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

by Stephen Baxter

  He tumbled out of the Bell, dragging the supervisor after him.

  He had to find the Spine. He turned to his left and kicked out. He held Hosch’s hand tight - at least he thought he did; only pain reached him now from his hands, feet and face. He felt a whispering drag pull at his own body ... No, he thought, it was more than that; there were a thousand discrete tugs at his flesh, like hooks dragging into the skin. His flesh was ablating, he realized slowly, crumbling off him as he Waved.

  He reached ahead with his free hand. His sight was gone, both eyecups useless now. This was the way back to the Spine, as best he remembered it from the moment the Bell had been torn away by the Magfield surges. Of course, since then he’d been unconscious. The Bell could even have turned upside down . . .

  But he didn’t have any better guesses. He thrashed at the scouring liquid, trying not to estimate how far he’d Waved from the Bell, how much further before he was sure he’d missed the Spine.

  Mercifully the pain seemed to be lessening. The burning, the decomposition of his flesh, must be damaging the nerve endings themselves. Soon he genuinely would be isolated inside his body.

  Well, I’ll never Surf again. Or sculpt. Or, and now his inner smile faded, or feel a woman’s skin.

  There was a new stab of pain from his outstretched arm, his useless stub of hand. The arm buckled, forced back by something solid.

  His body collided with a hard surface. He tried to feel with his chest, thighs and face.

  The Spine. The blessed Spine.

  He dragged his free arm across the surface until it snagged on something. There, he had it - a Bell cable. He made his hand into a hook and wrapped it around the cable. With Hosch still towed limply behind him, he flattened himself against the wooden surface of the Spine, and began to Wave once more, along the length of the Spine, using the Cable as a guide.

  How ironic, he thought, if he were Waving the wrong way, down towards the Core.

  By the time he was lifted out of the fluid, he was almost isolated from the world, inside a deadened body. He felt as aware, as alert as ever, but he could feel little. Even the pain had gone now. But he could feel his chest expand, dragging in the thinning, clearing Air, and he could feel the Magfield pull at his stomach, the centre of him.

  He was still here, he thought. Just a little battered around the edges.

  He thought he’d kept Waving until the end, and he thought he’d kept hold of Hosch. But it was hard to be sure.

  And now he was being moved again, more delicately. He tried to smile. The Fishermen must have come down for him and Hosch, in a second Bell.

  He was glad he couldn’t see the looks on their faces, as they nursed him.

  25

  With a final heave from the team of volunteers, the patient was loaded through the kicked-out Hospital wall and into the car waiting in the Air beyond. Adda watched the car recede cautiously from the Hospital, and then turn to join the streams of refugees fleeing to the upflux.

  Once the evacuation of the City had begun, this ward of the Hospital of the Common Good, directly behind the Skin of Parz, had rapidly been adapted to serve as a loading bay. Now it was a three-dimensional swarm of Hospital staff, volunteers, patients and those close to them. Patients screamed or moaned, and staff called desperately to each other for splints, bandages, drugs. And as fast as the patients were shipped off in the cars outside, more - ever more - were crowding in from the rest of the broken City. Adda felt overwhelmed, daunted, dismayed, exhausted. Perhaps I’ve finally seen too many changes. Too many disasters; too many shattered bodies . . .

  He leaned out into the Air beyond the Skin. He opened his mouth, trying to expel from his lungs the Hospital stink of stale capillary-Air. But even outside the Skin the Air was sour; he could smell nuclear-burning wood, Air-pig jetfarts, the smell of human fear. It was as if the City, in its death throes, was wrapped in an invisible cloud of sour-smelling photons, like an immense dying creature leaking its last capillary-Air.

  The City, suffering hugely with groans of wood and the shearing scream of failing Corestuff metal, shuddered around him. The Hospital was lodged in the Downside belly of the City, so that Adda was peering out of the Skin like an insect gazing out of a wall. The anchor-bands were still functioning; electron gas shone around them in response to the huge currents surging through their superconducting interiors as the City fought to maintain its position.

  The Skin was a blur of motion. All over the City the fragile hull had been kicked away. People clambered out of the City and into waiting cars; most of them dragged possessions after them through the ragged holes they’d made. Cars and free-Waving people diffused away from the City in a widening, blurring cloud. The Air was filled with the yells of people, the braying commands of Speakers.

  Beyond the pathetic human river the Glitch-wracked vortex lines were mere sketches, scribbles of instability. The Magfield shuddered perceptibly as the massive upwellings from the Quantum Sea continued.

  And in the far distance, the blue-violet fire of Xeelee ships raked through the Mantle. It was a sight he never thought he’d live to see.

  ‘Adda!’

  Reluctantly, he turned away from the open Air and concentrated on the ward once more.

  The next patient to be evacuated, a woman, was screaming in pain. She was so swaddled in stained bandages that all that could be seen of her was a gaping mouth. Deni Maxx trailed after this grotesque package, stroking the woman’s hair and murmuring futile words of comfort. Deni looked to Adda with a mute appeal. He tried to mask his reluctance to touch the injured woman. He moved closer to the woman and stared into her face, muttering gruff, calming words. It was like soothing a wounded Air-pig. But the woman’s eyecups were black with bruising, and he doubted that she’d heard him.

  They moved quickly to load the woman into a waiting Air-car. At last the car pulled away from the building, and the screams of the woman dwindled slowly.

  Deni lingered by the improvised doorway and gulped in breaths of dank Polar Air. She looked into the mists of distance, at the violet limbs of the Xeelee starbreaker beams walking easily through the Star.

  ‘Let’s hope those damn things keep away from the City,’ Adda said.

  She brushed back a handful of filthy hair. ‘And from your people, wherever they are . . . Anyway, if the beams do hit us directly, it will be mischance. The purpose of the Xeelee is obviously to disrupt the Core; they wouldn’t waste effort on a tiny, helpless construct like a City.’

  ‘Yes. So much for Hork’s expedition into the underMantle.’

  ‘Perhaps. But, Adda, that brave and foolish expedition was the only hope any of us had. I have clung to it far beyond any rational point.’ She smiled thinly. ‘In fact I still cling to it. Why not? As long as it keeps me functioning.’

  He surveyed the thin trails of Air-cars and people dispersing into the roiling Air. In the distance the larger cars showed up as silhouettes, fleeing insects against searing Xeelee light.

  Deni rubbed her chin. ‘You may not understand this, Adda, but most of the City’s people have never strayed outside Parz before. To them, the City has always been the safest place in the world. Now that it’s falling apart around them, they feel - betrayed. Like a child abandoned by its parents.’ She hesitated. ‘We’re talking of hope. But in a way, for many the worst has already come to pass.’

  ‘Do you think we’re doing any good here?’

  She looked strained. ‘Well, we’re shoving the patients out of this improvised port as fast as they are coming in - crushed in the Stadium, or burned and sliced open by that Corestuff berg incursion through the Midside . . . But whether they are any safer out there than in what’s left of the City, I don’t care to judge.’ She smiled without humour. ‘But at least it makes us feel better to help them. Don’t you agree?’

  Another patient was shouldered past them and out into a waiting car. Farr was in this latest work party, and as soon as the patient - an unconscious child - was delivered, Far
r turned to make his way back into the chaos of the ward. Adda laid a hand on his shoulder, restraining him. There were deep bruises around the boy’s eyes; his shoulders were hunched and his mouth was working as if he was mumbling to himself.

  Adda shook him gently. ‘Farr? Are you all right, lad?’

  Farr focused on the old man. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, his voice high and thin. ‘I’m just a little tired, and . . .’

  ‘Listen, you don’t have to carry on with this.’

  Farr looked offended. ‘Adda, I’m not a kid.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you are, you damn . . .’

  Deni moved smoothly between them, something of her old sheen of competence returning to her. ‘Farr, you’re doing a marvellous job . . . and I need you to keep on doing it. So I agree with Adda; I think you should take a short break - find something to eat, a place to rest.’

  Farr looked ready to protest further, but Deni pushed him gently in the chest. ‘Go on. That’s an order.’

  With a thin smile the boy complied.

  Deni turned a quizzical face to Adda. ‘I can tell you were never a parent.’

  Adda growled wordlessly.

  A new Air-car approached the rough lip of the opened-up wall; five nervous pigs jostled together, bumping against the Skin like inflated toys. The car’s door opened and the driver leaned across. ‘Adda,’ Toba Mixxax said, his broad, weary face splitting into a grin. ‘I’m glad to find you. Ito said you were trying to get here, with Farr.’

  ‘Well, he’s here. He’s fine. He’s working hard.’ Adda had always found Toba’s round, flat face rather bland and unexpressive; but now Adda could see real pain in the set of Toba’s eyecups, the small lines at the corners of his mouth. ‘Cris isn’t here. I’m sorry.’

  Toba’s expression barely changed, but Adda could see a small light go out of him. ‘No. I, ah - I didn’t expect he would be.’

  ‘No.’

  The two men let their gazes slide away from each other, briefly embarrassed.

  ‘How’s Ito? Where is she?’

  ‘At the ceiling-farm. What’s left of it. She’s found plenty to do. She’s a craftswoman, Adda, and she’s launched herself into repair work, with the coolies who’ve stayed.’ He shook his head. ‘Everything’s smashed, though. You wouldn’t believe it.’ There was bitterness in Toba’s voice. ‘This latest Glitch has done for us, Adda.’

  Toba’s words made him think of what Deni had said - that the Xeelee were here to disrupt the Core, to devastate the Star itself. Adda wasn’t very imaginative; he focused on the here-and-now, on what was achievable. But, he suddenly wondered, what if Deni Maxx was right - that the Xeelee truly had come, this time, to finish the Star - to do for them all?

  He glanced around the lurid sky. Inside himself, he’d been expecting this Glitch to come to an end, eventually - just like all the other Glitches in his long life, no matter how severe. But what if that wasn’t true, this time? After all, the Xeelee were manufacturing this Glitch; his previous experience wasn’t a reliable guide. What if the Xeelee kept on, persisted until the Core itself welled out from rents in the Quantum Sea . . .

  Up to now Adda had been anticipating only his own death, and the death of many others - even of those close to him. But perhaps this new catastrophe was destined to go much further - to encompass the destruction of the race itself. He was overwhelmed suddenly by a vision of the Star scoured clean of Human Beings, of all future generations - everything Adda had worked for - snuffed out, rendered meaningless.

  Toba was still talking. Adda hadn’t heard a word he’d said for a long time.

  Adda pulled himself away and took a deep breath. If the world was to finish today - well, there was little Adda could do about it. In the meantime he had work to do.

  Deni Maxx joined Adda in the improvised doorway. ‘Thanks for coming to help us, citizen.’

  Toba shrugged. ‘I needed something to keep me busy.’ Another patient was being brought through the ward now; Toba Mixxax stared past Adda at the broken body, and his round face set into a mask of grimness.

  ‘Well, you found it,’ Adda said darkly.

  Deni Maxx touched his arm. ‘Come on, upfluxer. Let’s get back to work.’

  In the distance the starbreakers, like immense daggers, continued to pierce the Mantle. Adda stared out for one moment longer; then, with a final nod to Toba, he turned away.

  Once the Star had seemed huge to her. Now here she was stranded in the immensity of this Ur-sky, of stars and planets, and she thought back almost nostalgically to the cosy world of the Mantle - with the smooth purple floor of the Quantum Sea below her, the Crust a blanket above her, the Mantle itself like an immense womb succouring her. All of that had been stripped away by this astonishing journey, and by the seeing-gadgets of the Ur-humans.

  She tilted back her head and opened her eyes as wide as she could, trying to take it all in, to bury her awe and build a model of this new universe in her head.

  The sky around them - the space between the stars - wasn’t utterly black. She made out hints of structure: clouds, whorls, shadings of grey. There must be some kind of air out there, beyond the transparent walls - air but not Air: thin, translucent, patchy, but sufficient to give the sky an elusive shape. It was a little like the fugitive ghost-patterns she could see in the darkness of her own eyecups if she jammed her eyes tight shut.

  And beyond the thin shroud of gas lay the stars, suspended all around the sky. They were lanterns, clear and without flicker; they were of all colours and all levels of brightness, from the faintest spark to intense, noble flames. And perhaps, she thought with an almost religious awe, those lights in the sky were worlds in themselves. Maybe there were other forms of humans on those distant lights, placed there by the Ur- humans for their own inscrutable purposes. Would it ever be possible to know? - to speak to those humans, to travel there across such immensities?

  She tried to make out patterns in the distribution of the stars. Perhaps there was a hint of a ring structure over there - and a dozen stars trailed in a line across that corner of the sky . . .

  But as fast as she found such bits of orderliness in the unmanageable sky, she lost them again. Slowly she came to accept the truth - that there was no order, that the stars were scattered over the sky at random.

  For the first time since leaving the ‘Flying Pig’, panic spurted in her. Her breath scraped through her throat and she felt her capillaries expand throughout her flesh, admitting more strength-bearing Air.

  Why should randomness upset her so? Because, she realized slowly, there were no vortex lines here, no neat Crust ceiling or Sea floor. All her life had been spent in a ruled-off sky - a sky where any hint of irregularity was so unusual as to be a sign of deadly danger.

  But there were no lines here, no reassuring anchor-points for her mind.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Hork sounded calmer than she was, but his eyecups were wide and his nostrils flared, glowing like nuclear-burning wood above his bush of beard.

  ‘No. Not really. I’m not sure I can accept all this.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Hork lifted up his face. In the starlight the intrinsic coarseness of his features seemed to melt away, leaving a calm, almost elegiac expression. He waved a hand across the sky. ‘Look at the stars. Look how their brightness varies . . . But what if that variation is an illusion? Have you thought about that? What if all the stars are about as bright as each other?’

  Her mind - as usual - plodded slowly behind his flight of logic. If the stars were all the same intrinsic brightness, then some of them would have to be further away. Much further away.

  She sighed. No, damn it. She hadn’t thought of that.

  Somehow she’d been picturing the starry Ur-universe as a shell around her - like the Crust, though much further away. But it wasn’t like that; she was surrounded by an unbounded sky throughout which the stars - themselves worlds - were scattered like spin-spider eggs.

  The universe ballooned around her, re
ducing her to a meaningless mote, a spark of awareness. It was oppressive, beyond her imagination; she cried out, covering her face in her hands.

  Hork sounded uncomfortable. ‘Take it easy.’

  Irritation burrowed through her awe. ‘Oh, sure. And you’re quite calm, I suppose. Sorry to embarrass you . . .’

  ‘Give me a break.’

  She turned away from him, striving for calm. ‘I wish I knew what is an appropriate response to all this - to be here in this ancient place, to be seeing through the eyes of the Ur-humans . . .’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ Hork said gently. ‘Remember there are still walls around us, which must somehow be helping us to see. The Ur-humans didn’t see things the same way we do. Ask Muub about it when we get back . . . We “see” by sound waves which are transmitted through the Air.’ He waved a hand. ‘But beyond this little bubble, there isn’t any Air. The Ur-humans didn’t live in Air, in fact. And they “saw” by focusing beams of photons, which . . .’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘They could smell the stars?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘In Air, photons can travel only slowly, diffusing. So we use them to smell. And we “hear” temperature fluctuations.

  ‘In empty space, it’s different. Phonons can’t travel at all - so we would be blind. But photons travel immensely fast. So the Ur-humans could have “seen” photons . . . Anyway, that’s Muub’s theory.’

  ‘Then how did they hear? Or smell, or taste?’

  He growled impatiently. ‘How the hell should I know? Anyway, I think this third chamber is designed to let us see the universe the way the Ur-humans did.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘And there’s still a setting left on the arrow-console, the fourth one . . . we haven’t finished with our ways of seeing yet.’