She peered deep into the heart of the Sun, subvocally trying to press more of her functions into play. She had senses to pick up the ghostly shades of neutrino and photino fluxes, and if she just — tried — hard enough, she ought to be able to make out the dark matter cloud itself.
“I’ll have to go deeper,” she murmured.
What?
“I said I’m going deeper. I want to find out what’s down there. In the core.”
Lieserl —
“Come on, Kevan. Spare me any warnings about caution. You can’t tell me that Superet has invested so much in me so far, only to have me turn back just inside the damn photosphere.”
You’ve already achieved an astonishing amount.
“And I can achieve a lot more. I’m going in, Kevan. Just as I’ve been designed to. I want to see just what has put out our Sun.” Or, she thought uneasily, who.
Scholes hesitated. The truth is, you’re only an experiment, Lieserl. Damn it, we didn’t even know what conditions you would encounter in there.
“So I’ll take my time. You can redesign me en route. I’ve all the time in the world.
“I’ll follow the bouncing photons. Maybe it will take me a million years to drift into the center. But I’m going to get there.”
Lieserl, Superet wants you to go on. But — you must listen to this — it is prepared to risk you not returning. Your trip could be one way, Lieserl. Do you understand? Lieserl?
She shut out the whispering, remote voice, and stared into the oceanic depths of the Sun.
PART II
Trajectory: Timelike
8
His legs locked around a branch of the kapok tree, Arrow Maker raised his bow toward the skydome. The taut bowstring dug into the tough flesh of his three middle fingers, and the bow itself had a feeling of heaviness, of power. The arrow balanced in his grasp, light, perfect.
Maker’s bare, hairless skin was slick from the exertion of climbing. He was close to the top of the canopy here, and the clicks, rustles, trills and coughs of the approaching evening sounded from everywhere within the great layer of life around him. Somewhere a group of howler monkeys were calling out their territorial claims, their eerie, almost choral wails rising and falling.
He released the bow string.
The arrow hissed into the air, and the guide line it towed unraveled past Arrow Maker’s face with the faintest of breezes.
He heard a clatter in the branches, a few yards away from him, as the arrow returned. But the line didn’t fall back; Maker had succeeded in hooking it over an upper branch of the kapok.
He slung his bow across his shoulder, retrieved his quiver, and clambered across the branches, his bare feet easily finding purchase on moss-laden bark. He found the arrow in a mound of moss at the junction of a banyan’s trunk with a branch. Working quickly and efficiently, Arrow Maker unraveled a rope from his waist and attached it to the line; the rope — spun by his daughter from liana fiber — was as thick as his finger, and, working by touch. Maker found the rope heavy and difficult to knot.
When the rope was firmly attached Arrow Maker began to haul at the guide line. The rope slithered up through layers of leaves. Soon Maker had pulled the rope over the branch above. He tugged at the rope; there was some give, as the unseen kapok branch flexed, but the hold was more than strong enough to support his weight.
He detached the guide line and wrapped it around his waist. He clipped two metal hand-grips onto the rope. There was a webbing stirrup attached to each grip, and Arrow Maker placed his feet in these. Standing with his weight in one stirrup he moved the other a few feet upwards. Then he raised himself and moved the other grip, up past the first. Thus Arrow Maker climbed smoothly up through the remaining layers of canopy. The grips slid upwards easily, but ratchets prevented them from slipping down. One of the grips felt a little loose — it was worn, he suspected — but it was secure enough.
As he climbed up through layers of greenery toward the sky, Maker relaxed into the familiar rhythm of the simple exercise, enjoying the glowing feeling in his joints as his muscles worked. The heavy belt around his waist, with its pockets of webbing for his tools and food, bumped softly against his skin; he barely noticed the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.
The grips, and ropes and stirrups, had belonged to Arrow Maker for at least twenty years. They were among his most treasured possessions: his life depended on them, and they were almost irreplaceable. The people of the forest could make rope, and bows, and face paint, but they simply didn’t have the raw materials to manufacture grips and stirrups — or, come to that, knives, spectacles and many other essential day-to-day objects. Even old Uvarov — rolling around the forest floor in his chair — admitted as much.
To get his set of climbing gear, the younger Arrow Maker had traded with the Undermen.
He’d spent many days collecting forest produce: fruit, the flesh of birds, bowls of copaifera sap. He piled his goods in one of the great Locks set in the floor of the forest. He’d communicated his needs to the Undermen by an elaborate series of scratches made with the point of his knife in the scarred surface of the Lock.
When he’d returned to the Lock the next day, there lay the climbing gear he’d wanted, gleaming new and neatly laid out. Of the forest goods there was no sign.
The forest folk relied on Underman artifacts to stay alive. But similarly, Arrow Maker had often thought, perhaps the Undermen needed forest food to survive. Perhaps it was dark down there, beneath the forest, cut off from the light; perhaps the Men couldn’t grow their own food. Arrow Maker shivered; he had a sudden vision of a race of nocturnal, huge-eyed creatures skulking like loris through the lifeless, ever-darkened levels below his feet.
He reached the top of his rope. The anchoring branch was only a couple of hand’s-breadths thick, but it was solid enough. A tree-swift’s nest — a ball of bark and feathers, glued by spittle — clung to the side of the branch, sheltering its single egg.
He selected a fatter branch and sat on it, wrapping his legs around its junction with the trunk. He placed his bow and quiver carefully beside him, lodging them safely. He drew some dried meat from his belt and chewed at the tough, salty stuff as he gazed around.
Now he’d climbed close to the crown of the kapok tree. The great tree’s last few branches were silhouetted against the darkling skydome above him, their clusters of brownish leaves rustling.
The mass of the canopy was perhaps thirty yards below the skydome, but this single giant kapok raised its bulk above the rest, its uppermost branches almost grazing the sky. The darkness of the evening rendered this upper world almost as dark as the forest floor, far below him. But Maker knew his way around the kapok; after all he’d been climbing it for most of his eighty years.
He was at the top of the world. In the distance a bird flapped across the sky, its colors a gaudy splash against the fading light. Beyond the skydome, the stars were coming out. The kapok’s branches were a dense, tangled mass beneath him, obscuring its immense trunk. Seeds — fragments of fluffy down — floated everywhere, peppering the leaves with the last of the daylight. Ten yards below the tree’s crown, the canopy was a rippling carpet, a dense layer of greenery turning oily black as night approached — which stretched to the horizon, lapping against the walls of the skydome itself.