Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (67 page)

But Farr wasn’t listening; he crept forward to the wound in the branch and stared into it with fascination. Close to the rim of the ripped bark the wood was a pale yellow, the material looking much like that of the spear Adda had used. But further in, deeper than a hand’s length, the wood was glowing green and emitting a warmth which - even from half a mansheight away - Adda could feel as a comforting, tangible presence against his chest. The glow of the wood sparkled against Farr’s face and evoked verdant shadows within his round eyes.

Dura, Logue’s ungainly daughter, joined them now; she shot a brief smile of thanks to Adda as she crouched beside her brother and raised her palms to the warmth of the wood. The green fire scattered highlights from her limbs and face which made her look, Adda thought charitably, half-attractive for once. As long as she didn’t move about too much and reveal her total lack of grace, anyway.

Dura said to Farr, ‘Another lesson. What’s making the wood burn?’

He smiled at her, eyecups full of wood-glow. ‘Heavy stuff from the Crust?’

‘Yes.’ She leaned towards Farr so that the heads of brother and sister were side by side over the glowing wood, their faces shining like two leaves. Dura went on, ‘Proton-rich nuclei on their way to the leaves. The tree branch is like a casing, you see, enclosing a tube where the pressure is lower than the Air. But when the casing is breached the heavy nuclei inside fission, decaying rapidly. What you’re seeing is nuclei burning into the Air ...’

Adda saw how Farr’s smooth young face creased with concentration as he absorbed this new bit of useless knowledge.

Useless?

Well, maybe, he thought; but these precious, abstract facts, polished by retelling and handed down from the earliest days of the Human Beings - from the time of their expulsion from Parz City, ten generations ago - were treasures. Part of what made them human.

So Adda nodded approvingly at Dura and her attempts to educate her brother. The Human Beings had been thrust into this upflux wilderness against their will. But they were not savages, or animals; they had remained civilized people. Why, some of them could even read; a handful of books scraped painfully onto scrolls of pigskin with styli of wood were among the Human Beings’ principal treasures ...

He leaned towards Dura and said quietly, ‘You’ll have to go on, you know. Deeper into the forest, towards the Crust.’

Dura started. She pulled away from the trunk-wound, the light of the burning nuclei shining from the long muscles of her neck. The other Human Beings, a few mansheights away, were still clustered about the treetops; most of them, having crammed their bellies full, were gathering armfuls of the succulent leaves. She said, ‘I know. But most of them want to go back to the camp already, with their leaves.’

Adda sniffed. ‘Then they’re damn fools, and it’s a shame the spin weather didn’t take them instead of a few with more sense. Leaves taste good but they don’t fill a belly.’

‘No. I know.’ She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, ran a finger around the rim of one eyecup absently. ‘And we have to replace the Air-pigs we lost in the spin storm.’

‘Which means going on,’ Adda said.

She said with a weary irritation, ‘You don’t need to tell me, Adda.’

‘You’ll have to lead them. They won’t go by themselves; folk aren’t like that. They’re like Air-pigs: all wanting to follow the leader but none wanting to lead.’

‘They won’t follow me. I’m not my father.’

Adda shrugged. ‘They won’t follow anyone else.’ He studied her square face, seeing the doubts and submerged strength in its thin lines. ‘I don’t think you really have a choice.’

‘No,’ she sighed, straightening up. ‘I know.’ She went to talk to the tribesfolk.

When she returned to the nuclear fire, only Philas, the widow of Esk, came with her. The two women Waved side by side. Dura’s face was averted, apparently riven with embarrassment; Philas’s expression was empty.

Adda wasn’t really surprised at the reaction of the rest. Even when it was against their own damn interest, they’d snub Logue’s daughter.

He was interested to see Philas with Dura, though. Everyone had known about Dura’s relationship with Esk; it was hardly the sort of thing that could be kept quiet in a community reduced to fifty people, counting the kids.

It had been against the rules. Sort of. But it was tolerated, and hardly unique - as long as Dura obeyed a few unspoken conventions. Such as restricting her reaction to Esk’s death, keeping herself away from the widowed Philas.

Just another bit of stupidity, Adda thought. The Human Beings had once numbered hundreds - even in the days of Adda’s grandfather there had been over a hundred adults - and maybe then conventions about adultery might have made sense. But not now.

He shook his head. Adda had despaired of Human Beings long before Farr was born.

‘They want to go back,’ said Dura, her voice flat. ‘But I’ll go on. Philas will come.’

The woman Philas, her face drab and empty, her hair lying limply against her angular skull, looked to Adda as if she had nothing left to lose anyway. Well, he thought, if it helped the two women work out their own relationship, then fine.

Some hunting expedition it was going to be, though.

He lifted his spear.

Dura frowned. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t ask you to ...’

Adda growled a soft warning to shut her up.

Farr straightened up from the burning pit. ‘I’ll come too,’ he said brightly, his face turned up to Dura.

Dura placed her hands on his shoulders. ‘Now, that’s ridiculous,’ she said in a parent’s tones. ‘You know you’re too young to ...’

Farr responded with bleated protests, but Adda cut across him impatiently. ‘Let the boy come,’ he rasped to Dura. ‘You think he’d be safer with those leafgatherers? Or back at the place where the Net used to be?’

Dura’s anxious face swivelled from Adda to her brother and back again. At length she sighed, smoothing back her hair. ‘All right. Let’s go.’

They gathered their simple equipment. Dura knotted a length of rope around her waist and tucked a short stabbing-knife and cleaning brush into the rope, behind her back; she tied a small bag of food to the rope.

Then, without another word to the others, the four of them - Adda, Dura, Farr and the widow Philas - began the slow, careful climb towards the darkness of the Crust.

T
hey moved in silence.

At first Dura found the motion easy. The tree slid beneath her, almost featureless, slowly widening as she climbed up its length. The tree trunk grew along the direction of the Magfield, and so moving along it meant moving in the easiest direction, parallel to the Magfield, with the superfluid Air offering hardly any resistance. It was barely necessary to Wave; Dura found it was enough to push at the smooth, warm bark with her hands.

She looked back. The leafy treetops seemed to be merging into a floor across the world now, and the open Air beyond was being sealed away from her. Her companions were threaded along the trunk behind her, moving easily: the widow Philas apparently indifferent to her surroundings, Farr with his eyecups wide and staring, his mouth wide open and his chest straining at the thin Air, and dear old Adda at the back, his spear clasped before him, his good eye constantly sweeping the complex darkness around them. The three of them - naked, sleek, with their ropes, nets and small bags bound to them - looked like small, timid animals as they moved through the shades of the forest.

They rested. Dura took her cleaning scraper from her belt of rope and worked at her arms and legs, dislodging fragments of leaf and bark.

Adda glided up the line to her, his face alert. ‘How are you?’

Looking at him, Dura thought of her father.

She’d been involved in hunts before, of course - as had most adult Human Beings - but always she’d been able to rely on the tactical awareness, the deep, ingrained knowledge of the Star and all its ways, of Logue and the others.

She’d never
led
before.

Some of her doubt must have shown in her face. Adda nodded, his wizened face neutral. ‘You’ll do.’

She snorted. Keeping her voice low enough that only Adda could hear, she said, ‘Maybe. But what good is it? Look at us ...’ She waved a hand at the little party. ‘A boy. Two women, distracted by grief ...’

‘And me,’ Adda said quietly.

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged. ‘Thanks for staying with me, Adda. But even if by some miracle this collection of novices succeeds we’ll return with only two, maybe three Air-pigs. We wouldn’t have the capacity to restrain any more.’ She remembered - in the better days of her childhood - hunting parties of ten or a dozen strong and alert men and women, returning in triumph to the Net with whole herds of wild pigs. ‘And what good will that do? The Human Beings are going to starve, Adda.’

‘Maybe. But it may not be as bad as that. We might find a couple of sows, maybe with piglets ... enough to reestablish our stock. Who knows? And look, Dura, you can only lead those who wish to be led. Don’t flog yourself too hard. Even Logue only led by consent. And remember, Logue never faced times as hard as what’s to come now.

‘Listen to me. When the people get hungry enough, they’ll turn to you. They’ll be angry, disillusioned, and they’ll blame you because there’s no one else to blame. But they’ll be yours to lead.’

She found herself shuddering. ‘I’ve no choice, have I? All my life, since the moment of my birth, has had a kind of logic which has led me to this point. And I’ve never had a choice about any of it.’

Adda smiled, his face a grim mask. ‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘But then, what choices do any of us have?’

The forest seemed empty of Air-pigs.

The little party grew fretful and tired. After another half-day’s fruitless searching, Dura allowed them to rest, to sleep.

When they woke, she knew she would have to lead them downflux. Downflux, and higher - deeper into the forest, towards the Crust.

Towards the South - downflux - the Air was richer, the Magfield stronger. The pigs must have fled that way, following the Glitch. But everyone knew downflux was a dangerous direction to travel.

The Human Beings followed her with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

The forest was dense, complex. Six-legged Crust-crabs scuttled from Dura as she approached, abandoning webs slung between the tree trunks. Cocoons of leeches and other unidentifiable creatures clustered thick on the trunks, like pale, bloated leaves.

A ray turned its blind face towards her.

Adda hissed a warning. Dura flattened herself against the tree trunk before her, wrapping her arms around it and willing her ragged breath to still. The wood pressing against her belly and thighs was hard and hot.

A breath of Air at her back, a faint shadow.

She shifted her head to the right, feeling the roughness of the bark scratch her cheek. Her eyecups swivelled, following the ray as it glided by, utterly silent. The ray was a translucent sheet at least a mansheight wide. At its closest it was no more than an arm’s length from her. She could recognize the basic architecture of all the Mantle’s animals: the ray was built around a thin, cylindrical spine, and six tiny, spherical eyes ringed the babyish maw set into the centre of its face. But the fins of the ray had been extended into six wide, thin sheets. The wings were spaced evenly around the body and they rippled as the ray moved; electron gas sparkled around the leading edges. The flesh was almost transparent, so that it was difficult even to see the wings, and Dura could see shadowy fragments of some meal passing along the ray’s cylindrical gut.

The ray was the only animal - other than humans - that moved by Waving, rather than by squirting jetfarts like pigs or boar. Moving in silence, without the sweet stink of jetfarts, the ray was an effective predator. And its mouth, though tiny, was ringed by jagged, ripping teeth.

The ray slid over the four humans for several heartbeats, apparently unaware of their presence. Then, still silent, it floated away into the shadows of the forest.

Dura counted to a hundred before pushing herself away from the tree trunk.

The vortex lines were dense here, almost tangled together among the trees. The Star, its rotation continually slowing, gradually expelled the vortex lines from the Mantle ... until a fresh Glitch struck, when the lines crumbled into deadly fragments before renewing.

The Air was noticeably thinner. Dura felt her chest strain at the stuff and her heart pumped as it sought to power her muscles; from various points in her body she heard the small pops of pressure equalizing. She knew what was happening, of course. The Air had two main components, a neutron superfluid and an electron gas. The neutrons were thinning out; more pressure here was supplied by the gas of free electrons. When she held up her hand before her face she could see the ghostly sparkle of electrons around her fingers, bright in the gloom and evoking dim highlights from the crowding leaves.

But now her vision seemed to be failing. The Air was growing poor at carrying the high-frequency, high-velocity sound waves which allowed her to see. And, worse, the Air - thin as it was - was losing its superfluidity. It started to feel sticky, viscous; and as she moved she began to feel a breeze, faint but unquestionably present, plucking at her face and hair-tubes, impeding her motion.

She found herself trembling at the thought of this sticky stuff congealing in the fine network of capillaries which powered her muscles - the network which sustained her very being.

Human Beings weren’t meant to live up here. Even pigs spent no more time close to the Crust than they had to. She heaved at the sludgelike Air, feeling it curdle within her capillaries, and longed for the open space of the Mantle beneath the roof-forest, for clean, fresh, thick Air.

In all directions around her the tree trunks filled the world. As it became progressively more difficult to see, the trunks, parallel, curving slightly to follow the Magfield, seemed suddenly artificial, sinister in their regularity, like the threads of some huge Net around her. She found herself gripped by a slow panic. Her chest heaved at the unsatisfying Air, the breath noisy in her throat. It took a strong, conscious effort to keep moving, an exercise of will just to keep her hands working at the tree trunk.