Rainbow Mars

by Larry Niven

  “So?”

  “This band of foliage ends, what, a hundred klicks up? If seeds dropped from the bottom, they’d fall at a slant. Coriolis effect would pull them … two or three klicks east?”

  “We’ll look.”

  A twinkling overhead. The Martians’ lift cage was in view, much lower than it had been. It must be nearly falling, and it was flashing light.

  “Miya? They’re coming down.”

  “Can you find cover?”

  “I can put foliage between me and them. I’m falling faster than they are. We could talk to them if your translators worked in vacuum.”

  * * *

  Two hundred klicks lower, the fringe of black foliage had swollen to become a match for any forest still on Earth. Svetz charred out another tunnel.

  Again a swarm of creatures fled his blaster beam. A nightmare shape took an interest in Svetz. His blaster dissolved it, but he’d attracted attention. Four rippling silver sheets with eyes in the middle drifted near, studying him. Living light-sails: not the light-sail leaves that grew on the tree, but maybe part of the same evolutionary line.

  Svetz knew that if he fired on ambulatory mirrors, his own beam would come back at him. He jetted into the tunnel. They didn’t follow.

  He slowed midway to look around.

  Limbs became branches became little branches became twigs. Growth here was fractal, like a fern or a tree. He saw nothing like flowers or fruit or seeds or pinecones.

  Miya was taking more time to explore, but she was making bigger jumps. He stopped another hundred klicks down and dipped in again. Tree parasites had grown sparse. Nothing else had changed.

  The upper tree was a line of winking lights when he emerged. Pretty. Svetz zoomed his view. Lights twinkled all along the trunk to the far tip. Signals.… “Miya, they’re talking about us.”

  The edge in her voice matched his own. “I see it. Mirrors. They can chop huge mirrors out of those light-sails. What the futz is that?”

  * * *

  Something ghastly bright was coming at them out of the night. The breath froze in Svetz’s throat. Something like an eroded gray mountain came straight toward the tree, turning massively as it came. The flicker of mirror-speech stopped as it moved on them, growing, growing, gone past with several klicks’ clearance.

  Fear made Miya’s voice ragged. “Missed. Hanny? Talk to me!”

  “I’m okay, but that was disturbing. Phobos? It must scare the Martians into fits every time it comes by.”

  “It and the tree must be in a resonance pattern. Ha! We can hope. What else have you found?”

  “Look up,” he said. Her suit was badly chosen, too like the colors of Mars, but he’d spotted her. “I found you.”

  He dropped past her and slowed, keeping his distance. She eased alongside him. Two flight sticks fell together along the narrowing trunk. Dawn was crawling down the tree toward Mars. A broad crescent of dawn crawled across black land toward the base of the tree.

  Not black land. He saw lines of light, brighter where they crossed. Cities formed where canals met. There were more cities, arcs of light like little crescent moons on the darkness. Directly below was a cruciform glow. But none of those lights were blinking.

  “Up here they’re talking with reflected sunlight,” Miya said. “Talking about strangers on the tree. They’ll get answers as soon as it’s daylight below us, and then the whole planet will know all about us. Maybe it’s time to talk to some Martians.”

  Svetz agreed. “Offer them refuge. Tell them what’s going to happen.”

  “We don’t exactly know what happened, Hanny.”

  “Makes us less persuasive. And from everything I can tell,” Svetz said, “Martians would rather open fire than conversation.”

  There were lights flickering below, not on Mars, but—

  “Duck,” he said. Another open cage was rising toward them, flashing with reflections and tiny puffs of fire. Futz, there were crabs crawling all over the outside! Crabs as big as Wrona, with human faces, it looked like. Human shapes inside the cage were doing the shooting.

  He glided sideways to put forest between him and what he’d seen.

  “Futz!”

  “What?”

  “Something hit my helmet,” Miya said.

  “Futz! Pull into the foliage, let me look at you!”

  “I’m fine. My ears are ringing a little.”

  Still falling, braking with their flight sticks, they eased around the narrowing curve of the tree. Svetz heard Miya cursing softly before he spotted it.

  Above them on a second pair of silver tracks, a wooden raft hung vertically. A cargo lift, rising. Things were tied to it: a boxcar-sized bulb with a door in one end, and several smaller boxes. Man-shapes were clinging to the web of lines.

  Something struck his back-shell, not from the cargo lift. Svetz yelped and lifted on the flight stick. But that would take him too close to the guns on the cargo lift! Around the trunk, then, with bullets trying to follow him, and then turn off the flight stick and fall!

  “Where are you?” Miya asked.

  “Falling. West side.”

  “The trunk below us is swarming! Hanny, let’s go with your guess. Go in at the bottom end of the black forest. Hide in there. Hope we see seeds. Zeera, are you reading us?”

  The shadow of dawn had crept down the trunk to its base. Half of Mars was alight, and all of the skyhook tree. Svetz squinted down into a coruscation of blinking lights. Sunlight and mirrors: Mars was talking back to the tree. But stare into the blaze and you saw more.

  Aircraft too high to be aircraft.

  He zoomed his faceplate, and saw thousands of flying vehicles around the base of the tree. Higher up, mere hundreds, all (it seemed) trying to dock against the trunk. But that high, they must be in vacuum!

  The Pilgrim probes had videotaped what seemed to be hard-shelled dirigibles. Could Mars have a lighter-than-vacuum gas? What was he up against here?

  Some of the sparkling was weaponry: puffs of fire and a glitter of projectiles falling short. But some of the weaponry wasn’t aimed at them. The natives were fighting each other.

  Miya said, “Zeera’s over the horizon, and the Orbiter doesn’t seem to be in position to relay. Still with us, Hanny?”

  “Still intact and on course for the bottom of the forest. Miya, I may have used flight sticks as often as you have. Just not in Mars gravity while trying to move inside a sausage skin.”

  “Very good. Anything goes wrong, yell for me. Don’t think it over first.”

  18

  Jacob’s ladder. Typifies a soul’s approach to perfection. A universal axis or World Tree. Equates with Ama-no-Hashidate, the Beanstalk, Lugh’s chain, stem of Jesse, Yggdrasil.

  —Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols, by Gertrude Jobes

  A flyer ruptured and began to sink in a scattered cloud of men.

  Mars still pulled like a planet. The flight stick was lifting at maximum, but Svetz’s belly still thought he was sliding down a smooth glass hill. But the treescape slowed, slowed … until the black forest was a world-sized bulge above him and he was starting to float back up.

  Miya drifted alongside. Below them the trunk was infested.

  Svetz had barely heard of termites. He had to picture something like Von Neumann nanotech machines turning living wood into more of themselves until there was nothing left but the machines. It looked like that, just a haze of motion, until he turned up the zoom.

  He had not anticipated that the wealth and power of Mars, five hundred and fifty years before Earth’s first atomic bomb, could match the wealth of the United Nations of 1108 AE. But armor and manpower of that order was crawling up the tree at them.

  The twinkling wasn’t all mirrors. Close below them, slender man-shapes were fighting green-clad six-limbed giants. Faceplates winked like silver mirrors. Here and there were twinkling blades. Stick-figure shapes, improbably tall, moved about the trunk undisturbed, observing the fighting like hundreds
of wandering referees.

  Svetz said, speculating, “It’s a technology race, like the First Cold War. Somebody saw us using tools that no Martian has. They can’t let anyone else get to us first. We came to rob them. They’re all swarming up the tree to be first to rob us.”

  One of the factions was getting too close. Svetz saw puffs of gunfire. Swords or not, they still had kinetic projectiles.

  “Let’s get into cover,” Miya said. The forest flared briefly and left a charred tunnel. Miya jetted into it. Svetz fired rockets and followed.

  It was soft, cushiony. Wriggle through, wriggle down. “That’s me behind you, so don’t shoot.”

  “Good. I don’t see any parasites,” Miya said. “Or seeds.”

  Even seeds of Earth could take any shape. Pinecones, spiky peach pits, smooth almonds, great melons with tiny seeds, avocados, acorns, sesame.

  Whatever their form, skyhook seeds would look all alike. They might be armored against reentry heat. Otherwise Svetz had no idea what to look for, and Miya of Space Bureau had even less. He was seeing nothing but foliage—

  “Have a look here,” Miya said.

  He saw her below, by pink Marslight. He wriggled down beside her. They’d left most of the tree above them now, and Mars was close below. They peered down through a hole in the sky.

  The lower sixty klicks of the tree was swarming with troop carriers and cargo vehicles. Miya said, “I’m wondering—”

  The tree shuddered. They had that instant’s warning, and then the trunk lashed like a whip.

  It was worse than any earthquake. Svetz was totally disoriented. His arms and legs strangled a black branch that was trying to fling him into the sky. His grip was being shaken loose.

  Eerily calm was Miya’s voice. “Hanny, I’ve lost my flight stick. Can you come and get me?”

  “What was that?” The tree was shuddering still. Miya was nowhere in sight.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care yet. Come and get me.”

  She was falling!

  Stop a moment. Think. “Was it lifting?”

  “My flight stick? No. Maybe it stayed in the tree.”

  Svetz saw it wedged in branches. He reached, and the tree shook it and him out like overripe fruit. He was spinning down, dizzy and disoriented, with his own flight stick in one hand and the other falling with him.

  A flare of rockets sent him close enough to grab.

  “I’ve got them both. Wait one.” He wrapped himself around his flight stick, gripped the other in an armpit, and barely stopped himself from twisting the lift throttle. He’d lose her if he lifted!

  “Miya, you’ve got your rocket pack. Find me and come get your flight stick. Do it before we both burn up.”

  “Understood. Can you see me?”

  “No! You’re the same color as Mars! Who picks your wardrobe? Look for me; I’m green and I’m turning on my blinks.”

  “Blinks, aye aye.”

  “We’ll make great targets. Oh, futz!” He screamed in terror as the tree ripped loose.

  Whatever was happening below was half hidden in a cloud of chaff. Some of that chaff was vehicles and men. The tree’s lateral surge must have shaken most of its parasites loose. The torn base of the rising tree trailed wood chaff and artifacts: twisted silver rails, pressure suits of human and nonhuman shape, falling sky ships. A falling lift cage: men and green giants and big crabs were swarming out and over it, and what they hoped to accomplish was beyond Svetz.

  Svetz’s emergency suit lights were scintillating in preprogrammed panic. He was a clear and vivid target. Maybe Miya—

  “I see you, Hanny.”

  —Maybe Miya would get to him before anyone else. And there she was, a flickering orange flare rising past him. Svetz twisted the flight stick throttle hard over. “Do not make your burn. I’m chasing you,” he called.

  She was there again, coming down, and he twisted again to kill the lift, rockets too close. “Let me do the docking—”

  “Just give me the flight stick!” she screamed. He hadn’t guessed how frightened she was. She snatched at the brush discharge with both hands, and had it.

  The tree’s torn base rose past them, big as a wooden moon. He glimpsed Miya again, high above him on the flight stick, and lost her. They were falling fast. Already he could hear a whisper of wind. They’d burn as meteors if they couldn’t kill their velocity.

  It was not a time to worry about staying together.

  Her voice was clear, almost calm. “Too much weight on the tree. They overloaded it.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Decelerating. I lost it for a moment there, Hanny. Look out overhead, there’s a lot of futz falling at us.”

  He looked up at men falling silent in vacuum.

  A sky ship dropped past him, slowed and rose again.

  His hand scrabbled at his back. He must have dropped the blaster, but he was instinctively reaching for the needle gun, and he found that.

  The vessel was alongside him. It might have been a dirigible balloon with wooden decking along the top. Men swarmed out of an interior well, anchored themselves, and hurled something. It unfurled as it came: a net.

  Svetz twisted the throttle off and dropped under the net. They pulled it back and prepared to throw again.

  Something ripped the vessel wide open. For an instant Svetz could see into a tank running bow to stern, filled with gas glowing by the light of a vermilion laser. Then the glowing gas puffed out and the vessel dropped away.

  Wind sang a reedy melody, pulled at his helmet, set up a tremor in his flight stick.

  Martian vehicles dropped past him. Nobody seemed to be firing at Svetz. Some fired at each other. None tried to match the lifting power of Svetz’s flight stick.

  And then one did. A sky yacht was floating down toward him.

  He shifted laterally. So did the yacht, matching his lift. It was brick shaped, covered with masts and nets with no regard for streamlining.

  “Miya, a flying yacht tried to net me, and now I’ve got another,” he said. He looked for a target. He could glimpse men, but they were under hatches, firing through slits.

  Miya said, “I’m clear. I can get to you, but not fast. I’m already in the atmosphere.”

  They must have recognized his needle gun as a weapon. The ship rose above him. A net flew. He dodged. They pulled it back and threw again. He dodged.

  Air sang past him. He could feel heat on his shoes, the backs of his legs, his forearms.

  The sky yacht’s crew tired of trying to net him. He saw puffs of flame from covered slits, and tiny metal missiles whacked the back of his flight stick. The brush discharge sputtered blue lightning and he fell.

  Nothing had hit him. He was falling with a dead stick between his legs, but he wasn’t dead yet. He twisted every control. The stick only sputtered puffs of lightning. He kicked it away from him.

  The sky yacht was falling alongside him. The net came down again, and this time, rocket pack or not, Svetz didn’t dodge. The net swept him in, and the flight stick too, and pulled him toward a wooden deck.

  Svetz fished out the flight stick and threw it overside.

  The deck knocked the wind out of him. He felt it surge under him, the yacht pulling upward. “They’ve got me,” he said.

  19

  In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.

  —“A Princess of Mars,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  “Describe the vessel,” Miya instructed.

  “Seventeen meters by seven, fitted out like a boat, no keel, no aerodynamic surfaces. Two long tanks with a narrow cabin between. I’m not guessing about that; I saw a tank ripped open on another craft. There are firing points forward, kinetic energy weapons, a motor aft and a deck across the whole top. I’m lying on the deck.” And he looked up at a row of silver masks.

  They wound the net around Svetz to immobilize him. Svetz said, “They look like men, what I can see. Except … one.”

 
; “Don’t leave me hanging.”

  “It’s just watching. Squatting with its knees way higher than its head. Bubble helmet isn’t quite big enough for its ears. It’s wearing just the helmet. It’s covered with white … feathers! Bird ancestry.”

  “Hanny, it wouldn’t be related to anything from Earth.”

  The crew fished his needle gun out and gathered ’round to study that. One crewman fired at something as it fell past. When he saw no result, he fired a crystal into a wooden post. It left a tiny streak of white powder. He was not impressed. He kept the needle gun.

  Several crew picked Svetz up and turned him for inspection.

  They reached through the net and opened buckles until they had freed the rocket pack and could slide it off his back. They must have recognized the bell-shapes as rocket nozzles. They were careful with it, bracing it against the deck before they tried to fire it. They couldn’t make it work.

  They’d find the safety override soon enough.

  Svetz spoke while they were playing with the rocket pack. “Miya, they’re built like basketball players. Their pressure suits are not quite skintights. They’re quilted and painted in camouflage, all reds, and they wear bracelets and toques over the suits. They’re wearing silver masks. The masks are pictures of human faces, like death masks. Little windows for eyes. Gems in some of the masks. I won’t be able to use my translator until we’ve got air. Talk to me, Miya.”

  “I’m here, Hanny.”

  “The decks are wood. The fittings are wood. There’s some metal, maybe iron and gold, but I’m surrounded by literally tonnes of wood!”

  “Enjoy. I’ve found seeds.”

  “Tell me.”

  She had flown over the city. “Graceful towers that go up and up. Those slender arched bridges. Streets wind high up between the towers with no support but a few arches thin as an afterthought. Everything looks fragile. They build like they’ve forgotten gravity, Hanny. The tree’s been dropping all kinds of heavy stuff; it’ll knock down half the city before the day’s over. Nobody was going to notice me in all that.

  “I came down east of the city. I found thousands of craters all in a line, all sizes—stuff that fell off the tree over the years—except that a lot of little craters were just the same size, two meters across. I dug seeds out of the centers of those. They look like big yellow apples.”