The Smoke Ring
by Larry Niven
Prologue
Discipline
THE PLANET BELOW HIM WAS HIDDEN TO ALL OF SHARLS’ senses save for the Neutrino Screen, the Neudar. What had been a gas giant planet a billion years ago was still a world two and a half times the size of the Earth: an egg of rock and nickel-iron hidden in world-sized storms. The storms spread out into a cloudy ring occupying the entirety of Goldblatt’s World’s orbit around the neutron star.
Sharls watched storms spin outward from the gas giant.
Streams of fog and cloud and dust ran slow near the Smoke Ring’s outer rim, faster at the Smoke Ring median, faster yet as they neared Levoy’s Star; and everywhere there were flattened whorls of hurricane. The gravity gradient was savage this near the ancient neutron star. The innermost limits of the Smoke Ring circled Levoy’s Star every two hours.
The Smoke Ring was tinged with green — it had its own billion-year-old ecology — and somewhere in that cloud were men.
The temptation to go to them was a constant low-level irritant.
When moving between stars, Discipline burned the near-infinite hydrogen of interstellar space; but Discipline had been at rest for a long time now, and onboard fuel was limited. Refueling could not have progressed far when the mutiny came. Sharls’s supply of deuterium-tritium mix was finite. He had no way of knowing how long he must wait for the children of Discipline’s crew to rediscover civilization, to build their own spacecraft, to come to him. He was always short of power. The solar collectors on his two remaining CARMs didn’t give him much.
Sharls ignored the stars, most of the time. He watched the Smoke Ring. When the boredom became too much for him, he edited it from his memory. Boredom was a recurring surprise.
Five hundred and thirty-two Earth years was one hundred and ninety-two orbits of Levoy’s Star round its companion star. But the natives of the Smoke Ring measured years from the passings of the neutron star (Levoy’s Star, “Voy”) across the face of the yellow dwarf (T3, “Sun”); so a Smoke Ring “year” was 1.384 Earth years.
Sharls had been waiting in the L2 point behind Goldblatt’s World for three hundred and eighty-four Smoke Ring years. Best to sit it out in a stable orbit, and watch, and wait for men to develop civilization. Best to edit the memory of boredom…
Discipline’s computer/autopilot stored its information as a human brain did, or a hologram, though Sharls could feel differences. Memories from his time aboard Discipline were sharp and vivid. Those he had edited were gone completely. But memories from his time as a man, transferred long ago from a human brain now long dead, were blurred, hard to retrieve.
So: it wasn’t like a relay clicking over.
But somewhere in the computer there was a change of state. Five hundred and thirty-two years, and enough is enough. Sharls Davis Kendy was done with waiting.
Section One
CITIZENS TREE
Chapter One
The Pond
from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 19 SM:
PONDS
WATER DROPLETS COME IN ALL SIZES HERE. CLOUDS MAY HOLD EVERYTHING FROM FINE MIST, TO GLOBULES THE SIZE OF A FIST, TO SPHEROIDS THAT HOUSE ALL MANNER OF LIFE. THE BIGGEST “POND” WE’VE SEEN MASSED TEN MILLION METRIC TONS OR SO; BUT THE TIDE FROM LEVOY’S STAR HAD PULLED IT INTO TWO LOBES AND THE DIFFERENTIAL WINDS WERE TEARING IT APART.
THE ECOLOGY OF THE PONDS IS ONE RATHER THAN MANY. LIFE IS QUEER AND WONDERFUL, BUT IN EVERY POND WE HAVE EXAMINED IT IS THE SAME LIFE. PONDS ARE TEMPORARY; POND LIFE MUST OCCASIONALLY MIGRATE. IN THE SMOKE RING EVEN THE FISH CAN FLY.
LAWRI AND JEFFER SWAM BENEATH MURKY PONDWATER, trailing forty square meters of fabric stretched across the net more commonly used to sieve harebrains from the sky. They gripped its corners in strong toes and swam with their arms.
The sheet resisted. The leading edge tried to crumple.
Tethers at the comers of the harebrain net got in their way. We could have had some help, Jeffer thought. Lawri wouldn’t have it. Lawri’s idea. Lawri’s project! She’d be doing this by herself if she possibly could.
Air! He slapped her thigh. She dropped the sheet and they swam toward the light.
Air is the sweetest taste, though one must risk drowning to appreciate it.
They were at the arc of the pond nearest Citizens Tree.
The center of the trunk was a mere three klomters east.
Seventy klomters of trunk ran out and in from the pond, ending in paired curved tufts. The in tuft, home, looked greenish black, with Voy’s blue pinpoint shining almost behind it. A single line ran from the trunk, and divided.
The sheet was a ghostly shadow deep within the pond.
Lines ran from the comers, up through the water and out, to join the main cable that ran to the trunk.
“Almost in place,” Lawri said doubtfully.
“Close enough.”
“All right. You go get the CARM ready. I’ll draft some hands to pull it in.”
Jeffer nodded. His legs scissored and shot him into the air. He drifted toward the main cable in a spray of droplets.
It was easier than arguing. Lawri would not leave Jeffer to organize the final stage. When Lawri the Scientist got an idea, nobody else got credit. Particularly not Citizens
Tree’s other Scientist, her husband.
Partway around the curve of the pond, Minya and Gavving floated in the interface between air and water, surrounded by thrashing children.
Lines ran from each child toward the cable from Citizens Tree. The children were taught the backstroke first.
It kept their faces in the air. Some preferred the frog-kick that let them look beneath the water. Swimming was a balance of surface tension versus the thrust of arms and legs.
If a child kicked himself entirely out of the water, an adult must go after him. A child who went beneath the surface could panic and must be pulled out before he drowned. There were carnivores among the waterbirds.
Minya and Gavving wore harpoons. They had three of their own among the swimmers.
Gavving used lazy strokes to change his attitude, moving his field of view in a clockwise circle.
“Look at Rather,” Minya said.
The oldest of the children were swimming together.
Daughter of two jungle giants, golden-blond Jill had grown to merely normal height in the tide of Citizens Tree. She was thirty ce’meters shorter than her parents…but the contrast between Jill and Rather was startling. At fourteen, Minya’s dark-haired firstborn son was less than two meters in height. Jill had more than half a meter on him.
Yet Minya never spoke of Rather’s height. Gavving looked again and said, “Right. Rather!”
Rather paddled over, reluctantly. Fine green fur, barely visible, grew a mi’meter long on his left cheek.
Gavving gripped the boy’s arm and lifted him partway out of the water, against surface tension. The green could be traced down Rather’s neck, over his shoulder, and partway across his chest.
“Fluff,” Gavving said. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”
Rather grinned guiltily. “I’ve never swum before.”
Minya snapped, “You go straight—”
“No. Finish your swim. You’ll pay for it. You’ve seen your last of the sun for a while. Have we raised a fool? It’s almost reached your eye!”
Rather nodded solemnly and paddled away. Minya watched him go, her mouth pursed in anger. Her husband wriggled and was silently underwater; kicked, and was beneath her; grasped an ankle and dove. Minya doubled back on herself and kicked him across the jaw. Gavving reached through the defense of her waving arms and legs and had her head between his hands; pulled her to him by main strength and kissed her hard. She laughed bubbles.