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

by Stephen Baxter

  It could still go wrong, Dura thought uneasily. The fragile society left adrift by the Xeelee Glitch could still fall apart - disintegrate into suicidal conflict over dwindling resources, over once-precious goods from the old Parz which had been reduced in value to trinkets by the disaster.

  But not just yet. Now, people seemed - on the whole - to be prepared to work together, to rebuild. This was a time of hope, of regeneration.

  Dura welcomed her own aching muscles and stiff back. It was evidence of the hard work that comprised her own small part of the Mantle-wide rebuilding effort She felt a surge of optimism, of energy; she suspected that the days to come would be some of the happiest of her life.

  In a clear space a few mansheights from the car, the Human Being Mur had been showing Lea - a pretty girl who had once been a Surfer - how to construct nets from the plaited bark of Crust-trees. The two of them were surrounded by a cloud of half-coiled ropes and abandoned sections of net. Little Jai - reunited with his father - wriggled through the Air around them, nude and slick, grasping at bits of rope and gurgling with laughter. Lea was brandishing a length of rope in Mur’s face. ‘Yes, but I don’t see why I have to do it over.’

  Mur’s voice was cracking with anger, making him sound very young. Compared to the City girl, Mur still looked painfully thin, Dura thought. ‘Because it’s wrong,’ he said. ‘You’ve done it wrong. Again! And I—’

  ‘And I don’t see why I should put up with that kind of talk from the likes of you, upfluxer.’

  Toba placed his hands on the girl’s shoulders. ‘Lea, Lea. You shouldn’t speak to our friends like that.’

  ‘Friends?’ The girl launched into an impressive round of cursing. Toba looked pale and pulled away from her, dismayed.

  Dura took the rope which Lea was rejecting. ‘Perhaps Mur didn’t explain,’ she said smoothly. ‘You have to double plait the rope to give it extra strength.’ She hauled at sections of it, demonstrating its toughness.

  ‘But the way he speaks to me—’

  ‘This plaiting is finely done.’ She looked at Lea. ‘Did you do this?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  Dura smiled. ‘It takes most Human Beings years of practice to learn such a skill, and you’ve almost mastered it already.’

  Lea, distracted by the praise, was visibly struggling to stay angry; she pushed elaborately dyed hair from her forehead.

  Dura passed the rope to her. ‘With a bit more help from Mur, I’ll be coming to you for instruction. Come on Toba, let’s take a break; I’d like to see how Adda is getting on.’

  As they moved away Dura was careful not to make a show of looking round, but she could see that Mur and Lea were moving back towards each other, warily, and picking up sections of rope once more.

  She felt rather smug at her success at defusing the little situation. And she was secretly pleased at this evidence that the Human Beings were managing to adjust to the situation they’d found here at the Pole - better than some of Parz’s former inhabitants, it seemed. Dura had expected the Human Beings to be shocked, disappointed to arrive at the Pole after their epic journey across the sky, only to find nothing more than a dispersing cloud of rubble. In fact they’d reacted with much more equanimity than she’d anticipated . . . especially once reunited with their children. The Human Beings simply hadn’t known what to expect here. They couldn’t have imagined Parz in all its glory - any more than she herself could have, before Toba brought her here for the first time. For the little band of Human Beings, the immense number of people, the huge, mysterious engines, the precious artifacts scattered almost carelessly through the Air, had been wonder enough.

  One section of the rough, expanding City-cloud had been cordoned off, informally, to serve as a Hospital area. Dura and Toba pushed through the cloud of debris until they were moving through arrays of patients, drifting comfortably in the Air and loosely knotted together with lengths of rope. Dura cast a cursory, slightly embarrassed glance at the patients. Many people had been left so damaged by the Glitch that they would never function fully again; but the care they were receiving was clearly competent. The bandaging and splints seemed undamaged and clean. One of the blessings of the destruction of Parz was that its scale had been so immense many smaller, more robust items in the City - like medical equipment - had simply been spilled into the Air, undamaged.

  As they neared the heart of the improvised Hospital, Muub, once Court Physician, emerged to meet them. Muub had abandoned his impractical finery, replacing it with what looked like a Fisherman’s many-pocketed smock. His smile was broad and welcoming beneath his shining bare scalp, and the Physician looked as happy as Dura could remember seeing him - liberated, even.

  Muub led them to Adda. The old upfluxer was standing a sullen guard over an outsized, sealed cocoon. Dura knew that the cocoon contained Bzya, the crippled Fisherman, who still could do little more than bellow half-coherent phrases from his ruin of a mouth. Bzya was evidently asleep. But Adda seemed content to spend much of his waking time with his friend, keeping watch over him and serving as a clumsy nurse when necessary, helping Jool and their daughter - Shar, who had returned from the ceiling-farms - to tend to him.

  Adda embraced Dura, and asked after the rest of the Human Beings. Dura told him about Mur and Lea, and Muub added, ‘There are points of friction. But your upfluxers are working well with the citizens of Parz. Don’t you agree, Adda?’

  The old man growled, his face as sour as ever. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we’re “fitting in” too damn well.’

  Dura smiled. ‘You’re too much of a cynic, dear Adda. Nobody forced the Human Beings to come here, to help the City folk dig their way out of the rubble.’

  ‘Although were delighted you’re here,’ Muub said expansively. Without your upflux-hardened muscles we wouldn’t be making half the progress we’ve managed so far.’

  ‘Sure. As long as were not using our “upflux-hardened muscles” to build another nice, neat cage for ourselves.’

  Dura said, ‘Now, Adda—

  Toba Mixxax said nervously, ‘But you were never in a cage. I don’t understand.’

  Muub held up his hands. ‘Adda has a point. And while we’re rebuilding our City, it’s a time to think about rebuilding our hearts as well. The Human Beings were in a cage, Toba. As were we all: a cage of ignorance, prejudice and suppression.’

  Dura looked at him carefully. ‘You genuinely accept that?’

  ‘Do we need a City at all?’ Adda asked sourly. ‘Maybe it’s time for a fresh start without one.’

  Dura shook her head. ‘I don’t think I agree with that. Not any more. The benefits of a City - stability, a repository of understanding, the access to medicine - all of these will help us all, everyone in the Mantle.’ She fixed Muub with a sharp glance. ‘Won’t they?’

  He nodded seriously. ‘We could never advance from a base of subsistence farming. But the City must never again become a fortress-prison. That’s why we’re planning a whole series of satellite communities, with the City as the hub. We should not trap most of humanity in one place, so vulnerable to disasters from without - and from our own hearts.’

  Adda snorted. ‘You talk about human nature. What’s to stop human nature from reasserting itself where prisons and fortresses are concerned?’

  ‘Only the strong and continuing efforts of good men and women,’ Muub said evenly. ‘Hork shares these goals. He’s talking about new kinds of power structures - representative councils which would give all of the Mantle’s people a say in the way things are run.’

  ‘Knowing Hork,’ Dura admitted, ‘I find that a little hard to swallow.’

  ‘Then try harder,’ Muub said sternly. ‘Hork is no sentimental dreamer, Dura. He faces realities and acts on them. He knows that without the ancient wisdom of the Human Beings - without the clues you people brought about the Core Wars, the possibility of retrieving some of the ancient technology - the City would have been wiped out by the Xeelee attack, without even knowing why.
Perhaps the race itself would have perished . . . We need each other. Hork accepts that, and is going to make sure we don’t lose what we’ve gained. Surely his litany, today, is evidence of his goodwill. Perhaps we could construct a new integrated philosophy, incorporating the best elements of all these strands - the Xeelee philosophy, the Wheel followers - and build a new faith to guide us . . .’

  Dura laughed. ‘Maybe. But we’ll have to put the City back together first.’

  Adda rubbed his nose. ‘Perhaps. But I don’t think we’ll have Farr here to help us.’

  ‘No,’ Dura said. ‘He’s determined to return to the Quantum Sea, in a new improved “Flying Pig”. To find the Colonists again. But he’s accepted he needs to put in some time rebuilding his own world first, before flying off to win new ones . . .’

  ‘Not a poor ambition to have,’ Muub said, smiling thinly. ‘Quite a number of us are intrigued by what you learned of the Colonists . . . and the huge Ur-human engines at the North Pole. Of course, we don’t know any way of travelling more than a few tens of metres from the South Pole, let alone of crossing the Equator . . . but we’ll find a way.’ ‘Why should there be a way at all?’ Adda asked cynically. ‘This Star is a hostile environment, remember. The Glitches have forced that into our heads, if nothing else. We’ve no guarantee we’ll ever be able to achieve much more than we can do now. After all the Ur humans left us to die with the Star; they didn’t believe in any future for us.’ ‘Perhaps!’ Muub smiled. ‘But perhaps not. Here’s a speculation for you. What if the Ur-humans didn’t intend us to be destroyed when the Star impacted the Ring? What if the Ur-humans left us some means of escaping from the Star?’

  Dura said ‘Like the wormhole to the planet—’

  ‘Or,’ Muub said, ‘even a ship - an Air-car that could travel outside the Star itself.’ He looked up at the Crust, a look of vague dissatisfaction on his face. ‘What lies beyond that constraining roof over our world? The glimpses you saw, Dura, of other stars - hundreds, millions of them - each one, perhaps, harbouring life - not human as we are and yet human, descended from the Ur-stock . . . And then, behind it all the Ur-humans themselves, still pursuing their own aloof goals. To see it all - what a prize that would be! Yes, Adda; many of us are very curious indeed about what might lie at the far Pole . . .

  ‘Yet even that will tell us so little of the true history of our universe. What is the true purpose of Bolder’s Ring? What are the Xeelee’s intentions - who, where is the enemy they seem to fear so much?’ He smiled, looking wistful. ‘I will resent dying without the answers to such questions, as I surely will . . .’

  In the distance, in the opened heart of the City hundreds of mansheights away, pipes began to bray: Hork calling his citizens to him. Muub bid a hasty farewell to his friends.

  With Adda, Dura began to make her way towards the heart of the debris cloud. As they Waved, peacefully, she slipped her hand into his.

  ‘We’ve come a long way, daughter of Logue, Adda said.

  Dura looked at him with a little suspicion, but there was no sign of irony in his expression; his good eye returned her gaze with a softness she hadn’t often seen there before.

  She nodded. ‘We have . . .’ And some of us a little further than others, she thought. ‘How’s Bzya?’

  He sniffed. ‘Surviving. Accepting what he has. Which is a lot, I suppose; he has Jool and Shar both with him now . . .’

  ‘And you,’ she said.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you think you’ll stay with them?’

  He shrugged, with an echo of his old cantankerousness, but his expression remained soft.

  She squeezed his hand. ‘I’m glad you’ve found a home,’ she said.

  As they neared the Wheel at the heart of the debris cloud, they could hear once more the thin, clear voice of Physician Muub as he addressed the crowd gathering there.

  ‘ . . . The cult of the Xeelee, with its emphasis on higher goals than those of the here-and-now, was impossible for Parz’s closed, controlled society to accommodate. It was only by the suppression of these elements - the expulsion of the Xeelee cultists, the Reformation’s expunging of any genuine information about the past - that the authorities thought the City could survive.

  ‘Well, they were wrong.

  ‘Human nature will flourish, despite the strictest controls. The upfluxers kept their ancient knowledge almost intact - across generations, and with little recourse to records or writing materials. New faiths - like the cult of the Wheel - bloomed in the desert left by the destruction of beliefs and knowledge.’ Muub hesitated, and - unable to see him - Dura remembered how his cup-retinae characteristically lost some of their focused shape, briefly, as he turned to his inner visions. ‘It’s interesting that both among the exiled Human Beings - and among the almost equally disadvantaged Downsiders, here in Parz - a detailed wisdom from the past survived, by oral tradition alone. If we are all descended from Stellar engineers - from a highly intelligent stock - perhaps we should not be surprised at such evidence of mentation, crossing generations. Indeed, the systematic waste of such talent seems a crime. How much more might man have achieved in this Star by now, if not for petty prejudice and superstition . . .’

  Adda snorted. ‘Unctuous old fart.’

  Dura laughed.

  ‘And I wish I could see Hork’s face, as he Waves around having to listen to that.’

  ‘Maybe you misjudge him, Adda.’

  ‘Maybe. But then,’ he said slowly - carefully, she thought - ‘I’ve never been as close to him as you have.’

  Again she studied the old man sharply, wondering how much he knew - or what he could read, in her face. He was watching her waiting for some reaction, his battered face empty of expression.

  But what was her reaction? What did she want, now?

  So much had happened since that first Glitch - the Glitch that had taken her father from her. Several times she had thought her life was finished - she’d never really believed she’d return to the Mantle, from the moment she boarded the ‘Flying Pig’ in Parz’s Harbour. Now, she realised, she was simply grateful to be alive; and that simple fact would never leave her, would inform her enjoyment of the rest of her time.

  And yet . . .

  And yet her experiences had changed her. Having seen so much - to have travelled further, done so much more than any human since the days of the Colonists themselves - would make it impossible for her to settle back into the cramped lifestyle of a City dweller - and still less of a Human Being.

  Absently she folded her arms across her stomach, remembering her single moment of passion with Hork - when she had allowed her intense need for privacy to be overcome, when she thought her life was almost lost, deep in the underMantle. She had found a brief spark of human warmth there; and Hork was surely wiser than she had first realised. But still, she had seen into Hork’s soul in the Ur-human chamber, and she had recoiled from what she had found - the anger, the desperation, the need to find something worth dying for.

  Hork could not be a companion for her.

  ‘I’ve changed, Adda,’ she said. ‘I . . .’

  ‘No.’ He was shaking his head sadly, reading her face. ‘Not really. You were alone before all this - before we came here - and you’re still alone, now. Aren’t you?’

  She sighed. A little harshly, she said, ‘If that’s how I’m meant to be then maybe I should accept it.’ She turned; beyond Parz’s cloud of rubble she could see the ceiling fields of the hinterland: bare, scrubbed clean of their cultivation - and yet, in a way, renewed. ‘Maybe that’s where I will go,’ she said.

  He turned to see. ‘What and become a farmer? Making pap-wheat for the masses? You?’

  She grinned. ‘No. No, making a place of my own . . . a little island of order, in all of this emptiness.’

  Adda snorted with contempt, but the pressure of his fingers around hers increased, gently, warmly.

  The pipers’ calls were bright and harsh. From all around the cloud-
City people were Waving into the Air, converging towards the Wheel at the heart of the cloud. Peering that way now, Dura could see the massive form of Hork - a colourful speck in his robes, his massive arms resting on the huge Wheel. She imagined she could already hear his voice as he recited the litany - the first legal Wheel-litany, a list of all those known to have died in the final Glitch, whether they were from Parz, the hinterland, the upflux, the Skin.

  It was a litany intended to conciliate and heal.

  The two Human Beings, Waving strongly, joined the shoal of people converging on the Wheel. Around them, the shimmering vortex lines marched steadily across the sky, renewed and strong.

  RING

  PART I

  EVENT: SYSTEM

  1

  Even at the moment she was born she knew something was wrong.

  A face loomed over her: wide, smooth, smiling. The cheeks were damp, the glistening eyes huge. ‘Lieserl. Oh, Lieserl . . .’

  Lieserl. My name, then.

  She explored the face before her, studying the lines around the eyes, the humorous upturn of the mouth, the strong nose. It was an intelligent, lived-in face. This is a good human being, she thought. Good stock . . .

  ‘Good stock’?

  This was impossible. She was impossible. She felt terrified of her own explosive consciousness. She shouldn’t even be able to focus her eyes yet . . .

  She tried to touch her mother’s face. Her own hand was still moist with amniotic fluid - but it was growing visibly, the bones extending and broadening, filling out the loose skin as if it were a glove.

  She opened her mouth. It was dry, her gums already sore with budding teeth.

  Strong arms reached beneath her; bony adult fingers dug into the aching flesh of her back. She could sense other adults surrounding her, the bed in which she’d been born, the outlines of a room.