Midworld Read Online Free Page B

Home-tree offered cauliflorous fruits shaped like gourds, tasting like cranberry, which sometimes grew within the sealed-off homes themselves.
    Small scorched places lay within the houses and beneath the canopy in the central square. These minute burns did not affect the enormous growth. Each home also possessed a pit dug into the wood itself. Here, many times daily, the inhabitants of the tree offered thanks for its shelter and protection, mixing their offerings with a mulch of dead, pulpy plants gathered for the purpose. The mulch also served to kill strong odors. When the pits were full they were cleaned out. The dry residue was thrown over the side of the Home-tree into the green depths, so that the pits could be used again. For the tree accepted and absorbed the offerings with great speed and matchless efficiency.
    The Home-tree was the greatest discovery made by Born’s ancestors. Its unique characteristics were discovered when it seemed that the last surviving colonists would perish. At that time no one wondered why a growth unutilized by native life should prove so accommodating to alien interlopers. When the human population made a comeback, scouts were sent out to search for other Home-trees, and a new tribe was planted. But in the years since Born’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had settled in this tree, contact with other tribes had first dwindled and then stopped altogether. None bothered to reopen such contact, or cared. They had all they could do to survive in a world that seethed with nightmare forms of death and destruction.
    “Born is back … look, Born has returned … Born, Born!”
    A small crowd gathered around him, welcoming him joyously, but consisting entirely of children. One of them, ignoring the respect due a returning hunter, had the temerity to tug at his cloak. He looked down, recognized the orphan boy Din who was cared for in common.
    His mother and father had been taken one day while they were on a fruit-gathering expedition, by something that had coughed once horribly and vanished into the forest. The rest of the party had fled in panic and later returned to find only the couple’s tools. No sign of them had ever been found. So the boy was raised by everyone in the village. For reasons unknown to anyone, least of all to Born, the youngster had attached himself to him. The hunter could not cast the youth away. It was a law—and a good law for survival—that a free child could make parents of any and all it chose. Why one would pick mad Born, though …
    “No, you cannot have the grazer pelt,” Born scolded, as he gently shoved the boy away. Din, at thirteen, was no longer a child. He was no longer pushed so easily.
    Following at the orphan’s heels was a fat ball of fur not quite as big as the adolescent. The furcot cub Muf tripped over its own stubby legs every third step. The third time he tripped, he lay down in the middle of the village and went to sleep, this being an appropriate solution to the problem. Ruumahum eyed the cub, mumbled disapprovingly. But he could sympathize. He was quite ready for an extended nap himself.
    Born did not head directly for his home, but instead walked across the village to another’s.
    “Brightly Go!”
    Green eyes that matched the densest leaves peeked out, followed by the face and form of a wood nymph supple as a kitten. She walked over to take both his hands in hers.
    “It’s good that you’re back, Born. Everyone worried. I … worried, much.”
    “Worried?” he responded jovially.
    “About a little grazer?” He made a grandiose gesture in the direction of the carcass. Beneath its great mass Ruumahum fumed and had unkind thoughts about persons who engaged in frivolous activities before considering the comfort of their furcot.
    Brightly Go stared at the grazer and her eyes grew big as ruby-in-kind blossoms.
    Then she frowned with uncertainty. “But Born, I can’t possibly eat all that!”
    Born’s answering laughter was