Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (21 page)

The air was hot, damp, and foul with a stench like sweat; but, though his chest ached slightly, he seemed to be breathing normally. Cautiously he propped himself up on his elbows. The muscles of his arms felt ripped and the fingernails on both hands were torn; but the bones of his fingers seemed intact and in place.

He climbed cautiously to his feet.

Stars still wheeled around the whale, but if he averted his eyes he felt no dizziness. It was as if he were standing in a steady gravity well of about two gees. Looking down he saw that his bare feet had sunk a couple of inches into the resilient cartilage. With some experimentation he found he could walk with little difficulty, provided he avoided slipping on the slick surface.

Again thirst tore at his throat; it felt as if the back of his mouth were closing up with the dryness.

He made his way to the aperture he had torn in the cartilage sheet. The wound had already closed to a narrow slit barely as wide as his waist. He had no way of telling how long he had been unconscious, but surely it must have taken a shift at least for the healing to progress this far. He knelt down, the cartilage beneath his knees a warm, wet carpet, and pushed his face close to the wound. A breeze bore him welcome fresh air. He could see the dangling flap of cartilage up which he had scrambled to safety: the ripped skin had grown opaque and was covered in a mass of fine creases. Perhaps eventually the dangling fold would be isolated outside the body, atrophy and fall away.

Thanks to Rees’s scrambling the area of cartilage around the wound was scraped clear of flesh; only a few clumps clung here and there, like isolated patches of foliage on an old tree. Rees lay on the warm floor, took a fold of cartilage in his left hand, and thrust his head and right arm out through the wound. He swept his arm around the outer wall of the whale’s belly, hauling in as much flesh matter as he could reach. As he worked, the breeze of the whale’s rotation washed steadily over his face and bare arms.

When he was done he withdrew from the wound and hauled away his meagre supply. He shoved a fistful into his mouth immediately. Sticky whale juice trickled, soothing, down his parched throat and fluffy flesh clung to his straggling beard; he squatted on the warm floor, and, for a few minutes, ate steadily, postponing thoughts of an impossible future.

When he was done, his thirst and hunger at least partially sated, his pile of flesh was reduced by at least half. The damn stuff would last hardly any time at all . . . He crammed the rest into the pockets of his filthy coverall.

Now he became aware of another problem, as the pressure in his bladder and lower bowels began to grow painful. He felt oddly reluctant to relieve himself inside the body of another creature; it seemed an obscene violation. But, the muscles of his lower stomach told him, he didn’t really have a lot of choice. At last he loosened his trousers and squatted over the narrowest section of the rent in the stomach wall.

He had a bizarre image of his waste being flung through the air in a cloud of brown and yellow. It was highly unlikely, of course, but perhaps one day the stuff would reach the Belt, or the Raft; would one of his acquaintances look up in horror for the source of this foul rain - and think of him?

He laughed out loud; the sound was absorbed by the soft wall around him. He could think of a few nominations for the recipient of such a message. Gover, Roch, Quid . . . Maybe he should take aim.

His needs satisfied, his curiosity began to reassert itself, and he stared around at the mysterious interior of the whale. It was like being inside some great, glass-walled ship. From the leading face a wide tube stretched down the axis of the body, contracting as it neared the rear. Entrails of some kind branched off, looking like fat, pale worms that coiled around the principal oesophagus. Sacs which could hold four men were suspended around the axial tube, filled with obscure, unmoving forms. Organs were clustered around the main axial canal; and others, vast and anonymous, were fixed to the inner wall of the skin.

Beyond the body’s rear Rees could make out the joint to the fluke section, and then the great semicircular flukes themselves, washing through the air with immense assurance and power. The motion of the flukes and the wheeling shadows cast by the starlight through the translucent skin gave the place a superficial impression of motion; but otherwise, apart from a subdued humming, the vast space was still and calm. Rees had read of the great cathedrals of Earth; he remembered staring at the old pictures and wondering what it would be like to stand inside such ancient, huge, still spaces.

Perhaps it would be something like this.

Stepping cautiously over the slippery, yielding surface, he began to make his way towards the whale’s leading face.

He neared an organ fixed to the floor. It was an opaque, flattened sphere, twice as tall as he was, and its mass tugged gently at him He pressed his palm to the tough, lumpy flesh; beneath the surface he could feel hot liquid churn. Perhaps this was the equivalent of a liver or kidney. Crouching, he could see how the organ was attached to the stomach wall by a tight, wrinkled ring of flesh; the ring was clear enough for him to see liquid pulse to and from the dense cartilage.

A Boney spear protruded from the organ, its tip buried an arm’s length inside the soft material. Rees took the shaft and carefully slid the spear away from the organ; it emerged damp and sticky. He propped the spear safely within a fold of flesh and walked on.

The floor slanted sharply upwards as he began to climb the slope of the body towards the axis of rotation. At last he was climbing a near-vertical, sheer surface, and he was forced to dig his hands into the cartilage. As he climbed towards the axis the centripetal force lessened, although a Coriolis effect began to make him stagger.

He paused for breath and looked back over the slope he had climbed. The organs fixed to the apparent floor and walls of the chamber were like mysterious engines. The tube of the oesophagus stretched away above his head; he noticed now that wrapped around it, close behind the eyes, was a large, spongy mass; filaments like rope connected the sponge to the eyes - optic nerves? Perhaps the convoluted lump was the whale’s brain; if so its mass relative to its body must compare favourably with a human’s.

Could the whale be intelligent? That seemed absurd . . . but then he remembered the song of the Boney hunters. The whale must have a reasonably sophisticated sensorium to be able to respond to such a lure.

At last he reached a position just below the join of the oesophagus to the face. The whale’s triple eyes hung over him like vast lamps, staring calmly ahead; it felt as if he were clinging to the inside of some huge mask.

The face rippled, almost casting him free; he clung tighter to the cartilage. Staring up he saw that the centre of the face had split, becoming an open mouth which led directly into the huge throat.

Rees looked out through the face. He made out a blur of motion which slowly resolved itself into a shoal of ghost-white plates which whirled in the air before the whale. These plate creatures were no more than three or four feet wide; some of them, perhaps the young, were far smaller. The creatures had upturned rims - no doubt for aerodynamic reasons - and Rees saw how purplish veins crisscrossed the upper surface of the discs.

The creatures scattered in alarm as the whale approached. The whale’s three eyes locked on the plate animals, triangulating with hungry precision. Soon the plates were impacting the great, flat face; the cartilage resounded like a drum-skin, making Rees flinch. Doomed plate creatures, still spinning feebly, slid into the whale’s maw and disappeared into the opaque oesophagus, and soon a series of bulges were passing down the great tube. Rees imagined the still living plates hurling themselves against the walls that had closed around them after a lifetime of free air. After some minutes the first bulge reached a branch to the semi-transparent entrails. Battered plates emerged into the comparative stillness of the intestines, some still turning feebly. With vast pulses of clear muscle the bodies were worked along the entrails, dissolving as they moved through vats of digestive gases or fluids.

For perhaps thirty minutes the whale cut a path through the cloud of plate creatures . . . and then something fast moved at the rim of Rees’s peripheral vision. He twisted, peering.

There was a blur, something red and dense that shot across the sky. Now another, and a third; and now a whole flock of them, raining through the air like missiles. The things descended on the shoal of plate creatures in a great, frenzied blur of motion and blood; when they moved on they left behind a cloud of blood and meat scraps—

—and one of the blurs flew at Rees’s face. He cried out and flinched backwards, almost losing his grip on the cartilage mask; then he steadied himself and stared back at the creature.

It had come to a halt mere yards before him. It was little more than a flying mouth. A red stump of a body, limbless, perhaps two yards long, was fronted by a circular maw wider than Rees could reach. Eyes like beads clustered round the mouth, which was ringed by long teeth, needle points turned inwards. Now the mouth closed, the flesh stretching over a rudimentary bone structure, until teeth met in a grind of white flashes.

Rees could almost imagine this sky wolf licking its lips as it studied him.

But the eyes of the whale fixed the wolf with a haughty glare, and after a few seconds the wolf shot away to join its companions amid the easier meat of the plate creatures.

Apparently satiated, the whale surged out of the cloud of plates and into clear air. Looking back, Rees could see the sky wolves continue to feast on the hapless plates.

The sky wolves were creatures of children’s tales; Rees had never encountered one before. No doubt, like uncounted other species of Nebula flora and fauna, the plates and wolves were careful to avoid the homes of man. Was he the first human to see such a sight? And would the Nebula die before mankind could explore the marvels this strange universe had to offer?

A heavy depression fell upon Rees, and he pressed his face against the inner face of the whale.

The whale forged ever deeper into the heart of the Nebula; the air outside grew darker.

Rees woke from a dream of falling.

His back was pressed against the inner face of the whale, his hands locked around folds of cartilage; cautiously he uncurled his fingers and worked the stiff joints.

What had woken him? He scanned the cavernous interior of the whale. Shafts of starlight still swept through the body like torch beams—

—but, surely, more slowly than before. Was the whale coming to rest?

He turned to look out of the whale’s face . . . and felt a tingle of wonder at the base of his skull. Peering in at him, not a dozen yards from where he stood, were the three eyes of a second whale. Its face was pressed to that of ‘his’ whale, and he saw how the mouths of the two vast creatures worked in sympathetic patterns, almost as if they were speaking to each other.

Now the other whale peeled away, its flukes beating, and the view ahead cleared. Again, wonder surged through Rees, causing him to gasp. Beyond the second whale was another, side on, forging through the air - and beyond that another, and another; as far as Rees’s eyes could see, above him and below him, there was a great array of whales which swam through the Nebula. The school must have been spread through cubic miles: the more distant of them were like tiny lanterns illuminated by starlight.

Like a great, pinkish river, the whales were all streaming towards the Core.

From behind Rees there was a low grind, as if some great machine were stirring. Turning, he saw that the joint connecting the main body of the whale to its fluke section was swivelling; bones and muscles the size of men hauled at the mass of turning flesh. Soon the whale was banking around a wide arc, its flukes beating purposefully. The whale’s rotation increased once more, turning the school of whales into a kaleidoscope of whirling flukes; and at last the whale settled into a place in the vast migration.

For hours the school forged on into increasing darkness. The stars at these depths were older, dimmer, their proximity increasing as the Core neared. Rees made out two stars so close they almost touched: their tired fires were drawn out in great mounds, and they whirled around each other in a pirouette seconds long. Later the whales passed a massive star, miles across; its fusion processes seemed exhausted, but the iron of its surface, compressed by gravity, gave off a dull, sombre glow. The surface was a place of constant motion: every few minutes a portion would subside, leaving a crater perhaps yards wide and a spray of molten particles struggling a few feet into the air. Smaller stars circled the giant in orbits of several minutes, and Rees was reminded of Hollerbach’s orrery: here was another ‘solar system’ model, made not of metal beads but of stars . . .

The school reached another collection of stars bound by gravity; but this time there was no central giant: instead a dozen small stars, some still burning, whirled through a complex, chaotic dance. At one moment it seemed two stars must collide . . . but no; they passed no more than yards apart, spun around and hurtled off in new directions. The motion of the star family showed no structure, no periodicity - and Rees, who in his time on the Raft had studied the chaotic aspects of the three-body problem, was not surprised.

Still the gloom deepened. A gathering blackness ahead told Rees they were nearing the Core. He remembered the Telescopic journey into the Nebula he had taken at the time of the revolt with that young Class Three - what was his name? Nead? Little had he dreamt that one day he would repeat the journey in person, and in such a fantastic fashion . . .

Again he thought briefly of Hollerbach. What would that old man give to be seeing these wonders? A mood of contentment, perhaps brought on by his memories, settled over Rees.