Maybe, maybe it would come. They didn't talk about it. Bad luck.
Between the drought and the recent political upsets, it had been too long since the Triune Squad had been free for treetending duty. They had been needed as police. One could hope that the executions had settled the troubles; but now the triads were finding parasites and patches of old-man's-hair everywhere on the trunk. Today they were burning virtually a field of the horrid stuff.
Motion caught Minya's eye, outward and windward. Blue-againstblue, hard to see, something big. The sun was nearly at nadir, glaring up. She held a hand beneath her eyes, and squinted, and presently said, "Triune."
Smitta snapped alert. "Interested in us? Sal!"
Sal sang out from behind the smoke cloud. "I see it."
Minya said, "They're interested. They're pretty close already."
Smitta had pulled herself against the trunk and was readying her weapons. "I fought a triune once. They're smarter than swordbirds. You can scare them off. Just remember, if we kill one, we'll have to kill all three."
The torpedo-shaped object was closer now. It was nearly the blue of the sky, slowly rotating. Six big eyes showed in turn around the circumference, and three great gauzy fins…one smaller than the other.
That would be the juvenile. Minya whispered, "What do we need?"
"Bows and arrows ready? Tether your arrow and scoop up some burning old-man's-hair on the point. Lucky we had a fire going. Know where your jet pods are, you may need them."
Minya could feel her heart pulsing in her throat. It was her second trip up the trunk…but Smitta and Sal had been up many times. They were tough and experienced. Sal was a burly, red-haired fortyyear-old who had joined the Triune Squad at age twelve. Smitta had been born a man; she was a woman by courtesy.
Stay clear of Smitta, Minya told herself. Smitta was slow to anger, but under pressure something could snap in her mind. Then Smitta fought like a berserker, even among her own, and the only way to at her was to pile on her.
Minya strung her hardwood bow and used an arrow point to dig a gob of burning fungus. Ready-?
The torpedo split in three. Three slender torpedoes flapped laz toward them, showing small lateral fins and violent-orange bellies. male and a female, forever mated, plus a single juvenile who would take on body mass fast, then mature more slowly. They divided only to ht or fight. The Triune Squad itself was named for the triune famiclass="underline" interdependence.
The juvenile would be the smallest, the one hanging back a little. The adults swept forward.
"Aim for the male," Smitta said and loosed, the line trailing c behind the arrow. Which was male? Minya waited a moment to judge Smitta's target, then loosed her own weapon. She judged that U, weren't in range yet…and she was right; the male's body ripped him free of the arrows' paths, while the female bored in. Sal had hit back. Now she loosed, and the veering female caught an arrow in 1 fin.
She bellowed. She flapped once, and the arrow snapped free. appeared from the smoke, yanked into the sky. It didn't seem to boti her as she reeled in, her ancient metal bow slung safe over her should The smoldering old-man's-hair had been left on the female's tail, a she was flapping madly.
Smitta sent a tethered arrow winging at the juvenile.
Both adults screamed. The female tried to block the arrow. Too late. The juvenile didn't seem to see the arrow coming. Smitta yanked at the line and stopped it a meter short.
The female gaped.
The women were reeling frantically, but it wasn't necessary. The adults moved in alongside the infant, infinitely graceful. Small has reached out from their orange bellies to pull them together. Tb moved away like a single blurred blue ghost against the blue sky.
"See? They're smart. You can reason with them," Smitta said.
Sal pulled a teardrop-shaped jet pod from one of the cluster of pods that ran down and across the front of her tunic. She twisted the top and a cloud of seeds and mist spurted away from her, thrusting Sal back toward the bark.
She coiled line and stowed her weapons, including the valuable be Springy met4, it was, handed down from old to young within the Triune Squad for at least two hundred years. "Well done, troops, but I think the fire is getting to the wood. I wish Thanya would get here. She couldn't have missed us, could she?"
To Minya's eye, the fire might have reached wood by now, or not.
Hard to tell where old-man's-hair shaded over into rotted wood. "It's not bad yet," she said.
"I hate to waste jet pods, but…treefodder. I want to look for them," Sal decided. She gathered her legs under her, hands gripping the bark to brace herself, and jumped. She waved her arms turn herself around until she could see the trunk. They watched her drift along the trunk, out toward Dalton-Quinn Tuft.
"She worries too much," Smitta said.
Seventy days had passed since Clave's citizens had departed Quinn Tuft.
The tree fed a myriad parasites, and the parasites fed Clave's team. They had killed another nose-arm, easily, chopping through its nose, then jabbing harpoons into its den. There were patches of fan fungus everywhere. Merril had slept a full eight days after eating from the red fringe of a fan fungus. The subsequent throbbing headache didn't seem to affect her climbing, and presently it went away. So the fan fungus served them as food, and they had found more of the shelled burrowers and other edibles.
The Grad saw it all as evidence of the tree's decline.
They had found a jet pod bush, like a mass of bubbles on the bark.
Clave had packed a dozen ripe pods in a pouch of scraped nose-arm hide.
They had taken to camping just outside the water-washed wood.
Clave laughed and admitted that they should have been doing that all along. They'd slept three times more on the tree: last night in a nosearm's den, twice before in deep wounds in the wood, cracks overgrown with "fuzz" that had to be burned out first. The char had turned their clothing black.
They had learned not to try to boil water. The bubbles just foamed it out in a hot, expanding mass.
Tidal gravity continued to decrease until they were almost floating up the trunk. Merril loved it. Recovering from the fan fungus hadn't changed that. You couldn't fall; you'd just yell for help, and someone would presently throw you a line. Glory loved it, and Alfin smiled sometimes.
But there were penalties. Now water had grown scarce too. There was no wind this high, and thus no leeward stream of water. Sometimes you found wet wood, wet enough to lick dry. There was water in fan fungus flesh.
Here was the mark Jinny had found. Good: it looked nearly clean.
And half a klomter farther up the trunk, a fan-shape showed like a white hand against the sky. It must be huge. The Grad pointed. "Dinner?"
Clave said, "We'll find smaller ones around it."
"But wouldn't it look grand," Merril asked, "coming into the Commons?"
The Grad was pulling himself toward the tribal mark when Clave said, "Hold it."
"What?"
"This mark isn't overgrown like the others were. Grad, doesn't it look funny to you? Tended?"
"There's some fuzz growing, but maybe not enough." Then the Grad was close enough to see the real discrepancy. "There's no takeout mark. Citizens, this isn't Quinn territory."
Gavving and Jiovan had been left behind to tend the smokefire.
Hard-learned lessons showed here. Bark torn from the rim of a patch of fuzz served as fuel. Healthy bark resisted fire. A circle of coals surrounded the meat, all open to the fitful breezes. A sheltered fire wouldn't burn. The smoke wouldn't rise; it would stay to smother the fire. Even here in the open, the smoke hovered in a squirming cloud.