by Larry Niven
Chuff! Flutter. THUNK!
She jerked the brake and began reeling in, walking off her branch, skimming the vines around the slash her line had made, touching the next branch with her tiptoes. Soon she was rising almost vertically, walking with hands and the points of her knees, up the side of the nearest main trunk. When the angle that the monofilament line made with the bark wall of the trunk began to shorten, she slowed the winder.
A woman's face, her own face, stared back at her in a pool of distorted greenery. As her head moved or a breeze rippled the leaves around her, she saw a flash of bright silver. This reflection of the floating world and her own face peered out from a collar of encroaching bark in the side of the tree. Like a knot of polished metal buried in the wood.
She touched the mirror and quickly drew her fingers back. It was cold—colder than any metal would normally be, in this mild climate. Its inherent temperature was not low enough to freeze sap in the wood embedding the knot. Still, it was a chill so deep that the shock felt, to her probing fingertips, like unexpected heat. She thunked the surface with her knuckles and listened for any echo of a cavity beneath the silver skin. No sound came back. So either the object was solid—more than solid, because she could sense no resonance at all—or its insides were lodged in another dimension. A dimension turned by several degrees away from her local reality.
She had found the stasis-box.
Now, how to alert the others? Krater wished they'd worked out, in advance, a series of whistles or bird-calls to address this situation. As communications officer she suddenly realized that should have been her responsibility. Hmm. . . . Well, how could she fix it up at this late date?
Sally Krater fingered the radio at her wrist. If not for the kzinti, she might try using that. But if their enemies were monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum, a radio call would be as damning as a shout. More directional, too. But perhaps . . . Krater clicked the unit off standby and tapped her finger lightly against the microphone in a rapid and ancient dance: dit, dah, dah, dah, pause, dit, dah, pause, dit, dah, dit . . .
"What is it?" from the speaker, before she could go on. She recognized Cuiller's voice, low and guarded.
She brought the microphone to her lips. "Krater. I've found it."
A pause, then: "Converge on Sally." And that was all.
Krater held her breath, waiting for an energy bolt to tear through the foliage below her. None came, but the chuff of launchers and whirr of winder motors was closing in from either side.
Gambiel was the first to appear from her right, with his weapon at the ready. He saw the mirror in the tree and slowly strapped the rifle back over his shoulder. He touched the surface and did not draw back at the chill. "That's it, alright," he said.
Jook and Cuiller appeared from the left. They, too, examined the alien artifact.
"If that thing's a billion years old," Jook asked, "how did it get up in a tree? It should have been buried under layers of geological strata, then turned over two or three times by plate tectonics."
"We've already figured out that this world doesn't have 'em, Hugh," Gambiel said. "Plate tectonics, that is."
"This rainforest ecology must be very old," Krater observed. "As old as the Bandersnatchi and the other Slaver biota. The Bandersnatchi will have been tending this planet for a long time.
"It's just possible," she went on, "that the stasis-box was picked up by a young, growing tree. Those saplings back there looked strong enough to do it—if whatever's inside the box isn't too heavy. Then the box was absorbed into the tree trunk as the branches sprouted and spread out. Eventually, when the tree died, the box fell to the forest floor. And the next tree to rise in that place took it up again. Maybe the stasis-box did spend a million years or so underground, pulled down by the root structure. But sooner or later it always comes up."
"Why?" from Cuiller.
"Because roots and other burrowing life turn the soil over. And in any scatter of small, loose stuff, the larger and heavier objects tend to rise. . . . Have we seen any sign of streams yet, let alone rivers or lakes? Those are the forces that make sedimentary rocks—what you call 'geological strata.' But we haven't seen them."
"Well, not around here," Jook said.
"And around here is where the box is, right?"
"I give up," the navigator said. "You found it in a tree, so it must be possible."
"We'd better get it out of the tree if we want to keep it," Cuiller said. "Daff, can you cut it out with your rifle?"
"Not if you mind the top of this tree coming down."
"Alternatives?"
"None I can see."
"Start cutting."
The Jinxian unslung his rifle and took aim two centimeters from the side of the mirror. The others, dancing on their monofilament tethers, swung back from the tree trunk.
* * *
Nyawk-Captain pulled the three claws of his left foot free from the firm wood as he touched the ground again. He shook them instinctively before remembering that it was sap, not blood, on his toes. Then he arched his foot in the special way that retracted the steel hooks into their sleeves. No sense in clogging them with dirt as he walked around.
He angled the navigational tool up into the trees again and pressed the improvised trigger. The tiny readout screen blossomed with a solid return. Somewhere above him was the Thrintun artifact, but his locator—modified from a missile's ranging warhead—was too powerful for this close work. Nyawk-Captain sighed and turned toward his third and final tree trunk for climbing.
Both times before, he had gone up as far as the first heavy branchings. Then he had released his hold on the trunk and stepped out into the green world of the elevated rainforest. The foliage beneath him had been uniformly limber, sagging fearfully under the weight of his body and armor. He had made his way a few cautious steps in this treacherous environment—so unlike the rolling veldt of his ancestors. Every step bad required careful placement of all four paws on a firm bough, to avoid falling through. When he was fully clear of the trunk, he had raised his torso, balanced, and aimed his locator in the four cardinal directions.
By gauging the strength of the various returns, he had determined the general direction of the artifact. And by keeping his path down the last tree all along one side, without deviating around the intervening branches, he had maintained his sense of that direction. He was reasonably sure that the way to the artifact was up the tree he now addressed.
And if it was not, then he would start over again—right up until the time his crew had the Cat's Paw repaired and he must continue with his mission to Margrave.
Nyawk-Captain extended the powered claws and began climbing. In his previous forays up into the canopy layer, he had perfected the technique, digging in with his hind claws for lift and using his front claws for balance. It was easier going up than coming down.
* * *
A stutter of blue-light pulses, of short and penetrating wavelength, flashed from the muzzle of Gambiel's weapon. In a second, their original impact point in the tree trunk was obscured by smoke and steam.
"Don't worry about touching the box's perimeter;" Cuiller advised.
"I'm riding on it," Gambiel replied. "The reflection helps." He swung the rifle in a slow circle, keeping ahead of the billow of steam.
After about thirty seconds, he had made two circuits of the mirror's face, going deeper each time. After the third pass, he shut off the weapon.
"We can pull it now."
Gambiel gripped the outer circumference of the box, which was shaped like a keg with its flat end facing them. At first, Krater expected Gambiel to draw back his hands from the residual heat, but of course the stasis-box absorbed the laser energy into another dimension. The Jinxian did, however, try to keep his knuckles away from the charred and smoldering wood surrounding it. He worked the box left, then right. He drew a slender knife and began digging around it. Krater saw the blade make a long drag against the side when his knife slipped, but it left no scrat
ches and made no sound. Like cutting against glass with a feather. He worked on swinging the end with his hands again. It came free suddenly, like a stopper from a bottle.
"Light," he said, surprised. "Must weigh about ten kilograms."
"Empty?" Jook asked.
Gambiel started to shake it, then stopped in mid-motion with a frown.
Jook stifled a laugh. Whatever the box held, it held in stasis. The contents would not be rattling around in this time-frame.
"Not much mass, anyway," the Jinxian said. He had been staring at the box in his hands, but in a flash his attention shifted to the tree trunk at the point his knee rested against it. He stuffed the keg under one arm and placed his free palm against the bark.
Krater tried to read his face and couldn't. She swung closer to the tree and felt it, too.
A dull, rhythmic pounding was transmitted through the wood. She looked up, expecting to see the weakened top section bending over, dragging against branches as it started to topple on their heads. But, despite the deep wound in its side, the trunk wasn't falling.
Still the pounding came.
"Kzin One has found our tree," Gambiel whispered hoarsely.
"That's him climbing?" asked Cuiller, who had also put a hand on the wood.
"Yeah. But slowly. Methodical."
"Right. Daff, you keep the box. Sally, stay with him. The two of you go east." Cuiller pointed to establish direction. "Hugh, you and I go west to provide a diversion for them. Everybody try to keep out of the kzin's way for at least a full day. Reassemble at noon tomorrow by Callisto's hull—or, if the kzinti are still around, one kilometer south by the sun. Questions?"
They shook their heads.
"Go!" he hissed, pushing Krater's shoulder.
The reel motors whined as they each rose away from the burn mark, toward the scattered anchor points of their own grapples.
* * *
Once he was inside the lowest levels of the green layer, Nyawk-Captain boosted the gain on his aural enhancers. He was listening for anything that might attack. On the ground, he could trust his senses of sight and smell to detect an enemy at great range. And his armor could deal with anything short of another rampaging Whitefood. Up in the foliage, however, screened by leaves and baffled by random breezes, those senses were next to useless. Only his steel ears would save him now.
Listening hard, he could hear twanging and huffing noises, with the clatter of leaves closing around solid bodies. Nyawk-Captain froze. But the noises were fading, he decided, moving off into the forest. Whatever lived up here perhaps had more to fear from a kzin than he from it.
Instead of stepping off on the lower branches, as he had before, this time Nyawk-Captain kept close to the main trunk of his tree. He intended to climb as high as he could, until the width of the bole was insufficient to support his weight.
He was still climbing on firm wood when he saw a burn mark in the tree. His head came up level with a hole big enough for a newborn kzitten to curl up inside. He touched the edges of the scar, crumbling the charcoal that coated them. It was still warm. He tasted his fingerpads. Fresh soot, with the scent of smoke still in it. As he watched, a tear of yellow sap rolled down and across the curve of the hole, confirming his suspicion.
He drew his locator from its belt clip and aimed down along his leg.
No return image.
He aimed up, past his helmet.
No image, either.
He aimed to the four cardinal points, in one case reaching around the tree trunk to aim for it.
East by the sun, he got a hard return, but nowhere as close to him as the bloom had been a few minutes ago.
The artifact was on the move—and going fast.
Nyawk-Captain did not think a Whitefood would have come to take it. He did not think a sudden burst of lightning had burned this hole. And he could think of no animal living in this world of green vines which might have control of such fire. Unless it was a form of superior monkey . . . the sons of Hanuman.
Certainly they had come here in the Leaf-Eater hull. They had not died with it. And, considering its present condition, they could not leave in it.
He began the long climb down to the forest floor. As he went, he sent a call to Cat's Paw. It was time to get Weaponsmaster started on a wide-area sweep with those sensors they still possessed.
* * *
Daff Gambiel rested in the fork of a large branch, balancing the Slaver stasis-box on his knee. He and Krater had traveled eastward five kilometers by his own dead reckoning.
Now they were in disagreement about which way they had actually gone. So Krater had climbed higher into the overgrowth, to take bearings by the setting sun. Fine in theory—if she could keep her sense of direction while moving around in this leaf maze.
Gambiel was willing to bet she would get lost just coming down.
While he waited, he studied the stasis-box. One side had a flattened place with a dull-gray disk etched onto the mirrored surface. It was the only feature in an otherwise featureless object. It had to be the fieldactuator switch.
Gambiel considered it carefully. He knew he should wait on opening the box until the other team members could be present. They would all want to inventory the contents together. That way they could examine anything inside that might be fragile or valuable, offer witness of anything that might fall apart or evaporate, or try to protect each other against anything that might suddenly leap out and attack them.
But Cuiller and Jook might also have been captured by now. Or he and Krater might be captured anytime soon. Better to open the box now and know what it contained. Besides, even though it massed only ten kilos, the thing was too awkward to keep carrying around. Gambiel was tired of working his launcher one-handed, and no sling or belt he could rig would hold on to the box's slick, mirrored surface. More to the point, if the kzinti were using deep radar—or any radar at this distance—the box was a sure signal of his and Krater's location. So it made most sense to abandon it, unload and abandon it, now.
Without more thinking, he pressed down on the disk.
The box changed, its surface slowly becoming a cloudy gray. It was like watching a time-lapse video of silver tarnishing. When the transformation was complete, a crack appeared along the keg's length and down each end-face.
Gambiel forced the crack open with his hands and found himself blinking into a pair of wide-set, liquid eyes. They belonged to a face that was part of a rounded body covered in soft, white hair that was trimmed in intersecting globes of fluff. He was reminded of pictures he once had seen of Earth dogs—useless, yapping, brainless pets. This animal, however, studied him with a wary expression and made no move to climb out of the stasis-box.
Gently, in case the animal should suddenly display teeth and snap at him, Gambiel felt around inside the box He quickly found the remaining contents: a long tubular device that had a fretwork of keys and finger-holes, like a flute, but no mouth-hole for blowing; and three patties of wrinkled, brownish material that looked like freeze-dried meat, each wrapped in a tight plastic sheath. Gambiel assumed the meat was some kind of food ration for the "dog."
He set the stasis-box, with the animal still sitting patiently inside it, down among the interwoven vines of the canopy. It was the "flute" that drew his attention.
He held it up with the end pointing at his mouth, like a clarinet or recorder, and tried to fit his fingers to the keys and holes. It didn't work for eight fingers and two thumbs. He frowned and looked down along the flute's length, counting. Yes, it did have more than ten positions—thirteen, in fact—but the spacing was wrong for human hands. Not surprising, considering that a billion years ago humans had not evolved on Earth, nor much else, other than bacteria and blue-green algae.
He raised the flute again, and—
Yip!
The dog had barked at him. Gambiel looked down. The animal's eyes had grown big and it was trying to shy away from him.
Daff shrugged and began pressing keys at random, st
ill looking for a hole to blow through. He heard a faint and almost familiar strain of music. He stopped fingering. Instead of breaking off in the middle, the tune wandered away from the notes and faded in a burble of sound. If this was a flute, Gambiel decided, it was a defective one.
He set it aside and looked at the dog, which seemed to be going to sleep on him.
"Come here, Fellah."
The dog immediately straightened up and jumped out of the case. It came directly to Gambiel, sure-footing its way across the vines, and rested its chin on his knee. It looked up at him with an attitude of rapt attention.
"Yeah, you're a good Fellah, aren't you? Bright little guy, too. You know I won't hurt you. . . . It's a good thing we found you first, instead of those kzinti. . . . They probably hate dogs—would if they had any in their Patriarchy, that is. . . . And they're big enough to do something about it, too. . . . I figure they'd take you for a snack. You're just about one bite to them."
As he talked, the animal's eyes slowly closed . . . falling asleep.
The darkness was beginning to grow around them, seeping in between the leaves, and Gambiel expected Krater to come down soon.
"Are you hungry, Fellah?" He picked up one of the meat patties and looked it over. No kind of heat tab or peel point in the wrapper. He drew his knife and slit around the edge.
The dog never lifted its head from his knee.
He pulled the plastic back and sniffed the patty. It smelled vaguely unpleasant, like dried meat saturated with chemical preservatives.
"You eat this stuff?" He offered it to the dog.
Fellah slid his chin off Gambiel's leg and backed away. His eyes were still half closed and his head down between his shoulders. Gambiel knew very little about dogs, because they didn't fare well in Jinx's high gravity. But he decided the animal's reaction was purely negative, a cross between "guilt" and "disgust."
Gambiel shrugged and broke off a piece of the meat for himself. He put it in his mouth, let his saliva soak it for a moment, and began chewing. It had no flavor, like chewing on wood pulp. He rewrapped the patty, putting it and the others in his pocket.
