XIII
Ranau lay on a northeasterly jut of the continent, with Kompong Timur a good thousand kilometers to the southwest. Intervening swamp and mountain, lack of navigable rivers, before all the standoffishness of its people, made it little frequented. A few traders flew in during the year, otherwise the airstrip was hardly used. It was still dark when Flandry’s car set down. Several impassive men with phosphorescent globes to light their way met him, and he was horrified to learn it was ten kilometers’ walk to the nearest dwelling.
“We make no roads under the Trees,” said Tembesi, Djuanda’s father. And that was that.
Dawn came while they were still afoot. As the spectacle grew before him, Flandry’s life added one more occasion of awe.
The ground was low, wet, thickly covered with a soft and intensely green moss-like turf. It sparkled with a million water drops. Fog rolled and streamed, slowly breaking up as the sun climbed. The air was cool, and filled the nostrils with dampness. His tread muffled and upborne by the springy growth, his companions unspeaking and half blurred in the mist, Flandry moved through silence like a dream.
Ahead of him, rising out of a fog bank into clear sky, were the Trees of Ranau.
There were over a thousand, but only a few could be seen at one time. They grew too far apart, a kilometer or more between boles. And they were too big.
Hearing Djuanda tell of them, mentioning an average height of two hundred meters and an estimated average age of ten thousand Terrestrial years, Flandry had imagined the redwoods he knew from home. But this was not Terra. The great Trees were several times as thick in proportion—incredibly massive, organic mountains with roots like foothills. They shot straight up for fifty meters or so, then began to branch, broadest at the bottom, tapering to a spire. The slim higher boughs would each have made a Terran oak; the lowest were forests in themselves, forking again and yet again, the five-pointed leaves (small, delicately serrated, green on top but with a golden underside of nearly mirror brightness) outnumbering the visible stars. Even given the lower gravity of Unan Besar, it was hard to imagine how branches so huge could support their own weight. But they had cores with a strength approximating steel, surrounded by a principal thickness of wood as light as balsa, the whole armored in tough gray bark. Tossing in the gentle winds which prevailed here, the upper leaves reflected sunlight downward off their shiny sides, so that the lower foliage was not shadowed to death.
No matter explanations. When Flandry saw the grove itself, filling the sky, sunlight winking and shivering and running like flame in the crowns, he merely stood and looked. The others respected his need. For long, the whole party remained silent where it was.
When they resumed—passing through a stand of tall frond trees without even noticing—the Terran found tongue once more: “I understand your people are freeholders. That’s rare, isn’t it?”
Tembesi, who was a big stern-faced man, replied slowly: “We are not quite what you think. Early in the history of this planet, it became clear that the free yeoman was doomed. The large plantations were underselling him, so he was driven to subsistence farming, with the price of antitoxin too high for him to afford improvements. Let him have one bad year, and he must sell land to the plantation owner, just to pay for survival. Presently his farm became too small to support him, he fell into the grip of the moneylenders, in the end he was fortunate if he became a tenant rather than a slave.
“Our own ancestors were peasants whose leaders foresaw the loss of land. They sold what they had and moved here. There were certain necessities of survival as free men. First, some means of getting cash for antitoxin and tools. Yet, second, not enough wealth to excite the greed of the great lords, who could always find a pretext to dispossess their inferiors. Third, remoteness from the corruption and violence of the cities, the countryside’s ignorance and poverty. Fourth, mutual helpfulness, so that individual misfortunes would not nibble away the new community as the old had been destroyed.
“These things were found among the Trees.”
And now they left the minor forest and approached the holy grove. It was not as dark under one of the giants as Flandry had expected. The overshadowing roof of leaves twinkled, flashed, glittered, so that sunspecks went dancing among the shades. Small animals scurried out of the way, around the nearest root which heaved its gray wall up from the pseudomoss. Redbreasted fluter birds and golden ketjils darted in and out of the foliage overhead; their song drifted down through a distant, eternal rustle, that was like some huge waterfall heard across many leagues of stillness. Close to a Tree, you had no real sense of its height. It was too enormous: simply there, blocking off half the world. Looking ahead, down the clear shadowy sward, you got a total effect, arched and whispering vaults full of sun, upheld by columns that soared. The forest floor was strewn with tiny white blossoms.
Djuanda turned worshipful eyes from Flandry and said, reddening: “My father, I am ashamed that ever I wished to change this.”
“It was not an ill-meant desire,” said Tembesi. “You were too young to appreciate that three hundred years of tradition must hold more wisdom than any single man.” His gray head inclined to the Terran. “I have yet to offer my thanks for the rescuing of my son, Captain.”
“Oh, forget it,” muttered Flandry. “You helped rescue me, didn’t you?”
“For a selfish purpose. Djuanda, your elders are not quite such doddering old women as you believed. We also want to change the life of the Trees—more than you ever dreamed.”
“By bringing the Terrans!” The boy’s voice cracked loud and exultant across the quiet.
“Well . . . not exactly,” demurred Flandry. He glanced about at the rest. Eager Djuanda, firm Tembesi, sullen Kemul, unreadable Luang holding his arm . . . he supposed they could be relied on. The others, though, soft-spoken men with lithe gait and bold gaze, he didn’t know about. “Uh, we can’t proceed too openly, or word will get back to Biocontrol.”
“That has been thought of,” said Tembesi. “All whom you see here are of my own Tree—or clan, if you prefer, since each Tree is the home of a single blood-line. I have talked freedom with them for a long time. Most of our folk can be trusted equally well. Timidity, treachery, or indiscretion might make a few dangerous, but they are very few.”
“It only takes one,” humphed Kemul.
“How could a traitor get word to the outside?” replied Tembesi. “The next regular trade caravan is not due for many weeks. I have taken good care that no one will depart this area meanwhile. Our few aircraft are all under guard. To go on foot would require more than thirty days to the next communication center . . . hence, would be impossible.”
“Unless the local dispenser advanced a few pills, given a reasonable-sounding pretext,” said Flandry. “Or—wait—the dispenser is in radio touch with Biocontrol all the time!”
Tembesi’s chuckle was grim. “Hereabouts,” he said, “unpopular dispensers have long tended to meet with accidents. They fall off high branches, or an adderkop bites them, or they go for a walk and are never seen again. The present appointee is my own nephew, and one of our inner-circle conspirators.”
Flandry nodded, unsurprised. Even the most villainous governments are bound to have a certain percentage of decent people in them—who, given a chance, often become the most effective enemies of the regime.
“We’re safe for a while, I suppose,” he decided. “Doubtless Warouw will check the entire planet, hoping to pick up my trail. But he’s not likely to think of trying here until a lot of other possibilities have failed.”
Djuanda’s enthusiasm broke loose again: “And you will free our people!”
Flandry would have preferred a less melodramatic phrasing, but hadn’t the heart to say so. He addressed Tembesi: “I gather you aren’t too badly off here. And that you’re conservative. If Unan Besar is opened to free trade, a lot of things are going to change overnight, including your own ways of life. Is it worth that much to you to be rid of Biocontrol?”
“I asked him the same question,” said Luang. “In vain. He had already answered it for himself.”
“It is worth it,” Tembesi said. “We have kept a degree of independence, but at a cruel cost of narrowing our lives. For we seldom, if ever, have money to undertake new things, or even to travel outside our own land. A Tree will not support many hundred persons, so we must limit the children a family may have. A man is free to choose his life work—but the choice is very small. He is free to speak his mind—but there is little to speak about. And always we must pay our hard-won silvers for pills which cost about half a copper to produce; and always we must dread that some overlord will covet our country and find ways to take it from us; and always our sons must look at the stars, and wonder what is there, and grow old and die without having known.”
Flandry nodded again. It was another common phenomenon: revolutions don’t originate with slaves or starveling proletarians, but with men who have enough liberty and material well-being to realize how much more they ought to have.
“The trouble is,” he said, “a mere uprising won’t help. If the whole planet rose against Biocontrol, it would only die. What we need is finesse.”
The brown faces around him hardened, as Tembesi spoke for all: “We do not wish to die uselessly. But we have discussed this for years, it was a dream of our fathers before us, and we know our own will. The People of the Trees will hazard death if they must. If we fail, we shall not wait for the sickness to destroy us, but take our children in our arms and leap from the uppermost boughs. Then the Trees can take us back into their own substance, and we will be leaves in the sunlight.”
It wasn’t really very cold here, but Flandry shivered.
They had now reached a certain bole. Tembesi stopped. “This we call the Tree Where the Ketjils Nest,” he said, “the home of my clan. Welcome, liberator.”
Flandry looked up. And up. Plastic rungs had been set into the ancient rough bark. At intervals a platform, ornamented with flowering creepers, offered a breathing spell. But the climb would be long. He sighed and followed his guide.
When he reached the lowest branch, he saw it stretch like a road, outward and curving gradually up. There were no rails. Looking down, he spied earth dizzily far beneath him, and gulped. This close to the leaves, he heard their rustling loud and clear, everywhere around; they made a green gloom, unrestful with a thousand flickering candle-flames of reflection. He saw buildings along the branch, nestled into its forks or perched on swaying ancillary limbs. They were living houses, woven together of parasitic grasses like enormous reeds rooted in the bark—graceful domes and hemicylinders, with wind flapping dyed straw curtains in their doorways. Against the trunk itself stood a long peak-roofed structure of blossoming sod.
“What’s that?” asked Flandry.
Djuanda said in an awed whisper, almost lost under the leaf-voices: “The shrine. The gods are there, and a tunnel cut deep into the wood. When a boy is grown, he enters that tunnel for a night. I may not say more.”
“The rest are public buildings, storehouses and processing plants and so on,” said Tembesi with an obvious desire to turn the conversation elsewhere. “Let us climb further, to where people dwell.”
The higher they ascended, the more light and airy it became. There the buildings were smaller, often gaily patterned. They stood in clusters where boughs forked; a few were attached to the main trunk. The dwellers were about, running barefoot along even the thin and quivering outermost parts as if this were solid ground. Only very young children were restricted, by leash or wattle fence. Physically, this tribe was no different from any other on Unan Besar; their costume varied in mere details of batik; even most of the homely household tasks their women carried out, or the simple furniture glimpsed through uncurtained doorways, was familiar. Their uniqueness was at once more subtle and more striking. It lay in dignified courtesy, which glanced at the newcomers with frank interest but did not nudge or stare, which softened speech and made way for a neighbor coming down a narrow limb. It lay in the attitude toward leaders like Tembesi, respectful but not subservient; in laughter more frequent and less shrill than elsewhere; in the plunk of a samisen, as a boy sat vine-crowned, swinging his feet over windy nothingness and serenading his girl.
“I see flats of vegetables here and there,” Flandry remarked. “Where are the big crops you spoke of, Djuanda?”
“You can see one of our harvesting crews a few more boughs up, Captain.”
Flandry groaned.
The sight was picturesque, though. From the outer twigs hung lichenoid beards, not unlike Spanish moss. Groups of men went precariously near, using hooks and nets to gather it in. Flandry felt queasy just watching them, but they seemed merry enough at their appalling work. The stuff was carried down by other men to a processing shed, where it would yield the antipyretic drug (Unan Besar had more than one disease!) which was the chief local cash crop.
There were other sources of food, fiber, and income. Entire species of lesser trees and bushes grew on the big ones; mutation and selection had made them useful to man. Semi-domesticated fowl nestled where a share of eggs could be taken. Eventually, branches turned sick; pruning them, cutting them up, treating the residues, amounted to an entire lumber and plastics industry. Bark worms and burrowing insects were a good source of protein, Flandry was assured—though admittedly hunting and fishing down in the ground was more popular.
It was obvious why the planet had only this one stand of titans. The species was moribund, succumbing to a hundred parasitic forms which evolved faster than its own defenses. Now man had established a kind of symbiosis, preserving these last few: one of the rare cases where he had actually helped out nature. And so, thought Flandry, even if I’m not much for bucolic surroundings myself, I’ve that reason also to like the people of Ranau.
Near the very top, where branches were more sparse and even the bole swayed a little, Tembesi halted. A plank platform supported a reed hut overgrown with purple-blooming creepers. “This is for the use of newly wed couples, who need some days’ privacy,” he said. “But I trust you and your wife will consider it your own, Captain, for as long as you honor our clan with your presence.”
“Wife?” Flandry blinked. Luang suppressed a grin. Well . . . solid citizens like these doubtless had equally well-timbered family lives. No reason to disillusion them. “I thank you,” he bowed. “Will you not enter with me?”
Tembesi smiled and shook his head. “You are tired and wish to rest, Captain. There are food and drink within for your use. Later we will pester you with formal invitations. Shall we say tonight, an hour after sunset—you will dine at my house? Anyone can guide you there.”
“And we’ll hear your plans!” cried Djuanda.
Tembesi remained calm; but it flamed in his eyes. “If the Captain so desires.”
He bowed. “Good rest, then. Ah—friend Kemul—you are invited to stay with me.”
The mugger looked around. “Why not here?” he said belligerently.
“This cabin only has one room.”
Kemul stood hunched, legs planted wide apart, arms dangling. He swung his hideous face back and forth, as if watching for an attack. “Luang,” he said, “why did we ever snag the Terran?”
The girl struck a light to her cigarette. “I thought it would be interesting,” she shrugged. “Now do run along.”
A moment more Kemul stood, then shuffled to the platform’s edge and down the ladder.
Flandry entered the cabin with Luang. It was cheerfully furnished. The floorboards rocked and vibrated; leaves filled it with an ocean noise. “Cosmos, how I can sleep!” he said.
“Aren’t you hungry?” asked Luang. She approached an electric brazier next to a pantry. “I could make you some dinner.” With a curiously shy smile: “We wives have to learn cooking.”
“I suspect I’m a better cook than you are,” he laughed, and went to wash up. Running water was available, though at this height it must be pumped from a cistern thirty meters below. There was even a hot tap. Djuanda had mentioned an extensive use of solar cells in this community as its prime energy source. The Terran stripped off his bedraggled finery, scrubbed, flopped on the bed, and tumbled into sleep.
Luang shook him awake hours later. “Get up, we’ll be late for supper.” He yawned and slipped on a kilt laid out for him. To hell with anything else. She was equally informal, except for a blossom in her hair. They walked out on the platform.
A moment they paused, then, to look. There weren’t many more branches above them; they could see through the now faintly shining leaves to a deep blue-black sky and the earliest stars. The Tree foamed with foliage on either hand and below. It was like standing above a lake and hearing the waters move. Once in a while Flandry glimpsed phosphor globes, hung on twigs far underfoot. But such lighting was more visible on the next Tree, whose vast shadowy mass twinkled with a hundred firefly lanterns. Beyond was the night.
Luang slipped close to him. He felt her shoulder as a silken touch along his arm. “Give me a smoke, will you?” she asked. “I am out.”
“’Fraid I am too.”
“Damn!” Her curse was fervent.
“Want one that bad?”
“Yes. I do not like this place.”
“Why, I think it’s pleasant.”
“Too much sky. Not enough people. None of them my kind of people. Gods! Why did I ever tell Kemul to intercept you?”
“Sorry now?”
“Oh . . . no . . . I suppose not. In a way. Dominic—” She caught his hand. Her own fingers were cold. He wished he could make out her expression in the dusk. “Dominic, have you any plans at all? Any hopes?”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “yes.”
“You must be crazy. We can’t fight a planet. Not even with this ape-folk to help. I know a city, in the opposite hemisphere—or even old Swamp Town, I can hide you there forever, I swear I can—”
“No,” he said. “It’s good of you, kid, but I’m going ahead with my project. We won’t need you, though, so feel free to take off.”
Fear edged her tone, for the first time since he had met her: “I do not want to die of the sickness.”
“You won’t. I’ll get clean away, with no suspicion of the fact—”
“Impossible! Every spaceship on this planet is watched!”
“—or else I’ll be recaptured. Or, more likely, killed. I’d prefer being killed, I think. But either way, Luang, you’ve done your share and there’s no reason for you to take further risks. I’ll speak to Tembesi. You can get a car out of here tomorrow morning.”
“And leave you?”
“Uh—”
“No,” she said.
They stood unspeaking a while. The Tree soughed and thrummed.
Finally she asked, “Must you act tomorrow already, Dominic?”
“Soon,” he replied. “I’d better not give Warouw much time. He’s almost as intelligent as I am.”
“But tomorrow?” she insisted.
“Well—no. No, I suppose it could wait another day or two. Why?”
“Then wait. Tell Tembesi you have to work out the details of your scheme. But not with him. Let’s be alone up here. This wretched planet can spare an extra few hours till it is free—without any idea how to use freedom—can it not?”
“I reckon so.”
Flandry dared not be too eager about it, or he might never get up courage for the final hazard. But he couldn’t help agreeing with the girl. One more short day and night? Why not? Wasn’t a man entitled to a few hours entirely his own, out of the niggardly total granted him?