The Smoke Ring

Glowing in direct sunlight, the Clump was green-and-white chaos in Logbearer’s steam trail. Clave felt good: loose and free, cruising through an uncluttered sky.

Rather crawled out of the angular cabin. His head was metal and glass. “The suit’s too big, but I can wear the helmet.”

Clave smiled at the sight. “Getting anything?”

“Getting…? No, Jeffer hasn’t called. Maybe he can’t call this suit. I tried Kendy too.”

“Too bad.” Clave had been watching a distant brownish smudge of vegetation. Now he shouted aft. “Carlot? Could that be a fisher jungle?”

“Be with you in twelve breaths.” Carlot finished what she was doing to the motor and crawled to them over the cabin. “Where?”

Clave’s toes jabbed east and out.

“I don’t see the root…right, that’s what it is. I’d better turn off the motor or we’ll go past. Rather?”

Rather followed her aft. Clave stayed at the bow while they worked the motor. Presently the tide behind him went away.

Closer now, the fisher jungle looked dead enough. Brown foliage and bare branchlets. Tufts and patches of vivid green: parasitical growths. The fisher root was half extended, like a dead man’s hand with three scarlet fingernails. He looked for the CARM…and found a man flapping toward him.

Jeffer pulled himself aboard, panting. “Moor to the root. Treefodder, I’m glad to see you, but what are you doing here? Is everyone here?” He looked over the edge of cabin and shouted, “Hello, Carlot! Rather, what… is that a pressure suit helmet?”

“Yes. The rest of it’s inside.”

They told it in tandem while they moored Logbearer.

“I never did quite know if the Captain-Guardian believed me,” Rather said, “but he left Serjent House without taking any copsiks—”

“The Navy watched us for the next forty, fifty days,”

Clave said. “We weren’t doing anything peculiar. Booce sold wood and hired people to cut it. We bought more seeds and some tools and stuff. We’re carrying all that. Mickl kept coming around, interrupting us, trying to get Rather to tell him more about Seekers—”

“I tried not to talk too much. I built up a picture of these Seekers in my mind, and maybe I got it across. Secretive. Not very many of ’em. Too many Scientists, maybe half a dozen. They’ve got a cassette and reader but they don’t show it to outsiders. They threw away their silver suit, but they’ve got records on how to maintain it. And they swear to kill anyone who tells their secrets. The citizen who told me disappeared. He was high on fringe and I was just a kid, but I had a better memory than most kids…That part’s true anyway,” Rather said. “I haven’t told Mickl all of this.”

“Dangerous,” Jeffer said. “You’ll have Mickl desperate to meet them.”

“Not if I read him right. Scientist, you know the story now, and you can back me up. Give him details I didn’t.”

Clave asked, “Jeffer, did Kendy get the records he wanted?”

“I haven’t heard from him.”

“If we’re lucky the treefeeder never will call back. Anyway, we must have looked i

“No. You’d better leave it here if you’re supposed to.”

They carried the suit and helmet into the dead foliage. Rather and Carlot set to moving their cargo while they looked about.-

Entropy and parasites had eaten a deep cavity into the fisher jungle’s dead trunk. The CARM was there, and Jeffer’s camp: rocks for a fireplace, a rack of poles for smoking meat, a midden a decent distance away. Jeffer had made a third wing for himself, a prudent move for a man alone. From the blackened look of it he’d been using it to fan his fire.

Jeffer had the pressure suit splayed like a bird’s flayed skin. “Rather, did you try it?”

“It’s too big for me. — And the air feed doesn’t work. I got the panel open. A little wheel isn’t co

Jeffer gri

Rather laughed. “Mickl doesn’t want the Seekers stealing his silver suit! If they try it they’ll find out nobody’s worthy!”

“I’ll refuel it. No guarantee the jets still work.”

“Well, if they do work, I get the impression that Booce will get a decent offer for the Wart. Mickl never actually said so.”

“Three pressure suits?”

Clave said, “Stet. We may have to do this twice more. And they’re searching Dark and sky for a fourth pressure suit. They must be looking hard at where Logbearer went.

You may want to move the CARM.”

Carlot arrived pushing the last of the cargo: not seeds, but tools. “You’re going to love this, Scientist.” She separated something out.

Jeffer took it with glad cries. “A pump! Wonderful! The CARM’s low on water, and I hate the way I filled it last time. Can I keep it?”

“Stet. We’re supposed to bribe the Seekers with it. Here, this is a bellows from the Market. You anchor one end. It’s easier.”

“Nice. Can you stay for a couple of sleeps? I’ve got food and—”

“Lonely?”

It showed in his face. “You know it.”

“We’ve got food you never tasted. Dark fungus and earthlife. You’ll love it.”

Their exotic di

Jeffer talked while he ate. “I had some trouble getting the silver suit. I found it okay, but it was right in the fire. I had to get the bow up against it and push it out along with a kilton of burning goo. I just wonder how many Admiralty citizens saw me.”

“The stories won’t match,” Clave said. “In sixty days it won’t matter at all. I’ve been thinking. We’ll bum the fringe here. If a Navy ship comes they’ll find that the Seekers had a hell of a party and then went away.”

“Good. I’ll have to take the CARM someplace you can find it—”

“No. You find us. Logbearer will be returning to Citizens Tree in due course, maybe another thirty days. Keep watch. Pick us up well outside the Clump.”

“Another fifty days of this? Treefodder. And I never even saw the treefeeding Clump.”

“We’ll leave you most of our food,” Clave said.

Carlot carefully wasn’t looking at Rather. “I’ll be bringing a guest. Raff Belmy and I’ll be married as soon as we get back to the Admiralty. I want to bring him back to the tree. What he tells his father is up to him, but he’ll have at least a quarter year to think about it.”

“So you decided,” Rather said. He felt he had almost gotten used to the loss.

“I’m like you. I’m tired of secrets.”

“There’s a plant here that grows good foliage,” Jeffer offered. “Dessert.”

Carlot tossed an orange sphere at him.

Jeffer’s acting like a happy eight-year-old. Rather thought as he tethered himself into a foliage patch for sleep. Being alone out here must be rough on him. Maybe all adults stay children someplace in their heads…

“Rather?”

“Yuh. Carlot?”

She wriggled under the lines and was alongside him. Rather opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he said, “I don’t like lying to you.”

“What now?”

“I was going to not say, ‘What would Raff think?’ ”

She didn’t move away. Presently she said, “You don’t understand us.”

“Nope.”

“We like to spread the genes around. Nobody talks about it in public, but you hear. A man and a woman get engaged. They make babies together. Sixty, seventy days later, they get married. Maybe the first kid looks like the rest and maybe he doesn’t.”

“But why?”

“It’s the last chance. See, I’m going to marry Raff, but there are men I turned down. They’re not going to just vanish. I wasn’t with Raff off those sleeps I was away. Raff’s been seeing friends too, I don’t know who. Rather, it’s just different. The officers say it’s good. They talk about gene drift.”