Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

His face was close to hers, so close she could smell sweet bread on his breath. His expression was clear, set. Determination seemed to shine from him; just for a moment Dura felt tempted to let herself wallow in that determination, to relax in his massive strength as if he were her father reborn.

  But she resisted. She said harshly, “So you’ve no fear of death? Will your power in Parz help you overcome the final disaster?”

  “Of course it won’t,” he said. “And I’m not without fear. That surprises you, doesn’t it? I’m not a fool without the imagination to be afraid, upfluxer; nor am I so arrogant as to suppose myself beyond the reach of death. I know that in the end I am as weak as the next man in the face of the great forces of the Star — let alone the unknowns beyond it. But, just at this moment, I’m…” He waved a hand in the Air. “I’m exhilarated. I’m doing something more than waiting for the next Glitch to hit Parz, or coping with the devastation of the last one. I’m trying to change the world, to challenge the way things are.” His eyecups were dark wells. “And I couldn’t bear to allow anyone else to go into the dark at the heart of the Star, and not be there.” He looked at her. “Can you understand that?”

  “Some say you’re running away from the real problems. That genuine courage would lie in staying behind and wrestling with the disaster, not flying off on a spectacular, wasteful jaunt.”

  He nodded, his smile grim. “I know. Muub’s among them. Oh, don’t worry; I won’t do anything about it. It’s a point of view. Even one I share, in my darkest moments.” He grinned. “But I like to think my father would have been proud of me, if he could have seen me now. He always thought I was so — practical. So unimaginative. And yet…”

  There was a thud from the hull of the “Flying Pig”; the little craft shuddered in the Air. The pigs squealed, thrashing in their stall, and with a single, involuntary movement Dura and Hork grabbed at each other.

  The craft settled. Hork’s expansive belly, liquid beneath its covering of glittering material, was heavy against Dura’s stomach and breasts.

  “What was that?”

  The small, regular arrays of hair at the fringe of his beard wafted as he breathed. “Corestuff bergs,” he said, his voice tight. “That’s all. Corestuff bergs. If either of us was a Fisherman we’d not have been startled — that’s why they come down here in the first place: to fish for the Corestuff bergs. The “Pig” is designed to cope with little impacts like that; there’s nothing to fear.” His arms were still around her — and her arms were in turn wrapped around his torso, her hands clutching at the layers of material over his back — and now he reached up to stroke her hair. She wanted, suddenly, to bury herself in this bulky strength, to hide deep inside the warm darkness of the eyecups which were huge before her.

  She scrabbled at his clothing, found a line of buttons down the seam at his side; and she felt his thick, clumsy fingers traveling over her own coverall.

  A last shred of rationality made her assess his expression, his open mouth and flaring, shining nostrils, and she saw that his need was as great as hers.

  His clothing came apart, and she peeled a layer of thick, expensive material away from his belly and chest. She ran her left hand down the curve of his stomach and found his cache; with a deft, tender motion she pulled out the small penis, wrapped it in her fingers and squeezed it gently. It swelled rapidly, pushing at her palm like a small animal. He’d opened her coverall now, and she shrugged out of it, kicking her legs impatiently out of the clinging material and letting the garment drift away into the Air. She felt Hork’s hand slide, dry and hot, up her thigh and between her legs; she opened her thighs softly and he ran his fingers over her cleft, as clumsily and eagerly as an adolescent. There was a coolness inside her, and she knew that she was ready, that membranes inside her were already sighing lubricating Air into her. Now she took Hork’s penis — it was pulsing, rhythmically — and pushed it deep inside her; it entered her easily. He sighed, and buried his face in her shoulder; she turned her head, resting her cheek on his hair. His penis was like a warm, beating heart inside her. His legs, still clothed, were warm and rough against hers as she began to scissor her thighs, back and forth, letting the pattern of her movements stimulate the muscle walls inside her.

  At last she felt herself clench at him, hard; she shuddered, and she heard him gasp, his bulk heavy against hers as they drifted in the Air. Her muscles pulsed around him, and for a few seconds she felt flutters, beats, as the rhythms of their bodies strove to merge. But soon they coalesced, and she felt a surge of triumph as the walls of her vagina throbbed in unison with Hork.

  He came quickly, and she only heartbeats later. They cried out and shuddered against each other; she felt the muscles of his back move under her fingers.

  Hork slumped against her. She held him against her body, curling her fingers in his hair, unwilling to release his warmth and mass. She felt his penis still inside her, small and hot. The moment of closeness stretched on, and she thought of how strange this liaison would have seemed to her — deep in the lethal depths of the Star with the ruler of an astonishing City — if she could have imagined it, in the days before she left the upflux. For some reason she thought of Deni Maxx, the brisk doctor from Muub’s Hospital. But your coupling would have seemed much stranger to a watching Ur-human, Dura imagined her saying. We believe their sexual mechanism was based — not on compression, like ours — but on frictional forces. That’s obviously impossible for us, embedded in superfluid as we are, so when they designed us…

  Slowly the closeness faded. The sounds of the craft — the snuffling of the feeding Air-pigs, the soft whirr of the turbine axle, the slow hissing of the wood-lamps — seeped back into her awareness. Hork’s bulk seemed separate from her once more, and she became aware of folds of cloth trapped uncomfortably between their bodies, of a stiffness in her back as her body leaned forward over his belly.

  Gently she pushed him away. His penis fell out of her with a soft, warm sound.

  He looked into her eyes, smiled — he looked as if he had been crying, she thought briefly, startled — and tucked his penis back into its cache. He hauled his coverall around the circumference of his stomach, and she reached for her discarded clothes.

  “Well,” she said at last. “Where did that come from?”

  He drifted away from her and settled back into the small seat close to the control console; she saw how his sparkling coverall was noticeably less elegant now, crumpled and sitting askew on his shoulders. “Fear,” he said simply. His composure was restored, she saw, but he wasn’t bothering to restore his usual abrasive front. The atmosphere between them had changed; the tension which had pervaded the ship in the days since its launch had dissipated. “Fear. Obviously. I needed — comfort. I needed to lose myself. I don’t know if that’s enough of a reason; I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Absently she reached up and fed more leaf fragments into the pigs’ hopper. “I wanted it too.”

  He ran his hands over the simple instruments before him. “I meant what I said, you know. For myself, I’d rather be here, running this ship, than anywhere in the Star. In Parz, the problems I have to deal with, day to day…” For a brief, empathetic moment she could imagine how it must be to be in a position like Hork’s — with the welfare of not just himself, not just his family, but of thousands resting on his shoulders. She watched the set of his face and recalled the hint of weeping she thought she’d detected; briefly she felt she understood him. He said, “Nothing ever gets solved, you see. That’s the trouble. Or if it does, the next day it is worse. At least here…” He grasped the simple controls. “At least here, I am doing something. Going somewhere!”

  “Yes, but doing what? Going where?”

  He looked up at her. “You know there’s no reply to that. We’re seeking help, from whatever came out of the Core once before to destroy us.”

  “And how are we supposed to find it?”

  “You sound like the Finance sub-Committee,” he said sourl
y. “All we can do is put ourselves into a position where they can find us… whoever they are.”

  She felt her mood swinging away from him now; she felt hot and vaguely soiled, and once more the tight curves of the walls seemed to close in around her. She recalled, now, that they hadn’t kissed once. She didn’t even like this man. “So you’re happy to be going somewhere. Anywhere. Is that what this is really all about? — providing you with recreation from your awful burdens? And if it is, did you really have to drag me down into the depths with you?”

  For a moment there was an element of hurt in his face, and his lips parted as if he were about to protest; but then he smiled, and she saw his defensive front enclose him once more. “Now, now. Let’s not bicker. We don’t want to be found at odds when our host from the Core comes to meet us, do we?”

  “I don’t think I can restrain myself for such a long wait,” she said with contempt, and she turned back to her pigs, stroking and soothing them.

  There was another thud at the hull, a scrape along the length of the ship. This one was softer than before, but still Dura found herself shuddering. She calmed the nervous pigs with quiet words, and wondered if she had been right — if it really would be such a long wait, after all.

  Electron gas crackling from its superconducting hoops, the tiny wooden ship labored centimeter after centimeter into the thickening depths of the neutron star.

  * * *

  Bzya was to be put on double shifts, inside the Bells. He didn’t know when he would next have enough free time to get away from the Harbor between dives. So he invited Adda and Farr to come see him off, in a place he called a “bar”.

  Adda found the place with some difficulty. The bar was a small, cramped chamber tucked deep inside the Downside. The only light came from guttering wood-lamps on the walls; in the green, poky gloom Adda was strongly aware of how deep inside the carcass of the City he was buried.

  In one corner of the bar was a counter where a couple of people were apparently serving something, some kind of food. Rails crisscrossed the chamber with no apparent pattern; men and women clustered together in small groups on the rails, slowly eating their way through bowls of what looked like bread, and talking desultorily. Adda saw heavy workers’ tunics, scarred flesh, thick, twisted limbs. One or two appraising stares were directed at the upfluxer.

  Bzya was alone at a length of rail, close to the far wall. He saw Adda and raised an arm, beckoning him over; three small bowls were fixed to the rail beside him.

  Adda pushed forward, feeling self-conscious in his bandages, and clambered stiffly through the crowded place, aware of the babble of conversation all-around him.

  “Adda.” Bzya smiled through his distorted face, and waved Adda to a clear space of rail. Adda hooked one arm over the rail, hooking himself comfortably into place. “Thanks for coming down.” Bzya glanced, once, past Adda toward the door, then turned back to his bowls.

  Adda caught the look. “No Farr,” he said heavily. “I’m sorry, Bzya. I couldn’t find him.”

  Bzya nodded. “I expect he’s Surfing again.”

  “I know you did a lot for him, when he was working in the Harbor; he should have…”

  Bzya held up his thick palm. “Forget it. Look, if I was his age I’d rather be losing myself in the sky with the Surfers than sitting in a poky place like this with two battered old fogeys. And with the Games coming up in a couple of days, they’ll only have one thing on their minds. Or maybe two,” he said slyly. He nodded at the three bowls on the rail. “Anyway, it just means there’s more of this stuff for us.”

  Adda looked down at the row of bowls. They were crudely carved of wood and were little larger than his cupped palm, and they were fixed to the rail by stubs of wood. The bowls contained small slices of what might have been bread. Adda, cautiously, pulled out a small, round slice; it was dense, warm and moist to the touch. He turned it over doubtfully. “What the hell’s this?”

  Bzya laughed, looking pleased with himself. “I didn’t think you’d have heard of it yet. No bars in the upflux, eh, my friend?”

  Adda glared. “I’m supposed to eat this stuff?”

  Bzya extended his fingers, inviting Adda to do so.

  Adda sniffed at the plastic stuff, squeezed it and finally took a small nibble. It was as hot, dense and soggy as it looked — unpleasant inside the mouth — and the taste was sour, unidentifiable. Adda swallowed the fragment. “Disgusting.”

  “But you’ve got to treat it right.” Bzya dipped into the bowl, drew out a thick handful of the stuff, and crammed it into his mouth. His big jaws worked as he chewed the stuff twice, then swallowed it down in one go. He closed his eyes as the hot food passed down his throat; and after a few seconds he shuddered briefly, suppressing a sigh. Then he belched. “That’s how you take beercake.”

  “Beercake?”

  “Try it again.”

  Adda reached into the second bowl and lifted a healthy handful of cake to his mouth. It sat in his mouth, hot, dense and eminently indigestible; but, with determination, he bit into it a couple of times and then swallowed, forcing his throat to accept the incompressible stuff. The cake passed down his throat, a hard, painful lump. “Fabulous,” he said when it was gone. “I’m so glad I came.”

  Bzya grinned and held up his palm.

  …And a heat seemed to surge smoothly out from Adda’s stomach, flooding his body and head; his palms and feet tingled, as if being worked by invisible fingers, and his skull seemed to swell in size, filling up with a roomy, comfortable warmth. He looked down at his body, astonished, half-expecting to see electron gas sparking around his fingertips, to hear his skin sighing with the new warmth. But there was no outward change.

  After a few seconds the heat-surge wore away, but when it had receded it left Adda feeling subtly altered. The bar seemed cozier — friendlier — than even a moment before, and the smell of the remaining beercake was pleasing, harmonious, enticing.

  “Welcome to beercake, my friend, and a new lifelong relationship.”

  The pleasing warmth induced by the cake still permeated Adda. He poked at the cake with a new wonder. “Well, I’ve not eaten anything with such an impact before, up- or downflux.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Bzya picked up a piece of cake and compressed it between his fingers. “Farr is developing a taste too, I ought to say. It’s a mash, mostly of Crust-tree leaf. But it’s fermented — in huge Corestuff vessels, for days…”

  “Fermented?”

  “Spin-spider web is put into the vats with the mash. There’s something in the webbing, maybe in the glistening stuff that makes it sticky, which reacts with the mash and changes it to beercake. Magic.”

  “Sure.” Adda took another mouthful of the beercake now; it was as revolting as before, but the anticipation of its aftereffects made the taste much easier to bear. He swallowed it down and allowed the warmth to filter through his being.

  “What does the stuff cost?”

  “Nothing.” Bzya shrugged. “The Harbor authorities provide it for us. As much as we want, as long as we’re able to do our jobs.”

  “What do you mean? Is it bad for you?”

  “If you overdo it, yes.” Bzya rubbed his face. “It works on the capillaries in your flesh — dilates them — and some of the major pneumatic vessels in the brain. The flow of Air is subtly altered, you see, and…”

  “And you feel wonderful.”

  “Yeah. But if you use it too often, you can’t recover. The capillaries stay dilated…”

  Adda gazed around the bar, at this safe, marvelous place. “That seems all right to me.”

  “Sure. Your head would be a wonderful place to live in. But you couldn’t function, Adda; you couldn’t do a job. And if it gets bad enough you couldn’t even feed yourself, without prompting. But, yes, you’d feel wonderful about it.”

  “And I don’t suppose this City is so forgiving of people who can’t hold down jobs.”

  “Not much.”

  “
Don’t the Harbor managers worry they’re going to lose too many of their Fishermen, to this cake stuff? Why dole it out free?”

  Bzya shrugged. “They lose a few. But they don’t care. Adda, we’re expendable. It doesn’t take long to train up a new Fisherman, and there’re always plenty of recruits, in the Downside. And they know the cake keeps us here in the bars, happy, quiet and available. They gain more than they lose.” He chomped another mouthful. “And so do I.”

  Adda worked his way slowly through the bowl, cautiously observing the cake’s increasing effects on him. Every so often he moved his fingers and feet, testing his coordination. If he got to the point where he even thought he might be losing control, he promised himself, he’d stop.

  The Fisherman had fallen silent; his huge fingers toyed with the cake.

  “I hear you’re on double shifts. Whatever that means.”

  Bzya smiled, indulgent. “It means I’m assigned to the Bells twice as frequently as usual. It’s because they’re running twice as many dives as usual.”

  “Why?”

  “The upflux Glitch. No wood coming into the City. Not enough, anyway. People bitch about food rationing, but the wood shortage is just as important in the longer term. And let’s hope the day never comes when they have to ration beercake… Anyway, they want more Corestuff metal, to use as building material.”

  “Building? Are they extending the City?”

  “Rebuilding. It goes on all the time, Adda, mostly deep in the guts of the place. Small repairs, maintenance. Although,” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “there are rumors that it isn’t just the need to keep up routine repairs that’s prompted this increased demand.”

  “What, then?”

  “They’re trying to strengthen the City’s structure. Rebuild the skeleton with more Corestuff. They’re not shouting about it for fear of causing panic; but they’re endeavoring to make it more robust in the face of future problems. Like a closer Glitch.”

  Adda frowned. “Can they do that? Will it work?”

  “I’m not an engineer. I don’t know.” Bzya chewed on the cake, absently. “But I doubt it,” he said without emotion. “The City’s so huge; you’d have to rip most of its guts out to strengthen it significantly. And it’s a ramshackle structure. I mean, it grew, it was never planned. It was built for space, not strength.”