Stephen Baxter - Raft

Gord scratched his bald pate. “We’re progessing,” he said lightly. “I’ll say no more than that; but, yes, we’re progressing.”

Hollerbach leaned forward, hands folded behind his back. “What about this control system problem?”

Gord nodded cautiously. “Rees, are you up to date on this one? To direct the Bridge’s fall — to change its orbit — we need some way to control the steam jets we’ll have fixed to the hull; but we don’t want to make any breaches in the hull through which to pass our control lines. We don’t even know if we can make breaches, come to that.

“Now it looks as if we can use components from the cannibalized Moles. Some of their motor units operate on an action-at-a-distance principle. I’m just a simple engineer; maybe you Scientists understand the ins and outs of it. But what it boils down to is that we may be able to operate the jets from inside the Bridge with a series of switches which won’t need any physical connection to the jets at all. We’re about to run tests on the extent to which the hull material blocks the signals.”

Hollerbach smiled. “I’m impressed. Was this your idea?”

“Ah…” Gord scratched his cheek. “We did get a little guidance from a Mole brain. Once you ask the right questions — and get past its complaints about ‘massive sensor dysfunction’ — it’s surprising how…” His voice tailed away and his eyes widened.

“Rees.” The vast voice came from behind Rees; the Scientist stiffened. “I thought I’d find you hanging around here.”

Rees turned and lifted his face up to Roch’s. The huge miner’s eyes were, as ever, red-rimmed with inchoate anger; his fists opened and closed like pistons. Grye whimpered softly and edged behind Hollerbach. “I have work to do, Roch,” Rees said calmly. “So must you; I suggest you return to it.”

“Work?” Roch’s filth-rimmed nostrils flared and he waved a fist at the Bridge. “Like hell will I work so you and your pox-ridden friends can fly off in this fancy thing.”

Hollerbach said sternly, “Sir, the lists of passengers have not yet been published; and until they are it is up to all of us—”

“They don’t need to be published. We all know who’ll be on that trip… and it won’t be the likes of me. Rees, I should have sucked your brains out of your skull while I had the chance down on the kernel.” Roch held up a rope-like finger, “I’ll be back,” he growled. “And when I find I’m not on that list I’m going to make damn sure you’re not either.” He stabbed the finger at Grye. “And the same goes for you!”

Grye turned ash white and trembled convulsively.

Roch stalked off. Gord hefted his jet and said wryly, “Good to know that in this time of upheaval some things have stayed exactly the same. Come on, Nead; let’s get this thing mounted.”

Rees faced Hollerbach and Grye. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the departed Roch. “That’s why we are running out of time,” he said. “The political situation on this Raft — no, damn it, the human situation — is deteriorating fast. The whole thing is unstable. Everyone knows that a ‘list’ is being drawn up… and most people have a good idea who’ll be on it. How long can we expect people to work toward a goal most of them cannot share? A second uprising would be catastrophic. We would descend into anarchy—”

Hollerbach emitted a sigh; suddenly he seemed to stagger. Grye took his arm. “Chief Scientist — are you all right?”

Hollerbach fixed rheumy eyes on Rees. “I’m tired, you see… terribly tired. You’re right, of course, Rees, but what can any of us do, other than give our best efforts to this goal?”

Rees realized suddenly that he had been unloading his own doubts onto the weakening shoulders of Hollerbach, as if he were still a child and the old man some kind of impregnable adult. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t burden you—”

Hollerbach waved a shaky hand. “No, no; you’re quite right. In a way it helps clarify my own thinking.” His eyes twinkled with a faint amusement. “Even your friend Roch helps, in a way. Look at the comparison between us. Roch is young, powerful; I’m too old to stand up — let alone to pass on my frailties to a new generation. Which of us should go on the mission?”

Rees was appalled. “Hollerbach, we need your understanding. You’re not suggesting…”

“Rees, I suspect a grave flaw in the way we live our lives here has been our refusal to accept our place in the universe. We inhabit a world which places a premium on physical strength and endurance — as your friend Roch so ably demonstrates — and on agility, reflex and adaptabilty — for example, the Boneys — rather than ‘understanding.’ We are little more than clumsy animals lost in this bottomless sky. But our inheritance of ageing gadgetry from the Ship, the supply machines and the rest, has let us maintain the illusion that we are masters of this universe, as perhaps we were masters of the world man came from.

“Now, this enforced migration is going to force us to abandon most of our cherished toys — and with them our illusions.” He looked vaguely into the distance. “Perhaps, looking far into man’s future, our big brains will atrophy, useless; perhaps we will become one with the whales and sky wolves, surviving as best we can among the flying trees—”

Rees snorted. “Hollerbach, you’re turning into a maundering bugger in your old age.”

Hollerbach raised his eyebrows. “Boy, I was cultivating old age while you were still chewing iron ore on the kernel of a star.”

“Well, I don’t know about the far future, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. All I can do is solve the problems of the present. And frankly, Hollerbach, I don’t believe we’ve a hope of surviving this trip without your guidance.

“Gentlemen, we’ve a lot to do. I suggest we get on with it.”

The plate hung over the Raft. Pallis crept to its edge and peered out over the battered deckscape.

Smoke was spreading across the deck like a mask over a familiar face.

Suddenly the plate jerked through the air, bowling Pallis onto his back. With a growl he reached out and grabbed handfuls of the netting that swathed the fragile craft. “By the Bones, innkeeper, can’t you control this bloody thing?”

Jame snorted. “This is a real ship. You’re not dangling from one of your wooden toys now, tree-pilot.”

“Don’t push your luck, mine rat.” Pallis thumped a fist into the rough iron of the plate. “It’s just that this way of flying is — unnatural.”

“Unnatural?” Jame laughed. “Maybe you’re right. And maybe you people spent too much time lying around in your leafy bowers, while the miners came along to piss all over you.”

“The war is over, Jame,” Pallis said easily. He let his shoulders hang loose, rolled his hands into half fists. “But perhaps there are one or two loose ends to be tied up.”

The barman’s broad face twisted into a grin of anticipation. “I’d like nothing better, tree swinger. Name the time and place, and choice of weapons.”

“Oh, no weapons.”

“That will suit me fine—”

“By the Bones, will you two shut up?” Nead, the plate’s third occupant, glared over the charts and instruments spread over his lap. “We have work to do, if you recall.”

Jame and Pallis exchanged one last stare, then Jame returned his attention to the controls of the craft. Pallis shifted across the little deck until he sat beside Nead. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “How’s it going?”

Nead held a battered sextant to his eye, then tried to compare the reading to entries in a handwritten table. “Damn it,” he said, clearly frustrated. “I can’t tell. I just don’t have the expertise, Pallis. Cipse would know. If only—”