Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (97 page)

‘If he’s smart enough, and good enough, it won’t end. He can parlay his gifts into a niche in the Upside, before he gets too old to shine on the Surfboard. And even if not - hell, it’s a holiday for him, upfluxer. A holiday from the drudgery that will make up most of his life.’

There was a shout from above them. Cris had ridden his board high up the City’s face, and was now sweeping through the sparkling Air close to the Longitude band. Electron gas swirled around his board and body, crackling and sparking blue. Other young people - evidently friends of Cris - had joined them, appearing from cracks in the Skin as if from nowhere - or so it seemed to Adda - and they raced around the Longitude band like young rays.

‘They shouldn’t do that,’ Bzya murmured. ‘Against the law, strictly speaking. If Cris goes too close to the Longitude the flux gradients could tear him apart.’

‘Then why’s he doing it?’

‘To learn to master the flux,’ the Fisherman said. ‘To learn how to conquer the fiercer gradients he’ll find when he’s in the Games, and he Surfs across the face of the Pole.’

Adda sniffed. ‘So now I know how you choose your rulers - on whether they can balance on a bit of wood. No wonder this City’s such a damn mess.’

Bzya’s laughter echoed from the blank, crudely finished wall of the City. ‘You don’t like us much, do you, Adda?’

‘Not much.’ He looked at Bzya, hesitating. ‘And I don’t understand how you’ve kept your sense of humour, my friend.’

‘By accepting life as it is. I can question, but I can’t change. Anyway, Parz isn’t some kind of huge prison, as you seem to imagine. It’s home for a lot of people - it’s like a machine, designed to improve the lives of young people like Cris.’

‘Then the machine’s not bloody working.’

Bzya said calmly, ‘Would you exchange Farr’s life and experiences, to date, for Cris’s?’

‘But Cris’s thinking is so narrow. The Games, his parents ... as if this City was all the world, safe and eternal. Instead of ...’ He searched for the words. ‘Instead of a box, lashed up from old lumber, floating around in immensity ...’

Bzya touched his shoulder. ‘But that’s why you and I are here, old man. To keep the world away from boys like Farr and Cris - to give them a place that seems as stable and eternal as your parents did when you were a child - until they are old enough to cope with the truth.’ He turned his scarred face to the North, staring into the diverging vortex lines with a trace of anxiety. ‘I wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to achieve that.’

Again and again, Cris Mixxax looped around the huge Corestuff band.

It was the day of the launch. The down-gaping mouth of the Harbour, here in the deepest Downside of the City, framed clear, yellow Air. A few people Waved beneath the entrance and peered up into the dark. Engineers talked desultorily as they waited for Hork to arrive, and to begin the launch proper. There was a smell of old, splintering wood.

Dura clung to a rail close to the lip of the access port, keeping to herself. She had already said her goodbyes. Toba had cooked them a fine meal in his little Midside home, but it had been a difficult occasion; Dura had had to work hard to break through Farr’s resentful reserve. She’d asked Adda, quietly, to keep Farr away from the launch site today. She’d have enough to think about without the emotional freight of another round of farewells.

Even, she thought, wrapping her arms around her torso, if they turned out to be final farewells.

She looked down at the craft, studying lines which had become familiar to her in weeks of designing, building and testing. Hork V had decided to call his extraordinary craft the ‘Flying Pig’. It was a clumsy, ugly name, Dura thought; but it caught the essence, maybe, of a clumsy, ugly vessel. The ship as finally constructed - after two failed prototypes - was a squat cylinder two mansheights across and perhaps three tall. The hull, of polished wood, was punctured by large, staring windows of clearwood. There were also clearwood panels set into the upper and lower cross-sections of the cylinder. The whole craft was bound about by five hoops of sturdy Core-matter. The Air-pigs whose farts would power the vessel could be seen through the windows, lumps of straining, harnessed energy. The ship was suspended by thick cables from huge, splintered pulleys which - on normal days - bore Bells down towards the Quantum Sea.

This, then, was the craft which would carry two people into the lethal depths of the underMantle. In the dingy, dense Air of the City’s Harbour the thing looked sturdy enough, Dura supposed, but she doubted she’d feel so secure once they were underway.

There was a disturbance above her, a sound of hatches banging. Hork V, Chair of Parz City, resplendent in a glittering coverall, descended from the gloom above. He seemed to glow; his bearded face was split by a huge smile. Dura saw that Physician Muub and the engineer Seciv Trop followed him. ‘Good day, good day,’ Hork called to Dura, and he clapped her meatily on the shoulder-blade. ‘Ready for the off?’

Dura, her head, full of her regrets and fears, turned away without speaking.

Seciv Trop wafted down, coming to rest close to her. He touched her arm, gently; the many pockets of his coverall were crammed, as usual, with unidentifiable - and probably irrelevant - items. ‘Travel safely,’ he said.

She turned, at first irritated; but there was genuine sympathy in his finely drawn face. ‘Thanks,’ she said slowly.

He nodded. ‘I understand how you’re feeling. Does that surprise you? - crusty old Seciv, good for nothing without his styli and tables. But I’m human, just the same. You’re afraid of the journey ahead ...’

‘Terrified would be a better word.’

He grimaced. ‘Then at least you’re sane. You’re already missing your family and friends. And you probably don’t expect to make it back, ever.’

She felt a small surge of gratitude to Seciv; this was the first time anyone had actually voiced her most obvious fear. ‘No, frankly.’

‘But you’re going anyway.’ He smiled. ‘You put the safety of the world ahead of your own.’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I put my brother’s safety ahead of my own.’

‘That’s more than sufficient.’

As she had suspected, the City men had insisted on one of the Human Beings taking this trip. Adda was ruled out because of age and injury. Farr’s omission - which came to his frustration - hadn’t been a foregone conclusion; his youth, in the eyes of those making the decisions, had barely outweighed his experience as a novice Fisherman. Dura had been forced to argue hard.

The second crewman had been a surprise: it was to be Hork, Chair of Parz, himself. Now Hork was moving around the bay, glad-handing the engineers. Dura watched his progress sourly. He must be subject to the same fears as herself; and - in recent months anyway - to enormous personal pressure - and yet he looked relaxed, at ease, utterly in command; he had a natural authority which made her feel small, weak.

‘He wears his fear well,’ she said sourly.

Seciv pulled at the corner of his mouth. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps his fear of not taking the voyage, of remaining here, is the greater. He is gambling a great deal on this voyage, you know.’

This stunt ... Yes, Dura did know; she’d become immersed enough in the politics of Parz to be able - with the help of Ito and Toba - to understand something of Hork’s situation. However unreasonable it might be, the citizens of Parz expected Hork to resolve their troubles - to lift food rationing, to restore the lumber convoys and get the place working again. To open the
shops
, damn it. That he’d manifestly failed to do so (but how could he have succeeded?) had put his position in doubt; there were factions in his Court and on the larger Committee who were gunning for him, with varying degrees of openness.

This ludicrous jaunt into the underMantle was Hork’s last gamble. All or nothing. If it succeeded then he, Hork, would return as the saviour of the City and all the peoples of the Mantle. But if it failed - well, Dura thought uneasily, perhaps it would be better for Hork to die in a glorious instant, in the deep underMantle, than at the hands of an assassin here in the bright corridors of Parz.

The crew members had to climb into the ship through a hinged hatch set in the upper end of the cylinder. Hosch, the former Harbour supervisor, had been checking the craft’s simple systems; now Dura watched his thin, hunched shoulders emerge from the craft through the crew hatch. As Muub had expected, Hosch had turned out to be a good manager of the construction project, despite his sour personality; he’d been able effectively to draw out the mercurial expertise of the likes of Seciv Trop and to marry it to the practical skills of his Harbour engineers.

Hosch glanced up, saw that both Dura and Hork were ready. ‘It’s time,’ he said.

Dura felt something within her recede. As if in a dream she watched her own hands and legs working as she clambered down towards the ship.

She climbed stiffly through the hatch and into the interior, squeezing past the row of bound, straining Air-pigs and the sleek turbine beside them. She experienced a mixture of gratified relief at being underway, and a tang of sheer, awful terror.

With bellowed goodbyes to the engineers, to Muub, Seciv and the rest, Hork shook Hosch’s thin hand and clambered into the cabin, squeezing his sparkling bulk through the hatch. He seemed careless of the pollution of his gleaming suit by the dirt of the pigs. He dragged the hatch closed after him and dogged its wooden latches tight.

For a moment Hork and Dura hovered close to the hatch, alone in there for the first time. Their eyes met.
Now
, Dura thought,
now the two of them were bound to each other, for good or ill
. She could see a slow, appraising awareness of that in Hork’s expression. But there was little fear there; she read humour, enthusiasm.

By the blood of the Xeelee
, she thought.
He’s actually enjoying this.

Without speaking they descended into the craft.

The pigs were strapped in place close to the top of the cylinder. Dura climbed into her loose harness close to the pigs. The walls of the cabin were fat with Air-tanks, food stores, equipment lockers and a primitive latrine. Cooling fans hummed and wood-lamps, their green glow dim, studded the walls.

Towards the base of the ship Hork took his place at the craft’s simple control panel, a board placed before one of the broader windows and equipped with three levers and a series of switches. He rolled his sleeves back from his arms with every evidence of relish.

There was a pounding on the hull.

Hork thumped back enthusiastically, grinning through his beard. ‘So,’ he said breathlessly, ‘so it begins!’

The craft jolted into motion. Dura heard a muffled cheer from the engineers in the Harbour, the creaking of the pulleys as they began to pay out cable.

After a few seconds the craft emerged from the Harbour. The golden brilliance of Polar Air-light swept the interior of the ship, filling Dura with a nostalgic, claustrophobic ache. The silhouetted forms of Waving people - some of them children - accompanied the craft as it began its descent from the City.

Hork was laughing. Dura looked down at him, disbelieving.

‘Oh, come on,’ Hork said briskly. ‘We’re off! Isn’t this a magnificent adventure? And what a relief it is to be
doing
something, to be going somewhere. Eh, Dura?’

Dura sniffed, letting her face settle into sourness. ‘Well, Hork, here I am going to hell in the belly of a wooden pig. It’s a bit hard to find much to smile about. With respect. And we do have work to do.’

Hork’s expression was hard, and she felt briefly uneasy - she’d been around him long enough now to witness several of his towering rages. But he merely laughed aloud once more. His noisy, exuberant presence was overwhelming in the cramped cabin; Dura felt herself shrink from it, as if escaping into herself. Hork said, ‘Quite right, captain! And isn’t it time you started working the pigs?’

He was right; Dura swivelled in her sling to begin the work. The craft wouldn’t be cut loose of the Harbour cable for some time, but they needed to be sure the internal turbine and the magnetic fields were fully functioning. The animals’ harness, slung across the width of the cabin, kept the pigs’ rears aimed squarely at the wide blades of a turbine. A trough carved from unfinished wood had been fixed a micron or so before the pigs’ sketchy, six-eyed faces, and now Dura took a sack of leaves from a locker and filled the trough with luscious vegetable material, crushing the stuff as she worked. Soon the delicious tang of the leaves filled the cabin. Dura was aware of Hork bending over his console, evidently shutting out the scents; as for herself - well, she could all but taste the protons dripping out onto her tongue.

The pigs could barely stand it. Their hexagonal arrays of eyecups bulged and their mouths gaped wide. With grunts of protest they hurled themselves against the unyielding harness towards the leaves, their jetfarts exploding in the cramped atmosphere of the cabin.

Under the steady pressure of the jetfart stream, the broad blades of the turbine began to turn. Soon the sweet, musky smell of pig-fart permeated the Air of the cabin, reminding Dura, if she closed her eyes, of the scents of her childhood, of the Net with its enclosed herd. She scattered a few fragments of food into the grasp of the pigs’ gaping maws. Just enough to keep them fed, but little enough to keep them interested in more.

The anatomy of a healthy Air-pig was efficient enough to enable it to generate farts for many days on very little food. Pigs could travel metres allowing as much of their bulky substance to dissolve into fart energy as was required; these five, though terrified and frustrated by the conditions into which they had been penned, should have little problem powering the turbine for as long as the humans needed. And there was a back-up system - a stove powered by nuclear-burning wood - if they were desperate enough to need to risk its heat in the confines of the cabin.