Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  The vortex ring passed on through the wreckage of Rauc, shrinking rapidly.

  Dura let herself drift to a stop in a clear volume of Air. She felt the tension leave her muscles; she curled slowly into a ball, as if she were seeking sleep. This shouldn’t happen, she thought. It’s not right. We don’t deserve such a fate. It’s — unnatural.

  And now there was another name to add to the litany of the caravans.

  On the horizon, something moved. An object, slicing through the Air; it was like a ray, with shining, golden wings which beat at the Air… but it was far larger than any ray, large enough to be seen even though it was almost lost in the mists of the horizon. Blue-white light stabbed from the belly of the great sky-ray into the bruised purple mass of the Quantum Sea below.

  More memories, legends from the mouths and staring eyecups of intense, lean old men, returned to her. I know what that is. Could it he causing the Glitches, with those beams?

  I know what it is. It’s a ship, from beyond the Star.

  She let her head sink forward, against her knees.

  Xeelee.

  14

  “Xeelee.”

  Amidst the wreckage of ceiling-farm buildings, Hork cradled the head of his father in his lap. He looked up at Muub, despair and rage shining from his bearded face.

  Muub studied the broken body of Hork, Chair of Parz Committee, determined to forget his own personal danger — exposed as he was to the mercurial anger of the younger Hork — and to view this shattered man as just another patient.

  As soon as word of the latest Glitch reached Parz, Hork, fearing for his father’s life, had summoned Muub. Now, less than a day later, here they were at the experimental Crust farm.

  The small medical staff maintained here had clearly been overwhelmed by the disaster. They had greeted Muub on his arrival with a bizarre mixture of relief and fear — eager to hand over responsibility for the injured Chair, and yet fearful of the consequences if they were judged to be negligent. Well, the staff here had clearly done their best, and Muub doubted that the attention Hork had received could have been bettered even within his own Common Good Hospital. But the medics’ work had been to no avail, Muub saw immediately. The large, delicate skull of the Committee Chair was clearly crushed.

  A Guard, crossbow loaded, hovered over the body, watching Muub surreptitiously.

  Hork lifted his face to Muub; Muub read bitterness, apprehension and determination in Hork’s round, tough features. He tried to put aside the interest shown by the Guard in his movements. Hork was a grieving son, he told himself. “Sir,” he said slowly. “He’s dead. I’m sorry. I…”

  Hork’s eyecups seemed to deepen. “I can see that, damn you.” He glanced over his father’s crushed body, picking at the Chair’s fine robes.

  “The staff here were afraid to tell you,” Muub said.

  “Do they have reason to be?”

  Muub tried to judge Hork’s mood. He was honest enough to admit to himself that he would have no compunction in delivering the hapless attendants here up to Hork’s wrath, if he thought it were necessary to save himself. But Hork, though clearly shocked, seemed rational. And in his heart he wasn’t a vindictive man. “No. They did everything they could.”

  Hork ran a hand over his father’s thin, yellow hair. “Make sure you tell them I appreciate their work. See they understand they’re under no threat for their part in this… And see they get on with treating the rest of the injured here.”

  “Of course.” There was plenty of work for the medics here. As the Air-chariot had hurtled beneath the devastated hinterland, Muub had caught shocking, vivid glimpses of smashed fields — of coolies and uprooted wheat-stems drifting alike in the placid Air — of shattered, exploded buildings. Air-pigs had nosed among drifting corpses, seeking food. He shuddered. “I may be forced to stay here myself, sir, after you’ve departed. There is urgent work to be done, all around this area, finding and treating the wounded before…”

  “No.” Hork still stroked his father’s head, but his voice was brisk, businesslike. “I intend to stay here one day, to ensure my father’s affairs are in order. During that time you may do as you please here. But then I will return to Parz, and you must return with me.” He raised his face to the sky and stared around at the Crust, at the newly congealed vortex lines. “The devastation is not restricted just to this farm, or even this part of the Crust. Muub, damage was done in a broad annulus right around the Pole, in a great swathe cutting through much of Parz’s best hinterland. It’s all to do with the Star’s modes of vibration, I’m told.” He shook his head. “If it’s any consolation there must have been similar bands of destruction encompassing the Star at every latitude, all the way to the North Pole. The Star rang like a Corestuff Bell, one cheerful idiot told me… Now I have to ensure that the work of relief is coordinated as well as it can be — and to start to consider the consequences of so much damage to Parz’s bread-basket hinterland. And I need you with me, Muub; you have thousands of patients throughout the hinterland, not just the few dozen here. And I have another assignment in mind for you…”

  “As you say.”

  Still Hork’s eyes probed at the sky. “Xeelee,” he said again.

  His mind full of images of destruction, Muub tried to focus on what the Chair-elect was saying… It seemed very important to Hork. And therefore, he thought wearily, it was important to Muub.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Who?”

  “The commoners… the ordinary people, here in the ceiling-farm. The coolies and their supervisors. Even some of the medical staff, who should be educated enough to know better.” Hork’s face grimaced in a ghastly echo of a smile. “They all saw the beams in the sky, the ship from beyond the Crust. The reality of these visions seems unquestionable, Muub. And the commoners have only one explanation… that the Xeelee have returned to haunt us.” He looked down at the devastated head of his father. “To destroy us, apparently.”

  Muub, disturbed, reached out and grasped Hork’s fat-laden shoulder; he felt the tension in Hork’s massive muscles. “Sir, this is nonsense. The commoners know nothing. You must not…”

  “Rubbish, Muub.” Again that wild look; but Muub, daring, kept his hand in place. “Everyone knows all about the Xeelee, it seems, even after all this time. So much for generations of suppression since the Reformation, eh? These superstitions are like weeds in my father’s fields, I’m starting to think. It’s the same with the damn Wheel cult — no matter how many of the bastards you Break, they keep coming back for more. Quite ineradicable. Even within the Court itself, Muub! Can you believe that?”

  Muub felt himself stiffen. “Sir, a great disaster has befallen us. We must deal with the consequences of the Glitch. We cannot pay attention to the gossiping of ignorant folk. And…”

  “Don’t tell me my duties, Muub,” Hork said. “Of course I have to deal with the impact of this Glitch. But I cannot ignore what has been seen, Physician.” Hork’s round face was stern, determined. “A huge ship, penetrating the Crust from the spaces beyond the Star. And appearing to fire some kind of weapon, a spear made of light, into the Quantum Sea. Muub, what if the ship is causing the Glitches? What then? Where would my duty lie?”

  Muub pulled away from Hork. Despite his exhaustion and shock, he felt a thrill of awe run through him, deep and primitive. Hork was planning to challenge the Xeelee themselves.

  “Now that my father’s gone the Court will be a nest of intrigues. In the chaos of this disaster, perhaps there’ll even be an assassination attempt… and I don’t have time to deal with any of it. We have to find a way to combat the threat of the Xeelee. We need knowledge, Muub; we need to understand the enemy before we can fight them.”

  Muub frowned. “But so many generations after the Reformation our knowledge of the Xeelee mythos has been relegated to fragments of legend. I could consult scholars in the University, perhaps…”


  Hork shook his heavy head. “All the books were fed into Harbor hoppers generations ago… And the heads of those ‘scholars’ are as empty as they are shaved of hair.”

  Muub forced himself not to run a self-conscious hand over his own bare scalp.

  “Muub, we have to think wider. Beyond the City, even. What about those weird upfluxers you told me about? The old man and his companions… curiosities from the wild. The upfluxers are Xeelee cultists, aren’t they? Maybe they could tell us something; maybe they have preserved the knowledge we have foolishly destroyed.”

  “Perhaps,” Muub said dutifully.

  “Bring them to Parz, Muub.” Hork glanced down at his father. “But first,” he said quietly, “you must attend to your patients.”

  “Yes. I… excuse me, sir.”

  Gathering his strength, Muub Waved away from the grisly little tableau and returned to his work.

  * * *

  Dura glided to a halt against the soft resistance of the Magfield. She let her limbs rest, loose, against the field; they ached after so many days’ Waving from the ruined ceiling-farm.

  She stared around at the empty, yellow-gold sky. The Quantum Sea was a concave bruise far below her, and the new vortex lines arced around her, clean and undisturbed. It was as if the recent Glitch had never happened; the Star, having expelled its excess energy and angular momentum, had restored itself with astonishing speed.

  It was a shame, Dura thought, that humans couldn’t do the same.

  She sniffed the Air, trying to judge the spacing of the vortex lines, the depth of redness of the distant South Pole. This must be about the right latitude; surely the sky had looked much like this at the site of the Human Beings’ encampment. She dug her hand into the sack tied to the rope at her waist. The sack, massive and awkwardly full of bread when she had started this trek, was now depressingly easy to carry. She pulled out a small fistful of the sweet, belly-filling bread and began to chew. She could surely be no more than a centimeter or so from the Human Beings’ site; she ought to be able to see them by now. Unless they’d moved on, of course — or, she thought, her heart heavy, unless they’d been destroyed by the Glitch. But even so she’d surely find their artifacts, scattered here — or their bodies. And…

  “Dura! Dura!”

  The voice came from somewhere above her, toward the Crust-forest. Dura flipped back in the Air and peered upward. It was difficult to pick out movement against the misty, complex texture of the forest, but — there! A man, young, slim, naked, Waving alone — no, she saw, something was accompanying him: a slim, small form which buzzed around his legs as he Waved down toward her. She squinted. An Air-piglet? No, she quickly realized; it was a child, a human infant.

  She surged through the Air, up toward the forest; she was still aware of the fatigue in her legs, but that felt distant, unimportant now.

  The two adults came to a halt in the Air, perhaps a mansheight apart; the infant, no more than a few months old, clung to the man’s legs while the adults studied each other with an odd wariness. The man — no more than a boy himself, really — smiled cautiously. There seemed to be no fat in his face at all, and there were streaks of premature yellow in his hair; when he smiled his eyecups seemed huge, his teeth prominent. Under the superficial changes, wrought by hunger and fatigue, this face was as familiar as her own body, a face she had known for half her life. After the thousands of strangers to whom she’d been exposed in Parz, and later at the ceiling-farm, Dura found herself staring at this face as if rediscovering her own identity. It felt as if she’d never been away from the Human Beings, and she wanted to drink in this familiarity.

  “Dura? We never thought we’d see you again.”

  It was Mur, husband of Dia. And this must be Jai, the boy whom Dura had helped deliver, just after the Glitch which killed her father.

  She moved toward Mur and folded him in her arms. The bones in Mur’s back were sharp under her fingers, and his skin was filthy, slick with fragments of Crust-tree leaves. The baby at his leg mewled, and she reached down an absent hand to stroke his head.

  “We thought you must be dead. Lost. It’s been so long.”

  “No.” Dura forced herself to smile. “I’ll tell you all about it. Farr and Adda are both well, though far from here.” She studied Mur more carefully now, trying to sort out the flood of her initial impressions. The signs of hunger, of poor living, were obvious. She ran her hand over the little boy’s scalp. Through the sparsely haired flesh she could feel the bones of the skull, the plates not yet locked together. The child was pawing at her bag now, his tiny fingers poking at the lumps of food contained there. Mur made to pull the infant away, but Dura pulled out a handful of bread, crumbled it, and presented it to the child. Jai grasped the bread fragments with both hands and shoved them into his mouth; his jaw scraped across his open hands, raking in bread, his eyes unseeing as he fed.

  “What’s that?”

  “Bread. Food… I’ll explain it all. Mur, what’s happening here?”

  “We are — fewer.” His gaze shifted from her face, and he glanced down at his feeding son, as if in search of distraction. “The last Glitch…”

  “The others?”

  The child had finished the bread already. He reached up his hands wordlessly to Dura, imploring more; she could see the fragment he’d devoured as a distinct bulge, high in his empty stomach.

  Mur pulled the child away from Dura, soothing him. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to them.”

  * * *

  The Human Beings had established a crude camp in the fringes of the Crust-forest itself. The Air here was thin, unsatisfying in Dura’s lungs, and the Quantum Sea curved away from her, far below. Ropes had been slung between branches of the trees, and garments, half-finished tools and scraps of food were suspended from the ropes. Dura touched one of the bits of food gingerly. It was Air-pig flesh, so old it was tough and leathery between her fingertips. The tree-branches for some distance around had been stripped of leaves and bark, revealing how the people had been feeding.

  There were only twenty Human Beings left — fifteen adults and five children.

  They crowded around Dura, reaching to touch and embrace her, some of them weeping. The familiar faces surrounded her, peering through masks of hunger and dirt. Her heart went out to these people — her people — and yet she felt detached from them, distant; she let them touch her, and she embraced in return, but a part of her wanted to recoil from their childlike, helpless pressing. She felt stiff, civilized. The very nakedness of these upfluxers was startling. She felt massive, sleek and bulky, too, compared to their starved scrawniness.

  Her experiences, her exposure to Parz City, had changed her, she realized; perhaps she would never again be content to settle into the small, hard, limited life of a Human Being.

  She gave Mur her bag of bread and told him to distribute it as he saw fit. As he moved among the Human Beings she saw how sharp eyes followed each move; the aura of hunger which hovered over the people, focusing on the bag of bread, was like a living thing.

  She found Philas, the widow of Esk. Dura and Philas moved away from the heart of the crude encampment, out of earshot of the rest of the Human Beings. Oddly, Philas seemed more beautiful now; it was as if privation was allowing the bony symmetry, the underlying dignity of her features, to emerge. Dura could see no bitterness, no trace of the rivalry which had once silently divided them.

  “You’ve suffered greatly.”

  Philas shrugged. “We couldn’t rebuild the Net, after you left. We survived; we hunted again in the forest and trapped some pigs. But then the second Glitch came.”

  The survivors had abandoned the open Air in favor of the fringe of the forest. It wasn’t particularly logical, but Dura thought she understood; the need for some form of solid base, to have a feeling of protective walls around them, would dominate logic. She thought of the folk of Parz in their compressed wooden boxes, their thin walls affording illusory protection from
the wilds of the Mantle not half a centimeter from where they lay. Perhaps people all shared the same basic instincts, no matter what their origins — and perhaps those instincts had traveled with humanity from whatever distant Star had birthed the Ur-humans.

  It was impossible to find Air-pigs now, no matter how widely the Human Beings hunted. The latest Glitch, savage as it was, had scattered the herds of pigs as well as devastating the works of humanity. The people were trying to survive on leaves, and were even experimenting with meals of spin-spider flesh.

  Of course, it was impossible to subsist on leaves. Without decent food, the Human Beings would surely die. (And so will I, now that my bread is gone, she thought with a surprising stab of selfishness.)

  Dura turned in on herself, trying to understand her own motives for returning to her people. After Rauc’s death, and after she’d helped to cope with the worst of the destruction at Qos Frenk’s farm, she learned that most of the coolies were to be released from their indentures. Qos, roots of yellow showing in his pink hair, his small hands wringing each other, had explained that he intended to save what he could of this year’s harvest, and then start the slow, painful work of rebuilding his holding. It would take many years before the farm was functioning again, and in the meantime it would not generate any income for Frenk; so he couldn’t employ them any longer.

  The coolies had seemed to understand. Frenk provided rides back to Parz City for those who wanted it; the rest, dully, had dispersed to seek work in the neighboring ceiling-farms.

  Dura slowly realized that she had lost the indenture which should have paid for Adda’s Hospital treatment. Overwhelmed and shocked, she resolved to return to her people, the Human Beings. Later, perhaps, when things had settled down, she would return to Parz and address the problems of Farr, of Adda’s debts.