Abruptly he realized his apostasy and tongued on his transmitter: “Take her up, Mr. Wright.”
The tightened limbline lent the effect of a suspension bridge supported by a single cable. He walked back to the trunk, and when he reached it, got into delimbing position. He drew and aimed his cutter. As he squeezed the trigger, a flock of hahaha birds erupted from the foliage at the limb’s end. “Take her up some more, Mr. Wright.”
The limb groaned, rose slightly. The hahaha birds flew three times around the trunk, then soared up into the crest and out of sight. He cut again. It was the sunward side of the tree, and the sap began to ooze out of the slit and trickle down the trunk. He shuddered, cut some more. “Keep a steady strain, Mr. Wright.” The limb rose, inch by inch, foot by foot. Awesomely, monstrously. Some of the others had been giants; this one dwarfed them. “A little faster, Mr. Wright. She’s twisting my way.”
The limb steadied, rose back, back toward the trunk. He stole a glance below. Suhre and Blueskies had finished cutting the last limb he had sent down into sections small enough for the carrier-winches to handle, and were watching him intently. Wright was standing by the tree-winch, his eyes focused on the rising limb. The square down there had a reddish cast. So had the three men’s clothing.
Strong wiped his face on his stained shirtsleeve and returned his attention to the cut. He tried to concentrate on it. The limb was almost perpendicular now, and the critical moment had arrived. He wiped his face again. Lord, the sun was hot! And there was no shade to protect him. No shade whatsoever. Not a vestige, not a mote, not an iota of shade…
He wondered what price tree-shade would bring if there were an acute shortage of it throughout the galaxy. And how would you sell it if you had some to sell? By the cubic foot? By the temperature? By the quality?
Good morning, madam I’m in the tree-shade business. I deal in rare tree-shades of all kinds: in willow-shade, oak-shade, appletree-shade, maple-shade, to name just a few. Today I’m running a special on a most unusual kind of tree-shade newly imported from Omicron Ceti 18. It’s deep, dark, cool and refreshing—just the thing to relax you after a day in the sun—and it’s positively the last of its kind on the market. You may think you know your tree-shades, madam, but you have never known a tree-shade like this one. Cool winds have blown through it, birds have sung in it, dryads have frolicked in it the day long—
“Strong!”
He came out of it like a swimmer coming out of the depths of the sea. The limb was swinging darkly towards him, twisting free from the stub along the uneven line of his undercut. He could hear the loud ripping of wood tissue and the grinding sound of bark against bark. He saw the “blood.”
He tried to leap out of the way, but his legs had turned to lead and all he could do was watch the relentless approach and wait till those tons and tons of solid fiber broke completely free and descended upon him and blended his blood with their own.
He closed his eyes. Tomorrow is when I’ll kill you, she had said. Not tonight. He heard the heavy thungg as the limbline tautened beneath the full weight of the limb, and he felt the tree shudder. But he knew no crushing impact, no scraping of smashed body against the trunk. He knew nothing but the darkness of his closed eyelids and the feeling that time had ceased to pass.
“Strong! For God’s sake get out of there!”
He opened his eyes then. The limb, at the last moment, had swung the opposite way. Now it was swinging back. Life returned to his legs, and he scrambled and clawed his way around the trunk. The tree was still shuddering and he was unable to brace himself in his saddle, but he managed to cling to the bark-prominences till the shock-waves died away. Then he worked his way back around the trunk to where the limb was swinging gently back and forth on the end of the limb-line.
“All right, Strong. That’s all for you. I’m grounding you right now!”
Looking down, he saw Wright standing by the winch, hands on hips, gazing angrily up at him. Blueskies had taken over the winch-controls, and Suhre was buckling on his climber’s belt. The limb was rapidly nearing the ground.
So I’m grounded, Strong thought.
He wondered why he didn’t feel relieved. He’d wanted to be grounded, hadn’t he?
He lay back in his saddle and looked up at his handiwork: at the macabre stubs and the disembodied crest. There was something beautiful about the crest, something unbearably beautiful. It was more gold than green, more like a woman’s hair than limbs and leaves.
“Did you hear me, Strong? I said you were grounded!”
Suddenly he thought of Suhre climbing up into those lovely golden tresses, defiling them with his brutal hands; raping them, destroying them. If it had been Blueskies he wouldn’t have cared. But Suhre!
He lowered his eyes to the limbline-crotch. The last limb had reached the ground by now, and the limbline was no longer in motion. His eyes traced its silvery length down the trunk to where it hung several feet away, and he reached out and grasped it and climbed it to the top of the stub he had just created. He slipped out of his saddle, pulled the rope down, coiled and slung it over his shoulder.
“I’m telling you for the last time, Strong!”
“To hell with you, Wright,” Strong said. “This is my tree!”
He started up the limbline. Wright cursed him steadily for the first hundred feet, changed to a more conciliatory tone when he passed the halfway mark. Strong paid no attention. “All right, Tom,” Wright said finally, “finish it then. But don’t try to climb all the way to the crest. Use the lift.”
“Shove the lift,” Strong said.
He knew he was being unreasonable, but he didn’t care. He wanted to climb; he wanted to use his strength; he wanted to hurt his body; he wanted to know pain. He began to know it some two hundred feet down from the limbline-crotch. By the time he reached the crotch he knew it well. But not as well as he wanted to know it, and, without pausing, he coiled a lineman’s loop, threw it through an overhead stub-crotch, and continued his ascent. It took him three more throws to make the first crest-limb, and he pulled himself gratefully into leafsweet coolness. His muscles screamed and his lungs burned and his throat felt like caked mud.
When some of his strength returned, he drank sparingly from his canteen, then he lay quietly in the coolness, not thinking, not moving, not feeling. Vaguely he heard Wright’s voice—“You’re a damned fool, but you’re a good treeman, Mr. Strong!” But he was too exhausted to answer.
Gradually the rest of his strength returned, and he stood up on the limb and smoked a cigarette. He looked up into the foliage, located his original saddle-rope crotch, and threw for it. From the crotch he began a systematic scrutiny of the crest. He didn’t really expect to find her; but before he made the first topping he had to know that she wasn’t there.
Hahaha birds eyed him with half-moon eyes. Tree-flowers bloomed in bowers. Sun-dappled leaves quivered in a little breeze.
He wanted to call out to her, but he didn’t know her name. If she had a name. Funny he’d never thought to ask her. He stared at unusual twists of limbs, at unique patterns of leaves. He looked long at tree-flowers. If she was not here, she was nowhere.
Unless, during the night, she had left the tree and hidden herself in one of the vacated houses. But he did not think she had. If she was real and not his fancy, she would never leave her tree; and if she wasn’t real and was his fancy, she couldn’t leave her tree.
Apparently she was neither: the crest was empty—empty of her flower-face, her leafy tunic, her wheat-hued length of leg and arm; her sunny hair. He sighed. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He had dreaded finding her because if she’d been in the crest, he wouldn’t have known what to do. But now he knew that he had dreaded not finding her, too.