Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (89 page)

‘Dura? We never thought we’d see you again.’

It was Mur, husband of Dia. And this must be Jai, the boy whom Dura had helped deliver, just after the Glitch which killed her father.

She moved towards Mur and folded him in her arms. The bones in Mur’s back were sharp under her fingers, and his skin was filthy, slick with fragments of Crust-tree leaves. The baby at his leg mewled, and she reached down an absent hand to stroke his head.

‘We thought you must be dead. Lost. It’s been so long.’

‘No.’ Dura forced herself to smile. ‘I’ll tell you all about it. Farr and Adda are both well, though far from here.’ She studied Mur more carefully now, trying to sort out the flood of her initial impressions. The signs of hunger, of poor living, were obvious. She ran her hand over the little boy’s scalp. Through the sparsely haired flesh she could feel the bones of the skull, the plates not yet locked together. The child was pawing at her bag now, his tiny fingers poking at the lumps of food contained there. Mur made to pull the infant away, but Dura pulled out a handful of bread, crumbled it, and presented it to the child. Jai grasped the bread fragments with both hands and shoved them into his mouth; his jaw scraped across his open hands, raking in bread, his eyes unseeing as he fed.

‘What’s that?’

‘Bread. Food . . . I’ll explain it all. Mur, what’s happening here?’

‘We are - fewer.’ His gaze shifted from her face, and he glanced down at his feeding son, as if in search of distraction. ‘The last Glitch . . .’

‘The others?’

The child had finished the bread already. He reached up his hands wordlessly to Dura, imploring more; she could see the fragment he’d devoured as a distinct bulge, high in his empty stomach.

Mur pulled the child away from Dura, soothing him. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you to them.’

The Human Beings had established a crude camp in the fringes of the Crust-forest itself. The Air here was thin, unsatisfying in Dura’s lungs, and the Quantum Sea curved away from her, far below. Ropes had been slung between branches of the trees, and garments, half-finished tools and scraps of food were suspended from the ropes. Dura touched one of the bits of food gingerly. It was Air-pig flesh, so old it was tough and leathery between her fingertips. The tree-branches for some distance around had been stripped of leaves and bark, revealing how the people had been feeding.

There were only twenty Human Beings left - fifteen adults and five children.

They crowded around Dura, reaching to touch and embrace her, some of them weeping. The familiar faces surrounded her, peering through masks of hunger and dirt. Her heart went out to these people -
her
people - and yet she felt detached from them, distant; she let them touch her, and she embraced in return, but a part of her wanted to recoil from their childlike, helpless pressing. She felt stiff, civilized. The very nakedness of these
upfluxers
was startling. She felt massive, sleek and bulky, too, compared to their starved scrawniness.

Her experiences, her exposure to Parz City, had changed her, she realized; perhaps she would never again be content to settle into the small, hard, limited life of a Human Being.

She gave Mur her bag of bread and told him to distribute it as he saw fit. As he moved among the Human Beings she saw how sharp eyes followed each move; the aura of hunger which hovered over the people, focusing on the bag of bread, was like a living thing.

She found Philas, the widow of Esk. Dura and Philas moved away from the heart of the crude encampment, out of earshot of the rest of the Human Beings. Oddly, Philas seemed more beautiful now; it was as if privation was allowing the bony symmetry, the underlying dignity of her features, to emerge. Dura could see no bitterness, no trace of the rivalry which had once silently divided them.

‘You’ve suffered greatly.’

Philas shrugged. ‘We couldn’t rebuild the Net, after you left. We survived; we hunted again in the forest and trapped some pigs. But then the second Glitch came.’

The survivors had abandoned the open Air in favour of the fringe of the forest. It wasn’t particularly logical, but Dura thought she understood; the need for some form of solid base, to have a feeling of protective walls around them, would dominate logic. She thought of the folk of Parz in their compressed wooden boxes, their thin walls affording illusory protection from the wilds of the Mantle not half a centimetre from where they lay. Perhaps people all shared the same basic instincts, no matter what their origins - and perhaps those instincts had travelled with humanity from whatever distant Star had birthed the Ur-humans.

It was impossible to find Air-pigs now, no matter how widely the Human Beings hunted. The latest Glitch, savage as it was, had scattered the herds of Pigs as well as devastating the works of humanity. The people were trying to survive on leaves, and were even experimenting with meals of spin-spider flesh.

Of course, it was impossible to subsist on leaves. Without decent food, the Human Beings would surely die. (
And so will I, now that my bread is gone
, she thought with a surprising stab of selfishness.)

Dura turned in on herself, trying to understand her own motives for returning to her people. After Rauc’s death, and after she’d helped to cope with the worst of the destruction at Qos Frenk’s farm, she learned that most of the coolies were to be released from their indentures. Qos, roots of yellow showing in his pink hair, his small hands wringing each other, had explained that he intended to save what he could of this year’s harvest, and then start the slow, painful work of rebuilding his holding. It would take many years before the farm was functioning again, and in the meantime it would not generate any income for Frenk; so he couldn’t employ them any longer.

The coolies had seemed to understand. Frenk provided rides back to Parz City for those who wanted it; the rest, dully, had dispersed to seek work in the neighbouring ceiling-farms.

Dura slowly realized that she had lost the indenture which should have paid for Adda’s Hospital treatment. Overwhelmed and shocked, she resolved to return to her people, the Human Beings. Later, perhaps, when things had settled down, she would return to Parz and address the problems of Farr, of Adda’s debts.

Now, studying Philas’s dull, silent face, she wondered what she’d been expecting to find, here among the Human Beings. Perhaps a hidden, childlike part of her had hoped to find everything restored to what it had been when she’d been a small girl . . . when Logue was strong, protecting her, and the world was - by comparison - a stable and safe place.

Of course, that was an illusion. There was nowhere for her to hide, no one who could look after her.

She raised her hands to her face. In fact, she thought with a stab of shameful selfishness, by returning here she’d only placed herself in danger of starvation,
and
had taken on responsibility for the Human Beings once more.

She straightened up. Philas was waiting for her, her face grave and beautiful. ‘Philas, we can’t stay here,’ Dura said. ‘We can’t live like this. It’s not viable.’

Philas nodded gravely. ‘But we have no choice.’

Dura sighed. ‘We do. I’ve told you about Parz City . . . Philas, we must go there. It’s an immense distance, and I don’t know how we’ll manage the journey. But there is food there. It’s our only hope.’

‘What will we do, in Parz City? How will we get food?’

Dura felt like laughing.
We’ll beg
, she thought.
We’ll be hungry freaks; if we’re lucky they will feed us rather than Wheel-Break us. And . . .

‘Dura!’

Mur came crashing through the forest towards them; his eyes were wide with shock.

Dura felt her hands slip to the knife tucked into the rope at her waist. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘There’s something outside the trees . . . A box of wood. Drawn by Air-pigs! Just as you’ve described it, Philas . . .’

Dura turned, peering out through the thin foliage. There, easily visible beyond the stripped twigs of the forest fringe, was an Air-car, huge and sleek. It was calling, in a thin, amplified voice.

‘ . . . Dura . . . upfluxer Dura . . . If you can hear me, show yourself. Dura . . .’

‘Tell me about the Xeelee,’ said Hork V.

The Palace anteroom was a hollow sphere about five mansheights across, anchored loosely in the Garden. Fine ropes had been threaded across the interior, and light, comfortable net cocoons were suspended here and there. Smaller nets contained drinks and sweetmeats.

Adda, Muub and Hork occupied three of the cocoons. The three of them faced each other close to the centre of the room. Adda felt as if he were trapped in the web of a Crust-spider.

Adda found Hork’s demanding tone, his stare over that bush of ludicrous face-hair, quite offensive. This was the new Chair of the Parz Committee. So what? Such titles didn’t mean a damn thing to Adda, and the day they did would be a sorry one, he reckoned.

Let them wait. Adda allowed his gaze to slide around the opulence of this chamber.

The painted walls were the ultimate folly, of course. They were designed to give an illusion of the open Air. He studied the drawn-in vortex lines, the purple paint that represented the Quantum Sea. How absurd, thought Adda, for these City people to close themselves away from the world in their boxes of wood and Corestuff, and then go to so much trouble to reproduce what could be found outside.

The centrepiece of the anteroom was a tame vortex ring. And, Adda conceded, it was impressive. It was contained in nested globes of clearwood which revolved continually about three independent axes, maintaining the spin of the Air trapped within. Every child knew that if an unstable vortex line threw off a ring, the torus of vorticity would rapidly lose its energy and decay away; but this trapped ring was fed with energy by the artful spinning of the globes, and so remained stable.

Of course, it wasn’t as impressive as the million-mansheight-long vortex lines which spanned the Mantle and arced over the Garden, and which were available for viewing without charge or effort . . .

‘I’m glad you’re finding the room so interesting.’ Hork’s tone contained patience, but with an undercurrent of threat.

‘I wasn’t aware you were in a hurry. After all, you’ve lasted ten generations without talking to the Human Beings; what’s the rush now?’

‘No games,’ Hork growled. ‘Come on, upfluxer. You know why I’ve asked you here. I need your help.’

Muub interposed smoothly, ‘You must make allowances for this old rascal, sir. He rejoices in being difficult . . . a privilege of age, perhaps.’

Adda turned to glare at Muub, but the doctor would not meet his eye.

‘I ask you again,’ Hork said quietly. ‘Tell me of the Xeelee.’

‘Not until you tell me that my friends will be returned from their exile.’

‘From their
indentures
,’ Muub said impatiently. ‘Damn it, Adda, I’ve already assured you that they’ve been sent for.’

Adda watched Hork, his mouth set firm.

Hork nodded, the motion an impatient spasm which caused ripples to flow over the front of his chest. ‘Their debts are dissolved. Now give me my answer.’

‘I’ll tell you all you need to know in five words.’

Hork tilted his head back, his nostrils glowing.

Adda said slowly, ‘You - can - not - fight - Xeelee.’

Hork growled.

‘That’s your intention, isn’t it?’ Adda asked evenly. ‘You want to find a way to beat off Xeelee as if they were rampaging Air-boars; you want to find a way to stop them smashing up your beautiful Palace . . .’

‘They are killing the people I am responsible for.’

Adda leaned forward in his sling. ‘City man, they don’t even know we’re here. Nothing you could do would even raise you to their attention.’

Muub was shaking his head. ‘How can you respect such - such primal monsters? Explain that, Adda.’

‘The Xeelee have their own goals,’ said Adda. ‘Goals which we do not share, and cannot even comprehend . . .’

The Xeelee - moving behind mists of legend - were immense. They were to the Ur-humans as Ur-humans were to Human Beings, perhaps. They were like gods - and yet lower than gods.

Perhaps gods could have been tolerated, by the Ur-human soul. Not the Xeelee. The Xeelee had been
rivals.

Hork twisted in his sling, angry and impatient. ‘So the Ur-humans, unable to endure the aloof grandeur of these Xeelee, challenged them . . .’

‘Yes. There were great wars.’

Billions had died. The destruction of the Xeelee had become a racial goal for the Ur-humans.

‘ . . . But not for everyone,’ Adda said. ‘As the venom of the assaults grew, so did Ur-human understanding of the Xeelee’s great Projects. For instance the Ring was discovered . . .’

‘The Ring?’ Hork growled.

‘Bolder’s Ring,’ Adda said. ‘A huge construct which one day will form a gateway between universes . . .’

‘What is this old fool babbling about, Physician? What are these universes of which he speaks? Are they in other parts of the Star?’

Muub spread his long, fine hands and smiled. ‘I’m as mystified as you are, sir. Perhaps the universes reside in other Stars. If such exist.’

Adda grunted. ‘If I knew all the answers I’d have spent my life doing a lot more than carve spears and hunt pigs,’ he said sourly. ‘Look, Hork, I will tell you what I know; I’m telling you what my father told me. But if you ask stupid questions you are only going to get stupid answers.’

‘Get on with it,’ Muub murmured.

‘Even if they could have been successful,’ Adda said, ‘wise Ur-men came to see that to destroy the Xeelee might be as unwise as for a child to destroy its father. The Xeelee are working on our behalf, waging immense, invisible battles in order to save us from unknown danger. We cannot understand their ways; we are as dust in the Air to them. But they are our best hope.’