“Yes. So much for Hork’s expedition into the underMantle.”
“Perhaps. But, Adda, that brave and foolish expedition was the only hope any of us had. I have clung to it far beyond any rational point.” She smiled thinly. “In fact I still cling to it. Why not? As long as it keeps me functioning.”
He surveyed the thin trails of Air-cars and people dispersing into the roiling Air. In the distance the larger cars showed up as silhouettes, fleeing insects against searing Xeelee light.
Deni rubbed her chin. “You may not understand this, Adda, but most of the City’s people have never strayed outside Parz before. To them, the City has always been the safest place in the world. Now that it’s falling apart around them, they feel — betrayed. Like a child abandoned by its parents.” She hesitated. “We’re talking of hope. But in a way, for many the worst has already come to pass.”
“Do you think we’re doing any good here?”
She looked strained. “Well, we’re shoving the patients out of this improvised port as fast as they are coming in — crushed in the Stadium, or burned and sliced open by that Corestuff berg incursion through the Midside… But whether they are any safer out there than in what’s left of the City, I don’t care to judge.” She smiled without humor. “But at least it makes us feel better to help them. Don’t you agree?”
Another patient was shouldered past them and out into a waiting car. Farr was in this latest work party, and as soon as the patient — an unconscious child — was delivered, Farr turned to make his way back into the chaos of the ward. Adda laid a hand on his shoulder, restraining him. There were deep bruises around the boy’s eyes; his shoulders were hunched and his mouth was working as if he was mumbling to himself.
Adda shook him gently. “Farr? Are you all right, lad?”
Farr focused on the old man. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice high and thin. “I’m just a little tired, and…”
“Listen, you don’t have to carry on with this.”
Farr looked offended. “Adda, I’m not a kid.”
“I’m not suggesting you are, you damn…”
Deni moved smoothly between them, something of her old sheen of competence returning to her. “Farr, you’re doing a marvelous job… and I need you to keep on doing it. So I agree with Adda; I think you should take a short break — find something to eat, a place to rest.”
Farr looked ready to protest further, but Deni pushed him gently in the chest. “Go on. That’s an order.”
With a thin smile the boy complied.
Deni turned a quizzical face to Adda. “I can tell you were never a parent.”
Adda growled wordlessly.
A new Air-car approached the rough lip of the opened-up wall; five nervous pigs jostled together, bumping against the Skin like inflated toys. The car’s door opened and the driver leaned across. “Adda,” Toba Mixxax said, his broad, weary face splitting into a grin. “I’m glad to find you. Ito said you were trying to get here, with Farr.”
“Well, he’s here. He’s fine. He’s working hard.” Adda had always found Toba’s round, flat face rather bland and unexpressive; but now Adda could see real pain in the set of Toba’s eyecups, the small lines at the corners of his mouth. “Cris isn’t here. I’m sorry.”
Toba’s expression barely changed, but Adda could see a small light go out of him. “No. I, ah — I didn’t expect he would be.”
“No.”
The two men let their gazes slide away from each other, briefly embarrassed.
“How’s Ito? Where is she?”
“At the ceiling-farm. What’s left of it. She’s found plenty to do. She’s a craftswoman, Adda, and she’s launched herself into repair work, with the coolies who’ve stayed.” He shook his head. “Everything’s smashed, though. You wouldn’t believe it.” There was bitterness in Toba’s voice. “This latest Glitch has done for us, Adda.”
Toba’s words made him think of what Deni had said — that the Xeelee were here to disrupt the Core, to devastate the Star itself. Adda wasn’t very imaginative; he focused on the here-and-now, on what was achievable. But, he suddenly wondered, what if Deni Maxx was right — that the Xeelee truly had come, this time, to finish the Star — to do for them all?
He glanced around the lurid sky. Inside himself, he’d been expecting this Glitch to come to an end, eventually — just like all the other Glitches in his long life, no matter how severe. But what if that wasn’t true, this time? After all, the Xeelee were manufacturing this Glitch; his previous experience wasn’t a reliable guide. What if the Xeelee kept on, persisted until the Core itself welled out from rents in the Quantum Sea…
Up to now Adda had been anticipating only his own death, and the death of many others — even of those close to him. But perhaps this new catastrophe was destined to go much further — to encompass the destruction of the race itself. He was overwhelmed suddenly by a vision of the Star scoured clean of Human Beings, of all future generations — everything Adda had worked for — snuffed out, rendered meaningless.
Toba was still talking. Adda hadn’t heard a word he’d said for a long time.
Adda pulled himself away and took a deep breath. If the world was to finish today — well, there was little Adda could do about it. In the meantime he had work to do.
Deni Maxx joined Adda in the improvised doorway. “Thanks for coming to help us, citizen.”
Toba shrugged. “I needed something to keep me busy.” Another patient was being brought through the ward now; Toba Mixxax stared past Adda at the broken body, and his round face set into a mask of grimness.
“Well, you found it,” Adda said darkly.
Deni Maxx touched his arm. “Come on, upfluxer. Let’s get back to work.”
In the distance the starbreakers, like immense daggers, continued to pierce the Mantle. Adda stared out for one moment longer; then, with a final nod to Toba, he turned away.
Once the Star had seemed huge to her. Now here she was stranded in the immensity of this Ur-sky, of stars and planets, and she thought back almost nostalgically to the cozy world of the Mantle — with the smooth purple floor of the Quantum Sea below her, the Crust a blanket above her, the Mantle itself like an immense womb succoring her. All of that had been stripped away by this astonishing journey, and by the seeing-gadgets of the Ur-humans.
She tilted back her head and opened her eyes as wide as she could, trying to take it all in, to bury her awe and build a model of this new universe in her head.
The sky around them — the space between the stars — wasn’t utterly black. She made out hints of structure: clouds, whorls, shadings of gray. There must be some kind of air out there, beyond the transparent walls — air but not Air: thin, translucent, patchy, but sufficient to give the sky an elusive shape. It was a little like the fugitive ghost-patterns she could see in the darkness of her own eyecups if she jammed her eyes tight shut.
And beyond the thin shroud of gas lay the stars, suspended all around the sky. They were lanterns, clear and without flicker; they were of all colors and all levels of brightness, from the faintest spark to intense, noble flames. And perhaps, she thought with an almost religious awe, those lights in the sky were worlds in themselves. Maybe there were other forms of humans on those distant lights, placed there by the Ur-humans for their own inscrutable purposes. Would it ever be possible to know? — to speak to those humans, to travel there across such immensities?
She tried to make out patterns in the distribution of the stars. Perhaps there was a hint of a ring structure over there — and a dozen stars trailed in a line across that corner of the sky…