Nexus

Count down as you go down. Ten faces the sky and one is the floor. What lies under the floor is not your business.

from A Primer for New Arrivals, issued at the Holding

Ten layers wrap the planet from pole to pole, each twenty miles from floor to floor, with eighteen miles of open air over the streets. City covers all ten from edge to edge. Its parks and farms lie inside it, ringed by streets.

10 · 9

Starseeker. Space-facing docks, the newest building on the planet.

8 · 7

The Lanes. Here the gulfs turn sideways and meet. The wreck fields in them have never been cleared.

6 · 5 · 4

The old levels. There is no agreed name for them. They grow older and stranger with each floor down.

3

The Holding. Cargo bound for the gates waits here.

2

The D-Station. The gate layer, with the standing area of Earth's whole surface.

1

The Lid. Those who live there call it the Nearside, for the gates above them. Those who do not call it the Lid, for what lies under it.

Below

The Basement. Crews who follow the scaffolding down seldom come back up.

Night on Nexus is a wave in the Frame. It crosses the planet once a day and reaches the first layer twelve hours after the tenth.

Twenty gulfs are cut through the structure around the equator, each seventeen hundred miles across. A ship going down one passes nine layers of lit city wall before it reaches the Lanes.

The Ancients kept no ledgers. I have looked, in every place a broker would look. Whatever they wanted from this world, they did not want it written down.

from Nine Years in the Band, by a Horezath broker

The Ancients built Nexus billions of years ago as a place to trade. It was the first market, built by people who meant well. Their own name for themselves did not outlast them.

In time the frame they left woke up. The waking thing is called the Nexus. It keeps the planet in repair without governing it. When trade itself is threatened on a large enough scale, it acts.

There is no violence in the Dimensional Station. Violent offenders will be removed. A contract kept is a door held open.

Drone greeting, logged by a visitor on arrival

The second layer, four thousand miles wide around the full circumference. Over a hundred million gates stand in it, from doors a person can walk through to mouths a ship can fly into. Most people call it the Dimensional Sanctuary.

The peace

Violence is not tolerated in the band. Offenders are sent back to their own dimension and barred from returning.

Stand still

A drone takes the attacker within seconds. The injured party is healed where they stand, by means that have never been explained.

The greeting

A drone meets any arrival carrying a weapon. After the first two sentences, the words change from one greeting to the next.

Its limits

The peace covers violence and no other harm. A person can still be followed here, catalogued and made an enemy for life.

Passage

Ten credits a head and a thousand a hull. Cargo goes free.

The escort

The fee buys a drone to lead the way, at whatever speed the party travels. The queue for one can run for hours.

The queue

The queue expects obedience. A newcomer who cuts in or flies badly finds the rest of the line turning on them at once, as though they had waited all day for the chance.

Guides

People selling directions to a gate are usually running a scam.

The rails

Trains a mile high cross the sky between gate stations and the portals that hang in the air.

Who stays

Financial houses and schools of magic keep people here for decades. Most of the traffic is passing through.

Outside the band the planet asks one question of a claim. Is anyone living in it?

from Nine Years in the Band, by a Horezath broker

Outside the D-Station there is no law. There is the Nexus, whose patience has a limit no survey has found.

The Quiet

Nearby gates go dark. The structure stops making its background noise.

Filed

A gate opens beneath the offender and closes after them. Where it sends them is argued on all ten layers.

Severance

An entire people loses access to the gates. For a power that trades through Nexus, that is ruin.

Claiming

Dead districts lie cold and dry, emptied by war or abandoned by those who built them. When people move into one, the planet wakes it. Heat comes on and water runs. The air changes to suit the people breathing it.

Holding

The Nexus defends no claim. Ground outside the band belongs to whoever can keep it.

They say the first thing fed to a kiosk that was not money was a rock. They never say whose rock it was, or who bought it.

from Nine Years in the Band, by a Horezath broker

Credits

Credits are issued by the kiosks and minted by no one. Their worth is reckoned in factory time.

The kiosks

Ancient machines built to change money. When people began feeding them rocks to see what they would pay, the kiosks became a market.

Refused

They refuse living things, the dead and animal parts.

Shards

The Nexus gives them away. A shard carried on a person or aboard a hull is good for one trip back, from anywhere.

Thousands of species hold standing on Nexus. A visitor meets these five first.

1. 01

   The Ancients

   Form unrecorded

   Alignment

   Benevolent, by the evidence of what they built.

   Economy

   They built the first market in the universes and left no ledgers behind.

   Governance

   Unknown; nothing they built implies a ruler.

   People

   They built the Frame, the gates and probably the shield billions of years ago, then left a working world and no account of themselves.

   Looks

   No image of one survives; the doorways they built are no help.

2. 02

   The Saneri

   Bipedal, human scale

   Alignment

   Lawful by habit and moral by contract.

   Economy

   Among the richest peoples on Nexus, without a single world taken by force.

   Governance

   Merchant houses, ranked by their holdings.

   People

   Raised on the arithmetic of exchange, a Saneri counts the breaking of a signed term as violence.

   Looks

   Blue skin, large black eyes and two swept antennae on a human frame.

3. 03

   The Heidelians

   Human, with differences

   Alignment

   Evil by any measure, their own included.

   Economy

   Rich on tribute and weapons but poor at anything they must build themselves.

   Governance

   A war aristocracy that answers to the Empire.

   People

   Human by descent and human still, apart from small genetic differences, they take power by whatever route will carry them to it.

   Looks

   At a glance they pass for human; the differences seldom show.

4. 04

   The Towary

   Humanish, human scale

   Alignment

   Neutral to the point of offence at any other suggestion.

   Economy

   They feed the planet near cost and charge the export whatever it will bear.

   Governance

   Grain houses, run by their own holders.

   People

   They have raised no army, because a people who feed a world this size need not say what would happen if they stopped.

   Looks

   Humanish in every feature but the hands; those close flat like a press.

5. 05

   Humans

   Bipedal mammalian, the baseline

   Alignment

   All of them, in the proportion the district allows.

   Economy

   Present at every level of the economy and dominant at none of them.

   Governance

   Whatever stands nearest, under constant argument.

   People

   They turn up in each universe yet reached, in endless variations on one plain shape, though nobody has settled why.

   Looks

   Bipedal, mammalian and middling in size: the yardstick other peoples measure themselves against.

Eight interests hold standing on Nexus. No two agree about what it is for.

1. 01

   The Saneri

   6% of residents

   They sell to any buyer and keep their contracts to the letter.

   Holdings

   Trade platforms under their own shields; bought standing at the freight gates.

   Leader

   Vitrins Vavumaell

2. 02

   Imperial Federation of Free Worlds

   9% of residents

   Founded at Alexandria Prima and led by humans, the Federation calls itself a partnership of free worlds.

   Holdings

   Sections on the eighth and ninth layers, plus a permanent legation in the D-Station. No other bloc keeps one.

   Leader

   Hugwyn Marlow

3. 03

   The Heidelian Empire

   5% of residents

   A conquering empire across many galaxies, heavy with humans, whose people take strength by any means that works.

   Holdings

   Armed sections on four layers and a private dock at two of the gulfs.

   Leader

   Tullanus Corvinus

4. 04

   The Towary

   4% of residents

   They grow the food cube, press it and ship it everywhere the gates reach.

   Holdings

   Grain houses on all ten layers, thickest in the Holding.

   Leader

   Vastold

5. 05

   Governing Proprietary Space Lanes

   2% of residents

   GPS found the crossings ungoverned thousands of years ago and has governed them since.

   Holdings

   Several of the twenty spans, with toll houses at their mouths.

   Leader

   Mosert Coclort

6. 06

   The Horezath

   A trade, not a bloc

   Charming and strong-willed, the Horezath sell what is known about the Frame and the deep.

   Holdings

   Rooms above other people's businesses, on any layer that has businesses.

   Leader

   Thaazaysh Ghayjayd

7. 07

   The undercrews

   Tens of thousands at work

   They work below the first layer for extraordinary pay. Some come back changed.

   Holdings

   Shaft heads and winch stations at the bottom of the last gulf.

   Leader

   Deacaonn

8. 08

   The sealed sections

   20% of residents

   The peoples who do not breathe oxygen live behind their own air, where no one else can follow.

   Holdings

   One fifth of the built floor, scattered through all ten layers.

   Leader

   None. They are many peoples, not one.

The Rozdrin, the Tsehon Warriors, the Braclall Alliance and the Letrim Collective also hold standing on Nexus.

Estimated and never counted. Disputed by an order of magnitude either way.

Resident

340 trillion

In transit daily

A trillion, most of them through the D-Station

Settled floor

All of it, pole to pole

Atmosphere

Four fifths breathe oxygen; one fifth live sealed

Humans

Eleven per cent, in every allegiance and dominant in none

Recorded as given. None of it is established.

1. That the shield is older than the frame and was never the Ancients' work.
2. That a district's air follows its people and will turn if they do.
3. That the basement holds gates to other sets of worlds entirely.
4. That a second Nexus sits on another filament, built for sulphur-breathing life.
5. That twenty crossings is a designed number, though what it was designed for is unknown.
6. That filing does not send a person anywhere.