Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Who indeed?’ Hollerbach murmured. ‘I’m sorry, Rees; I don’t think you have very much choice . . .’

  ‘Anyway, what about this bloody Telescope?’

  Rees tried to focus. ‘All right. Look, Hollerbach, I have to agree that Jaen’s work is a priority right now—’

  Jaen whooped and punched the air.

  ‘So your studies must fit in around that work. All right? But,’ he went on rapidly, ‘when we get close enough to the Core the steam jets will become ineffectual anyway. So navigation will become a waste of time . . . and the Telescope can be released, and Hollerbach can do his work. Maybe Jaen will even help.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘How’s that for a compromise?’

  Jaen grinned and punched him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll make a Committee member of you yet.’ She turned and pulled her way back into the interior of the chamber.

  Rees felt his shoulders slump. ‘Hollerbach, I’m too young to be a Captain. And I’ve no desire for the job.’

  Hollerbach smiled gently. ‘That last alone probably qualifies you as well as anyone. Rees, I fear you must face it; you’re the only man on board with first-hand experience of the Belt, the Raft, the Bone world . . . and so you’re the only leader figure remotely acceptable to all the ship’s disparate factions. And after all it has been your drive, your determination, that has brought us so far. Now you’re stuck with this responsibility, I fear.

  ‘And there are some hard decisions ahead. Assuming we round the Core successfully we will face rationing, extremes of temperature in the unknown regions outside the Nebula - even boredom will be a life-threatening hazard! You will have to keep us functioning in extraordinary circumstances. If I can assist you in any way, of course, I will.’

  ‘Thanks. I don’t much like the idea, but I guess you are right. And to help me you could start,’ he said sharply, ‘by sorting out your differences with Jaen yourself.’

  Hollerbach smiled ruefully. ‘That young woman is rather forceful.’

  ‘Hollerbach, what do you expect to see down there anyway? I guess a close view of a black hole is going to be spectacular enough . . .’

  A flush of animation touched Hollerbach’s papery cheeks. ‘Far more than that. Have I ever discussed with you my ideas on gravitic chemistry? I have?’ Hollerbach looked disappointed at the curtailing of his lecture, but Rees encouraged him to continue; for a few minutes, he realized gratefully, he could return to his apprenticeship, when Hollerbach and the rest would lecture him each shift on the mysteries of the many universes.

  ‘You will recall my speculation on a new type of “atom”,’ Hollerbach began. ‘Its component particles - perhaps singularities themselves - will be bonded by gravity rather than the other fundamental forces. Given the right conditions, the right temperature and pressure, the right gravitational gradients, a new “gravitic chemistry” will be possible.’

  ‘In the Core,’ Rees said.

  ‘Yes!’ Hollerbach declared. ‘As we skirt the Core we will observe a new realm, my friend, a new phase of creation in which—’

  Over Hollerbach’s shoulder there loomed a wide, bloodstained face. Rees frowned. ‘What do you want, Roch?’

  The huge miner grinned. ‘I only wanted to point out what you’re missing. Look.’ He pointed.

  Rees turned. At first he could see nothing unusual - and then, squinting, he made out a faint patch of dull brown amid the upward shower of stars. It was too far away to make out any detail, but memory supplied the rest; and he saw again a surface of skin stretched over bone, white faces turning to a distant speck in the air—

  ‘The Boneys,’ he said.

  Roch opened his corrupt mouth and laughed; Hollerbach flinched, disgusted. ‘Your home from home, Rees,’ Roch said coarsely. ‘Don’t you feel like dropping in and visiting old friends?’

  ‘Roch, get back to your work.’

  Roch did so, still laughing.

  Rees stayed for some minutes at the hull, watching until the Boneys’ worldlet was lost in the haze far above. Yet another piece of his life gone, beyond recall . . .

  With a shudder he turned from the window and, with Hollerbach, immersed himself once more in the bustle and warmth of the Bridge.

  Almost powerless, its soft human cargo swarming through its interior, the battered old ship plunged towards the black hole.

  The sky outside darkened and filled up with the fantastic, twisted star sculptures observed by Rees on his first journey to these depths. The Scientists left the hull transparent; Rees gambled that this would distract the helpless passengers from their steadily worsening plight. And so it turned out; as the shifts passed a growing number spent time at the great windows, and the mood of the ship became one of calm, almost of awe.

  Now, with closest approach to the Core barely a shift away, the Bridge was approaching a school of whales; and the windows were coated with human faces. Rees discreetly made room for Hollerbach; side by side they stared out.

  At this depth each whale was a slender missile, its deflated flesh an aerodynamic casing around its internal organs. Even the great eyes had closed now, so that the whales plummeted blind into the Core - and there were row upon row of them, above, below and all around the Bridge, so many that at infinity the air was a wall of pale flesh.

  Rees murmured, ‘If I’d known it would be as spectacular as this I wouldn’t have got off last time.’

  ‘You’d never have survived,’ Hollerbach said. ‘Look closely.’ He pointed at the nearest whale. ‘See how it glows?’

  Rees made out a pinkish glow around the whale’s leading end. ‘Air resistance?’

  ‘Obviously,’ Hollerbach said impatiently. ‘The atmosphere is like soup at these depths. Now, keep watching.’

  Rees kept his eyes fixed on the whale’s nose - and was rewarded with the sight of a six-foot patch of whale skin flaring into flame and tumbling away from the speeding animal. Rees looked around the school with new eyes; throughout the hail of motion he could see similar tiny flares of burning flesh, sparks of discarded fire. ‘It looks as if the whales are disintegrating, as if air resistance is too great . . . Perhaps they have misjudged their path around the Core; maybe our presence has disturbed them—’

  Hollerbach snorted in disgust. ‘Sentimental tosh. Rees, those whales know what they’re doing far better than we do.’

  ‘Then why the burning?’

  ‘I’m surprised at you, boy; you should have worked it out as soon as you climbed aboard that whale and studied its spongy outer flesh.’

  ‘At the time I was more interested in finding out whether I could eat it,’ Rees said dryly. ‘But . . .’ He thought it through. ‘You’re saying the purpose of the outer flesh is ablation?’

  ‘Precisely. The outer layer burns up and falls away. One of the simplest but most efficient ways of dispersing the heat generated by excessive air resistance . . . a method used on man’s earliest spacecraft, as I recall from the Ship’s records - records which are, of course, now lost forever—’

  Suddenly fire blazed over the hull’s exterior; the watching passengers recoiled from a sheet of flame mere inches from their faces.

  As soon as it had begun it was over.

  ‘Well, that was no planned ablation,’ Rees said grimly. ‘That was one of our steam jets. So much for our attitude control.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hollerbach nodded slowly, his brow furrowed. ‘That’s rather earlier than I expected. I had entertained hopes of retaining some control even at closest approach - when, of course, the ship’s trajectory may most easily be modified.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re stuck with what we’ve got, from this point in. We’re flying without smoke, as Pallis might say . . . We just have to hope we’re on an acceptable course. Come on; let’s talk to the navigators. But keep your voice down. Whatever the verdict there’s no point in starting a panic.’

  The members of the navigation team responded to Rees’s questions according to their inclinations. Raft Scientists pored over diagrams
which showed orbits sprouting from the Core like unruly hair, while the Boneys threw bits of shaped metal into the air and watched how they drifted.

  After some minutes of this, Rees snapped, ‘Well?’

  Quid turned to him and shrugged cheerfully. ‘We’re still too far out. Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see.’

  Jaen scratched her head, a pen tucked behind her ear. ‘Rees, we’re in an almost chaotic situation here. Because of the distance at which we lost control, our final trajectory remains indeterminately sensitive to initial conditions . . .’

  ‘In other words,’ Rees said, irritated, ‘we have to wait and see. Terrific.’

  Jaen made to protest, then thought better of it.

  Quid slapped his shoulder. ‘Look, there’s not a bloody thing we can do. You’ve done your best . . . and if nothing else you’ve given old Quid a damn interesting ride.’

  Hollerbach said briskly, ‘And you’re not alone in those sentiments, my Boney friend. Jaen! I presume your use of the Telescope is now at an end?’

  Jaen grinned.

  It took thirty minutes to adjust the instrument’s orientation and focus. At last Rees, Jaen, Hollerbach and Nead crowded around the small monitor plate.

  At first Rees was disappointed; the screen filled with the thick black cloud of star debris which surrounded the Core itself, images familiar from observations from the Raft. But as the minutes passed and the Bridge entered the outermost layers of the material, the sombre cloud parted before them and the debris began to show a depth and structure. A pale, pinkish light shone upwards at them. Soon veils of shattered star stuff were arching over the hull, making the Bridge seem a fragile container indeed.

  Then, abruptly, the clouds cleared; and they were sailing over the Core itself.

  Jaen breathed, ‘It’s . . . it’s like a planet . . .’

  The Core was a compact mass clustered about its black hole, a flattened sphere fifty miles wide. And, indeed, it was a world rendered in shades of red and pink. Its surface layers - subjected, Rees estimated, to many hundreds of gravities - were well-defined and showed almost topographical features. There were oceans of some quasi-liquid material, thick and red as blood; they lapped at lands that thrust above the general spherical surface. There were even small mountain ranges, like wrinkles in the skin of a soured fruit, and clouds like smoke which sped across the face of the seas. There was continual motion: waves miles wide crisscrossed the seas, the mountain sheets seemed to evolve endlessly, and even the coasts of the strange continents writhed. It was as if some great heat source were causing the Core’s epidermis to wrinkle and blister constantly.

  It was like Earth taken to Hell, Rees thought.

  Hollerbach was ecstatic. He peered into the monitor as if he wished he could climb through it. ‘Gravitic chemistry!’ he croaked. ‘I am vindicated. The structure of that fantastic surface can be maintained solely by the influence of gravitic chemistry; only gravitic bonds could battle against the attraction of the black hole.’

  ‘But it all changes so rapidly,’ Rees said. ‘Metamorphoses on a scale of miles, happening in seconds.’

  Hollerbach nodded eagerly. ‘Such speed will be a characteristic of the gravitic realm. Remember that changing gravity fields propagate at the speed of light, and—’

  Jaen cried out, pointing at the monitor plate.

  At the centre of one of the amorphous continents, etched into the surface like a mile-wide chessboard, was a rectangular grid of pink-white light.

  Ideas crowded into Rees’s mind. ‘Life,’ he whispered.

  ‘And intelligence,’ Hollerbach said. ‘Two staggering discoveries in a single glance . . .’

  Jaen asked, ‘But how is this possible?’

  ‘We should rather ask, “why should it not be so?”’ Hollerbach said. ‘The essential condition for life is the existence of sharp energy gradients . . . The gravitic realm is one of fast-evolving patterns; the universal principles of self-organization, like the Feigenbaum series which govern the blossoming of structure out of chaos, almost demand that organization should arise.’

  Now they saw more gridworks. Some covered whole continents and seemed to be trying to buttress the ‘land’ against the huge waves. Road-like lines of light arrowed around the globe. And - at the highest magnification - Rees was even able to make out individual structures: pyramids, tetrahedra and cubes.

  ‘And why should intelligence not arise?’ Hollerbach went on dreamily. ‘On a world of such violent change, selection in favour of organizing principles would be a powerful factor. Look how the gravitic peoples are struggling to preserve their ordered environments against the depredations of chaos!’

  Hollerbach fell silent, but Rees’s mind raced on. Perhaps these creatures would build ships of their own which could travel to other hole-based ‘planets’, and meet with their unimaginable cousins. At present this strange biosphere was fuelled by the influx of material from the Nebular debris cloud - a steady rain of star wrecks arcing on hyperbolic trajectories into the Core - and from within by the X-radiating accretion disc around the black hole, deep within the Core itself; but eventually the Nebula would be depleted and the gravitic world would be exposed, naked to space, fuelled only by the heat of the Core and, ultimately, the slow evaporation of the black hole itself.

  Long after all the nebulae had expired, he realized, the gravitic people would walk their roiling worlds. With a sense of dislocation he realized that these creatures were the true denizens of this cosmos; humans, soft, dirty and flabby, were mere transient interlopers.

  Closest approach neared.

  The Core world turned into a landscape; passengers screamed or sighed as the Bridge soared mere tens of miles above a boiling ocean. Whales drifted over the seas, pale and imperturbable as ghosts.

  Something was tugging at Rees’s feet. Irritated, he grabbed a Telescope strut and hauled himself back to the monitor; but the pull increased remorselessly, at last growing uncomfortable . . .

  He began to worry. The Bridge should be in virtual free fall. Was something impeding it? He peered around the transparent hull, half-expecting - what? That the Bridge had run into some glutinous cloud, some impossible spout from the strange seas below?

  But there was nothing.

  He returned his attention to the Telescope - to find that Hollerbach was now upside down; arms outstretched he clung to the monitor and was gamely trying to haul his face level with the picture in the plate. Bizarrely, he and Rees seemed to be being pulled towards opposite ends of the ship. Nead and Jaen were similarly arrayed around the Telescope mount, clinging on in the presence of this strange new field.

  Screams arose around the chamber. The flimsy structure of ropes and sheets began to collapse; clothes, cutlery, people went sliding towards the walls.

  ‘What the hell’s happening, Hollerbach?’

  The old Scientist clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘Damn it, this isn’t helping my arthritis—’

  ‘Hollerbach . . . !’

  ‘It’s the tide!’ Hollerbach snapped. ‘By the Bones, boy, didn’t you learn anything in my orbital dynamics classes? We’re so close to the Core that its gravity field is varying significantly on a scale of a few yards.’

  ‘Damn it, Hollerbach, if you knew all about this why didn’t you warn us?’ Hollerbach refused to look abashed. ‘Because it was obvious, boy . . . ! And any minute now we’ll get the really spectacular stuff. As soon as the gravitational gradient exceeds the moment imposed by air friction - ah, here we go . . .’

  The image in the monitor blurred as the Telescope lost its lock. The churning ocean wheeled over Rees’s head. Now the shanty construction collapsed completely and bewildered passengers were hurled about; spatters of blood appeared on flesh, clothes, walls.

  The ship was turning.

  ‘Nose down!’ Hollerbach, hands still clamped to the Telescope, screamed to make himself heard. ‘The ship will come to equilibrium nose down to the Core—’

  The p
row of the ship swung to the Core, ran past it, hauled itself back, as if the Bridge were a huge magnetized needle close to a lump of iron. With each swing the devastation within the chamber worsened; now Rees could see limp bodies among the thrashing passengers. Absurdly, he was reminded of the dance he had watched in the Theatre of Light; like dancers, Bridge and Core were going through an aerial ballet, with the ship waltzing in the black hole’s arms of gravity.

  At last the ship stabilized, its axis pointing at the Core. The passengers and their effects had been wadded into the ends of the cylindrical chamber, where the tidal effects were most strong; Rees and the other Scientists, still clinging to the Telescope mount, were close to the ship’s centre of gravity, and were, Rees realized, escaping comparatively lightly.

  Blood-red oceans swept past the windows.

  ‘We must be near closest approach,’ Rees shouted. ‘If we can just survive the next few minutes, if the ship holds together against this tide—’

  Nead, arms twined around the shaft of the Telescope, was staring at the Core ocean. ‘I think we might have to survive more than that,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look!’ Nead pointed - and, his grip loosened, he slipped away from the Telescope. He scrabbled against the sheer surface of the instrument, hands trying to regain their purchase; then his grasp failed completely. Still staring at the window he fell thirty yards into the squirming mass of humanity crushed into one end of the cylindrical chamber.

  He hit with a cracking sound, a cry of pain. Rees closed his eyes.

  Hollerbach shouted urgently, ‘Rees. Look at what he was telling us.’

  Rees turned.

  The sea of blood continued to churn; but now, Rees saw, there was a distinct whirlpool, a tight knot gathered beneath the Bridge. Shadows moved in that maelstrom, vast and purposeful. And - the whirlpool was moving with the hurtling ship, tracking its progress . . .

  The whirlpool burst like a blister and a disc a hundred yards wide came looming out of the ocean. Its jet black surface thrashed; with bewildering frequency vast limbs pulsed out, as if fists were straining through a sheet of rubber. The disc hovered for long seconds; then, its rotation slowing, it fell back into the pounding ocean.