Vacuum Diagrams

by Stephen Baxter

  A short, round-faced man called Arke walked with Erwal. "This winter," he said, "I lifted the body of my wife out of the teepee and into the snow. I had to wait for the thaw before I could bury her in the cow-tree stand. I barely know what you're talking about with your stories of stars and ships, Erwal, but I know this. If I'd stayed at home I'd surely have died. At least with you I'll die trying to find a way out. And," he finished doubtfully, "you never know; we might even succeed."

  Many of her fellow travelers, Erwal suspected, had been motivated to come by much the same mixture of desperation and doubt; and yet they had come. And, as they walked, Erwal sensed a mood of optimism generated by the very fact of their motion, that they were doing something.

  But winter came early in the north.

  The winds hit them first, so that the children, wailing, were forced to stumble along clinging to the fur of the cow, who sang them simple songs. Then snow followed, and the march became a grim haul across a featureless plain punctuated by nights huddled in a single, shivering mound under a layer of blankets.

  Erwal had memorized the list of directions which Teal had given to the village, and she was as sure as she could be that she was not leading her party astray. But on the more difficult days she was constantly aware that she was hardly equipped to serve as the leader of such an ambitious expedition; and when they entered the mouth of yet another blizzard she found tears leaking from her freezing eyes, and she wondered if she was guiding these people to their deaths.

  Then, one day, Sura came pushing through the snow drifts. She grinned, excited, holding up a faded rag. Erwal, tired and bemused, pushed snow-speckled hair from her eyes and took the object from the girl. It was a strip of mummy-cow hide. Roughly cut and uncured, the strip had been frozen before it had a chance to rot; and it was tied with a double knot.

  "Teal," Sura said. "This is one of his markers, isn't it? I found it tied to a dead cow-tree, just over that ridge."

  Erwal stared at the battered little artifact. "Yes, it's Teal's. Call the others and tell them."

  The find of the marker was treated as a great triumph, and the travelers drank Sand's milk with an air of celebration. They approached Erwal and touched her arms and shoulders, congratulating her. Erwal felt oddly distanced from all this. After all, they had only confirmed that they were on Teal's path — a path which, as Damen had repeatedly pointed out, might lead only to madness or death.

  But she kept such thoughts to herself and did her best to join in the celebrations.

  After a rest, they struggled on into the teeth of the wind, making headway as best they could.

  They made a makeshift camp in the heart of another blizzard. They burrowed together in the snow, faces buried in their furs.

  In the dim morning light Erwal was shaken awake. Thick with sleep and unwilling to leave her warm nest she slowly opened her eyes. Sura was bending over her, her cheeks flushed under spots of frostbite. "Erwal, we're there!"

  "What?"

  "The Eight Rooms! It's just as Teal described. Come on!"

  Erwal pushed her way out of the snow. Her knees and hips ached. All around her, people were emerging from their snow cocoons. She rubbed a little snow into her face, then took a mouthful of the crumbling stuff and let it melt on her tongue.

  For once it was a clear, still day. The snow lay in great mounds to the horizon, and the desolate landscape was punctuated only by the defiant remnants of cow-trees — and, on the northern horizon, by a building. Erwal squinted, straining to see in the dim daylight. It was a large, plain box, just as Teal had described.

  The Eight Rooms.

  Her party began to make for the artifact. The children ran whooping, the adults hurrying after. Erwal thought of cautioning them to be careful; but she stopped herself, almost amused. What precautions were there to take? Either the Eight Rooms would save their lives... or they would have to turn back, try to reach the village before the worst of the winter set in, and wait, exhausted, for the cold to kill them.

  Either way there wasn't much point in being careful. Stiffly, Erwal made her way through the snow to the Eight Rooms.

  The children were soon clambering in and out of an open doorway. Erwal paused some distance from the structure and studied it carefully. She recalled Teal describing his shock at seeing how the building floated, unsupported, a foot in the air; and, bending down, she saw a strip of snowy land beneath the Rooms. She frowned, puzzling at her own un-startled reaction. What was the great wonder? Every child heard stories of how powerful the ancients had been, of how they had built the very world humans lived in; why should a box floating in the air be such a surprise?

  She sighed. Perhaps she simply wasn't very imaginative. Briskly she approached the Rooms, paused only briefly at the doorway, then stepped up and over the foot-high sill—

  —and nearly fainted as she entered warm, still air. She felt blood rush to her face, and, seeking support, she reached out to a wall — and pulled her fingers back, shocked. The material of the wall was warm and soft, like flesh. Arke joined her, running a callused palm over the wall. "Isn't it remarkable? Perhaps this whole building is a living creature."

  "Yes." Feeling stronger she turned and surveyed the Room. There were hatchlike doors in all four walls, and in the floor and ceiling; through each door she could see people in other Rooms running fingertips over the walls, their expressions slack. "It's very strange..."

  ...Wait a moment. Rooms beyond each door? But this one Room was big enough to fill up the cube she had seen from outside, so that beyond the doors should be only snow or sky...

  And yet there were Rooms where there was no space for them.

  Vaguely she remembered Teal's impatient descriptions of how the Rooms were folded over each other, and briefly she struggled to understand. Then she sighed, deciding to put the mystery of the folded-up place out of her mind. If it didn't bother the children, why should it bother her?

  Arke went on, "Erwal, we've done well, even if we go no further than this. We are warm and dry, and we still have the mummy-cow for food. We could stay here, bring the mummy-cow inside, allow the children to grow..."

  "But that's not why we came here," she said, suddenly impatient. "Teal went further." She looked up, recalling how Teal had described climbing up through the roof hatch. "Come on," she told Arke. "Help me up."

  Arke allowed her to climb onto his shoulders; soon others, already in the upper Room, were pulling her up through the hatch/door.

  The upper Room was just like the first, with light from nowhere filling the air. A few adults stood here, looking lost. Silently she climbed to her feet. She tried to picture Teal as he had taken these steps. Straight ahead from the hatch in the floor, he had said, and push at the door...

  Beyond the door was the Eighth Room. It was shaped like the rest but its walls were clear, as if made of ice.

  Beyond the walls was a black sky sprinkled with tiny lights.

  There was a body on the crystal floor.

  Arke stood beside Erwal. "Are they 'stars'?"

  Shuddering, she said: "That's the word Teal gave us."

  "And that — " He pointed straight ahead; beyond the farthest wall an object like a large, black seed pod floated in emptiness. "Do you think that's the 'ship'?"

  Erwal tried to speak but her throat was dry.

  She forced herself to look down.

  The body was little more than bones swathed in rags of clothing. In one clawlike hand it clutched an elaborate knife. Erwal bent, took the knife; the skeletal fingers fell to pieces, clattering against the warm material of the floor. "This was Allel's knife," she told Arke. "Teal's grandmother. Teal treasured this knife."

  Arke held her elbow. "It's a miracle he made it this far, you know. And the second time he came he didn't have a mummy-cow."

  "He died alone. And so close to his goal."

  "But he didn't die in vain. He brought us here."

  Erwal, trembling, walked to the wall nearest the ship. "Now all we
have to do is work out how to get out of here."

  The others watched her, their faces pale with awe.

  It is not true to say that Paul waited beside the Eighth Room after the brief appearance of the first human. Rather, he assigned a subcomponent of his personality to monitor events within the Room, while he turned the rest of his multiplexed attention elsewhere. And it could not be said that Paul's patience was tested by the subsequent delay. After all he was largely independent of the constraints of time and space; and the galaxies were available for his study.

  And yet...

  And yet, when humans reappeared in the Eighth Room, it seemed to Paul that he had waited a very, very long time.

  The humans stared at the star-strewn Universe and retreated in alarm. Paul was fascinated by their angular movements, their obviously limited viewpoints. How unimaginably constraining to have one's awareness bound into a box on a stalk of bone!

  But as Paul continued to observe, memories of his own brief corporeal sojourn on the Sugar Lump stirred, oddly sharp. Godlike, uncertain of his own reaction, he watched men, women and children talk, touch each other, laugh.

  He noticed the ragged, filthy clothes, the protruding ribs, the ice-damaged skin. He pondered the meaning of these things.

  Eventually a gray-haired woman entered the Room. Her behavior seemed different; she walked slowly to the crystal wall and stared out steadily at the stars.

  Paul focused his attention so that it was as if he were gazing into her eyes.

  The face was fine-boned, the skin drawn tight over the bones, and age had brought webs of wrinkles around the eyes and mouth. The skin was scarred, the lips cracked and bleeding. This was a tired face. But the head was held erect, the eyes locked on a Universe which must be utterly baffling.

  And behind those eyes a quantum grain of consciousness lay like an unripened seed, shaped by millions of years.

  The woman left the Room; Paul, oddly shaken, reflected.

  Over the next few days the humans investigated their crystal box. They touched the walls, staring through them with blank incomprehension. They were clearly aware of the spacecraft which lay waiting just beyond the Room's walls: they pointed, knelt so they could see under it, and occasionally one of them would paw at the walls; but there was no pattern to their searches, no system; they deployed no tools beyond fingertips and tongues. But they showed no frustration. They were like children in an adult world; they simply did not expect to be able to make things work.

  At length there was a flurry of activity at the brightly-lit doorway. The humans were goading some sort of animal into the Room: here came a barrel-like head, a broad, solid body covered by shaggy fur. The humans punched the beast's flanks, tugged at the hair above its trembling eyes; the creature, obviously terrified, was almost immovable. But at last it stood in the center of the Room, surrounded by sweating, triumphant humans. It looked to left, right, and finally down at its feet. Paul imagined its terror as it found itself standing on apparent emptiness light years deep. The great head rotated like a piece of machinery and the beast scurried backward through the door, bowling some of the humans over. The people ran after it, shouting and waving their arms.

  Paul, bemused, withdrew for some time.

  These people were clearly helpless.

  Crushed by uncounted generations in their four-dimensional cage, they had lost not only understanding but, it seemed to him, also the means by which to acquire a greater understanding. The Eight Rooms and the waiting ship were obviously intended to be found and used by the humans. But these ragged remnants were incapable of working this out.

  This rabble was the relic of a race which had once had the audacity to challenge the Xeelee themselves. The strands of Paul's persona sang with contempt and he considered abandoning the humans, returning to his contemplation.

  ...But then he remembered the gray woman, the quantum jewel which had sparkled even within its battered setting of bone and dirt, and his contempt was stilled. Even fallen, these were still humans.

  Slowly, almost hesitantly, he returned to the Eighth Room.

  After the absurd attempt to push Sand into the Eighth Room, the novelty of the crystal box had worn off. The Room was left mostly empty as the villagers spread through the comfortable, opaque interiors of the other Rooms, laying their filthy blankets over fleshlike floors. Soon it seemed that Erwal could scarcely walk a yard without tripping over some running child or the outstretched legs of its parent. The purposeless, almost lazy mood was only to be expected, she supposed. Life in the village had been an endless round of cold and dirt, made only more meaningless by the endless legends of man's great past. The Eight Rooms were the driest, warmest, most comfortable place any human alive had ever seen...

  But they had not come here for comfort.

  Again and again she was drawn to the mysteries of the Eighth Room. She would lie on her back on its body-warm floor staring up at the star-buildings; or she would lie facedown, her nose pressed against the clear floor, and imagine herself falling slowly into that great, endless pool of light.

  She studied the craft beyond the wall. It was some thirty feet long — nearly three times the size of the Room — and shaped like a fat, rounded disc. It was utterly black, showing only by starshine highlights. It was completely beyond her experience... but she knew what it was. Teal had told her what to expect, with his strange tales of men traveling among the stars.

  This was the ship. It was a vessel to take them... somewhere else. (Here her imagination failed.) The Eight Rooms were merely a way station. But if they were to go on they had to find a way through these walls! She laid her palms flat and passed them over the warm, crystalline stuff. But this was not a teepee; there were no flaps to open. She slapped the wall in exasperation.

  The gray-haired woman was frustrated! She wanted to explore!

  Paul exulted. He slid quantum tendrils into her skull.

  ...She spread her hand wide and folded the fingers forward so that they formed a kind of cylinder; then she pressed her fingertips against the wall, just — here...

  Erwal gasped and staggered away from the wall. She stared at her hands, flexing them and turning them over, as if to reassure herself that they were still under her control.

  It had been like a waking dream.

  It could have lasted no more than a second. She had seen her hand reach out and touch the wall in that odd way — it had been her own hand, undoubtedly; she had recognized the patch of white, frost-killed tissue near the center knuckles — but the vision had been laid over the sight of her real hand, which had remained resting against the clear wall.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and retreated to the door of the Room. For some minutes she allowed the warm, human noises of the villagers to seep over her. She had felt able to cope with her bizarre experiences up to now: she had the stories of Teal to cling to, and as long as it was all out there, as long as she, Erwal, wife of Damen, remained the same, with her comfortable skin smock and her tiny collection of possessions, then she felt strong and able to endure.

  But this was different.

  Something had reached inside her head, and for the first time since she had left the village she experienced real terror. She wished Teal were here; surely he would be able to understand this...

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Teal wasn't here. And in any event he hadn't been able to go beyond this point himself. There was no use hiding in helplessness; the meaning of the vision was obvious. Someone, or something, had shown her the way out of here. Who it was, and how they had done it, she didn't know. Nor did it matter. Now she had to decide what to do. She could return to the warm fug of the villagers and forget about the challenge of the stars...

  Or she could follow these clear instructions.

  And what would happen then?

  It was just as well she was so unimaginative (she walked back to the far wall) for if she had the faintest inkling of what she might unleash (she lifted her hand as i
n the vision, made a tube of her fingers) she would certainly never approach the wall and stab her fingers just so—

  Nothing happened.

  She leaned against the wall, trying to stop the shaking of her body, and stabbed again and again.

  Suddenly there was a hole in the wall. It was a circle a little shorter than she was, and it led into a wide, well-lit room — a room inside the ship.

  Suddenly her will broke and she ran, sobbing, from the Eighth Room.

  The humans stepped cautiously through the circular opening and stood, incongruous in their furs and leggings, at the center of the ship's single chamber. Chairs of some dark, soft material lay scattered over the deck. The chairs were fixed in place but the humans quickly discovered that they would, with a judicious rock backwards, convert into couches. Soon the children were swarming over the devices, rocking back and forth.

  Paul, watching, considered this. These chairs were so clearly designed for humans; in fact, of course, the whole life-system was human-based. And yet the rest of the ship showed few of the characteristics of human technology. Paul's attention foci prowled. The chamber occupied by the humans was a flat cylinder which, Paul realized, filled most of the ship's volume; its drive units, life support and other equipment must be embedded in the hull. And when he studied the paper-thin hull itself he found space-wings furled into tight coils within the body; and he discovered how it would be possible to expand collapsed compartments in the hull to accommodate hundreds, thousands of people.

  Sadly this wasn't necessary.

  Slowly the humans colonized the comparatively spacious environs of the ship. They spread their foul blankets over the floor, argued over occupancy of the couches, and even tried to goad the poor animal through the Eighth Room and into the ship. Soon they were hanging up their blankets to separate the chamber into a series of private cells.

  The ship meant no more to them than would a comfortable shack, Paul realized, amused and irritated.