Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  Farr tried to bite back. “Then you should have told me what was going on before. What if something had gone wrong, and I hadn’t known what to do?”

  Bzya regarded Hosch impassively. “The boy has a point, Hosch.”

  “Anyway,” Farr said, “it can’t take much skill to throw a simple switch…”

  “Oh, that’s not the skill,” Hosch said quietly. “The skill is in staying alive long enough to do it.”

  * * *

  The Bell lurched alarmingly through the underMantle, unbalanced by the mass of Corestuff clinging to its side. Farr tried to judge their ascent, but he couldn’t separate genuine indications of their rise to the light — the sensations in his belly, a lightening of the gloom in the small windows — from optimistic imagination. He gazed anxiously at the bruised-purple glow in the windows, unable to take any of the food Bzya offered him from a small locker set in the hull of the Bell.

  The Bell shuddered under a fresh impact. Farr clung to his pole. There was a grinding noise, and the clumsy little craft shuddered to a halt.

  Farr resisted the temptation to close his eyes and curl up. What now? What else can they throw at me?

  He felt Bzya’s rough fingertips on his shoulders. “It’s all right, lad. That’s a sign that we’re nearly home.”

  “What was it?”

  “That was our berg, scraping against the Spine. We’re only a meter or so below Parz itself now.”

  Hosch hauled at a lever on the control panel, grunting with the effort; the hum Farr had learned to associate with the currents supplying the Bell’s protective magnetic field decreased in intensity. Hosch turned to him, his mood evidently swinging toward its calm, sly pole. “Your buddy here is half-right. But we aren’t safe yet. Not by a long way.”

  In fact this was one of the most dangerous parts of the mission. The berg, rattling against the Spine, could easily sever their cables or damage the Spine itself.

  “So,” Hosch said silkily, “one of us has to go outside and do some work.”

  “What work?”

  “Wrap ropes around the berg. Lash it to the Bell,” Bzya said gently. “That’s all. Stops the berg from shaking loose, and protects the cables from collisions with the Corestuff.”

  Hosch was staring at Farr.

  Bzya held up his huge hands. “No,” he said. “Hosch, you can’t be serious. You can’t send the boy out there.”

  “I’ve never been more serious,” Hosch said. “As you’ve both been telling me, the boy won’t last five heartbeats down here unless he learns the trade. And there’s only one way to do that, isn’t there?”

  Bzya made to protest, but Farr stopped him. “It’s all right, Bzya. I’m not afraid. He’s probably right, anyway.”

  Bzya said, “Listen to me. If you were not afraid you would be a fool, or dead. Fear keeps your eyecups open and clean.”

  “Ropes in that locker,” Hosch said, pointing.

  Bzya started to haul out the tightly packed, thick ropes; soon the little cabin seemed filled with the stuff. “And you,” Hosch snapped at Farr. “Get the hatch open.”

  Farr looked through the window. The Air — if it could be called Air, this deep — was purple, almost Sea-like. He was still, after all, a full meter — a hundred thousand mansheights — below Parz.

  He felt the sole of a foot in his back. “Get on with it,” Hosch growled. “It won’t kill you. Probably.”

  Farr put his shoulders to the circular hatch and pushed. It was heavy and stiff, and as he pushed he heard the scraping of the Corestuff hoops binding up the capsule as they slid away.

  The hatch burst open, flying out of his reach. The Air outside the Bell was thick and glutinous, and it crowded into the cabin, overwhelming the thinner, clear Air within. The light of the cabin’s lamps seemed immediately dimmed.

  Farr held his breath, his mouth clamped closed almost of its own accord. There was a pressure on his chest, as if the thicker Air were trying to force itself into his lungs through his skin. With an effort of will he dragged his lips apart. The cloying, purple Air forced its way into his throat; he could feel it on his lips, viscous and bitter. He heaved, expanding his lungs; the stuff burned as it worked through his capillaries.

  So, after a brief few heartbeats of struggle, he was embedded in the underMantle. He raised his arms experimentally, flexing his fingers. His movements were unimpaired, but he felt weaker, sluggish. Perhaps the superfluid fraction of this Air was lower than in the true Mantle.

  “The hatch,” Bzya said, pointing. “You’d better retrieve it.” Bzya’s voice was obscured, as if he was speaking through a layer of cloth.

  Farr nodded. He pushed his way out of the hatchway.

  The yellow-purple Air was so thick it barely carried any illumination; it was as if he was suspended in a dark-walled bubble about four mansheights across. The Bell was suspended at the center of the bubble, a drifting bulk. Beyond it the Spine was a wall, massive and implacable, its upper and lower extremes lost in the misty obscurity of the Air. Looking at the Spine now Farr could see cables of Corestuff wrapped around it and laid out along its length — cables which must provide a magnetic field like the Bell’s, to keep the Spine from itself dissolving in the lower underMantle. The Bell’s own cables snaked up and out of sight toward the world of the upperMantle, a world which seemed impossibly distant to Farr.

  The loose hatch was a short distance from him. He Waved to it easily enough, although the Air in which he was embedded was a cloying presence around him. He caught the hatch and returned it briskly to Bzya.

  “Now the berg,” Hosch called. “Can you see it?”

  Farr looked. There was a shape, lumpen, lodged between the Bell and the Spine. It was half a mansheight long, dark and irregular, like a growth on the clean, artificial lines of the Bell.

  “Don’t I need the ropes?”

  “Go and inspect the berg first,” Hosch called. “See if it’s done us any damage.”

  He took deep breaths of the stale Air and flexed his legs. It would take only a few strokes to Wave to the lump of Corestuff.

  As he neared, he saw that the berg’s surface was made rough by small pits and escarpments. It was hard to imagine that this was the material that formed the gleaming hoops around the Bell, or the City’s anchor-bands, or the fine inlays in Surfboards. He was within an arm’s length of the berg, still Waving smoothly… If he lived long enough, he would like to see the workshops — the foundries, Bzya called them — where the transformation of this stuff took place…

  Invisible hands grabbed his chest and legs, yanking him sideways. He found himself tumbling head over heels away from the Bell. He cried out. He scrabbled at the Air but could gain no purchase, and his legs thrashed at the emptiness in a futile effort to Wave.

  Trembling, he paddled at the Air, trying to still his roll. Hosch was laughing at him, he realized; and Bzya, too, seemed to be having trouble suppressing a smile.

  Just another little game, then; another test for the new boy.

  He closed his eyes, willing the trembling of his limbs to still. He tried to think. Invisible hands? Only a magfield could have jolted him like that — the Bell’s protective magfield. And of course he’d been knocked sideways; that was the way fields affected moving charged objects, like his body. That was why it was necessary, when Waving, to move legs and arms across the flux lines of the Magfield to generate forward motion.

  So the Bell’s own magfield shell had thrown him. Big joke.

  Logue would probably have told him off for not anticipating this, he realized. Laughed at him as well, to drive home the point.

  Farr’s fear turned to anger. He looked forward to the day when he would no longer have so much to learn… and he could maybe administer a few lessons of his own.

  His self-control returning, Farr began to make his clumsy way back to the Bell. “Give me the ropes,” he said.

  12

  The huge lumber caravan was visible for many days before it reached Qos
Frenk’s ceiling-farm.

  Dura, descending from a wheat-field at the end of a shift, watched the caravan’s approach absently. It was a trace of darkness on the curving horizon, a trail of tree trunks toiling through the vortex lines from the wild forests on the upflux fringe of the hinterland, on its way to the City at the furthest downflux. She wasn’t too interested. The hinterland sky, even this far from Parz, was never empty of traffic. The caravan would pass in a couple of days, and that would be that.

  But this caravan didn’t go by so quickly. As time wore on it continued to grow in her vision, and Dura slowly came to appreciate the caravan’s true scale, and the extent to which distance and perspective had fooled her. The train of severed tree trunks, stretched along the vortex lines, must have extended for more than a centimeter. And it was only when the caravan approached its nearest point to the farm that Dura could make out people traveling with the caravan — men and women Waving along the lengths of the trunks, or tending the teams of Air-pigs scattered along the trunks’ lengths, utterly dwarfed by the scale of the caravan itself.

  Another shift wore away. Rubbing arms and shoulders left stiff by a long day’s crop-tending, Dura slung her Air-tank over her shoulder and Waved slowly toward the refectory.

  Rauc came up to her. Dura studied her curiously. Rauc had become something of a friend to Dura — as much of a friend as she had made here, anyway — but today the slim little coolie seemed different. Distracted, somehow. Although Rauc too had just finished a shift, she’d already changed into a clean smock and combed her hair free of dirt and wheat-chaff. The smile on her thin, perpetually tired face was nervous.

  “Rauc? Is something wrong?”

  “No. No, not at all.” Rauc’s small feet twisted together in the Air. “Dura, have you got any plans for your off-shift?”

  Dura laughed. “To eat. To sleep. Why?”

  “Come with me to the caravan.”

  “What?”

  “The lumber caravan.” Rauc pointed down beneath her feet, to where the caravan toiled impressively across the sky. “It wouldn’t take us long to Wave down there.”

  Dura tried to conceal her reluctance. No thanks. I’ve already seen enough of the City, the hinterland, of new people, to last me a lifetime. She thought with a mild longing of the little nest she’d been able to establish for herself on the fringe of the farm — just a cocoon, and her little cache of personal belongings, suspended in the open Air, away from the cramped dormitories favored by the rest of the coolies. “Maybe another time, Rauc. Thanks, but…”

  Rauc looked unreasonably disappointed. “But the caravans only pass about once a year. And Brow can’t always arrange an assignment to the right caravan; if we’re unlucky he ends up centimeters away from the farm when he passes this latitude, and…”

  “Brow?” Rauc had mentioned the name before. “Your husband? Your husband’s with this caravan?”

  “He’ll be expecting me.” Rauc reached out and took Dura’s hands. “Come with me. Brow’s never met an upfluxer before.”

  Dura squeezed her hands. “Well, I’ve never met a lumberjack. Rauc, is this the only time you get to see your husband? Are you sure you want me along?”

  “I wouldn’t ask otherwise. It will make it special.”

  Dura felt honored, and she said so. She considered the distance to the caravan. “Will we have the time to get there and back, all in a single off-shift? Maybe we ought to go to Leeh and postpone our next shift — do a double.”

  Rauc grinned. “I’ve already fixed it. Come on; find yourself something clean to wear, and we’ll go. Why don’t you bring your stuff from the upflux? Your knife and your ropes…”

  Rauc followed Dura to her sleeping-nest, talking excitedly the whole way.

  * * *

  The two women dropped out of the ceiling-farm and descended lightly into the Mantle.

  Dura dipped forward, extending her arms toward the caravan, and began to thrust with her legs. As she Waved she was still wondering if this was a good idea — her legs and arms still ached from her long shift — but after some time the steady, easy exercise seemed to work the pains from her muscles and joints, and she found herself relishing the comfortable, natural motion across the Magfield — so different from the cramped awkwardness of her work in the fields, with her head buried in an Air-mask, her arms straining above her head, her fingers thrust into the roots of some recalcitrant mutant plant.

  The caravan spread out across the sky before her. It was a chain of Crust-tree trunks stripped of roots, branches and leaves; the trunks were bound together in sets of two or three by lengths of rope, and the sets were connected by more links of strong plaited rope. Dura had to swivel her head to see the leading and trailing ends of the chain of trunks, which dwindled with perspective among the converging vortex lines; in fact, she mused, the whole caravan was like a wooden facsimile of a vortex line.

  Two humans hung in the Air some distance from the caravan. They seemed to be waiting for Rauc and Dura; as the women approached they called something and set off through the Air to greet them. It was a man and a woman, Dura saw. They were both around the same age as Rauc and Dura, and they wore identical, practical-looking loose vests equipped with dozens of pockets from which bits of rope and tools protruded.

  Rauc rushed forward and embraced the man. Dura and the lumberjack woman hung back, waiting awkwardly. The woman was slim, strong-looking, with tough-looking, weathered skin; she — and the man, evidently Rauc’s husband Brow — looked much more like upfluxers than any hinterland or City folk Dura had met up to now.

  Rauc and Brow broke their embrace, but they stayed close with their arms linked together. Rauc pulled Brow toward Dura. “Brow, here’s a friend from the farm. Dura. She’s an upfluxer…”

  Brow turned to Dura with a look of surprised interest; his gaze flickered over her. He resembled Rauc quite closely. His body was lean, strong-looking under its vest, and his narrow face was kindly. “An upfluxer? How do you come to be working on a ceiling-farm?”

  Dura forced herself to smile. “It’s a long story.”

  Rauc squeezed Brow’s arm. “She can tell you later.”

  Brow rubbed his nose, still staring at Dura. “We see upfluxers sometimes. In the distance. When we’re working in the far upflux, right at the edge of the hinterland. You see, the further upflux you go toward the wild forests, the better the trees grow. But…” He stopped, embarrassed.

  “But the more dangerous it gets?” Dura maintained her smile, determined for once to be tolerant. “Well, don’t worry. I don’t bite.”

  They laughed, but it was forced.

  Rauc introduced the woman with Brow. She was called Kae, and she and Rauc embraced. Dura observed them curiously, trying to make sense of their relationship. There was a stiffness between Rauc and Kae, a wariness; and yet their embrace seemed genuine — as if on some level, beneath the surface strain, they shared a basic sympathy for each other.

  Brow tugged at Rauc. “Come and see the others; they’ve missed you. We’re going to eat shortly.” He glanced at Dura. “Will you join us?”

  The woman Kae approached Dura with brisk friendliness. “Dura, let’s leave these two alone for a while. I’ll show you around the caravan… I don’t suppose you’ve met people like us before…”

  * * *

  Dura and Kae Waved side by side along the length of the caravan. Kae pointed out features of the caravan and described how it worked in a brisk, matter-of-fact way, her talk laced with endless references to Dura’s assumed ignorance. Dura had long since grown tired of being treated as an amusing freak by these Parz folk, but — for today — she bit back the acid replies which seemed to come so easily to her. This woman, Kae, didn’t mean any harm; she was simply trying to be kind to a stranger.

  Maybe I’m learning to look beneath the surface of people, Dura wondered. Not to react to trivia. She smiled at herself. Maybe she was growing up at last.

  The chain of trunks slid through the Ai
r at about half an easy Waving speed. There were teams of harnessed Air-pigs, their harness sets fixed — not to Air-cars — but to the rope links in the chain of trees. The pigs squealed and snorted as they hauled at their restraints of leather. Humans, some of them children, tended the animals. The pigs were fed bowls of mashed-up Crust-tree leaf, and their harnesses were endlessly adjusted to keep the teams hauling in the same direction, along the long line of trunks.

  People hailed Kae as she passed, and they glanced curiously at Dura. Dura guessed there must be a hundred people traveling with this caravan.

  The women paused to watch one team being broken up. The animals were released from their harnesses, but they were still restrained by ropes fixed to pierced fins. The animals were led away to be tied up in another part of the caravan to rest, while a fresh team was fixed into place.

  Dura frowned at this. “Wouldn’t it be easier to stop the caravan, rather than try to change the pigs over in flight?”

  Kae laughed. “Hardly. Dura, when the caravan is assembled, back on the edge of the upflux, it takes several days, usually, for the pig-teams to haul it up to speed. And once this mass of wood is moving, it’s much easier to maintain its motion than to keep stopping and starting it. Do you see?”

  Dura sighed inwardly. “I know what momentum is. So you don’t even stop when you sleep?”

  “We sleep in shifts. We sleep tied up to nets and cocoons fixed to the trunks themselves.” Kae pointed to the nearest pig-team. “We rotate the pigs in flight. It isn’t so difficult to steer a caravan; all you have to do is follow the vortex lines downflux until you get to the South Pole… Dura, a caravan like this never stops moving, once it sets off from the edge of the hinterland. Not until it’s within sight of Parz itself. Then the pig-teams are turned around, and the caravan’s broken up to be taken into the City.”