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

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘We don’t need charity.’

  ‘The noble savage,’ Toba replied sourly. ‘Do you know how long it would take for you to be picked up as vagrants? You saw the guards at the Hospital. And at the Hospital, they’re picked specially for their warm bedside manner. Vagrants aren’t popular. No tithes to the Committee, no room in the City, as the saying goes . . . You’d be on a Committee-run ceiling-farm doing forced labour, or worse, before you could turn around. And then who’s going to pay poor old Adda’s bills?’

  Dura could see there was indeed no choice. In fact, she thought, they had every reason to be grateful to this irritable little man - if he weren’t offering to take them in, they could be in real difficulty. So she nodded, and tried, embarrassed, to form a phrase of thanks.

  Toba said, ‘Oh, just get in the car.’

  Toba drove them through the still-crowded streets away from the Hospital. The streets - wood-lined corridors of varying widths - were a baffling maze to Dura, and after a few twists and corners her orientation was gone. Cars and people were everywhere, and more than once Toba’s team of Air-pigs came into jostling contact with others, forcing Toba to haul on his reins. Speaker-amplified voices blared. Here in the City, Toba drove with the car door open. The Air in the streets was noisy, thick, hot, and laden with the stink of people and Air-pigs; beams of brightness shone through the dust and the green clouds of jetfart.

  At length they left the busiest streets behind and came to an area which seemed quieter - less full of rushing cars and howling pigs. The corridor-streets here were wide and lined by rows of neat doors and windows which marked out small dwelling-places. Evidently these had been virtually identical when constructed, but now they had been made unique by their owners, with small plants confined in globe-baskets by the windows, elaborate carvings on the doorways, and other small changes. Many of the carved scenes depicted the Mantle outside the City: Dura recognized vortex lines, Crust-trees, people Waving happily through clear Air. How strange that these people, still longing for the open Air, should closet themselves inside this stuffy box of wood.

  Toba tugged his reins and drove the car smoothly through a wide, open portal to a place he described as a ‘car park’. He slowed the car. ‘End of the line.’ Dura and Farr stared back at him, confused. ‘Go on. Out you get. You have to Wave from here, I’m afraid.’

  The car park was a large, dingy chamber, its walls stained by pig faeces and splintered from multiple collisions. There were a half-dozen cars, hanging abandoned in the Air, and thirty or forty pigs jostled together in a large area cordoned off by a loose net. The animals seemed content enough, Dura observed; they clambered slowly over each other, munching contentedly at fragments of food floating in the Air.

  Toba loosened the harnesses around his own pigs and led them one by one over to the cordoned area. He guided the pigs competently through a raised flap in the net, taking care to seal the net tight after himself each time.

  When he was done he wiped his hands on his short under-trousers. ‘That’s that. Someone will come by shortly to feed and scrape them.’ He sniffed, peering at the grubby walls of the car park. ‘Tatty place, isn’t it? And you wouldn’t believe the quarterly charges. But what can you do? Since the ordinances banning so much on-street parking it’s become impossible to find a place. Not that it seems to stop a lot of people, of course . . .’

  Dura strained to follow this. But like much of Toba’s conversation it was largely meaningless to her, and - she suspected - contained little hard information anyway.

  After a while, and with no reply from the silent, staring Human Beings, Toba subsided. He led them from the car park and out into the street.

  Dura and Farr followed their host through the curving streets. It was oddly difficult to Wave here; perhaps the Magfield wasn’t as strong outside. Dura felt very conscious of people all around her, of strangers behind these oddly uniform doorways and windows. Occasionally she saw thin faces peering out at them as they passed. The stares of the people of Parz seemed to bore into her back, and it was difficult not to whirl around, to confront the invisible threats behind her.

  She kept an eye on Farr, but he seemed, if anything, less spooked than she was. He stared around wide-eyed, as if everything was unique, endlessly fascinating. His bare limbs and graceful, strong Waving looked out of place in this cramped, slightly shabby street.

  After a few minutes Toba stopped at a doorway barely distinguishable from a hundred others. ‘My home,’ he explained, an odd note of apology in his voice. ‘Not as far Upside as I’d like it to be. But, still, it’s home.’ He fished in a pocket of his under-shorts and produced a small, finely carved wooden object. He inserted this into a hole in the door, turned it, and then pushed the door wide. From inside the house came a smell of hot food, the greenish light of wood-lamps. ‘Ito!’

  A woman came Waving briskly to the door. She was quite short, plump and with her hair tied back from her forehead; she wore a loose suit of some brightly coloured fabric. She seemed about the same age as Dura, although - oddly - there was no yellow coloration in her hair. The woman smiled at Toba, but the smile faded when she saw the upfluxers.

  Toba’s hands twisted together. ‘Ito, I’ve some explaining to do . . .’

  The sharp gaze of the woman, Ito, travelled up and down the bodies of the Human Beings, taking in their bare skin, their unkempt hair, their hand-weapons. ‘Yes, you bloody well have,’ she said.

  Toba’s dwelling-place was a box of wood about ten mansheights across. It was divided into five smaller rooms by light partitions and coloured sheets; small lamps, of nuclear-burning wood, glowed neatly in each room.

  Toba showed the Human Beings a place to clean themselves - a room containing chutes for waste and spherical bowls holding scented cloth. Dura and Farr, left alone in this strange room, tried to use the chutes. Dura pulled the little levers as Toba had shown them, and their shit disappeared down gurgling tubes into the mysterious guts of the City. Brother and sister peered into the chutes, open-mouthed, trying to see where it all went.

  When they were done Toba led them to a room at the centre of the little home. The centrepiece was a wooden ball suspended at the heart of the room; there were handholds set around the globe’s surface and fist-sized cavities carved into it. Ito - who had changed into a lighter, flowing robe - was ladling some hot, unrecognizable food into the cavities. She smiled at them, but her lips were tight. There was a third member of the family in the room - Toba’s son, who he introduced as Cris. Cris seemed a little older than Farr, and the two boys stared at each other with frank, not unfriendly curiosity. Cris seemed better muscled than most City folk to Dura. His hair was long, floating and mottled yellow, as if prematurely aged; but the colour was vivid even in the dim lamplight, and Dura suspected it had been dyed that way.

  At Ito’s invitation the upfluxers came to the spherical table. Dura, still naked, her knife still at her back, felt large, clumsy, ugly in this delicate little place. She was constantly aware of the Pole-strength of her muscles, and she felt inhibited, afraid to touch anything or move too quickly for fear of smashing something.

  Copying Toba, she shovelled food into her mouth with small wooden utensils. The food was hot and unfamiliar, but strongly flavoured. As soon as she started, Dura found she was ravenously hungry - in fact, save for the few fragments of the bread Toba had offered to Adda during the long journey to the City, she hadn’t eaten since their ill-fated hunt - and how long ago that seemed now!

  They ate in silence.

  After the meal, Toba guided the Human Beings to a small room in one corner of the home. A single lamp cast long shadows, and two tight cocoons had been suspended across the room. ‘I know it’s small, but there should be room for the two of you,’ he said. ‘I hope you sleep well.’

  The two Human Beings clambered into the cocoons; the fabric felt soft and warm against Dura’s skin.

  Toba Mixxax reached for the lamp - then hesitated. ‘Do you want me to dampen t
he light?’

  It seemed a strange request to Dura. She looked around, but this deep inside Parz City there were, of course, no light-ducts, no access to the open Air. ‘But then it would be dark,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Yes . . . We sleep in the dark.’

  Dura had never been in the dark in her life. ‘Why?’

  Toba looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know . . . I’ve never thought about it.’ He drew back his hand from the lamp, and smiled at them. ‘Sleep well.’ He Waved briskly away, sealing shut the room behind him.

  Wriggling inside her cocoon, Dura uncoiled her length of rope from her waist, and wrapped it loosely around one of the cocoon’s ties. She knotted the rope around her knife, close enough that she could reach the knife if she needed to. Then she squirmed deeper into the cocoon, at last drawing her arms inside it. It was an odd experience to be completely enclosed like this, though strangely comforting.

  She glanced across at Farr. He was already asleep, his head tucked down against his chest. She felt a burst of protective affection for her brother - and yet, she realized ruefully, he seemed less in need of protection than she did herself. Farr seemed to be absorbing the wonders and mysteries of this complex place with much more resilience and openness than Dura could find.

  Dura sighed, clinging to the fragments of her dissipating feeling of protectiveness. Looking after her brother, at least nominally, made her able to forget her own sense of isolation and threat. Perhaps in an odd way, she thought drowsily, she needed Farr more than he needed her. In the quiet of the room, she became aware of noises from beyond the walls around her. There were murmured words from Toba, the uneven voice of the boy, Cris; and then it was as if her sphere of awareness expanded out beyond this single house, so that she could hear the soft insect-murmurings of thousands of humans all around her in this immense hive of people. The wooden walls creaked softly, expanding and contracting; she felt as if the whole City were breathing around her.

  The cocoon soon grew hot, confining; impatiently she shoved her arms out into the marginally cooler Air. It took her a long time to find sleep.

  The next day Ito seemed a little friendlier. After feeding them again she told them, ‘I’ve a day off work today . . .’

  ‘Where do you work?’ Dura asked.

  ‘In a workshop just behind Pall Mall.’ She smiled, looking tired at the thought of her job. ‘I build car interiors. And I’m glad of a bit of free time. Sometimes, at the end of my shift, I can’t seem to get the smell of wood out of my fingers . . .’

  Dura listened to all this carefully. The conversation of these City folk was like an elaborate puzzle, and she wondered where to start the process of unravelling. ‘What’s a Pall Mall?’

  Cris, the son, laughed at her. ‘It’s not a Pall Mall. It’s just - Pall Mall.’

  Ito hushed him. ‘It’s a street, dear, the main one leading from the Palace to the Market . . . All this must be very strange to you. Why don’t you come see the sights with me?’

  Uncertain, Dura looked to Toba. He nodded. ‘Go ahead. I’ve got to head back to the ceiling-farm, but you take your time; it’s going to be a few days before Adda’s ready for visitors. And maybe Cris can look after Farr for a while.’

  Ito was eyeing Dura’s bare limbs doubtfully. ‘But I don’t think we should take you out like that. Nudity’s all right for shock value - but in Pall Mall?’

  Ito lent Dura one of her own garments, a one-piece coverall of some soft, pliant material. The cloth felt smoothly comfortable against Dura’s skin, but as she sealed up the front of the outfit she felt enclosed, oddly claustrophobic. She tried Waving around the room experimentally; the material rustled against her skin, and the seams restricted her movements.

  After a little thought she wrapped her battered piece of rope around her waist, and tucked her wooden knife and scraper inside the coverall. The homely feel of the objects made her feel a little more secure.

  Cris stared at her with a sceptical grin. ‘You won’t need a knife. It isn’t the upflux here, you know.’

  Again Ito hushed him; the two adults politely refrained from comment.

  Leaving Farr with Cris, the two women left the home with Toba. He led them to his car, waiting in the ‘car park’. Dura helped him harness up a team of fresh pigs from the pen in the corner.

  Toba took them through a fresh maze of unfamiliar streets. Soon they left behind the quiet residential section and arrived in the bustling central areas. Dura tried to follow their route, but once again found it impossible. She was used to orienting herself against the great features of the Mantle: the vortex lines, the Pole, the Quantum Sea. She suspected that keeping a sense of direction while tracking through this warren of wooden corridors was a skill which the children of Parz must acquire from birth, but which she would have to spend many months learning.

  Toba brought them to the widest avenue yet. Its walls - at least a hundred mansheights apart - were lined with green-glowing lamps and elaborate windows and doorways. Toba pulled the car out of the traffic streams and hauled on his reins. ‘Here you are - Pall Mall,’ he announced. He embraced Ito. ‘I’ll head off to the farm; I’ll be back in a couple of days. Enjoy yourselves . . .’

  Ito led Dura out of the car. Dura watched, uncertain, as the car pulled away into the traffic.

  The avenue was the largest enclosed space Dura had ever seen - surely the largest in the City itself. It was an immense, vertical tunnel, crammed with cars and people and full of noise and light. The two women were close to one wall; Dura could see how the wall was lined with windows, all elaborately decorated and lettered, beyond which were arrays of multicoloured clothes, bags, scrapers, bottles and globes, elaborately carved lamps, finely crafted artifacts Dura could not even recognize. People - hundreds of them - swarmed across the wall like foraging animals; they chattered excitedly to each other as they plunged through doorways.

  Ito smiled. ‘Shops,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about the crush. It’s always like this.’

  All four walls of the avenue were lined with the ‘shops’. The wall opposite, a full hundred mansheights away, was a distant tapestry of colour and endless human motion, rendered a little indistinct by the dusty Air; lamps sparkled in rows across its face and shafts of light shone from round ducts.

  Pall Mall was alive with traffic. At first the swarming, braying cars seemed to move chaotically, but slowly Dura discerned patterns: there were several streams, she saw, moving up and down the avenue parallel to its walls, and every so often a car would veer - perilously, it seemed to her - from one stream to another, or would pull off Pall Mall into a side-street. The Air was thick with green jetfart, alive with the squealing of pigs. For a while Dura managed to follow Toba’s car as it worked its way along the avenue, but she soon lost it in the swirling lanes of traffic.

  There was a strong, sweet smell, almost overpowering. It reminded Dura of the scented towels in Ito’s bathroom.

  Ito, touching her arm, drew her towards the shops. ‘Come on, dear. People are starting to stare . . .’

  Dura could hardly help goggle at the people thronging the shops. Men and women alike were dressed in extravagantly coloured robes and coveralls shaped to reveal flashes of flesh; there were hats and jewels everywhere, and hair sculpted into huge, multicoloured piles.

  Ito led Dura through two or three shops. She showed her jewellery, ornaments, fine hats and clothes; Dura handled the goods, wondering at the fine craftsmanship, but quite unable to make sense of Ito’s patient explanations of the items’ use.

  Ito’s persistence seemed to be wearing a little now, and they returned to the main avenue. ‘We’ll go to the Market,’ Ito said. ‘You’ll enjoy that.’

  They joined a stream of people heading - more or less - for that end of Pall Mall deepest inside the City. Almost at once Dura was thumped in the small of her back by something soft and round, like a weak fist; she whirled, scrabbling ineffectually at her clothes in search of her knife.

  A man hurried
past her. He was dressed in a flowing, sparkling robe. In his soft white hands he held leaders to two fat piglets, and he was being dragged in an undignified way - it seemed to Dura - after the piglets, his feet dangling through their clouds of jetfart. It had been one of the piglets that had hit Dura’s back.

  The man barely glanced at her as he passed.

  Ito was grinning at her.

  ‘What’s wrong with him? Can’t he Wave like everyone else?’

  ‘Of course he can. But he can afford not to.’ Ito shook her head at Dura’s confusion. ‘Oh, come on, it would take too long to explain.’

  Dura sniffed. The sweet smell was even stronger now. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Pig farts, of course. Perfumed, naturally . . .’

  They dropped gently down the avenue, Waving easily. Dura found herself embarrassed by the awkward silences between herself and this kindly woman - but there was so little common ground between them.

  ‘Why do you live in the City?’ Dura asked. ‘I mean, when Toba’s farm is so far away . . .’

  ‘Well, there’s my own job,’ Ito said. ‘The farm is large, but it’s in a poor area. Right on the fringe of the hinterland, so far upflux that it’s hard even to get coolies to work out there, for fear of . . .’ She stopped.

  ‘For fear of upfluxers. It’s all right.’

  ‘The farm doesn’t bring in as much as it should. And everything seems to cost so much . . .’

  ‘But you could live in your farm.’ The thought of that appealed to Dura. She liked the idea of being out in the open, away from this stuffy warren - and yet being surrounded by an area of cultivation, of order; to know that your area of control extended many hundreds of mansheights all around you.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ito said reluctantly. ‘But who wants to be a subsistence farmer? And there’s Cris’s schooling to think of.’

  ‘You could teach him yourself.’

  Ito shook her head patiently. ‘No, dear, not as well as the professionals. And they are only to be found here, in the City.’ Her tired, careworn look returned. ‘And I’m determined Cris is going to get the best schooling we can afford. And stick it to the end, despite his dreams of Surfing.’