Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  With Dura and Farr helping Adda, the three Human Beings made their way to Muub and his companions.

  * * *

  The six of them hovered together close to the center of the huge emptiness of the Stadium; Dura felt cold and isolated despite the clamminess of the Pole. Ropes and guide rails were slung across the huge volume all around them, silent evidence of the crowds this place was designed to accommodate.

  The Physician, Muub, was dressed in a severe, dark robe. As before, Dura found it impossible not to stare at the grand dome of his bald head. He greeted them with a smile which seemed professional enough but a little strained. “Thank you for your time.”

  Adda grinned. “Oh, we had a choice?”

  Muub’s smile thinned. Briskly he introduced his two companions: a Harbor supervisor called Hosch, cadaverously thin, who seemed to know Farr, judging from the sour glances he cast at the boy; and a tall, wispy tree-stem of a man called Seciv Trop whom Muub described as an expert on the Magfield. Like Muub’s, Trop’s fine old head was shaven, in the style of the academics of the University.

  Muub rapidly sketched in the background to Hork’s directive. “Frankly, I’m not certain about the value of this program; I may as well tell you that from the start. But I do sympathize with Hork’s thinking.” He looked about him, his expression hard. “I only need to be here, in the fragility of this Stadium, to recognize that we have to find some way to protect ourselves from the random danger of Glitches.”

  Dura frowned. “But why are we here? We Human Beings, I mean. You need experts. What can we possibly add?”

  “Two things. One is that you are experts — or the nearest we have — on the Xeelee. So Hork believes, at any rate. And second, there’s no one else.” He raised his arms as if to embrace the City. “Dura, Parz may seem a large and rich place to you, but the economy has taken a severe battering from the Glitches. All our resources are devoted to coping with the consequences, to rebuilding the hinterland… all but us, and we are all Hork felt able to spare.” He smiled at them. “Six of us, including a boy. And our mission is to save the world. Perhaps we will succeed; and what plaudits we will earn if we do.”

  He fell silent. The six of them hovered in a rough ring, studying each other warily — all but the Magfield expert Seciv Trop, who stared into the distance with his finely chiseled eyecups.

  “Well,” Muub said briskly. “Hork asked me to come up with options to achieve the impossible — to penetrate the underMantle, more deeply than any human since prehistory. And I, in turn, asked Hosch and Adda to bring us suggestions to work with. The Bells from the Harbor descend to a depth of about a meter. Our first estimates indicate that we must penetrate at least ten times as deeply — to a depth of ten meters below Parz, deep into the underMantle. Seciv, you’re here to comment, if you will, and to add anything you can.”

  Trop nodded briskly. “I’ll do my feeble best,” he said in a thin, mannered voice. Seciv Trop was clearly the oldest of the group. His almost-bare scalp was populated by fine clumps of yellow-gold hair, left carelessly unshaven. And his suit — loosely fitting and equipped with immense pockets — was more battered and patched than Dura had come to expect of the grander City folk.

  This old fellow was rather endearing, Dura decided. Farr asked, “Why are we here? In this Stadium?”

  “Because of your friend.” Muub eyed the pigskin doubtfully. “Adda tells me he would prefer to demonstrate his idea rather than describe it. I thought I’d better obtain as much space as possible.”

  The Harbor supervisor, Hosch, twisted his face into a sneer. “Then maybe we’d better let the old fool get on with it before his damn pig corpse starts stinking out the building.”

  Adda grinned and hauled on the short rope which attached the inflated pigskin to his belt. He held the grisly artifact before him, obviously relishing the squeamish reaction of the City men. The skin was revolting, Dura conceded; its orifices had been crudely sewn over and Air pumped in to inflate its boxy bulk, causing its six fins to become erect. Its sketchy, inhuman face seemed to be staring at her. And, she realized, it actually did stink a little.

  Hosch sneered. “Is this some kind of joke? The old fool thinks we could all don pigskins and swim to the bloody Core.”

  Adda waved the inflated skin in the supervisor’s face. “Wrong, City man. You people travel around in chariots hauled by pigs. At first I wondered if humans could travel in one of those all the way to the Core… but of course the pigs could never survive the journey into the underMantle. So we build a pig… an artificial pig, of wood and Corestuff. Strong enough to withstand the pressures of the underMantle.”

  Seciv nodded. “How is this device to be propelled?”

  Adda jabbed a finger at the pig’s jet orifice. “With jetfarts, of course. Like the real thing.” He flicked the inflated fins. “And these will keep it stable.” Now he pressed the skin between his arm and his bandaged ribs; Air squirted out of the jet orifice and the pig-corpse wobbled through the air in a ghastly, comic parody of life.

  Hosch laughed out loud. “And where do the farts come from, upfluxer? You?”

  Seciv frowned, his crumpled hair waving. “You could mimic the internal operation of the pig’s anatomy. The car could carry tanks of Air, heated by a stock of wood in a nuclear-burning boiler and expelled through a valve orifice.” With a delicate finger he reached out and poked at one flabby fin, tentatively. “You could even make an attempt at steering, by mounting these fins on gimbals worked from inside the craft. And the fart nozzles could be made directional, with a little ingenuity.” The old man nodded approvingly to Adda. “A practical suggestion in many respects.”

  Adda — despite himself, Dura realized — swelled at the praise; Hosch looked disgruntled.

  Farr said seriously, “But how could it survive the underMantle? Adda, I learned in the Bells that it’s not pressure alone that would destroy such a craft, by crushing it…” He snapped his fist closed suddenly, making Dura flinch; she wondered where he’d learned such crude dramatic tricks. Farr went on, “Nuclear matter — ordinary matter — would dissolve.”

  Hosch said rapidly, “Well, of course it would. Anyone with a fingernail of experience knows that. Our Bells are protected from the pressure by magnetic fields sent down from the turbines in the City.”

  Seciv Trop shook his head. “That’s a misapprehension, Supervisor. To be precise, the Bells are fed by electrical currents which are generated in the Harbor… but the protective magnetic shell is generated at the Bell itself, by superconducting hoops which girdle the Bell.”

  Hosch looked the old man up and down. “You’re a Fisherman, I suppose. We must have been on different shifts…”

  Muub touched Hosch’s shoulder. “Seciv designed the current generation of Bells — the Bells you ride every day. Hosch, your life depends upon his expertise; it suits you ill to mock him.”

  Hosch subsided. “Well, what of it? The boy’s point stands.”

  Seciv seemed impervious to offense. “One would simply need to gird this artificial pig around with superconducting hoops, and carry equipment to generate the magnetic field from within.” He frowned. “Of course, the bulk of the craft would be increased.”

  Dura asked, “Wouldn’t it get hot inside the wooden pig, with nuclear burning going on all the time?”

  Seciv nodded. “Yes, that would be a difficulty… though not in itself insurmountable. A more serious problem would be the supply of propellent Air. Compression ratios in even our best-made tanks are not very high. Sufficient for a jaunt to the ceiling-farms in an Air-car, but hardly enough for an expedition of this magnitude.” He eyed Adda sadly. “Again, perhaps this could be overcome. But there are two far more devastating flaws. First, a lack of stability. There is more to an Air-pig than an anus and a few fins, after all. The pig has six eyes to guide it…”

  “Well,” Adda said defensively, “you could have six windows of clearglass. Or more.”

  “Perhaps. But the windows wo
uld each be manned by a pilot — yes? — who would then have to relay instructions to a crew — five or six men who would haul laboriously at the directing fins, hoping to adjust the motion. Adda, your wooden pig would flounder in the Air, I fear.”

  Dura said, “But you don’t have to use fins. The thing doesn’t have to be exactly like a pig, after all. Maybe we could use jetfarts, coming from the sides of the pig.”

  “Yes.” Muub looked thoughtful. “That could be far more precise.”

  Seciv smiled indulgently. “Still, I would expect instability. Besides, I fear my second objection is fatal.”

  Adda glared at him, his eye-leech slithering across his cheek.

  “Your mode of propulsion could not work within the underMantle, let alone the Quantum Sea. In high-pressure conditions Air could not be expelled; it would be forced back into the body of the pig.”

  Hosch scratched his head. “I hate to be constructive about this stupid idea,” he said, “but couldn’t you throw a magnetic field away from the pig’s hull? Then the farts would be expelled into Air at normal pressure.”

  Seciv looked at him and ran bony fingers through his scraps of hair, evidently searching for a simple explanation. “But the expelled Air would still be inside the magnetic field, which in turn would be attached to the ship through the field lines. The Air would push at the magnetic shell, which would drag back the ship. It is a matter of action and reaction, you see…”

  Muub waved him to silence. “I think we can take your word for it, Seciv.” He smiled at Adda. “Sir, the consensus seems to be that we can’t proceed with your suggestion; but it was ingenious, and perhaps — do you agree, Seciv? — some aspects of it may survive in a final design. Also, it sounds to me as if we could use this idea to make Air-cars of a different design from those we have at present — Air-cars which wouldn’t need pigs to draw them. None of the problems we’ve talked about would arise if the craft operated in the free Air, after all.”

  Adda, clutching his retrieved pig with his one free arm, looked inordinately pleased with himself. Dura nudged him and said quietly, “You’re enjoying this. You’re forgetting you’re a miserable old bugger. You’ll confuse them.”

  Adda glared at her. “Well? Who’s next? This Fisherman’s been so clever about my suggestions; now let’s hear what he has to say.”

  “Indeed. Hosch?”

  The Harbor supervisor spread his empty hands, speaking only to Muub. “My idea is straightforward and I don’t need to send pigskins flying around to describe it. I say we stick to what we know. I say we extend the Spine… but build it as long as we need it to be, down into the underMantle.”

  Seciv Trop rubbed his chin. “Well, that has the merit of familiarity, as you say. The wooden Spine would need protecting against dissolution in the underMantle, but we could use superconducting coils to achieve that, as we do now… But what an awesome undertaking it would be. I doubt if such a Spine could sustain its structural integrity on the lengthscale required. And it might affect the stability of the City itself. Could the anchor-bands sustain our position, here at the Pole, with such a counterweight?”

  Muub was shaking his head. “Hosch, we can’t conceivably spare the resources for this. You must know the timber convoys from the Crust have dried up since the Glitch, so we’re not getting the wood. And we haven’t the manpower to spare, in any case…”

  “Besides,” Dura said, “what if a Glitch hit? The Spine would be so fragile it would be destroyed in moments.”

  Hosch folded his arms and crossed his legs, turning his wiry body into a ball of finality. “Then it’s impossible. We may as well stop wasting our time and tell Hork so.”

  Muub turned to him. “Frankly, Hosch, I won’t be sorry if that is our conclusion. I’d rather not waste any more time and effort on this fool’s errand than I have to.”

  “Oh, no.” Seciv Trop’s creased face showed irritation. “We haven’t reached such a conclusion at all. We’ve merely eliminated possibilities. And we do, perhaps, have some of the elements of a workable solution.”

  Muub looked sour, and he pulled at a thread in his robe. “Go on.”

  “First, we know that this hypothetical device — this new, free-floating Bell — will need a protective magnetic field, to keep it from dissolution, and some means of propulsion. It will have to be self-sustaining; our traditional methods cannot be extended to such depths, so we’ve ruled out supply from the City. So the device would have to carry a simple turbine to generate a protective field.”

  “How would it move?” Dura asked. “I thought you said that jetfarts couldn’t work.”

  “And so they couldn’t,” said Seciv. “But there are other means of propulsion…”

  “Waving,” said Farr, his round face animated. “What about that? Maybe we could make a Bell that could swim freely, a Bell that could Wave.”

  “Exactly.” Seciv nodded, looking pleased. “We could haul ourselves along the Magfield, exactly as we do when we Wave in the Air. Well done, young man.”

  Muub pulled at his lower lip. “But maybe the Magfield doesn’t penetrate the underMantle.”

  “We believe it does,” Seciv said. “The underMantle and the Sea are permeated by charged particles — protons, electrons and hyperons — which sustain the Magfield.”

  Hosch sneered. “What would we do, attach a pair of false legs to the back?”

  Farr — whose imagination seemed to have been caught — said excitedly, “No, you’d Wave using coils of superconductor. Like the anchor-bands. You could move them from inside the Bell, and…”

  “Good thinking once more,” Seciv said smoothly. “But you could go a little further. It wouldn’t be necessary to move the coils themselves, physically; it is the movement of the current within them that could generate forward motion.”

  Muub was nodding slowly. “I see. So you’d make the current flow back and forth.”

  “Have it alternate. Exactly. Then the coils could be fixed rigidly to the hull. And, of course, this design would have a certain economy: the craft’s propulsion system would be one and the same as the magnetic shielding system.” He frowned. “But we would still face the problem of the excessive heat in the interior of the craft generated by a nuclear-burning turbine in an enclosed space…”

  Hosch looked reluctant to speak, as if, Dura thought, he genuinely hated to contribute anything positive. “But you wouldn’t need to use nuclear burning,” he said at last. “Anything to power the turbine would be sufficient… maybe even human muscles.”

  “No, I fear our muscles would be too feeble for such a task. But we could use the power of animals — a team of pigs, harnessed to some form of turbine — yes, indeed!” He laughed and clapped Adda on the back, sending the old man spinning slowly like a bandaged fan. “So it seems after all that we will be riding pigs to the Core!”

  Adda steadied himself, grinning widely.

  Muub looked around the group. “I don’t believe it.” He sounded disappointed. “I think we’ve come up with something we could build… something that might actually work.”

  Seciv pulled at his chin; Dura had never seen hands so bony and delicate. “We should build a prototype — there may still be unforeseen problems with the design. And, of course, once the descent begins the craft will encounter conditions we can only guess at.”

  “And then,” Dura said, her spine prickling and cold, “there are the Colonists. In fact, the mission will be a failure if it doesn’t encounter the Colonists. What then?”

  “What indeed?” Seciv echoed gravely.

  Muub ran a hand over his bald head. “Damn you. Damn all of you. You’ve succeeded too well; I can’t justify reporting to Hork that this idea of his is impossible.” He eyed the Harbor supervisor. “Hosch, I want you to take charge of the design and construction of a prototype.”

  Hosch glared back resentfully, his thin face livid.

  Muub said icily, “Call on these upfluxers, and you can have some of Seciv’s time.
As for labor, use some of your workers from the Harbor. But keep it simple and cheap, will you? There’s no need to waste more of our energy on this than we have to.” He turned in the Air, dismissing them. “Call me when the prototype’s ready.”

  * * *

  The Human Beings, arms loosely linked, followed Muub and the others slowly out of the Stadium.

  “So,” Adda said. “A chance to confront gods from the past.”

  “Not gods,” Dura said firmly. “Even the Xeelee aren’t gods… But these Colonists could be monsters, if they exist. Remember the Core Wars.”

  Adda sniffed. “This damn fool expedition will never get that far anyway. This Waving Bell will be crushed.”

  “Perhaps. But you needn’t be so stuffy, Adda. I know you enjoyed playing with ideas, back there. You have to admire the imagination, the spirit of these City folk.”

  “Well, what now?” Adda asked. “Do you want to find your friend Ito?”

  “Later… I have something to do first. I need to find someone — the daughter of a friend, from my ceiling-farm. A friend called Rauc.”

  Adda thought about that. “Does the girl know what’s become of her mother?”

  “No,” Dura said quietly. “I’m going to have to tell her.”

  Adda nodded, his crumpled face expressionless, seeming to understand.

  And one day, Dura thought, I will have to go to the upflux forests, and tell Brow…

  She glanced at Farr. The boy’s eyes were fixed on an indefinite distance, and his face was blank. She felt as if she could read his mind. Humans were going to build a ship to find the Colonists. It was indeed an idea full of wonder… deep inside herself, too, she found, there was a small spark of awe.

  And Farr was young enough to relish a ride.

  But Adda was right. It was an utterly deadly prospect. And surely, she thought, as Hork’s “experts” on the Xeelee, at least one of the three Human Beings would be assigned to the voyage, if it were ever made…