The Smoke Ring

“Birds are the worst. A pond, a glob of mud, a jungle, they don’t follow you if you dodge. Everybody got harpoons? Stet. Hey, smell that. First whiff of the Dark. State, it’s good to be back!”

Logbearer fell straight in. It was like entering a huge storm cloud…a granular-looking storm cloud. The air smelled of wet and rot and mustiness.

They strung line, using beams on the nose as mooring points. Raym watched and frowned and told them to put the lines closer together. “It’s got to hold the mud while you make the burn.” When they finished, Logbearer’s nose was the center of a great web. “I always string my extra clothes across the middle of the web. That way you know the mud won’t go through and all over the cabin. You bring any extra clothes, Carlot?”

She spoke through gritted teeth. “You didn’t tell me to. But yes, I brought extra clothes, and I don’t much like getting them covered with mud.”

“So wash them after. You do it when you’re ready to leave. Then you use what’s dirty. Look there, aft of center. Kerchiefs!”

Kerchiefs looked like a score of scraps of pink and green cloth afloat on the wind. “Those’re flowers,” Raym said. “Not fungus. They’ll—”

“Could you spread those to hold the mud?”

“Carlot, they’re not strong enough. Touch them and they shred. Hey, you don’t mind dirty clothes when you’re Dark diving!”

They took turns sleeping. The sky thickened and darkened over five or six days. Then Voy and the sun were hidden and it was impossible to know day. Rather’s eyes adjusted. He saw colors emerging from the dark: blue tinges, green, orange. Behind them the murky sky was a blaze of light, suddenly bluer as Voy passed, too bright to look at.

Raym was forward, inspecting the web again. Or maybe he only liked the view.

Clave said, “It isn’t the risk that bothers me. It’s the fact that I’m not taking it. Feels like this should be my job.”

Rather didn’t answer, but Carlot did. “Oh, you’re taking a risk. If Rather gets caught, the Navy’ll want us all. Clave, it’s not too late to change our minds!”

“Yeah. I know how persuasive Kendy is. And I think I should have been consulted.” Rather started to speak.

Clave snapped, “Yes, Rather, it couldn’t be done. Besides, Kendy’s right. It gets us everything we came for. Rather, if you don’t come back in a decent time, we’re leaving. I’ve got the seeds. We’ll just bum straight out and let Jeffer find us in the sky.”

“Stet,” said Rather.

“And what about Dad?” Carlot demanded. “Why should the Navy believe him when he tells them he didn’t know?”

“I won’t get caught. One big risk and we go home.”

“I don’t owe you this,” Carlot said, as she had said before. This time nobody answered. (But Jeffer had said, “You owe Citizens Tree for your life,” and it was true.)

“I think we’ve gone far enough,” Clave said. “Nobody’s going to see us from the Market.”

Rather nodded. “But there’s still Raym.”

“He’s easily distracted.”

The rocket had slowed considerably. They were drifting, not flying. The murky sky was busy with soft, shadowy shapes. Once there was a jagged rock the size of Logbearer, half covered by…Rather stared. That had to be a fungus. But it was convoluted like the moby’s brain Half Hand had tried to serve them.

Raym pointed through the net of lines. “You can eat that.”

Clave said, “Treefodder! I mean literally. That’s a tuft off an integral tree!”

It could have been, Rather thought. There was the curved blade of the branch. But where foliage should have been, now there was a great misshapen lump of soft gray curves. “I pushed one of those home once,” Raym said. “Had to. My nets were torn up. It was all the food I had left, and I barely made a dent in it getting home. Half Hand served slices of it for the next twenty days, but he didn’t pay much…”

Rather tuned him out.

The orange tinge ahead grew gradually stronger. Orange light shining through shadows. Rather had grown used to the wet, musty smell, but something else was in it now. “Raym, what’s that?”

“I’ve been living with Exec ever since the accident. My son, Exec Wilby. He only went into the Dark but once — What?”

“That.”

“That’s the fire. Carlot, we have to turn.”

Carlot jerked around. “Fire?”

Now Rather knew that smell. Fire burning in something wet and rotten.

“It’s been burning down here since…I don’t know when. All my life, anyway. Never gets much bigger, never gets much smaller. Now, don’t hurry. Look around and find a pond and steer for that. We need more water anyway.”

They looked. There was no mistaking the shape of a pond, of course, even in darkness. Rather found no spheroids in evidence. Carlot said, “I don’t see anything!”

“There.”

“But that’s…oh.” Raym was pointing to a fungus jungle, a maze of thick white threads…and the orange light glinted off something reflective inside. The mass, in fact, was mostly pond, but it was laced with fungus.

Clave used the bellows. The pipefire that had been estivating in the windless murk now blazed up. Carlot blew the last of their water into the pipe while Rather and Clave tilted the rocket.

The fungus jungle drifted across the orange light. Logbearer impacted softly against resilient fungus fingers, and recoiled.

“What kind of pump you got? Good. Boy…Rather, you want to pump?”

“You pump, Raym,” Carlot said. “Debby, you go with him. Keep your harpoon handy.”

“Stet, that’s good thinking, Carlot. No guessing what’s lurking in there.” The imaginary horrors didn’t diminish Raym’s enthusiasm as he flapped away with the pump. The hose slowed him. Debby kissed Rather’s cheek before she picked up a loop of hose and flew after him.

Raym disappeared among interlocked white strands that broke where he touched them.

Clave said, “Now, Rather.”

They entered the cabin together. The bags of seeds nearly filled one compartment. Rather pulled them out, reached further, and had the silver suit.

Debby saw only kicking wings among finger-thick white pillars of fungus. “Nothing dangerous yet,” Raym called cheerfully. “Watch for stinkbirds. Great State! Girl, get me a bag, a big one!”

Debby dropped the hose and worked her way in. “What—”

“Fringe!”

“Oh. Here.” She’d taken to carrying the big bags they’d used to collect honey while logging. She passed one in. She couldn’t see what Raym was doing in there, but the air had turned dusty. She sneezed.

Raym wriggled out in a cloud of dust motes. There was something shapeless in the bag. “Sixty, seventy chits worth,” he said. “I’ll just take this back—”

“I’ve linked up the hose. What have you got?” Carlot had come at his shout.

Raym showed her the bag.

“Dammit, Raym, that’s sporing fringe! Debby, get away from it.”

“Yeah.’’ Debby kicked out into the air. She was feeling dreamy…light-headed…happy. But if she’d breathed spores, Raym must have breathed more.

Keep him away from the ship! Debby pulled on the hose until she had the pump. “Raym, take this around to someplace else and start pumping.”

“I’ll take this back,” Carlot said. “Raym, you shouldn’t get near sporing fringe! Sure it’s worth money—” She gave up. Raym was laughing.

Clave had stuck the helmet to a wall with a dab of glue. It watched him in stoic calm. “Try to do the circle in one sweep,” it said.

“Is that how the original was done?”

“First painting was probably a template, but templates wear out. The suits must be painted over and over. Every so often the junior Guardian has to paint it. I’m guessing, of course, but the original looks a little sloppy in Kendy’s pictures.”

Clave pointed the brush like a pencil and moved in a single graceful sweep. The resulting greenish-white circle wasn’t half bad. “Bring it close,” said the helmet. “Too narrow and also a little small. Go around again and add some bulk to the outer rim. Rather, when you leave, drape a cloth over yourself. We don’t want to get it dirty while it’s wet…Stet, Clave. Now the dot in the middle. Stet, leave it tiny. Give me another look at the shoulder—”