Raft xs-1

by Stephen Baxter

  “What do you mean, the rest of us?” Pallis lifted the cage from its stand; it was light, if bulky, and he held it out to Rees. The young Scientist put down his drink globe and took the cage uncertainly, staring at the agitated young trees. “This should go on the journey,” Pallis said. “Maybe you should take more. Release them into the new nebula, let them breed — and, in a few hundred shifts, whole new forests will begin to form. If the new place doesn’t have its own already…”

  “Why are you giving this to me? I don’t understand, tree-pilot.”

  “But I do,” Sheen said.

  Pallis whirled. Rees gasped, juggling the cage in his shock.

  She stood just inside the doorway, diffuse starlight catching the fine hairs on her bare arms.

  Pallis, with hot shame, felt himself blush; seeing her standing there, in his own cabin, made him feel like a clumsy adolescent. “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said lamely.

  She laughed. “I can see that. Well, am I not to be invited in? Can’t I have a drink?”

  “Of course…”

  Sheen settled comfortably to the floor, crossing her legs under her. She nodded to Rees.

  Rees looked from Pallis to Sheen and back, his color deepening. Pallis was surprised. Did Rees have some feeling for his former supervisor… even after his treatment during his return exile on the Belt? Rees stood up, awkwardly fumbling with the cage. “I’ll talk to you again, Pallis—”

  “You don’t have to go,” Pallis said quickly.

  Sheen’s eyes sparkled with amusement.

  Again Rees looked from one to the other. “I guess it would be for the best,” he said. With mumbled farewells, he left.

  Pallis handed Sheen a drink globe. “So he’s carrying a torch for you.”

  “Adolescent lust,” she said starkly.

  Pallis grinned. “I can understand that. But Rees is no adolescent.”

  “I know that. He’s become determined, and he’s driving us all ahead of him. He’s the savior of the world. But he’s also a bloody idiot when he wants to be.”

  “I think he’s jealous…”

  “Is there something for him to be jealous of, tree-pilot?”

  Pallis dropped his eyes without reply.

  “So,” she said briskly, “you’re not travelling on the Bridge. That was the meaning of your gift to Rees, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded, turning to the space the cage had occupied.

  “There’s not much of my life left,” he said slowly. “My place on that Bridge would be better to go to some youngster.”

  She reached forward and touched his knee; the feeling of her flesh was electric. “They’ll only invite you to go if they think they need you.”

  He snorted. “Sheen, by the time those caged skitters have grown, my stiffening corpse will long since have been hurled over the Rim. And what use will I be without a tree to fly?” He pointed to the flying forest hidden by the cabin’s roof. “My life is the forest up there. After the Bridge goes, the Raft will still be here, for a long time to come. And they’re going to need their trees.”

  She nodded. “Well, I understand, even if I don’t agree.” She fixed him with her clear eyes. “I guess we can debate it after the Bridge has gone.”

  He gasped; then he reached out and took her hand. “What are you talking about? Surely you’re not planning to stay too? Sheen, you’re crazy—”

  “Tree-pilot,” she snapped, “I did not insult you on the quality of your decision.” She let her hand rest in his. “As you said, the Raft is going to be here for a long time to come. And so is the Belt. It’s going to be grim after the Bridge departs, taking away — all our hope. But someone will have to keep things turning. Someone will have to call the shift changes. And, like you, I find I don’t want to leave behind my life.”

  He nodded. “Well, I won’t say I agree—”

  She said warningly, “Tree-pilot—”

  “But I respect your decision. And—” He felt the heat rise to his face again. “And I’m glad you’ll still be here.”

  She smiled and moved her face closer to his. “What are you trying to say, tree-pilot?”

  “Maybe we can keep each other company.”

  She reached up, took a curl of his beard, and tugged it gently. “Yes. Maybe we can.”

  14

  A cage of scaffolding obscured the Bridge’s clean lines. Crew members crawled over the scaffolding fixing steam jets to the Bridge’s hull. Rees, with Hollerbach and Grye, walked around the perimeter of the work area. Rees eyed the project with a critical eye. “We’re too slow, damn it.”

  Grye twisted his hands together. “Rees, I’m forced to say that your detailed understanding of this project is woefully lacking. Come—” He beckoned. “Let me show you how much progress we have made.” He slapped a plump hand against the wooden cage surrounding the Bridge; it was a rectangular box securely fastened to the deck, and it supported three broad hoops which wrapped around the Bridge itself. “We can’t take chances with this,” Grye said. “The last stage in the launch process will be the cutting away of the Bridge from the deck. When that is done, all that will support the Bridge will be this scaffolding. A mistake made here could cause catastrophic—”

  “I know, I know,” Rees said, irritated. “But the fact is we’re running out of time…”

  They came to the Bridge’s open port. Under the supervision of Jaen and another Scientist, two burly workmen were manhandling an instrument out of the Observatory. The instrument — a mass spectrometer, Rees recognized — was dented and scratched, and its power lead terminated in a melted stump. The spectrometer was placed with several others in an eerie group some yards from the Bridge; the discarded instruments turned blinded sensors to the sky.

  Hollerbach shuddered. “And this is something I certainly hesitate over,” he said, his voice strained. “We face an awful dilemma. Every instrument we vandalize and throw out gives us floor space and air for another four or five people. But can we afford to leave behind this telescope, that spectrometer? Is this device a mere luxury — or, in the unknown environs of our destination, will we leave ourselves blind in some key spectrum?”

  Rees suppressed a sigh. Hesitation, delays, obfus-cations, more delays… Obviously the Scientists could not metamorphose into men of action in mere hours — and he sympathized with the dilemmas they were trying to resolve — but he wished they could learn to establish and stick to priorities.

  Now they came to a group of Scientists probing cautiously at a food machine. The huge device loomed over them, its outlets like stilled mouths. Rees knew that the machine was too large to carry into the Bridge’s interior, and so it — and a second companion machine — would, rather absurdly, have to be lodged close to the port in the Bridge’s outer corridor.

  Grye and Hollerbach both made to speak, but Rees held up his hands. “No,” he said acidly. “Let me go into the reasons why we can’t possibly rush this particular process. We’ve calculated that if strict rationing is imposed during the flight two machines should satisfy our needs. This one even has an air filtration and oxygenation unit built into it, we’ve discovered…”

  “Yes,” Grye said eagerly, “but that calculation depends on a key assumption: that the machines will work at full efficiency inside the Bridge. And we don’t know enough about their power supply to be sure. We know this machine’s power source is built into it somehow — unlike the Bridge instruments, which shared a single unit by way of cables — and we even suspect, from the old manuals, that it’s based on a microscopic black hole — but we’re not sure. What if it requires starlight as a source of replenishment? What if it produces volumes of some noxious gas which, in the confines of the Bridge, will suffocate us all?”

  Rees said, “We have to test and be sure, I accept that. If the efficiency of the machine goes down by just ten per cent — then that’s fifty more people we have to leave behind.”

  Grye nodded. “Then you see—”

  “I see th
at these decisions take time. But time is what we just don’t have, damn it…” Pressure built inside him: a pressure which, he knew, would not be relieved until, for better or worse, the Bridge was launched.

  Walking on, they met Gord. The mine engineer and Nead, who was working as his assistant, were carrying a steam jet unit to the Bridge. Gord nodded briskly. “Gentlemen.”

  Rees studied the little mine engineer, his worries momentarily lifting. Gord had returned to his old efficient, bustling, slightly prickly self; he was barely recognizable as the shadow Rees had found on the Boneys’ worldlet. “You’re doing well, Gord.”

  Gord scratched his bald pate. “We’re progessing,” he said lightly. “I’ll say no more than that; but, yes, we’re progressing.”

  Hollerbach leaned forward, hands folded behind his back. “What about this control system problem?”

  Gord nodded cautiously. “Rees, are you up to date on this one? To direct the Bridge’s fall — to change its orbit — we need some way to control the steam jets we’ll have fixed to the hull; but we don’t want to make any breaches in the hull through which to pass our control lines. We don’t even know if we can make breaches, come to that.

  “Now it looks as if we can use components from the cannibalized Moles. Some of their motor units operate on an action-at-a-distance principle. I’m just a simple engineer; maybe you Scientists understand the ins and outs of it. But what it boils down to is that we may be able to operate the jets from inside the Bridge with a series of switches which won’t need any physical connection to the jets at all. We’re about to run tests on the extent to which the hull material blocks the signals.”

  Hollerbach smiled. “I’m impressed. Was this your idea?”

  “Ah…” Gord scratched his cheek. “We did get a little guidance from a Mole brain. Once you ask the right questions — and get past its complaints about ‘massive sensor dysfunction’ — it’s surprising how…” His voice tailed away and his eyes widened.

  “Rees.” The vast voice came from behind Rees; the Scientist stiffened. “I thought I’d find you hanging around here.”

  Rees turned and lifted his face up to Roch’s. The huge miner’s eyes were, as ever, red-rimmed with inchoate anger; his fists opened and closed like pistons. Grye whimpered softly and edged behind Hollerbach. “I have work to do, Roch,” Rees said calmly. “So must you; I suggest you return to it.”

  “Work?” Roch’s filth-rimmed nostrils flared and he waved a fist at the Bridge. “Like hell will I work so you and your pox-ridden friends can fly off in this fancy thing.”

  Hollerbach said sternly, “Sir, the lists of passengers have not yet been published; and until they are it is up to all of us—”

  “They don’t need to be published. We all know who’ll be on that trip… and it won’t be the likes of me. Rees, I should have sucked your brains out of your skull while I had the chance down on the kernel.” Roch held up a rope-like finger, “I’ll be back,” he growled. “And when I find I’m not on that list I’m going to make damn sure you’re not either.” He stabbed the finger at Grye. “And the same goes for you!”

  Grye turned ash white and trembled convulsively.

  Roch stalked off. Gord hefted his jet and said wryly, “Good to know that in this time of upheaval some things have stayed exactly the same. Come on, Nead; let’s get this thing mounted.”

  Rees faced Hollerbach and Grye. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the departed Roch. “That’s why we are running out of time,” he said. “The political situation on this Raft — no, damn it, the human situation — is deteriorating fast. The whole thing is unstable. Everyone knows that a ‘list’ is being drawn up… and most people have a good idea who’ll be on it. How long can we expect people to work toward a goal most of them cannot share? A second uprising would be catastrophic. We would descend into anarchy—”

  Hollerbach emitted a sigh; suddenly he seemed to stagger. Grye took his arm. “Chief Scientist — are you all right?”

  Hollerbach fixed rheumy eyes on Rees. “I’m tired, you see… terribly tired. You’re right, of course, Rees, but what can any of us do, other than give our best efforts to this goal?”

  Rees realized suddenly that he had been unloading his own doubts onto the weakening shoulders of Hollerbach, as if he were still a child and the old man some kind of impregnable adult. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t burden you—”

  Hollerbach waved a shaky hand. “No, no; you’re quite right. In a way it helps clarify my own thinking.” His eyes twinkled with a faint amusement. “Even your friend Roch helps, in a way. Look at the comparison between us. Roch is young, powerful; I’m too old to stand up — let alone to pass on my frailties to a new generation. Which of us should go on the mission?”

  Rees was appalled. “Hollerbach, we need your understanding. You’re not suggesting…”

  “Rees, I suspect a grave flaw in the way we live our lives here has been our refusal to accept our place in the universe. We inhabit a world which places a premium on physical strength and endurance — as your friend Roch so ably demonstrates — and on agility, reflex and adaptabilty — for example, the Boneys — rather than ‘understanding.’ We are little more than clumsy animals lost in this bottomless sky. But our inheritance of ageing gadgetry from the Ship, the supply machines and the rest, has let us maintain the illusion that we are masters of this universe, as perhaps we were masters of the world man came from.

  “Now, this enforced migration is going to force us to abandon most of our cherished toys — and with them our illusions.” He looked vaguely into the distance. “Perhaps, looking far into man’s future, our big brains will atrophy, useless; perhaps we will become one with the whales and sky wolves, surviving as best we can among the flying trees—”

  Rees snorted. “Hollerbach, you’re turning into a maundering bugger in your old age.”

  Hollerbach raised his eyebrows. “Boy, I was cultivating old age while you were still chewing iron ore on the kernel of a star.”

  “Well, I don’t know about the far future, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. All I can do is solve the problems of the present. And frankly, Hollerbach, I don’t believe we’ve a hope of surviving this trip without your guidance.

  “Gentlemen, we’ve a lot to do. I suggest we get on with it.”

  The plate hung over the Raft. Pallis crept to its edge and peered out over the battered deckscape.

  Smoke was spreading across the deck like a mask over a familiar face.

  Suddenly the plate jerked through the air, bowling Pallis onto his back. With a growl he reached out and grabbed handfuls of the netting that swathed the fragile craft. “By the Bones, innkeeper, can’t you control this bloody thing?”

  Jame snorted. “This is a real ship. You’re not dangling from one of your wooden toys now, tree-pilot.”

  “Don’t push your luck, mine rat.” Pallis thumped a fist into the rough iron of the plate. “It’s just that this way of flying is — unnatural.”

  “Unnatural?” Jame laughed. “Maybe you’re right. And maybe you people spent too much time lying around in your leafy bowers, while the miners came along to piss all over you.”

  “The war is over, Jame,” Pallis said easily. He let his shoulders hang loose, rolled his hands into half fists. “But perhaps there are one or two loose ends to be tied up.”

  The barman’s broad face twisted into a grin of anticipation. “I’d like nothing better, tree swinger. Name the time and place, and choice of weapons.”

  “Oh, no weapons.”

  “That will suit me fine—”

  “By the Bones, will you two shut up?” Nead, the plate’s third occupant, glared over the charts and instruments spread over his lap. “We have work to do, if you recall.”

  Jame and Pallis exchanged one last stare, then Jame returned his attention to the controls of the craft. Pallis shifted across the little deck until he sat beside Nead. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “How�
�s it going?”

  Nead held a battered sextant to his eye, then tried to compare the reading to entries in a handwritten table. “Damn it,” he said, clearly frustrated. “I can’t tell. I just don’t have the expertise, Pallis. Cipse would know. If only—”

  “If only he weren’t long dead, then everything would be fine,” Pallis said. “I know. Just do your best, lad. What do you think?”

  Again Nead ran his fingers over the tables. “I think it’s taking too long. I’m trying to measure the sideways speed of the Raft against the background stars, and I don’t think it’s moving fast enough.”

  Pallis frowned. He lay on his belly and once more surveyed the Raft. The mighty old craft lay spread out below him like a tray of fantastic toys. Suspended over the deck and marked by the occasional plume of steam he could see other plate craft, more observers of this huge dislocation. A wall of smoke climbed up from one side of the Rim — the port side, as he looked down — and, additionally, each of the trees in the central tethered forest had its own smoke cloak. The smoke was having the desired effect — he could see how the trees’ cables leaned consistently to his right as the flying plants sought to escape the shadow of the smoke — and he imagined he could hear the strain of the cables as the Raft was hauled aside. Cable shadows were beginning to lengthen over the deck; the Raft was indeed moving out from under the star which hung poised over it. It was an inspiring sight, one which Pallis in his long life had seen only twice previously; and for such cooperation to be achieved after the turmoil of revolution and war — and at a time when so many of the Raft’s best were occupied with the Bridge project — was, he decided, something to be admired.