Flux

3

They moved in silence.

At first Dura found the motion easy. The tree slid beneath her, almost featureless, slowly widening as she climbed up its length. The tree trunk grew along the direction of the Magfield, and so moving along it meant moving in the easiest direction, parallel to the Magfield, with the superfluid Air offering hardly any resistance. It was barely necessary to Wave; Dura found it was enough to push at the smooth, warm bark with her hands.

She looked back. The leafy treetops seemed to be merging into a floor across the world now, and the open Air beyond was being sealed away from her. Her companions were threaded along the trunk behind her, moving easily: the widow Philas apparently indifferent to her surroundings, Farr with his eyecups wide and staring, his mouth wide open and his chest straining at the thin Air, and dear old Adda at the back, his spear clasped before him, his good eye constantly sweeping the complex darkness around them. The three of them — naked, sleek, with their ropes, nets and small bags bound to them — looked like small, timid animals as they moved through the shades of the forest.

They rested. Dura took her cleaning scraper from her belt of rope and worked at her arms and legs, dislodging fragments of leaf and bark.

Adda glided up the line to her, her face alert. “How are you?”

Looking at him, Dura thought of her father.

She’d been involved in hunts before, of course — as had most adult Human Beings — but always she’d been able to rely on the tactical awareness, the deep, ingrained knowledge of the Star and all its ways, of Logue and the others.

She’d never led before.

Some of her doubt must have shown in her face. Adda nodded, his wizened face neutral. “You’ll do.”

She snorted. Keeping her voice low enough that only Adda could hear, she said, “Maybe. But what good is it? Look at us…” She waved a hand at the little party. “A boy. Two women, distracted by grief…”

“And me,” Adda said quietly.

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “Thanks for staying with me, Adda. But even if by some miracle this collection of novices succeeds we’ll return with only two, maybe three Air-pigs. We wouldn’t have the capacity to restrain any more.” She remembered — in the better days of her childhood — hunting parties of ten or a dozen strong and alert men and women, returning in triumph to the Net with whole herds of wild pigs. “And what good will that do? The Human Beings are going to starve, Adda.”

“Maybe. But it may not be as bad as that. We might find a couple of sows, maybe with piglets… enough to reestablish our stock. Who knows? And look, Dura, you can only lead those who wish to be led. Don’t flog yourself too hard. Even Logue only led by consent. And remember, Logue never faced times as hard as what’s to come now.

“Listen to me. When the people get hungry enough, they’ll turn to you. They’ll be angry, disillusioned, and they’ll blame you because there’s no one else to blame. But they’ll be yours to lead.”

She found herself shuddering. “I’ve no choice, have I? All my life, since the moment of my birth, has had a kind of logic which has led me to this point. And I’ve never had a choice about any of it.”

Adda smiled, his face a grim mask. “No,” he said harshly. “But then, what choices do any of us have?”

The forest seemed empty of Air-pigs.

The little party grew fretful and tired. After another half-day’s fruitless searching, Dura allowed them to rest, to sleep.

When they woke, she knew she would have to lead them downflux. Downflux, and higher — deeper into the forest, toward the Crust.

Toward the South — downflux — the Air was richer, the Magfield stronger. The pigs must have fled that way, following the Glitch. But everyone knew downflux was a dangerous direction to travel.

The Human Beings followed her with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

The forest was dense, complex. Six-legged Crust-crabs scuttled from Dura as she approached, abandoning webs slung between the tree trunks. Cocoons of leeches and other unidentifiable creatures clustered thick on the trunks, like pale, bloated leaves.

A ray turned its blind face toward her.

Adda hissed a warning. Dura flattened herself against the tree trunk before her, wrapping her arms around it and willing her ragged breath to still. The wood pressing against her belly and thighs was hard and hot.

A breath of Air at her back, a faint shadow.

She shifted her head to the right, feeling the roughness of the bark scratch her cheek. Her eyecups swiveled, following the ray as it glided by, utterly silent. The ray was a translucent sheet at least a mansheight wide. At its closest it was no more than an arm’s length from her. She could recognize the basic architecture of all the Mantle’s animals: the ray was built around a thin, cylindrical spine, and six tiny, spherical eyes ringed the babyish maw set into the center of its face. But the fins of the ray had been extended into six wide, thin sheets. The wings were spaced evenly around the body and they rippled as the ray moved; electron gas sparkled around the leading edges. The flesh was almost transparent, so that it was difficult even to see the wings, and Dura could see shadowy fragments of some meal passing along the ray’s cylindrical gut.

The ray was the only animal — other than humans — that moved by Waving, rather than by squirting jetfarts like pigs or boar. Moving in silence, without the sweet stink of jetfarts, the ray was an effective predator. And its mouth, though tiny, was ringed by jagged, ripping teeth.

The ray slid over the four humans for several heartbeats, apparently unaware of their presence. Then, still silent, it floated away into the shadows of the forest.

Dura counted to a hundred before pushing herself away from the tree trunk.

The vortex lines were dense here, almost tangled together among the trees. The Star, its rotation continually slowing, gradually expelled the vortex lines from the Mantle… until a fresh Glitch struck, when the lines crumbled into deadly fragments before renewing.

The Air was noticeably thinner. Dura felt her chest strain at the stuff and her heart pumped as it sought to power her muscles; from various points in her body she heard the small pops of pressure equalizing. She knew what was happening, of course. The Air had two main components, a neutron superfluid and an electron gas. The neutrons were thinning out; more pressure here was supplied by the gas of free electrons. When she held up her hand before her face she could see the ghostly sparkle of electrons around her fingers, bright in the gloom and evoking dim highlights from the crowding leaves.

But now her vision seemed to be failing. The Air was growing poor at carrying the high-frequency, high-velocity sound waves which allowed her to see. And, worse, the Air — thin as it was — was losing its superfluidity. It started to feel sticky, viscous; and as she moved she began to feel a breeze, faint but unquestionably present, plucking at her face and hair-tubes, impeding her motion.

She found herself trembling at the thought of this sticky stuff congealing in the fine network of capillaries which powered her muscles — the network which sustained her very being.

Human Beings weren’t meant to live up here. Even pigs spent no more time close to the Crust than they had to. She heaved at the sludgelike Air, feeling it curdle within her capillaries, and longed for the open space of the Mantle beneath the roof-forest, for clean, fresh, thick Air.

In all directions around her the tree trunks filled the world. As it became progressively more difficult to see, the trunks, parallel, curving slightly to follow the Magfield, seemed suddenly artificial, sinister in their regularity, like the threads of some huge Net around her. She found herself gripped by a slow panic. Her chest heaved at the unsatisfying Air, the breath noisy in her throat. It took a strong, conscious effort to keep moving, an exercise of will just to keep her hands working at the tree trunk.

She was concerned for Farr. Even in the gloom she could see how distressed he was: his face was white and seemed to be bulging, his eyes half-closed; he seemed barely aware of where he was, and he moved along the trunk stiffly.

Dura forced herself to look away, to carry on. There was no help she could give him. Not now. The best she could do was to move on, to bring home the results of a successful hunt. And as Adda had said, the boy was probably safer with her than anywhere else…

At least Adda was close to Farr. Dura found herself offering up a simple, childlike message of thanks to the watchful Xeelee for the old man’s presence and support.

When the climb ended it was with a suddenness that startled her.

The tree trunk she’d followed had broadened only gradually, at last reaching a width just too great for her to stretch her arms around. Now, suddenly, the clean lines of the trunk exploded into a complex tangle of roots which formed a semicircular platform over her head. Peering up, she could see the roots receding into the dim, translucent interior of the Crust itself; they looked almost like human arms, reaching deep into the gossamer solid in search of neutron-rich nuclei of molybdenum, strontium or krypton.

Looking around, she saw how the root system of the tree merged with those of its neighbors in the forest, so that a carpet of wood formed an impenetrable ceiling over the forest. A few strands of purplish grass sprouted among the roots. The tree trunks, following the Magfield lines, met the root ceiling at an oblique angle.

Soon the others had joined her. The four Human Beings huddled together, clinging to loose roots for stability. It was so dim now that Dura could barely make out the faces of her companions, the outlines of their thin bodies. Philas’s eyes were dull with exhaustion and apathy; Farr, trembling, had his arms wrapped around himself, and his mouth was wide as he strained at the residual Air. Adda was as uncomplaining as ever, but his face was set and pale, and Dura could see how his old shoulders were hunched over his thin, heaving chest. Adda took leaves from the bulging pack at his waist. Dura bit into the food gratefully. Insubstantial and unsatisfying as it was, the food seemed to boost what was left of her strength. Farr continued to shiver; Dura put an arm around him and drew him closer to her, hoping to transmit enough of her body warmth to stop the trembling.

Farr asked, “Are we at the Crust?”

“No,” Adda growled. “The true Crust is still millions of mansheights above us. But we’ve reached the roots; this is as far as we can go.”

Philas’s voice was low and harsh in the thin Air. “We can’t stay here for long.”

“We won’t need to,” Dura said. “But maybe we should open up a trunk and start some nuclear burning again, before we congeal here. Adda, could you…”

The old man raised a hand, curtly. “No time,” he breathed. “Just listen… all of you.”

Dura frowned but said nothing. The four fell into a silence broken only by the rattle of their uneven breaths. Dura felt small, vulnerable, isolated, dwarfed by the immensities of the root systems over their heads. Every instinct ordered her to bolt, to slide back down the tree and plummet through the wall of treetops to the open Air where she belonged; and she could see the same urges in the set faces of the others.

There. A rustle, a distant grunting… It came from the root systems, somewhere to her left.

Adda’s face crumpled with frustration. “Damn it all,” he hissed. “I can’t hear; my ears are turning to mush.”

“I can hear them, Adda,” Farr said.

Dura pointed. “That way.”

Adda nodded, his good eye half-closed with satisfaction. “I knew it wouldn’t take long. How many?”

Dura and Philas looked at each other, each seeking the answer in the other’s face. Dura said, “I can’t tell, Adda… more than one, I think.”

For a few seconds Adda swore steadily, cursing his age, his failing faculties. “Well, into the Ring with it,” he said finally. “We’ll just have to chance there aren’t too many in the herd.” In an urgent, harsh whisper he gave them careful instructions on how, in the event of attack by a boar, they should scatter… and work across the Magfield flux rather than try to flee along it. “Because that’s the way the boar will go. And, believe me, the boar will be a damn sight quicker than you.” His face was a murderous, chilling mask in the twilight.

Dura said, “Philas, go with Adda and Wave around to the far side of the herd. Take the nets and rope and get downflux from them. Farr, stay with me; we’ll wait until the others are in position and then we’ll chase the pigs into the nets. All right?”

Hurriedly they passed around the equipment they would need. Dura took two short stabbing spears from the bundle carried by Philas. Then Adda and Philas slid silently into the darkness, working across the Magfield by Waving and by clambering across the parallel tree trunks.

Farr stayed close to Dura, still pressed close to her for warmth, trusting. For a few seconds she looked down at him — his eyes seemed vacant, as if he were not fully conscious — and she tried to imagine how she would feel if anything were to befall this boy, as a result of her own ignorance and carelessness.

Well, she thought ruefully, at least she’d done her best for him in the way she’d structured the hunt. It was undoubtedly safer to be upflux of the herd when the hunt started. And she would have been greatly more worried if she hadn’t stayed with Farr herself.

With a last, brisk hug, she whispered, “Come on, Farr. We’ve got work to do. Let’s see how close we can get to those pigs without them spotting us.”

He nodded dully and drew away from her, still shivering.

Hefting a short spear in each hand, Dura began to pull herself across the lines of the fat trunks in the direction of the noises she’d heard. Moving in this direction, the resistance of the Magfield was added to the thickened viscosity of the Air, and the going was hard. She felt submerged and had to suppress a pang of panic at the feeling of being trapped up here, of being unable to free herself from this solidifying Air.

She did not look back, but was aware of Farr following her, perhaps a mansheight behind; he moved silently save for his rattling breath, and she could hear how he was trying to control the noise of his breathing. The brave little hunter, she thought. Logue would have been proud of him.

It took only seconds to reach the pigs; soon Dura could see the blocky forms of several animals sliding between the tree trunks, still apparently oblivious to the humans.

Beckoning Farr to come close to her, Dura lodged herself amid the tree trunks perhaps ten mansheights below the root ceiling.

There were three Air-pigs. The animals, each about the size of a man’s torso, worked steadily around the bases of the trees, scooping up purple-green krypton grass and other small plants. The pigs’ fins Waved languidly as they fed, and Dura could see how their eyestalks were fixed on the grass before them and their mouths were pursed, almost shut. When grazing on the thin foodstuff which floated in the free Air, a pig’s mouth could open so wide that it exposed the entire front end of the pig, turning the animal into an open-ended tube, a crude eating machine trailing eyestalks and fins. But here in this failing Air the mouths were barely opening as they worked, lapping and chewing at the krypton grass. The pigs were keeping their squat bodies sealed up as much as possible, maintaining an inner reservoir of life-sustaining Air; in this way, she knew, the pigs could last for days up here — unlike fragile, weak and ill-adapted Human Beings.

She turned to Farr, who hovered beside her with his eyes barely protruding over the trunk. She mimed: Just three of them. We’re in luck.

He nodded and pointed at one of the pigs. Dura, studying the animal more closely, saw that it was bigger than the others: bulkier, clumsier.

A pregnant sow.

She felt a smile spread across her face. Perfect.

She counted one hundred heartbeats, then lifted her spears. Philas and Adda should be in position by now.

She nodded to Farr.

The two humans erupted from behind their trunk. Dura yelled as loudly as the thin Air would permit; she hurled herself along the Magfield flux at the pigs, rattling her spears against the wood of the trunk. Beside her Farr did the same, his hair tangling almost comically.

At their approach the pigs’ mouths snapped shut. Their eyestalks lifted, rigid, to fix straining gazes on their sudden assailants. Then, as if with one mind, the pigs turned and bolted.

The animals hurled themselves along the Magfield lines, seeking the easiest and quickest escape. They clattered against tree trunks and bounced over roots, their jet orifices farting clouds of green-stained, sweet-smelling Air. Dura and Farr gave chase, still roaring enthusiastically. Suddenly Dura found herself bound up by the excitement of the hunt, and a new energy coursed through her.

The pigs, of course, outran Dura and Farr easily. Within a few heartbeats the animals were disappearing into the darkness of distance, trailing clouds of jetfarts…

But there were Adda and Philas, waiting just a little further down the Magfield, with a net pulled tight between them and with stabbing spears at the ready.

The first two pigs were moving too rapidly to stop. They turned in the Air and tumbled against each other, their huge mouths popping open to emit childlike squeals, but they hurtled backside first into the net. Philas and Adda worked together, a little clumsily but effectively. Within a few heartbeats they had thrown the net around the two pigs and were prodding at them, trying to force them to subside. Green jetfarts squirted from the pigs, and the net bulged as the terrified animals strove vainly to escape. By the time Dura got there they would have the animals trussed up and then…

There was a scream behind her. Farr’s scream.

She whirled in the Air, Adda and Philas forgotten. The third pig — the pregnant sow, she saw — had evaded Adda’s net. Terrified and enraged, it had flown down, away from the root ceiling, and was now plummeting up through the trees, back along the Magfield flux… and straight at Farr.

The boy gazed at the animal’s flapping fins and rigid, staring eyestalks, apparently transfixed. He isn’t going to get out of the way, Dura realized. And the momentum of the pig would crush him in a moment.

She tried to call out, to move toward the boy — but she was plunged into a nightmare of slow motion. The Magfield was thick, clinging, the Air a soupy mass in which she was embedded. She struggled to get free, to shout to her brother, but the hurtling, blurring speed of the pig reduced her efforts to the trivial.

There was barely a mansheight between the pig and the boy. Dura, trapped in viscous Air, heard herself scream.

Suddenly the sow opened its mouth wide and bellowed in agony. Jetfarts staining the air, it veered abruptly. One ventral fin caught Farr with a side-swipe which sent him spinning against a tree trunk… but, Dura saw with a flood of relief, he was no more than shocked.

As the sow tumbled in the Air the reason for its distress revealed itself: Adda’s long spear, protruding from the sow’s belly. The spear quivered as the beast thrashed, seeking an escape from this sudden agony.

Now Adda himself raced along the Magfield, ungainly but determined. Behind him the two trapped pigs were struggling free of the abandoned net. Adda bellowed: “She’s gone rogue… Dura, get to the boy and keep him away.”

Now the pig settled in the Air, all six of its eyestalks triangulating on the old man. Adda slowed to a hover, arms and legs outspread, his gaze locked on the pig.

Dura said uncertainly, “Adda, get out of the way… I think…”

“Get the damn boy.”

Dura hurried to obey, skirting the hovering pig.

With a howl that rent the glutinous Air, the pig charged Adda.

Adda twisted in the Air and began to Wave out of the way, his legs thrashing at the Magfield…

But, Dura saw instantly, not fast enough.

Clinging to the weeping Farr there was nothing she could do as the final, ghastly moments unfolded. Adda’s face showed no fear — but no acceptance either, Dura saw; there was only a grimace of irritation, perhaps at this newest failure of his crumbling body.

As it closed on Adda, trailing green clouds of jetfarts, the sow opened its mouth.

The huge, circular maw closed on both Adda’s legs. The momentum of the hurtling sow carried away both pig and Adda, and Dura cried out as she saw Adda’s fragile body smashed against a tree trunk. But he was still conscious, and fighting; with both fists he pounded on the sow’s wide, quivering back.

Dura kicked away from the tree and Waved as hard as she could toward the pig. Philas was approaching the pig from the far side, her stabbing spears held out before her. The woman’s eyes were wide, emptied by shock and terror.

The pig, halted by its impact with the tree, pulled back into clear Air now, and it began, with lateral squirts of gas, to rotate around its long axis. Adda seemed to realize what was happening. With his legs still trapped, he beat harder at the pig’s flank, cursing violently. But still the pig twisted, ever faster, becoming at last a blur of fins and eyestalks. Jetfart gas trailed around its body in circular ribbons, and electron glow sparkled from its fins. Adda, at last, fell backward and lay against the pig’s long flank, his knees bent cruelly.

This was the way boars killed their prey, Dura knew: the boar would spin so fast that the superfluidity of the Air which sustained all animals in the Mantle, including humans, broke down. It was simple, but deadly effective. Even now, she knew, the pain of Adda’s trapped legs, the agony induced by the whirling of the world around him, would be subsumed by a dull, disabling numbness as his muscles ceased to function, his senses dimmed, and at last even his mind failed.

With a yell from deep in her gut, Dura threw herself at the whirling animal. She scrabbled at its smooth, slippery hide, feeling her belly and legs brush against its hot flesh. She stabbed at its tough epidermis once, twice, before being hurled clear. She tumbled backward through the Air, colliding with a trunk hard enough to knock the breath out of her.

One of her two short spears had snapped, she saw, and was now floating harmlessly away. But she had succeeded in ramming the other through the skin of the pig. The wounded animal, with Adda’s spear still protruding from its belly, tried to maintain its rotation; but, distracted by pain, its motion became uneven, and the pig began to precess clumsily, the axis of its rotation dipping as it thrashed in the Air. Poor Adda, now evidently unconscious, was thrown back and forth by the pig, his limp body flopping passively against the animal’s flank.

Philas fell on the pig now and drove another spear into the animal’s hide, widening the wound Dura had made. The animal opened its huge mouth, its circular lip-face pulling back to reveal a green-stained throat, and let out a roar of pain. Adda, his legs freed from the mouth, fell limply away from the pig; Farr hurried to him.

Philas rammed her second spear into the thrashing pig’s mouth, stabbing at the organs exposed within. Dura pushed away from the tree and hurled herself once more at the sow; she was weaponless, but she hauled at the spears already embedded in the pig’s flanks, wrenching open the wounds, while Philas continued to work at the mouth.

It took many minutes. The pig thrashed and tore at the Air to the end, striving to use its residual rotation to throw off its attackers. But it had no escape. At last, leaking jetfarts aimlessly, its cries dying to a murmur, the sow’s struggles petered away.

The two women, exhausted, hung in the Air. The sow was an inert mass, immense, its skin ripped, its mouth gaping loosely. Dura — panting, barely able to see — found it difficult to believe that even now the animal would not erupt to a ghastly, butchered semblance of life.

Dura Waved slowly through the Air to Philas. The two women embraced, their eyes wide with shock at what they had done.

Farr gingerly laid Adda along a tree trunk, relying on the gentle pressure of the Magfield to hold him in place. He stroked the old man’s yellowed hair. He had retrieved Adda’s battered old spear and laid it beside him.

Dura and Philas approached, Dura wiping trembling hands on her thighs. She studied Adda’s injuries cautiously, scared even to touch him.

Adda’s legs, below the knees, were a mangled mess: the long bones were obviously broken in several places, the feet reduced to masses of pulped meat. The surface of Adda’s chest was unbroken but oddly uneven; Dura, fearful even to touch, speculated about broken ribs. His right arm dangled at a strange angle, limp in the Air; perhaps the shoulder had been broken. Adda’s face was a soft, bruised mess. Both eyecups were filled by gummy blood, and his nostrils were dimmed… And, of course, the Xeelee alone knew about internal injuries. Adda’s penis and scrotum had fallen from their cache between his legs; exposed, they made the old man look still more vulnerable, pathetic. Tenderly, Dura cupped the shriveled genitalia in her hand and tucked them away in their cache.

“He’s dying,” Philas said, her voice uneven. She seemed to be drawing back from the battered body, as if this, for her, was too much to deal with.

Dura shook her head, forcing herself to think. “He’ll certainly die up here, in this lousy Air. We’ve got to get him away, back into the Mantle…”

Philas touched her arm. She looked into Dura’s face, and Dura saw how the woman was struggling to break through her own shock. Philas said, “Dura, we have to face it. He’s going to die. There’s no point making plans, or struggling to get him away from here… all we can do is make him comfortable.”

Dura shook off the light touch of the widow, unable — yet — to accept that.

Adda’s mouth was phrasing words, feebly shaping the breath that wheezed through his lips. “…Dura…”

Still scared to touch him, she leaned close to his mouth. “Adda? You’re conscious?”

A sketch of a laugh came from him, and he turned blind eyecups to her. “…I’d… rather not be.” He closed his mouth and tried to swallow; then he said, “Are you all right?… The boy?”

“Yes, Adda. He’s fine. Thanks to you.”

“…And the pigs?”

“We killed the one that attacked you. The sow. The others…” She glanced to the nets which drifted in the Air, tangled and empty. “They got away. What a disaster this has been.”

“No.” He stirred, as if trying to reach out to her, then fell back. “We did our best. Now you must… try again. Go back…”

“Yes. But first we have to work out how to move you.” She stared at his crushed body, trying to visualize how she might address the worst of the wounds.

Again that sketchy, chilling laugh. “Don’t be so… damned stupid,” he said. “I’m finished. Don’t… waste your time.

She opened her mouth, ready to argue, but a great weariness fell upon her, and she subsided. Of course Adda was right. And Philas. Of course he would soon die. But still, she knew, she would have to try to save him. “I never saw a pig behave like that. A boar, maybe. But…”

“We should have… expected it,” he whispered. “Stupid of me… pregnant sow… it was bound to… react like that.” His breath seemed to be slowing; in a strange way, she thought as she studied him, he seemed to be growing more comfortable. More peaceful.

She said softly, “You’re not going to die yet, damn you.”

He did not reply.

She turned to Philas. “Look, we’ll have to try to bind up his wounds. Cut some strips from the hide of that sow. Perhaps we can strap this damaged arm across his body. And we could tie his legs together, use his spear as a splint.”

Philas stared at her for a long moment, then went to do as Dura had ordered.

Farr asked, “What can I do?”

Dura looked around, abstracted. “Go and retrieve that net. We’re going to have to make a cradle, somehow, so we can haul him back home…”

“All right.”

When Philas returned, the women tried to straighten Adda’s legs in preparation for binding them to the makeshift splint. When she touched his flesh, Dura saw Adda’s face spasm, his mouth open wide in a soundless cry. Unable to proceed, she pulled her hands away from his ruined flesh and stared at Philas helplessly.

Then, behind her, Farr screamed.

Dura whirled, her hands reaching for Adda’s spear.

Farr was still working on the tangled net — or had been; now he was backing away from it, his eyecups wide with shock. With the briefest of glances, Dura assured herself that the boy had not been harmed. Then, as she hurried to his side, she looked past him to discover what was threatening him…

She slowed to a halt in the Air, her mouth dangling, forgetting even her brother in her amazement.

A box, floating in the Air, approached them. It was a cube about a mansheight on a side made of carefully cut plates of wood. Ropes led to a team of six young Air-pigs which was patiently hauling the box through the forest. And, through a clear panel set into the front of the box, a man’s face peered out at her.

He was frowning.

The box drifted to a halt. Dura raised Adda’s spear.