Climbing a Leaner

Copyright 1986 David E. Cortesi

The others looked back. Milla stood smiling with her arms folded around the hanks of rope hung on her neck. Cress dropped a plastic bladder in the dust and made big, wheeling signs to hurry him along, his dark hair flopping from side to side. Bren stopped four paces from them and sagged, hands on knees, to pant. The others went slowly on; in a minute he caught them up.

"Where ya goin'?" Bren asked, though he knew the answer.

"Gonna climb a leaner," Cress said.

"Really? A big one?"

"Real big."

"It's just come ripe, too," Milla said with satisfaction. "I've been watching for days. It is gonna be worth some money."

"If it's really ripe, it mawn come down," said Cress.

"You don't know," said Milla. "I spotted it. I know how ripe they should be."

"Where is it?" asked Bren. "A long ways?"

"Out on the veldt from our place," said Milla. "Not far."

He had to ask, though he had only a slim hope for the answer. He skipped ahead and walked backward, facing them. "Can I climb with you? Please, Milla?"

"Oh, Bren, you're pretty small yet."

"You can watch," Cress offered.

A hot answer lay on his tongue, something about he didn't want just to watch, but something new happened in his head. For the first time, he spoke a thought through in his head and heard how it would sound in the air. This one would would sound like a kid whining. Knowing what he was doing, and pleased with himself for doing it, he swallowed the complaint. Instead, he said "I've been practicing with ropes. I can climb our pencil tree."

"That's just a stick, it nah more than five meters," said Cress.

"But I do it lots of times, over and over. Please, Milla, I can do it. Please?"

Milla stopped and looked at Cress. Bren, watching her anxiously for a sign, noticed the translucence of her brows and lashes, the wisps of blond hair at her temples against her sun-reddened skin.

"What do you think?"

Cress's hairs were fine black ink-strokes on his brown skin. He shrugged. "S'your leaner."

"You go third?"

"Sure."

"Oh, boy!" yelled Bren.

Leaner palms stride across the veldt, each step taking a generation of the plant. Between strides, the palms vanished into their footprints, becoming no more than rosettes of dusty red leaves. Such rosettes, each as big as a homesite, stippled the pink plain.

One rosette in a ten would sprout a stalk from its center, segmented, a meter thick at the base. A stalk grew frantically, stretching from a nub to a 50-meter reed in the brief days of hot, still weather the colonists called Lucky Summer, days permeated by the metallic tang of Diamond Jubilee blossoms and baked by the straight amber rays of the sun.

When a leaner reached its height it opened a silver tuft at its top, a bright spot against the creamy sky. Within the tuft a bag began to swell as pumps in each segment handed up water from the deepest roots in preparation for the drop.

"Whoo! Big leaner." Cress peered up at the stem, almost a perfect perpendicular above him.

Bren slapped a hand against the fibrous bulk. There was no resonance; the stem felt as solid as the ground itself. "It's solid, huh?"

"It may move if we get any wind." Milla was shaking out the ropes she carried. Three were straight lengths of a meter and a half, three were more than twice as long. All had two fist-sized wooden beads, one threaded at each end.

Cress was grinning. "Good thing you brought ropes for three climbers."

"Never mind that, I want to see Bren tie them."

"I know how," Bren said. "This is my foot rope." He took a short, two-bead length. "Here's my foot loops." He made a small loop at each end by doubling each end of the rope back through its bead.

"Test it," said Cress. Bren put a foot in one loop and pulled up on the other. Friction locked the rope in the beads. "Let me," said Cress, and yanked fiercely on the loops, but they held.

"Good," said Milla. "Now your back loop."

Bren stripped one knob off a long rope and threaded both ends through the remaining one to make a small loop. He reached to wrap the long ends around the trunk and realized it was much, much too large to encircle with his arms. Milla took one end, stepped around the leaner with it, and handed it to him. He threaded both free ends through the remaining knob and tied them to make another small loop. His knot turned into a granny, and he tsked in frustration.

"That's all right, I get square knots wrong, too," Milla said. She retied it and pulled it firm. "Okay, step in."

Bren stood facing the trunk and pulled the loop up around himself like a hoop. He slipped his wrists through the small loops and wrapped his hands around the rope beyond them, so he could flip the loop.

"Test it," Cress said again. Bren threw himself back against the loop. It caught him across the back under the shoulder blades. "Not bad. Milla, you ready?"

Milla had tied her foot rope. Cress handed the end of her back loop around the trunk to her. She finished it while standing in it and tested it well. Bren dropped his loop to the ground and watched as she hooked her feet through the loops of her foot rope and, with a skip, stood up against the tree in the rope. Her feet and legs were splayed out to the sides of the trunk with the rope taut between them, and the rope dug against the skin of the tree under her weight. She leaned out against the back loop.

She hitched by pulling her weight forward and, as she fell back, tossing the back loop higher on the trunk. She hopped by bending at waist and knees to hoist her feet, and the foot rope, higher against the trunk. She hitched; she hopped; hitched and hopped; and in a few seconds she had flowed up the trunk higher than Bren's head, where she stopped and looked down at them. "Let's climb, plow-boys."

Bren looked up at her, and Cress swatted him on the fanny. "Let's go!" He set himself on the tree. And hitched. And hopped, but not as far as he'd hitched, so his arms were extended up. He had to hop again to catch up. He hitched more gently; he hopped. That was better. Hitched. Hopped.

"You have to go steady," said Milla from above him, "You can't stop to think each time. Look up, watch me." She bounded away for ten hops, her body opening and closing like a jacknife, and Bren could hear her counting, "Hop one, hop two..."

"Yeah, I've done that." But it was on the pencil tree. This was the real thing. He hitched and hopped and tried to make each flow into the other. On the third hop it began to work; on the sixth his foot rope slipped as he planted it to hitch, and he slid and jarred to a stop.

"Whoa! Careful!" called Cress below him. He looked down and saw Cress's face near his feet. Cress was still standing on the ground, but he was ready to climb. "S'all right," Cress said, "You did just right when it slipped. But keep your head back and plant the foot rope on every hop."

Bren faced the stem again, took a deep breath, and started to climb.

When they were climbing, they were working harder than if they'd been running hard up stairs. They went in spurts, with a rest after each spurt. Milla set the pace and called the stops.

To Bren, the first few stops were magical. As he'd hang against the back loop, panting, everything -- the eroded mesas that bounded the veldt; the knotted, bronze turf plants below; the amber cording of the stem in front of his eyes; Milla's dusty heels just above him on the trunk; the creaking of the ropes as they shifted their weight; his own harsh breath -- everything seemed new, brightly real, a gift.

Discomfort grew. The foot loops cut into his insteps, and standing in them made his ankles want to fold out. When his arms hauled down to lift his feet to a new purchase, the rope sawed on the inner joints of his fingers and on his wrists, and these spots began to get sore. When he thrust up from his feet, the muscles in his thighs and back hurt. He had been determined that he would not call for a rest before Milla stopped, and he clung to that, but it cost him more effort each time.

"Stopping," Milla called. "Look up and out, Bren."

Standing to rest was only partial relief. With his knees locked and spine stiff he could lean out into the back loop, but his soles still ached and his ankles wanted to tremble. He looked up past Milla's feet, foreshortened legs, faded red shorts, to see her smiling down at him.

"Pretty good view, huh?" She nodded out past the stem.

"Pretty good, yeah." They were above the tops of the trees growing in the wadi down which they'd come from home. He was facing the mesa on which the town was built, and almost on a level with the edge of it. When he looked to right or left, he saw the pink and bronze veldt stretched to the horizon, broken by outcrops of black rocks fringed with purple shrubs. A riffle of air cooled his shoulders.

"Breeze coming, hey," said Cress below him.

Bren looked down past his shins to see Cress's black hair, his open mouth, his brow wrinkling as he looked up at Bren. Cress blocked his view of the stem beyond. He focussed on the ground below Cress, and was suddenly gripped by fear. He snapped his gaze back to the stem in front of him and looked hard at its surface, which was like bundles of fine straw. Shivers ran down his arms and up his legs. His knees wanted to quiver.

"You all right, Bren?" Cress asked cheerfully. Bren concentrated on the look of the trunk, on his wrists, on the rope.

"Bren? I told you not to look--"

"All right!" He didn't want her to say the word down. "Let's go."

"Sure, let's go."

At the next rest they were past the middle of the tree. "It's really getting squudgy, Milla," said Cress.

"I told you it was ripe," said Milla.

Bren could see the dents Milla's foot rope had cut into the stem. The dent before his eyes was damp. His own back loop was dark and gummy where it wrapped around the stem. "When's it gonna lean?" he asked.

"Could be any time," said Cress; "Boy, it's soft. Just needs a little wind."

"It isn't going over," said Milla.

"Supposing it did," Bren said tentatively.

"We'd just have to ride it," said Milla. "But it won't."

"Turn upside down, whoo!" exulted Cress.

"You better hope not, or we've wasted our time," Milla chided. "Let's climb."

The leaner palm reproduces in two ways. In the lofty tuft, round pods harden and split to scatter spores like dust in the wind. Meanwhile, the stem gorges on water and weakens in the center. When the spores are gone, the stem leans over in a graceful catenary and plunks its tuft into the ground twenty meters from its base. Water stored in the upper half runs down to be a dowry for the new plant; water in the lower half returns to the parent. Later, the dry stem breaks up, husks away in rounds and plates, disintegrating in the winter winds.

Small pains and strains became strong pains and tingling. Bren's shoulders and arms and ankles and feet quivered while he rested and hurt while he was moving. He was terribly afraid that he'd give in to fatigue, stop climbing, and spoil things for the other two.

When he found that he could continue despite it, at least for now, he was relieved. Then the relief somehow turned into a glowing anger. He was angry about everything, the tree, Milla, Cress, the world, his body. While the anger was on him, each hitch and hop was a defiant blow against some enemy. At the next stop, after she'd caught her breath Milla said something sympathetic to him. He shouted, "Shut up! Shut up! Let's go!" and hopped up to butt his head angrily into her feet.

All at once they were at the top. Bren looked out across the red and gold native forest on the mesa. He could see the metal roofs of their homes in the distance, surrounded by the green of Earth plants.

Milla was standing with her head right inside the feathery tuft. She called out "Yow! the bladder's bigger than my head!"

She hopped down twice, so that her foot rope plunked into the stem directly in front of Bren's face. "Gimme the bag."

Bren looked up; Milla was leaning out of her loop, reaching down toward him. He was looking straight up her arm to her face, which was floured with silvery spores. Something slapped his leg.

"Don't look down," Milla said to him, "Just reach down and grab the bag with your hand."

He reached. Rubbery plastic slapped his hand but he missed it.

"Here she comes again," came Cress's voice, and "That's it!" as he squeezed it.

Glad to be part of the team, he swung the bag up in an exaggerated arc and stretched it high -- and instantly felt panic at the unusual motion. All the empty space to the ground yawned at his back. But Milla had taken the bag and hopped up into the tuft again, and he settled back into his rope and looked fixedly at the trunk. As long as he did that, he was all right.

When the leaner's top thumps to the ground, it can only dent the wiry mat of growth that covers the veldt. This tangled community of tough plants resists the leaner's weight and holds its new rootlets away from water and soil.

The leaner attacks with a bladder of herbicide, a cocktail of enzymes that kill just the plants that bind the turf together, dissolving just the proteins that gave their tendrils strength. The stuff would splash out when the top hit the ground. Within minutes, the top could sag into a rotting patch of turf, sag down to soil accompanied by a decomposing mulch of dead veldt-plants.

This fluid, which appeared only during the night and day before the tree leans, is ideally suited to preparing the soil for Earth plants. Even heavily diluted it clears ground faster than a plow, and it is less persistent than synthetic herbicides. A bladder of it is worth solid credit at the store.

"Got it," Milla said, and slung the sealed bag, now swollen and sloshing, around her neck. At the same moment, air fluttered in Bren's ears and chilled the sweat on the nape of his neck. The distant landscape slid across behind the stem, and inertia pulled at his testicles, as the stem swung slowly with the wind.

"Whoo-oo!" exulted Cress below him.

"Time to go, hey," said Milla. "Cress, start down."

"OK, I'm going."

Bren could feel the vibration of Cress's hops through the stem. Another ruffle of wind came, and again the landscape swooped in a great slow arc beyond the stem.

"Bren, we have to go down."

He heard her but he didn't really listen, for all his concentration was devoted to holding himself still and to willing the stem to do the same.

"Bren, it's just like coming up, only backwards. You hitch the loop down, then you hop down."

He heard her, but the words didn't seem important enough to need an answer.

"Bren?"

"Hey, Bren," came Cress's boisterous cry, "Come on, we have to get back to the middle before it leans."

"That's right, Bren, you don't want to be up here if it goes."

Okay. Okay, let's try it, he thought. He tried to hear it in his father's voice: Okay, Bren, let's try it. He made a couple of futile efforts to drag the upper loop down the stem, then succeeded by pulling himself in toward the stem and flipping the slackened loop down as he fell back.

"Great, Bren, now just hop down. Take a good hop. Don't worry about slipping; the rope'll dig into the trunk, it's really squishy."

Twice he bent his knees to hop and twice stopped just on the verge of moving. The third time he did it. The foot rope did slide before it dug in, but only an inch.

"Yay Bren!" came up from Cress, and "Yow, that's it" came down from Milla.

Yank and flip the upper loop; hop and squelch the lower one. Yank and flip; hop. During his fourth or fifth move the breeze puffed its hardest yet. The tree swooped during his hop, and the foot rope didn't hold. He slipped, scraped, and slammed into the tree full length, face to the stem (a mass of cloudy amber tubes, bubbles in some them, before his eyes) and all his weight on his outstretched arms and the rope across his shoulder blades.

"Wo, take it easy, boy!" called Cress. "Hang still, I'm coming." Cress hopped three times, then Bren felt a hand on each of his feet. "Okay, I'm here, I can stop you if you slip more."

"Bring your feet up, get on your foot rope," called Milla.

He did; it took three tries, but finally he stood, panting and swallowing. The trunk was still circling and swooping. It was leaning farther and farther from the vertical, too, and tugging them in and out and from side to side as it turned.

"Milla, I don't think we can get down before it goes."

"Right, we'll have to ride it, but we want to be nearer the middle." Then more softly, to Bren, "Come on, we need twenty-five good hops now. Can you do them?"

He looked up at her; her concerned face warmed him. "Sure, I can do that. Let's go." And he made the hops as she counted them out. He grinned up to find her grinning down.

"I lied, we need twenty-five more."

"Ah, you!"

They'd only made nineteen when the leaner gave up. They were lucky; it tilted toward the mesa and away from them, so that it pulled them to itself. Bren found himself hugging the stem and looking along it, past Milla's bottom and the tuft toward the mesa. Then the tuft dipped out of sight and the horizon rose; he was looking at the veldt in the middle distance, and there was a remote shock in the stem between his arms. The top had grounded, and they were astride an arch, not far past its center. Milla looked back at him past her shoulder.

"Just hang on, don't do anything."

"I'm OK." And he was, for the new posture had relieved all the muscle stress of the past hour. He turned and looked over his own shoulder to Cress, who had, he saw, dropped his foot rope and sat up to ride the stem like a horse.

"How'd you like the ride, Bren?"

How had he liked it? You didn't "like" something like that, it just happened. "Pretty good."

They still had to get down. For one bad moment Bren thought Milla meant them to continue ahead to the top, which would mean sitting up and turning around on the stem. He closed his eyes and clutched the trunk in a sweat at the idea. But Cress started worming backwards, and that settled it. They worked backwards and up to the peak of the arch, then backwards and down until the foot-ropes began to bite and they could hop to the ground.

All his joints ached and trembled as he stepped back from the trunk, and when Cress said "Whoo! Climber!" and grabbed at him, he staggered and sat down on the springy turf. Milla laughed and pushed Cress off his feet; they both sat on Cress while he yelled and drummed the ground; then they all rolled flat and looked at the western horizon of their world, where layers of cream, butterscotch, rose and plum heaped up to the first stars in the purple zenith.