"1 The Integral Trees" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Harp opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged.

Gavving dropped it. He had wondered, and now he knew. Harp was afraid. . . "I can't get anyone to tell me anything," he said. "What have you heard?"

"Good news and bad. Nine of you, supposed to be eight. You were an afterthought. The good news is just a rumor. Clave's your leader."

"Clove?"

"Himself. Maybe. Now, it could still be true that the Chairman's getting rid of anyone he doesn't like. He-"

"dave's the top hunter in the tuft! He's the Chairman's son-in-law!"

"But he's not living with Mayrin. Aside from that. . . I'd be guessing."

"What?"

"It's too complicated. I could even be wrong." And Harp drifted off.

The Smoke Ring was a line of white emerging from the pale blue sky, narrowing as it curved around in the west. Far down the arc, Gold was a clot of streaming, embattled storms. His gaze followed the arm around and down and in, until it faded out near Voy. Voy was directly below, a blazing pinpoint like a diamond set in a ring.

It was all sharper and clearer than it had been when Gavving was a child. Voy had been dimmer then and blurred.

At the passing of Gold, Gavving had been ten years old. He remembered hating the Scientist for his predictions of disaster, for the fear those predictions raised. The shrieking winds had been terrible enough

but Gold had passed, and the storms had diminished. . The allergy attack had come days later.

This present drought had taken years to reach its peak, but Gavving had felt the disaster at once. Blinding agony like knives in his eyes, runny nose, tightness in his chest. Thin, dry air, the Scientist said. Some could tolerate it, some could not. Gold had dropped the tree's orbit, he was told, the tree had moved closer to Voy, too far below the Smoke Ring median. Gavving was told to sleep above the treemouth, where the rivulets ran. That was before the rivulets had dwindled so drastically.

The wind too had become stronger.

It always blew directly into the treemouth. Quinn Thit spread wide green sails into the wind, to catch anything that the wind might bear. Water, dust or mud, insects or larger creatures, all were filtered by the finely divided foliage or entangled in the branchiets. The spine branches migrated slowly forward, west along the branch, until gradually all was swallowed into the great conical pit. Even old huts migrated into the treemouth to be crushed and swallowed, and new ones had to be built every few years.

Everything came to the treemouth. The streams that ran down the trunk found an artificial catchbasin above, but the water reached the treemouth as cookwater, or washwater, or when citizens came to rid themselves of body wastes, to "feed the tree."

Martal's cushion of spine branches had already carried her several meters downslope. Her entourage had retreated to the rim, to join Alfin, the treemouth custodian.

Children were taught how to care for the tree. When Gavving was younger his tasks had included carrying collected earth and manure and garbage to pack into the treemouth, removing rocks to use elsewhere, finding and killing pests. He hadn't liked it much-Alfin was a terror to work under-but some of the pests had been edible, he remembered. Earthlife crops were grown here too, tobacco and maize and tomatoes, they had to be harvested before the tree swallowed them.

But in these dark days, passing prey were all too rare. Even the insects were dying out. There wasn't food for the tribe, let alone garbage to feed the insects and the tree. The crops were nearly dead. The branch was nude for half its length; it wasn't growing new foliage.

Alfin had had care of the treemouth for longer than Gavving had been alive. That sour old man hated half the tribe for one reason or another. Gavving had feared him once. He attended all funerals . . but today he truly looked bereaved, as if he were barely holding his grief in check.

Day was dimming. The bright spot, the sun, was dropping, blurring. Soon enough it would brighten and coalesce in the east. Meanwhile Х yes, here came the Chairman, carefully robed and hooded against the light, attended by the Scientist and the Grad. The Grad, a blond boy four years older than Gavving, looked unwontedly serious. Gavving wondered if it was for Martal or for himself.

The Scientist wore the ancient falling jumper that signified his rank: a two-piece garment in pale blue, ill-fitting, with pictures on one shoulder. The pants came to just below the knees; the tunic left a quarter meter of gray-furred belly. After untold generations the strange, glossy cloth was beginning to show signs of wear, and the Scientist wore it only for official functions.

The Grad was right, Gavving thought suddenly: the old uniform would fit Harp perfectly.

The Scientist spoke, praising Martal's last contribution to the health of the tree, reminding those present that one day they must all fulfill that obligation. He kept it short, then stepped aside for the Chairman.