“Shock. She may recover. When may I see them?”
“Kendy, I wanted to give Mishael a tour of the CARM. The Chairman vetoed that. He’s afraid they’ll try to steal the CARM.”
“Nonsense. What do the rest of your tribe think?”
“We’re split down the middle. Half of us want to go see what’s in the Clump. They’ve got a place…the Market?…where we could get anything we want. The Serjents told us about it.”
“And?”
“The Chairman is scared spitless of the Clump. He thinks we’re too close now. Some of the others feel the same way. Jayan and Jinny, of course, but Mark and Minya too. Even the Serjents don’t all want to leave. Mark’s asked Ryllin for permission to marry Karilly, and she gave it.”
“Good. How do you feel about this, Jeffer?”
“I want to see the Clump. Booce told me they’ve got something they call the Library, but it sounds like a CARM autopilot. I want to scan their cassettes. Kendy, I’m doing what I can. I just took some of them flying. They like that. Maybe they’ll start wondering what else they’re missing.”
“I remember Clave. He leads his citizens where they want to go. Call a council. Force your citizens to make a decision.”
“What good does that do us?”
“If you lose the vote, you’ll know where you stand. Then make Clave set a date for moving the tree. Decide what you need and who you need. Is there any chance you can talk Mark around?”
“None.”
“The Serjents told you how to go about setting up a logging enterprise. Tell me.”
The children slept on, exhausted by their flying. Gavving was making an early breakfast on a slice of smoked dumbo meat. He said, “The Admiralty has earthlife plants.”
“We’ve lived without them for fourteen years,” Minya said sleepily.
“We lived without lifts and the CARM for longer than that. It was because we didn’t know.”
“The Admiralty has never touched us. We wouldn’t know it exists, except that Booce tells us so. But you want to know more. Aren’t these matters more properly discussed in council?”
Gavving looked closely at his wife. “You looked like this fourteen years ago, when you were trying to kill me. The whole tuft is like that. There hasn’t been fighting like this since the War of London Tree!”
“I haven’t forgotten London Tree. We made a home here. Any change is for the worse.”
“Dear, are you sorry they came?”
“No!” Minya said with some force. She was fully awake now. “There aren’t enough of us. We all feel that.”
“Lawri the Scientist talks about the gene pool being too small—”
“We don’t need that gibberish. We can feel we’re too few. Now we have three more women, even if Ryllin is too old to host a guest, and they’re different from us—”
“They are indeed!”
“Well, that’s good!”
“Suppose they want to go home?”
“They can’t,” Minya said flatly.
A child stirred: Qwen. Gavving lowered his voice.
“Suppose we built them another rocket. Suppose some of us wanted to go with them.”
Minya stopped to sort words through her head. Gavving waited patiently. Presently she said, “They’d have to be crazy. We’d have to be crazy to let them go. Gav, have you forgotten London Tree?”
“No. I haven’t forgotten Quinn Tuft, either, or Carther States. They didn’t make citizens into copsiks, and neither did your people.”
“…No. But we attacked you the instant we saw you.”
“True.”
“Do you remember being lost in the sky, clinging to a sheet of bark and dying of thirst? We faced dangers we can’t even describe to our children, because they were too strange! We fought hard for Citizens Tree! And now both Scientists want to cross a thousand klomters to the Clump shouting ‘Here we are!’ Why do you want to risk what we’ve got?”
“They’ve got things to trade. They’ve got wings—”
“We’ve got wings.”
“We picked jet pods, when we could find them. All this time. And it’s so simple. Minya, what would you have given for a pair of wings, when we were stranded in the sky? Everything in the Smoke Ring can fly except men, and all it takes is spine branches and cloth! They’ve got a rocket that moves a tree, and it isn’t stolen starstuff, it’s made mostly from things they find in the Smoke Ring. What have they got in the Clump? What haven’t we seen yet?”
She put bitterness in her laughter. “A thousand people and a drastic need for copsiks, maybe.”
Gavving sighed. “Stet, you don’t want anything changed. What should we do? They’re here.”
“Make them welcome,” said Minya. “Teach them how to live in a tree. Get the girls married. Make them part of us. Gavving, Mark intends to marry Karilly.”
“Karilly’s sick in the mind. She isn’t getting over it.”
“Sure, and Mark’s a dwarf. He’s needed a wife, and none of us would touch him. 1 never did feel sorry for the copsik runner, but…but he’s willing to take care other.
And I think you ought to marry one of the other girls.”
Bang! Gavving stared. This was a woman afraid of changes? “I am married.”
“Clave has two wives. Anthon did, until lisa died. I’m getting too old to make babies, dear.”
“You don’t mean—”
“No!” She hugged him. “But it won’t give me a guest to carry.”
“You’re serious? Okay, who?”
She hesitated. Then, bravely (he thought): “I would have thought Mishael. She’s the oldest. Gavving, she showed me how to fly. I like her.”
“Have you mentioned any of—”
“No, you fool! A woman doesn’t ask a woman to be her wife!” And when he laughed she smiled, weakly.
Gavving saw how difficult this was for her. Minya must have thought long and hard about this.
“There’s room to extend the hut,” she said. “We’d have another pair of hands, adult hands. The children are growing up, they’re not as much fun any more—”
And if some of us marry Serjent women, we’ll have their loyalty when the Admiralty comes to us! Logbearer can’t be the only ship in the sky. Gavving wondered if his brain was working in the service of his seeds. Minya had not referred to Mishael’s alien beauty.
And if we do visit the Clump, his brain ran on, we’ll need guides. Booce or Ryllin would have to go. With their daughters among us, we’d have their loyalty—
Chapter Five
The Silver Suit
from the Admiralty cassettes, year 3 SM:
WE WERE CHOSEN FOR THIS. NO CITIZEN LEAVES EARTH ORBIT UNTIL THE STATE HAS LEARNED HIS TOLERANCE FOR FREE-FALL. ONE IN TEN THOUSAND HAVE THE GENETIC QUIRKS TO SURVIVE MONTHS OR YEARS OF FREE-FALL WITHOUT SOFTENING OF THE BONES, WITHOUT FAILURE OF THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE TERROR OF FALLING.
WE SERVED THE STATE BY FLYING TO THE STARS. WHEN THE DRIVE WAS OFF WE PLAYED AT FLYING, WHILE CRAMPED IN A SEEDER RAMSHIP WITH BARELY ROOM TO FLAP OUR ARMS. HERE IS REAL FLIGHT. OF COURSE THE SMOKE RING SEEMS AN INCREDIBLE DREAM COME TRUE — TO US.
“KENDY FOR THE STATE. HELLO, JEFFER. IT’S BEEN more than thirty days.”
“I was busy. We got our council. It’s over.”
“How did it go?”
“We lost.”
“Who sided against you?”
“Clave. Jayan and Jinny. Minya. Mark.”
“Five out of ten. If you count the Serjents, twelve.”
“Thirteen. Mishael’s old enough, and married too, but she acts like a junior wife. She won’t make Minya or Gavving angry. Gavving doesn’t want to fight with Minya. The Serjents don’t think like citizens yet. Anthon won’t get into the arguments. I’m not really sure where he stands. The rest of us want to see what’s out there, but we don’t all want it enough. Debby loves arguing, but she’s not very good at it. We didn’t give Clave any trouble at all.”