Children of the Comet

by Donald Moffitt

  He made three trips below the gorse until the rotation of the Tree brought the face of the dark too near. He’d brought back only six of the stripped branches she required. She sighed and put down her awl and thread. “I’m not quite finished either,” she said. “I still have some stitching to do, and then there will be the resin to apply. We will have to wait until tomorrow, my poor impatient Tor-ris.”

  She spread the skins on the ground to show him her work. She had sewn four of the skins together, end to end, to make a long strip more than four times Torris’s own length. Two more squares jutted out, one on either side. She showed him how they would be folded. He understood at once and cried out, “Yes, like a cave!”

  She finished the sewing the next day and spread sealant liberally along the seams. Like Torris’s, her tribe’s sealant was the same resin used to cast Faces, except that something dark had been added to make it opaque. When he tried helpfully to point out that a transparent sealant was better because it could always show the condition of the stitches underneath, she became impatient and said snappishly, “Have you nothing better to do than sit around and watch me work? Find something useful to do. You could gather leaves and stems and make a soft bed for us. Or finish assembling the new arrows you promised.”

  “Or I could hunt meatbeast and bring back a carcass or two to add to your insane hoard!” he shot back angrily, and was immediately sorry. The last thing he wanted to do was to hasten her departure.

  “Do you think it’s so easy?” she retorted. “This is a new kind of hunting, and you are not an experienced hunter. You don’t even know how to move on an open surface without a solid branch to grab hold of. You could fall through and start thrashing and start a stampede. Run off all that meat. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, you could get yourself kicked to death in the bargain. Or you could launch yourself into the sky by mistake and then, while you’re hanging there like a fool waiting for the Tree to kindly draw you back to it, get yourself snapped up by some hovering flutterbeast who’s learned how to hunt under these conditions.”

  For emphasis she pointed to the sky above the teeming greensward. The three or four black dots hovering there were opportunistic flutterbeasts that had managed to launch themselves to heights that would not alarm the grazing beasts below. It took them a long, long time to drift down to an altitude where they might represent a threat, and of course, while out of contact with the ground, with nothing to push against, they could not circle or otherwise maneuver. Every so often one of them would essay moderate lateral movement by spitting reaction mass, but their downward drift was so slow that it was easy for a watchful meatbeast to keep track of them and avoid being directly underneath when they landed.

  But sometimes the meatbeasts were not watchful enough or were lulled by the slowness of the descent. And flutterbeasts were a lot smarter than they were. As Torris watched, one of the black shapes, timing it just right, spat a gob of reaction mass and managed a last-minute course adjustment. A quick push of a wing sent it scooting sideways to snare a meatbeast that hadn’t retreated quite as far as its fellows when they moved aside to clear a safe landing zone.

  “One of them tried to get me that way,” Ning said matter-of-factly.

  Torris shuddered. Across the plain, the frantic flurry of motion had stopped as the flutterbeast engulfed the unlucky animal in its wings and settled down to devour its feast. The other meatbeasts went back to their grazing. They had nothing to worry about now.

  “Stop gawking,” Ning said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  Torris stood back and surveyed the odd contraption that he and Ning had been working on for the last four days. Ning’s catapult was taking shape now. He had been sawing wood to length for her, shaping dovetails, splicing and winding animal tendons into thick cables while she whittled notches into oddly fashioned pieces that were supposed to fit together somehow.

  He could see now that it was a sort of gigantic bow that was braced against one of the underlying branches beneath their feet. The strength of a dozen men could not have drawn it, but Ning had explained that it could be bent little by little by a kind of winding thing that could be cranked back over and over again by one person at the long end of a staff. Each pull would advance the mighty bowstring by only a finger’s width, but one of the wooden things she was carving would catch it while the staff was pushed back to its starting position. When the bowstring was fully drawn, you could release it by leaning sideways on the staff.

  Torris marveled at the complexity of the device. He had made traps that sprang suddenly to ensnare small prey, but he had never imagined a contrivance of such power.

  “Does your tribe make such things?” he said wonderingly.

  “No,” she said. “There are legends that they were used long ago by a race of giants that lived before man. There are pictures carved on ancient slabs of wood that show them. The slabs are held sacred. But I think they were just people like us who thought big and dared greatly.” She paused in her work to give him a challenging grin. “Perhaps they used them to venture to more distant Trees on bride raids. And they could go as an armed group instead of landing singly and have a greater chance of overpowering a defending clot of men.”

  “So you don’t believe in giants?”

  Her expression grew fierce. “The carvings are very clear and detailed. You can tell from them how these great bows must have worked. I think they must have been used to pass on the knowledge of how to make them to their artificers.”

  “Have you ever made one of these before?”

  She blushed behind her faceplate. “No.” Then, after a moment: “It would not have been allowed.”

  “Didn’t you talk to your elders?”

  She scowled at him. “The old men laughed when I tried to tell them what I thought. They said I was just a woman and didn’t know anything. Then, when I wouldn’t back down, they became angry. They said I was being blasphemous. That I would be punished if I persisted in my apostasy.”

  Torris wanted to ask her if she really thought her strange contraption would work, but he thought it best not to pursue the subject. “I think we need one or two more carcasses to balance that bundle of meat if you intend to ride it back to your Tree. You don’t want it spinning when you’re trying to hang on to it.”

  “All right,” she relented. “You can go hunting with me tomorrow. We’ll get another couple of animals first, then finish up here.”

  It took another eight days of hard work to finish assembling Ning’s giant sling. Then there was an unexpected problem with the intricate catch. It tended to slip prematurely. They tested it by hurling a massive log at the stars. But they did not dare to position the mound of dressed carcasses in the basketwork cup they had made for it until Ning was mounted and ready to fly; they were afraid that the oversensitive trigger might send the cargo of meat soaring into space without her.

  But at last Ning pronounced them ready. “You have been a good pair of hands, my patient Tor-ris,” she said. “You have earned the rest you shall have tonight.” She peered at the sky, where the tiny green dot that was their target had already set. “Tomorrow, when the world has made another full turn and we face the Sisters again, our giants’ bow will again be aimed at my people’s Tree. We must wait until the orange star has merged with the red Stepsister, and you must pull the trigger at the precise moment when orange Sister appears again. I will show you how you must count. If you miss the moment, we will have to wait a whole day before we try again, and then I will have to change the counting to account for a slight sideways shift.”

  Torris could only gape at that. Ning sounded for all the world like Claz making one of his mysterious pronouncements, and she sounded just as sure of herself.

  She laughed when she saw the expression on his face. “Don’t look so worried, my mighty hunter. Tonight you will be sleeping with a woman, not a priest.”

  CHAPTER 13
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  Ning was straddling the enormous mound of frozen carcasses that Torris had painstakingly tied and retied until he had a solid, secure mass that would not fly apart from the stresses to which it would shortly be subjected. With one hand she was holding on for dear life to the improvised harness in front of her. With the other hand she was tightly grasping the sack of explosive seed pods she would need for minor course corrections. She wasn’t worried about running out. She had all the extra reaction mass she might need in the form of the haunches of frozen meat she was sitting on.

  Torris stared at the spectacle with misgivings he knew in his heart were unworthy. There was enough meat there to feed his own tribe for an entire season. Any member of his tribe would have told him that it was his duty to kill Ning and drop the packet of meat to the foot of the Tree where it could be retrieved. He could imagine what Claz or his father would say about his perverse scruples. Now he had a new lie to tell. He shifted his eyes to her face. She paid no attention to him. Her gaze was fixed on the sky, waiting for the Sisters to emerge from their brief occlusion. Through her transparent faceplate he could see her lips moving as she counted off the moments. Perched atop her prize at last, she was wound up as tightly as her fantastic invention. He kept his hands assiduously away from the trigger staff, as she had told him to do. She was taking no chances on a premature release.

  His eyes strayed momentarily to the patch of sky she was concentrating on, and he almost missed her signal. When he flicked his eyes back to her face, her lips were mouthing a frantic command in no-air talk.

  “Pull, Tor-ris, pull!” she was screaming soundlessly. She added a few choice words of invective as he sprang guiltily to obey.

  The recoil from the staff knocked him off his feet and sent him flying. When he picked himself up, Ning and her frozen cargo were gone, and the catapult, which had seemed so sturdy when they were putting it together, was in shambles. The violence of the launch had been too much for it.

  When he raised his eyes to the sky, Ning was already a dwindling figure among the stars. She had managed to retain her grip on the harness, so that was all right.

  As he watched, he saw a few hovering flutterbeasts take notice of the eruption and turn their narrow heads toward the miraculous bundle of flying meat. They had been lazing aloft, hoping to snare one of the unwary meatbeasts that had been grazing too close to the edge of the circular meadow and, inattentive to the gentle push of the Tree’s rotation, had slid over the brink into the sky. The ability to spit mouthfuls of reaction mass had been good enough to let the waiting flutterbeasts maneuver close enough to these involuntary snacks to engulf an unfortunate animal or two, but Ning and her cargo were already out of reach. But not so out of reach for those grounded flutterbeasts that could push against something solid. Several of these raised curious heads, sensed food, and launched themselves with enough force to have a chance of intercepting Ning.

  There wasn’t much Torris could do. He ran for the bow he had left on the ground some distance away, took hasty aim, and managed to put an arrow through one of the creatures as it sailed overhead. It writhed in agony, spurting globules of blood. That diverted one of the pursuing flutterbeasts, which turned its attention to this easier prey.

  Another couple of the black-winged monsters hadn’t launched themselves forcefully enough to intercept Ning, and they too gave up the chase. That left three or four flutterbeasts with enough initial momentum to overtake Ning. And they were gradually closing the gap.

  Torris stood by helplessly as they drew nearer to Ning. The two that were closest to her were already spreading their huge clawed wings in anticipation of a capture.

  Ning was a tiny figure at this distance, but Torris could see that she had let go of the harness and was standing up, her long body streaming outward. She would be an easy snack for one of her pursuers if she started drifting away from her hurtling missile. But then he saw that she must have hooked her feet under the harness and was securely anchored.

  Now she was fitting an arrow to her bow. Taking cool aim, she shot the flutterbeast that was closest, then calmly drew another arrow from her quiver and shot another one. One of the following beasts caught up with the nearer of its two wounded fellows and started chewing on it despite its vigorous objections. That left one more pursuer. Its slightly oblique vector wouldn’t allow it to catch up to Ning’s other victim, so it spat a quick course correction and slammed into the feeding flutterbeast to counter the feast.

  Torris watched with relief as Ning’s miniscule figure drew itself in, and she was once again seated securely. Her arrows had reduced the momentum of victims and victors alike, and the gap between Ning and the squabbling flutterbeasts slowly began to widen. Squinting with one eye, he assured himself that Ning’s flying larder was eclipsing the green dot that was her Tree.

  He stared for a long time at the ruins of Ning’s wrecked contrivance and finally shook his head. He picked up his bow and scattered belongings and trudged slowly toward the shelter where he and Ning had spent their last night. He had a lot of thinking to do.

  By morning he had made up his mind. There was no point in lingering here in this strange land of plenty, where game was to be had for the asking and where the Tree ended and naked space began. A person was not a person away from his tribe.

  He had finished his Climb. He had had his Dream, and it was a good one. Claz would be pleased. Perhaps Torris’s Dream would even go into the annals to be recited by future priests.

  That was the rub. He could tell his Dream but not the rest of it.

  Ning had argued and argued with him about that. “Tor-ris, my virtuous simpleton,” she’d finally said in exasperation, “you simply cannot tell your priest or anyone else that you have killed another Climber. This Brank of yours was a plain murderer who would have killed me and gone on to kill you when you were still helpless in your Dream, or so he thought. You had no choice. If he were the one on trial before your tribe, he would be the one to be sentenced to be cast into the darkness for stealing from another Climber if for nothing else. He is not worth risking your overscrupulous neck for.”

  “The Climb is a sacrament,” he replied piously. “And to lie is blasphemy.”

  “Tor-ris, Tor-ris, what am I to do with you?” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “You wouldn’t be lying; you’d only be leaving things out.”

  “And what else am I to leave out?” he’d asked hotly. “That I paired with you, and that we spent days and days climbing to the land at the top of the Tree, where game abounds and where people go when they die? And that we made a bow of the giants to send a gift of meat to the people of another Tree—a Tree that our bride hunters will be raiding someday?”

  She knitted her brows. “You can tell them about the land at the top of the Tree,” she said judiciously. “I have no doubt that there will be some that call it blasphemy and that you will have to endure being lectured by your priest and your elders. But in the past, there must have been hardy souls in your tribe who climbed to the land at the end of the Tree and brought back tales. And that is where your legends come from. One day, other youths making the Climb will break through, then more, and it will be legend no longer. Your tribe will know abundance, and the legends will be about you. But you must not tell them about me. That would make you a traitor.”

  In truth, Torris had already come to the same conclusion, but he could not admit it to himself. It was easier to blame it on Ning and to make himself angry. But he knew in his heart that he was unworthy. And that he would be a coward.

  He took a final look around the nest that he and Ning had shared. She hadn’t left much behind. She’d taken the arrowheads he’d carved for her, and in some bittersweet fashion, that made him happy. There wasn’t anything there that he wanted, and he couldn’t have explained some artifact from another Tree anyway. There was a fresh stovebeast that he and Ning had caught the night before, tied in the corner, and he exchanged
it for the one he’d been harboring for the last few days. The furry little fellow he’d been using was at the airseal as soon as he opened it, and it scampered away as fast as its stubby legs would carry it.

  He walked to the edge of the circular plateau and followed its perimeter for some distance until he came to a spot where there was a clear drop of at least a mile, with no branches in the way to slow his descent. Like all the life forms that had evolved on the Tree, he had an exquisite sense of gravity no matter how feeble it might be, and he could feel the infinitesimal pull of the comet’s mass far below. It would be a long fall from paradise. Clutching his bow and spear, he stepped off the edge.

  CHAPTER 14

  The first group he encountered, with still a few hours of descent ahead of him, was a party of hunters in the lower branches. There were five of them carrying one pathetic prize among them—a starveling meatbeast that must have been the cull of its herd.

  They stopped and stared at Torris but did not try to approach him. One did not speak to a returning Dreamer until he had poured out his Dream to Claz and had undergone the proper rituals. They conferred briefly among themselves, then one of them scrambled downward and disappeared among the low-lying boughs. To spread the news, Torris supposed.

  He saluted them wryly and continued his descent. By the time he got to the cave mouth he was exhausted. Climbing down was just as tiring as climbing up, except that it didn’t take as long, with intervals of dropping free alternating with threading one’s way through the branches. He was hungry, too, not having stopped often enough to forage or to hunt.