The Integral Trees t-1 Page 13

  His tumble turned him and the dream turned nightmare. He faced a bulky, faceless silver thing. The apparition raised something metal? A splinter stabbed into Clave's ribs. He plucked it out. His mind was muzzy…was it a thorn? The metal-and-glass creature forced itself through the tunnel wall, ignoring Clave. Acolytes followed it in, blue men carrying huge, unwieldy bows.

  The pain had gone and reality was fading. Here was medicine after all.

  "I see you've caught up with the first group," the pilot said. "The forward group has stopped. The middle group has joined them. Maybe you should quit."

  "I sent Toby back with two copsilcs. The third had a broken leg, so we left him. We're almost at full strength. Let's just see what happens."

  "Patty, is there something unusual about your mission?"

  Classfled…oh, what did it matter? "Catch some copsiks. Shoot some meatbirds. Collect some spices. Pick up anything scientific." That last wasn't usual. Maybe the First Officer wanted the Scientist to owe him a favor. Patty didn't comment, not with the Scientist's Apprentice listening.

  "Fine. You've got copsiks. How many do you need? You don't really expect to find science here, do you?"

  "There's a big group ahead. I'm going to at least look at the situation." Patty turned the volume down. Pilots tended to argue a point to death, and Patry wanted silence.

  Gavving hadn't burrowed far before Jayan's line led them to a tunnel carved through the foliage. They moved faster then.

  Despite its alien smell, Gavving was hungry enough to try the foliage.

  The taste was alien too; but it was sweet and went down well. He ate more.

  In fact, he felt almost at home here. His toes thrust into branchlets and pushed him down the tunnel in remembered rhythm. Cheeping and croaking rose from thousands of unseen throats. They wouldn't be birds, this deep in the thicket; but they chirped, and if need came they could probably fly. The sound was the sound of Gavving's childhood, before the drought killed the small life throughout the tuft.

  It was an effort to remember that this wasn't Quinn Tuft; that he followed enemies who knew this thicket as Gavving knew his tree.

  Minya, it seemed, didn't have that problem. She was snatching handfuls of foliage, but the hand she used clutched an arrow, and her bow was in the other.

  They were moving faster than the line that slithered ahead of them. Merril wound it up as they went. The coil trailed from a thumb; she used both hands to move herself. When Gavving noticed, he said, "Let me do that for a while. Eat."

  "Keep your hands free!" A little later, perhaps regretting her sharpness, she said, "I need my hands to move. You can fight with your hands. Where's your harpoon?"

  "On my back. We're all right as long as Jayan is still pulling on the line," he said and immediately noticed that the line had gone slack. Gavving reached for his harpoon before he moved again.

  A disembodied white arm thrust out of the tunnel wall and beckoned. Jayan looked out through a screen of branchiets. Her voice was a hoarse and frightened whisper. "They're ahead of us."

  "Where?"

  "Not far. Don't take the tunnel. There's a long, straight part, then it swells out. They'd see you. Go where I go, or they'll hear branchiets breaking."

  They followed her into the thicket.

  Jayan had broken a trail. Twice she'd had to cut thicker spine branches. In the end they watched from behind a screen of branchiets as the Grad spoke with the weird women.

  They were lean and elongated, like exaggerated cartoons of the ideal woman, or like a further stage in human evolution. They looked relaxed. So did the Grad. His feet and one hand were bound, but he was casually eating foliage while they talked. The carcass of a bird was mostly bones.

  Minya's breath was warm on his shoulder. She whispered, "It looks like the Grad may have talked them around. I can't hear, can you?"

  "No." There was too much birdsong…and an occasional crackling as someone moved, making Gavving glad for the birdsong. Still, someone was making too much noise…

  Minya leapt through the branchiets in a hideous crackling, straight into the midst of the weird women, screaming, "Monster made of starstufli There!"

  Gavving leapt after her, ready to do battle. He'd have appreciated some warning. The weird women didn't hesitate an instant. Five of them jumped toward other tunnels and were gone in three directions. The sixth jumped clumsily. She struck the edge of the opening and tumbled away unconscious. Had she struck that bard?

  The Grad was struggling to free his hands. Gavving felt something sting his leg. He turned to fight.

  To fight what? A thing of glass and metal! There were men behind it-ordinary men who floated free, sighting over their toes as they pulled huge bows taut with their hands-but they didn't fire. The thing of science pointed a metal tube at Minya, then at the Grad. Gavving's harpoon bounced off its mirror-glass face. It pointed at Gavving and stung him again.

  You can't fight science, Gavving thought, and he drew his long knife and leapt at the monster. Then everything went dreamy.

  "You're too deep," the pilot said. "I can't get individual readings on you. I've got a hot spot, a cluster of a dozen or so. You and the copsiks together?"

  "Sounds right. We've got six copsiks here, one already tied up for us. We'll leave the one with no legs. That gives us seven total. A bunch went off through the tunnels. Can you locate them?"

  "Yes. It looks like they're together again. There's you, and there's a tighter, brighter spot east of you. I'd say quit now. Kill some meatbirds on the way out."

  "There's something here…I've got something scientific here, something I don't understand. Too scientific by half." Squad Leader Patty picked up a rectangular mirror that didn't reflect, a mirror that shone by its own light. With some trepidation he flipped an obvious switch. The light went out, to his relief. "You're right, we've got enough. We're coming out."

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Scientist's Apprentice

  LASSITUDE…AN ODD, PLEASANT SENSATION LIKE FIZZING IN the blood…constriction and resistance at his wrists and anldes…memories drifting into place, sorting themselves. The Grad waited until his mind was straight before he opened his eyes.

  He was bound again, tension at wrists and ankles holding his body straight. Getting to be a habit. His bonds gave as he tugged at them. He was tied to netting, face down to a wall that was hard and cold and smooth, and translucent to a millimeter's depth, over a gray substrate.

  He'd never seen the like before; but from a distance this stuff might look like metal.

  It was the flying box. He was tied to the flying box. He twisted his head left and saw others: Minya, Gavving, Jayan (already awake and trying to hide it), Jinny. To his right, a row of dead salmon birds and ribbon birds, Alfin smiling in his sleep, and one of the Carther Tribe women, the pregnant one, Ilsa. Her eyes were open and empty of hope.

  A jovial voice boomed at them. "Some of you are awake by now—"

  The Grad arched his back to see over his head. The copsik runner was big, burly, cheerful. He clung to the net near the windowed end. "Don't try to wriggle loose. You'll just get lost in the sky, and we won't come back for you. We don't want fools for copsiks."

  Minya called to him. "May we talk among ourselves?"

  "Sure, if you don't interrupt me. Now, you're wondering what's going to happen to you. You're going to join London Tree. There's tide when you're in a tree. You'll have to get used to the pull on things, and balancing on your feet without falling, and so forth. You'll get to like it.

  You can heat water till it boils without it spewing all over the place, and that lets you cook things you never tasted. You always know where you are, by what a thing does if you let go of it. You can drop garbage—" From below their feet came an unnerving whistling roar. The copsik runner's voice rose " — and know it won't float back at you." He stopped talking because some of his prisoners were screaming.

  A tide pulled toward the Grad's feet. He was not surprised to see sk
y wheeling past: green forest, a strip of blue, billowing white. The textured green below his feet began to contract.

  A wet wind blew past. Mist thickened around them. The panicky screams thinned to whimpers, and the Grad heard Alfin's, "Treefodder! We're going back into the treefeeding storm cloud! Whose bright idea—" and he must have silenced himself, because nobody else could have reached him.

  Their guard waited for quiet. He said, "It's very impolite for a copsik to interrupt a citizen. I am a citizen. I'll forget it for the duration of this voyage, but you will learn. Questions?"

  Minya screamed, "What gives you the right?"

  "Don't ever say that again," the copsik runner said. "Anything else?" Minya seemed to calm herself in an instant. "What about our children? Will they be copsiks too?"

  "They'll have the chance to be citizens. There's an initiation. Some won't want to take it. Some won't pass."

  Mist enclosed them completely. The copsik runner himself was halfinvisible. A wave of droplets each the size of a thumb swept across them, leaving them soaked.

  Nobody else seemed inclined to, so the Grad spoke. "Is London Tree stuck in this storm cloud?"

  The copsik runner laughed. "We're not stuck anywhere! We moved into the cloud because we need water. After we get you home we'll move out, I expect."

  "How?"

  "Classified."

  Gavving was just waking up. He looked left and right and found the Grad. "What's happening?"

  "The good news is we're going to live in a tree."

  Gavving tested his bonds while he absorbed that. "As what?"

  "Copsiks. Property. Servants."

  "Huh. Better than dying of thirst. Where are we? The flying box?"

  "Right."

  "I don't see Clave. Or Merril."

  "Right again."

  "I feel wonderful," Gavving said. "Why do I feel so good? Something was on those thorns, maybe, like the red fringe on a fan fungus."

  "Could be."

  "You're not saying much."

  The Grad said, "I don't want to miss anything. If I know how we get to London Tree, maybe I could get us back. I had some Carther Tribe citizens convinced that we should join them."

  Gavving turned to Minya. They spoke together at length. The Grad didn't try to hear. It was too noisy anyway. The whistling roar had faded, but the windsong was nearly as loud.

  "Too many changes," Minya said.

  "I know."

  "I can't seem to feel anything. I want to get angry, but I can't."

  "We're drugged."

  "It's not that. I was Minya of the Triune Squad of Dalton Quinn Tuft. Then I was lost in the sky and dying of thirst. I found you and married you and joined the Dark Tuft People. We hitched a ride with a moby and got slung into a jungle. Now we're what? Copsiks? It's too many changes. Too much."

  "All right, I'm a little numb myself. We'll get over it. They can't keep us drugged forever. You're still Minya, the berserker warrior. Just forget it till you need it."

  "What will they do with us?"

  "I don't know. The Grad's talking escape. I think we'd better wait. We don't know enough."

  She found a laugh, somewhere. "At least we don't die virgins."

  "We met each other. We were dying, and now we're not dying at all. We're going to a tree, and it can move itself. We'll never see another drought. It could be worse. It's been worse…I wish I could see Clave, though."

  It was dark and wet around them. Lightning marched a meandering path across the bow. The vehicle swung around. Npw the wind blew up from their feet. In that direction a' bushy shadow was forming.

  "There," said Minya.

  The roar of motors resumed.

  Gavving watched for a time before he convinced himself that it was one tuft of an integral tree. He'd never seen any tree from such a vantage. They were coming up on the in branch. The tuft was greener and healthier-looking than Quinn Tuft had been, and foliage reached farther to cover the branch. The bare wooden tail sported a horizontal platform of hewn wood, clearly a work of tremendous labor.

  The roar of science-in-action wavered, rose and fell, as the flying box settled toward the platform. A great arching gap had been chopped through the branch itseli linking this platform to one on the other side. At its west end, where foliage began to sprout, a large hut had been woven.

  The whistling roar died.

  Then things happened fast. People left the hut on the jump. More appeared from underneath, perhaps from inside the flying box. London Tree's citizens didn't have the incredible height of the forest denizens.

  Some wore gaudy colors, but most wore tuftberry red, and the men had smooth faces scraped clean of hair. They swarmed to what was now the roof of the flying box and began pulling prisoners loose.

  Jinny, Jayan, Minya, and the tall Carther Tribe woman were freed in turn and escorted off the roof of the vehicle. Then nothing happened for a time.

  They took the women first. The drug on the needles still held him calm, but that bothered Gavving nonetheless. He couldn't see what was happening on the ledge. Presently he was pulled free of the net, lifted, and walked off the roof.

  Somehow he had expected normal tides. Here was no more than a third of the tidal force at Quinn Tuft. He drifted down.

  Alfin's eyes popped open when the copsik runners turned him loose.

  They were closing again when he hit the platform. He grunted in protest, then went back to sleep. Two men in tuftberry red picked him up and carried him away.

  A copsik runner, a golden-haired woman of twenty or so with a pretty, triangular face, held up the Grad's reader and tapes. "Which of you belongs to these?" she demanded.

  The Grad called from above Gavving's head; he was still falling.

  "They're mine."

  "Stay with me," she commanded. "Do you know how to walk?

  You're short enough to be a tree dweller."

  The Grad staggered when he touched down, but stayed upright. "I can walk."

  "Wait with me. We'll use the carm to reach the Citadel."

  Strangers were among them, leading Gavving and Alfin toward the big hut. The Grad's eyes followed them, and Gavving would have waved, but his wrists were still tied. A smallish, fussy-looking man in red pushed a bird's carcass into his hampered arms-it was nearly his own mass-and said, "Take this along. Can you cook?"

  "Come." The copsik's hand shoved against the small of his back. He moved in that direction, toward where the fin flowered into tuft. But where were the women?

  The flying box had blocked his view. Now he saw the women through the arch, on the other ledge. Minya began struggling, crying, "Wait! That's my husband!"

  The drug slowed him down, but Gavving threw the bird into the copsik's arms, sending him tumbling backward under its mass, and tried to jump toward Minya. He never completed the first step. Two men stepped in from either side and caught his arms. They must have been waiting for just such a move. One clouted him across the head hard enough to set the world spinning. They hustled him into the but.

  The copsik was studying Lawri as she studied him. He was thin, with stringy muscles; three or four ce'meters taller than Lawri herself and not much older. His blond hair and beard were raggedly cut. He was dirty from head to foot. A line of dried blood ran from his right eyebrow to the corner of his jaw. He was very much the kind of copsik who might come spinning from the sky on a sheet of bark, and hardly a convincing man of science.

  But his eyes inquired; they judged her. He asked, "Citizen, what will happen to them?"

  "Call me Scientist's Apprentice," Lawri said. "Who are you?"

  "I'm the Quinn Tribe Scientist," he said.

  That made her laugh. "I can hardly call you Scientist! Don't you have a name?"

  He bristled, but he answered. "I did. Jeffer."

  "Jeffer, the other copsiks don't concern you now. Get aboard the carm and stay out of the pilot's way."

  He stood stupidly. "Carm?"

  She slapped its metal flank an
d pronounced the syllables as she had been taught. "Cargo And Repair Module. CARM. In!"

  He got through both doors and a few paces beyond, and there he stopped, gaping, trying to see in every direction at once. For the moment she left him to it. She didn't blame him. Few copsiks ever saw the interior of the carm.

  Ten chairs faced into a tremendous curved window of thick glass. Images were there that couldn't be outside the glass, nor could they be reflections. They must be in the glass itself: numbers and letters and line drawings in blue and yellow and green.

  Behind the chairs was thirty or forty cubic meters of empty space.

  There were bars set to swivel out of the walls and floor and ceiling, and numerous loops of metal: anchorage for stored goods against the jerky pull of the motors. Even so, the cabin was only a fifth the size of the carm. What was the rest?

  When the carm moved, flame had spurted from nostrils at the rear. It seemed that something must burn to move the carm…a good deal of it, if it occupied most of the carm's bulk…and pumps to move the fuel, and mysteries whose names he'd glimpsed in the cassettes: attitude jet ljfe support system, computer, mass sensor, echo laser.

  The calm left by the needle had almost left his blood. He was starting to be afraid. Could he learn to read those numbers in the glass? Would he have the chance?

  A man in blue lounged before the box window. A big-boned man of average height, he was still too tall for the chair; what would have been a curved head rest poked him between the shoulder blades. The Scientist's Apprentice spoke briskly. "Please take us to the Citadel."

  "I don't have orders to do that."

  "Just what are your orders?" Her voice was casual, peremptory.

  "I don't have orders yet. The Navy may be interested in these. scientific items."

  "Confiscate them, if you're sure enough. And I'll tell the Scientist what happened to them, as soon as I'm allowed to contact him. Will you confiscate the copsik too? He says he knows how to work them. Maybe you'd better confiscate me, to talk to him."