Raft xs-1

by Stephen Baxter

  At last he broke through to Nebula air.

  He dragged himself from the hole and lay exhausted, staring up at the ruddy starlight.

  Rees sought out Gord. The former engineer admitted him without a word, and Rees threw himself to the ground and fell into a deep sleep.

  Over the ensuing shifts he stayed with Gord, largely in silence. Rees forced himself to drink — even accompanying Gord on a trip into the interior of the worldlet to fill fresh globes — but he could not eat. Gord gloomily studied him in the darkness of the cabin. “Don’t think about it,” he said. He dropped a fragment of meat into his mouth, chewed the tough stuff and swallowed it. “See? It’s just meat. And it’s that or die.”

  Rees let a slice of meat lie in the palm of his hand, visualizing the actions of raising it to his lips, biting into it, swallowing it.

  He couldn’t do it. He threw the fragment into a corner of the hut and turned away. After a while he heard the slow footsteps of Gord as the engineer crossed the room to collect the scrap of food.

  So the shifts passed, and Rees felt his strength subsiding. Brushing a hand over the remnants of his uniform he could feel ribs emerging from their mantle of flesh, and his head seemed to swell.

  The Boneys’ singing seemed to pulse like blood.

  At length Gord laid a hand on his shoulder. Bees sat up, his head floating. “What is it?”

  “The whale,” Gord said with a hint of excitement. “They’re preparing to hunt it. You’ll have to come and see, Rees; even in these circumstances it’s an incredible sight.”

  With care Rees stood and followed Gord from the hut.

  Peering around groggily he made out the usual groups of adults in their little circles in the huts. They were chanting rhythmically. Even the children seemed spellbound: they sat in attentive groups near the adults, chanting and swaying as best they could.

  Gord walked slowly around the worldlet. Rees followed, stumbling; the entire colony seemed to be singing now, so that the skin surface pulsated like a drum.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Galling to the whale. Somehow the song lures the creature closer.”

  Rees, befuddled and irritated, said: “I don’t see any whale.”

  Gord squatted patiently on the floor. “Wait a while and you will.”

  Rees sat beside Gord and closed his eyes. Slowly the singing worked its way into his consciousness until he was swaying with the cyclic rhythms; a mood of calm acceptance, of welcome even, seemed to spread over him.

  Was this what the music was supposed to make the whale feel?

  “Gord, where do you think the word ‘whale’ comes from?”

  The engineer shrugged. “You were the Scientist. You tell me. Perhaps there was some great creature on Earth with that name.”

  Rees scratched the tangle of beard on his jaw. “I wonder what an Earth whale looked like—”

  Gord’s eyes were widening. “Maybe something like that,” he said, pointing.

  The whale rose over the horizon of skin like some huge, translucent sun. The bulk of its body was a sphere perhaps fifty yards wide, dwarfing the bone world; within its clear skin organs clustered like immense machines. The leading face of the whale was studded with three spheres about the size of a man. The way they rotated, fixing on the worldlet and the nearby stars, reminded Rees irresistibly of eyes. Attached to the rear of the body were three huge flukes; these semicircles of flesh were as large as the main sphere and they rotated gently, connected to the body by a tube of dense flesh. The whale coasted through the air and the flukes soared no more than twenty yards over Rees’s head, washing his laughing face with cool air. “It’s fantastic!” he said.

  Gord smiled faintly.

  The Boneys, still singing, emerged from their huts. Their eyes were fixed on the whale and they carried spears of bone and metal.

  Gord leaned close to Rees and said through the song, “Sometimes they just attach ropes to the creatures, have the whales drag the colony a little way out of the Nebula. Adjusting the orbit, you see; otherwise they might have fallen into the Core long ago. This shift, though, it seems they need meat.”

  Rees was puzzled. “How can you kill a creature like that?”

  Gord pointed. “Not difficult. All you have to do is puncture the skin. It loses its structure, you see. The thing simply crumples into the worldlet’s gravity well. Then the trick is to slice the damn thing up fast enough to avoid us all being smothered by flesh…”

  Now the first spears were flying. The song broke up into shouts of victory. The whale, evidently agitated, began to turn its flukes more quickly. Spears passed clean through the translucent flesh, or embedded themselves in sheets of cartilage — and at last, to a great cry, an organ was hit. The whale lurched toward the surface of the worldlet, its skin crumpling. A mighty ceiling of flesh passed no more than ten feet above Rees’s head.

  “What about this, miner?” Quid stood beside him, spear in hand. The Boney grinned. “This is the way to live, eh? Better than scratching in the vitals of some dead star—”

  More spears hissed through the air; with increasing precision they looped through the compound gravity field of planet and whale and found soft targets within the body of the whale.

  “Quid, how can they be so accurate?”

  “It’s easy. Imagine the planet as a lump below you. And the whale as another small lump somewhere about there—” He pointed. “—Close to its center. That’s where all the pull comes from, right? So then you just imagine the path you want your spear to follow and — throw!”

  Rees scratched his head, wondering what Hollerbach would have made of this distillation of orbital mechanics. But the need for the Boneys — trapped on their little world — to develop such spear-throwing skills was obvious.

  The spears continued to fly until it seemed impossible for the whale to escape. Now its belly was almost brushing the rooftops of the colony. Men and women were producing massive machetes now, and soon the butchery would start. Rees, in his starved, dreamy state, wondered if whale blood would smell different from human—

  And suddenly he found himself running, almost without conscious thought. With a light motion he hauled himself to the roof of one of the sturdier huts — could he have moved so cleanly without his recent weight loss? — and stood, staring upwards at the wrinkled, semitransparent roof of flesh that slid over him. It was still just out of his reach — and then a fold a few feet deep came towards him like a descending curtain. He jumped and grabbed with both hands. His fingers passed through flesh that crumbled, dry. He scrabbled for a firm hold, believing for one, panicky second that he would fall again; and then, his arms elbow-deep in pulpy flesh, his fingers bit into a shank of some tougher material and he pulled himself higher onto the whale’s body. He managed to swing his feet up and embed them in the fleshy ceiling; and so upside down, he sailed over the Boney colony.

  His boarding seemed to galvanize the whale. Its flukes beat the air with renewed vigor and it rose from the surface with wrenches that threatened to tear Rees from his precarious hold.

  Angry voices were raised at him, and a spear whistled past his ear and into the soft flesh. Quid and the other Boneys waved furious fists. He saw the pale, upturned face of Gord streaming with tears.

  The whale continued to rise and the colony turned from a landscape into a small, brown ball, lost in the sky. The human voices faded to the level of the wind. The warm skin of the whale pulsed with its steady motion; and Rees was alone.

  10

  Its tormentors far behind, the great beast moved cautiously through the air; the flukes turned with slow strength, and the vast body shuddered. It was as if it were exploring the dull pain of the punctures it had suffered. Through the translucent walls of the body Rees could see triple eyes turn fully backwards, as if the whale were inspecting its own interior.

  Then, with a sound like the wind, the flukes’ speed of rotation increased. The whale surged forward. Soon it had climbed clear
of the bone world’s gravity well, and Rees’s sensation of clinging to a ceiling was transformed into a sense of being pinned against a soft wall.

  With some curiosity he examined the substance before his face. His fingers were still locked in the layer of cartilage beneath the whale’s six-inch layer of flesh. The flesh itself had no epidermis and was vaguely pink in color; the stuff had little more consistency than a thick foam and there was no sign of blood, although Rees noticed that his arms and legs had become coated with some sticky substance. He recalled that the Boneys hunted this creature for food, and on impulse he pushed his face into the flesh and tore away a mouthful. The stuff seemed to melt in his mouth, compacting from a fluffy bulk to a small, tough lozenge. The taste was strong and slightly bitter; he chewed and swallowed easily. The stuff even seemed to soothe the dryness of his throat.

  Suddenly he was starving, and he buried his face in the whale flesh, tearing chunks away with his teeth.

  After some minutes he had cleared perhaps a square foot of the soft flesh, exposing cartilage, and his stomach felt filled. So, then, he could expect the whale to provide for him for some considerable time.

  He looked around. Clouds and stars stretched all around him, a vast, sterile array without walls or floor. He was, of course, utterly adrift in the red sky, and surely now beyond hope of seeing another human face again. The thought did not frighten him; rather, he became gently wistful. At least he had escaped the degradation of the Boneys. If he had to die, then let it be like this, with his eyes open to new wonders.

  He shifted his position comfortably against the bulk of the whale. It took very little effort to stay in place, and the steady motion, the pumping of the flukes were surprisingly soothing. It might be possible to survive quite some time here, before he weakened and fell away…

  His arms were beginning to ache. Carefully, one hand at a time, he shifted the position of his fingers; but soon the pain was spreading to his back and shoulders.

  Could he be tiring so quickly? The effort to cling on here, in these weightless conditions, was minimal. Wasn’t it?

  He looked back over his shoulder.

  The world was wheeling around him. The stars and clouds executed vast rotations around the whale; once again he was clinging to a ceiling from which he might fall at any moment…

  He almost lost his grip. He closed his eyes and dug his fingers tighter into the sheet of cartilage. He should have anticipated this, of course. The whale had rotational symmetry; of course it would spin. It would have to compensate for the turning of its flukes, and spinnng would give it stability as it forged through the air. It all made perfect sense…

  Wind whipped over Rees’s face, pushing back his hair. The rate of spin was increasing; he felt the strain on his fingers mount. If he didn’t stop analyzing the damn situation and do something, before many more minutes passed he would be thrown off.

  Now his feet lost their tenuous hold. His body swung away from the whale’s, so that he was dangling from his hands. The cartilage in his clamped fingers twisted like elastic, and with each swing of his torso pain coursed through his biceps and elbows. The centrifugal force continued to rise, through one, one and a half, two gee…

  Perhaps he could head for one of the stationary “poles,” maybe at the joint between the flukes and the main body. He looked sideways toward the rear of the body; he could see the linking tube of cartilage as a misty blur through the walls of flesh.

  It might have been a world away. It was all he could do to cling on here.

  The spin increased further. Stars streaked below him and he began to grow groggy; he imagined blood pooling somewhere near his feet, starving his brain. He could hardly feel his arms now, but when he stared up through black-speckled vision he could see that the fingers of his left hand, the weaker, were loosening.

  With a cry of panic he forced fresh strength into his hands. His fingers tightened as if in a spasm.

  And the cartilage ripped.

  It was like a curtain parting along a seam. From the interior of the whale a hot, foul gas billowed out over him, causing him to gasp, his eyes to stream. The ruptured cartilage began to sag. Soon a great fold of it was suspended beneath the belly of the whale; Rees clung on, still swinging painfully.

  Now a ripple a foot high came rolling down the whale’s belly wall. The whale’s nervous system must be slow to react, but surely it could feel the agony of this massive hernia. The wave reached the site of the rupture. The dangling fold of cartilage jerked up and down, once, twice, again; Rees’s shoulders felt as if they were being dragged from their sockets and needles thrust into the joints.

  Again his fingers loosened.

  The rip in the sheet was like a narrow door above him.

  Shoulders shaking, Rees hauled himself up until his chin was level with his fists. He released his left hand—

  — and almost fell altogether; but his right hand still clutched at the cartilage, and now his left hand was locked over the lip of the wound. He released his right hand; the weaker, numb left slipped over greasy cartilage but — now — he had both hands clamped at the edge of the aperture.

  He rested there for a few seconds, the muscles of his arms screaming, his fingers slipping.

  Now he worked the muscles of his back and dragged his feet up before his face, shoved them over his head and through the aperture. Then his legs and back slid easily over the inner surface of the cartilage and into the body of the whale, and finally he was able to uncurl his fingers. With the last of his strength he rolled away from the aperture.

  Breathing hard he lay on his back, spread-eagled against the whale’s inner stomach wall. Below him, obscured by the translucent flesh, were the wheeling stars, and far above, like huge machines in some vast, dimly lit hall, were the organs of the whale.

  His lungs rattled; his arms and hands were on fire. Blackness fell over him and the pain dropped away.

  He awoke to a raging thirst.

  He stared up into the cavernous interior of the whale. The light seemed dimmer: perhaps the whale, for reasons of its own, was flying deeper into the Nebula.

  The air was hot, damp, and foul with a stench like sweat; but, though his chest ached slightly, he seemed to be breathing normally. Cautiously he propped himself up on his elbows. The muscles of his arms felt ripped and the fingernails on both hands were torn; but the bones of his fingers seemed intact and in place.

  He climbed cautiously to his feet.

  Stars still wheeled around the whale, but if he averted his eyes he felt no dizziness. It was as if he were standing in a steady gravity well of about two gees. Looking down he saw that his bare feet had sunk a couple of inches into the resilient cartilage. With some experimentation he found he could walk with little difficulty, provided he avoided slipping on the slick surface.

  Again thirst tore at his throat; it felt as if the back of his mouth were closing up with the dryness.

  He made his way to the aperture he had torn in the cartilage sheet. The wound had already closed to a narrow slit barely as wide as his waist. He had no way of telling how long he had been unconscious, but surely it must have taken a shift at least for the healing to progress this far. He knelt down, the cartilage beneath his knees a warm, wet carpet, and pushed his face close to the wound. A breeze bore him welcome fresh air. He could see the dangling flap of cartilage up which he had scrambled to safety: the ripped skin had grown opaque and was covered in a mass of fine creases. Perhaps eventually the dangling fold would be isolated outside the body, atrophy and fall away.

  Thanks to Rees’s scrambling the area of cartilage around the wound was scraped clear of flesh; only a few clumps clung here and there, like isolated patches of foliage on an old tree. Rees lay on the warm floor, took a fold of cartilage in his left hand, and thrust his head and right arm out through the wound. He swept his arm around the outer wall of the whale’s belly, hauling in as much flesh matter as he could reach. As he worked the breeze of the whale’s rotation washe
d steadily over his face and bare arms.

  When he was done he withdrew from the wound and hauled away his meager supply. He shoved a fistful into his mouth immediately. Sticky whale juice trickled, soothing, down his parched throat and fluffy flesh clung to his straggling beard; he squatted on the warm floor and, for a few minutes, ate steadily, postponing thoughts of an impossible future.

  When he was done, his thirst and hunger at least partially sated, his pile of flesh was reduced by at least half. The damn stuff would last hardly any time at all… He crammed the rest into the pockets of his filthy coverall.

  Now he became aware of another problem, as the pressure in his bladder and lower bowels began to grow painful. He felt oddly reluctant to relieve himself inside the body of another creature; it seemed an obscene violation. But, the muscles of his lower stomach told him, he didn’t really have a lot of choice.

  At last he loosened his trousers and squatted over the narrowest section of the rent in the stomach wall.

  He had a bizarre image of his waste being flung through the air in a cloud of brown and yellow. It was highly unlikely, of course, but perhaps one day the stuff would reach the Belt, or the Raft; would one of his acquaintances look up in horror for the source of this foul rain — and think of him?

  He laughed out loud; the sound was absorbed by the soft wall around him. He could think of a few nominations for the recipient of such a message. Gover, Roch, Quid… Maybe he should take aim.

  His needs satisfied, his curiosity began to reassert itself, and he stared around at the mysterious interior of the whale. It was like being inside some great, glass-wailed ship. From the leading face a wide tube stretched down the axis of the body, contracting as it neared the rear. Entrails of some kind branched off, looking like fat, pale worms that coiled around the principal esophagus. Sacs which could hold four men were suspended around the axial tube, filled with obscure, unmoving forms. Organs were clustered around the main axial canal; and others, vast and anonymous, were fixed to the inner wall of the skin.