The Color of Distance Read Online Free PDF

attacked her when she was out collecting specimens for the Survey. They had clustered so thickly on the face plate of her helmet that she couldn’t see to climb. This time, the insects merely hovered briefly and then buzzed off again.
    The alien turned the bright red spurs on its wrists upward. The bees clustered on its arms. Looking closer, Juna saw a sticky, golden fluid oozing from its wrist spurs. The insects appeared to be feeding on the secretions. After a minute or two the alien gently shook its arms and the bees flew away.
    Several other aliens sat on another branch, staring at Juna. Brilliant patterns rippled over their bodies. She looked back at them for a long moment. Then her guide brushed her shoulder with its knuckles and beckoned her on. She turned to follow, and stopped short in amazement, her exhaustion forgotten.
    She was in one of the most remarkable trees she had ever seen. The limb she stood on was half a meter thick, and fifty meters from the ground. The bark was worn smooth from the passage of many feet, and its sides were bearded with ferns and moss. The trunk was at least a dozen meters in diameter, rising from thick, buttressed roots. The trunk split into a many-branched crotch about forty-five meters from the ground, forming a great bowl a dozen meters across. In the center of the crotch was a round hole big enough to drop a piano through. The edges of the hole were worn smooth with use. As she watched, an alien emerged from the trunk of the tree, joining several other aliens seated beside the hole, busy weaving baskets. They stopped and stared at Juna as she approached. She felt naked under their unreadable gaze.
    Excitement broke through the wall of her fatigue. No wonder the Survey team hadn’t seen these people. Their villages were indistinguishable from the surrounding forest.
    Ignoring the stares of the other aliens, her guide beckoned her toward a series of steep steps leading down into the gaping hole. Clouds of bees filled the air. The tree vibrated with their humming. At last her guide helped her onto a platform about two meters wide.
    She turned and looked down into the heart of the hollow tree. It reminded her of a gigantic seashell. Four steep ramps spiraled down the inside of the tree. Arched doorways branched off it at regular intervals. Aliens climbed up and down the ramps on mysterious errands; others clustered in doorways eating and socializing. The walls glowed with a soft blue radiance that illuminated the tree’s interior. The glow came from a fungus growing on the walls. She touched its soft, velvety surface, wondering what form of bioluminescence caused the glow. Her fingers came away powdered with faintly glowing blue.
    Juna looked down into the depths of the tree for a dizzying moment. A distant pool of water reflected the blue glow of the walls and the far-off gleam of the sky. The tree smelled of damp wood and leaves, tinged with the faint sweetness of honey. There was a sense of order and tranquillity about this beautiful, strange place.
    The tree teemed with life. Iridescent bees swirled in shafts of watery sunlight. Small lizards scuttled out of her way, and thousands of insects filed up and down the trunk of the tree, carrying bits of leaves and litter. She startled a tiny, slender serpent, no bigger around than her little finger, and perhaps twenty centimeters long. The snake hurled itself into the air, gliding away on brilliant ribbed wings.
    About a fifth of the way down, they stepped onto a narrow balcony and entered one of the many low doorways that opened onto the central cavity. The door passed through a half-meter-thick wall opening onto a room shaped like a wide slice of pie with the tip cut off. It was a good-sized room, bigger than the common room in her group marriage’s house. She felt a small twinge of regret, as she always did, at anything that reminded her of her failed marriage.
    Two small, deep windows set into the meter-thick trunk provided more