Vacuum Diagrams

by Stephen Baxter

  There was an odd shrewdness in Orange's brown eyes. "I... w-will help you." She turned and made her way to one of the piles of balloon equipment. With her articulated trunk she pulled at a bark tarpaulin.

  His heart lifting, Teal shooed the other cows away from the rope anchor and began to check the knots and stays.

  The morning was approaching its murky peak by the time Teal and his unexpected ally had assembled a one-man balloon and attached it to the rope bridge. Teal wrestled with a cluster of alcohol burners, directing heated air into the leather envelope's brown gloom.

  At last the envelope rose from the frozen earth, billowing like a waking giant. Orange strained to hold it back; she trumpeted in alarm as she was dragged across the ground. Teal pulled a harness round his shoulders.

  There was a gust of wind. The balloon lurched higher and its guide ropes began to scrape up the rope bridge.

  The harness dug into Teal's armpits. His feet left the ground.

  Orange fell away, her huge head rotating up to him. Soon the anchor shrank to a cluster of bundles, anonymous in the gray landscape.

  He wriggled in the harness, swinging slowly beneath the envelope. He looked to the south and picked out his home village. It looked like a muddy patch sprinkled with teepees... and out of one of the teepees came a running figure, shouting like an angry insect.

  Damen, his brother. It had to be. Well, Teal couldn't be stopped now.

  He continued to rise and Damen's cries dropped away. Soon there was only the creak of the rigging, his own rapid breath.

  The barren landscape opened out further. It was a dreary panorama of red and gray, starved of color and warmth by the dying Sun. His grandmother spoke of flowers a bright orange, birds as blue as ice — of hundreds or thousands of people in villages clustered so close they were forced to fight over resources.

  But now colors like blue were only a dim childhood memory to Teal. And there were only a few score people in Teal's village, and no one knew how far away their nearest surviving neighbors were.

  The low clouds fell on him; the world shrank to a fluffy cocoon. Flecks of snow pattered into his face, and he drew the hood of his leather jacket tight around his head.

  Then he burst into crimson sunlight.

  He gasped at the sudden clarity of the air. Frost sparkled over his cheeks.

  The rope bridge rose from the carpet of cloud below him and arced gracefully across the Gap, a spider's web between the twin worlds. Finally, on the other side of the Gap, it disappeared into a second layer of broken cloud... a layer belonging to another world, upside down and far above him.

  The landscape of the world above — called Home — served Teal's world — called the Shell — as a sky; it was an unbroken ceiling coated with upside-down seas, rivers, forests, ice caps. Teal searched for familiar features. There were threads of smoke: fires warding off the chill, even at noon.

  There was a sound behind him like the breath of a huge animal.

  He twisted around and stabilized — and found his eyes filled with orange light.

  The Gap between Shell and Home was unbroken. The two worlds' darkling daylight was begrudged them by a Sun, a mottled sphere a mile across — a sphere that now twisted and rolled through the sky towards Teal...

  ...But it was going to pass miles above him.

  Cursing, Teal labored at his burners. The balloon yanked him upwards, but soon the harness's pressure began to ease. He was approaching the middle of the Gap: the place halfway between the worlds where weight disappeared. He knew that if he continued his ascent, "up" would become "down"; Home would turn from a roof to a floor, and the place where Teal had been born would once more become the Shell over Home, the world that his grandmother's mother had known.

  The Sun's breath became a roar.

  He used a soaked cloth to dampen the burners, trying to hover just below the zone of complete weightlessness. The guide rope creaked; the balloon bobbed in a gust hot enough to scour the frost from his face, and he turned to the Sun once more.

  It came at him like a fist. Boiling air fled its surface. His craft tossed like a toy. His eyes dried like meat in a fire and he felt his face shrivel and crack.

  The guide rope snapped with a smell of charred leather. His balloon flipped backwards once, twice, seams popping. He roared out his frustration at the impossible thing—

  Then the balloon was falling. He caught one last glimpse of the Sun as it passed above him, splinters of ruddy light stabbing through slits in the battered envelope.

  He fell back through the clouds. Snow battered his scorched face as he labored at the burners, striving to replace the hot air leaking out of the envelope.

  Soon he could make out the bridge anchor site, now surrounded by fallen miles of rope. There was patient Orange running in little agitated circles, and a bearded man standing there hands on hips, shouting something — Damen, it must be — and now Damen was running towards the point he would hit, a mile or so from the anchor.

  The ground blurred towards him. He closed his eyes and tried to hang like a doll, soft and boneless.

  The earth was frozen and impossibly hard. It seemed to slam upwards and carry him into the sky, sweeping up the wreckage of his balloon.

  Damen carried Teal to his teepee and dumped him onto a pallet. Erwal ran to them and stroked Teal's face.

  Overwhelmed with guilt Teal tried to speak — but could only groan as broken things in his chest moved against each other.

  Damen's bearded face was a mask of contempt. "Why? You useless bloody fool, why?"

  Something bubbled in Teal's throat. "I... I was trying to fix..."

  Damen's face twisted, and he lashed the back of his hand upwards into his brother's chin. Teal's back arched. Erwal tugged at Damen's arm.

  Damen turned away. He walked with Erwal to the teepee's open entrance, speaking softly. He cupped her cheek in his massive hand... and then ducked out of the teepee. Erwal tied up the flap behind him.

  "Erwal... I..."

  "Don't talk." Her voice was harsh with crying. She bathed his face.

  He closed his eyes.

  When he woke it was night. His grandmother was watching over him, her face a wrinkled mask of reassurance in the alcohol lamp's smoky light.

  "How are you?"

  Teal probed, wincing, at his ribs. "Still here. Where's Damen?"

  Allel rested a birdlike hand on his shoulder. "Not here. Take it easy." She laughed softly. "What a pair. You, the hopeless dreamer... just like I was at your age. And Damen reminds me of my mother. A hard-headed, practical, obstinate — so-and-so."

  The old woman's quaint Home accent was like balm to Teal. He struggled to sit up; Allel arranged the blanket of soft leather over Teal's bound-up ribs. "You're not too badly hurt," she said. "Just a bit flattened. Your wife's left you some broth: boiled-up mummy-cow meat buds. See? Come on, let me feed you."

  "Thanks..."

  Allel pulled a stone knife from her belt. She'd owned that knife all Teal's life; Teal knew it was one of the few remembrances Allel had brought with her on her last journey from her home world. Now she used the blunt edge of the knife to ladle broth into Teal's cracked mouth.

  "She worries about you, you know. Erwal."

  Teal nodded ruefully through the food.

  "Not good for her in her condition." Allel's voice was as dry as a rustle of leaves.

  "I know. But I had to go, you know, grandmother. I had to try—"

  "To save the world?" The old woman smiled, not unkindly. "Yes, just like I was... or," she continued, "perhaps you are a bit tougher. I crossed the Gap with my mother — that was adventure enough — but I'd never have dreamed of challenging the Sun itself..."

  Allel's rheumy eyes peered into the wavering light of a lamp. "There are so many differences between Home and Shell. We had no mummy-cows to feed us, you know. Only cow-trees. And we spoke a different language. It took me long enough to learn yours, I can tell you, and my mother wouldn't even try...
>
  "I wonder if all these differences were intended, somehow. Perhaps the Sun was meant to fail. Perhaps there's a plan to force us to cross the Gap, to mix our blood and toughen ourselves — "

  Teal pushed away the knife and lay back on his rustling pallet. He'd heard all this before. "Maybe, but such speculation won't help us find a way out of the trap the world's become. Will it?"

  Allel shrugged mildly. "Perhaps not. But the alternative is ignorance — which can only drive you to spectacular suicide. Such as by crashing into the Sun in a leather balloon."

  Teal found himself blushing under his blisters.

  "Before you can find a way out of the world you need to understand its nature." She wagged a bony finger. "Are you prepared to be a little patient, and do a bit of thinking?"

  Teal smiled and propped himself up on one elbow.

  Allel put aside the bowl of broth and settled herself onto a mat beside the pallet, cross-legged. "When I wasn't much younger than you, my mother took me on a long walk to an old abandoned City to the north of Home. And there I learned something of the nature of our world.

  "The world is a box. We locked ourselves into a huge box to escape from the Xeelee, whatever they are. But the nature of this box is quite remarkable."

  Teal gathered the blanket tighter around his aching chest. "Go on."

  Allel pulled up a section of the leather mat beneath her and bunched it into a rough globe. "Here's a model of the world. Let's imagine there are insects living on this globe." Her fingers trotted comically over the globe; Teal smiled. "They're perfectly happy in their little world, never imagining the mysteries above or below them. Yes?

  "Now. I think the world we came from is a flat place, somewhere... else. Just like the rest of this mat — a flat place that goes on forever, and contains stars and Xeelee."

  She pointed at the place where the globe joined the mat, encased in her spidery fist. "The worlds must touch, as these models do here. We have to find such a place. A place where you can walk out of our world and into the original... a door to fold through."

  Teal nodded slowly. "Yes — yes, I understand. But where would such a door be?"

  "Ah." Allel smoothed the mat and stretched her withered legs. "That's the question. Surely it could only be in one of the old Cities, at the northern extremes of the worlds... But nobody on either world knows of anything that sounds remotely like a door. No human, anyway."

  Allel dropped her eyes, wrinkles clustering around her mouth. "And there's another question. Sometimes I think it would be better not to find the door. There's so much we don't know about the past. Why not? Suppose it's been deliberately forgotten. Suppose we shouldn't try to find out about the world, the Xeelee... about ourselves. Perhaps it's better not to know—"

  But Teal wasn't listening. "What did you mean, 'no human'?"

  Allel smiled at Teal. "Nobody here pays much attention to mummy-cows, you know. They're taken for granted... just walking meat and milk dispensers, a source of muscle power... but they were a real novelty to me when I arrived. And I've spent a lot of my time listening to their songs."

  "But mummy-cows are so simple."

  "Maybe. But they're almost as old as mankind. No? And they've remembered some things we seem to have forgotten."

  Teal grabbed his grandmother's arm, forgetting his pain. "Do they say where the door is? Tell me."

  "Not quite. Take it easy, now. But... there is a song about a place, somewhere to the north of this world. A place called the Eight Rooms.

  "Seven of those rooms are strange enough, the song says. And when you've found your way through them to the Eighth—"

  "What? What's in the Eighth?"

  Allel's grooved face was neutral.

  Teal found his mouth gaping. "I've got to go there," he said. "That's what you're telling me, isn't it? I have to find these Eight Rooms." He pushed back the blanket.

  Allel's thin hands fluttered against Teal's shoulders. "Now, not so fast. You're not going anywhere for a while—"

  "Or ever."

  Allel jumped. The new voice was flat and harsh; a massive figure swathed in quilted leather stood over Teal's bunk.

  "Damen." Teal subsided back with a sinking heart. "How long have you been in here? How much did you hear?"

  "Enough. I'm surprised you didn't notice me coming in; I nearly blew the damn lamps out." Damen's bearded face was full of stern concern. "Grandmother, you should be ashamed, pumping his head full of this rubbish. Brother, I'm telling you now you're not leaving this village again. Not ever; not while I'm alive — not unless you get yourself exiled, anyway...

  "Damn it, man, Erwal's a good woman." His voice grew soft with unconscious envy. "Yes, a good woman. And she's bearing your kid. You can't go chasing sunbeams anymore."

  Allel wiped off her stone knife and began picking at her fingernails.

  Damen squeezed his brother's shoulder with his great mat of a hand. "You just work at getting healthy." He stood straight and walked to the teepee flap. "I'm sorry to be so tough, little brother," he said awkwardly, "but it's for your own good." He pulled the flap closed behind him.

  Allel cackled sardonically. "Now, where have I heard that before? People always mean so well... but we go nowhere, while the ice closes all around us."

  Teal lay back and stared at the darkness beyond the teepee's chimney flue. "So that's it. Damen will never let me out of here." A despair as complete as the world's roof settled over him. "It's over, then."

  "Not necessarily." Allel's voice was muffled.

  Teal turned — and then began struggling off the pallet. "Grandmother, what have you done?"

  The stone knife lay on the mat, streaked with blood. A great gash opened Allel's face from temple to throat. The old woman swayed slightly, blood pooling around her neck. "Take the knife," she said hoarsely. "I'll say it was you."

  "But..."

  "In my mother's day, they'd have killed you for this, you know? But now, as times have grown harsher, we've had to work out laws to control each other. So they'll be civilized... They'll exile you. Just like Damen said. You can go where you want."

  "But—"

  "No buts. I'll make sure Erwal is cared for." She slumped forward. "Take the knife," she whispered. "Do it."

  Involuntarily, she cried out. Blood looped over her mouth.

  Outside the teepee there were running footsteps, lamps, shouts. Teal struggled across the mat and put his arm around the thin shoulders...

  ...and grasped the knife.

  They let him recover from his balloon fall. They gave him a suit of quilted leather, containers for water, flints, a coil of rope... they didn't want to think they were sending him to his death.

  Although, of course, that was exactly what they were doing.

  On his last night Erwal came to his guarded teepee. She pressed a bundle wrapped in skin into his hands — and then spat in his face, and hurried away.

  Teal was twenty years old. He felt something soft dying inside him.

  Inside the skin was his grandmother's knife, cleaned of blood. Teal tucked it into his belt and tried to sleep.

  At dawn, most of the village turned out to watch him leave. Teal stared at the slack faces, the children with limbs like twigs, and beyond them the huddle of shabby little teepees, the piles of lichen, a half-butchered mummy-cow carcass. Once, he thought, we could build worlds. We even built this boxworld. Now: now, look at us.

  There was no sign of Damen, or Erwal, or Allel.

  Teal turned away, pulling his hood closed against the cold.

  His feet were already aching by the time he passed the bridge anchor. There'd been no will to rebuild the world-bridge, and the rope lay crumpled amid the frost.

  He felt as if he were walking through a great ill-lit room. Dead heather crumbled beneath his feet, gray in the ruddy gloom. Home, above him, was a mirrored roof as bleak as the ground beneath him.

  Wind sprawled across the flat landscape. He walked until his legs were numb with fat
igue.

  When night fell he huddled beneath a shriveled cow-tree and sucked sour milk from its bark nipples. Then he buried himself in a rough bed of leaves, clutching the stone knife to his chest and determining to think of nothing until dawn.

  There was a rustle under the wind. A warm breath, not unpleasantly scented—

  He snapped awake and scrambled backwards out of his nest. In the starless gloom a huge shape hovered uncertainly.

  He held out the knife with both hands. "Who is it?"

  The voice was ill-formed, soft, and infinitely reassuring. "It iss me... Orange. I am so-ssorry to wake you..."

  Teal let out a deep breath and lowered the knife. He found himself laughing softly, his eyes wet. How absurd.

  Orange moved closer to the cow-tree, and Teal snuggled into her warm coat.

  After that he slept for most of the night.

  In the morning he breakfasted from the food teats clustered over Orange's lower body. There were milk and water nipples, and meat buds that could be snapped off, without discomfort to Orange.

  They set off just after dawn, with Teal munching on a still warm bud. Orange wore a saddle-shaped pannier into which Teal loaded his meager possessions.

  The morning was chill but comparatively bright, and Home was a shining carpet overhead. Teal felt his spirits lifting a little.

  "Orange... why did you follow me?"

  "Your gra-grandmother told me where you were going. So I decided to follow."

  "Yes, but why?"

  "To... help."

  He smiled and wrapped a hand in the coarse hair behind her ear. "Well, I'm glad you're here."

  That evening Orange used her articulated trunk to gather handfuls of moss. She packed his aching feet with it and then licked it off. "My... saliva has healing pro-properties," she said.

  Teal lay back against her fur. "Yes," he said. "Thank you..."

  The reddening world folded away, and he slept.

  They came to an abandoned City.

  Teal walked through arches, into low cylindrical buildings. The walls were as smooth as skin and knife-thin, showing no signs of age. But the interiors were unlit and musty.