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The mulefa madeinspecting and testing the ones Atal’s fa what she wanted The principle of twisting and winding hadn’t caught on in their world, so all the cords and ropes were braided; but they were strong and flexible, and Mary soon found exactly the sort she wanted
What are you doing? said Atal
The esturing and roundabout explaining Atal was horrified
To go into the high part of the trees?
I , Mary explained Now you can help me prepare the rope
Once in California, Mary hadthe trees Mary had done a little rock cli, and she’d listened avidly as he had talked about the techniques and equipment She had decided to try it herself as soon as she had the chance Of course she’d never expected to be cli solo didn’t greatly appeal, either, but there was no choice about that What she could do was make it as safe as possible beforehand
She took a coil long enough to reach over one of the branches of a high tree and back down to the ground, and strong enough to bear several tie nuh cord and s with them: short loops tied with a fisherman’s knot, which could make hand¨C and footholds when she tied them to thethe rope over the branch in the first place An hour or two’s experiy branch produced a bow; the Swiss Army knife cut some arroith stiff leaves in place of feathers to stabilize theht; and finally, after a day’s work, Mary was ready to begin But the sun was setting, and her hands were tired, and she ate and slept, preoccupied, while the mulefa discussed her endlessly in their quiet, , she set off to shoot an arrow over a branch Soathered to watch, anxious for her safety Cli was so alien to creatures heels that the very thought of it horrified them
Privately Mary kne they felt She sed her nervousness and tied an end of the thinnest, lightest line to one of her arrows, and sent it flying upward from the bow
She lost the first arrow: it stuck in the bark partway up and wouldn’t coh it did clear the branch, it didn’t fall far enough to reach the ground on the other side, and pulling it back, she caught it and snapped it The long line fell back attached to the broken shaft, and she tried again with the third and last, and this ti carefully and steadily so as not to snag the line and break it, she hauled the prepared rope up and over until both ends were on the ground Then she tied them both securely to a massive buttress of one of the roots, as thick around as her own hips So it should be fairly solid, she thought It had better be What she couldn’t tell froround, of course, hat kind of branch the whole thing, including her, would be depending on Unlike cli on rock, where you could fasten the rope to pitons on the cliff face every few yards so you never had far to fall, this business involved one very long free length of rope, and one very long fall if anything rong To ether three s ends of the hten the an to slip
Mary put her foot in the first sling and began to climb
She reached the canopy in less tihtforward, the rope was kindly on her hands, and although she hadn’t wanted to think about the proble on top of the first branch, she found that the deep fissures in the bark helped her to get a solid purchase and feel secure In fact, only fifteenon the first branch and planning her route to the next
She had brought twoto make a web of fixed lines to serve in place of the pitons and anchors and "friends" and other hardware she relied on when cli them in place took her some minutes more, and once she’d secured herself, she chose what looked like the ain, and set off
After ten ht in the thickest part of the canopy She could reach the long leaves and run theh her hands; she found flower after flower, off-white and absurdly s that would later becoreat iron-hard seedpods
She reached a comfortable spot where three branches forked, tied the rope securely, adjusted her harness, and rested
Through the gaps in the leaves, she could see the blue sea, clear and sparkling as far as the horizon; and in the other direction over her right shoulder, she could see the succession of low rises in the gold-brown prairie, laced across by the black highways
There was a light breeze, which lifted a faint scent out of the flowers and rustled the stiff leaves, and Mary i her up, like a pair of giant hands As she lay in the fork of the great branches, she felt a kind of bliss she had only felt once before; and that was not when she ht back to her norht ankle, which was resting aardly in the crook of the fork She eased it away and turned her attention to the task, still dizzy froladness that surrounded her
She’d explained to the mulefa how she had to hold the sap-lacquer plates a hand span apart in order to see the sraf and at once they’d seen the proble the alass was tucked in her breast pocket, and she took it out now When she looked through it, she saw those drifting golden sparkles, the sraf, the Shadows, Lyra’s Dust, like a vast cloud of tiny beings floating through the wind For the most part they drifted randoht, or lass of water