"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."
"I feel wonderful," Gavving said. "Why do I feel so good? Something was on those thorns, maybe, like the red fringe on a fan fungus."
"Could be."
"You're not saying much."
The Grad said, "I don't want to miss anything. If I know how we get to London Tree, maybe I could get us back. I had some Carther Tribe citizens convinced that we should join them."
Gavving turned to Minya. They spoke together at length. The Grad didn't try to hear. It was too noisy anyway. The whistling roar had faded, but the windsong was nearly as loud.
"Too many changes," Minya said.
"I know."
"I can't seem to feel anything. I want to get angry, but I can't."
"We're drugged."
"It's not that. I was Minya of the Triune Squad of Dalton Quinn Tuft. Then I was lost in the sky and dying of thirst. I found you and married you and joined the Dark Tuft People. We hitched a ride with a moby and got slung into a jungle. Now we're what? Copsiks? It's too many changes. Too much."
"All right, I'm a little numb myself. We'll get over it. They can't keep us drugged forever. You're still Minya, the berserker warrior. Just forget it till you need it."
"What will they do with us?"
"I don't know. The Grad's talking escape. I think we'd better wait. We don't know enough."
She found a laugh, somewhere. "At least we don't die virgins."
"We met each other. We were dying, and now we're not dying at all. We're going to a tree, and it can move itself. We'll never see another drought. It could be worse. It's been worse…I wish I could see Clave, though."
It was dark and wet around them. Lightning marched a meandering path across the bow. The vehicle swung around. Npw the wind blew up from their feet. In that direction a' bushy shadow was forming.
"There," said Minya.
The roar of motors resumed.
Gavving watched for a time before he convinced himself that it was one tuft of an integral tree. He'd never seen any tree from such a vantage. They were coming up on the in branch. The tuft was greener and healthier-looking than Quinn Tuft had been, and foliage reached farther to cover the branch. The bare wooden tail sported a horizontal platform of hewn wood, clearly a work of tremendous labor.
The roar of science-in-action wavered, rose and fell, as the flying box settled toward the platform. A great arching gap had been chopped through the branch itseli linking this platform to one on the other side. At its west end, where foliage began to sprout, a large hut had been woven.
The whistling roar died.
Then things happened fast. People left the hut on the jump. More appeared from underneath, perhaps from inside the flying box. London Tree's citizens didn't have the incredible height of the forest denizens.
Some wore gaudy colors, but most wore tuftberry red, and the men had smooth faces scraped clean of hair. They swarmed to what was now the roof of the flying box and began pulling prisoners loose.