Aidan Redding Against the Universes

Forever Falls-4

Leaning my shoulders against the woven wall, head back, eyes closed, I tried to rest my tired eyes and aching head. I’d awoken at six AM, and it would be nine PM before the zeppelin hit the Hindenbarge. If the passengers from this morning’s flight were awake and available, I had more hours of talking to them before I could sleep. I needed to conserve energy, especially my mental energy. And every time my mind strayed to what lay beneath us, I had to remind myself that we weren’t that far up, and if we had trouble the zeppelin could just gently ease itself to the ground.

I am total crap at lying to myself.

By shifting around, I found a spot where the wicker ends didn’t gouge my scalp and shoulder too badly, so long as I kept my weight on them. The only sounds were the whirring of the blades, wind softly whistling through the weave, and Cedar’s and Takamoto’s quiet whispers.

Maybe I fell asleep.

A distant voice shouted, then Cedar said “Redding? You awake?”

“She’s asleep,” Takamoto said.

I heaved my head upright, trying to ignore the stale taste of my mouth. “No,” I yawned, “I’m up.”

“Goggles,” Takamoto said. “On the wall, by your seat.”

“You’ll want to see this,” Cedar said.

My back muscles ached as I fumbled for the goggles. Our basket swayed and rocked, and my stomach rolled with it.

I barely had the smoked glass goggles over my eyes when Cedar swung aside a panel in the basket’s front wall. A three-foot glassless window framed the Hindenbarge.

Imagine the most monstrously huge balloon you’ve ever seen.

Now imagine dozens of them, hundreds, all clustered together like grapes. Platforms hung beneath the balloons, all different shapes and sizes: some cubes, some flat boxes, some dangling lines and derricks. Lines and cables and scaffolds connected the whole assembly.

One of the suns hung right behind the Hindenbarge, silhouetting the whole thing in fuming reds and oranges. The dangling platforms and bulging air sacs cast shadows kilometers deep.

Takamoto grinned at my expression. “Impressive, da?”

I couldn’t figure out its size. Without any ground, without any clouds, without being able to see any humanizing details, I couldn’t process its scale.

The zeppelin’s bamboo prop blades whooshed overhead just as much as ever, pushing us through the endless sky. Wind through the window ruffled my hair back. And the Hindenbarge didn’t grow any bigger.

“They keep adding to it,” Cedar said. “Earth wants all the molecular-diffused steel they can get.”

“How big is that?” I asked.

“One thousand seven hundred meters, end-to-end,” Takamoto said. “All genetically engineered structural bamboo.”

Behind the smoked glasses I blinked. “There’s really no metal out there?”

I realized my mistake half a second too late. Never ask a specialist about their field unless you’re hoping they’ll handle both sides of the conversation for you.

Takamoto straightened his back and actually reached for the suspenders he didn’t have on. “Freefall has scalar matter coherence. Out there,” he waved, “steel grows weak. Ten kilometers further in—if you go quickly enough, it diffuses. Expands.” He formed an inflating balloon with his hands. “And we, we mathematically predict diffusion patterns.”

“It works the same the other way,” Cedar said. “Dig into the cliff, and everything gets more solid. Everything more than two klicks deep is solid neutronium. They—”

“They are nothing,” Takamoto said. “They try for years to dig neutronium. They get nothing! Never will. But out here? My team? A rod like this,” Takamoto said, holding his hands about a foot apart, “cut just right, it inflates—pow!—into I-beam. I-beam stronger than plain beam, and weighs seven kilos. On Earth!”

“I’d like to see that,” I said.

Cedar said “The—”

“So would we all,” Takamoto said over her, oblivious to Cedar’s sudden glare. “Two kilometer past the Hindenbarge, your body come apart. Is also mathematically predictable. You look like squidodactyl. We use dirigibles, bamboo clockwork, to control the steel diffusers.”

Takamoto burbled on, while I sat back in my chair and stared at the slowly growing platform.

I’d seen diffused steel before. Everyone on Freefall had. But I hadn’t appreciated how we made it until I saw the Hindenbarge. It looked too big to be real. And it couldn’t be real, on Earth.

We’d built a wonder in the sky.

In another universe’s sky.

This was why I’d joined Montague. If it meant I had to help scrape some poor bastard off the Debris Shield, it was totally worth it.

One of the smaller balloons moved independently. I blinked, and suddenly my eyes made sense of them. That balloon was a zeppelin, one of the huge cargo zeppelins, with bundles of diffused steel dangling from its belly. It swam past us like a whale ignoring a flounder, but up in the minuscule perch for the pilot I made out a speck waving at us.

That zeppelin was bigger than all of the Facility. It would dock far below the floors where we ate and worked, offloading cargo to be lugged through the Portal back to Earth.

“You have to be careful,” Cedar said. “If you cut the stock wrong, it’ll diffuse badly. Nobody wants an I-beam with sharp edges, it’ll have your arm off before you notice. We have a few of the really good ones back in the office.”

“They have to be at office,” Takamoto said. “Leave steel here more than a week, it gets weak. Diffusion needs speed. Out here, just—” he shrugged “—rots.”

“The people trying to dig far enough into the cliff to get neutronium have been at it for ten years now,” Cedar said. “Our department’s profits have covered the last eight of that, and projects in a dozen other universes too.”

MacConnor brought us to the Hindenbarge so smoothly I hardly knew we’d connected. One moment our basket swayed, then the motion stopped. I let out a deep breath and unbuckled.

“Careful!” MacConnor said, dropping through the ceiling hatch. He came down the ladder using only his hands, letting his feet swing free into the room. “If I weigh twenty kilos here, Miss Redding, you weigh about a sneeze.”

I stopped, then carefully undid the belt.

Cedar unbuckled, laid her forearm over her head to protect it from the ceiling, then stood. I followed her example, and rose so quickly that my feet left the ground. My forearm was squeezed between my head and the ceiling, and then I settled back down.

“Light steps,” MacConnor said. “You’ll get it.”

My duffel bag weighted less than one of the boots I’d left in my quarters.

MacConnor untied the rear hatch and held it open for me. “Thank you for flying Tahiti Sunset airlines.”

I followed MacConnor out onto the dock.

The basket sat on an enclosed platform of structural bamboo. The zeppelin’s glowing underbelly formed the ceiling, glowing in white and pink from diffused light. Sunlight streamed through gaps between the bamboo struts behind us, and the breeze carried hot metal and burning wood.

A man loomed on the platform, wearing a Montague Security uniform with the blue epaulets of a Second. His chin looked like it could do double duty as a plow and his eyes shone with energy, but stubble darkened his face and he’d combed his dark brown hair with his fingers.

“Security Third Redding,” he said in a voice like a rock crusher, stepping forward and holding out his right hand.

“Mister Lundbaugh, sir?” I reached to take his hand.

He harrumphed. “You have a message from your supervisor, I hope.”

“Oh!” I jerked my hand back and fumbled in my pockets. The white envelope from Forecourt was in my right thigh pocket, slightly bent but still sealed.

Lundbaugh took it from me impatiently, tore it open with a thumb. His bushy eyebrows crawled closer together as he read. “I was ready for bed.”

“Sorry, sir,” I said.

Cedar waved one hand in farewell as she and Takamoto slipped out a side door. MacConnor had already vanished.

“So,” he drawled. “You’re here to talk to the morning zeppelin passengers. We start work early out here, but don’t worry—I’ll get them rousted for you.”

The information I’d gathered earlier suddenly felt completely irrelevant. I’d made a huge deal out of this for nothing. Yes, I couldn’t make sense of the facts, but someone smarter could. Gupper had died of misadventure, a normal ordinary misadventure. He must have. Pushing any other explanation would only make me a bigger fool and wreck what little career I had. “It could wait for morning, sir.”

“Oh, no!” Lundbaugh showed his teeth. It wasn’t a smile. “We can’t have anyone missing their flight back in the morning. If I’m up, everyone’s up.” He folded Forecourt’s message into a neat square. “Besides, this might be a serious crime you’re here about. It’s not just an industrial accident. Got to take it serious. Urgent, even.”

I wanted to slink away.

But, dammit, the facts didn’t make sense.

“If the radio had worked,” Lundbaugh said, “I could have saved you the trip. This morning’s zeppelin arrived just fine. On time. They certainly didn’t stop to—” he smirked “—throw anyone overboard.”

7The Hindenbarge had its own rhythm, a slower sway than the tiny zeppelin, a private tide formed of shifting silk and flexing bamboo and creaking hemp, an inexorable inertia that you had to accept before you could walk. The platform’s slow rotation skewed every movement: every dropped object landed just a little bit off target, every door closed a little too enthusiastically or lethargically. I found myself grateful for my gum-soled shoes, offering me a little extra traction on bamboo decks and ladders even while reduced weight nibbled at friction.

But I got answers.

The morning zeppelin—yesterday morning’s zeppelin, by the time I finished—had a completely uneventful flight. Nobody on the flight had seen Devin Gupper. They hadn’t detoured above the Debris Shield.

At almost one in the morning, I released tired and confused scientists and mechanics to the custody of their beds. When I told Lundbaugh I’d finished, he huffed and scowled and pointed me to a hammock. My pilot was asleep, returning to the Facility didn’t demand urgency, and the Tahiti Sunset had to recharge for the journey home anyway. Zeppelins could only do about forty kilometers on a charge.

The weave and tide of the Hindenbarge rocked me to dreamless sleep.

A support clerk shook me awake too soon to tell me that the Tahiti Sunset would leave for the Facility in half an hour. He brought me a sandwich, a cup of coffee, and a sealed envelope from Lundbaugh, for Forecourt.

I made it to the dock with four minutes to spare. Cedar was already there, an Irish warrior from before the Oil Age, trying not to catch her red hair in the wicker ceiling and looking even more bleary-eyed than I felt. “Doctor Cedar,” I said.

She nodded. “Redding. How was your trip?”

Useless and stupid. “Necessary.” I strapped the chute box onto my back and took my seat. Last night’s boxed dinner still sat on the floor, its fried chicken and potatoes and butter certainly congealed and festering. I’d have to remember to take it out when I left. “How was yours?”

Cedar heaved out a breath. “Rough. Everybody—” Her voice cracked. She took a moment to steady herself and said, “Everybody liked Devin. I mean, he was a good guy. Not one of those people with a rough outside but they’re okay when you get to know them. I mean, he honestly gave a damn. He wanted everyone to be successful. Did you know he wrote half a dozen Diffusion monographs, but he made sure he wasn’t the only one listed as author? Kirk can’t write a grocery list without doing thirty drafts to try to make it coherent, but he’s a hell of a mathematician. Devin made sure he got credit on every single paper based on his work, though.”