Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring Read Free Page A

aware of her bare arms.
    ‘Thanks.’ He took the drink and sucked at the globe’s plastic nipple; hot liquor coursed over his tongue. ‘Maybe I did need that.’
    Sheen studied him with frank curiosity. ‘You’re an odd one, Rees, aren’t you?’
    He stared back, letting his eyes slide over the smoothness of the skin around her eyes. It struck him that she wasn’t really much older than he was. ‘How am I odd?’
    ‘You keep yourself to yourself.’
    He shrugged.
    ‘Look, it’s something you need to grow out of. You need company. We all do. Especially after a shift like this one.’
    ‘What did you mean earlier?’ he asked suddenly.
    ‘When?’
    ‘During the implosion. You said how hard it was to build anything strong enough for this universe.’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘Well . . . what other universe is there?’
    She sucked at her drink, ignoring the shouted invitations from the party behind her. ‘Who cares?’
    ‘My father used to say the mine was killing us all. Humans weren’t meant to work down there, crawling around in wheelchairs at five gee.’
    She laughed. ‘Rees, you’re a character. But I’m not in the mood for metaphysical speculation, frankly. What I’m in the mood for is to get brain-dead on this fermented fruit-sim. So you can join me and the boys if you want, or you can go and sigh at the stars. OK?’ She floated away, looking back questioningly; he shook his head, smiling stiffly, and she drifted back to her party, disappearing into a little pool of arms and legs.
    Rees finished his drink, struggled to the bar to return the empty globe, and left.
    A heavy cloud, fat with rain, drifted over the Belt, reducing visibility to a few yards; the air it brought with it seemed exceptionally sour and thin.
    Rees prowled around the cables that girdled his world, muscles working restlessly. He completed two full circuits, passing huts and cabins familiar since his childhood, hurrying past well-known faces. The damp cloud, the thin air, the confinement of the Belt seemed to come together somewhere inside his chest. Questions chased around his skull. Why were human materials and building methods so inadequate to resist the forces of the world? Why were human bodies so feeble in the face of those forces?
    Why had his parents had to die, without answering the questions that had haunted him since childhood?
    Shards of rationality glittered in the mud of his overtired thinking. His parents had had no better understanding of their circumstances than he had; there had been nothing but legends they could tell him before their sour deaths. Children’s tales of a Ship, a Crew, of something called Bolder’s Ring . . . But his parents had had - acceptance. They, and the rest of the Belt dwellers - even the sparkiest, like Sheen - seemed implicitly to accept their lot. Only Rees seemed plagued by questions, unanswered doubts.
    Why couldn’t he be like everyone else? Why couldn’t he just accept and be accepted?
    He let himself drift to rest, arms aching, cloud mist spattering his face. In all his universe there was only one entity which he could talk to about this - which would respond in any meaningful way to his questions.
    And that was a digging machine.
    With a sudden impulse he looked about. He was perhaps a hundred yards from the nearest mine elevator station; his arms and legs carried him to it with renewed vigour.
    Cloud mist swirled after Rees as he entered the station. The place was deserted, as Rees had expected. The whole shift would be lost to mourning; not for another two or three hours would the bleary-eyed workers of the next shift begin to arrive.
    The station was little more than another cubical iron shack, locked into the Belt. It was dominated by a massive drum around which a fine cable was coiled. The drum was framed by winch equipment constructed of some metal that remained free of rust, and from the cable dangled a heavy chair fitted with large, fat wheels. The chair was topped by