The Integral Trees

Chapter Three

The Trunk

DAY BRIGHTENED AND FADED AND BRIGHTENED AGAIN WHILE they climbed. The men doffed their tunics and tucked them into their pack straps; somewhat later, so did the women. Clave leered at Jayan and Ji

Jayan and Ji

Some citizens called them stupid, for they had no fund of conversation, but Gavving wondered. In other matters they showed good sense. As now: Ji

Jiovan had lost ground after Clave resumed the lead. He cursed as he climbed, steadily, monotonously: the wind, the bark handholds, his missing leg. Alfin should have been one of the leaders, Gavving thought; but he kept pausing to look down.

Gavving's own shoulders and legs burned with fatigue. Worse, he was mpking mistakes, setting his claw sandals wrong, so that they slipped too often.

Tired people make mistakes. Gavving saw Glory slip, thrash, and fall two or three meters before she caught an edge of bark. While she hugged herself ferociously against the tree, Gavving moved crosswise until he was behind and to the side of her.

Fear held her rigid.

"Keep going," Gavving said. "I'll stay behind you. I'll catch you." She looked down, nodded jerkily, began climbing again. She seemed to move in convulsions, putting too much effort into it. Gavving kept pace.

She slipped. Gavving gripped the bark. When she dropped into range he planted the palm of his hand under her buttocks and pushed her hard against the tree. She gasped, and clung, and resumed climbing.

Clave called down. "Is anybody thirsty?"

They needed their breath, and the answer was too obvious. Of course they were thirsty. Clave said, "Swing around east. We'll get a drink."

Falling water had carved a cha

"Watch yourselves," Clave told them. "Use your spikes if you have to. This is slippery stuff."

"Here," the Grad called from over their heads.

They worked their way toward him. A hill of rock must have smacked into the tree long ago, half embedding itself. The trunk had grown to enclose it. It made a fine platform, particularly since a stream had split to run round it on both sides. By the time Merril and Jayan had worked their way up, Clave had hammered spikes into the wood above the rock and attached lines.

Merril and Jayan worked their way onto the rock. Mcml lay gasping while Jayan brought her water.

Glory lay flat on the rock with her eyes closed. Presently she crawled to the portside stream. She called to Clave. "Any limit?"

"What?"

"On how much we drink. The water goes—"

Clave laughed loudly. Like the Chairman hosting a midyear celebration, he bellowed, "Drink! Bathe! Have water fights! Who's to stop us? If Qui

They climbed in a spiral path. They weren't here just to climb, Clave said, but to explore. Gavving could hear Jiovan's monotonous cursing as they climbed into the wind, until the wind drowned him out.

Gavving reached up for a fistful of green cotton and stuffed it in his mouth. The branch that waved above his pack was nearly bare now. The sky was empty out to some distant streamers of cloud and a dozen dots that might be ponds, all hundreds of klomters out. They'd be hurting for food when sleeptinie came.

He was crossing a scar in the bark, a puckering that ran down into the wood itself An old wound that the bark was trying to heal…big enough to climb in, but it ran the wrong way. Abruptly the Grad shouted, "Stop! Hold it up!"

"What's the matter?" Clave demanded.

"The Qui

Without the Grad to point it out, Gavving would never have realized that this was writing. He had seen writing only rarely, and these letters were three to four meters across. They couldn't be read, they had to be inferred: DQ, with a curlicue mark across the D.

"We'll have to gouge this out," the Grad said. "It's nearly grown out.

Someone should come here more often."

Clave ran a critical eye over his crew. "Gavving, Alfin, Ji

Merril said, "I can work. For that matter, I could carry more."

"Tell me that tomorrow," Clave told her. He made his way across the bark to clap her on the shoulder. "If you can take some of the load, you'll get it. Let's see how you do tomorrow with your muscles all cramped up."

They carved away bark and dug deeper into the wood with the points of their harpoons. The Grad moved among them. The Q took shape. When the Grad approached him, Gavving asked, "Why are the letters so big? You can hardly read them."

"They're not for us. You could see them if you were a klomter away," the Grad said.

Alfin had overheard. "Where? Falling? Are we doing this for swordbirds and triunes to read?"

The Grad smiled and passed on without answering. Alfin scowled at his back, then crossed to Gavving's position. "Is he crazy?"

"Maybe. But if you can't dig as deep as Ji

"He tells half a secret and leaves you hanging," Alfin complained.

"He does it all the time."

They left the tribal insignia carved deep and clear into the tree. The wind was beating straight down on them now. Gavving felt a familiar pain in his ears. He worked his jaw while he sought the old memory, and when his ears popped it came: pressure/pain in his ears, a score of days after the passing of Gold, the night before his first allergy attack. These days he rarely wondered if he would wake with his eyes and sinuses streaming in agony. He simply lived through it. But he'd never wakened on the vertical slope of the tree! He pictured himself climbing blind.

That was what distracted him while a thick, wood-colored rope lifted from the bark to wrap itself around Glory's waist.

Glory yelped. Gavving saw her clinging to the bark with her face against it, refusing to look. The rope was pulling her sideways, away from him.

Gavving pulled his harpoon from his pack before he moved. He crawled around Glory toward the living rope.

Glory screamed again as her grip was torn loose. Now only the live rope itself held her from falling. He didn't dare slash it. Instead he scampered toward its source, while the rope coiled itself around Glory, spi

There was a hole in the tree. From the blackness inside Gavving saw a thickening of the live rope and a single eye lifting on a stalk to look at him. He jabbed at it. A lid flicked closed; the stalk dodged. Gavving tracked it. He felt the jar through his arm and shoulder as the harpoon punched through.

A huge mouth opened and screamed. The living rope thrashed and tried to fling Glory away. What saved Glory was Glory herself; she had plunged her own harpoon through the brown hawser and gripped the point where it emerged. She clung to the haft with both hands while the rope bent around to attack Gavving.