Rainbow Mars (22 page)

Earth's ecology was adapting to the alien grove. Seaweed grew among the trunks, and seabirds hunted fish. A bird had made a nest in the black foliage and laid eight small blue eggs. Svetz collected the eggs for Ra Chen.

“They'll rot,” Zeera objected. “We'll be months getting home with the FFD.”

“Doesn't the
Minim
have a cold box?”

“Have you
seen
one? Wait now, maybe the Vivarium only needs to study the interior structure. If we don't expect eggs to
hatch
—”

So Svetz put them in the trade kit and turned them to gold.

*   *   *

Another six-day jump made it clear that many of the anchor trees were going to merge. The root line had grown thicker, as thick as Svetz's little finger.

They jumped another ten days, and studied the anchor grove through the
Minim
dome. The grove was merging into a single mass. Anchor trees farther away had fallen on their sides. Their trunks grew along the ground. Some merged head to tail. Only those closest to the Hangtree root still stood, and those leaned, growing into one conical stalk. The collar of black foliage was growing ragged.

Svetz and Miya geared up and went through the inner door. Miya's hand stopped him on the launch platform.

Below the launch platform, a ring of men in metal shells was converging on the
Minim.
A sailing ship built like an ornately carved bathtub lay at anchor nearby.

Miya dropped her flight stick. “We can't go down to meet them. No ladder. Better not fly either.”

“Right.” Svetz thumbed his translator on. “Jack!”

A soldier stepped forward. They all looked alike, and Svetz had to guess he was looking at Jack. Jack was clean. He had shaved.

Svetz shouted down, “What's—”

His own voice carried, but the translation didn't. Svetz turned up the volume on the device, pointed it down and asked in a normal voice, “What's happened while we've been away, Jack?” Let the translator do his shouting.

Jack shouted back. “A great wonder! This—you called these beanstalk roots? This monstrous beanstalk sprang from them overnight! It happened while I was in delirium from fever.” He moved like a healthy man now. Dole yeast might have cured a vitamin deficiency.

“But, another great wonder! The
Saint Mercurius
has arrived! Please make the acquaintance of Captain Magalhaes, Major Pereira, Father De Castro…”

“Look at her!” “Wouldn't you like to—” “So beautiful!” “Shame-free barbarian devils!”
Other voices were intruding. Miya flushed and stepped back out of sight.

The translator wasn't picking up just the shouts. It caught several near whispers and translated them all.

“The one in the window, I wonder if she bares her breasts too?”

“To have two such wives—”

“But they are dark.”

“He gave Jack gold. He must have much more, to treat it so lightly.”

“Why does he not invite us in? What might this wizard be hiding inside?”

Svetz tried to answer only the shouts from Jack and Captain Magalhaes. “A pleasure to meet you … so far from home … little chance to explore … the weather seems most pleasant in the morning … yes, some of us have learned to eat fish … what is the date?”

“I must ask the navigator.” Captain Magalhaes lowered his voice, not to a whisper but to a softer authoritative bark.
“Three mongrels of a dark, strange race, a man with two wives who claims to be Christian and Russian. Father De Castro, is this a Christian? Is this a Russian?”

“I have met Russians. Their skin is whiter than mine. Whiter than my father's I should say, given what this fierce sun has done to my complexion. Their ceremonies are queer, and their beliefs are strange. Jack, I do not see what you trusted in this Svetz. Did you see his dwelling?”

“From a distance, sir, and then it was gone.”

“And now returned.”

“It stands on two chicken legs.”
This from Father De Castro.
“I think this man may be a kind of Russian sorcerer.”

From Jack:
“Sir, I believe he saved my life. I know his generosity.”

“Well, Jack, perhaps you are too trusting.”
Captain Magalhaes raised his voice. “Master Svetz, the year is fifteen sixty-four in the month of April, and we are ten days from celebrating Easter. We hope you will join us.”

Miya touched his arm. “Keep it cool here? I have an urge to cover up.”

“Sure,” Svetz said, and he stepped forward smiling as Miya stepped inside. “Thank you, Captain. Jack, look what I found!”

He tossed down a handful of gold eggs.

Jack caught two of the eight. The others fell and lay like golden eyes looking up from the mud. The shelled men stared, for less than a heartbeat.

Then Jack reached to pick up another egg—and so did every other man except Captain Magalhaes. The priest got one. Jack had three; he stepped out of the scuffle and handed one of the eggs to Captain Magalhaes for inspection.

Miya stepped out wearing a ship's blouse. She saw the knot of excitement and asked, “Hanny, what did you do?”

“Who, me?”

“Hanny!”

“They've been waiting for me to invite them in. Miya, they must think we have an invisible door down there where there's nothing but hydrogen tank. Not showing them my home makes me an ill-mannered barbarian, right? So I distracted them—”

“You gave them golden eggs and watched them fight!”

“Right,” said Svetz, and he waved and grinned widely and went back inside. “Zeera, let's jump a few days. I can't think of anything more we want to learn from these … savages.”

“We'll miss their holy day. They'll be
sure
we're sorcerers.”

“Aren't we?”

*   *   *

They counted ten strobes and dropped out at midnight. Miya and Svetz went out with mag specs.

The Portuguese ship was still at anchor. A glare on shore near the ship was the remains of a cookfire. Oblong wooden structures reflected infrared light.

Nothing interesting had happened to the Hangtree, so Zeera jumped them again.

Miya stayed to tend Thaxir. Svetz and Zeera went out.

The line from the sky was no thicker, but for a swelling several meters above the tuft. Zeera found another lump six meters higher, and another, and another.

“Pumps,” she said. “You can't get fluid very high with just capillary action.”

“Look, Zeera, those little bulges are
crawling.
Moving up the line. Not pumps. More like little cargo vessels.”

“Svetz, we're going to have to stay and watch this.”

They dipped into the green forest to collect a variety of leaves for the Martian. Svetz asked, “Zeera, what about Thaxir? She could float if you put her in a pressure suit.”

“Well, yes, if her faceplate wasn't smashed!”

Svetz lifted again for another look at the swellings on the cable. “Thirty to forty meters apart. A tablespoon of water each. Hey, Zeera, what's wrong with this picture?”

“Maybe they pull apart as they climb. You know, accelerating.”

“They'd better. Otherwise … add it up and it's enough mass to pull the tree down.”

“Is that what happened at Mars?”

“A million tonnes of war fleet. If the center of mass of an orbital tether drops below geosynchronous orbit, something's got to fall.”

Zeera said, “Maybe we can fix that faceplate.”

*   *   *

That part turned out to be easy. Zeera cut two lenses out of a fishbowl helmet and embedded them in a meteor patch, size large. That fit across Thaxir's pressure suit mask.

They waited for night and high tide.

Thaxir watched on the airlock platform while her captors worked at putting the pulley system together. Then, suddenly losing patience, she began climbing down the pulley ropes.

Svetz found it a startling sight. Thaxir had been sloughing her exercise, but now she was a tremendous insect climbing head down, all six appendages gripping the ropes. Despite Earth's gravity, six limbs were enough.

There were hot spots in the jungle. Svetz wondered what the soldiers thought they saw.

Thaxir descended into the surf. “Zzz,” she said, and the translator said, “Pleasure.”

Svetz and Miya swam around Thaxir. She seemed to be comfortable for the first time since her capture. She asked for her pouch, with her food and her harp, and they dropped that down to her.

*   *   *

Times had become too interesting for the locals. They were gone, leaving time travelers and Portuguese in possession.

Miya and Zeera went to pick leaves for Thaxir in the forest. They took the trade kit; after all, they might meet Portuguese.

The
Minim
's cameras were mounted to watch the black knot where all the anchor trees now merged, where the root trailing from the Hangtree was now thick as Miya's calf.

The cameras found several Portuguese sailors on a climbing expedition. The near-horizontal trunks were easy going, but climbers were stalled near the peak. Still, why had he assumed that sailors couldn't climb? They must spend half their lives in the rigging of sails!

So Svetz might have gone with the women, but he stayed to watch.

He had thought the Portuguese might approach him. They had seen golden coins, then golden eggs, and now they must have glimpsed a sea creature moving about the
Minim.
But nobody had come. Perhaps their religious father figure had warned them away from wizards.

*   *   *

The women returned at sunset. They took turns cleaning up in the
Minim
before they would talk to Svetz.

“We met some conquistadors in the woods,” Miya told him.

“Learn anything?”

“Don't talk to strange men,” Zeera snapped.

Miya said, “We did some teaching too.” The women wouldn't meet his eyes, nor each other's.

Svetz let it go. Eventually he'd get the story.

34

Thaxir had slept floating. This morning she played in the water, getting her exercise without fighting gravity. Svetz sat on the launch platform, watching.

He felt restless. They were wasting time, and there was no need.

How did a Hangtree grow? Could it survive to the present? Would it move on to some other star? What would kill it and what was its life span? The only things left to learn would all be learned using the Fast Forward device. With the FFD they would watch it all happen, wait for present time, and ultimately report it all to the Institute—

Thaxir! A breaking wave had caught her and was washing her toward shore!

A Martian might well find an ocean terrifying, and indeed she seemed paralyzed, borne headfirst toward the beach on her belly plates.

Svetz considered rescue. The tide was in. He could reach shore with a flight stick and risk being seen; or let the waves wash him in … but then he'd be stuck onshore for hours … though it might be the only way to help Thaxir.

Waves rolled her up the sand.

Wouldn't it be better to hail her, using the translator, and ask her to wait? Futz no, if the tide went out he'd have to roll her back to the water! But now she was on all sixes, crawling headfirst back into the waves.

And shelled men at the edge of the woods were shouting, gesticulating, then dropping to one knee and aiming their kinetic weapons tubes—

They fired into green water and foam. Thaxir was gone.

*   *   *

Miya and Zeera were both sleeping. Svetz caressed Miya's foot. She snapped alert in an instant.

“Portuguese onshore. I'm going to have to talk to them. Is there anything I'll have to apologize for?”

Behind his shoulder a chilled voice said, “Do not apologize for anything. That's an order, Svetz.”

Miya said, “Believe it, Hanny.”

“Anything to make
them
apologize for? No? Great. And what do I tell them about Thaxir? She was onshore. They saw her.”

Miya said, “Let me sleep.”

*   *   *

In the
sshh, hisss
of waves there was a music born of madness. Svetz tried to ignore it, but his mind ran away from him, chasing the beat.

The water was withdrawing from the land. Svetz glanced down to be sure, but yes, Thaxir was in the shadow of the
Minim,
safely hidden in floating weed. She was playing her windstorm-minor harp in time with the waves.

Svetz called a cheery good morning to six Portuguese.

The conversation that followed was all shouting over diminishing distance and hissing waves, but Svetz didn't have to do his own shouting.

The Captain was missing a man. Had Svetz or his wives seen Alfonso Nunes?

Svetz answered, “Well, but men in armor all look alike from a distance. Was there anything distinctive—?”

“Alfonso Nunes is short, Captain, very hairy, and lost his helmet long ago, so his face is dark.”
The translator was picking up normal voices again.

Captain Magalhaes shouted, “Six went out to the woods yesterday afternoon. Five returned. There was no blood on the survivors. They will not speak to any but the priest, and Father De Castro
will not
speak. I must not violate a covenant, but I must know. Has any soldier tried to rob you, Master Svetz?”

“Nobody has troubled us here.”

“Not even the great sea creature? I saw it myself, Master Svetz. We fired on it to protect you.”

“I think it harmless. I armed myself and swam with it yesterday, Captain, and it did not trouble me.” Svetz was beginning to enjoy himself. Remembering Whale's undying hatred for its captors, he said, “Many large sea creatures enjoy the company of men.”