Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  The sharp eyes of the woman, Ito, traveled 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 colored 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 center of the little home. The centerpiece 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, whom 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 color 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 shoveled food into her mouth with small wooden utensils. The food was hot and unfamiliar, but strongly flavored. 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 the 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 oddly 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 unraveling. “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 skeptical 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 multicolored 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 color 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 toward 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 colored robes and coveralls shaped to reveal flashes of flesh; there were hats and jewels everywhere, and hair sculpted into huge, multicolored piles.

  Ito led Dura through two or three shops. She showed her jewelry, 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.”

  Surfing?

  Dura fell silent, trying to puzzle all this out.

  Ito brightened. “Besides — with all respect to you and your people, dear — I wouldn’t want to live on some remote farm, when I could be surrounded by all this. The shops, the theaters, the libraries at the University…” She looked at Dura curiously. “I know this is all strange to you, but don’t you feel the buzz of life here? And if, one day, we could move a bit further Upside…”

  “Upside?”

  “Closer to the Palace.” Ito pointed upward, back the way they had come. “At the top of the City. All of this side of the City, above the Market, is Upside.”

  “And below the Market…”

  Ito blinked. “Why, that’s the Downside, of course. Where the Harbor is, and the dynamo sheds, and cargo ports, and sewage warrens.” She sniffed. “Nobody would live down there by choice.”

  Dura Waved patiently along, the unfamiliar clothes scraping across her legs and back.

  As they descended, the walls of Pall Mall curved away from her like an opening throat, and the avenue merged smoothly into the Market. This was a spherical chamber perhaps double the width of Pall Mall itself. The Market seemed to be the end-point of a dozen streets — not just the Mall — and traffic streams poured through it constantly. Cars and people swarmed over each other chaotically; in the dust and noise, Dura saw drivers lean out of their cars, bellowing obscure profanities at each other. There were shops here, but they were just small, brightly colored stalls strung in rows across the chamber. Stallkeepers hovered at all angles, brandishing their wares and shouting at passing customers.

  At the center of the Market was a wheel of wood, about a mansheight across. It was mounted on a huge wooden spindle which crossed the chamber from side to side, cutting through the shambolic stalls; the spindle must have been hewn from a single Crust-tree, Dura thought, and she wondered how the carpenters had managed to bring it here, into the heart of the City. The wheel had five spokes, from which ropes dangled. The shape of the wheel looked vaguely familiar to Dura, and after a moment’s thought she recalled the odd little talisman which Toba wore around his neck, the man spreadeagled against a wheel. Wasn’t that five-spoked too?

  Ito said, “Isn’t this great? These little stalls don’t look like much but you can get some real bargains. Good quality stuff, too…”

  Dura found herself backing up, back toward the Mall they’d emerged from. Here, right in the belly of this huge City, the noise, heat and constant motion seemed to crowd around her, threatening to overwhelm her.

  Ito followed her and took her hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s find somewhere quieter and have something to eat.”

  * * *

  Cris’s room was a mess. Crumpled clothes, all gaudily colored, floated through the Air like discarded skin; from among the clothes’ empty limbs, bottles of hair-dye protruded, glinting in the lamplight. Cris pushed his way confidently into this morass, shoving clothes out of the way. Farr didn’t find it so easy to
enter the room. The cramped space, the clothes pawing softly at his flesh, gave him an intense feeling of claustrophobia.

  Cris misread his discomfiture. “Sorry about the mess. My parents give me hell about it. But I just can’t seem to keep all this junk straight.” He tipped back in the Air and rammed at a mass of clothing with both feet; the clothing wadded into a ball and compressed into one corner, leaving the Air marginally clearer; but even as Farr watched the clothes slowly unraveled, reaching out blindly with empty sleeves.

  Farr peered around, wondering what he was supposed to say. “Some of your belongings are — attractive.”

  Cris gave him an odd look. “Attractive. Yeah. Well, not half as attractive as they could be if we had a little more money to spare. But times are hard. They’re always hard.” He dived into the bundles of clothing once more, pulling them apart with his hands, evidently searching for something. “I suppose money doesn’t mean a thing, where you grew up.”

  “No,” Farr said, still unsure what money actually was. Oddly, he had heard envy in Cris’s voice.

  Cris had retrieved something from within the cloud of clothing: a board, a thin sheet of wood about a mansheight long. Its edges were rounded and its surface, though scored by grooves for gripping, was finely finished and polished so well that Farr could see his reflection in it. A thin webbing of some shining material had been inlaid into the wood. Cris ran his hand lovingly over the board; it was as if, Farr thought, he were caressing the skin of a loved one. Cris said, “It sounds great.”

  “What does?”

  “Life in the upflux.” Cris looked at Farr uncertainly.

  Again Farr didn’t know how to answer. He glanced around at Cris’s roomful of possessions — none of which he’d made himself, Farr was willing to bet — and let his look linger on Cris’s stocky, well-fed frame.

  “I mean, you’re so free out there.” Cris ran his hand around the edge of his polished board. “Look, I finish my schooling in another year. And then what? My parents don’t have the money for more education — to send me to the University, or the Medical College, maybe. Anyway, I don’t have the brains for any of that.” He laughed, as if proud of the fact. “For someone like me there are only three choices here.” He counted them off on his callus-free fingers. “If you’re stupid, you end up in the Harbor, fishing up Corestuff from the underMantle — or maybe you can lumberjack, or you might end up in the sewage runs. Whatever. But if you’re a little smarter you might get into the Civil Service, somewhere. Or — if you can’t stand any of that, if you don’t want to work for the Committee — you can go your own way. Set up a stall in the Market. Or work a ceiling-farm, like my father, or build cars like my mother. And spend your life breaking your back with work, and paying over most of your money in tithes to the Committee.” He shrugged, clinging to his board; his voice was heavy with despondency, with world-weariness. “And that’s it. Not much of a choice, is it?”