The Smoke Ring

Jeffer tapped the white button. “Prikazyvat Voice,” he said.

The CARM said, “Ready, Jeffer the Scientist.”

Clave and Anthon fluttered erratically through the air.

Suddenly Anthon moved purposefully toward the blister of charred machinery, moving easily, as if he had always been a bird. Clave moved after him, fighting a tendency to veer left.

They swept away the white ash that lay between the bell and the tank. The ash enclosed them in cloud. When the cloud dispersed, they had exposed a length of tube and a loose webbing of metal strands around it.

“Kendy for the State. Hello, Jeffer.”

Jeffer didn’t jump. “Hello, Kendy. What do you make of all this?”

“You’d know more about the injured plant than I. I’ve been studying the machinery.” Within the bow window the metal strands and the enclosed pipe began blinking, an outline of red light. “These, the pipe and the chicken wire, are metal. The ruptured tank—” another blinking outline “—appears to have been a large seed pod. The cone is half of a similar seed pod. The ash around the pipe appears to be wood ash.

“We’re looking at a steam rocket, Jeffer. Your invaders used a wood fire to heat the pipe. They ran water through the pipe and into the nozzle. Very inefficient, but in your peculiar environment they could move a tree with that. Slowly, of course.”

“Why would they pick an injured tree?”

“Ask them. Did any survive?”

“One’s dead. Five more are in bad shape. My wife won’t let me near them. Wait a few days and see.”

Clave and Anthon flew along the split in the great tank.

They reached the cluster of black oblongs at the other end.

The Checker said, “Their wounds won’t become infected. We didn’t bring disease bacteria.”

“What?”

“I was thinking aloud. I want to talk to your invaders. Take them on a tour, Jeffer, when they’re ready. Show them the CARM.”

“Kendy, I’m not sure I want them to know about you.”

“I will observe only.”

Clave and Anthon were flapping back to the CARM.

They carried blackened cargo, and they no longer wore tethers. “Company coming,” Jeffer said.

“Jeffer, you’ve concealed your contact with me from the rest of your tribe, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t mentioned it to them yet.”

“I’ll keep my silence while others are aboard. Play the game any way you like.”

Clave and Anthon returned black with soot. They untied the now-clumsy wings, then wiggled in, pushing armfuls of blackened salvage ahead of them. Clave crowed, “I love it! It’s really flying!”

“You never did like tide, did you, Clave? How’s the leg?”

“It never gets any better.” Clave flexed his right leg.

The misshapen lump on his thighbone bulged beneath the skin and muscle. The compound fracture he’d suffered in Carther States had healed, but in the jungle there had been no tide to tell the bone to stop growing. “It feels like I strained it. If I have to fly any distance I’ll use just one wing.”

They set to mooring their loot along the walls. Two tremendous hooks, wood stiffened with metal. A meter’s length of metal band with tiny teeth along one edge. A hardwood tube had kept its shape if not its strength; the remnants of charred plastic hose clung to one end.

“Weapons and tools,” Clave said. “There was wire twisted together like a harebrain net, but it was burned through in too many places. Nothing else worth taking except the pipe. We’ve got to have that pipe. We moored the lines to it, Jeffer. Let’s pull it loose.”

“It must be important, given that you’ve moored the CARM to a tree that’s about to come apart. Why? Just because it’s metal?”

“I’ve got a vague idea what this setup is for,” Clave said. “We could duplicate everything except the pipe, in theory anyway. The pipe isn’t just metal, it’s starstuff, something out of the old science.”

“Why do you say that?”

“We couldn’t find a seam,” Anthon said. “It gleams when you rub away the soot. Clave, I’m not sure I like any of this. Jeffer’s right, that tree could come apart and throw us spi

Clave the Chairman said, “Pull that pipe out. Scientist.”

Anthon fumed and was silent. Jeffer said, “Strap down. Let’s hope the tethers hold.”

Under attitude jets the CARM shuddered and lurched.

Then six meters of metal pipe two hundred ce’meters across pulled loose in a cloud of ash.

When Anthon and Clave went out to retrieve it, Jeffer went too. They watched, gri

They bound the pipe up against the hull and took the CARM back to Citizens Tree. The burning tree continued to drift west and in.

Lawri kept the citizens away from her hut for five days, a full waking-sleeping cycle. That became impossible when she sent Rather for food. Rather came back with waterbird stew, and Clave, Jeffer, Gavving, Minya, Debby, Jayan, Ji

She kept them outside while the strangers ate. Then she and Jeffer pulled the hut’s entrance apart. It could be rebuilt later.

The man named himself: Booce Serjent. He shaped his words strangely. He named the others: his wife Ryllin, and their daughters Mishael, Karilly, and Carlot.

“We’ve delayed the funeral until you’re strong enough,” Clave said. “Can you make yourself discuss funeral practices?”

Booce shrugged painfully. “We cremate. The ashes go into the earthlife tanks. What do you do here?”

“The dead go to feed the tree.”

“All right. Chairman Clave, what has happened to Logbearer?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Logbearer is our ship. You saw a burning tree? The fire started around Logbearer, in the middle.”

“We went there. We brought back a metal pipe and some other stuff.”

“You saved the main feed pipe! How?”

“We used the CARM. It’s an old starstuff relic, still working. We use it to move the tree.”

Booce smiled and sighed and seemed about to drift off to sleep.

Lawri asked, “What are you? Carlot said loggers.”

“Let him alone. I’m awake.” The older woman sounded tired. “I’m Ryllin. Yes, we’re loggers. We take lumber back to the Clump and sell it there.”

Chairman Clave asked, “You mean there are men in there?”

Ryllin’s laugh chopped off as if it had hurt her. “More than a thousand. With children, near two thousand.”

“Thousands. Huh. And you move trees. Don’t you have trees in the Clump?”

“No. The tide’s wrong.”

“How do you move a tree?”

“You cut off one tuft. Then the wind only blows on the other tuft. Booce generally takes us west, so of course we want the log to go east. So we cut the in tuft. The wind pushes just on the out tuft, so it pushes the tree west, and that slows it down. The tree drops closer to Voy and speeds up—”

The children and some adults were looking confused.

We taught them this! Lawri thought angrily. West takes you in. Pushing a tree against the Smoke Ring’s rotation — west — would drop it closer to Voy. Lower orbits were faster orbits. The tree would move east toward the Clump.

“ — But of course we need the rocket too,” Ryllin was saying. “A rocket is a tank of water, and a nozzle, and a metal pipe with a fire around it. You run water through the pipe. The steam sprays away from where you want to go. Without the pipe there’s no Log bearer. You understand reaction effects?”

The citizens looked at each other. Children understood the law of reaction before they could speak!

Ryllin said, “Well, when you get to the Clump you sever the other tuft and work the log to a mooring with the steam rocket. Then you have to sell it. We’ve done it all our lives. But the pipefire got away from us… Lawri? I’m tired.”