Raft - Xeelee Sequence Part 2

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 s.h.i.+ft 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 ma.s.s 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 mindHe 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. Hurriedly 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 I 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 ma.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 ma.s.s, apprentice. Good s.h.i.+ft 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?"

The boy nodded hesitantly. "I'm sorry. I'll pay you back-"

"When? After you return to the Belt?"

The boy shook his head, a glint in his eye. "No. I'm not going back."

Pallis bunched his fists and rested them on his hips. "Listen to me. You'll have to go back. You'll be allowed to stay on the Raft until the next supply tree; but then you'll be s.h.i.+pped back. You'll have to work your pa.s.sage, I expect. All right?"

Rees shook his head again, his face a mask of determination.

Pallis studied the young miner, an unwelcome sympathy growing inside him. "You're still hungry, aren't you? And thirsty, I'll bet. Come on. I keep my - and Gover's - rations at the trunk."

He led the boy across the tree surface. Surrept.i.tiously he watched as the boy half-walked across the foliated platform, his feet seeking out the points of good purchase and then lodging in the foliage, so allowing him to "stand" on the tree. The contrast with Gover's clumsy stumbling was marked. Pallis found himself wondering what kind of woodsman the lad would make...

After a dozen yards they disturbed a spray of skitters; the little creatures whirled up into Rees's face and he stepped back, startled. Pallis laughed. "Don't worry. Skitters are harmless. They are the seeds from which the tree grows..."

Rees nodded. "I guessed that."

Pallis arched an eyebrow. "You did?"

"Yes. You can see the shape's the same; it's just a difference of scale."

Pallis listened in surprised silence to the serious, parched voice.

They reached the trunk. Rees stood before the tall cylinder and ran his fingers over the gnarled wood. Pallis hid a smile. "Put your ear against the wood. Go on."

Rees did so with a look of puzzlement - which evolved into an almost comic delight.

"That's the bole turning, inside the trunk. You see, the tree is alive, right to its core."

Rees's eyes were wide.

Now Pallis smiled openly. "But I suspect you won't be alive much longer if you don't eat and drink. Here..."

After letting the boy sleep for a quarter-s.h.i.+ft Pallis put him to work. Soon Rees was bent over a fire bowl, sc.r.a.ping ash and soot from the iron with shaped blades of wood. Pallis found that his work was fast and complete, supervised or unsupervised. Once again Gover suffered by comparison... and by the looks he shot at Rees, Pallis suspected Gover knew it.

After half a s.h.i.+ft Pallis brought Rees a globe of water. "Here; you deserve a break."

Rees squatted back among the foliage, flexing stiff hands. His face was muddy with sweat and soot and he sucked gratefully at the drink. On an impulse Pallis said, "These bowls hold fire. Maybe you guessed that. Do you understand how they're used?"

Rees shook his head, interest illuminating his tired face.

Pallis described the simple sensorium of the tree. The tree was essentially a huge propeller. The great vegetable reacted to two basic forms of stimuli - gravity fields and light - and in their uncultivated state great forests of trees of all sizes and ages would drift through the clouds of the Nebula, their leaves and branchlets trapping starlight, the nourishment of drifting plants and animals, the moisture of fat rain clouds.

Rees listened, nodding seriously. "So by rotating faster - or slower - the tree pushes at the air and can climb away from gravity wells or towards the light."

"That's right. The art of the pilot is to generate a blanket of smoke to hide the light, and so to guide the flight of the tree."

Rees frowned, his eyes distant. "But what I don't understand is how the tree can change its rotation speed."

Once again Pallis was surprised. "You ask good questions," he said slowly. "I'll try to explain. The trunk is a hollow cylinder; it contains another, solid cylinder called the bole, which is suspended in a vacuum chamber. The trunk and the rest of the tree are made of a light, fine-fibred wood; but the bole is a ma.s.s of much denser material, and the vacuum chamber is crisscrossed with struts and ribs to keep it from collapsing. And the bole spins in its chamber; muscle-like fibres keep it whirling faster than a skitter.

"Now - when the tree wants to speed its rotation it slows the bole a little, and the spin of the bole is transferred to the tree. And when the tree wants to slow it is as if it pours some of its spin back into the bole." He struggled for phrases to make it clearer; dim, half-understood fragments from Scientists' lectures drifted through his mind: moments of inertia, conservation of angular momentum...

He gave up with a shrug. "Well, that's about the best I can explain it. Do you understand?"

Rees nodded. "I think so." He looked oddly pleased with Pallis's answer; it was a look that reminded the pilot of the Scientists he had worked with, a look of pleasure at finding out how things work.

Gover, from the rim of the tree, watched them sullenly.

Pallis stepped slowly back to his station at the trunk. How much education did the average miner get, he wondered. He doubted Rees was even literate. As soon as a child was strong enough he was no doubt forced into the foundry or down to the crus.h.i.+ng surface of the iron star, to begin a life of muscle-sapping toil...

And he was forced there by the economics of the Nebula, he reminded himself harshly; economics which he - Pallis - helped to keep in place.

He shook his head, troubled. Pallis had never accepted the theory, common on the Raft, that the miners were a species of subhuman, fit only for the toil they endured. What was the life span of the miners? Thirty thousand s.h.i.+fts? Less, maybe? Would Rees live long enough to learn what angular momentum was? What a fine woodsman he would make... or, he admitted ruefully, maybe a better Scientist.

A vague plan began to form in his mind.

Rees came to the trunk and collected his s.h.i.+ft-end rations. The young miner peered absently around at the empty sky. As the tree climbed up towards the Raft, away from the Core and towards the edge of the Nebula, the air was perceptibly brightening.

A distant sound carried over the sigh of the wind through the branches: a discordant shout, huge and mysterious.

Rees looked questioningly at Pallis. The tree-pilot smiled. "That's the song of a whale." Rees looked about eagerly, but Pallis warned, "I wouldn't bother. The beast could be miles away..." The pilot watched Rees thoughtfully. "Rees, something you haven't told me yet. You're a stowaway, right? But you can't have any real idea what the Raft is like. So... why did you do it? What were you running from?"

Rees's brow creased as he considered the question. "I wasn't running from anything, pilot. The mine is a tough place, but it was my home. No. I left to find the answer."

"The answer? To what?"

"To why the Nebula is dying."

Pallis studied the serious young miner and felt a chill settle on his spine.

Rees woke from a comfortable sleep in his nest of foliage. Pallis hung over him, silhouetted by a bright sky. "s.h.i.+ft change," the pilot said briskly. "Hard work ahead for all of us: docking and unloading and-"

"Docking?" Rees shook his head clear of sleep. "Then we've arrived?"

Pallis grinned. "Well, isn't that obvious?"

He moved aside. Behind him the Raft hung huge in the sky.

3.

HOLLERBACH LIFTED HIS HEAD from the lab report, eyes smarting. He removed his spectacles, set them on the desk top before him, and began methodically to ma.s.sage the ridge of bone between his eyes. "Oh, do sit down, Mith," he said wearily.

Captain Mith continued to pace around the office. His face was a well of anger under its covering of black beard and his ma.s.sive belly wobbled before him. Hollerbach noted that Mith's coverall was frayed at the hem, and even the golden Officer's threads at his collar looked dulled. "Sit down? How the h.e.l.l can I sit down? I suppose you know I've got a Raft to run."

Hollerbach groaned inwardly, "Of course, but-"

Mith took an orrery from a crowded shelf and shook it at Hollerbach. "And while you Scientists swan around in here my people are sick and dying-"

"Oh, by the Bones, Mith, spare me the sanctimony!" Hollerbach thrust out his jaw. "Your father was just the same. All lectures and no d.a.m.n use."

Mith's mouth was round. "Now, look, Hollerbach-"

"Lab tests take time. The equipment we're working with is hundreds of thousands of s.h.i.+fts old, remember. We're doing our best, and all the bl.u.s.ter in the Nebula isn't going to speed us up. And you can put down that orrery, if you don't mind."

Mith looked at the dusty instrument. "Why the h.e.l.l should I, you old fart?"

"Because it's the only one in the universe. And n.o.body knows how to fix it. Old fart yourself."

Mith growled - then barked laughter. "All right, all right." He set the orrery back on its shelf and pulled a hard-backed chair opposite the desk. He sat with legs splayed under his belly and raised troubled eyes to Hollerbach. "Look, Scientist, we shouldn't be sc.r.a.pping. You have to understand how worried I am, how frightened the crew are."

Hollerbach spread his hands on the desk top; liver-spots stared back at him. "Of course I do, Captain." He turned his ancient spectacles over in his fingers and sighed. "Look, we don't need to wait for the lab results. I know d.a.m.n well what we're going to find."

Mith spread his hands palm up. "What?"

"We're suffering from protein and vitamin deficiencies. The children particularly are being hit by bone, skin and growth disorders so archaic that the s.h.i.+p's medical printouts don't even refer to them." He thought of his own grandchild, not four thousand s.h.i.+fts old; when Hollerbach took those slim little legs in his hands he could feel the bones curve... "Now, we don't think there's anything wrong with the food dispensers."

Mith snorted. "How can you be so sure?"

Hollerbach rubbed his eyes again. "Of course I'm not sure," he said, irritated. "Look, Mith, I'm speculating. You can either accept that or wait for the tests."

Mith sat back and held up his palms. "All right, all right. Go on."

"Very well, then. Of all the Raft's equipment our understanding is, by necessity, greatest of the dispensers. We're overhauling the brutes; but I don't expect anything to be found wrong."

"What, then?"

Hollerbach climbed out of his chair, feeling the familiar twinge in his right hip. He walked to the open door of his office and peered out. "Isn't it obvious? Mith, when I was a kid that sky was blue as a baby's eyes. Now we have children, adults even, who don't know what blue is. The d.a.m.n Nebula has gone sour. The dispensers are fed by organic compounds in the Nebula atmosphere - and by airborne plants and animals, of course. Mith, it's a case of garbage in, garbage out. The machines can't work miracles. They can't produce decent food out of the sludge out there. And that's the problem."