Flux - Xeelee Sequence Part 26

Bzya grinned. "Well, I'd exchange places with Hork any day, if I thought I could do his job. Of course I would. And there are plenty of people closer to me, in the Harbor, who I'd happily throttle, if I thought it would make the world a better place. If I didn't think they'd just bring in somebody worse. I accept I'm at the bottom of the heap, here, Adda. Or close to it. But I believe it's the way of things. I will fight injustice and inequity - but I accept the need for the existence of the heap itself." He looked carefully at Adda. "Does that make sense?"

Adda thought it over. "No," he said at last. "But it doesn't seem to matter much."

Bzya laughed. "Now you see why they give us this stuff for free. Here." He held out the third bowl. "Your good health, my friend."

Adda reached for the cake.

A couple of days later Bzya's shifts should have allowed him another break. Adda searched for Farr, but couldn't find him, so he went down to the bar alone. He entered, awkward and self-conscious in his dressings, peering into the gloomier corners.

He couldn't find Bzya, and he didn't stay.

21.

IN THE INTERIOR OF THE STAR there were no sharp boundaries, merely gradual changes in the dominant form of matter as pressures and densities increased. So there was no dramatic plunge, no great impacts as the "Flying Pig" hauled itself deeper: just a slow, depressing diminution of the last vestiges of Air-light. And the glow cast by the wood-lamps fixed to the walls was no subst.i.tute; with its smoky greenness and long, flickering shadows, the gloom in the cabin was quite sinister.

To Dura, hunched over herself in her corner of the ship, this long, slow descent into darkness was like a lingering death.

Soon, though, the ride became much less even. The ship swayed alarmingly and at one point was nearly upended. The laboring pigs, their shadows huge on the ship's roof, bleated pathetically; Hork laughed, his eyecups pools of green darkness.

Dura's fingers scrabbled over the smooth wooden walls in search of purchase. "What's happening? Why are we being pummeled like this?"

"Every Bell hits underMantle currents. The only difference is, we've no Spine to steady us." Hork spoke to her slowly, as if she were stupid. Since their single physical encounter, his aloof hostility had been marked. "The substance of the Mantle at these depths is different from our Air... or so my tutors used to tell me. It's still a superfluid of neutrons, apparently, but of a different mode from the Air: it's anisotropic anisotropic - it has different properties in different directions." - it has different properties in different directions."

Dura frowned. "So in some directions it's like the Air, and it doesn't impede our progress. But in others..."

"...it feels thick and viscous, and it batters against our magnetic shield. Yes."

"But how can you tell which directions it's Air-like?"

"You can't." Hork grinned. "That's the fun of it."

"But that's dangerous," she said, uneasily aware of how childlike she sounded.

"Of course it is. That's why the Harbor suffers so many losses."

...And this is where I sent my brother, she thought with a shiver. She felt strangely, retrospectively fearful. Here, drifting through this anisotropic nightmare, it was as if she were fearing for her brother for the first time. she thought with a shiver. She felt strangely, retrospectively fearful. Here, drifting through this anisotropic nightmare, it was as if she were fearing for her brother for the first time.

Still, after a while Dura found she could ignore - almost - the constant, uneven buffeting. Immersed in the hot, fetid atmosphere of the ship, with the warm stink of the pig-farts and the patient, silent work of Hork at his control box, she was even able to doze.

Something slammed into the side of the ship.

Dura screamed and jolted fully awake. She felt herself quiver from the blow, as if someone had punched her own skull; she looked around, wild-eyed, for the source of the disaster. The pigs were squealing furiously. Hork, still at his controls, was laughing at her.

"d.a.m.n you. What was that?"

He spread his hands. "Just a little welcoming card from the Quantum Sea." He pointed. "Look out of the window."

She turned to stare through the clearwood. The Mantle here was utterly dark, but the lamps of the ship cast a green glow for a few microns through the murky, turbulent stuff. And there were forms drifting through that dim ocean - blocky, irregular shapes, many of them islands large enough to swallow up this tiny craft. The blocks slid silently upward past the ship and toward the distant Mantle - or rather, Dura realized, the "Pig" herself was hurtling down past them on her way toward the Core.

"Corestuff bergs... Islands of hyperonic matter," Hork said. "No Fisherman would tackle bergs of such a size... but then, no Fisherman has ever been so deep."

Dura stared gloomily out at the vast, slow-moving bulks of hyperonic matter. If they were unlucky enough, she realized - if they were caught by a combination of a large enough ma.s.s and an adverse current - their little ship would be crushed like a child's skull, magnetic protection or no. "How deep are we?"

Hork peered at the crude meters on his control panel; his beard scratched softly at the meters' clearwood covers. "Hard to say," he said dismissively. "Our tame experts were very clever at finding ways for us to travel so far, but not so clever at letting us know where we are. But I'd guess..." He scowled. "Perhaps five meters below the City."

Dura gasped. Five meters... Five meters... Five hundred thousand mansheights. Why, surely even an Ur-human would be awed by such a journey. Five hundred thousand mansheights. Why, surely even an Ur-human would be awed by such a journey.

"Of course, we've no real control over our position. All we've the capability to do is to descend and, if we live through that, to come up again. But we could emerge anywhere; we've no idea where these currents are taking us."

"We've discussed this problem. Wherever we emerge we need only follow the Magfield to the South Pole."

Hork smiled at her. "But that could be tens of meters from the City... It could take months to return. And then we will rely on your upfluxer survival skills to enable us to endure, in the remote wilds of the Star. I will place myself in your hands, and I antic.i.p.ate that the journey home will be... interesting."

The impacts from the hyperonic bergs were coming thick and fast now. Hork pulled at the wooden levers on his control panel and slowed their progress down to a crawl; Dura watched through the windows as the thickening ma.s.ses of Corestuff cl.u.s.tered around the "Pig," held back from crushing her only by the invisible walls of the magnetic shield.

At last Hork flicked over his controls and pushed himself away from the panel. "You may as well let the animals rest," he said to Dura. "That's as far as we're going."

Dura frowned and peered out of the windows. "We can't penetrate any deeper?"

Hork shrugged, and yawned elaborately. "Not unless a channel through the bergs opens up. The bergs are like a solid ma.s.s from here on in - you can see for yourself. No, this is the end of the journey." He drifted up through the cabin, took some fragments of untouched leaf matter from the pigs' trough and chewed it without enthusiasm. He handed more handfuls of food to Dura. "Here," he said.

Dura took the food and bit into it thoughtfully. The whine of the turbine was stilled now, and she was suspended in a silence broken only by the hoa.r.s.e wheezing of the pigs and by the soft thumping of hyperonic fragments against the magnetic shield. The pigs, still bound into their harnesses, were trembling with the panic of their blocked flight; their six-fold eyes rolled. As she ate, Dura ran her hands over the dilated pores of their flanks; the simple action of soothing the frightened animals - of tending creatures even more scared than herself - seemed to calm her.

Hork folded his arms, his ma.s.sive shoulder muscles bunching under his glittering costume. "Well, this is the strangest picnic I've ever had."

"What do we do now?"

"Who knows?" He grinned at her, a fragment of his professional charm showing. "Maybe that's all we've come so far to find." He pointed out of the window. "Corestuff. Hard, dangerous and dead. Anyway, it's not over yet. We've only just arrived, after all. We can stay here for days, if we have to."

Dura laughed. "Maybe you should go out and make a speech. Wake the Colonists out of their thousand-year slumber."

Hork studied her impa.s.sively, his heavy jaw working; then he turned away from her, rebuffing her completely.

She felt alone and a little foolish. In the renewed silence of the cabin, her fear crowded in once more. She stroked the quivering pigs and sucked on leaf-matter.

She wondered how long they would have to wait here, before Hork would give up - or, terrifyingly, before something happened. something happened.

In the end, they didn't have to wait very long at all.

Hork screamed, his voice thin and high with terror.

Somehow Dura had fallen asleep again. She jolted awake, the muggy Air thick in her lungs and eyes. She looked around quickly.

The green glow of the lamps filled the cabin with eerie, sharp shadows. The pigs were squealing, terrified, arching in their restraints. Hork, all his arrogance and c.o.c.kiness gone, had backed against a wall, his coverall rumpled and stained, his hands fruitlessly seeking a weapon. It was as if the inhabitants of the "Flying Pig," human and animal alike, had radiated away from the heart of the cylindrical craft, like fragments of a slow explosion. Dura blinked, trying to clear her vision. No, not an explosion, she saw; hovering at the geometric center of the cylinder - the focus of all this terror - was another person. another person. A third human, here where it was impossible for any human to be... A third human, here where it was impossible for any human to be...

Or rather, she realized as she stared more closely, it was - something - with the form of a human. She saw a bulky woman, evidently older than herself, dressed in what might have been a Fisherman's tunic. But the material glowed, softly crimson, and it looked seamless. Hair, deep black, was tied tightly around her scalp. A purple glow shone out of eyecups, nostrils and mouth.

...But there was something in those eyecups, she saw. There was flesh flesh in there, spheres which moved independently of the face, like animals trapped inside the skull. in there, spheres which moved independently of the face, like animals trapped inside the skull.

She felt the leaves rise in her throat; she wanted to scream, scrabble at the walls of the craft to escape this. She held herself as still as she could, forcing herself to study the vision.

"It's like a woman," she whispered to Hork. "A human. But that's impossible. How could a human survive down here? There's no Air to breathe, or..."

Hork sounded impatient, though his breath still rattled with fear. "This isn't a human, obviously. It's... something else, using the form of a human. A human-shaped sac of fire."

"What else? What is it?" else? What is it?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"Do you think it's Xeelee?"

"No human has ever seen a Xeelee. Anyway, the Xeelee are just legend."

Astonishingly, she found anger building inside her. At a time like this, she felt patronized. patronized. She glared at him and hissed, "Legends are why you brought me here, remember?" She glared at him and hissed, "Legends are why you brought me here, remember?"

The Chair of Parz City shot an exasperated glance at her; then he turned to face the woman-thing, and when he spoke Dura found herself admiring the steadiness of his tone. "You," he challenged. "Intruder. What do you want with us?"

The silence, broken by the wheezing of the pigs, seemed to stretch; Dura, staring at the ugly flaps of flesh which covered the woman-thing's ear-cavities, wondered if it could hear Hork, still less answer him.

Then the woman-thing opened its mouth. Light poured out of its straining lips, and a sound emerged - deeper than any voice originating in a human chest - and, at first, formless.

But, Dura realized, wondering, words were beginning to emerge.

I... We've been expecting you. You took your own sweet time. And we had a devil of a job to find you. It looked around at the "Pig," its neck swiveling like a ball joint, unnaturally. It looked around at the "Pig," its neck swiveling like a ball joint, unnaturally. Is this the best you could do? We need you to come a lot deeper than this; transmission conditions are awful... Is this the best you could do? We need you to come a lot deeper than this; transmission conditions are awful...

Hork exchanged an astounded glance with Dura.

"Can you understand me?" he asked the thing. "Are you a Colonist?"

"Of course it can understand you, Hork," Dura hissed, exasperated in her turn. She felt fascinated beyond her horror of this bag of skin. "How is it you can speak our language?"

The thing's mouth worked, obscenely reminiscent of an Air-pig's, and the flesh-b.a.l.l.s in the eyecups rolled; as she watched, it seemed to Dura that the woman-thing appeared less and less human. It was merely a puppet of some unfathomable hyperonic creature beyond the hull, she realized; she found herself glancing through the window, wondering what immense, dark eyecups might be fixed on her even now.

The woman-thing smiled. smiled. It was a ghastly parody. It was a ghastly parody.

Of course I can understand you. I'm a Colonist, as you call us... but I'm also your grandmother. Once or twice removed, anyway...

A week before Games Day, Muub, the Physician, sent Adda an invitation to join him to view the Games from the Committee Box, high over the Stadium. Adda felt patronized: he had no doubt that in Muub's eyes he remained an unreconstructed savage from the upflux, and to Muub, Adda's reactions to the City's great events would be amus.e.m.e.nts - entertainments in themselves.

But he didn't refuse immediately. Perhaps Farr would enjoy seeing the Games from such a privileged vantage point. Farr's mood remained complex, difficult for Adda to break into. In fact he saw little of Farr these days; the boy seemed determined to spend as much time as possible with the rebellious, remote community of Surfers who lived half their lives clinging to the City's Skin.

In the end, Farr wouldn't come to the Games.

The City wasn't what it was. Even in Adda's short time of acquaintance with it, Parz, battered by the consequences of the Glitches, had lost some of its heart. In the great avenues half the shops and cafes were closed up now, and the ostentatiously rich with their trains of perfumed Air-piglets were conspicuous by their absence. There was a sense - not exactly of crisis - but of austerity. Times were difficult; there was much to be done and endured before things improved and the City could enjoy itself again.

But the Games were going to be different, it seemed. As the Day approached he sensed a quickening of the City's pulse. There seemed to be more people on the streets, arguing and gambling over the outcome of the various strangely named events. The Luge. The Slalom. The Pole-Divers... The Games would be like a holiday for the City, a relief from drudgery.

Adda was curious. curious.

So, in the end, he decided to accept Muub's invitation.

The Stadium was a huge, clearwood-walled box fixed to one of the City's upper edges. The Committee Box was a balcony which hung over the Stadium itself from the City's upper surface, and to reach it Adda had to travel to the uppermost Upside, to the Garden surrounding the Palace itself. Feeling more out of place than ever in the opulent surroundings, he Waved past the miniature, sculpted Crust-trees, brandishing his begrimed bandaging like a weapon. He was subjected to scrutiny by three layers of contemptuous Guards before he reached the Box itself; he enjoyed insulting them as they searched his person.

At last he was ushered into the Box, a square platform twenty mansheights on a side domed over by clearwood. Neat rows of coc.o.o.ns filled the platform, bound loosely to the structure by soft threads. About half the coc.o.o.ns were already full, Adda saw; courtiers and other grandees nestled in the soft leather of the coc.o.o.ns like huge, glittering insect larvae. Their talk was bright and loud, their laughter braying; there was a heavy, cloying scent of perfume.

Adda was escorted to the front row of the Box by a small, humble-looking woman in a drab tunic. Muub was already there. He rested in his coc.o.o.n with his long, thin arms folded calmly against his chest, and his bare scalp shone softly as he surveyed the Stadium below. He turned to greet Adda with a nod. With ill grace Adda let the woman servant help him into a spare coc.o.o.n; his legs remained stiff and his right shoulder barely mobile, so that, embarra.s.singly, he had to be levered into the coc.o.o.n as if he were a statue of wood. Another woman, smiling, approached him with a box of sweetmeats; Adda chased her away with a snarl.

Muub smiled at him indulgently. "I'm glad you decided to come, Adda. I believe you will find the Day interesting."

Adda nodded, trying to be gracious. After all, he had accepted Muub's invitation. But what was it about this man's manner that irritated him so? He nodded over his shoulder at the sparkling ranks of courtiers. "That lot seems to agree with you."

Muub regarded the courtiers with aloof disdain. "Games Day is a spectacle which does not fail to excite the unsophisticated," he said softly. "No matter how many times it is viewed. And besides, Hork is absent. As you know very well. And there is something of a vacuum of authority, among my more shallow colleagues, until the Chair's return." He listened to the jabber of the courtiers for a moment, his large, fragile head c.o.c.ked to one side. "You can hear it in their tone. They are like children in the absence of a parent." He sighed.

Adda grinned. "Well," he said, "it's nice to know that your superciliousness isn't restricted to upfluxers." He deliberately ignored Muub's reaction; he leaned forward in his coc.o.o.n and stared through the clearwood wall below him.

He was perched at the upper rim of the City. Its wooden Skin swept away below him, huge, uneven, battered; the great Corestuff anchor-bands were arcs of silver-gray cutting across the sky. Far below the City the Pole was a ma.s.s of bruised purple. Vortex lines shimmered across the sky around the City, on their way to their own rotation pole around the curve of the Star...

Adda stared at the vortex lines for a moment. Were they more tightly packed than usual? He tried to detect a drift through the Air, a presage of another Glitch. But he wasn't in the open Air - he wasn't able to smell the changes in the photons, to taste the Air's disturbance - and he couldn't be sure there was any change.

The Stadium was thronged with people who swarmed through the Air, hauling themselves over each other and along the ropes and rails strung across the great volume. Even through layers of clearwood, Adda could hear the excited buzz of the crowd; the sound seemed to come in waves of intensity, sparkling with fragments of individual voices - the cry of a baby, the hawking yells of vendors working the crowd. Sewage outlets sprayed streams of clear waste from the sh.e.l.l of the Stadium into the patient Air.

Away from the bulk of the City, acrobats Waved silkily through the Air in a prelude to the Games proper. They were young, lithe, nude, their skins dyed with strong primary colors; with ripples of their legs and arms they spiraled around the vortex lines and dived at each other, grabbing each others' hands and whirling away on new paths. There must have been a hundred of them, Adda estimated; their dance, chaotic yet obviously carefully ch.o.r.eographed, was like an explosion of young flesh in the Air.

He became aware that Muub was watching him; there was curiosity in the Physician's shallow eyecups. Adda let his jaw hang open, playing the goggling tourist. "My word," he said. "What a lot of people."

Muub threw his head back and laughed. "All right, Adda. Perhaps I deserved that. But you can scarcely blame me for my fascination at your reaction to all this. Such scenes can scarcely have been imaginable to you, in your former life in the upflux."

Adda gazed around, trying to take in the whole scene as a gestalt - the immense, human construct of the City itself, a thousand people gathered below for a single purpose, the scarcely believable opulence of the courtiers in the Box with their fine clothes and sweetmeats and servants, the acrobats flourishing their limbs through the Air in their huge dance. "Yes, it's impressive," he said. He tried to find ways of expressing what he was feeling. "More than impressive. Uplifting, in a way. When humans work together, we can challenge the Star itself. I suppose it's good to know that not everyone has to scratch a living out of the Air, barely subsisting as the Human Beings do. And yet..."

And yet, why should there be wealth wealth and and poverty? poverty? The City was a marvelous construct, but it was dwarfed on the scale of the Star - and it was no bigger than an Ur-human's thumb, probably. But even within its tiny walls there were endless, rigid layers: the courtiers in their Box, walled off from the ma.s.ses below; the Upside and Downside; and the invisible - yet very real - barriers between the two. Why should it be so? It was as if humans built such places as this with the sole purpose of finding ways to dominate each other. The City was a marvelous construct, but it was dwarfed on the scale of the Star - and it was no bigger than an Ur-human's thumb, probably. But even within its tiny walls there were endless, rigid layers: the courtiers in their Box, walled off from the ma.s.ses below; the Upside and Downside; and the invisible - yet very real - barriers between the two. Why should it be so? It was as if humans built such places as this with the sole purpose of finding ways to dominate each other.

Muub listened to Adda's clumsy expression of this. "But it's inevitable," he said, his face neutral. "You have to have organization - hierarchy - if you are to run the complex, interlinking systems which sustain a society like the City with its hinterland. And only within such a society can man afford art, science, wisdom - even leisure of the most brutish sort, like these Games. And with hierarchies comes power." He smiled at Adda, condescending once more. "People aren't very n.o.ble, upfluxer. Look around you. Their darker side will find expression in any situation where they can best each other."

Adda remembered times in the upflux, when he was young, and the world was less treacherous than it had become of late. He recalled hunting-parties of five or six men and women, utterly immersed in the silence of the Air, their senses open, thrilling to the environment around them. Completely aware and alive, as they worked together.

Muub was an observer, he realized. Believing he was above the rest of mankind, but in fact merely detached. Cold. The only way to live was to be yourself, in the world and in the company of others. The City was like a huge machine designed to stop its citizens doing just that - to alienate. No wonder the young people clambered out of the cargo ports and lived on the Skin, riding on the Air by wit and skill. Seeking life. life.

The light had changed. The rich yellow of the Air over the Pole seemed brighter. Puzzled, he turned his head toward the upflux.

There was a buzz of antic.i.p.ation from the Box, answered by a buzz from the Stadium. Muub touched Adda's arm and pointed upward. "Look. The Surfers. Do you see them?"

The Surfers were a hexagonal array, shining motes scattered across the Air. Even Muub, despite his detachment, seemed thrilled as he stared up, evidently wondering how it would be to ride the flux so high, so far from the City.