"No way at all."
"Okay. There's a cluster of huts under the branch, and that's where the women stay when they carry guests, for more tidal pull while the baby's developing. So. Is there anyone at the treemouth that you want fighting beside you?"
"Maybe." She thought of Heln.
"Maybe isn't good enough. Skip the treemouth. if something happens, grab Jayan and anyone else you think you need and go up. A lot of the men spend their time at the top of the treemouth. We can hope Gavving and Alfin are there. But wait till something drastic happens."
Chapter Seventeen
"When Birnham Wood…"
THE HUGE SILVER PETALS WERE RISING, FOLDING INWARD. THE funnel at their center faced east and out, and the sun was moving into line with the funnel. Gold was eastward and seemed close. The sluggish whorl of storm was a strange sight, neither mundane nor scientific, but mind-gripping.
Clave and Kara were alone. The other fire-tenders had gone elsewhere after the fires were quenched. The Sharman asked, "Do you know the law of reaction?"
"I'm not a baby."
"When the steam spits from the funnel, the jungle moves in the opposite direction. That would be back to moister surroundings, back into the Smoke Ring, if we weren't…meddling. Afterward something must be regrown: fuel, perhaps. It takes twenty years."
"That's why they've been getting away with the raids."
"Yes. But no more."
The petals stood at thirty degrees from vertical. The sun shone directly into the funnel, and the petals were shining into it too. The funnel cupped an intolerable glare.
Kara said, "The jungle-heat spits when the sun shines straight into the blossom. It's not easy to make it spit at a chosen time, but…this day, I think."
It came as if by the Sharman's command: a soft, bone-shaking fumf from the funnel. Clave felt heat on his face. The jungle shuddered. Kara and Clave clung tight with hands and feet.
A cloud began to form between himself and the sun. A column of steam, racing away from him. He felt a tug, a tide, pulling him toward the sky.
"It works," he said. "I didn't…How long till we reach the tree?"
"A day, maybe less. The warriors are gathering now."
"What? Why didn't you tell me?" Without waiting for an answer, Clave dove into the foliage. His thoughts were murderous. Had she cost him his place in the coming battle? Why?
Four copsiks were running the elevator lines with their legs, and the Grad's eye caught Gavving among them. The elevator had almost reached its cradle. Was there no way to tell him? Minya's with the pregnant women. She's fine. I'm in the Citadel. Ordon said, "So you couldn't wait for the Holidays."
The Grad jumped violently. For a moment he was actually floating. Ordon bellowed laughter. "Hey, forget it, it's nothing. With a chance like that, how could you not? That's why Dloris got a little upset when she saw you weren't Lawri."
The Grad grinned a sickly grin. "Did you watch the whole time?"
"No, I don't need to get my kicks that way. I can visit the Commons. I just poked my head in and saw what you were poking and pulled it back out again." He put the Grad into the elevator with a friendly, forceful shove in the small of his back and followed him in.
He seemed friendly enough, but first and last he was the Grad's guard. The Grad was not to be harmed, the Grad was not to escape. He liked to talk, but…They had come to the pregnant women's complex the long way round, by way of the Navy installation on the fin. They had returned by the same route. Presumably Ordon had some business on the fin. The Grad had asked about it. Ordon had become coldly suspicious. He would not talk to a copsik about his work.
The tuft sank away. This was far easier than the four-day climb up Dalton-Quinn Tree. A flock of small birds was veering wide of the trunk. "Harebrains," Ordon said. "Good eating, but you have to use the carm to chase them down. The old Scientist used to let us do that. Klance won't."
A streamer of rain was blowing across the out tuft. Was that why the First was so eager to move the tree? Wet citizens?
A mobile tree: it boggled the mind. Find your own weather! A fluffy green bauble hung east of the out tuft, with a strange spreading plume of white mist behind it. Within a day or two London Tree would have put it from sight. The Grad wondered if he was being unreasonably antsy. The carm could reach Carther States across any distance. if he couldn't capture the carm, he would be here forever; and if he could, what was the hurry?
But time had a choke hold on his throat.
Life was not intolerable for the Scientist's Apprentice. In a hundred sleeps he might grow into this new life. When the time came he feared he would move too slowly, or not at all.
Clave found Merril in the Commons. She was dipping the points of crossbow bolts in the evil-smelling brew the Carthers made from poison fern.
The increasing tide caught Clave jumping toward her. He paused, then floated back, laughing. "It's real! I sure wasn't going to call her a liar, but—"
"Clave, what's happening?" Merril was drifting too, arrows all about her. She managed to catch the poison pot and cap it before it spilled.
"We're on our way. The warriors are on the surface." Clave jumped to his pack against the pull of the strange tide. He had readied it some sleeps ago.
Merril barked, "What? How long have we got?"
She had spent her days learning how to make arrows, twist bowstrings, shape a crossbow and fire it. Clave had watched her at target practice. She was as good as most of the Carthers, and her powerful arms were faster at resetting the crossbow.
He said it anyway. "Merril, you're in Carther States whether you go or not. A lot of Carthers aren't citizens."
"You don't have to go."
"You can feed that to the tree, 0 Chairman!"
Clave shoved a handful of the freshly poisoned bolts into his quiver.
"Then grab your gear and go!"
The tide was about like that in Quinn Tuft. Using the tunnels was almost like walking. But it was strange. Every branchlet and foliage tuft had the tremors.
Clave pulled himself through crackling branchiets and soft green turf through to the sky. A column of cloud raced outward from beyond the jungle's horizon. The surface was nearly vertical. He took care for his handholds.
Skeletal warriors emerged like earthworms out of the green billows.
Fifty or sixty Carthers had already chosen and boarded pods. Clave was annoyed. The Sharman had told him late, and nobody had told Merril.
Why? To give them a chance to back out? "Sure I'd have fought, but I didn't get the word in time—"
Maybe the Carthers needed copsiks more than citizens.
He helped Merril through the foliage. The light of battle was in her eye. She said, "The copsik runners left us behind. Not worth their time."
"I had a broken leg." Clave got it then, and bid his grin. "They made a terrible mistake leaving you, though."
"They'll find out. Don't you laugh!" She shook a harpoon; its point was stained with evil yellow. "This goop will drive you crazy if it doesn't kill you."
The sky was a vast sheet of cloud. Lightning flashed in dark rifts. Clave searched the western fringe until he found a thin line of shadow. London Tree was too big to hide in a cloud: fifty klomters or so, half the length of Dalton-Quinn, but five times the long axis of this puffball jungle.
The Comlink's chosen leader, Anthon, already had his legs wrapped around the largest pod. Anthon was brawnier than the average Carther man, and darker. To Clave he might have had a fragile look, with long bones that could be snapped at whim. But he was festooned with weaponry, crossbow and bolts and a club with a knot on the end; his nails were long and sharp; scars showed here and there on his body; and in fact he looked savage and dangerous.