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

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘You know they do,’ Berg said calmly. ‘You saw what they did to my boat.’

  ‘So we’ve no way of compelling them to do anything.’ He heard the frustration, the despair in his own voice. ‘They’re not going to oppose the Spline at all; they’re putting all their faith in this Project of theirs. The magic Project which will solve everything.’

  Berg growled softly.

  She lashed out sideways with her bunched fist and caught the Friend squarely on the temple. Shira crumpled and fell to the ground where she lay with her small face fringed by pink-stained grass.

  Harry, staring down, said: ‘Wow.’

  ‘She won’t stay out long,’ Miriam said. ‘We need to move fast.’

  Poole glanced up at the still-growing, rolling form of the Spline warship. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We have to take out both Spline,’ Berg muttered.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s take ’em both out. Or, on the other hand, why don’t we think big? I have a cunning plan ...’

  ‘Shut up, Harry,’ Michael said absently. ‘All right, Miriam, we’re listening. How?’

  ‘We’ll have to split up. Harry, is the Crab’s boat ready to lift?’

  Harry closed his eyes, as if looking within. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Shira stirred on the grass, moaning softly.

  ‘Maybe you can get away in the boat,’ Miriam said. ‘While the Friends are still running about confused, trying to stow everything. Get back to the Crab and go after the first Spline, the one that’s heading for Earth. Maybe you can catch it before it engages its hyperdrive.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Berg grinned tightly. ‘How should I know? I’m making this up as I go along. You’ll have to think of something.’

  ‘All right. What about you?’

  Berg looked up. The second Spline, advancing on the earth-craft, loomed still closer; it was a fleshy moon above them. ‘I’ll try to do something about that one,’ Berg said. ‘Maybe I can get to those singularity cannons.’

  Shira moaned again and seemed to be trying to lift her face from the grass.

  Poole said, ‘And her?’

  Berg shrugged. ‘Take her with you. Maybe she’ll be able to help you.’

  Poole bent, picked up the girl, her protruding eyes open now and trying to focus.

  Berg searched Poole’s face. ‘I need to say goodbye, Michael,’ she said.

  Harry looked from Poole, to Miriam, and back to Poole; and he winked politely out of existence.

  Michael looked beyond the village of Xeelee-material huts, towards the centre of the earth-craft. Three burly Friends were running towards them. No, four. And they were carrying something. Weapons?

  He turned back to Berg. ‘You’ll never make it to the centre of the craft,’ he said. ‘Come with us.’

  Harry’s head popped out of space, close to Miriam’s ear. ‘Sorry, folks,’ he said, ‘but you haven’t a lot of time for this.’

  Miriam grinned briefly, ran her hand through her stubble of hair, and took a deep breath. ‘But I’m not going to the centre of the craft. Goodbye, Michael.’ And she swivelled - and started to run, towards the edge of the world.

  Michael Poole stood watching her for one second, mouth open.

  Shira wriggled harder in his arms, kicking like a stranded fish.

  There was no more time. Michael turned on his heel and ran for his boat, the ungainly burden of Shira flopping in his arms, the disembodied head of his father floating at his side.

  The rim of the craft, ahead of her, was a fringe of grass, incongruous against the bruised-purple countenance of Jupiter.

  Her mind raced.

  From the circular village of the Friends of Wigner, Berg had about a hundred yards to run to the lip of the craft. Well, she could cover that distance in maybe ten seconds, on the flat. But the weakening of gravity as she approached the edge ought to let her speed up - as long as she didn’t fall flat on her face - but on the other hand she’d be climbing out of the earth-craft’s gravity well, so she’d feel as if she were running uphill ...

  Yes. Already the ground seemed to be tipping up beneath her.

  She tried to work with the weakening gravity, gain whatever advantage she could; she consciously slowed her pace, letting her stride lengthen and carry her further.

  She risked a glance backwards. The posse of pursuing Friends had split, she saw; two of them had concentrated on Michael and the girl, and the other two were coming after her. They were fit and covered the grass fast.

  They carried laser-guns, of the type which had turned her boat to slag. She imagined coherent photons surging from the weapons and arcing into her back, faster than thought. You don’t dodge a light weapon . . . She felt her back tense, the muscles locking. Her stride faltered, and she tried to empty her head of everything but the next step.

  She seemed to be climbing a one-in-three slope now. She didn’t dare look back again, for fear of seeing the earth-craft apparently tip behind her, of tumbling helplessly backwards, her balance lost. And, damn it, her chest hurt. Her lungs were dragging at thinning air; coming this far out of the earth-craft’s tiny gravity well was like climbing the mountains of Mars.

  She wondered why the Friends didn’t just open up. No need to aim; they could just hose the lasers, slice her spine the same way they’d cut open her boat. But they were hesitating. Thinking twice.

  They wanted to stop her, not murder her, she realized; they were reluctant to use those weapons.

  She didn’t have much time for the Friends, but at least they weren’t killers. Maybe it would be better if they were.

  Her sense of perspective was starting to work on the approaching edge of the world, now. She could see individual blades of grass rushing towards her.

  Her lungs hurt like hell. She felt her tongue protrude from her mouth. Her whole chest ached, and the muscles of her back and her upper arms. Her legs, stiffening as she climbed the steepening hill, were shivering, as if they knew what they were approaching.

  She ignored it all. Her arms flailing at the thinned air, she drove her feet down into the grass, pushing the earth-craft below her.

  The ‘plane’ continued to steepen; she was flying up a bowl-shaped Alp—

  And then there was no more grass beneath her boots.

  She tipped forward, stumbling over the edge of the world; her momentum carried her away from the earth-craft and into the pink light of Jovian space, arms and legs spread wide like some unlikely kite. As she spilled slowly forward she saw the posse of Friends sprawl against the grass, weapons abandoned, the thin air drawing their mouths open in cartoon masks of amazement.

  She was lost in space, her lungs empty. She hung, seemingly motionless, between the earth-craft and the bulk of Jupiter. Darkness crowded the edge of her vision.

  Oh Jesus, Michael, maybe this wasn’t such a good plan after all.

  Michael Poole, running around the edge of the earth-craft village towards his boat, arms aching with the weight of the semi-conscious Shira, was exhausted already.

  He saw Berg go flying over the edge of the world. He found time to wonder if she knew what she was doing.

  He glanced over his shoulder; the twist of his muscles only added to the breathless ache across his chest. Two of the Friends were still chasing him. They were close enough for him to see the mud spattered over their light pink coveralls, the set grimness of their faces, the glinting plastic of their laser-rifles ...

  Harry hovered beside him, his legs whirling propeller-style in a cartoon running motion. ‘I hate to be the bringer of bad news,’ he panted, ‘but they’re gaining on us.’

  ‘Tell me something ... I don’t know.’

  Harry glanced easily over his shoulder. ‘Actually I don’t know why they don’t just lase you down where you stand.’

  ‘Save the ... pep talk ...’ Michael gasped, his shoulders and arms encased in pain, ‘and ... do something!’

  ‘Like what?’

 
‘Use your ... initiative, damn you,’ Michael growled.

  Harry frowned, rubbed his chin, and disappeared.

  Suddenly there were wails from Poole’s pursuers, arcs of laser light above his head, the sizzle of ozone.

  Still sprinting, Michael risked another look back.

  A ten-foot edition of Harry, a shimmering collage of semi-transparent, fist-sized pixels, had materialized in front of the two Friends. Startled, they’d stumbled to a halt before the apparition and had let rip with the lasers. The pale pink beams lanced harmlessly through the grainy image, dipping slightly as they refracted out of the atmosphere.

  But within seconds the Friends had dismissed the Virtual. Shouting to each other, they shouldered their weapons and set off once more; Harry materialized before them again and again, the basic template of his Virtual body distorted into a variety of gross forms, but the Friends, their strides barely faltering, ran through the ineffectual clouds of pixels.

  Poole tucked his head down and ran.

  ‘Michael!’

  Poole jerked his head up. The boat from the Crab was speeding towards him, a gunmetal-grey bullet shape which hovered a few feet above the plane. The English grass waved and flattened beneath it. An inviting yellow light glowed from the open airlock.

  Harry’s amplified voice echoed from the distant Xeelee-material buildings. ‘Michael, you’re going to get approximately one go at this ... I hope your timing is better than your stamina.’

  Michael pounded across the grass, the girl an ungainly bundle in his arms. His breath scraped in his throat. The boat swept towards him at fifty miles per hour, the open hatchway gaping.

  A flicker of pink-purple light above his head, a whiff of ozone, and a small hole appeared in the grey-white carapace of the boat. Smoke wisped briefly; the boat seemed to falter, but kept advancing.

  It looked as if the Friends were shedding their scruples about using their weapons.

  The boat filled his vision.

  Poole jumped.

  The doorframe caught his right shin, his left foot; pain blazed and he felt the warm welling of blood. He fell hard on the metal floor of the airlock, landing heavily on top of Shira. The girl gasped under his weight, her eyes widening. They slid in a tangle of limbs across the floor, Poole’s damaged legs leaving a trail of blood; they were jammed against the back wall of the airlock, and for the second time the air was knocked out of Poole’s labouring lungs.

  A laser bolt flickered a few inches above Poole’s head.

  The boat surged away from the ground, the hatch sliding closed slowly; Poole, struggling to rise, was slammed to the floor again, this time away from the girl. His chest heaved. He hadn’t been able to draw a single decent breath since his last, desperate few strides across the grass of the earth-craft, and now he felt as if he were in vacuum.

  He forced his head up and looked blearily to the closing hatch. He saw a slice of salmon-pink Jupiter, a tranche of stars; already they were out of the toy atmosphere of the earth-world, above its scrap of blue sky, rushing into Jovian space.

  Blackness welled up before him. The pain in his legs stabbed through his dimming senses.

  The girl moaned, sounding very far away, and he thought he heard Harry’s voice. His lungs were empty. He was very cold. He closed his eyes.

  Berg turned a half-somersault before the thin air slowed her tumble. Then she was falling, upside down relative to the earth-craft, gravity tugging at her so feebly it seemed as if she were hanging in the sky.

  Sucking at the cold air, her arms and legs spread wide, she stared back at the earth-craft. The biggest danger with all of this - the biggest in a whole jungle of dangers, she conceded - was that she might have reached escape velocity. Would she continue to fly out into the Jovian light, her lungs straining to find the last few molecules of oxygen? She tried to taste the air, to sense if it were getting any thinner; but it was impossible to tell.

  The earth-craft was laid out like a diagram before her. She was looking up at the flat, quarter-mile-wide dome of dove-grey Xeelee material which formed its base. The dome was breached by circular vents, each about a yard wide, which must be the mouths of the singularity cannon Poole had described. The dome reminded her incongruously of some old sports stadium, ripped from the Earth and hurled into orbit, upside down, around Jupiter; but on the base of this stadium sat a cluster of Xeelee-material buildings and the battered, ancient stones of a henge. Close to the edge of the landscape she could make out her two pursuers; staring after her, they clung to their floor of grass like two pink-clad flies, their weapons pinned to the sward by the inverted gravity.

  Beyond the earth-craft the Spline warship climbed across the sky, Jupiter casting long, mottled spotlights onto its elephant hide.

  Now there was the faintest breeze whispering past her ears as the earth-craft’s weak, complex gravity field stroked her back into the artificial sky. She felt a surge of relief. Well, at least she wasn’t going to die of asphyxiation, suspended carelessly over Jupiter.

  The earth-craft seemed to be tipping away from her, dipping its domed section and hiding the grass-coated face from her view. Soon, even the Spline ship was hidden by its bulk.

  For an odd, brief moment she was alone. She was suspended in a bubble of crisp blue sky; tufts of ragged white cloud laced the air, draping themselves over the edge of the earth-craft. It was utterly silent. It was almost peaceful. She didn’t feel any fear, or regrets, she was on a roller-coaster of events now, and there wasn’t much she could do except relax, roll with it, and react to whatever happened. She tried to empty her mind, to concentrate just on drawing in each painful breath.

  A breeze pushed more steadily at her face now; she felt it riffle her short hair, and her loose jumpsuit billowed gently against her chest and legs.

  She watched the dome more carefully, focusing on the nearest of the seemingly randomly placed singularity-cannon vents, about two hundred yards in from the rim of the craft. By measuring it against her thumbnail she saw that the vent was growing. It was like a huge opening mouth.

  She found herself sighing with a small, odd regret. So much for her little interlude in the air; it looked as if the world of events was drawing her back in again.

  The grey construction-material dome was looming up at her now; she was going to hit about twenty yards up from the earth-lined rim of the craft. Well, she was glad to avoid the vents for the moment; the Xeelee material was monomolecular, and she remembered the razor-sharp edges of the doorway to Shira’s hut ...

  The gravity on this part of the dome would be about a quarter of the earth-normal field in the interior of the craft. Enough to cause her to hit hard. She tried to orient herself in the stiffening wind, her arms and legs bent slightly, her hands held before her face.

  Michael opened his eyes.

  He was breathing normally. Thank God. He took a luxurious draught of thick, warm air.

  He was inside the metal box that was the boat’s airlock. The floor felt soft below him ... too soft. He probed beneath him with his right hand, and found the metal floor a few inches below his spine; inadvertently he shoved himself a little further into the air.

  Weightlessness. They’d made it into space.

  When he turned his head, his shoulders, chest and neck still ached from their labours in the thin air of the earth-craft. Beside him Shira was curled into a question mark, the diffuse light of the airlock bathing the elegant dome of her head. Her face looked very young in her sleep. Trickles of blood, meandering in the weightless conditions, snaked from her ears.

  Poole lifted cautious fingers to his own face. Blood at his nose and ears. And the sudden movement made him rock in the air; his hovering legs dangled and banged together, and the pain from his damaged shins and feet flared anew. He cried out, softly.

  Harry’s face popped into being just in front of his own. ‘You’re alive,’ Harry said. ‘Awake, as a matter of fact.’

  Poole found his voice reduced to an ugly scratch. ‘Grea
t timing, Harry. Why didn’t you run it a bit closer?’

  Harry’s eyebrows raised a little. ‘Piece of cake,’ he said.

  ‘Let me sleep.’ Michael closed his eyes.

  ‘Sorry. We dock with the Crab in one minute. Then we’ve got to get out of here. We’re assaulting a mile-wide sentient warship from the future. Or don’t you remember the plan?’

  Michael groaned and shut his eyes tighter.

  Berg’s hands, feet and knees hit the unyielding surface first. The construction material was slick, smoother than ice, a shock of sudden cold against her palms. She let her hands and feet slide away from beneath her. She turned her face away so that her chest and thighs hit the surface comparatively softly.

  She lay spreadeagled, flattened against the dome. She lay for a few minutes, the breath hissing through her teeth, her chest flat against the cold Xeelee substance.

  She’d had worse landings.

  The light changed. She lifted her head. Once more the Spline was rising over the curved horizon of the dome, a malevolent moon of flesh, cratered by eyes and weapon snouts.

  11

  Harry’s voice was strained. ‘Michael. The Spline is attacking the earth-craft.’

  Michael Poole, the Crab’s two gravities heavy on his chest, lay on a couch. The subdued lights of the Crab’s lifedome were comfortingly familiar all around him.

  Above him, directly ahead of the advancing Crab, the Spline they had chosen to chase loomed like a misshapen face, growing perceptibly. Other ships orbited the Spline in a slow, complex gavotte. The whole tableau was almost pleasing to watch; peaceful, silent.

  Poole felt tired, his capacity to absorb change exhausted. Lying here was almost like the precious days when he had sailed alone through the Oort Cloud.

  The girl Shira, on a couch beside Poole’s, her frail frame crushed by the two-gravity thrust, wept softly. Poole turned to her reluctantly. Her face was gaunt. There was moisture under her eyes, her nose, patches of colour in her cheeks; her eyes were like red wounds. Harry’s disembodied head floated in shadow some feet above them both, no expression readable.