Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (128 page)

As, no doubt, they were meant to be.

Planner Milpitas turned the bit of metal over and over in his long fingers, eyeing Morrow. His desk was bare, the walls without adornment. ‘You ask too many questions, Morrow.’ The Planner’s bare scalp was stretched paper-thin over his skull and betrayed a faint tracery of scars.

Morrow tried to smile; already, as he entered the interview, he felt immensely tired. ‘I always have.’

The Planner didn’t smile. ‘Yes. You always have. But my problem is that your questions sometimes disturb others.’

Morrow tried to keep himself from trembling. At the surface of his mind there was fear, and a sense of powerlessness - but beneath that there was an anger he knew he must struggle to control. Milpitas could, if he wished, make life very unpleasant for Morrow.

Milpitas held up the artifact. ‘Tell me what this is.’

‘It’s a figure-of-eight ring.’

‘Did you make it?’

Morrow shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s a standard design in the shops on Deck Four.’

‘All right.’ Milpitas placed the ring on his desk, with a soft clink. ‘Tell me what else you make. Give me a list.’

Morrow closed his eyes and thought. ‘Parts for some of the machines - the food dispensers, for instance. Not the innards, of course - we leave that to the nanobots - but the major external components. Material for buildings - joists, pipes, cables. Spectacles, cutlery: simple things that the nanobot maintenance crews can’t repair.’

Milpitas nodded. ‘And?’

‘And things like your figure-of-eight ring.’ Morrow struggled, probably failing, to keep a note of frustration out of his voice. ‘And ratchets, and stirrups. Scrapers—’

‘All right. Now, Morrow, the value of a joist, or a pair of spectacles, is obvious. But what do you think of this question: what is the
value
of your figure-of-eight rings, ratchets and stirrups?’

Morrow hesitated. This was exactly the kind of question which had landed him in trouble in the first place. ‘I don’t know,’ he blurted at last. ‘Planner, it drives me crazy not to know. I look at these things and try to work out what they
might
be used for, but—’

The Planner raised his hands. ‘You’re not answering me, Morrow.’

Morrow was confused. He’d long since learned that when dealing with people like Milpitas, words turned into weapons, fine blades whose movements he could barely follow. ‘But you asked me what the ratchets were for.’

‘No. I asked you what you thought of the
question
, not for an answer to the question itself. That’s very different.’

Morrow tried to work that out. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

‘No.’ The Planner rested his long, surgery-scarred fingers on the desk before him. Milpitas seemed to be one of those unfortunate individuals suffering a partial AS failure, necessitating this kind of gross rework of his body. ‘No, I really believe you don’t. And that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it, Morrow?’

He stood and walked to the window of his office. From here Morrow could see the outer frame of the Temple; its face was a tilted plane of golden light. Milpitas’ wide, bony face was framed by the iron sky, the sourceless daylight.

‘The question has
no
value,’ Milpitas said at length. ‘And so an answer to it would have no value - it would be meaningless, because the question in itself has no reference to anything meaningful.’ He turned to Morrow and smiled searchingly. ‘I know you’re not happy with that answer. Go ahead; don’t be afraid. Tell me what you think.’

Morrow sighed.
I think you’re crazy
. ‘I think you’re playing with words.’ He picked up the ring. ‘Of
course
this thing has a purpose. It exists, physically. We expend effort in making it—’

‘Everything we do has a purpose, Morrow, and one purpose only.’ Milpitas looked solemn. ‘Do you know what that is?’

Morrow felt vaguely irritated. ‘The survival of the species. I’m not a child, Planner.’

‘Exactly. Good. That’s why we’re here; that’s why Paradoxa built this ship-world of ours; that’s why my grandmother - dead now, of course - and the others initiated this voyage. That’s the purpose that informs everything we do.’

Morrow’s irritation turned into a vague rebelliousness.
Everything? Even the elimination of the children?

He wondered how many interviews, like this, he had suffered over the years. Vaguely he remembered a time when things hadn’t been like this. Right at the start of his life, half a millennium ago, the great Virtual devices, hidden somewhere in the fabric of the world, had covered the drab hull walls with scenes of lost, beautiful panoramas: he remembered Virtual suns and moons crossing a Virtual sky, children running in the streets.

There had been a feeling of space - of
infinity
. The Virtuals had had the power to make this box-world seem immense, without constraints.

But Paradoxa had closed down the Virtuals, one by one, exposing the skull-like reality of the world which lay beneath the illusion. No one now seemed to know where the Virtual machines were, or how to get access to them, even if they still worked.

At the same time Paradoxa had first discouraged, then abolished, childbirth. Morrow had been one of the last children to be born, in fact.

Virtual dioramas - and the voices of children - were no longer necessary, Paradoxa said.

There were no young, and the people grew
old
. There was neither day nor night, but only the endless, steel-grey, sourceless light which - diffused from the metal hull - gave the impression of a continual dawn. Leisure activities - theatres, study groups, play groups - had fallen into disuse. The world was structured only by the endless drudgery of work.

Work, and study of the words of the founders of Paradoxa, of course.

Milpitas turned his wide, rather coarse face to Morrow. ‘Paradoxa’s one imperative is to ensure the survival of the species - physically, through our genes, and culturally, through the memes we carry - into the indefinite future.’ He pointed to the iron sky. ‘Everything we do is driven by that logic, Morrow. For all we know, we are the only humans alive, anywhere. And so we must optimize the use of our resources.

‘At present we’re succeeding. Our population is well-adjusted; we have no need of new generations - not until our resource situation changes.’

But
, Morrow thought wildly,
but the population isn’t stable
. Every year people died - through accident, or obscure AS-failure. So, every year, the population actually
fell.

Over the centuries he had witnessed the steady drop in population, the slow retreat from the lower Decks. When Morrow had been born, he was sure that the lifedome had been inhabited all the way down to Deck Eight - and it was said there were another seven or eight Decks below that. Now, only Decks Two and Three were occupied.

Could there be a point, he wondered, below which the race couldn’t regenerate itself, even if the temporary sterility was reversed?

What would Paradoxa do then?

Milpitas sat down once more. When he spoke again, the Planner seemed to be trying to be kind. ‘Morrow, you must not torment yourself - and those around you - with questions that can’t be answered. You know, in principle,
why
our world is as it is. Isn’t that sufficient? Is it really necessary for you to understand every detail?’

But if I don’t understand
, Morrow thought sourly,
then you can control me. Arbitrarily. And
that’s
what I find hard to accept.

Milpitas steepled his fingers. ‘Here’s another dimension you need to think about. His voice was harsher now. ‘Tell me, what are your views on the internal contradictions of the meme versus gene duality?’

Morrow, glowering, refused to answer.

Milpitas smiled, exquisitely patronizing. ‘You don’t understand the question, do you? Can you read?’

‘Yes, I can read,’ Morrow said testily. ‘I had to teach myself, but, yes, I can read.’

Milpitas frowned. ‘But you don’t
need
to be able to read. Most people don’t need to. It’s a luxury, Morrow; an indulgence.

‘We must all accept our limitations, Morrow;
you have to accept
that there are people who know better than you do.’

Morrow steeled himself.
Here it comes
. No punishment was going to be terribly onerous, but he found any disruption from his daily routine increasingly difficult, even painful.

‘Four weeks on Deck One,’ Milpitas said briskly, making a note. ‘I’ll coordinate this with your supervisor in the shops. I’m sorry to do this, Morrow, but you must see my position; we can’t have you disrupting those around you with your - your ill-disciplined thinking.’

Deck One. The Locks
. One of the most difficult - if not frightening - places to work on all the Decks. This was a tough punishment, for what he still couldn’t accept as a crime . . .

But, nevertheless, he found himself suppressing a grin at the irony of this. For the Locks - and the strange, illicit trade that went on through them - were an explicit embodiment of the contradictions within his society.

The first tendrils of morning light snaked up over the skydome like living things. The dim stars fled.

Arrow Maker unwrapped himself from his branch and stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. The breeze up here was fresh and dry. He urinated against the bole of the tree; the hot liquid darkened the wood and coursed down towards the canopy. He chewed on some of the meat from his belt, and lapped up dew moisture from the kapok’s leaves. The water wasn’t much, but he’d find more later, in the bowls of orchids and bromeliads.

He retrieved his bow and quiver, made his way to the rope he’d left dangling, and prepared for the first stage of his descent. He passed the rope through a metal figure-of-eight ring, clipped the ring to his belt, and stood up in his webbing stirrups. He slid easily downwards, controlling the run of the rope through the ring with his hand. The figure-of-eight ring, scuffed and worn with use, rang softly as he descended.

The canopy, fifty yards above the forest floor, was a twenty-yard-deep layer of vegetation. Arrow Maker was soon screened from the breeze of the topmost level, and the air grew moist, humid, comfortable.

He found a liana and cut it open; water spurted into his mouth. On his last visit to the canopy, Arrow Maker had spotted a fig-tree which had looked close to fruiting; he decided to take a detour there before returning to Uvarov. He wrapped his rope around his waist, tucked his climbing gear into his belt, and clambered across the canopy, working his way from branch to branch.

Moss and algae coated the bark of the trees and hung from twigs in sheets, making the wood dangerously slippery. Lianas, fig roots and the dangling roots of orchids, bromeliads and ferns festooned the branches like rope. Leaves shone in the gloom, like little green arrow-heads. Some of the flowers, designed to catch the attention of hummingbirds and sunbirds, gleamed red in the gloom; others, pale, fetid, waited patiently for bats to eat their fruit and so propagate their seeds.

Beyond the clutter of life, Maker could see the branchless trunks of the canopy trees. The trunks rose like columns of smoke through the greenery, smooth and massive.

The fig-tree was an incongruous tangle sprouting from the trunk of a canopy tree, a parasite feeding off its host tree. As he approached the fig he knew he’d been right about the fruiting. A parrot hung upside down from a branch, its feathers brilliant crimson, munching at a fig it held in one claw. The rich smell of ripe figs wafted from the leaves, and the branches were alive with animals and birds.

There was even a family of silver-leaf monkeys. Maker got quite close to one female, with a baby clinging to her back. For a few moments Maker watched her working at the fruit; she seemed to sniff each fig individually, as if trying to determine from the perfume if it was ready to consume. At last she found a fig to her liking and crammed it whole into her mouth, while her baby mewled at her neck.

The female suddenly became aware of Arrow Maker. Her small, perfect head swivelled towards him, her eyes round, and for an instant she froze, her gaze locked with Maker’s. Then she turned and bounded away through rustling leaves, lost to his sight in a moment.

He worked his way towards the fig, shouting and clapping his hands to scare the scavengers away. He even roused a cluster of fruit bats, unusually feeding during the day; they scattered at his approach, their huge, loose, leathery wings rustling.

At length he reached the bough of the canopy tree, which was wrapped around with fig roots. This was actually a strangler fig, he realized; the crown of the fig was so dense that it was blocking out the light from its host and would eventually take its place in the canopy.

‘Arrow Maker.’

His name was whispered, suddenly, close behind him. He turned, startled, and almost lost his grip on the algae-coated branch below him; his bow rattled against his bare back, clumsily.

It was Spinner-of-Rope. Her face was round in the gloom as she grinned at him. Spinner, his older daughter, was fifteen years old, and her short, slim body was as lithe as a monkey’s. She bore a full sack at her back. A bright smear of scarlet dye crossed her face, picking out her eyes and nose like a mask; her hair was shaven back from her scalp and dangled in a fringe over her ears down to her shoulders, rich black. Her metal spectacles shone in the green light.

‘Got you,’ she said.

He tried to recover his dignity. ‘That was irresponsible.’

She snorted and rubbed at her stub of a nose. ‘Oh, sure. I saw you creeping up on that poor silver-leaf. With her baby, too.’ Squatting in the branches, she moved towards him menacingly. ‘Maybe I should climb on your back and see how you like it—’

‘Don’t bother.’ He settled against the bough of the tree, pulled a fig from a branch and bit into it. ‘What’s in the sack?’