Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (95 page)

He squeezed Dia once, and then they broke and prepared to return to the Crust-forest, to face the others and begin the day’s work.

‘Dia! Mur!’ The voice, drifting down from the Crust-forest, radiated excitement.

Dia and Mur slowed their ascent, confused, and looked up. Philas was dropping towards them, her skinny legs pumping at the Air. When she reached the couple, she grabbed at their arms to stop herself.

Dia held Philas’s shoulders. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Philas, panting, the bones of her face prominent under her tied-back hair, shook her head. ‘Nothing’s wrong. But ... look. Look down there.’ She pointed, down past their feet into the Mantle.

The three of them separated and tipped forward in the Air. Mur peered down, trying to follow the direction of Philas’s gesture. He saw the orderly array of vortex lines, the dull purple bruise of the Quantum Sea beyond the crystalline Air. There seemed nothing unusual, except ...

There. A small, dark knot in the Air, a hint of motion.

He turned to Dia. ‘Your eyes are sharper than mine. What is it?’

‘People,’ she said, squinting down. ‘A group of them. Twenty or thirty, maybe. It looks like an encampment. But there’s something at the centre ...’

‘What?’

Philas thrust her face forward at Dia. ‘Do
you
see it?’

‘I think so,’ Dia said slowly. Her eyes narrowed. ‘But it might not mean anything, Philas ...’

Mur was baffled. ‘What is it? What do you see?’

Uncertainty and fear creased Dia’s small, pretty face. ‘It’s a tetrahedron,’ she said.

The fifteen Human Beings gathered on the lower edge of the forest and debated what to do. Dia, fearful, uncertain, thought they shouldn’t waste time on this chance encounter; she wanted simply, to continue with the slog to the Pole. Mur sympathized. The Human Beings were already divided, listless, growing steadily more apathetic. It was becoming ever harder to maintain the momentum of this trek across the Mantle; and once that momentum was gone, it might be impossible to regain.

They would be stranded, wherever they stopped. And that, of course, would be unbearable for those with children at the Pole.

Philas and others argued strongly for doing something. ‘Think about it,’ she said vehemently, her thin arms raised over her head as she spoke, her fingers spread wide. ‘What if that really is a wormhole Interface, left over from the past? What if it’s still working?’

‘That’s impossible,’ Dia said. ‘The Interfaces were taken down into the Core, by the Colonists after the Core Wars.’

‘The Mantle is a big place,’ someone said. ‘Maybe some of the Interfaces were left functioning. Maybe ...’

‘Yes,’ Philas said eagerly, ‘just think of that. We know that in the days before the Wars Human Beings could cross the Mantle in huge bounds, using the wormholes. If that is a working Interface down there we might complete this impossible journey in a heartbeat!’

Mur looked around at faces rendered sharp by hunger and exhaustion. Philas was weaving a dream of abandoning this ghastly journey, to reach their goal in moments with the aid of magical ancient technology. It was seductive, compelling, all but irresistible.

Despite his loyalty to Dia, he felt himself falling under the spell of that dream.

‘There are already people there,’ he said slowly. ‘Around the Interface. If it is an Interface. Who’s to say how they will react to us? Will they simply let us walk up and wander through?’

‘Maybe they’re Colonists,’ Philas said.

‘Anyway,’ said someone, ‘we won’t know unless we go to find out ...’

There was a murmur of agreement. Dia dropped her head. Philas and Mur were named as scouts, to go ahead to the artifact and investigate, leaving the rest of the Human Beings in the forest until their return.

Mur tried to comfort Dia. ‘It won’t take us long. And perhaps ...’

‘Perhaps what?’ She stared at him bitterly. ‘Perhaps there are wizards there who can restore little Jai to us. Is that what you expect?’

‘Dia ...’

She seemed to slump, as if the Air was collapsing out of her. ‘We’re going to spend the rest of our lives here. Right here. Dying off one by one. Aren’t we, Mur?’

Philas and Mur dived away from the forest and into the Mantle. The tetrahedral artifact might be as much as a half-day away, so they each carried a bag containing a little of the tribe’s precious, and dwindling, supply of pig-meat.

At first Mur looked back frequently into the Crust-forest. Dia’s face, turned down like a small, round leaf, followed them as they descended, her expression soon too distant to read. Then she ducked back into the forest. For a while Mur was able to follow the movements of the other Human Beings as they worked through the forest, using the time to hunt and to repair damaged tools, ropes and clothes. But at last the site of the Human Beings’ temporary camp was lost in the swirling, complex tapestry of trunks and branches that made up the Crust-forest.

Mur spent some time staring up at the forest, carefully committing the pattern of trunks to memory so they could find the Human Beings again.

Philas descended towards the artifact without speaking. Her thin face was intent on the goal, empty of expression; Mur hadn’t seen her so focused since the death of Esk. She dug into her pouch and, with efficient regularity, bit into a piece of meat.

Mur, alone with his thoughts, fell through the vortex lines. The artifact, and the little colony around it, grew in his vision tantalizingly slowly. But it wasn’t long before he could see without ambiguity that the artifact was indeed a tetrahedron, around ten mansheights to a side.

The story of the Colonists, and their Core Wars, was part of the lore of the Human Beings. When the Ur-humans first reached the Star, having travelled from their own unimaginable worlds, the Star was empty of human life. The Colonists had been the first generation to be established within the Star, by the Ur-humans. It had been their task to spawn the first of the Star’s true inhabitants: all of them, the mortal, frail ancestors of the Human Beings, the people of Parz and the hinterland, all the inhabitants of the Mantle.

Compared to Human Beings the Colonists had been like gods. They had more in common with the Ur-humans, perhaps, Mur speculated. With Ur-human technology they had pierced the Mantle with wormhole links and established huge Cities which had sailed through the Mantle in vast, orderly arrays. The first generations of Human Beings had worked with their progenitors, travelling the wormhole links and building a Mantle-wide society.

Then the Core Wars had come.

As they neared the artifact, and the irregular little settlement around it, excitement gathered in Mur. Fatigue and hunger worked on him as he Waved, and he became aware that his thinking was becoming looser, more fragmented. His head seemed filled with visions, with new hopes; and the aches of his tired, protesting body seemed to fade. Could these really be Colonists, this artifact a fragment from the magical past?

He wanted to believe. He was tired - so tired - of pain, of death, of scraping his marginal existence from the unforgiving Air. To discover a Colonist artifact would be like returning to the arms of long-dead parents.

Glancing across at Philas, he recognized the same hunger to believe - to find a home - in her expression, the set of her body as she Waved.

With perhaps five hundred mansheights separating them from the artifact, two people broke from the grouping around the tetrahedron. The two came Waving cautiously up to meet Philas and Mur.

Mur slowed, and moved closer to Philas.

The pair from the tetrahedron halted a dozen mansheights below the Human Beings. They were a man and a woman, and they carried spears of wood. The woman came up a little further, and pointed her spear at Mur’s belly. ‘What do you want?’

Mur inspected the woman. She must have been aged around forty. The spear was well crafted, but it was just a spear - nothing more sophisticated than a sharpened stick of wood, nothing the Human Beings couldn’t have manufactured for themselves. The woman wore a crude, pocketed poncho of what looked like pig-leather, and a wide-brimmed hat. Folds of cloth were tied up around the rim of the hat. The woman was well muscled but scrawny; her face was wide and flat, disfigured by a scowl. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Deaf, are you?’

Mur sighed, disappointment gathering in him. He turned to Philas. ‘Obviously, these aren’t Colonists.’

‘Who are they, then?’

‘How should I know?’ he snapped back, irritated.

He moved forward a little, with arms spread wide, hands empty. ‘My name is Mur. This is Philas. We’re - refugees.’ He decided not to mention the rest of the Human Beings. ‘We lost all we possessed in the Glitch. We’re trying to get to Parz City. Do you know it?’

The woman’s eyes narrowed; she didn’t reply. She raised the spear uncertainly and poked it towards Mur’s stomach again, substituting aggressiveness for an answer.

‘We’re wasting our time,’ Mur whispered to Philas. But Philas had broken away from him and was Waving down with irregular, trembling strokes of her thin legs towards the strangers.

‘You have an Interface,’ she said.

The man, similarly grimy and scowling, a little younger than the woman, joined his companion. He too was wearing a battered, wide-brimmed hat. They stared at the Human Beings as suspiciously, thought Mur, as a pair of tethered Air-pigs.

‘Please,’ Philas said. ‘We’ve come a long way. We’re trying to reach the Pole. Can we ...’ She stumbled over her words, as if she’d become suddenly aware of how foolish they sounded. ‘Will your Interface help us?’ She looked from one to the other. ‘Do you understand what I’m asking?’

The man opened a mouth devoid of teeth and laughed, but the woman laid a restraining hand on his arm. Her voice remained stern, but it softened a little. ‘Yes, I understand. And you’re right; it is an Interface - from the olden days, from before the Core Wars. But you can’t use it.

Philas was trembling. ‘We’ll pay,’ she said wildly. ‘You must ...’

Mur grabbed her shoulders and tried to still her shivering with his own inertia. ‘Stop it, Philas. Don’t you understand? Even if we could pay,
the Interface doesn’t work any more
. These people are as helpless as we are.’

Philas stared into his face resentfully, then turned away; her body was wracked by shuddering.

The man and woman watched them curiously.

Mur turned to them wearily. ‘Why don’t you put away your weapons? You can see we’re no threat to you.’

They lowered their spears carefully, but kept them aimed roughly in the direction of the Human Beings. The man said, ‘You really are refugees from further upflux?’

‘Yes. And we really are trying to reach a place called Parz City, which we’ve never seen. But it’s at the Pole.’

‘Which Pole?’ the woman asked. ‘The South Pole?’

The man cackled. ‘If you’re starting from here it hardly matters, does it?’

‘Oh, shut up, Borz,’ the woman said.

Mur put his arm around Philas. ‘Will you let us see your Interface?’

To his shame, he read amused pity in the woman’s expression. ‘If you want,’ she said. ‘But stay close to the two of us. Do you understand? We see enough thieves and beggars ...’

‘We’re no beggars,’ Philas said with a spark of spirit. She drew away from Mur and pulled her shoulders straight. ‘Come, then.’

Borz and the woman turned away from them and separated by a couple of mansheights. Hand in hand, Mur and Philas Waved cautiously forward.

Soon they were approaching the artifact, shepherded by spears and scowls.

Mur squeezed Philas’s hand. ‘You should have said we weren’t thieves,’ he whispered. ‘I was thinking of trying a little begging.’

She managed a small laugh. ‘It wouldn’t have worked. These people have no more than we have ... or had, before we lost our home.’ She pointed at Borz, to their left. ‘Look at the hat he’s wearing.’

The hat’s brim was piled with pleats of fine material, knotted into place by ties fixed through holes in the leather of the hat. Mur imagined undoing those ties; perhaps a kind of net would drop down, around the head.

‘It’s odd, but what about it?’

‘Remember Dura’s tales of her time on the ceiling-farm. The Air-tanks they made her wear, working high up, close to the Crust. The masks ...’

‘Oh. Right.’ Mur nodded. ‘Those hats must have come from coolies’ Air-tanks.’

‘So my guess is these people used to be coolies. Maybe they ran away.’

‘But they ought to know about Parz.’

Philas laughed without humour. She seemed in control of herself again, but her mood was black. ‘So they are concealing things from us. Well, we lied to them. That’s what the world is like, it seems.’

Mur stared at Borz’s hat. Apart from Deni Maxx’s Air-car it was the first artifact even remotely related to the City he’d ever seen. And recognizing it now from Dura’s description somehow lent veracity to Dura’s bizarre tale. He felt oddly reassured by the confirmation of this small detail, as if somewhere inwardly he’d imagined Dura might be lying, or mad.

The people turned to stare, suspicious and hostile, as the Human Beings were brought into the encampment by Borz and his companion. There seemed to be around forty humans in the little colony, perhaps fifteen of them children and infants. The adults were fixing clothes, mending nets, sharpening knives, lounging in the Air and talking. Children wriggled around them like tiny rays, their bare skins crackling with electron gas. None of it would have looked out of place in any of the Human Beings’ encampments, Mur thought.

The tetrahedral artifact loomed beyond the small-scale human activities. It was a skeletal framework, incongruous, sharp, dark.

Borz and the woman hung back as Mur and Philas hesitantly approached the tetrahedron’s forbidding geometries. Mur peered up at the framework. The edges were poles a little thicker than his wrist, each about ten mansheights long. They were precisely machined of some dull, dark substance. The four triangular faces defined by the edges enclosed nothing but ordinary Air - in fact, the people here had slung sections of net to enclose a small herd of squabbling, starved-looking Air-pigs at the framework’s geometric centre. Elsewhere on the framework rough bags had been fixed by bits of rope; irregular bulges told Mur that the bags probably contained food, clothes and tools.