The Integral Trees

When had he lost control? Perhaps they had threatened to bypass the computer and go to manual control. They couldn't; but morale would disintegrate if they ever learned how little control they really had. Kendy might have surrendered on that basis.

Or he might have been curious.

He did not remember any part of what must have been a mutiny. He must have been played for a fool; he might not want to remember that. The crew had departed with eight of the ten CARMs and rifled the hydroponics to boot! It should never have been allowed.

He was reasonably sure that seven of the CARMs were inoperable. Some equipment might have been salvaged…and the last CARM had now ceased its spray of incandescent water vapor. Kendy ceased beaming his message. The Smoke Ring glowed white and featureless beneath him.

One day he would know. Would they remember him at all?

Kendy waited.

Chapter Six

Middle Ground

THE PATCH OF OLD-MAN'S-HAIR SHOULD HAVE BEEN TENDED long since. It was fifty to sixty meters across and had eaten half a meter deep into live wood. Parasol plants had rooted in the resulting compost, and matured, and spread their brightly colored blossoms to attract passing insects.

Minya watched the fire spread in intersecting curves within the fungus patch. Breezes tossed the choking smoke in unpredictable directions. The smoke drove clouds of mites out of the fungus and into the open. She was wishing Thanya's triad would arrive with water.

There were three triads of the Triune Squad now on the trunk.

Minya, Sal, and Smitta were nearing the median. Jeel's triad traversed up and down the trunk, ferrying provisions from the tuft, while Thanya's brought water from the lee.

Fire was usually no problem, but mistakes could happen.

"I love these climbs," Smitta said. She floated with her toes gripping an edge of bark. This close to the median, it was enough to hold her against the feeble tide. "I like floating…and where else can you see the entire Smoke Ring?"

Minya nodded. She didn't want to talk. When a problem couldn't be solved and wouldn't go away, what could one do but run? She had run as far as a human being could go. It was working: she felt at peace here, halfway between infinities.

The tree seemed to run forever in both directions. The Dark Tuft, backlit by Voy and the sun, was a halo of green fluff with a black core. Outward, Dalton-Qui

Maybe, maybe it would come. They didn't talk about it. Bad luck.

Between the drought and the recent political upsets, it had been too long since the Triune Squad had been free for treetending duty. They had been needed as police. One could hope that the executions had settled the troubles; but now the triads were finding parasites and patches of old-man's-hair everywhere on the trunk. Today they were burning virtually a field of the horrid stuff.

Motion caught Minya's eye, outward and windward. Blue-againstblue, hard to see, something big. The sun was nearly at nadir, glaring up. She held a hand beneath her eyes, and squinted, and presently said, "Triune."

Smitta snapped alert. "Interested in us? Sal!"

Sal sang out from behind the smoke cloud. "I see it."

Minya said, "They're interested. They're pretty close already."

Smitta had pulled herself against the trunk and was readying her weapons. "I fought a triune once. They're smarter than swordbirds. You can scare them off. Just remember, if we kill one, we'll have to kill all three."

The torpedo-shaped object was closer now. It was nearly the blue of the sky, slowly rotating. Six big eyes showed in turn around the circumference, and three great gauzy fins…one smaller than the other.

That would be the juvenile. Minya whispered, "What do we need?"

"Bows and arrows ready? Tether your arrow and scoop up some burning old-man's-hair on the point. Lucky we had a fire going. Know where your jet pods are, you may need them."

Minya could feel her heart pulsing in her throat. It was her second trip up the trunk…but Smitta and Sal had been up many times. They were tough and experienced. Sal was a burly, red-haired fortyyear-old who had joined the Triune Squad at age twelve. Smitta had been born a man; she was a woman by courtesy.

Stay clear of Smitta, Minya told herself. Smitta was slow to anger, but under pressure something could snap in her mind. Then Smitta fought like a berserker, even among her own, and the only way to at her was to pile on her.

Minya strung her hardwood bow and used an arrow point to dig a gob of burning fungus. Ready-?

The torpedo split in three. Three slender torpedoes flapped laz toward them, showing small lateral fins and violent-orange bellies. male and a female, forever mated, plus a single juvenile who would take on body mass fast, then mature more slowly. They divided only to ht or fight. The Triune Squad itself was named for the triune famil: interdependence.

The juvenile would be the smallest, the one hanging back a little. The adults swept forward.

"Aim for the male," Smitta said and loosed, the line trailing c behind the arrow. Which was male? Minya waited a moment to judge Smitta's target, then loosed her own weapon. She judged that U, weren't in range yet…and she was right; the male's body ripped him free of the arrows' paths, while the female bored in. Sal had hit back. Now she loosed, and the veering female caught an arrow in 1 fin.

She bellowed. She flapped once, and the arrow snapped free. appeared from the smoke, yanked into the sky. It didn't seem to boti her as she reeled in, her ancient metal bow slung safe over her should The smoldering old-man's-hair had been left on the female's tail, a she was flapping madly.

Smitta sent a tethered arrow winging at the juvenile.

Both adults screamed. The female tried to block the arrow. Too late. The juvenile didn't seem to see the arrow coming. Smitta yanked at the line and stopped it a meter short.

The female gaped.

The women were reeling frantically, but it wasn't necessary. The adults moved in alongside the infant, infinitely graceful. Small has reached out from their orange bellies to pull them together. Tb moved away like a single blurred blue ghost against the blue sky.

"See? They're smart. You can reason with them," Smitta said.

Sal pulled a teardrop-shaped jet pod from one of the cluster of pods that ran down and across the front of her tunic. She twisted the top and a cloud of seeds and mist spurted away from her, thrusting Sal back toward the bark.

She coiled line and stowed her weapons, including the valuable be Springy met4, it was, handed down from old to young within the Triune Squad for at least two hundred years. "Well done, troops, but I think the fire is getting to the wood. I wish Thanya would get here. She couldn't have missed us, could she?"

To Minya's eye, the fire might have reached wood by now, or not.

Hard to tell where old-man's-hair shaded over into rotted wood. "It's not bad yet," she said.

"I hate to waste jet pods, but…treefodder. I want to look for them," Sal decided. She gathered her legs under her, hands gripping the bark to brace herself, and jumped. She waved her arms turn herself around until she could see the trunk. They watched her drift along the trunk, out toward Dalton-Qui

"She worries too much," Smitta said.

Seventy days had passed since Clave's citizens had departed Qui

The tree fed a myriad parasites, and the parasites fed Clave's team. They had killed another nose-arm, easily, chopping through its nose, then jabbing harpoons into its den. There were patches of fan fungus everywhere. Merril had slept a full eight days after eating from the red fringe of a fan fungus. The subsequent throbbing headache didn't seem to affect her climbing, and presently it went away. So the fan fungus served them as food, and they had found more of the shelled burrowers and other edibles.