“Sure. Carlot’s coming with Mother’s matchet. Send her after me. I need it to cut my way through.” It didn’t feel odd to be speaking thus peremptorily to his second mother. Mishael wasn’t that much older than Rather; she was new to all this, and it showed.
Rather crawled west.
Memories tried to surface around him. His parents’ bedroom: he’d lived in a basket, in a corner too small for a baby now. The private dining area, and ghosts of wonderful smells: were they in his nose, or in his mind? The common room, and too many strangers: he’d cried and had to be taken away. The spaces were distorted and tiny, a green-black womb. The spine branches were still growing. He tore them away with his fists; tore through an old partition.
He didn’t like this. His past was too small to hold him.
“Gorey!”
From west by north, Gorey yelled piercingly. He sounded more angry than frightened. How had he gotten thereat What had been a kitchen wall had crumpled and grown half a meter thick! He must have found some way around—
“Rather?”
Carlot, behind him. He reached far back and took what was pushed into his hand. “Thanks.” He pulled it to the level of his face, turned it with some difficulty and pushed the blade further.
“Can you get to him?”
“One way or another.”
For years the matchet had been no more than a part of the wall. He’d never really looked at it. The handle was long and a bit too wide for his short fingers. The blade was sixty ce’meters of black metal, tinged red by time. Time and use had serrated the edge. It had once belonged to a Navy man of London Tree.
In this restricted space he must use it as a saw. He didn’t try to cut the wall. He cut branchlets west of him.
He turned starboard, still sawing through miscellaneous branchlets. “Gorey?”
Cautiously, doubtfully: “Rath?”
“Here. Give me your hand. Can you reach me?”
“I can’t move!”
Rather saw a thrashing foot. He pulled on it experimentally. Gorey was pinned between a spine branch and a smooth dark walclass="underline" the main branch itself. He must have tried to crawl between them. Rather wriggled forward.
He sawed the spine branch half through, reached farther and broke it with his hands. Gorey wriggled out and wrapped himself around his brother and clung. Presently he asked, “Are they mad?”
“Sure they’re mad. How did you get here? Hide and seek?”
“Yeah. Harry said he was gonna catch me and feed me to the triunes, so I kept going. Then I was afraid the treemouth would get me and I got really scared.”
“Harry wouldn’t get that close to a triune family. You know that.”
“Yeah, but I was mad.”
“You’d starve to death before you reached the treemouth. Here, grab my foot and follow me.”
The boy’s fingers were long enough to overlap Rather’s ankle. He was already taller than Rather. They crawled out, with easier going at every meter.
In the common room Rather’s mothers greeted him as a hero, while Gorey was scolded and petted. Rather took it with what grace he could. He wondered if Carlot was laughing at him; but in fact she seemed to think he had done something actively dangerous.
It made him uncomfortable. He was vastly relieved when Gavving poked his head through the door. “Treadmill runners!” he called. “Rather?” And Rather was rescued.
Harry and Carlot came with them. As they neared the treemouth Gavving said, “Harry, Carlot, why don’t you see if they need help with the laundry pot?”
They split off. Harry grumbling.
Rather followed his father up through the tunnels toward the treadmill. His nerves were prickling. Something odd was going on. “Father? Do they really need treadmill runners?”
“No,” Gavving said without looking down.
The treadmill was at rest. Debby and Jeffer lay in the foliage nearby, eating and talking. They sat up when Gavving appeared. “Got him,” Gavving said.
This must have something to do with the Serjent family; and the conference before the last sleep, from which children were barred; and the arguments that divided half the families in the tree. Do my mothers know about this? Would they approve? Rather asked instead, “Should we have brought Carlot?”
“No need. Rather, we have to find out something.” Gavving pointed at a short, faceless fat man made of silvery metal. “Try that on.”
“The silver suit?”
“Yeah. See if you can get into it.”
Rather looked it over. This thing had a fearsome, quasiscientific reputation. It was a flying fighting machine, stronger than crossbow bolts, stronger than the airlessness beyond all that was known. Rather had never before seen it with its head closed.
Jeffer instructed him. “Lift this latch. Take the head and turn it. Pull up. Turn it the other way.”
The head came up on a hinge.
“This latch too. Now pull this down…now pull it apart…good.”
The suit was open down the front, and empty.
“Can you get in?”
“Where’s Mark?”
“Debby?”
“No problem. We relieved him and he took Karilly to the kitchen.”
“Father…wait. Listen. I’m the only boy in the tree with two mothers and two fathers.” Rather plunged on despite the sudden hurt in Gavving’s face. “We’ve never talked about this, but I always knew…sooner or later I’d…does Mark know what you’re doing with the silver suit?”
“No.”
“What’s it all about?” Four big adults could make him do whatever they wanted; and it didn’t matter. They needed his cooperation, and he didn’t know enough to give it.
Jeffer the Scientist said, “It’s about seeing what’s outside Citizens Tree. It’s learning about the Smoke Ring, what we can use, what we need to be afraid of. Or else it’s about staying savages until someone comes out of the sky to teach us the hard way.”
“We’re going to the Clump,” Gavving said. “We’ll be safer if we can take the Silver Man.”
“Uh-huh. Mark doesn’t want to go?”
“Right.”
They watched as Rather tried to get into the suit. He had to get his legs in first, then duck under the neck ring.
He closed the sliding catches, the headpiece, the latches.
The suit was loose around his belly, snug everywhere else. “It fits.”
Jeffer closed the helmet on him. He rotated it left until it dropped two mi’meters, then right.
Rather was locked in a box his own size and shape.
The suit smelled faintly of former occupants, of exertion and fear. He moved his arms, then his legs, against faint resistance. He turned and reached and plucked a handful of foliage…good. He could move. He could move like a normal man.
The air was getting stale…but Jeffer was already turning the helmet, lifting it. The adults were smiling at each other. Gavving said, “Okay. Get out of it.”
Getting out of the silver suit was as difficult as getting in. Rather said, “Now tell me.”
“Some of us are going to visit the Clump. Do you want to come with us?”
“Who’s going? How long will it take?”
“Me,” said Jeffer. “Gavving. Booce and Ryllin. Anthon and Debby. The Clump is all jungle giants. We need people that size.”
“How does the Chairman—”
“He’ll try to stop us.”
“Father, I don’t really like the thought of not ever coming home.”
Gavving shook his head. “They’ll want the CARM back. They’ll want us back too. Citizens Tree isn’t so crowded that they can afford to lose anyone who breathes. They’ll want to know what we learned. They’ll want what we bring back. Half the citizens are on our side anyway; they just don’t want to buck the Chairman.”