Midworld

  Nearchose returned to his duties. He sat at his gimbal post and brooded on what there was in a simple hunk of wood that impelled someone as rational as Tsing-ahn to go off the deep end. Such things happened, and he need not concern himself with them. But he could not help it.

  He sighed, and forced himself to turn his gaze and attention to the surrounding wall of forest.

  God damn, but he was sick of green.

  VI

  “OUCH!”

  Born stopped, looked back at his charges. Logan was hopping awkwardly on one foot on the cubble, holding a trailing liana for support. Born let go of the vine-root he was holding and dropped next to her. She sat down, holding her left leg. She seemed more angry than hurt. Cohoma was studying something Logan was concealing with a hand.

  “What is it?”

  She smiled up at him. Beads of sweat were beginning to form on her forehead. “I stepped on something.” She looked around, gestured. “That flower there … went right through my boot.”

  Born saw the tiny collection of bright orange thorns sticking up from the middle of the miniature bouquet of six-petaled lavender blooms. His expression changed. A hand reached under his cloak and he brought out the bone blade.

  “Hey!” Cohoma started to move between them. Born shoved the bigger man aside. Cohoma stumbled and nearly fell off the cubble.

  “Lie down!” Born instructed Logan harshly, putting a hand on her chest and shoving. She went down, hard, then started to sit up slightly, bracing herself with her hands.

  “Born what are you doing? It stings a little, but—”

  He yanked the boot off and she fell backward again, hitting her head on the wood. Then he raised her leg and held the knife over it.

  “Now wait a minute, Born!” Her voice turned panicky. Cohoma had recovered his footing, took a threatening step toward the hunter.

  “Just a second, you misplaced pygmy. Explain—”

  There was a warning growl just overhead and he looked up. Ruumahum was leaning over the cubble just above him, holding on with four legs, the front paws dangling and claws extended. The furcot smiled, showing more ivory than a concert grand. Cohoma looked into three eyes and clenched his fists, but kept them at his side.

  “This will hurt a little,” Born said quickly. He cut into the sole of her foot, directly over the three punctures.

  Logan screamed violently, fell back and tried to twist free. Holding her foot tightly, Born put his mouth over the freely bleeding wound, sucked and spat, sucked and spat. When he finished, she was crying softly and trembling. After a cautious glance at Ruumahum, Cohoma moved to comfort her.

  Born ignored the giant’s tense questions while searching the surrounding foliage. He found what he needed, a cluster of herbaceous cylinders growing from a nearby limb. Finding an old one, he cut it off at the base. It was half the length of his arm. The knife took the top off, revealing a hollow tube filled with clear liquid. He drained it, sighed, and tried another one. This he offered to the injured woman. Logan finished rubbing at her eyes, stared at him.

  “Drink it,” he advised simply, She started to take it and recoiled at the feel of the mushy stem. Then she put her lips hesitantly to the rim and drained half of it, despite Cohoma’s warnings. She passed the remainder to him.

  Cohoma studied it warily. “How do we know he’s not trying to poison us?”

  “If he wanted to kill us,” she sighed, “he could have left us for the flying meat-eater, Jan. Don’t be a fool. There’s nothing harmful in it.” Cohoma sipped at it reluctantly, but finished what was left.

  “Your foot … how does it feel?” Born inquired solicitously. Logan drew her knee up, pulled it in to where she could see the bottom. The wound was not as deep as she had feared, certainly not as deep as it had felt when Born was cutting it. It was already beginning to heal. Around the multiple punctures, though, the skin had turned a dull red.

  “Like someone took a knife to it,” she shot back. “How should it feel?”

  “You feel nothing besides the cut?” Born pressed.

  She considered. “A slight tingle, maybe, around where I stepped on the thorns … like when your foot goes to sleep. But that’s all.”

  “Tingle,” Born said thoughtfully. He started searching the brush again. Both giants watched him curiously. He paused before one plant, then plucked a pale yellow fruit from a branch far above, where it hung in neat clusters of three. “Eat this,” he instructed Logan when he rejoined them again.

  She examined it doubtfully. Of all the fruits and edible vegetation Born had introduced to them, this appeared the most formidable. It was shaped like a squat barrel, with brown riblike extrusions running around its circumference. “Skin and all?”

  “Skin and all,” Born said, nodding, “and quickly. It will be better for you.”

  She brought it to her mouth. So much of the foliage on this world was deceptive—maybe this tough-looking specimen, would have a … then she bit into it. Her face screwed up in disgust. “It tastes,” she told Cohoma, “like spoiled cheese seasoned with vinegar. What happens,” she asked Born appealingly, “if I don’t finish this thing?”

  “I believe—I think, I got all of the poison out of your system. If not, you have a few moments left before the remaining poison spreads to your nervous system and kills you. Unless it is countered by the antitoxin in fruit.”

  Logan finished the yellow pulp with speed that belied her nausea. Still, she found time to wonder at how words like “antitoxin” and terms like “nervous system” had lasted in these people’s vocabulary down through the years of their fall from knowledge. Undoubtedly, she reflected, these expressions were constantly used in this ever-threatening environment. As she reached this conclusion, her eyes widened, her cheeks bulged, and she turned and retched, with such violence that Born and Cohoma had to move fast to keep her heaving body from falling off the cubble. Minutes later she was lying on her back gasping for air and running a forearm slowly across her mouth.

  “Holy orders!” she wheezed. “I feel like I’ve been turned inside out.” She put both hands to her abdomen and felt around gently. “Still there—you could have bet me it wasn’t.”

  Born ignored her gasps and complaints. “How does your foot feel now?”

  “Still tingles a little.”

  “Just your foot?” he persisted, staring intently at her. “Not your ankle, or your lower leg, here?” He touched her calf. She shook her head. Born grunted, got to his feet. “Good. If your leg tingled, the poison would have spread past my ability to halt it. Then it would have been too late. But you will be all right, now.”

  She nodded and started to get to her feet with Cohoma’s help. Then she stared sharply at Born. “Hey—if it was so vital that I eat that fruit right away, Born, why did you hesitate before picking it and bringing it down? According to what you just said, I could have died in the interim.”

  The hunter stared back at her with the patient look one reserves for very young children. “I had to be sure the tesshanda would not object to my taking its fruit, since it was not yet quite ripe.”

  Both Logan and Cohoma appeared confused. “Are you saying,” she went on, “that you had to ask that plant’s permission? That you talked to it?”

  “I did not say that,” Born explained easily. “I emfoled it.”

  “Emfoled? Oh, you mean you felt the fruit to see if it was ripe—enfolded it.”

  Born shook his head. “No … emfoled. You do not emfol with your plants?”

  “I guess not, since I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Born.”

  He looked satisfied without being pleased. “Ah, that explains much.”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t,” Cohoma replied. “Look, Born, are you saying you talked or conversed with that plant and that it gave you an okay to pick a fruit before it was ripe?”

  “No, no, I emfoled it. If the fruit was ripe, I would not have had to, of course.”

  “Why of course?” Logan asked, fee
ling the conversation growing steadily more tenuous.

  “Because then the tesshanda would have emfoled me.”

  “Some kind of ritual superstition,” she muttered. “The logic trappings are intriguing. Wonder where it sprang from? Give me a hand up, Jan.” He did so and she immediately winced, bent over and held her stomach.

  “Can you walk?” Born inquired, still patient

  “No, but I’m an accomplished stumbler.” She forced a sickly grin. “Talk about the cure being worse than the disease … I don’t think you’d make it as a Commonwealth physician, van Born, but this is the second time you’ve saved my life. Thanks.”

  “Third time,” Born told her without explaining. “We are near to the Home, now. Another half-level up and two or three levels distant.” Both giants groaned.

  “I’ve never seen a tree like that, not on Survey or in any of the other reports,” Cohoma announced when they had their first sight of the Home.

  “You haven’t been keeping up, Jan,” his partner admonished. “The next to the last eastward skimmer brought back the details on it. It’s called a weaver. The central trunk hardly narrows at all till it attains the five- or six-hundred-meter level. Then it splits and resplits into an interlocking maze of trunklets that form a … well … a kind of enormous central basket in the tree. Then the subtrunks re-combine a few dozen meters higher to form a single bole again that reaches all the way to the forest top. According to the report the branches of the trunklet cage are lined with a red fruit, mostly sugar pulp around a nutlike center, that’s about as rich in nourishment components as anything found locally so far—and rich in niacin, of all things.” She pointed as they neared the first trunklets and walked along a thick tuntangcle. “See those pods growing from the pink blossoms? According to the report, if you brush against one, you get a face full of pollen. If you breathe that stuff, it’s good-bye, according to the lab analysis. Fungal spores settle in the lungs and esophagus, spread instantly and choke you inside two minutes.”

  She was suddenly aware that Born showed no sign of swerving from the deadly flower-sprouting vines. “We’re going around this tree, aren’t we, Born? There can’t be a poison here your people don’t know about.”

  “Go around?” Born eyed her oddly. “This tree is the Home.” He approached the tangle of flower-laden vines and branchlets.

  “Born …” She followed him slowly, her eyes on the deadly pods. One touch would send a shower of suffocating pollen into the air.

  Born stopped at the first vine, leaned over, and spat directly into one of the broad blooms, avoiding the swollen pod. A shiver appeared to pass through the vine as the glistening petals closed on themselves. The shiver continued. Then, like a twig curling back from flame, the vines tightened, retracted on themselves, revealing a clear path through the brambles.

  “Quickly now,” Born urged, starting between the passage.

  A streak of emerald lightning shot past the two giants as they began to follow. Ruumahum had not waited for them to make up their minds. When they were through and safe, both turned to watch the tension slip out of the vines. They relaxed, once again barring the way as effectively as a duralloy wall.

  “Remarkable,” Cohoma murmured. He questioned Born as they strode deeper into the heart of the Home-tree. “What would happen, Born, if I were to spit in one of the flowers?”

  “Nothing,” the hunter told him. “You are not of the Home. The Home recognizes only its own.”

  “I don’t see how—” he began, but Logan was already analyzing the possibilities.

  “Tell me, Born,” she asked, “do your people eat the fruit of the weaver—the Home?”

  Born looked back at her, aghast. At times these giants seemed to possess knowledge beyond imagining; at other times, they could be incredibly stupid.

  “Is there anything better to eat except perhaps fresh meat?” He had heard Logan’s recital of the Survey report on the weaver, but had not understood. “Why would we not eat of what is so readily provided for us?”

  “Interesting,” Logan agreed. Then she again began using words of no meaning to Born and he willingly ignored their conversation. “You see the connection yet, Jan?”

  Her companion nodded. “I think so. They eat the tree’s fruit on a regular basis; it’s their staple food. Chemicals from the fruit mass in their system. When they spit into one of the flowers, chemicals from the ingested fruit are included in the saliva. No wonder the Home recognizes its own!”

  “I can see what’s in it for the people,” Logan confessed. “Food and shelter. What, if anything, does the tree get out of it?”

  Their musings were interrupted by a shout, then another, and another. Soon they were surrounded by a group of goggling children—perfectly normal children in every way, if one discounted the predominance of deep brown skin, hair, and green eyes, plus their shortness. The youngsters eyed the two giants with the kind of awe they would have reserved for a pink furcot.

  Din was there, too. He fell in step alongside Born. Puffing out his thin chest, he matched the hunter stride for stride, except for an occasional skip needed to keep up. Born muttered an indifferent greeting to the boy. Would the youth never cease pestering him?

  Muf tagged along behind his person, his presence unusual for a furcot. Normally he would have been off with his brethren somewhere in the trunklets, sleeping. The cub nosed his way through the group of children and sniffed questioningly at Logan. She shied away at first, then reached out and hesitantly patted the cub on the head. A low rumble began to sound from somewhere deep within the six-legged ball of fur. The cub edged closer to Logan, nearly knocking her over.

  A streamlined, rippling green shape was alongside her in a second. “If cub troubles, slap,” Ruumahum advised Logan in his rumbling bass.

  She gazed down at the cub, who was staring up at her with worshipful multiple eyes. “Slap him—certainly not!” she objected. “He’s only being affectionate.”

  Ruumahum snorted derisively, padded on ahead.

  This unlikely parade—one person, two furcots, a gaggle of softly chattering children, and two giants—finally came to a halt by the side of the central leaf-leather pavilion.

  Born’s gaze swept over the surrounding homes. Somewhere an adult furcot yawned loudly. No crowd came running from the half-open doorways. No covey of adolescent girls hurried to feel his arms and torso and to make cooing sounds. No hunters arrived to study his giants with the awe the children had shown. There was no praise, no admiring compliments, no adulation or expressions of proper commendation for his courage and boldness—only the curious stares of a few oldsters peeping out from behind leafleather doorways.

  Something hit Born at the back of his knees, and he fell forward, landing in a puddle of stagnant night-water. Muf scrambled and hid among the children. They laughed delightedly. Getting slowly to his feet, Born tried to regain his dignity while shaking the water free from the cloak. The laughter continued. He turned and yelled at them. They drew back slightly, but the smiles did not entirely vanish. He took a step toward the nearest child, his hand going threateningly to his knife. This time they scattered, naked brown bodies darting nimbly into the doorways of homes, or behind ridges and humps in the wooden paving of the square. Born found he was breathing hard. His capacity for making a fool of himself seemed limitless.

  “Not quite the reception you hoped for, hmmm?” Cohoma ventured with surprising sympathy. “I know exactly how you feel. I’ve experienced the same lack of appreciation myself.” He shot a significant glance at Logan that she missed.

  All at once the anger flowed out of the hunter, and he relaxed somewhat, feeling at the same time an unexpected sense of kinship to this strange man who claimed to travel the Upper Hell in a boat made of axe metal.

  “Where is everyone, anyway?” Logan wondered.

  Born just shrugged and led them on toward his own vestibule, located high in the trunklets at the far end of the Home cage. “Gathering fruit, caring for the
Home …”

  “Parasite control,” Cohoma murmured to Logan. “One point for the tree. Better the human parasite you know than the unreasonable animal or plant you don’t.”

  “Symbiote, not parasite,” Logan countered. “Both tree and man benefit. I wonder, though, what the weaver trees did for protection before Born’s ancestors made them their home.”

  “… or hunting, perhaps,” Born concluded, ignoring their whispers. “All will return before the night comes.” He smiled to himself. He could still count on Brightly Go’s reaction when he introduced the giants to the council tonight.

  Born’s own living quarters elicited more peculiar words from the giants. “See,” Logan went on, indicating the walls and ceiling, “the smaller branches and vines grow so close together here that it’s a simple matter to close off the remaining space with woven material.”

  Cohoma murmured agreement, sat down and ran a finger along the smooth wood of the floor. An idea was forming that he needed additional proof to confirm. Born gave it to him when he explained the function of a circular crevice in the floor located near the back of the big room.

  “I just wonder,” he mumbled aloud, “who has adapted to whom, here—man to tree, or tree to man? Maybe nothing lived in the weavers before the colonists discovered them. But I don’t understand how such detailed, specialized interdependence could have developed in a few generations.”

  Logan considered silently. Born eyed the two of them without understanding as they continued to talk between themselves. What did they mean, man adapt to tree or tree to man? The Home was the Home. It was only sensible that a man should take care of his dwelling. What was it like, he wondered, on the world where these giants came from, that they found the natural order of things here so astonishing? He did not think he would care for it. Then a freak thought struck him—freak, because it seemed so impossible.