Nothing.
"Just hang on, will you? Hang on. Something will happen. Talk to
Jayan. See if she's learned anything." Treefodder, there must be something she could say…"Find out where the pregnant women are kept. See if the Grad even comes down to examine them. He might. Tell him we're hanging on. Waiting."
Jinny didn't move. Hen voice was muffled. "All right, I'm listening. But I can't stand it. I can't."
"You're tougher than you think."
"If another man picks me, I'll kill him."
Some of them like women who fight, Minya thought. She said instead,
"Wait. Wait till we can kill them all."
After a long time, Jinny uncurled and stood up.
Chapter Sixteen
Rumblings of Mutiny
GAVVING WOKE TO A TOUCH ON HIS SHOULDER. HE LOOKED about him without moving.
There were three tiers of hammocks, and Gavving's was in the top layer. The daylit doorway made a black silhouette of a supervisor. He seemed to have fallen asleep standing up: easy enough in London Tree's gentle tide. In the dimness of the barracks, Alfin clung to Gavving's haimmock-post. He spoke in a whisper that wanted to shout in jubilation.
"They've put me to work at the treemouth!"
"I thought only women did that," Gavving said without moving at all. Jorg snored directly below him-a "gentled" man, pudgy and sad, and too stupid to spy on anyone. But the hammocks were close-packed.
"I saw the farm when they took us for showers. There's a lot they're doing wrong. I talked to a supervisor about it. He let me talk to the woman who runs the farm. Kor's her name, and she listens. I'm a consultant."
"Good."
"Give me a couple of hundred days and I might get you in on it too. I want to show what I can do first."
"Did you get a chance to speak to Minya? Or Jinny?"
"Don't even think it. They'd go berserk if wq tried to talk to the women."
To be a treemouth tender again…seeing Minya, but not allowed to speak to hen. Meanwhile, maybe AliIn could carry messages, if he could be talked into taking the risk. Gavving put it out of his mind. "I learned something today. The tree does move, and it's the carm, the flying box, that moves it. They've settled other trees—"
"What does that do for us?"
"I don't know yet."
Alfin moved away to his hammock.
Patience came hard to Gavving. In the beginning he had thought of nothing but escape. At night he could drive himself mad with worry over Minya…or he could sleep, and work, and wait, and learn.
The supervisors wouldn't answer questions. What did he know, what had he learned? The women farmed the treemouth and cooked; pregnant women lived elsewhere. Men tended machinery and wonked with wood, here in the upper reaches of the tuft. The copsiks talked of rescue, but never of revolt.
They wouldn't revolt now anyway, with the Holidays eight sleeps away. Afterward, maybe; but wouldn't the Navy know that from experience? They'd be ready. The supervisors were never without their truncheons, sticks of hardwood half a meter long. Horse said the women supervisors carried them too. During an insurrection the Navy might be given those instead of swords…or not.
What else? Bicycle works wore out. Damaging them-damaging anything made of starstuff-would hurt London Tree, but not soon. Here was where the elevators could be sabotaged, but the Navy could still put down a revolt by using the carm.
The carm did everything. It lived at the tree's midpoint, where the Scientist kept his laboratory. Was the Grad there? Was he planning something? He'd seemed determined to escape, even before they reached London Tree.
Was any of that worth anything? If we were together! We could plan something. He had learned that he might spend the rest of his life moving an elevator on pumping water up the trunk. He had not had an allergy attack since his capture. It was not a bad life, and he was dangerously close to becoming used to it. In eight sleeps he would be allowed to see his own wife.
Carther States was setting fires halfway around the biggest flower in the universe.
Clave flapped his blanket at the coals. His arms were plunged elbowdeep in the foliage to anchor him. His toes clutched the edge of the blanket. He undulated his legs and torso to move the blanket in waves, exerting himself just enough to keep the coals red.
Eighty meters away, a huge silver petal gradually shifted position, turning to catch the sun at a sharper angle.
A fire would die in its own smoke, without a breeze, and breezes were rare in the jungle. The day was calm and bright. Clave took it as a chance to exercise his legs.
There was a knot as big as a boy's fist where the break had been on his thighbone. His fingers could feel the hard lump beneath the muscles; his body felt it when he moved. Merril had told him it couldn't be seen.
Would she lie to spare him? He was disinclined to ask anyone else.
He was disfigured. But the bone was healing; it hurt less every day. The scar was an impressive pink ridge. He exercised, and waited for war.
There had been tens of days of sleep merging into pain. He'd seen spindly, impossibly tall near-human forms flitting about him at all angles, green shapes fading like ghosts into a dark green background, quiet voices blurred in the eternal whisper of the foliage. He had thought he was still dreaming.
But Merril was real. Homely, legless Merril was entirely familiRr, entirely real, and mad as hell. The copsik runners bad taken everyone. "Everyone but us. They left us. I'll make them sorry for that!"
He had taken little notice, in the pain of a healing bone and the sharperacheofhisfailure. Ahuntleaderwhobadlost histeam, a Chairman who had lost his tribe. Quinn Tribe was dead. He told himself that depression always followed a serious wound. He stayed where he was, deep in the dark interior of the jungle, for fear that fluff might grow in the wound; and he slept. He slept a great deal. He didn't have the will to do more.
Merril tried to talk to him. Things weren't that bad. The Grad had impressed the Carthers. Merril and Clave were welcome in the tribe though as copsiks.
Once he woke to find Merril jubilant. "They'll let me fight!" she said, and Clave learned that the Carthers were planning war against London Tree.
Over the following days he grew to know tjie jungle people. Of around two hundred Carthers, half were copsiks. It didn't seem to carry any onus. Copsiks here lacked for nothing save a voice in the council.
He saw many children and many pregnancies and no starvation. The jungle people were healthy and happy…and better armed than Quinn Tribe had been.
He was questioned at a gathering of the tribe. Carther States' Commons was a mere widening in a tunnel, perhaps twelve meters across and twice that long. Surprisingly, the space held everyone. Men and women and children, copsiks and citizens, all clung to the cylinder wall, covering it with an inner layer of heads, while Comlink or the Sharman spoke from one end.
"How can you even reach London Tree?" he had asked, but only once. That information was "classified"; spies would not be tolerated. But he could watch the preparations. He was sure these fires were part of it.
He had been flapping wind at the coals for half a day now. His leg was holding up. Soon he would have to shift position.
Kara the Sharman came skimming toward him. She dipped her grapnd into the foliage and stopped herself next to Clave. "How are you doing?"
"You tell me. Does the fire look right?"
She looked. "Keep it that way. Feed it another branch a few hundred breaths from now. How's the leg?"
"Fine. Can we talk?"
"I've other fires to check."
The Sharman was Carther States' equivalent to the Scientist. Maybe the word had meant Chair,nan once. She seemed to have more power than the political boss, the Comlink, who spent most of his time finding out what everybody else wanted. Getting her attention was worth a try. Clave said, "Sharman, I'm a tree dweller. We're going to attack a tree. Shouldn't you be using what I know?"