have been lodged with the Dirijhi consul at the edge of the forest near Dembut. The two known types of allied support for the rebellion are extremely volatile and will attack on very little provocation. The names are those which are currently in use by northern media, said to be borrowed from the Dirijhi symbiont dialect.

  2 Tens of thousands cheer progress of rebellion in Jarutan’s Freedom Plaza, celebrating the early success of the rebel armies in shaking up the colonial government in Feidreh-Avatrayn. Chong Tosh addresses the crowd from the statue of Kraken the Great standing at the feet of the old Hormling hero of the Faction Wars. “We will see our children and our grandchildren as the respected citizens of a self-governing world,” Chong declares. Secondary school bands and parades of schoolchildren and youth organizations fill the plaza afterward, and fireworks light up the city along the river Silas.

  3 Fans of The Adventures of Little Agnes in Monospace were heartbroken when the new episode failed to air on the familiar Airy-Fairy Stream in the Surround. The shutoff of all new entertainment from Senal has Surround fans upset at missing a lot of new installments for popular serials like Don Ameche Speaks from the Dead and Southside Reeks. Other forms of popular culture are also suffering. Music fans have missed the spray-release of the new Shaptown Boys recording, and S-Boys’ fans are known to be violent when they can’t keep up with the sweet, sweet harmonies of their adolescent heroes. Coverage of the investiture of Ess Haven as a Node of Hanson in Grand Wheel was interrupted at the time of gate closure; no ships were in transit at the time, or at least none is known to have been in transit. All communications with Grand Wheel and Home Star have been interrupted. No word from Gatekeeper Station as to when gate services will be restored from the Aramenian side.

  4 The Hormling Eighth Army continues to hold a strong defensive perimeter around the colonial capital twin cities, Feidreh-Avatrayn, and the Prin appear to have found an effective means of preventing further encroachments on the city. What appeared to be the first serious defeat of the Prin may be turning in their favor, as has been the case in all other conflicts since the Conquest. Some media outlets in Feidreh-Avatrayn continue to function.

  5 Edenera Sade, proxy name for the daughter of the deceased media star Sade, released a protest to news outlets in the twin cities today upon learning of the emigration of her father’s murderer, Fineas Figg, to Aramen. Figg, scion of the Orminy House Bemona-Kakenet, is known to have fled Senal due to recent setbacks to the family fortune under the Common Fund Reforms; he is rumored to have settled in an underground estate far to the north of the Ajhevan continent, in a facility in which he has secreted much of the fortune he hid from Hanson and the Mage. Figg invoked his house’s right to murder when he and Sade became embroiled in an argument over a young woman at Figg’s three hundredth birthday party, ironically thrown for him by Sade. Edenera Sade is the newly adopted proxy name of his biological-natural daughter, thought to be seeking her own status as a celebrity in the Hormling pantheon.

  6 Debris from an explosion which destroyed at least part of the Twelfth Fleet has been detected by Hargirs Station in orbit around Arsus; the debris field is several million kilomeasures wide, indicating some broad scale disaster within the fleet. High levels of radioactivity in the area are making further reconnaissance difficult. No communication from any of the ships assigned to the fleet has been received in nearly two days.

  7 Skygard Aramen has taken the unprecedented step of suspending pulleypod service to and from the surface. Surface-to-space cables are being withdrawn into Skygard to prevent station destabilization should the war in Feidreh-Avatrayn escalate. No Skygard station has ever attempted to reel in its ground cables, and engineers involved in the project remain uncertain as to how long the process will require.

  8 A candy tree has blossomed in downtown Jarutan, near the Ordinance Park entrance. Candy trees bloom once a decade or less and are increasingly rare, even in their native habitat along the Ajhevan coast. A candy harvester is in place and a squadron of militia has the tree under guard. Candy-tree addicts are gathering but there are no signs of violence to report. The candy tree is considered to be an endangered species by wildlife groups, but there are no efforts under way to preserve them. Candy trees are protected under the terms of the Treaty of Silas Ford, which governed relations between the Mage and the Dirijhi until the recent rebellion.

  Unto Greenwood

  1.

  Kitra flew the flitter north into the Silas valley along a familiar route parallel to the track of the river, a low path with not much traffic, guide-planes visible in the heads-up but not in reality. She was fretting about the number of people in the flitter, all of whom would be in the riverboat heading into Dirijhi country without any papers, all of whom would have to be hidden, each one of whom lessened her chances of getting Binam out this trip, a goal that urged itself on her more strongly as the war in the south unfolded.

  As if he were reading her mind, Pel said, in his mellow voice, “I can get papers for a private excursion upriver, provided the trees haven’t closed the river traffic.”

  “There’s been no news about a closure,” Kitra said. “And that would be news, up here.”

  “There’ll be a lot of frightened southern tourists stranded in Dembut,” he said.

  Dekkar nodded, glancing at the thing tied up in the back compartment.

  “How’s that thing in the back?” Keely asked. “Can it get loose?”

  “No,” Dekkar said. “I have it safely under control.”

  Sitting next to the boy, Kitra could feel some of his tension. She was more acutely aware of Penelope, however. The spider thing was still sitting in the boy’s lap, and every time it moved, Kitra’s gaze flew to it.

  Pel had opened a frame with a map of Greenwood, the one he had used when she told him her brother’s location. “Are you sure?” Pel was asking. “Because that’s almost too good to be true.”

  “Yes. I’m very sure.”

  Pel met Kitra’s eyes in the mirror. “Your brother’s tree. It’s very close to where we need to go.”

  “The place where you expect to find—”

  “Yes,” Dekkar said, quietly. She could see him in the mirror again, looking behind at some movement in the back.

  “Who’s your brother?” Keely asked.

  “His name is Binam.”

  “Is he your little brother?”

  “Yes.”

  Keely had to think about that for a minute. “Is he little like I am? Does he like to play with toys?”

  “He used to. There aren’t a lot of toys where he is now.”

  “No toys?” Keely gave that serious thought.

  “The trees don’t play with toys, and my brother has to do what the trees want him to do.”

  “He does?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he belongs to a tree. He works for one. It’s his job.”

  From the second row of seats, sitting next to the quiescent Hilda, Figg asked, “How long to Dembut?”

  “A little over an hour. I’ll park the flitter in one of the big public lots near the airway terminal.”

  “My boat is at the commercial dock,” Pel s
aid. “I keep some provisions on board but we’ll need more.”

  “Buy whatever you need,” Dekkar said. “I have cash chips. I’ll need to lie low in the city while we’re there.”

  “We’ll take you to the dock,” Kitra said, “and you can wait with the thing in the back.”

  “Do you think they’re looking for you?” Figg asked.

  “They’ll be looking for someone who feels like I do to their senses. I could hide from most of their operators, but there’s at least one who’ll find me unless I take precautions.”

  “One?” Figg asked.

  “They have a very powerful cantor with them. She feels female to me, but she has something to do with the trees. She’s returning from the southern continent at the moment, a good number of hours away.”

  “Hours?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll be pursuing us?”

  “I expect she’s coming up from the south to deal with me, yes.” Dekkar spoke mildly, without any hint of arrogance; Kitra studied his face in the back-view mirror, which gave her a good look at the whole passenger compartment.

  He had known this was coming when he hired her in the first place. A sudden instinct told her this was true. He had been sent here. Maybe even by the Mage herself, or the one that the Hormling called Great Irion.

  The cabin fell quiet after that and remained so until the flitter reached Dembut. There was a public flitter pad near the riverboat docks, and Kitra landed there. Traffic in the city appeared much the same as usual, though these days Dembut grew so fast she found herself recognizing less and less of it, other than the old village at the center, which was now too posh a location for any but the most wealthy residents. River and tourist traffic had moved into new development upriver toward the forest, which loomed green and verdant over everything.

  She went to the market on her own to buy supplies. Pel was to wait while Dekkar worked on Figg’s wounds and healed them; afterward he and Zhengzhou would accompany Figg to apply for papers for a private expedition into Greenwood, as far as the Capital, the usual tourist route. The trees would expedite a request of that sort if the supplicant was willing to pay the large fee required; the trees had a great appreciation for money. Dekkar planned to remain behind on the boat with the Nerva-thing and Keely, in order to control the former and hide the latter. That left Kitra to buy supplies for the journey.

  She wandered in the market to listen to the talk, at the same time eyeing shops where she could order what she needed. She had brought the Hilda for help with portage, and the drone followed at her elbow with a bland expression. Pathfinding with these creatures was chancy out in the open, so it was best simply to keep close to it herself.

  People were subdued here, even in the taverns. She heard a lot of muttering about the docks, the war traffic flowing through. Heads clustered close together. News-frames in the bars carried the rebel media, that bimbo blond man Nars Federson chanting about the coming of independence, Aramen to be ruled by local assembly. In the tavern where she paused to watch, some people were jeering at him openly.

  She was about to leave the bar when the frame switched to a survey team send by one of the Jarutan independent telecasters, stunned faces milling about a heap of wreckage, the camera rising and panning back to show a field of ruin, smoking husks of buildings interspersed with dark, shadowed craters eating deep into the earth. Silence fell over the bar. The images were being broadcast from remote cameras in Rarnak, a city on the northern coast of Jharvan. Some of the faces around her were obviously listening to the voiceover on their link. She was glad to have none.

  In Dembut, merchants maintained a tradition of selling face-to-face from physical inventory; Kitra always found it a pleasant change to purchase from a human being rather than from a machine interface. This was what she was used to from her girlhood, after all; she had grown up on this continent, she and Binam and her parents living on an algae farm until Binam was sold to the trees. That gave the parents enough money to rid themselves of the farm and move south; Kitra divorced them and refused any part of the bounty for Binam in the settlement.

  She went to the only outfitter she had used here, a shop that kept a good deal of inventory. Ard’s Overland Supply had a big showroom and a lot of stock for cross-country parties and river travel. Kitra bought sleeping rolls in impossibly tiny packs; she bought other supplies they would need for bathing and hygiene; she bought a large store of food of the survival variety—dehydrated meats and nutrient-soaked cakes, foods that they could carry overland—and canteens and packs, along with a lightweight set of cookware and a couple of tents. She bought adjustable biosuits with one-pass hoods, transparent over the face; she bought a dozen kits for fitting them properly, in case she ran into trouble. The store owner showed her a portable covered cooker that made no light or smoke and she added it to the smart-cart that the Hilda was leading about. She paid for all this with a cash chip from Dekkar and rented the smart-cart, too, to carry her purchases home.

  Since the riverboat had a galley, she bought fresher, more palatable supplies at an open market, on top of the more portable supplies she’d already purchased. She shopped in a rush, planning for a long journey: better to stock Pel’s kitchen for a month and let him keep the surplus than to run out of food in Dirijhi country.

  Behind her trotted the Hilda with the smart-cart at her heels. They headed through the crowded market along the riverfront, the gray-brown waters of the Silas flowing fast, swollen with rain. Dembut attracted Ajhevan farmers, militia, symbionts on break from the consulate or in town to make purchases for their trees. To most people the syms would have looked very much like one another, male and female hardly distinguishable, but Kitra had worked with syms a long time and had learned to see them both for what they had become and for what they might have been before their transformation. She studied the few she could see now, wishing that one of them might be Binam.

  Ten years ago she had passed through Dembut on her way into Dirijhi country, a revolutionary freshly returned from a fact-finding trip to Paska, one of the Hormling colonies in the Cluster. She had been a different person in those days; the decade since then felt longer than all that had come before. Too long, in fact, for she spent it knowing that Binam still languished in service to his tree.

  The market crowd thinned at the riverfront, and she and the Hilda made good progress toward the boat district. Pel’s boat had just come in sight when Kitra heard a boom so loud it stunned her and felt a concussion that knocked her to the ground. The Hilda had kept upright and managed the smart-cart; the market behind them was framed in orange flame and a cloud of black.

  Out of the river, dripping, rose three of the big black mantises, the things that had destroyed Figg’s compound. Calmly they walked ashore, black legs smashing through boats, docks, piers, kiosks, and buildings, the lead bug raising its head and bleating, the most awful, shrieking sound. Kitra shivered and her skin knotted to bumps. The Hilda closed a hand around Kitra’s shoulder, heaved her upright, and forced her to trot toward the boat; the smart-cart’s engine whined.

  Pel and Figg rushed down the wharf, took Kitra by the arms, and hurried her on board. Figg was giving her a look of such concern that she almost liked him. His skin had lost the gray tinge and the wounds around the edge of his face were almost invisible. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head, stooping to clear the doorway, hurtling into the dark of the boat’s interior while, after them, Zhengzhou followed, leading the Hilda. “There was an explosion. Then those things came out of the river. I thought they were coming after me for a second.”

  “They’re attacking the town,” Pel said, from outside.

  “Bring the cart on board.” Figg stood at the open hatch for a moment, watching. “We don’t have time to unload it.”

  The cart started to alarm when it left the dock; Pel ripped open a panel and poured bleach on its organics to stop the shrieking once he jostled it down the
couple of steps. “Where’s Dekkar?”

  “Here,” the priest said, stepping out of the shadow of the interior. “You’d better get us under way.”

  Kitra jumped when he appeared, stepped away from him, her heart in her mouth. She was rattled by the explosions, the mantises that had stepped so close, the fires on the docks. She sat stupefied on something, a chest with a cheap cushion tied to the top.

  “Why are they attacking their own allies?” Pel headed to the pilot’s station; Figg was already taking in the mooring lines along the dock.

  “Allies don’t always get along. Though they could be looking for us, I expect.”

  Figg slid into the boat, closed the hatch expertly, signaling to Pel, who backed the boat out of its slip and carefully eased into the river.

  On the shore, chaos, and then, behind the boat, another trio of the black mantises walking out of the river, smashing into the boat slips. Some of the fleet attempted to escape into the river; the creatures went after each of these with especial ferocity, smashing carbon-hard forelegs through the hulls, ripping their head crests through each craft in the same motion, stem to stern, the composite hulls shredded, occupants ripped to pieces. Overhead, a flock of dark bird-shapes appeared, streaming down toward the town.

  Quiet shock overtook everyone on the boat; Kitra had to will herself to breathe more slowly. She moved to the glass walls, stood there watching the cloud fall over the town.

  “They don’t see us,” she said.

  “No.” Dekkar moved beside her; Figg, beyond, was kneeling by Keely, arms around the boy. “If our luck holds and none of them blunders into us, we may make it into the forest.”

  She watched him carefully, trying to control her new fear of him. Having studied with Prin, worked with Prin and Drune, she knew them well enough to spot the signs of their work; in Dekkar she found no tell-tale look of distance, none of the partial distraction. He appeared to be completely and fully engaged in conversation with her, to the degree that he was not absorbed in the chaos along the riverbank. No sign hinted that he was engaged in any other activity, but it was impossible that the creatures would have missed the lone boat leaving the dock when they emerged from the river.