Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring

by Stephen Baxter

  They passed abruptly out of the mass of cables and slid over a clear expanse of deck. Unimpeded Nebula light dazzled Rees. When he looked back the cables were like a wall of textured metal hundreds of feet tall, topped by discs of foliage.

  The nose of the bus began to rise.

  At first Rees thought it was his imagination. Then he noticed the passengers shifting in their seats; and still the tilt increased, until it seemed to Rees that he was about to slide back down a metal slope to the cables.

  He shook his head tiredly. He had had enough wonders for one shift. If only Gover would give him a few hints about what was going on—

  He closed his eyes. Come on, think it through, he told himself. He thought of the Raft as he had seen it from above. Had it looked bowl-shaped? No, it had been flat all the way to the Rim; he was sure of that. Then what?

  Fear shot through him. Suppose the Raft was falling! Perhaps the cables on a thousand trees had snapped; perhaps the Raft was tipping over, spilling its human cargo into the pit of air—

  He snorted as with a little more thought he saw it. The bus was climbing out of the Raft’s gravity well, which was deepest at the structure’s centre. If the bus’s brakes failed now it would roll back along the plane in from the Rim towards the Raft’s heart . . . just as if it were rolling downhill. In reality the Raft was, of course, a flat plate, fixed in space; but its central gravity field made it seem to tilt to anyone standing close to the Rim.

  When the slope had risen to one in one the bus shuddered to a halt. A set of steps had been fixed to the deck alongside the bus’s path; they led to the very Rim. The passengers jumped down. ‘You stay there,’ Gover told Rees; and he set off after the others up the shallow stairs.

  Fixed almost at the Rim was the huge, silhouetted form of what must be a supply machine. The passengers formed a small queue before it.

  Rees obediently remained in his seat. He longed to examine the device at the Rim. But there would be another shift, time and fresh energy to pursue that.

  It would be nice, though, to walk to the edge and peer into the depths of the Nebula . . . Perhaps he might even glimpse the Belt.

  One by one the passengers returned to the bus bearing supply packets, like those which Pallis had brought to the Belt. The last passenger thumped the nose of the bus; the battered old machine lurched into motion and set off down the imaginary slope.

  Pallis’s cabin was a simple cube partitioned into three rooms: there was an eating area, a living room with seats and hammocks, and a cleaning area with a sink, toilet and shower head.

  Pallis had changed into a long, heavy robe. The garment’s breast bore a stylized representation of a tree in the green braid which Rees had come to recognize as the badge of Pallis’s woodsman Class. He told Rees and Gover to clean themselves up. When it was Rees’s turn he approached the gleaming spigots with some awe; he barely recognized the clean, sparkling stuff that emerged as water.

  Pallis prepared a meal, a rich meat-sim broth. Rees sat cross-legged on the cabin floor and ate eagerly. Gover sat in a chair wrapped in his customary silence.

  Pallis’s home was free of decoration save for two items in the living area. One was a cage constructed of woven slats of wood, suspended from the ceiling; within it five or six young trees hovered and fizzed, immature branches whirling. They filled the room with motion and the scent of wood. Rees saw how the skitters, one or two adorned with bright flowers, fizzed towards the cabin lights, bumping in soft frustration against the walls of their cage. ‘I let them out when they’re too big,’ Pallis told Rees. ‘They’re just - company, I suppose. You know, there are some who bind up these babies with wire to stunt their growth, distort their shapes. I can’t envisage doing that. No matter how attractive the result.’

  The other item of decoration was a photograph, a portrait of a woman. Such things weren’t unknown in the Belt - the ancient, fading images were handed down through families like shabby heirlooms - but this portrait was fresh and vivid. With Pallis’s permission Rees picked it up—

  —and with a jolt he recognized the smiling face.

  He turned to Pallis. ‘It’s Sheen.’

  Pallis shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his scars flaring red. ‘I should have guessed you’d know her. We - used to be friends.’

  Rees imagined the pilot and his shift supervisor together. The picture was a little incongruous - but not as immediately painful as some such couplings he had envisaged in the past. Pallis and Sheen was a concept he could live with.

  He returned the photo to its frame and resumed his meal, chewing thoughtfully.

  At the turn of the shift they settled for sleep.

  Rees’s hammock was yielding and he relaxed, feeling somehow at home. The next shift would bring more changes, surprises and confusions; but he would face that when it came. For the next few hours he was safe, cupped in the bowl of the Raft as if in the palm of a hand.

  A respectful knock jolted Hollerbach out of his trance-like concentration. ‘Eh? Who the hell is that?’ His old eyes took a few seconds to focus - and his mind longer to clear of its whirl of food test results. He reached for his spectacles. Of course the ancient artefact didn’t really fit his eyes, but the discs of glass did help a little.

  A tall, scarred man loomed into semi-focus, advancing hesitantly into the office. ‘It’s me, Scientist. Pallis.’

  ‘Oh, pilot. I saw your tree return, I think. Good trip?’

  Pallis smiled tiredly. ‘I’m afraid not, sir. The miners have had a few troubles—’

  ‘Haven’t we all?’ Hollerbach grumbled. ‘I just hope we don’t poison the poor buggers with our food pods. Now then, Pallis, what can I do for you - oh, by the Bones, I’ve remembered. You’ve brought back that damn boy, haven’t you?’ He peered beyond Pallis; and there, sure enough, was the skinny, insolent figure of Gover. Hollerbach sighed. ‘Well, you’d better see Grye and return to your usual duties, lad. And your studies. Maybe we’ll make a Scientist of you yet, eh? Or,’ he muttered as Gover departed, ‘more likely I’ll lob you over the Rim myself. Is that all, Pallis?’

  The tree-pilot looked embarrassed; he shifted awkwardly and his scar network flared crimson. ‘Not quite, sir. Rees!’

  Now another boy approached the office. This one was dark and lean and dressed in the ragged remnants of a coverall - and he stopped in surprise at the doorway, eyes fixed to the floor.

  ‘Come on, lad,’ Pallis said, not unkindly. ‘It’s only carpet; it doesn’t bite.’

  The strange boy stepped cautiously over the carpet until he stood before Hollerbach’s desk. He raised his eyes - and again his mouth dropped with obvious shock.

  ‘Good God, Pallis,’ Hollerbach said, running a hand self-consciously over his bald scalp, ‘what have you brought me here? Hasn’t he ever seen a Scientist before?’

  Pallis coughed; he seemed to be trying to hide a laugh. ‘I don’t think it’s that, sir. With all respect, I doubt if the lad’s ever seen anyone so old.’

  Hollerbach opened his mouth - then closed it again. He inspected the boy more carefully, noting the heavy muscles, the scarred hands and arms. ‘Where are you from, lad?’

  He spoke up clearly. ‘The Belt.’

  ‘He’s a stowaway,’ Pallis said apologetically. ‘He travelled back with me and—’

  ‘And he’s got to be shipped straight home.’ Hollerbach sat back and folded his skinny arms. ‘I’m sorry, Pallis; we’re overpopulated as it is.’

  ‘I know that, sir, and I’m having the forms processed right now. As soon as a tree is loaded he could be gone.’

  ‘Then why bring him here?’

  ‘Because . . .’ Pallis hesitated. ‘Hollerbach, he’s a bright lad,’ he finished in a rush. ‘He can - he gets status reports from the buses—’

  Hollerbach shrugged. ‘So do a good handful of smart kids every shift.’ He shook his head, amused. ‘Good grief, Pallis, you don’t change, do you? Do you remember how, as a kid, you’d bring me broken s
kitters? And I’d have to fix up little paper splints for the things. A damn lot of good it did them, of course, but it made you feel better.’

  Pallis’s scars darkened furiously; he avoided Rees’s curious gaze.

  ‘And now you bring home this bright young stowaway and - what? - expect me to take him on as my chief apprentice?’

  Pallis shrugged. ‘I thought, maybe just until the tree was ready . . .’

  ‘You thought wrong. I’m a busy man, tree-pilot.’

  Pallis turned to the boy. ‘Tell him why you’re here. Tell him what you told me, on the tree.’

  Rees was staring at Hollerbach. ‘I left the Belt to find out why the Nebula is dying,’ he said simply.

  The Scientist sat forward, intrigued despite himself. ‘Oh, yes? We know why it’s dying. Hydrogen depletion. That’s obvious. What we don’t know is what to do about it.’

  Rees studied him, apparently thinking it over. Then he asked: ‘What’s hydrogen?’

  Hollerbach drummed his long fingers on the desk top, on the point of ordering Pallis out of the room . . . But Rees was waiting for an answer, a look of bright inquiry in his eyes.

  ‘Hmm. That would take more than a sentence to explain, lad.’ Another drum of the fingers. ‘Well, maybe it wouldn’t do any harm - and it might be amusing—’

  ‘Sir?’ Pallis asked.

  ‘Are you any good with a broom, lad? The Bones know we could do with someone to back up that useless article Gover. Yes, why not? Pallis, take him to Grye. Get him a few chores to do; and tell Grye from me to start him on a bit of basic education. He may as well be useful while he’s eating our damn food. Just until the tree flies, mind.’

  ‘Hollerbach, thanks—’

  ‘Oh, get out, Pallis. You’ve won your battle. Now let me get on with my work. And in future keep your damn lame skitters to yourself!’

  4

  A handbell shaken somewhere told him that the shift was over. Rees peeled off his protective gloves and with an expert eye surveyed the lab; after his efforts its floor and walls now gleamed in the light of the globes fixed to the ceiling.

  He walked slowly out of the lab. The light from the star above made his exposed skin tingle, and he rested for a few seconds, drinking in gulps of antiseptic-free air. His back and thighs ached and the skin of his upper arms itched in a dozen places: trophies of splashes of powerful cleaning agents.

  The few dozen shifts before the next tree departure seemed to be flying past. He drank in the exotic sights and scents of the Raft, anticipating a return to a lifetime in a lonely cabin in the Belt; he would pore over these memories as Pallis must treasure his photograph of Sheen.

  But what he’d been shown and taught had been precious little, he admitted to himself - despite Hollerbach’s vague promises. The Scientists were an unprepossessing collection - mostly middle-aged, overweight and irritable. Brandishing the bits of braid that denoted their rank they moved about their strange tasks and ignored him. Grye, the assistant who’d been assigned the task of educating him, had done little more than provide Rees with a child’s picture book to help him read, together with a pile of quite incomprehensible lab reports.

  Although he’d certainly learned enough about cleaning, he reflected ruefully.

  But occasionally, just occasionally, his skitter-like imagination would be snagged by something. Like that series of bottles, set out like bar stock in one of the labs, filled with tree sap in various stages of hardening—

  ‘You! What’s your name? Oh, damn it, you, boy! Yes, you!’

  Rees turned to see a pile of dusty volumes staggering towards him. ‘You, the lad from the mine. Come and give me a hand with this stuff . . .’ Over the volumes appeared a round face topped by a bald scalp, and Rees recognized Cipse, the Chief Navigator. Forgetting his aches he hurried towards the puffing Cipse and, with some delicacy, took the top half of the pile.

  Cipse panted with relief. ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Well, come on, come on; if we don’t get these printouts to the Bridge sharpish those buggers in my team will have cleared off to the bars again, you mark my words, and that’ll be another shift lost.’ Rees hesitated, and after a few paces Cipse turned. ‘By the Bones, lad, are you deaf as well as stupid?’

  Rees felt his mouth working. ‘I . . . you want me to bring this stuff to the Bridge?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Cipse said heavily. ‘I want you to run to the Rim and dump it over the side, what else . . .? Oh, for the love of - come on, come on!’

  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 centre, 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 r
each 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?’