The Integral Trees

Chapter Fifteen

London Tree

GAVVING WAS ON THE BICYCLE WITH THREE OTHER COPSIKS.

There wasn't tide enough to pull him against the pedals. Straps ran from the belt around his waist to the bicycle frame. Forcing his legs down against the pedals pushed him up against the belt. After the first session he'd thought he was crippled for life. The endless passage of days had toughened him; his legs no longer hurt, and the muscles were hard to the touch.

The bicycle gears were of old metal. They squealed as they moved and gave forth a scent of old animal grease. The frame was massive, of cut wood. There had been six sets of gears once; Gavving could see where two had been ripped out.

The frame was anchored to the trunk where the tuft grew thin. Foliage grew around the copsiks. Surrounded by sky, with most of the tuft below them, they could still snatch and eat a handful while pedaling. They worked naked, with sweat pooling on their faces and in their armpits.

High up along the trunk, a wooden box descended slowly. A similar box had risen almost out of sight.

Gavving let his legs run on while he watched the elevator descend. The mindless labor let his eyes and ears and mind run free.

There were other structures around the trunk. This level was used for industry, and here were all the men. Man's work and woman's work never seemed to intersect in London Tree, at least not for copsiks.

Sometimes children swarmed through or watched them with bright, curious eyes. Today there were none.

The citizens of London Tree must have kept copsiks for generations. They were skilled at it. They had chopped Qui

Gavving, pumping steadily, watched storms move sluggishly around a tight knot on the eastern arm of the Smoke Ring. Gold was nearer than he had ever seen it, save for that eerie time when he was a child, when Gold had passed so near and everything had changed.

The jungle hovered hundreds of klomters beyond the out tuft: a harmless-looking green puffball. How are you doing Clave? Did that broken leg save your freedom? Merril, were those shrunken legs finally good for something? Or have you become copsiks among the jungle people or are you dead?

Over the past eighty-five days or so, twenty sleeps, the tree had drifted to the eastern fringes of the cloud bank. He'd been told, during the trip across the sky to London Tree, that the tree could move by itself. He had seen no evidence of it. Rain swept across them from time to time…surely the tree had collected enough water by now.

The elevator had settled into its slot and was releasing passengers. Gavving and the others stopped pedaling. "Navy men," Horse puffed.

"Come for the women."

Gavving said, "What?"

"Citizens live in the out tuft. When you see a boxful come down and it's all men, they're come for the women."

Gavving looked away.

"Nine sleeps," said Horse. He was in his fifties, three ce'meters shorter than Gavving, with a bald, freckled head and tremendously strong legs. He had driven the bicycles for two decades. "Forty days till we meet the women. You wouldn't believe how rancy I get thinking about it." By now Gavving was strangling the handbar. Horse saw the muscles standing out along his arms and said, "Boy, I forgot. I was never married, myself. I was born here. Failed the test when I was ten."

Gavving forced himself to speak. "Born here?"

Horse nodded. "My father was a citizen, at least mother always said so. Who ever knows?"

"Seems likely. You'd be taller if—"

"Na, na, the jungle giants' kids aren't any taller than the citizens."

So: children raised in the jungle grew taller, without tide to compress them. "What are the tests like?"

"We're na supposed to say."

"Okay."

The supervisor called, "Pedal, you copsiks!" and they did. More passengers were coming down. Over the squeal of the gears Horse said, "I flunked the obedience test. Sometimes I'm glad I didn't go."

Huh? "Go?"

"To another tree. That's where you go if you pass the tests. Heh, you are green, aren't you? Did you think your kids would stay as citizens if they passed the tests?"

"That's…yes." He hadn't been told that, he'd been allowed to assume it. "There are other trees? How many? Who lives in them?"

Horse chuckled. "You want to know everything at once? I think it's four bud trees now, settled by any copsik woman's kid who passes the tests. London Tree goes between them, trading for what they need. Any man's kid has the same chance as a citizen's, because nobody ever knows, see? I thought I wanted to go, once. But it's been thirty-five years.

"I did think I'd be picked for service in the out tuft. I should've been. I'm second-generation…and when they turned me down for that, I damn near lost my testes for swatting a supervisor. Jorg, there" — Horse indicated the man pedaling in front of him—"he did. Poor copsik. I don't know what the gentled ones do when the Holidays come."

Gavving still hadn't learned to shave without cutting himself. It was not his choice. All copsiks shaved. He had seen no man wearing a beard in London Tree, save one; and that one was Patry, a Navy officer. "Horse, is that why they make us shave? So the gentled ones won't be quite so obvious?"

"I never thought of that. Maybe."

"Horse…you must actually have seen the tree move."

Horse's laughter brought a supervisor's head around. He lowered his voice. "Did you think it was just a story? We move the tree about once a year! I've been on water details too, to feed the carm."

"What's it like?"

"It's like the tide goes slantwise. Going to the treemouth is like climbing a hill. You don't want any hunting parties out when it happens, and you have to tilt the cookpot. The whole trunk of the tree bendsalittle…"

"Lawri," said the Grad, "trouble."

Lawri glanced back. The pond clung to the bark, a flattened heinisphere. The Grad had run the hose into the water. Now the water was flowing up the outside of the hose, forming a collar.

"Don't worry about it. Just get to the bicycle and pedal," Lawri told him. "And don't call me that."

The Grad strapped himself to the saddle and started the pedals turning. The gears moved a pump. It was all starstufl metal, discolored with age. The collar of water shrank as water was sucked into the hose.

It was strange work for the Qui

Water spurted from the hose as Lawri carried it into the carm. The Grad couldn't see what she was doing in there. He pedaled.

In Klance's presence the Grad was Lawri's equal. Otherwise Lawri treated him as a copsik, a spy, or both. He was clean, fed, and clothed.

Of the rest of Qui

It was night. Both Voy and the sun were hidden behind the in tuft. In the peculiar light that remained, two faint streamers of blue light fa

The Scientist (the Scientist) had told him that they were discharges of peculiar energies from the poles of Voy itself. The Scientist had seen them when he was younger, but the Grad had never been able to see them, not even from the midpoint of Dalton-Qui