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

by Stephen Baxter

  16

  The driver of the car from Parz City was Deni Maxx, the junior doctor who had treated Adda. Dura wanted to rush to her, to demand news of Farr and Adda.

  The Human Beings - all twenty of them, including the five children - emerged from their shelter in the forest and trailed after Dura. Deni Maxx peered out of the open hatch at her, staring indifferently past her at the ring of skinny Human Beings. ‘I’m glad I’ve found you.’

  ‘I’m surprised you managed it. The upflux is a big place.’

  Deni shrugged. She seemed irritated, impatient. ‘It wasn’t so hard. Toba Mixxax gave me precise directions from his ceiling-farm to the place he first found you. All I had to do was scout around until you responded to my call.’

  Philas crowded close to Dura. The widow pressed her mouth close to Dura’s ear; Dura was aware, uncomfortably, of the sweet, thin stink of leaves and bark on Philas’s breath. ‘Who is she? What does she want?’

  Dura pulled her head away. She was aware of Deni’s appraising gaze. She felt a swirl of contradictory emotions: irritation at Deni’s high-handed manner, and yet a certain embarrassment at the awkward, childlike behaviour of the Human Beings. Had she been such a primitive on her first encounter with Toba Mixxax?

  ‘Get in the car,’ Deni said. ‘We’ve a long journey back to Parz, and I was told to hurry ...’

  ‘Who by? Why am I being recalled? Is it something to do with my indenture? Surely you saw Qos Frenk’s ceiling-farm - or what was left of it; it’s no longer functioning. Qos released us, and ...’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with your indenture. I’ll explain on the way.’ Deni drummed her fingers on the frame of the car’s door.

  Dura was aware of the staring eyes of the rest of the tribe, as they waited mutely for her to make a decision. She felt a brief, selfish stab of impatience with them; they were dependent, like children. She wanted to go back to Parz. She could surely - she told herself - find out more about the situation of Farr and Adda there than if she stayed with the Human Beings as just another simple refugee upfluxer. And, in the long run - she justified to herself - she could maybe do more to help all the Human Beings by returning than by staying here. Something important must be required of her, for the City to send someone like Deni Maxx to fetch her. Perhaps in some odd way she would have influence over events ...

  Philas tugged at her arm, like a child, demanding attention. Dura pulled her arm away angrily - and instantly regretted the impulse.

  The truth was, she admitted to herself, she was relieved that she had an excuse, and the means, to get away from the suffocating company of the Human Beings. But she felt such guilt about it.

  She came to a quick decision. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she told Deni. ‘But not alone.’

  Deni frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll take the children.’ She widened her arms to indicate the five children - the youngest was Mur’s infant, Jai, the oldest an adolescent girl.

  Deni Maxx launched into a volley of complaints.

  Dura turned her back and confronted the Human Beings. They pulled their children to themselves in baffled silence, their eyes huge and fixed on her. She ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. Slowly, patiently, she described what awaited the children at Parz City. Food. Shelter. Safety. Surely she could prevail on Toba Mixxax to find temporary homes for the children. They were all young enough to seem cute to the City folk, she calculated, surprising herself with her own cynicism. And in a few short years they’d be able to turn their upfluxer muscles to gainful employment.

  She was consigning the children to lives in the Downside, she realized. But it was better than starving here, or sharing their parents’ epic trek across the devastated hinterland of Parz. And eventually, she insisted to the bewildered parents, they would reach Parz themselves and be reunited with their offspring.

  The adults were baffled and frightened, struggling to deal with concepts they could barely envisage. But they trusted her, Dura realized slowly, with a mixture of relief and shame - and so, one by one, the children were delivered to Dura.

  Deni Maxx glared as the grimy bodies of the children were passed into her car, and Dura wondered if Deni was even now going to raise some cruel objection. But when the doctor watched Dura settle little Jai - frightened and crying for his mother - in the arms of the oldest girl at the back of the car, Deni’s irritation visibly softened.

  At last it was done. Dura gathered the bereft adults in a huddle and gave them strict instructions on how to get to the Pole. They listened to her solemnly. Then Dura embraced them all, and climbed into the car.

  As Deni flicked the team of Air-pigs into motion, Dura stared back through the huge, expansive windows at the Human Beings. Shorn of their children, they looked lost, bewildered, futile. Dia and Mur clung to each other. I’ve taken away their future, Dura realized. Their reason for living.

  Or, perhaps, I’ve preserved their future.

  When the Human Beings were out of sight - and despite the continuing crying of the frightened, disoriented children - Dura settled into one of the car’s expensive cocoons, relief and guilt once more competing for her soul.

  Deni steered the car with unconscious skill along the renewed vortex lines. ‘The City is taking in injured from the hinterland. It’s not been easy, for any of us.’ The doctor was scarcely recognizable from the cheerful, rather patronizing woman who had treated Adda, Dura thought; Maxx’s eyecups were ringed by darkness and crusty sleep deposits; her face seemed to have sunk in on itself, becoming gaunt and severe, and she hunched over her reins with tense, knotted muscles.

  Dura stared moodily out of the car’s huge windows at the Crust as it passed over them. She remembered how she had marvelled at the orderliness of the great hinterland with its ceiling-farms and gardens, as she had viewed it that first time with Toba Mixxax. Now, by contrast, she was appalled at the destruction the Glitch had wrought. In great swathes the farms had been scoured from the Crust, leaving the bare root-ceiling exposed. Here and there coolies still toiled patiently at the shattered land, but the naked ceiling had none of the vigour of the natural forest; obscenely stripped of its rectangles of cultivation it looked like an open wound.

  Deni tried to explain how the Crust had responded to the Glitch by ringing - vibrating in sectors, apparently all over the Star; the devastation had come in orderly waves, with a lethal and offensive neatness. Dura let the words wash over her, barely understanding.

  ‘The destruction persists right around the hinterland,’ Deni said. ‘At least half the ceiling-farms have stopped functioning, and the rest can only work on a limited basis.’ She glanced at Dura. ‘Parz City doesn’t have much stock of food, you know; she relies on the daily traffic from the ceiling-farms. And you know what they say ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Any society is only a meal away from revolution. Hork has already instituted rationing. In the long term, I doubt it’s going to be enough. Still, at the moment people seem to be accepting the troubles we’re having: patiently waiting their turn for medical treatment behind ranks of coolies, following the orders of the Committee. Eventually, I guess, they will blame the Committee for their woes.’

  Dura took a deep breath. ‘Just as you’re blaming me?’

  Deni turned to her, her eyes wide. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Your tone. Your manner with me, ever since you arrived to bring me back.’

  Deni rubbed her nose, and when she looked at Dura again there was a faint smile on her lips. ‘No. I don’t blame you, my dear. But I do resent being a ferry driver. I have patients to treat ... At a time like this I have better things to do than ...’

  ‘Then why did you come to get me?’

  ‘Because Muub ordered me to.’

  ‘Muub? Oh, the Administrator.’

  ‘He felt I was the only person who would recognize you.’ She sniffed. ‘Old fool. There aren’t that many upfluxers on Qos Frenk’s ceiling-farm, after all.’

 
‘I still don’t understand why you’re here.’

  ‘Because that friend of yours insisted on it.’ She frowned. ‘Adda? Worst patient in the world. But what beautiful work we did with his pneumatic vessels.’

  The Air seemed thick in Dura’s mouth. ‘Adda is alive? He’s safe?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was with Muub when the Glitch hit. He’s quite well ... or at least, as well as before. You know, with injuries like that it’s a miracle he’s able to move about. And ...’

  Dura closed her eyes. She hadn’t dared ask of her kinsmen earlier - as if phrasing the very question would tempt fate. ‘And Farr?’

  ‘Who? Oh, the boy. Your brother, isn’t he? Yes, he’s fine. He was in the Harbour ...’

  ‘You’ve seen him? You’ve seen that he’s safe?’

  ‘Yes.’ Some compassion entered Deni’s voice. ‘Dura, don’t worry about your people. Adda had Farr brought to the Palace ...’

  ‘The Palace?’

  ‘Yes, it was a condition of him working with Hork, apparently.’

  Dura laughed; it was as if a huge pressure had been lifted from her heart. But still, what was Adda doing handing out orders at the Palace? Why were they so important, all of a sudden? ‘Things have changed since I’ve been gone.’

  Deni nodded. ‘Yes, but don’t ask me about it ... Muub will tell you, when we dock.’ She growled, ‘another Physician taken away from healing people ... I hope this project of Hork’s, whatever it is, really is important enough to cost so many lives.’

  They were approaching the South Pole now; the vortex lines, deceptively orderly, were beginning to converge. Dura studied the Crust. The elegant, pretty farms and gardens of the ceiling-scape here had largely been spared the Glitch’s devastation, but there was something odd: the Crust had a fine texture, as if it were covered by fine, dark furs - furs which Waved in slow formation towards the Pole.

  Dura pointed this out to Deni. ‘What’s that?’

  Deni glanced up. ‘Refugees, my dear. From all over the devastated hinterland. No longer able to work on their farms, they are converging on Parz City, hoping for salvation.’

  Dura stared around the sky. Refugees. The Crust seemed black with humanity.

  The children started to cry again. Dura turned to comfort them.

  When Hork heard that the two upfluxers - the boy from the Harbour and the woman, Dura - had been located and were being returned to the Upside, he called Muub and the old fool Adda to another meeting in the Palace anteroom.

  Adda settled into his cocoon of rope, his splinted legs dangling absurdly, and he swept his revolting one-eyed gaze around the anteroom as if he owned the place.

  Hork suppressed his irritation. ‘Your people are safe. They are inside the City. Now I would like to continue with our discussion.

  Adda stared, eyeing him up as if he were a coolie in the Market. At last the old man nodded. ‘Very well. Let’s proceed.’

  Hork saw Muub sigh, evidently with relief.

  ‘I return to my final question,’ Hork said. ‘I concede the existence of the Xeelee. But I am not concerned with myths. I don’t want to hear about the awesome racial goals of the Xeelee ... I want to know what they want with us.’

  ‘I told you,’ Adda said evenly. ‘They don’t want anything of us. I don’t think they even know we’re here. But they do want something of our world - our Star.’

  ‘Apparently they wish to destroy it,’ Muub said, running a hand over his bare scalp.

  ‘Evidently,’ Adda said. ‘Hork, the wisdom of my people - handed down verbally since our expulsion from ...’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘ ... has nothing to say about any purpose of the Star. But we do know that humans were brought here, to this Star. By the Ur-humans. And we were adapted to survive here.’

  Muub was nodding at this. ‘This isn’t a surprise, sir. Analogous anatomy studies have come to similar conclusions.’

  ‘I am struggling to contain my fascination,’ Hork said acidly. Restless, frustrated, he pushed his way out of his sling and began to swim briskly around the room. He watched the turning of the small, powerful cooling-fan set in one corner of the painted sky; he studied the captive vortex ring in its nest of clearwood spheres. He resisted the temptation to smash the spheres again, despite his mounting frustration; the cost of repair had been ruinous - indefensible, actually, in such times as now. ‘Go on with your account. If humans were brought here, made to fit the Mantle - then why isn’t the evidence of this all around us? Where are the devices which made us? Where are these “different” Ur-humans?’

  Adda shook his head. ‘At one time there was plenty of evidence. Marvellous devices, left here by the Ur-men to help us survive, and to work here. Wormhole Interfaces. Weapons, huge structures which would dwarf your shabby City ...’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Hork snapped. ‘And don’t tell me they were suppressed, deliberately destroyed by some vindictive Parz administration of the past.’

  ‘No.’ Adda smiled. ‘Your forebears did not have to conceal physical evidence ... merely the truth.’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘The Colonists,’ Adda said slowly.

  ‘What?’

  Once, humans had travelled throughout the Star. The Quantum Sea had been as clear as the Air to them, in their marvellous machines. They had been able to venture even into the outer layers of the Core with impunity. And there had been marvellous gateways, called wormhole Interfaces, which had allowed humans even to travel outside the Star itself.

  The humans, following the commands of their departed creators, the Ur-humans, had set about rebuilding the Star. And the mysterious Colonists, sleeping in their quark soup at the Core, had become hostile to the growing power of humans.

  The Colonists had emerged from the Core. Brief, shattering wars were fought.

  Human machines were destroyed or dragged into the Quantum Sea. The human population was devastated, the survivors pitched into the open Air virtually without resource.

  Within generations, the stories of man’s origin on the Star, the tale of the Colonists, became a dim legend, another baroque detail in the rich word-painting of human history, of the invisible worlds beyond the Star.

  Muub laughed out loud, his long, aristocratic face creased with mirth. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said to Hork. ‘But here we are compounding myth on myth. How long are we to continue with this charade? I have patients to attend.’

  ‘Shut up, Muub. You’ll stay here as long as I need you.’

  Hork thought hard. He had damnably little resource to spare. He had to tend the wounded and destitute, and, in the longer term, rebuild on the hinterland, alleviate the hunger of the people.

  And yet, and yet ...

  If - by a small diversion of effort - he could remove the fantastic Xeelee threat from the City - the whole world, in fact - then he could become the greatest hero of history.

  There was pride, self-aggrandizement in such a vision, Hork knew. So what? If he could repel the Xeelee, mankind would rightfully acclaim him.

  But how to go about it?

  He certainly couldn’t devote armies of scholars to piecing together the fragmentary legends of man’s origin. And he didn’t have the years to wait while some such discipline as Muub’s ‘analogous anatomy’ cogitated over its subject matter. He had to prioritize, to go for the most direct benefit.

  He looked at Adda sharply. ‘You say these beings - the Colonists - took the Interfaces, and the other magical machines, back into the Quantum Sea with them. Beyond the reach of our Fishermen. So we’ve no reason to believe the devices were destroyed?’

  Adda looked up; the leech nibbling at his eye, disturbed, slid across his cheek. ‘Nor any evidence that they survived.’

  Muub snorted. ‘Now the old fool has the effrontery to talk of evidence!’

  What if this legend of Colonists and ancient technologies held some grain of truth? Then perhaps, Hork speculated, some of these devices could still exist, deep
in the Quantum Sea. An Interface would be worth having ...

  ‘Muub,’ he asked thoughtfully. ‘How could we penetrate the Quantum Sea?’

  Muub looked at him, as if shocked by the suggestion. ‘We cannot, of course, sir. It is impossible.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You are not thinking of chasing after these absurd legends, of wasting resources on a ...’

  ‘You will not lecture me, Physician,’ Hork snapped. ‘Think of it as a - a scientific experiment. If nothing else we would learn much about the Star, and about our own capabilities ... and, perhaps, disprove once and for all these fanciful legends of Colonists and antique wonders.’ Or, he allowed himself to imagine, perhaps I will uncover a treasure lost to mankind for generations.

  ‘Sir, I must protest. People continue to die, all over the hinterland. Parz itself may be overwhelmed by the flood of refugees approaching. We must abandon these fantasies of the impossible, and return our attention to the immediate, the practical.’

  Hork studied the Physician - Muub was stiff, trembling in his cocoon of rope. His irritation with Muub’s stiff anger was eclipsed, suddenly, by respect for this decent man. It must have taken a lot of courage for the Physician to speak out like that. ‘Muub - my dear Muub - as soon as I close this meeting I will be immersed in the immediate, the practical ... in the pain of ten thousand human beings.’ He smiled. ‘I want you to take charge of this project. Reach the Quantum Sea.’

  Muub ground out, ‘The task - is - impossible.’

  Hork nodded. ‘Of course. Bring me options, within two days.’

  He turned from them then, and, straightening his back, thrust through the Air to the door and his duties.

  17

  After she’d endured a brief, unsettled sleep in Deni’s cramped quarters, a messenger from the Committee called for Dura. The messenger was a small, rather sad man in a scuffed tunic; his skin was thin and pale and his eyes were bruised-looking, discoloured deep inside the cups. Perhaps he had spent too much of his life doing close work inside the City, Dura thought, shut away from fresh Air.