The Color of Distance (42 page)

After lunch, they climbed down to the forest floor and observed what came by to feed on the fallen fruit. This time of day it was mostly insects. Now that her computer was recharged, Juna could catalogue directly as she watched, with the computer in helmet configuration, subvocalizing into a throat mike. She recorded almost forty species of insects, everything from fruit flies to a large, many-legged arthropod with claws that clearly filled much the same ecological niche as a land crab. There were half a dozen different butterflies feeding on rotting fruit.

Several amphibians came by, including a tiny jewel-like frog that sat in a shaft of sunlight, bobbing up and down, flickering through a range of brilliant colors. Juna watched, intrigued, as a larger, red frog responded to the other frog’s courtship ritual. The tiny frog clasped the larger female and they scuttled off into the leaves to mate. Juna smiled. If she hadn’t seen them pairing off, she would have catalogued the two as completely different species.

As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, the larger animals came out into the treetops to feed. Juna and her two assistants climbed back up to watch them.

It was almost sunset when Johito returned. She led them back to her room, where her bami had laid out a good-sized meal.

“What did you learn today?” Johito asked Juna when they were seated.

As she ate, Juna reeled off a list of the animals that had visited the gauware tree and what they had done there. She speculated on how their visits affected the tree, identifying possible seed dispersers, and noting animals that she knew were desirable game. She worked from memory as much as possible, consulting Moki or Anito only when she was uncertain about something. She wanted Johito to know that she had a good memory for the kinds of details that might be useful for learning an atwa. If Johito was impressed by how much she could learn on her own, she might be more willing to teach her. Juna knew that there was no way that she could master such a complex ecosystem by herself in less than a month. Unless she understood how the Tendu used the atwas to guide their interactions with the forest, all of the natural history in the world wouldn’t help. For that she needed Johito’s cooperation.

Johito watched her recital of the day’s events impassively. Her skin remained neutral, with no hint of emotion. At last Juna ran out of things to say. There was a long moment of stillness. Johito sat as though she were carved from a huge block of pale green jade, her chin tucked in thought.

“I want you to go back to the same tree and watch again tomorrow,” Johito said, breaking her stillness at last. She looked away. They were clearly dismissed.

Juna’s shoulders slumped. She followed Anito and Moki out the door, feeling defeated.

Anito touched her on the shoulder when they reached their room. “You did well today. Don’t let Johito bother you. You were up late last night. Get some sleep.”

Juna nodded.

Moki touched her arm. “We learned a lot today. We’ll leam more tomorrow. Good night, siti.”

“Sleep well, bai,” Juna said, giving her bami a quick hug. They hadn’t linked today. She missed the closeness they shared through linking.

She held out her arms, suppressing a jaw-cracking yawn. Just a quick link, to quiet her conscience, then off to bed.

Moki linked with her, and they shared the familiar closeness and peace. It felt so good, like a warm bath or a hug from her mother. Drowsily she broke the link and burrowed into her warm, moist, leafy bed. She felt rosy and peaceful and connected with Moki, and through Moki, with all of the Tendu. She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand to keep the leaves out. She wondered now at her previous fear of allu-a. She would surely have gone mad from sheer loneliness without it. Sleep claimed her, as deep and profound as the dark, eternal forest around them.

The next few days were much like the first. She watched the tree, noting everything that interacted with it—animal, insect, or plant. Every night Johito listened to her describe what happened in the gauware tree, and then sent her back to watch some more. By the end of the seventh day she felt that she had learned everything there was to know about the tree. When Johito sent her back for an eighth day of tree-watching, she began to protest. Anito touched her arm. A small, private glyph of negation flickered on the back of her hand. Juna stilled her skin speech with an effort.

“Yes, kene, I will go back to the tree tomorrow,” she said after Anito apologized for her. “Only please tell me what I am supposed to be looking for that I have not yet noticed.”

Johito said nothing for a long time. Juna sat perfectly still, determined not to move until Johito said something helpful.

“You have more to learn. Look more carefully,” Johito said at last. Then she got up and crawled into bed, as though they had already left the room.

Juna turned bright red with anger. Anito plucked nervously at her arm.

Juna took a deep breath. Anger would do nothing to help her. Johito was trying to see how far-she could be pushed. If she lost her temper, she would lose everything.

“I’m all right,” she told Anito. “Let’s go.”

Juna lay awake, shifting uncomfortably in her bed. Was she missing something, or was Johito being difficult? Tomorrow she would go over every inch of the tree. If she didn’t turn up something new, then she would tell Anito that she was giving up.

The next morning Juna arose early. She woke Moki and they slipped out of the tree while the forest was still dim and thick with mist. The first shafts of light were gilding the treetops when they reached the gauware tree. Juna stationed herself on the branch of a nearby tree, and considered her next move.

Everything depended on whether Johito was playing fair with her. After seven days spent cataloguing everything that happened on that damned tree, Juna was sure that Johito wanted her to fail.

So, how would Johito try to keep her from succeeding? Johito had to play fair according to Tendu custom. To do otherwise would make her lose face if it was discovered. Johito was testing her. If she passed the test, then she was worthy to take on as a student. There was still some hidden fact about this tree that Juna needed to discover, something that was the key to the gauware tree’s survival.

Whatever it was that Juna needed to find out, it was not something that Moki, Anito, or Ninto knew about the tree. They had given her what information they had. The rest she had to figure out for herself.

She turned to her bami. “Moki, go ask Anito and Ninto if they know of any other gauware trees nearby.”

Moki nodded and swung off through the trees. Juna climbed down to the ground, and began examining the tree minutely, starting at the wide buttress roots. She knocked on the roots. They resonated like a drum. Were they hollow? She climbed, pausing from time to time to knock on the trunk. It too resonated. It was hollow. About mid-morning Juna pushed aside a bromeliad and found what she was looking for, a hole in the crotch of the tree, twice the size of her fist.

So, the tree was hollow. What lived inside? She could format her computer as a camera and drop it through the hole on a rope, but she didn’t want to risk losing it. Better to wait and see what Moki could find out.

She swung through the trees to a nearby stream, and washed off the accumulated grime of her morning exertions. It was amazing how dirty she got, just climbing a tree. She plunged into the stream, whooping at the feel of the cold water on her skin. She emerged shining and clean to find Anito and Moki waiting for her.

“There are several gauware trees nearby,” Anito informed her. “Let’s eat and then go look at them.”

The second tree they looked at had a large gaping hole in its trunk, big enough for Juna to climb into. She sent Moki for a long coil of rope and a large fresh chunk of glow-fungus.

“You’re going to climb down inside that gauware tree?” Anito asked, ochre flickers of concern highlighting her words.

Juna nodded.

“Be careful. You don’t know what lives inside that hole. It might be dangerous.”

“Yes, but I have to know what’s down there.”

Anito flickered resigned agreement. “You’re probably right. Johito won’t be satisfied until you tell her about the inside of the tree, but if you die in the process, she won’t mourn. For all we know, there could be something dangerous in there. Be very careful.”

It was early afternoon when Moki returned with the necessary climbing equipment. They lowered the glow-fungus down, but aside from a flock of sleepy, wide-mouthed araus, birds that looked like a cross between an archaeopteryx and a whippoorwill, they saw nothing except vague, shiny, writhing shapes in the dimness. Those shapes could have been anything from a giant snake to a colony of harmless beetles.

Moki looped one end of the rope around a branch and tied it securely. Anito tied a series of loops in the other end. “For footholds,” she explained, and then braced the rope behind her back. Moki paid out a body length of rope into the hole. Juna checked her gear, and swung herself into the hole. She stuck her feet through the bottom loops in the rope and then nodded to Anito, who began lowering her into the dark cavern of the hollow tree. As soon as Juna was far enough down, she hooked the glow-fungus onto a loop above her head. It cast a pallid blue light on the rough interior of the tree. A warm current of air blew past her, carrying the stench of death and decay. She swallowed against her gag reflex and wished she was enclosed in an environment suit.

Two and a half meters down, a wide shelflike projection partially blocked the hollow. It was covered with dark brown beetle-like insects feeding on decayed leaf litter. These bugs were what she had seen moving in the light from the glow-fungus. As Juna carefully eased her way past the obstruction, a bright yellow snake with vivid red bands bordered by thin green stripes lifted its head out of the leaf litter and regarded her alertly. Juna froze. It was a tiakan. Its bite was extremely poisonous. The Tendu could counteract the poison, but it took months for all of the effects to wear off. She watched it watch her for a very long time. At last the snake lowered its head and crept off, backwards. The motion was odd and very unsnakelike. Gingerly she unhooked the light from the rope and held it closer. She let out the breath that she had been holding, and laughed. It was a harmless giant millipede, its tail colored to resemble a tiakan’s head. Using a long bamboo probe, Juna stirred the leaf litter around the anthropod. It lifted its tail again, mimicking the poisonous snake. The illusion was almost perfect.

She gave the rope two tugs, the signal to lower her farther into the darkness. For a moment, the light from the glow-fungus was cut off by the projection. Her pupils widened, but the darkness was nearly absolute. Something wet and slimy fluttered past her, chirring and squeaking. She screamed. The sound was swallowed by the soft, rotting wood on the inside of the tree. Then the glow-fungus slid past the projection, and Juna saw that she had disturbed a colony of frog-bats. They were ugly but harmless. Conditions inside the tree were perfect for them. They needed a very hot, humid environment. The temperature had to be almost 35 degrees Celsius, and the air was saturated with moisture.

As she continued her descent, she had time to survey the inner surface of the tree. It was covered with a variety of different kinds of fungi. Clouds of tiny insects swarmed around her light. The walls opened out as she continued descending. It was like being in a cave. Great plates of multicolored fungi hung down like stalactites. Several different species of frog-bats made the tree their home. They clung between the fungal stalactites, chittering uneasily at her invasion. Their guano rained down on her head. She wiped it off with a sweaty palm and continued her descent. This reeking wooden cavern was a far cry from Narmolom’s comfortable, well-lit village tree.

At last the bottom of the cavity came into sight. Something fled squeaking at her approach. She jerked the rope three times, the signal to stop, and hung a couple of feet above the guano-covered floor. The fleeing animal paused at the edge of a dark hole. It was the size and shape of a large hairless rat, white with blotchy yellow patches. It was a gootara, an amphibian like the batlike creatures she had startled in her descent. The female laid its eggs in a pouch on the male’s abdomen, where he fertilized them. The eggs hatched and the young lived in the male’s pouch until they finished developing and were old enough to survive on their own. She pushed off from a projecting rib and grasped a woody knob on the other side of the tree to look more closely at the gootara, but the creature fled down the passageway.

Juna reached down with a bamboo probe and stirred the guano, disturbing a seething sea, of insects and worms that burrowed frantically into the detritus. There was plenty of food for the gootara down here. She dug further, trying to see how deep the layer of guano was, and whether there was wood or earth underneath. She struck earth about fifteen centimeters down, densely packed with roots. The guano was evidently a major source of nutrients for the gauware tree. Sequestered inside the tree like this, it was held for the exclusive use of the gauware tree. Perhaps this was what Johito had wanted her to find.

Juna unhooked the glow-fungus and shone it down the passageway formed by the hollow root of the tree. Several other hollow roots radiated out of the central cavern. She wondered what other creatures used these underground passageways through the jungle. She put the glow-fungus back in its case of nutrient solution, and hung there in the dark, listening. There were crisp rustling and popping sounds around and below her. The hole at the top of the tree was only a dim, distant circle of light. The outside world seemed very far away from this dark, stinking, bug-infested hell.

At last her eyes grew used to the darkness and she could make out, faintly, the bulges and irregularities on the inside of the tree trunk. Something rustled behind her. The rope swayed as she turned her head to look. Peering through the darkness, she could make out only a vague shape. She pulled out the glow-fungus.