Flux

Adda stared, eyeing him up as if he were a coolie in the Market. At last the old man nodded. “Very well. Let’s proceed.”

Hork saw Muub sigh, evidently with relief.

“I return to my final question,” Hork said. “I concede the existence of the Xeelee. But I am not concerned with myths. I don’t want to hear about the awesome racial goals of the Xeelee… I want to know what they want with us.”

“I told you,” Adda said evenly. “They don’t want anything of us. I don’t think they even know we’re here. But they do want something of our world — our Star.”

“Apparently they wish to destroy it,” Muub said, running a hand over his bare scalp.

“Evidently,” Adda said. “Hork, the wisdom of my people — handed down verbally since our expulsion from…”

“Yes, yes.”

“…has nothing to say about any purpose of the Star. But we do know that humans were brought here, to this Star. By the Ur-humans. And we were adapted to survive here.”

Muub was nodding at this. “This isn’t a surprise, sir. Analogous anatomy studies have come to similar conclusions.”

“I am struggling to contain my fascination,” Hork said acidly. Restless, frustrated, he pushed his way out of his sling and began to swim briskly around the room. He watched the turning of the small, powerful cooling-fan set in one corner of the painted sky; he studied the captive vortex ring in its nest of clearwood spheres. He resisted the temptation to smash the spheres again, despite his mounting frustration; the cost of repair had been ruinous — indefensible, actually, in such times as now. “Go on with your account. If humans were brought here, made to fit the Mantle — then why isn’t the evidence of this all around us? Where are the devices which made us? Where are these ‘different’ Ur-humans?”

Adda shook his head. “At one time there was plenty of evidence. Marvelous devices, left here by the Ur-men to help us survive, and to work here. Wormhole Interfaces. Weapons, huge structures which would dwarf your shabby City…”

“Where are they now?” Hork snapped. “And don’t tell me they were suppressed, deliberately destroyed by some vindictive Parz administration of the past.”

“No.” Adda smiled. “Your forebears did not have to conceal physical evidence… merely the truth.”

“Get on with it.”

“The Colonists,” Adda said slowly.

“What?”

Once, humans had traveled throughout the Star. The Quantum Sea had been as clear as the Air to them, in their marvelous machines. They had been able to venture even into the outer layers of the Core with impunity. And there had been marvelous gateways, called wormhole Interfaces, which had allowed humans even to travel outside the Star itself.

The humans, following the commands of their departed creators, the Ur-humans, had set about rebuilding the Star. And the mysterious Colonists, sleeping in their quark soup at the Core, had become hostile to the growing power of humans.

The Colonists had emerged from the Core. Brief, shattering wars were fought.

Human machines were destroyed or dragged into the Quantum Sea. The human population was devastated, the survivors pitched into the open Air virtually without resource.

Within generations, the stories of man’s origin on the Star, the tale of the Colonists, became a dim legend, another baroque detail in the rich word-painting of human history, of the invisible worlds beyond the Star.

Muub laughed out loud, his long, aristocratic face creased with mirth. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Hork. “But here we are compounding myth on myth. How long are we to continue with this charade? I have patients to attend.”

“Shut up, Muub. You’ll stay here as long as I need you.”

Hork thought hard. He had damnably little resource to spare. He had to tend the wounded and destitute, and, in the longer term, rebuild on the hinterland, alleviate the hunger of the people.

And yet, and yet…

If — by a small diversion of effort — he could remove the fantastic Xeelee threat from the City — the whole world, in fact — then he could become the greatest hero of history.

There was pride, self-aggrandizement in such a vision, Hork knew. So what? If he could repel the Xeelee, mankind would rightfully acclaim him.

But how to go about it?

He certainly couldn’t devote armies of scholars to piecing together the fragmentary legends of man’s origin. And he didn’t have the years to wait while some such discipline as Muub’s “analogous anatomy” cogitated over its subject matter. He had to prioritize, to go for the most direct benefit.

He looked at Adda sharply. “You say these beings — the Colonists — took the Interfaces, and the other magical machines, back into the Quantum Sea with them. Beyond the reach of our Fishermen. So we’ve no reason to believe the devices were destroyed?”

Adda looked up; the leech nibbling at his eye, disturbed, slid across his cheek. “Nor any evidence that they survived.”

Muub snorted. “Now the old fool has the effrontery to talk of evidence!”

What if this legend of Colonists and ancient technologies held some grain of truth? Then perhaps, Hork speculated, some of these devices could still exist, deep in the Quantum Sea. An Interface would be worth having…

“Muub,” he asked thoughtfully. “How could we penetrate the Quantum Sea?”

Muub looked at him, as if shocked by the suggestion. “We cannot, of course, sir. It is impossible.” His eyes narrowed. “You are not thinking of chasing after these absurd legends, of wasting resources on a…”

“You will not lecture me, Physician,” Hork snapped. “Think of it as a — a scientific experiment. If nothing else we would learn much about the Star, and about our own capabilities… and, perhaps, disprove once and for all these fanciful legends of Colonists and antique wonders.” Or, he allowed himself to imagine, perhaps I will uncover a treasure lost to mankind for generations.

“Sir, I must protest. People continue to die, all over the hinterland. Parz itself may be overwhelmed by the flood of refugees approaching. We must abandon these fantasies of the impossible, and return our attention to the immediate, the practical.”

Hork studied the Physician — Muub was stiff, trembling in his cocoon of rope. His irritation with Muub’s stiff anger was eclipsed, suddenly, by respect for this decent man. It must have taken a lot of courage for the Physician to speak out like that. “Muub — my dear Muub — as soon as I close this meeting I will be immersed in the immediate, the practical… in the pain of ten thousand human beings.” He smiled. “I want you to take charge of this project. Reach the Quantum Sea.”

Muub ground out, “The task — is — impossible.”

Hork nodded. “Of course. Bring me options, within two days.”

He turned from them then, and, straightening his back, thrust through the Air to the door and his duties.

17

After she’d endured a brief, unsettled sleep in Deni’s cramped quarters, a messenger from the Committee called for Dura. The messenger was a small, rather sad man in a scuffed tunic; his skin was thin and pale and his eyes were bruised-looking, discolored deep inside the cups. Perhaps he had spent too much of his life doing close work inside the City, Dura thought, shut away from fresh Air.

She was led away from the Hospital and through the streets. They passed through the Market, and Waved Upside along Pall Mall. The great avenue seemed quieter than she remembered. The lines of Air-cars moved much more easily than before, with clear Air between the sparsely spaced cars, and many of the shops were closed up, their wood-lamps dimmed. She began to understand how the disaster in the hinterland had impacted the economy of the City.

Even so, the noise was a constant, growling racket and the few fans and illumination vents seemed hardly sufficient. Soon Dura found herself fighting off claustrophobia. And yet, only days before, she had been feeling restless in the limited company of the upfluxers. Her experiences really had left her a misfit, she thought gloomily.

They took a turn off the Mall close to its Upside terminus and emerged, surprisingly, into clear Air-light. They had entered a huge open chamber, a cube a hundred mansheights on a side. Its edges were constructed of fine beams, leaving the faces open to the clear sky — this place must be clinging to the side of the City like some immense wooden leech — but, oddly, the Air was no fresher here than in the bowels of the City, and there was no discernible breeze. Looking more closely, she realized that the apparently open faces of this cube were coated with huge panels of clearwood; she was inside a transparent wooden box big enough to hold — she estimated quickly — a thousand people.

It was impressive, but utterly bizarre; Dura felt bemused — as so often before — by the strangeness of the City.

The messenger touched her elbow. “Here we are. This is the Stadium. Of course it’s empty today; when it’s in use it’s crammed with people… Up there you can see the Committee Box.” He pointed to a thin balcony suspended over the Stadium itself; his voice was thin, ingratiating. “People come here to watch the Games — our sporting events. Do you have Games in the upflux?”

“Why have I been brought here?”

The little man shied away, his bruised-looking eyecups closing.

“Dura…”

Farr?

She whirled in the Air. Her brother was only a mansheight from her; he was calm and apparently well, and dressed in a loose tunic. There were people with him — Adda and three City men.

She saw all this in the heartbeat it took to cross the space between them and take her brother in her arms. He hugged her back — but not as an uninhibited child, she slowly realized; he put his arms around her and patted her spine, comforting her.

She let him go and held him at arm’s length. His face was square and serious. He seemed to have grown older, and there was more of their father about him.

“I’m well, Dura.”

“Yes. So am I. I thought you might have been injured in the Glitch.”

“I wasn’t in the Bells when the Glitch came. It was my off-shift, and I was in the Harbor…”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said bitterly. “You’re too young to have been sent down in those things.”

“It’s just the way things are,” he said gently. “Boys younger than me have served in the Bells. Dura, none of it is your fault… even if I’d been hurt it wouldn’t have been your fault.”

He was comforting her. He really was growing up.

“Anyway, I haven’t been back to the Harbor for a while,” Farr went on. He smiled. “Not since Adda had Hork send for me. I’ve been staying with Toba.”

“How are the family?”

“Well. Cris has been teaching me to Surf.” Farr held his arms out in the Air, as if balancing on an invisible board. “You’ll have to try it…”