Raft

2

The tree was a wheel of wood and foliage fifty yards wide. Its rotation slowing, it lowered itself reluctantly into the gravity well of the star kernel.

Pallis, the tree-pilot, was hanging by hands and feet below the knotty trunk of the tree. The star kernel and its churning Belt mine were behind his back. With a critical eye he peered up through the mat of foliage at the smoke which hung raggedly over the upper branches. The layer of smoke wasn’t anywhere near thick enough: he could clearly see starlight splashing through to bathe the tree’s round leaves. He moved his hands along the nearest branch, felt the uncertain quivering of the fine blade of wood. Even here, at the root of the branches, he could feel the tree’s turbulent uncertainty. Two imperatives acted on the tree. It strove to flee the deadly gravity well of the star — but it also sought to escape the shadow of the smoke cloud, which drove it back into the well. A skillful woodsman should have the two imperatives in fine balance; the tree should hover in an unstable equilibrium at the required distance.

Now the tree’s rotating branches bit into the air and it jerked upwards by a good yard. Pallis was almost shaken loose. A cloud of skitters came tumbling from the foliage; the tiny wheel-shaped creatures buzzed around his face and arms as they tried to regain the security of their parent.

Damn that boy—

With an angry, liquid movement of his arms he hauled himself through the foliage to the top side of the tree. The ragged blanket of smoke and steam hung a few yards above his head, attached tenuously to the branches by threads of smoke. The damp wood in at least half the fire bowls fixed to the branches had, he soon found, been consumed.

And Gover, his so-called assistant, was nowhere to be seen.

His toes wrapped around the foliage, Pallis drew himself to his full height. At fifty thousand shifts he was old by Nebula standards; but his stomach was still as flat and as hard as the trunk of one of his beloved fleet of trees, and most men would shy from the network of branch scars that covered his face, forearms and hands and flared red at moments of anger.

And this was one of those moments.

“Gover! By the Bones themselves, what do you think you are doing?”

A thin, clever face appeared above one of the bowls near the rim of the tree. Gover shook his way out of a nest of leaves and came scurrying across the platform of foliage, a pack bouncing against his narrow back.

Paliis stood with arms folded and biceps bunched. “Gover,” he said softly, “I’ll ask you again. What do you think you’re doing?”

Gover shoved the back of his hand against his nose, pushing the nostrils out of shape; the hand came away glistening. “I’d finished,” he mumbled.

Pallis leant over him. Gover’s gaze slid over and away from the tree-pilot’s eyes. “You’re finished when I tell you so. And not before.”

Gover said nothing.

“Look—” Pallis stabbed a finger at Gover’s pack. “You’re still carrying half your stock of wood. The fires are dying. And look at the state of the smoke screen. More holes than your damn vest. My tree doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going, thanks to you. Can’t you feel her shuddering?

“Now, listen, Gover. I don’t care a damn for you, but I do care for my tree. You cause her any more upset and I’ll have you over the rim; if you’re lucky the Boneys’ll have you for supper, and I’ll fly her home to the Raft myself. Got that?”

Gover hung before him, hands tugging listlessly at the ragged hem of his vest. Pallis let the moment stretch taut; then he hissed, “Now move it!”

With a flurry of motion Gover pulled himself to the nearest pot and began hauling wood from his pack. Soon fresh billows of smoke were rising to join the depleted cloud, and the shuddering of the tree subsided.

His exasperation simmering Pallis watched the boy’s awkward movements. Oh, he’d had his share of poor assistants in the past, but in the old times most of them had been willing to learn. To try. And gradually, as hard shifts wore by, those young people had grown into responsible men and women, their minds toughening with their bodies.

But not this lot. Not the new generation.

This was his third flight with the boy Gover. And the lad was still as sullen and obstructive as when he’d first been assigned to the trees; Pallis would be more than glad to hand him back to Science.

His eyes roamed around the red sky, restless. The falling stars were an array of pinpoints dwindling into the far distance; the depths of the Nebula, far below him, were a sink of murky crimson. Was this nostalgic disregard for the young of today just a symptom of ageing…? Or had people truly changed?

Well, there was no doubt that the world had changed around him. The crisp blue skies, the rich breezes of his youth were memories now; the very air was turning into a smoky sludge, and the minds of men seemed to be turning sour with it.

And one thing was for sure. His trees didn’t like this gloom.

He sighed, trying to snap out of his introspection. The stars kept falling no matter what the color of the sky. Life went on, and he had work to do.

Tiny vibrations played over the soles of his bare feet, telling him that the tree was almost stable now, hovering at the lip of the star kernel’s gravity well. Gover moved silently among the fire bowls. Damn it, the lad could do the job well when he was forced to. That was the most annoying thing about him. “Right, Gover, I want that layer maintained while I’m off-tree. And the Belt’s a small place; I’ll know if you slack. You got that?”

Gover nodded without looking at him.

Pallis dropped through the foliage, his thoughts turning to the difficult negotiations ahead.

It was the end of Rees’s work shift. Wearily he hauled himself through the foundry door.

Cooler air dried the sweat from his brow. He pulled himself along the ropes and roofs towards his cabin, inspecting his hands and arms with some interest. When one of the older workers had dropped a ladle of iron, Rees had narrowly dodged a hail of molten metal; tiny droplets had drifted into his flesh, sizzling out little craters which—

A huge shadow flapped across the Belt. Air washed over his back. He looked up; and a feeling of astonishing cold settled at the base of his skull,

The tree was magnificent against the crimson sky. Its dozen radial branches and their veil of leaves turned with a calm possession; the trunk was like a mighty wooden skull which glared around at the ocean of air.

This was it. His opportunity to escape from the Belt…

The supply trees were the only known means of traveling from Belt to Raft, and so after his moment of decision following the foundry implosion Rees had resolved to stow away on the next tree to visit the Belt. He had begun to hoard food, wrapping dried meat in bundles of cloth, filling cloth globes with water—

Sometimes, during his sleep shifts, he had lain awake staring at his makeshift preparations and a thin sweat had covered his brow as he wondered if he would have the courage to take the decisive step.

Well, the moment had come. Staring at the magnificent tree he probed at his emotions: he knew he was no hero, and he had half-expected fear to encase him like a net of ropes. But there was no fear. Even the nagging pain in his hands subsided. There was only elation; the future was an empty sky, within which his hopes would surely find room.

He hurried to his cabin and collected his bundle of supplies, which was already lashed together; then he climbed to the outer wail of his cabin.

A rope had uncoiled from the tree trunk and lay across the fifty yards to the Belt, brushing against the orbiting cabins. A man came shimmering confidently down the rope; he was scarred, old and muscular, almost a piece of the tree himself. Ignoring the watching Rees the man dropped without hesitation across empty air to a cabin and began to make his way around the Beit.

Rees clung to his cabin by one hand. The rotation of the Belt carried the cabin steadily towards the tree’s dangling rope; when it was a yard from him he grabbed at it and swarmed without hesitation off the Belt.

As always at shift change the Quartermaster’s was crowded. Pallis waited outside, watching the Belt’s pipes and boxy cabins roll around the star kernel. At length Sheen emerged bearing two drink globes.

They drifted to the relative privacy of a long stretch of piping and silently raised their globes. Their eyes met briefly. Pallis looked away in some confusion — then felt embarrassed at that in turn.

To the Bones with it. The past was gone.

He sucked at the liquor, trying not to grimace. “I think this stuff’s improving,” he said at last.

Her eyebrows arched slightly. “I’m sorry we can’t do better. No doubt your tastes are a little more refined.”

He felt a sigh escape from his throat. “Damn it, Sheen, let’s not fence. Yes, the Raft has got a liquor machine. Yes, what comes out of it is a damn sight finer than this recycled piss. And everyone knows it. But this stuff really is a little better than it was. All right? Now, can we get on with our business?”

She shrugged, indifferent, and sipped her drink. He studied the way the diffuse light caught in her hair, and his attraction to her once more pulled at him. Damn it, he had to grow out of this. It must be five thousand shifts since the time they’d slept together, their limbs tangling in her sleeping net as the Belt rolled silently around its star…

It had been a one-off, two tired people falling together. Now, damn it to hell, it only got in the way of business. In fact he suspected the miners used her as their negotiating front with him knowing the effect she had on him. This was a tough game. And it was getting tougher…

He tried to concentrate on what she was saying. “… So we’re down on production. We can’t fulfil the shipment. Gord says it will take another fifty shifts before that foundry is operational again. And that’s the way it is.” She fell silent and stared at him defiantly.

His eyes slid from her face and tracked reluctantly around the Belt. The ruined foundry was a scorched, crumpled wound in the chain of cabins. Briefly he allowed himself to imagine the scene in there during the accident — the walls bellying in, the ladles spilling molten iron—

He shuddered.

“I’m sorry, Sheen,” he said slowly. “I truly am. But—”

“But you’re not going to leave us the full fee,” she said sourly.

“Damn it, I don’t make the rules. I’ve a treeful of supplies up there; I’m ready to give you what I get back in iron, at the agreed exchange rate.”

She hissed through clenched teeth, her eyes fixed on her drink. “Pallis, I hate to beg. You’ve no idea how much I hate to beg. But we need those supplies. We’ve got sewage coming out of our spigots; we’ve got sick and dying—”

He gulped down the last of his drink. “Leave it, Sheen,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended.

She raised her head and fixed him with eyes reduced to slits. “You need our metal, Raft man. Don’t forget that.”

He took a deep breath. “Sheen, we’ve another source. You know that. The early Crew found two star kernels in neat circular orbits around the Core—”

She laughed quietly. “And you know the other mine isn’t producing any more. Is it, Pallis? We don’t know what happened to it, yet, but we’ve picked up that much. So let’s not play games.”

Shame rose like a bubble inside him; he felt his face redden and he imagined his scars emerging as a livid net. So they knew. At least, he reflected gloomily, at least we evacuated the Nebula’s only other mine when that star fell too close. At least we were honorable enough for that. Although not honorable enough to avoid lying about all that pain in order to keep our advantage over these people—

“Sheen, we’re getting nowhere. I’m just doing my job, and this is out of iny control.” He handed back his drink globe. “You have a shift to decide whether to accept my terms. Then I leave regardless. And — look, Sheen, just remember something. We can recycle our iron a hell of a lot easier than you can recycle your food and water.”

She studied him dispassionately. “I hope they suck on your bones, Raft man.”

He felt his shoulders slump. He turned and began to make his slow way to the nearest wall, from which he could jump to the tree rope.

A file of miners clambered up to the tree, iron plates strapped to their backs. Under the pilot’s supervision the plates were lashed securely to the tree rim, widely spaced. The miners descended to the Belt laden with casks of food and fresh water.

Rees, watching from the foliage, couldn’t understand why so many of the food cases were left behind in the tree.

He stayed curled closely around a two-feet wide branch — taking care not to cut open his palms on its knife-sharp leading edge — and he kept a layer of foliage around his body. He had no way of telling the time, but the loading of the tree must have taken several shifts. He was wide-eyed and sleepless. He knew that his absence from work would go unremarked for at least a couple of shifts — and, he thought with a distant sadness, it might be longer before anyone cared enough to come looking for him.

Well, the world of the Belt was behind him now/ Whatever dangers the future held for him, at least they would be new dangers.

In fact he only had two problems. Hunger and thirst…

Disaster had struck soon after he had found himself this hiding place among the leaves. One of the Belt workmen had stumbled across his tiny cache of supplies; thinking it belonged to the despised Raft crewmen the miner had shared the morsels among his companions. Rees had been lucky to avoid detection himself, he realized… but now he had no supplies, and the clamor of his throat and belly had come to fill his head.

But at last the loading was complete; and when the pilot launched his tree, even Rees’s thirst was forgotten.

When the final miner had slithered down to the Belt Pallis curled up the rope and hung it around a hook fixed to the trunk. So his visit was over. Sheen hadn’t spoken to him again, and for several shifts he had had to endure the sullen silence of strangers. He shook his head and turned his thoughts with some relief to the flight home. “Right, Gover, let’s see you move! I want the bowls switched to the underside of the tree, filled and lit before I’ve finished coiling this rope. Or would you rather wait for the next tree?”

Gover got to work, comparatively briskly; and soon a blanket of smoke was spreading beneath the tree, shielding the Belt and its star from view.

Pallis stood close to the trunk, his feet and hands sensitive to the excited surge of sap. It was almost as if he could sense the huge vegetable thoughts of the tree as it reacted to the darkness spreading below it. The trunk audibly hummed; the branches bit into the air; the foliage shook and swished and skitters tumbled, confused at the abrupt change of airspeed; and then, with an exhilarating surge, the great spinning platform lifted from the star. The Belt and its human misery dwindled to a toy-like mote, falling slowly into the Nebula, and Pallis, hands and feet pressed against the flying wood, was where he was most happy.

His contentment lasted for about a shift and a half. He prowled the wooden platform, moodily watching the stars slide through the silent air. The flight just wasn’t smooth. Oh, it wasn’t enough to disturb Gover’s extensive slumbers, but to Pallis’s practiced senses it was like riding a skitter in a gale. He pressed his ear to the ten-feet-high wall of the trunk; he could feel the bole whirring in its vacuum chamber as it tried to even out the tree’s rotation.

This felt like a loading imbalance… But that was impossible. He’d supervised the stowage of the cargo himself to ensure an even distribution of mass around the rim. For him not to have spotted such a gross imbalance would have been like — well, like forgetting to breathe.

Then what?

With a growl of impatience he pushed away from the trunk and stalked to the rim. He began to work around the lashed loads, methodically rechecking each plate and cask and allowing a picture of the tree’s loading to build up in his mind—

He slowed to a halt. One of the food casks had been broken into; its plastic casing was cracked in two places and half the contents were gone. Hur — riedly he checked a nearby water cask. It too was broken open and empty.

He felt hot breath course through his nostrils. “Gover! Gover, come here!”

The boy came slowly, his thin face twisted with apprehension.

Pallis stood immobile until Gover got within arm’s reach; then he lashed out with his right hand and grabbed the apprentice’s shoulder. The boy gasped and squirmed, but was unable to break the grip. Pallis pointed at the violated casks. “What do you call this?”

Gover stared at the casks with what looked like real shock. “Well, I didn’t do it, pilot. I wouldn’t be so stupid — ah!”

Pallis worked his thumb deeper into the boy’s joint, searching for the nerve. “Did 1 keep this food from the miners in order to allow you to feast your useless face? Why, you little bonesucker, I’ve a mind to throw you over now. When I get back to the Raft I’ll make sure not a day of your life goes by without the world being told what a lying, thieving… little…”

Then he fell silent, his anger dissipating.

There was still something wrong. The mass of the provisions taken from the casks wasn’t nearly enough to account for the disruption to the tree’s balance. And as for Gover — well, he’d been proven a thief, a liar and worse in the past, but he was right: he wasn’t nearly stupid enough for this.

Reluctantly he released the boy’s shoulder. Gover rubbed the joint, staring at him resentfully. Pallis scratched his chin. “Well, if you didn’t take the stuff, Gover, then who did? Eh?”

By the Bones, they had a stowaway.

Swiftly he dropped to all fours and pressed his hands and feet against the wood of a branch. He closed his eyes and let the tiny shuddering speak to him. If the unevenness wasn’t at the rim then where…?

Abruptly he straightened and half-ran about a quarter of the way around the rim, his long toes clutching at the foliage. He paused for a few seconds, hands once more folded around a branch; then he made his way more slowly towards the center of the tree, stopping about halfway to the trunk.

There was a little nest in the foliage. Through the bunched leaves he could see a few scraps of discolored cloth, a twist of unruly black hair, a hand dangling weightless; the hand was that of a boy or young man, he judged, but it was heavily callused and it bore a spatter of tiny wounds.

Pallis straightened to his full height. “Well, here’s our unexpected mass, apprentice. Good shift to you, sir! And would you care for your breakfast now?”

The nest exploded. Skitters whirled away from the tangle of limbs and flew away, as if indignant; and at last a boy half-stood before Pallis, eyes bleary with sleep, mouth a circle of shock.

Gover sidled up beside Pallis. “By the Bones, it’s a mine rat.”

Pallis looked from one boy to the other. The two seemed about the same age, but where Gover was well-fed and ill-muscled, the stowaway had ribs like an anatomical model’s and his muscles were like a man’s; and his hands were the battered product of hours of labor. The lad’s eyes were dark-ringed. Pallis remembered the imploded foundry and wondered what horrors this young miner had already seen. Now the boy filled his chest defiantly, his hands bunching into fists.

Gover sneered, arms folded. “What do we do, pilot? Throw him to the Boneys?”

Pallis turned on him with a snarl. “Gover, sometimes you disgust me.”

Gover flinched. “But—”

“Have you cleaned out the fire bowls yet? No? Then do it. Now!”

With a last, baleful glare at the stowaway, Gover moved clumsily away across the tree.

The stowaway watched him go with some relief; then turned back to Pallis.

The pilot’s anger was gone. He raised his hands, palms upwards. “Take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you… and that idler is nothing to be afraid of. Tell me your name.”

The boy’s mouth worked but no sound emerged; he licked cracked lips, and managed to say: “Rees.”

“All right. I’m Pallis. I’m the tree-pilot. Do you know what that means?”

“I… Yes.”

“By the Bones, you’re dry, aren’t you? No wonder you stole that water. You did, didn’t you? And the food?”

The boy nodded hesitantly. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back—”

“When? After you return to the Belt?”

The boy shook his head, a glint in his eye. “No. I’m not going back.”

Pallis bunched his fists and rested them on his hips. “Listen to me. You’ll have to go back. You’ll be allowed to stay on the Raft until the next supply tree; but then you’ll be shipped back. You’ll have to work your passage, I expect. All right?”

Rees shook his head again, his face a mask of determination.

Pallis studied the young miner, an unwelcome sympathy growing inside him. “You’re still hungry, aren’t you? And thirsty, I’ll bet. Come on. I keep my — and Gover’s — rations at the trunk.”

He led the boy across the tree surface. Surreptitiously he watched as the boy half-walked across the foliated platform, his feet seeking out the points of good purchase and then lodging in the foliage, so allowing him to “stand” on the tree. The contrast with Gover’s clumsy stumbling was marked. Pallis found himself wondering what kind of woodsman the lad would make…

After a dozen yards they disturbed a spray of skitters; the little creatures whirled up into Rees’s face and he stepped back, startled. Pallis laughed. “Don’t worry. Skitters are harmless. They are the seeds from which the tree grows…”

Rees nodded. “I guessed that.”

Pallis arched an eyebrow. “You did?”

“Yes. You can see the shape’s the same; it’s just a difference of scale.”

Pallis listened in surprised silence to the serious, parched voice.

They reached the trunk. Rees stood before the tall cylinder and ran his fingers over the gnarled wood. Pallis hid a smile. “Put your ear against the wood. Go on.”

Rees did so with a look of puzzlement — which evolved into an almost comic delight.

“That’s the bole turning, inside the trunk. You see, the tree is alive, right to its core.”

Rees’s eyes were wide.

Now Pallis smiled openly. “But I suspect you won’t be alive much longer if you don’t eat and drink. Here…”

After letting the boy sleep for a quarter-shift Pallis put him to work. Soon Rees was bent over a fire bowl, scraping ash and soot from the iron with shaped blades of wood. Pallis found that his work was fast and complete, supervised or unsupervised. Once again Gover suffered by comparison… and by the looks he shot at Rees, Pallis suspected Gover knew it.

After half a shift Pallis brought Rees a globe of water. “Here; you deserve a break.”

Rees squatted back among the foliage, flexing stiff hands. His face was muddy with sweat and soot and he sucked gratefully at the drink. On an impulse Pallis said, “These bowls hold fire. Maybe you guessed that. Do you understand how they’re used?”

Rees shook his head, interest illuminating his tired face.

Pallis described the simple sensorium of the tree. The tree was essentially a huge propeller. The great vegetable reacted to two basic forms of stimuli — gravity fields and light — and in their uncultivated state great forests of trees of all sizes and ages would drift through the clouds of the Nebula, their leaves and branchlets trapping starlight, the nourishment of drifting plants and animals, the moisture of fat rain clouds.

Rees listened, nodding seriously. “So by rotating faster — or slower — the tree pushes at the air and can climb away from gravity wells or towards the light.”

“That’s right. The art of the pilot is to generate a blanket of smoke to hide the light, and so to guide the flight of the tree.”

Rees frowned, his eyes distant. “But what I don’t understand is how the tree can change its rotation speed.”

Once again Pallis was surprised. “You ask good questions,” he said slowly. “I’ll try to explain. The trunk is a hollow cylinder; it contains another, solid cylinder called the bole, which is suspended in a vacuum chamber. The trunk and the rest of the tree are made of a light, fine-fibred wood; but the bole is a mass of much denser material, and the vacuum chamber is crisscrossed with struts and ribs to keep it from collapsing. And the bole spins in its chamber; muscle-like fibres keep it whirling faster than a skitter.

“Now — when the tree wants to speed its rotation it slows the bole a little, and the spin of the bole is transferred to the tree. And when the tree wants to slow it is as if it pours some of its spin back into the bole,” He struggled for phrases to make it clearer; dim, half-understood fragments from Scientists’ lectures drifted through his mind: moments of inertia, conservation of angular momentum…

He gave up with a shrug. “Well, that’s about the best I can explain it. Do you understand?”

Rees nodded. “I think so.” He looked oddly pleased with Pallis’s answer; it was a look that reminded the pilot of the Scientists he had worked with, a look of pleasure at finding out how things work.

Gover, from the rim of the tree, watched them sullenly.

Pallis stepped slowly back to his station at the trunk. How much education did the average miner get, he wondered. He doubted Rees was even literate. As soon as a child was strong enough he was no doubt forced into the foundry or down to the crushing surface of the iron star, to begin a life of muscle-sapping toil…

And he was forced there by the economics of the Nebula, he reminded himself harshly; economics which he — Pallis — helped to keep in place.

He shook his head, troubled. Pallis had never accepted the theory, common on the Raft, that the miners were a species of subhuman, fit only for the toil they endured. What was the life span of the miners? Thirty thousand shifts? Less, maybe? Would Rees live long enough to learn what angular momentum was? What a fine woodsman he would make… or, he admitted ruefully, maybe a better Scientist.

A vague plan began to form in his mind.

Rees came to the trunk and collected his shift-end rations. The young miner peered absently around at the empty sky. As the tree climbed up towards the Raft, away from the Core and towards the edge of the Nebula, the air was perceptibly brightening.

A distant sound carried over the sigh of the wind through the branches: a discordant shout, huge and mysterious.

Rees looked questioningly at Pallis. The tree-pilot smiled. “That’s the song of a whale.” Rees looked about eagerly, but Pallis warned, “I wouldn’t bother. The beast could be miles away…” The pilot watched Rees thoughtfully. “Rees, something you haven’t told me yet. You’re a stowaway, right? But you can’t have any real idea what the Raft is like. So… why did you do it? What were you running from?”

Rees’s brow creased as he considered the question. “I wasn’t running from anything, pilot. The mine is a tough place, but it was my home. No. I left to find the answer.”

“The answer? To what?”

“To why the Nebula is dying.” Pallis studied the serious young miner and felt a chill settle on his spine.

Rees woke from a comfortable sleep in his nest of foliage. Pallis hung over him, silhouetted by a bright sky. “Shift change,” the pilot said briskly.

“Hard work ahead for all of us: docking and unloading and—”

“Docking?” Rees shook his head clear of sleep.

“Then we’ve arrived?”

Pallis grinned. “Well, isn’t that obvious?”

He moved aside. Behind him the Raft hung huge in the sky.