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

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Damn it,’ said Poole. ‘Harry, bring up an image of the earth-craft.’

  A section of the dome turned opaque, hiding the Spline and its ineffectual human attendants; the opaque section filled with a salmon-pink wash, an inverted slab of grass-green, a ball of hull-flesh. The little cup-shaped earth-craft, dwarfed, hung beneath the belly of the attacking warship like some absurd pendant; and it hung with its grassy face averted, its construction-material dome turned up to the Spline in submission. Cherry-red fire flickered from the gut of the Spline, dimming Jupiter’s light. The earth-craft shuddered visibly.

  ‘Starbreakers,’ Shira breathed, eyes wide. ‘The Spline is using starbreakers.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ Poole said grimly. ‘Can the Xeelee material withstand starbreaker beams?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps for a while. The earth-craft isn’t a warship, Michael.’

  Poole frowned. In the magnified and enhanced image on the dome the singularity-cannon portals were obvious breaches in the ship’s armour. Presumably the causality stress was still impairing the Spline’s power and accuracy. But if the Spline managed to shoot through one of those portals it would be over, no matter how tough this magical Xeelee substance was.

  Suddenly there was smoke, flames erupting from one of the cannon mouths. The light was an intense blue, heavily loaded to the ultraviolet. Poole, used to the silent flickering of light and particle weapons, felt weak, awed. Two points of light, intensely bright and whirling around each other, shot out of the cannon and spiralled along the column of smoke and light towards the patient bulk of Jupiter.

  Harry said, ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Singularities,’ Poole breathed. ‘I can scarcely believe it. They’re working their cannon; they’ve fired off two of their singularities. The Friends are fighting back. Maybe Berg—’

  ‘No.’ Shira’s face, though damp with weeping, was composed. ‘It’s the Project. They are proceeding with the Project.’ Her eyes were bright, seemingly joyful, as she stared upwards.

  Starbreaker light flared. Overloaded, the lifedome turned black, the image imploding, then cleared once more.

  Now, above Poole’s head, the Spline he was chasing was turning, weapon pits glinting menacingly.

  ‘I think they’ve spotted us,’ Harry said.

  The belly of the Spline closed down on the earth-craft like a lid. The nearest cannon-mouth was still yards away.

  Berg threw herself flat against the construction-material dome. Hull-flesh rolled above her, silent and awesome, like the palm of some giant hand. Metal artefacts large enough to be artillery pieces stared down at her. Now a huge wounded area swept over her, an inverted pool of blood and disrupted flesh. Something swam in that thick, oil-like blood, she saw: symbiotic organisms - or constructs - patiently tending to the worst of the damage. With acres of charnel-house meat suspended over her head, she found herself gagging; but, of course, there was no smell, no sound; the Spline was still outside the atmosphere of the earth-craft.

  Would Xeelee construction material stop the weapons of a Spline warship? Maybe not. But it sure would help ...

  She had to get inside the dome.

  Trying to ignore the looming ceiling of flesh, she slithered on her belly towards the hole in the dome.

  She was too slow, too damn slow. After a few seconds she stopped, rested her face against the dove-grey cheek of Xeelee material.

  This was ridiculous. Crawling wasn’t going to make a difference, one way or the other; it could only slow her down.

  Muttering encouragement to herself, keeping her eyes off the nightmare filling the sky, she pushed herself up to a kneeling position, got her legs under her, stood uncertainly.

  As if in response cherry-red brightness burst all around her; the dome shuddered like a living thing. She was thrown to her face.

  Then, when the singularity cannon fired, Berg’s body actually rattled against the shuddering Xeelee material. She pushed herself away from the dome, leaving smears of blood from her nose, her bruised mouth.

  She got to her feet. There was a stink of ozone; a wind pressed at her chest, weak in the thin air. Twin points of light - which must be singularities - climbed a tube of smoke into the pink-stained sky. The points whirled around each other like buzzing fireflies. She gave a hoarse cheer: at last, it seemed, the good guys were fighting back ...

  But then she saw that the smoke tube the singularities were climbing almost grazed the surface of the dome; it passed neatly through the gap between the dome and the lumbering belly of the Spline and arced towards Jupiter.

  The Friends weren’t trying to attack the Spline, to defend themselves; they were firing their singularities at Jupiter. Even at a time like this, all they cared about was their damn Project.

  ‘Assholes,’ Berg said. She started running.

  Ignoring the pain of the thinness of the atmosphere in her lungs, the heady stench of scorched air, the buffeting winds, the shuddering dome, she tried to work out what she’d do when she got to the mouth of the cannon. The tubes were about three feet wide, and she’d have about twenty yards to fall to the inner base of the dome; she could probably slide through the first few yards and then use her hands and feet to brake—

  Starbreaker light flared hellishly all around her. Abandoning all conscious plans, she wrapped her arms around her face and dived head-first into the cannon tube.

  Even though the Spline’s weapon-ports must be open now - even though the warship from the future must look like some fleshy wall across the sky, massive and menacing, to the natives of this era - a lone matchstick craft was coming at them out of the flotilla of ships, flaring along a two-gee curve straight for the Spline.

  Jasoft Parz could hardly believe it.

  The ship was about a mile in length. Its drive-fire plumed from a block of comet-ice; the block was fixed to a long, delicate, open-frame metal stalk, topped by a clear lifedome. The dome was a pool of subdued light; Jasoft could almost imagine he could see humans moving about in it, actual people.

  Jasoft recognized the design from the research he’d performed for the dead Governor. This was a GUTship, driven by the phase energy of decoupling super-forces. It looked so fragile.

  Something moved in Jasoft, lost and isolated as he was in the grotesque eyeball of the Spline.

  There had to be something he could do to help.

  He pushed away from the lens. With short, heavy strokes through the thick entoptic fluid, he cast about the eye chamber, looking for some way to damage his Spline host.

  Berg rattled down the translucent singularity-cannon tube.

  The barrel seemed to be sheltering her from the blazing red light of the starbreaker assault, but its surface proved to be slick and unyielding; neither her hands nor her feet could gain any kind of purchase on the walls of the tube. So she kicked out at the walls as she collided with them, jamming herself as hard as she could against them: anything to generate a little friction. She knew the lower mouth of the tube was six feet above the crystalline floor of the inner chamber. Berg tried to twist in the tube so she’d land butt-first, protecting her head and arms—

  She plummeted out of the cannon.

  The plane of singularities, diamond points in a lattice of blue-white light, rushed to meet her, slammed into her back.

  For long seconds she lay there spreadeagled, staring up at the Xeelee-material dome. Cherry-red light glimmered in distant cannon mouths.

  She gingerly moved her legs, wiggled her fingers. There was a cacophony of pain, but nothing seemed to be broken. Her lungs, back and chest felt like a single mass of bruises, though; and it was hard to expand her lungs, to take a decent breath.

  It felt nice to lie here, she thought, just to lie here and to watch the light show ...

  Starbreaker light flared anew beyond the dome - no, she realized with a shock; now it was shining through the dome - and as she watched Xeelee construction material blistered, bubbling like melting plastic.


  She’d postpone blacking out until later, she decided.

  She rolled over and climbed painfully to her feet, ignored the clamouring stiffness, the pain in her legs and chest.

  The hollow heart of the earth-craft was a hive of activity. Friends ran everywhere carrying bits of equipment, working control panels, shouting instructions to each other. But there was no chaos, or panic, Berg saw. The Friends knew exactly what they were doing. The scene had something of the air of a great installation - a power plant, perhaps - in the throes of some crisis.

  In the commotion no one seemed to have observed her unorthodox entrance. There was damage around her, evidence of the huge Spline assault; close to her there was a burned-out control console, two young, gaunt bodies splayed over it.

  A cannon-tube flared, forcing her to shield her eyes; a pair of singularities hurtled out of the plane beneath her feet, dazzled up into a cannon tube and soared beyond the dome like ascending souls. She felt the plane beneath her shudder as the whole craft recoiled from the launch of so much mass.

  And now there was a rush of noise above her, like the exhalation of a giant. She glanced up. The damaged area of the dome was beginning to glow white-hot; around a quarter of the dome was sagging, losing its structural integrity under the sustained Spline assault.

  There was a smell of burning.

  Berg recognized a man - a boy, really - the Friend Jaar, who’d taken Poole on his sightseeing tour of this place. Jaar was working at the centre of a little group of Friends, poring over slates which bore what looked like schematics of singularity trajectories. There was soot, blood smeared over his bare scalp, and his jumpsuit was torn, begrimed; he looked tired, but in control.

  In a few strides Berg crossed the chamber. She forced her way through the knot of people and grabbed Jaar’s arm, pulling away his slate so he was forced to look at her.

  Irritation, hypertension crossed his face. ‘Miriam Berg. How did you get in here? I thought—’

  ‘I’ll explain later. Jaar, you’re under attack. What are you doing about it?’

  He pulled his arm away from her. ‘We are finishing the Project,’ he said. ‘Please, Miriam—’

  She grabbed his shoulders, twisted him round so he was forced to face her. ‘Look above your head, damn it! The Spline is using starbreakers. The whole damn roof is going to implode on you, Xeelee material or not. There’s not going to be time to finish your precious Project. You’re going to fail, Jaar, unless you do something about it.’

  Wearily he indicated the frantic motion around them. ‘We set up a crash schedule for the implementation of the Project, but we’re falling behind already. And we’ve lost lives.’ He looked up; he seemed to flinch from the failing dome.

  ‘Why don’t you use the hyperdrive?’

  ‘The hyperdrive has already gone,’ Jaar said. ‘Its components were stored in the structure of the dome; we lost operability soon after the start of the assault—’

  ‘Jesus.’ Berg ran stiff fingers through her hair. So there was no way to run; they could only fight. And she wouldn’t be fighting merely for the good of humanity, but for her own life ... ‘All right, Jaar; show me how these damn singularity cannons work.’

  Jasoft Parz felt rather proud of himself.

  He wasn’t a scientist, or an engineer, by any stretch of the imagination. But, he was finding, he wasn’t completely without resource.

  In his life-support box he’d found a spare skinsuit. Using a sharp edge from the box he’d sliced this apart, assembled it into a little tepee-like tent; the substance of the skinsuit, trying to restore its breached integrity, had sealed itself tight along the new seams he’d created.

  He’d fixed the little tent over a Spline nerve-trunk and used the facemask of the skinsuit to pump the tent full of breathable air, creating a little bubble of atmosphere in entoptic fluid.

  Now he cast through the contents of the life-support box. Maybe he’d have to take the mechanism apart, to start his fire ...

  The Spline warship hung over the lifedome of the Hermit Crab, rolling with abrupt, jerky, mechanical motions.

  Michael Poole stared at it with something approaching fascination: quite apart from its dominating physical presence there was a vague obscenity about the mixture of gross, swollen life and mechanical deadliness. Michael was reminded of myths of the past, of the undead.

  No wonder Earth had been - would be - held in thrall by these things.

  Michael glanced at Shira. The Friend, exhausted, dishevelled, crushed by the GUTdrive’s continuing two-gravity push, lay flat on the couch next to his. Her eyes were open - staring up - but unseeing. A clean blue glow flickered at the edge of his vision, somewhere close to the perimeter of the lifedome.

  Harry’s disembodied head drifted like a balloon. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Verniers. Attitude jets.’

  ‘I know what verniers are,’ Harry grumbled. The head swivelled theatrically to peer up at the Spline. The huge sentient warship was now drifting away from the Crab’s zenith. ‘You’re turning the ship?’

  Michael leaned back in his couch and folded his hands together. ‘I preset the program,’ he said. ‘The ship’s turning. Right around, through one hundred and eighty degrees.’

  ‘But the GUTdrive is still firing.’ The head glanced up at the Spline again, closed one eye as if judging distances. ‘We must be slowing. Michael, are you hoping to rendezvous with that thing up there?’

  ‘No.’ Michael smiled. ‘No, a rendezvous isn’t in the plan.’

  ‘Then what is, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Look, Harry, you know as well as I do that this damn old tub isn’t a warship. Apart from a couple of Berry-phase archaeological scanners, I’ve nothing apart from the ship itself which I can use as a weapon.’ He shrugged, lying there. ‘Maybe if I’d brought back a few more samples from the Oort Cloud, I could throw rocks—’

  ‘What do you mean,’ Harry asked ominously, ‘“apart from the ship itself ”?’

  ‘After all this two-g thrust we’ve a huge velocity relative to the Spline. When we’ve turned around there’ll be only a couple of minutes before we close with the Spline; even with the GUTdrive firing we’ll barely lose any of that ...

  ‘Do you get it, Harry? We’re going to meet the Spline ass-first, with our GUTdrive blazing—’

  With slow, hesitant movements, Shira raised her hands and covered her face with long fingers.

  ‘My God,’ Harry breathed, and his Virtual head ballooned into a great six-feet-tall caricature. ‘We’re going to ram a Spline warship. Oh, good plan, Michael.’

  ‘You’ve got a better suggestion?’

  An image flickered into existence on the darkened dome above them: the Spline warship, as seen by the Crab’s backward-pointing cameras. The gunmetal grey of the Spline’s hull was reflected in Harry’s huge, pixel-frosted eyes. ‘Michael, as soon as that Spline lines itself up and touches us with its damn starbreaker beam, this ship will become a shower of molten slag.’

  ‘Then we’ll have died fighting. I say again: have you got a better suggestion?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘Your first idea. Let’s run back out to the cometary halo and find some rocks to throw.’

  Beyond Harry’s huge, translucent head the Spline’s motion seemed to have changed. Michael squinted, trying to make out patterns. Was the rolling of the warship becoming more jerky, more random?

  Come to think of it, he’d expected to be dead by now.

  Was there something wrong with the Spline?

  A quarter of the dome had caved in. Cannon barrels collapsed gracefully. Xeelee construction material shrank back like burning plastic, and through the breaches Miriam could see the harsh glare of the stars, the flicker of cherry-red starbreaker light.

  Molten construction material rained over the singularity plane. Friends scurried like insects as shards - red-hot and razor-sharp - sleeted down on them. A wind blasted from the devastated area through the rest of the chamber; Mir
iam could smell smoke, burning flesh.

  ‘Jesus,’ Miriam breathed. She knew she was lucky; the singularity-cannon console she’d been working at with Jaar was well away from the collapsing area. Jaar cried out inarticulately and pushed away from the console. Berg grabbed his arm. ‘No!’ She pulled him around. ‘Don’t be stupid, Jaar. There’s not a damn thing you can do to help them; the best place for you is here.’

  Jaar twisted his head away from her, towards the ruined areas of the earth-craft.

  Now a flare of cherry-red light dazzled her. The Spline had found a way through the failed dome and had hit the chamber itself with its starbreaker beam. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the glow of the dome, she saw that the crystal surface over one section of the singularity plane had become muddied, fractured; cracks were racing across it as if it were melting ice. The area had been scoured of human life. And the singularities themselves, white-hot fireflies embedded in their web of blue light, were stirring. Sliding.

  All around the artificial cavern the Friends seemed to have lost their discipline. They stumbled away from their consoles, clung to each other in distracted knots; or they ran, hopelessly, into the devastated area. The singularity-cannon muzzles were silent now; sparks no longer sailed upwards to space.

  The Friends were finished, Berg realized.

  Berg released Jaar and turned back to the console. She tried to ignore it all - the stench of meat, the wind in her face, the awesome creak of disintegrating Xeelee construction material - and to think through the layout of this cannon control. It was all based on a straightforward touch-screen, and the logic was obvious. Tapping lightly at coloured squares she ran through the direction-finder graphics.

  From the corner of her eye she saw schematic diagrams of the earth-ship - huge swaths of the dome-base glaring red - and graphs, lists of figures, data on more subtle damages.

  Berg said, ‘How bad is it? Are we losing the air?’

  Jaar watched her, distracted, his face crumpling in pain. ‘No,’ he said, his voice a hoarse shout above the chaotic din. ‘The breaches in the dome are above the bulk of the atmosphere; the singularity plane’s gravity well will keep most of the air in a thick layer close to the surface ... for the next few minutes anyway. But the air will seep out of that breach. It will absorb all this heat, boil out of the ruined shell ... and the dome itself may fail further.’