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

by Stephen Baxter

  Well, she thought ruefully, at least she’d done her best for him in the way she’d structured the hunt. It was undoubtedly safer to be upflux of the herd when the hunt started. And she would have been greatly more worried if she hadn’t stayed with Farr herself.

  With a last, brisk hug, she whispered, ‘Come on, Farr. We’ve got work to do. Let’s see how close we can get to those pigs without them spotting us.’

  He nodded dully and drew away from her, still shivering.

  Hefting a short spear in each hand, Dura began to pull herself across the lines of the fat trunks in the direction of the noises she’d heard. Moving in this direction, the resistance of the Magfield was added to the thickened viscosity of the Air, and the going was hard. She felt submerged and had to suppress a pang of panic at the feeling of being trapped up here, of being unable to free herself from this solidifying Air.

  She did not look back, but was aware of Farr following her, perhaps a mansheight behind; he moved silently save for his rattling breath, and she could hear how he was trying to control the noise of his breathing. The brave little hunter, she thought. Logue would have been proud of him.

  It took only seconds to reach the pigs; soon Dura could see the blocky forms of several animals sliding between the tree trunks, still apparently oblivious to the humans.

  Beckoning Farr to come close to her, Dura lodged herself amid the tree trunks perhaps ten mansheights below the root ceiling.

  There were three Air-pigs. The animals, each about the size of a man’s torso, worked steadily around the bases of the trees, scooping up purple-green krypton grass and other small plants. The pigs’ fins waved languidly as they fed, and Dura could see how their eyestalks were fixed on the grass before them and their mouths were pursed, almost shut. When grazing on the thin foodstuff which floated in the free Air, a pig’s mouth could open so wide that it exposed the entire front end of the pig, turning the animal into an open-ended tube, a crude eating machine trailing eyestalks and fins. But here in this failing Air the mouths were barely opening as they worked, lapping and chewing at the krypton grass. The pigs were keeping their squat bodies sealed up as much as possible, maintaining an inner reservoir of life-sustaining Air; in this way, she knew, the pigs could last for days up here - unlike fragile, weak and ill-adapted Human Beings.

  She turned to Farr, who hovered beside her with his eyes barely protruding over the trunk. She mimed: Just three of them. We’re in luck.

  He nodded and pointed at one of the pigs. Dura, studying the animal more closely, saw that it was bigger than the others: bulkier, clumsier.

  A pregnant sow.

  She felt a smile spread across her face. Perfect.

  She counted one hundred heartbeats, then lifted her spears. Philas and Adda should be in position by now.

  She nodded to Farr.

  The two humans erupted from behind their trunk. Dura yelled as loudly as the thin Air would permit; she hurled herself along the Magfield flux at the pigs, rattling her spears against the wood of the trunk. Beside her Farr did the same, his hair tangling almost comically.

  At their approach the pigs’ mouths snapped shut. Their eyestalks lifted, rigid, to fix straining gazes on their sudden assailants. Then, as if with one mind, the pigs turned and bolted.

  The animals hurled themselves along the Magfield lines, seeking the easiest and quickest escape. They clattered against tree trunks and bounced over roots, their jet orifices farting clouds of green-stained, sweet-smelling Air. Dura and Farr gave chase, still roaring enthusiastically. Suddenly Dura found herself bound up by the excitement of the hunt, and a new energy coursed through her.

  The pigs, of course, outran Dura and Farr easily. Within a few heartbeats the animals were disappearing into the darkness of distance, trailing clouds of jetfarts ...

  But there were Adda and Philas, waiting just a little further down the Magfield, with a net pulled tight between them and with stabbing spears at the ready.

  The first two pigs were moving too rapidly to stop. They turned in the Air and tumbled against each other, their huge mouths popping open to emit childlike squeals, but they hurtled backside first into the net. Philas and Adda worked together, a little clumsily but effectively. Within a few heartbeats they had thrown the net around the two pigs and were prodding at them, trying to force them to subside. Green jetfarts squirted from the pigs, and the net bulged as the terrified animals strove vainly to escape. By the time Dura got there they would have the animals trussed up and then ...

  There was a scream behind her. Farr’s scream.

  She whirled in the Air, Adda and Philas forgotten. The third pig - the pregnant sow, she saw - had evaded Adda’s net. Terrified and enraged, it had flown down, away from the root ceiling, and was now plummeting up through the trees, back along the Magfield flux ... and straight at Farr.

  The boy gazed at the animal’s flapping fins and rigid, staring eyestalks, apparently transfixed. He isn’t going to get out of the way, Dura realized. And the momentum of the pig would crush him in a moment.

  She tried to call out, to move towards the boy - but she was plunged into a nightmare of slow motion. The Magfield was thick, clinging, the Air a soupy mass in which she was embedded. She struggled to get free, to shout to her brother, but the hurtling, blurring speed of the pig reduced her efforts to the trivial.

  There was barely a mansheight between the pig and the boy. Dura, trapped in viscous Air, heard herself scream.

  Suddenly the sow opened its mouth wide and bellowed in agony. Jetfarts staining the air, it veered abruptly. One ventral fin caught Farr with a side-swipe which sent him spinning against a tree trunk ... but, Dura saw with a flood of relief, he was no more than shocked.

  As the sow tumbled in the Air the reason for its distress revealed itself: Adda’s long spear, protruding from the sow’s belly. The spear quivered as the beast thrashed, seeking an escape from this sudden agony.

  Now Adda himself raced along the Magfield, ungainly but determined. Behind him the two trapped pigs were struggling free of the abandoned net. Adda bellowed: ‘She’s gone rogue ... Dura, get to the boy and keep him away.’

  Now the pig settled in the Air, all six of its eyestalks triangulating on the old man. Adda slowed to a hover, arms and legs outspread, his gaze locked on the pig.

  Dura said uncertainly, ‘Adda, get out of the way ... I think ...’

  ‘Get the damn boy.’

  Dura hurried to obey, skirting the hovering pig.

  With a howl that rent the glutinous Air, the pig charged Adda.

  Adda twisted in the Air and began to Wave out of the way, his legs thrashing at the Magfield ...

  But, Dura saw instantly, not fast enough.

  Clinging to the weeping Farr there was nothing she could do as the final, ghastly moments unfolded. Adda’s face showed no fear - but no acceptance either, Dura saw; there was only a grimace of irritation, perhaps at this newest failure of his crumbling body.

  As it closed on Adda, trailing green clouds of jetfarts, the sow opened its mouth.

  The huge, circular maw closed on both Adda’s legs. The momentum of the hurtling sow carried away both pig and Adda, and Dura cried out as she saw Adda’s fragile body smashed against a tree trunk. But he was still conscious, and fighting; with both fists he pounded on the sow’s wide, quivering back.

  Dura kicked away from the tree and Waved as hard as she could towards the pig. Philas was approaching the pig from the far side, her stabbing spears held out before her. The woman’s eyes were wide, emptied by shock and terror.

  The pig, halted by its impact with the tree, pulled back into clear Air now, and it began, with lateral squirts of gas, to rotate around its long axis. Adda seemed to realize what was happening. With his legs still trapped, he beat harder at the pig’s flank, cursing violently. But still the pig twisted, ever faster, becoming at last a blur of fins and eyestalks. Jetfart gas trailed around its body in circular ribbons, and electron glow sparkled from its fins. A
dda, at last, fell backwards and lay against the pig’s long flank, his knees bent cruelly.

  This was the way boars killed their prey, Dura knew: the boar would spin so fast that the superfluidity of the Air which sustained all animals in the Mantle, including humans, broke down. It was simple, but deadly effective. Even now, she knew, the pain of Adda’s trapped legs, the agony induced by the whirling of the world around him, would be subsumed by a dull, disabling numbness as his muscles ceased to function, his senses dimmed, and at last even his mind failed.

  With a yell from deep in her gut, Dura threw herself at the whirling animal. She scrabbled at its smooth, slippery hide, feeling her belly and legs brush against its hot flesh. She stabbed at its tough epidermis once, twice, before being hurled clear. She tumbled backwards through the Air, colliding with a trunk hard enough to knock the breath out of her.

  One of her two short spears had snapped, she saw, and was now floating harmlessly away. But she had succeeded in ramming the other through the skin of the pig. The wounded animal, with Adda’s spear still protruding from its belly, tried to maintain its rotation; but, distracted by pain, its motion became uneven, and the pig began to precess clumsily, the axis of its rotation dipping as it thrashed in the Air. Poor Adda, now evidently unconscious, was thrown back and forth by the pig, his limp body flopping passively against the animal’s flank.

  Philas fell on the pig now and drove another spear into the animal’s hide, widening the wound Dura had made. The animal opened its huge mouth, its circular lip-face pulling back to reveal a green-stained throat, and let out a roar of pain. Adda, his legs freed from the mouth, fell limply away from the pig; Farr hurried to him.

  Philas rammed her second spear into the thrashing pig’s mouth, stabbing at the organs exposed within. Dura pushed away from the tree and hurled herself once more at the sow; she was weaponless, but she hauled at the spears already embedded in the pig’s flanks, wrenching open the wounds, while Philas continued to work at the mouth.

  It took many minutes. The pig thrashed and tore at the Air to the end, striving to use its residual rotation to throw off its attackers. But it had no escape. At last, leaking jetfarts aimlessly, its cries dying to a murmur, the sow’s struggles petered away.

  The two women, exhausted, hung in the Air. The sow was an inert mass, immense, its skin ripped, its mouth gaping loosely. Dura - panting, barely able to see - found it difficult to believe that even now the animal would not erupt to a ghastly, butchered semblance of life.

  Dura Waved slowly through the Air to Philas. The two women embraced, their eyes wide with shock at what they had done.

  Farr gingerly laid Adda along a tree trunk, relying on the gentle pressure of the Magfield to hold him in place. He stroked the old man’s yellowed hair. He had retrieved Adda’s battered old spear and laid it beside him.

  Dura and Philas approached, Dura wiping trembling hands on her thighs. She studied Adda’s injuries cautiously, scared even to touch him.

  Adda’s legs, below the knees, were a mangled mess: the long bones were obviously broken in several places, the feet reduced to masses of pulped meat. The surface of Adda’s chest was unbroken but oddly uneven; Dura, fearful even to touch, speculated about broken ribs. His right arm dangled at a strange angle, limp in the Air; perhaps the shoulder had been broken. Adda’s face was a soft, bruised mess. Both eyecups were filled by gummy blood, and his nostrils were dimmed ... And, of course, the Xeelee alone knew about internal injuries. Adda’s penis and scrotum had fallen from their cache between his legs; exposed, they made the old man look still more vulnerable, pathetic. Tenderly, Dura cupped the shrivelled genitalia in her hand and tucked them away in their cache.

  ‘He’s dying,’ Philas said, her voice uneven. She seemed to be drawing back from the battered body, as if this, for her, was too much to deal with.

  Dura shook her head, forcing herself to think. ‘He’ll certainly die up here, in this lousy Air. We’ve got to get him away, back into the Mantle ...’

  Philas touched her arm. She looked into Dura’s face, and Dura saw how the woman was struggling to break through her own shock. Philas said, ‘Dura, we have to face it. He’s going to die. There’s no point making plans, or struggling to get him away from here . . . all we can do is make him comfortable.’

  Dura shook off the light touch of the widow, unable - yet - to accept that.

  Adda’s mouth was phrasing words, feebly shaping the breath that wheezed through his lips. ‘... Dura ...’

  Still scared to touch him, she leaned close to his mouth. ‘Adda? You’re conscious?’

  A sketch of a laugh came from him, and he turned blind eyecups to her. ‘... I’d ... rather not be.’ He closed his mouth and tried to swallow; then he said, ‘Are you all right? ... The boy?’

  ‘Yes, Adda. He’s fine. Thanks to you.’

  ‘ ... And the pigs?’

  ‘We killed the one that attacked you. The sow. The others ...’ She glanced to the nets which drifted in the Air, tangled and empty. ‘They got away. What a disaster this has been.’

  ‘No.’ He stirred, as if trying to reach out to her, then fell back. ‘We did our best. Now you must ... try again. Go back ...’

  ‘Yes. But first we have to work out how to move you.’ She stared at his crushed body, trying to visualize how she might address the worst of the wounds.

  Again that sketchy, chilling laugh. ‘Don’t be so ... damned stupid,’ he said. ‘I’m finished. Don’t ... waste your time.’

  She opened her mouth, ready to argue, but a great weariness fell upon her, and she subsided. Of course Adda was right. And Philas. Of course he would soon die. But still, she knew, she would have to try to save him. ‘I never saw a pig behave like that. A boar, maybe. But ...’

  ‘We should have ... expected it,’ he whispered. ‘Stupid of me ... pregnant sow ... it was bound to ... react like that.’ His breath seemed to be slowing; in a strange way, she thought as she studied him, he seemed to be growing more comfortable. More peaceful.

  She said softly, ‘You’re not going to die yet, damn you.’

  He did not reply.

  She turned to Philas. ‘Look, we’ll have to try to bind up his wounds. Cut some strips from the hide of that sow. Perhaps we can strap this damaged arm across his body. And we could tie his legs together, use his spear as a splint.’

  Philas stared at her for a long moment, then went to do as Dura had ordered.

  Farr asked, ‘What can I do?’

  Dura looked around, abstracted. ‘Go and retrieve that net. We’re going to have to make a cradle, somehow, so we can haul him back home ...’

  ‘All right.’

  When Philas returned, the women tried to straighten Adda’s legs in preparation for binding them to the makeshift splint. When she touched his flesh, Dura saw Adda’s face spasm, his mouth open wide in a soundless cry. Unable to proceed, she pulled her hands away from his ruined flesh and stared at Philas helplessly.

  Then, behind her, Farr screamed.

  Dura whirled, her hands reaching for Adda’s spear.

  Farr was still working on the tangled net - or had been; now he was backing away from it, his eyecups wide with shock. With the briefest of glances, Dura assured herself that the boy had not been harmed. Then, as she hurried to his side, she looked past him to discover what was threatening him ...

  She slowed to a halt in the Air, her mouth dangling, forgetting even her brother in her amazement.

  A box, floating in the Air, approached them. It was a cube about a mansheight on a side made of carefully cut plates of wood. Ropes led to a team of six young Air-pigs which was patiently hauling the box through the forest. And, through a clear panel set into the front of the box, a man’s face peered out at her.

  He was frowning.

  The box drifted to a halt. Dura raised Adda’s spear.

  4

  Toba Mixxax hauled on his reins. The leather ropes sighed through the sealant membranes set in the face of the c
ar, and he could see through the clearwood window - and feel in the rapid slackening of tension in the reins - how eagerly the team of Air-pigs accepted the break.

  He stared at the four strangers.

  ... And how strange they were. Two women, a kid and a busted-up old man - all naked, one of the women waving a crude-looking wooden spear at him.

  At first Mixxax had assumed, naturally, that these were just another set of coolies taking a break in the forest, here at the fringe of his ceiling-farm. But that couldn’t be right, of course; even the dimmest of his coolies wouldn’t wander so far without an Air-tank. In fact, he wondered how this little rabble was surviving so high, so badly equipped. All they had were spears, ropes, a net of what looked like untreated leather ...

  Besides, he’d recognize his own coolies. Probably, anyway.

  He’d been patrolling the woodland just beyond the border of the ceiling-farm when he’d come across this group - or at least, he’d meant to be patrolling; it looked as if, daydreaming, he’d wandered a little further into the upflux forest than he’d meant to. Well, that wasn’t so surprising, he told himself. After all there was plenty on his mind. He was only fifty per cent through his wheat quota, with the financial year more than three-quarters gone. He found his hands straying to the Corestuff Wheel resting against his chest. Any more spin weather like the last lot and he was done for; he, with his wife Ito and son Cris, would be joining the swelling masses in the streets of Parz itself, dependent on the charity of strangers for their very survival. And there was precious little charity in the Parz of Hork IV, he reminded himself with a shudder.

  With an effort he brought his focus back to the present. He stared through the car’s window at the vagrants. The woman with the spear - tall, streaks of age-yellow in her hair, strong- looking, square face - stared back at him defiantly. She was naked save for a rope tied around her waist; affixed to the rope was some kind of carrying-pouch that looked as if it was made from uncured pigskin. She was slim, tough-looking, with small, compact breasts; he could see layers of muscles in her shoulders and thighs.