Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  Soon they were approaching the artifact, shepherded by spears and scowls.

  Mur squeezed Philas’s hand. “You should have said we weren’t thieves,” he whispered. “I was thinking of trying a little begging.”

  She managed a small laugh. “It wouldn’t have worked. These people have no more than we have… or had, before we lost our home.” She pointed at Borz, to their left. “Look at the hat he’s wearing.”

  The hat’s brim was piled with pleats of fine material, knotted into place by ties fixed through holes in the leather of the hat. Mur imagined undoing those ties; perhaps a kind of net would drop down, around the head.

  “It’s odd, but what about it?”

  “Remember Dura’s tales of her time on the ceiling-farm. The Air-tanks they made her wear, working high up, close to the Crust. The masks…”

  “Oh. Right.” Mur nodded. “Those hats must have come from coolies’ Air-tanks.”

  “So my guess is these people used to be coolies. Maybe they ran away.”

  “But they ought to know about Parz.”

  Philas laughed without humor. She seemed in control of herself again, but her mood was black. “So they are concealing things from us. Well, we lied to them. That’s what the world is like, it seems.”

  Mur stared at Borz’s hat. Apart from Deni Maxx’s Air-car it was the first artifact even remotely related to the City he’d ever seen. And recognizing it now from Dura’s description somehow lent veracity to Dura’s bizarre tale. He felt oddly reassured by the confirmation of this small detail, as if somewhere inwardly he’d imagined Dura might be lying, or mad.

  The people turned to stare, suspicious and hostile, as the Human Beings were brought into the encampment by Borz and his companion. There seemed to be around forty humans in the little colony, perhaps fifteen of them children and infants. The adults were fixing clothes, mending nets, sharpening knives, lounging in the Air and talking. Children wriggled around them like tiny rays, their bare skins crackling with electron gas. None of it would have looked out of place in any of the Human Beings’ encampments, Mur thought.

  The tetrahedral artifact loomed beyond the small-scale human activities. It was a skeletal framework, incongruous, sharp, dark.

  Borz and the woman hung back as Mur and Philas hesitantly approached the tetrahedron’s forbidding geometries. Mur peered up at the framework. The edges were poles a little thicker than his wrist, each about ten mansheights long. They were precisely machined of some dull, dark substance. The four triangular faces defined by the edges enclosed nothing but ordinary Air — in fact, the people here had slung sections of net to enclose a small herd of squabbling, starved-looking Air-pigs at the framework’s geometric center. Elsewhere on the framework rough bags had been fixed by bits of rope; irregular bulges told Mur that the bags probably contained food, clothes and tools.

  Mur moved forward, reached out a tentative hand and laid his palm against one edge. The material was smooth, hard and cold to the touch. Maybe this was the Corestuff of which Dura had spoken, extracted from the forbidding depths of the underMantle by City folk (and now, unimaginably, by the boy Farr whom Mur had grown up with).

  Philas asked, “Can we go inside?”

  The woman laughed. “Of course you can. Your friend was right… nothing works, any more.”

  The man grunted to Mur. “We’d hardly keep our pigs in there if they were going to be whisked off to the North Pole at any moment.”

  “I imagine not.”

  Philas passed cautiously through one face of the tetrahedron. Mur saw her shiver as she crossed the invisible plane marked by the edges. She hovered close to the pigs and turned in the Air, peering into the corners of the tetrahedron.

  The man — Borz — grunted. “Oh, what the hell.” He dug into one of the bags dangling on the tetrahedral frame and extracted a handful of food. “Here.”

  Mur grabbed the food. It was stale, slightly stinking Air-pig flesh. Mur allowed himself one deep bite before stuffing the rest into his belt. “Thank you,” he said around the mouthful of food. “I can see you’ve little to spare.”

  The woman drifted closer to him. “Once,” she said slowly, “this frame sparkled blue-white. As if it was made of vortex lines. Can you imagine it? And it really was a wormhole Interface; you could pass through it and cross the Mantle in a heartbeat.” For a moment she sounded sad — nostalgic for days she’d never seen — but now her dismissive expression returned. “So they say, anyway. But then the Core Wars came…”

  After raising several generations of Human Beings, the Colonists had suddenly withdrawn. According to the Human Beings’ fragmented oral histories the Colonists had retreated into the Core, taking most of the marvelous Ur-human technology with them, and destroying anything they were forced to leave behind.

  The Human Beings had been left stranded in the Air, helpless, with no tools save their bare hands.

  Perhaps the Colonists had expected the Human Beings to die off, Mur wondered. But they hadn’t. Indeed, if Dura’s tales of Parz and its hinterland were accurate, they had begun to construct a new society of their own, using nothing but their own ingenuity and the resources of the Star. A civilization which — if not yet Mantle-wide — was at least on a scale to bear comparison with the great days of the ancients.

  “The wormholes collapsed,” the woman said. “Most of the Interfaces were taken away into the Core. But some of them were left behind, like this one. But its vortex-light died. Now it just drifts around in the Magfield…”

  “I wonder what happened to the people inside the wormholes,” Mur said. “When the holes collapsed.”

  Philas came drifting out of the tetrahedron. “Come on, Mur,” she said tiredly.

  Mur thanked Borz for the scrap of food, and nodded to the woman — whose name, he realized, he’d never learned.

  The pair barely reacted, and their scowls seemed to be returning. Their spears had never left their hands, Mur noticed.

  They Waved out of the little encampment. A child jeered at them, until silenced by a parent; Mur and Philas didn’t look back.

  They began to Wave upward, side by side.

  Mur gazed up at the Crust-forest. “That seems a hell of a long way back,” he said. “To have come all this way, for a handful of meat…”

  “Yes,” Philas said savagely, “but we might have found riches. Riches beyond imagining. We had to come.”

  “I wonder why they stay here, close to the Interface. Do you think it protects them, when Glitches come?”

  “I doubt it,” Philas said. “After all, the thing floats freely, they said. It’s just a relic, a ruin from the past.”

  “Then why do they stay?”

  “For the same reason Dura’s City folk built their City at the Pole.” Philas waved her hands at the empty Mantlescape, the arching vortex lines. “Because it’s a fixed point, in all this emptiness. Something to cling to, to call home.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand; already she seemed short of breath. “Better than drifting, like we do. Better than that.”

  Mur lifted his face to the Crust-forest and Waved hard, ignoring the gathering ache in his hips, knees and ankles.

  19

  Dura made sure it was she, not Farr, whom Hork chose to go on the journey into the underMantle.

  At first Adda tried to explain Dura’s reasoning to Farr, to provide a bridge between them; but he could see that Farr was devastated. The boy mooched around the Upside apartment Hork had loaned the Human Beings like a trapped Air-pig. Adda wistfully watched him prowl, recalling Logue as a young man. The underMantle journey had many potent elements for Farr — the chance to protect his sibling by taking her place, the intrinsic excitement of the jaunt itself. Farr was still such a melange of boy and man.

  But — if one of the three Human Beings must go on this absurd trip — then Dura was the best choice. Farr didn’t have the maturity, or Adda himself the strength, to cope with the challenges the journey would provide…


  Adda cursed himself silently. Even in the privacy of his own mind he was starting to use the diluted language of the City folk, to be influenced by their gray thinking. Into the Core with that.

  The truth was that whoever went down inside this ramshackle craft into the underMantle would almost certainly die there. Dura’s qualification was only that she, of the three of them, had the skills and strength marginally to reduce that level of certainty.

  So, knowing Dura’s decision was right, Adda gave up trying to convince Farr. Instead he tried to support the decision in Farr’s mind in subtle ways — by taking the decision as a given, not even trying to justify it. He concentrated on trying to distract Farr from his anxious, angry concern for his sister, which wound up tighter as the day of the Mantlecraft’s launch neared. To this end Adda was pleased with the friendships Farr had made in his brief time in the City — with Cris, and the Fisherman Bzya — and tried to encourage them.

  When Cris offered to take Farr Surfing again Farr at first refused, unwilling to break out of his absorption with Dura; but Adda pressed him to accept the invitation. In the end it was a little party of four — Cris, Farr, Adda and Bzya — who set off, two days before Dura’s launch, through the corridors for the open Air.

  Adda had taken a liking to the huge, battered Fisherman, and sensed that Bzya had given Farr a great deal of support — more than Farr realized, probably — during Farr’s brief time in the Harbor. Now Farr was free of his indenture, thanks to the whim of Hork V, and — here was the boy showing his immaturity again, Adda reflected — now he seemed to sympathize little with Bzya, who was stuck with the situation Farr had escaped — the huge, stinking halls of the Harbor machines, and the depths of the underMantle. Instead, Farr complained at how little he saw of Bzya.

  Adda had no qualms in accepting Bzya’s help as they made their way through the busy corridors; the presence of Bzya’s huge arm guiding him was somehow less patronizing, less insulting, than any other City man’s.

  As they traveled out from the core of the City the street-corridors became barer, free of doors and buildings, and the Air more dusty. At last they reached the Skin. It was dark, deserted here, almost disquietingly so, and the City hull stretched above and below them. Adda surveyed the workmanship critically: curving sheets of crudely cut wooden planks, hammered onto a thick framework. It was like being in the interior of a huge mask. From without, the City was imposing, even to a worldly-wise upfluxer like himself; but seen from within, its primitive design and construction were easy to discern. These City folk really weren’t so advanced, despite their facility with Corestuff; the Ur-humans would surely have laughed at this wooden box.

  They Waved slowly along the Skin, not speaking, until Cris brought them to a small doorway, set into the Skin and locked by a wheel. With Bzya’s help Cris turned the stiff wheel — it creaked as it rotated, releasing small puffs of dust — and shoved the door open.

  Adda hauled himself through the doorframe and into the open Air. He Waved a few mansheights away from the City and hovered in the Air, breathing in the fresh stuff with a surge of relief. The party had emerged about halfway up the rectangular bulk of the City — in the Midside, Adda reminded himself — and the skin of Parz, like the face of a giant, cut off half the sky behind him. The imposing curve of a Longitude anchor-band swept over the rough surface a few dozen mansheights off; electron gas fizzed around the band’s Corestuff flanks, a visible reminder of the awesome currents flowing through its superconductor structure.

  Adda’s lungs seemed to expand. The vortex lines crossed the shining sky all around him, plunging into the crimson-purple pool that was the Pole beneath the City. The Air here was thick and clammy — they were right over the Pole, after all — but inside the City he always had the feeling he was breathing in someone else’s farts.

  The two boys tumbled away into the Air, hauling the Surfboard; Adda was pleased to see Farr’s natural, youthful vigor coming to the surface as he Waved energetically through the Air, responding to the refreshing openness. Bzya joined Adda; the two older men hung in the Magfield like leaves.

  “That door was a little stiff,” Adda said drily.

  Bzya nodded. “Not many City folk use the pedestrian exits.”

  Pedestrian. Another antique, meaningless word.

  “Most of ’em never leave the City walls at all. And those that do — because they have to, like your ceiling-farmer friend — take their cars.”

  “Is that a good thing, do you think?”

  Bzya shrugged. He was wearing a scuffed, ill-fitting coverall, and under its coarse fabric his shoulder muscles bunched like independent animals. “Neither one nor the other. It’s just the way things are. And always have been.”

  “Not always,” Adda murmured. He gazed around the sky with his good eye and sniffed, trying to assess the spin weather. “And maybe not forever. The City isn’t immune to the changes wrought by these unnatural Glitches. Even your great leader Hork admits that.”

  Bzya nodded at the boys. “It’s good to see Farr looking a bit happier.”

  “Yes.” Adda smiled. “The body has its wisdom. When you’re doing barrel-rolls in the Air, it’s hard to remember your problems.”

  Bzya patted his ample gut. “I wish I could remember doing barrel-rolls even. Still, I know what you mean.” Now Cris had set up his board. Farr rested it against the soft, even resistance of the Magfield and Cris set his feet on it, flexing his legs experimentally. Adda saw the boy’s muscles bunch as he pressed against the Magfield; his arms were outstretched and his fingers seemed to tickle at the Air, as if assessing the strength and direction of the Magfield. Farr pushed him off, recoiling through a mansheight or so, and Cris rocked the board steadily. He slid through the Air with impressive speed and grace; boy and board looked like a single entity, inseparable.

  Cris performed slow, elegant turns in the Air; then — with a thrust at the board and a swivel of his feet almost too fast for Adda’s rheumy eye to follow — he swept up and over, looping the loop in a single, tight motion. The boy flew across the blind face of Parz City, electron gas sparkling blue about his gleaming board.

  He came to rest close to Bzya and Adda, and stepped away from his board gracefully. Farr Waved over to join them. Still a little dazzled by Cris’s prowess, Adda saw the contrast with Farr: the Human Being had innate, Pole-enhanced strength, but beside Cris’s athletic grace he looked clumsy, massive and uncoordinated.

  But then, Farr hadn’t had the luxury of a lifetime playing games in the Air.

  “You ride that thing well.”

  “Thanks.” Cris dipped his head with its oddly dyed hair; he seemed acceptably unself-conscious about his skill. “And you’re in the Games, I hear,” Bzya said.

  Adda frowned. “What Games?”

  “They come once a year,” Farr said eagerly. “Cris has told me about them. Sports in the Air — Surfing, the Luge, acrobats, Wave-boxing. Half the people in the City go out to the Stadium to watch.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  Bzya poked Adda in the ribs with a sharp thumb. “It is fun, you old fogey. You should go along if you’re still here.”

  “It’s more than fun.” Cris’s tone was deeper than normal, earnest; Adda studied him curiously. Cris was a good boy, he had decided — shallow, but a decent friend to Farr. But now he sounded different: he was intense, his eyecups deep and dark.

  Bzya said to Adda, “The Games can make a big difference, for a talented young man like Cris. A moment of fame — money — invitations to the Palace…”

  “This is the third year I’ve had an application in for the Surfing,” Cris said. “I’ve been in the top five in my age group all that time. But this is the first time they’ve let me in.” He looked sour. “Even so, I’m unseeded. I’ve got a lousy draw, and…”

  Adda was aware of Farr hovering awkwardly close to them, his callused hands heavy at his sides. The contrast with Cris was painful. “Well,” he said, trying not to sound hostile to the
City boy’s prattle, “you should get your practice done, then.”

  The boys peeled away once more. Cris mounted his board and was soon sweeping through the Air again, an insect sizzling with electron gas before the face of Parz; Farr Waved in his wake, calling out excitedly.

  “Don’t be hard on the boy,” Bzya murmured. “He’s a City lad. You can’t expect him to have much sense of perspective.”

  “The Games mean nothing to me.”

  Bzya swiveled his scarred face to Adda. “But they mean everything to Cris. To him, it’s a chance — maybe his only chance — of breaking out of the life that’s been set out for him. You’d have to have a heart of Corestuff, man, not to sympathize with the boy for trying to change his lot.”

  “And what then, Fisherman? After his few moments of glory — after the grand folk have finished using him as their latest toy. What will become of him then?”

  “If he’s smart enough, and good enough, it won’t end. He can parlay his gifts into a niche in the Upside, before he gets too old to shine on the Surfboard. And even if not — hell, it’s a holiday for him, upfluxer. A holiday from the drudgery that will make up most of his life.”

  There was a shout from above them. Cris had ridden his board high up the City’s face, and was now sweeping through the sparkling Air close to the Longitude band. Electron gas swirled around his board and body, crackling and sparking blue. Other young people — evidently friends of Cris — had joined them, appearing from cracks in the Skin as if from nowhere — or so it seemed to Adda — and they raced around the Longitude band like young rays.

  “They shouldn’t do that,” Bzya murmured. “Against the law, strictly speaking. If Cris goes too close to the Longitude the flux gradients could tear him apart.”

  Then why’s he doing it?”

  “To learn to master the flux,” the Fisherman said. “To learn how to conquer the fiercer gradients he’ll find when he’s in the Games, and he Surfs across the face of the Pole.”

  Adda sniffed. “So now I know how you choose your rulers — on whether they can balance on a bit of wood. No wonder this City’s such a damn mess.”