Flux xs-3

by Stephen Baxter

  Bzya’s laughter echoed from the blank, crudely finished wall of the City. “You don’t like us much, do you, Adda?”

  “Not much.” He looked at Bzya, hesitating. “And I don’t understand how you’ve kept your sense of humor, my friend.”

  “By accepting life as it is. I can question, but I can’t change. Anyway, Parz isn’t some kind of huge prison, as you seem to imagine. It’s home for a lot of people — it’s like a machine, designed to improve the lives of young people like Cris.”

  “Then the machine’s not bloody working.”

  Bzya said calmly, “Would you exchange Farr’s life and experiences, to date, for Cris’s?”

  “But Cris’s thinking is so narrow. The Games, his parents… as if this City was all the world, safe and eternal. Instead of…” He searched for the words. “Instead of a box, lashed up from old lumber, floating around in immensity…”

  Bzya touched his shoulder. “But that’s why you and I are here, old man. To keep the world away from boys like Farr and Cris — to give them a place that seems as stable and eternal as your parents did when you were a child — until they are old enough to cope with the truth.” He turned his scarred face to the North, staring into the diverging vortex lines with a trace of anxiety. “I wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to achieve that.”

  Again and again, Cris Mixxax looped around the huge Corestuff band.

  * * *

  It was the day of the launch. The down-gaping mouth of the Harbor, here in the deepest Downside of the City, framed clear, yellow Air. A few people Waved beneath the entrance and peered up into the dark. Engineers talked desultorily as they waited for Hork to arrive, and to begin the launch proper. There was a smell of old, splintering wood.

  Dura clung to a rail close to the lip of the access port, keeping to herself. She had already said her good-byes. Toba had cooked them a fine meal in his little Midside home, but it had been a difficult occasion; Dura had had to work hard to break through Farr’s resentful reserve. She’d asked Adda, quietly, to keep Farr away from the launch site today. She’d have enough to think about without the emotional freight of another round of farewells.

  Even, she thought, wrapping her arms around her torso, if they turned out to be final farewells.

  She looked down at the craft, studying lines which had become familiar to her in weeks of designing, building and testing. Hork V had decided to call his extraordinary craft the “Flying Pig.” It was a clumsy, ugly name, Dura thought; but it caught the essence, maybe, of a clumsy, ugly vessel. The ship as finally constructed — after two failed prototypes — was a squat cylinder two mansheights across and perhaps three tall. The hull, of polished wood, was punctured by large, staring windows of clearwood. There were also clearwood panels set into the upper and lower cross-sections of the cylinder. The whole craft was bound about by five hoops of sturdy Core-matter. The Air-pigs whose farts would power the vessel could be seen through the windows, lumps of straining, harnessed energy. The ship was suspended by thick cables from huge, splintered pulleys which — on normal days — bore Bells down toward the Quantum Sea.

  This, then, was the craft which would carry two people into the lethal depths of the underMantle. In the dingy, dense Air of the City’s Harbor the thing looked sturdy enough, Dura supposed, but she doubted she’d feel so secure once they were underway.

  There was a disturbance above her, a sound of hatches banging. Hork V, Chair of Parz City, resplendent in a glittering coverall, descended from the gloom above. He seemed to glow; his bearded face was split by a huge smile. Dura saw that Physician Muub and the engineer Seciv Trop followed him. “Good day, good day,” Hork called to Dura, and he clapped her meatily on the shoulder-blade. “Ready for the off?”

  Dura, her head full of her regrets and fears, turned away without speaking.

  Seciv Trop wafted down, coming to rest close to her. He touched her arm, gently; the many pockets of his coverall were crammed, as usual, with unidentifiable — and probably irrelevant — items. “Travel safely,” he said.

  She turned, at first irritated; but there was genuine sympathy in his finely drawn face. “Thanks,” she said slowly.

  He nodded. “I understand how you’re feeling. Does that surprise you? — crusty old Seciv, good for nothing without his styli and tables. But I’m human, just the same. You’re afraid of the journey ahead…”

  “Terrified would be a better word.”

  He grimaced. “Then at least you’re sane. You’re already missing your family and friends. And you probably don’t expect to make it back, ever.”

  She felt a small surge of gratitude to Seciv; this was the first time anyone had actually voiced her most obvious fear. “No, frankly.”

  “But you’re going anyway.” He smiled. “You put the safety of the world ahead of your own.”

  “No,” she snapped. “I put my brother’s safety ahead of my own.”

  “That’s more than sufficient.”

  As she had suspected, the City men had insisted on one of the Human Beings taking this trip. Adda was ruled out because of age and injury. Farr’s omission — which came to his frustration — hadn’t been a foregone conclusion; his youth, in the eyes of those making the decisions, had barely outweighed his experience as a novice Fisherman. Dura had been forced to argue hard.

  The second crewman had been a surprise: it was to be Hork, Chair of Parz, himself. Now Hork was moving around the bay, glad-handing the engineers. Dura watched his progress sourly. He must be subject to the same fears as herself, and — in recent months anyway — to enormous personal pressure — and yet he looked relaxed, at ease, utterly in command; he had a natural authority which made her feel small, weak.

  “He wears his fear well,” she said sourly.

  Seciv pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps. Or perhaps his fear of not taking the voyage, of remaining here, is the greater. He is gambling a great deal on this voyage, you know.”

  This stunt… Yes, Dura did know; she’d become immersed enough in the politics of Parz to be able — with the help of Ito and Toba — to understand something of Hork’s situation. However unreasonable it might be, the citizens of Parz expected Hork to resolve their troubles — to lift food rationing, to restore the lumber convoys and get the place working again. To open the shops, damn it. That he’d manifestly failed to do so (but how could he have succeeded?) had put his position in doubt; there were factions in his Court and on the larger Committee who were gunning for him, with varying degrees of openness.

  This ludicrous jaunt into the underMantle was Hork’s last gamble. All or nothing. If it succeeded then he, Hork, would return as the savior of the City and all the peoples of the Mantle. But if it failed — well, Dura thought uneasily, perhaps it would be better for Hork to die in a glorious instant, in the deep underMantle, than at the hands of an assassin here in the bright corridors of Parz.

  The crew members had to climb into the ship through a hinged hatch set in the upper end of the cylinder. Hosch, the former Harbor supervisor, had been checking the craft’s simple systems; now Dura watched his thin, hunched shoulders emerge from the craft through the crew hatch. As Muub had expected, Hosch had turned out to be a good manager of the construction project, despite his sour personality; he’d been able effectively to draw out the mercurial expertise of the likes of Seciv Trop and to marry it to the practical skills of his Harbor engineers.

  Hosch glanced up, saw that both Dura and Hork were ready. “It’s time,” he said.

  Dura felt something within her recede. As if in a dream she watched her own hands and legs working as she clambered down toward the ship.

  She climbed stiffly through the hatch and into the interior, squeezing past the row of bound, straining Air-pigs and the sleek turbine beside them. She experienced a mixture of gratified relief at being underway, and a tang of sheer, awful terror.

  With bellowed good-byes to the engineers, to Muub, Seciv and the rest, Hork shook Hosch’s t
hin hand and clambered into the cabin, squeezing his sparkling bulk through the hatch. He seemed careless of the pollution of his gleaming suit by the dirt of the pigs. He dragged the hatch closed after him and dogged its wooden latches tight.

  For a moment Hork and Dura hovered close to the hatch, alone in there for the first time. Their eyes met. Now, Dura thought, now the two of them were bound to each other, for good or ill. She could see a slow, appraising awareness of that in Hork’s expression. But there was little fear there; she read humor, enthusiasm.

  By the blood of the Xeelee, she thought. He’s actually enjoying this.

  Without speaking they descended into the craft.

  The pigs were strapped in place close to the top of the cylinder. Dura climbed into her loose harness close to the pigs. The walls of the cabin were fat with Air-tanks, food stores, equipment lockers and a primitive latrine. Cooling fans hummed and wood-lamps, their green glow dim, studded the walls.

  Toward the base of the ship Hork took his place at the craft’s simple control panel, a board placed before one of the broader windows and equipped with three levers and a series of switches. He rolled his sleeves back from his arms with every evidence of relish.

  There was a pounding on the hull.

  Hork thumped back enthusiastically, grinning through his beard. “So,” he said breathlessly, “so it begins!”

  The craft jolted into motion. Dura heard a muffled cheer from the engineers in the Harbor, the creaking of the pulleys as they began to pay out cable.

  After a few seconds the craft emerged from the Harbor. The golden brilliance of Polar Air-light swept the interior of the ship, filling Dura with a nostalgic, claustrophobic ache. The silhouetted forms of Waving people — some of them children — accompanied the craft as it began its descent from the City.

  Hork was laughing. Dura looked down at him, disbelieving.

  “Oh, come on,” Hork said briskly. “We’re off! Isn’t this a magnificent adventure? And what a relief it is to be doing something, to be going somewhere. Eh, Dura?”

  Dura sniffed, letting her face settle into sourness. “Well, Hork, here I am going to hell in the belly of a wooden pig. It’s a bit hard to find much to smile about. With respect. And we do have work to do.”

  Hork’s expression was hard, and she felt briefly uneasy — she’d been around him long enough now to witness several of his towering rages. But he merely laughed aloud once more. His noisy, exuberant presence was overwhelming in the cramped cabin; Dura felt herself shrink from it, as if escaping into herself. Hork said, “Quite right, captain! And isn’t it time you started working the pigs?”

  He was right; Dura swiveled in her sling to begin the work. The craft wouldn’t be cut loose of the Harbor cable for some time, but they needed to be sure the internal turbine and the magnetic fields were fully functioning. The animals’ harness, slung across the width of the cabin, kept the pigs’ rears aimed squarely at the wide blades of a turbine. A trough carved from unfinished wood had been fixed a micron or so before the pigs’ sketchy, six-eyed faces, and now Dura took a sack of leaves from a locker and filled the trough with luscious vegetable material, crushing the stuff as she worked. Soon the delicious tang of the leaves filled the cabin. Dura was aware of Hork bending over his console, evidently shutting out the scents; as for herself — well, she could all but taste the protons dripping out onto her tongue.

  The pigs could barely stand it. Their hexagonal arrays of eyecups bulged and their mouths gaped wide. With grunts of protest they hurled themselves against the unyielding harness toward the leaves, their jetfarts exploding in the cramped atmosphere of the cabin.

  Under the steady pressure of the jetfart stream, the broad blades of the turbine began to turn. Soon the sweet, musky smell of pig-fart permeated the Air of the cabin, reminding Dura, if she closed her eyes, of the scents of her childhood, of the Net with its enclosed herd. She scattered a few fragments of food into the grasp of the pigs’ gaping maws. Just enough to keep them fed, but little enough to keep them interested in more.

  The anatomy of a healthy Air-pig was efficient enough to enable it to generate farts for many days on very little food. Pigs could travel meters allowing as much of their bulky substance to dissolve into fart energy as was required; these five, though terrified and frustrated by the conditions into which they had been penned, should have little problem powering the turbine for as long as the humans needed. And there was a back-up system — a stove powered by nuclear-burning wood — if they were desperate enough to need to risk its heat in the confines of the cabin.

  Hork, grunting to himself, experimentally threw switches. The ship shuddered in response, and Hork peered out of the window, gauging the effect of the currents generated in the superconducting hoops.

  Farr’s face suddenly appeared outside the ship, at the window opposite Dura. His expression was solemn, empty. He was Waving hard, she realized; they must be descending rapidly already, and soon he and the other Wavers would not be able to keep up.

  Farr must have given Adda the slip. And so, after all, here was a last good-bye. She forced herself to smile at Farr and raised her hand.

  There was a thud from the hull of the “Flying Pig”; the little craft shuddered in the Air before settling again.

  Dura frowned. “What was that?”

  Hork looked up, his wide face bland. “The Harbor cable cutting loose. Right on schedule.” He glanced out of the window at the dark shadows of the superconducting hoops. “We’re falling under our own power now; the currents in the hoops are Waving us deeper into the Star. And the hoops are the only way we’re going to get back home… We’re alone,” he said. “But we’re on our way.”

  20

  Three meters deep.

  It was a depth Dura couldn’t comprehend. Humans were confined within the Mantle to a shell of superfluid Air only a few meters thick. Her first journey with Toba to the Pole from the upflux — so far that she had felt she was traveling around the curvature of the Star itself — had only been about thirty meters.

  Now she was drilling whole meters into the unforgiving bulk of the Star itself. She imagined the Star crushing their tiny wooden boat and spitting them out, like a tiny infestation. And it was small comfort to remember that their journey would be broken before reaching such a depth only if they achieved their goal… if the unimaginable really did, after all, emerge from the Core to greet them.

  By the end of the second day they were already well below the nebulous boundary of the habitable layer of Air. The yellow brightness of the Air outside the windows had faded — to amber, then a deeper orange, and finally to a blood-purple color reminiscent of the Quantum Sea. Dura pressed her face against cold clearwood, hoping to see something — anything: exotic animals, unknown, inhuman people, some kind of structure inside the Star. But there was only the muddy purple of the thickening Air, and her own distorted, indistinct reflection in the wood-lamps’ green light. She was trapped in here — with her fears, and with Hork. She had expected to feel small, vulnerable inside this tiny wooden box as it burrowed its way into the immense guts of the Star; but the thick darkness beyond the window made her claustrophobic, trapped. She retreated into herself. She tended the fretting pigs, slept as much as she could, and kept her eyes averted from Hork’s.

  His determined efforts to talk to her, on the third day, were an intrusion.

  “You’re pensive.” His tone was offensively bright. “I hope this adventure isn’t causing you any — ah — philosophic difficulties.”

  He’d left his console and had drifted up the cabin, close to her station near the pigs’ harness. She stared at the broad, fat-laden face, the mound of beard around his mouth. When she’d first been introduced to Hork she’d been fascinated and disconcerted — as Hork intended, no doubt — by that beard, by this man with hair on his face. But now, as she looked closer, she could see the way the roots of the beard’s hair-tubes were arranged in a neat hexagonal pattern over Hork’s chin… The bea
rd had been transplanted, either from Hork’s own scalp or from one of his more unfortunate subjects.

  So the beard wasn’t impressive, she decided. Just decadent. And besides, it was yellowing more quickly than the hair on his head; another few years and Hork would look truly absurd.

  How huge, how intrusive, how irritating he was. The tension between them seemed to crackle like electron gas.

  “Philosophic difficulties? I’m not superstitious.”

  “I didn’t suggest you were.”

  “We aren’t religious about the Xeelee. I don’t fear that we’re going to bring down the wrath of the Xeelee, if that’s what you mean. But Human Beings — alone — would never have attempted this journey into the Star.”

  “Because the Xeelee will look after you, like mama in the sky.”

  Dura sighed. “Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite… We have to accept the actions of the Xeelee without question — for we believe that their goals will prove in the long term to be of benefit to us all, to humans as a race. Even if it means the destruction of the Star — even if it means our own destruction.”

  Hork shook his head. “You upfluxers are full of laughs, aren’t you? Well, it’s a chilly faith. And damn cold comfort.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dura said. “It’s not meant to be comforting. Back up there…” — she jerked her thumb upward, to the world of light and humans — “there is my comfort. My family and people.”

  Hork studied her. His face, under its layers of fat, was broad and coarsely worked, but — she admitted grudgingly — not without perception and sensitivity. “You fear death, Dura, despite your knowledge.”

  Dura laughed and closed her eyes. “I told you; knowledge is not necessarily a comfort. I’ve no reason not to fear death… and, yes, I fear it now.”

  Hork breathed deeply. “Then have faith in me. We’ll survive. I feel it. I know it…”