Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring (9 page)

He glanced about. The office was empty. He couldn’t resist it.

He picked up the device, relishing the feel of the machined metal base—

‘Don’t drop it, will you?’

He started. The intricate device juggled through the air, painfully slowly; he grabbed it and returned it to its shelf.

He turned. Silhouetted in the doorway was Jaen, her broad, freckled face creased into a grin. After a few seconds he smiled back. ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said.

The apprentice walked towards him. ‘You should be glad it’s only me. Anybody else and you’d be off the Raft by now.’

He shrugged, watching her approach with mild pleasure. Jaen was the senior apprentice of Cipse, the Chief Navigator; only a few hundred shifts older than Rees, she was one of the few inhabitants of the labs to show him anything other than contempt. She even seemed to forget he was a mine rat, sometimes . . . Jaen was a broad, stocky girl; her gait was confident but ungainly. Uncomfortably Rees found himself comparing her with Sheen. He was growing fond of Jaen; he believed she could become a good friend.

But her body didn’t pull at his with the intensity of the mine girl’s.

Jaen stood beside him and ran a casual fingertip over the little device. ‘Poor old Rees,’ she mocked. ‘I bet you don’t even know what this is, do you?’

He shrugged. ‘You know I don’t.’

‘It’s called an orrery.’ She spelt the word for him. ‘It’s a model of the Solar System.

‘The what?’

Jaen sighed, then she pointed at the silver orb at the heart of the orrery. ‘That’s a star. And these things are balls of - iron, I suppose, orbiting around it. They’re called planets. Mankind - the folk on the Raft, at least - originally came from one of these planets. The fourth, I think. Or maybe the third.’

Rees scratched his chin. ‘Really? There can’t have been too many of them.’

‘Why not?’

‘No room. If the planet was any size the gees would be too high. The star kernel back home is only fifty yards wide - and it’s mostly air - and it has a surface gravity of five gee.’

‘Yeah? Well, this planet was a lot bigger. It was—’ She extended her hands. ‘Miles wide. And the gravity wasn’t crushing. Things were different.’

‘How?’

‘ . . . I’m not sure. But the surface gravity was probably only, I don’t know, three or four gee.’

He thought that over. ‘In that case, what’s a gee? I mean, why is a gee the size it is - no larger and no smaller?’

Jaen had been about to say something else; now she frowned in exasperation. ‘Rees, I haven’t the faintest idea. By the Bones, you ask stupid questions. I’m almost tempted not to tell you the most interesting thing about the orrery.’

‘What?’

‘That the System was huge. The orbit of the planet took about a thousand shifts . . . and the star at the centre was a million miles wide!’

He thought that over. ‘Garbage,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘What do you know?’

‘A star like that is impossible. It would just implode.’

‘You know it all.’ She grinned at him. ‘I just hope you’re as clever at lugging supplies in from the Rim. Come on; Grye has given us a list of stuff to collect.’

‘OK.’

Carrying his cleaning equipment he followed her broad back from Hollerbach’s office. He glanced back once at the orrery, sitting gleaming in the shadows of its shelf.

A million miles? Ridiculous, of course.

But what if . . .?

They sat side by side on the bus; the machine’s huge tyres made the journey soothingly smooth.

Rees surveyed the mottled plates of the Raft, the people hurrying by on tasks and errands of whose nature even now he was uncertain. His fellow passengers sat patiently through the journey, some of them reading. Rees found these casual displays of literacy somehow startling.

He found himself sighing.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

He grinned ruefully at Jaen. ‘Sorry. It’s just . . . I’ve been here such a short time, and I seem to have learned so little.’

She frowned. ‘I thought you were getting some kind of crammer classes from Cipse and Grye.’

‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘I guess I can see their point of view. I wouldn’t want to waste time on a stowaway who is liable to be dumped back home within a few shifts.’

She scratched her nose. ‘That might be the reason. But the two of them have never been shy of parading their knowledge in front of me. Rees, you ask damn hard questions. I suspect they’re a little afraid of you.’

‘That’s crazy—’

‘Let’s face it, most of those old buggers don’t know all that much. Hollerbach does, I think; and one or two others. But the rest just follow the ancient printouts and hope for the best. Look at the way they patch up the ancient instruments with wood and bits of string . . . They’d be lost if anything really unexpected happened - or if anyone asked them a question from a strange angle.’

Rees thought that over and reflected how far his view of the Scientists had shifted since his arrival here. Now he saw that they were frail humans like himself, struggling to do their best in a world growing shabbier. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t make a lot of difference. Every time I open my eyes I see questions that don’t get answered. For instance, on every page of Cipse’s numbers books is written “IBM”. What does that mean?’

She laughed. ‘You’ve got me there. Maybe it’s something to do with the way those books were produced. They come from the Ship, you know.’

His interest quickened. ‘The Ship? You know, I’ve heard so many stories about that I’ve no idea what’s true.’

‘My understanding is that there really was a Ship. It was broken up to form the basis of the Raft itself.’

He pondered that. ‘And the original Crew printed those books?’

She hesitated, obviously near the limits of her knowledge. ‘They were produced a few generations later. The first Crew had kept their understanding in some kind of machine.’

‘What machine?’

‘. . . I don’t know. Maybe a talking machine, like the buses. The thing was more than a recording device, though. It could do calculations and computations.’

‘How?’

‘Rees,’ she said heavily, ‘if I knew that I’d build one. OK? Anyway, with the passing of time the machine began to fail, and the crew were afraid they wouldn’t be able to continue their computations. So, before it expired, the machine printed out everything it knew. And that includes an ancient type of table called “logarithms” to help us do calculations. That’s what Cipse was lugging in to the Bridge. Maybe you’ll learn how to use logarithms, some day.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

The bus rolled out of the thicket of cables; Rees found himself squinting in the harsh light of the star poised above the Raft.

Jaen was saying, ‘You understand Cipse’s job, do you?’

‘I think so, he said slowly. ‘Cipse is a Navigator. His job is to work out where the Raft should move to.’

Jaen nodded. ‘And the reason we have to do that is to get out of the path of the stars falling in from the rim of the Nebula.’ She jerked a thumb at the glowing sphere above. ‘Like that one. In the Bridge they keep records of approaching stars, so they can move the Raft in plenty of time. I reckon we’ll be shifting soon . . . That’s a sight to see, Rees; I hope you don’t miss it. All the trees tilting in unison, the rush of wind across the deck - and if I get through my appraisal I’ll be working on the moving team.’

‘Good for you,’ he said sourly.

With a sudden seriousness she patted his arm. ‘Don’t give up hope, miner. You’re not off the Raft yet.’

He smiled at her, and they spent the rest of the journey in silence.

The bus reached the edge of the Raft’s gravity well. The Rim approached like a knife edge against the sky, and the bus strained to a halt beside a broad stairway. Rees and Jaen joined a queue of passengers before a supply dispenser. An attendant sat sullenly beside the machine, silhouetted against the sky; Rees, staring absently, found him vaguely familiar.

The supply machine was an irregular block as tall as two men. Outlets pierced its broad face, surrounding a simple control panel reminiscent to Rees of the Mole’s. On the far side a nozzle like a huge mouth strained outwards at the atmosphere of the Nebula; Rees had learned that the machine’s raw material was drawn in by that nozzle from the life-rich air, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the machine taking huge breaths through those metal lips.

Jaen murmured in his ear: ‘Powered by a mini black hole, you know.’

He jumped. ‘A what?’

She grinned. ‘You don’t know? I’ll tell you later.’

‘You enjoy this, don’t you?’ he hissed.

Away from the shelter of the flying forest the starlight from above was intense. Rees found sweat droplets trickling into his eyes; he blinked, and found himself staring at the broad neck of the man in front of him. The flesh was studded with coarse black hair and was glistening damp near the collar. The man raised a wide, pug face to the star. ‘Damn heat,’ he grunted. ‘Don’t know why we’re still sitting underneath the bloody thing. Mith ought to get off his fat arse and do something about it. Eh?’ He glared inquisitively at Rees.

Rees smiled back uncertainly. The man gave him a strange look, then turned away.

After uncomfortable minutes the queue cleared, passengers squeezing past them down the stairs with their packets of food, water and other materials. Watched by the sullen attendant, Rees and Jaen stepped up to the machine; Jaen began to tap into the control panel one of the Scientists’ registration numbers, and then a complex sequence detailing their requirements. Rees marvelled at the way her fingers flew over the keyboard - yet another skill he might never get the chance to learn . . .

And he became aware that the attendant was grinning at him. The man sat on a tall wooden stool, arms folded; black stripes were stitched into his shabby coverall. ‘Well, well,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s the mine rat.’

‘Hello, Gover,’ Rees said stiffly.

‘Still skivvying for those old farts in Science, eh? I’d have thought they’d chuck you into the nozzles by now. All you mine rats are good for . . .’

Rees found his fists clenching; his biceps bunched almost painfully.

‘So you’re still the same nasty piece of work, eh, Gover?’ Jaen snapped. ‘Getting thrown out of Science hasn’t helped your character development, then.’

Gover bared yellow teeth. ‘I chose to leave. I’m not spending my life with those useless old space-wasters. At least with Infrastructure I’m doing real work. Learning real skills.’

Jaen lodged her fists on her hips. ‘Gover, if it wasn’t for the Scientists the Raft would have been destroyed generations ago.’

He sniffed, looking bored. ‘Sure. You keep believing it.’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘Maybe once. But what about now? Why haven’t they moved us out from under that thing in the sky, then?’

Jaen took an angry breath . . . then hesitated, having no easy answer.

Gover didn’t seem interested in his small victory. ‘It doesn’t matter. Think what you want. The people who really keep this Raft flying - Infrastructure, the woodsmen, the carpenters and metal-workers - we are going to be heard before long. And that will be the start of the long drop for all the parasites.’

Jaen frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

But Gover had turned away, smiling cynically; and a man behind them growled, ‘Come on; move it, you two.’

They returned to the bus clutching pallets of supplies. Rees said, ‘What if he’s right, Jaen? What if the Scientists, the Officers are - not allowed to work any more?’

She shivered. ‘Then it’s the end of the Raft. But I know Gover; he’s just puffing up his own importance, to make us think he’s happy with his move to Infrastructure. He’s always been the same.’

Rees frowned. Maybe, he thought.

But Gover had sounded very sure.

A few shifts later Hollerbach asked to see Rees.

Rees paused outside the Chief Scientist’s office, drawing deep breaths. He felt as if he were poised on the Rim of the Raft; the next few moments might shape the rest of his life.

Pushing his shoulders back he entered the office.

Hollerbach was bent over paperwork by the light of a globe over his desk. He scowled up at Rees’s approach. ‘Eh? Who’s that? Oh, yes; the miner lad. Come in, come in.’ He waved Rees to a chair before the desk; then he rested back in his armchair, bony arms folded behind his head. The light above the desk made the hollows around his eyes seem enormously deep.

‘You asked to see me,’ Rees said.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ Hollerbach stared frankly at Rees. ‘Now then; I hear you’ve been making yourself useful around the place. You’re a hard worker, and that’s something all too rare . . . So thank you for what you’ve done. But,’ he went on gently, ‘a supply tree has been loaded and is ready to fly to the Belt. Next shift. What I have to decide is whether you’re to be on it or not.’

A thrill coursed through Rees; perhaps he still had a chance to earn a place here. Anticipating some kind of test, he hastily reviewed the fragments of knowledge he had acquired.

Hollerbach got out of his chair and began to walk around the office. ‘You know we’re overpopulated here,’ he said. ‘And we have . . . problems with the supply dispensers, so that’s not going to get any easier. On the other hand, now that I’ve shed that useless article Gover I have a vacancy in the labs. But unless it’s really justified I can’t make a case for keeping you.’

Rees waited.

Hollerbach frowned. ‘You keep your own counsel, don’t you, lad? Very well . . . If you were going to ask me one question, now, before you’re shipped out of here - and I guaranteed to answer it as fully as I could - what would it be?’

Rees felt his heart pound. Here was the test, the moment of Rim balancing - but it had come in such an unexpected form. One question! What was the one key that might unlock the secrets against which his mind battered like a skitter against a globe lamp?