The object was a tetrahedron, she recognized immediately; a four-faced framework of glowing blue lines, like fragments of vortex lines. Sheets of gold, rippling, glistened over the faces. The construct was perhaps ten mansheights to a side, and its faces were easily wide enough to permit a ship the size of the “Pig” to pass.
It was a gate. A four-sided gate…
Dura felt like a child again; she found a smile, slow and heavy with wonder, spreading across her face. This was a wormhole Interface, the most precious of all the treasures lost in the Core.
It could be a gateway out of the Star.
She grabbed at Hork’s tunic, wonder flooding out her fear. “Don’t you understand what it means? We’ll be able to travel, to cross the Star in a moment, as we could before the Wars…”
He pushed her away roughly. “Sure. I understand what this means. Karen Macrae can’t stop the Glitches. And so — for the first time since dumping us in the Mantle all those years ago, since leaving us to our fate — she and her Core-infesting friends need us. We — you and I — are going to have to travel through that thing, to wherever it takes us, and stop the Glitches ourselves.”
22
Cris Mixxax climbed onto his board. The wood under his bare feet was polished, warm, familiar; his soles gripped the ridged surface, and the ribs of Corestuff embedded in the wood felt like cold, hard bones. He flexed his knees experimentally. Electron gas hissed around his ankles and toes as the board cut through the flux lines. The Magfield felt springy, solid.
Cris grinned savagely. It felt good. It all felt good. At last this day had come, and it was going to be his.
The sky was a huge diorama, all around him. The South Pole, with its brooding purple heart sunk deep in the Quantum Sea, was almost directly below him; he could feel the massive Polar distortion of the Magfield permeating his body. Above him the Crust seemed close enough to touch, the dangling Crust-trees like shining hairs, immensely detailed; patterns of cultivation showed in rectangular patches of color and texture — sharp, straight-line edges imposed by humans on the vibrant nature of the Star.
The City hovered in the Air over the Pole. Parz was so far below him he could cover it with the palm of his hand, and imagine he was alone in the sky — alone, save for his fellow racers. Parz looked like some elaborate wooden toy, surrounded by its cage of shining anchor-bands and pierced by a hundred orifices from which the green light of wood-lamps seeped, sickly. Sewage cascaded steadily from its underside, around the Spine of the Harbor. He could see the shining bulge that was the Stadium; it clung to the City’s upper lip like a fragile growth, with the Committee Box a colorful balcony over it. Somewhere in there his parents would be watching, he knew — praying for his success, he’d like to think. But perhaps they were wishing he might fail — give up this dream, this distraction of Surfing, and join them in their quiet, constrained lives once more.
He shook his head, staring down on the City as if he were some god, suspended over it. Out here the inwardness, the frustration of his life in and around the City, seemed remote, reduced to the trivial; he felt exalted, able to view it all with compassion, balance. His parents loved him, and they wanted what was best for him — as they saw it. The cries of the race marshals, tiny in the huge, glowing sky, floated to him. Almost time. He glanced around. There were a hundred Surfers, drawn into a rough line across the sky; now they were drawing precisely level, into line with the squads of marshals in their distinctive red uniforms. Cris flicked at his own board, once, twice; he felt it kick at the Magfield and bring him exactly into his place in the line. He stared ahead. He was facing along the direction of the vortex lines, toward the rotation pole; the closest line was a few mansheights from him, and the lines swept around him like the walls of some intangible corridor, beckoning him to infinity.
The challenge of the race was to Surf along the vortex lines, far across the roof of the world — across the Pole — to a finishing cross-section; there another group of marshals marked out an area of the sky, like human spin-spiders. The race was won — not just by the fastest, the first to complete the course — but by whoever applied the most technical skill, the most style in following the course.
He looked along the line. Ray, he knew, was three places down from him — the only other of his friends to have qualified for the Games this year. There she was, her lithe, bare body coiled over her board, her hair swept back and her teeth shining in a broad, hungry grin. He caught her eye, and she raised a fist, her smile broadening.
The Surfers were all in place now; he saw how they settled over their boards, concentrating, spreading their feet and lifting their arms. The marshals continued to scurry around the line like worried little animals, checking positions, adjusting boards with small pushes and shoves. Silence spread along the line; the marshals were withdrawing. Cris felt his senses open up. The board under his feet, the fizz of the Magfield, the freshness of the Air so far from the womb of the City as it sighed through his mouth and capillaries — these were vital and real things, penetrating his head; he had never felt so alive.
And perhaps, a distant, unwelcome part of him said, he never would again.
Well, if that was to be so — if his life was to be a long-drawn-out anticlimax after this superb moment — then let it be; and let this be his finest time.
The marshals glanced along their line at each other. In unison they raised their right arms — and brought them down with a chop, a cry of “Begin”!
Cris thrust savagely at his board. He felt the Magfield surge through the board and his limbs, dragging at the currents of charged particles there. He lunged forward with a roar, lancing through the Air. The tunnel of vortex lines seemed to explode outward around him; blue-white electron gas sparkled over his body. He was half-aware of similar yells around him, from the rest of the line, but he shut out the other Surfers; he focused on his board, the Magfield, his balance and position in the Air.
The line of marshals, ragged and breaking up, hurtled beneath him.
He opened his mouth and yelled again, incoherent. In his peripheral vision he saw that only Ray, and one or two others, had matched his start. He was in the lead, already ahead of the other Surfers! And he knew his style was good, his balance right; the Magfield surged through his body like a wave of heat. He raised a hand before his face and watched electron gas shower from his fingertips; shrouded in blue light he must look like a figure from a dream racing across the sky…
His board slammed upward, into his feet.
He gasped, almost thrown off the board with the shock. It had been like hitting something solid in the Magfield. He let his knees bend, trying to absorb the upward surge; but still he was hurled up into the Air, balanced perilously on his board. The vortex lines slid down the sky around him, and the Magfield flux lines tore at his stomach and chest as he was dragged brutally across them.
He heard screams from the Surfers around him.
The surge passed. Shaken, his knees and ankles aching, he straightened up. He risked glances to left and right. The line of Surfers was ragged, scattered, broken up. Whatever had caused that surge had hit the others as hard as it had him.
…Ray had gone. He saw a glinting sparkle which might have been her board, turning end over end through the Air; but of the girl herself there was no sign.
He felt a stab of concern — an awful, unfamiliar sense of waste — but the feeling was drowned by a flood of triumph. By luck or skill, or both, he had survived. He was still on his board, still in the race, and still determined to win.