Free Xeelee: An Omnibus: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring by Stephen Baxter Page B

save the finger from snapping, and his knees bent into a half-kneel before Rees. Pain showed in a sheen of sweat on his brow, but he clenched his teeth, refusing to cry out.
    Jorge’s smile faded; his hands hung at his sides, uncertain.
    ‘My name is Rees,’ the miner said slowly. ‘Remember that.’
    He released the finger. Doav slumped to his knees, nursing his hand; he glared up. ‘I’ll remember you, Rees; have no fear,’ he hissed.
    Already regretting his outburst Rees turned his back and walked away. The cadets didn’t follow.
    Slowly Rees dusted his way around Hollerbach’s office. Of all the areas to which his chores brought him access, this room was the most intriguing. He ran a fingertip along a row of books; their pages were black with age and the gilt on their spines had all but worn away. He traced letters one by one: E . . . n . . . c . . . y . . . c . . . Who, or what, was an ‘Encyclopaedia’? He daydreamed briefly about picking up a volume, letting it fall open . . .
    Again that almost sexual hunger for knowledge swept through him.
    Now his eye was caught by a machine, a thing of jewelled cogs and gears about the size of his cupped hands. At its centre was set a bright silver sphere; nine painted orbs were suspended on wires around the sphere. It was beautiful, but what the hell was it?
    He glanced about. The office was empty. He couldn’t resist it.
    He picked up the device, relishing the feel of the machined metal base—
    ‘Don’t drop it, will you?’
    He started. The intricate device juggled through the air, painfully slowly; he grabbed it and returned it to its shelf.
    He turned. Silhouetted in the doorway was Jaen, her broad, freckled face creased into a grin. After a few seconds he smiled back. ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said.
    The apprentice walked towards him. ‘You should be glad it’s only me. Anybody else and you’d be off the Raft by now.’
    He shrugged, watching her approach with mild pleasure. Jaen was the senior apprentice of Cipse, the Chief Navigator; only a few hundred shifts older than Rees, she was one of the few inhabitants of the labs to show him anything other than contempt. She even seemed to forget he was a mine rat, sometimes . . . Jaen was a broad, stocky girl; her gait was confident but ungainly. Uncomfortably Rees found himself comparing her with Sheen. He was growing fond of Jaen; he believed she could become a good friend.
    But her body didn’t pull at his with the intensity of the mine girl’s.
    Jaen stood beside him and ran a casual fingertip over the little device. ‘Poor old Rees,’ she mocked. ‘I bet you don’t even know what this is, do you?’
    He shrugged. ‘You know I don’t.’
    ‘It’s called an orrery.’ She spelt the word for him. ‘It’s a model of the Solar System.
    ‘The what?’
    Jaen sighed, then she pointed at the silver orb at the heart of the orrery. ‘That’s a star. And these things are balls of - iron, I suppose, orbiting around it. They’re called planets. Mankind - the folk on the Raft, at least - originally came from one of these planets. The fourth, I think. Or maybe the third.’
    Rees scratched his chin. ‘Really? There can’t have been too many of them.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘No room. If the planet was any size the gees would be too high. The star kernel back home is only fifty yards wide - and it’s mostly air - and it has a surface gravity of five gee.’
    ‘Yeah? Well, this planet was a lot bigger. It was—’ She extended her hands. ‘Miles wide. And the gravity wasn’t crushing. Things were different.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘ . . . I’m not sure. But the surface gravity was probably only, I don’t know, three or four gee.’
    He thought that over. ‘In that case, what’s a gee? I mean, why is a gee the size it is - no larger and no smaller?’
    Jaen had been about to say something else; now she frowned in exasperation. ‘Rees, I haven’t the faintest idea. By the Bones, you ask stupid questions. I’m