The Smoke Ring

“I’m in good shape. Mostly.” She pulled back to look into his face. He tried to look earnest. “First Mother, I’m allergic to dry, thin air. Not enough sleep does it too. It’s like knives in the eyes. I go blind. It lasts for hours.”

She started laughing. She said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and hugged him hard, still laughing. There were tears in her eyes. She put him down and saw him smiling slyly. She said, “It’ll never happen again. We’ll keep the tree where the air’s thick. You’d better go talk to Jill.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Talk to her first. Then I think—”

Jeffer shouted for attention. “I here present Raff Belmy. Raff and Carlot are married by Admiralty law. The record is in the cassettes.”

Over the heads of his brothers and sisters, Rather saw thejudging-look fade from Jill’s face. She moved forward at last. Rather said, “Harry, can you give me some privacy? Take them along?”

Harry said, “Oh. Sure.” Somehow he got his siblings moving away before Jill reached him.

The judging look was back. She said, “Rather. How are you?”

“Fine. Nobody made me a copsik. I didn’t get killed. Jill, I wanted to tell you.”

“Were you afraid I’d run tell my father?”

“If I wasn’t, the rest of us would have been. I couldn’t, Jill.”

He saw her reject that. She asked, “What was it like?”

“I’ll be a lot of days telling you that!” And suddenly it was a pain in him, that he couldn’t tell her about the raid, ever.

“What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing,” he lied. “I was remembering how close I came to joining the Admiralty Navy. I got out of it though. Jill, di

“Couple of days yet.”

“I’ll show you what to do.” Take the kids too? He’d thought he wanted to be alone with Jill, but now he knew he didn’t. “Harry! Gorey! Bring those bags to the cookpot.”

The Admiralty slid west below him. Kendy began his burn, then turned to his instruments. Neudar and the telescope array caught Admiralty Headquarters as it emerged from behind the Dark. The Library didn’t respond. It must be turned off. CARM #6 was nowhere in evidence. No pressure suit responded to his query.

Sharls Davis Kendy had made more than one mistake.

For half a thousand years he had been frantic to begin guiding his citizens in the Smoke Ring. Now he could begin, and now he almost knew how. Opportunities would come.

A part of his attention sca

The camera viewpoint spun erratically through a cloud of children. Children had knocked the helmet off its usual perch at the lift, then played with it like a basketball. Kendy viewed the commons as a series of stills. Corridor openings, the water trap, the communal cooking area, children laughing as they bounded in slow arcs.

A series of angular Clump houses, wildly various.

Mark’s hut in various stages of construction. The silver suit had been housed there for a time.

Abruptly the CARM #2 control board came to life.

Kendy sent his signal. Records came back: stills of various bored Guardians in their shared pressure suits, culminating in (present time) six jungle-giant men in a half circle around the control board, wearing anxious faces and spotless new uniforms. These must be officers; and now Kendy had their insignia.

The signal disintegrated with distance.

He rounded forty degrees of Smoke Ring before he made contact with CARM #6.

The vehicle was in its wooden dock at the midpoint of Citizens Tree. It was empty of citizens and cargo. That was Logbearer next to the left cage, and some smaller structure next to that. Kendy “stared”: he enlarged the image and examined it in detail.

They’d built a steam rocket.

They didn’t have a metal pipe or sikenwire, so they’d used ceramics. Fired mud! The laundry vat was part of it!

Records: the CARM on its way home. Logbearer was strapped along the hull. Booce was missing. Rather was present(!). The jungle-giant stranger matched the still of Hilar Belmy’s son.

Raff Belmy’s medical readings, originally ominous, settled down over passing days. Carlot must have helped to calm him down. Rather was being abnormally polite to both, and keeping his distance. The two spent considerable time out of sight aboard Logbearer.

Records: moving toward the Citizens Tree midpoint.

The ceramic rocket returned ahead of the CARM. It puffed toward the in tuft, pushing a huge glob of black mud, and passed out of range.

Records: “Year 384, day 2400, Jeffer speaking as Scientist. Carm and Logbearer are both docked at Citizens Tree. This will be my last log entry until Kendy calls.

“Kendy, for your information, Rather got out of Headquarters safely. We refueled the jets on an Admiralty pressure suit and returned it. Captain-Guardian Mickl could have had the other suits refueled too, but he never brought them. Now he’s got a pressure suit with jets. We gave him some time to play, and then we told him what to do when they run out of fuel.

“We’ve had no further trouble. Booce got a good offer on the metal. The Navy was carving it up when we left.

“Rather suggests that Mickl wants the flying suit for himself. It’s something even the Admiral doesn’t have. He’s got a secret now, and we know it, and he’ll need us to keep it flying. That gives us a certain edge with the Captain-Guardian if we ever want to exploit it.

“We have some wealth and some influence in the Admiralty. We got it without your help. We do not appreciate your abandoning Rather in the middle of the raid.

“I’ve spent as much time waiting for your call as I care to. I’ll be back from time to time. If you haven’t called by the crossyear, which is three hundred and ninety-one days from now, I will turn Voice off.”

Nobody was near the CARM. The lift wasn’t ru

The CARM drifted out of range. Kendy sca

The Admiralty flowed below him. The Library had been turned off again.

Their ancestors hadn’t listened to him either. They’d turned off the Voice subsystems; they’d cut the fibers that allowed Kendy to fly a CARM by remote. He’d been completely cut off for half a thousand years. As he was now.

Rather was scrubbing his teeth and thinking about breakfast when the Silver Man came into the bach hut. He spit and said, “Mark?”

“Who else?” Mark threw back his helmet. The silver suit was filthy and stank of smoke. “I tried that. I felt silly.”

“Sure, silly. Mark, I saw their teeth. The older Admiralty citizens still have half their teeth! I bet Ryllin and Mishael have been scrubbing their teeth all along.”

Rather remembered that this man wasn’t his father… and didn’t know it, and had a legitimate grievance. All in a rush he said, “I stole it. We thought we needed it and we did. It was right to go. Treefodder, Mark, you’re from a bigger tree! Don’t you feel cramped here?”

“Fifteen years I’ve felt cramped. Relax. You brought back some wonderful things. You brought back the CARM and the suit and you didn’t ruin the suit.”

“You looked mad enough to kill when we came down.”

“That was three good di

“You forgive me? Mark, I’m really glad.”

“What are my choices? Sure I forgive you. We’re firing the new laundry pot.”

“Is it that late? I slept like a rock. Needed it too. These first few sleeps I just lay there wondering why one of the walls was pushing against me.”

“I’ve spent some sleepless nights here myself,” Mark said. “It’s lonely in the bach hut. We built it too big. Big enough for the next crop of men.”