The Integral Trees

The Grad looked at him.

"Is there anything in your classified knowledge that we might need to know, to go on living?" Clave paused, not long enough for the Grad to answer. "If not, why should we guard that stufl or let you carry it to slow you down?" Pause. "If so, you're hiding knowledge we need. Why should we protect you?"

The Grad gaped.

"Grad, you're valuable. We're down to eight, we can't spare even one. But if you know why we need a Scientist more than an apprentice hunter, you'd better show us now."

It was as if the Grad had been frozen with his mouth open. Then he gave a jerky nod. He chose a cassette and fitted it into the rim of the nonmirror. He said, "Prikazyvat Find moby: em, oh, bee, wye."

The screen lit, filled with print. The Grad read, "Moby is a whalesized creature with a vast mouth and vertical cheek slots that are porous, used as filters. It feeds by flying through clouds of insects. Length: seventy meters. Mass: approx eight hundred metric tons. One major eye. Two smaller eyes, better protected and probably near-sighted for close work, on either side of a single arm. It stays near ponds or cottoncandy jungles. It prefers to be spi

Clave glanced over his shoulder. They had a side view of the flying mouth. Despite the swarm of insects near the raft, it was going around them. "That?"

"I'd think so."

"Carms? Captain Ahab? Whale-sized?"

"I don't know what any of that means."

"Doesn't matter, I guess. So. It's timid, and it eats bugs, not citizens.

Doesn't sound like a threat."

"And that is why you need a Scientist. Without the cassettes you wouldn't know anything about it."

"Maybe," said Gavving, "we don't want it to go around us."

He explained, stumbling a little. Nobody laughed. Maybe they were too thirsty. Clave studied the massive bug-eater, pursed his lips, nodded.

Clave stood as Minya posed him, gripping the steel bow in his left hand, drawing the bowstring halfway back toward his cheek. It felt awkward. Instead of one of Minya's mini-harpoons, a meter and a half of his own harpoon protruded before him.

The moby was watching him. He waited until the creature's spin put the major eye on its far side. "Throw the line," he said.

Gavving hurled the coiled line toward the moby. Clave let it unroll for a moment, then sent the harpoon after it.

The harpoon wobbled in flight, until the trailing line dragged it straight again. With the steel bow and Clave's muscles to propel it, the massive harpoon might have flown as far as the moby. It didn't. It didn't even come close.

"Reel it in and coil the line," he told Alfin. To the others he said,

"Arrows. Put some arrows in the beast. Get it mad. Get its attention." The Grad's arrow went wide, and Clave stopped him from wasting another. Gavving's and Minya's were flying true, and each had fired another when Clave said, "Stop. We want it mad, not scared, not injured. Grad, how timid is that thing likely to be?"

"I read you everything I know."

Classifiedl The first chance he got, Clave was going through all of the information on all of those "cassettes." He'd make the Grad read them to him.

The moby's gauzy tail was in motion. It had spotted the harpoon's motion and was edging away. Then the first arrows reached it. One struck the fin, one a cheek, neither with any great force.

The moby convulsed. Its fins thrashed and it turned. A third arrow struck near its major eye. It turned to face them.

"Alfin, have you got that line coiled?"

"Not yet."

"Then hurry, you copsik! Are we all tethered?"

The sky had opened a mouth; it gaped and grew huge. A skeletal arm folded forward, presenting four harpoons. Alfin asked, "Do we want to hurt it now?"

Clave discarded the metal bow and took up the harpoon. "Treefodder. I want this in its tail."

The moby obliged. Its tail flicked forward — and they felt the wind — as it circled to expmine the situation. As the tail came into sight, Clave cast. The harpoon struck solidly in the meaty part, ahead of the spreading translucent fin. The moby shuddered and continued to advance.

The "hand" lashed forward. Gavving whooped and leapt from between closing horn harpoons, away into the sky, until his tether went taut and pulled him around the edge of the bark. Minya yelled and slashed at the "hand." "Feels like bone," she reported and swung again.

Clave snatched up another harpoon and jumped toward the tremendous face. He pricked the creature's lip before his line pulled him back. The great skeletal fingers curled around behind him. Minya's sword slashed at a joint, and one of the harpoon-fingers was flying loose.

The moby snatched its hand back fast. Its mouth closed and stayed that way. The creature backpedaled with side fins.

Gavving reeled himself back to the bark. They watched the moby turning, retreating.

The bark raft surged. The moby stopped, turned to look back. The raft was following it. It began swimming strongly against the air.

A point of sunlight blazed near the edge of the pond. Vagrant breezes rippled the surface. Shadows moved within. A distant seed pod sent a tendril growing across a klomter of space toward the water. Gavving licked his lips and yearned.

Tens of thousands of metric tons of water dwindled in their wake.

Clave was cursing steadily. He stopped, then said, "Sorry. The moby was supposed to dive into the water and try to lose us."

Gavving opened his mouth, reconsidered…and spoke anyway.

"My idea. Why aren't you blaming me?"

"I'd still get the blame. I'm the Chairman. Anyway, it was worth a try! I just wish I knew where the beast was taking us."

They waited to learn.

Gavving's eyes traced the line of the Smoke Ring, congealing out of the background of sky into the pale blue of water vapor and distance. Toothpick splinters, all aligned, might have been a grove of integral trees. Tens of thousands of klomters beyond, a clot of white storm marked Gold. A thickening halfway down the arch toward Voy would be the far Clump.

Here were all the celestial objects a child had once wondered about. Harp had told him that he might see them someday. More practical heads had denied this. The tree moved at the whim of natural forces, and nobody left the tree.

He had left the tree, and was married, and marooned, and thirsty.

Qui

"So near and yet so far," the Grad said. "Don't we still have a few jet pods?"

"Not enough." Clave looked around him. "At least we haven't lost anyone. Okay. We're moving, and we're moving out; that's good, isn't it, Scientist? Thicker air?"

"Thicker anything," said the Grad. "Air, water, plants, meat, meateaters."

The moby was turning, swinging gradually east, and slowing. Tiring.

Its fins folded against its side, presenting a streamlined egg-shape to the wind; it continued to fall outward, towing the bark raft. The pond had become a tiny jewel, glowing with refracted blue Voylight.

Clave said, "We'll cut loose as soon as we get near anything interesting. Integral tree, pond, forest, anything with water in it. I don't want anyone cutting the line too soon."

"Cloud ahead," Merril said.

A distant, clotted streamer of white fading into blue. Clave barked laughter. "How far ahead? Sixty, seventy klomters? Anyway, it isn't ahead, it's straight out from us. We're aimed almost east."