Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  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 fibers 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 toward 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 prizing 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 — Northward — 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 clamor 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 spiraled around the line like some malevolent animal clambering toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 paralyzed by fear and awe, still clung to the Net. The p
regnant 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 toward 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 toward 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 spiraled inward, 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, wordless. 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-clamor. “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 toward 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.

  Mur’s young face was hard, cold and determined; his eyes were pits of darkness as he peered at Dura and Farr. “It’s her time. She’s early, but the Glitch… You’ll have to help me.”

  “All right.” Dura lifted Dia’s hands away from her belly, gently but firmly, and ran her fingers quickly over the uneven bulge. She could feel the baby’s limbs pushing feebly at the walls which still restrained it. The head was low, deep in the pelvis. “I think the head’s engaged,” she said. Dia’s young, thin face was fixed on hers, contorted with pain; Dura tried to smile at her. “It feels fine. A little while longer…”

  Dia hissed, her face creased with pain, “Get on with it, damn you.”

  “Yes.”

  Dura looked around desperately; the Air around them was still empty, the nearest Human Beings dozens of mansheights away. They were on their own.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to resist the temptation to search the Air for Logue. She delved deep inside herself, looking for strength.

  “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Mur, hold her neck and shoulders. You’ll have to brace her there; if you Wave a little you’ll hold yourself in place, and…”

  “I know what to do,” Mur snapped. Still holding Dia’s small head against his chest, he grasped her shoulders and Waved slowly, his strong legs beating at the Air.

  Dura felt awkward, inadequate. Damn it, she thought, aware of the pettiness of her own reaction, damn it, I’ve never done this on my own before. What do they expect?

  What next? “Farr, you’ll have to help me.”

  The boy hovered in the Air a mansheight away, his mouth gaping. “Dura, I…”

  “Come on, Farr, there’s nobody else,” Dura said. As he came close to her she whispered, “I know you’re frightened. I’m frightened too. But not as much as Dia. It’s not so difficult as all that, anyway. We’ll do fine…”

  As long as nothing goes wrong, she thought.

  “All right,” Farr said. “What do I do?”

  Dura took hold of Dia’s right leg, wrapping her fingers tightly around the lower calf. The woman’s muscles were trembling and slick with Air-sweat, and Dura could feel the legs pushing apart; Dia’s vagina was opening like a small mouth, popping softly. “Take her other leg,” she told Farr. “Like I’ve done. Get a tight hold; you’re going to have to pull hard.”

  Farr, hesitant and obviously scared, did as he was told.

  The baby moved, visibly, further into the pelvic area. It was like watching a morsel of food disappear down some huge neck. Dia arched back her head and moaned; the muscles in her neck were stiff and prominent.

  “It’s time,” Dura said. She glanced around quickly. She and Farr were in position, holding Dia’s ankles; Mur was already Waving, quite hard, pushing at his wife’s shoulders, so that the little ensemble drifted slowly through the Air. Both Mur’s and Farr’s eyes were locked on Dura’s face.

  Dia called out again, wordlessly.

  Dura leaned back, grasping Dia’s calf, and pushed firmly with her legs at the Magfield. “Farr! Do what I’m doing. We have to open her legs. Go on; don’t be afraid.”

  Farr watched her for a moment, then leaned back and Waved in a copy of his sister’s movements. Mur cried out and shoved hard at his wife’s shoulders, balancing Farr and Dura.

  Dia’s legs parted easily. She screamed.

  Farr’s hands slid over Dia’s convulsing calf; in his shock he seemed to stumble in the Air, his eyes wide. Dia’s thighs twitched back toward each other, the muscles shuddering.

  “No!” Mur shouted. “Farr, keep going; you mustn’t stop now!”

  Farr
’s distress was evident. “But we’re hurting her.”

  “No.”

  Damn it, Dura thought, Farr should know what’s happening here. Dia’s pelvis was hinged; with the birth so close the cartilage locking the two segments of the pelvis together would have dissolved into Dia’s blood, leaving her pelvis easily opened. Her birth canal and vagina were already stretching, gaping wide. Everything was working together to allow the baby’s head an easy passage from the womb to the Air. It’s easy, Dura thought. And it’s easy because the Ur-humans designed it to be easy, maybe even easier than for themselves…

  “It’s meant to be like this,” she shouted at Farr. “Believe me. You’ll hurt her if you stop now, if you don’t help us. And you’ll hurt the baby.”

  Dia opened her eyes. The cups brimmed with tears. “Please, Farr,” she said, reaching toward him vaguely. “It’s all right. Please.”

  He nodded, mumbling apologies, and pulled once more at Dia’s leg.

  “Easy,” Dura called, trying to match his motion. “Not too fast, and not jerkily; nice and smooth…”

  The birth canal gaped like a green-dark tunnel. Dia’s legs parted further than it would have seemed possible; Dura could see, under the thin flesh around the girl’s hips, how the pelvis had hinged wide.

  Dia screamed; her stomach convulsed.

  The baby came suddenly, wriggling down the birth passage like an Air-piglet. It squirted into the Air with a soft, sucking noise; droplets of dense, green-gold Air sprayed around it. As soon as it was out of the canal the baby started to Wave, instinctively but feebly, across the Magfield within which it would be embedded for all of its life.

  Dura’s eyes locked on Farr. He was following the baby’s uncertain progress through the Air, his mouth slack with wonder; but he was still firmly holding Dia’s leg. “Farr,” Dura commanded. “Come back toward me now. Slowly, steadily — that’s it…”

  Dia’s only danger now was that her hinged bones would not settle neatly back into place without dislocation; and even if all went well, for a few days she would be barely able to move as the halves of her pelvis knitted together once more. With Dura and Farr guiding them, her legs closed smoothly; Dura could see the bones around Dia’s pelvis sliding smoothly back into place.