Stephen Baxter - Flux

Adda shrugged. “They won’t follow anyone else.” He studied her square face, seeing the doubts and submerged strength in its thin lines. “I don’t think you really have a choice.”

“No,” she sighed, straightening up. “I know.” She went to talk to the tribesfolk.

When she returned to the nuclear fire, only Philas, the widow of Esk, came with her. The two women Waved side by side. Dura’s face was averted, apparently riven with embarrassment; Philas’s expression was empty.

Adda wasn’t really surprised at the reaction of the rest. Even when it was against their own damn interest, they’d snub Logue’s daughter.

He was interested to see Philas with Dura, though. Everyone had known about Dura’s relationship with Esk; it was hardly the sort of thing that could be kept quiet in a community reduced to fifty people, counting the kids.

It had been against the rules. Sort of. But it was tolerated, and hardly unique — as long as Dura obeyed a few unspoken conventions. Such as restricting her reaction to Esk’s death, keeping herself away from the widowed Philas.

Just another bit of stupidity, Adda thought. The Human Beings had once numbered hundreds — even in the days of Adda’s grandfather there had been over a hundred adults — and maybe then conventions about adultery might have made sense. But not now.

He shook his head. Adda had despaired of Human Beings long before Farr was born.

“They want to go back,” said Dura, her voice flat. “But I’ll go on. Philas will come.”

The woman Philas, her face drab and empty, her hair lying limply against her angular skull, looked to Adda as if she had nothing left to lose anyway. Well, he thought, if it helped the two women work out their own relationship, then fine.

Some hunting expedition it was going to be, though.

He lifted his spear.

Dura frowned. “No,” she said. “I can’t ask you to…”

Adda growled a soft warning to shut her up.

Farr straightened up from the burning pit. “I’ll come too,” he said brightly, his face turned up to Dura.

Dura placed her hands on his shoulders. “Now, that’s ridiculous,” she said in a parent’s tones. “You know you’re too young to…”

Farr responded with bleated protests, but Adda cut across him impatiently. “Let the boy come,” he rasped to Dura. “You think he’d be safer with those leaf-gatherers? Or back at the place where the Net used to be?”

Dura’s anxious face swiveled from Adda to her brother and back again. At length she sighed, smoothing back her hair. “All right. Let’s go.”

They gathered their simple equipment. Dura knotted a length of rope around her waist and tucked a short stabbing-knife and cleaning brush into the rope, behind her back; she tied a small bag of food to the rope.

Then, without another word to the others, the four of them — Adda, Dura, Farr and the widow Philas — began the slow, careful climb toward the darkness of the Crust.

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.