With Ray’s help, and Cris’s, Farr clambered onto the board and learned how to rock it with his toes and heels. At first it seemed impossible — he kept kicking the board away, clumsily — and he was aware of the eyes of Ray on every galumphing movement. But each time he fell away he retrieved the board and climbed back on.
Then, suddenly, he had it. The secret was not strength, really, but gentleness, suppleness, a sensitivity to the soft resistance of the Magfield. It was enough to rock the board steadily and evenly across the Magfield flux paths, to keep the pressure of his feet less than the counterpressure of the Magfield so that the board stayed attached to the soles of his bare feet. When a downstroke with one foot was completed, he bent his legs slowly and pushed the other end of the board down in its turn. Gradually he learned to build up the tempo of this rocking motion, and wisps of electron gas curled about his toes as induced current began to flow in the Corestuff inlays.
The board — Waving just as the girl had said — carried him gracefully, effortlessly across the flux lines.
He learned to slow, to turn, to accelerate. He learned when to stop rocking the board, simply to allow his momentum to carry him arcing across the Magfield.
He had no idea how long it took him to learn the basics of Surfing. He was only peripherally aware of Cris’s continuing patience, and he even forgot, for quite long periods, the nearness of Ray’s bare, lithe body. He sailed across the sky. It was, he thought, like learning to Wave for the first time. The board felt natural beneath his feet, as if it had always been there, and he suspected that a small, inner part of him — no matter what he did or where he went — would always cling to the memory of this experience, utterly addicted.
Ray swooped down before him, inverted and with hands on bare hips. “All right,” she said. “You’ve got the basics. Now let’s really Surf. Come on!”
High over the Pole, Farr surged along the corridors of light marked out by hexagonal arrays of vortex lines. The lines surged past him with immense, unimaginable speed. The soft bodies of floating spin-spider eggs padded at his face and legs as he flew, and the Air brushed at his cheeks, the tiny viscosity of its non-superfluid component resisting him feebly. The Quantum Sea was a purple floor far below him, delimiting the yellow Air; and the City was a vast, complex block of wood and light, hanging over the Pole, huge yet dwarfed by the Mantlescape.
Ahead of him the girl Ray looped around vortex lines with unconscious skill, electron light shimmering from her calves and buttocks.
His face was stretched into a fierce grin. He knew the grin was there, he knew Ray must be able to see it, and yet he couldn’t keep it from his face. Surfing was glorious. His head rattled with the elements of complex, unrealistic schemes by which he might acquire his own board, join this odd, irregular little troupe of Skin-based Surfers, maybe even enter some future Games himself.
Ray turned and swept close to him. “You’re doing fine,” she shouted.
“I still feel as if I might fall off any moment.”
She laughed. “But you’re strong. That makes up for a lot. Come on. Try a spiral.”
She showed him how to angle his body back and push the board across the Magfield, so that he moved in slow, uneven, sweeping curves around a vortex line. Still he was hurtling forward through the sky, but now the huge panorama wheeled steadily around him. He stared down at his body, at the board; blue highlights from the corridors of vortex lines and the soft purple glow of the Sea cast complex shadows across his board.
He pushed at the Air harder, trying like Ray to tighten his spirals around the vortex lines. This was the most difficult maneuver he’d attempted, and he was forced to concentrate, to think about each motion of his arms and legs.
His foot slipped on the board’s ridges. He stumbled through the Air, upward toward the vortex line at the axis of his spiral. The board fell away from his feet. As he came within a mansheight of the vortex line he felt the Air thicken, drag at his chest and limbs. He was picked up and hurled around the vortex singularity, and sent tumbling away into the Air.
He rolled on his back and kicked easily at the Air, Waving himself to a stop. He lay against the soft resistance of the Magfield, laughing softly, his chest dragging at the Air.
Ray came slithering across the Magfield on her board; she carried Cris’s board under her arm. “I bet you couldn’t do that again if you tried.”
He took the board from her. “I guess I should take this back to Cris. He’s been very patient.”
She shrugged, and pushed a stray length of hair away from her face. “I suppose so. You want one more run first?”
He hesitated, then felt his grin return. “One more.”
Suddenly he twisted the board in the Air, bent his knees and slipped the board under his feet. He thrust at the length of wood as rapidly as he could, and soared away through a tunnel of vortex lines. Behind him he heard her laugh and clamber onto her own board.
He sailed over the Pole, over the passive bulk of Parz City once more. He thrust at the board, still awkwardly he knew, but using all his upfluxer strength now. The vortex lines seemed to shoot past like spears, slowly curving, and the weak breeze of the Air plucked at his hair.
The corridor of vortex light was infinite before him. The ease of movement, after the restriction of spiraling, was exhilarating. He was moving faster than he’d ever moved in his life. He opened his mouth and yelled.
He heard Ray shouting behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. She was still chasing him, but he’d given himself a good lead. It would take her a while to catch him yet. She was cupping a hand around her mouth and calling something, even as she Surfed. He frowned and looked more closely, but he couldn’t make out what she was trying to tell him. Now she was pointing at him — no, past him.
He turned his head again, to face the direction of his flight. There was something in his path.
Spin-web.
The fine, shining threads seemed to cover the sky before him. He could see where the web was suspended from the vortex line array by small, tight rings of webbing which encircled the vortex lines without quite touching the glowing spin-singularities. Between the anchor rings, long lengths of thread looped across the vortex arrays. The complex mats of threads were almost invisible individually, but they caught the yellow and purple glow of the Mantle, so that lines of light formed a complex tapestry across the sky ahead.
It was really very beautiful, Farr thought abstractedly. But it was a wall across the sky.
The spin-spider itself was a dark mass in the upper left corner of his vision. It looked like an expanded, splayed-open Air-pig. Each of its six legs was a mansheight long, and its open maw would be wide enough to enfold his torso. It seemed to be working at its web, repairing broken threads perhaps. He wondered if it had spotted him — if it had started moving already toward the point where he would impact the net, or if it would wait until he was embedded in its sticky threads.
Only a couple of heartbeats had passed since he’d seen the web, and yet already he’d visibly reduced his distance to it.
He swiveled his hips and beat at the Magfield with his Surfboard, trying to shed his velocity. But he wouldn’t be able to stop in time. He looked quickly around the sky, seeking the edges of the web. Perhaps he could divert rather than stop, fly safely around the trap. But he couldn’t even see the edges of the web. Spin-spider webs could be hundreds of mansheights across.