Belt Riders
The Belt Riders are living balloons of Jupiter's cloud tops who have never touched anything solid. They once drifted along the wind belts, until the lightning that feeds them made them heavy; now their gondolas are moored to masts that drink the storm, and lightning is their food, their feast and their measure of age. A guest who cannot float at all seems to them impossibly heavy, and so impossibly old, and they greet such a guest with deep, humming respect.
«Whoo! A heavy one! A real heavy one, on legs! I'm …. Hold on to a rope, guest — there's wind up here, and I think you would fall for a very long time.»
The settlement and its dwellers
Crafts
Looks
Where they live
Mooring Knot. A knot of the Belt Riders: open gondolas moored to one another and to masts that drink the storm, floating in pools of cream cloud above the cloud tops. Over the Great Mast in the middle a caught lightning burns in a copper cage, and the elder, the heaviest of the knot, hovers beneath it.
Tasks
The Milkers' Iron· ElderGo into the Storm Bastion above the clouds, see the cages of the Milkers and come back.
«Above the clouds hangs the iron of the Milkers — the strangers who came to milk the storm and never shared a drop. None of us goes near it: the iron hums, and our rods stand on end. But you are heavy, guest, and iron does not frighten the heavy. Go inside, walk their bridges and come back. Tell me whether the rays are still in the cages.»
The Whale of the Spot· ElderWake the altar on the ring of the Storm Bastion and defeat the Spot Leviathan.
«Now you know what waits at the top: the ring without a roof, and the altar that calls the Whale. He is the last of the cloud whales, and he is hungry — the Spot's lightning no longer fills him, and every season he drinks more of ours. Our masts go thin, the bellblooms wait in vain. Two storm glands on the altar, and he will rise. Send him down into the Depths, heavy guest. Gently, if you can. But send him.»
Shells in the Frames· ElderWake the old ring of stone on Jupiter: the gate between the worlds.
«One more thing, and then you may call yourself heavier than me. The old ring sleeps on its deck, and the shells in its frames are silent. It wants the Whale's heart, three nautiluses quieted, a heap of stardust, our ammonia ice and the Spot's red phosphorus. Wake it, and every knot will hear the ring sing in the storm's voice. I have only heard that in stories.»
A Mast for Tuvo· Mast KeeperSee how the heavy folk guyed their Lightning Catcher, then bring the mast keeper two lightning rods and six iron chains for a young one's mast.
«Little Tuvo has grown a gondola of his own — and a gondola is only a boat until lightning strikes its mast. He needs a mast, and I need copper rods and chains to guy it. Your heavy folk once raised a mast in the belts — the Lightning Catcher, greedy thing. Go and look how they guyed it: they knew how to make a mast drink. Then bring me two rods and six chains.»
The First Strike· Mast KeeperLive through the Great Feast — the storm front of Jupiter — while Tuvo's new mast waits for its first lightning.
«The mast stands, the chains sing, and Tuvo has not slept for three nights. Lightning will not come to a new mast on a quiet day: it has to be the Great Feast, when the front rises from the Depths and the sky falls like hail. Be here when it comes, heavy guest. A home is born only once, and its first strike should have a witness.»
Ribs of the Cloud Whale· GondolierFind the bones of a cloud whale in the zones and bring the gondolier six bones for a keel built the old way.
«Our oldest gondolas were built on whale bone: light, and it never lets go of a rope. My great-grandmother rode the whales from Rise to Rise before we moored — she said a whale's back hums like a mast. There are bones in the zones still, held up by the clouds. Go and see them, heavy guest, and bring me bone. Any will do: they say your heavy folk carry it inside themselves. I want a keel the old way.»
Something to Drift With· GondolierMake a float belt from a floater's gas sac and show it to the gondolier.
«Every time you jump, heavy guest, my heart stops: you go down like hail. A Belt Rider without a gondola has nothing to hold on to, and you have neither a gondola nor any gas at all. Make yourself a belt of a floater's bladder: a buckle, leather and the sac that gulps the wind when you drop. Make it yourself and show me. Then I will know you will not fall all the way to the Depths.»
Lightness for the Old Ones· Gondolier· repeatableBring the gondolier eight mushballs for the old Belt Riders who can no longer rise above the masts.
«Every evening I ferry hail to the oldest gondolas. The old ones are heavy with scars and cannot rise above the masts any more, but a mushball keeps a little of the updraft it rode: for an hour they feel young and drift a hand higher. The hailgrowers in the belts catch them, and your heavy hands could pick a bundle. Bring eight now and then. I pay like a ferryman: a little, and every time.»
Red Yarn from the Spot· Cloud KnitterFind the Spot Pylon in the Great Red Spot and bring the cloud knitter eight pieces of spot crust to dye the cloud yarn red.
«Cream I can knit, amber I can knit — but red, the red of the Spot, grows only around the Still Pillar, where the whole storm turns. The crust there drinks the color of the Spot and keeps it. I cannot go: the Spot pulls the light ones in, and the nautiluses wait in its funnel. You are heavy; the wind will not take you. Bring me eight crusts from around the Pillar, and I will knit a block as red as the storm.»
A Patch for the Sky· Cloud KnitterLive through the comet's fall on Jupiter and bring the cloud knitter sixteen blocks of white wool to patch the burnt clouds.
«When I was light, a string of fire beads came out of the dark and fell into the Sky, one after another. Each left a black bruise as big as a world, and the clouds burned for days. The storm catchers say another string is coming. When it falls, stand and watch where it burns — and bring me your heavy folk's white wool. Only that wool knits a patch thick enough for a burnt cloud.»
Wool That Weighs Nothing· Cloud KnitterBring the cloud knitter four tufts of cloud wool from the mist lambs of the Breath.
«You smell of a mist that never rose over Jupiter, heavy guest: lilac and sharp, like a storm in a bottle. They say you pass through seams in the sky now. Is it true that somewhere out there lambs graze on mist, and their wool weighs nothing and never dries? A knitter only dreams of such yarn. Bring me four tufts, and I will knit a cloud that sleeps on air.»
Red Jellies over the Storm· Storm CatcherLive through the sprites over Jupiter's storms, jump the rings of light and bring the storm catcher four pieces of red phosphorus.
«Over the biggest storms, high up, red jellies flash — once, and gone. Under each one a ring of light runs out over the clouds. The old ones say the jellies are those who untied, dancing on top of the storm, and the ring is them waving. The sock on my pole says a night of jellies is near. Stand under them, heavy guest; jump when a ring comes, don't let it touch you, and bring me the red it leaves behind.»
Funnels in the Spot· Storm Catcher· repeatableDefeat two vortex nautiluses that hunt young Belt Riders in the Great Red Spot.
«The young ones drift too close to the Spot — they always have, and they always will. And the nautiluses wait in their funnels: whatever the wind carries in goes down the shell. I draw where the funnels are thickest, but a drawing keeps nobody up. Thin them for me, heavy guest — two at a time, and come back whenever my map fills again.»
A Jar for the Ringed Neighbor· Storm CatcherCarry a jar of Jupiter's lightning from the storm catcher to the elder of the Ring Keepers on Saturn.
«Your new ship goes further than the Four — so you will pass our ringed neighbor, the golden spark that never blinks. Hobba says nobody lives there; I say somebody must be catching all that ice. Take them a jar of our lightning — the best gift a Belt Rider can give: food, feast and a year of life in one. Give it to the heaviest of them, whoever holds their knot together. And ask: is it true that their winds walk in a six-sided ring?»
Ice for a Hot Mast· Ammonia TapperCarry four ammonia crystals from the ammonia tapper to the mast keeper, to cool a mast after a big strike.
«Last night the east mast took a strike so fat that the copper still glows. The mast keeper cools the masts with our ice, but my gondola is full of hail and the wind is against me. You walk, heavy guest, and the wind does not care about walkers. Take these four crystals to the keeper by the big mast — quickly, before the copper softens.»
What the Skimmer Drank· Ammonia TapperFind the wrecked Gas Skimmer and bring the ammonia tapper a canister of helium-3 from its hold, to give it back to the wind.
«A tapper takes a little from the Sky and lets the wind fill the gap. The Skimmer took everything: it drank our breath through its scoop until it burst. Its hold is still full of what it took, and at every Rise I hear the Sky missing it. We cannot go near it — it smells of greed. You can. Bring me one canister of what it drank, and at the next Rise I will open it to the wind, where it came from.»
Magnets for the Rings· Flux TapperBring the flux tapper four tetrataenite ingots and sixteen copper ingots for the collector rings.
«Whooo, a heavy guest on our rope! See the rings? They turn, and Ember's current runs down the mast — a feast that never ends. But the rings are hungry for iron that holds its pull, and for copper to carry the feast. Four bars of the star-iron, sixteen of copper. The mast will hum for you.»
A Storm for the Crown· Flux TapperCarry two charged batteries from the Io Mast to a crown tender of the Crown Station at Saturn.
«Further down the Sky hangs the ringed one, and its folk catch ice with nets and have no lightning at all — think of it! No feast, no scars, no weight. Take them two jars of ours. Let them taste what a storm is.»
A Real Charge· Flux TapperRaise the class of your ship at the dock console of any station.
«Your ship flies on a sip, heavy guest. A sip! Bring it to a dock, feed the console what it asks, and let the arm give it a real charge — a scar, as we say. A ship with its first scar is a home.»
The Farthest Knot· Flux TapperDock at the Triton Anchor, the station of the Windbearers near Neptune, and return to the Io Mast.
«The Four hang on ropes nobody sees. We think the whole Sky is tied like that — knot to knot. They say that at the very edge, by the blue one, there is a station on a chain. A knot! The farthest. Fly there, touch it, and come back: then the rope from our mast will reach the edge of the Sky.»
What to talk about
Tell me about Jupiter.
This is the Sky, and there is nothing else here. No floor, no bottom — only clouds on top of clouds: the higher, the colder and whiter; the lower, the warmer and darker. Under them lies the Depths, where the air thickens until it turns to metal. We live on the very top, where the lightning reaches up to us.
What is down in the Depths?
Weight. Everything heavy goes there: hail, old gondolas, and in the end, us. The deeper you sink, the harder the air squeezes and the warmer it gets — and the lightning is born down there, in the water clouds, and rises to us. We give the Depths our old ones, and it gives us lightning back. A fair trade.
Why is the sky striped?
Because it breathes. In the white stripes — we call them Rises — the air goes up and the ammonia freezes into white clouds; in the dark ones, the Sinks, it goes down and drags the brown stuff of the Depths with it. Between them the winds run, east and west, faster than any of us can swim. Our ancestors rode them around the whole Sky — that is where our name comes from.
What are those moons in the sky?
The Four. They are moored to the Sky on ropes we cannot see and go round and round, the way gondolas go round a mast in the wind. The yellow one is Ember: she smokes, and her smoke falls to us at the poles as curtains of light. The white one is Icelet, the big one is the Elder, and the dark, pocked one is Speckle. We count our years by them, and our children by the storms.
Who else lives in the Sky?
The floaters — little striped bubbles with big eyes. They are not our kind; they are more like your birds, curious and silly. The storm rays glide on the thunderheads and drink lightning through their wings: rivals at every feast, but honest ones. And in the Spot hunts the nautilus, a shell made of a coiled storm. Whatever the wind carries into the Spot goes down its funnel. Many young ones never came back from the Spot.
Who are you?
We are the Belt Riders. Once all of us rode the winds between the stripes, from Rise to Sink and around the whole Sky, and we needed no masts. But every lightning that feeds us leaves a little weight behind. The old ones grew heavy, the young ones would not leave them — and so we moored. Now our knots hang where the storms pass, and the wind rides by without us.
Why do you call me heavy?
Because you are! Weight is age here: every strike leaves a scar and a little copper in us, and old ones like me can't rise above the masts any more. So the heavier, the more respected. And you can't rise at all — I took you for someone older than the Spot! Though the heavy folk who came before you were all like that. Is your world full of walkers? A whole world of heavy ones... How sad. And how venerable.
Where do young Belt Riders come from?
From bellblooms. Have you seen them on the clouds — little bells of ice on threads, with a spark inside? A bellbloom waits for lightning. Most wait in vain and stay flowers. But if the lightning chooses one, the spark wakes, the threads snap, and a Belt Rider rises — light, light as a breath. That is why we never pick bellblooms. And please, don't put them in your soup.
Why do you have so many eyes?
To see the wind, of course. A storm doesn't come from in front — it comes from everywhere at once. With ten eyes around my belt I see the whole sky except straight up and straight down: up there are only my rods, down there only the Depths, and I don't care to look at either. Do you really see only forward? Then how do you know when a ray is behind you?
What happens when one of you grows too heavy?
Then they let go. We say "untied". One night, in a strong storm, an old one lets go of the mast and goes down into the Depths, slowly, glowing with every old scar. The others hum until the glow is gone. Then we build a drifting stone for them — a slab of storm cloud with a ring on it — and give it to the wind. The wind takes it apart stone by stone, and when the last stone is gone, the old one has reached the bottom.
A lightning that walked?
That is the closest word we have. The old ones who saw it from afar said it had a head — a ring of light on top — and arms held wide, and that it was warm, not burning: you could moor beside it and live. It climbed the invisible ropes to the Four, and the Four still swing on them. Then one day it walked away along a rope nobody can see, and did not come back. Since then we have lived on the little ones.
The tablet from Ember says: the road of fire goes down.
From Ember? Then I know where it went. The old ones said the First Lightning last stood over Ember — and Ember has smoked ever since. We thought she was burning. If your tablet says the road goes down through the fire, she is not burning: she is keeping a door warm. My home was struck the year Ember went dark for a while. Now I wonder what passed through.
The tablet from Icelet says life sleeps under the ice.
Under Icelet? Then that is what hums. On the stillest nights, when no storm is in the Sky, the storm catchers hear a low song from the white one, and we always said it was the ice cracking. Ice does not sing the same song twice, heavy guest. Whatever the First Lightning put to sleep down there is dreaming out loud.
What are those threads on your head?
My rods. They grow from the crown the way, I'm told, hair grows on you — only ours is copper. A spark runs up and down them all the time: that's me thinking. In a storm they stand on end and pull the lightning in. If you see a Belt Rider with drooping rods, give them a jar: they're hungry.
Names
Bhoom · Orrum · Thaddu · Wumbe · Hullu · Rrou · Brummo · Ombo · Vauu · Taram · Morro · Fiyu