Minya, it seemed, didn't have that problem. She was snatching handfuls of foliage, but the hand she used clutched an arrow, and her bow was in the other.
They were moving faster than the line that slithered ahead of them. Merril wound it up as they went. The coil trailed from a thumb; she used both hands to move herself. When Gavving noticed, he said, "Let me do that for a while. Eat."
"Keep your hands free!" A little later, perhaps regretting her sharpness, she said, "I need my hands to move. You can fight with your hands. Where's your harpoon?"
"On my back. We're all right as long as Jayan is still pulling on the line," he said and immediately noticed that the line had gone slack. Gavving reached for his harpoon before he moved again.
A disembodied white arm thrust out of the tunnel wall and beckoned. Jayan looked out through a screen of branchiets. Her voice was a hoarse and frightened whisper. "They're ahead of us."
"Where?"
"Not far. Don't take the tunnel. There's a long, straight part, then it swells out. They'd see you. Go where I go, or they'll hear branchiets breaking."
They followed her into the thicket.
Jayan had broken a trail. Twice she'd had to cut thicker spine branches. In the end they watched from behind a screen of branchiets as the Grad spoke with the weird women.
They were lean and elongated, like exaggerated cartoons of the ideal woman, or like a further stage in human evolution. They looked relaxed. So did the Grad. His feet and one hand were bound, but he was casually eating foliage while they talked. The carcass of a bird was mostly bones.
Minya's breath was warm on his shoulder. She whispered, "It looks like the Grad may have talked them around. I can't hear, can you?"
"No." There was too much birdsong…and an occasional crackling as someone moved, making Gavving glad for the birdsong. Still, someone was making too much noise…
Minya leapt through the branchiets in a hideous crackling, straight into the midst of the weird women, screaming, "Monster made of starstufli There!"
Gavving leapt after her, ready to do battle. He'd have appreciated some warning. The weird women didn't hesitate an instant. Five of them jumped toward other tunnels and were gone in three directions. The sixth jumped clumsily. She struck the edge of the opening and tumbled away unconscious. Had she struck that bard?
The Grad was struggling to free his hands. Gavving felt something sting his leg. He turned to fight.
To fight what? A thing of glass and metal! There were men behind it-ordinary men who floated free, sighting over their toes as they pulled huge bows taut with their hands-but they didn't fire. The thing of science pointed a metal tube at Minya, then at the Grad. Gavving's harpoon bounced off its mirror-glass face. It pointed at Gavving and stung him again.
You can't fight science, Gavving thought, and he drew his long knife and leapt at the monster. Then everything went dreamy.
"You're too deep," the pilot said. "I can't get individual readings on you. I've got a hot spot, a cluster of a dozen or so. You and the copsiks together?"
"Sounds right. We've got six copsiks here, one already tied up for us. We'll leave the one with no legs. That gives us seven total. A bunch went off through the tunnels. Can you locate them?"
"Yes. It looks like they're together again. There's you, and there's a tighter, brighter spot east of you. I'd say quit now. Kill some meatbirds on the way out."
"There's something here…I've got something scientific here, something I don't understand. Too scientific by half." Squad Leader Patty picked up a rectangular mirror that didn't reflect, a mirror that shone by its own light. With some trepidation he flipped an obvious switch. The light went out, to his relief. "You're right, we've got enough. We're coming out."
Chapter Thirteen
The Scientist's Apprentice
LASSITUDE…AN ODD, PLEASANT SENSATION LIKE FIZZING IN the blood…constriction and resistance at his wrists and anldes…memories drifting into place, sorting themselves. The Grad waited until his mind was straight before he opened his eyes.
He was bound again, tension at wrists and ankles holding his body straight. Getting to be a habit. His bonds gave as he tugged at them. He was tied to netting, face down to a wall that was hard and cold and smooth, and translucent to a millimeter's depth, over a gray substrate.
He'd never seen the like before; but from a distance this stuff might look like metal.
It was the flying box. He was tied to the flying box. He twisted his head left and saw others: Minya, Gavving, Jayan (already awake and trying to hide it), Jinny. To his right, a row of dead salmon birds and ribbon birds, Alfin smiling in his sleep, and one of the Carther Tribe women, the pregnant one, Ilsa. Her eyes were open and empty of hope.
A jovial voice boomed at them. "Some of you are awake by now—"
The Grad arched his back to see over his head. The copsik runner was big, burly, cheerful. He clung to the net near the windowed end. "Don't try to wriggle loose. You'll just get lost in the sky, and we won't come back for you. We don't want fools for copsiks."
Minya called to him. "May we talk among ourselves?"
"Sure, if you don't interrupt me. Now, you're wondering what's going to happen to you. You're going to join London Tree. There's tide when you're in a tree. You'll have to get used to the pull on things, and balancing on your feet without falling, and so forth. You'll get to like it.
You can heat water till it boils without it spewing all over the place, and that lets you cook things you never tasted. You always know where you are, by what a thing does if you let go of it. You can drop garbage—" From below their feet came an unnerving whistling roar. The copsik runner's voice rose " — and know it won't float back at you." He stopped talking because some of his prisoners were screaming.
A tide pulled toward the Grad's feet. He was not surprised to see sky wheeling past: green forest, a strip of blue, billowing white. The textured green below his feet began to contract.
A wet wind blew past. Mist thickened around them. The panicky screams thinned to whimpers, and the Grad heard Alfin's, "Treefodder! We're going back into the treefeeding storm cloud! Whose bright idea—" and he must have silenced himself, because nobody else could have reached him.
Their guard waited for quiet. He said, "It's very impolite for a copsik to interrupt a citizen. I am a citizen. I'll forget it for the duration of this voyage, but you will learn. Questions?"
Minya screamed, "What gives you the right?"
"Don't ever say that again," the copsik runner said. "Anything else?" Minya seemed to calm herself in an instant. "What about our children? Will they be copsiks too?"
"They'll have the chance to be citizens. There's an initiation. Some won't want to take it. Some won't pass."
Mist enclosed them completely. The copsik runner himself was halfinvisible. A wave of droplets each the size of a thumb swept across them, leaving them soaked.
Nobody else seemed inclined to, so the Grad spoke. "Is London Tree stuck in this storm cloud?"
The copsik runner laughed. "We're not stuck anywhere! We moved into the cloud because we need water. After we get you home we'll move out, I expect."
"How?"
"Classified."
Gavving was just waking up. He looked left and right and found the Grad. "What's happening?"
"The good news is we're going to live in a tree."
Gavving tested his bonds while he absorbed that. "As what?"
"Copsiks. Property. Servants."
"Huh. Better than dying of thirst. Where are we? The flying box?"
"Right."
"I don't see Clave. Or Merril."
"Right again."