The Integral Trees t-1

by Larry Niven

  Laython's line went taut. Then Gavving's. Spine branches ripped through Gavving's inadequate toes. Then the immense mass of the beast had pulled him into the sky.

  His own throat closed tight, but he heard Laython shriek. Laython too had been pulled loose.

  Torn branchlets were still clenched in Gavving's toes. He looked down into the cushiony expanse of the tuft, wondering whether to let go and drop. But his line was still anchored…and wind was stronger than tide; it could blow him past the tuft, past the entire branch, out and away. Instead he crawled along the line, away from their predatorprey.

  Laython wasn't retreating. He had readied his harpoon and was waiting.

  The swordbird decided. Its body snapped into a curve. The serrated tail slashed effortlessly through Gavving's line. The swordbird flapped hard, making west now. Laython's line went taut; then branchlets ripped and his line pulled free. Gavving snatched for it and missed.

  He might have pulled himself back to safety then, but he continued to watch.

  Laython poised with spear ready, his other arm waving in circles to hold his body from turning, as the predator flapped toward him. Almost alone among the creatures of the Smoke Ring, men have no wings.

  The swordbird's body snapped into a U. Its tail slashed Laython in half almost before he could move his spear. The beast's mouth snapped shut four times, and Laython was gone. Its mouth continued to work, trying to deal with Gavving's harpoon in its throat, as the wind carried it east.

  The Scientist's hut was like all of Quinn Tribe's huts: live spine branches fashioned into a wickerwork cage. It was bigger than some, but there was no sense of luxury. The roof and walls were a clutter of paraphernalia stuck into the wickerwork: boards and turkey quills and red tuftberry dye for ink, tools for teaching, tools for science, and relics from the time before men left the stars.

  The Scientist entered the hut with the air of a blind man. His hands were bloody to the elbows. He scraped at them with handfuls of foliage, talking under his breath. "Damn, damn drillbits. They just burrow in, no way to stop them." He looked up. "Grad?"

  "Day. Who were you talking to, yourself?"

  "Yes." He scrubbed at his arms ferociously, then hurled the wads of bloody foliage away from him. "Martal's dead. A drillbit burrowed into her. I probably killed her myself digging it out, but she'd have died anyway…you can't leave drillbit eggs. Have you heard about the expedition?"

  "Yes. Barely. I can't get anyone to tell me anything."

  The Scientist pulled a handful of foliage from the wall and tried to scrub the scalpel clean. He hadn't looked at the Grad. "What do you think?"

  The Grad had come in a fury and grown yet angrier while waiting in an empty hut. He tried to keep that out of his voice. "I think the Chairman's trying to get rid of some citizens he doesn't like. What I want to know is, why me?"

  "The Chairman's a fool. He thinks science could have stopped the drought."

  "Then you're in trouble too?" The Grad got it then. "You blamed it on me."

  The Scientist looked at him at last. The Grad thought he saw guilt there, but the eyes were steady. "I let him think you were to blame, yes. Now, there are some things I want you to have—"

  Incredulous laughter was his answer. "What, more gear to carry up a hundred klomters of trunk?"

  "Grad…Jeffer. What have I told you about the tree? We've studied the universe together, but the most important thing in it is the tree. Didn't I teach you that everything that lives has a way of staying near the Smoke Ring median, where there's air and water and soil?"

  "Everything but trees and men."

  "Integral trees have a way. I taught you."

  "I…had the idea you were only guessing…Oh, I see. You're willing to bet my life."

  The Scientist's eyes dropped. "I suppose I am. But if I'm right, there won't be anything left but you and the people who go with you. Jeffer, this could be nothing. You could all come back with…whatever we need: breeding turkeys, some kind of meat animal living on the trunk, I don't know—"

  "But you don't think so."

  "No. That's why I'm giving you these."

  He pulled treasures from the spine-branch walls: a glassy rectangle a quarter meter by half a meter, flat enough to fit into a pack four boxes each the size of a child's hand. The Grad's response was a musical "O-ooh."

  "You'll decide for yourself whether to tell any of the others what you're carrying. Now let's do one last drill session." The Scientist plugged a cassette into the reader screen. "You won't have much chance to study on the trunk."

  PLANTS

  LIFE PERVADES THE SMOKE RING BUT IS NEITHER DENSE NOR MASSIVE. IN THE FREE-FALL ENVIRONMENT PLANTS CAN SPREAD THEIR GREENERY WIDELY TO CATCH MAXIMUM SUNLIGHT AND PASSING WATER AND SOIL, WITHOUT BOTHERING ABOUT STRUCTURAL STRENGTH. WE FIND AT LEAST ONE EXCEPTION…

  THESE INTEGRAL TREES GROW TO TREMENDOUS SIZE. THE PLANT FORMS A LONG TRUNK UNDER TERRIFIC TENSION, TUFTED WITH GREEN AT BOTH ENDS, STABILIZED BY THE TIDE. THEY FORM THOUSANDS OF RADIAL SPOKES CIRCLING LEVOY'S STAR. THEY GROW UP TO A HUNDRED KILOMETERS IN LENGTH, WITH UP TO A FIFTH OF A GEE IN TIDAL "GRAVITY" AT THE TUFTS AND PERPETUAL HURRICANE WINDS.

  THE WINDS DERIVE FROM SIMPLE ORBITAL MECHANICS. THEY BLOW FROM THE WEST AT THE INNER TUFT AND FROM THE EAST AT THE OUTER TUFT (WHERE IN IS TOWARDS LEVOY'S STAR, AS USUAL). THE STRUCTURE BOWS TO THE WINDS, CURVING INTO A NEARLY HORIZONTAL BRANCH AT EACH END. THE FOLIAGE SIFTS FERTILIZER FROM THE WIND.

  THE MEDICAL DANGERS OF LIFE IN FREE-FALL ARE WELL KNOWN. IF DISCIPLINE HAS INDEED ABANDONED US, IF WE ARE INDEED MAROONED WITHIN THIS WEIRD ENVIRONMENT, WE COULD DO WORSE THAN TO SFITLE THE TUFTS OF THE INTEGRAL TREES. IF THE TREES PROVE MORE DANGEROUS THAN WE ANTICIPATE, ESCAPE IS EASY. WE NEED ONLY JUMP AND WAIT TO BE PICKED UP.

  The Grad looked up. "They really didn't know very much about the trees, did they?”

  "No. But, Jeffer, they had seen trees from outside."

  That was an awesome thought. While he chewed it, the Scientist said, "I'm afraid you may have to start training your own Grad, and soon."

  Jayan sat cross-legged, coiling lines. Sometimes she looked up to watch the children. They had come like a wind through the Commons, and the wind had died and left them scattered around Clave. He wasn't getting much work done, though it seemed he was trying.

  The girls loved Clave. The boys imitated him. Some just watched, others buzzed around him, trying to help him assemble the harpoons and the spikes or asking an endless stream of questions. "What are you doing? Why do you need so many harpoons? And all this rope? Is it a hunting trip?"

  "I can't tell you," Clave said with just the proper level of regret. "King, where have you been? You're all sticky."

  King was a happy eight-year-old painted in brown dust. "We went underside. The foliage is greener there. Tastes better."

  "Did you take lines? Those branches aren't as strong as they used to be. You could fall through. And did you take a grownup with you?"

  Jill, nine, had the wit to distract him. "When's dinner? We're still hungry."

  "Aren't we all." Clave turned to Jayan. "We've got enough packs, we won't be carrying food, we'll find water on the trunk…claw sandals jet pods, I'm glad we got those…hope we've got enough spikes what else do we need? Is Jinny back?"

  "No. What did you send her for, anyway?"

  "Rocks. I gave her a net for them, but she'll have to go all the way to the treemouth. I hope she finds us a good grindstone."

  Jayan didn't blame the children. She loved Clave too. She would have kept him for herself, if she could…if not for Jinny. Sometimes she wondered if Jinny ever felt that way.

  "Mmm…we'll pick some foliage before we leave the tuft—"

  Jayan stopped working. "Clave, I never thought of that. There's no foliage on the trunk! We won't have anything to eat!"

  "We'll find something. That's why we're going," Clave said briskly. "Thinking of changing your mind?"

  "Too late," Jayan said. She didn't add that sh
e had never wanted to go at all. There was no point, now.

  "I could bust you loose. Jinny too. The citizens like you, they wouldn't let—"

  "I won't stay." Not with Mayrin and the Chairman here, and Clave gone. She looked up and said, "Mayrin."

  Clave's wife stood in the half-shadows on the far side of the Cornmona. She might have been there for some time. She was seven years older than Clave, a stocky woman with the square jaw of her father, the Chairman. She called, "Clave, mighty hunter, what game are you playing with this young woman when you might be finding meat for the citizens?"

  "Orders."

  She approached, smiling. "The expedition. My father and I arranged it together."

  "If you'd like to believe that, feel free."

  The smile slipped. "Copsik! You've mocked me too long, Clave. You and them. I hope you fall into the sky."

  "I hope I don't," Clave said mildly. "Would you like to assist our departure? We need blankets. Better have an extra. Nine."

  "Fetch them yourself," Mayrin said and stalked away.

  Here in the main depths of Quinn Tuft there were tunnels through the foliage. Huts nestled against the vertical flank of the branch, and the tunnels ran past. Now Harp and Gavving had room to walk, or something like it. In the low tidal pull they bounced on the foliage as if it and they were made of air. The branchiets around the tunnels were dry and nude, their foliage stripped for food.

  Changes. The days had been longer before the passing of Gold. It used to be two days between sleeps; now it was eight. The Grad had tried to explain why, once, but the Scientist had caught them at it and whacked the Grad for spilling secrets and Gavving for listening.

  Harp thought that the tree was dying. Well, Harp was a teller, and world-sized disasters make rich tales. But the Grad thought so too…and Gavving felt like the world had ended. He almost wanted it to end, before he had to tell the Chairman about his son.

  He stopped to look into his own dwelling, a long half-cylinder, the bachelors' longhut. It was empty. Quinn Tribe must be gathered for the evening meal.

  "We're in trouble," Gavving said and sniffled.

  "Sure we are, but there's no point in acting like it. If we hide, we don't eat. Besides, we've got this." Harp hefted the dead musrum.

  Gavving shook his head. It wouldn't help. "You should have stopped him."

  "I couldn't." When Gavving didn't answer, Harp said, "Four days ago the whole tribe was throwing lines into a pond, remember? A pond no bigger than a big hut. As if we could pull it to us. We didn't think that was stupid till it was gone past, and nobody but Clave thought to go for the cookpot, and by the time he got back—"

  "I wouldn't send even Clave to catch a swordbird."

  "Twenty-twenty," Harp jeered. The taunt was archaic, but its meaning was common. Any fool can foresee the past.

  An opening in the cotton: the turkey pen, with one gloomy turkey still alive. There would be no more unless a wild one could be captured from the wind. Drought and famine…Water still ran down the trunk sometimes, but never enough. Flying things still passed, meat to be drawn from the howling wind, but rarely. The tribe could not survive on the sugary foliage forever.

  "Did I ever tell you," Harp asked, "about Glory and the turkeys?"

  "No." Gavving relaxed a little. He needed a distraction.

  "This was twelve or thirteen years back, before Gold passed by. Things didn't fall as fast then. Ask the Grad to tell you why, 'cause I can't, but it's true. So if she'd just fallen on the turkey pen, it wouldn't have busted. But Glory was trying to move the cookpot. She had it clutched in her arms, and it masses three times what she does, and she lost her balance and started running to keep it from hitting the ground. Then she smashed into the turkey pen.

  "It was as if she'd thought it out in detail. The turkeys were all through the Clump and into the sky. We got maybe a third of them back. That was when we took Glory off cooking duties."

  Another hollow, a big one: three rooms shaped from spine branches. Empty. Gavving said, "The Chairman must be almost over the fluff."

  "It's night," Harp answered.

  Night was only a dimming while the far arc of the Smoke Ring filtered the sunlight; but a cubic klomter of foliage blocked light too. A victim of fluff could come out at night long enough to share a meal.

  "He'll see us come in," Gavving said. "I wish he were still in confinement."

  There was firelight ahead of them now. They pressed on, Gavving smiling, Harp trailing the musrum on his line. When they emerged into the Commons their faces were dignified, and their eyes avoided nobody.

  The Commons was a large open area, bounded by a wickerwork of branchiets. Most of the tribe formed a scarlet circle with the cookpot in the center. Men and women wore blouses and pants dyed with the scarlet the Scientist made from tuftberries and sometimes decorated with black. That red would show vividly anywhere within the tuft. Children wore blouses only.

  All were uncommonly silent.

  The cookflre had nearly burned out, and the cookpot — an ancient thing, a tall, transparent cylinder with a lid of the same material — retained no more than a double handful of stew.

  The Chairman's chest was still half-covered in fluff but the patch had contracted and turned mostly brown. He was a square-jawed, brawny man in middle age, and he looked unhappy, irritable. Hungry. Harp and Gavving went to him, handed him their catch. "Food for the tribe," Harp said.

  Their catch looked like a fleshy mushroom, with a stalk half a meter long and sense organs and a coiled tentacle under the edge of the cap. A lung ran down the center of the stalk/body to give the thing jet propulsion. Part of the cap had been ripped away, perhaps by some predator; the scar was half-healed. It looked far from appetizing, but society's law bound the Chairman too.

  He took it. "Tomorrow's breakfast," he said courteously. "Where's Laython?"

  "Lost," Harp said, before Gavving could say, "Dead."

  The Chairman looked stricken. "How?" Then, "Wait, Eat first."

  That was common courtesy for returning hunters; but for Gavving the waiting was torture. They were given scooped-out seedpods containing a few mouthfuls of greens and turkey meat in broth. They ate with hungry eyes on them, and they handed the gourds back as soon as possible.

  "Now talk," the Chairman said.

  Gavving was glad when Harp took up the tale. "We left with the other hunters and climbed along the trunk. Presently we could raise our heads into the sky and see the bare trunk stretching out to infinity—"

  "My son is lost and you give me poetry?"

  Harp jumped. "Your pardon. There was nothing on our side of the trunk, neither of danger nor salvation. We started around the trunk. Then Laython saw a swordbird, far west and borne toward us on the wind."

  The Chairman's voice was only half-controlled. "You went after a swordbird?"

  "There is famine in Quinn Tuft. We've fallen too far in, too far toward Voy, the Scientist says so himself. No beasts fly near, no water trickles down the trunk—"

  "Am I not hungry enough to know this myself? Every baby knows better than to hunt a swordbird. Well, go on."

  Harp told it all, keeping his language lean, passing lightly over Laython's disobedience, letting him show as the doomed hero. "We saw Laython and the swordbird pulled east by the wind,, along a klomter of naked branch, then beyond. There was nothing we could do."

  "But he has his line?"

  "He does."

  "He may find rest somewhere," the Chairman said. "A forest somewhere. Another tree…he could anchor at the median and go down well. He's lost to Quinn Tribe at least."

  Harp said, "We waited in the hope that Laython might find a way to return, to win out and moor himself along the trunk, perhaps. Four days passed. We saw nothing but a musrum borne on the wind. We cast our grapnels and I hooked the thing."

  The Chairman looked ill with disgust. Gavving heard in his mind, Have you traded my son for musrum meat? But the Chairman said, "You are the last of the
hunters to return. You must know of today's events. First, Martal has been killed by a drillbit."

  Martal was an older woman, Gavving's father's aunt. A wrinkled woman who was always busy, too busy to talk to children, she had been Quinn Tribe's premier cook. Gavving tried not to picture a drillbit boring into her guts. And while he shuddered, the Chairman said, "Alter five days' sleep we will assemble for Martal's last rites. Second: the Council has decided to send a full hunting expedition up the trunk. They must not return without a means for our survival. Gavving, you will join the expedition. You'll be informed of your mission in detail after the funeral."

  Chapter Two

  Leavetaking

  THE TREEMOUTH WAS A FUNNEL-SHAPED PIT THICKLY LINED with dead-looking, naked spine branches. The citizens of Quinn Tuft nested in an arc above the nearly vertical rim. Fifty or more were gathered to say good-bye to Martal. Almost half were children.

  West of the treemouth was nothing but sky. The sky was all about them, and there was no protection from the wind, here at the westernmost point of the branch. Mothers folded their babes within their tunics. Quinn Tribe showed like scarlet tuftberries in the thick foliage around the treemouth.

  Martal was among them, at the lower rim of the funnel, flanked by four of her family. Gavving studied the dead woman's face. Almost calm, he thought, but with a last lingering trace of horror. The wound was above her hip: a gash made not by the drillbit, but by the Scientist's knife as he dug for it.

  A drillbit was a tiny creature, no bigger than a man's big toe. It would fly out of the wind too fast to see, strike, and burrow into flesh, leaving its gut as an expanding bag that trailed behind it. If left alone it would eventually burrow through and depart, tripled in size, leaving a clutch of eggs in the abandoned gut.

  Looking at Martal made Gavving queasy. He bad lain too long awake, slept too little; his belly was already churning as it tried to digest a breakfast of musrum stew.

  Harp edged up beside him, shoulder-high to Gavving. "I'm sorry," he said.