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

When they reached the rivulet, it was smaller yet, but it was enough: they hung in the water and let it cool them and run into their faces and mouths. Clave shared out smoked meat. Gavving found himself ravenous.

The Grad watched the birds as he ate. Presently he burst out laughing. "Look, they've got a mating dance going."

"So?"

"You'll see."

Presently Gavving did see; and so did others, judging by dave's bellowing laugh and the giggles from Jayan and Jinny. A gray-brown male would approach a female and abruptly spread his gray wings like a cloak. Under the gray was brilliant yellow, and a tube protruding from a splash of crimson feathers.

"The Scientist told me about them once. Flashers," said the Grad. His smile died as he said, "I wonder what they eat?"

"What difference does it make?" Alfin demanded.

"Maybe none." The Grad made his way upward toward the birds. The birds flew off, then returned to dive at him, shrieking obscenities. The Grad ignored them. Presently he returned.

Aliin asked, "Well?"

"The wood's riddled with holes. Riddled. The holes are full of insects. The birds dig in and eat the insects."

"You're in love," Alfin challenged. "You're in love with the idea that the tree's dying."

"I'd love to believe it isn't," the Grad said, but Alfin only snorted.

They spiraled around to the western side while the sun dipped beneath Voy and began to rise again. The wind was less ferocious now. But they were getting tired; there was almost no chatter. They rested frequently in crevasses in the hark.

They were resting when Mcml called, "Jinny? I'm hung up." A pincer the size of Clave's fist gripped the fabric of Merril's nearly empty pack. Merril pulled back against it. From a hole in the bark there emerged a creature covered in hard, brown, segmented plates. Its face was a single plate with a deeply inset eye. The body looked soft behind the last plate.

Jayan slashed where its body met the bark. The creature separated. It still clung to Merril's pack with idiot determination. Jayan levered the claw open with her harpoon and dropped the creature into her own pack.

When they had circled round to water again, Clave set water to boiling in the small, lidded pot. He made tea, refilled the pot, and boiled Merril's catch. It made one bite each for his team.

They wedged themselves into a wide crack with the shape of a lightning-stroke and moored themselves with lines. Together but separate, head to foot within the bark, they had no chance to converse, and no urge. Four days of climbing since breakfast left them too tired for anything but sleep.

At waking they ate more of the smoked meat. "Let's look for more of those hard-shelled things," Clave suggested. "That was good." He didn't have to urge them to get moving. He never would, Gavving realized, as long as they couldn't sleep where water flowed.

This time Jiovan was given the lead. He took them on a counterclockwise spiral that brought them back to lee within half a day. Again the wood was soft and riddled with holes, and flashers swarmed below them. Alfin and Glory tended to lose ground in the leeward regions. Jiovan remarked on it and earned a look of dull hatred from Alfin. The thing was that Alfin took more care setting his spikes than the rest did. And Glory didn't, so she lost time slipping and catching herself- They moored themselves in the stream and drank and washed.

Alfin spotted something far above them: gray nubs reaching out from the bark on both sides of the rivulet. He climbed, doggedly pounding spikes into the wood, and caine back with a fan-shaped fungus, pale gray with a red frill, half the size of his pack. "It could be edible," he said.

Clave asked, "Are you willing to try it?"

"No." He started to throw it away.

Merril stopped him. "We're here to keep the tribe from starving," she said. She broke a red-and-gray chunk from the fringe and ate a meager mouthful. "Not much taste, but it's nice. The Scientist would like it. You could chew it with no teeth." She took another bite.

Alfin broke off a piece of the grayish white inside, and ate that, looking as if he were taking poison. He nodded. "Tastes okay."

At which point there were more volunteers, but dave vetoed that. When they departed, Clave veered upward to pick a bouquet of the fanshaped fungi. A meter-square fan rode like a flag above his pack.