Parallax View (14 page)

Where before the facets of the ship’s eyes had been dull, blank, now they were clear, pulsing with a tangled skein of light.

The flux was alive and so too, at last, was Fluxmaster Julius Frayn.

Hannor was beside him, around him, as was Harque – the beast’s thought patterns resonant and harmonic, where before they had been dull and wary.

Where before they had been three species and a synth artifact, now they were one.

Frayn reached out with his mind, connected with Elisabetha’s rapturous Songline, and the
Oh Carrollian
plunged –
outward, onward
. To be connected to his wife in this way was an ecstasy beyond that which either had known when united physically in the past. Instinctively, Frayn and Hannor guided the ship along the Songline amplified by the mind of Harque the Thaptor.

Back in the real world, Frayn knew that the ship’s outline had wavered and then vanished; instantly it would materialise seven and a half thousand kilometres away in eastern China. Yet – by the perverse mathematics of fluxtime – they must pass two hours in the suspended reality of the dreamflux, riding the Songline through time and space.

And the body of their passenger would age by about six months, as a consequence of the biological stress of the journey.

(Somewhere, deep down in his mind, Frayn was aware of something different... an irregularity... a flaw in the dreamflux.)

He concentrated on the startling crystalline purity of his wife’s Songline – and yet was suddenly aware of strange visions darting at him from the surrounding darkness.

(Faces... faces floating in his peripheral vision. No: it was a single face.
Sylvian’s
face. His son.)

From whose mind did these images originate? In the dreamflux it was hard to distinguish.

Not Harque, clearly – the beast was incapable of such a feat. And not Elisabetha, consumed as she was in the devotion of her Calling. Hannor, too, was absorbed in the ecstasy of the flux.

His own mind, then? Some strange twist in his psyche of which he was unaware?

His speculations were interrupted.

-Master- it was Hannor, communicating through the flux. -Look into Harque’s mind. He is troubled, disturbed. What is happening?-

With huge effort, Frayn focused on the mental patterns of the Thaptor. Harque was struggling with the flux, as always, but there was something else, some added element that was disturbing the beast.

-Don’t like- Harque was thinking. -Don’t like. Di Stefano. Angers me.-

Concerned, Frayn tried to smooth over the Thaptor’s anxiety, smothering the beast with his reassuring thought patterns. His effort took effect – the wild surges of dreamflux ebbed, stabilising.

Eventually, Frayn pulled back and concentrated on working with Hannor to ease the passage of the
Oh Carrollian
along the songline called like rapture through the flux.

He sensed that the journey was about half-completed when he finally realised that Harque was pacified; this was now a flight like any other.

Tentatively he withdrew, feeling himself relax as he floated free of his body, now fully immersed in the dreamflux. When he was sure that everything was well, he floated across the nacelle and drifted down the spiral staircase, heading for the passenger quarters.

~

Di Stefano’s body lay slumped across the antique bed, while his dreamflux self hung by a port, staring out at the twisting channels of light. He turned when Frayn appeared in the open doorway. His body language was strange: an odd mix of hesitancy and the arrogance Frayn had first seen in him.

“What do you want?” Frayn asked.

The man nodded: there was no pretence now. “It is what you might want that is the issue,” he said.

Frayn stared at him, waited until he continued.

“You have family?” the man asked.

Frayn hesitated, then nodded. “A son,” he said. “He will be seventeen, now.”

“We have your son, Master Frayn. We can return him to you.”

After so long! Five years on this confounded planet, following hopeless leads, baseless rumours, in hope that he might one day locate his son.

“There must be a price, Mr di Stefano?”

The man nodded. “Your ship,” he said softly. “Let us destroy your fluxship and the boy is yours.”

“You work for one of the shipping lines?” Frayn said. The lines whose technological alternatives to fluxships had proved uncompetitive against the real thing, tailored by evolution and refined by genetic re-engineering.

Di Stefano nodded. “They pay me, yes,” he said. “There is a temporary port set up in Henan province – I have the co-ordinates. You will land there and hand over the fluxship, and your son will be returned to you.”

Frayn thought of Hannor, so possessive of the flux, so addicted to the ur-real dimension. How might his alien friend live without the soothing contact with the songlines? And Harque, who only really knew true life when working in the flux...

“And if we refuse?” Frayn asked. “What will your employers do when we hand you over to the police at Shanghai?”

Di Stefano shrugged. The man’s casual arrogance irritated Frayn. “We own the Shanghai police,” he said. “Your son will be killed, of course. He will suffer. Do you have a conscience, Master Frayn?”

Frayn stared past di Stefano at the lights of the dreamflux shot through the outer darkness. The
Oh Carrollian
was priceless beyond the value of any child. He could not let the ship be destroyed. Hannor and Harque did not deserve to lose that which made their lives worthwhile.

He was aware of di Stefano’s arrogant gaze. “Well, Master Frayn? Your answer?”

“I must consult my crew,” he answered shortly. He left di Stefano and drifted through the ship. He moved up the spiral staircase to the command nacelle. He saw his own body and that of Hannor, side by side on their recliners, limbs twitching in unison as they worked to steer the
Oh Carrollian
through the flux.

He re-entered his body, joined the flux once again, and informed Hannor and Harque of their passenger’s ultimatum.

Together, Master Frayn and Second Hannor guided the snorting, eructating bulk of the Thaptor down the ramp into the dazzling midday sun.

The temporary landing site in Henan province was a football stadium, the groundcrew armed heavily with charge rifles and shields.

Frayn scanned the watching crowd for Sylvian. Seventeen years old, the boy would probably be tall if he took after his mother and father. He would be visible, here.

No sign.

Frayn turned to di Stefano.

The passenger dipped his head and said, “You have fulfilled your part of the deal, Master Frayn. You will find Sylvian by Gate H.”

Frayn’s eyes followed the direction of di Stefano’s gesture.

He turned to Hannor, apologetic, defensive. The alien wore a deep cowl to shield him from the sun, his eyes retracted, but Frayn knew that his friend was distraught at their impending loss – an addict soon to be deprived of the source of his fix.

How long would it be before he and his crew were granted another fluxship from the Guild of Masters on Cynthera? Only one was re-engineered every couple of years, and there was a waiting list of crews for these.

“Go,” said the alien, softly. “He is your son, Brother Frayn. It... it is right.”

He was running.

He couldn’t help himself: running to find the son he had lost. The son he had failed, for being unable to explain the true significance of the dreamflux.

Rounding the towering bulk of the grandstand, he saw Gate H and then stopped. By the gate was a box – too small to be the coffin he had at first feared.

He hurried towards the box and dropped to his knees in bewilderment.

Resting on the box was a dreamloop. He reached out, picked it up with trembling fingers, and dropped it over his head.

He was no longer in the stadium in Henan province. He was once again on Cynthera, in one of the many cavernous timber rooms of his ancestral manse.

A figure stood beside a high window, limned in blinding sunlight and, in silhouette, unrecognisable.

“Father,” said a small voice, and its owner moved from before the window.

Sylvian – as he had been five years ago, aged twelve, a fey slight boy with frightened eyes. “I’m sorry, father. It’s hard to explain.”

“Sylvian,” Frayn heard himself saying. “I don’t understand. Where are you? What is all this...?”

The boy’s large frightened eyes looked up, into his. “When mother was... when she was Enjoined – I couldn’t stay on Cynthera, father. It was... I thought it was evil, what you did to her–”

“It was her choice, Sylvian. It was what she wanted. She is more truly happy now than she ever was.”

The boy winced, as if wounded. “I needed her. She should have been there for me.”

“I was there for you, after the Enjoining.”

The boy was shaking his head. As Frayn watched, his features began to change, to age. “You were no substitute, father. I’m sorry. You didn’t understand. All you could talk about was the dreamflux, and your ability.” Something hardened in the rapidly maturing features. “How do you think I felt, having no ability? How do you think it made me feel, having my inadequacy made plain by you all day, every day?”

“Sylvian... I tried to do my best.”

The boy almost spat. “Your best! Then your best was hardly good enough.”

“I came for you – for five years I’ve been searching.”

“I made sure you couldn’t find me...”

He was ageing still, as a human ages in the flux: but accelerated, exaggerated.

“I have seen a lot over the past five years, father. I have done a lot, too. And learnt.” His voice was deeper now, oddly familiar.

Frayn stared at Sylvian: he had aged way beyond the seventeen that he now must be. What was happening, Frayn wondered? Was this some cruel joke that his blackmailers were playing?

“And I travelled, too,” Sylvian went on. “The fluxship-derived constructs take a greater biological toll, especially if one does not possess the ability. I didn’t inherit your attunement to the flux. I’m old, now, far beyond my years...”

Frayn stared into the ageing face. It became even thinner, and Sylvian’s body lengthened, grew emaciated, covered with the cruel tattoos of the Rationalist cadre.

Frayn stared in horror at the face of Gianluca di Stefano.

“I’m sorry, father – but I don’t regret my actions. I did what I believe is right. I hope you can forgive me.”

Frayn tore the dreamloop from his head and turned.

Di Stefano – or Sylvian, rather – stood before him. There was no arrogance in the man’s eyes, now. Frayn saw only the pain of his betrayal – and he experienced a surge of rage at the actions of his son, and beyond rage the souring sensation of guilt.

In the distance, Frayn saw a bright flash, and a fountain of osseous shrapnel fly high into the air. He felt the pain of the ship as it expired, and he told himself that he could sense, also, Elisabetha’s grief.

Hannor and Harque approached and paused behind di Stefano. The tableau seemed to be waiting, waiting for his decision.

Hannor said: “Master, we must make arrangements to return to Cynthera.”

Frayn nodded. “I will be with you presently,” he said.

As Hannor and the Thaptor walked past him through the gate, Frayn looked into the aged eyes of his son.

“Come,” he said, holding out a hand. “We have much to talk about, Sylvian.”

Slowly, divided by mutual ignorance and misunderstanding, but united by much more, father and son walked side by side through the gate and into the teeming city.

Mind’s Eye

Today’s the day. Jiang Yu is certain of that.

Even before waking, she knew. Twisting sweatily through the black early hours, she lucid dreamed of drinking at a shady little bar on Sundeck. Fresh air for the first time in years, a striped canopy keeping the sun off her Levels-bleached skin. Then the klaxon had belched its ugly double note and she was back in her cage-bunk on Level Three.

Now she lies back, luxuriating as her fellow workers trudge down the aisles to begin the first shift. This morning is the start of Jiang’s two days’ leave. Two days... a lifetime, maybe. Who knows?

The dream has decided it for her: today’s the day. The day she gets out of this shit-hole. Feminine intuition, perhaps? She just knows.
Come on, kiddo. You gotta get outta there. Move it!

Sure, she’s heard all the scare stories: sixteen year old girl, up from the Levels. What if some freak gets hold of her? Or one of the gangs? More likely: she’ll end up with no money, no place to stay other than the gutter, no means of support other than selling herself on some street corner.

Juno from the next dorm had Gone Up a few months ago. She came back covered in bruises a couple of weeks later. But Juno is dumb. There’s no way Jiang will end up crawling back down to Three to wish away what remains of her life in the Yard.

She’s saved her creds, she knows how to handle herself. She’s watched all the topside soaps and flix – she knows what it’s like up there. She’s going to make it
work
.

You’ll be okay
, that confident inner voice assures her again.

Finally, she swings her legs out, drops to the floor. She stays in the T-shirt she wears at night, pulls a pair of dungarees up and fastens them at the shoulder. She has her creds, she has a backpack with her other shirt and a knife she stole from the Yard’s canteen. She’s ready.

She walks out of the dorm, feeling no regrets. Doesn’t even glance back over her shoulder.

In the streets the glo-tubes are brightening, a false dawn spreading over the squalor and filth. In this part of the Buildup migrant Indian workers have made the chambers and thoroughfares their own. The halls are full of teeming humanity, the steady background din pierced by cries of
chai
and
paan
from itinerant vendors. The reek of masala and incense clashes with the sharp tang of iced formaldehyde from the nearby cryogen mart, pinching her adenoids like smelling salts. She shoulders her way through the crowd, equal proportions of excitement and trepidation welling within her.

She can still turn back, but she won’t.
This is it, kiddo
.

She dives aboard an upchute just as the gates are clanging shut. It’s full of clerical workers who dorm on Three and work one level up. Even in the squeeze of the ’chute, they edge away from Jiang, their sidelong looks mixing pity and disgust. Her backpack clearly signals her intentions: another young Chink, seeking her fortune. Another statistic, perhaps.

She meets their looks, doesn’t care what they think. She’s doing something they’ll never have the guts to do, lodged forever in their humdrum conformity.

When the upchute reaches Four, Jiang has to fight the tide as the workers surge out, sucking her along in their wake. She feels a sense of triumph as she watches their retreating backs and remains in the ’chute, ready to continue her journey upwards. There are fewer citizens in the ’chute now, and an old crone with a basket of squawking poultry at her feet punches Six.

At each level it seems that a weight is lifting. People come and go, riding the ’chute for no more than a level or two at a time. The higher Jiang goes, the cleaner and healthier they all appear. The air tastes fresher in her lungs. As the crowds become thinner, the people seem more relaxed, their relations with the world around them not governed by the automatic hostility felt by the citizens of the lower Levels.

Jiang becomes increasingly aware of her difference as she ascends. Her poor clothing, her scrawny limbs, the pallor of her skin.

All the way she has resisted the temptation to leave the upchute, to explore each level in turn. Finally, on Level Nineteen, she succumbs.

She emerges in a cavernous chamber, glo-tubes lining a ceiling tens of metres above her head. Trees grow here: majestic pines, magnolias heavy with stellar pink blooms. Jiang’s parents had lived on Nineteen; she was born here, spent her first three years here. Before the skimmer crash, before her crippled father spiralled down through a succession of poorly paid piecework contracts. Before she was alone in the world, with only the Canterbury Line Shipyard between her and starvation. It still hurts to think about her father: memories of the good man he had been, corrupted by the more recent memories of the bitter shell he had become after the crash.

Come on, kiddo.

It’s as if she’s stepped into one of the soaps, a giant flix. Everyone wears clothes that cost more than Jiang has ever made in a year; they all have off-the-shelf movie-star looks and fine-tuned musical laughter.

No one looks at Jiang directly, but they’re aware of her presence as she threads her way through the crowds. They avoid her without breaking their stride; as she passes, their hands wander briefly to pockets and purses. And moments later she’s gone from their mind, as if she never existed.

She doesn’t care. She knows her place. You have to know your place if you’re ever going to improve it.

She hitches her backpack higher on her shoulders and heads for a long silver riser she’s spied in the distance.
Sundeck here I come!

Only there’s no sunlight...

She’s miscalculated. Down in the Levels, time zones are set according to the shift patterns dictated by the Canterbury Line and their ilk. Up here the timescale is governed by the rising and setting of the sun.

Mid-morning on Three, up here on Twenty it’s some time in the night.

Buildings loom high in the darkness, glo-tubes stuck to their walls spreading a pissy yellow light over the street. Occasional neon tubes and photostrobes, triggered by passers-by, seem only to emphasise the darkness of the sky.

Jiang huddles in a doorway, sheltering from the steady drizzle. The hunched figures rushing by and the stink of rain-borne pollutants give the place a Down-levels seediness she hadn’t anticipated. Like arriving in heaven and finding... not so much
hell
, as merely more of the same.

Come on, kiddo: make something of it!

She straightens her shoulders. She’s here now: she’s made her choice.

She steps out into the darkness. The rain isn’t as hard as she thought, but pretty soon she’s soaked through, nonetheless.

She drifts, feeling cheated. Betrayed by her dreams. After all this time, she should know better than to dream.

Eventually she comes to a junction that’s vaguely familiar. She must have seen it on one of the soaps. There’s a snack bar on the corner. Sheltering under its canopy, she peers in through the windows. About a quarter of the tables and booths are occupied, by young couples or singles. Some kids of about Jiang’s age are clustered in a corner around some kind of ents console, their heads wired to the screen.

There’s a board behind the bar, showing a long list of prices. Jiang thinks of the creds tucked into her dungarees. She’ll be lucky to last a day up here, at this rate.

But she’s hungry. She goes inside, orders fries and a beer, handing over more creds than she’s ever spent in one go.

She retreats to a booth by the window, where she can stare out at the hurrying figures in their sheenies and skins. She can see out across the junction here, to where the street becomes sky. There’s a raised escarpment of fresh construction work out to the west: a new level going up to cover this one. Here and there, thrusting through the plates of the deck, the top storeys of old skyscrapers remind her that the Levels are a recent phenomenon, not yet a century old. As she sips her beer, a starship slow-thunders overhead, its ponderous hulk winking a million lights and sending perceptible shudders through the fabric of the Buildup.

She’s starting to dry out now; she can feel the coarse denim of her dungarees tightening across her thighs. The beer’s starting to kick in too, better than anything she’s drunk down on Three. She savours every last morsel of the meal, wetting a finger to gather the last scraps from her plate. There’s a mouthful of beer left at the bottom of her mug. She delays drinking it, putting off her return to the street.

The street... that’s where she belongs, she knows. What will she do when her last cred is gone? She’ll be faced with the choice of returning to Three and begging for her old job back, or... or
what?

The door opens at the far end of the bar and a tall woman enters with a squall of wind and rain. Jiang watches her curiously. She’s what Jiang would like to be: tall, stylish. In control. Her skin is almost as dark as the black hair that tumbles to her waist, and only a shade darker than her deep brown eyes.

The woman catches her looking and Jiang turns away, embarrassed, stares at her own pitiful reflection in the glass. The woman’s exotic beauty makes her suddenly aware of how misguided her own dreams are: her place is down in the Levels, not up here on Sundeck.

When she looks up, the woman is smiling, exchanging a few words with the barkeep as she hands over a card to pay. She’s ordered two drinks and now she heads for Jiang’s table, meeting her look in a way that makes it impossible to turn away.

She sits down in Jiang’s booth, pushes a beer towards the girl. Close to, she’s just as beautiful, making Jiang envious, exhilarated.

“You’re wet through,” the woman says, matter-of-factly. “Didn’t think to bring a coat, first time up from the Levels, eh?”

“How do you know this is my first time up?” Jiang says, aggressively.

“Please,
darling
,” the woman says, rolling her eyes. “Tatty old dungarees, home-made backpack, no shoes on your little Chinese feet, a look on your face like you think I’m going to eat you... What level? Four? Five?”

“Three,” Jiang whispers, embarrassed at the admission. “I came up this morning. Tonight, I mean.”

The woman frowns. “Three,” she says softly. “That must either be the cryogen mart or one of the shipping lines – Canterbury, TransAm, Dorigo.” She pauses, surveys Jiang’s face, her poor clothing. “The yards, then, am I right? Girls never last long in the shipyards: if you’d stayed down there you’d have been lucky to reach your thirties. You made the right decision, girl.”

Jiang shrugs, stares out into the night again.

“I’m Leila Kundera,” the woman says, addressing Jiang’s reflection in the glass.

“Jiang Yu,” the girl whispers.

Leila indicates the beer she has bought Jiang. “Drink it,” she says. “You look as if you need it.”

Jiang raises the mug and sips.

“What have you come up here for, Jiang?” says Leila. “What’s in your dreams?”

“Survival,” Jiang tells her. “I’ll find work, support myself. I’m not going back down to the Yard.”

“It’s tough up here, darling. Thousands try and fail.” Leila hesitates, then adds, “I know what it’s like, Jiang, believe me.”

Jiang takes another mouthful of the beer.

“Listen,” Leila continues, “you can’t stay here, and – “ she indicates the street beyond the window “ – you can hardly stay out there. And somehow I doubt you’ve made alternative arrangements, have you?”

Jiang shakes her head, staring at the table-top.

“Then why don’t you come and stay with me a while, kiddo?”

She has a little black buggy waiting in the street. It pulls up alongside the two as they emerge into the rain. Inside, it smells of new plastic and old cigarettes, making Jiang think of the shipyard.

Soon, they’re skimming through the streets at what seems like high speed. Outside, the night rushes past in a strobe-like flicker of neon and glo-tubes. And inside, Jiang’s head is spinning: too much input, too much beer.

She called her
kiddo
, Jiang is sure of it. Only, as she tries to concentrate, she becomes less certain. Had she said it, or was it just Jiang’s own confused state imposing itself on reality? And what was so strange in that, anyway? Jiang, herself, has probably picked up the term from one of the soaps or flix they broadcast in the yard.

“Do you make a habit of this?” Jiang asks.

Leila looks at her quizzically, one eyebrow raised.

“Helping kids from the Levels, I mean.”

Leila’s look suddenly becomes more intense. “You’re the first,” she says.

But why me?
Jiang wants to cry, but she doesn’t. She stops herself. “I just can’t believe all this is happening,” she says in a small voice.

The buggy draws to a halt outside a three-storey grey-stone block and sinks down onto its buffers. “I expect you’re tired,” says Leila.

Now Jiang can smile. “Tired?” she asks. “But I’ve only been up a few hours: Level Three’s in a different time zone, because of the shifts. I thought it’d still be daytime when I came up here.”

Leila laughs, now. “We all get it a bit wrong when we come up from the Levels,” she says. “There are worse mistakes you could have made.”

They leave the buggy and now Jiang hesitates and looks up at the looming presence of her new friend’s apartment block. “Have you lived here long?” she asks.

Leila hurries to the door and swipes a palm across a scanner. “Here?” she asks. “No. A few weeks. I move about a lot, following contracts. I was in Manhattan a month ago, out at HK Titan a couple of months previously.”

Jiang stares at her. She talks of living off-planet so casually. Jiang’s sure she’s trying to impress her. And it’s working.

Leila’s holding the door open, one hand stretched towards Jiang. “Come on,” she says. “You’re getting wet again.”

They ride up to the next storey and emerge in a long, dark corridor. Leila leads Jiang past a series of identical paintings of big red flowers.

Leila chuckles when she notices how Jiang scrunches up her toes in the luxurious softness of the floor covering. “It’s called carpet,” she says. “It was fashionable until about fifty years ago. Old hotels like this still use the stuff.”