Larry Niven - The Integral Trees

The girls loved Clave. The boys imitated him. Some just watched, others buzzed around him, trying to help him assemble the harpoons and the spikes or asking an endless stream of questions. "What are you doing? Why do you need so many harpoons? And all this rope? Is it a hunting trip?"

"I can't tell you," Clave said with just the proper level of regret. "King, where have you been? You're all sticky."

King was a happy eight-year-old painted in brown dust. "We went underside. The foliage is greener there. Tastes better."

"Did you take lines? Those branches aren't as strong as they used to be. You could fall through. And did you take a grownup with you?"

Jill, nine, had the wit to distract him. "When's dinner? We're still hungry."

"Aren't we all." Clave turned to Jayan. "We've got enough packs, we won't be carrying food, we'll find water on the trunk…claw sandals jet pods, I'm glad we got those…hope we've got enough spikes what else do we need? Is Jinny back?"

"No. What did you send her for, anyway?"

"Rocks. I gave her a net for them, but she'll have to go all the way to the treemouth. I hope she finds us a good grindstone."

Jayan didn't blame the children. She loved Clave too. She would have kept him for herself, if she could…if not for Jinny. Sometimes she wondered if Jinny ever felt that way.

"Mmm…we'll pick some foliage before we leave the tuft—"

Jayan stopped working. "Clave, I never thought of that. There's no foliage on the trunk! We won't have anything to eat!"

"We'll find something. That's why we're going," Clave said briskly. "Thinking of changing your mind?"

"Too late," Jayan said. She didn't add that she had never wanted to go at all. There was no point, now.

"I could bust you loose. Jinny too. The citizens like you, they wouldn't let—"

"I won't stay." Not with Mayrin and the Chairman here, and Clave gone. She looked up and said, "Mayrin."

Clave's wife stood in the half-shadows on the far side of the Cornmona. She might have been there for some time. She was seven years older than Clave, a stocky woman with the square jaw of her father, the Chairman. She called, "Clave, mighty hunter, what game are you playing with this young woman when you might be finding meat for the citizens?"

"Orders."

She approached, smiling. "The expedition. My father and I arranged it together."

"If you'd like to believe that, feel free."

The smile slipped. "Copsik! You've mocked me too long, Clave. You and them. I hope you fall into the sky."

"I hope I don't," Clave said mildly. "Would you like to assist our departure? We need blankets. Better have an extra. Nine."

"Fetch them yourself," Mayrin said and stalked away.

Here in the main depths of Quinn Tuft there were tunnels through the foliage. Huts nestled against the vertical flank of the branch, and the tunnels ran past. Now Harp and Gavving had room to walk, or something like it. In the low tidal pull they bounced on the foliage as if it and they were made of air. The branchiets around the tunnels were dry and nude, their foliage stripped for food.

Changes. The days had been longer before the passing of Gold. It used to be two days between sleeps; now it was eight. The Grad had tried to explain why, once, but the Scientist had caught them at it and whacked the Grad for spilling secrets and Gavving for listening.

Harp thought that the tree was dying. Well, Harp was a teller, and world-sized disasters make rich tales. But the Grad thought so too…and Gavving felt like the world had ended. He almost wanted it to end, before he had to tell the Chairman about his son.

He stopped to look into his own dwelling, a long half-cylinder, the bachelors' longhut. It was empty. Quinn Tribe must be gathered for the evening meal.

"We're in trouble," Gavving said and sniffled.

"Sure we are, but there's no point in acting like it. If we hide, we don't eat. Besides, we've got this." Harp hefted the dead musrum.

Gavving shook his head. It wouldn't help. "You should have stopped him."

"I couldn't." When Gavving didn't answer, Harp said, "Four days ago the whole tribe was throwing lines into a pond, remember? A pond no bigger than a big hut. As if we could pull it to us. We didn't think that was stupid till it was gone past, and nobody but Clave thought to go for the cookpot, and by the time he got back—"

"I wouldn't send even Clave to catch a swordbird."

"Twenty-twenty," Harp jeered. The taunt was archaic, but its meaning was common. Any fool can foresee the past.

An opening in the cotton: the turkey pen, with one gloomy turkey still alive. There would be no more unless a wild one could be captured from the wind. Drought and famine…Water still ran down the trunk sometimes, but never enough. Flying things still passed, meat to be drawn from the howling wind, but rarely. The tribe could not survive on the sugary foliage forever.

"Did I ever tell you," Harp asked, "about Glory and the turkeys?"

"No." Gavving relaxed a little. He needed a distraction.

"This was twelve or thirteen years back, before Gold passed by. Things didn't fall as fast then. Ask the Grad to tell you why, 'cause I can't, but it's true. So if she'd just fallen on the turkey pen, it wouldn't have busted. But Glory was trying to move the cookpot. She had it clutched in her arms, and it masses three times what she does, and she lost her balance and started running to keep it from hitting the ground. Then she smashed into the turkey pen.

"It was as if she'd thought it out in detail. The turkeys were all through the Clump and into the sky. We got maybe a third of them back. That was when we took Glory off cooking duties."

Another hollow, a big one: three rooms shaped from spine branches. Empty. Gavving said, "The Chairman must be almost over the fluff."

"It's night," Harp answered.

Night was only a dimming while the far arc of the Smoke Ring filtered the sunlight; but a cubic klomter of foliage blocked light too. A victim of fluff could come out at night long enough to share a meal.

"He'll see us come in," Gavving said. "I wish he were still in confinement."

There was firelight ahead of them now. They pressed on, Gavving smiling, Harp trailing the musrum on his line. When they emerged into the Commons their faces were dignified, and their eyes avoided nobody.

The Commons was a large open area, bounded by a wickerwork of branchiets. Most of the tribe formed a scarlet circle with the cookpot in the center. Men and women wore blouses and pants dyed with the scarlet the Scientist made from tuftberries and sometimes decorated with black. That red would show vividly anywhere within the tuft. Children wore blouses only.

All were uncommonly silent.

The cookflre had nearly burned out, and the cookpot — an ancient thing, a tall, transparent cylinder with a lid of the same material — retained no more than a double handful of stew.

The Chairman's chest was still half-covered in fluff but the patch had contracted and turned mostly brown. He was a square-jawed, brawny man in middle age, and he looked unhappy, irritable. Hungry. Harp and Gavving went to him, handed him their catch. "Food for the tribe," Harp said.

Their catch looked like a fleshy mushroom, with a stalk half a meter long and sense organs and a coiled tentacle under the edge of the cap. A lung ran down the center of the stalk/body to give the thing jet propulsion. Part of the cap had been ripped away, perhaps by some predator; the scar was half-healed. It looked far from appetizing, but society's law bound the Chairman too.

He took it. "Tomorrow's breakfast," he said courteously. "Where's Laython?"

"Lost," Harp said, before Gavving could say, "Dead."

The Chairman looked stricken. "How?" Then, "Wait, Eat first."