Within a few hours Grantin was again hungry and footsore, and he insisted on halting for lunch. Both he and Chom made a meal from the packs, although the native augmented the human food with several crickets, two dragonflies, and six pink flowers. When describing the Fanists, Grantin decided the word "omnivorous" took on an entirely new meaning.
Pyra's glow warmed Grantin's bones. He stretched out on the soft bed of grasses to take a nap, only to be roughly shaken from his rest. Sleepily he looked up to see that Chom had already strapped on his pack and was ready to resume the hike.
"Not now, Chom, I need to rest," Grantin said, rolling over onto his back amid the flowers.
"No, we must go," the Fanist replied, shaking Grantin anew.
"Chom, just a few minutes…"
"No, we must get away from the river before night," Chom insisted. "This is a game trail. Animals use it to feed. Also, the nightbirds fly here. I have seen their signs, and the stingwings, too. We must leave now."
Reluctantly Grantin crawled to his feet and flung the pack across his shoulders. Again Chom led the way, setting a brisk pace.
"Chom, what's it like where you live? Your people live in the forest, don't they? Are the forests like this one?"
"No, not like this. There are no hometrees here."
"What's a hometree?"
"It's what we build our homes in, where we live. How we live together."
"You mean you hollow out the trees? Wouldn't it be just as easy to live in buildings?"
"Hollow out the trees? You mean kill them and live inside a dead shell? No. No Fanist could live that way. The trees are our homes, our friends, our protection, our companions. We care for them. They care for us. They are part of our life. We would not be what we are without them. We would be something different. The Fanist without his community, without his hometree, is an outlaw and renegade."
"You mean a criminal? I didn't know you had them. I've never heard of a Fanist going bad."
"Not a criminal, an outcast. Often they settle near human villages as weather predictors. They are out of harmony, ones who are so different, who think so differently, feel so differently, that they are not of us any longer."
"I don't understand. You mean an outcast does not follow the rules? If he obeys the laws, what does it matter if he lives in a tree or a house?"
"We are so different. I do not know if you can understand me or if I can understand you. Let me tell you about how we live, how a community is born, and perhaps you will see what I mean.
"A community exists. Call it a village or a town. It is not either of those things, but, in any event, it exists. Like any other people we are born and we age. Each of us, when we reach a particular stage in our life, is overtaken by the urge to explore-but explore is not the right word. There are no exact human words, you understand. I simply translate into the nearest human equivalent.
"This urge ranges from a mild curiosity in some individuals to an all-consuming obsession in others. The individual discusses these feelings with an adviser or mentor or parent-again, none of the words is quite right. Each person looks to a particular older member of the community whose attitudes, learning, wisdom, whose entire personality for some reason appeals to and gains the respect of the young one. This person then becomes someone to whom he goes for advice.
"The mentor discusses the feelings of the young person with him and suggests several prospects-not just a particular place to explore but a philosophy of exploration: should the young one look for new foodstuffs, spectacular landscapes, dangerous adventure, the learning of a new craft or skill. You see, the mentor must find an area of challenge which will both satisfy the urge for exploration and also yield some benefit both to the individual and to the community.
"Once the path has been chosen the person commences the journey, the trip of life. For some it might be no more than a study of the berry fields a league or two from the community, while another might set off across the Island Sea for a trek into the Hidden Lands."
"Then that's what you're doing-you're on your trip of life?" Grantin interjected.
"It is my time."
"Well, what is your mission? Surely you didn't start out with the idea of helping me?"
"A trip of life is a very personal thing which may not be discussed," Chom replied hastily, remembering Ajax's warnings of the need for secrecy. "Perhaps you will understand if I explain further. The more adventurous, strong-willed, and determined the individual, the more ambitious his trip of life. Those who are adventurous but foolish or unlucky or weak often fail to return. That is a good thing, for it improves the race. The dangerous, the weak, and the foolish do not return to found a family. Each of us is enjoined by the highest strictures to return with our report, and in this way we increase the knowledge and wisdom of the community."
"Your theory's not necessarily correct," Grantin said. "What about the timid ones who only go as far as the berry patch? They always return to breed. Doesn't that result in your becoming a race of timid weaklings?"
"An intelligent observation, but no. All those who return do not necessarily found a family. The more dangerous the trip of life, the more useful the wisdom returned, the easier it is for the individual to find a mate. Those who visit the berry patches often are unable to find mates and breed not at all. But who knows? Upon occasion startling knowledge has been obtained by quiet and contemplative individuals, and they have earned great respect by reason of their scholarly reports. Also, there is even a further benefit to our custom.
"Sometimes on the trip of life an individual finds a place which he prefers to his own community. After making his report the individual, if he is sufficiently bold, resourceful, and ambitious, leaves the community to found a new settlement in such a place. Upon the satisfactory establishment of a home the individual then takes a mate. If he is successful and the place is good a new community of strong stock is founded. If he has underestimated the hardships or picked a bad place he dies or fails to find a mate, and, again, the race is strengthened. In this way have we prospered through the ages."
"What about those who don't undertake the trip, who don't want to? What happens to them?"
"Those are the renegades, the criminals, the ones who wish to take no risks or to have a mate without earning the right, who give nothing back to the race. These are the ones who would destroy our whole world."
"What do you do with them?"
"They are forbidden to breed and removed from the community so that, through ignorance or error, they are not accepted as mentors by the young. They live out of contact with Nahra, the soul of the community, the empathy with the land."
Grantin's head was filled to overflowing with the Fanist culture, and still there were more questions. What did all of this have to do with Fanists living in trees? And how did they mate? Were only males expected to go on the trip of life? What was Chom doing here in the Gogol kingdom? It was all too much for Grantin now. The afternoon was wearing on. The morning's high spirits had dissipated. No longer listening to Chom's lecture, he shifted his attention to the forest.
As if the Black Pearl River were a boundary between the outer reaches of the forest and its main domain, the character of the woods had changed. There was a subtle deepening in the sky as the leaves grew more dense. The trees themselves were closer together and their trunks thicker and more gnarled. Mosses of rust and deep green festooned many trees, as the trapped air was humid and dank. The bushes and small plants had thinned greatly. The forest floor was dotted with mushrooms and other forms of fungi. The dominant color of the terrain had changed from green to the brown, white, and gray of dead leaf and mold. Though it was now only the eighth hour Before Dark, already a damp breeze presaged Pyra's setting.
By unspoken agreement Chom and Grantin increased the pace, as if in hope that the landscape beyond the next bend would be more hospitable. In point of fact the surroundings did change as the afternoon waned, but not for the better. By half past the ninth hour a twilight gloom filled the spaces between the trees. Although Pyra would not yet set for an hour and a half, Grantin and Chom had nothing like that much time to find a place to camp.
Uniformly covered with dead leaves, the trail could be discerned only by the fact that it provided an alley between the close-grown trees. Ahead the path curved to the right and, without warning, descended into a steep gully. Along the bottom of the ravine trickled a small, muddy stream. Chom's extra set of arms again proved their worth in ascending the far bank. Here the dead leaves made the walls slippery and Grantin found it difficult to obtain purchase. Only after working his way fifty yards or so downstream was he able to make use of the protruding roots of a great jonquil and scramble to the top.
Grantin in the lead, the two walked northward along the far edge of the gully to again intercept the trail. In spite of their relatively minor detour, ten minutes later they had still not spied the opening into the forest.
"We should have come to it by now," Grantin said nervously. "Have we reached the point where we entered the gully?"
"I cannot tell. It is too dark to see a disturbance in the ground cover. We may have to camp here and look for it in the morning when the light is better."
Grantin examined his surroundings with obvious distaste. Here there was neither food nor shelter, and the water in the stream looked too black and forbidding to drink. Grantin suspected that when night came hordes of sting-wings would descend upon the stream and its environs. He halted and peered between the rearing trees to his left. Thirty or forty feet away the ground swelled upward to form a low hill. Perhaps from its top he might be able to spot the trail.
"Chom, wait here a moment. Let me climb that ridge and see what I can see."
The leaves crunched beneath Grantin's feet and gave him the feeling of walking on a deep, soft carpet. Unlike the banks of the gully this slope was tree-studded and of a gentle incline. From the top he had a surprisingly good view. The lower foliage of the surrounding trees had withered from the lack of sunlight. Ahead of him and a bit to his right, a direction which Grantin roughly reckoned to be the northwest, he spied a markedly brighter patch. The area was fifty yards distant, but it seemed to glow with the red-orange highlights of late-afternoon sun.
Grantin turned back toward the gully and waved for Chom to join him. A few moments later the Fanist stood next to him at the top of the hill. Chom agreed that the phenomenon was worth investigating. As if they had emerged from behind a thick curtain, Grantin and Chom found themselves on the edge of a brightly lighted, almost circular meadow ringed with a peculiar variety of short, stumpy tree. A hundred fifty yards in diameter, the park-like spot was inviting. With the sky open above them Grantin and Chom were able to estimate the true time. Grantin judged it to be approximately the tenth hour, as Pyra was already setting. In less than an hour the meadow would be plunged into full night.
As excited as a child with a new toy, Grantin strode into the center of the clearing, obviously well pleased at its luxuriant ground cover. Chom hung back just within the boundary of the low trees. In spite of Grantin's signals he refused to proceed farther, and a moment later the young man returned to the Fanist's position.
"Chom, what's wrong? Is there something the matter?"
"Nothing that I am sure of, but I sense a strangeness here. I feel we're being watched."
"Watched? Are you sure?"
"No, it is just a feeling I have. I am not sure that we should spend the night here. Perhaps we should go back to the gully and find the trail to Cicero in the morning."
"Spend the night in that dismal gully with the sting-wings? No, thank you. Why are you looking at the trees like that? Is that what the problem is? Are they poisonous?"
"No. I do not think so," Chom said, rubbing his hands over the smooth, dark blue bark. "But they are very unusual. I have never seen a tree like this before. Why should we suddenly find a whole community of them ringing this particular meadow? There must be a reason, but I do not know what it is. I have a feeling about these trees. Something is not right."
"I think your time with Shenar has upset you more than you realize. I don't get any feeling from them at all. Come on, now. Are you going to camp here with me tonight or not?"
Once more Chom rubbed the trunk of the tree. He inspected the architecture of its limbs. The deep bluish-gray bark sheathed the circular trunk to a height of five feet, whereupon two V-shaped branches sprouted upward from either side. The ends of each branch were encased in an egg-shaped mass of fleshy blue-green leaves. Another foot or two above the branching point, the tree's central stalk likewise exploded in a great inverted teardrop of the same thick intertwined blue-green leaves. This crown was four feet in diameter and six feet high. Upon close examination the leaves resembled fat corkscrews so tightly interlocked that Grantin's hand could not be inserted between them.
For a few seconds longer Chom stared at the treetop with intense concentration then he removed his hands and followed Grantin to a spot fifteen feet from the edge of the forest.
For dinner Chom hunted up some mushrooms which he assured Grantin were nontoxic. At the far edge of the clearing the human managed to find a tayberry bush heavy with fruit. These substances augmented the food from Grantin's pack, and the human enjoyed a pleasant dinner. For his part Chom completed his meal with various random animal, insect, and plant delicacies. Not wanting to mar the meadow with a fire, the two curled up to sleep immediately after dinner, Grantin wrapping himself in a blanket while Chom trusted his comfort to his thick hide.
By the third hour AD both travelers were fast asleep. In their slumber they failed to hear the distant whinings of the night creatures, the chirps of the mating insects, the buzz of the occasional stingwing, and the plastic-like rustle and rattle of the life trees. With great care a bud-like stalk pushed its way through the leafy surface of the tree nearest the travelers. Leaf-like petals unfolded to reveal a functioning eye which focused unerringly on their forms.
Now satisfied that the two were indeed asleep, the rustle became louder and more agitated as inch by inch the life trees' shallow roots were plucked from the soil and slid forward. With the greatest deliberateness the trees moved slowly across the edge of the clearing to encircle Grantin and Chom where they slept.