The Smoke Ring

This was what it was to be a Scientist. Knowledge, power, mastery of a universe. This was what Kendy the Checker had to offer. At what price? Who but a Scientist would have the strength to resist?

The sun passed zenith and started down its arc. Jeffer had changed the display; he watched sets of letters and numbers. The roar of the main motor strummed his bones.

Chapter Three

Refugees

from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 4 SM:

TIME

WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO KEEP TO EARTH TIME, BUT THAT WORD “DAY” IS ABOUT AS USEFUL AS BALLS ON A CHECKER. THE CLOSER YOU GET TO VOY, THE SHORTER THE DAYS GET, DOWN TO ABOUT TWO HOURS. CLOSER THAN THAT, THE AIR’S TOO THIN AND THERE’S NO WATER TO SPEAK OF. AT A TEN-HOUR ORBIT, SAME THING, THERE’S NOTHING TO BREATHE. WE’VE BEEN KEEPING TO SHIP-TIME. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS CONSTITUTE A “SLEEP.” A “DAY” IS ONE ORBIT AROUND VOY, WHEREVER YOU HAPPEN TO BE. GOLD’S ORBIT IS A “STANDARD DAY.”

THE STATE TAKES ITS DATES FROM THE YEAR OF ITS FOUNDING. WE’VE DONE THE SAME, DATING SMOKE RING YEARS FROM FOUR YEARS AGO. OUR YEARS ARE HALF A ROTATION OF VOY AND ITS COMPANION SUN… HALF BECAUSE IT’S MORE CONVENIENT.

IF DISCIPLINE EVER DOES COME BACK FOR US, KENDY WILL HAVE TO LEARN A WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE.

THE HUTS OF CITIZENS TREE WERE ENCLOSURES MADE BY weaving living spine branches into a kind of wicker-work. The Scientists’ hut was larger than most, and more cluttered too. The Scientists were the tribe’s teachers and doctors.

Any hut would have harpoons protruding from the walls and high ceiling; but here the wicker sprouted starstuff knives, pots of herbs and pastes, and tools for writing.

The hut was crowded. Lawri stepped carefully among five sleeping jungle giants.

She’d covered their wounds in undyed cloth. The strangers moaned and twisted in their sleep. The youngest girl, with her hair burned down to the scalp on one side of her head, was holding herself half in the air.

The noise from outside wasn’t helping. Lawri bent to get through the doorway. “Could you hold it down!” she whisper-snarled. “These citizens don’t need…oh. Clave…Chairman, I’m trying to give them some quiet. Can you take the talk to the commons?”

Clave and Anthon were intimidated into silence. Jeffer asked, “Can any of them answer questions?”

“They’re asleep. They haven’t said anything sensible.”

Her husband merely nodded. Lawri went back in. Rustling sounds receded. For a moment she felt remorse. Jeffer would want to see the strangers as much as anyone.

When the burns healed, the strangers would be handsome, but in weird fashion. Only birds wore the gaudy colors of their scorched clothing. Their skin was dark; their lips and noses were broad; their hair was like black pillows.

The youngest girl stirred, thrashed, and opened her eyes. “Tide,” she said wonderingly. The dark eyes focused. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Lawri the Scientist. You’re in Citizens Tree. You’re safe now.”

The girl twisted to see the others. “Wend?”

“One of you died.”

The girl moaned.

“Can you tell me who you are and how you came here?”

“I’m Carlot,” the girl said. Two tears were growing.

“We’re Serjent House. Loggers. There was afire…the whole tree caught fire. Wend got caught when the water tank let go.” She shook her head; teardrop globules flew wide.

“All right, Carlot. Have some water, then go to sleep.”

Carlot’s drinking technique was surprising. She took the pottery vessel, set two fingers to nearly block the opening, then jerked the pottery vessel toward her face.

The jet of water struck her lower lip. She tried again and reached her mouth.

“Would you like something to eat? Foliage?”

“What’s that?”

Lawri went out to strip some branchlets of their foliage. Carlot looked dubiously at the fluffy green stuff.

“Oh, it’s greens.”

“You know it?”

“I’ve been in a tree tuft.” She tasted it. “This is sweet. Older tree?” She continued eating.

Lawri said, “Later I’ll get you some stew. You should sleep now.”

Carlot patted the wicker floor. “How can I sleep with this pushing up against me? All my blood wants to settle on one side.”

London Tree, Lawri’s home, had been bigger, with a stronger tide. In Citizens Tree you could drop a stone from eye level and draw a slow breath and let it out before the stone struck. But this Carlot must be used to no tide at all.

She turned over, gingerly. Her eyes closed and she was asleep.

They moved through the green gloom of the corridor, back toward the commons. Anthon said, “I always wondered. Lawri doesn’t take orders from you either, does she?”

Jeffer laughed. “Treefodder, no!”

Clave said, “I really wanted to ask them some questions before we tackle the firetree.”

“We can’t wait,” Jeffer said. “Let’s go see what we can scavenge. This is the most interesting thing that has happened to us in fourteen years.”

“It’s bound to bring changes.”

“Like what?”

Clave gri

“I’ve got the children too. I’m living in the bachelors’ longhut with my three kids and Rather. Look, I want to go now, before that burned tree drifts too far. Anthon?”

“Ready,” said the jungle giant.

Clave nodded, reluctantly. “Just us three? Stet. We’ll round up some kids to run the treadmill. And let’s take those wings along. I want to try them.”

The tree still burned. Fire had eaten six or seven klomters in from the midpoint along the lee side, progressing alongside the waterfall cha

Clave said, “I don’t understand why it hasn’t come apart.”

Anthon nodded uneasily. Jeffer said, “ It’ s a short tree. With a tuft missing it’s even shorter. Tide would pull harder on a grown tree, but that thing could still come apart while we’re on it. I don’t ever want to go through that again.”

Anthon asked, “Why do trees come apart?”

“They do it when they’re dying,” Clave said.

Jeffer said, “When a tree drifts too far away from the Smoke Ring median, it starves. It saves itself by coming i apart. The tide takes half of it out, half in. One half falls back to where the water and fertilizer are. The other half…dies, I guess.”

“I still don’t see any bugs,” Clave said. “It’s the bugs that eat a tree apart, isn’t it? The tree isn’t getting fed, so the bark lets the bugs get inside—”

“I don’t know everything, Clave.”

“Pity.”

They were close enough now to make out black lumps at the center of the charred region. There: a shape like a huge seed pod split open from inside. There: a thin shell of char, a bell shape not unlike the fire-spitting nostrils at the CARM’s aft end. A ridge of white ash joined the bell to the split pod. Beyond: several fragile sheets of charred wood, the remains of an oblong hut with interior walls.

Clave reached for the wings he’d bound to cargo hooks.

“Scientist, can you hold the CARM here? We’ll go see what there is to see. If the tree breaks in half, you’ll still have us tethered.” Jeffer stifled a protest. He ached to explore that ruined structure, but — “I can handle it. Take lines too.” The sun would be dead east in a few tens of breaths.

A stick protruded from the butt end of each fan-shaped wing. After some experimentation they settled for lining the stick along their shins and binding them with the straps. The wings tended to hang up on things even when folded. Clave and Anthon wriggled through the airlock and flapped into the sky.