Niven, Larry - The Smokering

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Prologue

Discipline

THE PLANET BELOW HIM WAS HIDDEN TO ALL OF SHARLS'S

senses save for the Neutrino Screen, the Neudar. What

had been a gas giant planet a billion years ago was still a

world two and a half times the size of the Earth: an egg

of rock and nickel-iron hidden in world-sized storms. The

storms spread out into a cloudy ring occupying the en-

tirety of Goldblatt's World's orbit around the neutron

star.

Sharls watched storms spin outward from the gas giant.

Streams of fog and cloud and dust ran slow near the

Smoke Ring's outer rim, faster at the Smoke Ring median,

faster yet as they neared Levoy's Star; and everywhere

there were flattened whorls of hurricane. The gravity gra-

dient was savage this near the ancient neutron star. The

innermost limits of the Smoke Ring circled Levoy's Star

every two hours.

The Smoke Ring was tinged with green—it had its own

billion-year-old ecology—and somewhere in that cloud

were men.

2 / Larry Niven

The temptation to go to them was a constant low-level

irritant.

When moving between stars. Discipline burned the

near-infinite hydrogen of interstellar space; but Discipline

had been at rest for a long time now, and onboard fuel

was limited. Refueling could not have progressed far

when the mutiny came. Sharls's supply of deuterium-trit-

ium mix was finite. He had no way of knowing how long

he must wait for the children of Discipline's crew to re-

discover civilization, to build their own spacecraft, to

come to him. He was always short of power. The solar

collectors on his two remaining CARMs didn't give him

much.

Sharls ignored the stars, most of the time. He watched

the Smoke Ring. When the boredom became too much

for him, he edited it from his memory. Boredom was a

recurring surprise.

Five hundred and thirty-two Earth years was one

hundred and ninety-two orbits of Levoy's Star round its

companion star. But the natives of the Smoke Ring mea-

sured years from the passings of the neutron star (Levoy's

Star, "Voy") across the face of the yellow dwarf (T3,

"Sun"); so a Smoke Ring "year" was 1.384 Earth years.

Sharls had been waiting in the L2 point behind Goldblatt's

World for three hundred and eighty-four Smoke Ring

years.

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Best to sit it out in a stable orbit, and watch, and wait

for men to develop civilization. Best to edit the memory

of boredom . . .

Discipline's computer/autopilot stored its information

as a human brain did, or a hologram, though Sharls could

feel differences. Memories from his time aboard Disci-

pline were sharp and vivid. Those he had edited were gone

completely. But memories from his time as a man, trans-

THE SMOKE RING / 3

ferred long ago from a human brain now long dead, were

blurred, hard to retrieve.

So: it wasn't like a relay clicking over.

But somewhere in the computer there was a change of

state. Five hundred and thirty-two years, and enough is

enough. Sharls Davis Kendy was done with waiting.

Section One

CITIZENS

TREE

Chapter One

The Pond

from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 19 SM:

PONDS

WATER DROPLETS COME IN ALL SIZES HERE. CLOUDS

MAY HOLD EVERYTHING FROM FINE MIST, TO GLOBULES

THE SIZE OF A FIST, TO SPHEROIDS THAT HOUSE ALL

MANNER OF LIFE. THE BIGGEST "POND" WE'VE SEEN

MASSED TEN MILLION METRIC TONS OR SO; BUT THE TIDE

FROM LEVOY'S STAR HAD PULLED IT INTO TWO LOBES

AND THE DIFFERENTIAL WINDS WERE TEARING IT APART.

THE ECOLOGY OF THE PONDS IS ONE RATHER THAN

MANY. LIFE IS QUEER AND WONDERFUL, BUT IN EVERY

POND WE HAVE EXAMINED IT IS THE SAME LIFE. PONDS

ARE TEMPORARY; POND LIFE MUST OCCASIONALLY MI-

GRATE. IN THE SMOKE RING EVEN THE FISH CAN FLY.

—CAROL BURNES, LIFE SUPPORT

LAWRI AND JEPFER SWAM BENEATH MURKY PONDWA-

ter, trailing forty square meters of fabric stretched across

8 / Larry Niven

the net more commonly used to sieve harebrains from the

sky. They gripped its corners in strong toes and swam

with their arms.

The sheet Tesisted. The leading edge tried to crumple.

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Tethers at the comers of the harebrain net got in their

way. We could have had some help, Jeffer thought. Lawri

wouldn't have it. Lawri's idea. Lawn's project! She'd be

doing this by herself if she possibly could.

Air! He slapped her thigh. She dropped the sheet and

they swam toward the light.

Air is the sweetest taste, though one must risk drown-

ing to appreciate it.

They were at the arc of the pond nearest Citizens Tree.

The center of the trunk was a mere three klomters east.

Seventy klomters of trunk ran out and in from the pond,

ending in paired curved tufts. The in tuft, home, looked

greenish black, with Voy's blue pinpoint shining almost

behind it. A single line ran from the trunk, and divided.

The sheet was a ghostly shadow deep within the pond.

Lines ran from the comers, up through the water and out,

to join the main cable that ran to the trunk.

"Almost in place," Lawri said doubtfully.

"Close enough."

"All right. You go get the CARM ready. I'll draft some

hands to pull it in."

Jeffer nodded. His legs scissored and shot him into the

air. He drifted toward the main cable in a spray of drop-

lets.

It was easier than arguing. Lawri would not leave Jeffer

to organize the final stage. When Lawri the Scientist got

an idea, nobody else got credit. Particularly not Citizens

Tree's other Scientist, her husband.

Partway around the curve of the pond, Minya and

Gavving floated in the interface between air and water,

surrounded by thrashing children.

THE SMOKE RING / 9

Lines ran from each child toward the cable from Cit-

izens Tree. The children were taught the backstroke first.

It kept their faces in the air. Some preferred the frog-kick

that let them look beneath the water. Swimming was a

balance of surface tension versus the thrust of arms and

legs.

If a child kicked himself entirely out of the water, an

adult must go after him. A child who went beneath the

surface could panic and must be pulled out before he

drowned. There were carnivores among the waterbirds.

Minya and Gavving wore harpoons. They had three of

their own among the swimmers.

Gavving used lazy strokes to change his attitude, mov-

ing his field of view in a clockwise circle.

"Look at Rather," Minya said.

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The oldest of the children were swimming together.

Daughter of two jungle giants, golden-blond Jill had grown

to merely normal height in the tide of Citizens Tree. She

was thirty ce' meters shorter than her parents ... but the

contrast between Jill and Rather was startling. At four-

teen, Minya's dark-haired firstborn son was less than two

meters in height. Jill had more than half a meter on him.

Yet Minya never spoke of Rather's height. Gavving

looked again and said, "Right. Rather!"

Rather paddled over, reluctantly. Fine green fur,

barely visible, grew a mi'meter long on his left cheek.

Gavving gripped the boy's arm and lifted him partway out

of the water, against surface tension. The green could be

traced down Rather's neck, over his shoulder, and part-

way across his chest.

"Fluff," Gavving said. "Why didn't you tell some-

one?"

Rather grinned guiltily. "I've never swum before."

Minya snapped, "You go straight—"

"No. Finish your swim. You'll pay for it. You've seen

your last of the sun for a while. Have we raised a fool?

It's almost reached your eye!"

10 / Larry Niven

Rather nodded solemnly and paddled away. Minya

watched him go, her mouth pursed in anger. Her husband

wriggled and was silently underwater; kicked, and was

beneath her; grasped an ankle and dove. Minya doubled

back on herself and kicked him across the jaw. Gavving

reached through the defense of her waving arms and legs

and had her head between his hands; pulled her to him

by main strength and kissed her hard. She laughed bub-

bles.

He kicked toward the surface with Minya in tow. They

blew water from their faces before they inhaled, and were

back on duty before any child could get into trouble.

Debby was some distance from where the children

swam. She stayed just under the surface, motionless,

peering, her spear poised. She expelled stale air—which

stayed before her as a bubble—raised her head, snatched

a breath, ducked again.

Debby had lived her first nineteen years in free-fall.

Fourteen years in the tree tide had put muscle on her

without shrinking her height. Her children—and lisa's,

the children they had borne to Anthon—were no taller

than ordinary tree dwellers. But Debby was two and a

half meters tall. Her fingers were long and fragile; her

toes were sturdier if less agile, and the big toes measured

six ce'meters. Her rich brown hair was beginning to show

gray, but she still wore it a meter long. For swimming she

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wore it looped in a braid around her throat.

The water was murky. This was a new skill for Debby,

but she was learning.

She struck. The ripple other thrust expanded outward

around the great globule, past playing children and the

Scientists working their cloth sheet.

A silver shape wriggled on Debby's spearpoint. Debby

reached above her head, tugged hard at the tether, and

gasped as her head broke the surface. The waterbird, sud-

denly thrust into air, expanded its small wings and

THE SMOKE RING / 11

thrashed mightily. A blow to the head end quieted it.

Debby pushed it into a net bag to join five others.

Her chest still heaved with the need for air. She rested

quietly on her back, her hands fluttering from time to time

to keep surface tension from pulling her under.

Eastward, a thousand klomters past Citizens Tree, the

cloud patterns thickened into a flattened whirlpool. The

Smoke Ring converged beyond and below the whorl in a

stream of white touched with blue-green, narrowing as it

dropped toward the dazzling point of Voy.

Things tended to collect in that special part of the

Smoke Ring, east of Gold by sixty degrees of arc. The

citizens had reason to know that the storm-whorl around

Gold was dangerous. They assumed that the Clump was

too. They had never taken the tree nearer than this.

They had never visited a jungle.

Human beings certainly lived elsewhere in the Smoke

Ring, but Citizens Tree had never attempted to contact

them.

Citizens Tree was placid, safe. Working within the

pond was as much excitement as Debby ever got these

days. Life in Carther States had been different. The oc-

casional raids from London Tree forced the citizens to be

always prepared for war, until in one magnificent raid they

had ended London Tree's power forever.

Debby's connection with the jungle warriors had ended

too. A mixed group of copsiks and warriors had stolen

London Tree's CARM. The vehicle was old science, pow-

erful and unfamiliar. They and their prisoners had been

lucky to bring the CARM to any kind of safety; but

Carther States was lost somewhere in the sky beyond

Gold.

From westward came a cheerful cry. "Citizens! We

need muscle!" Debby saw Lawri the Scientist floating in

the sky with one hand on the main tether.

Debby snatched at the" net bag (six was a nice day's

catch), kicked herself into the sky, and began reeling her

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