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?"