The Integral Trees/The Smoke Ring

Author:Larry Niven [Niven, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi
Published: 2014-12-10T11:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

THE SILVER SUIT

from the Admiralty cassettes, year 3 SM:

We were chosen for this. No citizen leaves Earth orbit until the State has learned his tolerance for free fall. One in ten thousand have the genetic quirks to survive months or years of free fall without softening of the bones, without failure of the digestive system, without the terror of falling.

We served the State by flying to the stars. When the drive was off we played at flying, while cramped in a seeder ramship with barely room to flap our arms. Here is real flight. Of course the Smoke Ring seems an incredible dream come true—to us.

—Sharon Levoy, Astrogation

“Kendy for the State. Hello, Jeffer. It’s been more than thirty days.”

“I was busy. We got our council. It’s over.”

“How did it go?”

“We lost.”

“Who sided against you?”

“Clave. Jayan and Jinny. Minya. Mark.”

“Five out of ten. If you count the Serjents, twelve.”

“Thirteen. Mishael’s old enough, and married too, but she acts like a junior wife. She won’t make Minya or Gavving angry. Gavving doesn’t want to fight with Minya. The Serjents don’t think like citizens yet. Anthon won’t get into the arguments. I’m not really sure where he stands. The rest of us want to see what’s out there, but we don’t all want it enough. Debby loves arguing, but she’s not very good at it. We didn’t give Clave any trouble at all.”

“You’re disappointed. Don’t be. Did you think that flying would bring them around? People tend to side with authority, and authority tends to protect its own power. Clave is the key. Clave has everything he wants in Citizens’ Tree.”

“Kendy, do you see us as savages?”

“Yes. Don’t take that too seriously, Scientist. I would probably see the Admiralty as savages too. I want to educate you all.”

“Then educate me, Kendy. I can’t just take Booce and Ryllin and go off into the sky. We—”

“You must go, Jeffer. The wealth of the L4 point is almost irrelevant. It takes many people to hold a civilization together. There are too few of you here to be more than savages!”

Jeffer didn’t react to the insult, barring an increase in infrared radiation from his cheeks, neck, and ears. “We’d need things Citizens’ Tree can’t spare. Lawri’s on my side, but we can’t both go. The tree needs a Scientist. We’d have to take the carm too. We—”

“Take it.”

“You’re not serious. Dalton-Quinn Tree died because we couldn’t move it. I won’t see it happen to Citizens’ Tree.”

“Bring the carm back when you’re through with it.”

Jeffer paused to think. (Kendy never did that. It was another reason to distrust Kendy: he seemed to leap at his answers, without forethought.) “We might lose the carm.”

“You can build a steam rocket. Jeffer, I’m drifting out of range.”

“We’ve got one pipe, and we need that to be loggers. Without the pipe, Citizens’ Tree couldn’t build a steam rocket. I wouldn’t have believed that so much could change in twenty sleeps. Kendy?” The signal dissolved in noise.

Kendy returned to his records.

For

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