The Smoke Ring t-2

by Larry Niven

  Climbing was easy if you didn’t have to paint too. In less than a day they had half circled the trunk. Above them by a quarter klomter, the bark bulged like a wave surging across a pond. They climbed toward that.

  “Jeffer wanted us to look at this,” Booce told them. “Something must have hit the trunk while it was younger. The wood’sgrown around it.”

  The wood bulged to hide it like some secret treasure.

  Rather was almost inside the crater before he could see anything. Carlot, ahead of him, had stopped. Booce was at his shoulder. Rather heard him gasp.

  Carlot said, “Metal!”

  “I must apologize to Jeffer,” Booce said. “Metal indeed! The tree may consider it poisonous; see how reluctant the wood is to touch it! But the Admiralty won’t think so.”

  Rather asked, “We want this?”

  “We do. Secret auction, I think.” Booce was deep into the crater, running his hands over the reddish-black surface of the metal. “Six or eight thousand kilos. No point in trying to move it. We’ll have to show it to the Navy anyway, unless…hmm.”

  Carlot looked at her father. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

  “Exactly. I have to think about this. Well, my merry crew, I think we’ve earned a holiday.”

  They climbed back around the trunk, taking their time.

  Booce knew just where to find the shelled burrowers.

  After lunch they spent a day tethered in the now strongly running waterfall, first washing each other and squeezing honey out of their clothing, then wrestling. They still got some painting in before sleeptime.

  In twenty days they had reached the wild tuft.

  Rather had never appreciated foliage before. It had surrounded him all his life. He gorged, savoring the taste and texture. “You love it too,” he observed. “Carlot, Booce, why don’t you live in a tree?”

  “Oh, there’s foliage in the Clump too,” Carlot said.

  “All kinds. Rather, I can’t wait to show you!”

  They slept in foliage. Rather slept like a dead man, from exhaustion and the familiar sensation of sleeping under tide, in a womb of soft foliage. He woke early, feeling wonderful.

  Carlot lay not far from her father. Her face was griefstricken. She thrashed in slow motion, unconsciously trying to hold herself against the tide.

  Rather took her hand, gently. “Hey. Nightmare?”

  Her eyes opened. “Oh. Rather. I was trying to get to Wend. She was screaming and trying to fly with just her bare feet—” She shook her head violently and sat up.

  “Something I have to tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “When we were swimming. Father noticed you were up.”

  “Up? Oh, up. You’re very pretty,” Rather said a little awkwardly.

  “We can’t make babies.”

  “We can’t? Hey, the jungle giants and the London Tree citizens didn’t have any trouble. I’m a dwarf, but—”

  Carlot laughed. “Father says we can’t. He wants me to marry another logger. I think he wants it to be Raff Belmy, from Woodsman, but definitely another logger. I thought I’d better say something before…well, before you got to thinking.”

  “Thinking. Well, it’s too late, then.”

  “It’s all right, then?”

  “Sure. Go back to sleep.” The truth was that Rather was almost relieved. Carlot with her clothes off made his head swim and his blood boil: an uncomfortable feeling.

  And Booce didn’t want his daughter to love a dwarf savage. Should he resent that? Somehow he didn’t.

  Breakfast was more foliage. Then Booce gave Rather the matchet. “Pry the bark off. We want a complete ring of bare wood half a meter across. We’ll paint along behind you.”

  Three and a half days later he was halfway around.

  The bark was soft, easy to pry loose, but the trunk must have been a good two klomters in circumference. They returned to the wild tuft to sleep and eat. Rather was one vast ache, but it still felt good to be sleeping in tide, in foliage.

  After breakfast Rather was still on the matchet. The Serjents seemed to share Citizens Tree’s faith in a dwarf’s superior strength. He finished the job before they slept again. They were ahead of schedule. Jeffer would not bring the CARM down for them for another six or seven days.

  From the base of the trunk they watched a moby attack the bugs descending along the honey track. Mobies normally skimmed clouds of bugs from the sky for their food. This was a tremendous creature, mostly mouth and fins, riding the wind toward the trunk and the bug-swarm at a hundred meters per breath. It realized its mistake just in time. It thrashed madly, gaping, irresistibly comical, as the wind hurled it toward the tree. Its flank smashed loose a shower of bark as it passed.

  The bugs descended like a cloud of charcoal dust. They reached the ring of painted bare wood and spread to north and south. The cloud condensed, growing darker, swarming-a few ce’meters out from the bark.

  “Carlot. Do you like it on the tree?”

  She nodded, watching the bugs.

  “Booce? I’ve watched you. You like it here.”

  “I love it.”

  “Then how can you kill trees?”

  Booce shrugged. “There are plenty of trees.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Rocket

  from Logbearer’s log. Captain Booce Serjent speaking:

  YEAR 384, DAY 1280. TEN DEGREES WEST OF THE CLUMP. WE’VE FOUND A GROVE AND CHOSEN A SHORT ONE, 30 KLOMTERS.

  DAY 1300. REFUELED IN A RAINCLOUD. EVERYTHING’S WET.

  DAY 1310. ANCHORED AT MIDPOINT OF TREE.

  DAY 1330. RYLLIN AND KARILLY MUST HAVE LAID THE HONEY TRACK BY NOW. BUGS ARE FOLLOWING THEM DOWN TO THE TUFT. I’LL TAKE LOGBEARER IN TO PICK THEM UP. WE’RE ALL EAGER TO RETURN TO THE ADMIRALTY, BUT THERE’S NO WAY TO HURRY THE BUGS.

  DAY 1335. RYLLIN AND KARILLY ARE ABOARD. FROM THE IN TUFT THEY SPOTTED A POND 50 KLOMTERS WEST AND A LITTLE IN. THE WOMEN ARGUE THAT WE CAN FIRE UP THE ROCKET AND START OUR RETURN WITH OUT WAITING FOR THE BUGS. THE POND WILL LET US REFILL THE WATER TANK. IT WOULD GAIN US TWENTY TO THIRTY DAYS.

  NOW IT’S MY CHOICE. THERE’S A RISK, BUT I’VE NEVER YET HELD OUT AGAINST THE WOMEN. I’LL GIVE UP EARLY, SAVE TIME.

  DAY 1360. THE BUGS HAVE REACHED THE HONEY BAND AROUND THE IN TUFT. ORDINARILY I WOULD BE DOWN THERE SUPERVISING, BUT I CAN’T DO THAT WHILE WE’RE UNDER ACCELERATION.

  WE MAINTAIN STAGGERED WATCHES AGAINST HAPPYFEET. IF THEY FIND US WE CAN READY LOGBEARER FOR INDEPENDENT FLIGHT IN HALF A DAY. THE ROCKET IS HOT AND RUNNING.

  DAY 1370. I’LL STOP FEEDING THE PIPEFIRE SOON. LET IT BURN OUT BEFORE THE BUGS CUT THE TUFT LOOSE. I CAN GUIDE US INTO THE POND ON THE LAST OF OUR STEAM.

  IF THE ROCKET RUNS DRY IT’LL TEACH THE GIRLS CAUTION. WE’LL STILL FILL THE TANK BEFORE WE REACH THE CLUMP . YOU ALWAYS BUMP A POND OR TWO WHEN YOU’RE MOVING.

  DAY 1380. A MATURE TREE IS DRIFTING TO BLOCK OUR PATH. DAMMIT. MAYBE IT’LL MOVE PAST.

  NO FURTHER ENTRIES.

  THE CARM PICKED THEM UP ON THE BRANCH AND REturned to its dock with the cabin half filled with foliage. Rather suspected that they would not eat foliage again, nor sleep in decent tide, for a long time.

  He heard the argument when Clave wanted to restart the motor. “There’s no point,” Jeffer told him. “We’d be using fuel to fight wind. We’re doing fine.”

  Booce added his voice to Jeffer’s. “We’ll sail even further in after the tuft severs. Leave us something to breathe!”

  Had anyone else seen Clave glance aft? Clave had taken less than a breath to read the faces of his crew, but Rather had caught it.

  Not so long ago, far away in Citizens Tree, Gavving had spoken thus to his eldest son: “You’re a citizen now. Watch Clave during a meeting. He leads where we’ll go. He always has. You don’t have to go Clave’s way just because Clave says so…”

  The motor stayed off.

  The tree moved ponderously west and in. Its westward motion slowed over sev
eral days. The days were shorter, and Voy had come nearer. The smallest children learned never to look directly at Voy; but Rather could tell. In the corner of his eye the violet-white pinpoint was more intense, closer and smaller, with less sky to blur and distort it.

  It took six days to make a sleep; then seven. Time whirled around them until they stopped caring. The journey had become more important than their destination.

  The crew lived on the bark, all but Jeffer. They found the CARM too strange. Even Rather left the CARM after a few sleeps. He had learned that he liked strangeness; but he sensed that Jeffer saw him as an intruder. The Scientist captains the CARM.

  Debby and Booce disappeared down the trunk to monitor the progress of the bugs. They returned with smoked dumbo meat and two cured skins, which Booce shaped into armor that looked remarkably like the silver suit.

  “We won’t use it this trip, but it’s standard gear. The Navy will expect us to have it.”

  A grove of integral tree sproutlings passed Voy-ward of the tree, the first the citizens had ever seen. They were a few scores of meters long, tufted only at the out end.

  “The seeds drop away, out and in,” Booce told them. “After they sprout, they have to sail back to the median. They’ll grow the other tuft when there’s enough to feed them.”

  The day came when Carlot called her father and pointed outward. “Isn’t that a pod grove?”

  Backlit by the sun, the cluster might almost have been a miniature tree grove hundreds of klomters out. “Small …yes. Too far, though.”

  “Why?” Debby asked.

  “Well, it’d take too long to…I’d forgotten the CARM. Let’s ask Jeffer.”

  Jeffer summoned up his windows-within-windows. “Sure, we can get there. Clave, want to take a trip?”

  “Can we find our way back? The tree looks big when you’re tied to it, but from six hundred klomters away—”

  “Trust me.”

  Forty plants grew in a loose cluster, all much alike.

  From a fibrous cup that faced west, a long, limp leaf trailed eastward, waving sluggishly in the wind. A thick vine reached a hundred meters out from the boll, ending in a kind of collar. Each collar held a brown egg-shape.

  “Those are jet pods,” Debby realized suddenly. “We used to ride them in Carther States.”

  Booce directed Rather to one of the largest plants. Carlot and Debby hung back. Rather the Silver Man circled the pod, cautious in the face of a new thing: a fibrous brown egg as big as the common room in his father’s hut.

  There was tide enough to pull the vine taut. Smaller pods grew in a spiral around the stem end, ranging from fistsized to man-sized. Replacements, he surmised, that would grow after the ripe one dropped away.

  Satisfied, Rather wrapped his legs around the stem for leverage and swung his matchet.

  The sound blasted his whole body. The sky spun round him. Tide was pulling him apart. His fingers and toes felt like they were inflating as spin pulled blood into them.

  Against the tide that was pulling him rigid, Rather forced his legs vertical to his torso, pulled an arm against his chest, and fired the ankle jets. The spinning sky slowed. He aimed his feet against the spin and brought it to a stop.

  Battered and deafened, he pulled his helmet open to hear what Booce was shouting at him.

  “That one was ripe! Try another plant!”

  Rather jetted toward the grove. Booce guided him from a distance. “No, that one’s stunted. We want a big one.”

  “Aren’t the big ones likely to be riper?”

  “That’s why we use armor! Try there—”

  The pod exploded, blowing him west and away, while seeds sponged off the silver suit. The spin was less this time; the blow had been more direct. Rather opened his helmet. “I think I had more fun on the tree!”

  “It’s too wet here. The pods like to spread their seeds when there’s water around. Try that one. Close your helmet!”

  Rather seriously considered telling the alien merchant to go feed himself to the tree. But he was already moving toward a third vine. There isn’t any other Silver Man, he thought. He swung viciously at the base of the pod. And what am I, if I’m not the Silver Man?

  The pod dropped out and away. Carlot and Debby flapped after it.

  The next one didn’t explode either. Rather chased the seed pod down, with Booce chasing him. They braced their shoulders against the pod and started back. They were near the CARM when Rather’s jets died.

  He fiddled with the throttle wheels. Nothing.

  “Booce! Don’t leave me!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The suit won’t move!”

  Booce laughed. “Are we going to have to put wings on that thing?”

  “Can you push me—”

  “Can and will. Here comes Debby. I’ll push you and the ladies can have the pods.” Booce seemed indecently cheerful, and Rather was a long time understanding why. Booce had found a flaw in Citizens Tree’s intimidating science.

  “You ran out of fuel, that’s all,” Jeffer told him. “See that little red light below your chin?”

  “It was on when I started out. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Means you’re out of hydrogen. There must be a way to refuel the suit. I’ll search the cassettes. If I can’t find anything we’ll have to ask Mark, after this is all over. Calm, now! We’ve got pods and we’ve got honey. Maybe we won’t need the silver suit again.”

  A forty-klomter-long tree is hard to lose from six hundred klomters away. Jeffer had no trouble bringing them home.

  Booce attacked the first pod gingerly, hacking at the stem with the matchet, flinching back at each blow. At the sixth blow the pod suddenly spewed foggy air under terrific pressure. Booce threw himself into the sky. He flapped back, staying well clear.

  He opened the other pod in the same cautious fashion. Then he and Carlot sawed it in half. The inside was lined with fist-sized puffballs, each with a dangling tendril. Booce scraped these away.

  He sawed the stem off the first pod, leaving a small hole. He shaved the edges until the hole was just smaller than the metal pipe, and quit for dinner.

  They resumed work after breakfast. It took four of them to shove the ends of the pipe into the holes in both pods.

  Clave asked, “Now how do you get water in there?”

  “Punch a little hole in the other end of the tank. Put the pipe in a’pond and suck. You need good lungs to be a logger.”

  “We’re too far in to find many ponds.”

  “I know. Usually we fuel Logbearer before we go to work on the tree. But, dammit, we’ve got the CARM, and there’ll be a pond somewhere, and Logbearer is whole again! Except for the lines. And cabins. We’ll need wood to build cabins.”

  “We’ll go for wood after the next sleep,” Jeffer said. “The out branch, I think. The in branch may be about to fall off.”

  “No. Another thirty days at least.”

  Carlot said, “Father—”

  “Don’t trust that,” Booce said instantly. “We’ll use the out branch.”

  “You’re the logger. What changed your mind?”

  Booce sighed. “I was guessing. I don’t really know when the in branch will fall off. Jeffer, there’s likely to be a shock when the branch tears loose. Stay aboard the CARM. Stay strapped in when you sleep. Leave the motor off.”

  “Stet. Will the rest of you be okay on the trunk?”

  “As long as we keep our wings handy. Always have your wings in reach…always. But you should be in the CARM in case we need rescue.”

  The steam rocket still required attention. Booce and Carlot festooned the water tank with lines and wove a braid of lines around the bow end. “We’ll moor the cabins here. Other than that…I still don’t know what we’re going to use for sikenwire. There has to be some way to hold the coals in place.”

  Clave had a suggestion. “We could arrive crippled. Get a push from the CARM to drift the log into range, then signal for
help somehow. Tell the Navy we lost our sikenwire, got home by luck.”

  “Mmm…maybe. I’d look like a fool, but maybe. I just don’t want to be in too much of a hurry.” He stopped abruptly. Then he said, “Ryllin and the girls, they — we were in a hurry to get back to the Admiralty. We started the rocket running before the tuft dropped off.”

  “What’s — ?”

  “Did I tell you you’re rich?”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Clave said.

  “That wart on the trunk is thousands of kilos of metal. With metal you can buy anything that’s for sale in the Market. It also makes us a target. Someone might try to steal it.”

  “Good news and bad news.”

  “Right. We’ll set up shop to sell the wood, and take our time selling the metal. No hurry.”

  Food had grown short again. Debby and Clave flew in along the trunk until they found a covey of flashers. With the trunk as a backstop they fired their full complement of arrows and shot half a dozen of the small birds. It took them six days.

  They built a fire on the trunk to cook the birds. Logbearer’s crew was ready for a feast.

  Booce was the exception. He ate little. He was uncharacteristically silent, his eyes on the fire, until Carlot said, “Dad? Twenty, twenty-five days?”

  “About that,” Booce said. Then: “I guessed last time. I should be in the tuft watching the bugs.”

  “Dad, you couldn’t warn us from down there anyway.”

  “I could start climbing ten or fifteen days early…”

  “Dad—”

  “I’m glad we don’t have the rocket running. We were running the rocket when it happened.”

  The silence stretched. Debby asked, “What happened?”

  Booce told it.

  Booce was fast asleep when the cabin’s yielding wooden wall slammed into his face and chest. His grunt of surprise was lost among feminine shrieks. He was reaching for his wings before his eyes were fully open.

  The women were a flurry of action around him, snatching for their wings, moving out. Ryllin reached the door, looked about her, then immediately turned toward a violet-white glare that hadn’t been there when they’d gone to sleep. Carlot and Karilly followed. Wend hadn’t found her wings. She was near tears as she searched.