Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (16 page)

Pallis watched coldly, not deigning to reply.

The two braced their feet on the branches, spat on their hands, and began to haul on the rope. At length a bundle of filthy cloth was dragged through the foliage. The two men dumped the bundle to one side, then removed the rope and passed it back through the foliage.

The bundle uncurled slowly. Pallis walked over to it.

The bundle was a human, a man bound hand and foot: a Scientist, to judge by the remnants of crimson braid stitched to the ragged robes. He struggled to sit up, rocking his bound arms. Pallis reached down, took the man’s collar and hauled him upright. The Scientist looked up with dim gratitude; through matted dirt Pallis made out the face of Cipse, once Chief Navigator.

The Committee men were leaning against the trunk of his tree, evidently waiting for their rope to be attached to the next ‘passenger’. Pallis left Cipse and walked across to them. He took the shoulder of the bald man and, with a vicious pressure, forced the Committee man to face him.

The bald man eyed him uncertainly. ‘What’s the problem, pilot?’

Through clenched teeth Pallis said: ‘I don’t give a damn what happens down there, but on my trees what I say goes. And what I say is that these men are going to board my tree with dignity.’ He dug his fingers into the other’s flesh until cartilage popped.

The bald man squirmed away from his grip. ‘All right, damn it; we’re just doing our job. We don’t want any trouble.’

Pallis turned his back and returned to Cipse. ‘Navigator, welcome aboard,’ he said formally. ‘I’d be honoured if you would share my food.’

Cipse’s eyes closed and his soft body was wracked by shudders.

Slowly the flight of trees descended into the bowels of the Nebula. Before long the Belt hovered in the sky before them; gloomily Rees studied the chain of battered boxes and piping turning around the fleck of rust that was the star core. Here and there insect-like humans crawled between the cabins, and a cloud of yellowish smoke, emitted by the two foundries, hung about the Belt like a stain in the air.

Numbly he worked at the fire bowls. This was a nightmare: a grim parody of his hope-filled voyage to the Raft, so many shifts ago. During his rest periods he avoided the other Scientists. They clung to each other in a tight circle around Grye and Cipse, barely talking, doing only what they were told.

These were supposed to be men of intelligence and imagination, Rees thought bitterly; but then, he reflected, their future did not exactly encourage the use of the imagination, and he did not have the heart to blame them for turning away from the world.

His only, slight, pleasure was to spend long hours at the trunk of the tree, staring across the air at the formation which hung a few hundred yards above him. Six trees turned at the corners of an invisible hexagon; the trees were in the same plane and were close enough for their leaves to brush, but such was the skill of the pilots that scarcely a twig was disturbed as they descended through miles of air. And suspended beneath the trees, in a net fixed by six thick ropes, was the boxy form of a supply machine. Rees could see the remnants of Raft deck plates still clinging to the base of the machine.

Even now the flight was a sight that lifted his heart. Humans were capable of such beauty, such great feats . . .

The Belt became a chain of homes and factories. Rees saw half-familiar faces turned up towards their approach like tiny buttons.

Pallis joined him at the trunk. ‘So it ends like this, young miner,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Rees looked at him in some surprise; the pilot’s visage was turned towards the approaching Belt, his scars flaring. ‘Pallis, you’ve nothing to be sorry about.’

‘I’d have done you a kindness if I’d thrown you off when you first stowed away. They’ll give you a hard time down there, lad.’

Rees shrugged. ‘But it won’t be as hard as for the rest of them.’ He jabbed a thumb towards the Scientists. ‘And remember I had a choice. I could have joined the revolution and stayed on the Raft.’

Pallis scratched his beard. ‘I’m not sure I understand why you didn’t. The Bones know I’ve no sympathy with the old system; and the way your people had been kept down must have made you burn.’

‘Of course it did. But . . . I didn’t go to the Raft to throw fuel bombs, tree-pilot. I wanted to learn what was wrong with the world.’ He smiled. ‘Modest, wasn’t I?’

Pallis lifted his face higher. ‘You were damn right to try, boy. Those problems you saw haven’t gone away.’

Rees cast a glance around the red-stained sky. ‘No, they haven’t.’

‘Don’t lose hope,’ Pallis said firmly. ‘Old Hollerbach’s still working.’

Rees laughed. ‘Hollerbach? They won’t shift him. They still need someone to run things in there - find them the repair manuals for the supply machines, maybe try to move the Raft from under the falling star - and besides, I think even Decker’s afraid of him . . .’

Now they laughed together. They remained by the trunk for long minutes, watching the Belt approach.

‘Pallis, do something for me.’

‘What?’

‘Tell Jaen I asked about her.’

The tree-pilot rested his massive hand on Rees’s shoulder. ‘Aye, lad. She’s safe at present - Hollerbach got her a place on his team of assistants - and I’ll do what I can to make sure she stays that way.’

‘Thanks. I—’

‘And I’ll tell her you asked.’

A rope uncurled from the trunk of the tree and brushed against the Belt’s rooftops. Rees was the first to descend. A miner, half his face ruined by a massive purple burn, watched him curiously. The Belt’s rotation was carrying him away from the tree; Rees pulled himself after the trailing rope and assisted a second Scientist to lower himself to the rooftops.

Soon a gaggle of Scientists were stumbling around the Belt after the dangling rope. A cluster of Belt children followed them, eyes wide in thin faces.

Rees saw Sheen. His former supervisor hung from a cabin, one brown foot anchored in rope; she watched the procession with a broad grin.

Rees let the clumsy parade move on. He worked his way towards Sheen; fixing his feet in the rope he straightened up and faced her.

‘Well, well,’ she said softly. ‘We thought you were dead.’

He studied her. The heat-laden pull of her long limbs still called uncomfortably; but her face was gaunt, her eyes lost in pools of shadow. ‘You’ve changed, Sheen.’

She spat laughter. ‘So has the Belt, Rees. We’ve seen hard times here.’

He narrowed his eyes. Her voice was almost brutal, edged with despair. ‘If you’ve the brains I once believed you had,’ he snapped, ‘you’ll let me help. Let me tell you some of what I’ve learned.’

She shook her head. ‘This isn’t a time for knowledge, boy. This is a time to survive.’ She looked him up and down. ‘And believe me, you and the rest of your flabby colleagues are going to find that quite tough enough.’

The absurd, shambling procession, still following the tree rope, had almost completed an orbit of the Belt.

Rees closed his eyes. If only this mess would all go away; if only he were allowed to get back to his work—

‘Rees!’ It was Cipse’s thin voice. ‘You’ve got to help us, man; tell these people who we are . . .’

Rees shook off his despair and pulled himself across the rooftops.

T
he winch mechanism impelled the chair towards the star kernel. Rees closed his eyes, relaxed his muscles and tried to blank out his mind.

To get through the next shift: that was his only priority now. Just one shift at a time . . .

If the exile to the Belt had been a descent into hell for Grye, Cipse and the rest, for Rees it had been the meticulous opening of an old wound. Every detail of the Belt - the shabby cabins, the rain hissing over the surface of the kernel - had crowded into his awareness, and it was as if the intervening thousands of shifts on the Raft had never been.

But in truth he had changed forever. At least before he had had some hope . . . Now there was none.

The chair lurched. The dome of rust rocked beneath his feet and already he could sense the tightening pull of the star’s gravity field.

The Belt had changed too, he mused . . . and for the worse. The miners seemed coarsened, brutalized, the Belt itself shabbier and less well maintained. He had learned that deliveries from the Raft had grown less and less frequent. As supplies failed to arrive a vicious circle had set in. Increasing illness and malnutrition and, in the longer term, higher mortality were making it ever harder for the miners to meet their quotas, and without iron to trade even less food could be bought from the Raft - which worsened the miners’ conditions still further.

In such a situation, surely something had to give. But what? Even his old acquaintances - like Sheen - were reluctant to talk, as if there was some shameful secret they were hiding. Were the miners making some new arrangements, finding some other, darker, way to break out of the food trap? If so, what?

The wheels of his chair impacted the surface of the star and a full five gees descended on his chest, making him gasp. With a heavy hand he released the cable lock and allowed the chair to roll towards the nearest mine entrance.

‘Late again, you feckless bastard.’ The rumbling voice had issued from the gloom of the mine mouth.

‘No, I’m not, Roch; and you know it,’ Rees said calmly. He brought his chair to a halt at the head of the ramp leading down into the mine.

A chair came whirring up from the gloom. Despite the recent privations the miner Roch was still a huge man. His beard merged with the fur and sweat plastered across his chest; a stomach like a sack slumped over his belt. White showed around his eyes, and when he opened his mouth Rees could see stumps of teeth like burnt bones. ‘Don’t talk back, Raft man.’ Spittle sprayed his chest in tight parabolae. ‘What’s to stop me putting you all on triple shifts? Eh?’

Rees found the breath escaping from him in a slow sigh. He knew Roch of old. Roch, who you always avoided in the Quartermaster’s, whether he was drunk or not. Roch, the half-mad troublemaker who had only been allowed to grow past boyhood, Rees suspected, because of the size of his muscles.

Roch. The obvious choice as the Scientists’ shift supervisor.

He was still staring at Rees. ‘Well? Nothing to say? Eh?’

Rees held his tongue, but the other’s fury increased regardless.

‘What’s the matter, Raftshit? Scared of a little work? Eh? I’ll show you the meaning of work . . .’ Roch gripped the arms of his chair with fingers like lengths of rope; with separate, massive movements, he hauled his feet off their support plates and planted them on the rust.

‘Oh, by the Bones, Roch, you’ve made your point,’ Rees protested. ‘You’ll kill yourself—’

‘Not me, Raftshit.’ Now Roch’s biceps tightened so that Rees could see the structure of the muscles through the sweat-streaked skin. Slowly, grunting, Roch lifted his bulk from the chair, knees and calves shaking under the load. At last he stood, swaying minutely, arms raised for balance. Five gees hauled at his stomach so that it looked like a sack of mercury slung over his belt; Rees almost cringed as he imagined how the belt must be biting into Roch’s flesh.

A grin cracked Roch’s purpling face. ‘Well, Raft man?’ Now his tongue protruded from his lips. With slow deliberation he raised his left foot a few inches from the surface and shoved it forward; then the right, then the left again; and so, like a huge, grotesque child, Roch walked on the surface of the star.

Rees watched, not trusting himself to speak.

At length Roch was satisfied. He grabbed the chair arms and lowered himself into the seat. He stared at Rees challengingly, his humour apparently restored by his feat. ‘Well, come on, Raftshit, there’s work to do. Eh?’

And he turned his chair and led the way into the interior of the star.

Most of the Scientists’ work assignments were inside the star mine. For some imagined misdemeanour Roch had long since put them all on double shift. They were allowed an hour’s break between shifts - even Roch had not denied them that yet - and when the break came Rees met Cipse beneath the glow of a globe lamp.

The Scientists sat in companionable silence for a while. They were in one of the porous kernel’s larger chambers; lamps were scattered over its roof like trapped stars, casting light over piles of worked metal and the sullen forms of Moles.

The Navigator looked like a pool of fat in his wheelchair, his small features and short, weak limbs mere addenda to his crushed bulk. Rees, with some effort, helped him raise a tube of water to his lips. The Navigator dribbled; the water scattered over the ruin of his coverall and droplets hit the iron floor like bullets. Cipse smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wheezing.

Rees shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘You know,’ Cipse said at length, ‘the physical conditions down here are poor enough; but what makes it unendurable is . . . the sheer boredom.’

Rees nodded. ‘There has never been much to do save supervise the Moles. They can make their own decisions, mostly, with occasional human intervention. Frankly, though, one or two experienced miners can run the whole kernel. There’s no need for so many of us to be down here. It’s just Roch’s petty way of hurting us.’

‘Not so petty.’ Cipse’s breath seemed to be laboured; his words were punctuated by pauses. ‘I’m quite concerned about the . . . health of some of the others, you know. And I suspect . . . suspect that we would actually be of more use in some other role.’

Rees grimaced. ‘Of course. But try telling Roch.’

‘You know I’ve no wish to appear insulting, Rees, but you clearly have more in . . . common with these people than the . . . the rest of us.’ He coughed and clutched his chest. ‘After all, you are one of them. Can’t you . . . say something?’

Rees laughed softly. ‘Cipse, I ran out of here, remember. They hate me more than the rest of you. Look, things will get better, I’m sure of that; the miners aren’t barbarians. They’re just angry. We must be patient.’