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

by Stephen Baxter

  Toba studied her, cautious but with traces of concern. ‘Are you all right?’

  She tried to keep her voice steady. ‘I think so. I’m just a little taken aback by the speed of this thing, I suppose.’

  He frowned and squinted out through his window. ‘We’re not going so fast. Maybe a metre an hour. After all, it’s not as if we’ve got to work across the Magfield; we’re simply following the flux lines home . . . To my home, anyway. And, this far downflux, the pigs are getting back the full strength they’ll have at the Pole. There they could reach maybe twice this speed, with a clear run.’ He laughed. ‘Not that there’s any such thing as a clear run in Parz these days, despite the ordinances about cars inside the City. And the top teams . . .’

  ‘I’ve never been in a car before,’ she hissed, her teeth clenched.

  He opened his mouth, and nodded. ‘No. True. I’m sorry; I’m not very thoughtful. ’ He mused, ‘I guess I’d find it a little disconcerting if I’d never ridden before - if I hadn’t been riding since I was a child. No wonder you’re feeling ill. I’m sorry; maybe I should have warned you. I . . .’

  ‘Please stop apologizing.’

  ‘Anyway, we’ve made good time. Considering it’s such a hell of a long way from the Pole to my ceiling-farm.’ His round face creased with anger. ‘Humans can’t survive much more than forty, fifty metres from the Pole. And my ceiling-farm is right on the fringe of that, right on the edge of the hinterland of Parz. So far upflux the Air tastes like glue and the coolies are weaker than Air-piglets . . . How am I supposed to make a living in conditions like that?’ He looked at her, as if expecting an answer.

  ‘What’s a metre?’

  ‘. . . A hundred thousand mansheights. A million microns.’ He looked deflated, his anger fading. ‘I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry; I . . .’

  ‘How deep is the Mantle?’ she asked impulsively. ‘From to Crust to Quantum Sea, I mean.’

  He smiled, his anger evaporating visibly. ‘In metres, or mansheights?’

  ‘Metres will do.’

  ‘About six hundred.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been taught, too.’

  He studied her curiously. ‘You people know about things like that?’

  ‘Yes, we know about things like that,’ she said heavily. ‘We’re not animals; we educate our children . . . even though it takes most of our energy just to keep alive, without clothes and cars and Air-boxes and teams of captive Air-pigs.’

  He winced. ‘I won’t apologize again,’ he said ruefully. ‘Look . . . here’s what I know.’ Still holding his reins loosely, he cupped his long-fingered, delicate-looking hands into a ball. ‘The Star is a sphere, about twenty thousand metres across.’

  She nodded. Two thousand million mansheights.

  ‘It’s surrounded by the Crust,’ he went on. ‘There’s three hundred metres of that. And the Quantum Sea is another ball, about eighteen thousand metres across, floating inside the crust.’

  She frowned. ‘Floating?’

  He hesitated. ‘Well, I think so. How should I know? And between the Crust and the Quantum Sea is the Mantle - the Air we breathe - about six hundred metres deep.’ He looked into her face, a disconcerting mixture of suspicion and pity evident there. ‘That’s the shape of the Star. The world. Any kid in Parz City could have told you all that.’

  She shrugged. ‘Or any Human Being. Maybe there was no difference once.’

  She wished Adda were awake, so she could learn more of the secret history of her people. She turned her face to the window.

  In the last hours of the journey the inverted Crust landscape changed again.

  Dura, with Farr now awake and at her side, stared up, fascinated, watching the slow evolution of the racing Crustscape. There was very little left of the native forest here, although a few trees still straggled from small copses. The clean, orderly regularity of the fields they’d passed under to the North - further upflux, as she was learning to call it - was breaking up into a jumble of forms and textures.

  Farr pointed excitedly, his eyes round. Dura followed his gaze.

  They weren’t alone in the sky, she realized: in the far, misted distance something moved - not a car; it was long, dark, like a blackened vortex line. And like Mixxax’s car it was heading for the Pole, threading along the Magfield.

  She said, ‘That must be thousands of mansheights long.’

  Toba glanced dismissively. ‘Lumber convoy,’ he said. ‘Coming in from upflux. Nothing special. Damn slow, actually, if you get stuck behind one.’

  Soon there were many more cars in the Air. Mixxax, grumbling, often had to slow as they joined streams of traffic sliding smoothly along the Magfield flux lines. The cars came in all shapes and sizes, from small one-person buggies to grand chariots drawn by teams of a dozen or more pigs. These huge cars, covered in ornate carvings, quite dwarfed poor Mixxax’s; Toba’s car, thought Dura, which had seemed so grand and terrifying out in the forest upflux, now appeared small, shabby and insignificant.

  Much, she was coming to realize, like its owner.

  The colours of the Crust fields were changing: deepening and becoming more vivid. Farr asked Mixxax, ‘Different types of wheat?’

  Mixxax showed little interest in these rich regions from which he was excluded. ‘Maybe. Flowers, too.’

  ‘Flowers?’

  ‘Plants bred for their beauty - their shape, or colour; or the scent of the photons they give off.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, Ito grows some blooms which . . .’

  ‘Who’s Ito?’

  ‘My wife. Nothing as grand as this, of course; after all, we’re flying over the estates of Hork’s court now.’

  Farr had his face pressed to a window of the car. ‘You mean people grow plants just for the way they look?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how do they live? Don’t they have to hunt for food, as we do?’

  Dura shook her head. ‘Folk here don’t hunt, Farr. I’ve learned that much. They grow special kinds of grasses, and eat them.’

  Mixxax laughed bitterly. ‘“Folk here”, as you call them, don’t even do that. I do that, in my scrubby farm on the edge of the upflux desert. I grow food to feed the rich folk in Parz . . . and I pay them taxes so they can afford to buy it. And that,’ he finished bitterly, ‘is how Hork’s courtiers have enough leisure time to grow flowers.’

  The logic of that puzzled Dura, but - understanding little - she let it pass.

  Now, suddenly, the queue of cars in front of them cleared aside, and the view ahead was revealed.

  Dura heard herself gasp.

  Farr cried out, sounding like a small child. ‘What is it?’

  Mixxax turned and grinned at him, evidently enjoying his moment of advantage. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is Parz City. We have arrived.’

  6

  Muub arrived at the Reception Gallery shortly before the start of the Grand Tribute. He moved to the front of the Gallery, so that he could see down the full depth of Pall Mall, and selected a body-cocoon close to Vice-Chair Hork’s customary place. A servant drifted around him for a few moments, adjusting the cocoon so it fit snugly, and offered him drinks and other refreshments. Muub, unable to shake off weariness, found the harmless little man as irritating as an itch, and he chased him away.

  Muub looked down. Pall Mall was the City’s main avenue. Broad and light-filled, it was a rectangular corridor cut vertically through the complex heart of Parz - from the elaborate superstructure of the Palace buildings at the topmost Upside, down through hundreds of dwelling levels, all the way to the Market, the vast, open forum at the centre of the City. The Reception Gallery was poised at the head of Pall Mall, just below the Palace buildings themselves; Muub, trying to relax in his cocoon, was bathed in the subtly shaded light filtering down through the Palace’s lush gardens, and was able to survey, it seemed, the whole of the City as if it were laid open before him. Pall Mall itself glowed with light from the Air-shafts
and wood-lamps which lined its perforated walls; threads of the shafts, glowing green and yellow, converged towards the Market itself, the City’s dusty heart. The great avenue - normally thronged with traffic - was deserted today, but Muub could make out spectators peering from doors and viewing-balconies: ordinary little faces turned up towards him like so many flowers. And in the Market itself - all of five thousand mansheights below the Palace - the Tribute procession was almost assembled, as thousands of common citizens gathered to present the finest fruit of this quarter’s labour to the Committee. No cocoons down there, of course; instead the Market was criss-crossed by ropes and bars to which people clung with their hands or legs, or hauled themselves along in search of vantage points. To Muub, staring down at the swarming activity, it was like gazing into a huge net full of young piglets.

  The Gallery itself was laced with ropes of brushed leather - to guide those Committee members and courtiers, Muub thought sourly, too poor to be simply carried to their cocoons. The Gallery’s cool, piped Air was scented with fine Crust-flowers. Vice-Chair Hork was already in his place close to Muub, alongside the vacant cocoon reserved for his father, Hork IV. Hork glared ahead, sullen and silent in his bulk and glowering through his beard. Perhaps half the courtiers were in their places; but they had congregated towards the rear of the Gallery, evidently sensing, in their dim, self-seeking way, that today was not a good day to attract the attention of the mercurial Vice-Chair.

  So already the elaborate social jostling had begun. It would be a long day.

  In fact - thanks to the recent Glitch - it had already been a long day for Muub. The latest in a series of long days. He was principal Physician to the First Family, but he also had a hospital to run - indeed, the retention of his responsibilities at the Hospital of the Common Good had been a condition of his acceptance of his appointment to Hork’s court - and the burden placed on his staff by the Glitch had still to unravel. He studied the vapid, pretty, ageing faces of the courtiers as they preened in their finery, and wondered how many more ravaged bodies he would have to tend before sleep claimed him.

  Vice-Chair Hork seemed to notice him at last. Hork nodded to him. Hork was a bulky man whose size gave him an appearance of slowness of wit - a deceptive appearance, as more than one courtier had found to his cost. Under his extravagant beard - extravagantly manufactured, actually, Muub reflected wryly - Hork’s face had something of the angular nobility of his father’s, with those piercing, deep black eyecups and angular nose; but the features tended to be lost in the sheer bulk of the younger Hork’s fleshy face, so that whereas the Chair of the Central Committee had an appearance of gentle, rather bruised nobility, his son and heir appeared hard, tough and coarse, the refined elements of his looks serving only to accentuate his inherent violence. Today, though, Hork seemed calm. ‘So, Muub,’ he called. ‘You’ve decided to join me. I was fearful of being shunned.’

  Muub sighed as he worked his way deeper into his cocoon. ‘You glower too much, sir,’ he said. ‘You frighten them all away.’

  Hork snorted. ‘Then through the Ring with them,’ he said, the ancient obscenity coming easily to his lips. ‘And how are you, Physician? You’re looking a little subdued yourself.’

  Muub smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’m getting a little old for my burden of work. I’ve spent most of the last few days in the Hospital. We’re - very busy, sir.’

  ‘Glitch injuries?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Muub rubbed a hand over his shaven scalp. ‘Of course we should have seen the worst now . . . or rather, the more serious cases we have not yet reached must, sadly, be beyond our care. But there remains a steady stream of lesser injuries which . . .’

  ‘Minor?’

  ‘Lesser,’ Muub corrected him firmly. ‘Which is very different. Not life-threatening, but still, perhaps, disabling. Most of them patients from the central districts, of course. When Longitude I failed . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Hork said, chewing his lip. ‘You don’t need to tell me about it.’

  Longitude I was an anchor-band, one of four superconducting toroids wrapped around the City to maintain the structure’s position over the South Pole. Longitudes I and II were aligned vertically, while their twins Latitudes I and II were placed horizontally, so that the toroids criss-crossed around the City.

  The Glitch had largely spared the Polar regions, the City itself. But at the height of the Glitch, with vortex lines tangling around the City, Longitude I had failed. The City had rattled in its superconducting cage like a trapped Air-pig. The anchor-band’s current had been restored quickly, and the effects on the external parts of the structure - such as the Spine and the Committee Palace - had been minimal. But it had been in the hidden interior of the City, where thousands of clerks and artisans toiled their lives away, that the most serious injuries had been incurred.

  ‘Do we have any figures on the casualties yet?’

  Muub looked at the Vice-Chair. ‘I’m surprised you’re asking me. I’m your father’s Physician, but I’m really just one Hospital Administrator - one of twelve in all of Parz.’

  Hork waved fat fingers. ‘I know that. All right, forget I asked. I just wanted your view. The trouble is that the agencies which gather statistics like that for us are precisely those which were wrecked by the Glitch itself.’ He shook his head, the jowls wobbling angrily. ‘People think gathering information is a joke - unnecessary. A luxury. I suspect even my highly intelligent father shares that view.’ The last few words were spat out, venomously. ‘But the fact is, without such data a government can scarcely operate. I’ve tried to justify this to my father often enough. You see, Doctor, without central government functions, the state is like a body without a head. We can’t even raise tithes successfully, let alone allocate expenditure.’ Hork grimaced. ‘It makes today’s Grand Tribute look a little pointless, doesn’t it, Physician?’

  Muub nodded. ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘I tell you, Muub,’ Hork said, still nervously chewing on his bearded underlip, ‘one more Glitch like that and we could be done for.’

  Muub frowned. ‘Who are “we”? The government, the Committee?’

  Hork shrugged. ‘There are plenty of hotheads, out in the ceiling-farms, in the dynamo sheds, in the Harbour . . . There seems no way of rooting such vermin out. Even Breaking them on the Wheel serves only to create martyrs.’

  Muub smiled. ‘A wise observation.’

  Hork laughed, displaying well-maintained teeth. ‘And you’re a patronizing old fool who pushes his luck . . . Martyrs. Yet another subtlety of human interaction which seems to evade my poor, absent father.’ Now Hork looked piercingly at Muub; the Physician found himself flinching. ‘And you,’ Hork said. ‘Do you scent rebellion in the Air?’

  Muub thought carefully. He knew he wasn’t under any personal suspicion; but he also knew that the Vice-Chair - unlike his father - took careful note of anything said to him. And Hork had dozens, hundreds of informants spread right throughout Parz and its hinterland. ‘No, sir. Although there are plenty of grumbles - and plenty of folk ready to blame the Committee for our predicament.’

  ‘As if we had called the Glitches down on our own heads?’ Hork wriggled in his cocoon, folds of brushed leather rippling over his ample form. ‘You know,’ he mused, ‘if only that were true. If only the Glitches were human in origin, to be cancelled at a human command. But then, the scholars tell us - repeating what little wisdom was allowed to survive the Reformation - man was brought to this Mantle by the Ur-humans, modified to survive here. If once we had such control over our destiny, why should we not regain it, ultimately?’ He smiled. ‘Well, Physician?’

  Muub returned the smile. ‘You’ve a lively mind, sir, and I enjoy debating such subjects with you. But I prefer to restrict my attention to the practical. The achievable.’

  Hork scowled, his plaited hair-tubes waving with an elegance that made Muub abruptly aware of his own baldness. ‘Maybe. But let’s not forget that that was the argument of the Reformers,
ten generations ago. And their purges and expulsions left us in such ignorance we can’t even measure the damage they did . . .

  ‘Anyway, it’s not revolt I fear, Physician. It’s more the feasibility of government itself - I mean the viability of our state, regardless of whoever sits in my father’s chair.’ The man’s wide, fleshy face turned to Muub now, full of unaccustomed doubt. ‘Do you understand me, Muub? Damn few do, I can tell you, inside this wretched court or out.’

  Muub was impressed - not for the first time - by the younger Hork’s acuity. ‘Perhaps, you fear, the Glitches will render an organized society like Parz City impossible. Revolts will become irrelevant. Our civilization itself will fall.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Hork said, sounding almost grateful. ‘No more City - no more tithe-collectors, or Crust-flower parks, or artists or scientists. Or Physicians. We’ll all have to Wave off to the upflux and hunt boar.’

  Muub laughed. ‘There are a few who would like to see the back of the tithes.’

  ‘Only fools who cannot perceive the benefits. When every man must not only maintain his own scrubby herd of pigs, but must make, by hand, every tool he uses, like the poorest upfluxer . . . then, perhaps, he will look back on taxation with nostalgic affection.’

  Muub frowned, scratching at one eyecup. ‘Do you think such a collapse is near?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Hork said. ‘Not unless the Glitches really do smash us wide open. But it’s possible, and growing more so. And only a fool closes his eyes to the possible.’

  Muub, wary of what traps might lie under the surface of that remark, turned to stare down through the dusty, illuminated Air of Pall Mall.

  Hork growled, ‘Now I’ve embarrassed you. Come on, Muub, don’t start acting like one of these damn piglet-courtiers. I value your conversation. I didn’t mean to imply my father is such a fool.’

  ‘ . . . But he does not necessarily share your perspective.’

  ‘No. Damn it.’ Hork shook his head. ‘And he won’t give me the power to do anything about it. It’s frustrating.’ Hork looked at Muub. ‘I hear you saw him recently. Where is he?’