Outwardly, everyone in the forest appeared to be going about their usual business. There had been a rainfall earlier in the day; and the tumbleweeds had uprooted themselves and were moving about in the bushes, lapping water off the leaves. Ilf had noticed a small one rolling straight towards a waiting slurp and stopped for a moment to watch the slurp catch it. The slurp was of average size, which gave it a tongue-reach of between twelve and fourteen feet, and the tumbleweed was already within range.
The tongue shot out suddenly, a thin, yellow flash. Its tip flicked twice around the tumbleweed, jerked it off the ground and back to the feed opening in the imitation tree stump within which the rest of the slurp was concealed. The tumbleweed said “Oof!” in the surprised way they always did when something caught them, and went in through the opening. After a moment, the slurp’s tongue tip appeared in the opening again and waved gently around, ready for somebody else of the right size to come within reach.
Ilf, just turned eleven and rather small for his age, was the right size for this slurp, though barely. But, being a human boy, he was in no danger. The slurps of the diamondwood farms on Wrake didn’t attack humans. For a moment, he was tempted to tease the creature into a brief fencing match. If he picked up a stick and banged on the stump with it a few times, the slurp would become annoyed and dart its tongue out and try to knock the stick from his hand.
But it wasn’t the day for entertainment of that kind. Ilf couldn’t shake off his crawly, uncomfortable feeling, and while he had been standing there, Auris and Sam had moved a couple of hundred feet farther uphill, in the direction of the Queen Grove, and home. He turned and sprinted after them, caught up with them as they came out into one of the stretches of grassland which lay between the individual groves of diamondwood trees.
Auris, who was two years, two months, and two days older than Ilf, stood on top of Sam’s semiglobular shell, looking off to the right towards the valley where the diamondwood factory was. Most of the world of Wrake was on the hot side, either rather dry or rather steamy; but this was cool mountain country. Far to the south, below the valley and the foothills behind it, lay the continental plain, shimmering like a flat, green brown sea. To the north and east were higher plateaus, above the level where the diamondwood liked to grow. Ilf ran past Sam’s steadily moving bulk to the point where the forward rim of the shell made a flat upward curve, close enough to the ground so he could reach it.
Sam rolled a somber brown eye back for an instant as Ilf caught the shell and swung up on it, but his huge beaked head didn’t turn. He was a mossback, Wrake’s version of the turtle pattern, and, except for the full-grown trees and perhaps some members of the clean-up squad, the biggest thing on the farm. His corrugated shell was overgrown with a plant which had the appearance of long green fur; and occasionally when Sam fed, he would extend and use a pair of heavy arms with three-fingered hands, normally held folded up against the lower rim of the shell.
Auris had paid no attention to Ilf’s arrival. She still seemed to be watching the factory in the valley. She and Ilf were cousins but didn’t resemble each other. Ilf was small and wiry, with tight-curled red hair. Auris was slim and blond, and stood a good head taller than he did. He thought she looked as if she owned everything she could see from the top of Sam’s shell; and she did, as a matter of fact, own a good deal of it—nine tenths of the diamondwood farm and nine tenths of the factory. Ilf owned the remaining tenth of both.
He scrambled up the shell, grabbing the moss-fur to haul himself along, until he stood beside her. Sam, awkward as he looked when walking, was moving at a good ten miles an hour, clearly headed for the Queen Grove. Ilf didn’t know whether it was Sam or Auris who had decided to go back to the house. Whichever it had been, he could feel the purpose of going there.
“They’re nervous about something,” he told Auris, meaning the whole farm. “Think there’s a big storm coming?”
“Doesn’t look like a storm,” Auris said.
Ilf glanced about the sky, agreed silently. “Earthquake, maybe?”
Auris shook her head. “It doesn’t feel like earthquake.”
She hadn’t turned her gaze from the factory. Ilf asked, “Something going on down there?”
Auris shrugged. “They’re cutting a lot today,” she said. “They got in a limit order.”
Sam swayed on into the next grove while Ilf considered the information. Limit orders were fairly unusual; but it hardly explained the general uneasiness. He sighed, sat down, crossed his legs, and looked about. This was a grove of young trees, fifteen years and less. There was plenty of open space left between them. Ahead, a huge tumbleweed was dying, making happy, chuckling sounds as it pitched its scarlet seed pellets far out from its slowly unfolding leaves. The pellets rolled hurriedly farther away from the old weed as soon as they touched the ground. In a twelve-foot circle about their parent, the earth was being disturbed, churned, shifted steadily about. The clean-up squad had arrived to dispose of the dying tumbleweed; as Ilf looked, it suddenly settled six or seven inches deeper into the softened dirt. The pellets were hurrying to get beyond the reach of the clean-up squad so they wouldn’t get hauled down, too. But half-grown tumbleweeds, speckled yellow-green and ready to start their rooted period, were rolling through the grove towards the disturbed area. They would wait around the edge of the circle until the clean-up squad finished, then move in and put down their roots. The ground where the squad had worked recently was always richer than any other spot in the forest.
Ilf wondered, as he had many times before, what the clean-up squad looked like. Nobody ever caught so much as a glimpse of them. Riquol Cholm, his grandfather, had told him of attempts made by scientists to catch a member of the squad with digging machines. Even the smallest ones could dig much faster than the machines could dig after them, so the scientists always gave up finally and went away.
* * *
“Ilf, come in for lunch!” called Ilf’s grandmother’s voice.
Ilf filled his lungs, shouted, “Coming, grand—”
He broke off, looked up at Auris. She was smirking.
“Caught me again,” Ilf admitted. “Dumb humbugs!” He yelled, “Come out, Lying Lou! I know who it was.”
Meldy Cholm laughed her low, sweet laugh, a silverbell called the giant greenweb of the Queen Grove sounded its deep harp note, more or less all together. Then Lying Lou and Gabby darted into sight, leaped up on the mossback’s hump. The humbugs were small, brown, bobtailed animals, built with spider leanness and very quick. They had round skulls, monkey faces, and the pointed teeth of animals who lived by catching and killing other animals. Gabby sat down beside Ilf, inflating and deflating his voice pouch, while Lou burst into a series of rattling, clicking, spitting sounds.
“They’ve been down at the factory?” Ilf asked.
“Yes,” Auris said. “Hush now. I’m listening.”
Lou was jabbering along at the rate at which the humbugs chattered among themselves, but this sounded like, and was, a recording of human voices played back at high speed. When Auris wanted to know what people somewhere were talking about, she sent the humbugs off to listen. They remembered everything they heard, came back and repeated it to her at their own speed, which saved time. Ilf, if he tried hard, could understand scraps of it. Auris understood it all. She was hearing now what the people at the factory had been saying during the morning.
Gabby inflated his voice pouch part way, remarked in Grandfather Riquol’s strong, rich voice, “My, my! We’re not being quite on our best behavior today, are we, Ilf?”
“Shut up,” said Ilf.
“Hush now,” Gabby said in Auris’ voice. “I’m listening.” He added in Ilf’s voice, sounding crestfallen, “Caught me again!” then chuckled nastily.
Ilf made a fist of his left hand and swung fast. Gabby became a momentary brown blur, and was sitting again on Ilf’s other side. He looked at Ilf with round, innocent eyes, said in a solemn tone. “We must pay more attention to details, men. Mistakes can be expensive!”
He’d probably picked that up at the factory. Ilf ignored him. Trying to hit a humbug was a waste of effort. So was talking back to them. He shifted his attention to catching what Lou was saying; but Lou had finished up at that moment. She and Gabby took off instantly in a leap from Sam’s back and were gone in the bushes. Ilf thought they were a little jittery and erratic in their motions today, as if they, too, were keyed up even more than usual. Auris walked down to the front lip of the shell and sat on it, dangling her legs. Ilf joined her there.