Raft

by Stephen Baxter

  And he set off once more.

  Rees stood there for a full half-minute.

  The Bridge...!

  Then he ran after Cipse towards the heart of the Raft.

  * * *

  The city on the Raft had a simple structure. Seen from above — without its covering deck of trees — it would have appeared as a series of concentric circles.

  The outermost circle, closest to the Rim, was fairly empty, studded by the imposing bulks of supply machines. Within that was a band of storage and industrial units, a noisy, smoky place. Next came residential areas, clusters of small cabins of wood and metal. Rees had come to understand that the lower-placed citizens occupied the cabins closest to the industrial region. Within the housing area was a small region containing various specialist buildings: a training unit, a crude hospital — and the labs of the Scientist class where Rees was living and working. Finally, the innermost disc of the Raft — into which Rees had not previously been allowed — was the preserve of the Officers.

  And at the center, at the hub of the Raft itself, was embedded the gleaming cylinder which Rees had spotted on his first arrival here.

  The Bridge... And now, perhaps, he might be allowed to enter it.

  The Officers' cabins were larger and better finished than those of the ordinary crew; Rees stared with some awe at the carved door frames and curtained windows. Here there were no running children, no perspiring workers; Cipse slowed his bustle to a more stately walk, nodding to the gold-braided men and women they encountered.

  Pain lanced through Rees's foot as he stubbed his toe on a raised deck plate. His load of books tumbled to the surface, yellowed pages opening tiredly to reveal tables of numbers; each page was stamped with the mysterious letters "IBM."

  "Oh, by the Bones, you useless mine rat!" Cipse raged. Two young Officer cadets walked by; the braid in their new caps glittered in the starlight and they pointed at Rees, laughing quietly.

  "I'm sorry," Rees said, face burning. How had he tripped? The deck was a flat mosaic of welded iron plates... or was it? He stared down. The plates here were curved and studded with rivets, and their sheen was silvery, a contrast to the rusty tinge of the iron sheets further out. On one plate, a few feet away, was a blocky, rectangular design; it was tantalizingly incomplete, as if huge letters had once been painted on a curving wall, and the surface cut up and reassembled.

  Cipse muttered, "Come on, come on...."

  Rees picked up the books and hurried after Cipse. "Scientist," he said nervously, "why is the deck here so different?"

  Cipse gave him a glance of exasperation. "Because, lad, the innermost part of the Raft is the oldest. The areas further out were added later, constructed of sheets of star metal; this part was built of hull sections. All right?"

  "Hull? The hull of what?"

  But Cipse, bustling along, would not reply.

  Rees's imagination whirled like a young tree. Hull plates! He imagined the hull of a Mole; if that were cut up and reassembled then that, too, would be an uneven thing of broken curves.

  But the shell of a Mole would be much too small to provide all this area. He imagined a huge Mole, its mighty walls curving far above his head...

  But that wouldn't be a Mole. A Ship, then? Were the children's tales of the Ship and its Crew true after all?

  He felt frustration well up inside him; it was almost like the ache he sometimes felt to reach out to Sheen's cool flesh... If only someone would tell him what was going on!

  At last they passed through the innermost rank of dwellings and came to the Bridge. Rees found his pace slowing despite his will; he felt his heart pump within his chest.

  The Bridge was beautiful. It appeared as a half-cylinder twice his height and perhaps a hundred paces long; it lay on its side, embedded neatly in the deck. Rees remembered flying under the Raft and seeing the other half of the cylinder hanging beneath the plates like some vast insect. The pile of books still in his arms, he stepped closer to the curving wall. The surface was of a matt, silvery metal that softened the harsh starlight to a pink-gold glow. An arched door frame had been cut into the wall; its lines were the finest, cleanest work Rees had ever seen. The plates of the disassembled hull lapped around the cylinder, and Rees saw how neatly they had been cut and joined to the wall.

  He tried to imagine the men who had done this wonderful work. He had a vague picture of godlike creatures disassembling another, huge cylinder with glowing blades... And later generations had added their crude accretions around the gleaming heart of the Raft, their grace and power dwindling as thousands of shifts wore away.

  "...I said now, mine rat!" The Navigator's face was pink with fury; Rees shook himself out of his daydream and hurried to join Cipse at the doorway.

  Another Scientist emerged from the shining interior of the Bridge; he took Rees's load. Cipse gave Rees one last glance. "Now get back to your work, and be thankful if I don't tell Hollerbach to feed you to the reprocessing plants—" Muttering, the Navigator turned and disappeared into the interior of the Bridge.

  Reluctant to leave this magical area Rees reached out and stroked the silver wall with his fingertips — and pulled his hand back, startled; the surface was warm, almost like skin, and impossibly smooth. He pushed his hand flat against the wall and let his palm slide over the surface. It was utterly frictionless, as if slick with some oily fluid—

  "What's this? A mine rat nibbling at our Bridge?"

  He turned with a start. The two young Officers he had noticed earlier stood before him, hands on hips; they grinned easily. "Well, boy?" the taller of them said. "Do you have any business here?"

  "No, I—"

  "Because if not, I suggest you clear off back to the Belt where the other rats hide out. Or perhaps we should help you on your way, eh, Jorge?"

  "Doav, why not?"

  Rees studied the relaxed, handsome young men. Their words were scarcely harsher than Cipse's had been... but the youth of these cadets, the way they aped their elders so unthinkingly, made their contempt almost impossible to stomach, and Rees felt a warm anger well up inside him.

  But he couldn't afford to make enemies.

  Deliberately he turned his face away from the cadets and made to step past them... But the taller cadet, Doav, was in his way. "Well, rat?" He extended one finger and poked at Rees's shoulder—

  —and, almost against his will, Rees grabbed the finger in one fist; with an easy turn of his wrist he bent the cadet's hand back on itself. The young man's elbow was forced forward to save the finger from snapping, and his knees bent into a half-kneel before Rees. Pain showed in a sheen of sweat on his brow, but he clenched his teeth, refusing to cry out.

  Jorge's smile faded; his hands hung at his sides, uncertain.

  "My name is Rees," the miner said slowly. "Remember that."

  He released the finger. Doav slumped to his knees, nursing his hand; he glared up. "I'll remember you, Rees; have no fear," he hissed.

  Already regretting his outburst Rees turned his back and walked away. The cadets didn't follow.

  * * *

  Slowly Rees dusted his way around Hollerbach's office. Of all the areas to which his chores brought him access, this room was the most intriguing. He ran a fingertip along a row of books; their pages were black with age and the gilt on their spines had all but worn away. He traced letters one by one: E... n... c... y... c... Who, or what, was an "Encyclopaedia"? He daydreamed briefly about picking up a volume, letting it fall open...

  Again that almost sexual hunger for knowledge swept through him.

  Now his eye was caught by a machine, a thing of jewelled cogs and gears about the size of his cupped hands. At its center was set a bright silver sphere; nine painted orbs were suspended on wires around the sphere. It was beautiful, but what the hell was it?

  He glanced about. The office was empty. He couldn't resist it.

  He picked up the device, relishing the feel of the machined metal base—

  "Don't drop it,
will you?"

  He started. The intricate device juggled through the air, painfully slowly; he grabbed it and returned it to its shelf.

  He turned. Silhouetted in the doorway was Jaen, her broad, freckled face creased into a grin. After a few seconds he smiled back. "Thanks a lot," he said.

  The apprentice walked toward him. "You should be glad it's only me. Anybody else and you'd be off the Raft by now."

  He shrugged, watching her approach with mild pleasure. Jaen was the senior apprentice of Cipse, the Chief Navigator; only a few hundred shifts older than Rees, she was one of the few inhabitants of the labs to show him anything other than contempt. She even seemed to forget he was a mine rat, sometimes... Jaen was a broad, stocky girl; her gait was confident but ungainly. Uncomfortably Rees found himself comparing her with Sheen. He was growing fond of Jaen; he believed she could become a good friend.

  But her body didn't pull at his with the intensity of the mine girl's.

  Jaen stood beside him and ran a casual fingertip over the little device. "Poor old Rees," she mocked. "I bet you don't even know what this is, do you?"

  He shrugged. "You know I don't."

  "It's called an orrery." She spelt the word for him. "It's a model of the Solar System."

  "The what?"

  Jaen sighed, then she pointed at the silver orb at the heart of the orrery. "That's a star. And these things are balls of — iron, I suppose, orbiting around it. They're called planets. Mankind — the folk on the Raft, at least — originally came from one of these planets. The fourth, I think. Or maybe the third."

  Rees scratched his chin. "Really? There can't have been too many of them."

  "Why not?"

  "No room. If the planet was any size the gees would be too high. The star kernel back home is only fifty yards wide — and it's mostly air — and it has a surface gravity of five gee."

  "Yeah? Well, this planet was a lot bigger. It was—" She extended her hands. "Miles wide. And the gravity wasn't crushing. Things were different."

  "How?"

  "...I'm not sure. But the surface gravity was probably only, I don't know, three or four gee."

  He thought that over. "In that case, what's a gee? I mean, why is a gee the size it is — no larger and no smaller?"

  Jaen had been about to say something else; now she frowned in exasperation. "Rees, I haven't the faintest idea. By the Bones, you ask stupid questions. I'm almost tempted not to tell you the most interesting thing about the orrery."

  "What?"

  "That the System was huge. The orbit of the planet took about a thousand shifts... and the star at the center was a million miles wide!"

  He thought that over. "Garbage," he said.

  She laughed. "What do you know?"

  "A star like that is impossible. It would just implode."

  "You know it all." She grinned at him. "I just hope you're as clever at lugging supplies in from the Rim. Come on; Grye has given us a list of stuff to collect."

  "OK."

  Carrying his cleaning equipment he followed her broad back from Hollerbach's office. He glanced back once at the orrery, sitting gleaming in the shadows of its shelf.

  A million miles? Ridiculous, of course.

  But what if...?

  * * *

  They sat side by side on the bus; the machine's huge tires made the journey soothingly smooth.

  Rees surveyed the mottled plates of the Raft, the people hurrying by on tasks and errands of whose nature even now he was uncertain. His fellow passengers sat patiently through the journey, some of them reading. Rees found these casual displays of literacy somehow startling.

  He found himself sighing.

  "What's the matter with you?"

  He grinned ruefully at Jaen. "Sorry. It's just... I've been here such a short time, and I seem to have learned so little."

  She frowned. "I thought you were getting some kind of crammer classes from Cipse and Grye."

  "Not really," he admitted. "I guess I can see their point of view. I wouldn't want to waste time on a stowaway who is liable to be dumped back home within a few shifts."

  She scratched her nose. "That might be the reason. But the two of them have never been shy of parading their knowledge in front of me. Rees, you ask damn hard questions. I suspect they're a little afraid of you."

  "That's crazy—"

  "Let's face it, most of those old buggers don't know all that much. Hollerbach does, I think; and one or two others. But the rest just follow the ancient printouts and hope for the best. Look at the way they patch up the ancient instruments with wood and bits of string... They'd be lost if anything really unexpected happened — or if anyone asked them a question from a strange angle."

  Rees thought that over and reflected how far his view of the Scientists had shifted since his arrival here. Now he saw that they were frail humans like himself, struggling to do their best in a world growing shabbier. "Anyway," he said, "it doesn't make a lot of difference. Every time I open my eyes I see questions that don't get answered. For instance, on every page of Cipse's numbers books is written 'IBM.' What does that mean?"

  She laughed. "You've got me there. Maybe it's something to do with the way those books were produced. They come from the Ship, you know."

  His interest quickened. "The Ship? You know, I've heard so many stories about that I've no idea what's true."

  "My understanding is that there really was a Ship. It was broken up to form the basis of the Raft itself."

  He pondered that. "And the original Crew printed those books?"

  She hesitated, obviously near the limits of her knowledge. "They were produced a few generations later. The first Crew had kept their understanding in some kind of machine."

  "What machine?"

  "...I don't know. Maybe a talking machine, like the buses. The thing was more than a recording device, though. It could do calculations and computations."

  "How?"

  "Rees," she said heavily, "if I knew that I'd build one. OK? Anyway, with the passing of time the machine began to fail, and the crew were afraid they wouldn't be able to continue their computations. So, before it expired, the machine printed out everything it knew. And that includes an ancient type of table called 'logarithms' to help us do calculations. That's what Cipse was lugging in to the Bridge. Maybe you'll learn how to use logarithms, some day."

  "Yeah. Maybe."

  The bus rolled out of the thicket of cables; Rees found himself squinting in the harsh light of the star poised above the Raft.

  Jaen was saying, "You understand Cipse's job, do you?"

  "I think so," he said slowly. "Cipse is a Navigator. His job is to work out where the Raft should move to."

  Jaen nodded. "And the reason we have to do that is to get out of the path of the stars falling in from the rim of the Nebula." She jerked a thumb at the glowing sphere above. "Like that one. In the Bridge they keep records of approaching stars, so they can move the Raft in plenty of time. I reckon we'll be shifting soon... That's a sight to see, Rees; I hope you don't miss it. All the trees tilting in unison, the rush of wind across the deck — and if I get through my appraisal I'll be working on the moving team."

  "Good for you," he said sourly.

  With a sudden seriousness she patted his arm. "Don't give up hope, miner. You're not off the Raft yet."

  He smiled at her, and they spent the rest of the journey in silence.

  The bus reached the edge of the Raft's gravity well. The Rim approached like a knife edge against the sky, and the bus strained to a halt beside a broad stairway. Rees and Jaen joined a queue of passengers before a supply dispenser. An attendant sat sullenly beside the machine, silhouetted against the sky; Rees, staring absently, found him vaguely familiar.

  The supply machine was an irregular block as tall as two men. Outlets pierced its broad face, surrounding a simple control panel reminiscent to Rees of the Mole's. On the far side a nozzle like a huge mouth strained outwards at the atmosphere of the Nebula;
Rees had learned that the machine's raw material was drawn in by that nozzle from the life-rich air, and it wasn't hard to imagine the machine taking huge breaths through those metal lips.

  Jaen murmured in his ear: "Powered by a mini black hole, you know."

  He jumped. "A what?"

  She grinned. "You don't know? I'll tell you later."

  "You enjoy this, don't you?" he hissed.

  Away from the shelter of the flying forest the starlight from above was intense. Rees found sweat droplets trickling into his eyes; he blinked, and found himself staring at the broad neck of the man in front of him. The flesh was studded with coarse black hair and was glistening damp near the collar. The man raised a wide, pug face to the star. "Damn heat," he grunted. "Don't know why we're still sitting underneath the bloody thing. Mith ought to get off his fat arse and do something about it. Eh?" He glared inquisitively at Rees.

  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."