by Larry Niven
* * *
The shelled man was no taller than Svetz or Miya. He looked pale and ill. He wore weapons, but he didn’t try to reach them. Tilted against a supporting tree, he watched them descend as if they might be hallucinations.
Then he drew himself up before them in yoga tree position and said, “Yo soy John de Castores del Camoes…” and continued at some length.
“I am Jack,” said the translator.
In Earth gravity Jack wore armor around his torso and carried heavy baggage too. No wonder he seemed bowed beneath the weight. He looked amazingly dirty. His beard and hair were scraggly and matted and overgrown. He carried his helmet, and Svetz wondered if his overgrown hair would still fit into it.
The United Nations translator recognized the language: not Spanish, but Portuguese. It had that in storage. It learned the archaic forms much faster than it had learned martian speech.
Jack wanted food. He was here to fish, he explained. Beneath these very strange trees—?
Svetz said, “Orbital tether,” and heard the silence: the translator didn’t have that term yet. “Hangtree roots. Beanstalk?”
The translator spoke. Jack thought that over, then said politely, “Beneath these beanstalk roots the fish and shellfish thrive. But Dinis and I, we are sick of fish!”
Miya offered him a dole yeast bar. Jack bit into it and looked dubious. Then he offered them a dark strip of … something.
Svetz took it because he couldn’t guess how Miya would react. He lifted his filter helmet and caught a wave of smells. Some of that must be coming from Jack. He put the dark strip in his mouth. It was hard enough to break teeth.
Saliva softened it, and then it tasted like … strange, like … ancient messages crawling up from his primitive brain. Corruption, and meat, and fire.
“Jerked meat,” the translator called it, “with these you locals call chilis for flavor.”
“Meat. From a beast?”
“From some local creature I do not know, which Dinis shot. But the animals become wary and our bullets run low. Sir, my companion Dinis is hurt. Do you know local herbs to help him?”
Before they could admit to knowing nothing of the locality—which Svetz had already decided not to do—Jack had spilled his pack on the sand.
Blanket. Knives. A bottle and a small bag, both made of something like Naugahyde. Gear for mending a boot. An ornate religious thing, cross-shaped. Jack showed them leaves and roots wrapped in cloth, half a dozen varieties. This root they had cooked and eaten and liked. This helped constipation. These leaves they had spread on Dinis’ wound; it hadn’t done much good—
“And your do ’yeesbar. God ordains that true medicine must have an evil taste, and truly I feel better. Where does it grow?”
“In another country.” Svetz handed Jack another bar, for he’d finished the first. “We must hoard them,” he said.
Miya picked up a small, heavy bag. “What’s this?”
Jack took it quickly. “Silver coins. All I have. Would that they were gold. We hoped to find gold in this place, but—” He shrugged. “Will you come and look at my sick friend Dinis?”
* * *
Jack told his tale as he led them through the jungle.
The shipwreck had left twelve. Attacks by primitives out of jungle shadows, snakes bigger than a madman’s nightmares, fever, starvation, rumors of gold, greed and madness among their officers, had winnowed them down to two.
The jungle had nearly strangled a small stepped pyramid built of huge stone blocks. Jack led them nearly to the top and through a great doorway.
The room wasn’t large. Amid a junkyard of primitive tools and elegant stoneware, Dinis lay on a dais beside rusted armor. Dinis looked much like Jack; they even dressed alike. All the same, Dinis had been dead for hours.
Jack asked hopefully, “Is it possible…?”
Did he really expect dole yeast to restore a man to life? Svetz didn’t laugh. He said, “We cannot help this man.”
“Were we fools to lodge in this alien temple? Ah, Dinis! But we had not strength to build shelter.”
Svetz said, “Jack, our mission leader tells us that nobody is ever truly dead.”
Go back and talk to them, Zeera would have added—
Jack seemed to relax. “You are Christian!” he marveled. “And Svetz is your name? Russian?”
Svetz let that stand. “Jack, what is the year?”
“We left Portugal in the year of our Lord fifteen sixty. Since then I too have lost count. Two years, I think. In this place one cannot even guess when Christmas might come!”
Jack announced that he must bury his friend Dinis Alvares de Albuquerque y … another name of considerable length. Miya explained that they must report to their mission leader. Svetz saw Jack’s disappointment before Jack turned away to dig in the earth with his blunted sword.
Miya was right: they could not help with Dinis’ funeral. Jack would see that they didn’t know the rites!
Still—
Translator off, suit radio on. “Zeera, people made coins out of gold, didn’t they?”
“For a while. Then they went to paper and plastic.”
“If I found you a little silver, could you make wire?”
“Superconductor would be better … oh, all right, Svetz. Silver’s ductile, I can pound it.”
Miya whispered, “Hanny—”
“Go on ahead, Miya. I’m right behind you.”
Svetz went back to where Jack was digging in the earth with his blunted sword. Translator on. “Jack, give me your silver for a few minutes and I’ll give you gold coins back.”
Jack stared, then laughed. “Truly, I hear the sounds of my home! Why would you do this?”
“Because I need silver.” Because I’ve evaded helping you with a friend’s death rites.
Curiosity warred with distrust, and Jack handed Svetz his pouch.
Svetz went into the trees, out of sight. He took the largest coin out of the pouch, then dropped the pouch into the superconducting net of his trade kit. The conversion took a few minutes.
Svetz realized his mistake when he picked up the pouch. It too had become gold … and that would tell Jack more than Svetz wanted told. He fished out a zipped sample bag and poured the coins into that. He brought that to Jack.
Jack poured the coins from hand to hand, then bit one. “Where did you get these, Master Svetz? And this?”
The clear plastic pouch. Futz! Svetz said, “That’s a secret, Jack.”
He took a coin and bit it, but it didn’t have any taste at all.
* * *
The woman had taken the net off Thaxir. As Svetz watched, the green giant rolled over onto her side, then her belly, then lifted herself on all sixes. “Very good,” Miya said. “You’ll stay healthier if you can exercise. Hello, Hanny.”
Careful of her balance, Thaxir slid a middle arm toward her pack. She saw Svetz go tense. “Hungry,” she said. She fished in the pack and came out with a lump wrapped in a patch of Hangtree mirror. What was inside might have been white cheese.
She ate half of it in two bites. Then, “Will you taste?”
Miya broke off a crumb and (ignoring Zeera’s horror) put it in her mouth. “There’s almost no taste,” she said. “Like tofu. Thaxir, I think you could eat dole yeast. Try this.”
Still on all sixes, Thaxir let Miya put a chunk of dole yeast in her mouth.
Her eyes squeezed shut. They heard her voice muffled. “Your food tastes like canal scum. My weight holds me paralyzed, and the tree hangs above us, taunting. So much for worlds. Miya, will you help me to lie down again? I don’t want to fall.”
Svetz helped Miya ease the Martian down. He could feel Thaxir’s strength. Her problem was fear.
He asked, “Do you eat meat?”
“Some meat. Most plants. To choose too carefully is to starve.”
“I’ll find you something. Zeera—” He showed her Jack’s silver coin.
“Counterfeit,” Zeera said after
testing it. “Only part silver. Not very conductive at all.”
“Is gold conductive?”
“Why? Oh! Wait, now, Svetz, silver’s ductile. I’ll hammer this into shape and then we’ll change it.”
“About the green giant,” Svetz said. “Why not put her in water? Let her float.”
Zeera took the charge out of a blaster and began to pound on the silver coin with the butt. “She’s an alien, Svetz. What would salt water do to her? She might dissolve! Or anything! How did you get this?”
Svetz told her.
“This Jack knows you can make gold?”
“I handed him a bag of gold. He doesn’t know where I got it. He’s the last of his crew. Who would he tell? And what if he does? There were tales of people who could make gold. They were called alchemists. That’s why we made the trade kit, Zeera!”
Zeera belly-laughed. “You might have started that story, right here!”
“Why not?” Svetz reclined his chair and went to sleep. His dreams were shaped by the tapping of a blaster butt on a silver coin, and Zeera’s monotonous swearing.
* * *
The pounding stopped.
What Zeera had was a narrow little bar, not quite a wire, to replace a mere whisker of superconductor. “All right, Svetz, turn it into gold. Miya, we want to videotape straight up.”
And all of that was the work of a few minutes.
Miya went to help Thaxir roll over again. “Thaxir, do you understand all this? We’re going into the future—”
“Where my companions and my consort-by-contract are all grown old or dead, but the tree is linked to Earth. Good.”
Zeera glared at them. “Last chance. Did any of you leave scraps of high tech underwear for some archaeologist?”
Miya made a show of patting herself. “Nope.”
“Anything conspicuous in some unlikely place?”
“Jack,” Svetz said. They were leaving an ally.
Miya shrugged. Zeera flipped the FDD switch. The sun dropped like a giant meteoroid and plunged them into the dark.
33
They shared a meal and took turns in the bath bag, and drifted through half a year, while the Hangtree drifted up into the sky. When Zeera judged it straight overhead, she turned off the FFD.
Night again. The tree loomed huge and weightless. Silver blossoms blazed down, but not so many as there had been. A tiny moon was tangled among the blossoms.
Miya said, “It’s still not connected.”
“Well, it’s in position,” Zeera said. “Hit it again.”
“We do not want to miss this. Wait.” Miya took her time, lolling in her reclined chair with her mag specs pointed straight up. She said, “I can see the taproot and it’s still fifty klicks too high. Zeera, hit it.”
Day and night strobed. Svetz had found nothing, but he kept his mag specs pointed. There it was, thrashing like a string in a hurricane.
In real time, what was happening? A root descended through ferocious stratospheric winds. Weighted at the end? Light-sails unfurled to move the tree’s position against the wind below, to drag the line along a strip of anchor grove until—
Miya hit the cutoff. The strobe ended just past dawn. They’d jumped by twenty days.
Harder to see now that it wasn’t moving, a silver thread descended from heaven. Its end was tangled in the black tops of the anchor grove. The winds might still be vibrating it, but it was under tension now. The tree was in place; its light-sail leaves were furled; its mass was pulling up.
“I want a better look at that,” Svetz said.
* * *
He and Miya drifted among the black treetops. A silver line no thicker than coarse wire rose from one of the tufts. It was tangled through the black cotton of this and two other anchor trees.
Miya collected vegetation for Thaxir to try. Black anchor-tree foliage; green leaves and stems and a dug-up root; lichen and mushrooms; seaweed.
Thaxir liked lichen and certain leaves.
They jumped the Minim four days.
* * *
Zeera was getting cabin fever. She and Svetz went out while Miya stayed with Thaxir.
Three anchor trees had merged. The root line reached straight out of the common tuft. All the other trees, that had once stood straight, now leaned toward the trees that had caught the dangling line.
Zeera was clumsy on a flight stick. She hovered above while Svetz drifted among the black treetops.
Earth’s ecology was adapting to the alien grove. Seaweed grew among the trunks, and seabirds hunted fish. A bird had made a nest in the black foliage and laid eight small blue eggs. Svetz collected the eggs for Ra Chen.
“They’ll rot,” Zeera objected. “We’ll be months getting home with the FFD.”
“Doesn’t the Minim have a cold box?”
“Have you seen one? Wait now, maybe the Vivarium only needs to study the interior structure. If we don’t expect eggs to hatch—”
So Svetz put them in the trade kit and turned them to gold.
* * *
Another six-day jump made it clear that many of the anchor trees were going to merge. The root line had grown thicker, as thick as Svetz’s little finger.
They jumped another ten days, and studied the anchor grove through the Minim dome. The grove was merging into a single mass. Anchor trees farther away had fallen on their sides. Their trunks grew along the ground. Some merged head to tail. Only those closest to the Hangtree root still stood, and those leaned, growing into one conical stalk. The collar of black foliage was growing ragged.
Svetz and Miya geared up and went through the inner door. Miya’s hand stopped him on the launch platform.
Below the launch platform, a ring of men in metal shells was converging on the Minim. A sailing ship built like an ornately carved bathtub lay at anchor nearby.
Miya dropped her flight stick. “We can’t go down to meet them. No ladder. Better not fly either.”
“Right.” Svetz thumbed his translator on. “Jack!”
A soldier stepped forward. They all looked alike, and Svetz had to guess he was looking at Jack. Jack was clean. He had shaved.
Svetz shouted down, “What’s—”
His own voice carried, but the translation didn’t. Svetz turned up the volume on the device, pointed it down and asked in a normal voice, “What’s happened while we’ve been away, Jack?” Let the translator do his shouting.
Jack shouted back. “A great wonder! This—you called these beanstalk roots? This monstrous beanstalk sprang from them overnight! It happened while I was in delirium from fever.” He moved like a healthy man now. Dole yeast might have cured a vitamin deficiency.
“But, another great wonder! The Saint Mercurius has arrived! Please make the acquaintance of Captain Magalhaes, Major Pereira, Father De Castro…”
“Look at her!” “Wouldn’t you like to—” “So beautiful!” “Shame-free barbarian devils!” Other voices were intruding. Miya flushed and stepped back out of sight.
The translator wasn’t picking up just the shouts. It caught several near whispers and translated them all.
“The one in the window, I wonder if she bares her breasts too?”
“To have two such wives—”
“But they are dark.”
“He gave Jack gold. He must have much more, to treat it so lightly.”
“Why does he not invite us in? What might this wizard be hiding inside?”
Svetz tried to answer only the shouts from Jack and Captain Magalhaes. “A pleasure to meet you … so far from home … little chance to explore … the weather seems most pleasant in the morning … yes, some of us have learned to eat fish … what is the date?”
“I must ask the navigator.” Captain Magalhaes lowered his voice, not to a whisper but to a softer authoritative bark. “Three mongrels of a dark, strange race, a man with two wives who claims to be Christian and Russian. Father De Castro, is this a Christian? Is this a Russian?”
“I have met Russians. T
heir skin is whiter than mine. Whiter than my father’s I should say, given what this fierce sun has done to my complexion. Their ceremonies are queer, and their beliefs are strange. Jack, I do not see what you trusted in this Svetz. Did you see his dwelling?”
“From a distance, sir, and then it was gone.”
“And now returned.”
“It stands on two chicken legs.” This from Father De Castro. “I think this man may be a kind of Russian sorcerer.”
From Jack: “Sir, I believe he saved my life. I know his generosity.”
“Well, Jack, perhaps you are too trusting.” Captain Magalhaes raised his voice. “Master Svetz, the year is fifteen sixty-four in the month of April, and we are ten days from celebrating Easter. We hope you will join us.”
Miya touched his arm. “Keep it cool here? I have an urge to cover up.”
“Sure,” Svetz said, and he stepped forward smiling as Miya stepped inside. “Thank you, Captain. Jack, look what I found!”
He tossed down a handful of gold eggs.
Jack caught two of the eight. The others fell and lay like golden eyes looking up from the mud. The shelled men stared, for less than a heartbeat.
Then Jack reached to pick up another egg—and so did every other man except Captain Magalhaes. The priest got one. Jack had three; he stepped out of the scuffle and handed one of the eggs to Captain Magalhaes for inspection.
Miya stepped out wearing a ship’s blouse. She saw the knot of excitement and asked, “Hanny, what did you do?”
“Who, me?”
“Hanny!”
“They’ve been waiting for me to invite them in. Miya, they must think we have an invisible door down there where there’s nothing but hydrogen tank. Not showing them my home makes me an ill-mannered barbarian, right? So I distracted them—”
“You gave them golden eggs and watched them fight!”
“Right,” said Svetz, and he waved and grinned widely and went back inside. “Zeera, let’s jump a few days. I can’t think of anything more we want to learn from these … savages.”
“We’ll miss their holy day. They’ll be sure we’re sorcerers.”
