She heard voices raised in fear and impatience. What had seemed from a little further away to be a reasonably controlled operation was actually little more than a shambles, she realized.
There was something in her peripheral vision - a motion, blue-white and distant ... More ripples in the vortex tubes, coming from the distant North: immense, jagged irregularities utterly dwarfing the small instabilities she’d observed so far.
There wasn’t much time.
Logue, her father, hung in the Magfield a little way from the Net. Adda, too old and slow for the urgent work of dismantling the encampment, hovered beside Logue, his thin face twisted, sour. Logue bellowed out orders in his huge baritone, but, Dura could already see, with very little effect on the Human Beings’ coordination. Still Dura had that odd feeling of timelessness, of detachment, and she studied her father as if meeting him for the first time in many weeks. Logue’s hair, plastered against his scalp, was crumpled and yellowed; his face was a mask through which the round, boyish features shared by Farr could still be discerned, obscured by a mat of scars and wrinkles.
As Dura approached, Logue turned to her, his brown eyecups wide, his cheek muscles working. ‘You took your time,’ he growled at her. ‘Where have you been? You’re needed here. Can’t you see that?’
His words cut through her detachment, and despite herself, despite the urgency of the moment, she felt resentment building in her. ‘Where? I’ve been to the Core in a Xeelee nightfighter. Where do you think I’ve been?’
Logue turned from her in apparent disgust. ‘You shouldn’t blaspheme,’ he muttered.
She wanted to laugh. Impatient with him, with herself, with the continual friction between them, she shook her head. ‘Oh, into the Ring with it. What do you want me to do?’
Now old Adda leaned forward, the open pores among his remaining hair sparkling Air-sweat. ‘Don’t know there’s much you can do,’ he said sourly. ‘Look at them. What a shambles.’
‘We’re not going to make it in time, are we?’ Dura asked him. She pointed North. ‘Look at that ripple. We won’t get out of the way before it hits.
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ The old man raised his empty eyes to the South Pole; its soft glow illuminated the backs of his eyes, the cup-retinae there; fragments of debris swirled around the rims and tiny cleansing symbiotes swam constantly in and out of the cups.
Logue bellowed suddenly, ‘Mur, you damn fool. If that knot is stuck then cut it. Rip it. Gnaw it through if you have to! - but don’t just leave it there, or half the Net is going to go flapping off into the Quantum Sea when the storm hits us ...’
‘Worst I’ve ever seen,’ Adda muttered, sniffing. ‘Never known the photons to smell so sour. Like a frightened piglet ... Of course,’ he went on after a few moments, ‘I remember one spin storm when I was a kid ...’
Dura couldn’t help but smile. Adda was the wisest amongst them, probably, about the ways of the Star. But he relished his role as doomsayer ... he could never let go of the mysteries of his own past, of the wild, deadly days which only he could remember ...
Logue turned on her with fury, his face as unstable as the quivering Magfield. ‘While you grin, we could die,’ he hissed.
‘I know.’ She reached out and touched his arm, feeling the hot tide of Air which superleaked from his clenched muscles. ‘I know. I’m - sorry.’
He frowned, staring at her, and reached forward, as if to touch her. But he drew the hand back. ‘Perhaps you’re not as strong as I like to think you are.’
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps I’m not.’
‘Come,’ he said. ‘We’ll help each other. And we’ll help our people. No one’s dead yet, after all.’
Dura scrambled across the Magfield flux lines to the Net. Men, women and older children were gathered in tight huddles, their thin bodies bumping together as they floated in the turbulent Magfield, labouring at the Net. They cast fearful, distracted glances at the approaching vortex instabilities, and from all around the Net Dura could hear muttered - or shouted - prayer-chants, pleas for the benevolence of the Xeelee.
Watching the Human Beings, Dura realized they were huddling together for comfort, not for efficiency. Rather than working evenly and systematically around the Net, the people were actually impeding each other from working effectively at the dismantling; whole sections of the tangled Net were being left unattended.
Dura’s feeling of depressed helplessness deepened. Perhaps she could help them organize better - act as Logue’s daughter for once, she admonished herself wearily, act as a leader. But as she studied the frightened faces of the Human Beings, the round, staring eyecups of the children, she recognized the weary terror which seemed to be numbing her own reactions.
Maybe huddling and praying was as rational a response as any to this latest disaster.
She twisted in the Air and Waved towards an empty section of Net, keeping well away from Esk and Philas. Logue would have to do the leading; Dura would remain one of the led.
The first of the massive ripples neared the encampment. Feeling the growing tension in the Air, Dura grasped the Net’s sturdy rope and pulled her body against its shuddering bulk. For a moment her face was pressed against the Net’s thick mesh, and she found herself staring at an Air-pig, not an arm’s length from her. The rope-threaded holes punched through its fins were widened with age, ringed by scar tissue. The Air-pig seemed to be looking into her eyes, its six eyestalks pushed straight out from its brain pan, the cups swivelled at her. The beast was one of the oldest of the Air-pigs - as a kid, she recalled wistfully, she would have known the names of each one of the meagre herd - and it must have seen plenty of spin storms before. Well, she thought. What’s your diagnosis? Do you think we’ve a chance of getting through this storm any better than we have all the others? Will you live to see the other side of it? What do you think?
The creature’s fixed, mournful stare, the brown depths of its eyecups, afforded her no reply. But its musty animal warmth stank of fear.
The mat of rope before her face glimmered suddenly, blue-white; her head cast a shadow before her.
She turned to see that one vortex line had drifted to within a couple of mansheights of her position; it shimmered in the Air, quivering, a cable emitting an electric-blue glow almost too clamorous for her eyes.
The tribesfolk appeared to have given up any attempts at dismantling the Net; even Logue and Adda had come Waving across to the illusory safety of the habitat. People simply clung on where they were, arms wrapped around each other and around the smallest of the children, the opened-up Net flapping uselessly around them. The crying of children resounded.
And now, with sudden brutality, the spin storm hit. A jagged discontinuity a mansheight deep surged along the nearest vortex line past the Net, faster than any human could Wave, faster even than any wild Air-pig could jet through the Air. Dura tried to concentrate on the solidity of the fibrous rope in her hands, the comforting Magfield which, as always, confined her body with a gentle grip ... But it was impossible to ignore the sudden thickness of the Air in her lungs, the roaring heat-noise blasting through the Air so powerfully she feared for her ears, the quivering of the Magfield.
She clenched her eyes closed so hard that she could feel the Air in the cups squeeze away. Concentrate, she told herself. You understand what’s happening here. That wretched Air-pig, bound up inside the Net, is as ignorant as the youngest piglet in its first storm. But not you; not a Human Being.
And it is through understanding that we will prevail . . . But, even as she intoned the words to herself like a prayer, she could not find any truth in that pious hope.
The Air was a neutron liquid, a superfluid. Superfluids could not sustain spin over extended distances. So, in response to the rotation of the Star, the Air became filled with vortex lines, tubes of vanishing thinness within which the Air’s rotation was confined. The vortex lines aligned themselves in regular arrays, aligned with the Star’s rotation axis - closely parallel to the magnetic
axis followed by the Magfield. The vortex lines filled the world. They were safe as long as you stayed away from them; every child knew that. But in a Glitch, Dura thought ruefully, the lines sometimes came looking for you ... and the Air’s superfluidity broke down around a collapsing vortex line, transforming the Air from a thin, stable, lifegiving fluid into a thing of turmoil and turbulence.
The worst of the first spin gust seemed to be passing now. Still clinging to the Net, she opened her eyes and cast rapidly around the sky.
The vortex lines, parallel beams receding into infinity, were still marching grandly across the sky, seeking their new alignment. It was quite a magnificent sight; and for a moment Dura felt wonder thrill through her as she imagined the arrays of spin lines which stretched right around the Star realigning, gathering and spreading, as if the Star were bound up in the integrated thoughts of some immense mind.
The Net shuddered in her grip, its coarse fibres abrading her palms; the sharp pain jolted her rudely back to the here and now. She sighed, gathering her strength, as weariness closed around her again.
‘Dura! Dura!’
The childish voice, thin and scared, came drifting to her from a few mansheights away. Gripping the Net with one hand, she twisted to see Farr, her little brother, suspended in the Air like a discarded fragment of cloth and flesh. He was Waving towards her.
When Farr reached her, Dura enfolded him in her free arm, helping him wrap his arms and legs around the security of the Net’s ropes. He was breathing hard and trembling, and she could see the short hairs which coated his scalp pulsing as superfluid surged through them.
‘I was thrown off,’ he gasped between gulps of Air. ‘I lost my piglet.’
‘So I see. Are you okay?’
‘I think so.’ He stared up at her, his eyes wide and empty, and he raked his gaze across the sky as if searching for the source of this betrayal of his safety. ‘This is terrible, isn’t it, Dura? Are we going to die?’
She ran her fingers casually through his stiff hair. ‘No,’ she said, with a conviction she could never have mustered for herself alone. ‘No, we won’t die. But we are in danger. Now come on, we should get to work. We need to get the Net taken apart, folded up, before the next instability hits us and wrecks it.’ She pointed to a small, open-looking knot. ‘There. Undo that. As quick as you can.’
He buried his trembling fingers in the knot and began prising out lengths of rope. ‘How long before the next ripple?’
‘Long enough to finish the job,’ she said firmly. For confirmation, with her own fingers still dragging at the stubborn knots, she glanced upflux - Northwards - to the source of the next ripple.
Instantly she saw how wrong she had been. From around the Net she heard voices raised in wonder and rising alarm; within a few heartbeats, it seemed, she was hearing the first screams.
The next ripple was closing on them; already she could hear its rising clamour of heat fluctuations. This new instability was huge, at least five or six mansheights deep. Dura watched, mesmerized, her hands frozen. Already the ripple was hurtling at her faster than any she could remember, and as it approached its amplitude seemed to be deepening, as if it were feeding on Glitch energy. And, of course, with greater amplitude came still greater speed. The instability was a complex superposition of wave shapes clustered along the length of the migrating vortex line, a superposition which spiralled around the line like some malevolent animal clambering towards her ...
Farr said, ‘We can’t escape that. Can we, Dura?’
There was a moment of stillness, almost of calm. Farr’s voice, though still cracked by adolescence, had sounded suddenly full of a premature wisdom. It was some comfort that Dura wasn’t going to have to lie to him.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ve been too slow. I think it’s going to hit the Net.’ She felt distant from the danger around her, as if she were recalling events from long ago, far away.
Even as it rushed up towards them the ripple bowed away from the trend of the vortex line in ever more elaborate, fantastic shapes. It was as if some elastic limit had been passed and the vortex line, under intolerable strain, was yielding.
It was almost beautiful, captivating to watch. And it was only mansheights away.
She heard the thin voice of old Adda, from somewhere on the other side of the Net. ‘Get away from the Net. Oh, get away from the Net!’
‘Do as he says. Come on.’
The boy slowly lifted his head; he still clung to the rope, and his eyes were empty, as if beyond fear or wonder. She drove a fist into one of his hands. ‘Come on!’
The boy cried out and withdrew his hands and legs from the Net, staring at her with a round face full of betrayal ... but a face that looked once more like that of an alert child rather than a bemused, petrified adult. Dura grabbed his hand. ‘Farr, you have to Wave as you’ve never Waved before. Hold my hand; we’ll stay together ...’
With a thrust of her legs she pushed away. For the first moments she seemed to be dragging Farr behind her; but soon his body was Waving in synchronization with hers, wriggling against the cloying thickness of the Magfield, and the two of them hurried away from the doomed Net.
As she Waved, gasping, Dura looked back. The spin instability, recoiling, wafted through the Air like a deadly, blue-white wand. It scythed towards the Net with its cargo of wriggling humans. It was like some wonderful toy, Dura thought; it glowed intensely brightly, and the heat-noise it emitted was a roar, almost drowning out thought itself. The bleating of trapped Air-pigs was cold-thin, and Dura thought briefly of the old animal with whom she had shared that brief, odd moment of half-communication; she wondered how much that poor creature understood of what was to happen.
Maybe half the Human Beings had heeded Adda’s advice to get away. The rest, apparently paralysed by fear and awe, still clung to the Net. The pregnant Dia was lumbering away into the Air with Mur; the woman Philas still picked frantically, uselessly, at the Net, despite the pleas of her husband Esk to come away. It was as if, Dura thought, Philas imagined that the work was a magic spell which would drive the instability away.
Dura knew that rotation instabilities lost energy rapidly. Soon, very soon, this fantastic demon would wither to nothing, leaving the Air calm and empty once more. And, glowing, roaring, stinking of sour photons, the instability was indeed visibly shrinking as it bore down on the Net.
But, it was immediately obvious, not shrinking fast enough ...
With a heat-wail like a thousand voices the instability tore into the Net.
It was like a fist driving into cloth.
The Air inside the Net ceased to be superfluid and became a stiff, turbulent mass, whipping and whorling around the vortex instability like some demented animal. Dura saw knots burst open; the Net, almost gracefully, disintegrated into fragments of rope, into rough mats to which adults and children clung.
The Air-pig herd was hurled away into the Air as if scattered by a giant hand. Dura could see how some of the beasts, evidently dead or dying, hung where they were thrown, limply suspended against the Magfield; the rest squirted away through the Air, their bellow-guts puffing out farts of blue gas.
One man, clinging alone to a raft of rope, was sucked towards the instability itself.
It was too far away to be sure, but Dura thought she recognized Esk. Dozens of mansheights from the site of the Net, she was much too far away even to call to him - let alone to help - but nevertheless she seemed to see what followed as clearly as if she rode at her lost lover’s shoulder towards the deadly arch.
Esk, with his mat of rope, tumbled through the plane of the quivering, arch-shaped instability and was hurled around the arch itself, as limp as a doll. His trajectory rapidly lost energy and, unresisting, he spiralled inwards, orbiting the arch like some demented Air-piglet.
Esk’s body burst open, the chest and abdominal cavities peeling back like opening eyes, the limbs coming free almost easily, like a toy’s.
Farr cried out, word
less. It was the first sound he’d made since they’d pushed away from the Net.
Dura reached for him and clutched his hand, hard. ‘Listen to me,’ she shouted over the arch’s continuing heat-clamour. ‘It looked worse than it was. Esk was dead long before he hit the arch.’ And that was true; as soon as he had entered the region in which superfluidity broke down, the processes of Esk’s body - his breathing, his circulatory system, his very muscles, all reliant on the exploitation of the Air’s superfluidity - would have collapsed. To Esk, as the strength left his limbs, as the Air coagulated in the superleak capillaries of his brain, it must have been like falling gently asleep.
She thought. She hoped.
The instability passed through the site of the Net and sailed on into the sky, continuing its futile mission towards the South. But even as Dura watched, the arch shape was dwindling, shrinking, its energy expended.
It left behind an encampment which had been torn apart as effectively as poor Esk’s body.
Dura pulled Farr closer to her, easily overcoming the gentle resistance of the Magfield, and stroked his hair. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s over now. Let’s go back, and see what we can do.’
‘No,’ he said, clinging to his sister. ‘It’s never over. Is it, Dura?’
Little knots of people moved through the glistening, newly stable vortex lines, calling to each other. Dura Waved between the struggling groups, searching for Logue, or news of Logue; she kept a tight grip on Farr’s hand.
‘Dura, help us! Oh, by the blood of the Xeelee, help us!’
The voice came to her from a dozen mansheights away; it was a man’s - thin, high and desperate. She turned in the Air, searching for its source.
Farr took her arm and pointed. ‘There. It’s Mur, over by that chunk of Net. See? And it looks as if he’s got Dia with him.’
Heavily pregnant Dia ... Dura pulled at her brother’s hand and Waved rapidly through the Air.
Mur and Dia hung alone in the Air, naked and without tools. Mur was holding his wife’s shoulders and cradling her head. Dia was stretched out, her legs parting softly, her hands locked around the base of her distended belly.
Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring Page 49