To Fell a Tree

The Third Day

It was the last limb that nearly got him.

Noon had arrived by the time he had severed the others, and he stopped to eat. He had hardly any appetite. The tree, limbless and graceful for the first two hundred and eighty-seven feet, stubbed and grotesque for the next six hundred and forty-five, green and symmetrical for the remaining ninety, made him sick just to look at it. Only the thought of Suhre climbing into those dying branches made it possible for him to go on. If the thing you loved had to be killed, then it were best for you yourself to do it; for if mercy could be a part of murder, certainly a lover was best qualified to bestow it.

The first limb had finally become the last limb, and extended almost five hundred incongruous feet over the square and the village. After he finished eating, he started walking out on it. When he had paced off three hundred and thirty feet, he affixed the tongs. They were the largest pair the company owned, and, while light, were extremely unwieldy. But he finally got them set up the way he wanted them, and he paused a moment to rest.

The limb was narrow enough at this point for him to see over its edge. He had quite an audience: Wright and Suhre and Blueskies of course, and the timber-carrier drivers; and in addition there were hundreds of colonists, clustered in the streets beyond the roped off area, looking up with wondering faces. Somehow their presence failed to give him the gratifying thrill amateur audiences usually gave him. Instead he found himself wondering what they would do if he were to drop the limb straight down. It would be good for at least a score of houses, and if he were to jump-cut it, it would be good for half that many more.

Abruptly he realized his apostasy and tongued on his transmitter: “Take her up, Mr. Wright.”

The tightened limbline lent the effect of a suspension bridge supported by a single cable. He walked back to the trunk, and when he reached it, got into delimbing position. He drew and aimed his cutter. As he squeezed the trigger, a flock of hahaha birds erupted from the foliage at the limb’s end. “Take her up some more, Mr. Wright.”

The limb groaned, rose slightly. The hahaha birds flew three times around the trunk, then soared up into the crest and out of sight. He cut again. It was the sunward side of the tree, and the sap began to ooze out of the slit and trickle down the trunk. He shuddered, cut some more. “Keep a steady strain, Mr. Wright.” The limb rose, inch by inch, foot by foot. Awesomely, monstrously. Some of the others had been giants; this one dwarfed them. “A little faster, Mr. Wright. She’s twisting my way.”

The limb steadied, rose back, back toward the trunk. He stole a glance below. Suhre and Blueskies had finished cutting the last limb he had sent down into sections small enough for the carrier-winches to handle, and were watching him intently. Wright was standing by the tree-winch, his eyes focused on the rising limb. The square down there had a reddish cast. So had the three men’s clothing.

Strong wiped his face on his stained shirtsleeve and returned his attention to the cut. He tried to concentrate on it. The limb was almost perpendicular now, and the critical moment had arrived. He wiped his face again. Lord, the sun was hot! And there was no shade to protect him. No shade whatsoever. Not a vestige, not a mote, not an iota of shade…

He wondered what price tree-shade would bring if there were an acute shortage of it throughout the galaxy. And how would you sell it if you had some to sell? By the cubic foot? By the temperature? By the quality?

Good morning, madam I’m in the tree-shade business. I deal in rare tree-shades of all kinds: in willow-shade, oak-shade, appletree-shade, maple-shade, to name just a few. Today I’m running a special on a most unusual kind of tree-shade newly imported from Omicron Ceti 18. It’s deep, dark, cool and refreshing—just the thing to relax you after a day in the sun—and it’s positively the last of its kind on the market. You may think you know your tree-shades, madam, but you have never known a tree-shade like this one. Cool winds have blown through it, birds have sung in it, dryads have frolicked in it the day long—

“Strong!”

He came out of it like a swimmer coming out of the depths of the sea. The limb was swinging darkly towards him, twisting free from the stub along the uneven line of his undercut. He could hear the loud ripping of wood tissue and the grinding sound of bark against bark. He saw the “blood.”

He tried to leap out of the way, but his legs had turned to lead and all he could do was watch the relentless approach and wait till those tons and tons of solid fiber broke completely free and descended upon him and blended his blood with their own.

He closed his eyes. Tomorrow is when I’ll kill you, she had said. Not tonight. He heard the heavy thungg as the limbline tautened beneath the full weight of the limb, and he felt the tree shudder. But he knew no crushing impact, no scraping of smashed body against the trunk. He knew nothing but the darkness of his closed eyelids and the feeling that time had ceased to pass.

“Strong! For God’s sake get out of there!”

He opened his eyes then. The limb, at the last moment, had swung the opposite way. Now it was swinging back. Life returned to his legs, and he scrambled and clawed his way around the trunk. The tree was still shuddering and he was unable to brace himself in his saddle, but he managed to cling to the bark-prominences till the shock-waves died away. Then he worked his way back around the trunk to where the limb was swinging gently back and forth on the end of the limb-line.

“All right, Strong. That’s all for you. I’m grounding you right now!”

Looking down, he saw Wright standing by the winch, hands on hips, gazing angrily up at him. Blueskies had taken over the winch-controls, and Suhre was buckling on his climber’s belt. The limb was rapidly nearing the ground.

So I’m grounded, Strong thought.

He wondered why he didn’t feel relieved. He’d wanted to be grounded, hadn’t he?

He lay back in his saddle and looked up at his handiwork: at the macabre stubs and the disembodied crest. There was something beautiful about the crest, something unbearably beautiful. It was more gold than green, more like a woman’s hair than limbs and leaves.

“Did you hear me, Strong? I said you were grounded!”

Suddenly he thought of Suhre climbing up into those lovely golden tresses, defiling them with his brutal hands; raping them, destroying them. If it had been Blueskies he wouldn’t have cared. But Suhre!

He lowered his eyes to the limbline-crotch. The last limb had reached the ground by now, and the limbline was no longer in motion. His eyes traced its silvery length down the trunk to where it hung several feet away, and he reached out and grasped it and climbed it to the top of the stub he had just created. He slipped out of his saddle, pulled the rope down, coiled and slung it over his shoulder.

“I’m telling you for the last time, Strong!”

“To hell with you, Wright,” Strong said. “This is my tree!”

He started up the limbline. Wright cursed him steadily for the first hundred feet, changed to a more conciliatory tone when he passed the halfway mark. Strong paid no attention. “All right, Tom,” Wright said finally, “finish it then. But don’t try to climb all the way to the crest. Use the lift.”

“Shove the lift,” Strong said.

He knew he was being unreasonable, but he didn’t care. He wanted to climb; he wanted to use his strength; he wanted to hurt his body; he wanted to know pain. He began to know it some two hundred feet down from the limbline-crotch. By the time he reached the crotch he knew it well. But not as well as he wanted to know it, and, without pausing, he coiled a lineman’s loop, threw it through an overhead stub-crotch, and continued his ascent. It took him three more throws to make the first crest-limb, and he pulled himself gratefully into leafsweet coolness. His muscles screamed and his lungs burned and his throat felt like caked mud.

When some of his strength returned, he drank sparingly from his canteen, then he lay quietly in the coolness, not thinking, not moving, not feeling. Vaguely he heard Wright’s voice—“You’re a damned fool, but you’re a good treeman, Mr. Strong!” But he was too exhausted to answer.

Gradually the rest of his strength returned, and he stood up on the limb and smoked a cigarette. He looked up into the foliage, located his original saddle-rope crotch, and threw for it. From the crotch he began a systematic scrutiny of the crest. He didn’t really expect to find her; but before he made the first topping he had to know that she wasn’t there.

Hahaha birds eyed him with half-moon eyes. Tree-flowers bloomed in bowers. Sun-dappled leaves quivered in a little breeze.

He wanted to call out to her, but he didn’t know her name. If she had a name. Funny he’d never thought to ask her. He stared at unusual twists of limbs, at unique patterns of leaves. He looked long at tree-flowers. If she was not here, she was nowhere.

Unless, during the night, she had left the tree and hidden herself in one of the vacated houses. But he did not think she had. If she was real and not his fancy, she would never leave her tree; and if she wasn’t real and was his fancy, she couldn’t leave her tree.

Apparently she was neither: the crest was empty—empty of her flower-face, her leafy tunic, her wheat-hued length of leg and arm; her sunny hair. He sighed. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He had dreaded finding her because if she’d been in the crest, he wouldn’t have known what to do. But now he knew that he had dreaded not finding her, too.

“What are you doing up there, Mr. Strong? Saying good bye to your dryad?”

Startled, he looked down into the square. Wright and Suhre and Blueskies were a trio of almost indistinguishable specks. “Just looking her over, Mr. Wright,” he said. “The crest, I mean. There’s about ninety feet of her, think you can handle that much all at once?”

“I’ll take a chance, Mr. Strong. But I want the rest in fifty-foot sections, as long as the diameter of the trunk permits.”

“Stand by then, Mr. Wright.”

The crest, when it fell, seemed to bow goodbye to the sky. Hahaha birds erupted from it, streaked in a scarlet haze toward the horizon. It floated down to the ground like a green cloud, and the swish of its leaves was like the pattering of a thousand summer raindrops.

The tree shook like the shoulders of a woman sobbing.

“Well done, Mr. Strong,” Wright said presently. “Now as nearly as I can estimate, you can get about eleven fifty-footers before the increasing diameter of the trunk rules them out. Then you’ll have to take two one hundred-footers. If you drop them right, they shouldn’t give us any trouble. That’ll leave some two hundred feet for the base-cut, and you’ll have to fell it so that the last fifty feet comes down in one of the village streets; we’ll figure that out when you get down here. So in all, then, you’ve got fourteen more cuts to make. Think you can finish up today?”

Strong looked at his watch. “I doubt it, Mr. Wright.”

“If you can, fine. If you can’t, we’ve got all day tomorrow. Just don’t take any chances, Mr. Strong.”

The first fifty-footer nosed into the black soil of the square, paused a moment, then toppled on its side. The second followed in its wake—

And the third and the fourth—

It was funny, Strong thought, the way physical activity kept everything sane and in place. He found it hard to believe now that less than half an hour ago he had been looking for a dryad. That less than twenty-four hours ago he had been talking to one…

And the fifth and the sixth—

On the seventh, his pace began to slow. He was nearing the half-way mark and the diameter of the trunk had increased to nearly thirty feet. Snubbing himself to it was no longer possible, to get into topping position, he had to drive tree-pegs and run his improvised safety-belts through the slot in their end. But the slower pace gave Suhre and Blueskies a chance to cut the increasingly larger sections into suitable dimensions for the carriers. They had fallen behind; now they were beginning to catch up. The colonists, according to Wright, had given up hope of salvaging the wood and were piling it in a cleared area well away from the mill, preparatory to burning it.

Earlier in the afternoon a wind had sprung up. Now it began to die. The sun grew hotter; the tree “bled” more and more. Strong kept glancing down into the square. With its red-tinted grass and stub-gored sod, it had some of the aspects of a charnel house; but he was hungry for the feel of earth beneath his feet, and even “blood”-stained ground looked good to him.

He squinted repeatedly at the sun. He’d been in the tree nearly three days now, and did not relish spending another night in its branches. Or rather, in its stubs. But he had to admit after he finished the final fifty-footer, that he was going to have to. By then the sun was almost out of sight beyond the Great Wheat Sea, and he knew he couldn’t possibly drop even the first hundred-footer before darkness fell.

The lowest stub upon which he now stood was roomy enough for twenty tree-tents. Wright cable-cast over it (the lift had been lowered earlier in the afternoon, and the winch-cable reeled in), and sent up his supplies and supper. Supper turned out to be another of the mayor’s special plates. After setting up his tree-tent, Strong picked at the food indifferently; his appetite of yesterday was gone.

He was so tired that he didn’t even wash—though Wright had sent up soap and water, too—and when he finished eating, he lay back on the coarse bark and watched the silver rising of the moons and the pale whispering into life of the stars. This time when she came, she tiptoed up and sat down beside him and gazed into his face with her blue sad eyes. The whiteness of her skin shocked him, and the thinness of her cheeks made him want to cry.

I looked for you this morning, he said. I couldn’t find you. Where do you go when you disappear?

Nowhere, she said.

But you must go somewhere.

You don’t understand, she said.

No, he said. I guess I don’t. I guess I never will.

Yes you will, she said. Tomorrow you’ll understand. Tomorrow will be too late.

Tonight is too late. Yesterday was too late. It was too late before you even climbed into the tree.

Tell me, he said. Are you a member of the race that built the village?

In a way, she said.

How old are you?

I don’t know, she said.

Did you help to build the village?

I built the village alone.

Now you’re lying, he said.

I never lie, she said.

What happened to the original race?

They grew up. They ceased to be simple. They became complex and sophisticated, civilized. And as they became civilized, they began ridiculing the customs of the ancestors as being all ignorance and superstition, and they set up new customs. They made things of iron and bronze, and it took them less than one hundred years to destroy an ecological balance that not only had helped to keep them alive but had supplied them with a reason to live—a reason so strong that it was almost a life-force. When they discovered what they had done, they were horrified; but they made the discovery too late.

And so they died?

You’ve seen their villages.

Yes, I’ve seen their villages, he said. And I’ve read in the Advance Team’s report about the death-caves in the northern barrens into which they crawled with their children to die. But what about this village? They could have saved this one in the same way we are by removing the tree.

She shook her head. You still don’t understand, she said. In order to receive, one must also give: that was the law they broke. Some of them broke it sooner than others, but eventually all of them broke it and had to pay the penalty.

You’re right, he said. I don’t understand.

Tomorrow you will. Tomorrow everything will be clear.

Last night you tried to kill me, he said. Why?

I didn’t try to kill you. You tried to kill yourself. Today was when I tried to kill you.

With the limb?

With the limb.

But how?

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is, I didn’t. Couldn’t.

Where will you go tomorrow?

Why should you care where I go?

I do.

You couldn’t possibly be in love with me.

How do you know I couldn’t be?

Because—Because—

Because I don’t think you’re real?

You don’t, do you? she said.

I don’t know what to think, he said. Sometimes I think you are, some times I think you aren’t.

I’m as real as you are, she said. Though in a different way.

He reached up abruptly, and touched her face. Her skin was soft and cold. As cold as moonlight, as soft as a flower. It wavered before his eyes; her whole body wavered. He sat up, turned towards her. She was light and shadow, leaf and flower; the scent of summer, the breath of night. He heard her voice. It was so faint he could hardly make out her words: You shouldn’t have done that. You should have accepted me for what I was. Now you’ve spoiled it. Now we must spend our last night together, alone.

So you weren’t real after all, he said. You were never real. No answer.

But if you weren’t real, I must have imagined you, he said. And if I imagined you, how could you tell me things I didn’t know?

No answer.

He said: You make what I’m doing seem like a crime. But it isn’t a crime. When a tree becomes a menace to a community, it should be removed.

No answer.

Just the same, I’d give anything if it didn’t have to be this way, he said.

Silence.

Anything at all.

The space beside him remained empty. He turned, finally, and crawled into his tent and drew his campfire in after him. His tiredness had turned him numb. He fumbled with his blankets with numb fingers, wrapped them around his numb body. He drew up his numb knees and hugged them with his numb arms.

“Anything at all,” he murmured. “Anything at all…”