The Integral Trees

The Grad's humiliation kept him silent…until he saw their meal and recognized the harpoon. "That's Alfin's bird."

"It belongs to Carther States," Lizeth informed hini.

He found he didn't care. His belly was stridently empty. "That wood looks too green to make a cookflre—"

"Salmon bird is eaten raw, with falling onion when we can get it."

Raw. Yuk. "Falling onion?"

They showed him. Falling onion was a plant parasite that grew at the forks of the branchlets. It grew as a green tube with a spray of pink blossoms at the tip. The pretty brown-haired woman named Debby assembled a handful and cut the blossom-ends off. Usa's sword carved the scarlet meat in translucently thin slices.

Meanwhile Kara bound the Grad's right wrist to his ankles, then freed his left. "Don't untie anything else," she warned him.

Raw meat, he thought and shuddered; but his mouth watered. Hild wrapped sheets of pink meat around the stalks and passed one to the Grad. He bit into it.

His mind went blank. You learned to put hunger out of your mind during a famine…but he had definitely been hungry. The meat had an odd, rubbery texture. The flavor was rich; the onion taste was fiery, mouth-filling.

They watched him eat. I have to talk to them, he thought hazily. It's our last chance. We have to join them. Otherwise, what is there? Stay here and be hunted or let the invaders catch us, or jump into the sky.

The man-sized bird was dwindling. Lizeth seemed content to carve slices until they stopped disappearing; Debby was now cutting the falling onions to stretch them. The women had long since finished eating.

They watched with irritating smiles. The Grad wondered if they would consider a belch bad ma

He asked for water. Lizeth gave it to him in a squeezegourd. He drank a good deal. The falling onion had run out. Feeling pleasantly full, the Grad topped off his meal with a handful of foliage.

Nothing could be entirely bad when he felt this good.

Kara the Sharman said, "One thing is clear. You are certainly a refugee. I never saw a starving copsik ru

A test? The Grad took his time swallowing. "Cute," he said. "Now that that's established, shall we talk?"

"Where are we?"

"Nowhere in particular. I wouldn't lead you to the rest of the tribe until I knew who you were. Even here, the copsik ru

'Who are they, these…ru

"Copsik ru

He answered, "It's just an insult-word."

"Not to us or them. They take us for corpsiks, to work for them the rest of our lives. Boy, what are you doing?"

The Grad had reached for his pack with his free hand. "I am the Qui

"Go ahead."

The Grad unwrapped his reader. He had Carther States' undivided attention. The women were awed and wary; Lizeth held her spear at the ready. He chose the records cassette, inserted it into the reader, and said, "Prikazyvat Find copsik."

NOT FOUND

"Prikazyvat Find—" the Grad said and held the reader to Kara's face. The Sharman shied, then spoke to the machinery. "Corpsik."

CORPSICLE?

The Grad said, "Prikazyvat Expound."

The screen filled with print. The Grad asked, "Can you read it?"

"No," Kara said for them all.

"Corpsicle is an insult-term first used to describe people frozen for medical purposes. In the century preceding the founding of the State, some tens of thousands were frozen immediately after death in the hope of someday being revived and cured. This was found to be impossible.

“The State later made use of the stored personalities. Memory patterns could be recorded from a frozen brain, and RNA extracted from the central nervous system. A brainwiped criminal could thus be fitted with a new personality. No citizenship was conferred upon these corpsicles. The treatment was later refined and used by passengers and crew on long interstellar voyages.

"'The seeder ramship Discipline's crew included eight corpsicles. The memory sets were those of respected citizens of advanced age, with skills appropriate to an interstellar venture. It was hoped that the corpsicles would be grateful to find themselves in healthy, youthful bodies. This assumption proved-' I can't make sense of all that. One thing seems clear enough. A copsik isn't a citizen. He has no rights. He's property."

"That's right," said Debby, to the Sharman's evident a

So the Sharman doesn't trust me. So? "How do they find you in here? There must be cubic klomters of it, and you know it and they don't. I don't see why you fight at all."

"They find us. Twice now they have found us hidden in the jungle," Kara said bitterly. "Their Sharman is better than I am. It may be that their science enhances their senses. Grad, we would be glad to have your knowledge."

"Would you make us citizens?"

The pause lasted only seconds. "If you fight," said Kara.

"Clave broke his leg coming down."

"We make citizens only of those who will fight. Our warriors are fighting now, and who knows if they will repell the corpsik ru

Guests? Oh, the pregnant ones. "What about Clave and the women?

What happens to them?"

The Sharman shrugged. "They may live with us, but not as citizens." Not good, but it might be the best they could get. "I can't say yes or no. We'll have to talk. Kara…"

"Wbat is it?"

"I just remembered something. Kara, there are kinds of light you can't see. There used to be machines that could see the warmth of a body. That's how they find you."

The women looked at each other in dread. Debby whispered, "But only a corpse is cold."

"So light little fires all through the forest. Make them check each one."

"Very dangerous. The fire might…" she trailed off. "Never mind.

Fires go out unless fa

The Grad nodded and reached for more foliage. Things were looking better. If some could become citizens, they could protect the rest. Perhaps Qui

"Three groups, and they're all going deeper. The traces are getting blurred," said the pilot's blurred voice. The carm hung behind Squad Leader Patry's shoulder, bow aimed at the jungle. "Are you going after them?"

"Groups how big?"

"Three and three and a bigger group. The big group started first. You probably won't catch them."

In the hands of Patry's men a mass of greenery rose from the rest and floated free. Patry reported, "We've found where they dug in. Okay, we're going after them." He joined the waiting men. "Mark, take the point. The rest of you follow me. Go wide of that yellow stufl it's poison fern."

Mark was a dwarf the only man in London Tree who could wear the ancient armor, and thus the only possible custodian of the spitgun. Ten years ago he had tended to shy back from an attack, until he gained confidence in his invulnerability. The men had called him Tiny until Patty himself raised hell about it. Mark was born to wear the armor.

He'd learned to wear it well.

He climbed past the severed bush and into the dark with London Tree's infantry behind him.

The agony was real, centered above Clave's knee, but spreading in flashes throughout his body. The rest faded in and out. He was being towed through a tu