Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (12 page)

Baert gasped. ‘Now, how did they do that?’

‘Gravity,’ Rees whispered. ‘Just for a second they orbited around each other’s centre of mass.’

The dance went on. The partners twisted around each other, throwing their lithe bodies into elaborate parabolae, and Rees watched through half-closed eyes, entranced. The physicist in him analysed the dancers’ elaborate movements. Their centres of mass, located somewhere around their waists, traced out hyperbolic orbits in the varying gravity fields of the Raft, the stage and the dancers themselves, so that each time the dancers launched themselves from their trampoline the paths of their centres were more or less determined . . . But the dancers adorned the paths with movements of their slim bodies so deceptively that it seemed that the two of them were flying through the air at will, independent of gravity. How paradoxical, Rees thought, that the billion-gee environment of this universe should afford humans such freedom.

Now the dancers launched into a final, elaborate arc, their bodies orbiting, their faces locked together like facing planets. Then it was over; the dancers stood hand-in-hand atop their trampoline, and Rees cheered and stamped with the rest. So there was more to do with billion-strength gravity than measure it and fight it—

A flash, a muffled rush of air, a sudden blossom of smoke. The trampoline, blasted from below, turned briefly into a fluttering, birdlike creature, a dancer itself; the dancers, screaming, were hurled into the air. Then the trampoline collapsed into the splintered ruins of the stage, the dancers falling after it.

The audience, stunned, fell silent. The only sound was a low, broken crying from the wreckage of the stage, and Rees watched, unbelieving, as a red-brown stain spread over the remains of the trampoline.

A burly man bearing orange braids hurried from the wings and stood commandingly before the audience. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘No one should try to leave.’ And he stood there as the audience quietly obeyed. Rees, looking around, saw more orange braids at the exits from the Theatre, still more working their way into the ruins of the stage.

Baert’s face was pale. ‘Security,’ he whispered. ‘Report directly to the Captain. You don’t see them around too often, but they’re always there . . . undercover as often as not.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘What a mess. They’ll interrogate us all before they let us out of here; it will take hours—’

‘Baert, I don’t understand any of this. What happened?’

Baert shrugged. ‘What do you think? A bomb, of course.’

Rees felt an echo of the disorientation he had suffered when the drinks girl had walked by. ‘Someone did this deliberately?’

Baert looked at him sourly and did not reply.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t speak for those people.’ Baert rubbed the side of his nose. ‘But there’s been a few of these attacks, directed against Officers, mostly, or places they’re likely to be. Like this.

‘Not everyone’s happy here, you see, my friend,’ he went on. ‘A lot of people think the Officers get more than their share.’

‘So they’re turning to actions like this?’ Rees turned away. The red-stained trampoline was being wrapped around the limp bodies of the gravity dancers. He remembered his own flash of resentment at Baert, not more than an hour before this disaster. Perhaps he could sympathize with the motives of the people behind this act - why should one group enjoy at leisure the fruits of another’s labour? - but to kill for such a reason?

The orange-braided security men began to organize strip searches of the crowd. Resigned, not speaking, Rees and Baert sat back to wait their turn.

Despite isolated incidents like the Theatre attack Rees found his new life fascinating and rewarding, and the shifts wore away unbelievably quickly. All too soon, it seemed, he had finished his Thousand Shifts, the first stage of his graduation process, and it was time for his achievement to be honoured.

And so he found himself sitting on a decorated bus and studying the crimson braids of a Scientist (Third Class), freshly stitched to the shoulder of his coverall, and shivering with a sense of unreality. The bus worked its way through the suburbs of the Raft. Its dozen young occupants, Rees’s fellow graduate-apprentices, spun out a cloud of laughter and talk.

Jaen was studying him with humorous concern, a slight crease over her broad nose; her hands rested in the lap of her dress uniform. ‘Something on your mind?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m fine. You know me. I’m the serious type.’

‘Damn right. Here.’ Jaen reached to the boy sitting on the far side from Rees and took a narrow-necked bottle. ‘Drink. You’re graduating. This is your Thousandth Shift and you’re entitled to enjoy it.’

‘Well, it isn’t precisely. I was a slow starter, remember. For me it’s more like a thousand and a quarter—’

‘Oh, you boring bugger, drink some of this stuff before I kick you off the bus.’

Rees, laughing, gave in and took a deep draught from the bottle.

He had sampled some tough liquors in the Quartermaster’s bar, and plenty of them had been stronger than this fizzing wine-sim; but none of them had quite the same effect. Soon the globe lights lining the avenue of cables seemed to emit a more friendly light; Jaen’s gravity pull mingling with his was a source of warmth and stillness; and the brittle conversation of his companions seemed to grow vivid and amusing.

His mood persisted as they emerged from beneath the canopy of flying trees and reached the shadow of the Platform. The great lip of metal jutted inwards from the Rim, forming a black rectangle cut out of the crimson of the sky, its supporting braces like gaunt limbs. The bus wheezed to a halt alongside a set of wide stairs. Rees, Jaen and the rest tumbled from the bus and clambered up the stairs to the Platform.

The Thousandth Shift party was already in full swing, bustling with perhaps a hundred graduates of the various Classes of the Raft. A bar set up on trestle tables was doing healthy business, and a discordant set of musicians was thumping out a rhythmic sound - there were even a few couples tentatively dancing, near the band’s low stage. Rees, with Jaen in tolerant tow, set off on a tour of the walls of the Platform.

The Platform was an elegant idea: to fix a hundred-yard-square plate to the Rim at such an angle that it matched the local horizontal, surround it by a wall of glass, and so reveal a universe of spectacular views. At the inward edge was the Raft itself, tilted like some huge toy for Rees’s inspection. As at the Theatre the sensation of being on a safe, flat surface gave the proximity of the vast slope a vertiginous thrill.

The space-facing edge of the Platform was suspended over the Rim of the Raft, and a section of the floor was inset with sheets of glass. Rees stood over the depths of the Nebula; it felt as if he were floating in the air. He could see hundreds of stars scattered in a vast three-dimensional array, illuminating the air like mile-wide globe lamps; and at the centre of the view, towards the hidden Core of the Nebula, the stars were crowded together, so that it was as if he were staring into a vast, star-walled shaft.

‘Rees. I congratulate you.’ Rees turned. Hollerbach, gaunt, unsmiling and utterly out of place in all this gaiety, stood beside him.

‘Thank you, sir.’

The old Scientist leaned towards him conspiratorially. ‘Of course, I didn’t doubt you’d do well from the first.’

Rees laughed. ‘I can tell you I doubted it sometimes.’

‘A Thousand Shifts, eh?’ Hollerbach scratched his cheek. ‘Well, I’ve no doubt you’ll go much further . . . And in the meantime here’s something for you to think about, boy. The ancients, the first Crew, didn’t measure time exclusively in shifts. We know this from their records. They used shifts, yes, but they had other units: a “day”, which was about three shifts, and a “year”, which was about a thousand shifts. How old are you now?’

‘About seventeen thousand, I believe, sir.’

‘So you’d be about seventeen “years” old, eh? Now then - what do you suppose these units, a “day” and a “year”, referred to?’ But before Rees could answer Hollerbach raised his hand and walked off. ‘Baert! So they’ve let you get this far despite my efforts to the contrary—’

Bowls of sweetmeats had been set out around the walls. Jaen nibbled on some fluffy substance and tugged absently at his hand. ‘Come on. Isn’t that enough sightseeing and science?’

Rees looked at her, the combination of wine-sim and stars leaving him quite dazed. ‘Hm? You know, Jaen, the stories of our home universe notwithstanding, sometimes this seems a very beautiful place.’ He grinned. ‘And you don’t look too bad yourself.’

She punched him in the solar plexus. ‘And nor do you. Now let’s have a dance.’

‘What?’ His euphoria evaporated. He looked past her shoulder at the whirl of dancing couples. ‘Look, Jaen, I’ve never danced in my life.’

She clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t be such a coward, you mine rat. Those people are just ex-apprentices like you and me, and I can tell you one thing for sure: they won’t be watching you.’

‘Well . . .’ he began, but it was too late; with a determined grip on his forearm she led him to the centre of the Platform.

His head filled with memories of the unfortunate gravity dancers at the Theatre of Light and their swooping, spectacular ballet. If he lived for fifty thousand shifts he would never be able to match such grace.

Luckily this dance was nothing like that.

Young men eyed girls across a few yards of floor. Those who were dancing were enthusiastic but hardly expert; Rees watched for a few seconds, then began to imitate their rhythmic swaying.

Jaen pulled a face at him. ‘That’s bloody awful. But who cares?’

In the low-gee conditions - gravity here was about half its value near the Labs - the dance had a dreamy slowness. After a while Rees began to relax; and, eventually, he realized he was enjoying himself—

—until his legs whisked out from under him; he clattered to the Platform with a slow bump. Jaen covered her face with one hand, suppressing giggles; a circle of laughter clustered briefly around him. He got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry—’

There was a tap on his shoulder. ‘So you should be.’

He turned; there, with a broad, glinting grin, stood a tall young man with the braids of a Junior Officer. ‘Doav,’ Rees said slowly. ‘Did you trip me?’

Doav barked laughter.

Rees felt his forearm muscles bunch. ‘Doav, you’ve been an irritation to me for the last year . . .’

Doav looked baffled.

‘ . . . I mean, the last thousand shifts.’ And it was true; Rees could bear the constant sniping, cracks and cruelties of Doav and his like throughout his working day . . . but he would much prefer not to have to. And, since the incident at the Theatre, he had come to see how attitudes like Doav’s were the cause of a great deal of pain and suffering on the Raft; and, perhaps, of much more to come.

The wine-sim was like blood now, pounding in his head. ‘Cadet, if we’ve something to settle—’

Doav fixed him with a look of contempt. ‘Not here. But soon. Oh, yes; soon.’ And he turned his back and walked off through the throng.

Jaen thumped Rees’s arm hard enough to make him flinch. ‘Do you have to turn every incident into an exhibition? Come on; let’s get a drink.’ She stamped her way towards the bar.

‘Hello, Rees.’

Rees paused, allowing Jaen to slip ahead into the crush around the bar. A thin young man stood before him, hair plastered across his scalp. He wore the black braids of Infrastructure and he regarded Rees with cool appraisal.

Rees groaned. ‘Gover. I guess this isn’t to be the best shift I’ve ever had.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. I haven’t seen you since not long after my arrival.

‘Yeah, but that’s not hard to understand.’ Gover flicked delicately at Rees’s braid. ‘We move in different circles, don’t we?’

Rees, already on edge after the incident with Doav, studied Gover as coolly as he could. There were still the same sharp features, the look of petulant anger - but Gover looked more substantial, more sure of himself.

‘So you’re still skivvying for those old farts in the Labs, eh?’

‘I’m not going to respond to that, Gover.’

‘You’re not?’ Gover rubbed at his nostrils with the palm of his hand. ‘Seeing you in this toy uniform made me wonder how you see yourself now. I bet you haven’t done a shift’s work - real work - since you landed here. I wonder what your fellow rats would think of you now. Eh?’

Rees felt blood surge once more to his cheeks; the wine-sim seemed to be turning sour. There was a seed of confusion inside him. Was his anger at Gover just a way of shielding himself from the truth, that he had betrayed his origins . . .?

‘What do you want, Gover?’

Gover took a step closer to Rees. His stale breath cut through the wine fumes in Rees’s nostrils. ‘Listen, mine rat, believe it or not I want to do you a favour.’

‘What kind of favour?’

‘Things are changing here,’ Gover said slyly. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Things won’t always be as they are now.’ He eyed Rees, evidently unwilling to go further.

Rees frowned. ‘What are you talking about? The discontents?’

‘That’s what some call them. Seekers of justice, others say.’

The noise of the revellers seemed to recede from Rees; it was as if Gover and he shared their own Raft somewhere in the air. ‘Gover, I was in the Theatre of Light, that shift. Was that justice?’

Gover’s eyes narrowed. ‘Rees, you’ve seen how the elite on this Raft keep the rest of us down - and how their obscene economic system degrades the rest of the Nebula’s human population. The time is near when they will have to atone.’

Rees stared at him. ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’

Gover bit his lip. ‘Maybe. Look, Rees, I’m taking a chance talking to you like this. And if you betray me I’ll deny we ever had this conversation.’