The Smoke Ring t-2 Read online

  The water tank was virtually dry.

  And he could get something done while he waited for Lawri’s pond. Jeffer touched the blue button (the panel went blank) and the yellow (there appeared a line diagram of the CARM’s bow, the hut section). He touched a yellow dot in the image, and turned his fingertip. Then he moved aft.

  The residual goop in pond water stayed in the tank after the pure water was gone. Jeffer’s finger motions had (magically, scientifically) caused a spigot in the aft wall to ooze brown mud. He cupped the globule in his hands. He tossed it at the airlock, and most of it got through. Another globule formed, and he sent it after the first. He wiped his hands on his tunic. The mud flow had stopped.

  Next he pulled several loops of hose from cargo hooks.

  He rotated one end onto the spigot, then tossed the coil through the twin doors. Done! When Lawri’s blob of pond arrived, she would find the CARM ready to be fueled.

  Jeffer returned to the controls. He had a surprise for his wife.

  Two sleeps ago, while the rest of the tribe was roasting waterbirds from the pond, Lawri had held one of the creatures up for his perusal. “Have you ever really looked at these?”

  Jeffer had seen waterbirds before…but he’d kept his mouth shut, and looked.

  There were no feathers. The modified trilateral symmetry common to Smoke Ring life expressed itself in two wings and a tailfin, all in smooth membrane on collapsible ribs. The wings could be held half collapsed for motion within the denser medium of water. Only one of the three eyes looked like a normal bird’s eye. The others were big and bulbous, with large pupils and thick lids. The bodies were slippery-smooth.

  “I’ve eaten them, but…you’re right. I’ve seen everything from mobies to triunes to flashers to drillbits, and they don’t look like this. Earthlife doesn’t either. Do you think it’s so they can move through water?”

  “I’ve tried looking them up in the cassettes,” Lawri had said. “I tried bird. I tried water and pond. There’s nothing.”

  Jeffer’s next sleep had ended with a dream fading in his mind, leaving a single phrase: “…even the fish can fly.”

  He’d had to wait until now to try it.

  He tapped yellow (the display vanished), then white (and got a tiny white rectangle at the dorsal-port comer).

  White read the cassettes; white summoned Voice. “Prikazyvat Voice,” he said.

  The voice of the CARM was a throaty bass, as deep as Mark the dwarf’s voice. “Ready, Jeffer the Scientist.”

  “Prikazyvat Read Fish. Read it aloud.”

  The cassette was one that Jeffer had stolen from London Tree, but it was no different from Quinn Tribe’s lost records of Smoke Ring life forms. As Voice spoke, print scrolled down the display screen: words recorded long ago by one of Discipline’s abandoned crew.

  FISH

  IF THE BIRDS WITHIN THE SMOKE RING RESEMBLE FISH — LEGLESS, DESIGNED TO MOVE THROUGH AIR WEIGHTLESSLY, AS A FISH MOVES THROUGH WATER —THEN THE FISH THAT LIVE WITHIN THE PONDS RESEMBLEBIRDS.

  EVERY FISH WE HAVE EXAMINED BREATHES AIR. THEY ARE NOT MAMMALS, BUT LUNGFISH. THE SINGLE CLASS OF EXCEPTIONS, GILLFISH, ARE DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE.

  SOME CAN EXTRUDE A TUBE TO THE POND’S SURFACE.

  A FEW CAN EXPAND THE SIZE OF THEIR FINS VIA MEMBRANES, TO MAKE THEM SERVE AS WINGS. ONE FORM, CORE FISH, INFLATES ITSELF WITH AIR, DIVES TO THE CENTER OF A POND, AND EXPELS A BUBBLE. IT CAN STAY SUBMERGED FOR UP TO A DAY — SEVERAL SMOKE RING DAYS — REBREATHING ITS AIR BUBBLE, MAKING FORAYS TO HUNT, AND THEN RETURNING.

  THE WHALE-SIZED MOBY USES ITS POND AS A LAIR FROM WHICH IT BURSTS TO SWEEP THROUGH PASSING CLOUDS OF INSECTS. MOB VIS A COMPROMISE FORM, AND THERE ARE OTHERS.

  CLEARLY EVEN THE LARGEST PONDS CAN BREAK UP OR EVAPORATE OR BE TORN APART BY STORM. EVERY CREATURE THAT LIVES IN A POND MUST BE PREPARED TO MIGRATE TO ANOTHER: TO BEHAVE LIKE A BIRD. EVEN GILLFISH—

  “Prikazyvat Stop,” Jeffer said. This memory that had surfaced from his adolescent training under Quinn Tribe’s Scientist was going to put him one up on his wife!

  Back to work. He tapped white, then green, then each of the five green rectangles now onscreen. Within the great window that faced the bark, five smaller windows appeared, looking starboard, port, dorsal, ventral, and aft. The ventral view had a blur and a flicker to it. The rest were clear, like the window itself.

  The aft view looked along the line that led west to the pond. Citizens were returning to the tree. Behind them a bud of pond was already drifting toward the tree, with the harebrain net showing as a shadow within. Lawri’s crazy idea was working.

  They swarmed back along the cable toward the midpoint of Citizens Tree. Gavving and Minya and Anthon hung back, counting heads to be sure that all children were accounted for. A girl lost her grip and drifted; she was chortling and trying to swim through the air when Anthon scooped her up.

  As children arrived, Clave herded the smaller ones, with some difficulty, into a rectangular frame with a slatted floor: the lift cage. He stopped when twelve children were inside. Leave room for a couple of adults.

  The rest clung to the rough bark or floated like balloons on their tethers. There were wrestling matches. Eightyear-old Arth was getting good at using the recoil of his opponent’s line. He was Clave’s youngest, and just beginning the tremendous growth of adolescence.

  Debby had arrived first. Clave could see her a hundred meters out along the bark, climbing toward the CARM.

  The bud-pond continued to move. Lawri wore a proprietary smile. Still, Citizens Tree had better have more line next time they tried this. The pond was too close. If the tree had brushed it there would have been a flood.

  The lift now held a score of children. Whoever was in the treadmill would have a problem braking that weight.

  It couldn’t be helped. Clave looked about. Mark and Anthon looked ludicrous together. Mark short and wide, Anthon long and narrow, their heads pointing in opposite directions — He called, “Anthon, Mark. Take the children down and bring back any adult you can find. Be prepared to fight a fire.”

  Anthon stared in astonishment. “Fire?”

  “Burning tree. It’s around the other side of the trunk now. Go down and get some help. Rather — Where on Earth is Rather?”

  Mark pointed outward. “I didn’t know any reason to stop them,” he said defensively. “They won’t fit in the lift this trip—”

  Clave cursed silently as he watched Rather and Jill clawing their way out along the bark. There was no tide to hurt them here. If they slipped, someone would go get them. But he could have used their help.

  Jeffer couldn’t guess how long it took him to realize that the background had changed. Behind the five camera views superimposed upon it, the window no longer showed bark a few ce’meters distant. It showed a huge face, strong, with massive bones: the brutal face of a dwarf.

  Chapter Two

  Discipline

  from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 6 SM:

  FIRE

  MAKING A COOKFIRE IN FREE-FALL IS AN EXCES SIVELY INTERESTING EXPERIENCE IF WHAT YOU REALLY WANTED WAS DINNER. IT’S TAKEN ME EIGHT STATE YEARS TO PERFECT MY TECHNIQUE.

  THE FIRST LESSON IS THAT A FLAME DOESN’T RISE IN FREE-FALL. I LEARNED THAT WITH A CANDLE, WHEN I WAS A CADET DREAMING OF STRANGE WORLDS. IF THERE’S NO WIND (TURN OFF THE AIR FEED), THE CANDLE FLAME SEEMS TO GO OUT.

  BUT IT ISN’T OUT YET. THERE’S WAX VAPOR, AND THERE’S THE AIR AROUND IT, AND AT THE INTERFACE IS AN ENVELOPE OF PLASMA WHERE GAS AND OXYGEN INTERACT. IT CAN STAY HOT FOR MINUTES. COMBUSTION CONTINUES AT THE INTERFACE. WAVE THE CANDLE AND POP! THE FLAME IS BACK.

  IN THE CASE OF A COOKFIRE, THE WOOD CONTINUES TO CHAR. WAIT AN HOUR, THEN BLOW ON THE COALS WITH A BELLOWS. THE FIRE JUMPS TO LIFE AND THERE WENT YOUR EYEBROWS.

  — DENNIS QUINN, CAPTAIN

  DISCIPLINE HAD BEEN DETERIORATING.

  Cameras outside the hull showed rainbow-hued scars from matter that had penetrated the electromagnetic ramscoop while
Discipline was in flight. They also showed newer micrometeorite pocks. Sharls could ward off anything big enough to see coming, by turning on those magnetic shields for a few seconds, but they ate power in great gulps.

  One day he might regret even the little power he used to maintain the gardens and the cats.

  Within the hull, time had discolored metal and plastic.

  The air was dust-free; metal was clean, but not recently polished. Many of the servomechs had worn out. All but a few of the crew cubicles were kept cold and dark and airless. Kitchen machinery was in storage, with power shut down. Some of the bedding had decayed. Water mattresses had been drained and stored.

  Sharls kept the control room free of water vapor and almost cold enough to freeze carbon dioxide. He hoped that the computer and its extensions would survive longer in the cold. But the gardens and corridors and even some of the cubicles were kept habitable. Sharls left the lighting on a day-night cycle, for the birds and cats and plants.

  The gardens were surviving nicely. It was true that some of the plants had died out completely; but after all, his ecosystem was missing its most important factor.

  Human crew were supposed to be in that cycle, and they had been gone for half a thousand years.

  Scores of cats prowled the ship hunting hundreds of rats and a lesser number of turkeys and pigeons. The turkeys made a formidable enemy. The cats had learned to attack them in pairs.

  Sharls trained the cats to respond to his voice. He had released the experimental rats long ago. The birds were already loose; they must have been released during that blank spot in his memory, the mutiny; but by themselves they wouldn’t have fed the cats. They were too agile, for one thing. With all of the animal life in the system now, the gardens had a better chance of surviving.

  By watching the cats and rats and plants and turkeys and pigeons interact, Sharls hoped to learn how an ecological system would behave in a free-fall environment…like the larger ecosystem that flowed beneath Discipline in endless rivers of curdled cloud.

  Or had he simply become lonely? In his youth Sharls had never been a cat lover. (A sudden memory: his hand swelling with white patches rimmed in red, itching horribly. A kitten had scratched him playfully while he was stroking it.) And now? They didn’t obey orders worth a damn…but neither had his crew.

  A computer program would hardly have retained allergies; but who would expect a computer program to become lonely?

  Discipline skimmed above the curdled whorl of the fourth Lagrange point. A fraction of Sharls Davis Kendy’s attention watched on various wavelengths. This close, he could confirm an earlier sighting: minor amounts of carbon were being burned at sites around the edges of that endless storm. This was no forest fire: too small, and it had gone on for years. It might indicate human industry at a primitive level.

  Now, where was CARM #6?

  …Funny that the cats hadn’t gone with the mutineers. The crew had loved cats. Somewhere in the lost part of his memory, there must be a reason. Perhaps Sharls had pulled free of the Smoke Ring without warning.

  He might have done that if the mutineers planned something really foul, like cutting the computer out and trying to run Discipline manually.

  The mutiny was a blank to Sharls.

  He had edited those memories. He even remembered why. The descendants of the mutineers would need Sharls Davis Kendy someday. It was not good that he hold grudges against specific ancestors, against old names. But had he been too thorough?

  —There! CARM #6’s communications system had come alive.

  It was a thousand kilometers behind him and something less than six thousand kilometers in toward Voy. Kendy did several things at once. Before his new orbit could carry him away, he restarted the drive. He beamed, “Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State.”

  The CARM autopilot responded.

  “Link to me. Beam records.”

  He’d made mistakes enough during that unexpected contact twenty Earth years ago! At least he’d accomplished something: he’d broken the program that denied him access to the Cargo and Repair Module. The drive systems were beyond his reach. The original mutineers must have physically cut the fiber-optic cable. But the CARM would talk to him!

  He’d instructed the autopilot to take photographs at ten-minute intervals. Reentry was in progress when he sent that message. Static might well have fuzzed him out.

  But pictures were streaming in.

  Time passed at a furious rate. CARM #6 flamed as it plowed through thickening air, veering from plants and ponds and creatures. It dipped into a pond to refuel, then bedded itself in the Voy-ward tuft of the largest of a cluster (grove?) of integral trees. It stayed there, with not much of a view at all, for most of a Smoke Ring year.

  Flickering shapes carved cavities through the foliage and wove small branches into wasp’s-nest structures. Abruptly the CARM backed into the sky, skittered outward under inexpert handling, and docked at the midpoint of the tree.

  With another part of his mind, Kendy fiddled with Discipline’s fusion motor. He could not match his orbit to that of the CARM. He must stay well outside the Smoke Ring to protect Discipline from corrosion. The best he could do was twice the CARM’s orbital period, to dip low above the CARM’s position once every ten hours and eight minutes. But he’d be in range for half an hour while his motor was firing.

  More of his attention went to watching the CARM’s lone occupant in real time.

  Jeffer the “Scientist” was stored in memory. He had aged twenty Earth years: hair and beard going gray, wrinkles across his forehead (broken by a white line of scar that was a healing pink wound in Kendy’s records), and knuckles turning knobby. Height: 2.3 meters. Mass: 86 kilograms. Long arms and legs, toes like stubby fingers, fingers like a spider’s legs: long, fragile, the hands of a field surgeon.

  The Smoke Ring had altered Discipline’s descendants.

  The tribes of London Tree and Dalton-Quinn Tree had all looked like that. The jungle giants who had grown up without tidal gravity were hardly human: freakishly tall, with long, fragile, agile fingers and toes; and one of the twelve was a cripple, and others had legs of different length. Only Mark the Silver Man had looked like a normal State citizen. They had called him “dwarf.”

  They were savages; but they had learned to use State technology in the form of the CARM. Still human. Perhaps they could be made citizens again.

  To Kendy, who thought with the speed of a computer, the “Scientist” moved much too slowly. Now he was at the controls, auditing a cassette; now checking the camera views in present time…

  The incoming CARM records showed clouds and ponds and trees and trilaterally symmetric fishlike birds swirling across the sky. Natives flickered through the CARM cabin: the same savages, growing older; a growing handful of children.

  At fifteen years minus-time the CARM backed out of its timber dock for a journey of exploration. It visited a green puffball several kilometers across, and when it emerged there was vegetation like a houseful of green spaghetti bound to its dorsal surface. It hovered in the open sky while men darted among a flock of birds — real birds with real wings: turkeys — and returned to its dock with prisoners.

  At thirteen years minus-time it left the trunk to return with a dubious prize: several tons of black mud.

  There were no more such forays. The Cargo and Repair Module had become a motor for the tree.

  It was docked when the main drive fired for several hours. Kendy watched side views as the integral tree drifted across the sky. It had been circling too far from the neutron star. Air grew thin away from the Smoke Ring median.

  The tree was lower now; the air would be as thick as mountain air on Earth. And now the CARM was not being used at all; but there was plenty to watch. The Smoke Ring environment was fascinating. Huge spheres of water, storms, jungles like tremendous puffs of green cotton candy.

  In present time, the aft CARM camera showed nearly thirty natives maneuvering between the tree and a trem
endous globule of water. They were using the free-fall environment better than any State astronaut. The State had need of these people!

  Discipline’s own telescope had found the foreshortened tree, with the pond to mark it. And what was that on the opposite side of the tree? Infrared light glowed near its center…

  Half a thousand years of sensory deprivation were being compensated in a few minutes. After more than five hundred years, Sharls Kendy had left the stable point behind Goldblatt’s World. He had burned irreplaceable fuel, and it was worth it! Sharls tried to absorb it all, integrate it all…but that could wait. The “Scientist” might leave at any minute!

  He beamed: “Interrupt records.” It was twenty Earth years of nothing happening, and the tiny CARM autopilot couldn’t handle too many tasks at once. “Activate voice.”

  “Voice on.” The .04 second delay was almost too short to notice.

  “Send—” He displayed a picture of himself as a human being, with minor improvements. At age forty-two Kendy had been handsome, healthy, mature, firm of jaw, authoritative: a recruitment-poster version of a State checker.

  These were not obedient State citizens. They hadn’t trusted him twenty years ago. What words might give him a handle on Jeffer the “Scientist”?

  He sent, “Kendy for the State. Jeffer the Scientist, your citizens have been idle too long.”

  Jeffer jumped like a thief caught in the act. Two long seconds passed before he found his voice. “Checker?”

  “Speaking. How stands your tribe?”

  Out beyond the terrible whorl of storm that surrounded Gold, out where water boiled and froze at the same time and the legendary stars were a visible truth, lived Kendy the Checker. He had claimed to be something like an elaborate cassette: the recording of a man. He had claimed authority over every human being in the Smoke Ring. He had offered knowledge and power, while they were still near enough to hear his ravings.

  Perhaps he was only a madman trapped somehow aboard the spacecraft that had brought men from the stars. But he had knowledge. He had coached them through that terrible fall back into the Smoke Ring, fourteen years ago.