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He decided that he would lead them back up the nearest inviting branch. They had to skirt a broad area which seemed to be filled with quicksand pools, so it was not until noon that they reached a rough-surfaced column that dived from the heights into the swamp. Thankfully, they began clambering up it, and by dusk they had reached a promising horizontal portion of a branch. This contained a riverlet which, however, looked poisonous. Its water was carmine,
Ulysses examined it and found that the colour came from millions of tiny creatures, each of which was so small it was almost invisible when isolated. Ghlikh, who had decided to talk by then, said that these animals spawned once a year. He did not know where they came from or where they went. The waters of the riverlets and the pools would remain red for about a week and then would become clear. In the meantime, they served as food for the fish, birds and beasts in the jungle. He recommended making a soup of them.
Ulysses took his recommendation, but he made Ghlikh drink the soup first. After several hours went by with no bad results to the bat-man, Ulysses gave the go ahead. He drank a gourdful and found the soup very rich and tasty. For the next few days, as they poled their rafts, they ate merely by scooping up the carmine animals from the water. Not having to stop to hunt made their progress far swifter. They traversed approximately fifty miles, climbing down three cataracts, before they reached the lowest level of the riverlet. By then the carmine animals had disappeared.
When they climbed up again, Ulysses, acting partly on a whim and partly on curiosity, led them as high as they could go. The climb took three days up the gnarled and fissured side of the vertical trunk. At night, they slept on a projection of bark big enough to form a ledge to hold the entire party. The third day, they climbed through the clouds and only broke free of them toward evening. But in the morning the clouds were gone, and they could see into the abyss. They were at least ten thousand feet up. The trunk continued to rise for another two or three thousand feet, but there was no sense in their climbing any higher. This was as high as the branches grew. This branch was a bonanza; it seemed to go on forever, and its downward slope was very gentle.
A spring welled out at the junction of branch and trunk, and more springs added to the bulk of the riverlet so that, a mile away, it became navigable.
Every mile or so, the branch extended a vertical part which went all the way to the bottom—as far as they could determine—or else joined with another branch below.
To prevent the bat-men from trying to fly away, Ulysses had punched holes in the membranes of their wings and tied them together with thin strings of gut. He had forced them to climb up the trunk by themselves, since their weight was too much for anyone to bear on that extended climb. They had been in the middle of the line that crawled up the craggy barky cliff so that they could not try to climb off. They were so light, they could climb much faster than even the agile Wufea.
Ulysses ordered camp made. They would rest for several days, hunt and scout around. He hoped that he could find another hole in a trunk and so get a chance to experiment with the communication-membrane inside. Ever since his experience with the Wuggruds, he had looked for other holes. He was sure that these must exist by the many thousands, but he had seen none. They were everywhere, according to the bat-men. It was frustrating to know this and yet be unable to find them. However, he was also sure that each hole would be guarded by the bear-like Wuggrud or leopard-like Khrauszmiddum. He could not really afford another encounter with them if they outnumbered his people. But he chafed. If only he could get to a communication-membrane. By now he knew the code. The language was the trade language, and the code was similar to Morse in that it used a combination of long and short pulses.
He had gotten that out of Ghlikh during the nights when everybody should have been resting from the day's labours. Khyuks had steadfastly refused to tell him the code. In fact, Khyuks refused even to admit that there was such a thing as a code. But Ghlikh was another person. His threshold of pain was lower, or his strength of character was less. Or he was more intelligent than Khyuks and realised that he would have to break sometime. So why not tell now and save himself much pain for nothing?
Khyuks cursed Ghlikh for a traitor and a spineless gutless coward, and Ghlikh said that if he did not shut his mouth he would kill him at the first chance. Khyuks replied that he would kill Ghlikh the first chance he got.
Though Ghlikh did reveal the code, he did not—or could not—reveal the location of the central base of his people. He swore that he had to be high enough above The Tree to see certain navigational checkmarks that would eventually guide him to the base. These marks were high trunks which grew leaves in a pattern that could be determined only by someone about two thousand feet above them. They might even be under one at this moment, but he could not tell from below.
Ulysses shrugged this disappointment off. He had no plans for attacking the base even if he knew its location. He lacked the force for an attack. But he would have liked to know where it was so that when he did have enough force, he could attack it. He would find out, one way or another.
He was sitting with his back against a comparatively smooth slab of loosened bark, a big fire about ten feet in front of him. It was almost night. Below, it was night. The sky was still blue, and faraway clouds were touched with pink, light green and a darkening grey. The cries and screams of hunting animals and the hunted wafted up like almost forgotten nightmares, they were so faint. The two bat-men were near him, sitting side by side but not speaking or even looking at each other. The Wufea, Wagarondit and Alkunquib were around six large fires. Guards were posted out on the branch and also out of sight on bark ledges on the sides of the branch. The mouth-watering odour of roasting meat and fish was everywhere. A hunting party had gone out onto the branch earlier and returned with three four-horned, auburn-haired goats, ten large fish (taken from a black-and-grey spotted cougar-sized cat which had caught them), bags full of ten different types of berries, and three large heavily furred monkeys.
The hunters had reported that the vegetation on top of the branch consisted mainly of short but thick-bodied fir trees, berry bushes, a knee-high grass which grew out of dirt caught in the fissures, and an ankle-deep moss. The riverlet contained an abundance of fish but no snoligosters or hipporats. The main predators seemed to be the black-and-grey puma, a small bear, and several types of otters. The other animals were the goats and monkeys.
They ate well that night and slept as close to the fire as they could get without burning. At this height, it got bitter cold after the sun went down.
In the morning, they ate the remnants of their supper for breakfast and set out to build rafts. They cut down some of the firs, which were only about twenty feet high, and made rafts. And they launched out with good spirits and high hopes.
For once, they were not disappointed or deceived. The riverlet took them at an easy pace for about thirty miles and then ended in a widening of the branch. Here the riverlet did not hurtle over a ninety-degree bend in a cataract. It just spilled over the sides of the wide area, blocked by an upward bend of the branch. The party disassembled the rafts and carried the poles up the incline, which was at a forty-five-degree angle. Once on top, they found another spring which soon grew into another riverlet. They put their rafts together and let the stream take them. This type of portage was repeated ten times. Eventually, the branch took the longest uninterrupted stretch they had so far experienced. It lasted about sixty miles, and the descent was so gradual that the water just ran out into the swamp. Ulysses estimated that they must have covered about two hundred and fifty miles on the one branch. Ghlikh said that they had been fortunate to find this one. Only a few were like this.