#treeclimbing

Captain Sunlight didn’t even look away from the game, just waving distractedly, her scaly face intent on whatever play Mur had just made. He was chuckling about it and rubbing his tentacles together in a way that was probably a bluff. As soon as I looked away, he made a noise that said the good captain had just wrecked his clever plan. Trrili hissed with laughter.

None of them cared that I was about to climb to a dangerous height. None thought this was out of character in the slightest, and all of them were missing out on an excellent climbing experience.

It was a great tree. The bark was smooth but not slippery, reminding me of a madrone tree from back home, just without the flaky outer layer. And it didn’t feel as cold. If anything, it was warm as we scampered skyward, almost as if the tree welcomed a good climb by people who’d appreciate it.

The alien stopped, picking a branch to sit on and leaning back against another. “Now that is a nice view.”

I had to agree. “It is!” I found my own convenient pair of branches, draping my arms over the top one and finding a nice footrest on a third. “Everybody down there doesn’t know what they’re missing.” The forest around the landing pad was bright with oranges and yellows, the kind of vivid colors that I associated with autumn, but which could have been year-round here. Rolling hills lined the horizon, with a river sparkling merrily in the distance. The only straight line was the road. It made a nice counterpoint to all the gentler natural shapes.

My new friend cupped a hand to her snout unnecessarily. “Hey, everybody down there! You should come see this view!”

To no one’s surprise, she got a chorus of “no thanks.”

I shook my head. “Such a shame. They’re missing out on all the knowledge that comes from above, too. Hey, Paint!” I yelled down to the crewmate who had just dropped a box of round things. “One rolled under the ramp, and two are over in the grass!” I pointed them out.

A distant “Thank you!” reached my ears.

The alien nodded. “Wisdom of the heights indeed. What else can we see, that those on the ground can’t?”

We spent a good few minutes pointing things out to each other and swapping stories. Apparently her people were called the Farsights, for exactly this reason.

“Oh, motion on the road!” she declared, squinting into the distance. “Looks like somebody’s in a rush to be a little less late.”

“Well that ship has launched,” I said, following her eyes. “Nice thought, though. Say, is that one car or two?”

The Farsight didn’t answer immediately, which made me worry a little. Then she said “Uh oh,” which made me worry a lot.

“Uh oh what?”

She stood up on the branch and bellowed, “INCOMING! Client’s being chased by hostile fauna!”

“Oh jeez.” Now I could see it too: something large and antlered galloping after the little surface skimmer. Both were headed straight toward our landing pad.

Chaos erupted down below as we slid off our perches and scrambled downward. The bark was still friendly-smooth.

“I think that creature eats these!” my friend said, bounding out toward the end of a branch to shake loose a bundle of round seedpod things. “I’ve seen them before!”

“Will that matter?” I asked, slowing. “It looks pretty mad!”

“Can’t hurt!”

I couldn’t argue that. There were more than a few seedpods waiting on my path down, all of which came loose with a little judicious bouncing of the branches. When I hit the ground, it was in a sea of baseball-shaped plant bits.

The rest of the crew was scrambling to move crates and dash into the ships for anything weaponlike. A handful of beefy individuals from the other crew lined up to stare the thing down as it approached, and my ship’s biggest and scariest hurried to join them. Trrili claimed a place in front with her black-and-red carapace gleaming in the sun, pincher arms spread wide. She left space for the skimmer to zip past, but only just.

I grabbed seedpods, making a basket with my shirt. “Will we need these? Is it going to stop?”

“Beats me!” said my new friend. She grabbed an armload and ran. “Let’s find out!”

I raced after. We joined the lineup just before the gigantic whatever-it-was skidded to a halt, rearing to paw the air and roar thunderously. The guy in the skimmer was trying to park behind our ship. The various scary aliens yelled back at the huge moose-rhino.

“How well can you throw?” asked my friend, not waiting for an answer. She dumped her armload and started chucking seedpods.

“Pretty well!” I didn’t bother dropping mine, just grabbing them one by one from my shirt basket and aiming for the head.

I didn’t count how many of those direct shots were me, but I’m going to say most of them. The pods burst into squishy fruit with a solid core, doing a great job of annoying the creature as well as coating it with presumably-tasty purple goo.

Its forefeet hit the ground with a teeth-rattling thud. It roared some more, but half-heartedly, like it was just trying to save face at this point.

My friend the Farsight had run out of seedpods, so I gave her some of mine. While our crewmates did their best threat displays, we pelted the dangerous beastie with fruit until it turned to lope in the other direction. I made sure to throw a few on the road near it, in case it felt like picking up a bite to eat on the way. It didn’t, but I did see a tongue lick out as it turned its back on us.

Belatedly, Kavlae and Eggskin skidded out of our ship with stun guns at the same time as a couple people from the other — was that a rocket launcher or a flare gun? — none of which turned out to be necessary.

“Take that and eat it!” crowed the Farsight.

“Yeah!” I agreed. “It’s probably delicious!”

“It probably is, actually,” she said as the congratulations started to pour in.

I picked up a seedpod I’d dropped and sniffed it. “Smells a bit like kumquat.”

Captain Sunlight, busy trying to coax the client out of his vehicle, yelled across the landing pad, “Don’t eat that until Eggskin runs it through the medscanner!”

“Aw, really?” I complained, perfectly in synch with my new friend.

“Yes really!” She shook her lizardy head. I couldn’t make out her muttering from here, but I could guess it was about omnivorous habits, self-preservation instincts, absurd treeclimbing species, or all of the above.

The Farsight said, “If these are safe, I’m taking some back with me.”

“Even if they’re not, the seeds would make good souvenirs,” I pointed out, pulling at the pod where it had separated. “Look how perfectly round they are.”

“Oh yeah, those are nice.”

Trrili stalked past with a haughty tilt to her antennae. “You two get along far too well.”

“Like two seeds in a pod!” the Farsight quipped.

That made me smile. “Hey, my people say that too!”

We had plenty to talk about while everybody else handled the actual delivery we were there for. Eventually Eggskin did check the thing with a medscanner. It tasted like sour kumquat. The seeds cleaned up nicely.

And most importantly, my new friend had family with a whole enclave at the next space station my ship was planning to visit. And they had a climbing structure three stories high. I couldn’t wait.

The rest of the crew thought that sounded pointless and dangerous, of course, but none of them had ancestors who danced through the tree branches, so clearly they have no taste.

~~~