Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (103 page)

Dura had expected to make out the blue lines of the Interface, this box of light, from the inside. But there was no sign of the other faces, the rest of the wormhole; instead, beyond the walls of the ship, there was only a darkness even deeper than the twilit glow of the underMantle. It was as if they were entering - not a box of light - but the mouth of a corridor, like one of Parz’s dingy alleys. In fact, it seemed that she
could
make out the lines of a corridor, stretching through the wormhole and on into infinity; black on black, it was like staring into a throat. Deep in the corridor there were flashes - sharp, silent and distant, light which splashed briefly over the dim walls. Slowly a picture assembled in her mind, each flash providing another fragment; the corridor was a smooth-walled cylinder perhaps five mansheights across and . . .

And how deep?

The walls were all around them now; the ebony throat enclosed the fragile craft as if it had been swallowed. She felt a rush of Air through the capillaries of her head; illuminated in stabs, fragments of the walls raced upwards past the ship like pieces of a dream. The walls seemed to converge at a great distance, closing around a point at infinity. But that was impossible - wasn’t it? - because the Interface itself, the four-faced frame of light, was only ten or a dozen mansheights across.

But of course the corridor was immensely long - impossibly long - for the very purpose of a wormhole was to connect far-distant places. And now she was entering such a wormhole; soon the ship would be passing through the device to emerge ...

Somewhere else.

For a moment, fear, primitive, irrational and stark, surfaced in her mind; it was as if the mystery of it all was ramming itself into her eyes, ears and mind. She closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers in the soft leather of the pig harness. Was she, now, going to crumble into superstitious panic?

The wormhole was an artifact, she told herself. And an artifact built by humans - by Ur-humans, perhaps, but by humans nonetheless. She should not cringe before a mere device.

She forced her eyes open.

The ship shuddered.

Dura cried, ‘Too fast! You’re going too fast, damn it; we’ll turn over if you don’t slow down . . . Are you crazy?’

The control levers were still buried inside Hork’s fleshy hands, but when he turned to her his wide face was empty, wondering. ‘It’s not me,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, it’s not the ship ... we’re no longer propelling ourselves. Dura, we’re being drawn into the wormhole.’ He stared at the little control console, as if seeking an answer there. ‘And there’s nothing I can do about it.’

Cris rode the turbulent Magfield almost automatically. He stared at the neutrino fount, fascinated, almost forgetting his own peril. The fount was a tower, dark, unimaginably massive, thrusting out of the turbulent mass of the Quantum Sea. As it rose into Mantle Air, the viscous purple Sea-stuff crusted over, shattering, the fragments spiralling upwards around the dense-packed flux lines of the Magfield.

Here was stuff from deep in the heart of the Star - deeper than any Bell had gone, deeper perhaps even than Hork’s wooden ship would reach. Here was an expulsion of material from the immense, single nucleus that was the soul of the Star, from within the nebulous boundary between Sea and Core. The fount’s material was hyperonic; each hyperon was a huge cluster of quarks far more massive than any ordinary nucleon, and the hyperons were bound together by quark exchanges into complex, fractal masses. But as the material spewed up through the throat of the Pole its structure was collapsing, unable to sustain itself in the lower-density regime of the Mantle. The quark bags were breaking apart, releasing a flood of energy, and reforming as showers of nucleons; and the free nucleons - protons and neutrons - were congealing rapidly into chunks of cooling nuclear matter.

That deadly hail was now lancing through the Mantle, and would soon come streaming upwards around the City. And he felt the energy released by that huge wave of hyperonic decay as it surged upwards, the neutrinos sleeting through his body, hot and needle-sharp, on their way to the emptiness above the Crust.

Now, even as he watched, the spiralling paths of the charged chunks of freezing Core-matter seemed to be distorting - flattening - as if the Magfield itself were changing, in response to the disaster.

Suddenly Cris understood.

The Magfield
was
changing. The irruption of this immense freight of charged material from the Core had disrupted the field; the Sea-fount was like an electrical current, unimaginably strong, passing through the heart of the Star’s Magfield Pole, temporarily competing with the great magnetic engines at the Core of the Star itself. What he’d felt - the unexpected surges in the field - had been no more than distant echoes of that huge disturbance.

. . . But now another of those magnetic echoes hurtled up around him. This time his feet slipped from the board and he fell forward, crying out; the board slammed against his chest and thrust him upwards towards the Crust. He clung to the board helplessly, his legs scrabbling across its smooth surface, as he rose faster than he could ever have Surfed. If he lost the board he was finished, he knew. His mind raced. Perhaps he would be thrown beyond the Crust, board and all! What then? Would his body collapse into cooling fragments in the emptiness beyond, just as the Core material froze in the Mantle?

As it happened, would he be
aware
?

But the upward surge subsided, as suddenly as it had come.

The board stabilized in the Air. Gasping, Cris dragged himself forward across the board; his chest ached from the pressure of the board in its flight. There was the City, far below him, but still close enough for him to make out detail - the Spine, the gaping cargo ports, the encrustation of Garden on its upper surface. He felt a surge of relief, and even a little shame; he couldn’t have been thrown so impossibly high after all.

Carefully, cautiously, he tucked his knees under him, rested his feet against the board, and stood up. The Magfield was quivering like a live thing under him, and he rocked the board against it, tilting his aching ankles; but, for the moment, the field was fairly stable. Predictable. He could Surf on it . . . and he was going to have to, if he was to make it through this.

He glanced around the sky. He was alone now; there was no sign of any of the other hundred Surfers. Again he felt a burst of triumph, accompanied by shame. Had he survived because he was the best? Or the luckiest, perhaps?

And, he reminded himself, he might join the rest in the anonymity of death yet, before this day was through.

The vortex lines around him writhed, tortured by instabilities, by impossible, ungainly forms which warped as they propagated, gathering energy. The
end
of the vortex lines - the boundary of the volume of Air in which there were no vortex lines - was rushing towards him, a wall of emptiness. In that region, he knew, the turbulence of the Air, lashed by the neutrino storm from the Core, was such that its superfluid properties had broken down. He wouldn’t be able to Surf; the friction would be impossible. Damn it, he wouldn’t be able to
breathe
. His capillaries would clog, his heart strain at the thickening Air . . .

He shook his head, tried to focus. He looked down. He had to get back to the City before the turbulence reached him. (That remote part of him prodded his mind over this. Why should he be any safer in the City than outside?) Again he shook his head, growling at himself. The City was the only place to go, safe or not. Therefore he would go there. But already the chunks of frozen Sea-stuff were hurtling up around the City. A graze from one of those . . .

Thinking about it was pointless. He spread his feet against the board, bent his legs, and thrust.

He Surfed as he’d never Surfed before - perhaps as nobody had Surfed before. He thrust at the board again and again, ramming its Corestuff web across the shaking Magfield. He soared between rippling vortex lines, ducking and swooping. Soon he was moving so quickly that the residual normal-fluid component of the Air whipped at his hair, his face. But still he accelerated, slamming his feet against the board until his soles ached.

There was something in the distance, a new factor in the chaos the sky had become. He risked a brief glance. He saw lines crossing the sky, lancing down through the Crust across the vortex lines, and penetrating the Core - blue-white beams which stirred the Core like spoons.

Now he was entering the inverted rain from the exploded Sea. The frozen Sea-fragments were irregular, solid chunks, two or three mansheights across. They tumbled upwards through the Air around him, sharp edges sparkling, Sea-purple laced through their interior. The fragments had their own, whirling magnetic fields; ghostly flux-fingers plucked at Cris as they passed him. He followed a curving path, dipping down over the Pole towards the City; flexing his legs, his hips, his neck, he slalomed through the crumbling vortex lines, the Sea-fragments.

What sport! It was wonderful! He roared aloud, yelling out his exhilaration.

The City was ahead of him now. It seemed to balloon out of the Air, its Skin swelling before him, uneven, ugly, as if being inflated from within.

He was almost home.

By the blood of the Ur-humans
, he thought.
I might actually live through this
. And if he did, what a tale he would have to tell. What a hero he would become . . .

But now the Magfield surged again, betraying him.

This time he fell back; his spine was slammed against his board. The breath was knocked out of him, and he tumbled off the board, vainly clutching for its rim.

The board fell away from him, tumbling across the face of the City.

Falling naked through the Air, he watched the board recede. He tried to Wave, to rock his legs through the Air, but his strength was gone; he could get no purchase on the Magfield.

He was moving too fast, in any case.

Oddly he felt no fear, only a kind of regret. To have come so close and not to have made it . . .

The Skin of Parz was huge before him, a wall across the sky.

A
ll around the City, cooling fragments of the Quantum Sea, huge and threatening, streamed upwards from the Pole. In the Stadium, there was panic.

Adda leaned forward in his cocoon and peered down. The bulk of the Stadium was a turbulent mass of human torsos and struggling limbs; even as he watched, the network of delicate guide ropes which had criss-crossed the Stadium collapsed, engendering still more chaos as a thousand people struggled to escape. The crowd, screaming, sounded like trapped animals. Lost in the melee, Adda saw the purple uniforms of stewards and food vendors scrambling along with the rest.

They all wanted to get out, obviously. But get out to what? Where was safety to be found - inside the cosy Skin of the City? But that Skin was just a shell of wood and Corestuff ribs; it would burst like scraped leather if ...

He was kicked in the back, hard. He gasped as the Air was forced out of his lungs, and he fell forward; then the rope fixing his cocoon on one side parted, and he was spun around.

He struggled out of his cocoon, ignoring the protests of stiff joints, and prepared to take on whoever had struck him. But it was impossible to tell. The Committee Box was full of panicking courtiers, their made-up faces twisted with fear, fighting free of cocoons and restrictive robes. Adda opened his mouth and laughed at them. So all their finery, and fine titles, offered no protection from mortal terror. Where was their power now?

Muub was struggling out of his own cocoon with every expression of urgency.

Adda said, ‘Where will you go?’

‘The Hospital, of course.’ Muub gathered his robes tight around his legs and glanced around the Box, looking for the fastest way out. ‘It’s going to be a long day’s work ...’ Apparently on impulse, he grabbed Adda’s arm. ‘Upfluxer. Come with me. Help me.’

Adda felt like laughing again, but he recognized earnestness in Muub’s eyes. ‘Why me?’

Muub gestured to the scrambling courtiers. ‘Look at these people,’ he said wearily. ‘Not many cope well in a crisis, Adda.’ He glanced at the upfluxer appraisingly. ‘You think I’m a little inhuman - a cold man, remote from people. Perhaps I am. But I’ve worked long enough as a Physician to gain a functional understanding of who can be relied on. And you’re one of them, Adda. Please.’

Adda was surprisingly moved by this, but he pulled his arm free of Muub’s grasp. ‘I’ll come if I can. I promise. But first I have to find Farr - my kinsman.’

Muub nodded briskly. Without another word he began to work his way through the crowd of courtiers still blocking the Box’s exit, using his elbows and knees quite efficiently.

Adda glanced down at the crowded Stadium once more. The crush there was becoming deadly now; he saw imploded chests, limp limbs, Air-starved faces like white flowers in the mass of bodies.

He turned away and launched himself towards the exit.

Farr could be in any of a number of places - with the Skin-riders outside the City itself, or up somewhere near the Surfer race, or down in the Harbour with his old work-friends - but he would surely make for the Mixxaxes’ to find Adda. The Mixxaxes’ part of the mid-Upside was on the opposite side of Parz, and Adda began the long journey across a City in turmoil.

It was as if some malevolent giant, laughing like a spin-storm, had taken the City and shaken it. People, young and old, the well-dressed rich and drab manual workers alike, fled through the corridor-streets; screams echoed along the avenues and Air-shafts. Perhaps each of these scurrying folk had some dim purpose of their own in the face of the Glitch - just as Adda did. But collectively, they swarmed.

To Adda it was like a journey through hell. Never before had he felt so confined, so enclosed in this box built by lunatics to contain lunatics; he longed to be in the open Air where he could
see
what the Star was doing. He reached Pall Mall. The great vertical avenue was full of noise and light; people and cars swarmed over each other, Speakers blaring. Shop-fronts had been smashed open, and men and women were hastening through the crowds with arms full of goods - clothes, jewellery. Above his head, at the top of the Mall - the uppermost Upside - the golden light of the Palace Garden filtered down through the miniature bushes and ponds, as peaceful and opulent as ever. But now lines of guards fenced off the grounds of the Palace from any citizen who thought that might be a good direction to flee.