The heat of burning stayed in the smoke, so the fire didn't need to be large. Gavving and Jiovan stayed well back. A shift in the breeze could smother an incautious citizen.
The meat should be rotated soon. It was Gavving's turn, but it didn't have to be done instantly.
"Jiovan?"
"What?"
Even Gavving wouldn't ask Jiovan how he lost his leg-nobody would; but one thing about that tale had bothered him for years. And he asked.
"Why were you hunting alone, that day? Nobody hunts alone."
"I did."
"Okay." Topic closed. Gavving drew his harpoon. He pulled air into his lungs, then lunged into the smoke. Half-blind, he reached over the coals with the harpoon butt to turn the nose-arm legs-one, two, three. He yanked hard on his line to pull himself into open air. Smoke came with him, and he took an instant to fan it away before he drew breath.
Jiovan was looking in, past the small green tuft that had once enclosed his life, into the bluish white spark that was Voy. His head came up, and Gavving faced a murderous glare. "This isn't something I'd want told around."
Gavving waited.
"All right. I've got…I had a real gift for sarcasm, they tell me. When I was leading a hunt…well, the boys were there to learn, of course, and I was there to teach. If someone made a mistake, I left him in no doubt."
Gavving nodded.
"Pretty soon they were giving me nothing but the fumblers. I couldn't stand it, so I started hunting alone."
"I shouldn't have asked. It used to bother me."
"Forget it."
Gavving was trying to forget something else entirely. This last sleep period he had wakened to find three citizens missing. He'd followed a sound…and watched Clave and Jayan and Jinny moor lines to the bark, and leap outward, and make babies while they drifted.
What lived in his head now was lust and envy balanced by fear of Clave's wrath or Jinny's scorn (for he had fixed on Jinny as marginally lovelier.) He might as well dream. Any serious potential mate was back in Quinn Tuft, and Gavving couldn't offer anyway; he hadn't the wealth or the years.
That would change, of course. He would return (of course) as a hero (of course!). As for the Chairman's wrath…he hadn't been able to send Harp. Possibly Clave could have resisted him too. If they could end the famine, the Chairman could do nothing; they would be heroes.
Gavving could have his choice of mates. "So I was hunting alone," Jiovan said, "the day Glory busted open the turkey pen."
For an instant Gavving couldn't imagine what Jiovan was talking about. Then he smiled. "Harp's told that tale."
"I've heard him. I was down under the branch that day, with one line to tether me and another loose, nibbling a little foliage with my head sticking down into the sky, you know, just waiting. It was full night at the New Year's occlusion. The sun was a wide bright patch shining up at me, and Voy drifting right across the center.
"Here came a turkey, flapping against the wind, still moving pretty fast, and backward. I put a net on my free line, quick, and threw it. The turkey's caught. Here comes another one. I've got more nets, and in two breaths I've got a turkey on each end. But here come two more, then four, and they're coming from above, and by now I can guess they're ours. I throw the end of the line I'm moored to, and I get a third turkey—"
"Good throwing," Gavving said.
"Oh, sure, there wasn't anything wrong with my throwing that day. But the sky was full of turkeys, and most of them were going to get away, and I still thought it was kind of hilarious."
"Really."
"That's why I never told this story before."
Gavving suddenly guessed what wascoming. "I can live with it if you don't want to finish."
"No, that's okay. It was funny," Jiovan said seriously. "But the sky was full of turkeys, and a triune family came to do something about all that meat on the wing. They split up and went after the loose turkeys.
There wasn't a thing I could do but pull in my three."
Jiovan certainly wasn't smiling now. "The male went after one of my turkeys. Swallowed it whole and tried to swim away. It got the wrong line…picture one end of a line spiked deep in the branch, and that massive beast pulling on the other, and me in a loop in the middle. I suddenly saw what was happening, and I pulled the loop open and tried to jump out, and the loop snicked shut and my leg was ripped almost off and I was falling into the sky."
"Treefodder."
"I thought I was treefodder, all right. Remember, I still had a line in my hands? But with a turkey on each end, flapping like crazy, and I was falling. I tried throwing a turkey, I really did, I thought it might get caught in the branchlets, but it didn't.
"Meanwhile the triune male's been caught by something, and it doesn't know what. It pulls back against the line and feels a tug in its belly and throws up. I think that's what must have happened. All I know is something smacks me in the face, and it's a dead turkey covered with goo, and I grab it-I hug it to me with all my heart and climb the line back into the tuft."
Gavving was afraid to laugh.
"Then I tie off what's left of my leg. What's hanging loose, I had to cut off. Well, kid, did Harp ever tell you a story like that?"
"No. Treefodder, he'd love it! Oh."
"He'd make me famous. I don't want to be fanious that way."
Gavving chewed it over. "Why tell me now?"
"I don't know. My turn," Jiovan said suddenly. He filled his lungs and disappeared into the smoke.
Gavving felt burdened. Always he asked too many questions. He grinned guiltily, picturing Jiovan trying to throw a line with a turkey flapping at each end. But what if Jiovan regretted telling it?
He saw Clave appear from behind the curve of the tnmk.
Jiovan emerged, bringing smoke, and Gavving held his breath while it cleared. Jiovan coughed a little. "It's been so long," he said. "Maybe it doesn't hurt as much. Maybe I just wanted to tell it. Maybe I had to."
"They're coming back," Gavving said. "I wonder what's got them so excited?"
Clave bellowed, "I will not go home without learning something about them!"
"I know quite a lot about them," the Grad answered. "We all lived in the far tuft once. The Quinns left after some kind of disagreement. Before that, it was Dalton-Quinn Tribe."
"Then they're relatives."
The argument had grown a little less chaotic, but only because half the troop was trailing back. It was no less vehement. Alfin shouted, "You're not listening. They kicked us out! For all we know, they think they're still at war with us!"
The Grad said, "Clave, the tribemarks are tended, and we aren't finding as many fan fungi lately, or the shelled things either. I'm thinking they keep this stretch of trunk clean. They must be still around. Our move is to get out of here!"
"You want to run from something you haven't even seen!"
"We saw the tribal insignia," the Grad said. "DQ. No takeout mark across the Q. Maybe they still call themselves Dalton-Quinn. What does that make us? Intruders on their tree? We've passed the median anyway, we're in their space. Clave, let's go home. Kill another nose-arm, pick some fan fungus and one of the shells, and go home with plenty of food." Clave was shaking his head. "The tribe won't have to go thirsty any more either! We bring water from the trunk—"
Clave waved it away. "That water would get to the tuft anyway. No. I want to meet the Daltons. It's been hundreds of years, we don't know what they're like…maybe they know better tending methods for the earthlife, or ways to get water. Maybe they grow food we never heard of. Something. 'Day, Jiovan."
"'Day. What's going on?"
"We found a tribemark and it isn't ours. The question before the citizenry is, do we say hello before going home? Or do we just run?"