Raft xs-1

by Stephen Baxter

  Rees smiled back uncertainly. The man gave him a strange look, then turned away.

  After uncomfortable minutes the queue cleared, passengers squeezing past them down the stairs with their packets of food, water and other materials. Watched by the sullen attendant, Rees and Jaen stepped up to the machine; Jaen began to tap into the control panel one of the Scientists’ registration numbers, and then a complex sequence detailing their requirements. Rees marveled at the way her fingers flew over the keyboard — yet another skill he might never get the chance to learn…

  And he became aware that the attendant was grinning at him. The man sat on a tall wooden stool, arms folded; black stripes were stitched into his shabby coverall. “Well, well,” he said slowly. “It’s the mine rat.”

  “Hello, Gover,” Rees said stiffly.

  “Still skivvying for those old farts in Science, eh? I’d have thought they’d chuck you into the nozzles by now. All you mine rats are good for…”

  Rees found his fists clenching; his biceps bunched almost painfully.

  “So you’re still the same nasty piece of work, eh, Gover?” Jaen snapped. “Getting thrown out of Science hasn’t helped your character development, then,”

  Gover bared yellow teeth. “I chose to leave. I’m not spending my life with those useless old space-wasters. At least with Infrastructure I’m doing real work. Learning real skills.”

  Jaen lodged her fists on her hips. “Gover, if it wasn’t for the Scientists the Raft would have been destroyed generations ago.”

  He sniffed, looking bored. “Sure. You keep believing it.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Maybe once. But what about now? Why haven’t they moved us out from under that thing in the sky, then?”

  Jaen took an angry breath… then hesitated, having no easy answer.

  Gover didn’t seem interested in his small victory. “It doesn’t matter. Think what you want. The people who really keep this Raft flying — Infrastructure, the woodsmen, the carpenters and metalworkers — we are going to be heard before long. And that will be the start of the long drop for all the parasites.”

  Jaen frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But Gover had turned away, smiling cynically; and a man behind them growled, “Come on; move it, you two.”

  They returned to the bus clutching pallets of supplies. Bees said, “What if he’s right, Jaen? What if the Scientists, the Officers are — not allowed to work any more?”

  She shivered. “Then it’s the end of the Raft. But I know Gover; he’s just puffing up his own importance, to make us think he’s happy with his move to Infrastructure. He’s always been the same.”

  Rees frowned. Maybe, he thought.

  But Gover had sounded very sure.

  A few shifts later Hollerbach asked to see Rees.

  Rees paused outside the Chief Scientist’s office, drawing deep breaths. He felt as if he were poised on the Rim of the Raft; the next few moments might shape the rest of his life.

  Pushing his shoulders back he entered the office.

  Hollerbach was bent over paperwork by the light of a globe over his desk. He scowled up at Rees’s approach. “Eh? Who’s that? Oh, yes; the miner lad. Come in, come in.” He waved Rees to a chair before the desk; then he rested back in his armchair, bony arms folded behind his head. The light above the desk made the hollows around his eyes seem enormously deep.

  “You asked to see me,” Rees said.

  “I did, didn’t I?” Hollerbach stared frankly at Rees. “Now then; I hear you’ve been making yourself useful around the place. You’re a hard worker, and that’s something all too rare… So thank you for what you’ve done. But,” he went on gently, “a supply tree has been loaded and is ready to fly to the Belt. Next shift. What I have to decide is whether you’re to be on it or not.”

  A thrill coursed through Rees; perhaps he still had a chance to earn a place here. Anticipating some kind of test, he hastily reviewed the fragments of knowledge he had acquired.

  Hollerbach got out of his chair and began to walk around the office. “You know we’re overpopulated here,” he said. “And we have… problems with the supply dispensers, so that’s not going to get any easier. On the other hand, now that I’ve shed that useless article Gover I have a vacancy in the labs. But unless it’s really justified I can’t make a case for keeping you.”

  Rees waited.

  Hollerbach frowned. “You keep your own counsel, don’t you, lad? Very well… If you were going to ask me one question, now, before you’re shipped out of here — and I guaranteed to answer it as fully as I could — what would it be?”

  Rees felt his heart pound. Here was the test, the moment of Rim balancing — but it had come in such an unexpected form. One question! What was the one key that might unlock the secrets against which his mind battered like a skitter against a globe lamp?

  The seconds ticked away; Hollerbach regarded him steadily, thin hands steepled before his face.

  At last, almost on impulse, Rees asked: “What’s a gee?”

  Hollerbach frowned. “Explain.”

  Rees bunched his fists. “We live in a universe filled with strong, shifting gravity fields. But we have a standard unit of gravitational acceleration… a gee. Why should this be so? And why should it have the particular value it does?”

  Hollerbach nodded. “And what answer would you anticipate?”

  “That the gee relates to the place man came from. It must have had a large area over which gravity was stable, with a value of what we call a gee. So that became the standard. There’s nowhere in the universe with such a region — not even the Raft. So maybe some huge Raft in the past, that’s now broken up—”

  Hollerbach smiled, the skin stretching over his bony jaw. “That’s not bad thinking… Suppose I told you that there has never been anywhere in this universe with such a region?”

  Rees thought that over. “Then I’d suggest that men came here from somewhere else.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course not,” Rees said defensively. “I’d have to check it out… find more evidence.”

  The old Scientist shook his head. “Boy, I suspect there’s more scientific method in your untrained head than in whole cadres of my so-called assistants.”

  “But what’s the answer?”

  Hollerbach laughed. “You are a rare creature, aren’t you? More interested in understanding than in your own fate…

  “Well, I’ll tell you. Your guess was quite right. Men don’t belong in this universe. We came here in a Ship. We passed through something called Holder’s Ring, which was a kind of gateway. Somewhere in the cosmos on the other side of the Ring is the world we came from. It’s a planet, incidentally; a sphere, not a Raft, about eight thousand miles wide. And its surface has a gravity of exactly one gee.”

  Rees frowned. “Then it must be made of some gas.” |

  Hollerbach took the orrery from the shelf and studied the tiny planets. “It’s a ball of iron, actually. It couldn’t exist… here.

  “Gravity is the key to the absurd place we’re stranded in, you see; gravity here is a billion times as strong as in the universe we came from. Here our home planet would have a surface gravity of a billion gees — if it didn’t implode in an instant. And celestial mechanics are a joke. The home world takes more than a thousand shifts to orbit around its star. Here it would take just seventeen minutes!

  “Rees, we don’t believe the Crew intended to bring the Ship here. It was probably an accident. As soon as the increased gravity hit, large parts of the Ship collapsed. Including whatever they used to propel it through the air. They must have fallen into the Nebula, barely understanding what was happening, frantically seeking a way to stay out of the Core…”

  Rees thought of the foundry implosion and his imagination began to construct a scene…

  …Crew members hurried through the corridors of their falling Ship; smoke filled the passageways as luri
d flames singed the air. The hull was breached; the raw air of the Nebula scoured through the cabins, and through rents in the silver walls the Crew saw flying trees and huge, cloudy whales, all utterly unlike anything in their experience , . .

  “The Bones alone know how they survived those first few shifts. But survive they did; they harnessed trees and stayed out of the clutches of the Core; and gradually men spread through the Nebula, to the Belt worlds and beyond—”

  “What?” Rees’s focus snapped back to the present. “But I thought you were describing how the Raft folk got here… I assumed that Belt folk and the others—”

  “Came from somewhere else?” Hollerbach smiled, looking tired. “It’s rather convenient for us, in comparative comfort here on the Raft, to believe so; but the fact is that all the humans in the Nebula originated on the Ship. Yes, even the Boneys. And in fact this myth of disparate origins is probably damaging the species. We need to cross-breed, to expand the size of our gene pool…”

  Rees thought that over. In retrospect there were so many obvious points of similarity between life here and in the Belt. But the thought of the obvious differences, of the relentless harshness of Belt life, began to fill him with a cold anger.

  Why, for instance, shouldn’t the Belt have its own supply machine? If they had a shared origin surely the miners were as entitled as the Raft dwellers…

  There would be time to think on this later. He tried to concentrate on what Hollerbach was saying. “… So I’ll be frank with you, young man. We know the Nebula is almost spent. And unless we do something about it we’ll be spent too.”

  “What will happen? Will the air turn un-breathable?”

  Holierbach replaced the orrery tenderly. “Probably. But long before that the stars will go out. It will get cold and dark… and the trees will start to fail.

  “We’ll have nothing to hold us steady any more. We’ll fall into the Core, and that will be that. It should be quite a ride…

  “If we’re not to take that death ride, Rees, we need Scientists. Young ones; inquiring ones who might think up a way out of the trap the Nebula is becoming. Rees, the secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It’s what he asks. I think you’ve got that trick. Maybe, anyway…”

  A flush warmed Rees’s cheeks. “You’re saying I can stay?”

  Hollerbach sniffed. “It’s still probationary, mind; for as long as I think it needs to be. And we’ll have to fix up some real education for you. Chase Grye a bit harder, will you?” The old Scientist shuffled back to his desk and lowered himself into his seat. He took his spectacles from a pocket of his robe, perched them on his nose, and bent once more over his papers. He glanced up at Rees. “Anything else?”

  Rees found himself grinning. “Can I ask one more question?”

  Hollerbach frowned in irritation. “Well, if you must—”

  “Tell me about the stars. On the other side of Bolder’s Ring. Are they really a million miles across?”

  Hollerbach tried to maintain his mask of irritation; but it dissolved into a half-smile. “Yes. And some much bigger! They’re far apart, studded around an almost empty sky. And they last, not a thousand shifts like the wretched specimens here, but thousands of billions of shifts!”

  Rees tried to imagine such glory. “But…how?”

  Hollerbach began to tell him.

  5

  After Rees’s interview with Hollerbach Grye took him to a dormitory building. There was room for about fifty people in the long, flat building, and Rees, overwhelmed by self-consciousness, trailed the fussy Scientist down an aisle between two rows of simple pallets. Beside each pallet was a small cupboard and a rack on which clothes could be hung; Rees found himself staring curiously at the few personal possessions scattered on the floor and cupboard tops — combs and razors, small mirrors, simple sewing kits, here and there photographs of families or young women. One young man — another Science apprentice, judging by the crimson strands woven into his coveralls — lounged on a pallet. He raised narrow eyebrows at Rees’s unkempt appearance, but he nodded, friendly enough. Rees nodded back, his cheeks burning, and hurried after Grye.

  He wondered what this place was. Pallis’s cabin — where he had lodged since his arrival — had seemed unimaginably luxurious to his Belt-developed tastes, and this was hardly so grand, but surely still the dwelling of some exalted class. Perhaps Rees was to clean it out; maybe he would be given somewhere to sleep nearby—

  They reached a pallet free of sheets or blankets; the cupboard beside it swung open, empty. Grye waved his hand dismissively. “Here will do, I think.” And he turned to walk back down the dormitory.

  Rees, confused, followed him.

  Grye turned on him. “By all the bloody Bones, what’s the matter with you, boy? Don’t you understand simple speech?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Here.” Grye pointed once more at the pallet and spoke slowly and excessively clearly, as if to a simple child. “You will sleep here from now on. Do I need to write it down?”

  “No—”

  “Put your personal possessions in the cupboard.”

  “I don’t have any—”

  “Get yourself blankets from the stores,” Grye said. “The others will show you where.” And, oblivious to Rees’s lost stare at his back, Grye scurried from the building and on to his next chore.

  Rees sat on the pallet — it was soft and clean — and ran a finger over the well-worked lines of the little cupboard. His cupboard.

  His breath gathered in him and he felt a deep warmth spread through his face. Yes, it was his cupboard, his pallet — this was his place on the Raft.

  He really had made it.

  He sat on the pallet for some hours, oblivious to the amused stares of the dormitory’s other occupants. Just to be still, safe, to be able to anticipate classes tomorrow; that was enough for now.

  “I heard how you fooled old Hollerbach.”

  The words floated through Rees’s numbness; looking up, he found himself staring into the fine, cruel face of the Officer cadet he had bested outside the Bridge — he fumbled for the name — Doav? “As if having to live in these shacks wasn’t bad enough. Now we have to share them with the likes of this rat—”

  Rees looked within himself and found only calm and acceptance. This wasn’t a time for fighting. Deliberately he looked into Doav’s eyes, grinned slowly, and winked.

  Doav snorted and turned away. With much noise and banging of cupboards he collected his belongings from a pallet a few places from Rees’s and moved them to the far end of the hut.

  Later, the friendly lad who had acknowledged Rees earlier strolled past his pallet. “Don’t worry about Doav. We’re not all as bad.”

  Rees thanked him, appreciating the gesture. But he noticed that the boy did not move his place any nearer to Rees’s, and as the shift end neared and more apprentices gathered for sleep it soon became apparent that Rees’s pallet was an island surrounded by a little moat of empty places.

  He lay down on his unmade bed, tucked his legs, and smiled, not worried one bit.

  In theory, Rees learned, the Raft was a classless society. The ranks of Scientists, Officers and the rest were open to anyone regardless of the circumstances of their birth, depending only on merit and opportunity. The “Classes” of the Raft were based on roles of the Crew of the semi-legendary Ship; they denoted function and utility, so he was told, and not power or position. So the Officers were not a ruling class; they were servants of the rest, bearing a heavy responsibility for the day-to-day maintenance of the Raft’s social order and infrastructure. In this analysis the Captain was the least of all, weighed down by the heaviest burden.

  So he was told.

  At first Rees, his experience of human society limited to the harsh environment of the Belt, was prepared to believe what he was taught so solemnly, and he dismissed the snobbish cruelty of Doav and the rest as expressions of immaturity. But as his circle of acquaintances widened, and as his under
standing — formally and informally acquired — grew, he formed a rather different picture.

  It was certainly possible for a young person from a non-Officer Class to become an Officer. But, oddly enough, it never happened. The other Classes, excluded from power by the hereditary rule of the Officers, reacted by building what power bases they could. So the Infrastructure personnel had turned the Raft’s engineering details into an arcane mystery known only to initiates; and without appeasement of their key figures — men like Pallis’s acquaintance, Decker — they would exert their power to cut water or food supplies, dam up the sewers built into the deck, or bring the Raft to a halt in any of a hundred ways.

  Even the Scientists, whose very reason for being was the pursuit of understanding, were not immune from this rivalry for power.

  The Scientists were crucial to the Raft’s survival. In such matters as the moving of the Raft, the control of epidemics, the redesign of sections of the Raft itself, their knowledge and structured way of thinking was essential. And without the tradition the Scientists maintained — which explained how the universe worked, how humans could survive in it — the fragile social and engineering web which comprised the Raft would surely disintegrate within a few thousand shifts. It wasn’t its orbit around the Core which kept the Raft aloft, Rees told himself; it was the continuance of human understanding.

  So the Scientists had a vital, almost sacred responsibility. But, Rees reflected, it didn’t stop them using their precious knowledge for advantage every bit as unscrupulously as any of Decker’s workmen blocking up a sewer. The Scientists had a statutory obligation to educate every apprentice of supervisory status regardless of Class, and they did so — to a nominal extent. But only Science apprentices, like Rees, were allowed past the bare facts and actually to see the ancient books and instruments…

  Knowledge was hoarded. And so only those close to the Scientists had any real understanding of humanity’s origins, even of the nature of the Raft, the Nebula. Listening to chatter in refectories and food machine queues Rees came to understand that most people were more concerned about this shift’s ration size, or the outcome of spurious sporting contests, than the larger issues of racial survival. It was as if the Nebula was eternal, as if the Raft itself was fixed atop a pillar of steel, securely and for all time!