Flux

Bzya grinned and held up his palm.

…And a heat seemed to surge smoothly out from Adda’s stomach, flooding his body and head; his palms and feet tingled, as if being worked by invisible fingers, and his skull seemed to swell in size, filling up with a roomy, comfortable warmth. He looked down at his body, astonished, half-expecting to see electron gas sparking around his fingertips, to hear his skin sighing with the new warmth. But there was no outward change.

After a few seconds the heat-surge wore away, but when it had receded it left Adda feeling subtly altered. The bar seemed cozier — friendlier — than even a moment before, and the smell of the remaining beercake was pleasing, harmonious, enticing.

“Welcome to beercake, my friend, and a new lifelong relationship.”

The pleasing warmth induced by the cake still permeated Adda. He poked at the cake with a new wonder. “Well, I’ve not eaten anything with such an impact before, up- or downflux.”

“I didn’t think so.” Bzya picked up a piece of cake and compressed it between his fingers. “Farr is developing a taste too, I ought to say. It’s a mash, mostly of Crust-tree leaf. But it’s fermented — in huge Corestuff vessels, for days…”

“Fermented?”

“Spin-spider web is put into the vats with the mash. There’s something in the webbing, maybe in the glistening stuff that makes it sticky, which reacts with the mash and changes it to beercake. Magic.”

“Sure.” Adda took another mouthful of the beercake now; it was as revolting as before, but the anticipation of its aftereffects made the taste much easier to bear. He swallowed it down and allowed the warmth to filter through his being.

“What does the stuff cost?”

“Nothing.” Bzya shrugged. “The Harbor authorities provide it for us. As much as we want, as long as we’re able to do our jobs.”

“What do you mean? Is it bad for you?”

“If you overdo it, yes.” Bzya rubbed his face. “It works on the capillaries in your flesh — dilates them — and some of the major pneumatic vessels in the brain. The flow of Air is subtly altered, you see, and…”

“And you feel wonderful.”

“Yeah. But if you use it too often, you can’t recover. The capillaries stay dilated…”

Adda gazed around the bar, at this safe, marvelous place. “That seems all right to me.”

“Sure. Your head would be a wonderful place to live in. But you couldn’t function, Adda; you couldn’t do a job. And if it gets bad enough you couldn’t even feed yourself, without prompting. But, yes, you’d feel wonderful about it.”

“And I don’t suppose this City is so forgiving of people who can’t hold down jobs.”

“Not much.”

“Don’t the Harbor managers worry they’re going to lose too many of their Fishermen, to this cake stuff? Why dole it out free?”

Bzya shrugged. “They lose a few. But they don’t care. Adda, we’re expendable. It doesn’t take long to train up a new Fisherman, and there’re always plenty of recruits, in the Downside. And they know the cake keeps us here in the bars, happy, quiet and available. They gain more than they lose.” He chomped another mouthful. “And so do I.”

Adda worked his way slowly through the bowl, cautiously observing the cake’s increasing effects on him. Every so often he moved his fingers and feet, testing his coordination. If he got to the point where he even thought he might be losing control, he promised himself, he’d stop.

The Fisherman had fallen silent; his huge fingers toyed with the cake.

“I hear you’re on double shifts. Whatever that means.”

Bzya smiled, indulgent. “It means I’m assigned to the Bells twice as frequently as usual. It’s because they’re running twice as many dives as usual.”

“Why?”

“The upflux Glitch. No wood coming into the City. Not enough, anyway. People bitch about food rationing, but the wood shortage is just as important in the longer term. And let’s hope the day never comes when they have to ration beercake… Anyway, they want more Corestuff metal, to use as building material.”

“Building? Are they extending the City?”

“Rebuilding. It goes on all the time, Adda, mostly deep in the guts of the place. Small repairs, maintenance. Although,” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “there are rumors that it isn’t just the need to keep up routine repairs that’s prompted this increased demand.”

“What, then?”

“They’re trying to strengthen the City’s structure. Rebuild the skeleton with more Corestuff. They’re not shouting about it for fear of causing panic; but they’re endeavoring to make it more robust in the face of future problems. Like a closer Glitch.”

Adda frowned. “Can they do that? Will it work?”

“I’m not an engineer. I don’t know.” Bzya chewed on the cake, absently. “But I doubt it,” he said without emotion. “The City’s so huge; you’d have to rip most of its guts out to strengthen it significantly. And it’s a ramshackle structure. I mean, it grew, it was never planned. It was built for space, not strength.”

Parz had been one of the first permanent settlements founded after humanity was scattered through the Mantle following the Core Wars. At first Parz was a random construct of ropes and wood, no more significant than a dozen others, drifting freely above the Pole. But at the Pole the bodies of men and women were significantly stronger, and so Parz grew rapidly; and its position at the only geographically unique point in the southern hemisphere of the Mantle gave it strategic and psychological significance. Soon it had become a trading center, and had wealth enough to afford a ruling class — the first in the Mantle since the Wars. The Committee had been founded, and the growth and unification of Parz had proceeded apace.

Parz’s wealth exploded when the Harbor was established — Parz was the first and only community in the Mantle able to extract and exploit the valuable Corestuff. Soon the scattered community of the cap of Mantle around Parz, the region eventually to be called the hinterland, fell under Parz’s economic influence. Eventually the hinterland and City worked as a single economic unit, with the raw materials and taxes of the hinterland flowing into Parz, with Corestuff and — more importantly — the stability and regulation provided by Parz’s law washing back in return. Eventually only the far upflux, bleak and inhospitable, remained disunited from Parz, home to a few tribes of hunters, and bands of Parz exiles like the Human Beings themselves.

Adda bit into more cake. “I’m surprised people accepted being taken over like that. Didn’t anybody fight?”

Bzya shook his head. “It wasn’t seen as a conquest. Parz is not an empire, although it might seem that way to you. Adda, people remembered the time before the Wars, when humans lived in safety and security throughout the Mantle. We couldn’t return to those times; we’d lost too much. But Parz was better than nothing: it offered stability, regulation, a framework to live in. People gripe about their tithes — and nobody’s going to pretend that the Committee get it right all the time — but most of us would prefer taxes to living wild. With all respect to you, my friend.” He bit into his cake. “And that’s still true today; as true as it ever was.”

Two of the bowls were already empty. Adda felt the seduction of this place, that he could have sat here in this companionable glow with Bzya for a long time. “Do you really believe that? Look at your own position, Fisherman; look at the dangers you face daily. Is this really the best of all possible lives for you?”

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 substitute; 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 — 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.

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