Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  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 marveled 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 vigor 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 Harbor…”

  “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 toward 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 Harbor 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. Marvelous 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 traveled throughout the Star. The Quantum Sea had been as clear as the Air to them, in their marvelous machines. They had been able to venture even into the outer layers of the Core with impunity. And there had been marvelous 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, discolored 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.

  She was led away from the Hospital and through the streets. They passed through the Market, and Waved Upside along Pall Mall. The great avenue seemed quieter than she remembered. The lines of Air-cars moved much more easily than before, with clear Air between the sparsely spaced cars, and many of the shops were closed up, their wood-lamps dimmed. She began to understand how the disaster in the hinterland had impacted the economy of the City.

  Even so, the noise was a constant, growling racket and the few fans and illumination vents seemed hardly sufficient. Soon Dura found herself fighting off claustrophobia. And yet, only days before, she had been feeling restless in the limited company of the upfluxers. Her experiences really had left her a misfit, she thought gloomily.

  They took a turn off the Mall close to its Upside terminus and emerged, surprisingly, into clear Air-light. They had entered a huge open chamber, a cube a hundred mansheights on a side. Its edges were constructed of fine beams, leaving the faces open to the clear sky — this place must be clinging to the side of the City like some immense wooden leech — but, oddly, the Air was no fresher here than in the bowels of the City, and there was no discernible breeze. Looking more closely, she realized that the apparently open faces of this cube were coated with huge panels of clearwood; she was inside a transparent wooden box big enough to hold — she estimated quickly — a thousand people.

  It was impressive, but utterly bizarre; Dura felt bemused — as so often before — by the strangeness of the City.

  The messenger touched her elbow. “Here we are. This is the Stadium. Of course it’s empty today; when it’s in use it’s crammed with people… Up there you can see the Committee Box.” He pointed to a thin balcony suspended over the Stadium itself; his voice was thin, ingratiating. “People come here to watch the Games — our sporting events. Do you have Games in the upflux?”

  “Why have I been brought here?”

  The little man shied away, his bruised-looking eyecups closing.

  “Dura…”

  Farr?

  She whirled in the Air. Her brother was only a mansheight from her; he was calm and apparently well, and dressed in a loose tunic. There were people with him — Adda and three City men.

  She saw all this in the heartbeat it took to cross the space between them and take her brother in her arms. He hugged her back — but not as an uninhibited child, she slowly realized; he put his arms around her and patted her spine, comforting her.

  She let him go and held him at arm’s length. His face was square and serious. He seemed to have grown older, and there was more of their father about him.

  “I’m well, Dura.”

  “Yes. So am I. I thought you might have been injured in the Glitch.”

  “I wasn’t in the Bells when th
e Glitch came. It was my off-shift, and I was in the Harbor…”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said bitterly. “You’re too young to have been sent down in those things.”

  “It’s just the way things are,” he said gently. “Boys younger than me have served in the Bells. Dura, none of it is your fault… even if I’d been hurt it wouldn’t have been your fault.”

  He was comforting her. He really was growing up.

  “Anyway, I haven’t been back to the Harbor for a while,” Farr went on. He smiled. “Not since Adda had Hork send for me. I’ve been staying with Toba.”

  “How are the family?”

  “Well. Cris has been teaching me to Surf.” Farr held his arms out in the Air, as if balancing on an invisible board. “You’ll have to try it…”

  “Dura. You’ve made it; I’m glad.” Adda came paddling through the Air toward them. Dura glanced quickly over the old man; his shoulders, chest and lower legs were still bound up with grubby bandages, but he was moving freely enough. He was towing an object which looked like the skin of an Air-pig; sewn up and inflated, it bobbled behind his clumsy progress like a toy.

  She found a clear place on his face — away from the eye-leech — and kissed him. “I’d hug you if I wasn’t scared of breaking you.”

  He snorted. “So you got through the Glitch.”

  Briefly she told her story; Farr’s eyes grew round when she described the Xeelee ship. She told them how the Human Beings had fared in the Glitch — of their twenty dead. As she recited the familiar, lost names, she was reminded of the simple, moving name-litany ceremonial of the lumberjacks.

  She told Adda and Farr of the five upfluxer children lodging, for today, with Deni Maxx. Farr and Adda smiled, and promised to visit the kids.

  “Now tell me what we’re doing here. And why you’re towing a dead pig about the place.”

  Adda grimaced, making the leech slither across his crumpling cheek. “You’ll find out… damn foolishness, all of it.” He glanced around to the rest of the party; Dura recognized Muub, the Hospital Physician, with two other men. “Come on,” Adda said. “We’d better get on with it.”