An offer? “Rather, you there?”
Jeffer heard Clave’s distant yell. Presently Rather said, “Here.”
“You had an offer to join the Navy? What was said? What did you tell them?”
“I didn’t take the Petty seriously. The idea is to learn something about the Admiralty, buy some earthlife seeds, and get back to Citizens Tree!”
“We want to know about the Navy too.”
“I learned a little—”
Clave interrupted. “How serious are we? Booce, what has the Navy got that we want to see? I’m not so eager to see the inside of a Navy rocket that I’d feed one of my—”
“The Library! The cassettes! What’s on the Admiralty cassettes?”
“All right, Jeffer. What makes you think Rather could get to any of that? Booce might know, but he isn’t here to ask.”
Jeffer finished the shieldbird meat while he thought. “Ask him when you get the chance. Now, I’m getting terminally bored here. Are you free to move the silver suit into the rocket?”
“’No. It’s too easily recognized,” Clave said.
“How about just the helmet?”
“We’ll have to ask Booce, but…I think not. Let’s get Kendy in on this. Are you in contact?”
“He said he was changing orbit. He’ll be back in another day. Clave, I wish you could give me some kind of a view.”
“I’ll think of something. Jeffer, Rather’s waving at me.”
“Scientist out.”
“Clave? You’d better see this,” Rather said.
“What? I was talking to Jeffer.” Clave crawled out of the cavity behind the Wart. “Oh.”
From out of the crowded sky came a shapeless thing colored a dead yellowish brown. Its outline was fuzzed with a jittering motion that caused the optic nerves to twitch. It was coming straight at them, and Logbearer was behind it.
“Get out of its way, Rather, it’s going to hit! Got your wings?”
They fled. The thing fell toward the Wart with a faint, frightening buzzing sound. Myriads of black flecks swarmed around it, insects much smaller than honey hornets.
It struck the crater around the Wart and deformed like soft mud.
Logbearer bumped the trunk more softly. Debby emerged from the hatch in the forward pod. She stared hard at the intrusionary mass. She called, “It’s going to stick.”
Booce answered from inside. “Stet. Spread the honey.”
Debby waved at Booce and Rather, but that was all the attention she gave them. She began spreading red sticky honey around the rim of the crater.
The swarm of insects followed her. When she closed the circle, most of the insects had migrated to the honey.
“Done!”
“Good. Get aboard. Clave, Rather, I’ve got to moor this thing. Want a ride?”
Clave bellowed, “Booce, you get out here and answer some questions!”
Booce’s head popped out. He thought it over, then flapped to join them. He looked indecently self-satisfied.
“It’s a termite nest,” he said before Clave could ask. “We’ll say we didn’t have any choice, it was the only tree around and we had to get back to the Clump because… I’ll think of something.”
“Uh-huh. The honey?”
“Encouragement. When the termites run out of honey they’ll eat wood. They’ll bond the nest to the Wart.”
“What about the silver suit? Were you just going to leave it?”
“Where would it be safer?”
“Jeffer’s all alone in the sky. He’d go crazy!”
Booce’s grimace told it all. Clave said, “He’s the Citizens Tree Scientist, and he is not a crazy murderer. He was in a fight with our lives at stake, Booce, and he used what he had. It was more powerful than he thought it was—”
“He used it twice.”
“Booce, if you’ve ever been a happyfeet bandit yourself, tell me now.”
Booce was astonished, then amused. “Oh, really! No, I’m not protecting my own kind. I’m not defending bandits that prey on loggers. Granted they’d generally rather attack some tribe of helpless savages. Your suspicions are right there, Clave, but it doesn’t mean I like bandits. I wouldn’t have burned a whole damn tribe either!”
“Uh-huh. You would have sent them away without hurting them so much. How? Describe the procedure in detail.”
“I can’t do that. Jeffer hasn’t told any of us how to fly the CARM! Clave, the Scientist is not to burn any tribe, ever again. I’m telling you, not him. You are to stop him.”
“I’ll tell him. Now what?”
“Oh…we’ll leave everything but the helmet where it is. Jeffer’s scientific eyes are in the helmet, right? Those little windows in the forehead? We’ll moor it in the nest. He’ll have a view. We’ll be spending enough time around the Wart; we’ll talk to him then.”
The CARM with its cameras was hidden in a dark place, the pressure suit was in another, the incoming recordings were days old, and in present time Jeffer wasn’t present. Kendy skimmed the recordings. He was learning more through Disciplined own senses.
Logbearer was easy to follow: forty kilometers of tree with tufts missing and a metal mass off-center, now rounding the starward limb of the L4 whorl. Maintaining contact wasn’t going to be easy here. Discipline’s new orbit had twice the period of Goldblatt’s World, with Voy periodically falling north of the L4 point. Tilting his orbit out of the Smoke Ring allowed his instruments to penetrate less of the garbage in the Clump; but the log and the CARM and all of Kendy’s citizens would be circling that center on long kidney-shaped paths.
At least he wouldn’t have to burn more fuel. If he could establish relations with the Admiralty, his present orbit might suffice for hundreds of years.
Savages in a thriving civilization would find trouble sooner or later. Patience. Some emergency would force Jeffer to bring the CARM into the L4 point. Then he must open the airlock to the Navy…
One problem at a time. Wait. Learn.
Jeffer entered the cabin before Kendy passed out of range. There was fresh pink blood on his tunic and more on his hands.
“Kendy for the State—”
“Hello, Kendy. How can we—”
“Jeffer, if Rather has an offer from the Navy, I want him to accept.”
“You would. Rather didn’t sound too enthusiastic. Neither am I. How can we get away with not hiding the silver suit?”
“An excellent question.” Kendy was using light amplification, but it only showed him iron ore and chewed wood. Clave and Rather had departed the hiding place. “If the Navy has pressure suits, they’ll recognize yours. I thought of disassembling it, but they’d know the helmet too. We would ruin the camera if we tried to dismount it, and the electrical source is in the helmet.”
“So?”
“Patience.”
“Feed your patience to the tree, Kendy. I’ve got a cryptic entry under ‘Lagrange Points’—”
“I’ve had three hundred and eighty-four years to leam r patience. You are almost out of range. Can you feed yourself there?”
“Sure. There’s hand fungus, and flashers living on the bugs, and some other things. In a way it’s like learning to hunt all over again…” The link was lost.
A chance to examine the Admiralty’s military arm from inside! But Rather wasn’t enthusiastic. And Kendy would have to talk Jeffer around before his arguments could even reach the boy.
Patience…
Chapter Fourteen
Docking
from Logbearer’s log. Captain Booce Serjent speaking:
YEAR 384, DAY 1700. THIS TRIP WE NEED NOT FEAR HAPPYFEET.