Somewhere in a pattern of magnetic fields there was a change of state…and Kendy the man would have laughed. A change of State, yes. Sharls Davis Kendy’s State was a thousand years in the past. Dead. Somehow he must serve anyway. His own goals had been spelled out in detail; he would serve those.
Humankind was to settle varied environments. So be it. What was his present situation?
The receding Smoke Ring covered forty degrees of sky. His mind had been following a loop for just under two months! He’d missed the final stages of the explosion of Levoy’s Star, the foray into the Admiralty might have disintegrated by now…
To work. Discipline’s drive had shut down without his attention. Good! He still had fuel.
He started the drive warming. His orbit was a comet’s, highly eccentric. Equations ran through his mind…fire a short burst at aphelion. Shed some velocity by aerobraking, by dipping into the gas torus around the Smoke Ring, twice. Use Goldblatt’s World as a gravity sling, save a few cupfuls of deuterium that way…
Glowing in direct sunlight, the Clump was green-and-white chaos in Logbearer’s steam trail. Clave felt good: loose and free, cruising through an uncluttered sky.
Rather crawled out of the angular cabin. His head was metal and glass. “The suit’s too big, but I can wear the helmet.”
Clave smiled at the sight. “Getting anything?”
“Getting…? No, Jeffer hasn’t called. Maybe he can’t call this suit. I tried Kendy too.”
“Too bad.” Clave had been watching a distant brownish smudge of vegetation. Now he shouted aft. “Carlot? Could that be a fisher jungle?”
“Be with you in twelve breaths.” Carlot finished what she was doing to the motor and crawled to them over the cabin. “Where?”
Clave’s toes jabbed east and out.
“I don’t see the root…right, that’s what it is. I’d better turn off the motor or we’ll go past. Rather?”
Rather followed her aft. Clave stayed at the bow while they worked the motor. Presently the tide behind him went away.
Closer now, the fisher jungle looked dead enough. Brown foliage and bare branchlets. Tufts and patches of vivid green: parasitical growths. The fisher root was half extended, like a dead man’s hand with three scarlet fingernails. He looked for the CARM…and found a man flapping toward him.
Jeffer pulled himself aboard, panting. “Moor to the root. Treefodder, I’m glad to see you, but what are you doing here? Is everyone here?” He looked over the edge of cabin and shouted, “Hello, Carlot! Rather, what… is that a pressure suit helmet?”
“Yes. The rest of it’s inside.”
They told it in tandem while they moored Logbearer.
“I never did quite know if the Captain-Guardian believed me,” Rather said, “but he left Serjent House without taking any copsiks—”
“The Navy watched us for the next forty, fifty days,”
Clave said. “We weren’t doing anything peculiar. Booce sold wood and hired people to cut it. We bought more seeds and some tools and stuff. We’re carrying all that. Mickl kept coming around, interrupting us, trying to get Rather to tell him more about Seekers—”
“I tried not to talk too much. I built up a picture of these Seekers in my mind, and maybe I got it across. Secretive. Not very many of ’em. Too many Scientists, maybe half a dozen. They’ve got a cassette and reader but they don’t show it to outsiders. They threw away their silver suit, but they’ve got records on how to maintain it. And they swear to kill anyone who tells their secrets. The citizen who told me disappeared. He was high on fringe and I was just a kid, but I had a better memory than most kids…That part’s true anyway,” Rather said. “I haven’t told Mickl all of this.”
“Dangerous,” Jeffer said. “You’ll have Mickl desperate to meet them.”
“Not if I read him right. Scientist, you know the story now, and you can back me up. Give him details I didn’t.”
Clave asked, “Jeffer, did Kendy get the records he wanted?”
“I haven’t heard from him.”
“If we’re lucky the treefeeder never will call back. Anyway, we must have looked innocent enough. We never did anything odd because we didn’t know anything. So. Twenty days ago three dwarves pulled up to Logbearer in a Navy rocket. Mickl and another man and awoman, all the same size. Weird. They gave us the pressure suit and went away. We’re supposed to get the jets going and pay off the Seekers. Would you like ten years’ supply of fringe?”
“No. You’d better leave it here if you’re supposed to.”
They carried the suit and helmet into the dead foliage. Rather and Carlot set to moving their cargo while they looked about.-
Entropy and parasites had eaten a deep cavity into the fisher jungle’s dead trunk. The CARM was there, and Jeffer’s camp: rocks for a fireplace, a rack of poles for smoking meat, a midden a decent distance away. Jeffer had made a third wing for himself, a prudent move for a man alone. From the blackened look of it he’d been using it to fan his fire.
Jeffer had the pressure suit splayed like a bird’s flayed skin. “Rather, did you try it?”
“It’s too big for me. — And the air feed doesn’t work. I got the panel open. A little wheel isn’t connecting to anything, and there’s a spoke with nothing on it.”
Jeffer grinned. “I see.”
Rather laughed. “Mickl doesn’t want the Seekers stealing his silver suit! If they try it they’ll find out nobody’s worthy!”
“I’ll refuel it. No guarantee the jets still work.”
“Well, if they do work, I get the impression that Booce will get a decent offer for the Wart. Mickl never actually said so.”
“Three pressure suits?”
Clave said, “Stet. We may have to do this twice more. And they’re searching Dark and sky for a fourth pressure suit. They must be looking hard at where Logbearer went.
You may want to move the CARM.”
Carlot arrived pushing the last of the cargo: not seeds, but tools. “You’re going to love this, Scientist.” She separated something out.
Jeffer took it with glad cries. “A pump! Wonderful! The CARM’s low on water, and I hate the way I filled it last time. Can I keep it?”
“Stet. We’re supposed to bribe the Seekers with it. Here, this is a bellows from the Market. You anchor one end. It’s easier.”
“Nice. Can you stay for a couple of sleeps? I’ve got food and—”
“Lonely?”
It showed in his face. “You know it.”
“We’ve got food you never tasted. Dark fungus and earthlife. You’ll love it.”
Their exotic dinner was nothing unusual for Rather, not any longer. What made it fun was watching Jeffer react.
Jeffer talked while he ate. “I had some trouble getting the silver suit. I found it okay, but it was right in the fire. I had to get the bow up against it and push it out along with a kilton of burning goo. I just wonder how many Admiralty citizens saw me.”
“The stories won’t match,” Clave said. “In sixty days it won’t matter at all. I’ve been thinking. We’ll bum the fringe here. If a Navy ship comes they’ll find that the Seekers had a hell of a party and then went away.”
“Good. I’ll have to take the CARM someplace you can find it—”
“No. You find us. Logbearer will be returning to Citizens Tree in due course, maybe another thirty days. Keep watch. Pick us up well outside the Clump.”
“Another fifty days of this? Treefodder. And I never even saw the treefeeding Clump.”
“We’ll leave you most of our food,” Clave said.
Carlot carefully wasn’t looking at Rather. “I’ll be bringing a guest. Raff Belmy and I’ll be married as soon as we get back to the Admiralty. I want to bring him back to the tree. What he tells his father is up to him, but he’ll have at least a quarter year to think about it.”