The Integral Trees - Omnibus Read online

  “Enough,” Clave said. “That meat’s probably done. Let’s get the smoke out and get inside.”

  Gavving woke in the night and wondered where he was.

  He half remembered the sounds of groans. Someone in pain? It had stopped now. Sound of wind, sound of many people breathing. Warm bodies all around him. Rich smells of smoke and perspiration. Aches everywhere, as if he’d been beaten.

  A woman’s voice spoke near his ear. “Are you awake too?”

  And another, a man’s: “Yes. Let me sleep.” Alfin?

  Silence. And Gavving remembered: the cave was just large enough to accommodate nine exhausted climbers, after they flung the nose-arm’s bones into the sky. By now the offal might have reached Quinn Tuft, to feed the tree.

  They huddled against each other, flesh to flesh. Gavving had no way to avoid eavesdropping when Alfin spoke again, though his voice was a whisper. “I can’t sleep. Everything hurts.”

  Glory: “Me too.”

  “Did you hear groaning?”

  “Clave and Jayan, I think, and believe me, they’re feeling no pain.”

  “Oh. Good for them. Glory, why are you talking to me?”

  “I was hoping we could be friends.”

  “Just don’t climb near me, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll knock me off.”

  “Alfin, aren’t you afraid to be so high?”

  “No.”

  “I am.”

  Pause. “I’m afraid of falling off. I’d be crazy not to be.”

  There was quiet for a time. Gavving began to notice his own aching muscles and joints. They must be keeping him awake…but he was dozing when Alfin spoke again.

  “The Chairman knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “He knows I’m afraid of falling. That’s why the copsik bastard kept sending me under the branch on hunts. Nothing solid under me, trying to hang on and throw a harpoon too…I got even, though.”

  “How?” Glory asked while Gavving thought, So did the Chairman.

  “Never mind. Glory, will you lie with me?”

  A strained whisper. “No. Alfin, we can’t be alone!”

  “Did you have a lover, back in the tuft?”

  “No.”

  “Most of us didn’t. Nobody to protect us when the Chairman thought this up.”

  A pause, as for thought. “I still can’t. Not here.”

  Alfin’s voice rose to a shout. “Clave! Clave, you should have brought a masseuse!”

  Clave answered from the darkness. “I brought two.”

  “Treefodder,” Alfin said without heat, perhaps with amusement. Presently there was quiet.

  Chapter Four

  FLASHERS AND FAN FUNGUS

  In the morning they hurt. Some showed it more than others. Alfin tried to move, grunted in pain, curled up with his face buried in his arms. Merril’s face was blank and stoic as she flexed her arms, then rose onto her hands. Jayan and Jinny commiserated with each other, massaging each other’s pains away. On Jiovan’s face, amazement and agony as he tried to move, then a look of betrayal thrown in Clave’s direction.

  From Glory, wild-eyed panic. Gavving tapped her shoulder blade (and flinched at his own agony-signals). “We all hurt. Can’t you tell? What are you worried about? You won’t be left behind. Nobody’s got the strength.”

  Her eyes turned sane. She whispered, “I wasn’t thinking that. I was thinking I hurt. That’s normal, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. You’re not crippled, though.”

  “Thank you for taking care of me yesterday. I’m really grateful. I’m going to get better at this, I promise.”

  The Grad spoke without trying to move. “We’ll all get better. The higher we get, the less we weigh. Pretty soon we’ll be floating.”

  Clave trod carefully among citizens who were awake but not mobile. Gavving felt a stab of envy/anger. Clave didn’t hurt. From the back of the nose-arm’s burrow he selected a slab of smoked meat ragged with harpoon wounds. “Take your time over breakfast,” he instructed them. “Eat. It’s the easiest way to carry provisions—”

  “And we burned a lot of energy yesterday,” the Grad said. He moved like a cripple to join Clave and began tearing into a meter’s length of what had been the nose-arm’s rib. It made sense to Gavving, and he joined them. The meat had an odd, rank flavor. You could get used to it, he thought, if your life depended on it.

  Clave moved among them, gnawing at his huge slab of meat. He sliced a piece off and made Merril take it. He listened to Jiovan describing his symptoms, then interrupted with, “You’ve got your wind back. That’s good. Now eat,” handing him more of the steak. He cut the rest in half for Jayan and Jinny and spent a minute or two doing massage on their shoulders and hips. They winced and groaned.

  Presently, when all had eaten something, Clave looked around at his team. “We’ll circle to the east and get water half a day after we start. There’s no room in here to do warm-up exercises; we’ll just have to start moving. So saddle up, citizens. We’ll have to ‘feed the tree’ in the open, and whether you actually feed the tree is up to the tide and the wind. Alfin, take the lead.”

  Alfin led them on an upward spiral, counterclockwise. Gavving found his aches easing as they climbed. He noticed that Alfin never looked down. Not surprising if Alfin didn’t give a damn for those following him—but he never looked down.

  Gavving did, and marveled at their progress. Two extended hands would have covered all of Quinn Tuft.

  They delayed to repair the Q in a DQ mark. The sun had been horizontal in the east when they started. It was approaching Voy before they reached water-smoothed wood.

  A rivulet flowed down a meandering groove. This time there was no natural perch. Nine thirsty citizens pounded spikes into the wood and hung by their lines to drink, wash, soak their tunics, and wring them out.

  Gavving noticed Clave speaking to Alfin a little way below. He didn’t hear what was said. He only saw what Alfin did.

  “And suppose I don’t?”

  “Then you don’t.” Clave gestured upward, where the rest of them hung. “Look at them. I didn’t choose them. What do I do if one of my citizens turns out to be a coward? I live with it. But I have to know.”

  Alfin looked white with rage. Not red with fury. There isn’t any “white with rage”; white means fear, as Clave had learned long ago. A frightened man can kill…but Alfin’s hands were clenched on his line, and Clave’s harpoon was over his shoulder, easily reached.

  “I have to know. I can’t put you in the lead if you can’t make yourself look down to see how they’re doing. See? I’ll have to put you where you don’t hurt anyone else if you funk it. Tail end Charley. And if you freeze, I want to be sure nobody—”

  “All right.” Alfin dug in his pack, produced a spike and a rock. He pounded the spike in beside the one he was hanging from.

  “Make sure you can depend on it. It’s your life.”

  The second spike was in deeper than the first. Alfin tied the loose end of his line to both spikes and knotted it again. “And I leave you next to it?”

  “You take that chance too. Or you don’t. I have to know.”

  Alfin leapt straight outward, trailing loops of line. He thrashed, then threw his arms over his face.

  He fell slowly. We’re all lighter, Gavving realized. It’s real. I thought I was just feeling better, but we’re lifting less—And Alfin was still falling, but now he’d uncovered his face. His arms windmilled to turn him on his back. Gavving noticed Clave’s hand covering the spikes that moored Alfin’s line. The line pulled taut and swung Alfin in against the tree.

  Gavving watched him climb up. And watched him jump again, limbs splayed out as if he were trying to fly. It seemed he might make it, he fell so slowly; but presently the tide was pulling him down against the tree again.

  “That actually looks like fun,” Jayan said.

  Jinny said, “Ask first.”

>   Alfin didn’t jump again. When he had climbed back up to Clave’s position, and both had climbed to rejoin the team, Jinny spoke. “Can we try that?”

  Alfin sent her a look like a harpoon. Clave said, “No, time to get moving. Saddle up—”

  Alfin was in the lead again when they set out. He made a point of pausing frequently to look back. And Gavving wondered.

  Yesterday Alfin had swarmed all over the nose-arm, hacking like a berserker maniac, like Gavving himself. It was hard to believe that Alfin was afraid of Clave, or of heights, or of anything.

  The sun circled the sky, behind Voy and back to zenith, before they came to lee again. The water-smoothed wood was soft here, soft enough that they could cross with a spike in each hand, jab and yank and jab. They veered down to avoid scores of birds clustered on the wood. Scarlet-tailed, the birds were otherwise the grayish-brown of the wood itself.

  When they reached the rivulet, it was smaller yet, but it was enough: they hung in the water and let it cool them and run into their faces and mouths. Clave shared out smoked meat. Gavving found himself ravenous.

  The Grad watched the birds as he ate. Presently he burst out laughing. “Look, they’ve got a mating dance going.”

  “So?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Presently Gavving did see; and so did others, judging by Clave’s bellowing laugh and the giggles from Jayan and Jinny. A gray-brown male would approach a female and abruptly spread his gray wings like a cloak. Under the gray was brilliant yellow, and a tube protruding from a splash of crimson feathers.

  “The Scientist told me about them once. Flashers,” said the Grad. His smile died as he said, “I wonder what they eat?”

  “What difference does it make?” Alfin demanded.

  “Maybe none.” The Grad made his way upward toward the birds. The birds flew off, then returned to dive at him, shrieking obscenities. The Grad ignored them. Presently he returned.

  Alfin asked, “Well?”

  “The wood’s riddled with holes. Riddled. The holes are full of insects. The birds dig in and eat the insects.”

  “You’re in love,” Alfin challenged. “You’re in love with the idea that the tree’s dying.”

  “I’d love to believe it isn’t,” the Grad said, but Alfin only snorted.

  They spiraled around to the western side while the sun dipped beneath Voy and began to rise again. The wind was less ferocious now. But they were getting tired; there was almost no chatter. They rested frequently in crevasses in the bark.

  They were resting when Merril called, “Jinny? I’m hung up.”

  A pincer the size of Clave’s fist gripped the fabric of Merril’s nearly empty pack. Merril pulled back against it. From a hole in the bark there emerged a creature covered in hard, brown, segmented plates. Its face was a single plate with a deeply inset eye. The body looked soft behind the last plate.

  Jayan slashed where its body met the bark. The creature separated. It still clung to Merril’s pack with idiot determination. Jayan levered the claw open with her harpoon and dropped the creature into her own pack.

  When they had circled round to water again, Clave set water to boiling in the small, lidded pot. He made tea, refilled the pot, and boiled Merril’s catch. It made one bite each for his team.

  They wedged themselves into a wide crack with the shape of a lightning-stroke and moored themselves with lines. Together but separate, head to foot within the bark, they had no chance to converse, and no urge. Four days of climbing since breakfast left them too tired for anything but sleep.

  At waking they ate more of the smoked meat. “Let’s look for more of those hard-shelled things,” Clave suggested. “That was good.” He didn’t have to urge them to get moving. He never would, Gavving realized, as long as they couldn’t sleep where water flowed.

  This time Jiovan was given the lead. He took them on a counterclockwise spiral that brought them back to lee within half a day. Again the wood was soft and riddled with holes, and flashers swarmed below them. Alfin and Glory tended to lose ground in the leeward regions. Jiovan remarked on it and earned a look of dull hatred from Alfin.

  The thing was that Alfin took more care setting his spikes than the rest did. And Glory didn’t, so she lost time slipping and catching herself—

  They moored themselves in the stream and drank and washed.

  Alfin spotted something far above them: gray nubs reaching out from the bark on both sides of the rivulet. He climbed, doggedly pounding spikes into the wood, and came back with a fan-shaped fungus, pale gray with a red frill, half the size of his pack. “It could be edible,” he said.

  Clave asked, “Are you willing to try it?”

  “No.” He started to throw it away.

  Merril stopped him. “We’re here to keep the tribe from starving,” she said. She broke a red-and-gray chunk from the fringe and ate a meager mouthful. “Not much taste, but it’s nice. The Scientist would like it. You could chew it with no teeth.” She took another bite.

  Alfin broke off a piece of the grayish white inside and ate that, looking as if he were taking poison. He nodded. “Tastes okay.”

  At which point there were more volunteers, but Clave vetoed that. When they departed, Clave veered upward to pick a bouquet of the fan-shaped fungi. A meter-square fan rode like a flag above his pack.

  The sun was rising up the east.

  It was below Voy—you could look straight down along the trunk, past the green fuzzball that was Quinn Tuft, and see Voy’s bright spark at the fringe of the soft sun-glow—and the west wind was blowing almost softly across the ridges of the bark, when Gavving heard Merril shout, “Who needs legs?”

  She was holding herself an arm’s length from the bark by a one-handed grip. He shouted down. “Merril? Are you all right?”

  “I feel wonderful!” She let go and began to fall and reached out and caught herself. “The Grad was right! We can fly!”

  Gavving crawled toward her. Jinny was already below her, pounding in a spike. When Gavving reached them, Jayan was using the spike for support, with her line ready in her other hand. They pulled Merril back against the tree.

  She didn’t resist. She crowed, “Gavving, why do we live in the tuft? There’s food here, and water, and who needs legs? Let’s stay. We don’t need any nose-arm cave, we can dig out our own. We’ve got nose-arm meat and those shelled things and the fan fungus. I’ve eaten enough foliage to last me the rest of my life! But if anyone wants it, we’ll send down someone with legs.”

  We’ll have to be careful of that fan fungus, Gavving thought. He was pounding spikes into bark; on the other side of Merril, Jiovan was doing the same. Where was Clave?

  Clave was with Alfin, high above them, in furious inaudible argument.

  “Come on, let’s get going! What are you doing?” Merril demanded while Gavving and Jiovan bound her to the bark. “Or, listen, I’ve got a wonderful idea. Let’s go back. We’ve got what we want. We’ll kill another nose-arm and we, we’ll grow fan fungus in the tuft. Then set up another tribe here. Claaave!” she bellowed as Clave and Alfin climbed down into earshot. “How would I do as Chairman of a colony?”

  “You’d be terrific. Citizens, we’ll be here for a while. Moor yourselves. Don’t do any flying.”

  “I never thought it could be this good,” Merril told them. “My parents—when I was little, they were just waiting for me to die. But they wouldn’t feed me to the treemouth. I thought about it too, but I never did. I’m glad. Sometimes I thought of me as an example, something people need to be happy. Happy they have legs. Even one leg,” she whispered hoarsely to Jiovan. “Legs! So what?”

  Jiovan asked Clave, “How long do we have to put up with this?”

  “You don’t. Take, ah, take the Grad and find us a better place to sleep.”

  Jiovan looked about him. “Like what?”

  “A cave, a crack or a bulge in the bark…anything that’s better than hanging ourselves here like smoking meat.”

>   “I’ll go too,” Alfin said.

  “You stay.”

  “Clave, you do not have to treat me like a baby! I only ate from the middle of the thing. I feel fine!”

  “So does Merril.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You feel grouchy, and that’s fine. Merril feels fine, and that’s—”

  “Alfin, I am so glad you didn’t stop me from coming.” Merril smiled radiantly at him. In that moment Gavving thought her beautiful. “Thank you for trying, though. Feel sleepy,” Merril said and went to sleep.

  Alfin saw questioning eyes. He spoke reluctantly. “I, I thought I could talk the Chairman out of this idiocy. Sending a, a legless woman up the tree! Clave, I do feel fine. Wide-awake. Hungry. I’d like to try some more.”

  Clave removed a fan from his pack. He tore away some of the scarlet fringe, then offered Alfin a hand-sized piece of the white interior. If Alfin flinched, it was for too short a time to measure. He ate the whole chunk with a theatrical relish that had Clave grinning. Clave broke off the rest of the red fringe and pouched it separately.

  Jiovan and the Grad returned. They had found a DQ mark overgrown with fungus like a field of gray hair. “Infected. We’ll have to burn it out,” the Grad said.

  “Suppose it keeps on burning? We don’t have any water,” Clave said. “Never mind. Let’s have a look. Jayan, Jinny, stay with Merril. One of you come get me if she wakes up.”

  They examined the fungus patch dubiously. Scraping out all that gray hair would be a dull job. Clave pulled up a wad and set fire to it. It burned slowly, sullenly.

  “Let’s try it. But get some of our packs emptied in case we have to beat it out.”

  The fungus patch burned slowly. The west wind wasn’t strong at this height, and the smoke tended to sit within the fungus “hairs,” smothering the fire. It kept putting itself out. Yet it crept around in glowing fringes, restarting itself. They had to back away as foul-smelling smoke built up in the vicinity.

  The smoke was dissipating. Gavving moved in and found most of the fungus gone, the rest left as black char. The Q was two meters deep.