Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (113 page)

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.

 

E
ven 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 . . .’

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.

Her mother held her high before a window. Lieserl’s head lolled, the expanding muscles still too weak to support the burgeoning weight of her skull. Spittle laced across her chin.

An immense light flooded her eyes.

She cried out.

Her mother enfolded her in her arms. ‘The Sun, Lieserl.
The Sun
. . .’

The first few days were the worst.

Her parents - impossibly tall, looming figures - took her through brightly lit rooms, a garden always flooded with sunlight. She learned to sit up. The muscles in her back fanned out, pulsing as they grew. To distract her from the unending pain, clowns tumbled over the grass before her, chortling through huge red lips, before popping out of existence in clouds of pixels.

She grew explosively, feeding all the time, a million impressions crowding into her soft sensorium.

There seemed to be no limit to the number of rooms in this place, this
House
. Slowly she began to understand that some of the rooms were Virtual chambers - blank screens against which any number of images could be projected. But even so, the House must comprise hundreds of rooms. And she - with her parents - wasn’t alone here. There were other people. But at first they kept away, out of sight, apparent only by their actions: the meals they prepared, the toys they left her.

On the third day her parents took her on a trip by flitter. It was the first time she’d been away from the House, its grounds. As the flitter rose she stared through the bulbous windows, pressing her nose to heated glass.

The House was a jumble of white, cube-shaped buildings, linked by corridors and surrounded by garden - grass, trees. Further out there were bridges and roads looping through the air above the ground, more houses like a child’s bricks sprinkled across glowing hillsides.

The flitter soared higher.

The journey was an arc over a toylike landscape. A breast of blue ocean curved away from the land, all around her. This was the island of Skiros, Phillida - her mother - told her, and the sea was called the Aegean. The House was the largest construct on the island. She could see huge, brown-painted spheres dotting the heart of the island: carbon-sequestration domes, Phillida said, balls of dry ice four hundred yards tall.

The flitter snuggled at last against a grassy sward close to the shore of the ocean. Lieserl’s mother lifted her out and placed her - on her stretching, unsteady legs - on the rough, sandy grass.

Hand in hand, the little family walked down a short slope to the beach.

The Sun burned from an unbearably blue sky. Her vision seemed telescopic. She looked at distant groups of children and adults playing - far away, halfway to the horizon - and it was as if she was among them herself. Her feet, still uncertain, pressed into gritty, moist sand.

She found mussels clinging to a ruined pier. She prised them away with a toy spade, and gazed, fascinated, at their slime-dripping feet. She could taste the brine salt on the air; it seemed to permeate her very skin.

She sat on the sand with her parents, feeling her light costume stretch over her still-spreading limbs. They played a simple game, of counters moving over a floating Virtual board, with pictures of ladders and hissing snakes. There was laughter, mock complaints by her father, elaborate pantomimes of cheating.

Her senses were electric. It was a wonderful day, full of light and joy, extraordinarily vivid sensations. Her parents loved her - she could see that in the way they moved with each other, came to her, played with her.

They must know she was different; but they didn’t seem to care.

She didn’t want to be different - to be
wrong
. She closed her mind against her fears, and concentrated on the snakes, the ladders, the sparkling counters.

Every morning she woke up in a bed that felt too small.

Lieserl liked the garden. She liked to watch the flowers straining their tiny, pretty faces towards the Sun, as the great light climbed patiently across the sky. The sunlight made the flowers grow, her father told her. Maybe she was like a flower, she thought, growing too quickly in all this sunlight.

The House was full of toys: colourful blocks, and puzzles, and dolls. She picked them up and turned them over in her stretching, growing hands. She rapidly became bored with each toy, but one little gadget held her attention. It was a tiny village immersed in a globe of water. There were tiny people in there, frozen in mid-step as they walked, or ran, through their world. When her awkward hands shook the globe, plastic snowflakes would swirl through the air, settling over the encased streets and rooftops. She stared at the entombed villagers, wishing she could become one of them: become frozen in time as they were, free of this pressure of
growing.