Their catch was moored by cargo hooks, divested of skin and guts and some of the scarlet meat. Booce was holding raw bird flesh sliced thin and rolled around a stalk of lemon fern. He used it to point into the dorsal view.
“And that is a sting jungle. The green dot, straight out.”
“Stet.” Jeffer tapped attitude jets to life. The CARM turned. Carlot squeaked and grabbed Rather, startling him awake. Booce dropped his meal to snatch at a seat back.
Jeffer hid a grin. These sophisticated Admiralty folk found the CARM as unsettling as Jeffer’s own citizens did.
He aimed the CARM east of Booce’s green dot. East takes you out… “Half a day and we’ll have honey. What else do we need?”
“Some way to collect it,” Booce answered.
“We’ll put Rather in the silver suit. No treefeeding insect will sting him through that!”
“Right. Better than armor.”
“Tell us about the Admiralty,” Clave said.
Booce closed his eyes to think. Then: “You’re lonely out here. There’s too much space. Everything is dense in the Clump. Think of a seed pod, and think of the Admiralty as the shell. There are more people in the Market alone, any time of day or night, than you’ve ever seen.
“We pull the logs back to the Clump over the course of a year or two, and we arrange an auction in the Market. Twice we’ve been attacked by happyfeet bandits. Once we got back just as another log was being docked, and we got half what we expected for the wood. But over the years we put enough money together to buy my retailer’s license. This was going to be our last trip. We were going to settle in the Clump, and I’d work the wood myself and sell finished planks and burl, while Ryllin set about finding good husbands for our daughters. That was the point: they’re reaching that age…”
Clave asked, “Can we really make the Admiralty believe we’re loggers?”
“We’ll be loggers,” Booce said. “Rebuilding Logbearer’s no problem. We should have more weapons in case happyfeet come by, and it all has to look like Admiralty gear…and we still won’t look like a typical logging family. But we don’t have to, because I’ve got my retailer’s license.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we don’t have to sell the log straight off. The Navy ships will escort us in and give us a berth. I can set up shop in the Market and sell wood, and hire anyone I like; which means that the rest of you can be workers hired off a happyfeet jungle, or bought as copsiks. Some of the happyfeet keep copsiks. The Admiralty doesn’t, so you’d be free if I bought you.”
“Free, but not citizens.”
“Right.”
“Why can’t you have hired us off a tree?”
Booce thought about it, and smiled. “You have a gift, Clave. Tell as much of the truth as possible. Debby, you’re from Carther States, directly. You were stranded in the sky, you made your way to a tree, and now you want to live in a jungle again. Okay, Debby?”
Debby’s lips were moving as she silently repeated the details. “Stet.”
“We’ll have to say Citizens Tree is close to the Clump. Otherwise we got home too fast, and we’d have to explain about the CARM.”
Clave nodded. “So then we sell the log. How?”
“Set up in the Market and announce an auction. Buy your earthlife seeds with the money and go home. The Admiralty’ll take half in taxes—”
Clave exclaimed, “Half?”
Jeffer said, “Taxes?”
“Taxes,” Booce said, “is the money the Admiralty takes to run itself. Everybody pays, but the rich pay more. A good log is wealth. For the price of the CARM you could be very rich indeed.”
“The CARM is what makes us what we are. We won’t risk that,” Clave said.
“Then don’t take it into the Clump. The Navy won’t want something that powerful floating around. They’ll pay well, but they’ll buy it whether or not you’re selling.”
Jeffer tapped the forward jets awake. They were pulling near the sting jungle.
Certain mooring loops fit the silver suit too perfectly, as if it were their specific purpose. Four sets. For four suits?
Jeffer pulled it loose. “The silver suit is yours, Rather. I’m going to teach you everything about it.”
Rather had seen the silver suit as a mark of rank. He hadn’t thought of it as an obligation. “Did Mark show you how to work it?”
“I’ve watched him. Lift this latch. Take the head and turn it till it stops. Pull up. Turn it the other way. Lift. Now this latch. Now pull this down…pull it apart… good.”
The suit looked like the flayed skin of a dwarf.
Legs first, then arms. Duck under the neck ring. Rather closed the sliding catches, the latches. “Do I have to close the head?”
“Cover yourself. You don’t want to be stung,” Booce said. “Those little mutineers can sting a moby to death.”
Rather closed the headpiece. He said, “The air’s getting stale.”
They couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t really suffocate this fast, could he?
Jeffer lifted the headpiece. “Listen first. Put your hand here.” He guided Rather’s fingers to a row of square buttons on the outside of the neck ring. He pushed one (colored lights lit below Rather’s chin), and another (air jetted inward from all around the neck ring). He used Rather’s fingertip to roll a small wheel back and forth (the air jets grew weaker, then stronger). “Close the helmet.”
Rather did as Jeffer had shown him. Air from the neck ring hissed around his head.
Clave was saying something inaudible. Jeffer guided Rather’s fingertip to another tiny wheel, and suddenly Clave’s voice was a roar. “ — use up the air? Does that thing have to be closed? We’re not going back out of the Smoke Ring again, are we?”
“Let’s hope not. Rather, you’re leaking. Close that flap at your chest. The way Booce talks about honey hornets, you don’t want anything open.”
Rather felt it out, then used finger pressure to close a snap he’d missed.
Now he was being shown little wheels on his chest.
He moved the left one experimentally. His left foot kicked upward and he was wheeling in the air, banging his head and elbow, snatching for a mooring loop while his other hand rolled the wheel back to zero. He banged both knees before he could stop his spin.
Clave and Debbie were helpless with laughter. Jeffer had jumped clear. “Leave those alone while you’re inside! You fly with those. Now I’m going to walk you out the airlock. Play around with the jets. If you get in trouble we’ll come after you.”
Rather braced himself in the airlock, feeling imprisoned. The sting jungle was a fat, fluffy ring half a klomter across, dark green around the outside, slowly rotating. The inner rim flamed in orange and scarlet. Rather, looking out through the airlock, saw motion there like jittery fog.
Clave and Booce eased him into the sky.
They couldn’t have any idea what the boy was going through, Kendy thought. How would they? None could fly the ancient pressure suit. Rather would have to be an agoraphile and an acrophile both.
Kendy had explained the pressure suit with diagrams and pointers; but had he shown Jeffer how to replenish the suit’s oxygen and fuel? Replay that memory…no. Do that soon, if it wasn’t already too late. What Kendy was watching was already two hours past.
But the CARM was in range again, and in present time the boy was aboard, and out of the suit, and still alive.
Kendy kept the tape running:
Debby and Clave hovered a safe distance away. The boy floundered. He was all over the sky, spinning, faster …slower, tilting himself back and sideways to slow the spin…learning to move arms and legs to change his attitude. He found the throttle dials and turned both jets to minimum. He circled the CARM, then arced off toward the green doughnut that Booce had made his target.