'Who are they, these…runners?"
"Copsik runners. Don't you use the word copsik?" It sounded more like corpsik when she said it.
He answered, "It's just an insult-word."
"Not to us or them. They take us for corpsiks, to work for them the rest of our lives. Boy, what are you doing?"
The Grad had reached for his pack with his free hand. "I am the Quinn Tribe Scientist," he said in freezing tones. "I thought I might find some background on that word."
"Go ahead."
The Grad unwrapped his reader. He had Carther States' undivided attention. The women were awed and wary; Lizeth held her spear at the ready. He chose the records cassette, inserted it into the reader, and said, "Prikazyvat Find copsik."
NOT FOUND
"Prikazyvat Find—" the Grad said and held the reader to Kara's face. The Sharman shied, then spoke to the machinery. "Corpsik."
CORPSICLE?
The Grad said, "Prikazyvat Expound."
The screen filled with print. The Grad asked, "Can you read it?"
"No," Kara said for them all.
"Corpsicle is an insult-term first used to describe people frozen for medical purposes. In the century preceding the founding of the State, some tens of thousands were frozen immediately after death in the hope of someday being revived and cured. This was found to be impossible.
“The State later made use of the stored personalities. Memory patterns could be recorded from a frozen brain, and RNA extracted from the central nervous system. A brainwiped criminal could thus be fitted with a new personality. No citizenship was conferred upon these corpsicles. The treatment was later refined and used by passengers and crew on long interstellar voyages.
"'The seeder ramship Discipline's crew included eight corpsicles. The memory sets were those of respected citizens of advanced age, with skills appropriate to an interstellar venture. It was hoped that the corpsicles would be grateful to find themselves in healthy, youthful bodies. This assumption proved-' I can't make sense of all that. One thing seems clear enough. A copsik isn't a citizen. He has no rights. He's property."
"That's right," said Debby, to the Sharman's evident annoyance.
So the Sharman doesn't trust me. So? "How do they find you in here? There must be cubic klomters of it, and you know it and they don't. I don't see why you fight at all."
"They find us. Twice now they have found us hidden in the jungle," Kara said bitterly. "Their Sharman is better than I am. It may be that their science enhances their senses. Grad, we would be glad to have your knowledge."
"Would you make us citizens?"
The pause lasted only seconds. "If you fight," said Kara.
"Clave broke his leg coming down."
"We make citizens only of those who will fight. Our warriors are fighting now, and who knows if they will repell the corpsik runners? If we can hurt a few, perhaps they will not seek out the children and old men and women who host guests."
Guests? Oh, the pregnant ones. "What about Clave and the women?
What happens to them?"
The Sharman shrugged. "They may live with us, but not as citizens." Not good, but it might be the best they could get. "I can't say yes or no. We'll have to talk. Kara…"
"Wbat is it?"
"I just remembered something. Kara, there are kinds of light you can't see. There used to be machines that could see the warmth of a body. That's how they find you."
The women looked at each other in dread. Debby whispered, "But only a corpse is cold."
"So light little fires all through the forest. Make them check each one."
"Very dangerous. The fire might…" she trailed off. "Never mind.
Fires go out unless fanned. The smoke smothers them. It might be possible after all, near the jungle surface."
The Grad nodded and reached for more foliage. Things were looking better. If some could become citizens, they could protect the rest. Perhaps Quinn Tribe had found a home…
"Three groups, and they're all going deeper. The traces are getting blurred," said the pilot's blurred voice. The carm hung behind Squad Leader Patry's shoulder, bow aimed at the jungle. "Are you going after them?"
"Groups how big?"
"Three and three and a bigger group. The big group started first. You probably won't catch them."
In the hands of Patry's men a mass of greenery rose from the rest and floated free. Patry reported, "We've found where they dug in. Okay, we're going after them." He joined the waiting men. "Mark, take the point. The rest of you follow me. Go wide of that yellow stufl it's poison fern."
Mark was a dwarf the only man in London Tree who could wear the ancient armor, and thus the only possible custodian of the spitgun. Ten years ago he had tended to shy back from an attack, until he gained confidence in his invulnerability. The men had called him Tiny until Patty himself raised hell about it. Mark was born to wear the armor.
He'd learned to wear it well.
He climbed past the severed bush and into the dark with London Tree's infantry behind him.
The agony was real, centered above Clave's knee, but spreading in flashes throughout his body. The rest faded in and out. He was being towed through a tunnel. Soon the Scientist's plant extracts would erase the pain. But hadn't the plants died in the drought? And…the tree was gone. There wasn't any Scientist, and the Grad had no drugs, and the Grad was gone too. Too few survivors followed the Grad through green gloom. Clave's pitiful remnant of a tribe was split, and there was no medicine for an injured man.
Jinny and Minya stopped abruptly, jarring his leg. The pain shouted in his brain. Then they had plunged into the tunnel's branchlet walls, and Clave tumbled in free-fall, abandoned.
His tumble turned him and the dream turned nightmare. He faced a bulky, faceless silver thing. The apparition raised something metal? A splinter stabbed into Clave's ribs. He plucked it out. His mind was muzzy…was it a thorn? The metal-and-glass creature forced itself through the tunnel wall, ignoring Clave. Acolytes followed it in, blue men carrying huge, unwieldy bows.
The pain had gone and reality was fading. Here was medicine after all.
"I see you've caught up with the first group," the pilot said. "The forward group has stopped. The middle group has joined them. Maybe you should quit."
"I sent Toby back with two copsilcs. The third had a broken leg, so we left him. We're almost at full strength. Let's just see what happens."
"Patty, is there something unusual about your mission?"
Classfled…oh, what did it matter? "Catch some copsiks. Shoot some meatbirds. Collect some spices. Pick up anything scientific." That last wasn't usual. Maybe the First Officer wanted the Scientist to owe him a favor. Patty didn't comment, not with the Scientist's Apprentice listening.
"Fine. You've got copsiks. How many do you need? You don't really expect to find science here, do you?"
"There's a big group ahead. I'm going to at least look at the situation." Patty turned the volume down. Pilots tended to argue a point to death, and Patry wanted silence.
Gavving hadn't burrowed far before Jayan's line led them to a tunnel carved through the foliage. They moved faster then.
Despite its alien smell, Gavving was hungry enough to try the foliage.
The taste was alien too; but it was sweet and went down well. He ate more.
In fact, he felt almost at home here. His toes thrust into branchlets and pushed him down the tunnel in remembered rhythm. Cheeping and croaking rose from thousands of unseen throats. They wouldn't be birds, this deep in the thicket; but they chirped, and if need came they could probably fly. The sound was the sound of Gavving's childhood, before the drought killed the small life throughout the tuft.
It was an effort to remember that this wasn't Quinn Tuft; that he followed enemies who knew this thicket as Gavving knew his tree.