Flux xs-3 Read online

  “Oh, shut up.” Now the strong woman thrust her face into his window; Toba couldn’t help but recoil. “What do you think that means to us, ‘your property’? And anyway…” She pointed at the injured old fellow. “We can’t go anywhere with Adda in that state.” The old man, Adda, called something to her — perhaps an order to leave him — but she ignored him. “We’re not going to move. Do what you have to do. And we…” — she raised her spear again — “will do whatever we can to stop you.”

  Toba stared into the woman’s clear eyecups.

  At his side was a collection of small, finely carved wooden levers. Maybe now was the time to pull on those levers, to use the car’s crossbows and javelin tubes…

  Maybe.

  He leaned forward, unsure of his own motives. “What’s happened to him?”

  The woman hesitated, but the boy piped up loyally, his thin, clear voice transmitted well by the Speaker tubes. “Adda was gored by a boar.”

  The old man spat a harsh laugh. “Oh, rubbish. I was mangled by a pregnant sow. Stupid old fool that I am.” Now he seemed to be struggling to push himself away from his tree trunk to reach for a weapon. “But not so stupid, or old, that I can’t turn your last few minutes of life into hell, Pole man.”

  Toba locked eyes with the strong woman. She raised her spear and grimaced… and then, shockingly, disarmingly, her face broke up into laughter.

  Toba, startled, found himself laughing back.

  The woman jabbed her spear at Toba, barely threatening now. “You. Toba Paxxax.”

  “Mixxax. Toba Mixxax.”

  “I am Dura, daughter of Logue.”

  He nodded to her.

  She said, “Look, you can see we’re in trouble here. Why don’t you get out of your pig-box and give us some help?”

  He frowned. “What kind of help?”

  She looked toward the old man, apparently exasperated. “With him, of course.” She stared at the car with new eyes, as if appraising the subtlety of its design. “Maybe you could help us fix up his wounds.”

  “Hardly. I’m no doctor.”

  Dura frowned, as if the word wasn’t familiar to her. “Then at least you can help us get him out of the forest. Your box would be safe here until you got back.”

  “It’s called a car,” he said absently. “Carry him where? Your home?”

  She nodded and jabbed a spear along the line of the trees, down toward the interior of the Star. “A few thousand mansheights that way.”

  Mansheights? he thought, distracted. A practical measure, he supposed… but what was wrong with microns? A mansheight would be about ten microns — a hundred-thousandth of a meter — if it meant what it sounded like…

  “What kind of facilities do you have there?”

  “…Facilities?”

  Her hesitation was answer enough. Even if Toba were inclined to risk his own health carting this old chap around the forest, there was evidently nothing waiting for him at home but more of these naked savages living in some unimaginable squalor. “Look,” he said, trying to be kind, “what’s the point? Even if we got there in time…”

  “…there’d be nothing we could do for him.” Dura’s eyes were narrow and troubled. “I know. But I can’t just give up.” She looked at Toba, through his window, with what looked like a faint stab of hope. “You talked about your property. Is it far from here? Do you have any — ah, facilities?”

  “Hardly.” Of course there were basic medical facilities for the coolies, but nothing with any more ambition than to patch them up and send them back to work. Frankly, if one of his coolies were injured as badly as old Adda he’d expect him to die.

  He’d write him off, in fact.

  Only in Parz itself would there be treatment of the quality needed to save Adda’s life.

  He picked up his reins, trying to refocus his attention on his own affairs. He had plenty of problems of his own, plenty of work to finish before he’d see Ito and Cris again. Maybe he could be charitable — give these upfluxers the chance to get away. After all, they weren’t really likely to damage his ceiling-farm…

  “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to get out of this surprisingly awkward situation with some kind of dignity. “But I don’t think…”

  The woman, Dura, stared through his window, her eyecups deep and sharp, acute; Toba felt himself shudder under the intensity of her perception. “You know a way to help him,” she said slowly. “Or you think you do. Don’t you? I can see it in your face.”

  Toba felt his mouth open and close, like the vent of a farting Air-piglet. “No. Damn it… Maybe. All right, maybe. If we could get him to Parz. But even then there’d be no guarantee…” He laughed. “And anyway, how do you plan to pay for the treatment? Who are you, Hork’s long-lost niece? If you think I have funds to cover it…”

  “Help us,” she said, staring straight into his eyecups.

  It wasn’t a request now, he realized, or a plea; it was an order.

  He closed his eyes. Damn it. Why did these things have to happen to him? Didn’t he have enough problems? He almost wished he’d simply blasted this lot with the crossbows before they had a chance to open their mouths and confuse him.

  Unwilling to let himself think about it further, he pulled an Air-tank from beneath his seat, and reached out to open the door of the car.

  * * *

  A circular crack appeared in one previously seamless wall of Toba Mixxax’s wooden box — of his car. At this latest surprise Dura couldn’t help but flinch backward, raising her spear at the lid of wood which began to hinge inward into the car.

  The door opened fully with a sigh of equalizing pressure. The richness of the car’s Air wafted out over her, so thick it almost made her cough; she got one deep breath of it, and for a few heartbeats she felt invigorated, filled with energy. But then the Air dispersed into the stale, sticky thinness of the forest; and it was gone, as insubstantial as a dream. Obviously there had been more Air inside the compartment than out… but that made sense, of course. Why else ride around in a wooden prison, dependent on the cooperation of young pigs, other than to carry with you enough Air to sit in comfort?

  Toba Mixxax emerged from his car. Dura watched, wary and wide-eyed. Mixxax stared back at her. For long seconds they hung there, eyes raking over each other.

  Mixxax was wearing clothes. Not just a belt, or a carrying-pouch, but a suit of some kind of leather which encased him all over. She’d never seen anything so restrictive. And useless. It wasn’t as if it had a lot of pockets, even. And he wore a hat on his head, with a veil of some clear, light material dangling over his face. Tubes led from the veil to a pack on his back. A medallion, a wheel shape, hung on a chain around his neck.

  Mixxax was a good five years older than Dura herself, and only perhaps fifteen years younger than her father at the time of his death. Old enough for his hair — what she could see of it — to have mostly yellowed and for a network of lines to have accumulated around shallow eyecups. In the forest’s thin Air he seemed breathless, despite his hat and veil. He was short — a head shorter than she was — and looked well fed: his cheeks were round and his belly bulged under his clothes. But, despite his cargo of fat, Mixxax was not well muscled. His neck, arms and upper legs were thin, the muscles lost under the concealing layers of leather; his covered head wobbled slightly atop a neck that was frankly scrawny.

  In a fair contest, Dura realized slowly, Mixxax would be no match for her. In fact, he’d be hard pressed to defend himself against Farr. Had all the people of his strange home — Parz City — become so atrophied by riding around in pig-drawn cars?

  Dura began to feel confident again. Toba Mixxax was strange, but he obviously wasn’t much of a threat.

  She found her gaze drawn back to the medallion suspended from his neck. It was about the size of her palm, and consisted of an open wheel against which was fixed a sketchy sculpture of a man, with arms and legs outstretched against the wheel’s five spokes. The work was finely done,
with the expression on the face of the little carved man conveying a lot of meaning: pain, and yet a kind of patient dignity.

  But it wasn’t the form of the pendant but its material which was causing her to stare. It was carved of a substance she’d never seen before. Not wood, certainly; it looked too smooth, too heavy for that. What, then? Carved bone? Or…

  Mixxax seemed to become aware of her gazing at the pendant; with a start, oddly guilty, he masked the device in the palm of his hand and tucked it inside the neck of his jacket, out of sight.

  She decided to puzzle over this later. One more mystery among many…

  “Dura,” Toba said. His voice sounded a lot better than the distorted croak she’d heard through the walls of the car.

  “Thank you for helping us.”

  He frowned, his fat cheeks pulling down. “Don’t thank me until we find out if there’s anything to be done. Even if he survives the trip back to Parz, there’s no guarantee I’ll find a doctor to treat an upfluxer like him.”

  Upfluxer?

  “And even if I do I don’t know how you’re going to pay…”

  She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “Toba Mixxax, I’d rather deal with these mysterious problems when I come to them. For now, we should concentrate on getting Adda into your box… your car.”

  He nodded, and grinned. “Yes. And that’s not going to be so easy.”

  With a few brisk Waves, and with Mixxax clumsily following, Dura crossed to the little group of Human Beings. Farr’s eyes swiveled between Dura’s face, Mixxax’s hat, and back again; and his mouth gaped like a third, huge eyecup. Dura tried not to smile. “All right, Farr. Don’t stare.”

  Philas was cradling Adda’s battered head. Adda turned his blinded face to them. “Clear off, Parz man.” His voice was a bubbling croak.

  Mixxax ignored the words and bent over the old man. Dura seemed to see Adda’s wounds through the stranger’s eyes — the splayed right arm, the crushed feet, the imploded chest — and she felt a knife twist in her heart.

  Mixxax straightened up. His expression was obscured by his veil. “I was right. It’s not going to be easy, even getting him as far as the car,” he said quietly.

  “Then don’t bother,” Adda hissed. “Dura, you bloody fool…”

  “Shut up,” Dura said. She tried to think her way through the situation. “Maybe,” she said slowly, “if we could bind him up — tie him closely to splints made out of our spears — it wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Yes.” Mixxax looked around. “But those ropes you have, and the nets, would just cut into him.”

  “I know.” She looked appraisingly at Mixxax’s clothes. “So maybe…”

  After a while, he grasped what she was asking; and with a resigned sigh he started to peel off his trousers and jacket. “Why me?” he muttered, almost too quietly for her to hear.

  * * *

  He wore clothes even under his clothes. His chest, arms and legs were bare, but he wore substantial shorts of leather which covered his crotch and lower stomach. He kept his hat on.

  He looked even scrawnier of limb, flabbier of belly, without his clothes. In fact, he looked ridiculous. Dura forbore to comment.

  The Human Beings wore simple garments sometimes, of course — ponchos and capes, if the Air blew especially cold. But clothes under clothes?

  Adda swore violently as they strapped him — with knotted trouser legs and sleeves — to a makeshift frame of spears. But he was too weak to resist, and within a few minutes he was encased in a cocoon of soft leather, his blind face twisting to and fro as if in search of escape.

  Dura and Mixxax, with a scared Philas still cradling Adda’s fragile head, slid Adda’s cocoon carefully into the pig-car. Mixxax climbed in after it and set to work fixing it in place at the rear of the cabin with lengths of rope. Even now, Dura could hear from outside the car, Adda continued to curse his savior.

  Dura smiled at Philas, tired. “Old devil.”

  Philas did not respond. Her eyes, as she stared at the car, were wide… in fact, Dura slowly realized, her fear now was the strongest emotion the woman had shown since the death of Esk.

  Dura reached out and took Philas’s hand. It trembled against her palm, like a small animal. “Philas,” she said carefully. “I need your help.”

  Philas turned her face, long, grief-lined, toward Dura.

  Dura went on, “I need to return to the Human Beings. To organize another hunt… You see that, don’t you? But someone has to go with Adda, in the car, to this — Parz City.”

  Philas almost spat the word. “No.”

  “Philas, you must. I…”

  “Farr. Send him.”

  Dura stared at the woman’s hard, empty-eyed expression; anger and fear radiated out, shocking her. “Farr’s just a kid. You can’t be serious, Philas.”

  “Not me.” Philas shook her head stiffly, the muscles of her neck stiff with rage. “I’m not getting in that thing, to be taken away. No. I’d rather die.”

  And Dura, despairing, realized that the widow meant it. She tried for some while to persuade Philas, but there was no chink in the younger woman’s resolution.

  “All right, Philas.” Problems revolved in her head: the tribe, Farr… Her brother would have to come with her, in the car, of course. Adda had been correct in intuiting that Dura would never be able to relax if Farr were out of her sight for long. She said to Philas, “Here is what you must do.” She squeezed the woman’s hand, hard. “Go back to the Human Beings. Tell them what has happened. That we are safe, and that we’re going to get help for Adda. And we’ll return if we can.”

  Philas, her transfixing terror abating, nodded carefully.

  “They must hunt again. Tell them that, Philas; try to make them understand. Despite what’s befallen us. Otherwise they’ll starve. Do you understand? You must tell them all this, Philas, and make them hear.”

  “I will. I’m sorry, Dura.”

  Dura felt an impulse to embrace the woman then; but Philas held herself away. The two women hovered in the Air, unspeaking, awkward, for a few heartbeats.

  Dura turned away from Philas to face the door of the car. It was dark in there, like a mouth.

  Terror spurted in her, sudden and unexpected. She fought to move forward, to keep from shivering.

  She was scared of the car, of Parz City, of the unknown. Of course she was. She wondered now if that fear, lurking darkly at the back of her head, was truly what had impelled her to order Philas to go with Toba, regardless of any other justification. And she wondered if Philas had perceived that, too.

  Here was another layer, she thought tiredly, to add to an already overcomplex relationship. Well, maybe that was the nature of life.

  Dura turned and climbed slowly into the car; Farr, wordless, meek, followed.

  The man from the Pole, much less impressive without his outer garments, watched them climb aboard. The car proved to be cramped with the four of them — plus Adda’s improvised cocoon and an expansive seat for Mixxax before an array of controls. Mixxax pulled off his hat and veil with every expression of relief. He pulled a lever; the heavy door swung outward.

  Just before she was sealed away from the forest, Dura called out: “And Philas! Give them our love…”

  The door settled into its frame with a dull impact. Mixxax pulled another lever: a hiss, startlingly loud, erupted from the walls around them.

  Air flooded the cabin. It was sweet, invigorating, and it filled Dura’s head — but it was, she reminded herself, alien. She found a corner and huddled into it, pulling her knees to her chest.

  Mixxax looked around. He seemed puzzled. “Are you all right? You look — ill.”

  Dura fought the urge to lunge at him, to batter at the clear panels of wood set in the walls. “Toba Mixxax, we are Human Beings,” she hissed. “We have never, in our lives, been confined inside a box before. Try to understand how it feels.”

  Toba seemed baffled. Then he turned away and, looking self-consci
ous, hauled on reins that passed through the wooden walls.

  Dura’s belly lurched as the car jerked into motion. “Toba. Where is this City of yours?”

  “At the South Pole,” he said. “Downflux. As far downflux as it’s possible to go.”

  Downflux…

  Dura closed her eyes.

  5

  Dura emerged reluctantly from sleep.

  She could feel the laxness of her muscles, the slow rhythm of her heart, the rich, warm Air of the car pulsing through her lungs and capillaries. She opened her eyecups slowly and glanced around the cramped, boxy interior of the car.

  The only light came from four small, clear sections of wall — windows, Mixxax had called them — and the little wooden room was immersed in semi-darkness. It was a bizarre situation: to take a shit, she’d had to open a panel and squat over a tube; when she pulled a little lever the waste had been sucked away into the Air. The cabin itself was constructed of panels of wood fixed to a framework of struts and spars. The frame surrounded her, she thought fancifully, like the rib cage of some immense, protective creature. Still half-asleep, she remembered absently her feelings of threat when first climbing into the car. Now, after less than a day, she felt only a womb-like security; it was astonishing how quickly humans could adjust.

  Adda’s stretcher was still secured to the struts to which they had strapped it. Adda himself seemed to be asleep — or rather, unconscious. He breathed noisily, his mouth gaping and dribbling fluid; his eyes were half-open, but even his good eye was a small lake of pus which leaked slowly onto his cheek and forehead; small, harmless symbiotes covered his cheeks, lapping at the pus. Farr was curled, asleep, into a tight ball, wadded into one corner of the boxy cabin; his face was tucked into his knees and his hair waved gently as he breathed.

  Mixxax sat in his comfortable-looking seat before his array of levers and gadgets. He had his back to her, his eyes focused on the journey ahead of them. As he sat in his undershorts she could see afresh how thin and bony this man from the City really was, how pale his flesh. But, at this moment, in control of his vehicle, he radiated calm and competence. It was that very calmness, the feeling of being in a controlled, secure environment — coupled with the exhaustion of the abortive hunt, the stress of Adda’s injuries, the thinness of the forest Air — that had lulled Dura and Farr to fall asleep almost instantly, once the car had begun its journey.