Stephen Baxter - Xeelee - Endurance

At the end of the dinner, despite her anxiety and determination, Enna still couldn’t get to talk to her father. Bayle apologised, but with silent admonishments, warned her about spoiling the mood he had so carefully built; she knew that as Expedition leader he believed that morale, ever fragile, was the most precious resource of all. It will keep until the morning, his expression told her.

Frustrated, deeply uneasy, she left the building, walked out of the city to her wagon, and threw herself into Tomm’s arms. He seemed surprised by her passion.

Wait until the morning , Bayle had said .

But when the morning came the city was in chaos.

They were woken by babbling voices. They hastily pulled on their clothes, and hurried out of the wagon.

Servants and Philosophers alike milled about, some only half-dressed. Enna found Nool, her father’s manservant; dishevelled, unshaven, he was nothing like the sleek major-domo of the dinner last night. ‘I’m not going back in there again,’ he said. ‘You can pay me what you like.’

Enna grabbed his shoulders. ‘Nool! Calm down, man. Is it my father? Is something wrong?’

‘The sooner we get loaded up and out of here the better, I say . . .’

Enna abandoned him and turned to Tomm. ‘We’ll have to find him, Tomm! My father—’

But Tomm was staring up at the sky. ‘By all that’s created,’ he said. ‘Look at that.’

At first she thought the shape drifting in the sky was the Expedition’s balloon. But this angular, sharp-edged, white-walled object was no balloon. It was a building , a parallelepiped, like a slanted cube. With no sign of doors or windows, it had come loose from the ground, and drifted away on the wind like a soap bubble.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Tomm murmured.

Enna said grimly, ‘Believe it or not, we have to find my father even so. Come on .’ She grabbed his hand and dragged him into the city.

The unmade streets were crowded today, and people swarmed; it was difficult to find a way through. Again she had that strange, dreamlike feeling that the layout of the city was different. ‘Tell me you see it too, cartographer,’ she demanded of Tomm. ‘It has changed, again.’

‘Yes, it has changed.’

She was relieved to see her father’s building was still where it had been. But Philosophers were wandering outside, helpless, wringing their hands.

The doors and windows, all of them, had sealed up. There was no way into the building, or out.

She shoved her way through the crowd, grabbing Philosophers. ‘Where is he? Is he in there?’ But none of them had an answer. She reached the building itself. She ran her hands over the wall where the doorway had been last night, but it was seamless, as if the doorway had never existed. She slammed on the wall. ‘Father? Bayle! Can you hear me? It’s Enna!’ But there was no reply.

And then the wall lurched before her. Tomm snatched her back. The whole building was shifting, she saw, as if restless to leave the ground. Still she called, ‘Father! Father!’

‘He can’t hear you.’ The woman, Sila, stood in the fine robes Bayle had given her. She seemed aloof, untouched.

Enna grabbed Sila by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall of the building. ‘What have you done?’

‘Me? I haven’t done anything.’ Sila was unperturbed by Enna’s violence, though she was breathing hard. ‘But you know that, don’t you?’ Her voice was deep, exotic – ancient as Lowland dust.

Desperate as Enna was to find her father, the pieces of the puzzle were sliding around in her head. ‘ This is all about the buildings , isn’t it?’

‘You’re a clever girl. Your father will be proud – or would have been. He’s probably already dead. Don’t fret; he won’t have suffered, much.’

Tomm stood before them, uncertain. ‘I don’t understand any of this. Has this woman harmed Bayle?’

‘No,’ Enna hissed. ‘You just lured him here – didn’t you, you witch? It’s the building, Tomm. That’s what’s important here, not this woman.’

‘The building?’

‘The buildings take meat,’ Sila said.

Tomm looked bewildered. ‘Meat?’

‘Somehow they use it to maintain their fabric. Don’t ask me how.’

‘And light,’ Enna said. ‘That’s why they stack up into this strange reef, isn’t it? It isn’t a human architecture at all, is it? They are more like a forest. The buildings are competing for the light. ’

Sila smiled. ‘You see, I said you were clever.’

‘Light?’

‘Oh, Tomm, don’t just repeat everything we say! He’s in there. My father. And we’ve got to get him out.’

Tomm was obviously bewildered. ‘If you say so. How?’

She thought fast. Buildings that take meat. Buildings that need light . . . ‘The balloon,’ she said. ‘Get some servants.’

‘It will take an age for the heaters—’

‘Just bring the envelope. Hurry, Tomm!’

Tomm rushed off.

Enna went back to the building and continued to slam her hand against the wall. ‘I’ll get you out of there, Father. Hold on!’ But there was no reply. And again the building shifted ominously, its base scraping over the ground. She glanced into the sky, where that flying building had already become a speck against the blueshifted stars. If they fed, if they had the light they needed, did the buildings simply float away in search of new prey? Was that what had become of poor Momo?

Tomm returned with the balloon envelope, manhandled by a dozen bearers.

‘Get it over the building,’ Enna ordered. ‘Block out the light. Hurry. Oh, please . . .’

All of them hauled at the balloon envelope, dragging it over the building. The envelope ripped on the sharp corners of the structure, but Enna ignored wails of protest from the watching Philosophers. At last the thick hide envelope covered the building from top to bottom; it was like a wrapped-up present. She stood back, breathing hard, her hands stinking of leather. She had no idea what to do next if this didn’t work.

And a door dilated open in the side of the building.

Fumes billowed out, hot and yellow, and people recoiled, coughing and pressing their eyes. Then Bayle came staggering out, and collapsed to the ground.

‘Father!’ Enna knelt, and took his head on her lap.

His clothes were shredded, his hands were folded up like claws, and the skin of his face was crimson. But he was alive. ‘It was an acid bath in there,’ he wheezed. ‘Another few moments and I would have succumbed. It was like being swallowed. Digested.’

‘I know,’ she said.

He looked up; his eyes had been spared the acid. ‘You understand?’

‘I think so. Father, we have to let the doctors see to you.’

‘Yes, yes . . . But first, get everybody out of this cursed place.’

Enna glanced up at Tomm, who turned away and began to shout commands.

‘And,’ wheezed Bayle, ‘where is that woman, Sila?’

There was a waft of acid-laden air, a ripping noise. Philosophers scrambled back out of the way. Cradling her father, Enna saw that the building had shaken off the balloon envelope and was lifting grandly into the air. And Sila sat in an open doorway, looking down impassively, as the building lifted her into the time-accelerated sky.

Bayle was taken to his wagon, where his wounds were treated. He allowed in nobody but his daughter, the doctors, Nool – and Tomm, who, Bayle admitted grudgingly, had acquitted himself well.

Even in this straitened circumstance Bayle held forth, his voice reduced to a whisper, his face swathed in unguent cream. ‘I blame myself,’ he said. ‘I let myself see what I wanted to see about this city – just as I pompously warned you, Tomm, against the self-same flaw. And I refused to listen to you, Enna. I wanted to see a haven for the people I have led out into the wilderness. I saw what did not exist.’