“My son is lost and you give me poetry?”
Harp jumped. “Your pardon. There was nothing on our side of the trunk, neither of danger nor salvation. We started around the trunk. Then Laython saw a swordbird, far west and borne toward us on the wind.”
The Chairman’s voice was only half-controlled. “You went after a swordbird?”
“There is famine in Quinn Tuft. We’ve fallen too far in, too far toward Voy, the Scientist says so himself. No beasts fly near, no water trickles down the trunk—”
“Am I not hungry enough to know this myself? Every baby knows better than to hunt a swordbird. Well, go on.”
Harp told it all, keeping his language lean, passing lightly over Laython’s disobedience, letting him show as the doomed hero. “We saw Laython and the swordbird pulled east by the wind, along a klomter of naked branch, then beyond. There was nothing we could do.”
“But he has his line?”
“He does.”
“He may find rest somewhere,” the Chairman said. “A forest somewhere. Another tree…he could anchor at the median and go down…well. He’s lost to Quinn Tribe at least.”
Harp said, “We waited in the hope that Laython might find a way to return, to win out and moor himself along the trunk, perhaps. Four days passed. We saw nothing but a musrum borne on the wind. We cast our grapnels and I hooked the thing.”
The Chairman looked ill with disgust. Gavving heard in his mind, Have you traded my son for musrum meat? But the Chairman said, “You are the last of the hunters to return. You must know of today’s events. First, Martal has been killed by a drillbit.”
Martal was an older woman, Gavving’s father’s aunt. A wrinkled woman who was always busy, too busy to talk to children, she had been Quinn Tribe’s premier cook. Gavving tried not to picture a drillbit boring into her guts. And while he shuddered, the Chairman said, “After five days’ sleep we will assemble for Martal’s last rites. Second: the Council has decided to send a full hunting expedition up the trunk. They must not return without a means for our survival. Gavving, you will join the expedition. You’ll be informed of your mission in detail after the funeral.”
Chapter Two
LEAVETAKING
The treemouth was a funnel-shaped pit thickly lined with dead-looking, naked spine branches. The citizens of Quinn Tuft nested in an arc above the nearly vertical rim. Fifty or more were gathered to say good-bye to Martal. Almost half were children.
West of the treemouth was nothing but sky. The sky was all about them, and there was no protection from the wind, here at the westernmost point of the branch. Mothers folded their babes within their tunics. Quinn Tribe showed like scarlet tuftberries in the thick foliage around the treemouth.
Martal was among them, at the lower rim of the funnel, flanked by four of her family. Gavving studied the dead woman’s face. Almost calm, he thought, but with a last lingering trace of horror. The wound was above her hip: a gash made not by the drillbit, but by the Scientist’s knife as he dug for it.
A drillbit was a tiny creature, no bigger than a man’s big toe. It would fly out of the wind too fast to see, strike, and burrow into flesh, leaving its gut as an expanding bag that trailed behind it. If left alone it would eventually burrow through and depart, tripled in size, leaving a clutch of eggs in the abandoned gut.
Looking at Martal made Gavving queasy. He had lain too long awake, slept too little; his belly was already churning as it tried to digest a breakfast of musrum stew.
Harp edged up beside him, shoulder-high to Gavving. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” Though Gavving knew what he meant.
“You wouldn’t be going if Laython wasn’t dead.”
“You think this is the Chairman’s punishment. All right, I thought so too, but…wouldn’t you be going?”
Harp spread his hands, uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
“You’ve got too many friends.”
“Sure, I talk good. That could be it.”
“You could volunteer. Have you thought of the stories you could bring back?”
Harp opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged.
Gavving dropped it. He had wondered, and now he knew. Harp was afraid…“I can’t get anyone to tell me anything,” he said. “What have you heard?”
“Good news and bad. Nine of you, supposed to be eight. You were an afterthought. The good news is just a rumor. Clave’s your leader.”
“Clave?”
“Himself. Maybe. Now, it could still be true that the Chairman’s getting rid of anyone he doesn’t like. He—”
“Clave’s the top hunter in the tuft! He’s the Chairman’s son-in-law!”
“But he’s not living with Mayrin. Aside from that…I’d be guessing.”
“What?”
“It’s too complicated. I could even be wrong.” And Harp drifted off.
The Smoke Ring was a line of white emerging from the pale blue sky, narrowing as it curved around in the west. Far down the arc, Gold was a clot of streaming, embattled storms. His gaze followed the arm around and down and in, until it faded out near Voy. Voy was directly below, a blazing pinpoint like a diamond set in a ring.
It was all sharper and clearer than it had been when Gavving was a child. Voy had been dimmer then and blurred.
At the passing of Gold, Gavving had been ten years old. He remembered hating the Scientist for his predictions of disaster, for the fear those predictions raised. The shrieking winds had been terrible enough…but Gold had passed, and the storms had diminished…
The allergy attack had come days later.
This present drought had taken years to reach its peak, but Gavving had felt the disaster at once. Blinding agony like knives in his eyes, runny nose, tightness in his chest. Thin, dry air, the Scientist said. Some could tolerate it, some could not. Gold had dropped the tree’s orbit, he was told; the tree had moved closer to Voy, too far below the Smoke Ring median. Gavving was told to sleep above the treemouth, where the rivulets ran. That was before the rivulets had dwindled so drastically.
The wind too had become stronger.
It always blew directly into the treemouth. Quinn Tuft spread wide green sails into the wind, to catch anything that the wind might bear. Water, dust or mud, insects or larger creatures, all were filtered by the finely divided foliage or entangled in the branchlets. The spine branches migrated slowly forward, west along the branch, until gradually all was swallowed into the great conical pit. Even old huts migrated into the treemouth to be crushed and swallowed, and new ones had to be built every few years.
Everything came to the treemouth. The streams that ran down the trunk found an artificial catchbasin above, but the water reached the treemouth as cookwater, or washwater, or when citizens came to rid themselves of body wastes, to “feed the tree.”
Martal’s cushion of spine branches had already carried her several meters downslope. Her entourage had retreated to the rim, to join Alfin, the treemouth custodian.
Children were taught how to care for the tree. When Gavving was younger his tasks had included carrying collected earth and manure and garbage to pack into the treemouth, removing rocks to use elsewhere, finding and killing pests. He hadn’t liked it much—Alfin was a terror to work under—but some of the pests had been edible, he remembered. Earthlife crops were grown here too, tobacco and maize and tomatoes, they had to be harvested before the tree swallowed them.
But in these dark days, passing prey were all too rare. Even the insects were dying out. There wasn’t food for the tribe, let alone garbage to feed the insects and the tree. The crops were nearly dead. The branch was nude for half its length; it wasn’t growing new foliage.
Alfin had had care of the treemouth for longer than Gavving had been alive. That sour old man hated half the tribe for one reason or another. Gavving had feared him once. He attended all funerals…but today he truly looked bereaved, as if he were barely holding his grief in check.
Day was
dimming. The bright spot, the sun, was dropping, blurring. Soon enough it would brighten and coalesce in the east. Meanwhile…yes, here came the Chairman, carefully robed and hooded against the light, attended by the Scientist and the Grad. The Grad, a blond boy four years older than Gavving, looked unwontedly serious. Gavving wondered if it was for Martal or for himself.
The Scientist wore the ancient falling jumper that signified his rank: a two-piece garment in pale blue, ill-fitting, with pictures on one shoulder. The pants came to just below the knees; the tunic left a quarter meter of gray-furred belly. After untold generations the strange, glossy cloth was beginning to show signs of wear, and the Scientist wore it only for official functions.
The Grad was right, Gavving thought suddenly: the old uniform would fit Harp perfectly.
The Scientist spoke, praising Martal’s last contribution to the health of the tree, reminding those present that one day they must all fulfill that obligation. He kept it short, then stepped aside for the Chairman.
The Chairman spoke. Of Martal’s bad temper he said nothing; of her skill with the cookpot he said a good deal. He spoke of another loss, of the son who was lost to Quinn Tuft wherever he might be. He spoke long, and Gavving’s mind wandered.
Four young boys were all studious attention; but their toes were nipping at a copter patch. The ripe plants responded by launching their seedpods, tiny blades whirring at each end. The boys stood solemnly in a buzzing cloud of copters.
Treemouth humor. Others were having trouble suppressing laughter, but somehow Gavving couldn’t laugh. He’d had four brothers and a sister, and all had died before the age of six, like too many children in Quinn Tuft. In this time of famine they died more easily yet…He was the last of his family. Everything he saw today squeezed memories out of him, as if he were seeing it all for the last time.
It’s only a hunting party! His jumpy belly knew better. Hero of a single failed hunt, how would Gavving be chosen for a last-ditch foraging expedition?
Vengeance for Laython. Were the others being punished too? Who were the others? How would they be equipped? When would this endless funeral be over?
The Chairman spoke of the drought, and the need for sacrifice; and now his eye did fall on selected individuals, Gavving among them.
When the long speech ended, Martal was another two meters downslope. The Chairman departed hurriedly ahead of the brightening day.
Gavving made for the Commons with all haste.
Equipment was piled on the web of dry spine branches that Quinn Tribe called the ground. Harpoons, coils of line, spikes, grapnels, nets, brown sacks of coarse cloth, half a dozen jet pods, claw sandals…a reassuring stack of what it would take to keep them alive. Except…food? He saw no food.
Others had arrived before him. Even at a glance they seemed an odd selection. He saw a familiar face and called, “Grad! Are you coming too?”
The Grad loped to join them. “Right. I had a hand in planning it,” he confided. A bouncy, happy type in a traditionally studious profession, the Grad had come armed with his own line and harpoon. He seemed eager, full of nervous energy. He looked about him and said, “Oh, treefodder.”
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” He toed a pile of blankets and added, “At least we won’t go naked.”
“Hungry, though.”
“Maybe there’s something to eat on the trunk. There’d better be.”
The Grad had long been Gavving’s friend, but he wasn’t much of a hunter. And Merril? Merril would have been a big woman if her tiny, twisted legs had matched her torso. Her long fingers were callused, her arms were long and strong; and why not? She used them for everything, even walking. She clung to the wicker wall of the Commons, impassive, waiting.
One-legged Jiovan stood beside her, with a hand in the branchlets to hold him balanced. Gavving could remember Jiovan as an agile, reckless hunter. Then something had attacked him, something he would never describe. Jiovan had returned barely alive, with ribs broken and his left leg torn away, the stump tourniquetted with his line. Four years later the old wounds still hurt him constantly, and he never let anyone forget it.
Glory was a big-boned, homely woman, middle-aged, with no children. Her clumsiness had given her an unwanted fame. She blamed Harp the teller for that, and not without justice. There was the tale of the turkey cage; and he told another regarding the pink scar that ran down her right leg, gained when she was still involved in cooking duties.
The hate in Alfin’s eyes recalled the time she’d clouted him across the ear with a branchwood beam, but it spoke more of Alfin’s tendency to hold grudges. Gardener, garbage man, funeral director…he was no hunter, let alone an explorer, but he was here. No wonder he’d looked bereaved.
Glory waited cross-legged, eyes downcast. Alfin watched her with smoldering hate. Merril seemed impassive, relaxed, but Jiovan was muttering steadily under his breath.
These, his companions? Gavving’s belly clenched agonizingly on the musrum.
Then Clave entered the Commons, briskly, with a young woman on each arm. He looked about him as if liking what he saw.
It was true. Clave was coming.
They watched him prodding the piled equipment with his feet, nodding, nodding. “Good,” he said briskly and looked about him at his waiting companions. “We’re going to have to carry all this treefodder. Start dividing it up. You’ll probably want it on your back, moored with your line, but take your choice. Lose your pack and I’ll send you home.”
The musrum loosed its grip on Gavving’s belly. Clave was the ideal hunter: built long and narrow, two and a half meters of bone and muscle. He could pick a man up by wrapping the fingers of one hand around the man’s head, and his long toes could throw a rock as well as Gavving’s hands. His companions were Jayan and Jinny, twins, the dark and pretty daughters of Martal and a long-dead hunter. Without orders, they began loading equipment into the sacks. Others moved forward to help.
Alfin spoke. “I take it you’re our leader?”
“Right.”
“Just what are we supposed to be doing with all this?”
“We go up along the trunk. We renew the Quinn markings as we go. We keep going until we find whatever it takes to save the tribe. It could be food—”
“On the bare trunk?”
Clave looked him over. “We’ve spent all our lives along two klomters of branch. The Scientist tells me that the trunk is a hundred klomters long. Maybe more. We don’t know what’s up there. Whatever we need, it isn’t here.”
“You know why we’re going. We’re being thrown out,” Alfin said. “Nine fewer mouths to feed, and look at who—”
Clave rode him down. He could outshout thunder when he wanted to. “Would you like to stay, Alfin?” He waited, but Alfin didn’t answer. “Stay, then. You explain why you didn’t come.”
“I’m coming.” Alfin’s voice was almost inaudible. Clave had made no threats, and didn’t have to. They had been assigned. Anyone who stayed would be subject to charges of mutiny.
And that didn’t matter either. If Clave was going, then…Alfin was wrong, and Gavving’s stomach had been wrong too. They would find what the tribe needed, and they would return. Gavving set to assembling his pack.
Clave said, “We’ve got six pairs of claw sandals. Jayan Jinny, Grad…Gavving. I’ll take the extras. We’ll find out who else needs them. Everyone take four mooring spikes. Take a few rocks. I mean it. You need at least one to hammer spikes into wood, and you may want some for throwing. Has everybody got his dagger?”
It was night when they pulled themselves out of the foliage, and they still emerged blinking. The trunk seemed infinitely tall. The far tuft was almost invisible, blurred and blued almost to the color of the sky.
Clave called, “Take a few minutes to eat. Then stuff your packs with foliage. We won’t see foliage again for a long time.”
Gavving tore off a spine branch laden with green cotton candy. He stuck i
t between his back and the pack, and started up the trunk. Clave was already ahead of him.
The bark of the trunk was different from the traveling bark of the branch. There were no spine branches, but the bark must have been meters thick, with cracks big enough to partly shield a climber. Smaller cracks made easy grip for fingers.
Gavving wasn’t used to claw sandals. He had to kick a little to seat them right, or they slipped. His pack tended to pull him over backward. Maybe he wanted it lower? The tide helped. It pulled him not just downward, but against the trunk too, as if the trunk sloped.
The Grad was moving well but puffing. Maybe he spent too much time studying. But Gavving noted that his pack was larger than the others’. Was he carrying something besides provisions?
Merril had no pack, just her line. She managed to keep up using her arms alone. Jiovan, with two arms and a leg, was overtaking Clave himself, though his jaw was clenched in pain.
Jayan and Jinny, above Gavving on the thick bark, stopped as by mutual accord. They looked down; they looked at each other; they seemed about to weep. A sudden, futile surge of homesickness blocked Gavving’s own throat. He lusted to be back in the bachelors’ hut, clinging to his bunk, face buried in the foliage wall…
The twins resumed their climb. Gavving followed.
They were moving well, Clave thought. He was still worried about Merril. She’d slow them down, but at least she was trying. She’d find it easier, moving with just two arms, when they got near the middle of the trunk. There would be no tide at all there; things would drift without falling, if the Scientist’s smoke dreams were to be believed.
Alfin alone was still down there in the last fringes of tuft. Clave had expected trouble from Alfin, but not this. Alfin was the oldest of his team, pushing forty, but he was muscular, healthy.
Appeal to his pride? He called down, “Do you need claw sandals, Alfin?”
Alfin may have considered any number of retorts. What he called back was, “Maybe.”
“I’ll wait. Jiovan, take the lead.”