Children of the Comet (2 page)

CHAPTER 3

A dim, ruddy glow was filtering through the translucent sack and jerked Torris awake. The red star was in the sky again, and it was time to get moving.

He was ravenous. He tore open the packet of food that Secondmother had prepared for him and felt around inside. The first thing his hand encountered was a folded slice of tree fungus filled with minced meatbeast steak, marinated in its own juices and other flavorings. He wolfed it down immediately, then ate another. He was reaching for a third when he remembered his father's injunction, and he resealed the sack to save some of the food till later. He regretted not having set snares for the fleeing treehoppers the night before; he was going to have to be self-sufficient from now on.

He extricated himself partially from his airsuit and sponged himself off as best he could, using as little as possible of the precious meltwater he had brought with him; the sweetwater he had extracted from the Tree would have left him sticky.

Gratefully, he relieved himself with the help of the suit's facilities. He would open the second valve outside to drain the small reservoir.

Once again, the stovebeast attached itself to the small of his back, where it would recharge the suit's heatholder in the bargain. He would be glad to get out of the sleeping sack. The furry little firebelly, finding itself in an enclosed space, had lessened its heat output to compensate, but it was still uncomfortably hot inside the sack.

His weapons and the coil of fine silk rope were lying where he had left them on the branch's upper surface, held in place by the iceball's miniscule gravity, though they had fetched up against a protruding twig because of the even slighter force imparted by the Tree's ponderous rotation. That force would become greater as one proceeded outward along a branch, but here, close to the trunk, it was inconsiderable.

He thought it over and decided he didn't really need a climbing rope at this early stage; a spear that could be used as a harpoon would be more useful. He untied the grappling hook and passed the rope end through the small loop at the butt of the spear. Then he recoiled the rope carefully and fastened the other end to his belt.

Next he folded the sleeping sack flat and tucked it under his belt. He shouldered his bow and quiver, took a cautionary look around for wildlife, and resumed his Climb.

He climbed without stopping for a couple of hours. He was making good progress and thinking about taking a break when he saw the flutterbeast. It was hunting in the upper branches, and it saw him too.

It was huge—larger than a meatbeast—a dull black in color, with huge wings for enfolding its prey. The wings also helped the flutterbeast move from branch to branch, slapping those blanketing members against anything they touched. If it drifted out of reach of the Tree, it would turn its narrow face spaceward and spit a gob of reaction mass. There were wicked claws like grappling hooks at the first joint of the membrane's leading edges, for grasping a branch or a victim.

Instinctively, Torris pressed himself back against the shelter of the trunk—a useless move, because the flutterbeast could still get to him. The creature was flapping its way downward from branch to branch, its pink mouth opening and closing to show its fangs.

Slowly and deliberately, Torris drew an arrow from the quiver, nocked it, and pulled back the bowstring. He tracked the flutterbeast as it made its way closer.

Then it sprang. Its spreading wings blotted out the stars, and its pink mouth gaped wide. Torris let the arrow loose. The creature's wings jerked at the impact and brushed against his faceplate before it was sailing outward, impelled by the force of the arrow.

Quickly, it twisted its neckless head and spat. But the momentum imparted by the arrow was too great for it to overcome. Torris watched as it grew smaller against the background of stars until it shrank from sight.

He gave himself a few moments to recover, and when his heart finally slowed down, he continued his Climb.

CHAPTER 4

Four turns of the world later, the climbing had become almost routine. It was one handhold after another in a mind-numbing­, repetitive rhythm, an occasional wriggle of his lower body keeping his straying legs aligned. There was no detectable up or down here on the great wall of the trunk; you'd have to proceed laterally at least a mile or so along a branch before you'd begin to have any sensation of weight—and then your “down” was outward, not in the direction that your eye and positional memory told you it ought to be.

Despite the advantage that near-weightlessness gave him, Torris was exhausted at the end of each long day of climbing. At dark, he crawled stiffly into his sleeping sack with his muscles screaming and his hands turned to cramped claws. He estimated that he'd made about forty miles so far. Four times now, he'd stopped to make camp. He was on his third stovebeast.

He'd faced no serious threats since the flutterbeast. He'd avoided any number of web traps, clubbed a small tree snake with the butt of his spear and flung it—squirming and spitting—into space, and warded off a swarm of carrion moths that had been attracted by the small game he'd managed to bag. He still had seven arrows left.

The dressed carcass of the meatbeast he'd killed that morning floated behind him in an improvised harness made of a length of climbing rope. Having no weight, the carcass wasn't a burden, but he still had to strain against its mass, and he still had to stop every once in a while to untangle it from the branches. Climbing was nothing but hard, unrelenting work. There was no hint of the mystic experience that older Climbers said a Climb was supposed to be.

He paused to look around. A few man-lengths ahead through the foliage, the sheltered crotch of a branch looked inviting. The approach was relatively unobstructed, giving a good enough view of anything that might be lurking nearby. Even from here, he could see evidence of an expanse of young bark that signaled a burst of growth of provascular tissue from rapidly dividing cambium cells. It was a promising place to tap into the Tree's vascular system for water and air.

He decided to camp there for the night. A few more tugs brought him to the protective hollow where trunk and branch met. He reeled the meatbeast carcass in after him. With practiced movement, he soon had his sleeping sack set up and the few needed utensils within easy reach. He then proceeded to cut a few thin slices of meat from the carcass and minced them, to be eaten raw. Cooking was a luxury away from the fires of the cave he lived in, but a dip in the fermented sauce that Secondmother had packed would make the meal palatable. He chopped up some of the treeweed sprouts he'd gathered to be kneaded together with the minced meat after he'd thawed it out in the air sack.

He surveyed his supper preparations with satisfaction, then cached his equipment and the rest of his supplies in a convenient cavity nearby, reserving his bow, quiver, and spearhead.

Exhausted, he crawled into his bubble of air and sealed it after him. He raised his faceplate and let enough stovebeast heat escape to raise the temperature to above freezing. It was becoming increasingly hard to keep his eyes open. He'd barely finished his still-cold supper before falling asleep.

Something woke him early. He was still sodden with sleep, and at first he didn't know where he was. Then a flicker of movement caught his eye, and he came instantly alert.

He groped for an arrow and drew it from the quiver. It would have to do for a handheld weapon. There was no time to string the bow. And the shaft for the spear, too long for the sleeping sack, had been left outside. No time to regret that. But the arrow was as long as his forearm—longer than his knife or the spearhead, even with its threaded shank for a handle.

He felt the edges of his faceplate to be sure it was tight in its gasket, then unzipped the sleeping sack in one swift motion. The air pressure in the sack popped him outside like a seed out of its pod.

He twisted convulsively in midflight, landing feet first and right-side up. The comet's miniscule gravity planted him, however tentatively, on the branch's upper surface. Gripping the arrow, he quickly scanned the immediate area.

There was nothing.

He widened his search and saw movement in the middle distance, where the branch joined the trunk. The figure he saw, already half-obscured, disappeared into the foliage before he had a chance to get a good look.

It wasn't any kind of animal. It definitely had been a human shape, someone in an airsuit. He hadn't seen enough to make out the suit's identifying beadwork. But it had to be another Climber—a rogue Climber who did not respect the rules.

A glance at the sheltered hollow where he'd left his food cache stopped him. His supplies and belongings, what was left of them, were scattered all over the area. Two of his three airskins seemed to be gone, and the third had been wantonly slashed apart. A heartbreaking peek over the branch's edge showed him the hacked-up remains of the meatbeast carcass, drifting two branches farther down, already out of reach. It hadn't picked up much speed yet, so he must have missed catching the intruder by only a few minutes.

He couldn't afford to brood. He rummaged through the debris to see what he could salvage. There was an awl from his sewing kit and a half spool of web beast silk with it. He used them to sew the airskin back together, caulking the jagged seams with a generous slather of the animal glue used for repairing suit leaks, glad his father had insisted he carry some in an outside pocket.

He scraped as much of the spilled air as he could from the surrounding bark and scooped it into the airbag. Then he did what he should have done the night before: he drilled for air, let it congeal, and filled the air sack.

Belatedly he set the snares he had neglected to attend to before retiring, and by nightfall he was rewarded with four small treehoppers that would last him until he could find larger game. He promptly skinned and gutted them and stowed them away for later. By this time the two Sisters and the Stepsister had set, and he finished his remaining chores by ordinary starlight. He'd found the spear's shaft among the discarded miscellany—without the spearhead, his stalker hadn't thought it worth taking. He screwed the spear together and tested it for tightness. This time he'd sleep with the sleeping sack on top of it, face down and the zipper aligned, the spear ready to hand the instant he emerged.

Already nodding, struggling to keep his eyes open, he prepared to squirm into the inflated sack without sacrificing too much air. He had a good flow going from the new tap.

He'd lost a whole day. He wasn't worried about a return visit from the intruder that night. By this time, whoever it was would be miles above him.

He climbed for another two days without incident. A couple of times he thought he'd caught a fleeting glimpse of another Climber a few miles away, someone who quickly disappeared when Torris nocked an arrow, but if it was indeed the thief trying to keep pace with him, he made no attempt to get closer. He knew now that Torris had been alerted.

Torris remained cautious. A man ruthless enough to steal another Climber's food and air might be ruthless enough to kill him if he survived. Dead men tell no tales. The penalty for the enormity of stealing from another Climber was to be Shunned; the penalty for murder was expulsion from the tribe. That was a death sentence in itself. To be cast from the Tree into the outer darkness without enough air to reach another God-Tree was a punishment that no one, to Torris's knowledge, had ever survived.

After another five fingers of days, he was beginning to catch an occasional glimpse of the crown through gaps in the branches, and he estimated that he was halfway to his goal.

There hadn't been a hint of his elusive follower in all that time, and he decided that he'd finally lost him. But he wasn't tempted to relax. It was just when things were going well that people tended to let down their guard. At least that was what his father had always drummed into his head. By now he'd replenished his air and drinking water and had a fresh firebelly, after a frightening interval when he hadn't been able to find a replacement. He'd managed to bag another meatbeast—this far from the tribe's territory the lumbering creatures had lost all fear of man—and his larder was well stocked. It was no time to get careless.

It was his caution that trapped him.

He'd just attained another branch. He hoisted himself over the edge and peered around. It was a good place for a web spinner to weave a snare—a place where a migrating animal might venture an exploring limb.

Sure enough, there was a web there. His eye picked out a dry radial through the sticky labyrinth of crosshairs and followed it to the beast's lair. He located a beady cluster of eyes some distance away, half-hidden by an overhanging branchlet. The beast wasn't likely to rush out until its prey was caught in the web, but Torris nocked an arrow anyway.

He levered himself gingerly to a standing position and took a step sideways just to give himself an extra margin of safety, his eyes still on the nightmare in the shadows.

He felt the noose draw tight around his ankle too late. He was jerked off his feet, his spear and bow sent spinning out of reach. He found himself dangling upside down, swinging back and forth in dreamlike slow motion, the cord kept barely taut by the comet's insignificant gravity but still keeping him out of reach of anything he could grab to jackknife himself free.

From above he could see the scattered leaves that had so cleverly concealed the trap, laid down painstakingly in a pattern meant to seem random. Twisting his neck, he could see the tip of the long twig to which the cord had been attached. It was at least five man-lengths above him, and the base of the twig at the other end was anchored some five man-lengths farther along on the branch. The trap would have been powerful enough to snare a meatbeast and fast enough to snare a flutterer. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble.

But that wasn't his immediate worry. The web beast had been jarred to attention by the springing of the trap. It had partly emerged from its hiding place and was eyeing him with obvious interest.

He stopped struggling immediately. The beast crawled all the way out of its hiding place. Frozen with fear, Torris could do nothing but watch it.

And then, suddenly, the stubby end of an arrow was sprouting out of the web beast's cluster of eyes. The creature thrashed about frantically, spattering gobs of thickening blood, finally landing upside down, glued to the sticky spokes of its web, its eight hairy legs twitching.

As Torris watched, a bulky figure in a padded airsuit stepped out from behind a branchlet and started toward him, skirting the edges of the web but not bothering to glance at the dying web beast. The airsuit was an unfamiliar design. He had never seen anything like it. Instead of decorative beadwork to identify its wearer, it was embroidered in intricate patterns of many colors that covered the torso and branched out along the arms and legs.

Someone from another Tree, then. A hunter or someone on an ill-advised bride raid. Ill-advised because the nearest Tree, the one that the bachelors of Torris's tribe had been eagerly discussing for half a lifetime, was still too far away for a crossing and would not be reachable for many, many more turns of the world.

But this one had survived the leap. Torris had never heard of such a thing. The fellow must be very determined indeed.

Torris knew what you were supposed to do when you encountered someone from another tribe. You were supposed to kill him or her. His father had been telling him that since he was a small boy and had been given his first knife.

The stranger must have been having some of the same thoughts. As he approached Torris, he was already drawing another arrow out of its quiver.

Torris struggled helplessly. He still had his own knife, but he was hanging upside down by one leg, without the leverage to use it or even to throw it effectively.

Besides, the stranger wasn't going to get close enough to let him try. He stopped a couple of body lengths away and fitted another arrow to his bow.

Torris had the knife in his hand, waiting for a chance that wasn't going to come. The stranger looked up at him almost regretfully.

At that moment, the faceplate tilted toward him, and he got his first good look at the face of the person who was going to kill him.

It was a woman.