He detached the guide line and wrapped it around his waist. He clipped two metal hand-grips onto the rope. There was a webbing stirrup attached to each grip, and Arrow Maker placed his feet in these. Standing with his weight in one stirrup he moved the other a few feet upwards. Then he raised himself and moved the other grip, up past the first. Thus Arrow Maker climbed smoothly up through the remaining layers of canopy. The grips slid upwards easily, but ratchets prevented them from slipping down. One of the grips felt a little loose — it was worn, he suspected — but it was secure enough.
As he climbed up through layers of greenery toward the sky, Maker relaxed into the familiar rhythm of the simple exercise, enjoying the glowing feeling in his joints as his muscles worked. The heavy belt around his waist, with its pockets of webbing for his tools and food, bumped softly against his skin; he barely noticed the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.
The grips, and ropes and stirrups, had belonged to Arrow Maker for at least twenty years. They were among his most treasured possessions: his life depended on them, and they were almost irreplaceable. The people of the forest could make rope, and bows, and face paint, but they simply didn’t have the raw materials to manufacture grips and stirrups — or, come to that, knives, spectacles and many other essential day-to-day objects. Even old Uvarov — rolling around the forest floor in his chair — admitted as much.
To get his set of climbing gear, the younger Arrow Maker had traded with the Undermen.
He’d spent many days collecting forest produce: fruit, the flesh of birds, bowls of copaifera sap. He piled his goods in one of the great Locks set in the floor of the forest. He’d communicated his needs to the Undermen by an elaborate series of scratches made with the point of his knife in the scarred surface of the Lock.
When he’d returned to the Lock the next day, there lay the climbing gear he’d wanted, gleaming new and neatly laid out. Of the forest goods there was no sign.
The forest folk relied on Underman artifacts to stay alive. But similarly, Arrow Maker had often thought, perhaps the Undermen needed forest food to survive. Perhaps it was dark down there, beneath the forest, cut off from the light; perhaps the Men couldn’t grow their own food. Arrow Maker shivered; he had a sudden vision of a race of nocturnal, huge-eyed creatures skulking like loris through the lifeless, ever-darkened levels below his feet.
He reached the top of his rope. The anchoring branch was only a couple of hand’s-breadths thick, but it was solid enough. A tree-swift’s nest — a ball of bark and feathers, glued by spittle — clung to the side of the branch, sheltering its single egg.
He selected a fatter branch and sat on it, wrapping his legs around its junction with the trunk. He placed his bow and quiver carefully beside him, lodging them safely. He drew some dried meat from his belt and chewed at the tough, salty stuff as he gazed around.
Now he’d climbed close to the crown of the kapok tree. The great tree’s last few branches were silhouetted against the darkling skydome above him, their clusters of brownish leaves rustling.
The mass of the canopy was perhaps thirty yards below the skydome, but this single giant kapok raised its bulk above the rest, its uppermost branches almost grazing the sky. The darkness of the evening rendered this upper world almost as dark as the forest floor, far below him. But Maker knew his way around the kapok; after all he’d been climbing it for most of his eighty years.
He was at the top of the world. In the distance a bird flapped across the sky, its colors a gaudy splash against the fading light. Beyond the skydome, the stars were coming out. The kapok’s branches were a dense, tangled mass beneath him, obscuring its immense trunk. Seeds — fragments of fluffy down — floated everywhere, peppering the leaves with the last of the daylight. Ten yards below the tree’s crown, the canopy was a rippling carpet, a dense layer of greenery turning oily black as night approached — which stretched to the horizon, lapping against the walls of the skydome itself.
Garry Uvarov had sent Arrow Maker up here to inspect the sky. So Maker tipped up his face.
It was tempting to reach up and see if he could touch the sky.
He couldn’t, of course — the skydome was still at least twenty feet above him but it would be easy enough to shoot up an arrow, to watch it clatter against the invisible roof.
The sky was unchanged. The stars were a thin, irregular sprinkling, hardly disturbing the sky’s deep emptiness. Most of the stars were dull red points of light, like drops of blood, that were often difficult to see.
Uvarov had never shown interest in the stars before; now, suddenly, he’d ordered Arrow Maker to climb the trees, telling him to expect a sky blazing with stars, white, yellow and blue. Well, he’d been quite wrong.
Maker felt that old Uvarov was important: precious, like a talisman. But, as the years wore by, his words and imperatives seemed increasingly irrational.
Maker looked for the sky patterns he’d grown to know since his boyhood. There were the three stars, of a uniform brightness, in a neat row; there the familiar circle of stars dominated by a bright, scarlet gleam.
Nothing had changed in the sky above him, in the stars beyond the dome. Arrow Maker didn’t even know what Uvarov was expecting him to find.
He clambered down into the bulk of the kapok treetop, so that there was a comforting layer of greenery between himself and the bare sky. Then he tied himself to the trunk with a loop of rope, laid his head against a pillowing arm and waited for sleep.
The klaxon’s oscillating wail echoed off the houses, the empty streets, the walls of the sky.
Morrow woke immediately.
For a moment he lay in bed, staring into the sourceless illumination which bathed the ceiling above him.
Waking, at least, was easy. Some mornings the klaxon failed to sound — it was as imperfect and liable to failure as every other bit of equipment in the world but on those mornings Morrow found his eyes opening on time, just as usual. He pictured his brain as a worn, ancient thing, with grooves of habit ground into its surface. He woke at the same time, every day.
Just as he had for the last five centuries.
Stiffly he swung his legs from his pallet and stood up. He started to think through the shift ahead. Today he was due for an interview with Planner Milpitas — yet another interview, he thought — and he felt his heart sink.
He walked to the window and swung his arms back and forth to generate a little circulation in his upper body. From his home here on Deck Two Morrow could make out, through the open, multilayered flooring, some details of Deck Three below; he looked down over houses, factories, offices and — looming above all the other buildings — the imposing shoulders of the Planner Temples, scattered across the split levels like blocky clouds. Beyond the buildings and streets stood the walls of the world: sheets of metal, ribbed for strength. And over it all lay the multilevelled sky, a lid of girders and panels, enclosing and oppressive.
He worked through his morning rituals — washing, shaving his face and scalp, taking some dull, high-fiber food. He dressed in his cleanest standard-issue dungarees. Then he set off for his appointment with Planner Milpitas.
The community occupied two Decks, Two and Three. The inhabited Decks were laid out following a circular geometry, in a pattern of sectors and segments divided from each other by roads tracing out chords and radii. Deck Four, the level beneath Three, was accessible but uninhabited; Superet had long ago decreed that it be used as a source of raw materials. And there was also one level above, called Deck One, which was also uninhabited but served other purposes.