Ring xs-4

by Stephen Baxter

  “What is it?” Morrow asked drily. “More problems with human body odor?”

  She turned, her eyes huge behind her spectacles. “Not that. But something… Something’s wrong.”

  Arrow Maker raised his face. “I can smell it, too.”

  “Describe,” Uvarov snapped.

  “Sharp. Smoky. A little like fire, but more intense…”

  Uvarov grunted. He sounded somehow satisfied. “Cordite, probably.”

  Arrow Maker looked blank. “What?”

  They reached the top of the ramp. Hastily, with both forest people bearing their weapons in their hands, they made for the Lock down which Uvarov had been carried.

  As they approached the Lock, they slowed, almost as if synchronized. The three of them — Arrow Maker, Morrow and Spinner — stood and stared at the Lock.

  Uvarov twisted his face to left and right. “Tell me what’s wrong. It’s the Lock, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Morrow stepped forward cautiously. “Yes, it’s the Lock.” The cylinder of metal had been burst open, somewhere near its center; bits of its fabric, twisted, scorched, none larger than his hand, lay scattered across the Deck surface. There was a stink of smoke and fire — presumably Uvarov’s cordite.

  Arrow Maker stood clutching his bow, open-mouthed, impotent. Spinner ran off toward the next Lock, her bare feet padding against the metal floor.

  Uvarov nodded. “Simple and effective. We should have expected this.”

  Morrow bent to pick up a piece of hull metal; but the twisted, scorched fragment was still hot, and he withdrew his fingers hastily.

  Spinner came running back. She looked breathless, wide-eyed and very young; she stood close to her father and clutched his arm. “The next Lock’s been blown out as well. I think they all have. The Locks are impassable. We can’t get home.”

  Uvarov whispered, “We should check. But I am sure she is right.”

  Morrow slammed his fist into his palm. “Why? I just don’t understand. Why this destruction — this waste?”

  “I told you why,” Uvarov said evenly. “The existence of the upper level was an unacceptable challenge to the mindset of Milpitas and the rest of your damn Planners. I doubt if they will have done any damage to the forest Deck itself. Sealing it off — sealing it away from themselves, apparently forever — should do the trick just as well.”

  “But that’s insane,” Morrow protested.

  Uvarov hissed, “No one ever said it wasn’t. We’re human beings. What do you expect?”

  Arrow Maker paced about the floor. Morrow became aware, nervously, of the muscles in the back of the little man which flexed, angrily; Maker’s face paint flared. “Whether it was intended or not, we’re trapped here. We’re in real danger. Now, what in Lethe are we going to do?”

  Morrow’s fear seemed to have been burned out of him by his anger at the foolishness, the wastefulness of the destruction of the Locks. “I’ll help you. I’ll not abandon you. I’ll take you to my home — I live alone; you can hide there. Later, perhaps we can find some way to open up a Lock again, and — ”

  Arrow Maker looked grateful; but before he could speak Uvarov wheeled forward.

  “No. We won’t be going back to the forest.”

  Arrow Maker said, “But, Uvarov — ”

  “Nothing’s changed.” Uvarov turned his blind face from side to side. “Don’t you see that? Arrow Maker, you saw the stars yourself. The ship’s journey is over. And we have to go on.”

  Spinner clutched at her father’s arm. “Go on? Where?”

  “Regardless of the reaction of these damn fool survivalists, we will continue. Down through these Decks, and onwards… On to the Interface itself.”

  Arrow Maker, Spinner and Morrow exchanged stricken glances.

  Uvarov tilted back his head, exposing his bony throat. “We’ve traveled across five million years, Arrow Maker,” he whispered. “Five million years… Now it’s time to go home.”

  11

  She shivered. Suddenly, she felt oddly cold.

  Cold? No. Come on, Lieserl, think.

  Sometimes her Virtual-human illusory form was a hindrance; it caused her to anthropomorphize genuine experiences.

  Something had happened to her just now; somehow her environment had changed. How?

  There it came again — that deep, inner stab of illusory cold.

  She looked down at herself.

  A ghost-form — a photino bird — emerged from her Virtual stomach, and flew away on its orbit around the Sun. Another came through her legs; still more through her arms and chest — and at last, one bird flew through her head, the place where she resided. Her cold feeling was a reaction to the slivers of energy the birds took away from her as they passed through.

  Before, the photino birds had avoided her; presumably residually aware of her, they’d adjusted their trajectories to sweep around her. Now, though, they seemed to be doing quite the opposite. They seemed to be aiming at her, veering from their paths so that they deliberately passed through her.

  She felt like screaming — struggling, beating away these creatures with her fists.

  Much good that will do. She forced herself to remain still, to observe, to wait.

  Behind her the birds seemed to be gathering into a new formation: a cone with herself at the apex, a cone into which they streamed.

  Could they damage me? Kill me, even?

  Well, could they? Dark matter could interact with baryonic to a limited extent. If their density, around her, grew high enough — if the rate of interaction between the birds and the particles which comprised her grew high enough — then, she realized, the birds could do anything.

  And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it; embedded in this mush of plasma, she could never get away from them in time.

  She felt as if a hard, needle rain were sleeting through her. It was uncomfortable — tingling — but not truly painful, she realized slowly.

  Maybe they didn’t mean to destroy her, she wondered drowsily. Maybe — maybe they were trying to understand her…

  She held out her arms and submitted herself to inspection by the photino birds.

  They formed into a rough column — Arrow Maker leading, then Uvarov, followed by Morrow and Spinner-of-Rope, with Spinner occasionally boosting Uvarov’s chair.

  Morrow stepped over the ramp’s shallow lip and began the gentle, hundred-yard descent back into the comparative brightness and warmth of Deck Two.

  “Listen to me,” Garry Uvarov rasped. “We’re at the top of the lifedome. We have to get to the bottom of the dome, about a mile below us. Then we’ll need to find a pod and traverse half the length of the Northern’s spine, toward the drive unit; and that’s where we’ll find the Interface. Got that?”

  Most of this was unimaginable to Morrow. He tried to concentrate on the part he understood. “What do you mean by the bottom of the lifedome? Deck Four?”

  A bark of laughter from Uvarov. “No; I mean the loading bay. Below Deck Fifteen.”

  Morrow felt something cringe within him. I’m too old for this… “But, Uvarov, there is nothing below Deck Four — ”

  “Don’t be so damn stupid, man.”

  “…I mean, nothing inhabited. Even Deck Four is just used as a mine.” He tried to imagine descending below the gloomy, cavernous Deck in which he’d spent so much of his working life. It might be airless down there. And it would certainly be dark. And -

  There was a whisper of air past his ear, a clatter as something hit the metal of the ramp behind him.

  Arrow Maker froze, reaching for his bow instantly. Spinner hauled Uvarov’s chair to a halt, and the old doctor stared around with his sightless eyes.

  “What was that?” Uvarov snapped.

  Morrow took a couple of steps back up the ramp and searched the surface. Soon he spied the glint of metal. He bent to pick up the little artifact.

  It was a piton, he realized — a simple design he’d turned out hundreds of times himsel
f, in the workshops of Deck Four, for the trade with the forest folk. Perhaps Arrow Maker and Spinner had pitons just like this in their kit even now.

  But this piton seemed to have been sharpened; its point gleamed with rough, planed surfaces…

  There was another whisper of air.

  Spinner cried out. She clutched her left arm and bent forward, tumbling slowly to the Deck.

  Arrow Maker bent over her. “Spinner? Spinner?”

  Spinner held her left arm stiff against her body, and blood was seeping out through the fingers she’d clamped over her flesh.

  Arrow Maker prized his daughter’s hand away from her arm. Blood trickled down her bare flesh, from a neat, clean-looking puncture; a metal hook protruded from the center of the puncture. Spinner showed no pain, or fear; her expression was empty, perhaps with a trace of dull surprise showing in the eyes behind her spectacles.

  Without hesitation Maker grabbed the hook, spread his fingers around its base across Spinner’s flesh, and pulled.

  The device slid out neatly. Spinner murmured, her face pale beneath its lurid paint.

  Arrow Maker held up the blood-stained artifact. It was another piton. “Someone’s shooting at us,” he said evenly.

  “Shooting?” Uvarov turned his blind face toward Morrow. “What’s this, paper pusher? Is Superet arming you all now?”

  Morrow took a few steps down the ramp, further into the light of Deck Two, and peered down.

  Four people were climbing the ramp toward him: two women and two men, in drab, startlingly ordinary work uniforms. They looked scared, even bewildered; but their advance was steady and measured. They were pointing devices at his chest. He squinted to see the machines: strips of gleaming metal, bent into curves by lengths of cable.

  “I don’t believe it,” he whispered. “Cross-bows. They’re carrying cross-bows.”

  The weapons were obviously of scavenged interior partition material. They must have been constructed in the Deck Four workshops — perhaps mere yards from the spot where Morrow had whiled away decades making climbing rings, ratchets, spectacle frames and bits of cutlery for forest folk he’d never expected to meet.

  One of the four assailants, a woman, lifted her bow and began to adjust it, increasing its tension by working a small lever. She drew a piton from her tunic pocket and fitted it into a slot on top of the bow. She raised the bow and sighted along it, at his chest.

  Morrow watched, fascinated. He thought he recognized this woman. Doesn’t she work in a hydroponics processor in Segment 2? And -

  A compact mass crashed into his legs. His body was flung to the hard, ridged surface of the ramp, his cheek colliding with the floor with astonishing force.

  Another sigh of air over his head; again he heard the clatter of a sharpened piton hitting metal.

  Arrow Maker’s hand was on his back, pinning him against the ridged ramp surface. “You’d better damn well wake up, if you want to stay alive,” the forest man hissed. “Come on. Back up the ramp. Spinner, help Uvarov.”

  Spinner-of-Rope, blood still coating her lower arm, clambered up behind Uvarov’s chair and began to haul it backwards up the ramp.

  Morrow sat up cautiously. His cheek ached, his left side — where he’d landed was sore, and the ramp felt astonishingly hard beneath his legs. The sparks of pain were like fragments of a sensory explosion. He realized slowly that he hadn’t been in a fight — or any kind of violent physical situation — since he’d been a young man.

  Arrow Maker’s hand grabbed at his collar and hauled him backwards, flat against the ramp. “Keep down, damn it. Watch me. Do what I do.”

  Morrow, with an effort, turned on his belly; the ramp ridges dug painfully into the soft flesh over his hip.

  Arrow Maker worked rapidly up the ramp. He was small, compact, determined; his bare limbs squirmed across the metal like independent animals. Beyond him, Spinner had already pulled Uvarov out of the line of sight, into the darkness of Deck One.

  Morrow tried to copy Arrow Maker’s motion, but his clothes snagged on rough edges on the ramp, and the coarse surface rubbed at his palms.

  Another piton whispered over his head.

  He clambered to a crawling position and — ignoring the agony of kneecaps rolling over ridges in the surface — he scurried up the few yards of the ramp and over its lip.

  Arrow Maker tore a strip from Uvarov’s blanket and briskly wrapped it around his daughter’s wounded arm. Maker said, “They’re coming up the ramp. They’ll be here in less than a minute. Which way, Morrow?”

  Morrow rolled onto his backside and sat with his legs splayed. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened to him, all in the space of less than a minute. “Weapons,” he said. “How could they have made them so quickly? And — ”

  From the gloom of Deck One he heard Uvarov’s barked laughter. “Are you really so naive?”

  Arrow Maker finished his makeshift bandage. “Morrow. Which way do we go?”

  “The elevator shafts,” Uvarov croaked from the darkness. “They’ll be covering all the ramps. The shafts are our only chance. And the shafts cut right through the Decks, all the way to the base of the dome…”

  “But the shafts are disused,” Morrow said, frowning. The shafts had been shut down after the abandonment of the lower Decks, centuries before.

  Uvarov grimaced. “Then we’ll have to climb, won’t we?”

  Morrow could hear the slow, cautious footsteps of their four assailants as they came up the ramp.

  The Decks weren’t a very big world, and he’d been alive for a long time. He must know these people.

  And they were coming to kill him. If someone else had had the misfortune to be on Deck One when Maker and Spinner first stuck their heads through the hatch, then maybe he, Morrow, would now be in this hunting party, with crossbows and bolts of scavenged hull-metal…

  A shadow fell across him. He looked up into the eyes of the woman who worked in the Segment 2 hydroponics. She held a gleaming cross-bow bolt pointed at his face.

  There was a whoosh of air.

  The woman raised her hand to her face, the palm meeting her cheek with a dull clap. She fell backwards and rolled a few paces down the ramp. The cross-bow dropped from her loosening fingers and clattered to the Deck.

  Beyond the fallen woman Morrow caught a brief impression of the other three Deck folk scrambling back down the ramp.

  Spinner-of-Rope lowered her blowpipe; beneath her spectacles, her lips were trembling.

  “It’s all right, Spinner-of-Rope,” Maker said urgently. “You did the right thing.”

  “Morrow,” Uvarov said. “Show them the way.”

  Morrow pushed himself to his feet and stumbled away from the ramp.

  The elevator shaft was a cylinder of metal ten yards across; it rose from floor to ceiling, a hundred yards above them.

  Spinner-of-Rope, blood soaking through her dark bandage, leaned against the shaft. She looked tired, scared, subdued. She really is just a kid, Morrow thought.

  But she said defiantly, “You Undermen aren’t used to fighting, are you? Maybe those four weren’t expecting us to fight back. So they’ll be scared. Cautious. It will slow them down — ”

  “But not stop them,” Arrow Maker murmured. He was running his hand over the surface of the shaft, probing at small indentations in its surface. “So we haven’t much time… Morrow, how do we get into — Oh.”

  In response to Arrow Maker’s random jabs, a panel slid backwards and sideways. A round-edged doorway into the shaft was opened up, about as tall as Morrow and towering over the forest folk.

  Within the shaft, there was only darkness.

  Arrow Maker stuck his head inside the shaft, and peered up and down its length. “There are rungs on the inner surface. It’s like a ladder. Good. It will be easy to climb. And — ”

  Spinner touched his arm. “What about Uvarov?”

  Arrow Maker turned to the old doctor, his face creasing with concern.

  Morro
w looked with dismay at the gaping shaft. “We’ll never be able to carry that chair, not down a ladder — ”

  “Then carry me.” Uvarov’s ruined, crumpled face was deep in shadow as he lifted his head to them. “Forget the chair, damn it. Carry me.”

  Morrow heard footsteps, echoing from the bare walls of Deck One. “There’s no time,” he said to Arrow Maker. “We have to leave him. We can’t — ”

  Maker looked up at him, his face drawn and haughty beneath its gaudy paint. Then he turned away. “Spinner, give me a hand. Get his blanket off.”

  The girl took hold of the top of the black blanket and gently drew it back. Uvarov’s body was revealed: wasted, angularly bony, dressed in a silvery coverall through which Morrow could clearly see the bulge of ribs and pelvis. There were lumps under Uvarov’s tunic: perhaps colostomy bags or similar medical aids. Although he must have been as tall as Morrow, Uvarov’s body looked as if it massed no more than a child’s. One hand rested on Uvarov’s lap, swaying through a pendular tremble with a period of a second or so, and the other was wrapped around a simple joystick which — Morrow presumed — controlled the chair.

  Arrow Maker took Uvarov’s wrist and gently pulled his hand away from the joystick; the hand stayed curled, like a claw. Then Maker leaned forward, tucked his head into Uvarov’s chest, and straightened up, lifting Uvarov neatly out of his chair and settling him over Maker’s shoulder. As Arrow Maker stood there Uvarov’s slippered feet dangled against the floor, with his knees almost bent.

  Uvarov submitted to all this passively, without comment or complaint; Morrow, watching them, had the feeling that Arrow Maker was accustomed to handling Uvarov like this — perhaps he served the old doctor as some kind of basic nurse.

  As he studied the tough little man, almost obscured by his dangling human load. Morrow felt a pang of shame.

  Spinner-of-Rope picked up Uvarov’s blanket and slung it over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said anxiously.

  “You lead,” Arrow Maker said.