Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring Read Online Free PDF Page B

he felt his face redden and he imagined his scars emerging as a livid net. So they knew. At least, he reflected gloomily, at least we evacuated the Nebula’s only other mine when that star fell too close. At least we were honourable enough for that. Although not honourable enough to avoid lying about all that pain in order to keep our advantage over these people—
    ‘Sheen, we’re getting nowhere. I’m just doing my job, and this is out of my control.’ He handed back his drink globe. ‘You have a shift to decide whether to accept my terms. Then I leave regardless. And - look, Sheen, just remember something. We can recycle our iron a hell of a lot easier than you can recycle your food and water.’
    She studied him dispassionately. ‘I hope they suck on your bones, Raft man.’ He felt his shoulders slump. He turned and began to make his slow way to the nearest wall, from which he could jump to the tree rope.
    A file of miners clambered up to the tree, iron plates strapped to their backs. Under the pilot’s supervision the plates were lashed securely to the tree rim, widely spaced. The miners descended to the Belt laden with casks of food and fresh water.
    Rees, watching from the foliage, couldn’t understand why so many of the food cases were left behind in the tree.
    He stayed curled closely around a two-feet-wide branch - taking care not to cut open his palms on its knife-sharp leading edge - and he kept a layer of foliage around his body. He had no way of telling the time, but the loading of the tree must have taken several shifts. He was wide-eyed and sleepless. He knew that his absence from work would go unremarked for at least a couple of shifts - and, he thought with a distant sadness, it might be longer before anyone cared enough to come looking for him.
    Well, the world of the Belt was behind him now. Whatever dangers the future held for him, at least they would be new dangers.
    In fact he only had two problems. Hunger and thirst . . .
    Disaster had struck soon after he had found himself this hiding place among the leaves. One of the Belt workmen had stumbled across his tiny cache of supplies; thinking it belonged to the despised Raft crewmen the miner had shared the morsels among his companions. Rees had been lucky to avoid detection himself, he realized . . . but now he had no supplies, and the clamour of his throat and belly had come to fill his head.
    But at last the loading was complete; and when the pilot launched his tree, even Rees’s thirst was forgotten.
    When the final miner had slithered down to the Belt, Pallis curled up the rope and hung it around a hook fixed to the trunk. So his visit was over. Sheen hadn’t spoken to him again, and for several shifts he had had to endure the sullen silence of strangers. He shook his head and turned his thoughts with some relief to the flight home. ‘Right, Gover, let’s see you move! I want the bowls switched to the underside of the tree, filled and lit before I’ve finished coiling this rope. Or would you rather wait for the next tree?’
    Gover got to work, comparatively briskly; and soon a blanket of smoke was spreading beneath the tree, shielding the Belt and its star from view.
    Pallis stood close to the trunk, his feet and hands sensitive to the excited surge of sap. It was almost as if he could sense the huge vegetable thoughts of the tree as it reacted to the darkness spreading below it. The trunk audibly hummed; the branches bit into the air; the foliage shook and swished and skitters tumbled, confused at the abrupt change of airspeed; and then, with an exhilarating surge, the great spinning platform lifted from the star. The Belt and its human misery dwindled to a toy-like mote, falling slowly into the Nebula, and Pallis, hands and feet pressed against the flying wood, was where he was most happy.
    His contentment lasted for about a shift and a half. He prowled the wooden platform, moodily watching the stars slide through the silent air. The