The Integral Trees t-1

by Larry Niven

  The Grad opened the doors. The twins were flying at him. He jetted flame to slow the carm; stopped just alongside them, backed and moved sideways. Then they were crawling into the carm.

  Blue shapes crawled within the green sky. Armed Navy men, carrying jet pods and footbows and a massive thing that took three men to handle.

  The reunion would have to wait. "Get 'em into chairs," he called back to Clave. Minya next. He was flying the carm like he'd done it all his life. He got a little careless; Minya thumped the hull, then came in with a bloody nose. "Sorry," he said. "Gavving, never mind that, get her to a chair! Who's the other one?"

  "It's Ilsa," Anthon said. "They're shooting at her! Grad, get her!"

  "I'm doing that. Do we need the food and other stuff'?" He was alongside Ilsa now, between her and the failing Navy men. Voy glared behind her. Footbow arrows ticked off the hull…but that thump had no place in his scheme. What-?

  Ilsa's look of terror and determination faded into blissful sleep. He knew before he looked: the silver man was back, spitgun and all. He was on the dorsal surface, out of reach of the doors, and Anthon had thrown a line round Ilsa's waist and was pulling her in.

  "Get her into—" The chairs were full. "Get her against the back wall and stay with her. Don't turn any fixtures. Debby, put a tethered bolt in that carcass and we'll pull it in."

  Anthon said, "The silver man—"

  "These are close quarters. if he gets through the door, swarm him. The spitgun doesn't kill, but if he shoots us all, he owns us."

  Jinny called to the Grad, "We brought a stack of clean laundry and a water supply."

  "We've got water. Laundry…why not? Hey, I told Minya to go up. You did it right, we'd never have found you—"

  Minya said, "if you had the carm, you could find us in the sky. So we grabbed what we could and went down."

  The Navy men had not left the branch's green underside. Hardly surprising. if they failed to capture the cam, how would they reach the tree again? They would have looked futile, the Grad thought, were it not for the bulky starstuff thing they handled like a weapon.

  The salmon bird carcass was a black silhouette with Voy painfully bright behind it. Anthon and Debby had to squint…but their tethered arrows nailed it and they reeled it in. Maybe the silver man was hoping someone would show his head, none did. He tried to enter with the stack of ponchos, and the Grad almost managed to catch him in the closing door. That left the laundry outside top, and a red border around the yellow diagram. "I never saw red before. What's it mean?"

  Lawri deigned to answer, contemptuously. "Emergency. Your line's holding the airlock open."

  The Grad opened the door (the red warning disappeared) and Debby pulled the mass in. The silver man didn't try to follow. The door may have scared him. It was his last chance: the Grad closed the doors and sighed with satisfaction.

  His sigh chopped off when his ventral view flared pure, diizzling red, then disappeared from the bow window.

  From other displays he caught glimpses of painfully bright scarlet. "Can that thing hurt us?" Anthon demanded, while Lawri cried, "Now you'll see! They'll cut us in half!" and Clave said, "They're almost on us. We'll have them all over the hull if—"

  "Feed it to the tree!" the Grad shouted at them all. He couldn't think. What could that light do to them? Neither Klance nor Lawri had ever mentioned such a thing.

  We've got what we need. Forget the bread, forget the water. Get out! They'll never catch the carm.

  Lawri saw his hand move and screamed, "Wait!" The Grad didn't.

  He tapped the center of the big blue vertical bar.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Position of Scientist's Apprentice

  THE AIR SIGHED OUT OF THE GRAD'S LUNGS. HE WAS BEING crushed flat. His left arm had missed the arm rest; it was behind him, being pulled gradually from the shoulder socket. The chair was too low to support his head. His neck hurt savagely. Above the muted shriek of the main motor he heard his passengers fighting for breath.

  This must be killing the jungle giants.

  London Tree dwindled like a dream in the aft view. They were in the storm now, and blind. The Grad tried to raise his right arm, to touch the blue bar, to end the force that flattened him. Up, up…farther his arm fell back across his chest with a jolt that smashed the last sipful of air from his lungs. His sight blurred.

  Lawri's chin was tucked down against her collarbone. She was sure that if she relaxed her neck the tide would snap it.

  She watched Jeffer trying to turn off the motor and knew he couldn't make it. And Lawri's arms were bound.

  They will kill some mutineer, she thought with alloyed satisfaction. And I did it to them. The corn laser would burn or blind at close range, but almost certainly it would not have hurt the cam. She'd lied in hope that the mutineers would panic. She'd succeeded beyond her ambitions.

  But it's killing me!

  The screen of clouds swept past and away.

  Gold was to left of center in the bow window. The Smoke Ring trailed left of Gold. They were accelerating east and a little out.

  East takes you out.

  They were leaving the Smoke Ring.

  I knew it. That crazy Jeffer's killed us all.

  With his head pulled far back, with the points of what should have been a neck rest digging savagely into his shoulder blades, Gavving looked along his nose and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

  The skyflowed away at the edges of the bow window. A triune family split and fluttered and were gone before they could move. A small, flattish green jungle drifted close, accelerated, whipped past. A fluffy white cloud showed ahead. Closer. White blindness, and the carm shuddered and rang with the impact of water droplets. Something tiny struck the bow window a terrific blow and left a pink film a quarter meter across. In a breath the rain had pounded it clear.

  The cloud was gone, and the sky ahead was clear of further obstructions. Gold and the Smoke Ring showed like a puffball on a stem, against blue sky…a deep, dark blue sky, a color he'd never seen in his life.

  He rolled his head to look at Minya. The agony in his neck shifted the pressure was easier to take this way. She looked back at him.

  Lovely Minya, her face fuller than he remembered. He tried to speak and couldn't. He could barely breathe.

  She sighed, "Almost."

  The light of the CARM's main drive was back, and blueshifting!

  A shift in its spectral line, and he'd caught it. Lucky. Kendy aborted his usual message. The CARM's time-eroded program would be busy enough without distraction. For the CARM was in flight. It must have been accelerating for some minutes already. By the frequency shift, it was building up enough velocity to take it out of the Smoke Ring… within a few thousand kilometers of Discipline itself!

  When the light went out, Kendy began his message. The air was already thinning around the CARM. Reception should be good.

  "Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State."

  The sound stopped, the terrible tide was gone, all in a moment. Bodies bent like bows recoiled. Citizens who had not had the breath for screaming, screamed now.

  As the reflexive screams died to groans, the Grad heard Lawri say, wearily, "Jeffer. Never use the main motor unless you're pushing the tree."

  The Grad could only nod. He'd captured the carm, he'd. treefodder, everyone he knew, if he hadn't murdered him he'd put him aboard the carm! And then he'd touched the blue bar. He said, "Lawri, I'm open to suggestions."

  "Feed it to the tree."

  The Grad heard full-throated laughter aft…from Anthon. Debby swatted him hard across the belly. The blow snapped him into a U, but he kept laughing, and she joined him.

  They had reason! They had been flat against the back wall, protecting Ilsa from what should have been mild jolting. The killer chairs would have snapped their backs, but none of the jungle giants had been in them.

  Others were groaning, stirring, moving from pain to fear. Ilsa wa
s beginning to wake up. Merril-vacant-eyed, hypnotized by the peculiar sky rushing at the bow-seemed to snap out of it. "Well, somebody do something!"

  Clave's voice was a carrying one, and it filled the carm's cabin to overflowing. "Calm down, citizens. We're not in that much trouble. Remember where we are."

  Other sounds stopped. Clave said, "The carrier was built for this. It came from the stars. We know it operates inside the Smoke Ring, but it was built to operate anywhere, wasn't it, Grad?"

  That simply hadn't occurred to him. "Not anywhere, but…Outside the Smoke Ring, that's certain."

  "Good enough. What's our status?"

  "Give me a breath." The Grad was ashamed. It had taken Clave to get his mind working again. We're not in tmuble-Luck, that Clave didn't have the training to know what nonsense that was.

  The blue display was on. Thrust: 0. Acceleration: 0. The big blue rectangle had a border of flickering scarlet: main motor on, fuel exhausted. He tapped it off, for what that was worth. 02: 211. H2:0. H20:1,328. "Plenty of water, but no fuel. We can't maneuver. I don't know how to find out where we're going. Lawri?"

  No answer.

  "But we're bound to fall back sooner or later." Green display: "Pressure's way down outside. We're—" This could start a riot; but they'd have to know. "We're leaving the Smoke Ring. That's why the sky's that peculiar color." Yellow display: "Life support looks okay." Window displays: "Oh, my."

  In the aft and side views, all detail had become tiny: integral trees were toothpicks, ponds were drops of glitter, everything seemed embedded in fog. Gold had become a bulge within a larger lens of cloud patterns that trailed off to east and west: a storm pattern that spread across the Smoke Ring. The hidden planet seemed indecently close.

  "Sorry, Clave, I got hung up. Citizens, don't miss this! Nobody's seen the Smoke Ring from outside since men came from the stars."

  Others were craning forward to see the displays or peering out through the side windows. But Gavving said, "I think Horse is dead."

  Horse? The old man Gavving had brought with him. Horse certainly looked dead enough; small wonder if the tide had stopped an old man's heart. Poor copsilc the Grad thought. He had never met Horse, but what human could have wanted to die before seeing this? "Check his pulse."

  Lawri said, "Port view, Jeffer."

  Something in her voice…the Grad looked. Off to the edge: a flash of silver? "I don't—"

  "It's Mark! He's still out there!"

  "I don't believe it."

  But the silver pressure suit was crawling into view. The dwarf must have clung to the nets throughout that savage acceleration.

  "Jeffer, let him in!"

  "What a man! I…Lawri, I can't. The pressure's too low outside. We'd lose our air."

  "He'll die out there!…Wait a minute. Open the doors one at a time. Hall that's why Klance calls it an airlocki So did the cassettes—"

  "Sure, two doors to lock the air in. Okay." Muffled thumps sounded aft. The silver man wanted in. "Anthon, Clave, he may be dangerous. Take the spitgun away from him when he comes in." The Grad cleared all but the yellow display. No fast decisions from now on. He pinched both lines together-make sure they're closed tightl-then opened the outer door with a forefinger.

  The silver man disappeared from view, into the airlock.

  Good. Now close the outer line, wait-no red borders? Open the inner. Air shushed into the airlock. The silver man stepped into the carm, handed the spitgun to Anthon, and reached for his helmet.

  In her heart of hearts, Lawri may have hoped for a last-breath countermutiny from the Navy's toughest warrior. She gave up that hope when she saw his face. Mark was a dwarf, of course, and the bones of his face were massive, brutal; but his jaw hung slack and his breath came fast and his face was pale with shock. His eyes wavered about the cabin, seeking reassurance. "Minya?"

  A dark-haired woman answered. "Hello, Mark."

  Her voice was flat and her face was hostile. Mark nodded unhappily. Now he recognized Lawri. "Hello, Scientist's Apprentice. What now?"

  "We're in the hands of mutineers," Lawri said, "and I wish they were better at flying what they've stolen."

  The mutineers' First Officer said, "Welcome to Quinn Tribe, as a citizen. Quinn Tribe doesn't keep copsiks. I'm Clave, the Chairman. Who are you?"

  "Navy, point man, armor. Name's Mark. Citizen doesn't sound too bad. Where we going?"

  "Nobody seems to know. Now, we don't quite trust you, Mark, so we're going to tie you to a seat. That must have been quite a ride. Maybe you really are made of starstuf."

  Mark was letting himself be led forward, to an empty chair. "All things considered, I'd rather ride inside. I was too mad to let go. We're not really going to hit Gold, are we?"

  He's turned docile! Lawri thought in disgust. He's given in to the mutineers! Are they really going to win?

  And then she saw that they were not.

  She kept her silence.

  Clave counted ten seats and thirteen citizens, one dead. Horse didn't need a chair. Neither did the three jungle giants. Quite the contrary! But even with the wide cargo space aft, the carm was crowded.

  The citizens seemed calm enough. Exhausted, Clave guessed, and too awestruck to feel fear. He felt a touch of that himself. Most of them-even the silver man-were looking out the windows.

  The sky was nearly black and scattered with dozens of white points. The Scientist's Apprentice broke her angry silence to say, "You've heard about them all your lives. The stars! You say it without knowing what you're talking about. Well, there they are. You'll die for it, but you've seen the stars."

  Real they were, and impressive enough, but they were just points. It was the Blue Ghost and Ghost Child that held Clave's attention. He'd never seen them either. The paired fans of violet light were vivid and terrifying. They were entirely outside the Smoke Ring, flowing out along the hole in the ring.

  Anthon and Debby were keeping busy. They had moored the ponchos and the smoked and cleaned carcass of a salmon bird to fixtures along the cargo hold walls. Now they were carving thin slices from the bird. Clave remembered feeling like this when the tree came apart. He didn't know enough to make decisions! Then, he had been ready to strangle the Grad for withholding information. Now… The Grad was watching him uneasily. Did he think Clave would attack their prisoners? Clave smiled back. He made his way aft and helped the jungle giants pass curls of meat forward.

  Now was different. Clave was not Chairman here. If they died it would not be Clave's fault.

  Probably the jungle giants found the carm more frightening than most-than Clavel-yet they were acting to make it their home.

  Squeezegourds of water were passing up and down the chairs…three squeezegourds, looking somewhat flat. Clave wondered about the carm's water supply.

  He was about to ask when the Grad spoke first. "Gavving, would you come here for a moment?"

  There was secret urgency in his voice. Anthon noticed and continued what he was doing. So did Clave.If their help was needed it would be requested.

  Gavving squeezed between Lawri and the Grad. The summons was something of a relief. Minya's news had startled him, and he did need time to compose his face.

  The Grad pointed. "See the red border blinking around that number?"

  "Sure."

  "Red means emergency. That number is the air in the cabin. How do you feel? Allergy attack coming on?"

  "Actually, it was the last thing on my mind." Gavving listened to his body. Ears and sinuses were unhappy…eyes scratchy…

  "Maybe."

  The yellow number dropped a digit behind the decimal point.

  "Scientist's Apprentice, any comments?"

  "Fix it yourself, Jeffer the Scientist."

  "Grad, what does it mean?"

  "Oh, sorry, Gavving. There's no air outside. The air inside must be leaking out into the, um, universe. You know, I talk to you when I get confused. Maybe you'll come up with something."

  Gavving chewed it ov
er. "What Clave said—"

  "Clave did not say that the carm is almost four hundred years old and maybe falling apart."

  "Like all those bicycle gears…okay, what's your opinion of the Scientist's Apprentice?"

  Lawri bore their considering stares with her lips pressed tight and her eyes full on Gavving's. The Grad smiled and said, "Better you ask her opinion of us."

  Gavving didn't have to. "Four enemy warriors, six copsiks caught in mutiny, one corpse, and a Navy man who surrendered his weapon." Her expression ifickered. Had she forgotten the silver man? This wouldn't be easy, guessing at a stranger's thoughts. Try anyway. "I only wondered if she's good enough to save us if she wanted to. We could waste too much time on that."

  The Grad nodded. "Lawri, if the Scientist were here, could he save us?"

  "Maybe. But he wouldn't!"

  "Kiance wouldn't save the carm?" The Grad smiled.

  She shrugged as best she could within her bonds. "All right, he'd save the carm if he could."

  "How?" She didn't answer. "Can you save us?"

  She raised an eyebrow at him. Gavving found that admirable, but what he said was, "Bluff Grad, we'll have to fix it ourselves. The Scientist told you things about gases, didn't he?"

  "Both Scientists did. Come to that…oxygen? We must be getting air from the oxygen tank. It's the hydrogen tank that's empty. And we'll have more fuel pretty soon. The carm splits water into the two flavors of fuel. The one flavor, the oxygen, it's what we breathe. At least we'll have some time."

  Gavving studied the blonde girl's face. What did she know? What did she want? If she only wanted everybody dead, then dead they were. But there was something she might hate even more than mutiny.

  It depended on getting the Grad moving, which was a good idea anyway. How? Ask stupid questions; that worked sometimes. "Can we find the leak? Set something smoldering and watch the smoke?"