His eyes shifted ... and the sky had opened a mouth. The shock only lasted a moment. A great empty mouth closed and opened again. It was rotating slowly. An eye bulged above one jaw; something like a skeletal hand was folded below the other. It was a klomter away and still big.

THE INTEGRAL TREES, 1983

THE KITE MAN

BLOWING SMOKE

We had come to Jet Propulsion Laboratory, northwest of Pasadena, to watch the pictures Voyager I would send back as it passed Saturn.

We were science fiction writers from everywhere in the United States. Over the years Jerry Pournelie had managed to establish a place for us at JPL: the SFWA members were a special case of “Press.” Some of us had been here to watch the first pictures from the surface of Mars, and the featureless first close-up photos of Venus before JPL started playing with them, and the stunning pictures of Jupiter’s moons, and Jupiter itself.

as if God had taken a tremendous spray-painter and had Himself a wonderful lime.

In the opening scenes of FOOTFALL Jerry and I captured some of the flavor of those wonderful few days. The probe fell past Saturn, past various moons, through the ring. We waited for some iceflake to smash it but it never happened. The F Ring was twisted. C’Haven’t you ever seen three earthworms in love?”) The panel of experts hadn’t figured out why (“We’re sure Saturn is doing everything right . . .“). Perhaps the exhaust from a passing interstellar spacecraft had roiled it? Europa had a huge crater (‘Well, we’ve found the Death Star.”)

There was an orientation film for the Press. General laughter was heard when the narrator said, ‘We expect to find at least six rings.” He hadn’t seen the pictures. We had. Thousands of ringsl

In the Press Kit was a lecture about the atmosphere of litan. Astronomers have long known that Titan has a cloudy atmosphere. They can also demonstrate that Titan isn’t massive enough to hold an atmosphere. What’s it doing there?

They call it the gas torus effect, and it works like this—

litan isn’t massive enough, so molecules of atmosphere leak away. (Ii’s happening to Earth’s air, too, but much more slowly.) But the gas molecules are still bound by a strong gravitational field: Saturn’s. They remain in orbit around Saturn.

The gas torus is of low density, and is shaped like an overinflated inner tube—or a smoke ring, if a smoke ring were spinning, with the inner part going somewhat faster than the outer. Some of the trapped gas escapes anyway. Most of it will end up back in Titan’s atmosphere, and leak away again, and return.

Wow!

I made notes all over my press kit, and presently transferred them to my computer. Those notes include an intermediate case. Ii’s up for grabs: you can easily beat me into print.

We’ll put a Mars-size moon in orbit about a Jupiter-size body, and move It to halfway between Mars and Earth.

The Jovian primary will radiate some heat. If we want Earthlike temperature we must put the system farther from the sun than Earth is. till still be warmer than Saturn’s moon Titan, so the warmer gas will escape faster unless we make the body more massive than Titan. Almost certainly it will be tidally locked, with one face turned toward the Jovian at all times; so days will be long. With all of that in mind. . . we now have a world with an Earthlike atmosphere and four-tenths of Earth’s gravity.

Man-powered flight becomes easy. You need no more than bicycle gears and a propeller and a lot of wing. . .say a hang glider or a short-winged Gossamer Albatross . . . or even bird-wings, for a flyer with an injured leg. Notice that if I bring the moon closer to the Jovian (and move the Jovian farther from the sun, and make the sun a little bluer so it will put out more UV for plants, and so forth; don’t forget that the moon will become gradually more egg-shaped) I can shrink the moon and thus the gravitational pull, until your arthritic Aunt Tanya can fly.

But I became fascinated by an extreme case.

Forget the dinky lilile Jovian. Let’s put a neutron star at the center! That gives us a ferocious gravity gradient. We’ll put a gas giant planet in close orbit around it . . . not necessarily something as big as Jupiter, but a world more like Neptune. The planet won’t be habitable, not by a damn sight. But the gas torus itself should have enough pressure to support life. If we give it enough time, if we let life develop, and green plants.

We’ll get a breathable Earthlike atmosphere in a doughnut-shape larger than a world, where everything is in free-fall except for tidal effects; where gravity is found only at the endpoint tufts of what I then called “spoke trees,” that look like a free with Iwo tops and no bottom; where everything that lives can fly, except men.

Time must pass, not only for green life to produce raw avygen, but for the neutron star to spin down. Remember, that’s the ashes of a supernova explosion. It carried the magnetic field of a murdered star into itself when it collapsed. A star like that spinning within a nebula-cloud that used to be

the outer layer of that same murdered star, generates a signal powerful enough to shower Sal system with X-rays from hundreds of light-years away. That’s why ii’s called a pulsar. We’re describing enough radiation to fry any human.

So give it time to spin down. A billion years may be enough. Two would be beffer. . . except that the Smoke Ring is not really very stable. It might be gone by the time we arrive.

This is the point at which I began to need hard numbers.

Dr. Robert Forward worked at Hughes Research in Malibu, California. His interests were and are wide-ranging. When I first met him he had a prototype mass detector on display; I described if in “The Hole Man.” And he was about to publish a paper demonstrating that gravity-wave storms can result if mass spirals down into a black hole. . . when Jerry Pournelle’s “He Fell Into a Dark Hole” appeared in Analog.

So Forward located this Jerry Pournelle’s phone number and called him to acknowledge that Jerry had beaten him into print. And Jerry wangled an interview. And invited me to go along.

Forward talked about everything under the sun. He described a new concept, Hawking’s quantum black holes, black holes of all sizes formed in the extreme conditions of the Big Bang. They’re a natural for stories, and I told Jerry I’d beat him into print. (And did.)

Forward must have liked science fiction writers. He became one himself with Dragon’s Egg. which involves natives of a neutron star as described by the astronomer Frank Drake.

So I had access to an expert on neutron stars and hypergravily.

Please understand: I had a two-lobed novel in mind, two intimately related stories taking place twenty years apart. One story would speak of simple survival; one would speak of the founding of civilization. I wrote a fairly detailed outline (calling it THE SPOKE TREES) to nail down what I was after.

Then I sent it to Robert Forward and asked for help.

He gave if.

The numbers weren’t too startling (to me). I’d get about one-twentieth of a gravity in a big tree. Bob did have some surprises for me.

First, I’d messed up some technical terms. Gas torus, plasma torus, flux tube are not interchangeable!

Second, I had not realized that the winds at the endpoints of the trees would be even more powerful than the tide! And so my spoke trees— pointing through the neutron star, like spokes in a wagon wheel—were shaped by the wind into long S-shapes, integral signs, integral trees, and gained a good deal more detail.

Details are where the fun is.

I had already decided to maroon a handful of human beings in the Smoke Ring, leave them alone for five hundred years, then see what they were up to. I needed oxygen, and therefore green plants. I needed normal sunlight so I made the neutron star (Levoy’s Star, or Voy) part of a binary. That implied oxygen; oxygen implied green plants. What else did I know about life-forms in free-fall and breathable atmosphere?

Well— Water drops would come in all sizes, from fine mist through raindrops

the size of your fist or your head up to blobs so big that the tide would pull them apart. (Call them ponds.) Whatever their size, they could not be considered stable. Whatever lives in a pond (call it a fish) might have to cross to another pond fairly frequently.

So they’ll have lungs.

And they’ll fly. In fact any Smoke Ring life form will find some way of getting about. Wings are the most obvious way, and most life forms will have wings. . . but they won’t necessarily look like Earth’s birds.

After all, there’s no gravity. In the Smoke Ring a bird with a broken wing can still fly! There’s no unique down; no need for bilateral symmetry. What’s required is thrust not lift. I gave most of the Smoke Ring’s life forms trilateral symmetry, with plenty of room for evolution to fiddle around.

The birds look like fish and the fish act like birds.

The integral trees are more mobile than I at first realized. When a free comes apart, both segments will eventually return to the median (the region where the air is thickest.) They do it by sailing: the tree is accelerated by the wind in its remaining tuft. (And when it reaches the median, where the fertilizer is adequate, it will not survive unless it can grow another tuft fast)

There are other sailing plants, and plants that spray seeds, and seeds that spray compressed air. There are plants like rubber-band helicopters. Everything moves.

And how will humans adjust?

I’m dealing with savages here. (My choice.) They’re environmentalists when they have to be: they keep their own region clean. Otherwise their philosophy may allow them to use their environment as they please.

Thanks to Bob Forward and the winds, my trees gained a way of gathering fertilizer: branchlets migrate forward along the branch, into the tree-mouth, carrying whatever they’ve sieved from the wind. And the treemouth is the key to a lot of things.

The treemouth is the tribe’s toilet, and its funeral parlor, and its garbage pit. “Feed the tree” is a truly comprehensive insult.

I called the vegetation of the branch “the tuft.” I made the foliage edible. The tribe will dig tunnels through it in the normal course of events. I left the branchlets springy enough to be woven into wickerwork “huts.”

I had to design laundry and cooking techniques. . . and techniques of hunting and making war. . . and social hierarchies, different for every environment, including table manners and eating tools . . and language.

The details are where the fun is. I talked with friends about the Smoke Ring. Several got in a contest to suggest weapons; I took the footbow from that. Later, someone suggested making wings; I used Isaac Asimov’s suggestion as to what they would look like.

The cover for THE INTEGRAL TREES, by Michael Whelan, was the best I’d ever had. It should have been, for the effort he put into ifi He read through the manuscript twice, then braced me at a world science fiction convention and held me prisoner for an hour while he asked questions.

The SMOKE RING cover was just as good.

Authors can be nearly psychotic as regards the accuracy of a cover.

A stranger in a bookstore once looked at that cover and said, “Oh, a fantasy!” Nope. It’s hard science fiction in a peculiar place.

Bob Gleason and Tom Doherly were my guests for a few days in May. They came parily to give me some help with the book you’re reading now.

I’d already chosen excerpts from various of my novels. I couldn’t decide what to take from THE INTEGRAL TREES and THE SMOKE RING. The books were relatively new; Tom and Bob had read them; let them give me some help.

They spent most of a Friday rereading the books. Bob blames me for a blinding headache; Tom worked off the tension swimming back and forth in my pool, back and forth, like a damn machine. Their conclusion: there was nothing they could tear out of either book without it bleeding all over their hands.

Heh heh heh. Jerry and I did that to Bob Gleason once before. We turned over to him a quarter-million words of LUCIFER’S HAMMER: too big a book to sell well, he thought. “I have this nightmare in which we sell millions of copies of LUCIFER’S HAMMER and lose a nickel on every book!” Bob sat down to cut it to size. . . and there wasn’t one damn word he could live without.

Serve him right. He’s the man who taught us how to cut

But Niven doesn’t write excerpts; Niven writes novels!

On the other hand. . . they couldn’t find an excerpt that would stand by itself. So they’re demanding that I write a short story instead!

Thai’s wprk.

Oh, well. I want to get back into the Smoke Ring universe anyway. There’s a novel I want to write. . . involving really peculiar creatures who may have been shaped in the supernova explosion that began the Smoke Ring. And I want to bring them home.

CHAPTER ONE

YEAR 419 DAY 110

The light filtering through the foliage had an ominous tinge: white with no blue in it, white like dry bone.

Aim crawled eastward through corridors that paralleled the branch. Slender branchlets grew airy, sweet stuff like green cotton candy, easy to brush aside. He ate the occasional handful of foliage without slowing. If nobody did that, the corridor would close completely.

Already it was uncomfortably narrow. The in tuft had been deserted these past two years.

Four boys crawled in Alin’s wake. Their rolled-up kites caught in the foliage, slowing them. Alin knew how to keep his bundle pointed straight ahead through the branchlets.

The foliage thinned out, then ended in bare bark.

There was no sky. Brighton Tree was embedded in fog: one eightythree-klomter tree fading into an empty white universe.

The boys caught up. Stevn trailed, looking down into the bone-white sky. Stevn was Aim’s oldest son, though the long, straight brown hair and the exaggerated frown were exactly his uncle David’s.

Alin laughed at their disappointment. If Gilly or Stevn were relieved, Alin chose not to see that. He said, “Get out on the branch. This’ll be gone by the time we’re set up.”

They crawled out along the bark, fingers and toes clinging. Mist streamed past them, blowing hard. In the point-oh-three tidal force of Brighton Tree, it was amazing how much water a tunic could hold.

Halfway to nothing, Aim called a halt. “No wings, citizens. Today it’s kites. Frame them.”

Each boy unwrapped what he had brought: two sheets of fabric, four brace poles almost as tall as himself, and fifty meters of lines. Bertam was the quickest. He had the bound kite strapped to his back at the waist, and the free kite assembled in his hands, while Gilly was still wrestling with fabric.

Aim had not touched his own kites yet. Today his students would do without their teacher’s example.

The fog shredded and streamed away, and suddenly there was sky.

What had been fog could now be seen as a two-hundred-kiomter river of cloud streaming east and away through a universe of blue sky. The forward fringe of it roiled as it dipped into the chaotic currents of the Clump.

The Clump was an eternal sluggish storm a thousand kiomters across. Matter tended to gather in the tidal anomaly sixty degrees ahead of Goidbiatt’s World in its orbit around Levoy’s Star. From here the Clump covered almost half the sky, lit from behind by a rising Sun: flamecolored, darkening toward the axis.

Other trees floated around Brighton Tree, all on a level, dark against the bright Clump. Their trunks were vertical lines bent into near-horizontal branches at the in and out ends.

A Navy spinner ship puffed toward the grove, too distant for detail, leaving a white thread of smoke.

The boys were ready. Aim looked them over and said, “Good. Bertam, jump.”

Bertam rolled forward and dropped into the violet-white glare of Voy. Aim wondered if he had .closed his eyes. The wind gripped the kite on his back, the bound kite, and pulled him east.

“Stevn, go. Mario. Gilly, go. Go!”

Giiiy clutched the branch in terror.

They were calling Aim Newbry “Kitemaster” because he could fly with kites. “Kitemaster” instead of “Liftmaster’s Apprentice”; but this was his first group of students. It had yet to be demonstrated that the Kitemaster could teach.

Every child took flying lessons with wings or jet pods, when he or she was old enough. Some were frightened. Some were reckless. Some were clumsy. Aim had watched, then chosen six, drilled them with their equipment for seven sleeps, taken them out onto the bare branch and drilled them there—and lost two more to their fear— And he was about to lose another, on their first real flight.

“Jump or don’t jump, Gilly, but you know the choices.” Aim assembled his kites rapidly. “Don’t let me beat you into the sky.”

Gilly jumped with no grace, like a rag doll tlung into the wind. A moment later the boy was using everything Aim had taught him. Left arm and leg reached out to turn him, then in again. Now he faced east, free kite clutched against his chest; the kite on his back blocked it from the wind. Now his hands and feet reached cautiously out, holding the running lines with fingers and toes. The free kite wafted east, and caught the wind.

Alin roiled into the sky.

Almost he felt Gilly’s fear. Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good tree? Wings had been new to Brighton Tree when Aim was a baby, but kites, now . . . Aim Newbry was Brighton Tree’s expert with kites. He’d seen his first pair of kites less than a year ago, and possessed them immediately thereafter.

The wind pulled him east. Voy blazed violet-white below him. The bound kite framed him, two spokes at right angles. Kites were more awkward than a good pair of wings bound to one’s ankles; but kites didn’t have to be flapped or pedaled. They pulled themselves.

Bertam was nicely under sail. His free kite (banded red and white) deployed east-and-inward, pulling him away from Brighton Tree. His arms bowed to the pull. Bertam hadn’t grown to his full strength yet.

Mario was under sail too (yellow with a broad scarlet stripe). He seemed to be trying to join Bertam. Not a good idea. Collisions! But Bertram was laughing at Mario, sailing away, racing.

Stevn (orange swordbird on black) was all tangled up.

Gilly was slow. AIm thought he could see the boy’s tongue between his teeth. Slow, but he wasn’t making any mistakes. His free kite (black stars on scarlet) flapped and eased east, then east-and-in. Gilly moved after the others, sailing, flying without effort, wearing a wide white smile.

The laws of motion throughout the Smoke Ring were: East takes you out, out takes you west, west takes you in, in takes you east; north and south bring you back. Today’s goal was to sail outward, then return to Brighton Tree’s midpoint. Still, Aim wouldn’t be too disappointed if a boy wound up somewhere else.

The East Grove was nineteen trees positioned far enough from the Clump to get decent tide. Any tree would send wingmen to rescue a lost boy. A mistake need not be dangerous. Capability Tree was an obvious target, east and a littie in .

And Natlee was hardly speaking to him, because he was trying to teach their oldest son to fly.

Alin was now moving almost with the wind’s velocity. He deployed his free kite (a moby seen face-on, yellow on a scarlet background), but kept it on a short line. Was he going to have to rescue Stevn? Stevn was working more carefully now, getting himself untangled, glancing at Aim every few seconds while he tried to separate his running lines.

Stevn would overreact if his teacher-father began shouting instructions. Aim did too much of that anyway. Give him another few breaths.

One of the trees was getting longer.

Aim blinked. Capability Tree was separating into two halves.

There was no warning. There was only the numbing sight of a tree ripped in half at the midpoint, pulling ponderously apart, leaving a smoky trail of debris. One end fell into white Voylight, one toward the never-seen stars.

There were fifty to sixty people in Capability Tree, not counting children.

The Admiralty ship was still no more than a dot at the end of a vapor trail running through hazy blue-white. Aim watched the white curve as he worked his line.

Stevn had his line out now, east-and-in, as he’d been taught. He’d begun to accelerate.

Alin let his lines out gradually. The free kite pulled east-and-in, but he wrestled it horizontal. It went almost slack. Aim didn’t stand a chance of catching any of the boys already in flight, not even Giily. He’d have to catch Stevn.

The white curve of the Navy ship’s path remained almost straight. They hadn’t seen.

Aim passed out from Stevn; he let his free kite swing drastically inward, to pull him in earshot.

“Stevn!”

“It’s all right, Kitemaster. I’ve got it.”

“Look at Capability Tree!”

Stevn needed a moment to orient himself, and another to wonder if he had the right direction, and then—’ ‘What on Earth?”

“They need help. Now—”

“Dad, Dad, the whole tree’s torn apart!”

“Don’t lose it, boy. They need help. Do you think you can reach that Navy ship? Look straight east!”

The boy looked. “I’m not sure, Dad.”

Frightened. “It has to be done. The haze may be blocking their view. Get their attention. We need Navy for rescue work. You don’t have to get aboard. We’ll come for you. . .“ Stevn was drifting out of earshot. “Get their attention and tell them about Capability Tree!”

His kite was pulling him strongly now. He’d pass in from the debris cloud if he weren’t careful.

The halves of the tree were already widely separated, in toward Voy and out into the sky. Aim manipulated the free kite out . . . out .

waited until he feit no strain on the lines, then tilted the kite and let it continue moving. It was east of him now, blown toward him on a slack line. He tilted his body to adjust the bound kite, gathered as much of the line as he could, and was ready when it pulled taut.

By then he was deep inside a cloud of shredded bark, and a hundred million bark-dwelling insects were getting lost in his nose and mouth and ears. He spit and snorted and blinked and looked around for citizens needing rescue.

None yet. The free kite pulled westward, slowing him . . . and now he was among big cylindrical blocks of mud. He tilted both kites edge-on to the wind, and was at rest.

The stench struck him like a blow.

Over a dozen human lifetimes an integral tree swallows immense quantities of . . . stuff.

Foliage at both tufts spreads wide to sieve birds and lesser plants out of the wind. A pond impacts somewhere on the trunk; tide slides the water and the mud core down into the nearer tuft. Branchlets gradually migrate forward along the branch, through the tuft and into the treemouth, carrying foliage and everything embedded in it: mud and water, plants, dead animals, even old huts that men have woven from the living branchlets. Humans use the great conical pit as a toilet and garbage service and mortuary. Everything disappears into the treemouth, to feed the tree.

A tree has a mouth at both ends, and no anus. Tide pulls hard on an integral tree. The accumulating mud weakens its structure. The time comes when it must be rid of its mud core.

It pulls apart at the midpoint, and starts over as twins.

The core of Capability Tree had broken into cylindrical segments. The stench was horrid. Aim resisted breathing, for fear of inhaling foui dust. But the dust seemed to be all bark dust.

There was music in the wind, nonsense-words sung in a high, sweet contralto.

“We located the Titanic two miles deep in the Atlantic, and we didn’t know quite where that ship went down!”

Aim knew that voice. Where was she? “Harp!”

“Well, we photographed the wreck even down below her decks, But those monsters in the lakes just can’t be found.”

North-and-out: human shapes clung to a black cylinder of mud. Aim shouted, “Hello!”

The singer stopped. A man’s voice shouted from the mud-log. “Hello?”

“Do you have line?”

“Yes!”

The unseen bard sang again:

“Twenty-six miles by one short mile and a hundred fathoms deep.

fagged rock at the bottom of the Loch And the water’s thick with peat—”

A man cast loose from the mud log, kicking hard, trailing line. Wide fan-shaped wings were bound to his shins. As he kicked toward Aim, four more citizens let themselves be puiled loose. One, a six-year-old girl, was wailing in fear.

“The creature’s shy and shuns the sky,

And that’s why we must confess— We can’t find

We can’t find

We can’t find

We can’t find

We can’t find the creature in Loch Ness!”

Aim had his hands full keeping the kites tilted. They would pull him out of reach if he let them catch the wind. The winged man veered toward another mud block. The tow line trailed across it and picked up two more citizens, an older woman and a young man pulling a child by her ankle. Moments later an adolescent girl flew out of nowhere, out of the chaos of bark-dust fog and mud cylinders, with a baby in her arms and a larger boy clinging to her back. She caught the line with her toes.

Good enough. Aim tilted his kites and brought himself across their two line. It slid along his own main line, and Aim had it. He tied it to his kite-belt before it could go taut.

Now he let the free kite tilt. Lines grew taut and he felt himself pulled west. But where was Harp?

“We have sent a craft to Mars,

We have looked beyond the stars,

And a billion light-years don’t stand in our way—”

The winged man called into the sky, urgently. “Harp? Can you catch us?”

A voice came back. “I think not, Captain, but there’s other rescue coming.” For the first time Alin saw the singer, clinging with her toes to a sheet of bark.

He called, “Hello, Harp! Remember me? Aim Newbry, Brighton!”

“Suuure! Liftmaster’s Apprentice?”

“Kitemaster now. Are you really all right? I’d have trouble coming back for you.”

“Fine. I saw another kiteman.”

“I sent a Navy ship!”

“Fume!” She waved her windpipe in farewell, then resumed playing.

“We’ve sent rockets out to Saturn

and described its weather pattern,

But we still can’t find that beast in Loch Linné.”

The man pulled himself toward Aim until he was close enough to talk normally. Deep-set brown eyes, a curved sharp-edged nose, wide thin mouth, long gray hair bound by a ceramic ring: he looked like a man born to command. “I’m Captain Shan Ling, Capability Tree.”

“Kitemaster Aim Newbry, Brighton. Will she be all right?”

“Harp? Yeah. She called you to us, didn’t she? She’ll call that Navy ship too when it gets close enough. Kitemaster, can you move us all?”

“Not fast.” The kite was accelerating them nicely, pulling west. Maneuvering was going to be awkward. He must keep tension in the line; else his refugees would drift together.

There was no way he could wait for Capability’s Harp. He would have liked to see her again . . . just see her.

AIm adjusted his lines and moved away from the debris cloud. Eight passengers formed a tail behind him.

Captain Blinda Murphy and three of her crew scampered over the ship like so many spiders. The flame-haired Captain was pregnant. The bulge barely showed on her two-point-two meters of jungle-giant height. She was trying to move more slowly, to let her crew do the work, but she just didn’t have the habit.

Curtz didn’t try to duck aside. They treated Curtz as a familiar obstacle, and went around.

Curtz was not a navvy. He was a Navy Guardian.

His chief claim to rank was that he could wear the ancient armor of the starmen. His dwarfish size and the encumbrance of the silver suit decreased his agility. He could fight; he was invulnerable in battle; but he could not dart about the surface of a spinner ship trying to keep lines in order.

Renho and Dunninger and Rabin were long, spindly citizens up to two and a half meters tall, compared to Maxell’s one point eight, if you let him point his toes. Sometimes he wondered what they thought of him. The Captain might flay any navvy who insulted a Guardian. Blinda Murphy’s mother had been a dwarf. She’d have been a Silver Man herself if the armor had fit.

There in the mist: a pair of kites.

One kiteman? Half a dozen wouldn’t have been odd. Packs of Admiralty kitemen might fly out to the East Grove or farther yet, out to escort some incoming logger. But one? Could a party have got into trouble? The mist was too thin to hide more.

Guardian Maxell Curtz watched the kites coming. . . orange swordbird on a black field, intricately painted, very high quality compared to Admiralty work . . . coming almost straight at Flutterby.

Renho and Dunninger were pointing. Rabin scampered forward. The kiteman swept past by less than thirty meters. For a bare instant the Guardian saw him clearly: a boy, a ten-year-old climber frightened clean out of his mind.

Curtz jumped into the sky. A burst of his boot jets kicked him clear of Flutterby.

The prop blades were slowing, stopping. Rabin must have turned the motor off.

A rescue would look good on Flutterby’s record. Curtz’s too. Might help the Admiralty’s image. Climbers had been growing unhappy with Admiralty policies . . . All hindsight. Curtz had jumped by reflex.

The boy had tilted his kites flat to the wind. Curtz wouldn’t have to use his jets again. Good! Only one tribe of climbers in the whole sky could recharge boot jets, and they charged high.

Curtz fixed wings to his ankles and flapped toward the boy.

The boy was methodically reeling in his free kite, dismounting it, rolling it around the brace sticks. Thin, two meters tail or less, with a broad flat nose and straight brown hair: he was older than Curtz had guessed. Twelve, maybe. People raised in a tide were shorter than Admiralty citizens.

Closer . . . The boy twisted like a ribbon bird, reached far out and snatched Curtz’s wrist with panic strength. He was still frightened. Curtz wondered what the ancient pressure suit must look like to this savage. But he feared the sky more.

Curtz said, “I’m a Guardian, a Silver Man. That’s Flutterby. We’ll take you home.”

“No, no, you have to save them. Capability Tree’s come apart! Ripped in half!”

“What?”

The boy pointed. Curtz followed the line of his arm, west of out, following a dark wavering arc to a distant fisher-jungle. . . wait, it was farther away than that, bigger and . . . darksoii, was that a tree? Curtz looked in and east and found the other half.

“Your tree?”

“No, I’m from Brighton. That’s Capability Tree. Dad sent me to alert you. They need help.”

Flutterby wasn’t large. The ship had once carried thirty troops into a riot; but they’d been clinging to the hull. Two could work in the tiny cabin; four or five could huddle there while the ship was battered by triunes or swarming drillbits or a major storm.

The climber boy was in the way, of course, but what choice did they have? He braced himself in a corner, gripping handgrips with all his fingers and toes, and he couldn’t seem to stop shivering. Yet he spoke lucidly enough. He was Stevn Newbry, son of Kitemaster Newbry. He’d had a good flight, no surprises . . . other than the tree, of course . .

Maxell left the cabin. The boy made him nervous.

Flutterby was in the debris cloud. Less than a day had passed, but both ends of the tree had vanished into the murky sky. The sun had nearly reached nadir: double sunlight made long single shadows through the dust. The sky was dark with wood dust and dirt and tree-dwelling insects, and mud.

A brave act for a climber, kiting across naked sky toward a moving target, and not even for his own people. A climber spent his life tunneling through green darkness. No Admiralty citizen would have been so shaken by a day or two of falling.

Guardsman Maxell Curtz gripped rope railings with hands and toes and let the sky turn past him.

Tremendous cylinders of black mud tumbled in the chaos. Maxell had heard that such things could happen, but he’d never tried to imagine a disaster on this scale. He wondered how the mud held together so well

and then he saw. The tree had wrapped the mud like a package, had lined its fertilizer core with wood fibers so that it wouid slide loose easily.

Fisher-jungles were already drifting into the debris cloud. Long tendrils stretched toward mud blocks tumbling in the chaos. In the roar of F/utterby’s motor could be heard an irregular ticking as bits of bark impacted the blades.

Flutrerby’s hull was all ledges, toeholds and fingerholds, and rope:

rope in coils, guardrail ropes, rope to tie boxes and bails to the ledges, lines to set the vanes at the tail.

Flutterby pulled itself through the air by the long, long blades turning at her nose. Tilted vanes aft kept the whole ship from spinning the other way round . . . but Captain Murphy generally modified the tilt so that the sky slowly turned to show all possible views.

A wind beat down on Maxell’s head, stinking of half-burned wood alcohol—which Maxell was used to—and eons-buried mud.

Captain Murphy poked her head into the doorway and beilowed, “Rabin? Cut to idle. How on Earth am I supposed to hear anything?”

The noise and the wind dropped almost to nothing. Maxell listened for the wailing of climbers lost in the sky. He heard the buzz of confused insects, and— “We have set out traps to catch her

And sent dolphins down to fetch her,

And a million tourists watch from shore and ship—”

Somewhere a woman was singing some old nonsense-song as if she had never a care in the world.

The climber-kiteman’s head poked through the cabin door. He shouted, “That’s Capability’s Harp!”

“But we still wind up embarrassed,

For this creature won’t be harassed,

She just glides away and gives us all the slip.”

Curtz said, “I thought you were from—”

“Harp sang in Brighton Tree once,” the boy said. “She’s wonderful. Can we get to her?”

Captain Murphy bellowed aft. “Rabin, I’ve reversed the prop. Start her up, but watch your tethers.”

“Aye-firmative.”

“You all hear? Watch your tethers!”

“Ambitious dreams of our research teams

Are touted by the press

But we can’t find

We can’t find

We can’t find

We can’t find

We can’t find the creature in Loch Ness!”

Curtz tested his own tether as the prop spun up and the ship eased backward. Admiralty fitters had mounted the blades aft, like the motors on a rocket, on the first few spinner ships they built. They’d stopped that after a crewman lost his grip and fell into the blades. A navvy could still manage that while a spinner ship was backing up.

The songbird was standing upright as if in tide, clinging with her toes to a plug of black mud. Short golden hair haloed a pale triangular face. A musical instrument, nearly two meters of wooden tube with holes along its length, was strapped across her back. She watched Flutterby’s approach without sign of fear.

“Cut it!” called the Captain. The woman waited until the blades spun to a stop, then jumped toward Flutterby.

Renho and Dunninger were already in the sky, tethers trailing as they leapt to catch her. Across the sky it was difficult to tell navvies apart. They weren’t identical. Renho was strong, but Dunninger had been a kiteman. His hands and wrists, feet and ankles were sinewy, laced with blood vessels, actually stronger than a dwarf’s. But they were skeletally tall, their hair was cut identically short, and their identical red uniforms were only distinguished by big black number-letter designations on chest and back.

Graceful as hell, they tugged their lines to stop just alongside the songbird. She offered a hand to each, smiling her thanks.

They looked like giants next to her.

Against the wind and the whupwhupwhup of the motor Maxell Curtz could hear his heart pounding in his ears. She was tiny.

Her voice came to him, clear and musical. “—pulled a bunch of us off toward Brighton. I saw another kiteman coming too. Most of us must have been rescued by now.”

“I’ll tell the Captain,” Renho said.

“But the citizens who didn’t get out of the tufts are still in trouble. Can you get word to other Navy ships?”

They caught themselves against the hull, caught their breath, then pulled themselves aft toward the cabin. Capability’s Harp looked him over as they passed. Her eyes were an intense and vivid blue. She was definitely interested. Curtz smiled back, admiring. A moment later she was gone.

Interest in him? Chances were that she’d never seen a silver suit.

Voices from the cabin: Harp was trying to describe Capability Tree’s situation and calm the climber boy from Brighton, simultaneously.

The blades spun. The ship moved forward. Vanes tacked and backed as the ship wove a path among half-hidden bark sheets and masses of ancient mud. Suddenly there were insects everywhere, in Curtz’s ears and hair and mouth. He slammed his helmet down and turned on the internal air, and breathed his first clean air in hours.

While he was at it .

He tongued a switch.

Colors went all wonky. He let the sky turn past him. Big crimson blotch: he switched the display off (and saw a huge gape-mouthed fish, a bug eater) and on. Three smaller brighter dots: switch off (a triune family swimming hard after Flutterby) and on. A cloud of tiny dots would be birds; he didn’t bother to look. The big crimson blotch wouid be the bug eater again. A smaller glare (off) was the triune family, now joined for cursorial hunting, not that they’d ever catch Fiutterby.

and a crimson glare in his peripheral vision. He switched the display off and turned.

She was there beside him on the twenty-ce’meter-wide ledge.

She wasn’t a dwarf. She was short and stocky, but longer than Maxell Curtz by ten or twelve ce’meters. As Curtz realized that, she smiled enchantingiy, and dropped to one knee on the ledge. It brought them face to face.

“Thank you for my life,” she said. “I’m Harp.”

He opened his helmet and tilted it back. “Guardian Maxell Curtz. I’ve been looking for refugees with heat vision. All I’m finding is scavengers. How are you doing?”

“I’m all right. I’m worried about my people in the tufts.”

“Are they really in trouble?”

“Well, they’re not in good shape. They’ve got two short trees, each with one tuft, falling out of the median in opposite directions. The median’s where everything is, air and water and food. The out tuft has the steam rocket, but the others could all die before they’re blown back.”

Harp’s chin was pointed and her mouth was small, with a curve like

a recurved bow. It would always look pursed for kissing. Curtz was having trouble concentrating. He said, “We’ll send them ships.”

“Thank you.”

Guardian Curtz smiled back. “Trust the Navy, and be glad you live this close to the Admiralty. Rescue is what we do best.”

The crew were in motion now, scampering over the hull, unrolling many square meters of silvered cloth onto a wire frame. Curtz said, “There, now, we’re out of that goop,” as if he were running the show. “Now we can send a mirror message to Headquarters. Four or five days, we’ll have ships at both tufts.”

“At what price, Guardian?”

Maxell was a bit jolted. Climbers didn’t know about bargains and money, did they? He would have preferred to talk in terms of gallantry and rescue and the benefits of belonging to a mighty empire, and.

“Your credit’s good. Were you thinking of buying elsewhere?”

Her smile had faded. “It isn’t as if we could do without. My father saw a half-tree once, before we moved into the Grove. The tree was fine, very green and thriving, already growing another out tuft. It must have taken its own sweet time floating back into the Smoke Ring. Some of the tribe must have jumped. The rest looked like they’d suffocated. All dead.”

“Two ships can evacuate a whole tuft if there’s not enough air for

them.”

“Your motor needs air, doesn’t it?”

oOps.

Captain Murphy was near the nose, dictating to Renho as he shifted the mirror. Curtz jumped along the hull, stopped himself with a jerk at his line. Behind him there was music. Harp had begun playing, using the wind from the propeller.

“It’s a matter now of pride!

We are after Nessie’s hide—”

“Captain?”

“Guardian. How’s our songbird?”

“Cool as a snow cloud. She must do this every day. In fact she’s got a suggestion.”

Murphy stared. “She’s just a climber, stet?”

“I want to tell Headquarters to send rockets to the half-trees. Spinner ships are air-breathing. The motor could run out of air.”

“Actually . . . good point, Guardian. Renho, you heard?”

Renho was already wobbling the mirror back and forth. The beam pulsed against the faint haze, pointing back into the Admiralty.

CHAPTER TWO

YEAR 419 DAY 115

Triunes were hunting birds, ubiquitous throughout the Smoke Ring. The tribemark for London Tree had been triunes mated for distance flying, male and female and child all locked belly-to-belly into a three-lobed torpedo, seen nose-on.

Brighton Tree was a colony of London Tree. Brighton’s tribemark was a triune family just separating to hunt. Aim’s kites bore the same mark.

The tribemark glowed at the tree’s midpoint, scarlet and yellow dye on a black char background, nine meters across. Lift lines rose toward it from both tufts, and a pair of huts bracketed it. The dye was fading and half overgrown with bark. To Aim Newbry it was the sight of home, the certain knowledge that he was not lost in the sky.

Aim was decelerating, the free kite pulling in-and-east. His passengers led him westward toward the triune symbol. They had grown weary of terror during four days of flying. Now they only clung in silence. Aim had grown to hate their shifting, uneasy weight.

Somebody was waiting next to one of the huts.

Aim brought his passengers to a stop a few tens of meters short of the trunk. Better than smashing them against the bark. Tired men make mistakes. Aim started to bring the free kite around. . . almost no wind, and tricky too, distorted by the two-klomter thickness of the trunk . . . He gave up and stowed the kites instead, because Capability’s Captain Ling was kick-kick-kicking at the end of the line, towing them all toward the tree.

The man on the bark came flapping out to help. Aim recognized his younger brother David. David and Ling flew the line back to the trunk and began pulling in the rest.

One by one the refugees spread themselves across the bark, men and women and children, facedown, clawing and twitching as if trying to mate with the tree. Aim was the last to be reeled in. He tethered himself and let it go at that, for his dignity’s sake.

“You didn’t say you’d gone hunting,” David said.

“I’d gladly have shared the catch,” Aim answered. His mind was fuzzy with exhaustion.

“Captain Burns says they can have the in tuft.”

The in tuft had been empty for just over two years. Shortly after the tree arrived in the East Grove, most of the crops had died quite suddenly and for unknown reasons. Aim said, “Good. You can tell Captain Ling—him—but give him some time first.”

“I’d say he needs it! Are you all right?”

“Tired.”

“Bertam and Gilly got back without you. The others are still out.”

“There was a Navy ship. I sent Stevn there to get help.”

“Did you. What about Marlo?”

“He was flying nicely, last I saw him. He’s the oldest, he did fine on the tests . . .“ Two boys missing out of four.

Ling and two others had recovered a little. They were examining the lift arrangements, tactfully out of earshot.

David was studying his face. “You and Natlee are having trouble, stet?”

Aim shrugged. “Nothing special.”

“She doesn’t smile anymore, and the kids don’t talk to each other. Now, what is it? She’s carried guests before.”

“Sure, David, and she turns mean as a snake. You never noticed?”

“No. Three children and, what, a dozen lost ones? She’d be used to it. Other women don’t have trouble carrying guests.”

“Nobody but Natlee. David, I’m too tired for this.”

“I would have noticed. This is something else, Aim. When Bertam and Gilly came down, and no Stevn, I saw Natlee’s face. Have you ever taken her flying?”

“Hah! I got her as far as the lift line. As soon as we . . . yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Natlee is afraid of failing. There’s just no reasoning with that kind of fear.”

“She doesn’t want Stevn flying either. Stet?”

“As soon as the line lifted us clear of the foliage, as soon as she saw open sky, Natlee freaked. No, she doesn’t want Stevn flying. She doesn’t want me flying, and I’m the Kitemaster!”

“Look, if. . .“ If Stevn doesn’t come back. “If you need help, come to me.”

“David, she’ll be all right as soon as our guest is born. And Stevn, he’s . . .“ Had training? It was their first time in the sky. The boys had flown kites from the branch, they’d climbed to the midpoint and watched Aim flying. That wasn’t training. First time out, and he’d lost two students including his own son.

First things first. “Captain Ling, you can leave the children with me. Take whoever can travel and go down on the lift line. There’ll be a lift cage along for the children.”

Ling said, “I’ll wait for my people, Kitemaster.”

“Stet.” He was their Captain. “David, go home.”

“Aim, have you noticed?” David pointed east.

A rectangular fleck . . . a pair of yellow flecks. Mario?

“That’s good. Now go down to your dinner.” Alin would not be stared at while he waited.

“Will you and Mario join us? Shall I tell—”

“I’ll send Mario down. The Navy ship— If Stevn—” And if it didn’t come, he’d still sleep better on the trunk. If he went down without Stevn, Natiee would make him fight before she’d let him rest.

David seemed to read his thoughts. He moved away to speak to Captain Ling, who was stringing refugees on the line to the in tuft. “Captain Burns begs you to make free of our unoccupied in tuft . .

Aim tuned him out. The kites did seem to be coming here. Yellow? He didn’t notice when David left.

Ling didn’t try to rush his people. Many needed more time to huddle against the bark. He asked, “Who’s running the treadwheel, Kite-master?”

“No treadwheei, Captain. We’ve got a windmill moving the lift line.”

Ling nodded and changed the subject. “And you don’t seem to have a rocket. How on Earth did you get to the East Grove?”

“Classified, sir. You can examine the windmill, though.” Ling clearly hadn’t recognized the word.

The pair of kites was closer now. Yellow with a broad scarlet stripe. Aim felt the knot of his intestines sliding loose.

Ling was counting his citizens. Twenty citizens and eleven children:

a big jump in Brighton Tree’s population. No wonder Burns wanted them in the empty tuft. But Ling must be counting the ones who were missing. He dmdn’t look happy . . . Hell, he looked as tired as they did, finally. He put them on the line and watched it carry them in. Adults only: a child might lose his grip.

The cage came up. AIm used a ratchet to disconnect it from the line. He helped Ling load the children in. While Captain Ling spoke to the children, Aim wandered away to wait for Mario and his passengers.

Mario was close now. His mouth was slack with exhaustion. His arms and legs moved in jerks. Two frightened older women clung to his tow line and each other.

An exhausted rage was trying to boil up inside Alin. He should be proud; perhaps he was. . . but it hurt his mind to watch his student trying to maneuver. His own musculature kept trying to help.

When Mario thumped against the trunk, Ling and Aim were there to catch his line. They towed the women in. The old women wrapped themselves around Captain Ling. He made soothing noises and presently helped them into the lift cage.

“You were to come straight back to the midpoint,” Aim said.

“Kitemaster, I saved lives!”

“You saved them. Good. But I might have had to go looking for you. Do I look as tired as I feel?” Mario didn’t answer. “I could go back and search through that cloud of bark and bugs. But you didn’t have orders to be there. Maybe you lost your kites. Maybe I should be looking east and in—”

“Stet, Kitemaster, stet.” I’m sorry. The boy was as tired as Alin.

“Look, when you get down, my wife will have questions. Tell her 1 didn’t send you do to rescue work. You’re a hero. It was all your own idea.”

That surprised Marlo through his fog of fatigue. “You’re not coming down?”

“No. I’ll sleep better falling. Tell the out-Captain . . . tell everyone I’ll be down for breakfast.”

Mario took the outline and was carried away.

What he had taken for distant birds, and dismissed, weren’t. Four more refugees, winged, definitely headed for Brighton if exhaustion and exposure didn’t kill them first.

Ling hadn’t reconnected the lift cage yet. He called, “Kitemaster? Is that your Navy ship?”

Aim peered toward the darkened Clump.

“No, no, down!”

It still didn’t register. Various tribes used up and down in various ways, often obscene. . . but Ling was pointing along the trunk, in toward Voy.

A Navy spinner ship was landing in the tuft.

Aim said, “Hell, I thought they’d come to the midpoint. Captain, I think I’ll join you.”

YEAR 419 DAY 116

Flutterby moved into place and hovered above the in tuft of Brighton Tree. The dark trunk seemed a pure mathematical entity, a cylinder rising to a vanishing point. The foliage looked like a soft, billowy green cloud.

Captain Murphy chopped air with her hand. Dunninger turned off the fuel feed. The propeller blades unblurred, slowed, stopped.

The tide eased to nothing under Maxell’s feet: reassuring, until he realized .

Stevn Newbry, braced in the cabin doorway, said, “Hey . . .“ and bit off further comment.

Capability’s Harp tightened her grip on the lines. “We’ll fall.”

“I’ve done this before,” Captain Murphy said briskly. “Can’t land on the bare branch. It’s only a meter wide.”

Harp’s voice went just a bit ragged. “Can’t you dock at the midpoint?”

“Oh, sure. And then ride forty klomters down to the tuft, hanging on to a line strung by somebody else? No, thank you.”

But Flutterby was definitely failing, and Maxell Curtz’s knuckles were

white. Surely Captain Murphy wouldn’t risk the propeller. Of course not. And her smile was purely malicious.

The green billows caught them and buoyed them. A propeller blade bent, and recoiled. Murphy said, “All out. Renho, we’ll have refugees coming down at us pretty quick. How many did you see?”

“Hard to tell, Captain. Two kitemen pulling. . . somewhere around twenty, thirty?”

“They’ll need help. Renho, Dunninger, escort the climbers. Rabin, we’ll stay with the ship. Hey, boy . . . Stevn? Show us a way in.”

The young kiteman crawled out of the cabin and paused in the sunlight. Curtz had watched his fear dwindle as they approached the tree. Had seen his face light when they spotted one, then another pair of kites in flight. Now he watched him stretched like a growing plant as he savored the tide.

Curtz was feeling natural tide for the first time. It was weird but tolerable. He knew intellectually that he was under thrust, as in a ship’s cabin. Tension in the trunk was pulling the tuft outward against the inward pull of Levoy’s Star.

Stevn Newbry bounded across the greenery in shallow arcs. Against the constant whistle of the wind Renho called, “Hey!”

The boy calied back, “Citizen Renho, the corridors are all choked off. Our whole tribe moved out of here two years ago. I’ve got to. . . here, maybe . . . find an opening. Here!”

Renho jumped in a shallow arc toward Stevn. Harp followed. That decided Maxell Curtz. He braced against a submerged spine branch and jumped after her.

Too high. A touch of boot jets put him almost behind Harp. Stevn waited until they were close, then disappeared: poof and a puff of pollen, gone.

Harp landed, looked about her, than dived into the green billows.

Maxell found a dimple in the foliage. He pushed through—and was blind.

The Sun at nadir is only dimmer and more blurred than the Sun at zenith. Voy’s light never changes: it’s always at nadir. Darkness can be found inside a storm. The Dark is the sunless core of the Clump, a sluggish storm of matter squeezed close until it is almost solid. . . yet darkness is rare in the Smoke Ring.

Curtz might have guessed that it would be dim in the in tuft of Brighton Tree, too. But it was black!

Curtz moved by feel and by Harp’s rustling. Rustling behind him told him that Renho and Dunninger had found their way in. All the corridors

had closed to the width of a child. Luxuriant foliage clogged everything, leaving no room for man. Man formed no part of an integral tree’s intent.

Ahead of him, the climber boy said, “It turns here. Everyone all right?” Voices answered him.

Maxell reached what must be the turn: lower pressure this way . Behind him Renho asked, “You all right, Guardian?”

“I feel claustrophobic . . . and blind, of course.” “Hungry?”

“That too. We’ll have to make a chance to hunt.”

Renho chuckled. Dunninger snickered. Stevn barked incredulous laughter, then tried to choke it back.

Renho had set him up. He should have remembered: he was buried in food! He stripped a branchiet of the fluffy stuff that covered it and brought it to his mouth. He licked it.

Renho was blind too. “Try some foliage, then, Silver Man.”

“Mmmm!”

Harp called back, “That’s the best thing about tree living. Eat all you want. It keeps the corridors open.”

“Mmmm! Twuss me. I ne’wer— ‘Ff thiss— Nemmine.”

“I think he likes it,” Renho chortled.

The corridors twisted like wormholes through an apple. The Sun circled unseen. How far had they traveled, for how long? Impossible to tell . but Maxell’s knees recoiled from springy solidity. He reached down to touch interlaced spine branches.

Then the corridor opened out.

He’d grown used to the dark. The sudden light was painful. He had to guess some of what he was seeing:

All the outlines were soft and rounded, overgrown. Stevn Newbry bounded through the open space toward a westward-facing conical pit

the treemouth, no doubt, as this must have been the Commons. The smell was earthy, faintly unpleasant. Yellow-white Sunlight glared through sparser foliage in radial beams.

Stevn said, “Wow. I grew up here. It’s like there were never people here at all.”

A whirring, a steady mechanical sound from overhead. Maxell asked, “What’s that?”

“Let’s go see,” Harp said instantly.

They followed the sound up toward the light.

Above the foliage, the trunk seemed to rise forever. Water collected all along its length and thundered down the east face into the tuft. And here on the north side, a bigger version of Flutterby’s motor spun round and round in the ceaseless west wind.

“Clever,” Maxell said.

Harp examined the structure with some care. A line ran round a wheel that turned on the propeller’s axis, then straight out along the trunk. She said, “I was here two years ago. They wouldn’t let any of us see the lift mechanisms. They wanted to trade their secrets for ours. We don’t have any.”

“What, none?”

She smiled at him. “Whatever you want to know, just ask. We used a treadwheei and a line with loops along it. Cages are for effetes.”

Stevn popped up nearby. He said, “In about two days we’ll have a thousand refugees coming down at us. Misters Renho and Dunninger have gone hunting. We’ll want to feed them.”

Harp said, “Good. Did you have a garden?”

“Yah. The bad news is, you’re in it.”

Harp looked around her. “Hah! Well, we can search. Guardian, would you rather hunt? Mister Dunninger says he’s hunted trees . .

“I’ll help you look for crop plants.” The silver suit made him too clumsy to hunt anything more agile than a carrot, and he wasn’t about to take it off among strangers. “Let’s see, branchlets migrate along the branch into the treemouth, so if the garden used to be here—”

Stevn was climbing. He called back, “Actually it was on top and forty meters east. Earthlife needs sunlight. We’d let it drift for a year and then replant. But the way the branchlets move, any plant that lived through the famine is going to be all over the top of the tuft. Like . . . here!” He dropped something the size of Maxell’s head. “Most of the crops died, but there should be something.”

The object drifted down; Maxell jumped and caught it halfway. A big mushroom.

They searched, burrowing through the greenery like worms in an apple, while the sun arced from west to east. There were runner beans, and little red beans, and oats. Harp found a corn plant, but nothing was growing on it. The find of the day was a string of small trees, the roots twined intimately with the foliage, bearing tiny red apples.

Harp looked tired, drained . . . hardly surprising, given what she’d been through. Her voice still set Maxell’s nerves singing. “They’ll want food and warmth and a bath and rest. Even if the hunters get nothing, we’ve got food. Let’s do something about warmth.”

Harp and Stevn burrowed back down into the wicker-floored open space, the Commons. They searched, half-burrowing. Stevn began tearing at foliage, throwing it behind him. Maxell joined him, for lack of a better idea. Suddenly his knuckles brushed stone.

Big stones formed a ring three meters across, buried beneath the foliage.

“Rock must be hard to find in a tree,” Maxell said.

“They were pried out of the trunk,” Stevn said. “After we moved to

the out tuft, we kids had to find more. There weren’t enough, so Captain Rennick took some wingmen out to a dried-up pond. But you’ve got to have something, because you sure don’t want a fire getting loose in a tree tuft!”

Harp and Stevn had run out of strength. They settled into the foliage while Maxell continued to expose the stone ring. “What do we burn here?” he asked.

Stevn laughed. “What have we got plenty of?”

Burning branchlets threw an orange light through the Commons, a light kinder than the daylight pouring in from above. Maxell let it warm his hands. “Take a break,” he called to Harp, who had wandered away and was searching through foliage.

A head popped through the Commons floor. Dunninger looked around him and said, “Ah! A fire!” His hand rose too. “There are angel moles everywhere! I got these in a few minutes of just following the rustling.”

Maxell took the bundle: five narrow short-furred bodies. “Where’s Renho?”

“Underside. He still thinks he can catch a turkey or something.”

“That’d be good. Otherwise we could use a few more angel moles.”

Harp called, “Come back in half a day, we’ll have a bath.”

“Oh, lady-bard, that would go nicely!”

Maxell asked, “Won’t they want food and sleep first?”

Stevn said, “If we’re going to cook anything, we may want to dig out the bath and use it as a vat.”

Harp objected. “No, Stevn, the bath is important! It binds us together. For that matter, we should be clean before the refugees get down. Tree-fodder, where did they put it? Stevn?”

“Maybe they didn’t have one,” Maxell suggested. “Not all climber cultures are alike.”

“Oh, we had a bath,” Stevn said. He jumped high, clutched foliage and began crawling down. Maxell realized that he was following the waterfall. “Here,” he said suddenly.

Again they tore away foliage. The work was getting to Maxell’s back. He took it for granted that he was doing most of the work. Dwarves were stronger than normal men. He continued uprooting foliage until they had exposed a hemispherical ceramic bowl.

“Big enough to boil a dozen citizens at once,” he said.

“Right. Help me move this.” Harp had found a massive wooden wall, hinged at one end. The foliage that half-hid it impeded its swing. They pushed it across the waterfall, and were soaked before they finished.

The diverted waterfall began to fill the bowl.

“And we still don’t have a cookpot,” Maxell said.

“Nope.” It didn’t bother Harp. She seemed half-asleep, watching the bowl fill.

Would they expect him to take off the pressure suit? He couldn’t do that; but it looked like he’d better have a damn good excuse. The silver suit was his uniform and his defenses and the measure of his value.

Renho and Dunninger returned. Dunninger had another cluster of angel moles. Renho pulled a respectable mass up through the foliage: a half-grown triune a bit smaller than he was. They moved away to butcher their catch.

On no visible signal, Harp and Stevn began taking off their clothes.

She was wonderfui. Maxell tried to keep his jaw closed, his eyes half-lowered; he certainly couldn’t keep them off Harp. Normal women had always seemed fragile to him, too long and narrow; and while they might admire his muscle, they chose taller men.

Renho and Dunninger noticed what was going on. They began to strip too. They all set their bundled clothes handy and entered the pool.

Harp grinned at him. “Doesn’t it come off?”

“Classified,” the Silver Man said automatically. But anyone who might steal a silver suit was here within his sight. Right? And a Navy-trained dwarf was the equal of any four citizens, right? And any fool could see that if he didn’t get into that bath he’d be ostracizing himself, very bad vibes for the Admiralty, and he certainly couldn’t do it with the suit on, because water might damage something inside— He stepped into the foliage to get it off. The means were certainly classified.

If he’d had his life to live over again, he’d have been first into the bath. The way he’d hesitated, everyone watched him swim out of the foliage and enter the water. It was cold. He masked a grimace and submerged himself. He asked, “Is body heat supposed to make this warmer?”

Harp laughed. Stevn said, “Sitzen Tree is supposed to have their fireplace next to the bath, so one side gets hot.”

“The whole grove thinks they’re effetes,” Harp said.

She didn’t know about Admiralty practices. Renho and Dunninger were grinning, avoiding his eye and each other’s. Maxell said, “What do we use for soap?”

“Soak a bit, then we rub each other clean. I’ll show you.”

Maxell didn’t swallow his grin, because the rest were grinning too. Harp was going to be sparkingly clean.

“Guardian,” she said, “How do you like tree life?”

“It’s all new to me. Has its attractions, though. How are you feeling? It must have been a nightmare, your tree coming apart.”

“Oh, yes.” She took his hand underwater. Maxell was surprised, then pleased.

“Did you get any warning?”

She was silent for a few breaths. Then, “The whole tree was lurching around. The floor of the Commons twisted and ripped apart under us. We could hear a kind of bass scream, the sound of tearing wood, I guess. So we had some time, some warning, but what were we going to do with it? We tied the children in the loops and ran the treadmill to get them up quick, and then rode the line ourselves. Some of us snatched wings before it all ripped loose. I grabbed my windpipe instead.

“Some of us didn’t want to come, and some of the children hid when we tried to gather them up. We weren’t going to force them. We didn’t have room. They’re still in the tuft, I guess.”

Stevn left the water to pluck spmne branches. These he distributed with ritual precision. The ritual continued: the five fed each other foliage until the branches were bare, then began scraping each others’ backs with the springy branchlets. Backs and shoulders, and then they scraped themselves.

Maxell, last to scrape Harp’s back, took it easy. The skin was already pink. And while he was close enough, he half-whispered, “When I was surrounded by foliage and starving—”

“Yes?” Her head turned; her lips were very close.

“Thank you for not laughing.”

“I’ve visited half the trees in the grove, you know. They’re all different. I don’t laugh at anyone.”

‘‘I try not to.’’

“Guardian, would you like to find some privacy with me?”

Though they were both naked and whispering, this seemed very sudden. Maxell felt a stutter coming on. He made himself say, “Yes. Absolutely. Can I take my suit?”

She was surprised, but she didn’t laugh. “Something inventive?”

“No, I have to guard it. Standing orders.”

CHAPTER THREE

YEAR 419 DAY 118

Sounds trickled through his sleeping mind: snores, voices, complaints, crying children; wind, growing gradually louder; “Kitemaster? Kite-master?” all faintly irritating, all “Kitemaster?”

“Yuh.” He was standing half-upright in a wobbly lift cage. Everything hurt. He felt beaten half to death . . . but not sleepy. Alert. His eyes

were crusted and the Sun was too bright, west and a little in. The Sun had been west and a little out when the cage began to fall.

Between waking and waking was generally about four and a half days standard days: orbits of Goidblatt’s World. Nearer Levoy’s Star the

days ran shorter. Farther out, they ran longer. A sleep was a day and a half to two days; but a voyage from the midpoint to the in tuft took longer than that. He must have slept for two days and a little, because the tuft was coming up fast— “Kitemaster, what do we do?”

“Brake. There’s a brake. Ling, it’s hardwood, eyeball height in one corner. I think it’s behind those two white-haired—” Ling dove into the crowd; they made way. “Found it? Two flat pieces of wood. Squeeze them together.” The lift cage jerked and surged, and everyone still sleeping woke. “Not so hard, Captain, you’ll break it! Just gently, with both hands . . . a little harder. Remember, you’re not just braking a cageful of citizens, you’re braking the whole system. Spit on it if it smokes.”

The cage slowed.

Below was a Navy spinner ship, deeply nested, the first Aim had seen so close. For a made thing, it was big. A windmill turning on an oddly curved box, a tank, an octagonal hut, all decorated unimagmnatively in letters and numbers, like Admiralty wings; all festooned with rope. Green billows rose up to hide it.

The channel for the cage and lift lines had grown closed. No, there it was, just a pucker, and next to it the windmill spinning merriiy, its blades almost cutting foliage. He’d seen it this way a hundred times .

When Alin was eight years old, the Scientist caused a windmill to be built and hooked to the treadwheei that ran the lift lines. After that the lift lines were simply left running. They only called the kids to the treadwheel for extra power to lift a loaded cage.

Aim had liked the treadwheel, the companionship, the chance to show off muscle. Maybe that was why he’d become the Liftmaster’s Apprentice.

He was twenty when the crops failed. The tribe had migrated to the out tuft, traveling naked for fear of bringing contamination. Those had been frantically busy days. Lift lines had to be run to the out tuft, and a windmill built, and eventually a treadwheel and more lift cages; foraging parties on the truth needed transportation, and so did any food they found; and everything needed to be lifted to the midpoint and then out . .

He’d been Liftmaster’s Apprentice when ten Admiralty kitemen came saiiing out of the sky to touch down at Brighton’s midpoint. He’d known his destiny in that instant.

He’d asked for a pair of kites.

They’d laughed. It must have seemed funny to these tourists, a climber thing, this unspoken understanding that a gift would be repaid, eventually, somehow. But the kiteman Chet Bussjak had offered a trade.

It was all arranged in advance, carefully spelled out. For Bussjak’s set of kites, plus several sleeps spent teaching Aim how to make and bind more kites, Bussjak would take the kites they made together (proof that the making was taught well!) plus Aim’s wings.

It was easy to see why Bussjak wanted those. The wings bound to the kitemen’s backs were crude things, unpainted, ugly.

So Liftmaster Kent had taken another apprentice— “Brake!” Aim shouted. He’d never descended the tree with such a

load. The cage plunged into the foliage, into darkness and a roar of shattering branchiets loud enough to drown out the yelling, and slapped down hard. With his head ringing, Alin leapt to disconnect the cage before the lift line could pull it back out.

“Sorry,” he said.

Ling bellowed, “I can’t see a damn thing! Kitemaster, you’ve really All right, so you’ve been gone for two years, but this place is really What’s next?”

Aim’s sight was coming back. Parallel beams of sunlight flared from out. From in, from below. . . the red glow of a fire?

There were five shadows perched around the orange-white light of a rock firepit. Then one was flying toward him, backlighted by the glow. Stevn.

Aim caught him in the air. They drifted backward, and settled into green cloud.

“Boy, are you all right?”

“Sure. Well, I hurt.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. My hands. Wrists.”

The cage had emptied. The chatter of Linnet’s people faded as they all streamed toward the fire.

“Me too, but we did good. Everyone came back. What’s going on here? Who’s the—” In his concern for Stevn, AIm had only glimpsed the others at the fire. “Who’s the gleaming. . . silver man? It’s a Guardian!”

Stevn tugged at his arm. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

“No, hold a breath. I should know a little more. The Guardian?”

“He flew out to get me when I got close enough. They hadn’t seen the tree. When I pointed it out they went right in, but all we found was Harp.”

“Did you have any trouble with the kites?”

“No, Dad, it was just a straight shot, just set the kites and wait. I was afraid the fog would thicken up, but it didn’t. Riding back in a Navy ship was a kick. Noisy, though. When the windmill spins it’s like a thousand little men pounding with hammers.”

“There’s supposed to be little explosions going off in that box.” Aim was watching while he listened. Captain Ling and his men and women and chiidren had only paused at the fire. There was a flurry of activity back . . . “Isn’t that where we had the bath?”

“Yes. We ripped out the foliage and filled it. Harp thinks it’s important, ‘important bonding ritual,’ and maybe she had another reason too.”

“Capability’s Harp?”

“Right. Dad, there’s food at the fire.”

At the rock firepit the overgrowth of foliage had been torn away to prevent the fire’s spreading, and used to feed the fire itself. There were angel moles and apples broiled on spine branches. The horde hadn’t left much.

Stevn said, “Not all the earthlife died. We’ve got oats and two kinds of beans, but we couldn’t figure how to cook them.”

“Not to mention enough foliage to strangle us au if we don’t eat fast enough. I’d say the tuft’s ready for occupancy. What else don’t I know?”

“This tuft’s infested with angel moles. We shouid take some back. And we got the bath going.”

“Who did you bring? Who didn’t you bring?”

“Captain Murphy and one of the crew stayed with Flutterby. We’ve got two crew and Guardian Curtz and Harp.”

From the blurred activity in the dark beyond the fire, one separated and climbed toward sunlight. Aim’s dark vision must have been improving. He saw Capability’s Harp with fire in her hair, vivid as his memory, where every other human shape had been a blur. She perched herself above the bath: a creature of magic, backlit by yellow-white sunlight, playing a windpipe in the low breeze. Half-heard music wafted toward them.

Stevn said, “She went off into the bushes with the Guardian. Right out of the bath, naked, hauling that silver suit after them.”

Alin suppressed a guffaw.

“But she got the bath set up first. The silver suit has a smell to it that must be four hundred years old. Yug! Getting the suit off him was like pulling teeth, and getting the smell off took awhile, and now he’s back in the suit.”

“He did save her life . . . yours too.”

“Sorry.”

Harp recognized Aim, or maybe Stevn, and waved. They both waved back. Alin asked, “Did anyone ever tell you about bards?”

“What about bards?”

“Bards don’t marry. It seems to be that way in every tree. There’s always a bard, and bards belong to everyone. Nobody gets mad if his wife rubs up against a bard, and of course they’re usually men. Harp is the only woman bard I know about.”

“Have you rubbed up against Capability’s Harp?” Aim nodded.

“Does Mom know?”

“Yes.’’

“She doesn’t care?”

“It makes Natlee furious every time she thinks about it. But it’s not supposed to. Stevn—”

“We don’t mention her.”

“She’ll ask. She’ll know what tree came apart. Stick with me, stet? Harp will never speak a word to me without you right beside me.”

‘‘Stet.’’

“I wonder why the dwarf? They all saved her life. Did she—”

“Just the dwarf.”

The little man was a power in the Admiralty. And he was short.

They worked their way down a slope of foliage half-shaped into ledges. Stevn and the rest had uncovered just the rim of the hemispherical bowl. It was very crowded. Above the sloshing and murmuring Alin called, “Captain Ling?”

“Who asks?”

“Your companion in flight.”

“Kitemaster! Join us by all means!” Ling lolled in a soup of bodies. “I must say, it’s startling to find such luxury beneath the mask of overgrown foliage. The seats above the treemouth, for instance. And the firepit. Elegant.” Something in his tone suggested that Captain Ling did not quite approve.

Aim stripped and entered the water. It wasn’t jarringly cold. Thirty-odd bodies must have warmed it.

He must have been in body contact with half that many. He let his eyelids fall and savored sensations. His head lolled on someone’s shoulder, somebody’s child wiggled under his arm, a near-infant stood on his knee and studied him. Ripples marched as someone scrubbed someone’s back. A foot caressed his calf and a woman smiled. Sleepy eyes were all about him, the sloshing and the faintly heard music and the quiet.

And the Silver Man settling himself on a ledge above the bath. “Captain Ling, what’s going to happen to the rest of your tribe? Just how much rescue are they going to need? Harp tried to tell me a little—”

“Yes. Well, splitting is how integral trees breed.” Ling showed no anger at being confronted in his bath. “They fall apart. Now, the half that’s falling in, it’s got only the in tuft, stet? The other end was the midpoint; it’s just broken wood.

“So the wind is blowing just on the in tuft, so it blows the whole tree east, the way the Smoke Ring turns. You push the tree east, it wants a wider orbit. East takes you out. Likewise the other half-tree, which is falling out—”

“So they’re both being pushed back to the median.”

“Exactly. The wind blows it west, against its motion, so it wants a narrower orbit. Then again, the out half-tree had the rocket motor. It can get back by itself.”

“So now you’ve got two Capability Trees?”

“Maybe. Maybe inhabited by corpses. We’ll be very glad of your rescue maneuvers.”

A man began scrubbing Aim’s upper back; a woman started on his lower back. Then they traded. Body language and blooming romance across AIm’s back. It would have been fun without the treefeeding Silver Man. . . who.

He said, “Guardian, thank you for your courtesy to my son.” Fair’s fair.

Maxell Curtz was glad that he had bathed earlier. Older citizens often said that the Clump had grown crowded; but they never got as close together as this! His inclination was to loll in the foliage somewhere and remember Harp while he listened to Harp’s voice. Instead, with Renho and Dunninger, he perched on the rim of the bowl and tried to make conversation.

To Aim Newbry he said, “Not at all. Stevn guided us to where we could do some real good.” The so-called Kitemaster was in his thirties, short (but not dwarfed) and muscular, like any climber, but with a kite-man’s startling muscular development in his wrists and forearms. Maxell asked, “Your people used to live here?”

“Up to a couple of years ago. A little after we joined the Grove, most of the crops died. We had to move out. Sitzen and Research and Capability Trees gave us seeds, but we still had to get to the Admiralty and buy more. It’s the only time any of us have gone to the Admiralty.”

“Good thing you were already in reach,” Maxell said. Give. Buy. For sixty people in a tree, it was easy to keep obligations straight. For eleven trees in a Grove, not so easy. A tree might move, or come apart. For two thousand people in a region that changed shape faster than any artist could draw a map . .

Money was less fragile than memory; money lost shape less easily than an obligation.

Admiralty ships had contacted a good many trees over past centuries. Some moved into the East Grove, for access to the Admiralty and the benefits of civilization. Too many did not. For that matter— “How did you get into the Grove, Kitemaster? We looked for a steam rocket.”

“Guardian, that’s classified.”

The man was within his rights. Maxell changed the subject. “Captain Ling, we are gathering civilization. Why is it that any tree doesn’t come to us right away?”

Harp’s music had faded: she was listening.

“Our ships go out through the Smoke Ring to find the places of Man. We talk. We leave word how to find the Admiralty. We leave plans for steam rockets. You need a way to move your tree anyway, because any passage past Gold can hurl you out into the gas torus where you’il suffocate.”

“We built our rocket without help,” Ling said. AIm Newbry said nothing.

A tree couldn’t just drift into the Grove, could it? Sure it could. It wasn’t likely, but it could happen . . . and a treeful of climbers might well enjoy bewildering the au-powerful Admiralty.

“The Admiralty is the center of knowledge throughout the Smoke Ring. Why would any tribe hesitate?”

Harp was quietly settling between Curtz and Stevn.

Ling said, “I wouldn’t want to offend our rescuers.”

“I seriously want to know, Captain.”

Captain Ling said, “Well, your Admiralty isn’t all good.”

“How so?”

“The air’s thick with garbage.”

“There are garbage collectors.”

“They don’t collect it all.”

Ling had hit a nerve. The garbage probiem had increased with the population, even in Maxell’s brief lifespan.

Ling said, “We don’t visit the Clump that often, but word does pass among the trees, Guardian. We’re told about the garbage, the crime rate theft. . . violence. . . fringe addiction.”

“Don’t you have these things in a tree?”

“Not really. We know each other, don’t you see? You can’t use what you steal. It’ll be recognized. If you’re a bully, six of us other bullies will give you flying lessons, and if it keeps up, you’ll do it without wings. Fringe . . . well, fringe is fun, but it messes up your head. But nobody robs somebody for fringe. He finds it on the trunk. If he gets too fond of the stuff, we’ll still take care of him. He’ll be keeping the cookpot clean instead of hunting.”

He was getting reasonable answers. Joy! Maxell asked, “Couldn’t you be robbed by another tree?”

“They’d face hunting tools. Knives, harpoons, bows. But your Navy doesn’t like it when climbers carry those things in the Clump, so we can be robbed there.”

“Rescue?”

Harp spoke just beside him. “We hear stories about that too. We’re in debt now, aren’t we?”

Again? “Well, yes and no, Harp. The Admiralty thinks that charity works best if it pays for itself.”

“If I don’t understand that right away, it’s because Capability Tree never heard about money until we reached the Grove. So how are we expected to pay?”

“Labor, and there’s no hurry. You’ll pay some of the debt in mud.”

“Mud?”

“You have property rights in the mud that was the core of your tree. That stuff makes fine fertilizer.”

Harp laughed.

Dunninger said, “I hauled mud myself before I joined the Navy.” Aim Newbry asked, “Can that be done with kites?”

“That’s how we did it.” Dunninger lifted his arms. “See?”

“Kiteman?”

“Right.”

“If Brighton had had money, we could have just bought kites from a passing citizen. And kite-making instructions. And flying lessons. I don’t mind how hard I had to work for my kites,” Newbry said, “but what are we missing that we never thought of? We should have gone to the Clump long before. Then again . . . mud. We’d be competing with Admiralty kitemen. And you’ve been at it a lot longer than we have.”

“Yup. And we’ve got ships to haul the bigger blocks. Too bad,” said Dunninger.

Renho said, “You’re closer, though.”

“About ten times closer.” Newbry was suffering badly from indecision.

“You could be in there now,” Dunninger said. “Can’t deal with the Admiralty unless you tree has money. The Vivarium pays money for mud. Half goes to the hauler. And if you’re in there pulling mud around, you might run across a last refugee, the one who’s injured and can’t yell for help.”

Curtz was wishing he’d planned this. He thought he knew what would end Newbry’s hesitation. “The Admiralty merchants won’t even be in the easterly fringes for twenty or thirty days. Take some time to rest, you’d still make it.”

“Maybe.” Newbry pulled himself out of the water. “Time we were going. Come on, Stevn.”

YEAR 419 DAY 121

Where the lift lines turned at the midpoint, Aim and Stevn let go and kept coasting along the bark. Their kites were furled in their hands.

“You’re going,” Stevn said.

“I think so. Tow some of the mud from Capability Tree to the Vivarium. You want to come along?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Aim heard bitterness and didn’t like it. “This isn’t lives at stake, and the other boys have had time to rest. So?”

No answer.

“Bertam and Giliy and Marlow must have had five days’ sleep already. I’m dead tired, but I’m the Kitemaster, and Hell can freeze over before I let the Admiralty take all our mud. You’re dead tired too. So stay in the tuft.”

Stevn said, “I was scared all the time.”

‘ ‘Ah. ~

“I got the sails set, and I was never sure they were right. At first I was going way wide of the Navy ship, but I got myself turned, and then I still wasn’t sure. How far in can I go before the tree’s too far behind me to ever get back? What if the fog thickens up and I get lost? The sky goes on forever. What if the navvies never see me? The Scientist says if I get too far from the air I’ll pass out. Then what?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t want to say so.”

The other pulley was near. Aim snatched at an edge of bark sheet with one hand, got Stevn’s ankle with the other, and stopped their flight. “Here’s your ride down.”

Stevn didn’t move.

“I thought I was going to die, my first solo flight,” Aim said. “Everything I did took me farther from the tree. A triune family looked me over and never even bothered to separate.”

Stevn laughed.

“The only reason I was out there was, I didn’t want to be Liftmaster’s Apprentice the rest of my life. It looked like Liftmaster Kent was going to live forever. Still does.

“So you go on. Tell the Captain what’s going on, and ask him to send the other boys up. Tell your mother I’m going to make Brighton rich—”

“Dad, why don’t you tell them yourself?”

“No, I’ll stay on the trunk. I need the rest.”

“The Silver Man says you’ve got twenty or thirty days to rest! Talk things over with the Captain. See what we want from the Clump. You might even talk Mom into something.”

Stevn’s face closed down. He reached for the lift line.

Aim said, “Hold it. I see a lob. Let’s geta meal before we go down.”

“Where?”

“He’s poking an eye over the bark, just there. That must be where his burrow is.. Got your harpoon?”

“Yeah.”

“I just don’t like arguing,” Aim said. “I’d rather fly away, and I damn sure know some places nobody can follow me. I know I have to talk sometime, but it’s . . . it’s just . . . But if I can’t talk to your mother, my children’s mother, then I can’t talk to anyone, can I? Even you.”

“You’re coming down?”

“Yeah. But first I’ll show you how to boil a lob in zero tide.”