The Smoke Ring t-2

by Larry Niven

  Carlot looked at her questioningly. Debby said, “I’m afraid I’ll say too much.”

  “Adjeness?”

  “Yeah. It isn’t just the questions, it’s her treefeeding superior attitude. Carlot, I feel so small.”

  “Can’t help you there, but…go fly next to Raym. He won’t let you talk at all.” Carlot held her voice low. “Raym Wilby is an old Dark diver. It’s gotten to his brain.”

  “What’s he doing with us?”

  “He’s an old friend of Mother’s. I’d hate to have her see him now! I could get rid of him, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Either I’d hurt his feelings or it’d take forever.”

  “Stet. What’s a Dark diver?”

  “Ask him. Or just listen.”

  Debby dropped back. Raym was telling Rather, “It isn’t the dark that bothers you, it’s the thick. Your eyes get used to the light in there. It’s kind of gray, and the colors bleach out. I never heard of a diver getting wrecked unless he was a damn fool, because things don’t move fast in there. But you can’t move fast either. You drift. Sometimes you get lost, you forget which way is out. You come out never knowing how many days you were in.”

  Rather asked, “Why do you — ?”

  “Credit. On a bad trip you only come out with mud, but Zakry pays high for mud. A good trip, you can come out with your hull covered with blackbrain or walnutcushion or fringe.” Raym grinned, and Debby realized what it was that bothered her about Adjeness’s toothy smile.

  Rather said, “This makes you—”

  “No. You never hold onto it.”

  “ — Rich?”

  Teeth. Raym was an older man, yet he still had half his teeth. Adjeness must be Debby’s age, but her smile was all teeth, with only three or four gaps. The rest were youths: no teeth missing at all.

  Angular huts surrounded her. Debby fought vertigo. Down in all directions; no tide. The Admiralty crew were forming a line as Carlot led them toward a huge transparent cylinder. They had flown all their lives. Their grace made Debby feel clumsy.

  Debby eased into line behind Rather. The starstuff cylinder had an opening at one end. Debby brushed it with her wings as she went through. None of the others did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Half Hand’s

  from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 80 SM:

  WE’VE FOUND A FUNGUS WITH IMPORTANT MEDICINAL PROPERTIES…

  WOODSMAN’S DOOR HAD BEEN BRACED HOSPITABLY open. A guest need only grip the rounded edge as he flew past, set his wings in the racks, and swing himself in.

  Booce entered an atmosphere rich with blackbrain tea.

  Jonveev Belmy was a small woman, not much more than Clave’s height. Booce had watched her auburn hair turn gray over the years, but it was still long and thick. She was busy at a turning cookglobe. She stretched a foot to meet Booce’s hand.

  Her grip was strong. “Booce, I’m so sorry about Wend. Is Ryllin all right?”

  “She’s fine, Jonveev. We’re doing business with Citizens Tree, and that’s where she is now.” He wondered what Jonveev was thinking. Her concern was real, of course; but she had never dealt with Booce himself. In business matters Ryllin and Jonveev did the talking.

  Jonveev swung the big globular teapot round her head to settle the water, then quickly opened the spigot. Steam puffed. Hilar wrapped the teapot in cloth and passed it to Booce. “I never saw a log come home like that. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Booce sipped and swallowed. He liked his tea hot, and this was just off the boil. He savored old memories as much as the powerful, bitter taste. He said, “Not a lot—”

  Hilar waved it off. “Oh, then we’ll—”

  “I have no wish to drive you crazy at this time.”

  “Tell us a story,” Jonveev said.

  He told it long. Carelessness and bad luck; the fire; Wend dead, Karilly mute with shock. “There was a tuft tribe waiting to rescue us. They helped rebuild Logbearer. We found a tree.” Booce hesitated. “We were only half a thousand klomters from the Clump, Hilar, and we might’ve had to go halfway to Gold to find a better choice. It was big and it was close and we wanted to go home.”

  “I never saw termites on a tree before.”

  “A new breed, maybe. They’re dying now. They haven’t done that much damage, and it’s a lot of wood.”

  “That it is. We have a problem,” Jonveev said.

  The tea had come round again. Booce sipped and passed it on. “I notice you managed to sell some of your wood.”

  “Some. Then the whole Market saw you coming and the orders dried up. I could have sold at a loss, but Jonveev thought—”

  “I thought we might reach an agreement,” she said. “The merchants can’t whiplash us if one of us announces that his wood isn’t for sale.”

  Booce smiled. Such things had been done. “We’d have to give them time to believe we mean it. Thirty sleeps or so. That’ll cost one of us.”

  “We’re willing,” Jonveev said. “We’ll want something in return, of course.”

  “Speak further.” He sipped. The bitter taste of blackbrain fungus was the taste of civilization and hospitality and homecoming. He wished with all his heart that Ryllin were here. If Hilar was tiptoeing round the edges of a risky venture, Ryllin would have known at once.

  Jonveev said, “Booce, we’ll agree not to sell our tree until the next midyear. What I want is a loan at reasonable interest. Or I’ll offer you the same deal.”

  Booce was silent.

  “The loan would be, say, ten-to-fourth chits. Enough to keep one of us going for nearly a year.” She affected not to notice Booce’s sudden mirthless smile.

  “I don’t have that much on hand. And you, I suspect, don’t need that much—”

  “We’d need it if we don’t want to short-change some of our other concerns. But we can float such a loan and recoup it by selling our wood. On the other hand, whatever you’re doing with…what was it. Citizens Tree? It’s bound to bring you money, but not soon, stet? But you have a house that’s never been lived in.”

  The tea caught in his throat. Booce swallowed carefully, managed not to sputter. He said, “Ryllin would wring my neck.”

  “Well, then, you can’t do it,” Jonveev said instantly.

  On second thought…he could put the house up for sale, to buy time. If he set the price high, buyers would hang back and wait, because the Serjents were supposed to be broke. If the Navy bought the Wart metal soon enough…he’d have to take a lower price, but he’d be able to keep the house.

  But what did the Belmys have in mind? What would a loan do for them? It would be eating interest — “What interest?”

  “We’d pay fifteen percent until the next midyear, or take the same.”

  That was high but not out of line. His first niggling suspicion began to look like the truth. “I’ll sleep on it,” he said.

  Wickerwork ran around the inside of the glass bottle and across the center; wickerwork everywhere, but you had to look twice to see it beneath the plants and mud. The mud was at the interstices, held in place by nets. Plants grew from the mud, bearing red and yellow spheres and cylinders. Leafy vines strangled the wickerwork, the mud, and everything else in sight.

  It was a jungle with curving corridors through it. Debby felt a sudden terrible homesickness for Carther States… but the jungle other childhood was drab compared to the Vivarium.

  The old man who watched from within one of the openings was an elderly, undersized jungle giant. In the humid warmth he wore only a loose pair of short pants. His knees and elbows were knobby; his skin was yellow-brown, and there was something funny about his eyes. He watched the growing crowd in some surprise. He said, “Late, Adjeness.”

  “Zakry, these are customers,” Adjeness Swart said firmly. “They’ve been living without earthlife since Checker knows when.”

  “Have they.” The yellow man brightened. “Well, we can’t have that. Carlot Serjent, how good to see you! Adjeness, why don
’t you show the crew what they’ve been missing?”

  Carlot and the yellow man disappeared into the greenery. Adjeness Swart said, “Clave told me that. No earthlife crops. Is it true?”

  “Almost,” Debby said. “We’ve got turkeys.”

  Raym Wilby guffawed. Adjeness was suppressing a laugh. “Turkeys, stet. Try this.” She reached into a jun- gle of vines and plucked forth a red sphere. She sliced it apart with her knife and offered wedges around.

  It was juicy. Its taste was strong. Debby chewed and swallowed, trying to decide if she liked it.

  Rather plucked a slender yellow spike from the muck.

  Adjeness intervened. “Not that. Rather. You have to cook that. Try this. Don’t eat the skin.” The sphere Adjeness sliced up for him was orange outside and in. Rather bit into a wedge, and his eyes got big.

  Being back on Earth would be like this, Debby thought. Alien. She recognized almost nothing.

  There were people darting among the plants. They glanced incuriously at the intruders, then went back to what they were doing. Some sprayed water at the mud globules or the plants themselves. One was pushing a plant ahead of him; muddy pale appendages waved naked at one end. An older man floated slowly along an aisle, turning as he flew, to see in all directions.

  Debby tried a slice of the orange sphere. The sweetness, the wonder of it almost paralyzed her. “Treefodder!”

  “That’s an orange. This—”

  “I can see that.” Debby reached at random. “What’s this, a yellow?”

  “Plum. Not quite ripe.”

  It was bitter, sour. Adjeness gave her a dark-red spheroid from another part of the plant cluster. “This should be better.”

  It was.

  “You wouldn’t want to spend all your funds on fruit,”

  Adjeness said. “You’ll want legumes too, but they have to be cooked. Let Carlot take you to Half Hand’s Steak House before you make any final decisions. Unless you’re really rich? Then you can buy everything.”

  Clave said, “I’m not sure what we can afford. I haven’t heard any prices.”

  Adjeness nodded. “Here. Eat everything but the center, and you can eat that if you want to. Apple.”

  Rather asked, “Clave, did you eat like this in Quinn Tuft?”

  “No. Hey, corn! We had corn before the drought. Here. Strip off the leaves. Now the silk too.” He smiled, watching Rather bite into it. “Just the outside, and it’s supposed to be cooked.”

  “It’s okay this way. Leave the white stuff?”

  “Stet.”

  Raym’s hand sneaked into a bush as if without Raym’s knowledge. Three red objects each the size of his thumb went into his mouth all at once. Debby was nearly sure Adjeness had caught it. She only smiled.

  Carlot and the slant-eyed man emerged from a leafy wall. Carlot’s voice was just slightly ragged. “Crew, Zakry Bowles is our host here. We’ll go look at the prices after we know some of what we want. How are you doing?”

  “Carlot, it’s wonderful!” Rather burst out. “Oranges, plums, I think we want everything in sight. Zakry, can you eat everything here?”

  “Almost. Every plant has something you can eat growing on it some of the time. These potatoes, you can’t eat what you see. The root’s down there in the mud. You don’t eat the inside of an ear of corn—”

  “Clave told me.”

  “Or the pit of a plum.”

  “Oop.”

  “What did you do, swallow it? It’ll come out all right in the end. Let me show you what else we’ve got—”

  Bean vines grew mixed with the corn. They seemed to want to take over everything. “We stopped growing tobacco long ago,” Adjeness said. “Only the officers had fire handy, and they weren’t buying enough. This is lettuce.” Lettuce was leaves. It wasn’t as sweet as foliage.

  Strawberries were as startlingly good as oranges. Squash looked like jet pods. Zakry was enjoying himself.

  They went back to the entrance to examine a list of prices. Clave memorized the numbers he was interested in. “Why so much for strawberries and bananas?”

  “Strawberries keep dying. I don’t have bananas. Can’t grow them here at all. They need tide. The Navy buys them off some tree dwellers east of here, when they get the chance. Clave, you haven’t established credit yet—”

  “Credit?”

  Zakry Bowles spoke slowly, enunciating. “You haven’t shown that you can pay. But you can pick out what you want now, then come back later, pay me and collect it.”

  “What we want is stuff we can grow in a tree.”

  They discussed that at length. Rather joined in; there were things he would not go home without. Debby eased over to Carlot. “What’s got you upset?”

  “He won’t give me credit. We came in with a pod for our cabin and the Belmy log already in dock. Well, Dave Kon owes me money. I’ll go see him. Excuse me.”

  Zakry was urging something else on them: a greenishyellow fruit with an obscene shape. He showed Debby how to remove the peel. Clave laughed when Debby bit into it, but it was good. Carlot was talking to the Lockheeds, and they were nodding.

  She came back. “I have to talk to Dave Kon. You’d be bored—”

  “You’re leaving us?”

  “Stet. Stay with the Lockheeds. I’ll meet you at Half Hand’s Steak House.”

  Half Hand’s was across the Market.

  They flew through rain. Droplets flew from the edges of their wings. Rather breathed through his nose; from time to time he snorted out water. Debby and Clave were doing the same. The locals had donned masks of gauzy fabric, except for Raym, who breathed in the rain as if he cared not at all.

  Half Hand’s was a faceted dome adjoining a smaller, less symmetrical structure. You could see through some of the facets on the big dome: they were starstuff fabric. The rest was gray concrete. One six-sided facet had been cut away, and a wooden door hinged into the opening.

  Grag Maglicco, the Navy man, suddenly asked, “Have we all got sticks?” He assessed the blank looks correctly. “Go on in. I’ll join you, couple of breaths.” He swerved aside, headed for an angular hut twenty meters along the wheel.

  The inside was concrete too: concrete troweled over a structure of starstuff, outside and in. The concrete bore paintings of intriguing complexity and a variety of styles, but Rather caught only glimpses of these through a wall of citizens.

  Half Hand’s was full. Men, women, and children made a hemispherical shell around the newcomers, their toes clinging to two-meter poles protruding from the concrete. There were no foothold poles in the windows, so those stayed clear.

  From an open hexagon on the far side drifted smoke and cooking odors. Nurse Lockheed led them that way. She called through the opening. “Half Hand?”

  A man came out of the crowd behind her. “Hi, Nurse. You got money?”

  “No. Put it on the Serjents’ tab. I have a party of eight.”

  There was nothing wrong with Half Hand’s hands.

  He was a jungle giant, mostly bald, and his arms and legs were corded with muscle. He said, “Serjents? I heard—” Pull stop. “Sure, I’ll give the Serjents credit. What do you want?”

  “Let’s see the kitchen.”

  “Nobody sees the kitchen.” Half Hand was peering past Nurse Lockheed. “Shorts?”

  “Tree dwellers. They’ve never seen anything like your kitchen.”

  “Nobody sees the kitchen.”

  “I did,” Nurse said.

  Debby pushed her way forward. “Half Hand? I’m Debby Citizen—”

  “Pleasure,” he said gravely.

  “I wonder if you’d be interested in a description of a kitchen in a tuft.”

  Half Hand studied her; nodded. “Just you. Nurse, the special’s moby.”

  “How old?”

  “Eight days ago, shipful of Dark divers took a moby. Special is moby till we run out. Sausage cost you three times as much. No turkey today.”

  “We want vegetables, lots, a
ll kinds. Couple of kigrams of moby too, not too rare.”

  “Moby’s ready now. Vegetables soon. You, Debby, you cooked in that tree?”

  “Some.”

  Half Hand beckoned her in.

  Rather could feel the eyes. With a conscious effort he looked. Of the forty or so diners, only a dozen or so were watching what was happening at the kitchen entrance. Even those concentrated more on eating; their right hands kept pale wooden sticks in constant motion. The eye-pressure still made him flinch.

  Grag Maglicco rejoined them. He passed out pairs of sticks of pale wood, no bigger than the branchlets a tree dweller was used to.

  A woman brought them a two-kigram slab of meat, black on one side, pink on the other. John Lockheed took it on his knife. He flapped toward the wall, pushing the meat ahead of him. Diners edged aside to give him room or to avoid getting grease on their clothing.

  Nurse had to urge them. “Come on.”

  There were too many people.

  But Clave followed Nurse, and Rather followed him.

  There was room. Nurse talked to some of the locals around them. John carved chunks from the meat and passed them, knife to sticks. Moby meat was good. Tenderer than swordbird, richer than turkey.

  Grag’s own sticks — like every Clump citizen’s — were ornately carved. Some were wood, more were bone. Grag caught Rather looking. He showed Rather his own bone sticks. “You carve them yourself. Circle would mean I’m married. Spiral means I’m looking. A bird would say who I work for. Outline around the bird would mean I own the company. What I’ve got is the rocket, ’cause I’m Navy. You’d want a honey hornet, for Serjent Logging. Change life style, start new sticks.”

  John Lockheed pointed out a clump of customers to Clave. Tall men and women, a dozen or so, and a few infants; isolated, clustered close as if for protection. Peculiar footgear, thick-heeled sandals with toes protruding.

  “They’re happyfeet. Half Hand should make them check those shoes at the door,” John said. “They’re for fighting, for kicking.”