Under Pallis’s direction Rees and Gover stoked the fire bowls and worked their way across the surface of the tree, waving large, light blankets over the billowing smoke. Pallis studied the canopy of smoke with a critical eye; never satisfied, he snapped and growled at the boys. But, steadily and surely, the tree’s rise through the Nebula was molded into a slow curve towards the rim of the Raft.
The Raft grew in the sky until it blocked out half the Nebula. From below it showed as a ragged disc a half-mile wide; metal plates scattered highlights from the stars and light leaked through dozens of apertures in the deck. As the tree sailed up to the rim the Raft foreshortened into a patchwork ellipse; Rees could see the sooty scars of welding around the edges of the nearer plates, and as his eye tracked across the ceilinglike surface the plates crowded into a blur, with the far side of the disc a level horizon.
At last, with a rush of air, the tree rose above the rim and the upper surface of the Raft began to open out before Rees. He found himself drawn to the edge of the tree; he buried his hands in the foliage and stared, open-mouthed, as a torrent of color, noise and movement broke over him.
The Raft was an enormous dish that brimmed with life. Points of light were sprinkled over its surface. The deck was studded with buildings of all shapes and sizes, constructed of wood panels or corrugated metal and jumbled together like toys.
A confusion of smells assaulted Rees’s senses — sharp ozone from giant machines around the rim, wood smoke from a thousand chimneys, the hint of exotic cooking scents from the cabins. And people — more than Rees could count, so many that the Belt population would be easily lost among them — people walked about the Raft in great streams; and knots of running children exploded here and there into bursts of laughter.
He made out sturdy pyramids fixed to the deck, waist-high. And out of each pyramid a cable soared straight upwards; Rees tilted his face back, following the line of the cables, and he gasped. To each cable was tethered the trunk of a tree. To Rees one flying tree had been wonder enough. Now, over the Raft, he was faced with a mighty forest. Every tethering cable was vertical and quite taut, and Rees could almost feel the exertion of the harnessed trees as they strained against the pull of the Core.
A hundred questions tumbled through Rees’s mind. What would it be like to walk on that metal surface? What must it have been like for the Crew who had built the Raft, hanging in the void above the Core?
But now wasn’t the time; there was still work to do. Pallis was already bellowing at Gover. Rees got to his feet, wrapping his toes in the foliage like a regular woodsman.
Pallis joined him, and they labored at a fire bowl together.
“Rees, you can’t have had any real idea what the Raft is like. So… why did you do it? What were you running from?”
Rees considered the question. “I wasn’t running from anything, pilot. The mine is a tough place, but it was my home. No. I left to find the answer.”
“The answer? To what?”
“To why the Nebula is dying.”
Pallis studied the serious young miner and felt a chill settle on his spine.
How much education did the average miner get? Pallis doubted Rees was even literate. As soon as a child was strong enough he or she was forced into the foundry or down to the crushing surface of the iron star, to begin a life of muscle-sapping toil…
And the Belt’s children were forced there by the economics of the Nebula, he reminded himself harshly; economics which he — Pallis — helped to keep in place.
He shook his head, troubled. Pallis had never accepted the theory, common on the Raft, that the miners were a species of sub-human, fit only for the toil they endured. What was the life span of the miners? Thirty thousand shifts? Less, maybe half of Pallis’s own age already?
What a fine woodsman Rees would make… or, he admitted ruefully, maybe a better Scientist.
A vague plan began to form in his mind.
Maybe Pallis could help Rees find a place on the Raft.
It wouldn’t be easy. Rees would face a lifetime of hostility from the likes of Gover. And the Raft was no bed of flowers and leaves; its economy, too, had declined with the slow choking of the Nebula.
But Rees deserved a chance. And Rees was a smart kid. Maybe, Pallis mused, just maybe he might actually find some answers. Was it possible?
“Now, then, miner,” Pallis said briskly, “we’ve got a tree to fly. Let’s get the bowls brimming; I want a canopy up there so thick I could walk about on it. All right?”
The tree had passed the highest layer of the forest. The Raft turned from a landscape into an island in the air, crowned by a mass of shifting foliage. The sky above Rees seemed darker than usual, so that he felt he was suspended at the very edge of the Nebula, looking down over the mists surrounding the Nebula’s Core.
And in all that universe of air the only sign of humanity was the Raft, a scrap of metal suspended in miles of air.
His heart lifted, bursting with the exhilaration of a thousand questions.
“Did Rees find his answers?”
Eve just smiled, and the images, of the glowing Nebula and its mile-wide stars, faded from my view, receding into a scrap of crimson light, a spark lost in the greater blaze of human history…[5]
The assaults continued, waves of them, generations of humans battering against the great Xeelee defenses… and leaving shards of humanity stranded in the great spaces around the Xeelee Prime Radiant.
At last, even those broken shards became weapons of war.
The Tyranny of Heaven
Rodi climbed through the hatch and into the flitter. The craft was a box the size of a small room. He threaded his way through the interior.
There was a girl in one of the pilot seats. She turned. Tall and muscular, she wasn’t much older than Rodi’s twenty years.
Rodi tripped over a locker.
The girl’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Take it easy. You’re Rodi. Right? I’m Thet.”
His face hot, Rodi took the seat beside her. “Glad to meet you.” The instrument panel before him looked utterly alien.
“Well, buckle in.” Thet punched fat buttons. Monitors showed muscles contracting in the Ark’s hull. “And don’t be so nervous.”
“I’m not.”
“Of course you are. I never understand why. You’ve taken flitters outside the Ark before, haven’t you?”
“Sure.” He tried not to sound defensive. “On inter-Ark hops. But this is my first mission drop — my first time out of hyperspace. It’s a little different.”
She raised fine eyebrows. “We didn’t evolve in hyperspace.”
“Maybe. But it’s all I know—”
An orifice in the hull opened and exploded at them; the flitter surged into hyperspace. It was like being born.
A Virtual image of the Ark swam into their monitors. Holism Ark was a Spline ship: a rolling, fleshy sphere encrusted with blisters. It was a living being, Rodi mused, and it looked like it.