The Smoke Ring

“Okay.”

“What Raff thinks about it is, he’d rather not know. I never did wonder what Jill would think.”

Jill. “We never made promises.”

“Sure. But who else is there? There’s nobody anywhere near her age in the tuft. Just you.”

“I suppose. I wish I could have told her I was leaving.’’

She said nothing. Rather couldn’t drop it. “I wish I could tell her it was worth it. You never wanted that raid on the Library. You were right. If Kendy’s really gone, then why did it happen? The Navy’11 never stop being suspicious ofus,and we didn’t learn anything, and I can’t even tell Jill about the raid because I can’t tell her about Kendy.”

She stirred. “You don’t want me?”

“Sure I want you. Every sleep we’re here, I want you. I wanted you for keeps.”

“You can’t have that. When we marry, that’s the end of that. Understand?”

“Stet.”

Kendy had run the records from CARMs #2 and #6 over and over. He’d built up a sublibrary of sorts under RESOURCES, LOCAL USAGE.

Here: Citizens Tree was firing mud to make a cookpot.

Here: firing the laundry vat. Both had been recorded by the silver suit as it moved unharmed through the fire. One clip every ten minutes.

Here: curing the lines from the spaghetti jungle. Mark the Silver Man unharmed in the smoke.

Here: the elevator in Citizens Tree. Here, recorded years earlier by Klance the Scientist: the London Tree elevator, run with stationary bicycles.

Here: CARM #6 changing the integral tree’s orbit.

Here: Logbearer moving another tree.

Here: Rather collecting honey. Booce’s voice explaining that it was usually done with handmade armor. Here: a set of hornet armor made to show the Navy customs collectors, lest they seek for such and find the silver suit instead.

The natives used materials from Discipline when they had it. When they didn’t, they made do. They were doing very well without Kendy.

Discipline was making its second aerobraking pass, ass-backward through the gas torus. The cone of the fusion drive approached fusion temperatures. That was hardly a danger, but the plasma streaming back along the hull had to be watched.

Velocity, Smoke Ring median: 11 kps. Velocity at Kendy’s distance: 3 kps. Discipline’s, relative velocity: 20 kps and falling. Discipline reached perihelion and began to rise, embedded in hot plasma. The animals were frantic. Kendy couldn’t spare attention for them. Nothing had melted on his first pass…but the gas ahead of him thickened as he rose, because Goldblatt’s World was ahead.

Visual: a raging, endless storm the size of Neptune.

Neudar: a core the size of two and a half Earths spun once every seven hours, carrying the storm around with it, until the atmospheric envelope trailed off into the Smoke Ring. Instruments: impacting plasma increased in temperature and density; velocity decreased. The ship was surviving. There’d been the risk that he would have to blow hydrogen ahead of him for cooling.

Goldblatt’s World passed below, warping the ship’s path into something nearer a circle. Now the plasma density dropped fast.

Fifteen minutes of that was enough excitement for any computer program. In an hour he’d be over the Admiralty and out of the gas torus. He’d make his last short bum then. It would hold him near the Admiralty for a good half hour.

Discipline would be glowing bright enough to see, if anyone looked in just the right direction. That might or might not be good. Kendy had taken his time returning.

His long-range plans were in tatters and he didn’t know what to do about it.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Begi

from the Citizens Tree cassettes:

YEAR 384, DAY 2250. BOOCE RECORDED OUR HOLDINGS BEFORE WE LEFT. HE’S APPALLED THAT WE NEVER ASKED. BAD BUSINESS PERSONS, HE CALLS US. WE DON’T USUALLY BOTHER TO SPELL OUT WHO OWNS WHAT IN CITIZENS TREE. IT DRIVES BOOCE CRAZY.

WE SPENT A LOT ON SEEDS AND POOD AND WIDGETS, BUT WE STILL HAVE CREDIT — IMAGINARY MONEY — IN SOME VAGUE AMOUNT THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT BOOCE ACTUALLY GETS FOR THE WOOD AND THE METAL. WE’LLLEARNTHATWHEN, AND IF, WERETURN TO THE ADMIRALTY.

THE LIFT CAGE DROPPED. IT WAS CROWDED WITH EIGHT people and several bags from the CARM. Lawri and Gavving, Scientist and Chairman Pro Tern, seemed distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn’t hard to guess why. Raff Belmy was uncomfortable too. Carlot clung tight to his arm, possessively, protectively.

“I had some trouble finding the tree,” Jeffer said.

“Your problem,” Gavving answered. “After all, you took the silver suit. How were we supposed to tell you where we were?”

“Yeah, but you moved the tree, didn’t you? That thing next to the lift, is that what I think it is?”

“Yes. Lawri’s doing, mostly.”

“Hah. Scientist, I thought you’d be twiddling your toes waiting for me to come home.”

“We found ways to occupy ourselves, Scientist.” Lawri’s pregnancy was growing conspicuous. The formality between her and her husband did not seem unfriendly.

Gavving said, “I hope you brought something to make us look good.”

The rest of them laughed; but Clave said, “Trouble?”

“Treefodder, yes, trouble! I’d have flown to a new tree if I’d been sure they’d let me have wings. One thing, the children are on our side. They’ve been crazy with waiting to see what you bring back. And Minya stuck with me.”

“She did? Good,” said Clave.

“She did, in public.”

Clave reached into a bag. He sliced an apple in half and passed it to Gavving and Lawri. They bit, distrustfully, and continued eating. “That’ll do it,” Gavving said.

“Fine. Here. Don’t eat the hull.” He’d cut an orange into quarters.

They gnawed the insides out of the oranges. Lawri chewed and swallowed a bit from the peel, but did not take another. Gavving said, “Yeah!”

“We’ve got seeds,” Clave said. “This and a lot of other earthlife. We’ll plant them in the out tuft.”

Faces like afield of flowers below the falling cage. Two meteor-trails of golden blond hair: Jill next to Anthon, she a meter shorter than her father, both sca

The cage thumped into its housing. Children piled out of the treadmill, and Mark with them. Everyone in Citizens Tree was here.

They looked short: a field of dwarves in which Anthon and the Serjent women stood out as normal. Rather had become used to giants. Children and some adults crowded around the cage. Jill and Anthon hung back, not quite hostile, but suspending judgment. Mark had that look too.

For all these hundreds of days Rather had wondered what the tribe would think of his mutiny. He’d almost managed to forget that he had never told Jill, could not have told her that he was going to leave the tree.

His mothers were crowding close around the lift, and Karilly and Ryllin with them. The Serjent women hugged Carlot, then Carlot’s new husband. Karilly hung back a little. She was conspicuously carrying a guest. Raff beamed like sunlight at seeing someone he knew. They fell into rapid conversation, moving away, taking Karilly with them. “Damn, but I missed oranges…Booce had to stay? I’m not surprised, but…”

Karilly was silent.

Clave folded his wives into his arms and forced apples on them.

Anthon slapped an orange from Debby’s hand. Rather heard: “You took this Admiralty man aboard the carmT’ before his First Mother picked him up to hug him.

“You treefeeding fool,” Minya whispered. “You fool mutineer, you. Drillbits in your brains, both of you, you and your father. He never stopped wishing he’d gone too. Are you all right?”