Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (72 page)

‘
Efficient
,’ Adda hissed. ‘That was one of the words they used when they drove us away from the Pole.’

Dura frowned. ‘Who drove us away?’

‘The authorities in Parz,’ he said, his sightless eyes leaking disconcertingly. ‘I’m talking of a time ten generations ago, Dura . . . We don’t talk of these things any more. The princelings, the priests, the Wheelwrights. Drove us away from the thick, warm Air of the Pole and out into the deserts upflux. Drove us out for our faith, because we looked to a higher authority than them. Because we wouldn’t work on their ceiling-farms; we wouldn’t accept slavery. Because we wouldn’t be
efficient
.’

‘Coolies aren’t slaves,’ Toba Mixxax said heatedly. ‘Every man and woman is free in the eyes of the law of Parz City, and . . .’

‘And I’m a Xeelee’s grandmother,’ Adda said wearily. ‘In Parz, you are as free as you can afford to be. If you’re poor - a
coolie
, or a coolie’s son - you’ve no freedom at all.’

Dura said to Adda, ‘What are you talking about? Is this how you knew where Toba was from - because we were from Parz City too, once?’ She frowned. ‘You’ve never told me this. My father . . .’

Adda coughed, his throat rattling. ‘I doubt if Logue knew. Or, if he did, if he cared. It was
ten generations ago
. What difference does it make now? We could never return; why dwell on the past?’

Mixxax said absently, ‘I still haven’t worked out what to do if you incur costs for the old man’s medical treatment.’

‘It doesn’t take much imagination to guess,’ Adda hissed. ‘Dura, I told you to drive away this City man.’

‘Hush,’ she told him. ‘He’s helping us, Adda.’

‘I didn’t want his help,’ Adda said. ‘Not if it meant going into Parz itself.’ He thrashed, feebly, in his cocoon of clothes. ‘I’d rather die. But I couldn’t even manage that now.’

Frightened by his words, Dura pressed against Adda’s shoulders with her hands, forcing him to lie still.

Toba Mixxax called cautiously, ‘You mentioned “Xeelee” earlier.’

Dura turned to him, frowning.

He hesitated. ‘Then that’s your faith? You’re Xeelee cultists?’

‘No,’ Dura said wearily. ‘If that word means what I think it means. We don’t regard the Xeelee as gods; we aren’t savages. But we believe the goals of the Xeelee represent the best hope for . . .’

‘Listen,’ Toba said, more harshly, ‘I don’t see that I owe you any more favours. I’m doing too much for you already.’ He chewed his lip, staring out at the patterned Crust through his window. ‘But I’ll tell you this anyway. When we get to Parz, don’t advertise your faith - your belief, about the Xeelee. Whatever it is. All right? There’s no point looking for trouble.’

Dura thought that over. ‘Even more trouble than following a wheel?’

Adda turned blind eyes to her. Mixxax twisted, startled. ‘What do you know about the Wheel?’

‘Only that you wear one around your neck,’ she said mildly. ‘Except when you think you need to hide it.’

The City man yanked on his reins angrily.

Adda had closed his eyes and breathed noisily but steadily, evidently unconscious once more. Farr still slept. With a pang of guilt, Dura rammed the last morsels of the food - the
bread -
into her mouth, and slid forward to rejoin Mixxax at his reins.

She gazed through the windows. Bewildering Crust detail billowed over her head. Even the vortex lines seemed to be racing past her, and she had a sudden, jarring sensation of immense speed; she was plummeting helplessly towards the mysteries of the Pole, and the future.

Toba studied her, cautious but with traces of concern. ‘Are you all right?’

She tried to keep her voice steady. ‘I think so. I’m just a little taken aback by the speed of this thing, I suppose.’

He frowned and squinted out through his window. ‘We’re not going so fast. Maybe a metre an hour. After all, it’s not as if we’ve got to work across the Magfield; we’re simply following the flux lines home . . . To my home, anyway. And, this far downflux, the pigs are getting back the full strength they’ll have at the Pole. There they could reach maybe twice this speed, with a clear run.’ He laughed. ‘Not that there’s any such thing as a clear run in Parz these days, despite the ordinances about cars inside the City. And the top teams . . .’

‘I’ve never been in a car before,’ she hissed, her teeth clenched.

He opened his mouth, and nodded. ‘No. True. I’m sorry; I’m not very thoughtful. ’ He mused, ‘I guess I’d find it a little disconcerting if I’d never ridden before - if I hadn’t been riding since I was a child. No wonder you’re feeling ill. I’m sorry; maybe I should have warned you. I . . .’

‘Please stop apologizing.’

‘Anyway, we’ve made good time. Considering it’s such a hell of a long way from the Pole to my ceiling-farm.’ His round face creased with anger. ‘Humans can’t survive much more than forty, fifty metres from the Pole. And my ceiling-farm is right on the fringe of that, right on the edge of the hinterland of Parz. So far upflux the Air tastes like glue and the coolies are weaker than Air-piglets . . . How am I supposed to make a living in conditions like that?’ He looked at her, as if expecting an answer.

‘What’s a metre?’

‘. . . A hundred thousand mansheights. A million microns.’ He looked deflated, his anger fading. ‘I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry; I . . .’

‘How deep is the Mantle?’ she asked impulsively. ‘From to Crust to Quantum Sea, I mean.’

He smiled, his anger evaporating visibly. ‘In metres, or mansheights?’

‘Metres will do.’

‘About six hundred.’

She nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been taught, too.’

He studied her curiously. ‘You people know about things like that?’

‘Yes, we know about things like that,’ she said heavily. ‘We’re not animals; we educate our children . . . even though it takes most of our energy just to keep alive, without clothes and cars and Air-boxes and teams of captive Air-pigs.’

He winced. ‘I won’t apologize again,’ he said ruefully. ‘Look . . . here’s what I know.’ Still holding his reins loosely, he cupped his long-fingered, delicate-looking hands into a ball. ‘The Star is a sphere, about twenty thousand metres across.’

She nodded.
Two thousand million mansheights.

‘It’s surrounded by the Crust,’ he went on. ‘There’s three hundred metres of that. And the Quantum Sea is another ball, about eighteen thousand metres across, floating inside the crust.’

She frowned. ‘Floating?’

He hesitated. ‘Well, I think so. How should I know? And between the Crust and the Quantum Sea is the Mantle - the Air we breathe - about six hundred metres deep.’ He looked into her face, a disconcerting mixture of suspicion and pity evident there. ‘That’s the shape of the Star. The world. Any kid in Parz City could have told you all that.’

She shrugged. ‘Or any Human Being. Maybe there was no difference once.’

She wished Adda were awake, so she could learn more of the secret history of her people. She turned her face to the window.

In the last hours of the journey the inverted Crust landscape changed again.

Dura, with Farr now awake and at her side, stared up, fascinated, watching the slow evolution of the racing Crustscape. There was very little left of the native forest here, although a few trees still straggled from small copses. The clean, orderly regularity of the fields they’d passed under to the North - further
upflux
, as she was learning to call it - was breaking up into a jumble of forms and textures.

Farr pointed excitedly, his eyes round. Dura followed his gaze.

They weren’t alone in the sky, she realized: in the far, misted distance something moved - not a car; it was long, dark, like a blackened vortex line. And like Mixxax’s car it was heading for the Pole, threading along the Magfield.

She said, ‘That must be thousands of mansheights long.’

Toba glanced dismissively. ‘Lumber convoy,’ he said. ‘Coming in from upflux. Nothing special. Damn slow, actually, if you get stuck behind one.’

Soon there were many more cars in the Air. Mixxax, grumbling, often had to slow as they joined streams of traffic sliding smoothly along the Magfield flux lines. The cars came in all shapes and sizes, from small one-person buggies to grand chariots drawn by teams of a dozen or more pigs. These huge cars, covered in ornate carvings, quite dwarfed poor Mixxax’s; Toba’s car, thought Dura, which had seemed so grand and terrifying out in the forest upflux, now appeared small, shabby and insignificant.

Much, she was coming to realize, like its owner.

The colours of the Crust fields were changing: deepening and becoming more vivid. Farr asked Mixxax, ‘Different types of wheat?’

Mixxax showed little interest in these rich regions from which he was excluded. ‘Maybe. Flowers, too.’

‘Flowers?’

‘Plants bred for their beauty - their shape, or colour; or the scent of the photons they give off.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, Ito grows some blooms which . . .’

‘Who’s Ito?’

‘My wife. Nothing as grand as this, of course; after all, we’re flying over the estates of Hork’s court now.’

Farr had his face pressed to a window of the car. ‘You mean people grow plants just for the way they look?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how do they live? Don’t they have to hunt for food, as we do?’

Dura shook her head. ‘Folk here don’t hunt, Farr. I’ve learned that much. They grow special kinds of grasses, and eat them.’

Mixxax laughed bitterly. ‘“Folk here”, as you call them, don’t even do that.
I
do that, in my scrubby farm on the edge of the upflux desert. I grow food to feed the rich folk in Parz . . . and I pay them taxes so they can afford to buy it. And that,’ he finished bitterly, ‘is how Hork’s courtiers have enough leisure time to grow flowers.’

The logic of that puzzled Dura, but - understanding little - she let it pass.

Now, suddenly, the queue of cars in front of them cleared aside, and the view ahead was revealed.

Dura heard herself gasp.

Farr cried out, sounding like a small child. ‘What is it?’

Mixxax turned and grinned at him, evidently enjoying his moment of advantage. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is Parz City. We have arrived.’

M
uub arrived at the Reception Gallery shortly before the start of the Grand Tribute. He moved to the front of the Gallery, so that he could see down the full depth of Pall Mall, and selected a body-cocoon close to Vice-Chair Hork’s customary place. A servant drifted around him for a few moments, adjusting the cocoon so it fit snugly, and offered him drinks and other refreshments. Muub, unable to shake off weariness, found the harmless little man as irritating as an itch, and he chased him away.

Muub looked down. Pall Mall was the City’s main avenue. Broad and light-filled, it was a rectangular corridor cut vertically through the complex heart of Parz - from the elaborate superstructure of the Palace buildings at the topmost Upside, down through hundreds of dwelling levels, all the way to the Market, the vast, open forum at the centre of the City. The Reception Gallery was poised at the head of Pall Mall, just below the Palace buildings themselves; Muub, trying to relax in his cocoon, was bathed in the subtly shaded light filtering down through the Palace’s lush gardens, and was able to survey, it seemed, the whole of the City as if it were laid open before him. Pall Mall itself glowed with light from the Air-shafts and wood-lamps which lined its perforated walls; threads of the shafts, glowing green and yellow, converged towards the Market itself, the City’s dusty heart. The great avenue - normally thronged with traffic - was deserted today, but Muub could make out spectators peering from doors and viewing-balconies: ordinary little faces turned up towards him like so many flowers. And in the Market itself - all of five thousand mansheights below the Palace - the Tribute procession was almost assembled, as thousands of common citizens gathered to present the finest fruit of this quarter’s labour to the Committee. No cocoons down there, of course; instead the Market was criss-crossed by ropes and bars to which people clung with their hands or legs, or hauled themselves along in search of vantage points. To Muub, staring down at the swarming activity, it was like gazing into a huge net full of young piglets.

The Gallery itself was laced with ropes of brushed leather - to guide those Committee members and courtiers, Muub thought sourly, too poor to be simply carried to their cocoons. The Gallery’s cool, piped Air was scented with fine Crust-flowers. Vice-Chair Hork was already in his place close to Muub, alongside the vacant cocoon reserved for his father, Hork IV. Hork glared ahead, sullen and silent in his bulk and glowering through his beard. Perhaps half the courtiers were in their places; but they had congregated towards the rear of the Gallery, evidently sensing, in their dim, self-seeking way, that today was not a good day to attract the attention of the mercurial Vice-Chair.

So already the elaborate social jostling had begun. It would be a long day.

In fact - thanks to the recent Glitch - it had already been a long day for Muub. The latest in a series of long days. He was principal Physician to the First Family, but he also had a hospital to run - indeed, the retention of his responsibilities at the Hospital of the Common Good had been a condition of his acceptance of his appointment to Hork’s court - and the burden placed on his staff by the Glitch had still to unravel. He studied the vapid, pretty, ageing faces of the courtiers as they preened in their finery, and wondered how many more ravaged bodies he would have to tend before sleep claimed him.

Vice-Chair Hork seemed to notice him at last. Hork nodded to him. Hork was a bulky man whose size gave him an appearance of slowness of wit - a deceptive appearance, as more than one courtier had found to his cost. Under his extravagant beard - extravagantly manufactured, actually, Muub reflected wryly - Hork’s face had something of the angular nobility of his father’s, with those piercing, deep black eyecups and angular nose; but the features tended to be lost in the sheer bulk of the younger Hork’s fleshy face, so that whereas the Chair of the Central Committee had an appearance of gentle, rather bruised nobility, his son and heir appeared hard, tough and coarse, the refined elements of his looks serving only to accentuate his inherent violence. Today, though, Hork seemed calm. ‘So, Muub,’ he called. ‘You’ve decided to join me. I was fearful of being shunned.’