by Stephen Baxter

Book 3 of the Xeelee Sequence

To my nephew James Baxter

Chapter 1
Dura woke with a start.

There was something wrong. The photons didn't smell right.

Her hand floated before her face, dimly visible, and she flexed her fingers.
Disturbed electron gas, spiraling dizzily around the Magfield lines, sparkled
purple-white around the fingertips. The Air in her eyes was warm, stale, and she
could make out only vague shapes.

For a moment she hung there, curled in a tight ball, suspended in the elastic grip
of the Magfield.

She heard voices, thin and hot with panic. They were coming from the direction of
the Net.

Dura jammed her eyes tight shut and hugged her knees, willing herself to return to
the cool oblivion of sleep. Not again. By the blood of the Xeelee, she swore
silently, not another Glitch; not another spin storm. She wasn't sure if the little
tribe of Human Beings had the resources to respond to more disruption� nor, indeed,
if she herself had the strength to cope with fresh disaster.

The Magfield itself trembled now. Encasing her body, it rippled over her skin, not
unpleasantly, and she allowed it to rock her as if she were a child in its arms.
Then�not so pleasantly�it prodded her more rudely in the small of the back�

No, that wasn't the Magfield. She uncurled again, stretching against the confines
of the field. She rubbed her eyes�the fleshy rims of the cups were crusted with
sleep-deposits and felt sharp against her fingers�and shook her head to clear the
clouded Air out of the cups.

The prod in her back was coming from the fist of Farr, her brother. He'd been on
latrine duty, she saw; he still carried his plaited waste bag, empty of the
neutron-rich shit he'd taken out away from the Net and dumped in the Air. His
skinny, growing body trembled in response to the instabilities in the Magfield and
his round face was upturned to her, creased with an almost comical concern. In one
hand he gripped a fin of his pet Air-pig�a fat infant about the size of Dura's
fist, so young that none of its six fins were yet pierced. The little animal,
obviously terrified by the Glitch, struggled to escape, feebly; it pumped out
superfluid jetfarts in thin blue streams.

His fondness for the animal made Farr seem even younger than his twelve years�a
third of Dura's age�and he clung to the piglet as if clinging to childhood itself.
Well, Dura thought, the Mantle was huge and empty, but there was precious little
room in it for childhood. Farr was having to grow up fast.

He was so like their father, Logue.

Dura, still misty with sleep, felt a surge of affection and concern for the boy and
reached out to stroke his cheek, to run gentle fingers around the quiet brown rims
of his eyes.
She smiled at her brother. "Hello, Farr."

"Sorry for waking you."

"You didn't. The Star was kind enough to wake me, long before you got around to it.
Another Glitch?"

"The worst one yet, Adda says."

"Never mind what Adda says," Dura said, stroking his floating hair; the hollow
tubes were, as always, tangled and grubby. "We'll get by. We always do, don't we?
You get back to your father. And tell him I'm coming."

"All right." Farr smiled at her again, twisted stiffly, and, with his Air-pig's fin
still clutched tight, he began to Wave awkwardly across the Magfield's invisible
flux paths toward the Net. Dura watched him recede, his slim form diminished by the
shimmering, world-filling vortex lines beyond him.

Dura straightened to her full length and stretched, pressing against the Magfield.
She kept her mouth wide open as she worked stiffness out of her limbs and back. She
felt the feathery ripple of the Air as it poured through her throat to her lungs
and heart, rushing through superleak capillaries and filling her muscles; her body
seemed to tingle with its freshness.

She gazed around, sniffing the photons.

Dura's world was the Mantle of the Star, an immense cavern of yellow-white Air
bounded below by the Quantum Sea and above by the Crust.

The Crust itself was a rich, matted ceiling, purple-streaked with grass and the
hairlike lines of tree trunks. By squinting�distorting the parabolic retinas of her
eyes�she could make out dark motes scattered among the roots of the trees fixed to
the underside of the Crust. Perhaps they were rays, or a herd of wild Air-pigs, or
some other grazing creatures. It was too distant to see clearly, but the amphibian
animals seemed to be swirling around each other, colliding, confused; she almost
imagined she could hear the cool sound of their distress.

Far below her, the Quantum Sea formed a purple-dark floor to the world. The Sea was
mist-shrouded, its surface indistinct and deadly. The Sea itself, she saw with
relief, was undisturbed by the Glitch. Only once in Dura's memory had there been a
Glitch severe enough to cause a Seaquake. She shuddered like the Magfield as she
remembered that ghastly time; she had been no older than Farr, she supposed, when
the neutrino founts had come, sweeping half the Human Beings�including Phir, Dura's
mother and Logue's first wife�away and on, screaming, into the mysteries beyond the
Crust.

All around her, filing the Air between Crust and Sea, the vortex lines were an
electric-blue cage. The lines filled space in a hexagonal array, spaced about ten
mansheights apart; they swept around the Star from far upflux�from the North�arced
past her like the trajectories of immense, graceful animals, and converged into the
red-soft blur that was the South Pole, millions of mansheights away.

She held her fingers up before her face, trying to judge the spacing and pattern of
the lines.

Through her fingers she could see the encampment, a little knot of frantic detail
and activity�jostling, terrified Air-pigs, scrambling people, the quivering Net�all
embedded in the shuddering bulk of the Air. Farr with his struggling Air-piglet was
a pathetic scrap, wriggling through the invisible flux tubes.

Dura tried to ignore the small, messy knot of humanity, to focus on the lines.

Normally the motion of the lines was stately, predictable�regular enough for the
Human Beings to measure their lives by it, in fact. Overlaid on the eternal drift
of the lines toward the Crust there were pulses of line-bunching: the tight, sharp
crowdings that marked the days, and the slower, more complex second-order
oscillations which humans used to count their months. In normal times it was easy
for the Human Beings to avoid the slow creep of the lines; there was always plenty
of time to dismantle the Net, repitch their little encampment in another corner of
the empty sky.

Dura even knew what caused the lines' stately pulsations, much good the knowledge
did her: the Star had a companion, far beyond the Crust�a planet, a ball like the
Star but smaller, lighter�which revolved, unseen, over their heads, pulling at the
vortex lines as if with invisible fingers. And, of course, beyond the planet�the
childish ideas returned to her unbidden, like fragments of her lingering
sleep�beyond the planet were the stars of the Ur-humans, impossibly distant and
forever invisible.

The drifting vortex lines were as stable and secure, in normal times, as the
fingers of some friendly god; humans, Air-pigs and others moved freely between the
lines, fearlessly and without any danger�

Except during a Glitch.

Now, across the frame of her spread fingers, the vortex array was shifting visibly
as the superfluid Air sought to realign with the Star's adjusted rotation.
Instabilities�great parallel sets of ripples�already marched majestically along the
length of the lines, bearing the news of the Star's new awakening from Pole to
magnetic Pole.

The photons emitted by the lines smelled thin, sharp. The spin storm was coming.

* * *

Dura had chosen a sleep place about fifty mansheights from the center of the Human
Beings' current encampment, in a place where the Magfield had felt particularly
thick, comfortingly secure. Now she began to Wave toward the Net. Wriggling,
rippling her limbs, she felt electricity course through her epidermis; and she
pushed with arms and legs at the invisible, elastic resistance of the Magfield as
if it were a ladder. Fully awake now, she found herself filled with a belated
anxiety�an anxiety healthily laced with guilt at her tardiness�and as she slid
across the Magfield she spread the webbed fingers of her hands and beat at the Air,
trying to work up still more speed. Neutron superfluid made up most of the bulk of
the Air, so there was barely any resistance to her hands; but still she clawed at
the Air, her impatience mounting, seeking comfort in activity.

The vortex lines slid like dreams across her field of vision now. Ripples hurtled
in great even chains, as if the vortex lines were ropes shaken by giants located in
the mists of the Poles. As the waves beat past her they emitted a low, cool groan.
The amplitude of the waves was already half a mansheight. By Bolder's guts, she
thought, maybe that old fool Adda is right for once; maybe this really is going to
be the worst yet.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the encampment grew from a distant abstraction, a melange
of movement and noise, to a community. The encampment was based around the crude
cylindrical Net made of plaited tree-bark, slung out along the Magfield lines. Most
people slept and ate bound up to the Net, and the length of the cylinder was a
patchwork of tied-up belongings, privacy blankets, cleaning brushes, simple
clothes�ponchos, tunics and belts�and a few pathetic bundles of food. Scraps of
half-finished wooden artifacts and flags of untreated Air-pig leather dangled from
the Net ropes.

The Net was five mansheights across and a dozen long. It was at least five
generations old, according to the older folk like Adda. And it was the only home of
about fifty humans�and their only treasure.

As she neared it, clawing her way through the clinging Magfield, Dura suddenly saw
the flimsy construct with an objective eye�as if she had not been born in a blanket
tied to its filthy knots, as if she would not die still clinging to its fibers. How
fragile it was: how pathetic, how defenseless they truly were. Even as she
approached to join her people in this moment of need, Dura felt depressed, weak,
helpless.

The adults and older children were Waving all around the Net, working at knots
which dwarfed their fingers. She saw Esk, picking patiently at a section of the
Net. Dura thought he watched her approach, but it was hard to be sure. In any event
Philas, his wife, was with him, and Dura kept her face averted. Here and there Dura
could make out small children and infants still attached to the Net by tethers of
varying lengths. Each child, left tethered up by laboring parents and siblings, was
a small, wailing bundle of fear and loneliness, Waving futilely against its
constraints, and Dura felt her heart go out to every one of them. Dura spotted the
girl Dia, heavily pregnant with her first child. Working with her husband Mur, Dia
was pulling tools and bits of clothing from the Net and stuffing them into a sack;
Air-sweat glistened from her swollen, naked belly. Dia was a small-limbed,
childlike woman whose pregnancy had served to make her only more vulnerable and
young-looking; watching her work now, her every movement redolent of fear, made
something move inside childless Dura, an urge to protect.

The animals�the tribe's small herd of a dozen adult Air-pigs and about as many
piglets�were restrained inside the Net, along its axis. They bleated, their din
adding a mournful counterpoint to the shouts and cries of humans; they huddled
together at the heart of the Net in a trembling mass of fins, jet orifices and
stalks erect with huge, bowl-shaped eyes. A few people had gone inside the Net and
were trying to calm the animals, to attach leaders to their pierced fins. But the
dismantling of the Net was proceeding slowly and unevenly, Dura saw as she
approached, and the herd was a mass of panicky noise, uncoordinated movement.

She heard voices raised in fear and impatience. What had seemed from a little
further away to be a reasonably controlled operation was actually little more than
a shambles, she realized.

There was something in her peripheral vision�a motion, blue-white and distant� More
ripples in the vortex tubes, coming from the distant North: immense, jagged
irregularities utterly dwarfing the small instabilities she'd observed so far.

There wasn't much time.

Logue, her father, hung in the Magfield a little way from the Net. Adda, too old
and slow for the urgent work of dismantling the encampment, hovered beside Logue,
his thin face twisted, sour. Logue bellowed out orders in his huge baritone, but,
Dura could already see, with very little effect on the Human Beings' coordination.
Still Dura had that odd feeling of timelessness, of detachment, and she studied her
father as if meeting him for the first time in many weeks. Logue's hair, plastered
against his scalp, was crumpled and yellowed; his face was a mask through which the
round, boyish features shared by Farr could still be discerned, obscured by a mat
of scars and wrinkles.

As Dura approached, Logue turned to her, his brown eyecups wide, his cheek muscles
working. "You took your time," he growled at her. "Where have you been? You're
needed here. Can't you see that?"

His words cut through her detachment, and despite herself, despite the urgency of
the moment, she felt resentment building in her. "Where? I've been to the Core in a
Xeelee nightfighter. Where do you think I've been?"

Logue turned from her in apparent disgust. "You shouldn't blaspheme," he muttered.

She wanted to laugh. Impatient with him, with herself, with the continual friction
between them, she shook her head. "Oh, into the Ring with it. What do you want me
to do?"

Now old Adda leaned forward, the open pores among his remaining hair sparkling Air-
sweat. "Don't know there's much you can do," he said sourly. "Look at them. What a
shambles."

"We're not going to make it in time, are we?" Dura asked him. She pointed North.
"Look at that ripple. We won't get out of the way before it hits."

"Maybe. Maybe not." The old man raised his empty eyes to the South Pole; its soft
glow illuminated the backs of his eyes, the cup-retinas there; fragments of debris
swirled around the rims and tiny cleansing symbiotes swam constantly in and out of
the cups.

Logue bellowed suddenly, "Mur, you damn fool. If that knot is stuck then cut it.
Rip it. Gnaw it through if you have to!�but don't just leave it there, or half the
Net is going to go flapping off into the Quantum Sea when the storm hits us�"

"Worst I've ever seen," Adda muttered, sniffing. "Never known the photons to smell
so sour. Like a frightened piglet� Of course," he went on after a few moments, "I
remember one spin storm when I was a kid�"

Dura couldn't help but smile. Adda was the wisest among them, probably, about the
ways of the Star. But he relished his role as doomsayer� he could never let go of
the mysteries of his own past, of the wild, deadly days which only he could
remember�

Logue turned on her with fury, his face as unstable as the quivering Magfield.
"While you grin, we could die," he hissed.

"I know." She reached out and touched his arm, feeling the hot tide of Air which
superleaked from his clenched muscles. "I know. I'm�sorry."

He frowned, staring at her, and reached forward, as if to touch her. But he drew
the hand back. "Perhaps you're not as strong as I like to think you are."

"No," she said quietly. "Perhaps I'm not."

"Come," he said. "We'll help each other. And we'll help our people. No one's dead
yet, after all."

* * *

Dura scrambled across the Magfield flux lines to the Net. Men, women and older
children were gathered in tight huddles, their thin bodies bumping together as they
floated in the turbulent Magfield, laboring at the Net. They cast fearful,
distracted glances at the approaching vortex instabilities, and from all around the
Net Dura could hear muttered�or shouted�prayer-chants, pleas for the benevolence of
the Xeelee.

Watching the Human Beings, Dura realized they were huddling together for comfort,
not for efficiency. Rather than working evenly and systematically around the Net,
the people were actually impeding each other from working effectively at the
dismantling; whole sections of the tangled Net were being left unattended.

Dura's feeling of depressed helplessness deepened. Perhaps she could help them
organize better�act as Logue's daughter for once, she admonished herself wearily,
act as a leader. But as she studied the frightened faces of the Human Beings, the
round, staring eyecups of the children, she recognized the weary terror which
seemed to be numbing her own reactions.

Maybe huddling and praying was as rational a response as any to this latest
disaster.

She twisted in the Air and Waved toward an empty section of Net, keeping well away
from Esk and Philas. Logue would have to do the leading; Dura would remain one of
the led.

The first of the massive ripples neared the encampment. Feeling the growing tension
in the Air, Dura grasped the Net's sturdy rope and pulled her body against its
shuddering bulk. For a moment her face was pressed against the Net's thick mesh,
and she found herself staring at an Air-pig, not an arm's length from her. The
rope-threaded holes punched through its fins were widened with age, ringed by scar
tissue. The Air-pig seemed to be looking into her eyes, its six eyestalks pushed
straight out from its brain pan, the cups swiveled at her. The beast was one of the
oldest of the Air-pigs�as a kid, she recalled wistfully, she would have known the
names of each one of the meager herd�and it must have seen plenty of spin storms
before. Well, she thought. What's your diagnosis? Do you think we've a chance of
getting through this storm any better than we have all the others? Will you live to
see the other side of it? What do you think?

The creature's fixed, mournful stare, the brown depths of its eyecups, afforded her
no reply. But its musty animal warmth stank of fear.

The mat of rope before her face glimmered suddenly, blue-white; her head cast a
shadow before her.

She turned to see that one vortex line had drifted to within a couple of
mansheights of her position; it shimmered in the Air, quivering, a cable emitting
an electric-blue glow almost too clamorous for her eyes.

The tribesfolk appeared to have given up any attempts at dismantling the Net; even
Logue and Adda had come Waving across to the illusory safety of the habitat. People
simply clung on where they were, arms wrapped around each other and around the
smallest of the children, the opened-up Net flapping uselessly around them. The
crying of children resounded.

And now, with sudden brutality, the spin storm hit. A jagged discontinuity a
mansheight deep surged along the nearest vortex line past the Net, faster than any
human could Wave, faster even than any wild Air-pig could jet through the Air. Dura
tried to concentrate on the solidity of the fibrous rope in her hands, the
comforting Magfield which, as always, confined her body with a gentle grip� But it
was impossible to ignore the sudden thickness of the Air in her lungs, the roaring
heat-noise blasting through the Air so powerfully she feared for her ears, the
quivering of the Magfield.

She clenched her eyes closed so hard that she could feel the Air in the cups
squeeze away. Concentrate, she told herself. You understand what's happening here.
That wretched Air-pig, bound up inside the Net, is as ignorant as the youngest
piglet in its first storm. But not you; not a Human Being.

And it is through understanding that we will prevail� But, even as she intoned the
words to herself like a prayer, she could not find any truth in that pious hope.

The Air was a neutron liquid, a superfluid. Superfluids could not sustain spin over
extended distances. So, in response to the rotation of the Star, the Air became
filled with vortex lines, tubes of vanishing thinness within which the Air's
rotation was confined. The vortex lines aligned themselves in regular arrays,
aligned with the Star's rotation axis�closely parallel to the magnetic axis
followed by the Magfield. The vortex lines filled the world. They were safe as long
as you stayed away from them; every child knew that. But in a Glitch, Dura thought
ruefully, the lines sometimes came looking for you� and the Air's superfluidity
broke down around a collapsing vortex line, transforming the Air from a thin,
stable, lifegiving fluid into a thing of turmoil and turbulence.

The worst of the first spin gust seemed to be passing now. Still clinging to the
Net, she opened her eyes and cast rapidly around the sky.

The vortex lines, parallel beams receding into infinity, were still marching
grandly across the sky, seeking their new alignment. It was quite a magnificent
sight; and for a moment Dura felt wonder thrill through her as she imagined the
arrays of spin lines which stretched right around the Star realigning, gathering
and spreading, as if the Star were bound up in the integrated thoughts of some
immense mind.

The Net shuddered in her grip, its coarse fibers abrading her palms; the sharp pain
jolted her rudely back to the here and now. She sighed, gathering her strength, as
weariness closed around her again.

"Dura! Dura!"

The childish voice, thin and scared, came drifting to her from a few mansheights
away. Gripping the Net with one hand, she twisted to see Farr, her little brother,
suspended in the Air like a discarded fragment of cloth and flesh. He was Waving
toward her.

When Farr reached her, Dura enfolded him in her free arm, helping him wrap his arms
and legs around the security of the Net's ropes. He was breathing hard and
trembling, and she could see the short hairs which coated his scalp pulsing as
superfluid surged through them.

"I was thrown off," he gasped between gulps of Air. "I lost my piglet."

"So I see. Are you okay?"

"I think so." He stared up at her, his eyes wide and empty, and he raked his gaze
across the sky as if searching for the source of this betrayal of his safety. "This
is terrible, isn't it, Dura? Are we going to die?"

She ran her fingers casually through his stiff hair. "No," she said, with a
conviction she could never have mustered for herself alone. "No, we won't die. But
we are in danger. Now come on, we should get to work. We need to get the Net taken
apart, folded up, before the next instability hits us and wrecks it." She pointed
to a small, open-looking knot. "There. Undo that. As quick as you can."

He buried his trembling fingers in the knot and began prizing out lengths of rope.
"How long before the next ripple?"

"Long enough to finish the job," she said firmly. For confirmation, with her own
fingers still dragging at the stubborn knots, she glanced upflux�Northward�to the
source of the next ripple.

Instantly she saw how wrong she had been. From around the Net she heard voices
raised in wonder and rising alarm; within a few heartbeats, it seemed, she was
hearing the first screams.

The next ripple was closing on them; already she could hear its rising clamor of
heat fluctuations. This new instability was huge, at least five or six mansheights
deep. Dura watched, mesmerized, her hands frozen. Already the ripple was hurtling
at her faster than any she could remember, and as it approached its amplitude
seemed to be deepening, as if it were feeding on Glitch energy. And, of course,
with greater amplitude came still greater speed. The instability was a complex
superposition of wave shapes clustered along the length of the migrating vortex
line, a superposition which spiraled around the line like some malevolent animal
clambering toward her�

Farr said, "We can't escape that. Can we, Dura?"

There was a moment of stillness, almost of calm. Farr's voice, though still cracked
by adolescence, had sounded suddenly full of a premature wisdom. It was some
comfort that Dura wasn't going to have to lie to him.

"No," she said. "We've been too slow. I think it's going to hit the Net." She felt
distant from the danger around her, as if she were recalling events from long ago,
far away.

Even as it rushed up toward them the ripple bowed away from the trend of the vortex
line in ever more elaborate, fantastic shapes. It was as if some elastic limit had
been passed and the vortex line, under intolerable strain, was yielding.

It was almost beautiful, captivating to watch. And it was only mansheights away.

She heard the thin voice of old Adda, from somewhere on the other side of the Net.
"Get away from the Net. Oh, get away from the Net!"

"Do as he says. Come on."

The boy slowly lifted his head; he still clung to the rope, and his eyes were
empty, as if beyond fear or wonder. She drove a fist into one of his hands. "Come
on!"

The boy cried out and withdrew his hands and legs from the Net, staring at her with
a round face full of betrayal� but a face that looked once more like that of an
alert child rather than a bemused, petrified adult. Dura grabbed his hand. "Farr,
you have to Wave as you've never Waved before. Hold my hand; we'll stay together�"

With a thrust of her legs she pushed away. For the first moments she seemed to be
dragging Farr behind her; but soon his body was Waving in synchronization with
hers, wriggling against the cloying thickness of the Magfield, and the two of them
hurried away from the doomed Net.

As she Waved, gasping, Dura looked back. The spin instability, recoiling, wafted
through the Air like a deadly, blue-white wand. It scythed toward the Net with its
cargo of wriggling humans. It was like some wonderful toy, Dura thought; it glowed
intensely brightly, and the heat-noise it emitted was a roar, almost drowning out
thought itself. The bleating of trapped Air-pigs was cold-thin, and Dura thought
briefly of the old animal with whom she had shared that brief, odd moment of half-
communication; she wondered how much that poor creature understood of what was to
happen.

Maybe half the Human Beings had heeded Adda's advice to get away. The rest,
apparently paralyzed by fear and awe, still clung to the Net. The pregnant Dia was
lumbering away into the Air with Mur; the woman Philas still picked frantically,
uselessly, at the Net, despite the pleas of her husband Esk to come away. It was as
if, Dura thought, Philas imagined that the work was a magic spell which would drive
the instability away.

Dura knew that rotation instabilities lost energy rapidly. Soon, very soon, this
fantastic demon would wither to nothing, leaving the Air calm and empty once more.
And, glowing, roaring, stinking of sour photons, the instability was indeed visibly
shrinking as it bore down on the Net.

But, it was immediately obvious, not shrinking fast enough�

With a heat-wail like a thousand voices the instability tore into the Net.

* * *

It was like a fist driving into cloth.

The Air inside the Net ceased to be superfluid and became a stiff, turbulent mass,
whipping and whorling around the vortex instability like some demented animal. Dura
saw knots burst open; the Net, almost gracefully, disintegrated into fragments of
rope, into rough mats to which adults and children clung.

The Air-pig herd was hurled away into the Air as if scattered by a giant hand. Dura
could see how some of the beasts, evidently dead or dying, hung where they were
thrown, limply suspended against the Magfield; the rest squirted away through the
Air, their bellow-guts puffing out farts of blue gas.

One man, clinging alone to a raft of rope, was sucked toward the instability
itself.

It was too far away to be sure, but Dura thought she recognized Esk. Dozens of
mansheights from the site of the Net, she was much too far away even to call to
him�let alone to help�but nevertheless she seemed to see what followed as clearly
as if she rode at her lost lover's shoulder toward the deadly arch.

Esk, with his mat of rope, tumbled through the plane of the quivering, arch-shaped
instability and was hurled around the arch itself, as limp as a doll. His
trajectory rapidly lost energy and, unresisting, he spiraled inward, orbiting the
arch like some demented Air-piglet.

Esk's body burst open, the chest and abdominal cavities peeling back like opening
eyes, the limbs coming free almost easily, like a toy's.

Farr cried out, wordless. It was the first sound he'd made since they'd pushed away
from the Net.

Dura reached for him and clutched his hand, hard. "Listen to me," she shouted over
the arch's continuing heat-clamor. "It looked worse than it was. Esk was dead long
before he hit the arch." And that was true; as soon as he had entered the region in
which superfluidity broke down, the processes of Esk's body�his breathing, his
circulatory system, his very muscles, all reliant on the exploitation of the Air's
superfluidity�would have collapsed. To Esk, as the strength left his limbs, as the
Air coagulated in the superleak capillaries of his brain, it must have been like
falling gently asleep.

She thought. She hoped.

The instability passed through the site of the Net and sailed on into the sky,
continuing its futile mission toward the South. But even as Dura watched, the arch
shape was dwindling, shrinking, its energy expended.

It left behind an encampment which had been torn apart as effectively as poor Esk's
body.

Dura pulled Farr closer to her, easily overcoming the gentle resistance of the
Magfield, and stroked his hair. "Come on," she said. "It's over now. Let's go back,
and see what we can do."

"No," he said, clinging to his sister. "It's never over. Is it, Dura?"

* * *

Little knots of people moved through the glistening, newly stable vortex lines,
calling to each other. Dura Waved between the struggling groups, searching for
Logue, or news of Logue; she kept a tight grip on Farr's hand.

"Dura, help us! Oh, by the blood of the Xeelee, help us!"

The voice came to her from a dozen mansheights away; it was a man's�thin, high and
desperate. She turned in the Air, searching for its source.

Farr took her arm and pointed. "There. It's Mur, over by that chunk of Net. See?
And it looks as if he's got Dia with him."

Heavily pregnant Dia� Dura pulled at her brother's hand and Waved rapidly through
the Air.

Mur and Dia hung alone in the Air, naked and without tools. Mur was holding his
wife's shoulders and cradling her head. Dia was stretched out, her legs parting
softly, her hands locked around the base of her distended belly.

Mur's young face was hard, cold and determined; his eyes were pits of darkness as
he peered at Dura and Farr. "It's her time. She's early, but the Glitch� You'll
have to help me."

"All right." Dura lifted Dia's hands away from her belly, gently but firmly, and
ran her fingers quickly over the uneven bulge. She could feel the baby's limbs
pushing feebly at the walls which still restrained it. The head was low, deep in
the pelvis. "I think the head's engaged," she said. Dia's young, thin face was
fixed on hers, contorted with pain; Dura tried to smile at her. "It feels fine. A
little while longer�"

Dia hissed, her face creased with pain, "Get on with it, damn you."

"Yes."

Dura looked around desperately; the Air around them was still empty, the nearest
Human Beings dozens of mansheights away. They were on their own.

She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to resist the temptation to search the Air
for Logue. She delved deep inside herself, looking for strength.

"It's going to be all right," she said. "Mur, hold her neck and shoulders. You'll
have to brace her there; if you Wave a little you'll hold yourself in place, and�"

"I know what to do," Mur snapped. Still holding Dia's small head against his chest,
he grasped her shoulders and Waved slowly, his strong legs beating at the Air.

Dura felt awkward, inadequate. Damn it, she thought, aware of the pettiness of her
own reaction, damn it, I've never done this on my own before. What do they expect?

What next? "Farr, you'll have to help me."

The boy hovered in the Air a mansheight away, his mouth gaping. "Dura, I�"

"Come on, Farr, there's nobody else," Dura said. As he came close to her she
whispered, "I know you're frightened. I'm frightened too. But not as much as Dia.
It's not so difficult as all that, anyway. We'll do fine�"

As long as nothing goes wrong, she thought.

"All right," Farr said. "What do I do?"

Dura took hold of Dia's right leg, wrapping her fingers tightly around the lower
calf. The woman's muscles were trembling and slick with Air-sweat, and Dura could
feel the legs pushing apart; Dia's vagina was opening like a small mouth, popping
softly. "Take her other leg," she told Farr. "Like I've done. Get a tight hold;
you're going to have to pull hard."

Farr, hesitant and obviously scared, did as he was told.

The baby moved, visibly, further into the pelvic area. It was like watching a
morsel of food disappear down some huge neck. Dia arched back her head and moaned;
the muscles in her neck were stiff and prominent.

"It's time," Dura said. She glanced around quickly. She and Farr were in position,
holding Dia's ankles; Mur was already Waving, quite hard, pushing at his wife's
shoulders, so that the little ensemble drifted slowly through the Air. Both Mur's
and Farr's eyes were locked on Dura's face.

Dia called out again, wordlessly.

Dura leaned back, grasping Dia's calf, and pushed firmly with her legs at the
Magfield. "Farr! Do what I'm doing. We have to open her legs. Go on; don't be
afraid."

Farr watched her for a moment, then leaned back and Waved in a copy of his sister's
movements. Mur cried out and shoved hard at his wife's shoulders, balancing Farr
and Dura.

Dia's legs parted easily. She screamed.

Farr's hands slid over Dia's convulsing calf; in his shock he seemed to stumble in
the Air, his eyes wide. Dia's thighs twitched back toward each other, the muscles
shuddering.
"No!" Mur shouted. "Farr, keep going; you mustn't stop now!"

Farr's distress was evident. "But we're hurting her."

"No."

Damn it, Dura thought, Farr should know what's happening here. Dia's pelvis was
hinged; with the birth so close the cartilage locking the two segments of the
pelvis together would have dissolved into Dia's blood, leaving her pelvis easily
opened. Her birth canal and vagina were already stretching, gaping wide. Everything
was working together to allow the baby's head an easy passage from the womb to the
Air. It's easy, Dura thought. And it's easy because the Ur-humans designed it to be
easy, maybe even easier than for themselves�

"It's meant to be like this," she shouted at Farr. "Believe me. You'll hurt her if
you stop now, if you don't help us. And you'll hurt the baby."

Dia opened her eyes. The cups brimmed with tears. "Please, Farr," she said,
reaching toward him vaguely. "It's all right. Please."

He nodded, mumbling apologies, and pulled once more at Dia's leg.

"Easy," Dura called, trying to match his motion. "Not too fast, and not jerkily;
nice and smooth�"

The birth canal gaped like a green-dark tunnel. Dia's legs parted further than it
would have seemed possible; Dura could see, under the thin flesh around the girl's
hips, how the pelvis had hinged wide.

Dia screamed; her stomach convulsed.

The baby came suddenly, wriggling down the birth passage like an Air-piglet. It
squirted into the Air with a soft, sucking noise; droplets of dense, green-gold Air
sprayed around it. As soon as it was out of the canal the baby started to Wave,
instinctively but feebly, across the Magfield within which it would be embedded for
all of its life.

Dura's eyes locked on Farr. He was following the baby's uncertain progress through
the Air, his mouth slack with wonder; but he was still firmly holding Dia's leg.
"Farr," Dura commanded. "Come back toward me now. Slowly, steadily�that's it�"

Dia's only danger now was that her hinged bones would not settle neatly back into
place without dislocation; and even if all went well, for a few days she would be
barely able to move as the halves of her pelvis knitted together once more. With
Dura and Farr guiding them, her legs closed smoothly; Dura could see the bones
around Dia's pelvis sliding smoothly back into place.

Mur had managed to snatch a rag, a remnant of some piece of clothing, from the
littered Air; now he wiped tenderly at Dia's relaxing, half-sleeping face. Dura
took some of the rag and mopped at Dia's thighs and belly.

Farr Waved slowly toward them. He had chased after and caught the baby, Dura saw;
now he held the child against his chest as proudly as if it were his own, uncaring
of the birth fluid which pooled on his chest. The infant's mouth was still
distorted into the characteristic horn-shape it had needed to lock on to the womb-
wall nipples which sustained it before its birth; and its tiny penis had popped out
of the protective cache between its legs.

Farr, grinning, held the baby out to its mother. "It's a boy," he said.
"Jai," Dia whispered. "He's Jai."

* * *

Forty Human Beings had survived, of fifty. All but six adult Air-pigs, four of them
male, were gone. The Net, torn and scattered, was irreparable.

Logue was lost.

The tribe huddled together in the Magfield, surrounded by featureless Air. Mur and
Dia clung together, cradling their new, mewling baby. Dura uncomfortably led the
Human Beings through a brief service of prayers, calling down the beneficence of
the Xeelee. Adda stayed close to her, silent and strong despite his age, and Farr's
hand was a constant presence in hers.

Then the bodies they'd managed to retrieve were released into the Air; they slid,
dwindling, down to the Quantum Sea.

Philas, wife of the dead Esk, approached Dura after the service, Waving stiffly.
The two women studied each other, not speaking; Adda and the rest moved away,
averting their faces.

Philas was a thin, tired-looking woman; her uneven hair was tied back with a piece
of rope, making her face look skeletal. She stared at Dura, as if daring her to
grieve.

The Human Beings were monogamous� but there were more adult women than men. So
monogamy doesn't make sense, Dura thought wearily, and yet we practice it anyway.
Or rather, we pay lip-service to it.

Esk had loved them both� at any rate, he had shown tenderness to them both. And his
relationship with Dura had been no secret to Philas, or to anyone else, for that
matter. It had certainly done Philas no harm.

Perhaps Philas and Dura could help each other now, Dura thought. Perhaps hold each
other. But they wouldn't even speak about it.

And she, Dura, would not even be allowed to grieve openly.

At last Philas spoke. "What are we going to do, Dura? Should we rebuild the Net?
What should we do?"

Staring into the woman's dull eyecups, Dura wanted to retreat into herself, to
bring forward her own grief for her father, for Esk, as a shield against Philas's
demands. I don't know. I don't know. How could I know?

But there was nowhere to retreat.

Chapter 2
Ten Human Beings�Dura with Farr in tow, Adda, the newly widowed Philas, and six
other adults�climbed out of the site of the devastated encampment. They Waved
steadily across the Magfield and toward the Crust, in search of food.

Adda, as was his custom, stayed a small distance away from the rest as they Waved
across the field-lines. One of his eyes was matted over with the scars of
age�thinking about it now he gave that cup a quick poke with a fingertip to
dislodge some of the less welcome little creatures who were continually trying to
establish residence in there�but the other eye was as keen as it had ever been, and
as he Waved he swept his gaze through the Air above, below and all around them. He
liked to stay apart to keep an eye on things� and it allowed him to hide the fact
that he sometimes had trouble keeping up with the rest. It was his boast that he
could still Wave as good as any damn kid. It wasn't true, of course, but it was his
boast. He used to wriggle across the Magfield like an Air-piglet with a neutrino
fount up its arse, he recalled wistfully, but that was a long time ago. Now he must
look like a Xeelee's grandmother. Adda's vertebrae seemed to be seizing up one by
damn one as time wore away, so that his Waving was more like thrashing; it took a
conscious effort to thrust his pelvis back, to let his legs flop behind the motion
of his hips, to let his head drive ahead of the bending of his spine. And his skin
was coarsened by age, too, tough as old tree-bark in places; that had its
advantages, but it meant that he had trouble feeling the places where the electric
currents induced in his epidermis by his motion across the Magfield were strongest.
Damn it, he could barely feel the Magfield now; he was, he thought sourly, Waving
from memory.

Much like sex these days.

As always he carried his battered and trusted spear, a sharpened pole of wood
prized from a tree trunk by his own father hundreds of months ago. His fingers
nestled comfortably in the gripping grooves carved expertly in the shaft, and
electrical currents Magfield-induced in the wood tingled in his palm. As his father
had taught him, he kept the spear pointed along the direction of the Magfield
across which they climbed� for, of course, the wood�in fact any material�was
stronger in the direction of the Magfield than across it. And as any child knew, if
danger did approach it would most likely come along the Magfield lines, in which
direction motion was invisibly easy.

There weren't many predators who would attack humans, but Adda had seen a few, and
his father had told him of worse. The rays, for instance� Even a mature Air-
boar�the tougher cousin of the Air-pig�could give a man or woman a hard fight, and
could carry away a child as easy as snipping krypton grass away from the Crust, if
it was hungry enough.

Even half as hungry as the Human Beings were going to grow before much longer.

He looked along the gleaming cage of vortex lines which swept to red-mist infinity
at the South Pole, slicing up the sky around his companions. As always�whenever he
traveled even a short distance from the illusory completeness of the tribe's tiny
human environ�he was struck by the immensity of the Mantle-world; and as his eye
followed the converging parallels of the vortex lines he felt as if his tiny
spirit, helpless with awe, was somehow drawn along the lines. The island of
scattered debris which marked the site of their devastated encampment was a dirt-
colored mote Air-marooned in the clean, yellow-white immensities of the Star. And
his companions�nine of them still, he counted automatically�were Waving across the
field lines with unconscious synchronization, ropes and nets wrapped loosely around
their waists, their faces upturned to the Crust. One man had peeled away from the
rest; he had found an abandoned spin-spider web slung across the vortex lines, and
was searching it efficiently for eggs.

Human Beings looked so beautiful when they moved. And when a shoal of the kids went
whirling along the Magfield�flapping their legs so hard you could see the glow of
the induced fields shining in their limbs, and spiraling around the flux lines fast
enough to turn them into blurs�well, it was hard to imagine a better sight in this
or any of the fabled, lost worlds of the Ur-humans.

But at the same time humans looked so fragile, dwarfed as they were by the
immensities of the vortex-line cage and by the deep and deadly mysteries of the
Quantum Sea far below. Somehow an Air-pig looked the part for this environment, he
thought. Round and fat and solid� Why, even a neutrino fount didn't have to be the
end for an Air-pig; all it had to do was to tuck in its eyes, fold down its fins
and ride out the storm. Unless it got blasted out of the Star altogether, what
could happen? When the fount was done the pig could just unfold, graze on whatever
foliage it could find�for trees were trees, whichever part of the Crust they were
growing out of�and mate with the first Air-pig it came across. Or get mated with,
Adda thought with a grin.

Humans weren't like that. Humans were delicate. Easily smashed up, broken apart. He
thought of Esk: a damn fool, but nobody deserved to die like that. And, more than
anything else, humans were strange. If Adda were to pluck one of these irritating
little nibblers out of his dud eye now and look at it up close, he knew he'd find
the same basic design as the average Air-pig: six fins, symmetrically placed, an
intake-mouth to the front, jet vents to the rear, six tiny eyes. All Mantle animals
were the same, just scaled big and small, or with differences of proportion; the
basic features could be recognized even in superficially different creatures like
rays.

�Except for humans. There was nothing, no other animal, like a human in all this
world.

That wasn't a surprise, of course. Every kid learned at his mother's breast how the
Ur-humans had come from somewhere far away�a place much better than this, of
course; Adda suspected every human on every world grew up believing that�and had
left children here to grow, to be strong, and to join the community of mankind one
day, all under the beneficial and all-too-abstract gaze of that multiple God, the
Xeelee.

So the Human Beings had been put there. Adda had no doubt about the basic truth of
the old story�damn it, you only had to watch humans in flight to see the blinding
self-evidence of it�but on the other hand, he thought as he watched the flock of
Human Beings soar across the sky, he wouldn't really want to be built like an Air-
pig. Fat and round and flying by farts?

Mind you, flatulence was one skill he had bettered as he had got older. Maybe it
wouldn't have been such a bad idea to have been an Air-pig after all.

Adda was the oldest surviving Human Being. He knew what the others thought of him:
that he was a sour old fool, too gloomy for his own good. But he didn't care much
about that. He hadn't survived longer than any of his contemporaries by accident.
But he was, and always had been, essentially a simple man, not gifted with the
power over people and language shown by, say, a Logue. Or even a Dura, he thought,
even though she mightn't realize it yet. So if he irritated folk with anecdotes of
his boyhood� but, even as they laughed at him, if they soaked up any one of the
small lessons which had kept him alive� well, that was all right by Adda.

Of course, there were fragments from the past he didn't share with anyone. He'd no
doubt, for instance, that the Glitches were changing.

There had always been Glitches, spin storms. He even knew what caused them, in an
abstract sort of way: the slowing of the Star's rotation, and the consequent
explosive equalizations of spin energy. But over the last few years the Glitches
had got worse� far worse, and much more frequent.

Something else was causing Glitches now. Something unknowably powerful, disrupting
the Star�

Of course, his crotchety exterior had a major advantage�one he'd never admitted to
anyone else, and only half-allowed to himself. By acting so sour he never had to
show the unbearable love he felt for his fellow humans as he watched their alien,
vulnerable, impossibly beautiful flight across the Magfield, or the heartbreak he
endured at the loss of even the most wasted, most spoiled life.

Hefting his dragging spear in tiring fingers, Adda kicked on toward the treetops of
the Crust with renewed vigor.

* * *

Farr hovered in the Air, his knees tucked against his chest. With four or five
brisk pushes he emptied his bowels. He watched the pale, odorless pellets of shit
sail sparkling into the empty Air and sink toward the underMantle. Dense with
neutrons, the waste would merge into the unbreathable underMantle and, perhaps,
sink at last into the Quantum Sea.

He'd never been so high.

The treetops were only a few minutes' Waving above him now: only a score of
mansheights or so. The round, bronzed leaves of the trees, all turned toward the
Quantum Sea, formed a glimmering ceiling over the world. As he Waved he stared up
at that ceiling longingly, as if the leaves somehow represented safety�and yet he
looked nervously too. For beyond the leaves were the tree trunks, suspended in
darkness; and beyond the trunks lay the Crust itself, where all manner of creatures
prowled� At least according to old Adda, and some of the other kids.

But still, Farr realized, he'd rather be up there amidst the trees
than�suspended�out here.

He pushed at the Magfield and shimmered upward.

Farr, young as he was, was used to the feeling of fear. Of mortal terror, even. But
he was experiencing a kind of fear new to him�a novelty�and he probed at it, trying
to understand.

The nine adults around him Waved steadily upward, their faces turned up to the
trees like inverted leaves. Their bodies moved efficiently and with varying degrees
of grace, and Farr could smell the musky photons they exuded, hear the steady
rhythm of their breathing as they worked, wordless. His own breath was rapid; the
Air up here felt thin, shallow. And he was growing colder, despite the hard work of
Waving.

Somehow, without realizing it, Farr had gotten himself to the center of the Waving
group, so they formed a protective barrier around him. In fact, he realized, he was
Waving close to his sister, Dura, as if he were some little kid who needed his hand
holding.

How embarrassing.

Discreetly, without making it too obvious, he leaned forward so that he slid out
toward the edge of the group, away from Dura. And at the edge that strange new
flavor of fear�a feeling of exposure�assailed him again. Shaking his head as if to
clear out musty Air, he forced himself to turn away from the group, twisting in the
Air, so that he faced outward, across the Mantle.

Farr knew that the Mantle was tens of millions of mansheights deep. But humans
could survive only in a band about two million mansheights thick. Farr knew why� or
some of it anyway. The complex compounds of heavy tin nuclei which composed his
body (so his father had explained earnestly) could remain stable�remain bonded by
exchanges of neutron pairs�only within this layer. It was all to do with neutron
density: too far up and there weren't enough neutrons to allow the complex bonding
between nuclei; too far down, in the cloying underMantle, there were too many
neutrons�in the underMantle the very nuclei which composed his body would begin to
dissolve, liquefying at last into smooth neutron liquid.

And here�close to the treetops, nearing the top of the habitable band�he was tens
of thousands of mansheights above the site of the ruined Net.

Farr looked down, beyond his Waving feet, back the way he had climbed. The vortex
lines crossed the enormous sky, hundreds of them in a rigid parallel array of blue-
white streaks which melted into misty vanishing-points to left and right. The lines
blurred below him, the distance between them foreshortening until the lines melted
into a textured blue haze above the Quantum Sea. The Sea itself was a purple bruise
below the vortex lines, its surface mist-shrouded and deadly.

�And the surface of the Sea curved downward.

Farr had to suppress a yell by gulping, hard. He looked again at the Sea and saw
how it fell subtly away in every direction; there seemed no doubt that he was
looking down at a huge sphere. Even the vortex lines dipped slightly as they arced
away, converging, toward the horizons of the Sea. It was as if they were a cage
which encased the Sea.

Farr had grown up knowing that the world�the Star�was a multilayered ball, a
neutron star. The Crust was the outer surface of the ball, with the Quantum Sea
forming an impenetrable center; the Mantle, including the levels inhabited by
humans, was a layer inside the ball filled with Air. But it was one thing to know
such a fact; it was quite another to see it with your own eyes.

He was high. And he felt it. He stared down now, deep down, past his feet, at the
emptiness which separated him from the Sea. Of course, the Net was long since lost
in the Air, a distant speck. But even that, had he been able to see it, would have
been a comforting break in this looming immensity�

A break from what?

Suddenly he felt as if his stomach were turning into a mass of Air, and the
Magfield he was climbing seemed�not just invisible�but intangible, almost
irrelevant. It was as if there was nothing keeping him up�

He shut his eyes, tight, and tried to retreat into another world, into the
fantasies of his childhood. Perhaps once more he could be a warrior in the Core
Wars, the epic battles with the Colonists at the dawn of time. Once humans had been
strong, powerful, with magical four-walled "wormhole Interfaces" which let them
cross thousands of mansheights in a bound, and great machines which allowed them to
fly through the Star and beyond.

But the Colonists, the mysterious denizens of the heart of the Star, had emerged
from their glutinous realm to wage war on humanity. They had destroyed, or carried
off, the marvelous Interfaces and all the rest�and would have scraped mankind out
of the Mantle altogether if not for the wily cunning of Farr: Farr the Ur-human,
the giant god-warrior�

At length he felt a touch on his shoulder; he opened his eyes to see�not a

Colonist�but Dura hovering before him, a look of careful neutrality on her face.
She pointed upward. "We're there."

Farr looked up.

Leaves�six of them arranged in a neat, symmetrical pattern�hung down just above his
head. With a surge of absurd gratitude Farr pulled himself up into the darkness
beyond the leaves.

A branch about the thickness of his waist and coated with slick-dark wood led from
the leaf into a misty, blue-glowing darkness above him� no, he thought, that was
the wrong way round; somewhere up there was the trunk of the tree, suspended from
the Crust, and from it grew this branch, and from that in turn grew the leaves
which faced the Sea. He ran a hand along the wood of the branch; it was hard and
smooth, but surprisingly warm to the touch. A few twigs dangled from the main stem,
and tiny leaves sought chinks of light between their larger cousins.

He found himself clinging to the branch, his arms wrapped around it as if around
the arm of his mother. The warmth of the wood seeped through his chilled body.
Embarrassment flickered through his mind briefly, but he ignored it; at last he
felt safe.

Dura slid through the leaves and came to rest close to him. The subdued shadow-
light of the tree picked out the curves of her face. She smiled at him, looking
self-conscious. "Don't worry about it," she said, quietly enough that the others
couldn't hear. "I know how you feel. I was the same, the first time I came up
here."

Farr frowned. Reluctantly he released the branch and pushed himself away. "You
were? But I feel as if�as if I'm about to be pulled out of this tree�"

"It's called being frightened of falling."

"But that's ridiculous. Isn't it?" To Farr, "falling" meant losing your grip on the
Magfield when Waving. It was always over in a few mansheights at the most�the tiny
resistance of the Air and the currents induced in your skin soon slowed you down.
Nothing to fear. And then you could just Wave your way around the Magfield to where
you wanted to get to.

Dura grinned. "It's a feeling as if�" She hesitated. "�as if you could let go of
this tree, right now, and not be able to stop yourself sliding down, across the
Magfield and across the vortex lines, faster and faster, all the way to the Sea.
And your belly clenches up at the prospect."

"That's exactly it," he said, wondering at how precise her description was. "What
does it mean? Why should we feel like that?"

She shrugged, plucking at a leaf. The heavy plate of flesh came free of its
attaching branch with a sucking sound. "I don't know. Logue used to say it's
something deep inside us. An instinct we carried with us, when humans were brought
to this Star."

Farr thought about that. "Something to do with the Xeelee."

"Perhaps. Or something even older. In any event, it's not something you need to
worry about. Here." She held out the leaf toward him.

He took it from her cautiously. It was a bronze-gold plate, streaked radially with
purple and blue, about as wide as a man's hand. It was thick and pulpy�springy
between his fingers�and, like the wood, was warm to the touch, although, away from
its parent branch, it seemed to be cooling rapidly. He turned it over, prodding it
with a fingertip; its underside was dry, almost black. He looked up at Dura.
"Thanks," he said. "What shall I do with it?"
She laughed. "Try eating it."

After a cautious inspection of her face to make sure this wasn't some kind of
joke�Dura didn't usually play tricks on him; she was a little too serious for that�
but you never knew�Farr lifted the leaf to his lips and bit into it. The flesh of
the leaf was thin, surprisingly insubstantial, and it seemed to melt against his
tongue; but the taste it delivered was astonishingly sweet, like the meat of the
youngest Air-piglet, and Farr found himself cramming his mouth.

Within seconds he was swallowing the last of the leaf, savoring the lingering
flavor on his tongue. It had been delicious but really quite light, and had done
little but whet his hunger further. He looked around avidly. Here on the upper side
of the treetop ceiling he could see the leaves turned downward toward the Quantum
Sea, like a layer of broad, flattened child-faces. Farr reached down to pluck
another leaf.

Dura, laughing, restrained him. "Take it easy. Don't strip the whole damn tree."

Around a full mouth Farr said, "It's delicious."

She nodded. "I know. But it won't fill your belly. Not unless you really do strip
the tree� That's why we have to hunt the Air-pigs, who eat the leaves�and the
grass�for us." She pursed her lips. Then, in a tone suddenly and, to Farr,
shockingly similar to their lost father's, she said, "Let's have a little lesson.
Why do you think the leaves are so tasty?"

Farr thought about that. "Because they're full of protons."

Dura nodded seriously. "Near enough. Actually they are laced with proton-rich
isotopes�of krypton, strontium, zirconium, molybdenum� even a little heavy iron.
Each nucleus of krypton, for instance, has a hundred and eighteen protons, while
the tin nuclei of our bodies have just fifty each. And our bodies need protons for
their fuel." The heavy nuclei fissioned in human stomachs. Protons combined with
neutrons from the Air to make more tin nuclei�tin was the most stable nucleus in
the Air�and gave off energy in the process. "Now. Where does the proton-rich
material come from?"

"From the Crust." He smiled. "Everyone knows that."

The Crust, no more substantial than Air, was a gossamer solid. Its outermost layer
was composed of iron nuclei. Further in, steepening pressures drove neutrons into
the nuclei of the solid, forming increasingly heavy isotopes� until the nuclei
became so soft that their proton distributions began to overlap, and the neutrons
dripped out to form the Air, a superfluid of neutrons.

"All right," said Dura. "So how do the isotopes get all the way from the Crust to
these leaves?"

"That's easy," Farr said, reaching to pluck another succulent leaf. "The tree pulls
them down, inside its trunk."

"Using veins filled with Air. Right."

Farr frowned, feeling his cheeks bulge around the leaf. "But why? What's in it for
the tree?"

Dura's mouth opened and closed, and then she smiled, her eyes half-closed. "That's
a good question," she said. "One I wouldn't have thought of at your age� The
isotopes make the leaves more opaque to the neutrinos shining out of the Quantum
Sea."

Farr nodded, chewing.

A flood of neutrinos, intangible and invisible, shone continually from the Sea�or
perhaps from the mysterious Core deep beneath the Sea itself�and sleeted through
the vortex lines, through the bodies of Farr and the other humans as if they were
ghosts, and through the Crust to space. The trees turned slightly neutrino-opaque
leaves to that unseen light, absorbing its energy and turning it into more leaves,
branches, trunk. Farr pictured trees all over the interior of the Crust, straining
toward the Sealight with their leaves of krypton, strontium and molybdenum.

Dura watched him eat for a moment; then, hesitantly, she reached out to ruffle his
hair-tubes. "I'll tell you a secret," she said.

"What?"

"I'm glad you're here."

Briefly he considered pushing her hand away, of saying something funny, or cruel,
to break up the embarrassing moment. But something made him hold back. He studied
her face. It was a strong face, he supposed, square and symmetrical, with small,
piercing eyes and shining yellow nostrils. Not beautiful, but with something of the
strength of their father; and now with the first lines of age it was acquiring a
bit more depth.

But there was uncertainty in that face. Loneliness. Indecision, a need for comfort.

Farr thought about it. He felt safe with Dura. Not as safe as when Logue was alive�
But, he thought ruefully, as safe as he would ever feel again. Dura wasn't really
all that strong, but she did her best.

And this moment, as the others moved away from them, being together and talking
quietly and tasting the leaves, seemed to be important to her. So he said, gruffly:
"Yes. Me too."

She smiled at him, then bent to pluck a leaf for herself.

* * *

Adda slid silently through the treetops, following the circumference of a rough
circle twenty mansheights wide. Then he moved a little further up into the
suspended forest, working parallel to the lines of the trunks. The trees grew along
the Magfield flux lines, and he kept his spear pointing along the Magfield as he
worked his way along the smooth bark.

Save for the low, tinkling rustle of the leaves, the subdued talk of his
companions, he found only silence.

He pulled himself back along the length of the tree trunk to the inverted canopy of
leaves. None of the Human Beings�except, maybe, Logue's boy Farr, who was looking a
little lost�had even noticed he'd been absent. Adda relaxed a little, munching on
the thin, deceptively tasty meat of a leaf. But he kept his good eye wide open.

The Human Beings were bunched together around one trunk, nibbling leaves
desultorily and clinging, one-handed, to branchlets. They were huddled together for
warmth. Here, where the Air was attenuated by height, it was cold and hard to
breathe: so hard, in fact, that Adda felt his reflexes�his very thinking�slowing
down, turning sluggish. And it wasn't as if he had a lot of margin in that area, he
reflected. It was as if the very Air which drove his bones was turning to a thin,
sour soup.

The boy Farr was crouched against a section of bark a mansheight or so from
everyone else. He looked as if he were suffering a bit: visibly shivering, his
chest rising and falling rapidly in the attenuated Air, his hands pushing leaves
into his downturned mouth with an urgency that looked more like a craving for
comfort than for food.

Adda, with a single flip of his legs, Waved briskly over to the boy; he leaned
toward Farr and winked with his good eye. "How are you doing?"

The boy looked up at him, lethargic despite the shivering, and his voice, when he
spoke, was deepened by the cold. "I can't seem to get warm."

Adda sniffed. "That's the way it is, up here. The Air's too thin for us, see. And
if you go higher, toward the Crust, it gets thinner still. But there's no need to
be cold."

Farr frowned. "What do you mean?"

For answer Adda grinned. He raised his spear of hardened wood and aligned it
parallel to the tree trunk, along the direction of the Magfield flux lines. He
hefted it for a few seconds, feeling its springy tension. Then he said, "Watch and
remember."

The boy, eyeing the quivering spear with wide eyes, scrambled back out of the way.

Adda braced himself against the Magfield. With a single movement�he remained lithe
in spite of everything, Adda congratulated himself�Adda thrust the spearpoint deep
into the bulk of the tree. The first stab took the spearpoint through the bark and
perhaps a hand's length into the wood. By working the haft of the spear, twisting
it in his hands, Adda was able to drive the spear further into the flesh of the
branch, to perhaps half an arm's length.

That done, feeling his chest drag at the thin Air, Adda turned to make sure Farr
was still watching. "Now," he rasped. "Now comes the magic."

He twisted in the Air and placed his feet against the branch, close to the line of
his half-buried spear. Then he bent and wrapped both hands around the protruding
shaft of the spear, squatted so that his legs were bent and his back was straight,
and heaved upward, using the spear as a lever to prize open the wood of the branch.

�Actually it was a long time since he'd done this, he realized a few heartbeats
after starting. His palms grew slick with superfluid sweat, a steady ache spread
along his back, and for some reason the vision of his good eye was starting to
tremble and blur. And, though the spear bowed upward a bit as he strained, the
branch did little more than groan coldly.

He let go of the spear and wiped his palms against his thighs, feeling the breath
rattle in his chest. He carefully avoided eye contact with the boy.

Then he bent to the spear again.

This time, at last, the branch gave way; a plate of it the size of his chest
yielded and lifted up like a lid. Adda felt his aching legs spring straight, and he
tumbled away from the branch. Quickly recovering his dignity, he twisted in the
Air, ignoring the protests from his back and legs, and Waved back to Farr and the
opened branch. He looked down at his handiwork appraisingly and nodded. "Not as
difficult as it looks," he growled at the boy. "Used to do that one-handed� But
trees have got tougher since I was your age. Maybe something to do with this damn
spin weather."

But Farr wasn't listening; he crept forward to the wound in the branch and stared
into it with fascination. Close to the rim of the ripped bark the wood was a pale
yellow, the material looking much like that of the spear Adda had used. But further
in, deeper than a hand's length, the wood was glowing green and emitting a warmth
which�even from half a mansheight away�Adda could feel as a comforting, tangible
presence against his chest. The glow of the wood sparkled against Farr's face and
evoked verdant shadows within his round eyes.

Dura, Logue's ungainly daughter, joined them now; she shot a brief smile of thanks
to Adda as she crouched beside her brother and raised her palms to the warmth of
the wood. The green fire scattered highlights from her limbs and face which made
her look, Adda thought charitably, half-attractive for once. As long as she didn't
move about too much and reveal her total lack of grace, anyway.

Dura said to Farr, "Another lesson. What's making the wood burn?"

He smiled at her, eyecups full of wood-glow. "Heavy stuff from the Crust?"

"Yes." She leaned toward Farr so that the heads of brother and sister were side by
side over the glowing wood, their faces shining like two leaves. Dura went on,
"Proton-rich nuclei on their way to the leaves. The tree branch is like a casing,
you see, enclosing a tube where the pressure is lower than the Air. But when the
casing is breached the heavy nuclei inside fission, decaying rapidly. What you're
seeing is nuclei burning into the Air�"

Adda saw how Farr's smooth young face creased with concentration as he absorbed
this new bit of useless knowledge.

Useless?

Well, maybe, he thought; but these precious, abstract facts, polished by retelling
and handed down from the earliest days of the Human Beings�from the time of their
expulsion from Parz City, ten generations ago�were treasures. Part of what made
them human.

So Adda nodded approvingly at Dura and her attempts to educate her brother. The
Human Beings had been thrust into this upflux wilderness against their will. But
they were not savages, or animals; they had remained civilized people. Why, some of
them could even read; a handful of books scraped painfully onto scrolls of pigskin
with styli of wood were among the Human Beings' principal treasures�

He leaned toward Dura and said quietly, "You'll have to go on, you know. Deeper
into the forest, toward the Crust."

Dura started. She pulled away from the trunk-wound, the light of the burning nuclei
shining from the long muscles of her neck. The other Human Beings, a few
mansheights away, were still clustered about the treetops; most of them, having
crammed their bellies full, were gathering armfuls of the succulent leaves. She
said, "I know. But most of them want to go back to the camp already, with their
leaves."

Adda sniffed. "Then they're damn fools, and it's a shame the spin weather didn't
take them instead of a few with more sense. Leaves taste good but they don't fill a
belly."
"No. I know." She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose, ran a finger around the
rim of one eyecup absently. "And we have to replace the Air-pigs we lost in the
spin storm."

"Which means going on," Adda said.

She said with a weary irritation, "You don't need to tell me, Adda."

"You'll have to lead them. They won't go by themselves; folk aren't like that.
They're like Air-pigs: all wanting to follow the leader but none wanting to lead."

"They won't follow me. I'm not my father."

Adda shrugged. "They won't follow anyone else." He studied her square face, seeing
the doubts and submerged strength in its thin lines. "I don't think you really have
a choice."

"No," she sighed, straightening up. "I know." She went to talk to the tribesfolk.

When she returned to the nuclear fire, only Philas, the widow of Esk, came with
her. The two women Waved side by side. Dura's face was averted, apparently riven
with embarrassment; Philas's expression was empty.

Adda wasn't really surprised at the reaction of the rest. Even when it was against
their own damn interest, they'd snub Logue's daughter.

He was interested to see Philas with Dura, though. Everyone had known about Dura's
relationship with Esk; it was hardly the sort of thing that could be kept quiet in
a community reduced to fifty people, counting the kids.

It had been against the rules. Sort of. But it was tolerated, and hardly unique�as
long as Dura obeyed a few unspoken conventions. Such as restricting her reaction to
Esk's death, keeping herself away from the widowed Philas.

Just another bit of stupidity, Adda thought. The Human Beings had once numbered
hundreds�even in the days of Adda's grandfather there had been over a hundred
adults�and maybe then conventions about adultery might have made sense. But not
now.

He shook his head. Adda had despaired of Human Beings long before Farr was born.

"They want to go back," said Dura, her voice flat. "But I'll go on. Philas will
come."

The woman Philas, her face drab and empty, her hair lying limply against her
angular skull, looked to Adda as if she had nothing left to lose anyway. Well, he
thought, if it helped the two women work out their own relationship, then fine.

Some hunting expedition it was going to be, though.

He lifted his spear.

Dura frowned. "No," she said. "I can't ask you to�"

Adda growled a soft warning to shut her up.

Farr straightened up from the burning pit. "I'll come too," he said brightly, his
face turned up to Dura.
Dura placed her hands on his shoulders. "Now, that's ridiculous," she said in a
parent's tones. "You know you're too young to�"

Farr responded with bleated protests, but Adda cut across him impatiently. "Let the
boy come," he rasped to Dura. "You think he'd be safer with those leaf-gatherers?
Or back at the place where the Net used to be?"

Dura's anxious face swiveled from Adda to her brother and back again. At length she
sighed, smoothing back her hair. "All right. Let's go."

They gathered their simple equipment. Dura knotted a length of rope around her
waist and tucked a short stabbing-knife and cleaning brush into the rope, behind
her back; she tied a small bag of food to the rope.

Then, without another word to the others, the four of them�Adda, Dura, Farr and the
widow Philas�began the slow, careful climb toward the darkness of the Crust.

Chapter 3
They moved in silence.

At first Dura found the motion easy. The tree slid beneath her, almost featureless,
slowly widening as she climbed up its length. The tree trunk grew along the
direction of the Magfield, and so moving along it meant moving in the easiest
direction, parallel to the Magfield, with the superfluid Air offering hardly any
resistance. It was barely necessary to Wave; Dura found it was enough to push at
the smooth, warm bark with her hands.

She looked back. The leafy treetops seemed to be merging into a floor across the
world now, and the open Air beyond was being sealed away from her. Her companions
were threaded along the trunk behind her, moving easily: the widow Philas
apparently indifferent to her surroundings, Farr with his eyecups wide and staring,
his mouth wide open and his chest straining at the thin Air, and dear old Adda at
the back, his spear clasped before him, his good eye constantly sweeping the
complex darkness around them. The three of them�naked, sleek, with their ropes,
nets and small bags bound to them�looked like small, timid animals as they moved
through the shades of the forest.

They rested. Dura took her cleaning scraper from her belt of rope and worked at her
arms and legs, dislodging fragments of leaf and bark.

Adda glided up the line to her, her face alert. "How are you?"

Looking at him, Dura thought of her father.

She'd been involved in hunts before, of course�as had most adult Human Beings�but
always she'd been able to rely on the tactical awareness, the deep, ingrained
knowledge of the Star and all its ways, of Logue and the others.

She'd never led before.

Some of her doubt must have shown in her face. Adda nodded, his wizened face
neutral. "You'll do."

She snorted. Keeping her voice low enough that only Adda could hear, she said,
"Maybe. But what good is it? Look at us�" She waved a hand at the little party. "A
boy. Two women, distracted by grief�"

"And me," Adda said quietly.

"Yes," she acknowledged. "Thanks for staying with me, Adda. But even if by some
miracle this collection of novices succeeds we'll return with only two, maybe three
Air-pigs. We wouldn't have the capacity to restrain any more." She remembered�in
the better days of her childhood�hunting parties of ten or a dozen strong and alert
men and women, returning in triumph to the Net with whole herds of wild pigs. "And
what good will that do? The Human Beings are going to starve, Adda."

"Maybe. But it may not be as bad as that. We might find a couple of sows, maybe
with piglets� enough to reestablish our stock. Who knows? And look, Dura, you can
only lead those who wish to be led. Don't flog yourself too hard. Even Logue only
led by consent. And remember, Logue never faced times as hard as what's to come
now.

"Listen to me. When the people get hungry enough, they'll turn to you. They'll be
angry, disillusioned, and they'll blame you because there's no one else to blame.
But they'll be yours to lead."

She found herself shuddering. "I've no choice, have I? All my life, since the
moment of my birth, has had a kind of logic which has led me to this point. And
I've never had a choice about any of it."

Adda smiled, his face a grim mask. "No," he said harshly. "But then, what choices
do any of us have?"

* * *

The forest seemed empty of Air-pigs.

The little party grew fretful and tired. After another half-day's fruitless
searching, Dura allowed them to rest, to sleep.

When they woke, she knew she would have to lead them downflux. Downflux, and
higher�deeper into the forest, toward the Crust.

Toward the South�downflux�the Air was richer, the Magfield stronger. The pigs must
have fled that way, following the Glitch. But everyone knew downflux was a
dangerous direction to travel.

The Human Beings followed her with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

The forest was dense, complex. Six-legged Crust-crabs scuttled from Dura as she
approached, abandoning webs slung between the tree trunks. Cocoons of leeches and
other unidentifiable creatures clustered thick on the trunks, like pale, bloated
leaves.

A ray turned its blind face toward her.

Adda hissed a warning. Dura flattened herself against the tree trunk before her,
wrapping her arms around it and willing her ragged breath to still. The wood
pressing against her belly and thighs was hard and hot.

A breath of Air at her back, a faint shadow.

She shifted her head to the right, feeling the roughness of the bark scratch her
cheek. Her eyecups swiveled, following the ray as it glided by, utterly silent. The
ray was a translucent sheet at least a mansheight wide. At its closest it was no
more than an arm's length from her. She could recognize the basic architecture of
all the Mantle's animals: the ray was built around a thin, cylindrical spine, and
six tiny, spherical eyes ringed the babyish maw set into the center of its face.
But the fins of the ray had been extended into six wide, thin sheets. The wings
were spaced evenly around the body and they rippled as the ray moved; electron gas
sparkled around the leading edges. The flesh was almost transparent, so that it was
difficult even to see the wings, and Dura could see shadowy fragments of some meal
passing along the ray's cylindrical gut.

The ray was the only animal�other than humans�that moved by Waving, rather than by
squirting jetfarts like pigs or boar. Moving in silence, without the sweet stink of
jetfarts, the ray was an effective predator. And its mouth, though tiny, was ringed
by jagged, ripping teeth.

The ray slid over the four humans for several heartbeats, apparently unaware of
their presence. Then, still silent, it floated away into the shadows of the forest.

Dura counted to a hundred before pushing herself away from the tree trunk.

The vortex lines were dense here, almost tangled together among the trees. The
Star, its rotation continually slowing, gradually expelled the vortex lines from
the Mantle� until a fresh Glitch struck, when the lines crumbled into deadly
fragments before renewing.

The Air was noticeably thinner. Dura felt her chest strain at the stuff and her
heart pumped as it sought to power her muscles; from various points in her body she
heard the small pops of pressure equalizing. She knew what was happening, of
course. The Air had two main components, a neutron superfluid and an electron gas.
The neutrons were thinning out; more pressure here was supplied by the gas of free
electrons. When she held up her hand before her face she could see the ghostly
sparkle of electrons around her fingers, bright in the gloom and evoking dim
highlights from the crowding leaves.

But now her vision seemed to be failing. The Air was growing poor at carrying the
high-frequency, high-velocity sound waves which allowed her to see. And, worse, the
Air�thin as it was�was losing its superfluidity. It started to feel sticky,
viscous; and as she moved she began to feel a breeze, faint but unquestionably
present, plucking at her face and hair-tubes, impeding her motion.

She found herself trembling at the thought of this sticky stuff congealing in the
fine network of capillaries which powered her muscles�the network which sustained
her very being.

Human Beings weren't meant to live up here. Even pigs spent no more time close to
the Crust than they had to. She heaved at the sludgelike Air, feeling it curdle
within her capillaries, and longed for the open space of the Mantle beneath the
roof-forest, for clean, fresh, thick Air.

In all directions around her the tree trunks filled the world. As it became
progressively more difficult to see, the trunks, parallel, curving slightly to
follow the Magfield, seemed suddenly artificial, sinister in their regularity, like
the threads of some huge Net around her. She found herself gripped by a slow panic.
Her chest heaved at the unsatisfying Air, the breath noisy in her throat. It took a
strong, conscious effort to keep moving, an exercise of will just to keep her hands
working at the tree trunk.

She was concerned for Farr. Even in the gloom she could see how distressed he was:
his face was white and seemed to be bulging, his eyes half-closed; he seemed barely
aware of where he was, and he moved along the trunk stiffly.

Dura forced herself to look away, to carry on. There was no help she could give
him. Not now. The best she could do was to move on, to bring home the results of a
successful hunt. And as Adda had said, the boy was probably safer with her than
anywhere else�

At least Adda was close to Farr. Dura found herself offering up a simple, childlike
message of thanks to the watchful Xeelee for the old man's presence and support.

* * *

When the climb ended it was with a suddenness that startled her.

The tree trunk she'd followed had broadened only gradually, at last reaching a
width just too great for her to stretch her arms around. Now, suddenly, the clean
lines of the trunk exploded into a complex tangle of roots which formed a
semicircular platform over her head. Peering up, she could see the roots receding
into the dim, translucent interior of the Crust itself; they looked almost like
human arms, reaching deep into the gossamer solid in search of neutron-rich nuclei
of molybdenum, strontium or krypton.

Looking around, she saw how the root system of the tree merged with those of its
neighbors in the forest, so that a carpet of wood formed an impenetrable ceiling
over the forest. A few strands of purplish grass sprouted among the roots. The tree
trunks, following the Magfield lines, met the root ceiling at an oblique angle.

Soon the others had joined her. The four Human Beings huddled together, clinging to
loose roots for stability. It was so dim now that Dura could barely make out the
faces of her companions, the outlines of their thin bodies. Philas's eyes were dull
with exhaustion and apathy; Farr, trembling, had his arms wrapped around himself,
and his mouth was wide as he strained at the residual Air. Adda was as
uncomplaining as ever, but his face was set and pale, and Dura could see how his
old shoulders were hunched over his thin, heaving chest. Adda took leaves from the
bulging pack at his waist. Dura bit into the food gratefully. Insubstantial and
unsatisfying as it was, the food seemed to boost what was left of her strength.
Farr continued to shiver; Dura put an arm around him and drew him closer to her,
hoping to transmit enough of her body warmth to stop the trembling.

Farr asked, "Are we at the Crust?"

"No," Adda growled. "The true Crust is still millions of mansheights above us. But
we've reached the roots; this is as far as we can go."

Philas's voice was low and harsh in the thin Air. "We can't stay here for long."

"We won't need to," Dura said. "But maybe we should open up a trunk and start some
nuclear burning again, before we congeal here. Adda, could you�"

The old man raised a hand, curtly. "No time," he breathed. "Just listen� all of
you."

Dura frowned but said nothing. The four fell into a silence broken only by the
rattle of their uneven breaths. Dura felt small, vulnerable, isolated, dwarfed by
the immensities of the root systems over their heads. Every instinct ordered her to
bolt, to slide back down the tree and plummet through the wall of treetops to the
open Air where she belonged; and she could see the same urges in the set faces of
the others.

There. A rustle, a distant grunting� It came from the root systems, somewhere to
her left.

Adda's face crumpled with frustration. "Damn it all," he hissed. "I can't hear; my
ears are turning to mush."

"I can hear them, Adda," Farr said.

Dura pointed. "That way."

Adda nodded, his good eye half-closed with satisfaction. "I knew it wouldn't take
long. How many?"

Dura and Philas looked at each other, each seeking the answer in the other's face.
Dura said, "I can't tell, Adda� more than one, I think."

For a few seconds Adda swore steadily, cursing his age, his failing faculties.
"Well, into the Ring with it," he said finally. "We'll just have to chance there
aren't too many in the herd." In an urgent, harsh whisper he gave them careful
instructions on how, in the event of attack by a boar, they should scatter� and
work across the Magfield flux rather than try to flee along it. "Because that's the
way the boar will go. And, believe me, the boar will be a damn sight quicker than
you." His face was a murderous, chilling mask in the twilight.

Dura said, "Philas, go with Adda and Wave around to the far side of the herd. Take
the nets and rope and get downflux from them. Farr, stay with me; we'll wait until
the others are in position and then we'll chase the pigs into the nets. All right?"

Hurriedly they passed around the equipment they would need. Dura took two short
stabbing spears from the bundle carried by Philas. Then Adda and Philas slid
silently into the darkness, working across the Magfield by Waving and by clambering
across the parallel tree trunks.

Farr stayed close to Dura, still pressed close to her for warmth, trusting. For a
few seconds she looked down at him�his eyes seemed vacant, as if he were not fully
conscious�and she tried to imagine how she would feel if anything were to befall
this boy, as a result of her own ignorance and carelessness.

Well, she thought ruefully, at least she'd done her best for him in the way she'd
structured the hunt. It was undoubtedly safer to be upflux of the herd when the
hunt started. And she would have been greatly more worried if she hadn't stayed
with Farr herself.

With a last, brisk hug, she whispered, "Come on, Farr. We've got work to do. Let's
see how close we can get to those pigs without them spotting us."

He nodded dully and drew away from her, still shivering.

Hefting a short spear in each hand, Dura began to pull herself across the lines of
the fat trunks in the direction of the noises she'd heard. Moving in this
direction, the resistance of the Magfield was added to the thickened viscosity of
the Air, and the going was hard. She felt submerged and had to suppress a pang of
panic at the feeling of being trapped up here, of being unable to free herself from
this solidifying Air.

She did not look back, but was aware of Farr following her, perhaps a mansheight
behind; he moved silently save for his rattling breath, and she could hear how he
was trying to control the noise of his breathing. The brave little hunter, she
thought. Logue would have been proud of him.

It took only seconds to reach the pigs; soon Dura could see the blocky forms of
several animals sliding between the tree trunks, still apparently oblivious to the
humans.
Beckoning Farr to come close to her, Dura lodged herself amid the tree trunks
perhaps ten mansheights below the root ceiling.

There were three Air-pigs. The animals, each about the size of a man's torso,
worked steadily around the bases of the trees, scooping up purple-green krypton
grass and other small plants. The pigs' fins Waved languidly as they fed, and Dura
could see how their eyestalks were fixed on the grass before them and their mouths
were pursed, almost shut. When grazing on the thin foodstuff which floated in the
free Air, a pig's mouth could open so wide that it exposed the entire front end of
the pig, turning the animal into an open-ended tube, a crude eating machine
trailing eyestalks and fins. But here in this failing Air the mouths were barely
opening as they worked, lapping and chewing at the krypton grass. The pigs were
keeping their squat bodies sealed up as much as possible, maintaining an inner
reservoir of life-sustaining Air; in this way, she knew, the pigs could last for
days up here�unlike fragile, weak and ill-adapted Human Beings.

She turned to Farr, who hovered beside her with his eyes barely protruding over the
trunk. She mimed: Just three of them. We're in luck.

He nodded and pointed at one of the pigs. Dura, studying the animal more closely,
saw that it was bigger than the others: bulkier, clumsier.

A pregnant sow.

She felt a smile spread across her face. Perfect.

She counted one hundred heartbeats, then lifted her spears. Philas and Adda should
be in position by now.

She nodded to Farr.

The two humans erupted from behind their trunk. Dura yelled as loudly as the thin
Air would permit; she hurled herself along the Magfield flux at the pigs, rattling
her spears against the wood of the trunk. Beside her Farr did the same, his hair
tangling almost comically.

At their approach the pigs' mouths snapped shut. Their eyestalks lifted, rigid, to
fix straining gazes on their sudden assailants. Then, as if with one mind, the pigs
turned and bolted.

The animals hurled themselves along the Magfield lines, seeking the easiest and
quickest escape. They clattered against tree trunks and bounced over roots, their
jet orifices farting clouds of green-stained, sweet-smelling Air. Dura and Farr
gave chase, still roaring enthusiastically. Suddenly Dura found herself bound up by
the excitement of the hunt, and a new energy coursed through her.

The pigs, of course, outran Dura and Farr easily. Within a few heartbeats the
animals were disappearing into the darkness of distance, trailing clouds of
jetfarts�

But there were Adda and Philas, waiting just a little further down the Magfield,
with a net pulled tight between them and with stabbing spears at the ready.

The first two pigs were moving too rapidly to stop. They turned in the Air and
tumbled against each other, their huge mouths popping open to emit childlike
squeals, but they hurtled backside first into the net. Philas and Adda worked
together, a little clumsily but effectively. Within a few heartbeats they had
thrown the net around the two pigs and were prodding at them, trying to force them
to subside. Green jetfarts squirted from the pigs, and the net bulged as the
terrified animals strove vainly to escape. By the time Dura got there they would
have the animals trussed up and then�

There was a scream behind her. Farr's scream.

She whirled in the Air, Adda and Philas forgotten. The third pig�the pregnant sow,
she saw�had evaded Adda's net. Terrified and enraged, it had flown down, away from
the root ceiling, and was now plummeting up through the trees, back along the
Magfield flux� and straight at Farr.

The boy gazed at the animal's flapping fins and rigid, staring eyestalks,
apparently transfixed. He isn't going to get out of the way, Dura realized. And the
momentum of the pig would crush him in a moment.

She tried to call out, to move toward the boy�but she was plunged into a nightmare
of slow motion. The Magfield was thick, clinging, the Air a soupy mass in which she
was embedded. She struggled to get free, to shout to her brother, but the hurtling,
blurring speed of the pig reduced her efforts to the trivial.

There was barely a mansheight between the pig and the boy. Dura, trapped in viscous
Air, heard herself scream.

Suddenly the sow opened its mouth wide and bellowed in agony. Jetfarts staining the
air, it veered abruptly. One ventral fin caught Farr with a side-swipe which sent
him spinning against a tree trunk� but, Dura saw with a flood of relief, he was no
more than shocked.

As the sow tumbled in the Air the reason for its distress revealed itself: Adda's
long spear, protruding from the sow's belly. The spear quivered as the beast
thrashed, seeking an escape from this sudden agony.

Now Adda himself raced along the Magfield, ungainly but determined. Behind him the
two trapped pigs were struggling free of the abandoned net. Adda bellowed: "She's
gone rogue� Dura, get to the boy and keep him away."

Now the pig settled in the Air, all six of its eyestalks triangulating on the old
man. Adda slowed to a hover, arms and legs outspread, his gaze locked on the pig.

Dura said uncertainly, "Adda, get out of the way� I think�"

"Get the damn boy."

Dura hurried to obey, skirting the hovering pig.

With a howl that rent the glutinous Air, the pig charged Adda.

Adda twisted in the Air and began to Wave out of the way, his legs thrashing at the
Magfield�

But, Dura saw instantly, not fast enough.

Clinging to the weeping Farr there was nothing she could do as the final, ghastly
moments unfolded. Adda's face showed no fear�but no acceptance either, Dura saw;
there was only a grimace of irritation, perhaps at this newest failure of his
crumbling body.

As it closed on Adda, trailing green clouds of jetfarts, the sow opened its mouth.
The huge, circular maw closed on both Adda's legs. The momentum of the hurtling sow
carried away both pig and Adda, and Dura cried out as she saw Adda's fragile body
smashed against a tree trunk. But he was still conscious, and fighting; with both
fists he pounded on the sow's wide, quivering back.

Dura kicked away from the tree and Waved as hard as she could toward the pig.
Philas was approaching the pig from the far side, her stabbing spears held out
before her. The woman's eyes were wide, emptied by shock and terror.

The pig, halted by its impact with the tree, pulled back into clear Air now, and it
began, with lateral squirts of gas, to rotate around its long axis. Adda seemed to
realize what was happening. With his legs still trapped, he beat harder at the
pig's flank, cursing violently. But still the pig twisted, ever faster, becoming at
last a blur of fins and eyestalks. Jetfart gas trailed around its body in circular
ribbons, and electron glow sparkled from its fins. Adda, at last, fell backward and
lay against the pig's long flank, his knees bent cruelly.

This was the way boars killed their prey, Dura knew: the boar would spin so fast
that the superfluidity of the Air which sustained all animals in the Mantle,
including humans, broke down. It was simple, but deadly effective. Even now, she
knew, the pain of Adda's trapped legs, the agony induced by the whirling of the
world around him, would be subsumed by a dull, disabling numbness as his muscles
ceased to function, his senses dimmed, and at last even his mind failed.

With a yell from deep in her gut, Dura threw herself at the whirling animal. She
scrabbled at its smooth, slippery hide, feeling her belly and legs brush against
its hot flesh. She stabbed at its tough epidermis once, twice, before being hurled
clear. She tumbled backward through the Air, colliding with a trunk hard enough to
knock the breath out of her.

One of her two short spears had snapped, she saw, and was now floating harmlessly
away. But she had succeeded in ramming the other through the skin of the pig. The
wounded animal, with Adda's spear still protruding from its belly, tried to
maintain its rotation; but, distracted by pain, its motion became uneven, and the
pig began to precess clumsily, the axis of its rotation dipping as it thrashed in
the Air. Poor Adda, now evidently unconscious, was thrown back and forth by the
pig, his limp body flopping passively against the animal's flank.

Philas fell on the pig now and drove another spear into the animal's hide, widening
the wound Dura had made. The animal opened its huge mouth, its circular lip-face
pulling back to reveal a green-stained throat, and let out a roar of pain. Adda,
his legs freed from the mouth, fell limply away from the pig; Farr hurried to him.

Philas rammed her second spear into the thrashing pig's mouth, stabbing at the
organs exposed within. Dura pushed away from the tree and hurled herself once more
at the sow; she was weaponless, but she hauled at the spears already embedded in
the pig's flanks, wrenching open the wounds, while Philas continued to work at the
mouth.

It took many minutes. The pig thrashed and tore at the Air to the end, striving to
use its residual rotation to throw off its attackers. But it had no escape. At
last, leaking jetfarts aimlessly, its cries dying to a murmur, the sow's struggles
petered away.

The two women, exhausted, hung in the Air. The sow was an inert mass, immense, its
skin ripped, its mouth gaping loosely. Dura�panting, barely able to see�found it
difficult to believe that even now the animal would not erupt to a ghastly,
butchered semblance of life.
Dura Waved slowly through the Air to Philas. The two women embraced, their eyes
wide with shock at what they had done.

* * *

Farr gingerly laid Adda along a tree trunk, relying on the gentle pressure of the
Magfield to hold him in place. He stroked the old man's yellowed hair. He had
retrieved Adda's battered old spear and laid it beside him.

Dura and Philas approached, Dura wiping trembling hands on her thighs. She studied
Adda's injuries cautiously, scared even to touch him.

Adda's legs, below the knees, were a mangled mess: the long bones were obviously
broken in several places, the feet reduced to masses of pulped meat. The surface of
Adda's chest was unbroken but oddly uneven; Dura, fearful even to touch, speculated
about broken ribs. His right arm dangled at a strange angle, limp in the Air;
perhaps the shoulder had been broken. Adda's face was a soft, bruised mess. Both
eyecups were filled by gummy blood, and his nostrils were dimmed� And, of course,
the Xeelee alone knew about internal injuries. Adda's penis and scrotum had fallen
from their cache between his legs; exposed, they made the old man look still more
vulnerable, pathetic. Tenderly, Dura cupped the shriveled genitalia in her hand and
tucked them away in their cache.

"He's dying," Philas said, her voice uneven. She seemed to be drawing back from the
battered body, as if this, for her, was too much to deal with.

Dura shook her head, forcing herself to think. "He'll certainly die up here, in
this lousy Air. We've got to get him away, back into the Mantle�"

Philas touched her arm. She looked into Dura's face, and Dura saw how the woman was
struggling to break through her own shock. Philas said, "Dura, we have to face it.
He's going to die. There's no point making plans, or struggling to get him away
from here� all we can do is make him comfortable."

Dura shook off the light touch of the widow, unable�yet�to accept that.

Adda's mouth was phrasing words, feebly shaping the breath that wheezed through his
lips. "�Dura�"

Still scared to touch him, she leaned close to his mouth. "Adda? You're conscious?"

A sketch of a laugh came from him, and he turned blind eyecups to her. "�I'd�
rather not be." He closed his mouth and tried to swallow; then he said, "Are you
all right?� The boy?"

"Yes, Adda. He's fine. Thanks to you."

"�And the pigs?"

"We killed the one that attacked you. The sow. The others�" She glanced to the nets
which drifted in the Air, tangled and empty. "They got away. What a disaster this
has been."

"No." He stirred, as if trying to reach out to her, then fell back. "We did our
best. Now you must� try again. Go back�"

"Yes. But first we have to work out how to move you." She stared at his crushed
body, trying to visualize how she might address the worst of the wounds.
Again that sketchy, chilling laugh. "Don't be so� damned stupid," he said. "I'm
finished. Don't� waste your time.

She opened her mouth, ready to argue, but a great weariness fell upon her, and she
subsided. Of course Adda was right. And Philas. Of course he would soon die. But
still, she knew, she would have to try to save him. "I never saw a pig behave like
that. A boar, maybe. But�"

"We should have� expected it," he whispered. "Stupid of me� pregnant sow� it was
bound to� react like that." His breath seemed to be slowing; in a strange way, she
thought as she studied him, he seemed to be growing more comfortable. More
peaceful.

She said softly, "You're not going to die yet, damn you."

He did not reply.

She turned to Philas. "Look, we'll have to try to bind up his wounds. Cut some
strips from the hide of that sow. Perhaps we can strap this damaged arm across his
body. And we could tie his legs together, use his spear as a splint."

Philas stared at her for a long moment, then went to do as Dura had ordered.

Farr asked, "What can I do?"

Dura looked around, abstracted. "Go and retrieve that net. We're going to have to
make a cradle, somehow, so we can haul him back home�"

"All right."

When Philas returned, the women tried to straighten Adda's legs in preparation for
binding them to the makeshift splint. When she touched his flesh, Dura saw Adda's
face spasm, his mouth open wide in a soundless cry. Unable to proceed, she pulled
her hands away from his ruined flesh and stared at Philas helplessly.

Then, behind her, Farr screamed.

Dura whirled, her hands reaching for Adda's spear.

Farr was still working on the tangled net�or had been; now he was backing away from
it, his eyecups wide with shock. With the briefest of glances, Dura assured herself
that the boy had not been harmed. Then, as she hurried to his side, she looked past
him to discover what was threatening him�

She slowed to a halt in the Air, her mouth dangling, forgetting even her brother in
her amazement.

A box, floating in the Air, approached them. It was a cube about a mansheight on a
side made of carefully cut plates of wood. Ropes led to a team of six young Air-
pigs which was patiently hauling the box through the forest. And, through a clear
panel set into the front of the box, a man's face peered out at her.

He was frowning.

The box drifted to a halt. Dura raised Adda's spear.

Chapter 4
Toba Mixxax hauled on his reins. The leather ropes sighed through the sealant
membranes set in the face of the car, and he could see through the clearwood
window�and feel in the rapid slackening of tension in the reins�how eagerly the
team of Air-pigs accepted the break.

He stared at the four strangers.

�And how strange they were. Two women, a kid and a busted-up old man�all naked, one
of the women waving a crude-looking wooden spear at him.

At first Mixxax had assumed, naturally, that these were just another set of coolies
taking a break in the forest, here at the fringe of his ceiling-farm. But that
couldn't be right, of course; even the dimmest of his coolies wouldn't wander so
far without an Air-tank. In fact, he wondered how this little rabble was surviving
so high, so badly equipped. All they had were spears, ropes, a net of what looked
like untreated leather�

Besides, he'd recognize his own coolies. Probably, anyway.

He'd been patrolling the woodland just beyond the border of the ceiling-farm when
he'd come across this group�or at least, he'd meant to be patrolling; it looked as
if, daydreaming, he'd wandered a little further into the upflux forest than he'd
meant to. Well, that wasn't so surprising, he told himself. After all there was
plenty on his mind. He was only fifty percent through his wheat quota, with the
financial year more than three-quarters gone. He found his hands straying to the
Corestuff Wheel resting against his chest. Any more spin weather like the last lot
and he was done for; he, with his wife Ito and son Cris, would be joining the
swelling masses in the streets of Parz itself, dependent on the charity of
strangers for their very survival. And there was precious little charity in the
Parz of Hork IV, he reminded himself with a shudder.

With an effort he brought his focus back to the present. He stared through the
car's window at the vagrants. The woman with the spear�tall, streaks of age-yellow
in her hair, strong-looking, square face�stared back at him defiantly. She was
naked save for a rope tied around her waist; affixed to the rope was some kind of
carrying-pouch that looked as if it was made from uncured pigskin. She was slim,
tough-looking, with small, compact breasts; he could see layers of muscles in her
shoulders and thighs.

She was, frankly, terrifying.

Who were these people?

Now he thought about it, this far upflux from Parz they couldn't possibly be stray
coolies, even runaways from another ceiling-farm. Toba's farm was right on the
fringe of the wide hinterland around Parz� just on the edge of cultivation, Toba
reminded himself with an echo of old bitterness; not that it allowed him to pay
less tax than anyone else. Even the farm of Qos Frenk, his nearest neighbor, was
several days' travel downflux from here without a car.

No, these weren't coolies. They must be upfluxers� wild people.

The first Toba had ever encountered.

Toba's left hand circled in a rapid, half-involuntary Sign of the Wheel over his
chest. Maybe he should just yank on the reins and get out of here, before they had
a chance to do anything�

He chided himself for lack of courage. What could they do, after all? The only man
looked old enough to be Toba's father, and it seemed to be all the poor fellow
could do just to keep breathing. And even the two women and the boy working
together couldn't get through the hardened wood walls of a sealed Air-car� could
they?

He frowned. Of course, they could always attack him from the outside. Kill the Air-
pigs, for instance. Or just cut the reins.

He lifted the reins. Maybe it would be better to come back with help�get some of
the coolies into a posse, and then�

Fifty percent of quota.

He dropped the reins, suddenly angry with himself. No, damn it; poor as it was,
this was his patch of Crust, and he'd deserve to be Wheel-Broken if he let a gang
of weaponless savages drive him away.

Full of a righteous resolve, Toba pulled the mouthpiece of the Speaker toward him
and intoned into it, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

The upfluxers startled like frightened Air-pigs, he was gratified to see. They
Waved a little further from the car and poked their short spears toward him. Even
the old fellow looked up�or tried to; Toba could see how the injured man's eyecups
were sightless, clouded with pus-laced, stale Air.

Toba was filled with a sudden sense of confidence, of command of the situation. He
had nothing to fear; he was intimidating to these ignorant savages. They'd probably
never even heard of Parz City. His anger at their intrusion seemed to swell as his
apprehension diminished.

Now the strong-looking woman approached the car�cautiously, he saw, and with her
spear extended toward him�but evidently not paralyzed by fear� as, he conceded, he
might have been were the positions reversed.

The woman shouted through the clearwood at him now, emphasizing her words with
stabs of her spearpoint at his face; the voice was picked up by the Speaker
system's external ear.

"Who do you think you are, a Xeelee's grandmother?"

Toba listened carefully. The voice of the upfluxer was distorted by the limitations
of the Speaker, of course; but Toba was able to allow for that. He knew how the
Speaker system worked, pretty well. Working a ceiling-farm as far from the Pole as
Toba's�so far upflux, in such an inhospitable latitude�the car's systems kept him
alive. The strongest of the coolies could survive for a long time out here and
maybe some of them could even complete the trek back to the Pole, to Parz City. But
not Toba Mixxax, City-born and bred; he doubted he would last a thousand
heartbeats.

So he had assiduously learned how to maintain the systems of the car on which his
life depended� The Speaker system, for instance. The Air he breathed was supplied
by reservoirs carved into the thick, heavy wooden walls of the car. The Speaker
system was based on fine tubes which pierced the reservoirs; the tubes linked
membranes set in the inner and outer walls. The tubes were filled with Air, kept
warmed to perfect superfluidity by the reservoirs around them, and so capable of
transmitting without loss the small temperature fluctuations which human ears
registered as sound.

But the narrowness of the tubes did tend to filter out some lower frequencies. The
upfluxer savage's voice sounded thin and without depth, and the resonances gave her
a strange, echoing timbre. Despite that, her words had been well formed�obviously
in his own language�and tainted by barely a trace of accent.

He frowned at his own surprise. Was he so startled that the woman could speak?
These were upfluxers�but they were people, not animals. The woman's few words
abruptly caused him to see her as an intelligent, independent being, not capable of
being cowed quite so easily, perhaps, by his technological advantage.

Maybe this wouldn't be so simple after all.

"What's wrong?" the woman rasped. She shook her spear at him. "Too scared to
speak?"

"My name is Toba Mixxax, freeman of Parz. This is my property. And I want you out
of here."

The injured old fellow swiveled sightless eyecups at Toba. He shouted�weakly, but
loud enough for Toba to hear: "Parz bastards! Think you own the whole damn Mantle,
don't you?" A fit of coughing interrupted the old fool, and Toba watched as the
stronger woman bent over him, apparently asking him what he was talking about. The
man ignored her questions, and once his coughing had subsided he called out again:
"Bugger off, Pole man!"

Toba pursed his lips. They knew about Parz. Definitely not as ignorant as he had
supposed, then. In fact, maybe he was the ignorant one. He bent to his Speaker
membrane, trying to load his voice with threat: "I won't warn you again. I want you
off my property. And if you don't I�"

"Oh, shut up." Now the strong woman thrust her face into his window; Toba couldn't
help but recoil. "What do you think that means to us, 'your property'? And anyway�"
She pointed at the injured old fellow. "We can't go anywhere with Adda in that
state." The old man, Adda, called something to her�perhaps an order to leave
him�but she ignored him. "We're not going to move. Do what you have to do. And
we�"�she raised her spear again�"will do whatever we can to stop you."

Toba stared into the woman's clear eyecups.

At his side was a collection of small, finely carved wooden levers. Maybe now was
the time to pull on those levers, to use the car's crossbows and javelin tubes�

Maybe.

He leaned forward, unsure of his own motives. "What's happened to him?"

The woman hesitated, but the boy piped up loyally, his thin, clear voice
transmitted well by the Speaker tubes. "Adda was gored by a boar."

The old man spat a harsh laugh. "Oh, rubbish. I was mangled by a pregnant sow.
Stupid old fool that I am." Now he seemed to be struggling to push himself away
from his tree trunk to reach for a weapon. "But not so stupid, or old, that I can't
turn your last few minutes of life into hell, Pole man."

Toba locked eyes with the strong woman. She raised her spear and grimaced� and
then, shockingly, disarmingly, her face broke up into laughter.

Toba, startled, found himself laughing back.

The woman jabbed her spear at Toba, barely threatening now. "You. Toba Paxxax."

"Mixxax. Toba Mixxax."

"I am Dura, daughter of Logue."

He nodded to her.

She said, "Look, you can see we're in trouble here. Why don't you get out of your
pig-box and give us some help?"

He frowned. "What kind of help?"

She looked toward the old man, apparently exasperated. "With him, of course." She
stared at the car with new eyes, as if appraising the subtlety of its design.
"Maybe you could help us fix up his wounds."

"Hardly. I'm no doctor."

Dura frowned, as if the word wasn't familiar to her. "Then at least you can help us
get him out of the forest. Your box would be safe here until you got back."

"It's called a car," he said absently. "Carry him where? Your home?"

She nodded and jabbed a spear along the line of the trees, down toward the interior
of the Star. "A few thousand mansheights that way."

Mansheights? he thought, distracted. A practical measure, he supposed� but what was

wrong with microns? A mansheight would be about ten microns�a hundred-thousandth of
a meter�if it meant what it sounded like�

"What kind of facilities do you have there?"

"�Facilities?"

Her hesitation was answer enough. Even if Toba were inclined to risk his own health
carting this old chap around the forest, there was evidently nothing waiting for
him at home but more of these naked savages living in some unimaginable squalor.
"Look," he said, trying to be kind, "what's the point? Even if we got there in
time�"

"�there'd be nothing we could do for him." Dura's eyes were narrow and troubled. "I
know. But I can't just give up." She looked at Toba, through his window, with what
looked like a faint stab of hope. "You talked about your property. Is it far from
here? Do you have any�ah, facilities?"

"Hardly." Of course there were basic medical facilities for the coolies, but
nothing with any more ambition than to patch them up and send them back to work.
Frankly, if one of his coolies were injured as badly as old Adda he'd expect him to
die.

He'd write him off, in fact.

Only in Parz itself would there be treatment of the quality needed to save Adda's
life.

He picked up his reins, trying to refocus his attention on his own affairs. He had
plenty of problems of his own, plenty of work to finish before he'd see Ito and
Cris again. Maybe he could be charitable�give these upfluxers the chance to get
away. After all, they weren't really likely to damage his ceiling-farm�

"I'm sorry," he said, trying to get out of this surprisingly awkward situation with
some kind of dignity. "But I don't think�"

The woman, Dura, stared through his window, her eyecups deep and sharp, acute; Toba
felt himself shudder under the intensity of her perception. "You know a way to help
him," she said slowly. "Or you think you do. Don't you? I can see it in your face."

Toba felt his mouth open and close, like the vent of a farting Air-piglet. "No.
Damn it� Maybe. All right, maybe. If we could get him to Parz. But even then
there'd be no guarantee�" He laughed. "And anyway, how do you plan to pay for the
treatment? Who are you, Hork's long-lost niece? If you think I have funds to cover
it�"

"Help us," she said, staring straight into his eyecups.

It wasn't a request now, he realized, or a plea; it was an order.

He closed his eyes. Damn it. Why did these things have to happen to him? Didn't he
have enough problems? He almost wished he'd simply blasted this lot with the
crossbows before they had a chance to open their mouths and confuse him.

Unwilling to let himself think about it further, he pulled an Air-tank from beneath
his seat, and reached out to open the door of the car.

* * *

A circular crack appeared in one previously seamless wall of Toba Mixxax's wooden
box�of his car. At this latest surprise Dura couldn't help but flinch backward,
raising her spear at the lid of wood which began to hinge inward into the car.

The door opened fully with a sigh of equalizing pressure. The richness of the car's
Air wafted out over her, so thick it almost made her cough; she got one deep breath
of it, and for a few heartbeats she felt invigorated, filled with energy. But then
the Air dispersed into the stale, sticky thinness of the forest; and it was gone,
as insubstantial as a dream. Obviously there had been more Air inside the
compartment than out� but that made sense, of course. Why else ride around in a
wooden prison, dependent on the cooperation of young pigs, other than to carry with
you enough Air to sit in comfort?

Toba Mixxax emerged from his car. Dura watched, wary and wide-eyed. Mixxax stared
back at her. For long seconds they hung there, eyes raking over each other.

Mixxax was wearing clothes. Not just a belt, or a carrying-pouch, but a suit of
some kind of leather which encased him all over. She'd never seen anything so
restrictive. And useless. It wasn't as if it had a lot of pockets, even. And he
wore a hat on his head, with a veil of some clear, light material dangling over his
face. Tubes led from the veil to a pack on his back. A medallion, a wheel shape,
hung on a chain around his neck.

Mixxax was a good five years older than Dura herself, and only perhaps fifteen
years younger than her father at the time of his death. Old enough for his
hair�what she could see of it�to have mostly yellowed and for a network of lines to
have accumulated around shallow eyecups. In the forest's thin Air he seemed
breathless, despite his hat and veil. He was short�a head shorter than she was�and
looked well fed: his cheeks were round and his belly bulged under his clothes. But,
despite his cargo of fat, Mixxax was not well muscled. His neck, arms and upper
legs were thin, the muscles lost under the concealing layers of leather; his
covered head wobbled slightly atop a neck that was frankly scrawny.

In a fair contest, Dura realized slowly, Mixxax would be no match for her. In fact,
he'd be hard pressed to defend himself against Farr. Had all the people of his
strange home�Parz City�become so atrophied by riding around in pig-drawn cars?

Dura began to feel confident again. Toba Mixxax was strange, but he obviously
wasn't much of a threat.

She found her gaze drawn back to the medallion suspended from his neck. It was
about the size of her palm, and consisted of an open wheel against which was fixed
a sketchy sculpture of a man, with arms and legs outstretched against the wheel's
five spokes. The work was finely done, with the expression on the face of the
little carved man conveying a lot of meaning: pain, and yet a kind of patient
dignity.

But it wasn't the form of the pendant but its material which was causing her to
stare. It was carved of a substance she'd never seen before. Not wood, certainly;
it looked too smooth, too heavy for that. What, then? Carved bone? Or�

Mixxax seemed to become aware of her gazing at the pendant; with a start, oddly
guilty, he masked the device in the palm of his hand and tucked it inside the neck
of his jacket, out of sight.

She decided to puzzle over this later. One more mystery among many�

"Dura," Toba said. His voice sounded a lot better than the distorted croak she'd
heard through the walls of the car.

"Thank you for helping us."

He frowned, his fat cheeks pulling down. "Don't thank me until we find out if
there's anything to be done. Even if he survives the trip back to Parz, there's no
guarantee I'll find a doctor to treat an upfluxer like him."

Upfluxer?

"And even if I do I don't know how you're going to pay�"

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. "Toba Mixxax, I'd rather deal with
these mysterious problems when I come to them. For now, we should concentrate on
getting Adda into your box� your car."

He nodded, and grinned. "Yes. And that's not going to be so easy."

With a few brisk Waves, and with Mixxax clumsily following, Dura crossed to the
little group of Human Beings. Farr's eyes swiveled between Dura's face, Mixxax's
hat, and back again; and his mouth gaped like a third, huge eyecup. Dura tried not
to smile. "All right, Farr. Don't stare."

Philas was cradling Adda's battered head. Adda turned his blinded face to them.
"Clear off, Parz man." His voice was a bubbling croak.

Mixxax ignored the words and bent over the old man. Dura seemed to see Adda's
wounds through the stranger's eyes�the splayed right arm, the crushed feet, the
imploded chest�and she felt a knife twist in her heart.

Mixxax straightened up. His expression was obscured by his veil. "I was right. It's
not going to be easy, even getting him as far as the car," he said quietly.

"Then don't bother," Adda hissed. "Dura, you bloody fool�"

"Shut up," Dura said. She tried to think her way through the situation. "Maybe,"
she said slowly, "if we could bind him up�tie him closely to splints made out of
our spears�it wouldn't be so bad."

"Yes." Mixxax looked around. "But those ropes you have, and the nets, would just
cut into him."

"I know." She looked appraisingly at Mixxax's clothes. "So maybe�"

After a while, he grasped what she was asking; and with a resigned sigh he started
to peel off his trousers and jacket. "Why me?" he muttered, almost too quietly for
her to hear.

* * *

He wore clothes even under his clothes. His chest, arms and legs were bare, but he
wore substantial shorts of leather which covered his crotch and lower stomach. He
kept his hat on.

He looked even scrawnier of limb, flabbier of belly, without his clothes. In fact,
he looked ridiculous. Dura forbore to comment.

The Human Beings wore simple garments sometimes, of course�ponchos and capes, if
the Air blew especially cold. But clothes under clothes?

Adda swore violently as they strapped him�with knotted trouser legs and sleeves�to
a makeshift frame of spears. But he was too weak to resist, and within a few
minutes he was encased in a cocoon of soft leather, his blind face twisting to and
fro as if in search of escape.

Dura and Mixxax, with a scared Philas still cradling Adda's fragile head, slid
Adda's cocoon carefully into the pig-car. Mixxax climbed in after it and set to
work fixing it in place at the rear of the cabin with lengths of rope. Even now,
Dura could hear from outside the car, Adda continued to curse his savior.

Dura smiled at Philas, tired. "Old devil."

Philas did not respond. Her eyes, as she stared at the car, were wide� in fact,
Dura slowly realized, her fear now was the strongest emotion the woman had shown
since the death of Esk.

Dura reached out and took Philas's hand. It trembled against her palm, like a small
animal. "Philas," she said carefully. "I need your help."

Philas turned her face, long, grief-lined, toward Dura.

Dura went on, "I need to return to the Human Beings. To organize another hunt� You
see that, don't you? But someone has to go with Adda, in the car, to this�Parz
City."

Philas almost spat the word. "No."

"Philas, you must. I�"

"Farr. Send him."

Dura stared at the woman's hard, empty-eyed expression; anger and fear radiated
out, shocking her. "Farr's just a kid. You can't be serious, Philas."
"Not me." Philas shook her head stiffly, the muscles of her neck stiff with rage.
"I'm not getting in that thing, to be taken away. No. I'd rather die."

And Dura, despairing, realized that the widow meant it. She tried for some while to
persuade Philas, but there was no chink in the younger woman's resolution.

"All right, Philas." Problems revolved in her head: the tribe, Farr� Her brother
would have to come with her, in the car, of course. Adda had been correct in
intuiting that Dura would never be able to relax if Farr were out of her sight for
long. She said to Philas, "Here is what you must do." She squeezed the woman's
hand, hard. "Go back to the Human Beings. Tell them what has happened. That we are
safe, and that we're going to get help for Adda. And we'll return if we can."

Philas, her transfixing terror abating, nodded carefully.

"They must hunt again. Tell them that, Philas; try to make them understand. Despite
what's befallen us. Otherwise they'll starve. Do you understand? You must tell them
all this, Philas, and make them hear."

"I will. I'm sorry, Dura."

Dura felt an impulse to embrace the woman then; but Philas held herself away. The
two women hovered in the Air, unspeaking, awkward, for a few heartbeats.

Dura turned away from Philas to face the door of the car. It was dark in there,
like a mouth.

Terror spurted in her, sudden and unexpected. She fought to move forward, to keep
from shivering.

She was scared of the car, of Parz City, of the unknown. Of course she was. She
wondered now if that fear, lurking darkly at the back of her head, was truly what
had impelled her to order Philas to go with Toba, regardless of any other
justification. And she wondered if Philas had perceived that, too.

Here was another layer, she thought tiredly, to add to an already overcomplex
relationship. Well, maybe that was the nature of life.

Dura turned and climbed slowly into the car; Farr, wordless, meek, followed.

The man from the Pole, much less impressive without his outer garments, watched
them climb aboard. The car proved to be cramped with the four of them�plus Adda's
improvised cocoon and an expansive seat for Mixxax before an array of controls.
Mixxax pulled off his hat and veil with every expression of relief. He pulled a
lever; the heavy door swung outward.

Just before she was sealed away from the forest, Dura called out: "And Philas! Give
them our love�"

The door settled into its frame with a dull impact. Mixxax pulled another lever: a
hiss, startlingly loud, erupted from the walls around them.

Air flooded the cabin. It was sweet, invigorating, and it filled Dura's head�but it
was, she reminded herself, alien. She found a corner and huddled into it, pulling
her knees to her chest.

Mixxax looked around. He seemed puzzled. "Are you all right? You look�ill."

Dura fought the urge to lunge at him, to batter at the clear panels of wood set in
the walls. "Toba Mixxax, we are Human Beings," she hissed. "We have never, in our
lives, been confined inside a box before. Try to understand how it feels."

Toba seemed baffled. Then he turned away and, looking self-conscious, hauled on
reins that passed through the wooden walls.

Dura's belly lurched as the car jerked into motion. "Toba. Where is this City of
yours?"

"At the South Pole," he said. "Downflux. As far downflux as it's possible to go."

Downflux�

Dura closed her eyes.

Chapter 5
Dura emerged reluctantly from sleep.

She could feel the laxness of her muscles, the slow rhythm of her heart, the rich,
warm Air of the car pulsing through her lungs and capillaries. She opened her
eyecups slowly and glanced around the cramped, boxy interior of the car.

The only light came from four small, clear sections of wall�windows, Mixxax had
called them�and the little wooden room was immersed in semi-darkness. It was a
bizarre situation: to take a shit, she'd had to open a panel and squat over a tube;
when she pulled a little lever the waste had been sucked away into the Air. The
cabin itself was constructed of panels of wood fixed to a framework of struts and
spars. The frame surrounded her, she thought fancifully, like the rib cage of some
immense, protective creature. Still half-asleep, she remembered absently her
feelings of threat when first climbing into the car. Now, after less than a day,
she felt only a womb-like security; it was astonishing how quickly humans could
adjust.

Adda's stretcher was still secured to the struts to which they had strapped it.
Adda himself seemed to be asleep�or rather, unconscious. He breathed noisily, his
mouth gaping and dribbling fluid; his eyes were half-open, but even his good eye
was a small lake of pus which leaked slowly onto his cheek and forehead; small,
harmless symbiotes covered his cheeks, lapping at the pus. Farr was curled, asleep,
into a tight ball, wadded into one corner of the boxy cabin; his face was tucked
into his knees and his hair waved gently as he breathed.

Mixxax sat in his comfortable-looking seat before his array of levers and gadgets.
He had his back to her, his eyes focused on the journey ahead of them. As he sat in
his undershorts she could see afresh how thin and bony this man from the City
really was, how pale his flesh. But, at this moment, in control of his vehicle, he
radiated calm and competence. It was that very calmness, the feeling of being in a
controlled, secure environment�coupled with the exhaustion of the abortive hunt,
the stress of Adda's injuries, the thinness of the forest Air�that had lulled Dura
and Farr to fall asleep almost instantly, once the car had begun its journey.

Well, Dura was grateful for this brief interlude of peace. Soon enough the
pressures of the outside world would return�the responsibilities of Adda's illness,
Farr's vulnerability and need for protection, the unimaginable strangeness of the
place to which they were being taken. Before long she would be looking back on this
brief, secure interlude in the confining walls of the car with nostalgic affection.

Unwinding slowly, stretching to get the stiffness out of her muscles, she pushed
out of her corner and glided across the small cabin to Mixxax's seat. She anchored
herself by holding on to the back of the chair and peered past him out of his
window.

Toba Mixxax gave a start, flinching away from her. Dura had to suppress a laugh at
the moment of near-panic on his broad face.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I thought you were asleep."

"The others still are, I think. How long was I out?"

He shrugged. "A while."

She peered out of Mixxax's window, squinting a little at the golden brightness of
the Air. From the front face of the car, leather leaders led to a light wooden
framework which constrained the strong young Air-pigs Mixxax called his "team." The
laboring pigs were emitting green clouds of jetfart, so dense they half-obscured
the animals themselves; but they were making the car sail along the vortex lines,
she saw. Thin leather ropes�reins�were attached to the pierced fins of the pigs and
led, through a tight membrane in the front face of the cabin, to Mixxax's hands;
Mixxax held the reins almost casually, as if his control of the pigs and car was
unthinking, automatic. Dura fantasized briefly about living in such a place as this
magical Parz City, where the ability to direct a car like this came as naturally as
Waving.

Her eye followed the tunnel of vortices far ahead of the car to the distinct point
where they merged, obscuring infinity. And just beyond that red-white point at
infinity she made out the dull glow of the South Pole� and perhaps, she wondered,
the glow of Parz City itself.

The Crust sailed over them like an immense ceiling, detail whipping past her with
disconcerting speed. The trees through which she had hunted still grew here. They
dangled from the diaphanous substance of the Crust and following the Magfield lines
like hair-tubes; the cup-shapes of their neutrino leaves sparkled as her view of
them shifted. But the trees seemed to be thinning: she discerned patches of Crust
separating small, regular-looking stands of trees.

�And the exposed Crust was not bare: rectangular markings coated it, each perhaps a
hundred mansheights across. The rectangles were characterized by slight differences
of color, varieties of texture. Some contained markings which swept across the
patches in the direction of the Magfield like trapped vortex lines, but the
patterns in others worked aslant from the Magfield direction�even perpendicular to
it. And some bore no markings at all, save for random stipples of deeper color.

She stared into the South. The rectangular enclosures covered the Crust from this
point in, she saw, marking it out in a patchwork that receded into the misty
infinity beyond the end of the vortex lines. Small forms moved across the
enclosures, patiently working: humans, dwarfed by distance and by the scale of the
enclosures. Here and there she made out the boxy forms of Air-cars drifting through
groups of humans, supervising and inspecting.

She felt humbled, dwarfed. The cap of Crust around the Pole was cultivated�but on
an immense scale.

Before this journey she had never seen any artifact larger than the Human Beings'
Net. The car of Toba Mixxax, with its unending complexity, was impressive enough,
she supposed�but these markings across the Crust were of another order entirely:
artifice on a grand enough scale to challenge the curvature of the Star itself.

And put there by humans, like herself. She fought back awe.
She sought for the words Mixxax had used. "Ceiling-farm," she recalled at last.
"Toba Mixxax, this is your� ceiling-farm."

He laughed, an edge of bitterness in his voice. "Hardly. These fields are much too
lush for the likes of me. No, we passed the borders of my ceiling-farm long ago,
while you were sleeping� poor as it is, you probably wouldn't have been able to
distinguish it from the forest. When I picked you up we were about thirty meters
from the Pole. We're within about five meters of Parz now; here the Air is thicker,
warmer�the structure of the Star is different, just over the Pole itself�and people
can live and work much higher, close to the Crust itself." He waved a hand, the
reins resting casually in his grasp. "We're getting into the richest arable area.
The Crust farms from this point in are owned by much richer folk than me. Or better
connected� You wouldn't think it possible for one man to have as many brothers-in-
law as Hork IV. Even worse than his father was. And�"

"What are they doing?"

"Who?"

She pointed to the fields. "The people up there."

He frowned, apparently surprised by the question. "They're coolies," he said. "What

I mistook your people for. They're working the fields."

"Growing pap for the City," came a growl from behind them.

Dura turned, startled. Adda was awake; though his pus-filled eyecups were as
sightless as before, he held himself a little stiffer in his cocoon of clothes and
rope and his mouth was working, bubbles of spittle erupting from its comer.

Dura swam quickly to his side. "I'm sorry we woke you," she whispered. "How are you
feeling?"

His mouth twisted and his throat bubbled, in a ghastly parody of a laugh. "Oh,
terrific. What do you think? If you were any better-looking I'd invite you in here
to keep me warm."

She snorted. "Don't waste your Air on stupid jokes, you old fool." She tried to
adjust the position of his neck, smoothing out rucks in the rolled-up cloth around
it.

Each time she touched him he winced.

Toba Mixxax turned. "There's food in that locker," he said, pointing. "We've still
a long way to go."

In the place he'd indicated there was a small door cut into the wall, fixed by a
short leather thong; opening it, Dura found a series of small bowls, each covered
by a tight-fitting leather skin. Peeling away one of the skins she found pads of
some pink, fleshy substance, each about the size of her palm. She took a pad and
nibbled at it.

It was about as dense as meat, she supposed, but with a much softer texture. And it
was delicious�like the leaves of the trees, she thought. But, as far as she could
tell from her small sample, a lot denser and more nutritious than any leaf.

When was the last time she had eaten? It was all she could do not to cram the
strange food into her own mouth.
She pulled three of the food pads out of the bowl, then covered over the bowl and
stowed it away in its cupboard, desperate that the heavily scented photons which
seeped from the food shouldn't wake up Farr.

She held a pad to Adda's lips. "Eat," she ordered.

"City man's pap," he grumbled; but, feebly, he bit into the pad and chewed at it.

"There's nothing wrong with it," she whispered as she fed him. "It's just food."

"And it's good for you," Toba Mixxax called in a loud whisper, turning in his seat
to watch. "It's better for your health than meat, in fact. And�"

"But what is it?" Dura asked.

"Why, it's bread, of course," he said. "Made from wheat. From my ceiling-farm. What
did you think it was?"

"Ignore him," Adda rasped. "And don't give him the satisfaction of asking what
wheat is. I can see you want to."

"You can't see any damn thing," she said absently. She paused. "Well, what is
wheat, anyway?"

"Cultivated grass," Toba said. "The stuff which grows wild in the forest is good
enough for Air-pigs, but it wouldn't keep you or me alive long. But wheat is a
special type of grass, a strain which needs to be tended and protected�but which
contains enough proton-rich compounds from the Crust to feed people."

"On pap," Adda growled.

"Not pap. Bread," Mixxax said patiently.

Dura frowned. "I don't think I understand. Air-pigs eat grass and we eat pigs.
That's the way things work. What's wrong with that?"

Mixxax shrugged. "Nothing, if you don't have the choice. And if you want to spend
your life chasing around forests in search of pigs. But the fact is, per cubic
micron of Crust root ceiling, you can get more food value out of wheat than grazing
pigs. And it's economically more efficient in terms of labor to run wheat ceiling-
farms rather than pig farms." He laughed, with infuriating kindness. "Or to hunt
wild pigs, as you people do. After all, wheat stays in one place. It doesn't
jetfart around the forest, or attack old men." He looked sly. "Anyway, there are
some things you won't get except from cultivated crops. Beercake, for instance�"

"Efficient, "Adda hissed. "That was one of the words they used when they drove us
away from the Pole."

Dura frowned. "Who drove us away?"

"The authorities in Parz," he said, his sightless eyes leaking disconcertingly.

"I'm talking of a time ten generations ago, Dura� We don't talk of these things any
more. The princelings, the priests, the Wheelwrights. Drove us away from the thick,
warm Air of the Pole and out into the deserts upflux. Drove us out for our faith,
because we looked to a higher authority than them. Because we wouldn't work on
their ceiling-farms; we wouldn't accept slavery. Because we wouldn't be efficient."

"Coolies aren't slaves," Toba Mixxax said heatedly. "Every man and woman is free in
the eyes of the law of Parz City, and�"
"And I'm a Xeelee's grandmother," Adda said wearily. "In Parz, you are as free as
you can afford to be. If you're poor�a coolie, or a coolie's son�you've no freedom
at all."

Dura said to Adda, "What are you talking about? Is this how you knew where Toba was
from�because we were from Parz City too, once?" She frowned. "You've never told me
this. My father�"

Adda coughed, his throat rattling. "I doubt if Logue knew. Or, if he did, if he
cared. It was ten generations ago. What difference does it make now? We could never
return; why dwell on the past?"

Mixxax said absently, "I still haven't worked out what to do if you incur costs for
the old man's medical treatment."

"It doesn't take much imagination to guess," Adda hissed. "Dura, I told you to
drive away this City man."

"Hush," she told him. "He's helping us, Adda."

"I didn't want his help," Adda said. "Not if it meant going into Parz itself." He
thrashed, feebly, in his cocoon of clothes. "I'd rather die. But I couldn't even
manage that now."

Frightened by his words, Dura pressed against Adda's shoulders with her hands,
forcing him to lie still.

Toba Mixxax called cautiously, "You mentioned 'Xeelee' earlier."

Dura turned to him, frowning.

He hesitated. "Then that's your faith? You're Xeelee cultists?"

"No," Dura said wearily. "If that word means what I think it means. We don't regard
the Xeelee as gods; we aren't savages. But we believe the goals of the Xeelee
represent the best hope for�"

"Listen," Toba said, more harshly, "I don't see that I owe you any more favors. I'm
doing too much for you already." He chewed his lip, staring out at the patterned
Crust through his window. "But I'll tell you this anyway. When we get to Parz,
don't advertise your faith�your belief, about the Xeelee. Whatever it is. All
right? There's no point looking for trouble."

Dura thought that over. "Even more trouble than following a wheel?"

Adda turned blind eyes to her. Mixxax twisted, startled. "What do you know about
the Wheel?"

"Only that you wear one around your neck," she said mildly. "Except when you think
you need to hide it."

The City man yanked on his reins angrily.

Adda had closed his eyes and breathed noisily but steadily, evidently unconscious
once more. Farr still slept. With a pang of guilt, Dura rammed the last morsels of
the food�the bread�into her mouth, and slid forward to rejoin Mixxax at his reins.

She gazed through the windows. Bewildering Crust detail billowed over her head.
Even the vortex lines seemed to be racing past her, and she had a sudden, jarring
sensation of immense speed; she was plummeting helplessly toward the mysteries of
the Pole, and the future.

Toba studied her, cautious but with traces of concern. "Are you all right?"

She tried to keep her voice steady. "I think so. I'm just a little taken aback by
the speed of this thing, I suppose."

He frowned and squinted out through his window. "We're not going so fast. Maybe a
meter an hour. After all, it's not as if we've got to work across the Magfield;
we're simply following the flux lines home� To my home, anyway. And, this far
downflux, the pigs are getting back the full strength they'll have at the Pole.
There they could reach maybe twice this speed, with a clear run." He laughed. "Not
that there's any such thing as a clear run in Parz these days, despite the
ordinances about cars inside the City. And the top teams�"

"I've never been in a car before," she hissed, her teeth clenched.

He opened his mouth, and nodded. "No. True. I'm sorry; I'm not very thoughtful." He
mused, "I guess I'd find it a little disconcerting if I'd never ridden before�if I
hadn't been riding since I was a child. No wonder you're feeling ill. I'm sorry;
maybe I should have warned you. I�"

"Please stop apologizing."

"Anyway, we've made good time. Considering it's such a hell of a long way from the
Pole to my ceiling-farm." His round face creased with anger. "Humans can't survive
much more than forty, fifty meters from the Pole. And my ceiling-farm is right on
the fringe of that, right on the edge of the hinterland of Parz. So far upflux the
Air tastes like glue and the coolies are weaker than Air-piglets� How am I supposed
to make a living in conditions like that?" He looked at her, as if expecting an
answer.

"What's a meter?"

"�A hundred thousand mansheights. A million microns." He looked deflated, his anger
fading. "I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I'm sorry; I�"

"How deep is the Mantle?" she asked impulsively. "From Crust to Quantum Sea, I
mean."

He smiled, his anger evaporating visibly. "In meters, or mansheights?"

"Meters will do."

"About six hundred."

She nodded. "That's what I've been taught, too."

He studied her curiously. "You people know about things like that?"

"Yes, we know about things like that," she said heavily. "We're not animals; we
educate our children� even though it takes most of our energy just to keep alive,
without clothes and cars and Air-boxes and teams of captive Air-pigs."

He winced. "I won't apologize again," he said ruefully. "Look� here's what I know."
Still holding his reins loosely, he cupped his long-fingered, delicate-looking
hands into a ball. "The Star is a sphere, about twenty thousand meters across."
She nodded. Two thousand million mansheights.

"It's surrounded by the Crust," he went on. "There's three hundred meters of that.
And the Quantum Sea is another ball, about eighteen thousand meters across,
floating inside the crust.

She frowned. "Floating?"

He hesitated. "Well, I think so. How should I know? And between the Crust and the
Quantum Sea is the Mantle�the Air we breathe�about six hundred meters deep." He
looked into her face, a disconcerting mixture of suspicion and pity evident there.
"That's the shape of the Star. The world. Any kid in Parz City could have told you
all that."

She shrugged. "Or any Human Being. Maybe there was no difference once."

She wished Adda were awake, so she could learn more of the secret history of her
people. She turned her face to the window.

* * *

In the last hours of the journey the inverted Crust landscape changed again.

Dura, with Farr now awake and at her side, stared up, fascinated, watching the slow
evolution of the racing Crustscape. There was very little left of the native forest
here, although a few trees still straggled from small copses. The clean, orderly
regularity of the fields they'd passed under to the North�further upflux, as she
was learning to call it�was breaking up into a jumble of forms and textures.

Farr pointed excitedly, his eyes round. Dura followed his gaze.

They weren't alone in the sky, she realized: in the far, misted distance something
moved�not a car; it was long, dark, like a blackened vortex line. And like Mixxax's
car it was heading for the Pole, threading along the Magfield.

She said, "That must be thousands of mansheights long."

Toba glanced dismissively. "Lumber convoy," he said. "Coming in from upflux.

Nothing special. Damn slow, actually, if you get stuck behind one."

Soon there were many more cars in the Air. Mixxax, grumbling, often had to slow as
they joined streams of traffic sliding smoothly along the Magfield flux lines. The
cars came in all shapes and sizes, from small one-person buggies to grand chariots
drawn by teams of a dozen or more pigs. These huge cars, covered in ornate
carvings, quite dwarfed poor Mixxax's; Toba's car, thought Dura, which had seemed
so grand and terrifying out in the forest upflux, now appeared small, shabby and
insignificant.

Much, she was coming to realize, like its owner.

The colors of the Crust fields were changing: deepening and becoming more vivid.
Farr asked Mixxax, "Different types of wheat?"

Mixxax showed little interest in these rich regions from which he was excluded.
"Maybe. Flowers, too."

"Flowers?"
"Plants bred for their beauty�their shape, or color; or the scent of the photons
they give off." He smiled. "Actually, Ito grows some blooms which�"

"Who's Ito?"

"My wife. Nothing as grand as this, of course; after all, we're flying over the
estates of Hork's court now."

Farr had his face pressed to a window of the car. "You mean people grow plants just
for the way they look?"

"Yes."

"But how do they live? Don't they have to hunt for food, as we do?"

Dura shook her head. "Folk here don't hunt, Farr. I've learned that much. They grow
special kinds of grasses, and eat them."

Mixxax laughed bitterly. " 'Folk here,' as you call them, don't even do that, I do
that, in my scrubby farm on the edge of the upflux desert. I grow food to feed the
rich folk in Parz� and I pay them taxes so they can afford to buy it. And that," he
finished bitterly, "is how Hork's courtiers have enough leisure time to grow
flowers."

The logic of that puzzled Dura, but�understanding little�she let it pass.

Now, suddenly, the queue of cars in front of them cleared aside, and the view ahead
was revealed.

Dura heard herself gasp.

Farr cried out, sounding like a small child. "What is it?"

Mixxax turned and grinned at him, evidently enjoying his moment of advantage.
"That," he said, "is Parz City. We have arrived."

Chapter 6
Muub arrived at the Reception Gallery shortly before the start of the Grand
Tribute. He moved to the front of the Gallery, so that he could see down the full
depth of Pall Mall, and selected a body-cocoon close to Vice-Chair Hork's customary
place. A servant drifted around him for a few moments, adjusting the cocoon so it
fit snugly, and offered him drinks and other refreshments. Muub, unable to shake
off weariness, found the harmless little man as irritating as an itch, and he
chased him away.

Muub looked down. Pall Mall was the City's main avenue. Broad and light-filled, it
was a rectangular corridor cut vertically through the complex heart of Parz�from
the elaborate superstructure of the Palace buildings at the topmost Upside, down
through hundreds of dwelling levels, all the way to the Market, the vast, open
forum at the center of the City. The Reception Gallery was poised at the head of
Pall Mall, just below the Palace buildings themselves; Muub, trying to relax in his
cocoon, was bathed in the subtly shaded light filtering down through the Palace's
lush gardens, and was able to survey, it seemed, the whole of the City as if it
were laid open before him. Pall Mall itself glowed with light from the Air-shafts
and wood-lamps which lined its perforated walls; threads of the shafts, glowing
green and yellow, converged toward the Market itself, the City's dusty heart. The
great avenue�normally thronged with traffic�was deserted today, but Muub could make
out spectators peering from doors and viewing-balconies: ordinary little faces
turned up toward him like so many flowers. And in the Market itself�all of five
thousand mansheights below the Palace�the Tribute procession was almost assembled,
as thousands of common citizens gathered to present the finest fruit of this
quarter's labor to the Committee. No cocoons down there, of course; instead the
Market was crisscrossed by ropes and bars to which people clung with their hands or
legs, or hauled themselves along in search of vantage points. To Muub, staring down
at the swarming activity, it was like gazing into a huge net full of young piglets.

The Gallery itself was laced with ropes of brushed leather�to guide those Committee
members and courtiers, Muub thought sourly, too poor to be simply carried to their
cocoons. The Gallery's cool, piped Air was scented with fine Crust-flowers. Vice-
Chair Hork was already in his place close to Muub, alongside the vacant cocoon
reserved for his father, Hork IV. Hork glared ahead, sullen and silent in his bulk
and glowering through his beard. Perhaps half the courtiers were in their places;
but they had congregated toward the rear of the Gallery, evidently sensing, in
their dim, self-seeking way, that today was not a good day to attract the attention
of the mercurial Vice-Chair.

So already the elaborate social jostling had begun. It would be a long day.

In fact�thanks to the recent Glitch�it had already been a long day for Muub. The
latest in a series of long days. He was principal Physician to the First Family,
but he also had a hospital to run�indeed, the retention of his responsibilities at
the Hospital of the Common Good had been a condition of his acceptance of his
appointment to Hork's court�and the burden placed on his staff by the Glitch had
still to unravel. He studied the vapid, pretty, aging faces of the courtiers as
they preened in their finery, and wondered how many more ravaged bodies he would
have to tend before sleep claimed him.

Vice-Chair Hork seemed to notice him at last. Hork nodded to him. Hork was a bulky
man whose size gave him an appearance of slowness of wit�a deceptive appearance, as
more than one courtier had found to his cost. Under his extravagant
beard�extravagantly manufactured, actually, Muub reflected wryly�Hork's face had
something of the angular nobility of his father's, with those piercing, deep black
eyecups and angular nose; but the features tended to be lost in the sheer bulk of
the younger Hork's fleshy face, so that whereas the Chair of the Central Committee
had an appearance of gentle, rather bruised nobility, his son and heir appeared
hard, tough and coarse, the refined elements of his looks serving only to
accentuate his inherent violence. Today, though, Hork seemed calm. "So, Muub," he
called. "You've decided to join me. I was fearful of being shunned."

Muub sighed as he worked his way deeper into his cocoon. "You glower too much,
sir," he said. "You frighten them all away."

Hork snorted. "Then through the Ring with them," he said, the ancient obscenity
coming easily to his lips. "And how are you, Physician? You're looking a little
subdued yourself."

Muub smiled. "I'm afraid I'm getting a little old for my burden of work. I've spent
most of the last few days in the Hospital. We're�very busy, sir."

"Glitch injuries?"

"Yes, sir." Muub rubbed a hand over his shaven scalp. "Of course we should have
seen the worst now� or rather, the more serious cases we have not yet reached must,
sadly, be beyond our care. But there remains a steady stream of lesser injuries
which�"

"Minor?"
"Lesser," Muub corrected him firmly. "Which is very different. Not life-
threatening, but still, perhaps, disabling. Most of them patients from the central
districts, of course. When Longitude I failed�"

"I know," Hork said, chewing his lip. "You don't need to tell me about it."

Longitude I was an anchor-band, one of four superconducting toroids wrapped around

the City to maintain the structure's position over the South Pole. Longitudes I and
II were aligned vertically, while their twins Latitudes I and II were placed
horizontally, so that the toroids crisscrossed around the City.

The Glitch had largely spared the Polar regions, the City itself. But at the height
of the Glitch, with vortex lines tangling around the City, Longitude I had failed.
The City had rattled in its superconducting cage like a trapped Air-pig. The
anchor-band's current had been restored quickly, and the effects on the external
parts of the structure�such as the Spine and the Committee Palace�had been minimal.
But it had been in the hidden interior of the City, where thousands of clerks and
artisans toiled their lives away, that the most serious injuries had been incurred.

"Do we have any figures on the casualties yet?"

Muub looked at the Vice-Chair. "I'm surprised you're asking me. I'm your father's
Physician, but I'm really just one Hospital Administrator�one of twelve in all of
Parz."

Hork waved fat fingers. "I know that. All right, forget I asked. I just wanted your
view. The trouble is that the agencies which gather statistics like that for us are
precisely those which were wrecked by the Glitch itself." He shook his head, the
jowls wobbling angrily. "People think gathering information is a joke�unnecessary.
A luxury. I suspect even my highly intelligent father shares that view." The last
few words were spat out, venomously. "But the fact is, without such data a
government can scarcely operate. I've tried to justify this to my father often
enough. You see, Doctor, without central government functions, the state is like a
body without a head. We can't even raise tithes successfully, let alone allocate
expenditure." Hork grimaced. "It makes today's Grand Tribute look a little
pointless, doesn't it, Physician?"

Muub nodded. "I understand, sir."

"I tell you, Muub," Hork said, still nervously chewing on his bearded underlip,
"one more Glitch like that and we could be done for."

Muub frowned. "Who are 'we'? The government, the Committee?"

Hork shrugged. "There are plenty of hotheads, out in the ceiling-farms, in the
dynamo sheds, in the Harbor� There seems no way of rooting such vermin out. Even
Breaking them on the Wheel serves only to create martyrs."

Muub smiled. "A wise observation."

Hork laughed, displaying well-maintained teeth. "And you're a patronizing old fool
who pushes his luck� Martyrs. Yet another subtlety of human interaction which seems
to evade my poor, absent father." Now Hork looked piercingly at Muub; the Physician
found himself flinching. "And you," Hork said. "Do you scent rebellion in the Air?"

Muub thought carefully. He knew he wasn't under any personal suspicion; but he also
knew that the Vice-Chair�unlike his father�took careful note of anything said to
him. And Hork had dozens, hundreds of informants spread right throughout Parz and
its hinterland. "No, sir. Although there are plenty of grumbles�and plenty of folk
ready to blame the Committee for our predicament."

"As if we had called the Glitches down on our own heads?" Hork wriggled in his
cocoon, folds of brushed leather rippling over his ample form. "You know," he
mused, "if only that were true. If only the Glitches were human in origin, to be
canceled at a human command. But then, the scholars tell us�repeating what little
wisdom was allowed to survive the Reformation�man was brought to this Mantle by the
Ur-humans, modified to survive here. If once we had such control over our destiny,
why should we not regain it, ultimately?" He smiled. "Well, Physician?"

Muub returned the smile. "You've a lively mind, sir, and I enjoy debating such
subjects with you. But I prefer to restrict my attention to the practical. The
achievable."

Hork scowled, his plaited hair-tubes waving with an elegance that made Muub
abruptly aware of his own baldness. "Maybe. But let's not forget that that was the
argument of the Reformers, ten generations ago. And their purges and expulsions
left us in such ignorance we can't even measure the damage they did�

"Anyway, it's not revolt I fear, Physician. It's more the feasibility of government
itself�I mean the viability of our state, regardless of whoever sits in my father's
chair." The man's wide, fleshy face turned to Muub now, full of unaccustomed doubt.
"Do you understand me, Muub? Damn few do, I can tell you, inside this wretched
court or out."

Muub was impressed�not for the first time�by the younger Hork's acuity. "Perhaps,
you fear, the Glitches will render an organized society like Parz City impossible.
Revolts will become irrelevant. Our civilization itself will fall."

"Exactly," Hork said, sounding almost grateful. "No more City�no more tithe-
collectors, or Crust-flower parks, or artists or scientists. Or Physicians. We'll
all have to Wave off to the upflux and hunt boar."

Muub laughed. "There are a few who would like to see the back of the tithes."

"Only fools who cannot perceive the benefits. When every man must not only maintain
his own scrubby herd of pigs, but must make, by hand, every tool he uses, like the
poorest upfluxer� then, perhaps, he will look back on taxation with nostalgic
affection."

Muub frowned, scratching at one eyecup. "Do you think such a collapse is near?"

"Not yet," Hork said. "Not unless the Glitches really do smash us wide open. But
it's possible, and growing more so. And only a fool closes his eyes to the
possible."

Muub, wary of what traps might lie under the surface of that remark, turned to
stare down through the dusty, illuminated Air of Pall Mall.

Hork growled, "Now I've embarrassed you. Come on, Muub, don't start acting like one
of these damn piglet-courtiers. I value your conversation. I didn't mean to imply
my father is such a fool."

"�But he does not necessarily share your perspective."

"No. Damn it." Hork shook his head. "And he won't give me the power to do anything
about it. It's frustrating." Hork looked at Muub. "I hear you saw him recently.
Where is he?"
Shouldn't you know? "He's at his garden, at the Crust. He can't take the thin Air,
of course, so he mostly stays in his car, watching the coolies getting on with
their work."

"So he's healthy?"

Muub sighed. "Your father is an old man. He's fragile. But�yes; he is well."

Hork nodded. "I'm glad." He glanced at the Physician, seeking his reaction. "I mean
it, Muub. I get frustrated with him because I'm not always sure he addresses the
key issues. But Hork is still my father. And besides," he went on pragmatically,
"the last thing we need right now is a succession crisis."

There was a buzz of conversation from around the Gallery.

Hork leaned forward in his cocoon. "What's going on?"

Muub pointed. "The pipers are moving into position." There were a hundred of the
pipers, dressed in bright, eyecatching clothes, now Waving out of doorways all
along Pall Mall and taking up their positions, lining the route of the parade. The
closest pipers�four of them, one to each of the Mall's complex walls�were earnest
young men, efficiently stoking the small furnaces they carried on belts around
their waists. Fine, tapered tubes led from the furnaces in elaborate whorls to
wide, flower-like horns; the horns of polished wood gaped above the head of the
pipers like the mouths of shining predators.

"There!" Hork cried, pointing down the avenue, his face illuminated with a mixture
of excitement and avarice.

Muub, suppressing a sigh, leaned further forward and squinted down the Mall, trying
to pick out the distant specks in the Air that would be the approaching Tribute
parade: earnest, overweight citizens bearing vast sheaves of wheat, or grotesquely
bloated Air-pigs.

The pipers pushed valves on their furnace-boxes. Within each horn, complex Air
patterns swirled, sending pulses of heat along the necks of the horns�pulses which
emerged from the horns, by a process which had always seemed magical to the
resolutely non-musical Muub, as stirring peals of sound.

Far below, in the Market, the crowd roared.

* * *

Toba Mixxax twitched his reins and stared unblinking out of his window. "I'm going
to take him straight into the Hospital. The Common Good. It's a decent place.
Hork's own Physician runs it�"

Cars of all sizes came hurtling past them in a constant, random stream. Pig teams
farted clouds of green gas. Speakers blared. Toba yelled back through his own car's
system, but the amplified voices were too distorted for Dura to understand what was
being said.

It was, frankly, terrifying. Dura, hovering with Farr behind Toba's seat and
staring out at the chaotic whirl of hurtling wooden boxes, bit the back of her hand
to avoid crying out.

But somehow Toba Mixxax was managing not only to avoid collisions but also to drive
them forward�slowly, but forward�to the staggering bulk of the City itself.
"Of course it's not the cheapest. The Common Good, I mean." Toba laughed hollowly.
"But then, frankly, you're not going to be able to afford even the cheapest. So you
may as well not be able to afford the best."

"Your talk means little, Toba Mixxax," Dura said. "Perhaps you should concentrate
on the cars."

Toba shook his head. "Just my luck to come into town with three upfluxers on the
day of the Grand Tribute. Today of all days. And�"

Dura gave up listening. She tried to ignore the cloud of hurtling cars in the
foreground of her vision, to see beyond them to Parz itself.

The South Magnetic Pole itself was spectacular enough�like a huge artifact, an
immense sculpting of Magfield and spin lines. Vortex lines followed�almost�the
shape of the Magfield, so it was easy to trace the spectacular curvature of the
magnetic flux. It was nothing like the gentle, easy, Star-girdling curvature of her
home region, far upflux; here, at the furthest downflux, the vortex lines converged
from all over the Mantle and plunged into the bulk of the Star around the Pole
itself, forming a funnel of Magfield delineated by sparkling, wavering vortex
lines.

And, suspended right over the mouth of that immense funnel, as if challenging the
Pole's very right to exist, the City of Parz hung in the Air.

The City was shaped like a slender, upraised arm, with a fist clenched at its top.
The "arm" was a spine of wood which thrust upward, out of the Pole's plunging
vortex funnel, and the "fist" was a complex mass of wooden constructions which
sprawled across many thousands of mansheights. Four great hoops of some glittering
substance�"anchor-bands," Toba called them, two aligned vertically and two
horizontally�surrounded the fist-mass; Dura could see struts and spars attaching
the hoops to the mass of the "fist."

The "fist," the City itself, was a perforated wooden box, suspended within the
hoops. Ports�circular, elliptical and rectangular�punctured the box's surface, and
cars streamed in and out of many of the ports like small creatures feeding off some
greater beast. Toward the base of the City the ports were much wider: they gaped
like mouths, dark and rather forbidding, evidently intended for bulk deliveries.
Into one of these Dura could see tree-stalks being hauled from a great lumber-
jacking convoy.

Sparkling streams, hundreds of them, flowed endlessly from the base of the City and
into the Air, quite beautiful: they were sewer streams, Toba told her, rivers of
waste from Parz's thousands of inhabitants.

As the car veered around the City�Toba, braying incoherently into his Speaker tube,
was evidently looking for a port to enter�Dura caught tantalizing glimpses through
the many wide shafts of complex structures, layers of buildings within the bulk of
the City itself. A complex set of buildings perched on the crown of the City, grand
and elegant even to Dura's half-baffled eyes. There were even small Crust-trees
arcing into the Air from among those upper buildings. When she pointed this out to
Toba he grinned and shrugged. "That's the Committee Palace," he said. "Expense is
little object if you live that far Upside�"

Light filled the City, shining from its many ports and casting beams across the
dusty Air surrounding it, so that Parz was surrounded by a rich, complex mesh of
green-yellow illumination. The City was immense�almost beyond Dura's
imagination�but it seemed to her bright, Air-filled, full of light and motion.
People swarmed around the buildings, and streams of Air-cars laced around the
spires of the Palace. Even the "arm" below the City-fist, the Spine (as Toba called
it) that grew down toward the Pole, bore tiny cars which clambered constantly up
and down ropes threaded along the Spine's length.

The City grew as they approached�growing so huge, at last, that it more than filled
the small window of the car. Dura began to find the whole assemblage overwhelming
in detail and complexity. She recalled�with a strange feeling of nostalgia�her
feelings of panic on first encountering Toba's car. She'd soon learned to master
her panic then, and had come to feel almost in control of this strange, weak
person, Toba Mixxax. But now she was confronted by strangeness on an unimaginably
huger scale. Could she ever come to terms with all this�ever again take control
over her own destiny, let alone influence events around her?

Her discomfiture must have shown in her expression. Toba grinned at her, not
unsympathetically. "It must be pretty overwhelming," he said. "Do you know how big
the City is? Ten thousand mansheights, from side to side. And that's not counting
the Spine." The little car continued to edge its way, cautiously, around the City,
like a timid Air-piglet looking for a place to suckle. Toba shook his head. "Even
the Ur-humans would have been impressed by ten thousand mansheights, I'll bet. Why,
that's almost a centimeter�"

* * *

The car entered�at last�a narrow rectangular port which seemed to Dura to be
already filled with jostling traffic. The car pushed deeper into the bulk of the
City along a narrow tunnel�a "street," Toba Mixxax called it�through which cars and
people thronged. These citizens of Parz were all dressed in thick, heavy, bright
clothing, and all seemed to Dura utterly without fear of the streams of cars around
them. Dura's impressions from without of the airiness and brightness of the City
evaporated now; the walls of the street closed in around her, and the car seemed to
be pushing deeper into a clammy darkness.

At last they came to a gap in the wall of the street, a port leading to a brighter
place. This was the entrance to the Hospital, Toba said. Dura watched, silent, as
Toba with unconscious skill slid his car through the last few layers of traffic and
encouraged the pigs to draw the car gently into the Hospital bay. When the car had
been brought to rest against a floor of polished wood, Toba knotted the reins
together, pushed his way out of his chair and stretched in the Air.

Farr looked at him strangely. "You're tired? But the pigs did all the work."

Toba laughed and turned bruised-looking eyes to the boy. "Learn to drive, kid, and
you'll know what tiredness is." He looked to Dura. "Anyway, now comes the hard
part. Come on; I'll need you to help me explain."

Toba reached for the door of the car. As he released its catch Dura flinched, half-
expecting another explosive change of pressure. But the door simply glided open,
barely making a noise. Heat washed into the opened interior of the car; Dura felt
the prickle of cooling superfluid capillaries opening all over her body.

Toba led Dura and Farr out of the car, wriggling stiffly through the doorway. Dura
put her hands on the rim of the doorway, pulled�and found herself plunging forward,
her face ramming into Toba's back hard enough to make her nose ache.

Toba staggered in the Air. "Hey, take it easy. What's the rush?"

Dura apologized. She looked down at her arms uncertainly. What had that been all
about? She hadn't misjudged her own strength like that since she was a child. It
was as if she had suddenly become immensely strong� or else as light as a child.
She felt clumsy, off balance; the heat of this place seemed overwhelming.

Her confidence sank even more. She shook her head, irritated and afraid, and tried
to put the little incident out of her mind.

The Hospital bay was a hemisphere fifty mansheights across. Dozens of cars were
suspended here, mostly empty and bereft of their teams: harnesses and restraints
dangled limply in the Air, and one corner had been netted off as a pen for Air-
pigs. One car, much larger than Toba's, was being unloaded of patients: injured,
even dead-looking people, tied into bundles like Adda's. A tall man was
supervising; he was quite hairless and dressed in a long, fine robe. People�all
clothed�moved between the cars, hurrying and bearing expressions of unfathomable
concern. A few of them found time to glance curiously at Dura and Farr.

The walls, of polished wood, were so clean that they gleamed, reflecting curved
images of the bustle within the bay. Wide shafts pierced the walls and admitted the
brightness of the Air outside to this loading bay. Huge rimless wheels�fans, Toba
told her�turned in the shafts, pushing Air around the bay. Dura breathed in slowly,
assessing the quality of the Air. It was fresh, although clammy-hot and permeated
by the stench-photons of pigs. But there was something else, an aroma that was at
once familiar and yet strange, out of context�

People.

That was it; the Air was filled with the all-pervading, stale smell of people. It
was like being a little girl again and stuck at the heart of the Net, surrounded by
the perspiring bodies of adults, of other children. She was hot and claustrophobic,
suddenly aware that she was surrounded, here in the City, by more people than had
lived out their lives in her tiny tribe of Human Beings in many generations. She
felt naked and out of place.

Toba touched her shoulder. "Come on," he said anxiously. "Let's get the stretcher
out of the car. And then we'll find someone to�"

"Well. What have we here?" The voice was harsh, amused, and shared Toba's stilted
accent.

Dura turned. Two men were approaching, Waving stiffly through the Air. They were
short, blocky and wore identical suits of thick leather; they carried what looked
like coiled whips, and wore masks of stiffened leather which muffled their voices
and made it impossible to read their expressions.

The eyes of these anonymous beings raked over Dura and Farr.

She dropped her hands to her hips. The rope she'd taken Crust-hunting was still
wrapped around her waist, and she could feel the gentle pressure of her knife, her
cleaning scraper, tucked into the rope at her back. She found the presence of these
familiar things comforting, but�apart from that little knife�all their weapons were
still in the car. Stupid, stupid; what would Logue have said? She edged backward
through the Air, trying to find a clear path back to the car.

Toba said, "Sirs, I am Citizen Mixxax. I have a patient for the Hospital. And�"

The guard who had spoken earlier growled, "Where's the patient?"

Toba waved him to the car. The man peered in suspiciously. Then he withdrew his
head from the car, visibly wrinkling his nose under his mask. "I don't see a
patient. I see an upfluxer. And here�"�he waved the butt of his whip toward Dura
and Farr�"I see two more upfluxers. Plus a pig's-ass in his underpants. But no
patients."

"It's true," Toba said patiently, "that these people are from the upflux. But the
old man's badly hurt. And�"

"This is a Hospital," the guard said neutrally. "Not a damn zoo. So get these
animals out of here."

Toba sighed and held out his hands, apparently trying to find more words.

The guard was losing patience. He reached out and poked at Dura's shoulder with one
gloved finger. "I said get them out of here. I won't tell�"

Farr moved forward. "Stop that," he said. And he shoved, apparently gently, at the
guard.

The man flew backward through the Air, at last colliding with a wooden-paneled
wall. His whip trailed ineffectually behind him.

Farr tipped backward with the reaction; he looked down at his own hands with
astonishment.

The second guard started to uncoil his whip. "Well," he said softly, "maybe a few
spins of the Wheel would help you learn your place, little boy."

"Look, this is all going wrong," Toba said. "I didn't mean for any of this to
happen. Please; I�"

"Shut up."

Dura clenched her fists, ready to move forward. She had no doubt that she and Farr
could account for this man, leather armor or not�especially with the immense new
strength they seemed to have acquired here. Of course, there were more than two
guards in Parz City; and beyond the next few minutes she could envisage a hundred
dim and dark ways for events to unfold, flowering like deadly Crust-flowers out of
this incident� But this moment was all she could influence.

The guard raised the whip to her brother. She reached for her knife and prepared to
spring�

"Wait. Stop this."

Dura turned, slowly; the guard was lowering his whip.

The man who had been supervising the unloading of the other car�tall, commanding,
dressed in a fine but begrimed robe, and with a head shockingly denuded of hair-
tubes�was coming toward them.

Dura was aware of Toba cringing backward. The guard looked at Farr and Dura with
frustrated hunger.

Dura said, "Who are you? What do you want?"

The newcomer frowned. He was about Logue's age, she judged. "Who am I? It's a long
time since I was asked that. My name is Muub, my dear. I am the Administrator of
this Hospital." He studied her curiously. "And you're an upfluxer, aren't you?"

"No," she said, suddenly heartily sick of that word. "I am a Human Being."
He smiled. "Indeed." Muub glanced at the guards, and then turned to Toba Mixxax.
"Citizen, what is happening here? I don't welcome disturbances in my Hospital; we
have enough to cope with without that."

Toba bowed; he seemed to be trembling. His hands moved across the front of his
body, as if he were suddenly embarrassed by his underwear. "Yes. I'm sorry, sir. I
am Toba Mixxax; I run a ceiling-farm about thirty meters upflux, and I�"

"Get on with it," Muub said mildly.

"I found an injured upfluxer� an injured man. I brought him back. He's in the car."

Muub frowned. Then he slid across to the car and pulled his head and shoulders
through the doorway. Dura could see the Administrator efficiently inspecting Adda.
He seemed fascinated by the spears and nets of the Human Beings, the artifacts
which had been used to improvise splints for Adda.

Adda opened one eye. "Bugger off," he whispered to Muub.

The Administrator studied Adda, Dura thought, as one might consider a leech, or a
damaged spider.

Muub withdrew from the car. "This man's seriously hurt. That right arm�"

"I know, sir," Toba said miserably. "That was why I thought�"

"Damn it, man," Muub said, not unkindly, "how do you expect them to be able to pay?
They're upfluxers!"

Toba dropped his head. "Sir," he said, his voice wavering but dogged, "there is the
Market. Both the woman and the boy are strong and fit. And they're used to hard
work. I found them at the Crust, working in conditions no coolie would withstand."
He fell silent, keeping his head averted from the others.

Muub brushed his soiled fingers against his robe and gazed vacantly into the car.
At length he said mildly, "All right. Bring him in, Citizen Mixxax� Guard, help
him. And bring the woman and the boy. Keep your eye on them, Mixxax; if they run
wild, or foul the place, I'll hold you responsible."

Mixxax's misery seemed to lift a little. "Yes, sir. Thank you."

Another car sailed into the bay, evidently bringing in more patients for the
Hospital; Muub Waved away, tired responsibility etched into his face.

Chapter 7
Toba grudgingly offered to let Dura and Farr stay at his home in the City while
Adda's injuries were treated at the Hospital. At first Dura refused, but Toba gave
her a look of exasperation. "You haven't any choice," he said heavily. "Believe me.
If you had, I'd tell you about it; I've got my own life to get back to, eventually�
Look, you've nowhere to go, you've no money�not even any clothes."

"We don't need charity."

"The noble savage," Toba replied sourly. "Do you know how long it would take for
you to be picked up as vagrants? You saw the guards at the Hospital. And at the
Hospital, they're picked specially for their warm bedside manner. Vagrants aren't
popular. No tithes to the Committee, no room in the City, as the saying goes� You'd
be on a Committee-run ceiling-farm doing forced labor, or worse, before you could
turn around. And then who's going to pay poor old Adda's bills?"
Dura could see there was indeed no choice. In fact, she thought, they had every
reason to be grateful to this irritable little man�if he weren't offering to take
them in, they could be in real difficulty. So she nodded, and tried, embarrassed,
to form a phrase of thanks.

Toba said, "Oh, just get in the car."

Toba drove them through the still-crowded streets away from the Hospital. The
streets�wood-lined corridors of varying widths�were a baffling maze to Dura, and
after a few twists and corners her orientation was gone. Cars and people were
everywhere, and more than once Toba's team of Air-pigs came into jostling contact
with others, forcing Toba to haul on his reins. Speaker-amplified voices blared.
Here in the City, Toba drove with the car door open. The Air in the streets was
noisy, thick, hot, and laden with the stink of people and Air-pigs; beams of
brightness shone through the dust and the green clouds of jetfart.

At length they left the busiest streets behind and came to an area which seemed
quieter�less full of rushing cars and howling pigs. The corridor-streets here were
wide and lined by rows of neat doors and windows which marked out small dwelling-
places. Evidently these had been virtually identical when constructed, but now they
had been made unique by their owners, with small plants confined in globe-baskets
by the windows, elaborate carvings on the doorways, and other small changes. Many
of the carved scenes depicted the Mantle outside the City: Dura recognized vortex
lines, Crust trees, people Waving happily through clear Air. How strange that these
people, still longing for the open Air, should closet themselves inside this stuffy
box of wood.

Toba tugged his reins and drove the car smoothly through a wide, open portal to a
place he described as a "car park." He slowed the car. "End of the line." Dura and
Farr stared back at him, confused. "Go on. Out you get. You have to Wave from here,
I'm afraid."

The car park was a large, dingy chamber, its walls stained by pig feces and
splintered from multiple collisions. There were a half-dozen cars, hanging
abandoned in the Air, and thirty or forty pigs jostled together in a large area
cordoned off by a loose net. The animals seemed content enough, Dura observed; they
clambered slowly over each other, munching contentedly at fragments of food
floating in the Air.

Toba loosened the harnesses around his own pigs and led them one by one over to the
cordoned area. He guided the pigs competently through a raised flap in the net,
taking care to seal the net tight after himself each time.

When he was done he wiped his hands on his short under-trousers. "That's that.
Someone will come by shortly to feed and scrape them." He sniffed, peering at the
grubby walls of the car park. "Tatty place, isn't it? And you wouldn't believe the
quarterly charges. But what can you do? Since the ordinances banning so much on-
street parking it's become impossible to find a place. Not that it seems to stop a
lot of people, of course�"

Dura strained to follow this. But like much of Toba's conversation it was largely
meaningless to her, and�she suspected�contained little hard information anyway.

After a while, and with no reply from the silent, staring Human Beings, Toba
subsided. He led them from the car park and out into the street.

Dura and Farr followed their host through the curving streets. It was oddly
difficult to Wave here; perhaps the Magfield wasn't as strong outside. Dura felt
very conscious of people all around her, of strangers behind these oddly uniform
doorways and windows. Occasionally she saw thin faces peering out at them as they
passed. The stares of the people of Parz seemed to bore into her back, and it was
difficult not to whirl around, to confront the invisible threats behind her.

She kept an eye on Farr, but he seemed, if anything, less spooked than she was. He
stared around wide-eyed, as if everything was unique, endlessly fascinating. His
bare limbs and graceful, strong Waving looked out of place in this cramped,
slightly shabby street.

After a few minutes Toba stopped at a doorway barely distinguishable from a hundred
others. "My home," he explained, an odd note of apology in his voice. "Not as far
Upside as I'd like it to be. But, still, it's home." He fished in a pocket of his
undershorts and produced a small, finely carved wooden object. He inserted this
into a hole in the door, turned it, and then pushed the door wide. From inside the
house came a smell of hot food, the greenish light of woodlamps. "Ito!"

A woman came Waving briskly to the door. She was quite short, plump and with her
hair tied back from her forehead; she wore a loose suit of some brightly colored
fabric. She seemed about the same age as Dura, although�oddly�there was no yellow
coloration in her hair. The woman smiled at Toba, but the smile faded when she saw
the upfluxers.

Toba's hands twisted together. "Ito, I've some explaining to do�"

The sharp eyes of the woman, Ito, traveled up and down the bodies of the Human
Beings, taking in their bare skin, their unkempt hair, their hand-weapons. "Yes,
you bloody well have," she said.

* * *

Toba's dwelling-place was a box of wood about ten mansheights across. It was
divided into five smaller rooms by light partitions and colored sheets; small
lamps, of nuclear-burning wood, glowed neatly in each room.

Toba showed the Human Beings a place to clean themselves�a room containing chutes
for waste and spherical bowls holding scented cloth. Dura and Farr, left alone in
this strange room, tried to use the chutes. Dura pulled the little levers as Toba
had shown them, and their shit disappeared down gurgling tubes into the mysterious
guts of the City. Brother and sister peered into the chutes, open-mouthed, trying
to see where it all went.

When they were done Toba led them to a room at the center of the little home. The
centerpiece was a wooden ball suspended at the heart of the room; there were
handholds set around the globe's surface and fist-sized cavities carved into it.
Ito�who had changed into a lighter, flowing robe�was ladling some hot,
unrecognizable food into the cavities. She smiled at them, but her lips were tight.
There was a third member of the family in the room�Toba's son, whom he introduced
as Cris. Cris seemed a little older than Farr, and the two boys stared at each
other with frank, not unfriendly curiosity. Cris seemed better muscled than most
City folk to Dura. His hair was long, floating and mottled yellow, as if
prematurely aged; but the color was vivid even in the dim lamplight, and Dura
suspected it had been dyed that way.

At Ito's invitation the upfluxers came to the spherical table. Dura, still naked,
her knife still at her back, felt large, clumsy, ugly in this delicate little
place. She was constantly aware of the Pole-strength of her muscles, and she felt
inhibited, afraid to touch anything or move too quickly for fear of smashing
something.
Copying Toba, she shoveled food into her mouth with small wooden utensils. The food
was hot and unfamiliar, but strongly flavored. As soon as she started, Dura found
she was ravenously hungry�in fact, save for the few fragments of the bread Toba had
offered to Adda during the long journey to the City, she hadn't eaten since their
ill-fated hunt�and how long ago that seemed now!

They ate in silence.

After the meal, Toba guided the Human Beings to a small room in one corner of the
home. A single lamp cast long shadows, and two tight cocoons had been suspended
across the room. "I know it's small, but there should be room for the two of you,"
he said. "I hope you sleep well."

The two Human Beings clambered into the cocoons; the fabric felt soft and warm
against Dura's skin.

Toba Mixxax reached for the lamp�then hesitated. "Do you want me to dampen the
light?"

It seemed a strange request to Dura. She looked around, but this deep inside Parz
City there were, of course, no light-ducts, no access to the open Air. "But then it
would be dark," she said slowly.

"Yes� We sleep in the dark."

Dura had never been in the dark in her life. "Why?"

Toba looked puzzled. "I don't know� I've never thought about it." He drew back his
hand from the lamp, and smiled at them. "Sleep well." He Waved briskly away,
sealing shut the room behind him.

Wriggling inside her cocoon, Dura uncoiled her length of rope from her waist, and
wrapped it loosely around one of the cocoon's ties. She knotted the rope around her
knife, close enough that she could reach the knife if she needed to. Then she
squirmed deeper into the cocoon, at last drawing her arms inside it. It was an odd
experience to be completely enclosed like this, though oddly comforting.

She glanced across at Farr. He was already asleep, his head tucked down against his
chest. She felt a burst of protective affection for her brother�and yet, she
realized ruefully, he seemed less in need of protection than she did herself. Farr
seemed to be absorbing the wonders and mysteries of this complex place with much
more resilience and openness than Dura could find.

Dura sighed, clinging to the fragments of her dissipating feeling of

protectiveness. Looking after her brother, at least nominally, made her able to
forget her own sense of isolation and threat. Perhaps in an odd way, she thought
drowsily, she needed Farr more than he needed her. In the quiet of the room, she
became aware of noises from beyond the walls around her. There were murmured words
from Toba, the uneven voice of the boy, Cris; and then it was as if her sphere of
awareness expanded out beyond this single house, so that she could hear the soft
insect-murmurings of thousands of humans all around her in this immense hive of
people. The wooden walls creaked softly, expanding and contracting; she felt as if
the whole City were breathing around her.

The cocoon soon grew hot, confining; impatiently she shoved her arms out into the
marginally cooler Air. It took her a long time to find sleep.

* * *
The next day Ito seemed a little friendlier. After feeding them again she told
them, "I've a day off work today�"

"Where do you work?" Dura asked.

"In a workshop just behind Pall Mall." She smiled, looking tired at the thought of
her job. "I build car interiors. And I'm glad of a bit of free time. Sometimes, at
the end of my shift, I can't seem to get the smell of wood out of my fingers�"

Dura listened to all this carefully. The conversation of these City folk was like
an elaborate puzzle, and she wondered where to start the process of unraveling.
"What's a Pall Mall?"

Cris, the son, laughed at her. "It's not a Pall Mall. It's just�Pall Mall."

Ito hushed him. "It's a street, dear, the main one leading from the Palace to the
Market� All this must be very strange to you. Why don't you come see the sights
with me?"

Uncertain, Dura looked to Toba. He nodded. "Go ahead. I've got to head back to the
ceiling-farm, but you take your time; it's going to be a few days before Adda's
ready for visitors. And maybe Cris can look after Farr for a while."

Ito was eyeing Dura's bare limbs doubtfully. "But I don't think we should take you
out like that. Nudity's all right for shock value�but in Pall Mall?"

Ito lent Dura one of her own garments, a one-piece coverall of some soft, pliant
material. The cloth felt smoothly comfortable against Dura's skin, but as she
sealed up the front of the outfit she felt enclosed, oddly claustrophobic. She
tried Waving around the room experimentally; the material rustled against her skin,
and the seams restricted her movements.

After a little thought she wrapped her battered piece of rope around her waist, and
tucked her wooden knife and scraper inside the coverall. The homely feel of the
objects made her feel a little more secure.

Cris stared at her with a skeptical grin. "You won't need a knife. It isn't the
upflux here, you know."

Again Ito hushed him; the two adults politely refrained from comment.

Leaving Farr with Cris, the two women left the home with Toba. He led them to his
car, waiting in the "car park." Dura helped him harness up a team of fresh pigs
from the pen in the corner.

Toba took them through a fresh maze of unfamiliar streets. Soon they left behind
the quiet residential section and arrived in the bustling central areas. Dura tried
to follow their route, but once again found it impossible. She was used to
orienting herself against the great features of the Mantle: the vortex lines, the
Pole, the Quantum Sea. She suspected that keeping a sense of direction while
tracking through this warren of wooden corridors was a skill which the children of
Parz must acquire from birth, but which she would have to spend many months
learning.

Toba brought them to the widest avenue yet. Its walls�at least a hundred
mansheights apart�were lined with green-glowing lamps and elaborate windows and
doorways. Toba pulled the car out of the traffic streams and hauled on his reins.
"Here you are�Pall Mall," he announced. He embraced Ito. "I'll head off to the
farm; I'll be back in a couple of days. Enjoy yourselves�"

Ito led Dura out of the car. Dura watched, uncertain, as the car pulled away into
the traffic.

The avenue was the largest enclosed space Dura had ever seen�surely the largest in
the City itself. It was an immense, vertical tunnel, crammed with cars and people
and full of noise and light. The two women were close to one wall; Dura could see
how the wall was lined with windows, all elaborately decorated and lettered, beyond
which were arrays of multicolored clothes, bags, scrapers, bottles and globes,
elaborately carved lamps, finely crafted artifacts Dura could not even recognize.
People�hundreds of them�swarmed across the wall like foraging animals; they
chattered excitedly to each other as they plunged through doorways.

Ito smiled. "Shops," she said. "Don't worry about the crush. It's always like
this."

All four walls of the avenue were lined with the "shops." The wall opposite, a full
hundred mansheights away, was a distant tapestry of color and endless human motion,
rendered a little indistinct by the dusty Air; lamps sparkled in rows across its
face and shafts of light shone from round ducts.

Pall Mall was alive with traffic. At first the swarming, braying cars seemed to
move chaotically, but slowly Dura discerned patterns: there were several streams,
she saw, moving up and down the avenue parallel to its walls, and every so often a
car would veer�perilously, it seemed to her�from one stream to another, or would
pull off Pall Mall into a side-street. The Air was thick with green jetfart, alive
with the squealing of pigs. For a while Dura managed to follow Toba's car as it
worked its way along the avenue, but she soon lost it in the swirling lanes of
traffic.

There was a strong, sweet smell, almost overpowering. It reminded Dura of the
scented towels in Ito's bathroom.

Ito, touching her arm, drew her toward the shops. "Come on, dear. People are
starting to stare�"

Dura could hardly help goggle at the people thronging the shops. Men and women
alike were dressed in extravagantly colored robes and coveralls shaped to reveal
flashes of flesh; there were hats and jewels everywhere, and hair sculpted into
huge, multicolored piles.

Ito led Dura through two or three shops. She showed her jewelry, ornaments, fine
hats and clothes; Dura handled the goods, wondering at the fine craftsmanship, but
quite unable to make sense of Ito's patient explanations of the items' use.

Ito's persistence seemed to be wearing a little now, and they returned to the main
avenue. "We'll go to the Market," Ito said. "You'll enjoy that."

They joined a stream of people heading�more or less�for that end of Pall Mall
deepest inside the City. Almost at once Dura was thumped in the small of her back
by something soft and round, like a weak fist; she whirled, scrabbling
ineffectually at her clothes in search of her knife.

A man hurried past her. He was dressed in a flowing, sparkling robe. In his soft
white hands he held leaders to two fat piglets, and he was being dragged in an
undignified way�it seemed to Dura�after the piglets, his feet dangling through
their clouds of jetfart. It had been one of the piglets that had hit Dura's back.
The man barely glanced at her as he passed.

Ito was grinning at her.

"What's wrong with him? Can't he Wave like everyone else?"

"Of course he can. But he can afford not to." Ito shook her head at Dura's
confusion. "Oh, come on, it would take too long to explain."

Dura sniffed. The sweet smell was even stronger now. "What is that?"

"Pig farts, of course. Perfumed, naturally�"

They dropped gently down the avenue, Waving easily. Dura found herself embarrassed
by the awkward silences between herself and this kindly woman�but there was so
little common ground between them.

"Why do you live in the City?" Dura asked. "I mean, when Toba's farm is so far
away�"

"Well, there's my own job," Ito said. "The farm is large, but it's in a poor area.
Right on the fringe of the hinterland, so far upflux that it's hard even to get
coolies to work out there, for fear of�" She stopped.

"For fear of upfluxers. It's all right."

"The farm doesn't bring in as much as it should. And everything seems to cost so
much�"

"But you could live in your farm." The thought of that appealed to Dura. She liked
the idea of being out in the open, away from this stuffy warren�and yet being
surrounded by an area of cultivation, of order; to know that your area of control
extended many hundreds of mansheights all around you.

"Perhaps," Ito said reluctantly. "But who wants to be a subsistence farmer? And
there's Cris's schooling to think of."

"You could teach him yourself."

Ito shook her head patiently. "No, dear, not as well as the professionals. And they
are only to be found here, in the City." Her tired, careworn look returned. "And
I'm determined Cris is going to get the best schooling we can afford. And stick it
to the end, despite his dreams of Surfing."

Surfing?

Dura fell silent, trying to puzzle all this out.

Ito brightened. "Besides�with all respect to you and your people, dear�I wouldn't
want to live on some remote farm, when I could be surrounded by all this. The
shops, the theaters, the libraries at the University�" She looked at Dura
curiously. "I know this is all strange to you, but don't you feel the buzz of life
here? And if, one day, we could move a bit further Upside�"

"Upside?"

"Closer to the Palace." Ito pointed upward, back the way they had come. "At the top
of the City. All of this side of the City, above the Market, is Upside."
"And below the Market�"

Ito blinked. "Why, that's the Downside, of course. Where the Harbor is, and the
dynamo sheds, and cargo ports, and sewage warrens." She sniffed. "Nobody would live
down there by choice."

Dura Waved patiently along, the unfamiliar clothes scraping across her legs and
back.

As they descended, the walls of Pall Mall curved away from her like an opening
throat, and the avenue merged smoothly into the Market. This was a spherical
chamber perhaps double the width of Pall Mall itself. The Market seemed to be the
end-point of a dozen streets�not just the Mall�and traffic streams poured through
it constantly. Cars and people swarmed over each other chaotically; in the dust and
noise, Dura saw drivers lean out of their cars, bellowing obscure profanities at
each other. There were shops here, but they were just small, brightly colored
stalls strung in rows across the chamber. Stallkeepers hovered at all angles,
brandishing their wares and shouting at passing customers.

At the center of the Market was a wheel of wood, about a mansheight across. It was
mounted on a huge wooden spindle which crossed the chamber from side to side,
cutting through the shambolic stalls; the spindle must have been hewn from a single
Crust-tree, Dura thought, and she wondered how the carpenters had managed to bring
it here, into the heart of the City. The wheel had five spokes, from which ropes
dangled. The shape of the wheel looked vaguely familiar to Dura, and after a
moment's thought she recalled the odd little talisman which Toba wore around his
neck, the man spreadeagled against a wheel. Wasn't that five-spoked too?

Ito said, "Isn't this great? These little stalls don't look like much but you can
get some real bargains. Good quality stuff, too�"

Dura found herself backing up, back toward the Mall they'd emerged from. Here,
right in the belly of this huge City, the noise, heat and constant motion seemed to
crowd around her, threatening to overwhelm her.

Ito followed her and took her hand. "Come on," she said. "Let's find somewhere
quieter and have something to eat."

* * *

Cris's room was a mess. Crumpled clothes, all gaudily colored, floated through the
Air like discarded skin; from among the clothes' empty limbs, bottles of hair-dye
protruded, glinting in the lamplight. Cris pushed his way confidently into this
morass, shoving clothes out of the way. Farr didn't find it so easy to enter the
room. The cramped space, the clothes pawing softly at his flesh, gave him an
intense feeling of claustrophobia.

Cris misread his discomfiture. "Sorry about the mess. My parents give me hell about
it. But I just can't seem to keep all this junk straight." He tipped back in the
Air and rammed at a mass of clothing with both feet; the clothing wadded into a
ball and compressed into one corner, leaving the Air marginally clearer; but even
as Farr watched the clothes slowly unraveled, reaching out blindly with empty
sleeves.

Farr peered around, wondering what he was supposed to say. "Some of your belongings
are�attractive."

Cris gave him an odd look. "Attractive. Yeah. Well, not half as attractive as they
could be if we had a little more money to spare. But times are hard. They're always
hard." He dived into the bundles of clothing once more, pulling them apart with his
hands, evidently searching for something. "I suppose money doesn't mean a thing,
where you grew up."

"No," Farr said, still unsure what money actually was. Oddly, he had heard envy in
Cris's voice.

Cris had retrieved something from within the cloud of clothing: a board, a thin
sheet of wood about a mansheight long. Its edges were rounded and its surface,
though scored by grooves for gripping, was finely finished and polished so well
that Farr could see his reflection in it. A thin webbing of some shining material
had been inlaid into the wood. Cris ran his hand lovingly over the board; it was as
if, Farr thought, he were caressing the skin of a loved one. Cris said, "It sounds
great."

"What does?"

"Life in the upflux." Cris looked at Farr uncertainly.

Again Farr didn't know how to answer. He glanced around at Cris's roomful of
possessions�none of which he'd made himself, Farr was willing to bet�and let his
look linger on Cris's stocky, well-fed frame.

"I mean, you're so free out there." Cris ran his hand around the edge of his
polished board. "Look, I finish my schooling in another year. And then what? My
parents don't have the money for more education�to send me to the University, or
the Medical College, maybe. Anyway, I don't have the brains for any of that." He
laughed, as if proud of the fact. "For someone like me there are only three choices
here." He counted them off on his callus-free fingers. "If you're stupid, you end
up in the Harbor, fishing up Corestuff from the underMantle�or maybe you can
lumberjack, or you might end up in the sewage runs. Whatever. But if you're a
little smarter you might get into the Civil Service, somewhere. Or�if you can't
stand any of that, if you don't want to work for the Committee�you can go your own
way. Set up a stall in the Market. Or work a ceiling-farm, like my father, or build
cars like my mother. And spend your life breaking your back with work, and paying
over most of your money in tithes to the Committee." He shrugged, clinging to his
board; his voice was heavy with despondency, with world-weariness. "And that's it.
Not much of a choice, is it?"

If Farr had closed his eyes he might have imagined he was listening to an old,
time-beaten man like Adda rather than a boy at the start of his life. "But at least
the City keeps you fed, and safe, and comfortable."

"But not everyone wants to be comfortable. Isn't there more to life than that?" He
looked at Farr again with that odd tinge of envy. "That's what Surfing offers me�
Your life, in the upflux, must be so�interesting. Waking up in the open Air, every
day. Never knowing what the day is going to bring. Having to go out and find your
own food, with your bare hands�" Cris looked down at his own smooth hands as he
said this.

Farr didn't know what to reply to all this. He had come to think of the City folk
as superior in wisdom, and it was a shock to find one of them talking such rubbish.

Looking for something to say, he pointed to the board Cris was still cradling.
"What's this?"

"My board. My Surfboard." Cris hesitated. "You've never seen one before?"

Farr reached out and ran his fingertips over the polished surface. It was worked so
finely that he could barely feel the unevenness of the wood; it was like touching
skin�the skin of a very young child, perhaps. The mesh of shining threads had been
inlaid into a fine network of grooves, just deep enough to feel.

"It's beautiful."

"Yes." Cris looked proud. "It's not the most expensive you can get. But I've put a
hell of a lot of work into it, and now I doubt there's a better board this side of
Pall Mall."

Farr hesitated, embarrassed by his utter ignorance. "But what's it for?"

"For Surfing." Cris held the board out horizontally and flipped up into the Air,
bringing his bare feet to rest against the ridged board. The board drifted away
from him, of course, but Farr could see how expertly Cris's feet moved over the
surface, almost as if they were a second pair of hands. Cris held his arms out and
swayed in the Air. "You ride along the Magfield, like this. There's nothing like
it. The feeling of power, of speed�"

"But how? Do you Wave?"

Cris laughed. "No, of course not." Then he looked more thoughtful. "At least, not
quite." He flipped off the board, doing a neat back-somersault in the cramped room,
and caught the board. "See the wires inlaid into the surface? That's Corestuff.
Superconducting. That's what makes the boards so damn expensive." He rocked the
board in the Air with his arms. "You work it like this, with your legs. See? It's
like Waving, but with the board instead of your body. The currents in the
superconductors push against the Magfield, and�" He shot his hand through the Air.
"Whoosh!"

Farr thought about it. "And you can go faster than Waving?"

"Faster?" Cris laughed again. "You can be faster than any car, faster than any
farting pig�when you get a clear run, high above the Pole, you feel as if you're
going faster than thought." His expression turned misty, dreamlike.

Farr watched him, fascinated and curious.

"So that's what the board is for� sort of. But it's also my way out of here. Out of
my future. Maybe." Cris seemed awkward now, almost shy. "I'm good at this, Farr.
I'm one of the best in my age group; I've won a lot of the events I've been
eligible for up to now. And in a couple of months I qualify for the big one. The
Games. I'll be up against the best, my first chance�"

"The Games?"

"The biggest. If you do well there, become a star of the Games, then Parz just
opens her legs for you." Cris laughed coarsely at that, and Farr grinned
uncertainly. "I mean it," Cris said. "Parties at the Palace. Fame." He shrugged.
"Of course it doesn't last forever. But if you're good enough you never lose it,
the aura. Believe me� Will you still be around, for the Games?"

"I don't know. Adda�"

"Your friend in the Hospital. Yeah." Cris's mood seemed to swing to embarrassment
again. "Look, I'm sorry for going on about Surfing. I know you're in a difficult
situation."

Farr smiled, hoping to put this complex boy at his ease. "I enjoy hearing you
talk."

Cris studied Farr speculatively. "Listen, have you ever tried Surfing? No, of
course you haven't. Would you like to? We could meet some people I know�"

"I don't know if I'd be able to."

"It looks simple," Cris said. "It is simple in concept, but difficult to do well.
You have to keep your balance, keep the board pressed between you and the Magfield,
keep pushing down against the flux lines to build up your speed." He closed his
eyes briefly and rocked in the Air.

"I don't know," Farr said again.

Cris eyed him. "You should be strong enough. And, coming from the upflux, your
sense of balance and direction should be well developed. But maybe you're right.
You're barrel-chested, and your legs are a little short. Even so it mightn't be
impossible for you to stay aboard for a few seconds�"

Farr found himself bridling at this cool assessment. He folded his arms. "Let's do
it," he said. "Where?"

Cris grinned. "Come on. I'll show you."

* * *

Ito took Dura to the Museum.

This was situated in the University area of the City�far Upside, as Dura was
learning to call it; in fact, not very far below the Palace itself. The University
was a series of large chambers interconnected by richly paneled corridors. Ito
explained that they weren't allowed to disturb the academic calm of the chambers
themselves, but she was able to point out libraries, seminar areas filled with
groups of earnest young people, arrays of small cells within which the scholars
worked alone, poring over their incomprehensible studies.

The University was close to the City's outer wall, and was so full of natural light
the Air seemed to glow. There was an atmosphere of calm here, an intensity which
made Dura feel out of place (even more than usual). They passed a group of senior
University members; these wore flowing robes and had shaved off their hair, and
they barely glanced at the two women as they Waved disdainfully past.

She leaned close to Ito and whispered, "Muub. That Administrator at the Hospital.
He shaved his head. Does he belong here too?"

Ito smiled. "I've never met the man; he sounds a little too grand for the likes of
us. But, no, if he works at the Hospital he has no connection now with the
University. But he may once have studied here, and he wears the bald fashion as a
reminder to the rest of us that once he was a scholar." Her smile was thin, Dura
thought, and tired-looking. "People do that sort of thing, you know."

"Did you�study�at the University? Or Toba?"

"Me?" Ito laughed, gently. "Do I look as if I could ever have afforded it?� It
would be wonderful if Cris could make it here, though. If only we could find the
fees�it would give him something higher, something better to aim for. Maybe he
wouldn't waste so much time on that damn Surfboard."

The Museum was a large cube-shaped structure at the heart of the University
complex. It was riddled with passageways and illumination shafts, so that light
seeped through the whole of its porous bulk. As they moved slowly through the maze
of passageways, the multitude of ports and doorways seemed to conceal a hundred
caches of treasure.

One corridor held rows of pigs, rays and Crust-spiders. At first the creatures,
looming out of the darkness, made Dura recoil; but she soon realized that these
animals were no threat to her�and never would be to anyone else. They were dead,
preserved somehow, fixed to the walls of this place in grim parodies of their
living postures: gazing at the magnificent, outstretched wings of a ray, pinned
against a frame of wood, Dura felt unaccountably sad. A little further along a
display showed an Air-pig�dead like the others, but cut open and splayed out with
its organs�small masses of tissue fixed to the inner wall of the body�now
glistening, exposed for her inspection. Dura shuddered. She had killed dozens of
Air-pigs, but she could never have brought herself to touch this cold, clean
display.

Oddly, there was no smell in these corridors, either of life or death.

They came to an area containing human artifacts. Much of it was from the City
itself, Dura gathered, but from ages past; Ito laughed as she pointed to clothes
and hats mounted on the walls. Dura smiled politely, not really seeing the joke.
There was a model of the City, finely carved of wood and about a mansheight tall.
There was even a lamp inside so that the model was filled with light. Dura spent
some time peering at this in delight, with Ito pointing out the features of the
City. Here was a toy lumber train entering one of the great ports Downside, and
here was the Spine leading down into the underMantle; tiny cars carrying model
Fishermen descended along the Spine, seeking lodes of precious Corestuff. And the
Palace at the very crown of the City�at the farthest Upside of all�was a rich
tapestry glowing with life and color.

Further along, there were small cases containing artifacts from outside the City.
Ito touched her arm. "Perhaps you'll recognize some of this." There were spears and
knives, all carved from wood; she saw nets, ponchos, lengths of rope.

Upfluxer artifacts.

None of them looked as if they had come from the Human Beings themselves. But, said
Ito, that wasn't so surprising; there were upfluxer bands all around the fringe of
Parz's hinterland, right around the Star's Polar cap. Dura studied the objects,
aware of her own knife, her rope still wrapped around her waist. The things she
carried wouldn't be out of place inside one of these displays, she realized. With a
tinge of bitterness, she wondered if these people would like to pin her and her
brother up on the walls, like that poor, dead ray.

Finally, Ito brought her to the Museum's most famous exhibit (she said). They
entered a spherical room perhaps a dozen mansheights across. The light here was
dim, coming only from a few masked wood-lamps, and it took some time for Dura's
eyes to adapt to the darkness.

At first she thought there was nothing here, that the chamber was empty. Then,
slowly, as if emerging from mist, an object took shape before her. It was a cloud
about a mansheight across, a mesh of some shining substance. Ito encouraged her to
move a little closer, to push her face closer to the surface of the mesh. The
exhibit was like a tangled-up net, composed of cells perhaps a handsbreadth across.
And Dura saw that within the cells of the main mesh there was more detail: sub-
meshes, composed of fine cells no wider than a hair-tube. Perhaps, Dura wondered,
if she could see well enough she would find still more cells, almost invisibly
tiny, within the hair-scale mesh.
Ito showed Dura a plaque on the wall, inscribed with text on the display. " 'The
structure is fractal.' " Ito pronounced the word carefully. " 'That is, it shows a
similar structure on many scales. Corestuff lends itself to this property, being
composed of hyperons, bags of quarks in which are dissolved the orderly
nucleons�the protons and neutrons�of the human world.

" 'In regions humans can inhabit Corestuff exists in large metastable islands of
matter�the familiar Corestuff bergs retrieved by Fishermen, and used to construct
anchor-bands, among other artifacts�

" 'But further in, in the deep Core, the hyperonic material can combine to form
extraordinary, rich structures like this model. The representation here is based on
guesswork�on fragmentary tales from the time of the Core Wars, and on half-coherent
accounts of Fishermen. Nevertheless, the University scholars feel that�' "

"But," Dura interrupted, "what is it?"

Ito turned to her, her face round and smooth in the dim light. "Why, it's a
Colonist," she said.

"But the Colonists were human."

"No," Ito said. "Not really. They abandoned us, stealing our machines, and went
down into the Core." She looked somber. "And this is what they became. They lived
in these structures of Corestuff."

Dura stared into the deep, menacing depths of the model. It was as if, here in the
belly of the City, she had been transported to the Core itself and left to face
this bizarre, monstrous entity alone.

Chapter 8
Clutching his Surfboard, Cris led Farr through the heart of the City.

They followed a tangle of subsidiary streets, avoiding the main routes. Farr tried
to memorize their path, but his rudimentary sense of City-bound direction was soon
overwhelmed. Lost, baffled, but following Cris doggedly, he involuntarily glanced
around, looking for the Quantum Sea, the angle of the vortex lines to orient
himself. But of course, here deep in the guts of Parz, the faceless wooden walls
hid the world.

After a time, though, he realized that they must have passed below the City's rough
equator and moved into the region called the Downside. The walled streets here were
meaner, with illumination shafts and wood-lamps far separated. There were few cars
and fewer Wavers, and the doors to dwelling-places off the Downside streets,
battered and dirty, looked impenetrably solid. Cris didn't comment on the changed
environment�he kept up his chatter of Surfing as if oblivious�but Farr noticed how
the City boy kept his precious board clutched tight against his chest, shielding it
with his body.

At length they came to a wide, oval port set in a street wall. The shaft beyond
this port, about ten mansheights across, was much plainer than any City street�long
and featureless, and with scuffed, unfinished-looking walls�but it led, Farr saw,
to an ellipse of clear, precious Airlight. He stared hungrily into that light,
marveling at how the bright yellow glow glittered from scraped-smooth patches of
wall.

"Are we going down here?"

"Through this cargo port? Out through the Skin? But that's against City
ordinances�" Cris grinned. "You bet we are." With a whoop, Cris placed one hand on
the lip of the elliptical entrance and somersaulted into the shaft. His board
clutched above his head, he flapped his arms, Waving in reverse feet-first down the
shaft. Farr, clumsier, clambered over the lip of the port and plunged down.
Laughing, their voices echoing from the wooden walls, the boys tumbled toward the
open Air.

Farr shot out of the oppressive wall of the City and spread his arms and legs,
drinking in the yellow-shining Air and staring up at the arc of the vortex lines.

Cris was looking at him skeptically. "Are you okay?"

"I'm just glad to be out in the Air� even if it is this sticky Polar stuff."

"Right. Not like back in the good old upflux, eh?" Cris leveled his board, flexed
it with the palm of his hand experimentally against the Magfield.

Farr rolled luxuriously in the Air. The port they'd emerged from was a rough-rimmed
mouth set in the wooden outer hull�the Skin�and it loomed around them still, as if
threatening to snap down on them, to swallow them back into the City's wooden guts.
But the boys were drifting in the Air, away from the City, and Farr saw that this
port was just one of an array of similar entrances which stretched across the face
of the City in all directions, as far as he could see. Farr tried to pick out
identifying features of "their" port, so he could find it again if he needed to.
But it was simply a crudely finished gash in the wooden Skin, unmarked, with
nothing to distinguish it from a hundred others. Farr soon gave up the effort of
memorizing. After all, if he did get lost, even if he found this particular port
again he'd never find his way back to the Mixxaxes' home through the City streets.

He flipped his legs and pulled a little further away from the City. The Skin was
like a gigantic mask, looming over him. This close he could see its detail�how it
was crudely cobbled together from mismatched sections of wood and Corestuff�but it
was hugely impressive nevertheless. The dozens of cargo ports in this part of the
Skin were, he thought, like mouths, continually ingesting; or perhaps like
capillary pores, taking in a granular Air of wood and food. As he pulled back still
further he saw the huge, unending falls from the sewage outlets spread across the
base of the City; the roar of the semisolid stuff tumbling into the underMantle
seemed to fill the Air.

The City�battered and imperfect as it might be�was magnificent, he realized slowly;

it was like an immense animal, noisily alive, utterly oblivious of his own tiny
presence before its face.

He heard his name called.

He glanced around, but Cris had gone. Farr felt an absurd stab of
disorientation�after all, he had a far smaller chance of getting lost out here than
in the City's guts�and twisted, staring around. There was Cris, his orange coverall
bright, a distant, Waving figure suspended on his Surfboard. He was close to the
Skin but far above Farr's head. He'd slipped away while Farr was daydreaming.

Embarrassed, a little irritated, Farr thrust at the Air, letting the upfluxer
strength in his legs hurl him toward Cris.

Cris watched him approach, grinning infuriatingly. "Keep up. There are people
waiting for us." He clambered back onto his board, turned and led the way.

Farr followed, perhaps a mansheight behind; one after the other the boys soared
over the face of the City.

Cris's Surfing technique was spectacular, bearing little relation to the cut-down
caricature he had shown Farr inside the City. Cris pivoted the gleaming board under
one bare foot while thrusting with the other heel at the back of the board, making
it Wave vigorously. His bare soles seemed able to grip at the surface's fine
ridges. He kept his arms stretched out in the Air for balance, and the muscles in
the City boy's legs worked smoothly. The whole process looked wonderfully easy, in
fact, and Farr felt a dull itch�in the small of his back and in his calves�as he
stared at Cris. He longed to try out the Surfboard for himself. Why, with his
enhanced strength, here at the Pole, he could make the damn thing fly�

But he couldn't deny Cris's skill as he expertly levered his mass and inertia
against the soft resistance of the Magfield. The speed and grace of Cris's motion,
with electron gas crackling around the Corestuff strips embedded in the board, was
nonchalant and spectacular.

They were climbing up and around the City's Skin, generally away from the sewage
founts at the base but on a diagonal line across the face. They crossed one of the
huge Longitude anchor-bands. Farr saw how the band was fixed to the Skin by pegs of
Corestuff at intervals along its length. The gleaming Corestuff strip was wider
than a mansheight, and�in response to the huge currents surging through the band's
superconducting core�electron gas played unceasingly over its smooth surface. The
Magfield here was distorted, constricted by the band's field; it felt uneven,
harsh, tight around Farr's chest.

Cris clambered off his board and joined Farr in Waving away from the Skin, working
cautiously past the anchor-band. "Magfield's too spiky here," Cris said curtly.
"You can't get a proper grip."

Past the anchor-band, the Skin unfolded before Farr's gaze. He'd expected the
Skinscape to be featureless, uniform, except for the random blemishes of its
construction. But it was much too huge to allow such uniformity, he soon realized.
As they climbed toward the City's equator, toward the Upside areas, the huge cargo
ports and public Air-shafts became more sparse, to be replaced by smaller, tidier
doorways evidently meant for humans and Air-cars, and by small portals which must
be windows or light-shafts for private dwellings. A man leaned out of a window and
hurled out a bowl of what looked like sewage; the stuff sparkled as it dispersed.
Cris cupped his hands around his mouth and called down a greeting. The man�squat
and yellow-haired�peered out into the sky, startled. When he spotted the boys he
shook his fist at them, shouting something angry but indistinguishable. Cris yelled
abuse back, and Farr joined in, shaking his fist in return. He laughed, exhilarated
by this display of disrespect; he felt free, young, healthy, released from the
confines of the City, and the comparison with the sour old man in his windowed cell
made his condition all the sweeter.

They flew past an area of hull covered by a crude framework, a rectangular lattice
of wood. Behind the framework the Skin was broken open, exposing small chambers
within the City lit by dim green wood-lamps. Huge sections of wooden paneling
drifted in the Air outside the City, attached loosely to the framework by lengths
of rope; men and women clambered over the framework, hauling at the panels and
hammering them into place in the gaps in the Skin.

"Repairs," said Cris in uninterested response to Farr's question. "They go on all

the time. My father says the City's never really been finished; there's always some
section of it that needs rebuilding."

They arced high across a comparatively blank area of hull, unblemished by door,
window or port. Farr looked back to see the last small portals recede over the
City's tightly curving horizon, and soon there was no break in the Skin in sight.
Cris Surfed on in silence, subdued. Moving over this featureless Skinscape Farr
felt absurdly as if he had been rejected by the City, thrown out and shunned�as if
it had turned its back.

Now they passed another group of humans clambering over the Skin. At first Farr
thought this must be another set of repair workers, but the Skin here was unbroken,
clearly undamaged. And there was no repair scaffolding�just a loose net spread
across the Skin. A group of perhaps twenty adults were huddled in one corner of
their net, engaged in some unidentifiable project. Peering down as they passed,
Farr saw how belongings had been stuffed loosely into the net; he saw spears, crude
clothing and smaller folded-up nets that wouldn't have seemed out of place among
the belongings of the Human Beings. There was even a small colony of Air-pigs which
jostled slowly against the wooden wall, bound by ropes to a peg which had been
hammered into the Skin. An infant child squirmed inside the net, crying; its wails,
sweet and distant, carried through the silent Air to Farr.

A woman, fat and naked, turned from whatever she was engaged in with her
companions, and peered up at the boys. Farr saw how her fists were clenched. He
looked to Cris for a lead, but the City boy simply Waved on with his board, keeping
his eyes averted from the little colony below.

Farr, burning with curiosity, glanced down again. To his relief he saw that the
woman had turned away and was returning to her companions, evidently forgetting the
boys.

"Skin-riders," Cris said dismissively. "Scavengers. There are whole colonies of

them, living off remote bits of the Skin like this."

"But how do they survive?"

"They take stuff from the sewage founts, mostly. Filter it out with those nets of
theirs. Some of it they consume themselves, and some they use to feed their pigs.
Many of them hunt."

"Doesn't anybody mind?"

Cris shrugged. "Why should they? The Skin-riders are out of the way in places like
this, and they don't absorb any of the City's resources. You could say they make
Parz more efficient by extracting what they can out of everyone else's waste. The
Committee only takes action against them when they go rogue. Turn bandit. Some
tribes do, you know. They ring the exit portals, waiting to descend on slower-
moving cars. They kill the drivers and steal the pigs; they've no use for the cars
themselves. And sometimes they turn on each other, fighting stupid little Skin-wars
no one else understands. Then the guards step in. But apart from that, I guess the
City is big enough to support a few leeches on its face." He grinned. "Anyway,
there'll always be Skin-riders; you could never wipe them out. Not everyone can
live their lives inside six wooden walls." He bent his knees, flourishing the
board. "Which is one reason I'm out here today. I'd have thought you'd understand
that, Farr. Maybe the Skin-riders are a little like your people."

Farr frowned. Maybe there was a surface comparison, he thought. But Human Beings
would never allow themselves to become so�so filthy, he thought, so poor, to live
so badly�as the Skin-riders he had seen.

And no Human Being would accept the indignity of living by scavenging the waste of
others.

* * *
The squalid little colony of Skin-riders was soon hidden by the wooden limb of the
City face, and Cris led Farr further across the featureless Skin.

Farr spotted the girl before Cris saw her.

She was a compact, lithe shape swooping around the vortex lines, high above the
City. Electron gas sparkled around her Surfboard, underlighting the contours of her
body. There was a grace, a naturalness about her movements which far eclipsed even
Cris's proficiency, Farr thought. The girl saw them approaching and waved her arms
in greeting, shouted something inaudible.

They came to another net, stretched over the wooden Skin between a series of pegs,
just as the Skin-riders' had been. But this net was evidently abandoned: torn and
fraying, the net flapped emptily, containing nothing but what looked like the
sections of a Surfboard snapped in half, a few clothes tucked behind knots in the
net, and some crude-looking tools.

Cris drifted to a halt over the net and locked an anchoring hand comfortably into a
loop of rope. "That's Ray," he said enviously. "The girl. That's what she calls
herself anyway� after the rays of the Crust-forests, you see."

Farr squinted up at the girl; she was spiraling lazily around a vortex line as she
approached them, electron glow dazzling from her skin. "She looks good."

"She is good. Too bloody good," Cris said with a touch of sourness. "And she's a
year younger than me� My hope is there's going to be room for both of us in the
Games."

"What is this place?"

Cris flipped his Surfboard in the Air and watched it somersault. "Nowhere," he
said. His voice was deliberately casual. "Just an old Skin-rider net, in a bit of
the Skinscape that's hardly ever visited. We just use it as a base. You know, a
place to meet, to Surf from, to keep a few tools for the boards."

Just a base to Surf from� Cris's tone made it sound a lot more important than that,
to him. Farr watched the girl approach, casually skillful, slowing as she rode the
Magfield toward the Skin. He thought of what it must be like to be accepted by a
group of people like Cris and this girl Ray�to have a place like this to come to,
hidden from the gaze of families and the rest of the City.

He could barely imagine it. He realized suddenly that he'd never even been out of
sight of his family before the Glitch that killed his father. A place like this
must mean a great deal.

He wanted to ask Cris more questions. Who were these Surfers? What were they like?
How many of them were there?� But he kept quiet. He didn't want to be the clumsy
outsider from the upflux�not here, not with these two. He wanted them to accept
him, to make him one of theirs�even just for a day.

Maybe if he kept his mouth shut as much as possible they would think he knew more
than he did.

The girl, Ray, performed one last roll through the Air and stepped lightly off her
board before them. With one small ankle she flipped the board up, caught it in one
hand, and tucked it into a gap in the net. She hooked a hand into the net, close to
Cris's, and smiled at him and Farr. She was nude, and her long hair was tied back
from her face; there were streaks of yellow dye across her scalp, just as Cris
affected.

"You're on your own today?" Cris asked.

She shrugged, breathing heavily. "Sometimes I prefer it that way. You can get some
real work done." She turned to Farr, a look of lively interest on her face. "Who's
this?"

Cris grinned and clapped a hand on Farr's shoulder. "He's called Farr. He's staying
with us. He's from a tribe called the Human Beings."

"Human Beings?"

"Upfluxers," Cris said with an apologetic glance at Farr.

The girl's smile broadened, and Farr was aware of her light gaze flicking over him
with new interest. "An upfluxer? Really? So what do you make of Parz? Dump, isn't
it?"

Farr tried to find something to say.

He couldn't take his eyes off the girl. Her face was broad, intelligent, vividly
alive, her perfect nostrils shining. She was still breathing deeply after her
exertions, and her chest and shoulders were rising and falling smoothly. The
capillary pores across her chest and between her small breasts were wide and dark.

Cris was staring at him strangely, and Ray was watching him, interested, amused. He
had to find something to say. "It's okay. Parz is fine. Interesting." Interesting.
What a stupid thing to say. His voice sounded booming and uncontrolled, and he was
aware of his bulky, overmuscled body, his hands huge and useless at his side.

She let herself drift a little closer to him. He tried to keep his eyes on her
face. Her nakedness was spectacular. But that didn't make sense; the Human Beings
had always gone naked, save for occasional toolbelts or ponchos, so why should he
be so disturbed now? He must have become accustomed to bodies hidden by City
clothes, like the light coveralls he and Cris were wearing; Ray's sudden nudity by
contrast was impossible to ignore. Yes, that must be it�

But now he felt a deep warmth in his lower belly. Oh, blood of the Xeelee, help me.
Like an independent creature�utterly without his volition�his penis was trying to
push out of its cache. He leaned forward, hoping that folds in the cloth of his
coveralls would hide him. But the girl's eyes were wide and appraising, and he
could see a smile forming on her small mouth. She knew. She knew all about him.

" 'Interesting,' " she repeated. "Maybe, if you haven't had to grow up in it."

"We saw you practicing," Cris said. "You're looking good."

"Thanks." She looked at Cris awkwardly. "I've been selected for the Games. Had you
heard that?"

"Already?" Farr could see envy battling with affection for the girl on Cris's face.
"No, I�I mean, I'm pleased for you. Really, I am."

She brushed Cris's shoulder with her fingertips. "I know. And it's not too late for
you." She took her board from the net. "Come on, let's practice."

Cris glanced at Farr. "Yes, soon. But first�" He held out his board to Farr. "Would
you like to try it?"
Farr took the board hesitantly. He ran the palm of his hand across its surface. The
wood was more finely worked than any object he'd ever held, and the inlaid strips
of Corestuff were cold and smooth. "Don't you mind?"

Cris laughed easily. "As long as you bring it back whole, no. Go with Ray�she's a
better Surfer than me, and a better teacher. I'll wait here until you're done."

Farr looked at Ray. She smiled at him. "Come on, it'll be fun." She took the board
from him�her fingers brushed the back of his hand, lightly, sending a thrill
through him which caused his penis to stir again�and laid the board along the
Magfield, flat. She patted its surface with its crisscross inlay of Corestuff
strips. "Surfing's easy. It's just like Waving, but with your feet and your board
instead of your legs. All you have to remember is to keep contact with your board,
to keep pushing against the Magfield�"

With Ray's help, and Cris's, Farr clambered onto the board and learned how to rock
it with his toes and heels. At first it seemed impossible�he kept kicking the board
away, clumsily�and he was aware of the eyes of Ray on every galumphing movement.
But each time he fell away he retrieved the board and climbed back on.

Then, suddenly, he had it. The secret was not strength, really, but gentleness,
suppleness, a sensitivity to the soft resistance of the Magfield. It was enough to
rock the board steadily and evenly across the Magfield flux paths, to keep the
pressure of his feet less than the counterpressure of the Magfield so that the
board stayed attached to the soles of his bare feet. When a downstroke with one
foot was completed, he bent his legs slowly and pushed the other end of the board
down in its turn. Gradually he learned to build up the tempo of this rocking
motion, and wisps of electron gas curled about his toes as induced current began to
flow in the Corestuff inlays.

The board�Waving just as the girl had said�carried him gracefully, effortlessly
across the flux lines.

He learned to slow, to turn, to accelerate. He learned when to stop rocking the

board, simply to allow his momentum to carry him arcing across the Magfield.

He had no idea how long it took him to learn the basics of Surfing. He was only
peripherally aware of Cris's continuing patience, and he even forgot, for quite
long periods, the nearness of Ray's bare, lithe body. He sailed across the sky. It
was, he thought, like learning to Wave for the first time. The board felt natural
beneath his feet, as if it had always been there, and he suspected that a small,
inner part of him�no matter what he did or where he went�would always cling to the
memory of this experience, utterly addicted.

Ray swooped down before him, inverted and with hands on bare hips. "All right," she
said. "You've got the basics. Now let's really Surf. Come on!"

* * *

High over the Pole, Farr surged along the corridors of light marked out by
hexagonal arrays of vortex lines. The lines surged past him with immense,
unimaginable speed. The soft bodies of floating spin-spider eggs padded at his face
and legs as he flew, and the Air brushed at his cheeks, the tiny viscosity of its
non-superfluid component resisting him feebly. The Quantum Sea was a purple floor
far below him, delimiting the yellow Air; and the City was a vast, complex block of
wood and light, hanging over the Pole, huge yet dwarfed by the Mantlescape.

Ahead of him the girl Ray looped around vortex lines with unconscious skill,
electron light shimmering from her calves and buttocks.

His face was stretched into a fierce grin. He knew the grin was there, he knew Ray
must be able to see it, and yet he couldn't keep it from his face. Surfing was
glorious. His head rattled with the elements of complex, unrealistic schemes by
which he might acquire his own board, join this odd, irregular little troupe of
Skin-based Surfers, maybe even enter some future Games himself.

Ray turned and swept close to him. "You're doing fine," she shouted.

"I still feel as if I might fall off any moment."

She laughed. "But you're strong. That makes up for a lot. Come on. Try a spiral."

She showed him how to angle his body back and push the board across the Magfield,
so that he moved in slow, uneven, sweeping curves around a vortex line. Still he
was hurtling forward through the sky, but now the huge panorama wheeled steadily
around him. He stared down at his body, at the board; blue highlights from the
corridors of vortex lines and the soft purple glow of the Sea cast complex shadows
across his board.

He pushed at the Air harder, trying like Ray to tighten his spirals around the
vortex lines. This was the most difficult maneuver he'd attempted, and he was
forced to concentrate, to think about each motion of his arms and legs.

His foot slipped on the board's ridges. He stumbled through the Air, upward toward
the vortex line at the axis of his spiral. The board fell away from his feet. As he
came within a mansheight of the vortex line he felt the Air thicken, drag at his
chest and limbs. He was picked up and hurled around the vortex singularity, and
sent tumbling away into the Air.

He rolled on his back and kicked easily at the Air, Waving himself to a stop. He
lay against the soft resistance of the Magfield, laughing softly, his chest
dragging at the Air.

Ray came slithering across the Magfield on her board; she carried Cris's board
under her arm. "I bet you couldn't do that again if you tried."

He took the board from her. "I guess I should take this back to Cris. He's been
very patient."

She shrugged, and pushed a stray length of hair away from her face. "I suppose so.
You want one more run first?"

He hesitated, then felt his grin return. "One more."

Suddenly he twisted the board in the Air, bent his knees and slipped the board
under his feet. He thrust at the length of wood as rapidly as he could, and soared
away through a tunnel of vortex lines. Behind him he heard her laugh and clamber
onto her own board.

He sailed over the Pole, over the passive bulk of Parz City once more. He thrust at
the board, still awkwardly he knew, but using all his upfluxer strength now. The
vortex lines seemed to shoot past like spears, slowly curving, and the weak breeze
of the Air plucked at his hair.

The corridor of vortex light was infinite before him. The ease of movement, after
the restriction of spiraling, was exhilarating. He was moving faster than he'd ever
moved in his life. He opened his mouth and yelled.
He heard Ray shouting behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. She was still
chasing him, but he'd given himself a good lead. It would take her a while to catch
him yet. She was cupping a hand around her mouth and calling something, even as she
Surfed. He frowned and looked more closely, but he couldn't make out what she was
trying to tell him. Now she was pointing at him�no, past him.

He turned his head again, to face the direction of his flight. There was something
in his path.

Spin-web.

The fine, shining threads seemed to cover the sky before him. He could see where
the web was suspended from the vortex line array by small, tight rings of webbing
which encircled the vortex lines without quite touching the glowing spin-
singularities. Between the anchor rings, long lengths of thread looped across the
vortex arrays. The complex mats of threads were almost invisible individually, but
they caught the yellow and purple glow of the Mantle, so that lines of light formed
a complex tapestry across the sky ahead.

It was really very beautiful, Farr thought abstractedly. But it was a wall across
the sky.

The spin-spider itself was a dark mass in the upper left corner of his vision. It
looked like an expanded, splayed-open Air-pig. Each of its six legs was a
mansheight long, and its open maw would be wide enough to enfold his torso. It
seemed to be working at its web, repairing broken threads perhaps. He wondered if
it had spotted him�if it had started moving already toward the point where he would
impact the net, or if it would wait until he was embedded in its sticky threads.

Only a couple of heartbeats had passed since he'd seen the web, and yet already
he'd visibly reduced his distance to it.

He swiveled his hips and beat at the Magfield with his Surfboard, trying to shed
his velocity. But he wouldn't be able to stop in time. He looked quickly around the
sky, seeking the edges of the web. Perhaps he could divert rather than stop, fly
safely around the trap. But he couldn't even see the edges of the web. Spin-spider
webs could be hundreds of mansheights across.

Maybe he could break through the web, burst through to the other side before the
spider could reach him. It had to be impossible�there were layers to the web, a
great depth of sticky threads before him�but it seemed his only chance.

How could he have been so stupid as to fall into such a trap? He was supposed to be
the upfluxer, the wild boy; and yet he'd made one of the most basic mistakes a
Human Being could make. Ray and Cris would think him a fool. His sister would think
him a fool, when she heard. He imagined her voice, tinged with the tones of their
father: "Always look up- and downflux. Always. If you scare an Air-piglet, which
way does it move? Downflux, or upflux, along the flux paths, because it can move
quickest that way. That's the easiest direction to move for any animal�cut across
the flux paths and the Magfield resists your motion. And that's why predators set
their traps across the flux paths, waiting for anything stupid enough to come
fleeing along the flux direction, straight into an open mouth�"

The web exploded out of the sky. He could see more detail now�thick knots at the
intersection of the threads, the glistening stickiness of the threads themselves.
He turned in the Air and thrust with the board, trying to pick up as much speed as
he could. He crouched over the board, his knees and ankles still working
frantically, and tucked his arms over his head.
He'd remain conscious after he was caught in the thread. Uninjured, probably. He
wondered how long the spin-spider would take to clamber down to him. Would he still
be aware when it began its work on his body?

A mass came hurtling over his head, toward the web. He flinched, almost losing his
board, and looked up. Had the spider left its web and come for him already?�

But it was the girl, Ray. She'd chased him and passed him. Now she dived, ahead of
Farr, deep into the tangle of webbing. She moved in a tight spiral as she entered
the web, and the edge of her board cut through the glistening threads. Farr could
see the dangling threads brushing against her arms and shoulders, one by one
growing taut and then slackening as she moved on, burrowing through the layers of
web.

She was cutting a tunnel through the web for him, he realized. The ragged-walled
tunnel was already closing up�the web seemed to be designed for self-repair�but he
had no choice but to accept the chance she'd given him.

He hurtled deep into the web.

It was all around him, a complex, three-dimensional mesh of light. Threads

descended before his face and laid themselves across his shoulders, arms and face;
they tore at the fabric of his coverall and his skin and hair, and came loose with
small, painful rips. He cried out, but he dared not drop his face into his hands,
or close his eyes, or lift his arms to bat away the threads, for fear of losing his
tenuous control of the board.

Suddenly, as rapidly as he had entered it, he was through the web. The last threads
parted softly before him with a soft, sucking sigh, and he was released into empty
Air.

Ray was waiting for him a hundred mansheights from the border of the web, with her
board tucked neatly under her arm. He brought his board to a halt beside her and
allowed himself to tumble off gracelessly.

He turned and looked back. The tunnel in the web had already closed�all that
remained of it was a dark, cylindrical path through the layers of webbing, showing
where their passage had disrupted the structure of the web�and the spin-spider
itself was making its slow, patient way past the vortex lines on its way to
investigate this disturbance in its realm.

Farr felt himself shuddering; he didn't bother trying to hide his reaction. He
turned to Ray. "Thank you�"

"No. Don't say it." She was grinning. She was showing no fear, he realized. Her
pores were wide open and her eyecups staring, and again she exuded the vivid,
unbearably attractive aliveness which had struck him when he'd first met her. She
grabbed his arms and shook him. "Wasn't it fantastic? What a ride. Wait till I tell
Cris about this�"

She jumped on her board and surged away into the Air.

As he watched her supple legs work the board, and as the reaction from his brush
with death worked through his shocked mind, Farr once again felt an unwelcome
erection push its way out of his cache.

He climbed onto his board and set off, steering a wide, slow course around the web.
Chapter 9
After a few days Toba returned, and told Dura and Farr that he had booked them into
a labor stall in the Market. Dura was given to understand that Toba had done them
yet another favor by this, and yet he kept his eyes averted as he discussed it with
them, and when they ate Cris seemed embarrassed into an unusual silence. Ito fussed
around the upfluxers, her eyecups deep and dark.

Dura and Farr dressed as usual in the clothes the family had loaned them. But Toba
told them quietly that, this time, they should go unclothed. Dura peeled off the
thick material of her coverall with an odd reluctance; she could hardly say she had
grown used to it, but in the bustling streets she knew she would feel
exposed�conspicuously naked.

Toba pointed, embarrassed, to Dura's waist. "You'd better leave that behind."

Dura looked down. Her frayed length of rope was knotted, as always, at her waist,
and her small knife and scraper were comforting, hard presences just above her hips
at her back. Reflexively her hands flew to the rope.

Toba looked at Ito helplessly. Ito came to Dura hesitantly, her hands folded
together. "It really would be better if you left your things here, Dura. I think I
understand how you feel. I can't imagine how I'd cope in your position. But you
don't need those things of yours, your weapons. You do understand they couldn't
really be much protection to you here anyway�"

"That's not the point," Dura said. In her own ears her voice sounded ragged and a
little wild. "The point is�"

Toba pushed forward impatiently. "The point is we're getting late. And if you want
to be successful today, Dura�and I assume you do�you're going to have to think
about the effect those crude artifacts of yours would have on a prospective
purchaser. Most people in Parz think you're some kind of half-tamed animal
already."

"Toba�" Ito began.

"I'm sorry, but it's the truth. And if she goes down the Mall with a knife at her
waist�well, we'll be lucky not to be picked up by the guards before we even reach
the Market."

Farr moved closer to Dura, but she waved him away. "It's all right, Farr." Her
voice was steadier now. More rational. "He's right. What use is this stuff anyway?
It's only junk from the upflux."

Slowly she unraveled the rope from her waist.

* * *

The noise of the Market heated the Air even above the stifling clamminess of the
Pole. People swarmed among the stalls which thronged about the huge central Wheel,
the colors of their costumes extravagant and clashing. Dura folded her arms across
her breasts and belly, intimidated by the layers of staring faces around her.

Farr was quiet, but he seemed calm and watchful.

Toba brought them to a booth�a volume cordoned off from the rest of the Market by a
framework of wooden bars. Inside the booth were ten or a dozen adults and children,
all subdued, unkempt and shabbily dressed compared to most of the Market's
inhabitants; they stared with dull curiosity at the nakedness of Dura and Farr.
Toba bade the Human Beings enter the booth.

"Now," he said anxiously, "you do understand what's happening here, don't you?"

"Yes," said Farr, his eyes tight. "You're going to sell us."

Toba shook his round head. "Not at all. Anyhow, it's nothing to do with me. This is
a Market for work. Here, you are going to sell your labor�not yourselves."

Four prosperous-looking individuals�three men and a woman�had already emerged from

the Market's throng and come over to the booth. They were studying both the Human
Beings curiously but seemed particularly interested in Farr. Dura said to Toba, "I
doubt it's going to make much practical difference. Is it?"

"It's all the difference in the world. You sign up for a fixed-term contract� Your
liberty remains your own. And at the end of it�"

"Excuse me." The woman buyer had interrupted Toba. "I want to take a look at the
boy."

Toba smiled back. "Farr. Come on out. Don't be afraid."

Farr turned to Dura, his mouth open. She closed her eyes, suddenly ashamed that she
could do so little to protect her brother from this. "Go on, Farr. They won't hurt
you."

Farr slid through the wooden bars and out of the booth.

The woman was about Dura's age but a good deal plumper; her hair-tubes were
elaborately knotted into a gold-and-white bun, and layers of fat showed over her
cheekbones. With the air of a professional she peered into the boy's eyecups, ears
and nostrils; she bade him open his mouth and ran a finger around his gums,
inspecting the scrapings she extracted. Then she poked at Farr's armpits, anus and
penis-cache.

Dura turned away from her brother's misery.

The woman said to Toba, "He's healthy enough, if underfed. But he doesn't look too
strong."

Toba frowned. "You're considering him for Fishing?"

"Yes� He's obviously slim and light. But�"

"Madam, he's an upfluxer," Toba said complacently.

"Really?" The woman stared at Farr with new curiosity. She actually pulled away
from him a little, wiping her hands on her garment.

"And that means, of course, for his size and mass he's immensely strong, here at
the Pole. Ideal for the Bells." Toba turned to Dura, and his voice was smooth and
practiced. "You see, Dura, the material of our bodies is changed, here at the Pole,
because the Magfield is stronger." He seemed to be talking for the sake of it�to be
filling in the silence while the woman pondered Farr's destiny. "The bonds between
nuclei are made stronger. That's why it feels hotter here to you, and why your
muscles are�"

"I'm sure you're right," the woman cut in. "But�" She hesitated. "Is he�"
"Broken in?" Dura interrupted heavily.

"Dura," Toba warned her.

"Lady, he is a Human Being, not a wild boar. And he can speak for himself."

Toba said rapidly, "Madam, I can vouch for the boy's good nature. He's been living
in my home. Eating with my family. And besides, he represents good value at�"�his
face puffed out, and he seemed to be calculating rapidly�"at fifty skins."

The woman frowned, but her fat, broad face showed interest. "For what? The standard
ten years?"

"With the usual penalty clauses, of course," Toba said.

The woman hesitated.

A crowd was gathering around the Market's central Wheel. The noise level was rising
and there was an air of excitement� of dangerous excitement, Dura felt; suddenly
she wished the booth formed a more substantial cage around her.

"Look, I don't have time to haggle; I want to watch the execution. Forty-five, and
I'll take his option."

"Toba hesitated for barely a moment. "Done."

The woman melted into the crowd, with a final intrigued glance at Farr.

Dura reached out of the booth-cage and touched Toba's arm. "Ten years?"

"That's the standard condition."

"And the work?"

Toba looked uncomfortable. "It's hard. I'll not try to hide that. They'll put him
in the Bells� But he's strong, and he'll survive it."

"And after he's too weak to work?"

He pursed his lips. "He won't be in the Bells forever. He could become a
Supervisor, maybe; or some kind of specialist. Look, Dura, I know this must seem
strange to you, but this is our way, here in Parz. It's a system that's endured for
generations� And it's a system you accepted, implicitly, when you agreed to come
here in the car, to find a way to pay for Adda's treatment. I did try to warn you."
His round, dull face became defiant. "You understood that, didn't you?"

She sighed. "Yes. Of course I did. Not in every detail, but� I couldn't see any
choice."

"No," he said, his voice hard. "Well, you don't have any choice, now."

She hesitated before going on. She hated to beg. But at least Toba and his home
were fixed points in this new world, nodes of comparative familiarity. "Toba
Mixxax. Couldn't you buy us� our labor? You have a ceiling-farm at the Crust. And�"

"No," he said sharply. Then, more sympathetically, he went on, "I'm sorry, Dura,
but I'm not a prosperous man. I simply couldn't afford you� Or rather, I couldn't
afford a fair price for you. You wouldn't be able to pay off Adda's bills. Do you
understand? Listen, forty-five skins for ten prime years of Farr, unskilled as he
is, may seem a fortune to you; but believe me, that woman got a bargain, and she
knew it. And�"

His voice was drowned by a sudden roar from the crowd around the huge Wheel. People
jostled and barged each other as they swarmed along guide ropes and rails.
Dura�listless, barely interested�looked through the crowd, seeking the focus of
excitement.

A man was being hauled through the crowd. His two escorts, Waving strongly, were
dressed in a uniform similar to the guards at Muub's Hospital, with their faces
made supernaturally menacing by heavy leather masks. Their captive was a good ten
years older than Dura, with a thick mane of yellowing hair and a gaunt, patient
face. He was stripped to the waist and seemed to have his hands tied behind his
back.

The crowds flinched as he passed, even as they roared encouragement to his captors.

Dura rubbed her nose, depressed and confused. "I don't know what you're talking
about. How are forty-five skins a fortune? Skins of what?"

He had to shout to make himself heard. "It means, ah, forty-five Air-pig skins."

That seemed clearer. "So you're saying Farr's labor is worth as much as forty-five
Air-pigs?"

"No, of course not."

A new buyer came by the booth, a man who briefly asked about Farr. Toba had to turn
him away but indicated Dura was available. The buyer�a coarse, heavy-set man
dressed in a close-clinging robe�glanced over Dura cursorily before moving on.

Dura shuddered. There had been nothing threatening in the man's appraisal, still
less anything sexual. In fact�and this was the ghastly, dispiriting part of
it�there had been nothing personal in it at all. He had looked at her�her, Dura,
daughter of Logue and leader of the Human Beings�the way she might weigh up a spear
or knife, a carved piece of wood.

As a tool, not a person.

Toba was still trying to explain skins to her. "You see, we're not talking about
real pigs." He smiled, patronizing. "That would be absurd. Can you imagine people
carting around fifty, a hundred Air-pigs, to barter with each other? It's all based
on credit, you see. A skin is equivalent to the value of one pig. So you can
exchange skins�or rather, amounts of credit in skins�and it's equivalent to
bartering in pigs." He nodded brightly at her. "Do you see?"

"So if I had a credit of one skin�I could exchange it for one pig."

He opened his mouth to agree, and then his face fell. "Ah�not quite. Actually, a
pig�a healthy, fertile adult�would cost you about four and a half skins at today's
prices. But the cost of an actual pig is irrelevant� That isn't the point at all.
Can't you see that? It's all to do with inflation. The Air-pig is the base of the
currency, but�"

She turned her face away. She knew it was important to make sense of the ways of
these people, if she were ever to extricate herself and her charges from this mess,
but the flux lines of understanding across which she would have to Wave were
daunting.
Now another man came to inspect her. This one was short, fussy and dressed in a
loose suit; his hair-tubes were dyed a pale pink. He and Toba shook hands. They
seemed to know each other. The man called her out of the booth and, to her shame,
began to subject her to the intimate examination which Farr had suffered earlier.

Dura tried not to think about the strange little man's probing fingers. She watched
the captive, who had now been led to the wooden Wheel. His arms and legs were
crudely outstretched by the guards and fixed by ropes to four of the spokes, while
a thong was drawn around his neck to attach his head to the fifth spoke. Dura, even
as she endured her own humiliation, winced as the thong cut into the man's flesh.

The crowd bellowed, squirming around the Wheel in a frenzy of anticipation; despite
the finery of their clothes, Dura was reminded of feeding Air-pigs.

Toba Mixxax touched her shoulder. "Dura. This is Qos Frenk. He's interested in your
labor� Only five years, though, I'm afraid."

Qos Frenk, the pink-haired buyer, had finished his inspection. "Age catches up with
us all," he said with sad sympathy. "But my price is fair at fifteen skins."

"Toba Mixxax, will this cover the costs of Adda, with Farr's fee?"

He nodded. "Just about. Of course, Adda himself will have to find work once he's
fit. And�"

"I'll take the offer," she told Toba dully. "Tell him."

The Wheel started to turn about its axis.

The crowd screamed. At first the revolutions were slow, and the man pinned to it
seemed to smile. But momentum soon gathered, and Dura could see how the man's head
rattled against its spoke.

"Dura, I know Qos," Toba said. "He'll treat you well."

Qos Frenk nodded at her, not unkindly.

"How close will I be to Farr?"

Toba hesitated, looking at her strangely. Qos Frenk seemed confused.

Now the victim's eyecups had closed; his fists were clenched against the pain of
the rotation. Memories of Adda's attack by the sow returned to Dura. As the man was
spun around, the Air in his capillaries would lose its superfluidity, begin to
coagulate and slow; a sphere of agonizing pain would expand out through his body
from the pit of his stomach, surrounding a shell of numbness. And�

"Dura, you don't understand. Qos owns a ceiling-farm which borders on mine. So
you'll be working at the Crust� as a coolie. I explained to Qos how well adapted
you upfluxers are for such work; in fact I found you at the Crust, and�"

"What about Farr?"

"He will be in the Harbor. He will be a Fisherman. Didn't you understand that?
Dura�"

Now the man was rotating so fast that his limbs had become a blur. He must be
unconscious already, Dura thought, and it was a mercy not to be able to see his
face.

"Where is the Harbor, Toba Mixxax?"

He frowned. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding genuinely contrite. "I forget sometimes
how new all this is for you. The Harbor is at the base of the City, at the top of
the Spine� the pillar of wood which descends from the base of the City. Bells from
the Harbor follow the length of the Spine, diving deep into the underMantle. And�"

"And it's not acceptable," she snarled. Qos Frenk flinched from her, eyecups wide.
"I must be with Farr."

"No. Listen to me, Dura. That's not an option. Farr is ideal for the Harbor; he's
young and light but immensely strong. You're too old for such work. I'm sorry, but
that's the way it is."

"We won't be parted."

Toba Mixxax's face was hard now, his weak chin thrust forward. "You listen to me,
Dura. I've done my best to help you. And Ito and Cris have grown fond of you; I can
see that. But I've my own life to lead. Accept this now or I just Wave away out of
here. And leave you, and your precious brother, to the mercy of the Guards� and
within half a day you'll be joining that man on the Wheel, two more unemployable
vagrants."

Now the Wheel was a blur. The crowd bellowed its excitement.

There was a popping sound, soft and obscene. The Wheel rapidly slowed; the man's
hands, feet and head dangled as the Wheel turned through its final revolutions.

The prisoner's stomach cavity had burst; Air-vessels dangled amid folds of flesh
like fat, bloody hair-tubes. The crowd, as if awed, grew silent.

Toba, oblivious, still stared into Dura's face. "What's it to be, Dura?" he hissed.

The guards cut the Broken man down from the Wheel. The crowd, with a rising buzz of
conversation, started to disperse.

* * *

Dura and Farr were allowed to visit Adda in his Hospital room�his ward, Dura
remembered.

A huge fan turned slowly on one wall and the ward was pleasantly cool�it was almost
like the open Air. The Hospital was close to the City's outer wall and the ward was
connected to the outside world by only a short duct and was comparatively bright;
entering it, Dura had an impression of cheerfulness, of competence.

But these initial impressions were rapidly dispelled by the sight of Adda, who was
suspended at the center of the room in a maze of ropes, webbings and bandages,
almost all of his battered body obscured by gauzy material. A doctor�called Deni
Maxx, a round, prissy-looking woman whose belt and pockets bristled with mysterious
equipment�fussed around the suspended Human Being.

Adda peered at Dura and Farr from his nest of gauze. His right upper arm, which had
been broken, was coated in a mound of bandages, and his lower legs were strapped
together inside a cage of splints. Someone had scraped the pus from his good eye,
and applied an ointment to keep out symbiotes.
Dura, oddly, felt more squeamish about Adda's wounds now than when she had been
trying to cope with them with her bare hands in the Crust-forest. She was reminded,
distressingly, of the dead, displayed animals in the Museum. "You're looking well,"
she said.

"Lying sow," Adda growled. "What by the bones of the Xeelee am I doing here? And
why haven't you got out while you can?"

The doctor clucked her tongue, tweaking a bandage. "You know why you're here." She
spoke loudly, as if Adda were a deaf child. "You're here to heal."

Farr said, "Anyway, we'll be gone soon. I'm off to work in the Harbor. And Dura is
going to the ceiling-farm."

Adda fixed Dura with a one-eyed, venomous stare. "You stupid bitch."

"It's done now, Adda; I won't argue about it."

"You should have let me die, rather than turn yourselves into slaves." He tried to
raise gauze-wrapped arms. "What kind of life do you think I'm going to have now?"

Dura found Adda's tone repellent. It seemed wild, unconstructed, out of place in
this huge, ordered environment. She found herself contrasting Adda's violence with
the quiet timidity of Ito, who was living out her life in a series of tiny
movements as if barely aware of the constraints of the crush of people around her.
Dura would not have exchanged places with Ito, but she felt she understood her now.
Adda's rage was crass, uncomprehending. "Adda," she said sharply. "Leave it. It's
done. We have to make the best of it."

"Indeed we do," the doctor sighed philosophically. "Isn't that always the way of
things?"

Adda stared at the woman. "Why don't you keep out of it, you hideous old hag?"

Deni Maxx shook her head with no more than mild disapproval.

Dura, angry and unsettled, asked the doctor if Adda was healing.

"He's doing as well as we could expect."

"What's that supposed to mean? Why can't you people talk straight?"

The doctor's smile thinned. "I mean that he's going to live. And it looks as if his
broken bones are knitting�slowly, because of his age, but knitting. And I've sewn
up the ruptured vessels; most of his capillaries are capable of sustaining pressure
now�"

"But?"

"He's never going to be strong again. And he might not be able to leave the City."

Dura frowned; brief, selfish thoughts of extended periods of fee-paying crossed her
mind. "Why not? If he's healing up as you say�"

"Yes, but he won't be able to generate the same level of pneumatic pressure." Maxx
frowned quizzically. "Do you understand what that means?"

Dura gritted her teeth. "No."

"Oh dear. It's so easy to forget you're all upfluxers�"

Adda closed his eyes and leaned back in his gauze net.

"Look," said Maxx, "our bodies function by exploiting the Air's mass transport
properties� No? All right." She pointed at the fan set into the wall. "Do you know
why that fan is there�why there are fans installed throughout the City? To regulate
the temperature�to keep us cool, here in the heat of the South Pole. The Air we
inhabit is a neutron gas, and it's made up of two components�a superfluid and a
normal fluid. The superfluid can't sustain temperature differences�if you heat it,
the heat passes straight through.

"Now�that means that if you add more superfluid to a mass of Air, its temperature
will drop. And similarly if you take superfluid out the temperature rises, because
normal fluid is left behind. And that's the principle the wall fans work on."

Farr was frowning. "What's that got to do with Adda?"

"Adda's body is full of Air�like yours, and mine. And it's permeated by a network
of tiny capillaries, which can draw in superfluid to regulate his temperature."
Deni Maxx winked at Farr. "We have tiny Air-pumps in our bodies� lots of them,
including the heart itself. And that's what hair-tubes are for� to let Air out of
your skull, to keep your brain the right temperature. Did you know that?"

"And it's that mechanism which may not work so well, now, for Adda."

"Yes. We've repaired the major vessels, of course, but they're never the same once
they're ruptured�and he's simply lost too much of his capillary network. He's been
left weakened, too. Do you understand that Air also powers our muscles?�
Look�suppose you were to heat up an enclosed chamber, like this room. Do you know
what would happen to the superfluid? Unable to absorb heat, it would flee from the
room�vigorously, and however it could. And by doing so it would raise pressure
elsewhere.

"When Adda wants to raise his arm, he heats up the Air in his lungs. He's not aware
of doing that, of course; his body does it for him, burning off some of the energy
he's stored up by eating. And when his lungs are heated the Air rushes out;
capillaries lead the Air to his muscles, which expand and�"

"So you're saying that because this capillary network is damaged, Adda won't be as
strong again?"

"Yes." She looked from Dura to Farr. "Of course you do realize that our lungs
aren't really lungs, don't you?"

Dura shook her head, baffled by this latest leap. "What?"

"Well, we are artifacts, of course. Made things. Or at least our ancestors were.
Humans�real humans, I mean�came to this world, this Star, and designed us the way
we are, so that we could survive, here in the Mantle."

"The Ur-humans."

Maxx smiled, pleased. "You know of the Ur-humans? Good� Well, we believe that
original humans had lungs�reservoirs of some gas�in their bodies. Just as we do.
But perhaps their lungs' function was quite different. You see, our lungs are
simply caches of Air, of working gas for the pneumatic systems which power our
muscles."
"What were they like, the Ur-humans?"

"We can't be sure�the Core Wars and the Reformation haven't left us any records�but
we do have some strong hypotheses, based on scaling laws and analogies with
ourselves. Analogous anatomy was my principal subject as a student� Of course, that
was a long time ago. They were much like us. Or rather, we were made in their
image. But they were many times our size�about a hundred thousand times as tall, in
fact. Because he was dominated by balances between different sets of physical
forces, the average Ur-human was a meter tall, or more. And his body can't have
been based, as ours is, on the tin-nucleus bond� Do you know what I'm talking
about? The tin nuclei which make up our bodies contain fifty protons and one
hundred and forty-four neutrons. That's twelve by twelve, you see. The neutrons are
gathered in a spherical shape in symmetries of order three and four. Lots of
symmetry, you see; lots of easy ways for nuclei to fit together by sharing
neutrons, plenty of ways for chains and complex structures of nuclei to form. The
tin-nucleus bond is the basis of all life here, including our own. But not the Ur-
humans; the physics which dominated their structure�the densities and pressures we
think they inhabited�wouldn't have allowed any nuclear bonding at all. But they
must have had some equivalent of the tin bond�"

She held out her arms and wiggled her fingers. "So they were very strange. But they
had arms, and legs, like us�so we believe, because otherwise why would they have
given them to us?"

Dura shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Of course it does," Maxx smiled. "Oh, fingers have their uses. But haven't there
been times when you'd have swapped your long, clumsy legs for an Air-pig's jetfart
bladder? Or for a simple sheet of skin like a Surfer's board which would let you
Wave across the Magfield ten, a hundred times as fast as you can now? You have to
face it, my dear� We humans are a bad design for the environment of the Mantle. And
the reason must be that we are scale models of the Ur-humans who built us. No doubt
the Ur-human form was perfectly suited for whatever strange world they came from.
But not here."

Dura's imagination, overheating, filled her mind with visions of huge, misty,
godlike men, prising open the Crust and releasing handfuls of tiny artificial
humans into the Mantle�

Deni Maxx looked deeply into Dura's eyecups. "Is that clear to you? I think it's
important that you understand what's happened to your friend."

"Oh, it's clear," Adda called from his cocoon. "But it doesn't make a blind bit of
difference, because there's nothing she can do about it." He laughed. "Nothing, now
she's condemned me to this living hell. Is there, Dura?"

Dura's anger welled like Deni's heated superfluid. "I'm sick of your bitterness,
old man."

"You should have let me die," he whispered. "I told you."

"Why didn't you tell us about Parz City? Why did you leave us so unprepared?"

He sighed, a bubble of thick phlegm forming at the corner of his mouth. "Because we
were thrown out ten generations ago. Because our ancestors traveled so far before
building a home that none of us thought we would ever encounter Parz again." He
laughed. "It was better to forget� What good would it do to know such a place
existed? But how could we know they would spread so far, staining the Crust with
their ceiling-farms and their Wheels? Damn them�"
"Why were we sent away from Parz? Was it because�" She turned, but Deni Maxx was
making notes on a scroll with a Corestuff stylus, and did not appear to be
listening. "Because of the Xeelee?"

"No." He grimaced in pain. "No, not because of the Xeelee. Or at least, not
directly. It was because of how our philosophy caused us to behave."

The Human Beings believed that knowledge of the Xeelee predated the arrival of
humans in the Star�that it had been brought there by the Ur-humans themselves.

The Xeelee, godlike, dominated spaces so large�it was said�that by comparison the
Star itself was no more than a mote in the eyecup of a giant. Humans, striving for
supremacy, had resented the Xeelee�had even gone to hopeless war against the great
Xeelee projects, the constructs like the legendary Ring.

But over the generations�and as the terrible defeats continued�a new strand had
emerged in human thought. No one understood the Xeelee's grand purposes. But what
if their projects were aimed, not at squalid human-scale goals like the domination
of others, but at much higher aspirations?

The Xeelee were much more powerful than humans. Perhaps they always would be. And
perhaps, as a corollary, they were much more wise.

So, some apologists began to argue, humans should trust in the Xeelee rather than
oppose them. The Xeelee's ways were incomprehensible but must be informed by great
wisdom. The apologists developed a philosophy which was accepting, compliant, calm,
and trusting in an understanding above any human's.

Adda went on, "We followed the way of the Xeelee, you see, Dura; not the way of the
Committee of Parz. We would not obey." He shook his head. "So they sent us away.
And in that we were lucky; now they might simply have destroyed us on their
Wheels."

Deni Maxx touched Dura's shoulder. "You should leave now."

"We'll be back."

"No." Adda was shifting with ghastly slowness in his cocoon of bindings, evidently
trying to relieve his pain. "No, don't come back. Get away. As far and as fast as
you can. Get away�"

His voice broke up into a bubbling growl, and he closed his eyes.

Chapter 10
"You dumb upfluxer jetfart!" Hosch screamed in Farr's face. "When I want a whole
damn tree trunk fed into this hopper I'll tell you about it!" Now the Harbor
supervisor shoved his bony face forward and his tone descended into a barely
audible, infinitely menacing hiss. "But until I do� and if it wouldn't trouble you
too much� maybe you could split the wood just a little more finely. Or�"�foul-
smelling photons seeping from his mouth�"maybe you'd like to follow your handiwork
into the hopper and finish your work in there? Eh?"

Farr waited until Hosch was through. Trying to defend himself, he knew from bitter
experience, would only make things worse.

Hosch was a small, wiry man with a pinched mouth and eyecups which looked as if
they had been drilled into his face. His clothes were filthy and he always smelled
to Farr like days-old food. His limbs were so thin that Farr was confident that,
with his remarkable upfluxer strength here at the Pole, he�or Dura�could snap the
supervisor in two, in a fair fight�

At last Hosch seemed to exhaust his anger, and he Waved away to some other part of
the hopper line. The laborers who had gathered to relish Farr's humiliation�men and
women alike�gave up their surreptitious surveillance and, with the smugness of
spared victims, fixed their attention back on their work.

Air seethed in Farr's capillaries and muscles. Upfluxer. He called me upfluxer,

again. He watched his fists bunch�

Bzya's huge hand enclosed both Farr's own, and, with an irresistible, gentle force,
pulled Farr's arms down. "Don't," Bzya said, his voice a cool rumble from the
depths of an immense chest. "He's not worth it."

Farr's rage seemed to veer between the supervisor and this huge Fisherman who was
getting in the way. "He called me�"

"I heard what he called you," Bzya said evenly. "And so did everyone else� just as
Hosch intended. Listen to me. He wants you to react, to hit him. He'd like nothing
better."

"He'd be capable of liking nothing after I take off his head for him."

Bzya threw his head back and roared laughter. "And as soon as you did the guards
would be down on you. After a beating you'd return to work�to Hosch, to a
supervisor who really would hate you, and wouldn't pass up an opportunity to show
it�and to an extra five, or ten, years here to pay his compensation."

Farr, the remnants of his anger still swirling in him, looked up into Bzya's broad,
battered face. "But I've only just started this shift� At the moment I'll be happy
just to get through that."

"Good." With an immense, powerful hand Bzya ruffled Farr's hair-tubes. "That's the
way to think of it� You don't have to get through your whole ten years at once,
remember; just one shift at a time."

Bzya was a huge man with muscles the size of Air-piglets. He was as bulky, powerful
and gentle as the supervisor was small and needle-dagger vicious. Bzya's face was
marred by a mask of scar tissue which obliterated one side of his head and turned
one eyecup into a ghastly cavern that reached back into the depths of his skull.
Farr had come to know him as a simple man who had lived his life in the poverty-
stricken Downside, keeping himself alive by turning his giant muscles to the
mundane, difficult and dangerous labor which allowed the rest of Parz City to
function. He had a wife, Jool, and a daughter, Shar. Somehow, through a life of
travail, he had retained a kind and patient nature.

Now he said to Farr, winking at him with his good eyecup, "You shouldn't be hard on
old Hosch, you know."

Farr gaped, trying to suppress a laugh. "Me, hard on him? Why, the old Xeelee-lover
has it in for me."

Bzya reached to the conveyor and raised a length of tree trunk longer than Farr was
tall. With a single blow of his ax he cracked it open to reveal its glowing core.
"See it from his point of view. He's the supervisor of this section."

Farr snorted. "Making himself rich out of our work. Bastard."

Bzya smiled. "You learn fast, don't you? Well, maybe. But he's also responsible. We
lost another Bell, last shift. Had you heard? Three more Fishermen dead. Hosch is
responsible for that too."

Disasters seemed to hit the Harbor with a depressing regularity, Farr thought.
Still, he remained impatient with Bzya's tolerance, and he began to list Hosch's
faults.

"He's all of that, and then some you're too young to understand. Maybe he isn't up
to the responsibility he has.

"But�I'll say it again�whether he can cope or not, he's responsible. And when one
of us dies, a little of him must die too. I've seen it in his face, Farr, despite
all his viciousness. Remember that."

Farr frowned. He shoved more glowing wood into the hoppers. It was so complex. If
only Logue or Dura were here to help him make sense of it all�

Or if only he could get out of here and Surf.

* * *

The rest of the shift wore away without incident. Afterward Farr filed out with the
rest of the laborers to the small, cramped dormitory they shared. The dormitory,
home to forty people, was a stained box slung across with sleeping ropes. It stank
of shit and food. Farr ate his daily ration�today, a small portion of tough
bread�and looked for a stable nest in the web of sleeping-ropes. He wasn't yet
confident enough to challenge the older, powerful-looking Fishermen, men and women
both, who monopolized the chamber walls where the Air was slightly less polluted by
the grunts and farts of others. He finished up, as usual, close to the center of
the dormitory.

One day, he told himself as he closed his eyes and sought sleep. One day.

At the start of his next shift, with eyecups still crusted with sleep deposits, he
filed back to his post at the wood hoppers.

The Harbor was an irregular compound of large chambers constructed of stained wood
and fixed to the base of the City�in the shadow of the Downside, well away from the
bright, fashionable sectors of the upper levels. It was just below the huge dynamos
which powered the anchor-bands, and the deep, thrumming vibration of the machines
above was a constant accompaniment to life for the Fishermen. The Harbor was a
dark, hot, filthy place to work, and the contrast of the heat of the stoves, the
grinding roar of the pistons and pulleys with the open Air of the upflux, made it
all but unbearable for Farr.

Still, as his shift wore on, Farr relaxed into his work's heavy, steady rhythms. He
hauled the next massive length of tree trunk from the conveyor belt that ran
continually behind the row of laborers. He was forced to wrestle with the chunk of
wood; its inertia seemed to turn it into a willful, living thing, determined to
plow its own path through the Air regardless of Farr's wishes. The muscles in his
arms and back bulged as he braced himself against the floor of the chamber and
swung at the section of trunk with his ax of wood, hardened with a tip of
Corestuff. The trunk was tough, but split easily enough if he swung the blade along
the direction of the grain. When the split was deep enough, Farr forced his hands
into the cracked wood and prized the trunk section open, releasing a flood of
warmth and green light from the nuclear-burning interior which bathed his face and
chest. Then, with the nuclear fire still bright, he dumped the hot fragments into
the gaping maw of the hopper before him.
Cutting the wood was the part of his work Farr enjoyed the most, oddly. There was a
certain skill to be applied in finding exactly the right spot for his ax blade, a
skill Farr found pleasure in acquiring and applying. And when the wood split open
under his coaxing, releasing its energy with a sigh of warmth, it was like
revealing some hidden treasure.

A line of laborers worked alongside Farr, stretching almost out of sight in the
gloom of the Harbor; working in shifts, they fed the ravenous maw of the hoppers
unceasingly. The work was heavy, but not impossibly so for Farr, thanks to his
upfluxer muscles. In fact, he had to take care not to work too fast; exceeding his
quota didn't earn him any popularity with his workmates.

The heat energy released by the wood's burning nuclei was contained in great,
reinforced vessels�boilers�in another part of the Harbor complex. Superfluid Air,
fleeing the heat, was used to drive pistons. These pistons were immense fists of
hardened wood twice Farr's height which plunged into their jackets as steady as a
heartbeat.

The pistons, via huge, splintered rotary arms, turned pulleys; and it was the
pulleys which sent Bells full of fearful Fishermen toward the mysterious and deadly
depths of the underMantle.

It was so different from his life with the Human Beings, where there were no
devices more complex than a spear, no source of power save the muscles of humans or
animals. The Harbor was like an immense machine, with the sole purpose of sending
Fishermen down into the underMantle. He felt as if he were a component of that huge
machine himself, or as if he were laboring inside the heart of some giant built of
wood and rope�

Bzya apart, the other workers showed no signs of accepting Farr. It was as if their
unhappiness with their lot, here in this noisy, stinking inferno, had been turned
inward on themselves, and on each other. But still, once each new shift had settled
in, the workers seemed to reach a certain rhythm, and a mood of companionship
settled over the line�a mood which, Farr sensed, extended even to him, as long as
he kept his mouth shut.

He missed Dura, and the rest of the Human Beings, and he missed his old life in the
upflux. Of course he did. His sentence in this Harbor seemed to stretch off to
eternity. But he was able to accept his lot, as long as he kept his mind focused on
the task in hand, and took comforts where he could find them. One shift at a time,
that was the secret, as Bzya had told him. And�

"You."

There was a hand on his shoulder, grasping at his grubby tunic. He was roughly
dragged out of the line.

Hosch glared at him, his nostrils glowing sickly-white. "Change of assignment," he

growled.

"What?"

"A Bell," Hosch said.

* * *

As Dura approached�with twenty other new coolies in a huge car drawn by a dozen
stout Air-pigs�Frenk's ceiling-farm seemed tiny at first, a child's palmprint
against the immensity of the Crust itself. The other coolies seemed more interested
in another farm, still more distant and harder to make out than Frenk's. This
belonged to Hork IV, Chair of Parz City, Dura was told. The absent-minded Chair
escaped his civic responsibilities�leaving Parz in the scheming hands of his son�by
indulging in elaborate agricultural experiments, here at the Crust. On Hork's
ceiling-farm there were said to be spears of wheat taller than a man, and Crust-
trees no longer than a man's arm and bound up with lengths of Corestuff-wire�

Dura was barely able to keep her attention focused on this prattle. The thought of
being marooned at the Crust, with only these dullards for company, made her heart
sink.

At last Frenk's ceiling-farm filled the clearwood windows. The car settled to rest
at the center of a group of crude wooden buildings, and the doors opened.

Dura scrambled out and Waved away from the others. She took a deep breath of clean,
empty Air, relishing the sensation in her lungs and capillaries. The Air stretched
away all around her, an immense, unbroken layer stretching right around the Star;
it was like being inside the lungs of the Star itself. Well, the company might
leave a bit to be desired, but at least here she could breathe Air which didn't
taste like it had been through the lungs of a dozen people already.

Qos Frenk himself was there to greet them. He picked out Dura, smiling with
apparent kindness at her, and while the other coolies dispersed among the
buildings, he offered to show Dura around his farm.

Frenk�dapper, round and sleek, his pink hair flowing over an elaborate cloak�Waved
confidently beside her. "The work is straightforward enough, but it needs
concentration and care� qualities, sadly, which not all coolies nowadays share. I'm
sure you'll do a fine job, my dear."

Dura was wearing a coverall woven of some crude vegetable-fiber cloth, given to her
as a parting gift by Ito. As she Waved it grated against her skin constantly, as if
chafing her all over, and she longed to tear it off. On her back she carried a
round pod of wood�an Air-tank, like the one she'd seen Toba wear, with a small mask
she was supposed to fit over her face to help her breathe the rarefied Air of the
upperMantle. The bulky, unnatural thing impeded her movement even more than the
City-made clothes, but Frenk insisted she carry it. "Health ordinances, you see,"
he had said with a philosophical shrug, his ornate cloak bunching around his thin
shoulders.

Under the coverall, she still wore her length of rope and her small knife.

The farm had largely been cleared of tree trunks; the exposed forest root-ceiling
was seeded with neat rows of green-gold wheat, of altered grass. Here, hovering
just a few mansheights below the wafting, swollen tips of mutant grass, she could
no longer see the boundaries of the farm. It was as if the Crust's natural wildness
had been banished, overrun by this claustrophobic orderliness.

Of course the orderliness covered only two dimensions. The third dimension led down
to the clean, free Air of the Mantle which hung below her, huge and empty. The Parz
folk had not yet succeeded in fencing off the Air itself� All she needed to do was
to throw this Air-tank into the round, delicate face of Qos Frenk, and Wave away
into infinity. These soft City-boms�even the coolies�could never catch her.

But she could never quit this place, abandon her obligations, until Adda's fees
were paid off. Ties of obligation and duty would imprison her here as surely as any
cage.
Qos Frenk blinked, studying her. "I know this must be a strange situation for you.
I want you to know you've nothing to fear but hard work. I own the ceiling-farm,
and I own your labor, in that sense. But I don't make the mistake of imagining I
own your soul.

"I'm not a cruel man, Dura. I believe in treating my coolies as well as I can
afford. And�"

"Why?" Dura found herself snarling. "Because you're such a noble person?"

He smiled. "No. Because it's economically more efficient for me to have a happy and
healthy workforce." He laughed, and he looked a little more human to Dura. "That
should reassure you if nothing else does. I'm sure you'll be fine here, Dura. Why,
as soon as you learn the trade I don't see why we shouldn't be thinking of you as a
future supervisor, or skills specialist."

She forced herself to smile back. "All right. Thank you. I understand you're doing
your best for me. What will I have to do?"

He indicated the rows of ripening wheat dangling from the forest ceiling above
them. "In a few weeks we'll be ready for the harvest, and that's when the real work
begins. But for now your job is to ensure that the growth of the wheat is
unimpeded. Look for the obvious, like boars crushing the stems. Or trespassers." He
looked saddened. "We get a lot of that nowadays� scavengers, I mean. A lot of
poverty in the City, you see. Watch out for blight. Any kind of discoloration, or
growth abnormalities� If we get any diseases we isolate the area and sterilize it
fast, before the infection spreads.

"Look for wild grass, any plants growing among the roots, damaging the wheat. We
don't want anything else absorbing the lovely Crust isotopes which were meant for
our crop� And that includes young trees. You'd be surprised how fast they grow." He
spread his hands wide. His enthusiasm was almost endearing, Dura thought. "You
wouldn't think it but this part of the Crust was all native forest, once."

"Remarkable," Dura cut in drily, remembering the broad, unspoiled forests of her
home area in the far upflux.

Frenk looked at her uncertainly.

They met another worker, a woman who drifted with her head lost in the green-gold
crop and her legs dangling down into the Air. The woman was hauling small saplings
down from between the green stems of the wheat and shoving the weeds into a sack
bound to her waist.

"Ah," Frenk said with a smile. "One of my best workers. Rauc, meet Dura. Just
arrived here. Perhaps you'd be good enough to show her around�"

The woman drifted slowly down from the dangling crop. Over her head, Rauc was
wearing her Air-helmet, a veil of soft, semitransparent gauze which covered a
broad-brimmed hat. The curtain bulged out a little, showing that it was being fed
by Air from the woman's tank.

Frenk Waved fussily away.

Rauc was slim and wore a simple smock of grubby leather, though her arms were bare.
After Frenk's departure she regarded Dura somberly for a few moments without
speaking. Then she untied her veil and lifted it. Her face was thin and tired, her
eyecups dark; she looked about Dura's own age. "So you're the upfluxer," she said,
her voice containing the flat whine of the City-born.
"Yes."

"We heard you were coming. We were glad. Do you know why?"

Dura shrugged, uncaring.

"Because you upfluxers are strong� You'll work hard, help us meet our quotas." She
sniffed. "As long as you don't show us up, you'll be popular enough."

"I understand." This woman was trying to warn her, she realized. "Thanks, Rauc."

Rauc led her beneath the golden ceiling-fields back toward the cluster of
structures at the heart of the farm, where Dura had been dropped on first arrival.
There was no sign of Qos Frenk's car; Dura imagined him returning to his cozy,
stuffy home inside the City. Now, in mid-shift, the little huts seemed deserted:
they were small, boxy buildings of wood, dangling by lengths of rope from the
truncated stems of Crust-trees. There was a small, unkempt herd of pigs. Rauc said
the herd was kept�not for commercial purposes�but to provide meat for the coolies,
leather for smocks and hats. Rauc showed her small stores of clothing, Air-sacks
and tools. There was a bakery, its inner walls blackened by heat; the coolies'
staple food, bread, was made for them here. A large, overweight man labored in the
gloom of the bakery; he scowled at Dura and Rauc as they peered in at him. Rauc
pulled a face. "Well, the bread's fresh," she said. "But that's all you can say for
it� The lowest-quality wheat ends up here, that and any gleanings we can find,
while the best stuff is shipped off to Parz."

There was a dormitory building, a small, cramped box packed with rows of cocoons.
About half the cocoons were occupied. A woman's sleepy face lifted to stare at them
before flopping back into sleep, mouth open and hair dangling. Rauc pointed out a
vacant cocoon Dura would be able to claim for herself. But Dura couldn't imagine
sleeping in here, breathing in the snores and farts of others, while the fresh Air
of the Mantle swept away all around her. It made her realize, jarringly, that she
was going to be as out of place here as in Parz itself. Most of the coolies were,
after all, City-born�and mostly from the Downside where conditions were even more
cramped than the average. So off-shift coolies shoveled themselves into this
stinking box, listening to each other breathe and pretending that they weren't
stranded out here in the Mantle, but were tucked away inside the cozy confines of
Parz.

Rauc smiled at her. "I think we'll get along, Dura. You can tell me about your
people. And I'll show you how to get around here."

"Frenk seems all right�"

Rauc looked surprised. "Oh, he's decent enough. But that doesn't matter. Not day to
day, it doesn't. I'll introduce you to our section supervisor, Leeh. She makes a
difference� But not as much as she likes to think. Now Robis�who runs the
stores�that's where the real power lies. Get him to smile on you and the world is a
brighter place."

Dura hesitated. "Frenk says I might get to be a supervisor, eventually."

"He says that to everyone," Rauc said dismissively. "Come on, let's find Leeh;
she's probably off in the fields somewhere�" But she hesitated, looking searchingly
at Dura. Then, glancing around to check they were unobserved, she dug into a deep
pocket in her smock and drew out a small object. "Here," she said, placing the
object in Dura's hand. "This will keep you well."
It was a tiny five-spoked Wheel, like the one she'd seen around the neck of Toba
Mixxax� a model of the execution device in the Market Place. "Thank you," Dura said
slowly. "I think I understand what this means."

"You do?" Now Rauc's look was becoming wary.

Dura hastened to reassure her. "Don't worry. I won't betray you."

"The Wheel is illegal in Parz City," Rauc said. "In theory it's illegal everywhere,
throughout the Mantle� wherever the Guards' crossbows can reach. But we're a long
way from Parz here. The Wheel is tolerated on the ceiling-farms. Something to keep
us happy� That old fool Frenk says it's economically efficient for us to be allowed
to practice our faith."

Dura smiled. "That sounds like Frenk."

"�But you never know. Do upfluxers follow the Wheel?"

"No." She studied Rauc. She didn't seem very strong, or much of a rebel; but
apparently this Wheel business gave her comfort. "I saw a Wheel used as an
execution tool."

"Yes."

"Then why is it a symbol of faith?"

"Because it's used to kill." Rauc looked into her eyes, searching for
understanding. "So many human lives have been Broken that the Wheel, the very shape
of it, has become something human in itself. Or more than human. Do you see? By
keeping the Wheel close by us we are staying close to the noblest, bravest part of
us."

Rauc's speech was intense and earnest. Dura thumbed the little Wheel doubtfully.
The cult must be quite widespread. After all, Toba Mixxax was an adherent� a
ceiling-farm owner. Widespread through the Star, then, and through society itself.

If these Wheel cultists ever found a leader, they could be formidable opponents for
the mysterious Committee which ran the City.

Rauc looked tired. "Come on. Let's find Leeh, and get you started."

Side by side the two women Waved through the orderly Air of the farm, the golden
stalks of wheat suspended above them.

* * *

Farr was dimly aware of the other workers pulling away from him, sly looks
conveying their pleasure at his discomfiture. Chunks of Crust-tree rolled past on
their conveyor belt, ignored.

There was a growl. "No." Bzya, Farr realized, hovering close behind him.

Hosch's bony head swiveled at Bzya, eyecups deep and empty. "You're questioning me,
Fisherman?"

"This one's too young," Bzya said, laying a huge hand on Farr's shoulder. Farr,
unwilling to lead his friend into trouble, tried to shrug the hand away.

"But he was recruited for this." A muscle in the supervisor's cheek was twitching.
"He's small and light, but he's got that upfluxer strength. And we're short of
able-bodied�"

"He's got no skills. No experience. And we've taken a lot of losses recently,
Hosch. It's too much of a risk."

Hosch's cheek muscle seemed to have a life of its own. When he replied, it was in a
sudden scream. "I'm not asking your advice, you Xeelee-lover! And if you're so
concerned for this Piglet-turd you can come down as well. Got that? Got that?"

Farr dropped his head. Of course, Hosch wasn't being logical. If he�Farr�was being
taken down because of his size, then surely Bzya shouldn't be�

Bzya simply nodded, apparently unmoved by Hosch's anger or by his own sudden
assignment to peril. "Who's the third?"

"I am." Hosch's rage still showed in the pulsing of muscles in his face, in the
quivering of his eyecup rims. "I am. Now get moving, you Pig-lovers, and maybe
we've got a chance to get down there before the Quantum Sea congeals�"

Farr and Bzya followed Hosch out of the hopper chamber. Hosch's continued abuse
passed unheard through Farr's head, and he could only remember what Bzya had told
him about Hosch and responsibility.

Chapter 11
The chamber where they were to board the Bell was at the very base of the City. The
chamber had walls, an upper surface�but no floor. Farr, following Hosch and Bzya,
clung to guide ropes and gazed down into clear Air, drinking in its freshness after
days of the stale stenches of the Harbor. He was aware of the immense mass of the
City above him; it creaked softly, like some brooding animal.

The Bell itself was a sphere of hardened, battered wood two mansheights across.
Hoops of Corestuff were wrapped around it. The Bell was suspended from an immense
pulley which was almost lost in the darkness above Farr's head. More cables
attached the Bell loosely to the Spine. Farr could make out pale patches in the
dimness above, faces of Harbor workers close to the pulley.

The Spine was a pillar of wood which plunged, trailing cables, out of this chamber
and speared through the thick Air beneath the City. It turned into a dark line,
barely visible, curving slowly to follow the flux of the Magfield. Cables trailed
along its length to reach far, far down, into the distant, bruised-purple, lethal
mass of the underMantle.

Farr, following the Spine's curve, felt his heart slow inside him.

The Bell seemed impossibly fragile. How could it possibly protect him from
dissolution in the depths of the underMantle, hovering over the boiling surface of
the Quantum Sea itself? Surely it would be crushed like a leaf; no wonder so many
Fishermen lost their lives.

Hosch opened up a large door in the side of the Bell and clambered stiffly inside.
Bzya prodded Farr forward. As he approached the sphere Farr saw how badly scuffed
and scratched the outer surface was. He ran a finger along one deep scar; it looked
as if some animal had attacked this fragile-looking device, gouging it with teeth
or nails.

Reassuring, he thought drily.

Farr had expected the interior of the Bell to be something like Mixxax's car, with
its comfortable seats and light-admitting windows. Instead he entered a pocket of
gloom�in fact he almost collided with Hosch. The only windows were small panels of
clearwood which hardly admitted any light; woodlamps gave off a smoky, apologetic
green glow. There was a pole running the length of the sphere's axis, and Farr
clung to this. There was a small control panel�with two worn-looking switches and a
lever�and the hull was bulky with lockers and what looked like tanks of Air.

Bzya lumbered into the Bell. The interior was suddenly crowded; and as the
Fisherman's huge hands wrapped around the support pole the Bell was filled with
Bzya's strong, homely stench. Hosch clambered around them both to pull closed the
hatch�a massive disc of wood which fitted snugly into its frame.

They waited in the almost complete gloom. There was a busy scraping from all around
the hull. Farr, peering through the windows, saw Harbor workers adjusting the
position of the Corestuff hoops so that they surrounded the sphere evenly, covering
the hatchway. Farr glanced from Hosch to Bzya. Bzya returned his stare with a
patient acceptance, the darkness softening the lines of his scars. The supervisor
glared into space, angry and tense.

There was a humming, strangely regular. The whole craft vibrated with it. It seemed
to permeate his very being; he could feel his capillaries contracting. He looked at
Bzya, but the Fisherman had closed his good eye, his face set; his damaged eyecup
was a tunnel to infinity.

�And something changed. Something was taken away from Farr, lifted for the first
time in his life. The only time he had felt anything remotely like this was during
that last, fateful hunt with the Human Beings, when he had experienced that
disorienting fear of falling. What was happening to him? He felt his grasp of the
support pole loosen, his fingers slip from the wood. He cried out, drifting
backward.

Bzya's strong hand grasped his hair-tubes and hauled him back to the pole; Farr
wrapped his arms and legs around the solidity of the wood.

Hosch was laughing, his voice grating.

Somebody rapped on the Bell with a heavy fist. Now there was a sensation of
movement�jerking, swaying; Farr could hear cables rattle against the Bell and
against each other.

So it had begun. In brisk, bewildering silence, they were descending toward the
underMantle.

"The boy hasn't been prepared for any of this, Hosch." There was no trace of anger
in Bzya's voice. "I told you. How can he function if his ignorance leaves him
paralyzed by fear?"

"Talk to the upfluxer if you want." The supervisor turned his thin, creased, self-
absorbed face away.

"What's happening to me, Bzya? I feel strange. Is it just because we're descending,
following the Spine?"

"No." Bzya shook his head. "We are descending, but it's more than that. Listen
carefully, Farr; it's important that you understand what's happening to you. Maybe
it will keep you alive."

These words, simply spoken, evoked more fear in the boy than all of Hosch's
ranting. "Tell me."
"As we descend, the Air gets thicker. You understand that, don't you?�"

Farr understood. In the deadly depths of the underMantle, pressures and densities
were so great that nuclei were crammed together, forced into each other. It was
impossible for the structures of bonded nuclei which composed human bodies�and all
the material which comprised Farr's world�to remain stable. The nuclei dissolved
into the neutron superfluid that was the Air; and protons freed from the nuclei
formed a superconducting fluid in the neutron mix.

At last, from the Quantum Sea inward, the Star was like a single, immense nucleus;
no nuclear-based life could persist.

"How can this Bell of wood protect us? Won't the wood just dissolve?"

"It would� if not for the Corestuff hoops." The hoops were hollow tubes of
hyperonic Corestuff. The tubes contained proton superconductor, extracted from the
underMantle. More tubes led up through the cables to dynamos in the Harbor which
generated electrical currents in the Bell's hoops.

"The currents in the hoops generate huge magnetic fields," Bzya said. "Like our own
Magfield. And they protect us. The fields are like an extra wall around the Bell,
to insulate it from the pressures."

"But what's making me feel so strange? Is it this magfield of the Bell's?"

"No." Bzya smiled. "The hoops are expelling the Magfield�the Star's Magfield, I
mean�from the interior of the Bell.

"We all grow up in the Magfield. The Magfield affects us all the time� We use the
Magfield to move about, when we Wave. Farr, for the first time in your life you
can't feel the Magfield� For the first time, you can't tell which way up you are."

* * *

There was no way of tracking time. The silence was broken only by the clatter of
cables, the dull thud of the body of the Bell against the Spine, and the almost
subvocal, angry mumblings of Hosch. Farr kept his eyes closed and hoped for sleep.

After an unknowable period the Bell gave a savage lurch, almost jolting the axial
bar from Farr's hands. He clung to it, peering around the dimly lit cabin.
Something had changed; he could feel it. But what? Had the Bell hit something?

The Bell was still moving, but the quality of its motion had changed�or so the pit
of his stomach told him. They were still descending, he was sure; but now the
Bell's descent was much smoother, and the occasional collisions of the Bell against
the Spine had ceased.

It felt as if the Bell were floating, loose, through the underMantle.

Bzya laid a massive, kindly hand on his arm. "It's nothing to fear."

"I'm not�"

"We've come free of the Spine, that's all."

Farr felt his eyes grow round. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"No." The cabin's small, woodburning lamps sent a soft glow into the pit of Bzya's
ruined eye. "It's designed to be this way. Look, the Spine only goes down a meter
or so from the City. That's deeper than anyone could Wave unaided. But we have to
go much, much deeper than that. Now our Bell is descending without the Spine to
guide it.

"The cables still connect us to Parz. And the current they're carrying will
continue to protect us, and the cable, from the conditions here, as long as we
descend. But�"

"But we're drifting. And our cable could tangle, or break. What happens if it
breaks, Bzya?"

Bzya met his gaze steadily. "If it breaks, we don't go home."

"Does that ever happen?"

Bzya turned his face to the lamp. "When it does, they can tell almost immediately,
up in the Harbor," he said. "The cable starts to run free. You know the worst
straight away. You don't have to wait for the empty end to be returned�"

"And us? What would happen to us?"

Hosch pushed his thin face forward. "You ask a lot of stupid questions. I'll give
you some comfort. If the cable breaks, you won't know anything about it." He made
his hand into a loose fist and snapped it closed in Farr's face.

Farr flinched. "Maybe you should tell me what else can kill me. Then at least I'll
be prepared�"

There was a crash which jarred him loose from the support pole. The Bell swayed,
rocking through the thick fluid of the underMantle.

Farr found himself floundering in the Bell's stuffy Air. Once again he needed Bzya
to reach out and haul him back to the central post.

Bzya raised a silencing finger to his lips; Hosch merely glowered.

Farr held his breath.

Something scraped across the outside hull of the Bell; it was like fingernails
across wood. It lasted a few heartbeats, and then faded.

After a few minutes of silence, the lurching, unsteady journey continued; Farr
imagined meters of cable above his head, kinks mansheights tall running along its
length.

"What was that?" He glanced up at the windows, which grudgingly admitted a diffuse
purple light. "Are we in the Quantum Sea?"

"No," Bzya said. "No, the Sea itself is still hundreds of meters below us. Farr,
we're barely going to penetrate the upper layers of the underMantle. But we're
already a couple of meters below the Spine now."

"Yeah," said Hosch, his deep eyes fixed on Farr. "And that was a Colonist, come
back from the dead to see who's visiting him."

Farr felt his mouth drop open.

"It's a Corestuff berg," Bzya said steadily. "Corestuff. That's all."

Hosch sneered, his gaze sliding around the cabin.

Farr knew Hosch was taunting him, but the sudden shock of the words had penetrated
his imagination. He had always enjoyed Core War stories, had relished staring into
the unachievable surface of the Quantum Sea and frightening himself with visions of
the ancient, altered creatures prowling its depths. But the stories of the War, of
humankind's loss, had seemed so remote from everyday experience as to be
meaningless.

But Dura had told him of the fractal sculpture she had seen in Parz's University�a
sculpture of a Colonist's physical form, Ito had said. And now he was descending
into the underMantle himself, protected only by a rickety, barely understood
technology.

He clung to the post, staring at the bruised light in the windows.

* * *

Again there was a scraping against the hull. Again the Bell swayed, causing Farr's
stomach to lurch.

This time, Hosch and Bzya did not seem surprised. Hosch turned to press his face to
a window, while Bzya relaxed his grip on the support post and flexed the fingers of
his immense hands.

"What is it now?" Farr whispered.

"We think we've snagged a berg�"

Below the surface of the Quantum Sea, nuclei�clusters of protons and neutrons�could
not survive. And deeper still, in the dark belly of the Sea itself, densities
became so high that the nucleons themselves were brought into contact. Hyperons,
exotic combinations of quarks, could form from the colliding nucleons. The hyperons
could combine into stable islands of dense material�Corestuff bergs�which could
persist away from the formative densities of the heart of the Star. The bergs
drifted up, in Quantum Sea currents, to higher levels to be retrieved by the
Fishermen and returned to Para City.

"It's clinging to the outside of the Bell," Bzya said. He mimed the impact of the
berg against the Bell with his fists. "See? It's drawn there by the magnetic field
of the Bell, of its Corestuff hoops. And it stays, stuck by the Magfield set up in
response in its own interior."

Hosch grinned again, and Farr was aware of the supervisor's foul breath. "Good
Fishing. We were lucky. We can't be more than four meters below Parz. Now, boy.
Watch." With a grandiloquent gesture, Hosch closed the two switches on the small
control panel beside him.

Farr held his breath, but nothing seemed to have changed. The Bell still swayed
alarmingly through the underMantle�in fact it seemed to be rotating, his stomach
told him, perhaps knocked into a twist by the impact of the berg.

Bzya said patiently, "He's sent a signal to the Harbor, along the cables. That
we're ready to be hauled up."

Hosch grinned at him. "And that's why we're here, boy. That's the reason they put
men in these cages, and stuff them down into the underMantle. All to close those
little switches. See? Otherwise, how else would the Harbor know when to haul up the
Bells?"

"Why three of us? Why not just one Fisherman?"

"Double redundancy," Hosch said. "If something hit the mission�well, one of us
might live long enough to throw the switches, and bring home the precious
Corestuff." He was obviously relishing teasing out Farr's fear.

Farr tried to bite back. "Then you should have told me what was going on before.
What if something had gone wrong, and I hadn't known what to do?"

Bzya regarded Hosch impassively. "The boy has a point, Hosch."

"Anyway," Farr said, "it can't take much skill to throw a simple switch�"

"Oh, that's not the skill," Hosch said quietly. "The skill is in staying alive long
enough to do it."

* * *

The Bell lurched alarmingly through the underMantle, unbalanced by the mass of
Corestuff clinging to its side. Farr tried to judge their ascent, but he couldn't
separate genuine indications of their rise to the light�the sensations in his
belly, a lightening of the gloom in the small windows�from optimistic imagination.
He gazed anxiously at the bruised-purple glow in the windows, unable to take any of
the food Bzya offered him from a small locker set in the hull of the Bell.

The Bell shuddered under a fresh impact. Farr clung to his pole. There was a
grinding noise, and the clumsy little craft shuddered to a halt.

Farr resisted the temptation to close his eyes and curl up. What now? What else can
they throw at me?

He felt Bzya's rough fingertips on his shoulders. "It's all right, lad. That's a
sign that we're nearly home."

"What was it?"

"That was our berg, scraping against the Spine. We're only a meter or so below Parz
itself now."

Hosch hauled at a lever on the control panel, grunting with the effort; the hum
Farr had learned to associate with the currents supplying the Bell's protective
magnetic field decreased in intensity. Hosch turned to him, his mood evidently
swinging toward its calm, sly pole. "Your buddy here is half-right. But we aren't
safe yet. Not by a long way."

In fact this was one of the most dangerous parts of the mission. The berg, rattling
against the Spine, could easily sever their cables or damage the Spine itself.

"So," Hosch said silkily, "one of us has to go outside and do some work."

"What work?"

"Wrap ropes around the berg. Lash it to the Bell," Bzya said gently. "That's all.
Stops the berg from shaking loose, and protects the cables from collisions with the
Corestuff."

Hosch was staring at Farr.

Bzya held up his huge hands. "No," he said. "Hosch, you can't be serious. You can't
send the boy out there."

"I've never been more serious," Hosch said. "As you've both been telling me, the
boy won't last five heartbeats down here unless he learns the trade. And there's
only one way to do that, isn't there?"

Bzya made to protest, but Farr stopped him. "It's all right, Bzya. I'm not afraid.
He's probably right, anyway."

Bzya said, "Listen to me. If you were not afraid you would be a fool, or dead. Fear
keeps your eyecups open and clean."

"Ropes in that locker," Hosch said, pointing.

Bzya started to haul out the tightly packed, thick ropes; soon the little cabin
seemed filled with the stuff. "And you," Hosch snapped at Farr. "Get the hatch
open."

Farr looked through the window. The Air�if it could be called Air, this deep�was
purple, almost Sea-like. He was still, after all, a full meter�a hundred thousand
mansheights�below Parz.

He felt the sole of a foot in his back. "Get on with it," Hosch growled. "It won't
kill you. Probably."

Farr put his shoulders to the circular hatch and pushed. It was heavy and stiff,
and as he pushed he heard the scraping of the Corestuff hoops binding up the
capsule as they slid away.

The hatch burst open, flying out of his reach. The Air outside the Bell was thick
and glutinous, and it crowded into the cabin, overwhelming the thinner, clear Air
within. The light of the cabin's lamps seemed immediately dimmed.

Farr held his breath, his mouth clamped closed almost of its own accord. There was
a pressure on his chest, as if the thicker Air were trying to force itself into his
lungs through his skin. With an effort of will he dragged his lips apart. The
cloying, purple Air forced its way into his throat; he could feel it on his lips,
viscous and bitter. He heaved, expanding his lungs; the stuff burned as it worked
through his capillaries.

So, after a brief few heartbeats of struggle, he was embedded in the underMantle.
He raised his arms experimentally, flexing his fingers. His movements were
unimpaired, but he felt weaker, sluggish. Perhaps the superfluid fraction of this
Air was lower than in the true Mantle.

"The hatch," Bzya said, pointing. "You'd better retrieve it." Bzya's voice was
obscured, as if he was speaking through a layer of cloth.

Farr nodded. He pushed his way out of the hatchway.

The yellow-purple Air was so thick it barely carried any illumination; it was as if
he was suspended in a dark-walled bubble about four mansheights across. The Bell
was suspended at the center of the bubble, a drifting bulk. Beyond it the Spine was
a wall, massive and implacable, its upper and lower extremes lost in the misty
obscurity of the Air. Looking at the Spine now Farr could see cables of Corestuff
wrapped around it and laid out along its length�cables which must provide a
magnetic field like the Bell's, to keep the Spine from itself dissolving in the
lower underMantle. The Bell's own cables snaked up and out of sight toward the
world of the upperMantle, a world which seemed impossibly distant to Farr.

The loose hatch was a short distance from him. He Waved to it easily enough,
although the Air in which he was embedded was a cloying presence around him. He
caught the hatch and returned it briskly to Bzya.

"Now the berg," Hosch called. "Can you see it?"

Farr looked. There was a shape, lumpen, lodged between the Bell and the Spine. It
was half a mansheight long, dark and irregular, like a growth on the clean,
artificial lines of the Bell.

"Don't I need the ropes?"

"Go and inspect the berg first," Hosch called. "See if it's done us any damage."

He took deep breaths of the stale Air and flexed his legs. It would take only a few
strokes to Wave to the lump of Corestuff.

As he neared, he saw that the berg's surface was made rough by small pits and
escarpments. It was hard to imagine that this was the material that formed the
gleaming hoops around the Bell, or the City's anchor-bands, or the fine inlays in
Surfboards. He was within an arm's length of the berg, still Waving smoothly� If he
lived long enough, he would like to see the workshops�the foundries, Bzya called
them�where the transformation of this stuff took place�

Invisible hands grabbed his chest and legs, yanking him sideways. He found himself
tumbling head over heels away from the Bell. He cried out. He scrabbled at the Air
but could gain no purchase, and his legs thrashed at the emptiness in a futile
effort to Wave.

Trembling, he paddled at the Air, trying to still his roll. Hosch was laughing at
him, he realized; and Bzya, too, seemed to be having trouble suppressing a smile.

Just another little game, then; another test for the new boy.

He closed his eyes, willing the trembling of his limbs to still. He tried to think.
Invisible hands? Only a magfield could have jolted him like that�the Bell's
protective magfield. And of course he'd been knocked sideways; that was the way
fields affected moving charged objects, like his body. That was why it was
necessary, when Waving, to move legs and arms across the flux lines of the Magfield
to generate forward motion.

So the Bell's own magfield shell had thrown him. Big joke.

Logue would probably have told him off for not anticipating this, he realized.
Laughed at him as well, to drive home the point.

Farr's fear turned to anger. He looked forward to the day when he would no longer
have so much to learn� and he could maybe administer a few lessons of his own.

His self-control returning, Farr began to make his clumsy way back to the Bell.
"Give me the ropes," he said.

Chapter 12
The huge lumber caravan was visible for many days before it reached Qos Frenk's
ceiling-farm.
Dura, descending from a wheat-field at the end of a shift, watched the caravan's
approach absently. It was a trace of darkness on the curving horizon, a trail of
tree trunks toiling through the vortex lines from the wild forests on the upflux
fringe of the hinterland, on its way to the City at the furthest downflux. She
wasn't too interested. The hinterland sky, even this far from Parz, was never empty
of traffic. The caravan would pass in a couple of days, and that would be that.

But this caravan didn't go by so quickly. As time wore on it continued to grow in

her vision, and Dura slowly came to appreciate the caravan's true scale, and the
extent to which distance and perspective had fooled her. The train of severed tree
trunks, stretched along the vortex lines, must have extended for more than a
centimeter. And it was only when the caravan approached its nearest point to the
farm that Dura could make out people traveling with the caravan�men and women
Waving along the lengths of the trunks, or tending the teams of Air-pigs scattered
along the trunks' lengths, utterly dwarfed by the scale of the caravan itself.

Another shift wore away. Rubbing arms and shoulders left stiff by a long day's
crop-tending, Dura slung her Air-tank over her shoulder and Waved slowly toward the
refectory.

Rauc came up to her. Dura studied her curiously. Rauc had become something of a
friend to Dura�as much of a friend as she had made here, anyway�but today the slim
little coolie seemed different. Distracted, somehow. Although Rauc too had just
finished a shift, she'd already changed into a clean smock and combed her hair free
of dirt and wheat-chaff. The smile on her thin, perpetually tired face was nervous.

"Rauc? Is something wrong?"

"No. No, not at all." Rauc's small feet twisted together in the Air. "Dura, have
you got any plans for your off-shift?"

Dura laughed. "To eat. To sleep. Why?"

"Come with me to the caravan."

"What?"

"The lumber caravan." Rauc pointed down beneath her feet, to where the caravan
toiled impressively across the sky. "It wouldn't take us long to Wave down there."

Dura tried to conceal her reluctance. No thanks. I've already seen enough of the
City, the hinterland, of new people, to last me a lifetime. She thought with a mild
longing of the little nest she'd been able to establish for herself on the fringe
of the farm�just a cocoon, and her little cache of personal belongings, suspended
in the open Air, away from the cramped dormitories favored by the rest of the
coolies. "Maybe another time, Rauc. Thanks, but�"

Rauc looked unreasonably disappointed. "But the caravans only pass about once a
year. And Brow can't always arrange an assignment to the right caravan; if we're
unlucky he ends up centimeters away from the farm when he passes this latitude,
and�"

"Brow?" Rauc had mentioned the name before. "Your husband? Your husband's with this
caravan?"

"He'll be expecting me." Rauc reached out and took Dura's hands. "Come with me.
Brow's never met an upfluxer before."

Dura squeezed her hands. "Well, I've never met a lumberjack. Rauc, is this the only
time you get to see your husband? Are you sure you want me along?"

"I wouldn't ask otherwise. It will make it special."

Dura felt honored, and she said so. She considered the distance to the caravan.
"Will we have the time to get there and back, all in a single off-shift? Maybe we
ought to go to Leeh and postpone our next shift�do a double."

Rauc grinned. "I've already fixed it. Come on; find yourself something clean to
wear, and we'll go. Why don't you bring your stuff from the upflux? Your knife and
your ropes�"

Rauc followed Dura to her sleeping-nest, talking excitedly the whole way.

* * *

The two women dropped out of the ceiling-farm and descended lightly into the
Mantle.

Dura dipped forward, extending her arms toward the caravan, and began to thrust
with her legs. As she Waved she was still wondering if this was a good idea�her
legs and arms still ached from her long shift�but after some time the steady, easy
exercise seemed to work the pains from her muscles and joints, and she found
herself relishing the comfortable, natural motion across the Magfield�so different
from the cramped awkwardness of her work in the fields, with her head buried in an
Air-mask, her arms straining above her head, her fingers thrust into the roots of
some recalcitrant mutant plant.

The caravan spread out across the sky before her. It was a chain of Crust-tree
trunks stripped of roots, branches and leaves; the trunks were bound together in
sets of two or three by lengths of rope, and the sets were connected by more links
of strong plaited rope. Dura had to swivel her head to see the leading and trailing
ends of the chain of trunks, which dwindled with perspective among the converging
vortex lines; in fact, she mused, the whole caravan was like a wooden facsimile of
a vortex line.

Two humans hung in the Air some distance from the caravan. They seemed to be
waiting for Rauc and Dura; as the women approached they called something and set
off through the Air to greet them. It was a man and a woman, Dura saw. They were
both around the same age as Rauc and Dura, and they wore identical, practical-
looking loose vests equipped with dozens of pockets from which bits of rope and
tools protruded.

Rauc rushed forward and embraced the man. Dura and the lumberjack woman hung back,
waiting awkwardly. The woman was slim, strong-looking, with tough-looking,
weathered skin; she�and the man, evidently Rauc's husband Brow�looked much more
like upfluxers than any hinterland or City folk Dura had met up to now.

Rauc and Brow broke their embrace, but they stayed close with their arms linked
together. Rauc pulled Brow toward Dura. "Brow, here's a friend from the farm. Dura.
She's an upfluxer�"

Brow turned to Dura with a look of surprised interest; his gaze flickered over her.
He resembled Rauc quite closely. His body was lean, strong-looking under its vest,
and his narrow face was kindly. "An upfluxer? How do you come to be working on a
ceiling-farm?"

Dura forced herself to smile. "It's a long story."

Rauc squeezed Brow's arm. "She can tell you later."

Brow rubbed his nose, still staring at Dura. "We see upfluxers sometimes. In the
distance. When we're working in the far upflux, right at the edge of the
hinterland. You see, the further upflux you go toward the wild forests, the better
the trees grow. But�" He stopped, embarrassed.

"But the more dangerous it gets?" Dura maintained her smile, determined for once to
be tolerant. "Well, don't worry. I don't bite."

They laughed, but it was forced.

Rauc introduced the woman with Brow. She was called Kae, and she and Rauc embraced.
Dura observed them curiously, trying to make sense of their relationship. There was
a stiffness between Rauc and Kae, a wariness; and yet their embrace seemed
genuine�as if on some level, beneath the surface strain, they shared a basic
sympathy for each other.

Brow tugged at Rauc. "Come and see the others; they've missed you. We're going to
eat shortly." He glanced at Dura. "Will you join us?"

The woman Kae approached Dura with brisk friendliness. "Dura, let's leave these two
alone for a while. I'll show you around the caravan� I don't suppose you've met
people like us before�"

* * *

Dura and Kae Waved side by side along the length of the caravan. Kae pointed out
features of the caravan and described how it worked in a brisk, matter-of-fact way,
her talk laced with endless references to Dura's assumed ignorance. Dura had long
since grown tired of being treated as an amusing freak by these Parz folk, but�for
today�she bit back the acid replies which seemed to come so easily to her. This
woman, Kae, didn't mean any harm; she was simply trying to be kind to a stranger.

Maybe I'm learning to look beneath the surface of people, Dura wondered. Not to
react to trivia. She smiled at herself. Maybe she was growing up at last.

The chain of trunks slid through the Air at about half an easy Waving speed. There
were teams of harnessed Air-pigs, their harness sets fixed�not to Air-cars�but to
the rope links in the chain of trees. The pigs squealed and snorted as they hauled
at their restraints of leather. Humans, some of them children, tended the animals.
The pigs were fed bowls of mashed-up Crust-tree leaf, and their harnesses were
endlessly adjusted to keep the teams hauling in the same direction, along the long
line of trunks.

People hailed Kae as she passed, and they glanced curiously at Dura. Dura guessed
there must be a hundred people traveling with this caravan.

The women paused to watch one team being broken up. The animals were released from
their harnesses, but they were still restrained by ropes fixed to pierced fins. The
animals were led away to be tied up in another part of the caravan to rest, while a
fresh team was fixed into place.

Dura frowned at this. "Wouldn't it be easier to stop the caravan, rather than try
to change the pigs over in flight?"

Kae laughed. "Hardly. Dura, when the caravan is assembled, back on the edge of the
upflux, it takes several days, usually, for the pig-teams to haul it up to speed.
And once this mass of wood is moving, it's much easier to maintain its motion than
to keep stopping and starting it. Do you see?"

Dura sighed inwardly. "I know what momentum is. So you don't even stop when you
sleep?"

"We sleep in shifts. We sleep tied up to nets and cocoons fixed to the trunks
themselves." Kae pointed to the nearest pig-team. "We rotate the pigs in flight. It
isn't so difficult to steer a caravan; all you have to do is follow the vortex
lines downflux until you get to the South Pole� Dura, a caravan like this never
stops moving, once it sets off from the edge of the hinterland. Not until it's
within sight of Parz itself. Then the pig-teams are turned around, and the
caravan's broken up to be taken into the City."

Dura tried to envisage the distance from the upflux to Parz. "But at this speed it
must take months to reach the City."

"A full year, generally."

"A year?" Dura frowned. "But how can the City wait that long for lumber?"

"It can't. But it doesn't have to." Kae was smiling, but there didn't seem to be
any impatience in her tone at Dura's slowness. "At any time, there's a whole stream
of caravans like this, heading for the City from all around the circumference of
the hinterland. From the point of view of Parz there's a steady flow of the wood it
needs."

"Rauc knew on exactly which day to come down to the caravan. In fact, you and Brow
were waiting to greet us."

"Yes. We were on time. We always are, Dura; all the caravans are, right across the
hinterland. It's all carefully planned."

Dura thought of dozens, hundreds perhaps, of caravans like this, endlessly

converging on Parz with their precious lumber� and all on time. She felt awed at
the idea of humans being able to plan and act systematically on such a scale, and
with such precision.

They moved on along the length of the caravan. In some places the trunks had been
opened up to expose the green glow of the wood's nuclear-burning core. Humans moved
around the glowing spots and circles, purposeful and busy. There were nets and
lengths of rope trailing from the trunks, and Dura saw sleep cocoons, tools,
clothes, food bales tucked into the nets. In one place there was a little clutch of
infants and small children, safely confined inside a fine-meshed net.

"Why," she said, "the caravan's like a little City in itself. A City on the move.
There are whole families here."

"That's right." Kae smiled, a little sadly. "But the difference is, it's a City
that will be broken up in another few months, when we get to Parz. And we'll be
shipped back to the hinterland in cars, to start work on another."

They passed another netful of sleeping children.

Dura asked gently, "Why doesn't Rauc travel with the caravan? With Brow?"

Kae stiffened slightly. "Because she gets better pay where she is, doing coolie-
work for Qos Frenk. They have a kid. Did she tell you? She and Brow are having her
put through school in Parz itself. They have to work like this, to afford the
fees."
Dura let herself drift to a stop in the Air. "So Rauc is on a ceiling-farm in the
hinterland, her child is in that wooden box at the Pole, and Brow is lost somewhere
in the upflux with the lumber caravans. And if they're lucky they meet�what? once a
year?" She thought of the Mixxaxes, also constrained to spend so much of their time
apart, and for much the same motives. "What kind of life is that, Kae?"

Kae drew away. "You sound as if you disapprove, Dura." She waved a hand. "Of all of
this. The way we live our lives. Well, we can't all live as toy savages in the
upflux, you know." She bit her lip, but pressed on. "This is the way things are.
Rauc and Brow are doing the best they can, for their daughter. And if you want to
know how they feel about so much separation, you should ask them."

Dura said nothing.

"Life is complex for us�more than you can imagine, perhaps. We all have to make
compromises."

"Really? And what's your compromise, Kae?"

Kae's eyes narrowed. "Come on," she said. "Let's find the others. It must be time
to eat."

They worked their way back along the complicated linear community in stiff silence.

* * *

A dozen people had gathered, close to the trunk of one of the great severed trees
at the heart of the caravan. A Wheel design had been cut into the trunk: neat,
five-spoked, large enough to curve around the trunk's cylindrical form. Small bowls
of food had been jammed into the glowing trenches of the design.

The people anchored themselves to the trunk itself, or to ropes and sections of net
dangling from the trunk, arranging themselves around the glow of the nuclear fire.
Occasionally one of them reached into the fire and drew out a bowl.

Dura joined the group a little nervously. But she was greeted by neutral, even
friendly nods. With their nomadic lives, crisscrossing the hinterland, these
caravanners must be as used to accepting strangers as anyone in the huge, sprawling
hinterland around Parz.

She found a short length of rope and wrapped it around her arm. The rope, leading
to the tree trunk, hauled at her with a steady pressure. So, she realized, she had
become part of the caravan, bound to it and swept along by its immense momentum.
She glanced around at the group. Their faces, their relaxed bodies in their
practical vests, formed a rough hemispherical shell over the exposed wood core. The
green glow underlit their faces and limbs and cast soft light into their eyecups.
Dura felt comfortable�accepted here�and she drifted closer to the warmth of the
nuclear fire.

She spotted Rauc and Brow, huddled together on the far side of the little group.
Rauc waved briefly to her, but quickly returned her attention to her husband.
Glancing around discreetly, Dura saw that most of the party had separated out into
couples, bonded loosely by conversation. Alone, she turned to stare into the steady
glow of the fire.

There was a tap on her arm. She turned. Kae had settled into place next to her. She
was smiling. "Will you eat?"
Dura couldn't help but glance around surreptitiously. There seemed to be no one
with Kae, no partner. There was no sign of Kae's earlier flash of hostility�she had
the impression that there was a core of deep unhappiness in Kae, hidden not far
beneath the surface. She smiled back, eager to show good grace. "Thanks. I will."

Kae reached toward the fire-trenches cut into the wood. She drew out one of the
bowls embedded there, taking care to keep her fingers away from the hot wood
itself. The bowl was a small globe carved of wood, and it held food, a dark brown,
irregular mass. She held the bowl out to Dura.

Dura reached into the bowl and poked at the food tentatively. It was hot to the
touch. She took hold of it and drew it out. The surface was furry, but the furs
were singed to a crisp, and they crackled as she squeezed.

She looked at Kae doubtfully. "What is it?"

"Try it first." Kae looked sly in the green underglow.

Dura picked at the fur. "The whole thing?"

"Just bite into it."

Dura shrugged, raised the lump briskly, opened her mouth wide and bit into the fur.
The surface was elastic, difficult to pierce with her teeth, and the furs tickled
the roof of her mouth. Then the skin broke, and bits of hot, sticky meat spurted
over her mouth and chin. She spluttered, but she wiped her face and swallowed. The
stuff was rich, warm, meaty. She took a bite from the skin and chewed it slowly. It
was tough and without much flavor. Then she sucked at the remaining meat inside the
shell. There was a hard inner core which she discarded.

"It's good," she said at last. "What is it?"

Kae let the empty bowl hang in the Air; she poked at it with her forefinger and
watched it roll in the Air. "Spin-spider egg," she said. "I knew you wouldn't
recognize it. But it's the only way to eat it. It's actually a delicacy, in some
parts of the hinterland. There's even a community on the edge of the wild forest
who cultivate spiders, to get the eggs. Very dangerous, but very profitable. But
you have to know how to treat the eggs, to bring out the flavor."

"I don't think I would have recognized this as a spider egg at all."

"It has to be collected when freshly laid�when the young spider hasn't yet formed,
and there's just a sort of mush inside the egg. The hard part in the center is the
basis of the creature's exoskeleton; the young spider grows into its skeleton,
consuming the nutrient."

"Thanks for telling me," Dura said drily.

Kae laughed, and opened up a sack at her waist. She drew out a slice of beercake.
"Here; have some of this. In Parz, there's a good market for exotic deep-hinterland
produce like that. We make a good side-profit from it. Now. How about some Air-pig
meat?"

"All right. Please. And then you can tell me how you came to join these lumber
caravans."

"Only if you tell me how you ended up here, so far from the upflux�"

With food warm inside her, and with the exhilarating buzz of beercake filling her
head, Dura told Kae her tangled story; and a little later, in the steady glow of
the nuclear-fire Wheel, she repeated her tale for the rest of the lumberjacks, who
listened intently.

* * *

The food globes, nestling in the fire trenches, were finished. The conversation
gradually subsided, and Dura sensed that the gathering was coming to an end.

Rauc drew her hand from her husband's, and pulled forward, alone, into the center
of the little group. She faced the Wheel cut into the tree trunk in silence.

The last trickles of conversation died. Dura watched, puzzled. The atmosphere was
changing�becoming more solemn, sadder. The lumberjacks drew away from each other,
their postures stiffening in the Air. Dura glanced at Kae's face. The lumberjack's
eyecups were wide, illuminated by the fire-glow, fixed on Rauc.

Slowly Rauc began to speak. Her words consisted of names�all of them unknown to
Dura�recited in a steady monotone. Rauc's voice was tired, quiet, but it seemed to
enfold the intent gathering. Dura listened to the lulling, rhythmic chant of names
as it went on, for heartbeat after heartbeat, read evenly by Rauc to the great
Wheel carved into the wood.

These were the names of victims, Dura realized slowly. Victims of what? Of cruelty,
of disease, of starvation, of accident; they were the names of the dead, remembered
now in this simple ceremonial.

Some of the names must go back generations, she thought, their deaths so ancient
that all details had been forgotten. But the names remained, preserved by this
gentle, graceful Wheel cult.

And people who lived in the sky could have no other memorial than words.

At last the list came to a close. Rauc hung in the Air before the fading glow of
the Wheel trenches, her face empty. Then she stirred and looked around at the faces
watching her, as if waking up. She Waved back to her husband.

The group broke up. Brow enfolded his wife in his arms and led her away. All around
the group, couples bid farewells and drifted off.

Dura observed Kae surreptitiously. The woman was watching Brow and Rauc, her
expression blank. She became aware of Dura. She smiled, but her voice sounded
strained. "I've the feeling you're judging me again."

"No. But I think I understand your compromises now."

Kae shrugged. "We're together, Brow and I, for most of the time. Rauc knows it, and
has to live with that. But Brow�loves�Rauc. This day with her is worth a hundred
with me. And I have to live with that. We all have to compromise, Dura. Even you."

Dura thought of Esk, long dead now, and a similar painful triangle. "Yes," she
said. "We all have to compromise."

Kae offered her a place to sleep, somewhere in the tangle of nets and ropes that
comprised this strange, linear City. Dura refused, smiling.

She said farewell to Kae. The lumberjack nodded, and they regarded each other with
a strange, calm understanding.
Dura pushed away from the trunk and kicked at the Air, Waving for the ceiling-farm
and her secure, private little nest.

The caravan spread out beneath her, Wheel-shaped fires burning in a dozen places.

Chapter 13
Accompanied by a nervous-looking nurse from the Hospital of the Common Good, the
injured old upfluxer diffidently entered the Palace Garden. When Muub spotted him
he beckoned to the nurse�over the heads of curious courtiers�that she should bring
the upfluxer to join him at the Fount. Then he turned back to the slow ballet of
the superfluid fountain.

The Garden was a crown perched atop Parz City, an expensive setting for the Palace
of the City Committee. The Garden had been established generations before by one of
the predecessors of Hork IV. But it had been the particular genius of the current
Chair, and his fascination for the natural world around him, that had made this
place into the wonder it was. Now it was a lavish park, with exotic plants and
animals from all around the Mantle brought together in an orderly, tasteful
display. The low�but extravagant�buildings which made up the Palace itself were
studded around the Park, gleaming like Corestuff jewels set in rich cloth.
Courtiers drifted through the Garden in little knots, huddling like groups of
brightly colored animals.

Muub was no lover of the great outdoors, but he relished the Garden. He tilted back
his stiff neck, looking up into the yellow-gold Air. To be here beneath the
arching, sparkling vortex lines of the Pole�and yet securely surrounded by the
works of man�was a fulfilling, refreshing experience. It seemed to strengthen his
orderly heart that the Garden was an artifact, a museum of tamed nature�but an
artifact which stretched for no less than a square centimeter around him� The
Garden was enough to make one believe that man was capable of any achievement.

He ran a discreet doctor's eye over the approaching upfluxer. Adda was recovering
well but he could still barely move without assistance. Both his lower legs were
encased in splints, and his chest was swathed in bandages; a cast of carved wood
enclosed his right shoulder. His head, too, was a mass of strapped-up cloth, and an
eye-leech patiently fed in the corner of the old fellow's only working eye.

"I'm glad you could join me," Muub greeted him with a professional smile. "I wanted
to talk to you."

Adda glowered past his leech at Muub's shaved head, his finery. "Why? Who or what
are you?"

Muub allowed himself a heartbeat's cold silence. "My name is Muub. I am Physician
to the Committee� and Administrator of the Hospital of the Common Good, where your
injuries have been treated." He decided to go on the offensive. "Sir, we met
before, when you were first carried into the Hospital by one of our citizens. On
that occasion�though I don't expect you to remember�you told me to 'bugger off.'
Well, I failed to accept that invitation, choosing instead to have you treated. I
have asked you to view the Garden today as my guest, as a friendly gesture to one
who is new to Parz and who is alone here. But frankly, if you're not prepared to be
courteous then you are free to depart."

"Oh, I'll behave," Adda grumbled. "Though I'll not swallow the pretense that you've
done me any sort of favor by treating my injuries. I know very well that you're
exacting a handsome price from the labor of Dura and Farr."

Muub frowned. "Ah, your companions from upflux. Yes, I understand they have found
indentures."
"Slave labor," Adda hissed.

Muub made himself relax. Anyone who could survive at the court of Hork IV could put
up with a little goading from an eyeless old fool from the upflux. "I'll not let
you needle me, Adda. I've invited you here to enjoy the Garden�the spectacle�and I
fully intend that that is how we will spend the day."

Adda held his stare for a few moments; but he did not pursue the discussion, and
turned his head to view the Fount.

The superfluid fountain was the centerpiece of the Garden. It was based on a
clearwood cylinder twenty microns across, fixed to a tall, thin pedestal. Inside
the cylinder hovered a rough ball of gas, stained purple-blue, quivering slowly.
The cylinder�fabulously expensive in itself, of course�was girdled by five hoops of
polished Corestuff, and it bristled with poles which protruded from its surface.
Barrels�boxes of wood embossed with stylized carvings of the heads of Hork IV and
his predecessors�were fixed to the ends of the poles inside the cylinder.

Beautiful young acrobats�male and female, all naked�Waved spectacularly through the
Air around the cylinder, working its elaborate mechanisms. The electric blue of the
vortex lines cast shimmering highlights from the clearwood, and the soft, perfect
skin of the acrobats glowed with golden Air-light.

The upfluxer, Adda, made a disgusting noise through his nose. "You brought me here
to see this?"

Muub smiled. "I wouldn't expect you to understand what you're seeing."

Adda scowled, his hostility evident. "Then tell me."

"Superfluidity." Muub pointed. "The cylinder contains a low-pressure region.

There's hardly any Air in there, I mean� except for the sphere in the center.
That's just Air, but stained blue so you can see it. The hoops around the cylinder,
there, are generating a localized magnetic field. Do you understand me? Like the
Magfield, but artificial. Controllable. The magnetic field keeps the cylinder from
being crushed by the pressure of the Air outside. And it's designed to keep the
little Air inside the cylinder in that ball at the center."

"So what?"

"So we can view the Air�within which we are ordinarily immersed�from the outside,
as it were.

"Adda, Air is a neutron superfluid�a quite extraordinary substance which, were

inhabitants of some other world to discover it, would seem miraculous. Quantized
circulation�the phenomena which causes all the spin in the Air to collect into
vortex lines�is only one aspect. Watch, now, as the vessels are lowered and raised
from the sphere of Air."

A handsome young acrobat�a girl with blue-dyed hair�grasped one of the poles
protruding from the cylinder and pushed it through the clearwood wall. The base of
the ornate barrel at its far end dipped into the sphere of blue Air. The barrel
wasn't completely immersed; the girl held the barrel still so that its rim
protruded from the surface of the Air by a good two or three microns.

Blue-stained Air visibly crawled up the sides of the box and over the lip, pooling
inside. It was like watching a living creature, Muub thought, fascinated and
charmed as always by the spectacle.
When the box had filled itself to the level of the rest of the sphere, the acrobat
drew it slowly out of the sphere and brought it to rest again, so that its base was
placed perhaps five microns above the surface. Now the blue Air slid over the sides
and, in a thin stream which poured from the base of the vessel, returned eagerly to
the central sphere.

The acrobat troupe maintained this display at all hours of the day, at quite
remarkable expense. Adda watched the cycle through a couple of times, his good eye
empty of expression.

Muub watched him surreptitiously, then shook his head. "Don't you have any interest
in this? Even your eye-leech is showing more awareness, man!" He felt driven,
absurdly, to justify the display. "The Fount is demonstrating superfluidity. When
the vessel is lowered into the pool, a thin layer of the fluid is adsorbed onto the
vessel's surface. And the Air uses that fine layer�just a few neutrons thick�to
gain access to the interior of the vessel. When the vessel's withdrawn the Air uses
the same channel to return to the main bulk, the sphere. Quite remarkable.

"The hoops maintain a slight magnetic gradient from the geometric center of the
cylinder. That gradient restricts the residual Air to that sphere at the center�
and it is the resulting difference in electromagnetic potential energy which drives
the cycle of the fountain. And�"

"Riveting," Adda said drily.

Muub bit back a sharp comment. "Well, I know you people have different priorities
in life. Let's view the rest of the Garden� perhaps some of it will remind you of
the world you have left behind. I'm curious as to how you lived, actually."

"We upfluxers?" Adda asked acidly.

Muub replied smoothly, "You Human Beings. For example, superfluidity� Have you
retained much knowledge of such matters?"

Adda said, "Much of the lore absorbed by our children is practical and everyday�
how to repair a net; how to keep yourself clean; how to turn the battered corpse of
an Air-pig into a meal, a garment, a source of weapons, a length of rope."

Muub felt himself shudder delicately.

"But knowledge is our common heritage, City man," Adda murmured. "We would scarcely
allow you to rob us of that, as you robbed us of our place here ten generations
ago."

Turning, Muub led Adda slowly away from the Fount. Beside the youthful grace of the
acrobats, Adda's ungainly stiffness was laughable�and yet heartbreaking, Muub
thought. They passed through one of Hork's experimental ceiling-farm areas. Here a
new strain of wheat�tall and fat-stemmed�thrust from a simulated section of Crust-
forest root-ceiling.

"Tell me, Adda. What are your plans now?"

"Why should you care?"

"I'm curious."

Adda was silent for a while; then, grudgingly, he replied: "I'm going to go back.
Back to the upflux. What else?"
"And how do you propose to achieve that?"

"I'll damn well Wave there if I have to," Adda growled. "If I can't get one of your
citizens to take me home in one of those pig-drawn cars you have."

Muub was tempted to mock. He tried to summon up sympathy, to put himself in Adda's
situation�alone and far from home in a place he must find frighteningly strange,
despite his bravado. "My friend," he said evenly, "with all respect to the skills
of my staff in the Common Good, and to the remarkable progress you are making� I
have to say it will be a long time before you are fit for such a journey. Even by
car, the trek would kill you."

Adda snarled. "I'll take my chances."

"And if you made it home you'd never be as strong as you were, frankly. Your
pneumatic system has been weakened to well below its nominal level."

Adda's response, when it came, seemed doubtful. "I couldn't hunt?"

"No." Muub shook his head firmly. "Even if you were able to Wave fast enough to
creep up on, let us say, an aged and unfit Air-pig�"�that won a slight smile from
the upfluxer�"even so, you could never survive the low pressures, the thin Air of
the upperMantle. You see, you would be a burden on your people if you returned. I'm
sorry."

Adda's anger was apparently directed inward now. "I will not be a burden. I wanted
to die, after my injury. You did not allow me to die."

"It was the choice of your companions. They did not allow you to die; they sold
their labor to pay for your continued health. Adda, you owe it to them to maximize
the usefulness of your new life."

Adda shook his head stiffly, the bandaging rustling at his neck. "I cannot return
home. But I have nothing here."

"Perhaps you could find work. Anything you could earn would reduce the burden on
your friends."�And help besides, Muub forbore to add, to pay for Adda's own food
and shelter once his medical treatment was concluded.

"What could I do? Do you hunt here? I can't see myself being much use stalking
blades of mutated grass."

They had come now to a simulation of the wild Crust-forest. Dwarf Crust-
trees�slender whips no taller than a mansheight�thrust out of the roof of Parz. A
clutch of young ray, shackled to the roof surface by short lengths of rope, snapped
at them as they passed. Muub glanced at Adda, curious about the old man's reaction
to this toy forest. But Adda had turned his face up to the vortex lines swooping
over the City; his good eye was half-closed, as if he were peering at something,
and the leech crawled, ignored, over his face.

Muub hesitated. "When I first encountered you, you were swaddled in makeshift
bandages. And you had splints� Do you remember? The splints seemed actually to be
spears, of varying lengths and thicknesses. All decorated with fine engravings."

"What of it? Are you suggesting I could get a price for them here? I thought your
people, your Guards, were well enough equipped with their bows and whips."

"Indeed. No, we do not need your weapons� as weapons. But as artifacts the spears
have a certain�novelty." Muub sought the right words. "A kind of primitive artistry
that is really rather appealing. Adda, I suspect you could get a decent price for
your artifacts, especially from collectors of primitive materiel. And if, by
chance, you were capable of producing more�"

There was an odd change in the quality of light around them. Muub glanced around,
half-expecting to find that they had fallen into the shadow of an Air-car; but the
sky was empty, save for the vortex lines. Still the feeling of change persisted,
though, unsettling Muub; he pulled his robe closer around him.

Adda laughed. "I'd rather die than whore myself."

Muub opened his mouth, shaping a reply. That may be the choice, old man� But now
there was some sort of disturbance among the courtiers around them. No longer
drifting in their intense little knots of intrigue, the courtiers were gathering
together as if for comfort, pointing at the sky. "I wonder what's wrong. They seem
scared."

"Look up," Adda said drily. "Perhaps that has something to do with it."

Muub looked into the old man's sour, battered face, and then lifted his head to the
open Air.

The flux lines were moving. They were surging upward, away from the City, rising
like huge knife-blades toward the Crust.

"Glitch, "Adda said, his voice tight. "Another one. And a bad one. Muub, you must
do what you can to protect your people."

"Is the City in danger?"

"I don't know. Perhaps not. But those in the ceiling-farms certainly are�"

Muub, in the last moment before rushing to his duties, found time to remember that
Adda's own people too were exposed to all of this, lost somewhere in the sky.

The Air above him seemed to shimmer; somewhere a courtier screamed.

* * *

It was Rauc who first noticed the change in the sky.

Dura and Rauc were working together in a corner of Qos Frenk's ceiling-farm. Dura
was wearing the mandatory Air-tank, but she wore the veil pushed back from her
face; and the heavy wooden tank thumped against her back as she worked. She had
pushed her head and shoulders high into the stems of wheat, so that she was
surrounded by a bottomless cage of the yellow-gold plants. She reached above her
head with both hands, burrowing with her fingers among the roots of the wheat.
Stems scratched her bare arms. Here was another sapling; it felt warm and soft,
undeniably a living thing, a thin thread of heavy-nuclei material pulsing along its
axis. Young Crust-trees were the most persistent danger to Frenk's crop, springing
up endlessly despite continual weeding. The saplings�thinner than a finger's
width�were difficult to see, but easy to pick out from among the wheat-stems by
touch. She allowed her fingers to track along the sapling's length further up into
the shadows of the wheat. She probed at its roots, which snaked up into the tangle
of roots and plants which comprised the forest ceiling, and patiently prized them
out.

It was dull, mindless work, but not without a certain satisfaction: she enjoyed the
feel of the plants in her fingers, and relished deploying the simple skills she was
learning. Maybe in some other life she might have been a good farmer, she thought.
She liked the orderliness of the farm�although not the pressure of other people�and
the work was simple enough to leave her mind free to wander, to think of Farr, of
the upflux, and�

Rauc half-laughed. "Look at that. Dura, look� How strange."

Vaguely irritated at this irruption into her daydream, Dura dropped down from the
inverted field. Emerging into the clear Air, she rubbed her hands free of dust.
"What is it?"

Rauc hovered in the Air, Waving gently; she pointed downward. "Look at the vortex
lines. Have you ever seen them behave like that before?"

Vortex lines, acting strangely?

Dura snapped her head downward and raked her gaze across the sky.

The vortex lines were shimmering�infested with so many small instabilities that it
was difficult to see the lines themselves. At the limit of vision Dura could just
make out individual ripples racing along the lines, like small, scurrying animals.
And the lines were exploding upward, out of the Mantle and toward the Crust. Toward
the farm. Toward her.

All of the lines were moving, as deep into the sky as she could see; the parallel
ranks of them hurtled evenly out toward her.

There was something else, too: a dark shape far away, at the edge of her peripheral
vision; it scored the yellow horizon with a pencil of blue-white light.

"Rauc," she said. "We have to move."

Rauc looked up at her, the thin, tired face beneath its veiled hat registering
unconcern. "Why? What's wrong?"

Dura brushed the hat from her head, impatiently shrugging off the straps of her
Air-tank. "Give me your hand."

"But why�"

"It's a Glitch. And if we don't move now we'll be killed. Give me your hand. Now!"

Rauc's mouth opened wide. Dura saw shock in her expression, but no fear yet. Well,
there would be time enough for that. She grabbed Rauc's hand; the laborer's palm
was toughened by her work but the hand was cool, free of the heat of terror. She
kicked at the Magfield with both legs, Waving downward, away from the Crust and
toward the approaching flux lines. At first Rauc was dead inertia behind her; but
after a few strokes Rauc, too, began to Wave.

When the Star suffered a Glitch the Mantle could not sustain its even, gently
slowing pattern of rotation. The superfluid Air tried to expel the excess rotation
from its bulk by pushing the arrays of vortex lines�lines of quantized
vorticity�out toward the Crust. And the lines themselves suffered instabilities,
and could break down�

The women dropped into the racing forest of vortex lines. The lines were usually
about ten mansheights apart, so�in normal times�they were easy to avoid. But now,
at the birth of this spin storm, they were already rising faster than a Human Being
could Wave. The vortex lines fizzed past the women, sparkling electric blue.
Instabilities the size of a fist raced along them, colliding, merging, collapsing.

Rauc whimpered. Unwelcome images of the last Glitch, of Esk imploding around the
rogue vortex line, crowded Dura's head. She concentrated on the buffeting of the
Air against her bare skin, the thin, unnatural taste of it on her lips, the deadly
sparkle of the vortex lines. Now was all that mattered�now, and surviving into the
future through this moment.

The vortex lines were growing denser as they crowded toward the Crust, seeking an
impossible escape from the Star. It was becoming harder to dodge the lines as they
swept past her like infinite blades; she was forced to twist backward and forward,
slithering between lines. The instabilities were becoming more prominent, too; now
ripples almost a mansheight high were marching along the soaring lines, deepening
and quickening as they passed. There was a terrible beauty in the way the complex
waveforms sucked energy from the vortex lines and surged forward. The Air was
filled with the deafening, deadening heat-roar of the lines.

Soon Dura's arms and legs, already stiff from a long shift, were aching, and the
Air seemed to scrape through her lungs and capillaries. But now, as they penetrated
the rushing vortex forest and moved deeper into the Mantle, the lines were starting
to thin out. Dura, gratefully, looked down and saw that they were approaching a
volume where the lines�though still cutting the Air with preternatural speed�were
spaced at about their normal density. Further in still the Air seemed almost clear
of lines, temporarily purged of its vorticity.

Dura released Rauc's hand and risked a look back.

The vortex lines soared upward into the Crust, slicing through nuclear matter and
embedding themselves amid the complex nuclei of the Crust material. As they entered
the forest ceiling the lines thrashed with instabilities, sending bits of broken
matter flying into the Air. The lines were tearing apart Qos Frenk's ceiling-farm.
The crops she had tended only heartbeats earlier were now uprooted, fat wheat-stems
scattered in the Air. Ironically Dura could see Crust-tree saplings, anchored by
their deeper roots to the forest ceiling, surviving the spin storm where the
mutated grass could not.

Further away the buildings at the heart of Frenk's farm had been torn loose of
their moorings to the Crust ceiling; one of them exploded into a shower of wood
splinters. Coolies and supervisors were emerging from the fields and buildings, all
over the farm. They looked like a cloud of ungainly insects, dropping from the
fields toward the hurtling spin lines. Even through the storm Dura could hear their
shouts and cries; she wondered if the voice of Qos Frenk himself were among them.
Some people squirmed desperately into the lethal rain of vorticity, as Dura and
Rauc had done; but most had left it too late. Unable to squeeze through the barrage
of twisting lines they were forced to turn back, to climb up toward the Crust.

But there was no haven there.

Dura saw a woman, her Air-mask still in place over her face, pull herself up into
the wheat, as if burrowing into the Crust. When the vortex lines struck, her body
folded around the lines, backward, her arms and legs outstretched. The woman's
cries rose, thin and clear, before cutting off sharply.

Dura concentrated on the light-smell of the disturbed Air, its sharp presence in
her nostrils and on her palate and lips. She wasn't out of danger yet herself. She
watched an instability emerge from a line close to her. The instability grew like a
tumor and scythed through the Air, its motion along the line combining with the
line's upward sweep to take it diagonally past her. As it exceeded a mansheight in
depth the complex grace of its waveform became distorted; it seemed to be forming a
neck at its base, and secondary instabilities rippled around its circumference like
attendants.

The neck began to close. Dura stared, fascinated.

The sparkling vortex line crossed itself. The throat closed, and a ring of
vorticity spun clear of the line, perhaps two mansheights in diameter. The line
itself, freed of its irksome instability, recoiled from the ring in a smooth surge,
and then soared on toward the Crust. The ring turned in the Air, quivering, cutting
a diagonal path through the array of vortex lines.

A vortex ring.

Rings were believed to form perhaps once a generation, in extremes of spin weather.
Dura had never seen one before, and as far as she knew neither had her father, in a
long lifetime in the upflux.

She felt a prickle of deep unease. A vortex ring. Something extraordinary is

happening to the Star.

She remembered the odd, distant movement she had seen at the start of the storm,
the needles of blue light on the concave horizon. Perhaps that blue light was the
cause of all this. Making sure she wasn't in any immediate danger, she glanced
around the sky, seeking out the strange vision�

A scream. Rauc.

Dura spun in the Air, her legs thrashing at the Magfield. Rauc had gone from her
side, unnoticed. She felt a surge of anger at herself, her own carelessness, her
dreamy fascination with the vortex ring.

The scream had come from the path of the vortex ring, as it rose toward the Crust.
There was Rauc, high up in the thinning, rushing forest of vortex lines. She must
have seen the damage being wrought at the farm, and had taken it into her head to
return. To help. And now she was right in the path of the climbing vortex ring.
Rauc's eyes and her round, gaping mouth were like three splashes of dark paint on
her round face. The older woman was hanging in the Air, mesmerized by the ring's
oscillations, making no effort to flee.

Dura wrenched her legs and arms through the Air, surging toward the remote tableau.
"Get out of the way! Rauc, oh, get out of the way! It will kill you�"

But she could not overtake the ring. Rauc seemed to be waiting, almost patiently,
for the ring to come to her. The Air scraped in Dura's mouth and throat. She clawed
through the Air, her concern for patient, harmless Rauc merging with layers of
savage memory: her desolation at the loss of Esk and her father, her continual,
helpless ache at the thought of Farr, so remote from her.

A ring was a mechanism for a vortex line to shed instability, to lose excess energy
in a bid to regain lost equilibrium. But the ring itself was unstable. It quivered
in the Air as it climbed, seeming almost fragile, and it was visibly shrinking:
already it had lost perhaps half its original diameter and was reduced to no more
than a mansheight in width. And its path curved in the Air, as its spin wrenched at
the gas it passed through. For a moment Dura wondered wildly if the combined
effects of the shrinkage and the deviation of its trajectory might take the ring
away from Rauc. Perhaps if Rauc would just Wave a little way, away from the curve
of the path�
No. It was too late. Rauc was still alive, fully breathing, aware; but it was as if
she was already dead.

The ring struck Rauc in the midriff. She seemed to implode around the ribbon of
vorticity. Her smock was torn open and dragged forward, exposing her back; Dura saw
shards of bone protruding from broken flesh. One arm was twisted around and torn
away, leaving a grisly, twisted stump of ligament and bone. Rauc's head remained
intact, but it seemed to have been pulped; her face had been stretched,
grotesquely, the mouth ripping at its corners.

The vortex ring passed on through the wreckage of Rauc, shrinking rapidly.

Dura let herself drift to a stop in a clear volume of Air. She felt the tension
leave her muscles; she curled slowly into a ball, as if she were seeking sleep.
This shouldn't happen, she thought. It's not right. We don't deserve such a fate.
It's�unnatural.

And now there was another name to add to the litany of the caravans.

On the horizon, something moved. An object, slicing through the Air; it was like a
ray, with shining, golden wings which beat at the Air� but it was far larger than
any ray, large enough to be seen even though it was almost lost in the mists of the
horizon. Blue-white light stabbed from the belly of the great sky-ray into the
bruised purple mass of the Quantum Sea below.

More memories, legends from the mouths and staring eyecups of intense, lean old
men, returned to her. I know what that is. Could it he causing the Glitches, with
those beams?

I know what it is. It's a ship, from beyond the Star.

She let her head sink forward, against her knees.

Xeelee.

Chapter 14
"Xeelee."

Amidst the wreckage of ceiling-farm buildings, Hork cradled the head of his father
in his lap. He looked up at Muub, despair and rage shining from his bearded face.

Muub studied the broken body of Hork, Chair of Parz Committee, determined to forget
his own personal danger�exposed as he was to the mercurial anger of the younger
Hork�and to view this shattered man as just another patient.

As soon as word of the latest Glitch reached Parz, Hork, fearing for his father's
life, had summoned Muub. Now, less than a day later, here they were at the
experimental Crust farm.

The small medical staff maintained here had clearly been overwhelmed by the
disaster. They had greeted Muub on his arrival with a bizarre mixture of relief and
fear�eager to hand over responsibility for the injured Chair, and yet fearful of
the consequences if they were judged to be negligent. Well, the staff here had
clearly done their best, and Muub doubted that the attention Hork had received
could have been bettered even within his own Common Good Hospital. But the medics'
work had been to no avail, Muub saw immediately. The large, delicate skull of the
Committee Chair was clearly crushed.

A Guard, crossbow loaded, hovered over the body, watching Muub surreptitiously.
Hork lifted his face to Muub; Muub read bitterness, apprehension and determination
in Hork's round, tough features. He tried to put aside the interest shown by the
Guard in his movements. Hork was a grieving son, he told himself. "Sir," he said
slowly. "He's dead. I'm sorry. I�"

Hork's eyecups seemed to deepen. "I can see that, damn you." He glanced over his
father's crushed body, picking at the Chair's fine robes.

"The staff here were afraid to tell you," Muub said.

"Do they have reason to be?"

Muub tried to judge Hork's mood. He was honest enough to admit to himself that he
would have no compunction in delivering the hapless attendants here up to Hork's
wrath, if he thought it were necessary to save himself. But Hork, though clearly
shocked, seemed rational. And in his heart he wasn't a vindictive man. "No. They
did everything they could."

Hork ran a hand over his father's thin, yellow hair. "Make sure you tell them I
appreciate their work. See they understand they're under no threat for their part
in this� And see they get on with treating the rest of the injured here."

"Of course." There was plenty of work for the medics here. As the Air-chariot had
hurtled beneath the devastated hinterland, Muub had caught shocking, vivid glimpses
of smashed fields�of coolies and uprooted wheat-stems drifting alike in the placid
Air�of shattered, exploded buildings. Air-pigs had nosed among drifting corpses,
seeking food. He shuddered. "I may be forced to stay here myself, sir, after you've
departed. There is urgent work to be done, all around this area, finding and
treating the wounded before�"

"No." Hork still stroked his father's head, but his voice was brisk, businesslike.
"I intend to stay here one day, to ensure my father's affairs are in order. During
that time you may do as you please here. But then I will return to Parz, and you
must return with me." He raised his face to the sky and stared around at the Crust,
at the newly congealed vortex lines. "The devastation is not restricted just to
this farm, or even this part of the Crust. Muub, damage was done in a broad annulus
right around the Pole, in a great swathe cutting through much of Parz's best
hinterland. It's all to do with the Star's modes of vibration, I'm told." He shook
his head. "If it's any consolation there must have been similar bands of
destruction encompassing the Star at every latitude, all the way to the North Pole.
The Star rang like a Corestuff Bell, one cheerful idiot told me� Now I have to
ensure that the work of relief is coordinated as well as it can be�and to start to
consider the consequences of so much damage to Parz's bread-basket hinterland. And
I need you with me, Muub; you have thousands of patients throughout the hinterland,
not just the few dozen here. And I have another assignment in mind for you�"

"As you say."

Still Hork's eyes probed at the sky. "Xeelee," he said again.

His mind full of images of destruction, Muub tried to focus on what the Chair-elect
was saying� It seemed very important to Hork. And therefore, he thought wearily, it
was important to Muub.

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't understand."

"That's what they're saying."

"Who?"

"The commoners� the ordinary people, here in the ceiling-farm. The coolies and
their supervisors. Even some of the medical staff, who should be educated enough to
know better." Hork's face grimaced in a ghastly echo of a smile. "They all saw the
beams in the sky, the ship from beyond the Crust. The reality of these visions
seems unquestionable, Muub. And the commoners have only one explanation� that the
Xeelee have returned to haunt us." He looked down at the devastated head of his
father. "To destroy us, apparently."

Muub, disturbed, reached out and grasped Hork's fat-laden shoulder; he felt the
tension in Hork's massive muscles. "Sir, this is nonsense. The commoners know
nothing. You must not�"

"Rubbish, Muub." Again that wild look; but Muub, daring, kept his hand in place.
"Everyone knows all about the Xeelee, it seems, even after all this time. So much
for generations of suppression since the Reformation, eh? These superstitions are
like weeds in my father's fields, I'm starting to think. It's the same with the
damn Wheel cult�no matter how many of the bastards you Break, they keep coming back
for more. Quite ineradicable. Even within the Court itself, Muub! Can you believe
that?"

Muub felt himself stiffen. "Sir, a great disaster has befallen us. We must deal
with the consequences of the Glitch. We cannot pay attention to the gossiping of
ignorant folk. And�"

"Don't tell me my duties, Muub," Hork said. "Of course I have to deal with the
impact of this Glitch. But I cannot ignore what has been seen, Physician." Hork's
round face was stern, determined. "A huge ship, penetrating the Crust from the
spaces beyond the Star. And appearing to fire some kind of weapon, a spear made of
light, into the Quantum Sea. Muub, what if the ship is causing the Glitches? What
then? Where would my duty lie?"

Muub pulled away from Hork. Despite his exhaustion and shock, he felt a thrill of
awe run through him, deep and primitive. Hork was planning to challenge the Xeelee
themselves.

"Now that my father's gone the Court will be a nest of intrigues. In the chaos of
this disaster, perhaps there'll even be an assassination attempt� and I don't have
time to deal with any of it. We have to find a way to combat the threat of the
Xeelee. We need knowledge, Muub; we need to understand the enemy before we can
fight them."

Muub frowned. "But so many generations after the Reformation our knowledge of the
Xeelee mythos has been relegated to fragments of legend. I could consult scholars
in the University, perhaps�"

Hork shook his heavy head. "All the books were fed into Harbor hoppers generations
ago� And the heads of those 'scholars' are as empty as they are shaved of hair."

Muub forced himself not to run a self-conscious hand over his own bare scalp.

"Muub, we have to think wider. Beyond the City, even. What about those weird
upfluxers you told me about? The old man and his companions� curiosities from the
wild. The upfluxers are Xeelee cultists, aren't they? Maybe they could tell us
something; maybe they have preserved the knowledge we have foolishly destroyed."

"Perhaps," Muub said dutifully.

"Bring them to Parz, Muub." Hork glanced down at his father. "But first," he said
quietly, "you must attend to your patients."

"Yes. I� excuse me, sir."

Gathering his strength, Muub Waved away from the grisly little tableau and returned
to his work.

* * *

Dura glided to a halt against the soft resistance of the Magfield. She let her
limbs rest, loose, against the field; they ached after so many days' Waving from
the ruined ceiling-farm.

She stared around at the empty, yellow-gold sky. The Quantum Sea was a concave
bruise far below her, and the new vortex lines arced around her, clean and
undisturbed. It was as if the recent Glitch had never happened; the Star, having
expelled its excess energy and angular momentum, had restored itself with
astonishing speed.

It was a shame, Dura thought, that humans couldn't do the same.

She sniffed the Air, trying to judge the spacing of the vortex lines, the depth of
redness of the distant South Pole. This must be about the right latitude; surely
the sky had looked much like this at the site of the Human Beings' encampment. She
dug her hand into the sack tied to the rope at her waist. The sack, massive and
awkwardly full of bread when she had started this trek, was now depressingly easy
to carry. She pulled out a small fistful of the sweet, belly-filling bread and
began to chew. She could surely be no more than a centimeter or so from the Human
Beings' site; she ought to be able to see them by now. Unless they'd moved on, of
course�or, she thought, her heart heavy, unless they'd been destroyed by the
Glitch. But even so she'd surely find their artifacts, scattered here�or their
bodies. And�

"Dura! Dura!"

The voice came from somewhere above her, toward the Crust-forest. Dura flipped back
in the Air and peered upward. It was difficult to pick out movement against the
misty, complex texture of the forest, but�there! A man, young, slim, naked, Waving
alone�no, she saw, something was accompanying him: a slim, small form which buzzed
around his legs as he Waved down toward her. She squinted. An Air-piglet? No, she
quickly realized; it was a child, a human infant.

She surged through the Air, up toward the forest; she was still aware of the
fatigue in her legs, but that felt distant, unimportant now.

The two adults came to a halt in the Air, perhaps a mansheight apart; the infant,
no more than a few months old, clung to the man's legs while the adults studied
each other with an odd wariness. The man�no more than a boy himself, really�smiled
cautiously. There seemed to be no fat in his face at all, and there were streaks of
premature yellow in his hair; when he smiled his eyecups seemed huge, his teeth
prominent. Under the superficial changes, wrought by hunger and fatigue, this face
was as familiar as her own body, a face she had known for half her life. After the
thousands of strangers to whom she'd been exposed in Parz, and later at the
ceiling-farm, Dura found herself staring at this face as if rediscovering her own
identity. It felt as if she'd never been away from the Human Beings, and she wanted
to drink in this familiarity.

"Dura? We never thought we'd see you again."

It was Mur, husband of Dia. And this must be Jai, the boy whom Dura had helped
deliver, just after the Glitch which killed her father.

She moved toward Mur and folded him in her arms. The bones in Mur's back were sharp
under her fingers, and his skin was filthy, slick with fragments of Crust-tree
leaves. The baby at his leg mewled, and she reached down an absent hand to stroke
his head.

"We thought you must be dead. Lost. It's been so long."

"No." Dura forced herself to smile. "I'll tell you all about it. Farr and Adda are
both well, though far from here." She studied Mur more carefully now, trying to
sort out the flood of her initial impressions. The signs of hunger, of poor living,
were obvious. She ran her hand over the little boy's scalp. Through the sparsely
haired flesh she could feel the bones of the skull, the plates not yet locked
together. The child was pawing at her bag now, his tiny fingers poking at the lumps
of food contained there. Mur made to pull the infant away, but Dura pulled out a
handful of bread, crumbled it, and presented it to the child. Jai grasped the bread
fragments with both hands and shoved them into his mouth; his jaw scraped across
his open hands, raking in bread, his eyes unseeing as he fed.

"What's that?"

"Bread. Food� I'll explain it all. Mur, what's happening here?"

"We are�fewer." His gaze shifted from her face, and he glanced down at his feeding
son, as if in search of distraction. "The last Glitch�"

"The others?"

The child had finished the bread already. He reached up his hands wordlessly to
Dura, imploring more; she could see the fragment he'd devoured as a distinct bulge,
high in his empty stomach.

Mur pulled the child away from Dura, soothing him. "Come on," he said. "I'll take
you to them."

* * *

The Human Beings had established a crude camp in the fringes of the Crust-forest
itself. The Air here was thin, unsatisfying in Dura's lungs, and the Quantum Sea
curved away from her, far below. Ropes had been slung between branches of the
trees, and garments, half-finished tools and scraps of food were suspended from the
ropes. Dura touched one of the bits of food gingerly. It was Air-pig flesh, so old
it was tough and leathery between her fingertips. The tree-branches for some
distance around had been stripped of leaves and bark, revealing how the people had
been feeding.

There were only twenty Human Beings left�fifteen adults and five children.

They crowded around Dura, reaching to touch and embrace her, some of them weeping.
The familiar faces surrounded her, peering through masks of hunger and dirt. Her
heart went out to these people�her people�and yet she felt detached from them,
distant; she let them touch her, and she embraced in return, but a part of her
wanted to recoil from their childlike, helpless pressing. She felt stiff,
civilized. The very nakedness of these upfluxers was startling. She felt massive,
sleek and bulky, too, compared to their starved scrawniness.
Her experiences, her exposure to Parz City, had changed her, she realized; perhaps
she would never again be content to settle into the small, hard, limited life of a
Human Being.

She gave Mur her bag of bread and told him to distribute it as he saw fit. As he
moved among the Human Beings she saw how sharp eyes followed each move; the aura of
hunger which hovered over the people, focusing on the bag of bread, was like a
living thing.

She found Philas, the widow of Esk. Dura and Philas moved away from the heart of
the crude encampment, out of earshot of the rest of the Human Beings. Oddly, Philas
seemed more beautiful now; it was as if privation was allowing the bony symmetry,
the underlying dignity of her features, to emerge. Dura could see no bitterness, no
trace of the rivalry which had once silently divided them.

"You've suffered greatly."

Philas shrugged. "We couldn't rebuild the Net, after you left. We survived; we
hunted again in the forest and trapped some pigs. But then the second Glitch came."

The survivors had abandoned the open Air in favor of the fringe of the forest. It
wasn't particularly logical, but Dura thought she understood; the need for some
form of solid base, to have a feeling of protective walls around them, would
dominate logic. She thought of the folk of Parz in their compressed wooden boxes,
their thin walls affording illusory protection from the wilds of the Mantle not
half a centimeter from where they lay. Perhaps people all shared the same basic
instincts, no matter what their origins�and perhaps those instincts had traveled
with humanity from whatever distant Star had birthed the Ur-humans.

It was impossible to find Air-pigs now, no matter how widely the Human Beings
hunted. The latest Glitch, savage as it was, had scattered the herds of pigs as
well as devastating the works of humanity. The people were trying to survive on
leaves, and were even experimenting with meals of spin-spider flesh.

Of course, it was impossible to subsist on leaves. Without decent food, the Human
Beings would surely die. (And so will I, now that my bread is gone, she thought
with a surprising stab of selfishness.)

Dura turned in on herself, trying to understand her own motives for returning to
her people. After Rauc's death, and after she'd helped to cope with the worst of
the destruction at Qos Frenk's farm, she learned that most of the coolies were to
be released from their indentures. Qos, roots of yellow showing in his pink hair,
his small hands wringing each other, had explained that he intended to save what he
could of this year's harvest, and then start the slow, painful work of rebuilding
his holding. It would take many years before the farm was functioning again, and in
the meantime it would not generate any income for Frenk; so he couldn't employ them
any longer.

The coolies had seemed to understand. Frenk provided rides back to Parz City for
those who wanted it; the rest, dully, had dispersed to seek work in the neighboring
ceiling-farms.

Dura slowly realized that she had lost the indenture which should have paid for
Adda's Hospital treatment. Overwhelmed and shocked, she resolved to return to her
people, the Human Beings. Later, perhaps, when things had settled down, she would
return to Parz and address the problems of Farr, of Adda's debts.

Now, studying Philas's dull, silent face, she wondered what she'd been expecting to
find, here among the Human Beings. Perhaps a hidden, childlike part of her had
hoped to find everything restored to what it had been when she'd been a small girl�
when Logue was strong, protecting her, and the world was�by comparison�a stable and
safe place.

Of course, that was an illusion. There was nowhere for her to hide, no one who
could look after her.

She raised her hands to her face. In fact, she thought with a stab of shameful
selfishness, by returning here she'd only placed herself in danger of starvation,
and had taken on responsibility for the Human Beings once more.

If only I'd gone straight back to Parz. I could have found Farr, and found a way to
live. Perhaps I could have forgotten that the Human Beings ever lived�

She straightened up. Philas was waiting for her, her face grave and beautiful.
"Philas, we can't stay here," Dura said. "We can't live like this. It's not
viable."

Philas nodded gravely. "But we have no choice."

Dura sighed. "We do. I've told you about Parz City� Philas, we must go there. It's
an immense distance, and I don't know how we'll manage the journey. But there is
food there. It's our only hope."

"What will we do, in Parz City? How will we get food?"

Dura felt like laughing. We'll beg, she thought. We'll be hungry freaks; if we're
lucky they will feed us rather than Wheel-Break us. And�

"Dura!"

Mur came crashing through the forest toward them; his eyes were wide with shock.

Dura felt her hands slip to the knife tucked into the rope at her waist. "What is
it? What's wrong?"

"There's something outside the trees� A box of wood. Drawn by Air-pigs! Just as
you've described it, Philas�"

Dura turned, peering out through the thin foliage. There, easily visible beyond the
stripped twigs of the forest fringe, was an Air-car, huge and sleek. It was
calling, in a thin, amplified voice.

"�Dura� upfluxer Dura� If you can hear me, show yourself. Dura�"

* * *

"Tell me about the Xeelee," said Hork V.

The Palace anteroom was a hollow sphere about five mansheights across, anchored
loosely in the Garden. Fine ropes had been threaded across the interior, and light,
comfortable net cocoons were suspended here and there. Smaller nets contained
drinks and sweetmeats.

Adda, Muub and Hork occupied three of the cocoons. The three of them faced each
other close to the center of the room. Adda felt as if he were trapped in the web
of a Crust-spider.

Adda found Hork's demanding tone, his stare over that bush of ludicrous face-hair,
quite offensive. This was the new Chair of the Parz Committee. So what? Such titles
didn't mean a damn thing to Adda, and the day they did would be a sorry one, he
reckoned.

Let them wait. Adda allowed his gaze to slide around the opulence of this chamber.

The painted walls were the ultimate folly, of course. They were designed to give an
illusion of the open Air. He studied the drawn-in vortex lines, the purple paint
that represented the Quantum Sea. How absurd, thought Adda, for these City people
to close themselves away from the world in their boxes of wood and Corestuff, and
then go to so much trouble to reproduce what could be found outside.

The centerpiece of the anteroom was a tame vortex ring. And, Adda conceded, it was
impressive. It was contained in nested globes of clearwood which revolved
continually about three independent axs, maintaining the spin of the Air trapped
within. Every child knew that if an unstable vortex line threw off a ring, the
torus of voracity would rapidly lose its energy and decay away; but this trapped
ring was fed with energy by the artful spinning of the globes, and so remained
stable.

Of course, it wasn't as impressive as the million-mansheight-long vortex lines

which spanned the Mantle and arced over the Garden, and which were available for
viewing without charge or effort�

"I'm glad you're finding the room so interesting." Hork's tone contained patience,
but with an undercurrent of threat.

"I wasn't aware you were in a hurry. After all, you've lasted ten generations
without talking to the Human Beings; what's the rush now?"

"No games," Hork growled. "Come on, upfluxer. You know why I've asked you here. I
need your help."

Muub interposed smoothly, "You must make allowances for this old rascal, sir. He
rejoices in being difficult� a privilege of age, perhaps."

Adda turned to glare at Muub, but the doctor would not meet his eye.

"I ask you again," Hork said quietly. "Tell me of the Xeelee."

"Not until you tell me that my friends will be returned from their exile."

"From their indentures," Muub said impatiently. "Damn it, Adda, I've already
assured you that they've been sent for."

Adda watched Hork, his mouth set firm.

Hork nodded, the motion an impatient spasm which caused ripples to flow over the
front of his chest. "Their debts are dissolved. Now give me my answer."

"I'll tell you all you need to know in five words."

Hork tilted his head back, his nostrils glowing.

Adda said slowly, "You�can�not�fight�Xeelee."

Hork growled.

"That's your intention, isn't it?" Adda asked evenly. "You want to find a way to
beat off Xeelee as if they were rampaging Air-boars; you want to find a way to stop
them smashing up your beautiful Palace�"

"They are killing the people I am responsible for."

Adda leaned forward in his sling. "City man, they don't even know we're here.
Nothing you could do would even raise you to their attention."

Muub was shaking his head. "How can you respect such�such primal monsters? Explain
that, Adda."

"The Xeelee have their own goals," said Adda. "Goals which we do not share, and
cannot even comprehend�"

The Xeelee�moving behind mists of legend�were immense. They were to the Ur-humans
as Ur-humans were to Human Beings, perhaps. They were like gods�and yet lower than
gods.

Perhaps gods could have been tolerated, by the Ur-human soul. Not the Xeelee. The
Xeelee had been rivals.

Hork twisted in his sling, angry and impatient. "So the Ur-humans, unable to endure
the aloof grandeur of these Xeelee, challenged them�"

"Yes. There were great wars."

Billions had died. The destruction of the Xeelee had become a racial goal for the
Ur-humans.

"�But not for everyone," Adda said. "As the venom of the assaults grew, so did Ur-
human understanding of the Xeelee's great Projects. For instance the Ring was
discovered�"

"The Ring?" Hork growled.

"Bolder's Ring," Adda said. "A huge construct which one day will form a gateway
between universes�"

"What is this old fool babbling about, Physician? What are these universes of which
he speaks? Are they in other parts of the Star?"

Muub spread his long, fine hands and smiled. "I'm as mystified as you are, sir.
Perhaps the universes reside in other Stars. If such exist."

Adda grunted. "If I knew all the answers I'd have spent my life doing a lot more
than carve spears and hunt pigs," he said sourly. "Look, Hork, I will tell you what
I know; I'm telling you what my father told me. But if you ask stupid questions you
are only going to get stupid answers."

"Get on with it," Muub murmured.

"Even if they could have been successful," Adda said, "wise Ur-men came to see that
to destroy the Xeelee might be as unwise as for a child to destroy its father. The
Xeelee are working on our behalf, waging immense, invisible battles in order to
save us from unknown danger. We cannot understand their ways; we are as dust in the
Air to them. But they are our best hope."

Hork glared at him, raking his fat fingers through his beard. "What evidence is
there for any of this? It's all legend and hearsay�"
"That's true," Muub said, "but we couldn't expect any more from such a source,
sir�"

Hork shoved himself out of his sling, his bulk quivering in the Air like a sac of
liquid. "You're too damn patient, Physician. Legend and hearsay. The ramblings of a
senile old fool." He Waved to the captive vortex ring and slammed his fist into the
elegant spheres encasing it. The outermost sphere splintered in a star around his
fist, and the vortex ring broke up into a chain of smaller rings which rapidly
diminished in size, swooping around each other. "Am I supposed to gamble the future
of the City, of my people, on such gibberish? And what about us, upfluxer? Forget
these mythical men on other worlds. Why are the Xeelee interested in us?� and what
am I to do about it?"

Past Hork's wide, angry face, Adda watched the captive vortex ring struggling to
re-form.

Chapter 15
Bzya invited Farr to visit him at his home, deep in the Downside belly of the City.

The Harbor workers were expected to sleep inside the Harbor itself, in the huge,
stinking dormitories. The authorities preferred to have their staff where they
could call them out quickly in the event of some disaster�and where they had an
outside chance of keeping them fit for work. To get access to the rest of the City,
outside the Harbor walls, Bzya and Farr needed to arrange not only coincident off-
shifts but also coincident out-passes, and they had to wait some weeks before
Hosch�grudgingly and reluctantly�allowed the arrangement.

The Harbor, a huge spherical construction embedded in the base of the City, was
enclosed by its own Skin and had its own skeleton of Corestuff, strengthened to
withstand the forces exerted by the Bell winches. The Harbor was well designed for
its function, Farr had come to realize, but the interior was damned claustrophobic,
even by Parz standards. So he felt a mild relief as he emerged from the Harbor's
huge, daunting gates and entered the maze of Parz streets once more.

The streets�narrow, branching, indecipherably complex�twisted away in all

directions. Farr looked around, feeling lost already; he knew he'd have little hope
of finding his way through this three-dimensional maze.

Bzya rubbed his hands, grinned, and Waved off down one of the streets. He moved
rapidly despite his huge, scarred bulk. Farr studied the street. It looked the same
to him as a dozen others. Why that one? How had Bzya recognized it? And�

And Bzya was almost out of sight already, around the street's first bend.

Farr kicked away from the outer Harbor wall and plunged after Bzya.

The area around the Harbor was one of the shabbiest in the City. The streets were
cramped, old and twisting. The noise of the dynamo sheds, which were just above
this area, was a constant, dull throb. The dwelling-places were dark mouths, most
of them with doors or pieces of wall missing; as he hurried after Bzya, Farr was
aware of curious, hungry eyecups peering out at him. Here and there people Waved
unevenly past�men and women, some of them Harbor workers, and many of them in the
strange state called "drunkenness." Nobody spoke, to him or anybody else. Farr
shivered, feeling clumsy and conspicuous; this was like being lost in a Crust-
forest.

After a short time's brisk Waving, Bzya began to slow. They must be nearly at his
home. Farr looked around curiously. They were still in the deepest Downside, almost
on top of the Harbor, and the buildings here had the shrunken meanness of the areas
closest to the Harbor itself. But in this area there was a difference, Farr saw
slowly. The walls and doors were patched, but mostly intact. And there were no
"drunks." It was astonishing to him how in such a short distance the character of
Parz could change so completely.

Bzya grinned and pushed open a doorway�a doorway among thousands in these twisting
corridors. Once again Farr wondered how Bzya knew how to find his way around with
such unerring accuracy.

He climbed after Bzya through the doorway. The interior of the home was a single
room�a rough sphere, dimly illuminated by wood-lamps fixed seemingly at random to
the walls. He felt his cup-retinas stretch, adjusting to the low level of light.

A globe-bowl of tiny leaves was thrust into his chest.

He stumbled back in the Air. There was a wide, grinning face apparently suspended
over the bowl�startlingly like Bzya's, but half-bald, nose flattened and misshapen,
the nostrils dulled. "You're the upfluxer. Bzya's told me about you. Have a petal."

Bzya pushed past Farr and into the little home. "Let the poor lad in first, woman,"
he grumbled good-naturedly.

"All right, all right."

The woman withdrew, clutching her petal-globe and still grinning. Bzya wrapped a
huge hand around Farr's forearm and dragged him into the room, away from the door,
then closed the door behind them.

The three of them hovered in a rough circle. The woman dropped the petal-globe in
the Air and thrust out a hand. "I'm Jool. Bzya's my husband. You are welcome here."

Farr took her hand. It was almost the size of Bzya's, and as strong. "Bzya told me
about you, too."

Bzya kissed Jool. Then, sighing and stretching, he drifted away to the dim rear of
the little home, leaving Farr with his wife.

Jool's body was square, a compact�if misshapen�mass of muscles. She wore what
looked like the all-purpose coverall of the Harbor, much patched. One side of her
body was quite damaged�her hair was missing down one side of her scalp in wide
swathes, and her arm on that side was twisted, atrophied. Her leg was missing,
below the knee.

He was staring at the stump of the leg, the tied-off trouser leg below the knee.
Suddenly unbearably self-conscious, he lifted his eyes to Jool's face.

She clapped him on the shoulder. "Not much point looking for that leg; you'll never
find it." She smiled kindly. "Here. Have a petal. I meant it."

He dug his hand into the globe, pulled out a fistful of the little leaves, and
jammed them into his mouth. They were insubstantial, like all leaf-matter, and
strongly flavored�so strong that his head seemed to fill up with their sweet aroma.
He coughed, spluttering leaf fragments all over his hostess.

Jool tilted back her head and laughed. "Your upfluxer friend hasn't got very
sophisticated tastes, Bzya."

Bzya had gone to work in one corner of the cramped little room, beneath two
crumpled sleeping-cocoons; his arms were immersed in a large globe-barrel full of
fragments�chips of some substance�which crunched and ground against each other as
he closed his fists around pieces of cloth. "Neither have we, Jool, so stop teasing
the boy."

Farr picked up a petal. "Is it a leaf?"

"Yes." Jool popped one in her mouth and chewed noisily. "Yes, and no. It's from a
flower� a small, ornamental plant. They've been bred, here in Parz. You don't get
them in the wild, do you?"

"They grow in the Palace, don't they? In their Garden. Is that where you work?" He
studied her. From the way Cris had described the Committee Palace to him, Jool
seemed a little rough to be acceptable there.

"No, not the Palace. There are other parts of the Skin, a little further Downside,
where flowers, and bonsai trees, are cultivated. But not really for show, like in
the Garden."

"Why, then?"

She crunched on another leaf. "For food. And not for humans. For pigs. I wait on
Air-pigs, young Farr." Her eyes were bright and amused.

Farr was puzzled. "But these leaves�petals�can't be very nutritious."

"They don't make the pigs as strong as they could be, no," she said. "But they have
other advantages."

"Oh, stop teasing the lad," Bzya called again. "You know, she used to work in the
Harbor."

"We met there. I was his supervisor, before that cretin Hosch was promoted. At the
expense of this huge dolt Bzya, I'm afraid. Farr, do you want some beercake?"

"No. Yes. I mean, no thank you. I don't think I'd better."

"Oh, try a little." Jool turned to a cupboard set in the wall and opened its door.
The door was ill-fitting, but the food store within was well stocked and clean.
"I'll bet you've never tried it. Well, see what it's like. What the hell. We won't
let you get drunk, don't worry." She withdrew a slab of thick, sticky-looking cake
wrapped in thin cloth; she broke off a handful and passed it to Farr.

Bzya called, "Cake is fine as long as you chew it slowly, and know when to stop."

Farr bit into the cake cautiously. After the pungency of the petals it tasted sour,
thick, almost indigestible. He chewed it carefully�the taste didn't improve�and
swallowed.

Nothing happened.

Jool hung in the Air before him, huge arms folded. "Just wait," she said.

"Funny thing," Bzya called, still working at his globe of crunching chips.
"Beercake is an invention of the deep Downside. I guess we evolved it to stave off
boredom, lack of variety, lack of stimulation. The poor man's flower garden, eh,
Jool?"

"But now it's a delicacy," Jool said. "They take it in the Palace, from globes of
clearwood. Can you believe it?"

Warmth exploded in the pit of Farr's stomach. It spread out like an opening hand,
suffusing his torso and racing along his limbs like currents induced by some new
Magfield; his fingers and toes tingled, and he felt his pores ache deliciously as
they opened.

"Wow," he said.

"Well put." Jool reached out and took the beercake from his numb fingers. "I think
that's enough for now." She wrapped the cake in a fragment of cloth and stowed it
away in its cupboard.

Farr, still tingling, drifted across the room to join Bzya. The big Fisherman's
arms were still buried in the barrel of chips, and his broad hands were working at
a garment�an outsize tunic�inside the chips, rubbing surfaces together and scraping
the cloth through the chips. Bzya hauled the tunic out of the globe and added it to
a rough sphere of clothes, wadded together, which orbited close to his wide back.
Bzya grinned at Farr, rubbed his hands, and plunged a pair of trousers into the
chips. "Jool has been looking forward to meeting you."

"What happened to her?"

Bzya shrugged, his arms extended before him. "A Bell accident, deep in the
underMantle. It was so fast, she can't even reconstruct it. Anyway, she left half
herself down there. After that, of course, she was unemployable. So the Harbor
said." He smiled with unreasonable tolerance, Farr thought. "But she still had her
indenture to fulfill. So she came out of the Harbor with one leg, a dodgy husband,
and a debt."

"But she works now."

"Yes."

He fell into silence, and Farr watched him work the clothes curiously.

Bzya became aware of his stare. "What's the matter?� Oh. You don't know what I'm
doing, do you?"

Farr hesitated. "To be honest, Bzya, I get tired of asking what's going on all the
time."

"Well, I can sympathize with that." Bzya carried on rubbing the grit through his
clothes, impassive.

After a few heartbeats of silence Farr gave in. "Oh, all right. What are you doing,
Bzya?"

"Washing," Bzya said. "Keeping my clothes clean. I don't suppose you do much of
that, in the upflux�"

Farr was irritated. "We keep ourselves clean, even in the upflux. We're not
animals, you know. We have scrapers�"

Bzya patted the side of his barrel of chips. "This is a better idea. You work your
clothes through this mass of chips�bone fragments, bits of wood, and so on. You
work the stuff with your hands, you see�like this�get it into the cloth� The chips
are crushed, smaller and smaller, and work into the cloth, pushing out the dirt.
Much less crude than a scraper." He hauled a shirt out of the barrel and showed it
to Farr. "It's time-consuming, though. And a bit boring." He eyed Farr
speculatively. "Look, Farr, while you're in the City you ought to sample the
richness of its life to the full. Why don't you have a go?"

He moved eagerly away from the barrel, rubbing a layer of bone-dust from his arms.

Farr, well aware he was being teased again, took another shirt�this one stiff with
grime�and shoved it into the barrel. As he'd seen Bzya do, he kneaded the cloth
between his fingers. The chips crackled against each other and squirmed around his
fingers like live things. When he drew the shirt out again the dust coated his
hands, so that his fingers felt strange against each other, as if gloved. But the
shirt hardly seemed any cleaner.

"It does need practice," Bzya said drily.

Farr plunged the garment back into the barrel and pressed harder.

Jool had been fixing food; now she slapped Bzya on the shoulder. "Every time
someone comes to see us he gets them washing his smalls," she said.

Bzya tilted back his battered face and bellowed laughter.

Jool led Farr to the center of the little room. A five-spoked Wheel of wood hovered
here, with covered bowls jammed into the crevices between its spokes. Hanging in
the Air the three of them gathered close around the Wheel-table, enclosing it in a
rough sphere of faces and limbs, the light of the wood-lamps playing on their skin.
Now Jool lifted the covers from the bowls and let them drift off into the Air.
"Belly of Air-piglet, spiced with petals. Almost as good as Bzya can make it. Eggs
of Crust-ray� ever tried this, Farr? Stuffed leaves. More beercake�"

Farr, with Bzya prompting, dug his hands into the bowls and crammed the spicy,
flavorsome food into his mouth. As they ate, the conversation dried up, with both
Bzya and Jool too intent on feeding. He couldn't help comparing the little home
with the Mixxaxes', in the upper Midside. There was only one room, in contrast to
the Mixxaxes' five. A waste chute�scrupulously clean�pierced another wall of the
room they ate in. And Jool and Bzya were far less tidy than the Mixxaxes. The clump
of cleaned clothes had been simply abandoned by Bzya, and now it drifted in the
Air, sleeves slowly uncoiling like limp spin-spider legs. But the place was clean.
And he spotted a bundle of scrolls, loosely tied together and jammed into one
corner. The Wheel symbol was everywhere�carved into the walls, the shape of the
table from which they ate, sculpted into the back of the door. There was a much
greater feeling of age, of poor construction and shabbiness, than in the Midside�
But there was more character here, he decided slowly.

He looked at the wide, battered, intelligent faces of Bzya and Jool as they worked
at their food. The light of the lamps seemed to diffuse around them, so that their
faces were evenly illuminated (the apparently random placing of the lamps was
actually anything but, he realized). There was a quiet, unpretentious intelligence
here, he thought.

He briefly imagined living with these people. What if he'd grown up here, deep
inside Parz, in this strange, old, cramped part of the City?

It wouldn't have been so bad, he decided. His mood swung into a feeling of
pigletish devotion to these two decent people.

Surreptitiously he shook his head, wondering if the beercake was affecting his
judgment.
He became aware of Jool and Bzya watching his face curiously.

He blurted, "Do you have children?"

Jool smiled over a fistful of food. "Yes. One, a girl. Shar. We don't see much of
her. She works out of the City."

"Don't you miss her?"

"Of course," Bzya said simply. "Which is why I haven't mentioned her before, Farr.
What can't be helped shouldn't be brooded on."

"Why not bring her back?"

"It would be up to her," Bzya said gently. "I doubt if she'd want to come. But
she's too far away. She's a ceiling-farm coolie. Like your sister, from what you
say."

Farr felt vaguely excited. "I wonder if they'll meet."

Jool laughed. "The hinterland may seem a small place to an upfluxer, Farr, but it
contains hundreds of ceiling-farms. Shar's serving out her indenture. It's hard for
her to get home until that's through. Then, maybe, she'll get a more senior job on
the farm. She's working for a decent owner. Equitable."

"I don't understand."

Jool frowned. "What? How we can live apart, like this?" She shrugged. "I'd rather
have her away from us and safe, than here but in the Harbor. It's just the way
things are for us�"

"Farr has family," Bzya said.

Jool nodded. "A sister. The coolie. Yes? And there's another with you from the
upflux, an old man�"

"Adda."

"And you're separated from them both. Just like us, with Shar."

Farr nodded. "But Dura's being brought back from her ceiling-farm. Deni Maxx has
gone to get her."

"Who?"

"A doctor. From the Hospital of the Common Good� And Adda has been taken to see the
Chair of the City. It's all to do with sorting out the Glitches�"

"Hm," Bzya said. "Perhaps. Farr, I don't believe everything I hear from the Upside,
and I'd suggest you grow a little skepticism too. Still, I hope you see your sister
soon."

Jool was working toward the bottom of the bowl of piglet meat. "So what do you make
of our part of the City?"

Farr finished his mouthful. "It's different. It's�" He hesitated.

"Dark, dirty, threatening. Right?"

Farr shook his head. "I was going to say cramped. Even more cramped than everywhere
else."

"Well, this is the heart of the City," Jool said. "I'm not sentimental about it,
but that's the truth� It's the oldest part of Parz. The first to be built, around
the head of the Harbor, when the Spine was first driven into the underMantle."

Farr imagined those ancient days, the bravery of the men and women determined to
extract the Corestuff they needed to build their City, and then constructing that
immense structure with their bare hands and tools little more advanced, he guessed,
than the average Human Being's today.

Jool smiled. "I know what you're thinking, boy from the upflux. Why would anyone
build a little box like this around themselves? Why shut out the Air?"

"Because," Bzya said, "they were trying to rebuild what they thought they'd lost,
when the Colonists withdrew into the Core." He looked thoughtful. "So Parz is a
representation in wood and Corestuff of an ancient dream�"

"You're both very intelligent," Farr found himself saying.

Husband and wife together tilted back their heads and opened their throats with
laughter. The pair of them made a ludicrous, outsized, merry sight in the room's
cramped Air.

Jool wiped her eyecups. "You say what you think, don't you?"

Bzya patted her arm. "We aren't fair to laugh, Jool. After all, we know plenty of
people�even in the lower Midside, let alone the Upside�who think Downsiders are all
subhuman."

"And," Farr said, "with Human Beings�upfluxers�worse than that."

"But it's rubbish," Bzya said fervently. He grabbed a ray egg from the bowl and
waggled it before Farr's face. "Humans are more or less equal, as far as I can see,
no matter where they come from. And I'll go further." He bit into the soft egg and
spoke around his chewing. "I believe humans throughout this Star are intelligent�I
mean, more so than the stock on other human worlds; perhaps more intelligent even
than the average Ur-human."

Jool shook her head. "Listen to him, the ruler of a hundred Stars."

"But there's logic to what I say. Think about it," Bzya went on. "We're descended
from a selected stock�of engineers, placed in the Star to modify it; to build a
civilization in the Mantle. The Ur-humans wouldn't include fools in that stock, any
more than they would have made us too weak, or too ill-adapted."

"The analogous anatomists have worked out much of what we know about the Ur-humans"
project from our ill-adaptation," Jool said, her wide face lively and interested.
"From our inappropriate form, based on the Ur-human prototype. And�"

Their conversation, illuminating and informed, washed around Farr; he listened,

mellow and relaxed, chewing surreptitiously on a little more beercake.

Jool turned to Farr. "Of course, we weren't so clever as to avoid setting up a

rigid, stratified society to control each other with."

"Here in Parz, anyway," Farr said.

"Here in Parz," she conceded. "You Human Beings are evidently much too smart to put
up with it all."

"We were," Farr said mildly. "That's why we left."

"And now you've come back," Bzya said. "To the lowest strata, at the bottom of the
City� Upside, Downside, bottom, top; all those up-and-down concepts are relics of
Ur-human thinking�did you know that?� here in the Downside we're regarded as less
intelligent, less aware, than the rest. In the past people here have reacted to
that." His large, battered, thoughtful face looked sad. "Badly. If you treat people
as less than human, often they behave like it. A couple of generations ago this
part of the Downside was a slum. A jungle."

"Parts of it still are," Jool said.

"But we've pulled ourselves out of it." Bzya smiled. "Self-help. Education. Oral
histories, numeracy, literacy where we've the materials." He bit into a slice of
beercake. "The Committee does damn all for this part of the City. The Harbor does
less, even though most of us are Harbor employees. But we can help ourselves."

Farr listened to all this with a certain wonder. These people were like exiles in
their own City, he thought. Like Human Beings, lost in this forest of wood and
Corestuff. He told them of lessons and learning among the Human Beings�histories of
the tribe and of the greater mankind beyond the Star, told by elders to little
huddles of children suspended between the vortex lines. Bzya and Jool listened
thoughtfully.

When the food was finished, they rested for a while. Then Bzya and Jool moved a
little closer to each other, apparently unconsciously. Their huge heads dipped, so
that their brows were almost touching. They reached forward and placed wide, strong
fingers on the rim of the Wheel. Quietly they began to speak�in unison, a slow,
solemn litany of names, none of them familiar to Farr. He watched them in silence.

When they finished, after perhaps a hundred names, Bzya opened his eyecups wide and
smiled at Farr. "A little oral history in action, my friend."

Jool's face had resumed the sly, playful expression of earlier. She reached across
the Wheel-table and touched Farr's sleeve. "Have you figured out what my job is
yet?"

"Oh, stop teasing the boy," Bzya said loudly. "I'll tell you. She gathers petals
from the Upside gardens, and delivers them to the pig-farms�the small in-City ones
scattered around Parz, where the pigs for the Air-cars that run within the City are
kept."

"Think about it," Jool said. "The streets of the City are hot and cramped.
Enclosed. All those cars. All those pigs�"

"The petals are ground up and added to the pigs' feed," Bzya said.

Farr frowned. "Why?"

"To make them easier to live with." Solemnly, Jool bent forward, tilted her stump
of leg, grabbed her wide buttocks through her coverall and separated them, and
farted explosively.

Bzya laughed.

Farr looked from one to the other, uncertainly.

Then the smell hit him. Her fart was petal-perfumed.

Bzya shook his head, sighing. "Oh, don't pay her any attention; it will only
encourage her. More beercake?"

Chapter 16
The driver of the car from Parz City was Deni Maxx, the junior doctor who had
treated Adda. Dura wanted to rush to her, to demand news of Farr and Adda.

The Human Beings�all twenty of them, including the five children�emerged from their
shelter in the forest and trailed after Dura. Deni Maxx peered out of the open
hatch at her, staring indifferently past her at the ring of skinny Human Beings.
"I'm glad I've found you."

"I'm surprised you managed it. The upflux is a big place."

Deni shrugged. She seemed irritated, impatient. "It wasn't so hard. Toba Mixxax
gave me precise directions from his ceiling-farm to the place he first found you.
All I had to do was scout around until you responded to my call."

Philas crowded close to Dura. The widow pressed her mouth close to Dura's ear; Dura
was aware, uncomfortably, of the sweet, thin stink of leaves and bark on Philas's
breath. "Who is she? What does she want?"

Dura pulled her head away. She was aware of Deni's appraising gaze. She felt a
swirl of contradictory emotions: irritation at Deni's high-handed manner, and yet a
certain embarrassment at the awkward, childlike behavior of the Human Beings. Had
she been such a primitive on her first encounter with Toba Mixxax?

"Get in the car," Deni said. "We've a long journey back to Parz, and I was told to
hurry�"

"Who by? Why am I being recalled? Is it something to do with my indenture? Surely

you saw Qos Frenk's ceiling-farm�or what was left of it; it's no longer
functioning. Qos released us, and�"

"It's nothing to do with your indenture. I'll explain on the way." Deni drummed her
fingers on the frame of the car's door.

Dura was aware of the staring eyes of the rest of the tribe, as they waited mutely
for her to make a decision. She felt a brief, selfish stab of impatience with them;
they were dependent, like children. She wanted to go back to Parz. She could
surely�she told herself�find out more about the situation of Farr and Adda there
than if she stayed with the Human Beings as just another simple refugee upfluxer.
And, in the long run�she justified to herself�she could maybe do more to help all
the Human Beings by returning than by staying here. Something important must be
required of her, for the City to send someone like Deni Maxx to fetch her. Perhaps
in some odd way she would have influence over events�

Philas tugged at her arm, like a child, demanding attention. Dura pulled her arm
away angrily�and instantly regretted the impulse.

The truth was, she admitted to herself, she was relieved that she had an excuse,
and the means, to get away from the suffocating company of the Human Beings. But
she felt such guilt about it.

She came to a quick decision. "I'll come with you," she told Deni. "But not alone."
Deni frowned. "What?"

"I'll take the children." She widened her arms to indicate the five children�the
youngest was Mur's infant, Jai, the oldest an adolescent girl.

Deni Maxx launched into a volley of complaints.

Dura turned her back and confronted the Human Beings. They pulled their children to
themselves in baffled silence, their eyes huge and fixed on her. She ran a hand
through her hair, exasperated. Slowly, patiently, she described what awaited the
children at Parz City. Food. Shelter. Safety. Surely she could prevail on Toba
Mixxax to find temporary homes for the children. They were all young enough to seem
cute to the City folk, she calculated, surprising herself with her own cynicism.
And in a few short years they'd be able to turn their upfluxer muscles to gainful
employment.

She was consigning the children to lives in the Downside, she realized. But it was
better than starving here, or sharing their parents' epic trek across the
devastated hinterland of Parz. And eventually, she insisted to the bewildered
parents, they would reach Parz themselves and be reunited with their offspring.

The adults were baffled and frightened, struggling to deal with concepts they could
barely envisage. But they trusted her, Dura realized slowly, with a mixture of
relief and shame�and so, one by one, the children were delivered to Dura.

Deni Maxx glared as the grimy bodies of the children were passed into her car, and
Dura wondered if Deni was even now going to raise some cruel objection. But when
the doctor watched Dura settle little Jai�frightened and crying for his mother�in
the arms of the oldest girl at the back of the car, Deni's irritation visibly
softened.

At last it was done. Dura gathered the bereft adults in a huddle and gave them
strict instructions on how to get to the Pole. They listened to her solemnly. Then
Dura embraced them all, and climbed into the car.

As Deni flicked the team of Air-pigs into motion, Dura stared back through the
huge, expansive windows at the Human Beings. Shorn of their children, they looked
lost, bewildered, futile. Dia and Mur clung to each other. I've taken away their
future, Dura realized. Their reason for living.

Or, perhaps, I've preserved their future.

When the Human Beings were out of sight�and despite the continuing crying of the
frightened, disoriented children�Dura settled into one of the car's expensive
cocoons, relief and guilt once more competing for her soul.

* * *

Deni steered the car with unconscious skill along the renewed vortex lines. "The
City is taking in injured from the hinterland. It's not been easy, for any of us."
The doctor was scarcely recognizable from the cheerful, rather patronizing woman
who had treated Adda, Dura thought; Maxx's eyecups were ringed by darkness and
crusty sleep deposits; her face seemed to have sunk in on itself, becoming gaunt
and severe, and she hunched over her reins with tense, knotted muscles.

Dura stared moodily out of the car's huge windows at the Crust as it passed over
them. She remembered how she had marveled at the orderliness of the great
hinterland with its ceiling-farms and gardens, as she had viewed it that first time
with Toba Mixxax. Now, by contrast, she was appalled at the destruction the Glitch
had wrought. In great swathes the farms had been scoured from the Crust, leaving
the bare root-ceiling exposed. Here and there coolies still toiled patiently at the
shattered land, but the naked ceiling had none of the vigor of the natural forest;
obscenely stripped of its rectangles of cultivation it looked like an open wound.

Deni tried to explain how the Crust had responded to the Glitch by
ringing�vibrating in sectors, apparently all over the Star; the devastation had
come in orderly waves, with a lethal and offensive neatness. Dura let the words
wash over her, barely understanding.

"The destruction persists right around the hinterland," Deni said. "At least half
the ceiling-farms have stopped functioning, and the rest can only work on a limited
basis." She glanced at Dura. "Parz City doesn't have much stock of food, you know;
she relies on the daily traffic from the ceiling-farms. And you know what they
say�"

"What?"

"Any society is only a meal away from revolution. Hork has already instituted
rationing. In the long term, I doubt it's going to be enough. Still, at the moment
people seem to be accepting the troubles we're having: patiently waiting their turn
for medical treatment behind ranks of coolies, following the orders of the
Committee. Eventually, I guess, they will blame the Committee for their woes."

Dura took a deep breath. "Just as you're blaming me?"

Deni turned to her, her eyes wide. "Why do you say that?"

"Your tone. Your manner with me, ever since you arrived to bring me back."

Deni rubbed her nose, and when she looked at Dura again there was a faint smile on
her lips. "No. I don't blame you, my dear. But I do resent being a ferry driver. I
have patients to treat� At a time like this I have better things to do than�"

"Then why did you come to get me?"

"Because Muub ordered me to."

"Muub? Oh, the Administrator."

"He felt I was the only person who would recognize you." She sniffed. "Old fool.
There aren't that many upfluxers on Qos Frenk's ceiling-farm, after all."

"I still don't understand why you're here."

"Because that friend of yours insisted on it." She frowned. "Adda? Worst patient in
the world. But what beautiful work we did with his pneumatic vessels."

The Air seemed thick in Dura's mouth. "Adda is alive? He's safe?"

"Oh, yes. He was with Muub when the Glitch hit. He's quite well� or at least, as
well as before. You know, with injuries like that it's a miracle he's able to move
about. And�"

Dura closed her eyes. She hadn't dared ask of her kinsmen earlier�as if phrasing
the very question would tempt fate. "And Farr?"

"Who? Oh, the boy. Your brother, isn't he? Yes, he's fine. He was in the Harbor�"
"You've seen him? You've seen that he's safe?"

"Yes." Some compassion entered Deni's voice. "Dura, don't worry about your people.
Adda had Farr brought to the Palace�"

"The Palace?"

"Yes, it was a condition of him working with Hork, apparently."

Dura laughed; it was as if a huge pressure had been lifted from her heart. But
still, what was Adda doing handing out orders at the Palace? Why were they so
important, all of a sudden? "Things have changed since I've been gone."

Deni nodded. "Yes, but don't ask me about it� Muub will tell you, when we dock."
She growled. "Another Physician taken away from healing people� I hope this project
of Hork's, whatever it is, really is important enough to cost so many lives."

They were approaching the South Pole now; the vortex lines, deceptively orderly,
were beginning to converge. Dura studied the Crust. The elegant, pretty farms and
gardens of the ceiling-scape here had largely been spared the Glitch's devastation,
but there was something odd: the Crust had a fine texture, as if it were covered by
fine, dark furs�furs which Waved in slow formation toward the Pole.

Dura pointed this out to Deni. "What's that?"

Deni glanced up. "Refugees, my dear. From all over the devastated hinterland. No
longer able to work on their farms, they are converging on Parz City, hoping for
salvation."

Dura stared around the sky. Refugees. The Crust seemed black with humanity.

The children started to cry again. Dura turned to comfort them.

* * *

When Hork heard that the two upfluxers�the boy from the Harbor and the woman,
Dura�had been located and were being returned to the Upside, he called Muub and the
old fool Adda to another meeting in the Palace anteroom.

Adda settled into his cocoon of rope, his splinted legs dangling absurdly, and he
swept his revolting one-eyed gaze around the anteroom as if he owned the place.

Hork suppressed his irritation. "Your people are safe. They are inside the City.
Now I would like to continue with our discussion."

Adda stared, eyeing him up as if he were a coolie in the Market. At last the old
man nodded. "Very well. Let's proceed."

Hork saw Muub sigh, evidently with relief.

"I return to my final question," Hork said. "I concede the existence of the Xeelee.
But I am not concerned with myths. I don't want to hear about the awesome racial
goals of the Xeelee� I want to know what they want with us."

"I told you," Adda said evenly. "They don't want anything of us. I don't think they
even know we're here. But they do want something of our world�our Star."

"Apparently they wish to destroy it," Muub said, running a hand over his bare
scalp.
"Evidently," Adda said. "Hork, the wisdom of my people�handed down verbally since
our expulsion from�"

"Yes, yes."

"�has nothing to say about any purpose of the Star. But we do know that humans were
brought here, to this Star. By the Ur-humans. And we were adapted to survive here."

Muub was nodding at this. "This isn't a surprise, sir. Analogous anatomy studies
have come to similar conclusions."

"I am struggling to contain my fascination," Hork said acidly. Restless,

frustrated, he pushed his way out of his sling and began to swim briskly around the
room. He watched the turning of the small, powerful cooling-fan set in one corner
of the painted sky; he studied the captive vortex ring in its nest of clearwood
spheres. He resisted the temptation to smash the spheres again, despite his
mounting frustration; the cost of repair had been ruinous�indefensible, actually,
in such times as now. "Go on with your account. If humans were brought here, made
to fit the Mantle�then why isn't the evidence of this all around us? Where are the
devices which made us? Where are these 'different' Ur-humans?"

Adda shook his head. "At one time there was plenty of evidence. Marvelous devices,
left here by the Ur-men to help us survive, and to work here. Wormhole Interfaces.
Weapons, huge structures which would dwarf your shabby City�"

"Where are they now?" Hork snapped. "And don't tell me they were suppressed,
deliberately destroyed by some vindictive Parz administration of the past."

"No." Adda smiled. "Your forebears did not have to conceal physical evidence�
merely the truth."

"Get on with it."

"The Colonists," Adda said slowly.

"What?"

Once, humans had traveled throughout the Star. The Quantum Sea had been as clear as
the Air to them, in their marvelous machines. They had been able to venture even
into the outer layers of the Core with impunity. And there had been marvelous
gateways, called wormhole Interfaces, which had allowed humans even to travel
outside the Star itself.

The humans, following the commands of their departed creators, the Ur-humans, had
set about rebuilding the Star. And the mysterious Colonists, sleeping in their
quark soup at the Core, had become hostile to the growing power of humans.

The Colonists had emerged from the Core. Brief, shattering wars were fought.

Human machines were destroyed or dragged into the Quantum Sea. The human population
was devastated, the survivors pitched into the open Air virtually without resource.

Within generations, the stories of man's origin on the Star, the tale of the
Colonists, became a dim legend, another baroque detail in the rich word-painting of
human history, of the invisible worlds beyond the Star.

Muub laughed out loud, his long, aristocratic face creased with mirth. "I'm sorry,
sir," he said to Hork. "But here we are compounding myth on myth. How long are we
to continue with this charade? I have patients to attend."

"Shut up, Muub. You'll stay here as long as I need you."

Hork thought hard. He had damnably little resource to spare. He had to tend the
wounded and destitute, and, in the longer term, rebuild on the hinterland,
alleviate the hunger of the people.

And yet, and yet�

If�by a small diversion of effort�he could remove the fantastic Xeelee threat from
the City�the whole world, in fact�then he could become the greatest hero of
history.

There was pride, self-aggrandizement in such a vision, Hork knew. So what? If he

could repel the Xeelee, mankind would rightfully acclaim him.

But how to go about it?

He certainly couldn't devote armies of scholars to piecing together the fragmentary

legends of man's origin. And he didn't have the years to wait while some such
discipline as Muub's "analogous anatomy" cogitated over its subject matter. He had
to prioritize, to go for the most direct benefit.

He looked at Adda sharply. "You say these beings�the Colonists�took the Interfaces,
and the other magical machines, back into the Quantum Sea with them. Beyond the
reach of our Fishermen. So we've no reason to believe the devices were destroyed?"

Adda looked up; the leech nibbling at his eye, disturbed, slid across his cheek.
"Nor any evidence that they survived."

Muub snorted. "Now the old fool has the effrontery to talk of evidence!"

What if this legend of Colonists and ancient technologies held some grain of truth?
Then perhaps, Hork speculated, some of these devices could still exist, deep in the
Quantum Sea. An Interface would be worth having�

"Muub," he asked thoughtfully. "How could we penetrate the Quantum Sea?"

Muub looked at him, as if shocked by the suggestion. "We cannot, of course, sir. It
is impossible." His eyes narrowed. "You are not thinking of chasing after these
absurd legends, of wasting resources on a�"

"You will not lecture me, Physician," Hork snapped. "Think of it as a�a scientific
experiment. If nothing else we would learn much about the Star, and about our own
capabilities� and, perhaps, disprove once and for all these fanciful legends of
Colonists and antique wonders." Or, he allowed himself to imagine, perhaps I will
uncover a treasure lost to mankind for generations.

"Sir, I must protest. People continue to die, all over the hinterland. Parz itself
may be overwhelmed by the flood of refugees approaching. We must abandon these
fantasies of the impossible, and return our attention to the immediate, the
practical."

Hork studied the Physician�Muub was stiff, trembling in his cocoon of rope. His
irritation with Muub's stiff anger was eclipsed, suddenly, by respect for this
decent man. It must have taken a lot of courage for the Physician to speak out like
that. "Muub�my dear Muub�as soon as I close this meeting I will be immersed in the
immediate, the practical� in the pain of ten thousand human beings." He smiled. "I
want you to take charge of this project. Reach the Quantum Sea."

Muub ground out, "The task�is�impossible."

Hork nodded. "Of course. Bring me options, within two days."

He turned from them then, and, straightening his back, thrust through the Air to
the door and his duties.

Chapter 17
After she'd endured a brief, unsettled sleep in Deni's cramped quarters, a
messenger from the Committee called for Dura. The messenger was a small, rather sad
man in a scuffed tunic; his skin was thin and pale and his eyes were bruised-
looking, discolored deep inside the cups. Perhaps he had spent too much of his life
doing close work inside the City, Dura thought, shut away from fresh Air.

She was led away from the Hospital and through the streets. They passed through the
Market, and Waved Upside along Pall Mall. The great avenue seemed quieter than she
remembered. The lines of Air-cars moved much more easily than before, with clear
Air between the sparsely spaced cars, and many of the shops were closed up, their
wood-lamps dimmed. She began to understand how the disaster in the hinterland had
impacted the economy of the City.

Even so, the noise was a constant, growling racket and the few fans and
illumination vents seemed hardly sufficient. Soon Dura found herself fighting off
claustrophobia. And yet, only days before, she had been feeling restless in the
limited company of the upfluxers. Her experiences really had left her a misfit, she
thought gloomily.

They took a turn off the Mall close to its Upside terminus and emerged,
surprisingly, into clear Air-light. They had entered a huge open chamber, a cube a
hundred mansheights on a side. Its edges were constructed of fine beams, leaving
the faces open to the clear sky�this place must be clinging to the side of the City
like some immense wooden leech�but, oddly, the Air was no fresher here than in the
bowels of the City, and there was no discernible breeze. Looking more closely, she
realized that the apparently open faces of this cube were coated with huge panels
of clearwood; she was inside a transparent wooden box big enough to hold�she
estimated quickly�a thousand people.

It was impressive, but utterly bizarre; Dura felt bemused�as so often before�by the
strangeness of the City.

The messenger touched her elbow. "Here we are. This is the Stadium. Of course it's
empty today; when it's in use it's crammed with people� Up there you can see the
Committee Box." He pointed to a thin balcony suspended over the Stadium itself; his
voice was thin, ingratiating. "People come here to watch the Games�our sporting
events. Do you have Games in the upflux?"

"Why have I been brought here?"

The little man shied away, his bruised-looking eyecups closing.

"Dura�"

Farr?

She whirled in the Air. Her brother was only a mansheight from her; he was calm and
apparently well, and dressed in a loose tunic. There were people with him�Adda and
three City men.
She saw all this in the heartbeat it took to cross the space between them and take
her brother in her arms. He hugged her back�but not as an uninhibited child, she
slowly realized; he put his arms around her and patted her spine, comforting her.

She let him go and held him at arm's length. His face was square and serious. He
seemed to have grown older, and there was more of their father about him.

"I'm well, Dura."

"Yes. So am I. I thought you might have been injured in the Glitch."

"I wasn't in the Bells when the Glitch came. It was my off-shift, and I was in the
Harbor�"

"That doesn't matter," she said bitterly. "You're too young to have been sent down
in those things."

"It's just the way things are," he said gently. "Boys younger than me have served
in the Bells. Dura, none of it is your fault� even if I'd been hurt it wouldn't
have been your fault."

He was comforting her. He really was growing up.

"Anyway, I haven't been back to the Harbor for a while," Farr went on. He smiled.
"Not since Adda had Hork send for me. I've been staying with Toba."

"How are the family?"

"Well. Cris has been teaching me to Surf." Farr held his arms out in the Air, as if
balancing on an invisible board. "You'll have to try it�"

"Dura. You've made it; I'm glad." Adda came paddling through the Air toward them.
Dura glanced quickly over the old man; his shoulders, chest and lower legs were
still bound up with grubby bandages, but he was moving freely enough. He was towing
an object which looked like the skin of an Air-pig; sewn up and inflated, it
bobbled behind his clumsy progress like a toy.

She found a clear place on his face�away from the eye-leech�and kissed him. "I'd
hug you if I wasn't scared of breaking you."

He snorted. "So you got through the Glitch."

Briefly she told her story; Farr's eyes grew round when she described the Xeelee
ship. She told them how the Human Beings had fared in the Glitch�of their twenty
dead. As she recited the familiar, lost names, she was reminded of the simple,
moving name-litany ceremonial of the lumberjacks.

She told Adda and Farr of the five upfluxer children lodging, for today, with Deni
Maxx. Farr and Adda smiled, and promised to visit the kids.

"Now tell me what we're doing here. And why you're towing a dead pig about the
place."

Adda grimaced, making the leech slither across his crumpling cheek. "You'll find
out� damn foolishness, all of it." He glanced around to the rest of the party; Dura
recognized Muub, the Hospital Physician, with two other men. "Come on," Adda said.
"We'd better get on with it."
With Dura and Farr helping Adda, the three Human Beings made their way to Muub and
his companions.

* * *

The six of them hovered together close to the center of the huge emptiness of the
Stadium; Dura felt cold and isolated despite the clamminess of the Pole. Ropes and
guide rails were slung across the huge volume all around them, silent evidence of
the crowds this place was designed to accommodate.

The Physician, Muub, was dressed in a severe, dark robe. As before, Dura found it
impossible not to stare at the grand dome of his bald head. He greeted them with a
smile which seemed professional enough but a little strained. "Thank you for your
time."

Adda grinned. "Oh, we had a choice?"

Muub's smile thinned. Briskly he introduced his two companions: a Harbor supervisor
called Hosch, cadaverously thin, who seemed to know Farr, judging from the sour
glances he cast at the boy; and a tall, wispy tree-stem of a man called Seciv Trop
whom Muub described as an expert on the Magfield. Like Muub's, Trop's fine old head
was shaven, in the style of the academics of the University.

Muub rapidly sketched in the background to Hork's directive. "Frankly, I'm not
certain about the value of this program; I may as well tell you that from the
start. But I do sympathize with Hork's thinking." He looked about him, his
expression hard. "I only need to be here, in the fragility of this Stadium, to
recognize that we have to find some way to protect ourselves from the random danger
of Glitches."

Dura frowned. "But why are we here? We Human Beings, I mean. You need experts. What
can we possibly add?"

"Two things. One is that you are experts�or the nearest we have�on the Xeelee. So
Hork believes, at any rate. And second, there's no one else." He raised his arms as
if to embrace the City. "Dura, Parz may seem a large and rich place to you, but the
economy has taken a severe battering from the Glitches. All our resources are
devoted to coping with the consequences, to rebuilding the hinterland� all but us,
and we are all Hork felt able to spare." He smiled at them. "Six of us, including a
boy. And our mission is to save the world. Perhaps we will succeed; and what
plaudits we will earn if we do."

He fell silent. The six of them hovered in a rough ring, studying each other
warily�all but the Magfield expert Seciv Trop, who stared into the distance with
his finely chiseled eyecups.

"Well," Muub said briskly. "Hork asked me to come up with options to achieve the
impossible�to penetrate the underMantle, more deeply than any human since
prehistory. And I, in turn, asked Hosch and Adda to bring us suggestions to work
with. The Bells from the Harbor descend to a depth of about a meter. Our first
estimates indicate that we must penetrate at least ten times as deeply�to a depth
of ten meters below Parz, deep into the underMantle. Seciv, you're here to comment,
if you will, and to add anything you can."

Trop nodded briskly. "I'll do my feeble best," he said in a thin, mannered voice.
Seciv Trop was clearly the oldest of the group. His almost-bare scalp was populated
by fine clumps of yellow-gold hair, left carelessly unshaven. And his suit�loosely
fitting and equipped with immense pockets�was more battered and patched than Dura
had come to expect of the grander City folk.
This old fellow was rather endearing, Dura decided. Farr asked, "Why are we here?
In this Stadium?"

"Because of your friend." Muub eyed the pigskin doubtfully. "Adda tells me he would
prefer to demonstrate his idea rather than describe it. I thought I'd better obtain
as much space as possible."

The Harbor supervisor, Hosch, twisted his face into a sneer. "Then maybe we'd
better let the old fool get on with it before his damn pig corpse starts stinking
out the building."

Adda grinned and hauled on the short rope which attached the inflated pigskin to
his belt. He held the grisly artifact before him, obviously relishing the squeamish
reaction of the City men. The skin was revolting, Dura conceded; its orifices had
been crudely sewn over and Air pumped in to inflate its boxy bulk, causing its six
fins to become erect. Its sketchy, inhuman face seemed to be staring at her. And,
she realized, it actually did stink a little.

Hosch sneered. "Is this some kind of joke? The old fool thinks we could all don
pigskins and swim to the bloody Core."

Adda waved the inflated skin in the supervisor's face. "Wrong, City man. You people
travel around in chariots hauled by pigs. At first I wondered if humans could
travel in one of those all the way to the Core� but of course the pigs could never
survive the journey into the underMantle. So we build a pig� an artificial pig, of
wood and Corestuff. Strong enough to withstand the pressures of the underMantle."

Seciv nodded. "How is this device to be propelled?"

Adda jabbed a finger at the pig's jet orifice. "With jetfarts, of course. Like the
real thing." He flicked the inflated fins. "And these will keep it stable." Now he
pressed the skin between his arm and his bandaged ribs; Air squirted out of the jet
orifice and the pig-corpse wobbled through the air in a ghastly, comic parody of
life.

Hosch laughed out loud. "And where do the farts come from, upfluxer? You?"

Seciv frowned, his crumpled hair waving. "You could mimic the internal operation of
the pig's anatomy. The car could carry tanks of Air, heated by a stock of wood in a
nuclear-burning boiler and expelled through a valve orifice." With a delicate
finger he reached out and poked at one flabby fin, tentatively. "You could even
make an attempt at steering, by mounting these fins on gimbals worked from inside
the craft. And the fart nozzles could be made directional, with a little
ingenuity." The old man nodded approvingly to Adda. "A practical suggestion in many
respects."

Adda�despite himself, Dura realized�swelled at the praise; Hosch looked

disgruntled.

Farr said seriously, "But how could it survive the underMantle? Adda, I learned in
the Bells that it's not pressure alone that would destroy such a craft, by crushing
it�" He snapped his fist closed suddenly, making Dura flinch; she wondered where
he'd learned such crude dramatic tricks. Farr went on, "Nuclear matter�ordinary
matter�would dissolve."

Hosch said rapidly, "Well, of course it would. Anyone with a fingernail of

experience knows that. Our Bells are protected from the pressure by magnetic fields
sent down from the turbines in the City."
Seciv Trop shook his head. "That's a misapprehension, Supervisor. To be precise,
the Bells are fed by electrical currents which are generated in the Harbor� but the
protective magnetic shell is generated at the Bell itself, by superconducting hoops
which girdle the Bell."

Hosch looked the old man up and down. "You're a Fisherman, I suppose. We must have
been on different shifts�"

Muub touched Hosch's shoulder. "Seciv designed the current generation of Bells�the
Bells you ride every day. Hosch, your life depends upon his expertise; it suits you
ill to mock him."

Hosch subsided. "Well, what of it? The boy's point stands."

Seciv seemed impervious to offense. "One would simply need to gird this artificial
pig around with superconducting hoops, and carry equipment to generate the magnetic
field from within." He frowned. "Of course, the bulk of the craft would be
increased."

Dura asked, "Wouldn't it get hot inside the wooden pig, with nuclear burning going
on all the time?"

Seciv nodded. "Yes, that would be a difficulty� though not in itself

insurmountable. A more serious problem would be the supply of propellent Air.
Compression ratios in even our best-made tanks are not very high. Sufficient for a
jaunt to the ceiling-farms in an Air-car, but hardly enough for an expedition of
this magnitude." He eyed Adda sadly. "Again, perhaps this could be overcome. But
there are two far more devastating flaws. First, a lack of stability. There is more
to an Air-pig than an anus and a few fins, after all. The pig has six eyes to guide
it�"

"Well," Adda said defensively, "you could have six windows of clearglass. Or more."

"Perhaps. But the windows would each be manned by a pilot�yes?�who would then have
to relay instructions to a crew�five or six men who would haul laboriously at the
directing fins, hoping to adjust the motion. Adda, your wooden pig would flounder
in the Air, I fear."

Dura said, "But you don't have to use fins. The thing doesn't have to be exactly
like a pig, after all. Maybe we could use jetfarts, coming from the sides of the
pig."

"Yes." Muub looked thoughtful. "That could be far more precise."

Seciv smiled indulgently. "Still, I would expect instability. Besides, I fear my

second objection is fatal."

Adda glared at him, his eye-leech slithering across his cheek.

"Your mode of propulsion could not work within the underMantle, let alone the
Quantum Sea. In high-pressure conditions Air could not be expelled; it would be
forced back into the body of the pig."

Hosch scratched his head. "I hate to be constructive about this stupid idea," he
said, "but couldn't you throw a magnetic field away from the pig's hull? Then the
farts would be expelled into Air at normal pressure."

Seciv looked at him and ran bony fingers through his scraps of hair, evidently
searching for a simple explanation. "But the expelled Air would still be inside the
magnetic field, which in turn would be attached to the ship through the field
lines. The Air would push at the magnetic shell, which would drag back the ship. It
is a matter of action and reaction, you see�"

Muub waved him to silence. "I think we can take your word for it, Seciv." He smiled
at Adda. "Sir, the consensus seems to be that we can't proceed with your
suggestion; but it was ingenious, and perhaps�do you agree, Seciv?�some aspects of
it may survive in a final design. Also, it sounds to me as if we could use this
idea to make Air-cars of a different design from those we have at present�Air-cars
which wouldn't need pigs to draw them. None of the problems we've talked about
would arise if the craft operated in the free Air, after all."

Adda, clutching his retrieved pig with his one free arm, looked inordinately
pleased with himself. Dura nudged him and said quietly, "You're enjoying this.
You're forgetting you're a miserable old bugger. You'll confuse them."

Adda glared at her. "Well? Who's next? This Fisherman's been so clever about my
suggestions; now let's hear what he has to say."

"Indeed. Hosch?"

The Harbor supervisor spread his empty hands, speaking only to Muub. "My idea is
straightforward and I don't need to send pigskins flying around to describe it. I
say we stick to what we know. I say we extend the Spine� but build it as long as we
need it to be, down into the underMantle."

Seciv Trop rubbed his chin. "Well, that has the merit of familiarity, as you say.
The wooden Spine would need protecting against dissolution in the underMantle, but
we could use superconducting coils to achieve that, as we do now� But what an
awesome undertaking it would be. I doubt if such a Spine could sustain its
structural integrity on the lengthscale required. And it might affect the stability
of the City itself. Could the anchor-bands sustain our position, here at the Pole,
with such a counterweight?"

Muub was shaking his head. "Hosch, we can't conceivably spare the resources for
this. You must know the timber convoys from the Crust have dried up since the
Glitch, so we're not getting the wood. And we haven't the manpower to spare, in any
case�"

"Besides," Dura said, "what if a Glitch hit? The Spine would be so fragile it would
be destroyed in moments."

Hosch folded his arms and crossed his legs, turning his wiry body into a ball of
finality. "Then it's impossible. We may as well stop wasting our time and tell Hork
so."

Muub turned to him. "Frankly, Hosch, I won't be sorry if that is our conclusion.
I'd rather not waste any more time and effort on this fool's errand than I have
to."

"Oh, no." Seciv Trop's creased face showed irritation. "We haven't reached such a
conclusion at all. We've merely eliminated possibilities. And we do, perhaps, have
some of the elements of a workable solution."

Muub looked sour, and he pulled at a thread in his robe. "Go on."

"First, we know that this hypothetical device�this new, free-floating Bell�will

need a protective magnetic field, to keep it from dissolution, and some means of
propulsion. It will have to be self-sustaining; our traditional methods cannot be
extended to such depths, so we've ruled out supply from the City. So the device
would have to carry a simple turbine to generate a protective field."

"How would it move?" Dura asked. "I thought you said that jetfarts couldn't work."

"And so they couldn't," said Seciv. "But there are other means of propulsion�"

"Waving," said Farr, his round face animated. "What about that? Maybe we could make
a Bell that could swim freely, a Bell that could Wave."

"Exactly." Seciv nodded, looking pleased. "We could haul ourselves along the
Magfield, exactly as we do when we Wave in the Air. Well done, young man."

Muub pulled at his lower lip. "But maybe the Magfield doesn't penetrate the
underMantle."

"We believe it does," Seciv said. "The underMantle and the Sea are permeated by
charged particles�protons, electrons and hyperons�which sustain the Magfield."

Hosch sneered. "What would we do, attach a pair of false legs to the back?"

Farr�whose imagination seemed to have been caught�said excitedly, "No, you'd Wave
using coils of superconductor. Like the anchor-bands. You could move them from
inside the Bell, and�"

"Good thinking once more," Seciv said smoothly. "But you could go a little further.
It wouldn't be necessary to move the coils themselves, physically; it is the
movement of the current within them that could generate forward motion."

Muub was nodding slowly. "I see. So you'd make the current flow back and forth."

"Have it alternate. Exactly. Then the coils could be fixed rigidly to the hull.
And, of course, this design would have a certain economy: the craft's propulsion
system would be one and the same as the magnetic shielding system." He frowned.
"But we would still face the problem of the excessive heat in the interior of the
craft generated by a nuclear-burning turbine in an enclosed space�"

Hosch looked reluctant to speak, as if, Dura thought, he genuinely hated to

contribute anything positive. "But you wouldn't need to use nuclear burning," he
said at last. "Anything to power the turbine would be sufficient� maybe even human
muscles."

"No, I fear our muscles would be too feeble for such a task. But we could use the
power of animals�a team of pigs, harnessed to some form of turbine�yes, indeed!" He
laughed and clapped Adda on the back, sending the old man spinning slowly like a
bandaged fan. "So it seems after all that we will be riding pigs to the Core!"

Adda steadied himself, grinning widely.

Muub looked around the group. "I don't believe it." He sounded disappointed. "I
think we've come up with something we could build� something that might actually
work."

Seciv pulled at his chin; Dura had never seen hands so bony and delicate. "We
should build a prototype�there may still be unforeseen problems with the design.
And, of course, once the descent begins the craft will encounter conditions we can
only guess at."
"And then," Dura said, her spine prickling and cold, "there are the Colonists. In
fact, the mission will be a failure if it doesn't encounter the Colonists. What
then?"

"What indeed?" Seciv echoed gravely.

Muub ran a hand over his bald head. "Damn you. Damn all of you. You've succeeded
too well; I can't justify reporting to Hork that this idea of his is impossible."
He eyed the Harbor supervisor. "Hosch, I want you to take charge of the design and
construction of a prototype."

Hosch glared back resentfully, his thin face livid.

Muub said icily, "Call on these upfluxers, and you can have some of Seciv's time.
As for labor, use some of your workers from the Harbor. But keep it simple and
cheap, will you? There's no need to waste more of our energy on this than we have
to." He turned in the Air, dismissing them. "Call me when the prototype's ready."

* * *

The Human Beings, arms loosely linked, followed Muub and the others slowly out of
the Stadium.

"So," Adda said. "A chance to confront gods from the past."

"Not gods," Dura said firmly. "Even the Xeelee aren't gods� But these Colonists
could be monsters, if they exist. Remember the Core Wars."

Adda sniffed. "This damn fool expedition will never get that far anyway. This
Waving Bell will be crushed."

"Perhaps. But you needn't be so stuffy, Adda. I know you enjoyed playing with
ideas, back there. You have to admire the imagination, the spirit of these City
folk."

"Well, what now?" Adda asked. "Do you want to find your friend Ito?"

"Later� I have something to do first. I need to find someone�the daughter of a

friend, from my ceiling-farm. A friend called Rauc."

Adda thought about that. "Does the girl know what's become of her mother?"

"No," Dura said quietly. "I'm going to have to tell her."

Adda nodded, his crumpled face expressionless, seeming to understand.

And one day, Dura thought, I will have to go to the upflux forests, and tell Brow�

She glanced at Farr. The boy's eyes were fixed on an indefinite distance, and his
face was blank. She felt as if she could read his mind. Humans were going to build
a ship to find the Colonists. It was indeed an idea full of wonder� deep inside
herself, too, she found, there was a small spark of awe.

And Farr was young enough to relish a ride.

But Adda was right. It was an utterly deadly prospect. And surely, she thought, as
Hork's "experts" on the Xeelee, at least one of the three Human Beings would be
assigned to the voyage, if it were ever made�
She held Farr's arm tight and pulled herself closer to him, determined that Farr
should never make the journey he was dreaming of.

Chapter 18
Wakefulness intruded slowly on Mur.

Slowly, in shreds and shards, he became aware of the rustle of the Crust-trees, the
tired stink of his own body, the endless yellow glow of the Air pushing into his
closed eyecups. He'd used a few loops of frayed rope to bind himself loosely to a
branch of an outlying tree, and now he could feel the undeniable reality of the
ropes as they dug into the thin flesh of his chest and thighs.

Then the pain started.

His stomach, empty for so long, seemed to be slowly imploding, filling the center
of his body with a dull, dragging ache. His joints protested when he began to
stir�stiff joints were a wholly unexpected side-effect of hunger, reducing his
movements on bad days to those of an old man�and there was a sharp sheet of pain
stretched around the inside of his skull, as if his brain were pulling away from
the bone.

He jammed his eyes closed and wrapped his arms around himself, feeling his own bony
elbows digging into his ribs. How strange it was that he had never slept more
deeply in his life than in these impossibly difficult times. While waking life had
become steadily more unbearable, sleep was ever more comfortable, seductive, a
different realm in which his physical pain and mental distress dissolved.

If only I could stay there, he thought. How easy it would be never to wake up
again�

But already the pain had dug too far into his awareness for that option to be
available today.

With a sigh he opened his eyes and probed at the cups with one finger, working at
rims sharp with crusty sleep deposits. Then he clambered slowly out of his loose
sling of ropes. The rest of the Human Beings�the other fourteen�were scattered
across the lower rim of the forest, bound by similar loops of rope. Dangling there
half-asleep they looked like the pupae of insects, deformed spin-spiders perhaps.

Mur dropped out of the forest, avoiding the eyes of those others who were awake.

He stretched, his muscles still aching from yesterday's Waving. He pulled a handful
of leaf-matter from the tree, and then flexed his legs and Waved stiffly down into
the Mantle. Perhaps twenty mansheights below the fringe of the forest ceiling he
lifted his tunic and raised his legs to his chest. His hips and knees protested,
but he grabbed his lower legs and pulled his thighs close to his stomach. At first
his bowels failed to respond to this prompting�like the rest of his system his
digestive and elimination processes seemed to be failing, slowly�but he persisted,
keeping his arms wrapped around his legs.

At last his lower bowel convulsed, and�with a stab of pain which lanced through the
core of his body�a hard packet of waste was expelled into the Air. He glanced down.
The waste, floating down into the Mantle, was compact, too dark.

He cleaned himself with his handful of leaves.

Dia, his wife, came drifting down from the impromptu camp in the forest. As she
descended, he saw how she was blinking away the remnants of sleep and compressing
her eyecups against the brightness of the Air; but she was already�just moments
after waking�squinting along the vortex lines into the South, toward the distant
Pole, trying to assess how far they had come, how much further was left of this
huge odyssey.

When she reached Mur she looked into his face, kissed him on the lips, and wrapped
her arms around his chest. He folded his arms around her and rubbed her back.
Through her shabby poncho he could feel the bones of her spine. They had nothing to
say to each other, so they clung to each other, hanging in the silent Air, with the
Quantum Sea spread below them.

Since Dura and the City woman had left in their Air-car�taking away the children,
including their own Jai�the fifteen abandoned Human Beings had trekked across the
Mantle toward the Pole. The slow pulsations of the vortex lines marked out the
endless days of the journey. With no stores of food, the Human Beings were forced
to follow the fringe of the Crust-forest; the leaves of the trees were scarcely
nutritious, but they did serve to fool the body into forgetting its hunger for a
while. Every few days their food ran out and they were forced to interrupt the
march. There was some game to be had but the forest was unfamiliar, and the
animals, still scared and scattered after the most recent Glitch, were wary and
difficult to trap.

Without their own herd, the Human Beings were slowly starving to death. And on this
hopeless trek, with its endless days of slow, painful Waving, the Human Beings were
probably burning off their energy faster than they could replace it. Mur couldn't
forget the richness of the "bread" Dura had brought to them, when she had come
Waving out of the sky so unexpectedly with her startling stories of Cities in the
Air.

Their progress around the Mantle's curve was imperceptible, a crushingly

discouraging crawl. Every time he woke to another changeless Mantlescape Mur felt
discouraged. And, even when the Pole was neared, the Human Beings would still have
to cross the hinterland, the cultivated belt around the Pole. How would the
inhabitants of those regions�themselves suffering after the Glitches�welcome this
band of starving refugees as they came drifting beneath their ceiling-farms?

The logical thing for the Human Beings to do would be to give up this trek. Their
best chance of survival would be to stay here, or even retreat a little further
into the upflux, and try to establish a new home on the edge of the Crust-forest.
Stop wasting their energies on this trek. They could build a new Net, establish a
new herd of Air-pigs. They could even, he'd thought dizzily as he Waved across the
silent Air, experiment with maintaining flocks of rays. The flesh of the ray was
tough and not as palatable as Air-pig, but it softened when broiled using nuclear-
burning heat; and the eggs were fine to eat and easy to store.

�But, of course, that wasn't possible; for their children had been taken from them,
by well-meaning Dura, and transported to the South Pole. When he stared into the
dull crimson glow of the Pole, in the far downflux, Mur felt as if a chain as long
as a vortex line connected him directly to his child, a chain which dragged
inexorably at his heart. Dura's action had surely been in the best interests of the
children. But it left Mur knowing that his only chance of meeting his son again was
to stay alive and to complete this trek, all the way to the City at the Pole.

He squeezed Dia once, and then they broke and prepared to return to the Crust-
forest, to face the others and begin the day's work.

"Dia! Mur!" The voice, drifting down from the Crust-forest, radiated excitement.

Dia and Mur slowed their ascent, confused, and looked up. Philas was dropping
toward them, her skinny legs pumping at the Air. When she reached the couple, she
grabbed at their arms to stop herself.

Dia held Philas's shoulders. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Philas, panting, the bones of her face prominent under her tied-back hair, shook
her head. "Nothing's wrong. But� look. Look down there." She pointed, down past
their feet into the Mantle.

The three of them separated and tipped forward in the Air. Mur peered down, trying
to follow the direction of Philas's gesture. He saw the orderly array of vortex
lines, the dull purple bruise of the Quantum Sea beyond the crystalline Air. There
seemed nothing unusual, except�

There. A small, dark knot in the Air, a hint of motion.

He turned to Dia. "Your eyes are sharper than mine. What is it?"

"People," she said, squinting down. "A group of them. Twenty or thirty, maybe. It
looks like an encampment. But there's something at the center�"

"What?"

Philas thrust her face forward at Dia. "Do you see it?"

"I think so," Dia said slowly. Her eyes narrowed. "But it might not mean anything.
Philas�"

Mur was baffled. "What is it? What do you see?"

Uncertainty and fear creased Dia's small, pretty face. "It's a tetrahedron," she
said.

* * *

The fifteen Human Beings gathered on the lower edge of the forest and debated what
to do. Dia, fearful, uncertain, thought they shouldn't waste time on this chance
encounter; she wanted simply to continue with the slog to the Pole. Mur
sympathized. The Human Beings were already divided, listless, growing steadily more
apathetic. It was becoming ever harder to maintain the momentum of this trek across
the Mantle; and once that momentum was gone, it might be impossible to regain.

They would be stranded, wherever they stopped. And that, of course, would be
unbearable for those with children at the Pole.

Philas and others argued strongly for doing something. "Think about it," she said
vehemently, her thin arms raised over her head as she spoke, her fingers spread
wide. "What if that really is a wormhole Interface, left over from the past? What
if it's still working?"

"That's impossible," Dia said. "The Interfaces were taken down into the Core, by
the Colonists after the Core Wars."

"The Mantle is a big place," someone said. "Maybe some of the Interfaces were left
functioning. Maybe�"

"Yes," Philas said eagerly, "just think of that. We know that in the days before
the Wars Human Beings could cross the Mantle in huge bounds, using the wormholes.
If that is a working Interface down there we might complete this impossible journey
in a heartbeat!"
Mur looked around at faces rendered sharp by hunger and exhaustion. Philas was
weaving a dream of abandoning this ghastly journey, to reach their goal in moments
with the aid of magical ancient technology. It was seductive, compelling, all but
irresistible.

Despite his loyalty to Dia, he felt himself falling under the spell of that dream.

"There are already people there," he said slowly. "Around the Interface. If it is
an Interface. Who's to say how they will react to us? Will they simply let us walk
up and wander through?"

"Maybe they're Colonists," Philas said.

"Anyway," said someone, "we won't know unless we go to find out�"

There was a murmur of agreement. Dia dropped her head.

Philas and Mur were named as scouts, to go ahead to the artifact and investigate,
leaving the rest of the Human Beings in the forest until their return.

Mur tried to comfort Dia. "It won't take us long. And perhaps�"

"Perhaps what?" She stared at him bitterly. "Perhaps there are wizards there who
can restore little Jai to us. Is that what you expect?"

"Dia�"

She seemed to slump, as if the Air was collapsing out of her. "We're going to spend
the rest of our lives here. Right here. Dying off one by one. Aren't we, Mur?"

* * *

Philas and Mur dived away from the forest and into the Mantle. The tetrahedral
artifact might be as much as a half-day away, so they each carried a bag containing
a little of the tribe's precious, and dwindling, supply of pig-meat.

At first Mur looked back frequently into the Crust-forest. Dia's face, turned down
like a small, round leaf, followed them as they descended, her expression soon too
distant to read. Then she ducked back into the forest. For a while Mur was able to
follow the movements of the other Human Beings as they worked through the forest,
using the time to hunt and to repair damaged tools, ropes and clothes. But at last
the site of the Human Beings' temporary camp was lost in the swirling, complex
tapestry of trunks and branches that made up the Crust-forest.

Mur spent some time staring up at the forest, carefully committing the pattern of
trunks to memory so they could find the Human Beings again.

Philas descended toward the artifact without speaking. Her thin face was intent on
the goal, empty of expression; Mur hadn't seen her so focused since the death of
Esk. She dug into her pouch and, with efficient regularity, bit into a piece of
meat.

Mur, alone with his thoughts, fell through the vortex lines. The artifact, and the
little colony around it, grew in his vision tantalizingly slowly. But it wasn't
long before he could see without ambiguity that the artifact was indeed a
tetrahedron, around ten mansheights to a side.

The story of the Colonists, and their Core Wars, was part of the lore of the Human
Beings. When the Ur-humans first reached the Star, having traveled from their own
unimaginable worlds, the Star was empty of human life. The Colonists had been the
first generation to be established within the Star, by the Ur-humans. It had been
their task to spawn the first of the Star's true inhabitants: all of them, the
mortal, frail ancestors of the Human Beings, the people of Parz and the hinterland,
all the inhabitants of the Mantle.

Compared to Human Beings the Colonists had been like gods. They had more in common
with the Ur-humans, perhaps, Mur speculated. With Ur-human technology they had
pierced the Mantle with wormhole links and established huge Cities which had sailed
through the Mantle in vast, orderly arrays. The first generations of Human Beings
had worked with their progenitors, traveling the wormhole links and building a
Mantle-wide society.

Then the Core Wars had come.

As they neared the artifact, and the irregular little settlement around it,
excitement gathered in Mur. Fatigue and hunger worked on him as he Waved, and he
became aware that his thinking was becoming looser, more fragmented. His head
seemed filled with visions, with new hopes; and the aches of his tired, protesting
body seemed to fade. Could these really be Colonists, this artifact a fragment from
the magical past?

He wanted to believe. He was tired�so tired�of pain, of death, of scraping his

marginal existence from the unforgiving Air. To discover a Colonist artifact would
be like returning to the arms of long-dead parents.

Glancing across at Philas, he recognized the same hunger to believe�to find a

home�in her expression, the set of her body as she Waved.

With perhaps five hundred mansheights separating them from the artifact, two people
broke from the grouping around the tetrahedron. The two came Waving cautiously up
to meet Philas and Mur.

Mur slowed, and moved closer to Philas.

The pair from the tetrahedron halted a dozen mansheights below the Human Beings.
They were a man and a woman, and they carried spears of wood. The woman came up a
little further, and pointed her spear at Mur's belly. "What do you want?"

Mur inspected the woman. She must have been aged around forty. The spear was well
crafted, but it was just a spear�nothing more sophisticated than a sharpened stick
of wood, nothing the Human Beings couldn't have manufactured for themselves. The
woman wore a crude, pocketed poncho of what looked like pig-leather, and a wide-
brimmed hat. Folds of cloth were tied up around the rim of the hat. The woman was
well muscled but scrawny; her face was wide and flat, disfigured by a scowl.
"Well?" she demanded. "Deaf, are you?"

Mur sighed, disappointment gathering in him. He turned to Philas. "Obviously, these

aren't Colonists."

"Who are they, then?"

"How should I know?" he snapped back, irritated.

He moved forward a little, with arms spread wide, hands empty. "My name is Mur.
This is Philas. We're�refugees." He decided not to mention the rest of the Human
Beings. "We lost all we possessed in the Glitch. We're trying to get to Parz City.
Do you know it?"
The woman's eyes narrowed; she didn't reply. She raised the spear uncertainly and
poked it toward Mur's stomach again, substituting aggressiveness for an answer.

"We're wasting our time," Mur whispered to Philas. But Philas had broken away from
him and was Waving down with irregular, trembling strokes of her thin legs toward
the strangers.

"You have an Interface," she said.

The man, similarly grimy and scowling, a little younger than the woman, joined his
companion. He too was wearing a battered, wide-brimmed hat. They stared at the
Human Beings as suspiciously, thought Mur, as a pair of tethered Air-pigs.

"Please," Philas said. "We've come a long way. We're trying to reach the Pole. Can
we�" She stumbled over her words, as if she'd become suddenly aware of how foolish
they sounded. "Will your Interface help us?" She looked from one to the other. "Do
you understand what I'm asking?"

The man opened a mouth devoid of teeth and laughed, but the woman laid a
restraining hand on his arm. Her voice remained stern, but it softened a little.
"Yes, I understand. And you're right; it is an Interface�from the olden days, from
before the Core Wars. But you can't use it."

Philas was trembling. "We'll pay," she said wildly. "You must�"

Mur grabbed her shoulders and tried to still her shivering with his own inertia.
"Stop it, Philas. Don't you understand? Even if we could pay, the Interface doesn't
work any more. These people are as helpless as we are."

Philas stared into his face resentfully, then turned away; her body was wracked by
shuddering.

The man and woman watched them curiously.

Mur turned to them wearily. "Why don't you put away your weapons? You can see we're
no threat to you."

They lowered their spears carefully, but kept them aimed roughly in the direction
of the Human Beings. The man said, "You really are refugees from further upflux?"

"Yes. And we really are trying to reach a place called Parz City, which we've never
seen. But it's at the Pole."

"Which Pole?" the woman asked. "The South Pole?"

The man cackled. "If you're starting from here it hardly matters, does it?"

"Oh, shut up, Borz," the woman said.

Mur put his arm around Philas. "Will you let us see your Interface?"

To his shame, he read amused pity in the woman's expression. "If you want," she
said. "But stay close to the two of us. Do you understand? We see enough thieves
and beggars�"

"We're no beggars," Philas said with a spark of spirit. She drew away from Mur and
pulled her shoulders straight.
"Come, then."

Borz and the woman turned away from them and separated by a couple of mansheights.
Hand in hand, Mur and Philas Waved cautiously forward.

Soon they were approaching the artifact, shepherded by spears and scowls.

Mur squeezed Philas's hand. "You should have said we weren't thieves," he
whispered. "I was thinking of trying a little begging."

She managed a small laugh. "It wouldn't have worked. These people have no more than
we have� or had, before we lost our home." She pointed at Borz, to their left.
"Look at the hat he's wearing."

The hat's brim was piled with pleats of fine material, knotted into place by ties
fixed through holes in the leather of the hat. Mur imagined undoing those ties;
perhaps a kind of net would drop down, around the head.

"It's odd, but what about it?"

"Remember Dura's tales of her time on the ceiling-farm. The Air-tanks they made her
wear, working high up, close to the Crust. The masks�"

"Oh. Right." Mur nodded. "Those hats must have come from coolies' Air-tanks."

"So my guess is these people used to be coolies. Maybe they ran away."

"But they ought to know about Parz."

Philas laughed without humor. She seemed in control of herself again, but her mood
was black. "So they are concealing things from us. Well, we lied to them. That's
what the world is like, it seems."

Mur stared at Borz's hat. Apart from Deni Maxx's Air-car it was the first artifact
even remotely related to the City he'd ever seen. And recognizing it now from
Dura's description somehow lent veracity to Dura's bizarre tale. He felt oddly
reassured by the confirmation of this small detail, as if somewhere inwardly he'd
imagined Dura might be lying, or mad.

The people turned to stare, suspicious and hostile, as the Human Beings were
brought into the encampment by Borz and his companion. There seemed to be around
forty humans in the little colony, perhaps fifteen of them children and infants.
The adults were fixing clothes, mending nets, sharpening knives, lounging in the
Air and talking. Children wriggled around them like tiny rays, their bare skins
crackling with electron gas. None of it would have looked out of place in any of
the Human Beings' encampments, Mur thought.

The tetrahedral artifact loomed beyond the small-scale human activities. It was a
skeletal framework, incongruous, sharp, dark.

Borz and the woman hung back as Mur and Philas hesitantly approached the
tetrahedron's forbidding geometries. Mur peered up at the framework. The edges were
poles a little thicker than his wrist, each about ten mansheights long. They were
precisely machined of some dull, dark substance. The four triangular faces defined
by the edges enclosed nothing but ordinary Air�in fact, the people here had slung
sections of net to enclose a small herd of squabbling, starved-looking Air-pigs at
the framework's geometric center. Elsewhere on the framework rough bags had been
fixed by bits of rope; irregular bulges told Mur that the bags probably contained
food, clothes and tools.
Mur moved forward, reached out a tentative hand and laid his palm against one edge.
The material was smooth, hard and cold to the touch. Maybe this was the Corestuff
of which Dura had spoken, extracted from the forbidding depths of the underMantle
by City folk (and now, unimaginably, by the boy Farr whom Mur had grown up with).

Philas asked, "Can we go inside?"

The woman laughed. "Of course you can. Your friend was right� nothing works, any
more."

The man grunted to Mur. "We'd hardly keep our pigs in there if they were going to
be whisked off to the North Pole at any moment."

"I imagine not."

Philas passed cautiously through one face of the tetrahedron. Mur saw her shiver as
she crossed the invisible plane marked by the edges. She hovered close to the pigs
and turned in the Air, peering into the corners of the tetrahedron.

The man�Borz�grunted. "Oh, what the hell." He dug into one of the bags dangling on
the tetrahedral frame and extracted a handful of food. "Here."

Mur grabbed the food. It was stale, slightly stinking Air-pig flesh. Mur allowed
himself one deep bite before stuffing the rest into his belt. "Thank you," he said
around the mouthful of food. "I can see you've little to spare."

The woman drifted closer to him. "Once," she said slowly, "this frame sparkled
blue-white. As if it was made of vortex lines. Can you imagine it? And it really
was a wormhole Interface; you could pass through it and cross the Mantle in a
heartbeat." For a moment she sounded sad�nostalgic for days she'd never seen�but
now her dismissive expression returned. "So they say, anyway. But then the Core
Wars came�"

After raising several generations of Human Beings, the Colonists had suddenly
withdrawn. According to the Human Beings' fragmented oral histories the Colonists
had retreated into the Core, taking most of the marvelous Ur-human technology with
them, and destroying anything they were forced to leave behind.

The Human Beings had been left stranded in the Air, helpless, with no tools save
their bare hands.

Perhaps the Colonists had expected the Human Beings to die off, Mur wondered. But
they hadn't. Indeed, if Dura's tales of Parz and its hinterland were accurate, they
had begun to construct a new society of their own, using nothing but their own
ingenuity and the resources of the Star. A civilization which�if not yet Mantle-
wide�was at least on a scale to bear comparison with the great days of the
ancients.

"The wormholes collapsed," the woman said. "Most of the Interfaces were taken away
into the Core. But some of them were left behind, like this one. But its vortex-
light died. Now it just drifts around in the Magfield�"

"I wonder what happened to the people inside the wormholes," Mur said. "When the
holes collapsed."

Philas came drifting out of the tetrahedron. "Come on, Mur," she said tiredly.

Mur thanked Borz for the scrap of food, and nodded to the woman�whose name, he
realized, he'd never learned.

The pair barely reacted, and their scowls seemed to be returning. Their spears had
never left their hands, Mur noticed.

They Waved out of the little encampment. A child jeered at them, until silenced by
a parent; Mur and Philas didn't look back.

They began to Wave upward, side by side.

Mur gazed up at the Crust-forest. "That seems a hell of a long way back," he said.
"To have come all this way, for a handful of meat�"

"Yes," Philas said savagely, "but we might have found riches. Riches beyond
imagining. We had to come."

"I wonder why they stay here, close to the Interface. Do you think it protects
them, when Glitches come?"

"I doubt it," Philas said. "After all, the thing floats freely, they said. It's
just a relic, a ruin from the past."

"Then why do they stay?"

"For the same reason Dura's City folk built their City at the Pole." Philas waved
her hands at the empty Mantlescape, the arching vortex lines. "Because it's a fixed
point, in all this emptiness. Something to cling to, to call home." She wiped her
eyes with the back of her hand; already she seemed short of breath. "Better than
drifting, like we do. Better than that."

Mur lifted his face to the Crust-forest and Waved hard, ignoring the gathering ache
in his hips, knees and ankles.

Chapter 19
Dura made sure it was she, not Farr, whom Hork chose to go on the journey into the
underMantle.

At first Adda tried to explain Dura's reasoning to Farr, to provide a bridge

between them; but he could see that Farr was devastated. The boy mooched around the
Upside apartment Hork had loaned the Human Beings like a trapped Air-pig. Adda
wistfully watched him prowl, recalling Logue as a young man. The underMantle
journey had many potent elements for Farr�the chance to protect his sibling by
taking her place, the intrinsic excitement of the jaunt itself. Farr was still such
a melange of boy and man.

But�if one of the three Human Beings must go on this absurd trip�then Dura was the
best choice. Farr didn't have the maturity, or Adda himself the strength, to cope
with the challenges the journey would provide�

Adda cursed himself silently. Even in the privacy of his own mind he was starting
to use the diluted language of the City folk, to be influenced by their gray
thinking. Into the Core with that.

The truth was that whoever went down inside this ramshackle craft into the
underMantle would almost certainly die there. Dura's qualification was only that
she, of the three of them, had the skills and strength marginally to reduce that
level of certainty.

So, knowing Dura's decision was right, Adda gave up trying to convince Farr.
Instead he tried to support the decision in Farr's mind in subtle ways�by taking
the decision as a given, not even trying to justify it. He concentrated on trying
to distract Farr from his anxious, angry concern for his sister, which wound up
tighter as the day of the Mantlecraft's launch neared. To this end Adda was pleased
with the friendships Farr had made in his brief time in the City�with Cris, and the
Fisherman Bzya�and tried to encourage them.

When Cris offered to take Farr Surfing again Farr at first refused, unwilling to
break out of his absorption with Dura; but Adda pressed him to accept the
invitation. In the end it was a little party of four�Cris, Farr, Adda and Bzya�who
set off, two days before Dura's launch, through the corridors for the open Air.

Adda had taken a liking to the huge, battered Fisherman, and sensed that Bzya had
given Farr a great deal of support�more than Farr realized, probably�during Farr's
brief time in the Harbor. Now Farr was free of his indenture, thanks to the whim of
Hork V, and�here was the boy showing his immaturity again, Adda reflected�now he
seemed to sympathize little with Bzya, who was stuck with the situation Farr had
escaped�the huge, stinking halls of the Harbor machines, and the depths of the
underMantle. Instead, Farr complained at how little he saw of Bzya.

Adda had no qualms in accepting Bzya's help as they made their way through the busy
corridors; the presence of Bzya's huge arm guiding him was somehow less
patronizing, less insulting, than any other City man's.

As they traveled out from the core of the City the street-corridors became barer,
free of doors and buildings, and the Air more dusty. At last they reached the Skin.
It was dark, deserted here, almost disquietingly so, and the City hull stretched
above and below them. Adda surveyed the workmanship critically: curving sheets of
crudely cut wooden planks, hammered onto a thick framework. It was like being in
the interior of a huge mask. From without, the City was imposing, even to a
worldly-wise upfluxer like himself; but seen from within, its primitive design and
construction were easy to discern. These City folk really weren't so advanced,
despite their facility with Corestuff; the Ur-humans would surely have laughed at
this wooden box.

They Waved slowly along the Skin, not speaking, until Cris brought them to a small
doorway, set into the Skin and locked by a wheel. With Bzya's help Cris turned the
stiff wheel�it creaked as it rotated, releasing small puffs of dust�and shoved the
door open.

Adda hauled himself through the doorframe and into the open Air. He Waved a few
mansheights away from the City and hovered in the Air, breathing in the fresh stuff
with a surge of relief. The party had emerged about halfway up the rectangular bulk
of the City�in the Midside, Adda reminded himself�and the skin of Parz, like the
face of a giant, cut off half the sky behind him. The imposing curve of a Longitude
anchor-band swept over the rough surface a few dozen mansheights off; electron gas
fizzed around the band's Corestuff flanks, a visible reminder of the awesome
currents flowing through its superconductor structure.

Adda's lungs seemed to expand. The vortex lines crossed the shining sky all around
him, plunging into the crimson-purple pool that was the Pole beneath the City. The
Air here was thick and clammy�they were right over the Pole, after all�but inside
the City he always had the feeling he was breathing in someone else's farts.

The two boys tumbled away into the Air, hauling the Surfboard; Adda was pleased to
see Farr's natural, youthful vigor coming to the surface as he Waved energetically
through the Air, responding to the refreshing openness. Bzya joined Adda; the two
older men hung in the Magfield like leaves.
"That door was a little stiff," Adda said drily.

Bzya nodded. "Not many City folk use the pedestrian exits."

Pedestrian. Another antique, meaningless word.

"Most of 'em never leave the City walls at all. And those that do�because they have
to, like your ceiling-farmer friend�take their cars."

"Is that a good thing, do you think?"

Bzya shrugged. He was wearing a scuffed, ill-fitting coverall, and under its coarse
fabric his shoulder muscles bunched like independent animals. "Neither one nor the
other. It's just the way things are. And always have been."

"Not always," Adda murmured. He gazed around the sky with his good eye and sniffed,
trying to assess the spin weather. "And maybe not forever. The City isn't immune to
the changes wrought by these unnatural Glitches. Even your great leader Hork admits
that."

Bzya nodded at the boys. "It's good to see Farr looking a bit happier."

"Yes." Adda smiled. "The body has its wisdom. When you're doing barrel-rolls in the
Air, it's hard to remember your problems."

Bzya patted his ample gut. "I wish I could remember doing barrel-rolls even. Still,
I know what you mean." Now Cris had set up his board. Farr rested it against the
soft, even resistance of the Magfield and Cris set his feet on it, flexing his legs
experimentally. Adda saw the boy's muscles bunch as he pressed against the
Magfield; his arms were outstretched and his fingers seemed to tickle at the Air,
as if assessing the strength and direction of the Magfield. Farr pushed him off,
recoiling through a mansheight or so, and Cris rocked the board steadily. He slid
through the Air with impressive speed and grace; boy and board looked like a single
entity, inseparable.

Cris performed slow, elegant turns in the Air; then�with a thrust at the board and
a swivel of his feet almost too fast for Adda's rheumy eye to follow�he swept up
and over, looping the loop in a single, tight motion. The boy flew across the blind
face of Parz City, electron gas sparkling blue about his gleaming board.

He came to rest close to Bzya and Adda, and stepped away from his board gracefully.
Farr Waved over to join them. Still a little dazzled by Cris's prowess, Adda saw
the contrast with Farr: the Human Being had innate, Pole-enhanced strength, but
beside Cris's athletic grace he looked clumsy, massive and uncoordinated.

But then, Farr hadn't had the luxury of a lifetime playing games in the Air.

"You ride that thing well."

"Thanks." Cris dipped his head with its oddly dyed hair; he seemed acceptably
unself-conscious about his skill. "And you're in the Games, I hear," Bzya said.

Adda frowned. "What Games?"

"They come once a year," Farr said eagerly. "Cris has told me about them. Sports in
the Air�Surfing, the Luge, acrobats, Wave-boxing. Half the people in the City go
out to the Stadium to watch."

"Sounds fun."
Bzya poked Adda in the ribs with a sharp thumb. "It is fun, you old fogey. You
should go along if you're still here."

"It's more than fun." Cris's tone was deeper than normal, earnest; Adda studied him
curiously. Cris was a good boy, he had decided�shallow, but a decent friend to
Farr. But now he sounded different: he was intense, his eyecups deep and dark.

Bzya said to Adda, "The Games can make a big difference, for a talented young man
like Cris. A moment of fame�money�invitations to the Palace�"

"This is the third year I've had an application in for the Surfing," Cris said.
"I've been in the top five in my age group all that time. But this is the first
time they've let me in." He looked sour. "Even so, I'm unseeded. I've got a lousy
draw, and�"

Adda was aware of Farr hovering awkwardly close to them, his callused hands heavy
at his sides. The contrast with Cris was painful. "Well," he said, trying not to
sound hostile to the City boy's prattle, "you should get your practice done, then."

The boys peeled away once more. Cris mounted his board and was soon sweeping
through the Air again, an insect sizzling with electron gas before the face of
Parz; Farr Waved in his wake, calling out excitedly.

"Don't be hard on the boy," Bzya murmured. "He's a City lad. You can't expect him
to have much sense of perspective."

"The Games mean nothing to me."

Bzya swiveled his scarred face to Adda. "But they mean everything to Cris. To him,
it's a chance�maybe his only chance�of breaking out of the life that's been set out
for him. You'd have to have a heart of Corestuff, man, not to sympathize with the
boy for trying to change his lot."

"And what then, Fisherman? After his few moments of glory�after the grand folk have
finished using him as their latest toy. What will become of him then?"

"If he's smart enough, and good enough, it won't end. He can parlay his gifts into
a niche in the Upside, before he gets too old to shine on the Surfboard. And even
if not�hell, it's a holiday for him, upfluxer. A holiday from the drudgery that
will make up most of his life."

There was a shout from above them. Cris had ridden his board high up the City's
face, and was now sweeping through the sparkling Air close to the Longitude band.
Electron gas swirled around his board and body, crackling and sparking blue. Other
young people�evidently friends of Cris�had joined them, appearing from cracks in
the Skin as if from nowhere�or so it seemed to Adda�and they raced around the
Longitude band like young rays.

"They shouldn't do that," Bzya murmured. "Against the law, strictly speaking. If
Cris goes too close to the Longitude the flux gradients could tear him apart."

Then why's he doing it?"

"To learn to master the flux," the Fisherman said. "To learn how to conquer the
fiercer gradients he'll find when he's in the Games, and he Surfs across the face
of the Pole."

Adda sniffed. "So now I know how you choose your rulers�on whether they can balance
on a bit of wood. No wonder this City's such a damn mess."

Bzya's laughter echoed from the blank, crudely finished wall of the City. "You
don't like us much, do you, Adda?"

"Not much." He looked at Bzya, hesitating. "And I don't understand how you've kept
your sense of humor, my friend."

"By accepting life as it is. I can question, but I can't change. Anyway, Parz isn't
some kind of huge prison, as you seem to imagine. It's home for a lot of
people�it's like a machine, designed to improve the lives of young people like
Cris."

"Then the machine's not bloody working."

Bzya said calmly, "Would you exchange Farr's life and experiences, to date, for
Cris's?"

"But Cris's thinking is so narrow. The Games, his parents� as if this City was all
the world, safe and eternal. Instead of�" He searched for the words. "Instead of a
box, lashed up from old lumber, floating around in immensity�"

Bzya touched his shoulder. "But that's why you and I are here, old man. To keep the
world away from boys like Farr and Cris�to give them a place that seems as stable
and eternal as your parents did when you were a child�until they are old enough to
cope with the truth." He turned his scarred face to the North, staring into the
diverging vortex lines with a trace of anxiety. "I wonder how much longer we're
going to be able to achieve that."

Again and again, Cris Mixxax looped around the huge Corestuff band.

* * *

It was the day of the launch. The down-gaping mouth of the Harbor, here in the
deepest Downside of the City, framed clear, yellow Air. A few people Waved beneath
the entrance and peered up into the dark. Engineers talked desultorily as they
waited for Hork to arrive, and to begin the launch proper. There was a smell of
old, splintering wood.

Dura clung to a rail close to the lip of the access port, keeping to herself. She
had already said her good-byes. Toba had cooked them a fine meal in his little
Midside home, but it had been a difficult occasion; Dura had had to work hard to
break through Farr's resentful reserve. She'd asked Adda, quietly, to keep Farr
away from the launch site today. She'd have enough to think about without the
emotional freight of another round of farewells.

Even, she thought, wrapping her arms around her torso, if they turned out to be
final farewells.

She looked down at the craft, studying lines which had become familiar to her in
weeks of designing, building and testing. Hork V had decided to call his
extraordinary craft the "Flying Pig." It was a clumsy, ugly name, Dura thought; but
it caught the essence, maybe, of a clumsy, ugly vessel. The ship as finally
constructed�after two failed prototypes�was a squat cylinder two mansheights across
and perhaps three tall. The hull, of polished wood, was punctured by large, staring
windows of clearwood. There were also clearwood panels set into the upper and lower
cross-sections of the cylinder. The whole craft was bound about by five hoops of
sturdy Core-matter. The Air-pigs whose farts would power the vessel could be seen
through the windows, lumps of straining, harnessed energy. The ship was suspended
by thick cables from huge, splintered pulleys which�on normal days�bore Bells down
toward the Quantum Sea.

This, then, was the craft which would carry two people into the lethal depths of
the underMantle. In the dingy, dense Air of the City's Harbor the thing looked
sturdy enough, Dura supposed, but she doubted she'd feel so secure once they were
underway.

There was a disturbance above her, a sound of hatches banging. Hork V, Chair of
Parz City, resplendent in a glittering coverall, descended from the gloom above. He
seemed to glow; his bearded face was split by a huge smile. Dura saw that Physician
Muub and the engineer Seciv Trop followed him. "Good day, good day," Hork called to
Dura, and he clapped her meatily on the shoulder-blade. "Ready for the off?"

Dura, her head full of her regrets and fears, turned away without speaking.

Seciv Trop wafted down, coming to rest close to her. He touched her arm, gently;
the many pockets of his coverall were crammed, as usual, with unidentifiable�and
probably irrelevant�items. "Travel safely," he said.

She turned, at first irritated; but there was genuine sympathy in his finely drawn
face. "Thanks," she said slowly.

He nodded. "I understand how you're feeling. Does that surprise you?�crusty old
Seciv, good for nothing without his styli and tables. But I'm human, just the same.
You're afraid of the journey ahead�"

"Terrified would be a better word."

He grimaced. "Then at least you're sane. You're already missing your family and
friends. And you probably don't expect to make it back, ever."

She felt a small surge of gratitude to Seciv; this was the first time anyone had
actually voiced her most obvious fear. "No, frankly."

"But you're going anyway." He smiled. "You put the safety of the world ahead of
your own."

"No," she snapped. "I put my brother's safety ahead of my own."

"That's more than sufficient."

As she had suspected, the City men had insisted on one of the Human Beings taking
this trip. Adda was ruled out because of age and injury. Farr's omission�which came
to his frustration�hadn't been a foregone conclusion; his youth, in the eyes of
those making the decisions, had barely outweighed his experience as a novice
Fisherman. Dura had been forced to argue hard.

The second crewman had been a surprise: it was to be Hork, Chair of Parz, himself.
Now Hork was moving around the bay, glad-handing the engineers. Dura watched his
progress sourly. He must be subject to the same fears as herself, and�in recent
months anyway�to enormous personal pressure�and yet he looked relaxed, at ease,
utterly in command; he had a natural authority which made her feel small, weak.

"He wears his fear well," she said sourly.

Seciv pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Perhaps. Or perhaps his fear of not
taking the voyage, of remaining here, is the greater. He is gambling a great deal
on this voyage, you know."
This stunt� Yes, Dura did know; she'd become immersed enough in the politics of
Parz to be able�with the help of Ito and Toba�to understand something of Hork's
situation. However unreasonable it might be, the citizens of Parz expected Hork to
resolve their troubles�to lift food rationing, to restore the lumber convoys and
get the place working again. To open the shops, damn it. That he'd manifestly
failed to do so (but how could he have succeeded?) had put his position in doubt;
there were factions in his Court and on the larger Committee who were gunning for
him, with varying degrees of openness.

This ludicrous jaunt into the underMantle was Hork's last gamble. All or nothing.
If it succeeded then he, Hork, would return as the savior of the City and all the
peoples of the Mantle. But if it failed�well, Dura thought uneasily, perhaps it
would be better for Hork to die in a glorious instant, in the deep underMantle,
than at the hands of an assassin here in the bright corridors of Parz.

The crew members had to climb into the ship through a hinged hatch set in the upper
end of the cylinder. Hosch, the former Harbor supervisor, had been checking the
craft's simple systems; now Dura watched his thin, hunched shoulders emerge from
the craft through the crew hatch. As Muub had expected, Hosch had turned out to be
a good manager of the construction project, despite his sour personality; he'd been
able effectively to draw out the mercurial expertise of the likes of Seciv Trop and
to marry it to the practical skills of his Harbor engineers.

Hosch glanced up, saw that both Dura and Hork were ready. "It's time," he said.

Dura felt something within her recede. As if in a dream she watched her own hands
and legs working as she clambered down toward the ship.

She climbed stiffly through the hatch and into the interior, squeezing past the row
of bound, straining Air-pigs and the sleek turbine beside them. She experienced a
mixture of gratified relief at being underway, and a tang of sheer, awful terror.

With bellowed good-byes to the engineers, to Muub, Seciv and the rest, Hork shook
Hosch's thin hand and clambered into the cabin, squeezing his sparkling bulk
through the hatch. He seemed careless of the pollution of his gleaming suit by the
dirt of the pigs. He dragged the hatch closed after him and dogged its wooden
latches tight.

For a moment Hork and Dura hovered close to the hatch, alone in there for the first
time. Their eyes met. Now, Dura thought, now the two of them were bound to each
other, for good or ill. She could see a slow, appraising awareness of that in
Hork's expression. But there was little fear there; she read humor, enthusiasm.

By the blood of the Xeelee, she thought. He's actually enjoying this.

Without speaking they descended into the craft.

The pigs were strapped in place close to the top of the cylinder. Dura climbed into
her loose harness close to the pigs. The walls of the cabin were fat with Air-
tanks, food stores, equipment lockers and a primitive latrine. Cooling fans hummed
and wood-lamps, their green glow dim, studded the walls.

Toward the base of the ship Hork took his place at the craft's simple control
panel, a board placed before one of the broader windows and equipped with three
levers and a series of switches. He rolled his sleeves back from his arms with
every evidence of relish.

There was a pounding on the hull.

Hork thumped back enthusiastically, grinning through his beard. "So," he said
breathlessly, "so it begins!"

The craft jolted into motion. Dura heard a muffled cheer from the engineers in the
Harbor, the creaking of the pulleys as they began to pay out cable.

After a few seconds the craft emerged from the Harbor. The golden brilliance of
Polar Air-light swept the interior of the ship, filling Dura with a nostalgic,
claustrophobic ache. The silhouetted forms of Waving people�some of them
children�accompanied the craft as it began its descent from the City.

Hork was laughing. Dura looked down at him, disbelieving.

"Oh, come on," Hork said briskly. "We're off! Isn't this a magnificent adventure?
And what a relief it is to be doing something, to be going somewhere. Eh, Dura?"

Dura sniffed, letting her face settle into sourness. "Well, Hork, here I am going
to hell in the belly of a wooden pig. It's a bit hard to find much to smile about.
With respect. And we do have work to do."

Hork's expression was hard, and she felt briefly uneasy�she'd been around him long
enough now to witness several of his towering rages. But he merely laughed aloud
once more. His noisy, exuberant presence was overwhelming in the cramped cabin;
Dura felt herself shrink from it, as if escaping into herself. Hork said, "Quite
right, captain! And isn't it time you started working the pigs?"

He was right; Dura swiveled in her sling to begin the work. The craft wouldn't be
cut loose of the Harbor cable for some time, but they needed to be sure the
internal turbine and the magnetic fields were fully functioning. The animals'
harness, slung across the width of the cabin, kept the pigs' rears aimed squarely
at the wide blades of a turbine. A trough carved from unfinished wood had been
fixed a micron or so before the pigs' sketchy, six-eyed faces, and now Dura took a
sack of leaves from a locker and filled the trough with luscious vegetable
material, crushing the stuff as she worked. Soon the delicious tang of the leaves
filled the cabin. Dura was aware of Hork bending over his console, evidently
shutting out the scents; as for herself�well, she could all but taste the protons
dripping out onto her tongue.

The pigs could barely stand it. Their hexagonal arrays of eyecups bulged and their
mouths gaped wide. With grunts of protest they hurled themselves against the
unyielding harness toward the leaves, their jetfarts exploding in the cramped
atmosphere of the cabin.

Under the steady pressure of the jetfart stream, the broad blades of the turbine
began to turn. Soon the sweet, musky smell of pig-fart permeated the Air of the
cabin, reminding Dura, if she closed her eyes, of the scents of her childhood, of
the Net with its enclosed herd. She scattered a few fragments of food into the
grasp of the pigs' gaping maws. Just enough to keep them fed, but little enough to
keep them interested in more.

The anatomy of a healthy Air-pig was efficient enough to enable it to generate

farts for many days on very little food. Pigs could travel meters allowing as much
of their bulky substance to dissolve into fart energy as was required; these five,
though terrified and frustrated by the conditions into which they had been penned,
should have little problem powering the turbine for as long as the humans needed.
And there was a back-up system�a stove powered by nuclear-burning wood�if they were
desperate enough to need to risk its heat in the confines of the cabin.
Hork, grunting to himself, experimentally threw switches. The ship shuddered in
response, and Hork peered out of the window, gauging the effect of the currents
generated in the superconducting hoops.

Farr's face suddenly appeared outside the ship, at the window opposite Dura. His
expression was solemn, empty. He was Waving hard, she realized; they must be
descending rapidly already, and soon he and the other Wavers would not be able to
keep up.

Farr must have given Adda the slip. And so, after all, here was a last good-bye.
She forced herself to smile at Farr and raised her hand.

There was a thud from the hull of the "Flying Pig"; the little craft shuddered in
the Air before settling again.

Dura frowned. "What was that?"

Hork looked up, his wide face bland. "The Harbor cable cutting loose. Right on
schedule." He glanced out of the window at the dark shadows of the superconducting
hoops. "We're falling under our own power now; the currents in the hoops are Waving
us deeper into the Star. And the hoops are the only way we're going to get back
home� We're alone," he said. "But we're on our way."

Chapter 20
Three meters deep.

It was a depth Dura couldn't comprehend. Humans were confined within the Mantle to
a shell of superfluid Air only a few meters thick. Her first journey with Toba to
the Pole from the upflux�so far that she had felt she was traveling around the
curvature of the Star itself�had only been about thirty meters.

Now she was drilling whole meters into the unforgiving bulk of the Star itself. She
imagined the Star crushing their tiny wooden boat and spitting them out, like a
tiny infestation. And it was small comfort to remember that their journey would be
broken before reaching such a depth only if they achieved their goal� if the
unimaginable really did, after all, emerge from the Core to greet them.

By the end of the second day they were already well below the nebulous boundary of
the habitable layer of Air. The yellow brightness of the Air outside the windows
had faded�to amber, then a deeper orange, and finally to a blood-purple color
reminiscent of the Quantum Sea. Dura pressed her face against cold clearwood,
hoping to see something�anything: exotic animals, unknown, inhuman people, some
kind of structure inside the Star. But there was only the muddy purple of the
thickening Air, and her own distorted, indistinct reflection in the wood-lamps'
green light. She was trapped in here�with her fears, and with Hork. She had
expected to feel small, vulnerable inside this tiny wooden box as it burrowed its
way into the immense guts of the Star; but the thick darkness beyond the window
made her claustrophobic, trapped. She retreated into herself. She tended the
fretting pigs, slept as much as she could, and kept her eyes averted from Hork's.

His determined efforts to talk to her, on the third day, were an intrusion.

"You're pensive." His tone was offensively bright. "I hope this adventure isn't
causing you any�ah�philosophic difficulties."

He'd left his console and had drifted up the cabin, close to her station near the
pigs' harness. She stared at the broad, fat-laden face, the mound of beard around
his mouth. When she'd first been introduced to Hork she'd been fascinated and
disconcerted�as Hork intended, no doubt�by that beard, by this man with hair on his
face. But now, as she looked closer, she could see the way the roots of the beard's
hair-tubes were arranged in a neat hexagonal pattern over Hork's chin� The beard
had been transplanted, either from Hork's own scalp or from one of his more
unfortunate subjects.

So the beard wasn't impressive, she decided. Just decadent. And besides, it was
yellowing more quickly than the hair on his head; another few years and Hork would
look truly absurd.

How huge, how intrusive, how irritating he was. The tension between them seemed to
crackle like electron gas.

"Philosophic difficulties? I'm not superstitious."

"I didn't suggest you were."

"We aren't religious about the Xeelee. I don't fear that we're going to bring down
the wrath of the Xeelee, if that's what you mean. But Human Beings�alone�would
never have attempted this journey into the Star."

"Because the Xeelee will look after you, like mama in the sky."

Dura sighed. "Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite� We have to accept the
actions of the Xeelee without question�for we believe that their goals will prove
in the long term to be of benefit to us all, to humans as a race. Even if it means
the destruction of the Star�even if it means our own destruction."

Hork shook his head. "You upfluxers are full of laughs, aren't you? Well, it's a
chilly faith. And damn cold comfort."

"You don't understand," Dura said. "It's not meant to be comforting. Back up
there�"�she jerked her thumb upward, to the world of light and humans�"there is my
comfort. My family and people."

Hork studied her. His face, under its layers of fat, was broad and coarsely worked,
but�she admitted grudgingly�not without perception and sensitivity. "You fear
death, Dura, despite your knowledge."

Dura laughed and closed her eyes. "I told you; knowledge is not necessarily a
comfort. I've no reason not to fear death� and, yes, I fear it now."

Hork breathed deeply. "Then have faith in me. We'll survive. I feel it. I know it�"

His face was close to hers, so close she could smell sweet bread on his breath. His
expression was clear, set. Determination seemed to shine from him; just for a
moment Dura felt tempted to let herself wallow in that determination, to relax in
his massive strength as if he were her father reborn.

But she resisted. She said harshly, "So you've no fear of death? Will your power in
Parz help you overcome the final disaster?"

"Of course it won't," he said. "And I'm not without fear. That surprises you,
doesn't it? I'm not a fool without the imagination to be afraid, upfluxer; nor am I
so arrogant as to suppose myself beyond the reach of death. I know that in the end
I am as weak as the next man in the face of the great forces of the Star�let alone
the unknowns beyond it. But, just at this moment, I'm�" He waved a hand in the Air.
"I'm exhilarated. I'm doing something more than waiting for the next Glitch to hit
Parz, or coping with the devastation of the last one. I'm trying to change the
world, to challenge the way things are." His eyecups were dark wells. "And I
couldn't bear to allow anyone else to go into the dark at the heart of the Star,
and not be there." He looked at her. "Can you understand that?"

"Some say you're running away from the real problems. That genuine courage would
lie in staying behind and wrestling with the disaster, not flying off on a
spectacular, wasteful jaunt."

He nodded, his smile grim. "I know. Muub's among them. Oh, don't worry; I won't do
anything about it. It's a point of view. Even one I share, in my darkest moments."
He grinned. "But I like to think my father would have been proud of me, if he could
have seen me now. He always thought I was so�practical. So unimaginative. And yet�"

There was a thud from the hull of the "Flying Pig"; the little craft shuddered in
the Air. The pigs squealed, thrashing in their stall, and with a single,
involuntary movement Dura and Hork grabbed at each other.

The craft settled. Hork's expansive belly, liquid beneath its covering of
glittering material, was heavy against Dura's stomach and breasts.

"What was that?"

The small, regular arrays of hair at the fringe of his beard wafted as he breathed.
"Corestuff bergs," he said, his voice tight. "That's all. Corestuff bergs. If
either of us was a Fisherman we'd not have been startled�that's why they come down
here in the first place: to fish for the Corestuff bergs. The "Pig" is designed to
cope with little impacts like that; there's nothing to fear." His arms were still
around her�and her arms were in turn wrapped around his torso, her hands clutching
at the layers of material over his back�and now he reached up to stroke her hair.
She wanted, suddenly, to bury herself in this bulky strength, to hide deep inside
the warm darkness of the eyecups which were huge before her.

She scrabbled at his clothing, found a line of buttons down the seam at his side;
and she felt his thick, clumsy fingers traveling over her own coverall.

A last shred of rationality made her assess his expression, his open mouth and
flaring, shining nostrils, and she saw that his need was as great as hers.

His clothing came apart, and she peeled a layer of thick, expensive material away
from his belly and chest. She ran her left hand down the curve of his stomach and
found his cache; with a deft, tender motion she pulled out the small penis, wrapped
it in her fingers and squeezed it gently. It swelled rapidly, pushing at her palm
like a small animal. He'd opened her coverall now, and she shrugged out of it,
kicking her legs impatiently out of the clinging material and letting the garment
drift away into the Air. She felt Hork's hand slide, dry and hot, up her thigh and
between her legs; she opened her thighs softly and he ran his fingers over her
cleft, as clumsily and eagerly as an adolescent. There was a coolness inside her,
and she knew that she was ready, that membranes inside her were already sighing
lubricating Air into her. Now she took Hork's penis�it was pulsing,
rhythmically�and pushed it deep inside her; it entered her easily. He sighed, and
buried his face in her shoulder; she turned her head, resting her cheek on his
hair. His penis was like a warm, beating heart inside her. His legs, still clothed,
were warm and rough against hers as she began to scissor her thighs, back and
forth, letting the pattern of her movements stimulate the muscle walls inside her.

At last she felt herself clench at him, hard; she shuddered, and she heard him
gasp, his bulk heavy against hers as they drifted in the Air. Her muscles pulsed
around him, and for a few seconds she felt flutters, beats, as the rhythms of their
bodies strove to merge. But soon they coalesced, and she felt a surge of triumph as
the walls of her vagina throbbed in unison with Hork.
He came quickly, and she only heartbeats later. They cried out and shuddered
against each other; she felt the muscles of his back move under her fingers.

Hork slumped against her. She held him against her body, curling her fingers in his
hair, unwilling to release his warmth and mass. She felt his penis still inside
her, small and hot. The moment of closeness stretched on, and she thought of how
strange this liaison would have seemed to her�deep in the lethal depths of the Star
with the ruler of an astonishing City�if she could have imagined it, in the days
before she left the upflux. For some reason she thought of Deni Maxx, the brisk
doctor from Muub's Hospital. But your coupling would have seemed much stranger to a
watching Ur-human, Dura imagined her saying. We believe their sexual mechanism was
based�not on compression, like ours�but on frictional forces. That's obviously
impossible for us, embedded in superfluid as we are, so when they designed us�

Slowly the closeness faded. The sounds of the craft�the snuffling of the feeding
Air-pigs, the soft whirr of the turbine axle, the slow hissing of the wood-
lamps�seeped back into her awareness. Hork's bulk seemed separate from her once
more, and she became aware of folds of cloth trapped uncomfortably between their
bodies, of a stiffness in her back as her body leaned forward over his belly.

Gently she pushed him away. His penis fell out of her with a soft, warm sound.

He looked into her eyes, smiled�he looked as if he had been crying, she thought
briefly, startled�and tucked his penis back into its cache. He hauled his coverall
around the circumference of his stomach, and she reached for her discarded clothes.

"Well," she said at last. "Where did that come from?"

He drifted away from her and settled back into the small seat close to the control
console; she saw how his sparkling coverall was noticeably less elegant now,
crumpled and sitting askew on his shoulders. "Fear," he said simply. His composure
was restored, she saw, but he wasn't bothering to restore his usual abrasive front.
The atmosphere between them had changed; the tension which had pervaded the ship in
the days since its launch had dissipated. "Fear. Obviously. I needed�comfort. I
needed to lose myself. I don't know if that's enough of a reason; I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Absently she reached up and fed more leaf fragments into the pigs'
hopper. "I wanted it too."

He ran his hands over the simple instruments before him. "I meant what I said, you
know. For myself, I'd rather be here, running this ship, than anywhere in the Star.
In Parz, the problems I have to deal with, day to day�" For a brief, empathetic
moment she could imagine how it must be to be in a position like Hork's�with the
welfare of not just himself, not just his family, but of thousands resting on his
shoulders. She watched the set of his face and recalled the hint of weeping she
thought she'd detected; briefly she felt she understood him. He said, "Nothing ever
gets solved, you see. That's the trouble. Or if it does, the next day it is worse.
At least here�" He grasped the simple controls. "At least here, I am doing
something. Going somewhere!"

"Yes, but doing what? Going where?"

He looked up at her. "You know there's no reply to that. We're seeking help, from
whatever came out of the Core once before to destroy us."

"And how are we supposed to find it?"

"You sound like the Finance sub-Committee," he said sourly. "All we can do is put
ourselves into a position where they can find us� whoever they are."

She felt her mood swinging away from him now; she felt hot and vaguely soiled, and
once more the tight curves of the walls seemed to close in around her. She
recalled, now, that they hadn't kissed once. She didn't even like this man. "So
you're happy to be going somewhere. Anywhere. Is that what this is really all
about?�providing you with recreation from your awful burdens? And if it is, did you
really have to drag me down into the depths with you?"

For a moment there was an element of hurt in his face, and his lips parted as if he
were about to protest; but then he smiled, and she saw his defensive front enclose
him once more. "Now, now. Let's not bicker. We don't want to be found at odds when
our host from the Core comes to meet us, do we?"

"I don't think I can restrain myself for such a long wait," she said with contempt,
and she turned back to her pigs, stroking and soothing them.

There was another thud at the hull, a scrape along the length of the ship. This one
was softer than before, but still Dura found herself shuddering. She calmed the
nervous pigs with quiet words, and wondered if she had been right�if it really
would be such a long wait, after all.

Electron gas crackling from its superconducting hoops, the tiny wooden ship labored
centimeter after centimeter into the thickening depths of the neutron star.

* * *

Bzya was to be put on double shifts, inside the Bells. He didn't know when he would
next have enough free time to get away from the Harbor between dives. So he invited
Adda and Farr to come see him off, in a place he called a "bar".

Adda found the place with some difficulty. The bar was a small, cramped chamber
tucked deep inside the Downside. The only light came from guttering wood-lamps on
the walls; in the green, poky gloom Adda was strongly aware of how deep inside the
carcass of the City he was buried.

In one corner of the bar was a counter where a couple of people were apparently
serving something, some kind of food. Rails crisscrossed the chamber with no
apparent pattern; men and women clustered together in small groups on the rails,
slowly eating their way through bowls of what looked like bread, and talking
desultorily. Adda saw heavy workers' tunics, scarred flesh, thick, twisted limbs.
One or two appraising stares were directed at the upfluxer.

Bzya was alone at a length of rail, close to the far wall. He saw Adda and raised
an arm, beckoning him over; three small bowls were fixed to the rail beside him.

Adda pushed forward, feeling self-conscious in his bandages, and clambered stiffly
through the crowded place, aware of the babble of conversation all-around him.

"Adda." Bzya smiled through his distorted face, and waved Adda to a clear space of
rail. Adda hooked one arm over the rail, hooking himself comfortably into place.
"Thanks for coming down." Bzya glanced, once, past Adda toward the door, then
turned back to his bowls.

Adda caught the look. "No Farr," he said heavily. "I'm sorry, Bzya. I couldn't find
him."

Bzya nodded. "I expect he's Surfing again."

"I know you did a lot for him, when he was working in the Harbor; he should have�"

Bzya held up his thick palm. "Forget it. Look, if I was his age I'd rather be
losing myself in the sky with the Surfers than sitting in a poky place like this
with two battered old fogeys. And with the Games coming up in a couple of days,
they'll only have one thing on their minds. Or maybe two," he said slyly. He nodded
at the three bowls on the rail. "Anyway, it just means there's more of this stuff
for us."

Adda looked down at the row of bowls. They were crudely carved of wood and were
little larger than his cupped palm, and they were fixed to the rail by stubs of
wood. The bowls contained small slices of what might have been bread. Adda,
cautiously, pulled out a small, round slice; it was dense, warm and moist to the
touch. He turned it over doubtfully. "What the hell's this?"

Bzya laughed, looking pleased with himself. "I didn't think you'd have heard of it
yet. No bars in the upflux, eh, my friend?"

Adda glared. "I'm supposed to eat this stuff?"

Bzya extended his fingers, inviting Adda to do so.

Adda sniffed at the plastic stuff, squeezed it and finally took a small nibble. It
was as hot, dense and soggy as it looked�unpleasant inside the mouth�and the taste
was sour, unidentifiable. Adda swallowed the fragment. "Disgusting."

"But you've got to treat it right." Bzya dipped into the bowl, drew out a thick
handful of the stuff, and crammed it into his mouth. His big jaws worked as he
chewed the stuff twice, then swallowed it down in one go. He closed his eyes as the
hot food passed down his throat; and after a few seconds he shuddered briefly,
suppressing a sigh. Then he belched. "That's how you take beercake."

"Beercake?"

"Try it again."

Adda reached into the second bowl and lifted a healthy handful of cake to his
mouth. It sat in his mouth, hot, dense and eminently indigestible; but, with
determination, he bit into it a couple of times and then swallowed, forcing his
throat to accept the incompressible stuff. The cake passed down his throat, a hard,
painful lump. "Fabulous," he said when it was gone. "I'm so glad I came."

Bzya grinned and held up his palm.

�And a heat seemed to surge smoothly out from Adda's stomach, flooding his body and
head; his palms and feet tingled, as if being worked by invisible fingers, and his
skull seemed to swell in size, filling up with a roomy, comfortable warmth. He
looked down at his body, astonished, half-expecting to see electron gas sparking
around his fingertips, to hear his skin sighing with the new warmth. But there was
no outward change.

After a few seconds the heat-surge wore away, but when it had receded it left Adda
feeling subtly altered. The bar seemed cozier�friendlier�than even a moment before,
and the smell of the remaining beercake was pleasing, harmonious, enticing.

"Welcome to beercake, my friend, and a new lifelong relationship."

The pleasing warmth induced by the cake still permeated Adda. He poked at the cake
with a new wonder. "Well, I've not eaten anything with such an impact before, up-
or downflux."

"I didn't think so." Bzya picked up a piece of cake and compressed it between his
fingers. "Farr is developing a taste too, I ought to say. It's a mash, mostly of
Crust-tree leaf. But it's fermented�in huge Corestuff vessels, for days�"

"Fermented?"

"Spin-spider web is put into the vats with the mash. There's something in the
webbing, maybe in the glistening stuff that makes it sticky, which reacts with the
mash and changes it to beercake. Magic."

"Sure." Adda took another mouthful of the beercake now; it was as revolting as
before, but the anticipation of its aftereffects made the taste much easier to
bear. He swallowed it down and allowed the warmth to filter through his being.

"What does the stuff cost?"

"Nothing." Bzya shrugged. "The Harbor authorities provide it for us. As much as we
want, as long as we're able to do our jobs."

"What do you mean? Is it bad for you?"

"If you overdo it, yes." Bzya rubbed his face. "It works on the capillaries in your
flesh�dilates them�and some of the major pneumatic vessels in the brain. The flow
of Air is subtly altered, you see, and�"

"And you feel wonderful."

"Yeah. But if you use it too often, you can't recover. The capillaries stay
dilated�"

Adda gazed around the bar, at this safe, marvelous place. "That seems all right to
me."

"Sure. Your head would be a wonderful place to live in. But you couldn't function,
Adda; you couldn't do a job. And if it gets bad enough you couldn't even feed
yourself, without prompting. But, yes, you'd feel wonderful about it."

"And I don't suppose this City is so forgiving of people who can't hold down jobs."

"Not much."

"Don't the Harbor managers worry they're going to lose too many of their Fishermen,
to this cake stuff? Why dole it out free?"

Bzya shrugged. "They lose a few. But they don't care. Adda, we're expendable. It
doesn't take long to train up a new Fisherman, and there're always plenty of
recruits, in the Downside. And they know the cake keeps us here in the bars, happy,
quiet and available. They gain more than they lose." He chomped another mouthful.
"And so do I."

Adda worked his way slowly through the bowl, cautiously observing the cake's
increasing effects on him. Every so often he moved his fingers and feet, testing
his coordination. If he got to the point where he even thought he might be losing
control, he promised himself, he'd stop.

The Fisherman had fallen silent; his huge fingers toyed with the cake.
"I hear you're on double shifts. Whatever that means."

Bzya smiled, indulgent. "It means I'm assigned to the Bells twice as frequently as
usual. It's because they're running twice as many dives as usual."

"Why?"

"The upflux Glitch. No wood coming into the City. Not enough, anyway. People bitch
about food rationing, but the wood shortage is just as important in the longer
term. And let's hope the day never comes when they have to ration beercake� Anyway,
they want more Corestuff metal, to use as building material."

"Building? Are they extending the City?"

"Rebuilding. It goes on all the time, Adda, mostly deep in the guts of the place.
Small repairs, maintenance. Although," he said, leaning forward conspiratorially,
"there are rumors that it isn't just the need to keep up routine repairs that's
prompted this increased demand."

"What, then?"

"They're trying to strengthen the City's structure. Rebuild the skeleton with more
Corestuff. They're not shouting about it for fear of causing panic; but they're
endeavoring to make it more robust in the face of future problems. Like a closer
Glitch."

Adda frowned. "Can they do that? Will it work?"

"I'm not an engineer. I don't know." Bzya chewed on the cake, absently. "But I
doubt it," he said without emotion. "The City's so huge; you'd have to rip most of
its guts out to strengthen it significantly. And it's a ramshackle structure. I
mean, it grew, it was never planned. It was built for space, not strength."

Parz had been one of the first permanent settlements founded after humanity was
scattered through the Mantle following the Core Wars. At first Parz was a random
construct of ropes and wood, no more significant than a dozen others, drifting
freely above the Pole. But at the Pole the bodies of men and women were
significantly stronger, and so Parz grew rapidly; and its position at the only
geographically unique point in the southern hemisphere of the Mantle gave it
strategic and psychological significance. Soon it had become a trading center, and
had wealth enough to afford a ruling class�the first in the Mantle since the Wars.
The Committee had been founded, and the growth and unification of Parz had
proceeded apace.

Parz's wealth exploded when the Harbor was established�Parz was the first and only
community in the Mantle able to extract and exploit the valuable Corestuff. Soon
the scattered community of the cap of Mantle around Parz, the region eventually to
be called the hinterland, fell under Parz's economic influence. Eventually the
hinterland and City worked as a single economic unit, with the raw materials and
taxes of the hinterland flowing into Parz, with Corestuff and�more importantly�the
stability and regulation provided by Parz's law washing back in return. Eventually
only the far upflux, bleak and inhospitable, remained disunited from Parz, home to
a few tribes of hunters, and bands of Parz exiles like the Human Beings themselves.

Adda bit into more cake. "I'm surprised people accepted being taken over like that.
Didn't anybody fight?"

Bzya shook his head. "It wasn't seen as a conquest. Parz is not an empire, although
it might seem that way to you. Adda, people remembered the time before the Wars,
when humans lived in safety and security throughout the Mantle. We couldn't return
to those times; we'd lost too much. But Parz was better than nothing: it offered
stability, regulation, a framework to live in. People gripe about their tithes�and
nobody's going to pretend that the Committee get it right all the time�but most of
us would prefer taxes to living wild. With all respect to you, my friend." He bit
into his cake. "And that's still true today; as true as it ever was."

Two of the bowls were already empty. Adda felt the seduction of this place, that he
could have sat here in this companionable glow with Bzya for a long time. "Do you
really believe that? Look at your own position, Fisherman; look at the dangers you
face daily. Is this really the best of all possible lives for you?"

Bzya grinned. "Well, I'd exchange places with Hork any day, if I thought I could do
his job. Of course I would. And there are plenty of people closer to me, in the
Harbor, who I'd happily throttle, if I thought it would make the world a better
place. If I didn't think they'd just bring in somebody worse. I accept I'm at the
bottom of the heap, here, Adda. Or close to it. But I believe it's the way of
things. I will fight injustice and inequity�but I accept the need for the existence
of the heap itself." He looked carefully at Adda. "Does that make sense?"

Adda thought it over. "No," he said at last. "But it doesn't seem to matter much."

Bzya laughed. "Now you see why they give us this stuff for free. Here." He held out
the third bowl. "Your good health, my friend."

Adda reached for the cake.

* * *

A couple of days later Bzya's shifts should have allowed him another break. Adda
searched for Farr, but couldn't find him, so he went down to the bar alone. He
entered, awkward and self-conscious in his dressings, peering into the gloomier
corners.

He couldn't find Bzya, and he didn't stay.

Chapter 21
In the interior of the Star there were no sharp boundaries, merely gradual changes
in the dominant form of matter as pressures and densities increased. So there was
no dramatic plunge, no great impacts as the "Flying Pig" hauled itself deeper: just
a slow, depressing diminution of the last vestiges of Air-light. And the glow cast
by the wood-lamps fixed to the walls was no substitute; with its smoky greenness
and long, flickering shadows, the gloom in the cabin was quite sinister.

To Dura, hunched over herself in her corner of the ship, this long, slow descent
into darkness was like a lingering death.

Soon, though, the ride became much less even. The ship swayed alarmingly and at one
point was nearly upended. The laboring pigs, their shadows huge on the ship's roof,
bleated pathetically; Hork laughed, his eyecups pools of green darkness.

Dura's fingers scrabbled over the smooth wooden walls in search of purchase.
"What's happening? Why are we being pummeled like this?"

"Every Bell hits underMantle currents. The only difference is, we've no Spine to
steady us." Hork spoke to her slowly, as if she were stupid. Since their single
physical encounter, his aloof hostility had been marked. "The substance of the
Mantle at these depths is different from our Air� or so my tutors used to tell me.
It's still a superfluid of neutrons, apparently, but of a different mode from the
Air: it's anisotropic�it has different properties in different directions."

Dura frowned. "So in some directions it's like the Air, and it doesn't impede our
progress. But in others�"

"�it feels thick and viscous, and it batters against our magnetic shield. Yes."

"But how can you tell which directions it's Air-like?"

"You can't." Hork grinned. "That's the fun of it."

"But that's dangerous," she said, uneasily aware of how childlike she sounded.

"Of course it is. That's why the Harbor suffers so many losses."

�And this is where I sent my brother, she thought with a shiver. She felt
strangely, retrospectively fearful. Here, drifting through this anisotropic
nightmare, it was as if she were fearing for her brother for the first time.

Still, after a while Dura found she could ignore�almost�the constant, uneven
buffeting. Immersed in the hot, fetid atmosphere of the ship, with the warm stink
of the pig-farts and the patient, silent work of Hork at his control box, she was
even able to doze.

Something slammed into the side of the ship.

Dura screamed and jolted fully awake. She felt herself quiver from the blow, as if
someone had punched her own skull; she looked around, wild-eyed, for the source of
the disaster. The pigs were squealing furiously. Hork, still at his controls, was
laughing at her.

"Damn you. What was that?"

He spread his hands. "Just a little welcoming card from the Quantum Sea." He
pointed. "Look out of the window."

She turned to stare through the clearwood. The Mantle here was utterly dark, but
the lamps of the ship cast a green glow for a few microns through the murky,
turbulent stuff. And there were forms drifting through that dim ocean�blocky,
irregular shapes, many of them islands large enough to swallow up this tiny craft.
The blocks slid silently upward past the ship and toward the distant Mantle�or
rather, Dura realized, the "Pig" herself was hurtling down past them on her way
toward the Core.

"Corestuff bergs� Islands of hyperonic matter," Hork said. "No Fisherman would
tackle bergs of such a size� but then, no Fisherman has ever been so deep."

Dura stared gloomily out at the vast, slow-moving bulks of hyperonic matter. If
they were unlucky enough, she realized�if they were caught by a combination of a
large enough mass and an adverse current�their little ship would be crushed like a
child's skull, magnetic protection or no. "How deep are we?"

Hork peered at the crude meters on his control panel; his beard scratched softly at
the meters' clearwood covers. "Hard to say," he said dismissively. "Our tame
experts were very clever at finding ways for us to travel so far, but not so clever
at letting us know where we are. But I'd guess�" He scowled. "Perhaps five meters
below the City."

Dura gasped. Five meters� Five hundred thousand mansheights. Why, surely even an
Ur-human would be awed by such a journey.

"Of course, we've no real control over our position. All we've the capability to do
is to descend and, if we live through that, to come up again. But we could emerge
anywhere; we've no idea where these currents are taking us."

"We've discussed this problem. Wherever we emerge we need only follow the Magfield
to the South Pole."

Hork smiled at her. "But that could be tens of meters from the City� It could take
months to return. And then we will rely on your upfluxer survival skills to enable
us to endure, in the remote wilds of the Star. I will place myself in your hands,
and I anticipate that the journey home will be� interesting."

The impacts from the hyperonic bergs were coming thick and fast now. Hork pulled at
the wooden levers on his control panel and slowed their progress down to a crawl;
Dura watched through the windows as the thickening masses of Corestuff clustered
around the "Pig," held back from crushing her only by the invisible walls of the
magnetic shield.

At last Hork flicked over his controls and pushed himself away from the panel. "You
may as well let the animals rest," he said to Dura. "That's as far as we're going."

Dura frowned and peered out of the windows. "We can't penetrate any deeper?"

Hork shrugged, and yawned elaborately. "Not unless a channel through the bergs
opens up. The bergs are like a solid mass from here on in�you can see for yourself.
No, this is the end of the journey." He drifted up through the cabin, took some
fragments of untouched leaf matter from the pigs' trough and chewed it without
enthusiasm. He handed more handfuls of food to Dura. "Here," he said.

Dura took the food and bit into it thoughtfully. The whine of the turbine was
stilled now, and she was suspended in a silence broken only by the hoarse wheezing
of the pigs and by the soft thumping of hyperonic fragments against the magnetic
shield. The pigs, still bound into their harnesses, were trembling with the panic
of their blocked flight; their six-fold eyes rolled. As she ate, Dura ran her hands
over the dilated pores of their flanks; the simple action of soothing the
frightened animals�of tending creatures even more scared than herself�seemed to
calm her.

Hork folded his arms, his massive shoulder muscles bunching under his glittering
costume. "Well, this is the strangest picnic I've ever had."

"What do we do now?"

"Who knows?" He grinned at her, a fragment of his professional charm showing.

"Maybe that's all we've come so far to find." He pointed out of the window.
"Corestuff. Hard, dangerous and dead. Anyway, it's not over yet. We've only just
arrived, after all. We can stay here for days, if we have to."

Dura laughed. "Maybe you should go out and make a speech. Wake the Colonists out of
their thousand-year slumber."

Hork studied her impassively, his heavy jaw working; then he turned away from her,
rebuffing her completely.

She felt alone and a little foolish. In the renewed silence of the cabin, her fear
crowded in once more. She stroked the quivering pigs and sucked on leaf-matter.
She wondered how long they would have to wait here, before Hork would give up�or,
terrifyingly, before something happened.

In the end, they didn't have to wait very long at all.

* * *

Hork screamed, his voice thin and high with terror.

Somehow Dura had fallen asleep again. She jolted awake, the muggy Air thick in her
lungs and eyes. She looked around quickly.

The green glow of the lamps filled the cabin with eerie, sharp shadows. The pigs
were squealing, terrified, arching in their restraints. Hork, all his arrogance and
cockiness gone, had backed against a wall, his coverall rumpled and stained, his
hands fruitlessly seeking a weapon. It was as if the inhabitants of the "Flying
Pig," human and animal alike, had radiated away from the heart of the cylindrical
craft, like fragments of a slow explosion. Dura blinked, trying to clear her
vision. No, not an explosion, she saw; hovering at the geometric center of the
cylinder�the focus of all this terror�was another person. A third human, here where
it was impossible for any human to be�

Or rather, she realized as she stared more closely, it was�something�with the form
of a human. She saw a bulky woman, evidently older than herself, dressed in what
might have been a Fisherman's tunic. But the material glowed, softly crimson, and
it looked seamless. Hair, deep black, was tied tightly around her scalp. A purple
glow shone out of eyecups, nostrils and mouth.

�But there was something in those eyecups, she saw. There was flesh in there,
spheres which moved independently of the face, like animals trapped inside the
skull.

She felt the leaves rise in her throat; she wanted to scream, scrabble at the walls
of the craft to escape this. She held herself as still as she could, forcing
herself to study the vision.

"It's like a woman," she whispered to Hork. "A human. But that's impossible. How
could a human survive down here? There's no Air to breathe, or�"

Hork sounded impatient, though his breath still rattled with fear. "This isn't a
human, obviously. It's� something else, using the form of a human. A human-shaped
sac of fire."

"What else? What is it?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"Do you think it's Xeelee?"

"No human has ever seen a Xeelee. Anyway, the Xeelee are just legend."

Astonishingly, she found anger building inside her. At a time like this, she felt
patronized. She glared at him and hissed, "Legends are why you brought me here,
remember?"

The Chair of Parz City shot an exasperated glance at her; then he turned to face
the woman-thing, and when he spoke Dura found herself admiring the steadiness of
his tone. "You," he challenged. "Intruder. What do you want with us?"
The silence, broken by the wheezing of the pigs, seemed to stretch; Dura, staring
at the ugly flaps of flesh which covered the woman-thing's ear-cavities, wondered
if it could hear Hork, still less answer him.

Then the woman-thing opened its mouth. Light poured out of its straining lips, and
a sound emerged�deeper than any voice originating in a human chest�and, at first,
formless.

But, Dura realized, wondering, words were beginning to emerge.

I� We've been expecting you. You took your own sweet time. And we had a devil of a
job to find you. It looked around at the "Pig," its neck swiveling like a ball
joint, unnaturally. Is this the best you could do? We need you to come a lot deeper
than this; transmission conditions are awful�

Hork exchanged an astounded glance with Dura.

"Can you understand me?" he asked the thing. "Are you a Colonist?"

"Of course it can understand you, Hork," Dura hissed, exasperated in her turn. She
felt fascinated beyond her horror of this bag of skin. "How is it you can speak our
language?"

The thing's mouth worked, obscenely reminiscent of an Air-pig's, and the flesh-
balls in the eyecups rolled; as she watched, it seemed to Dura that the woman-thing
appeared less and less human. It was merely a puppet of some unfathomable hyperonic
creature beyond the hull, she realized; she found herself glancing through the
window, wondering what immense, dark eyecups might be fixed on her even now.

The woman-thing smiled. It was a ghastly parody.

Of course I can understand you. I'm a Colonist, as you call us� but I'm also your
grandmother. Once or twice removed, anyway�

* * *

A week before Games Day, Muub, the Physician, sent Adda an invitation to join him
to view the Games from the Committee Box, high over the Stadium. Adda felt
patronized: he had no doubt that in Muub's eyes he remained an unreconstructed
savage from the upflux, and to Muub, Adda's reactions to the City's great events
would be amusements�entertainments in themselves.

But he didn't refuse immediately. Perhaps Farr would enjoy seeing the Games from
such a privileged vantage point. Farr's mood remained complex, difficult for Adda
to break into. In fact he saw little of Farr these days; the boy seemed determined
to spend as much time as possible with the rebellious, remote community of Surfers
who lived half their lives clinging to the City's Skin.

In the end, Farr wouldn't come to the Games.

The City wasn't what it was. Even in Adda's short time of acquaintance with it,
Parz, battered by the consequences of the Glitches, had lost some of its heart. In
the great avenues half the shops and caf�s were closed up now, and the
ostentatiously rich with their trains of perfumed Air-piglets were conspicuous by
their absence. There was a sense�not exactly of crisis�but of austerity. Times were
difficult; there was much to be done and endured before things improved and the
City could enjoy itself again.

But the Games were going to be different, it seemed. As the Day approached he
sensed a quickening of the City's pulse. There seemed to be more people on the
streets, arguing and gambling over the outcome of the various strangely named
events. The Luge. The Slalom. The Pole-Divers� The Games would be like a holiday
for the City, a relief from drudgery.

Adda was curious.

So, in the end, he decided to accept Muub's invitation.

The Stadium was a huge, clearwood-walled box fixed to one of the City's upper
edges. The Committee Box was a balcony which hung over the Stadium itself from the
City's upper surface, and to reach it Adda had to travel to the uppermost Upside,
to the Garden surrounding the Palace itself. Feeling more out of place than ever in
the opulent surroundings, he Waved past the miniature, sculpted Crust-trees,
brandishing his begrimed bandaging like a weapon. He was subjected to scrutiny by
three layers of contemptuous Guards before he reached the Box itself; he enjoyed
insulting them as they searched his person.

At last he was ushered into the Box, a square platform twenty mansheights on a side
domed over by clearwood. Neat rows of cocoons filled the platform, bound loosely to
the structure by soft threads. About half the cocoons were already full, Adda saw;
courtiers and other grandees nestled in the soft leather of the cocoons like huge,
glittering insect larvae. Their talk was bright and loud, their laughter braying;
there was a heavy, cloying scent of perfume.

Adda was escorted to the front row of the Box by a small, humble-looking woman in a
drab tunic. Muub was already there. He rested in his cocoon with his long, thin
arms folded calmly against his chest, and his bare scalp shone softly as he
surveyed the Stadium below. He turned to greet Adda with a nod. With ill grace Adda
let the woman servant help him into a spare cocoon; his legs remained stiff and his
right shoulder barely mobile, so that, embarrassingly, he had to be levered into
the cocoon as if he were a statue of wood. Another woman, smiling, approached him
with a box of sweetmeats; Adda chased her away with a snarl.

Muub smiled at him indulgently. "I'm glad you decided to come, Adda. I believe you
will find the Day interesting."

Adda nodded, trying to be gracious. After all, he had accepted Muub's invitation.
But what was it about this man's manner that irritated him so? He nodded over his
shoulder at the sparkling ranks of courtiers. "That lot seems to agree with you."

Muub regarded the courtiers with aloof disdain. "Games Day is a spectacle which
does not fail to excite the unsophisticated," he said softly. "No matter how many
times it is viewed. And besides, Hork is absent. As you know very well. And there
is something of a vacuum of authority, among my more shallow colleagues, until the
Chair's return." He listened to the jabber of the courtiers for a moment, his
large, fragile head cocked to one side. "You can hear it in their tone. They are
like children in the absence of a parent." He sighed.

Adda grinned. "Well," he said, "it's nice to know that your superciliousness isn't
restricted to upfluxers." He deliberately ignored Muub's reaction; he leaned
forward in his cocoon and stared through the clearwood wall below him.

He was perched at the upper rim of the City. Its wooden Skin swept away below him,
huge, uneven, battered; the great Corestuff anchor-bands were arcs of silver-gray
cutting across the sky. Far below the City the Pole was a mass of bruised purple.
Vortex lines shimmered across the sky around the City, on their way to their own
rotation pole around the curve of the Star�
Adda stared at the vortex lines for a moment. Were they more tightly packed than
usual? He tried to detect a drift through the Air, a presage of another Glitch. But
he wasn't in the open Air�he wasn't able to smell the changes in the photons, to
taste the Air's disturbance�and he couldn't be sure there was any change.

The Stadium was thronged with people who swarmed through the Air, hauling
themselves over each other and along the ropes and rails strung across the great
volume. Even through layers of clearwood, Adda could hear the excited buzz of the
crowd; the sound seemed to come in waves of intensity, sparkling with fragments of
individual voices�the cry of a baby, the hawking yells of vendors working the
crowd. Sewage outlets sprayed streams of clear waste from the shell of the Stadium
into the patient Air.

Away from the bulk of the City, acrobats Waved silkily through the Air in a prelude
to the Games proper. They were young, lithe, nude, their skins dyed with strong
primary colors; with ripples of their legs and arms they spiraled around the vortex
lines and dived at each other, grabbing each others' hands and whirling away on new
paths. There must have been a hundred of them, Adda estimated; their dance, chaotic
yet obviously carefully choreographed, was like an explosion of young flesh in the
Air.

He became aware that Muub was watching him; there was curiosity in the Physician's
shallow eyecups. Adda let his jaw hang open, playing the goggling tourist. "My
word," he said. "What a lot of people."

Muub threw his head back and laughed. "All right, Adda. Perhaps I deserved that.
But you can scarcely blame me for my fascination at your reaction to all this. Such
scenes can scarcely have been imaginable to you, in your former life in the
upflux."

Adda gazed around, trying to take in the whole scene as a gestalt�the immense,
human construct of the City itself, a thousand people gathered below for a single
purpose, the scarcely believable opulence of the courtiers in the Box with their
fine clothes and sweetmeats and servants, the acrobats flourishing their limbs
through the Air in their huge dance. "Yes, it's impressive," he said. He tried to
find ways of expressing what he was feeling. "More than impressive. Uplifting, in a
way. When humans work together, we can challenge the Star itself. I suppose it's
good to know that not everyone has to scratch a living out of the Air, barely
subsisting as the Human Beings do. And yet�"

And yet, why should there be wealth and poverty? The City was a marvelous
construct, but it was dwarfed on the scale of the Star�and it was no bigger than an
Ur-human's thumb, probably. But even within its tiny walls there were endless,
rigid layers: the courtiers in their Box, walled off from the masses below; the
Upside and Downside; and the invisible�yet very real�barriers between the two. Why
should it be so? It was as if humans built such places as this with the sole
purpose of finding ways to dominate each other.

Muub listened to Adda's clumsy expression of this. "But it's inevitable," he said,
his face neutral. "You have to have organization�hierarchy�if you are to run the
complex, interlinking systems which sustain a society like the City with its
hinterland. And only within such a society can man afford art, science, wisdom�even
leisure of the most brutish sort, like these Games. And with hierarchies comes
power." He smiled at Adda, condescending once more. "People aren't very noble,
upfluxer. Look around you. Their darker side will find expression in any situation
where they can best each other."

Adda remembered times in the upflux, when he was young, and the world was less
treacherous than it had become of late. He recalled hunting-parties of five or six
men and women, utterly immersed in the silence of the Air, their senses open,
thrilling to the environment around them. Completely aware and alive, as they
worked together.

Muub was an observer, he realized. Believing he was above the rest of mankind, but
in fact merely detached. Cold. The only way to live was to be yourself, in the
world and in the company of others. The City was like a huge machine designed to
stop its citizens doing just that�to alienate. No wonder the young people clambered
out of the cargo ports and lived on the Skin, riding on the Air by wit and skill.
Seeking life.

The light had changed. The rich yellow of the Air over the Pole seemed brighter.
Puzzled, he turned his head toward the upflux.

There was a buzz of anticipation from the Box, answered by a buzz from the Stadium.
Muub touched Adda's arm and pointed upward. "Look. The Surfers. Do you see them?"

The Surfers were a hexagonal array, shining motes scattered across the Air. Even
Muub, despite his detachment, seemed thrilled as he stared up, evidently wondering
how it would be to ride the flux so high, so far from the City.

But Adda was still troubled by the light change. He scoured the horizon, cursing
the distortion of the clearwood wall before him.

Then he saw it.

Far upflux, far to the north, the vortex lines had disappeared.

* * *

Its�her�name was Karen Macrae. She had been born in a place called Mars, a thousand
years ago.

That's Earth-standard years, she said. Which are about half of Mars' years, of
course. But they're the same as your years� We designed your body-clocks to match
the standard human metabolic rate, you see, and we got you to count the rhythms of
the neutron star so that we have a common language of days, weeks, years� We wanted
you to live at the same rate as us, to be able to communicate with us. Karen Macrae
hesitated. With them, I mean. With standard humans.

Dura and Hork looked at each other. He hissed, "How much of this do you
understand?"

Dura stared at Karen Macrae. The floating image had drifted away from the center of
the cabin, now, and seemed to be growing coarser; it was not a single image, in
fact, but a kind of mosaic formed by small, jostling cubes of colored light. Dura
asked, "Are you an Ur-human?"

Karen Macrae fizzed. A what? Oh, you mean a standard human. No, I'm not. I was,
though�

Karen Macrae and five hundred others had come to the Star from�somewhere else.
Mars, perhaps, Dura thought. They had established a camp outside the Star. When
they'd arrived the Star had been empty of people; there were only the native
lifeforms�the pigs, the rays, the spin-spiders and their webs, the Crust-trees.

Karen Macrae had come to populate the Star with people.

The structure of a neutron star is astonishingly rich, whispered Karen Macrae. Do

you realize that? I mean, the Core is like a huge, single nucleus�a hypernucleus,
laced with twenty-four percent hyperonic matter. And it's fractal. Do you know what
that means? It has structure on all scales, right down to the�

"Please." Hork held up his hands. "This is a storm of words, conveying�nothing."

The blocks of Karen's face jostled like small insects. I am a first-generation

Colonist, she said. We established a Virtual environment in the hypernucleus�in the
Core. I was downloaded via a tap out of my corpus callosum�downloaded into the
environment here, in the Core. Karen Macrae brought veils of skin down over the
pulpy, obscene things nestling in her eyecups. Do you understand me?

Hork said slowly, "You are�a copy. Of an Ur-human. Living in the Core."

Dura said, "Where is the Ur-human Karen Macrae? Is she dead?"

She's gone. The ship left, once we were established here. I don't know where she is
now� Dura tried to detect emotion in the woman-thing's voice�was she resentful of
the original who had made her, who had thrust her into the Core of the Star? Was
she envious?�but the quality of the voice was coarse, too harsh to tell; Dura was
reminded of the Speaker system on Toba Mixxax's Air-car.

The colony of human copies, downloaded into the Core, had devices which interfaced
with the physical environment of the Star, the woman-thing told them. They had a
system to produce something called exotic matter; they laced the Mantle with
wormholes, linking Pole to Pole, and they built a string of beautiful cities.

When they'd finished, the Mantle was like a garden. Clean, empty. Waiting.

Dura sighed. "Then you built us."

"Yes," Hork said. "Just as our fractured history tells us. We are made things. Like
toys." He sounded angry, demeaned.

The world had been at peace. There had been no need to struggle to live. There were
no Glitches (few, anyway). The downloaded Colonists, still residing in the Core,
had been there for the Human Beings like immortal, omniscient parents.

One could Wave from upflux to Pole, through the wormhole transit ways, in a
heartbeat.

Hork pushed forward, confronting the woman-thing. "You expected us to come here, to
seek you."

We hoped you would come. We could not come to you.

"Why?" He seemed to be snarling now, Dura thought, unreasonably angry at this

ancient, fascinating woman-shell. "Why do you need us now?"

Karen Macrae turned her head. The light-boxes drifted, colliding noiselessly�no,
Dura saw, they drifted through each other, as smoothly as if they were made of
colored Air.

The Glitches, she said slowly. They are damaging the Core� they are damaging us.

Dura frowned. "Why don't you stop them?"

We haven't a physical Interface any more. We withdrew it. Karen's voice was growing
more indistinct, her component blocks larger; the form of a human was gradually
being submerged in loss of detail.

Hork pushed himself forward from the cabin wall, his heavy hands outspread against
the wood. "Why? Why did you withdraw? You built us, and took away our tools, and
abandoned us. You waged war against us; you took our treasures, our heritage. Why?
Why?"

Karen turned to him, her mouth open, purple boxes streaming from her coarsely
defined lips. She expanded and blurred, the boxes comprising her image swelling.

Hork threw himself at the image. He entered it as if it were no more than Air. He
batted at the drifting, crumbling light-boxes with his open palms. "Why did you
make us? What purpose did we serve for you here? Why did you abandon us?"

The boxes exploded; Dura quailed from a monstrous, ballooning image of Karen
Macrae's face, of the pale forms infesting her eyecups. There was a soundless
concussion, a flood of purple light which filled the cabin before fleeing through
the walls of the ship and into the ocean beyond. The human-thing, the simulacrum of
Karen Macrae, was gone. Hork twisted in the Air, punching at emptiness in his
frustration.

But there were new shadows in the cabin now, blue-green shadows cast by something
behind Dura. Something outside the ship. She turned.

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."

Chapter 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.

But there was still something wrong. He was drifting downward through the hexagonal
array of lines. He corrected his line of flight, pushed himself hard along the
Magfield�but again there came that damnable drift downward. He felt confused,
disoriented, as if his instincts were betraying him.

�No, he realized slowly; his instincts, his skill, were fine. He was holding his
line. The vortex lines themselves were drifting upward, toward the Crust.

He was a City boy, but he knew what that meant.

The Mantle was expelling its rotational momentum. Glitch.

Suddenly, for the first time, he felt lost, vulnerable, alone in the sky. He
couldn't help but cry out, longing to be back in the remote wooden womb of Parz.

He forced himself to concentrate. He wasn't in any direct danger yet. With luck,
and skill, he could still get through this.

Still he pushed across the sky, keeping in line with the drifting vortex lines. But
now he slowed a little, glancing around. He was virtually alone now; of the hundred
starters in the race, perhaps thirty were still on their boards, paralleling his
path through the Air. Of the rest�of the marshals�there was no sign. The City still
hung in the Air like a dusty lantern, solid and unperturbed.

The vortex lines were drifting faster. They looked tangled, untidy. Looking more
closely he saw instabilities searing along the lines from both upflux and downflux;
the huge, complex waveforms passed through each other, seeming to drag and
reinforce each other.

He looked over his shoulder at the far upflux. There the Air glowed yellow, empty.
No vortex lines at all.

Now purple light flooded up through the Air, sudden, shocking, so that his board
cast a shadow over his legs and arms. He leaned over his board, glanced down.

The Quantum Sea had exploded, right under the City; a neutrino fount rose steadily
toward Parz, like an immense fist.

Resentment flooded Cris. No, he thought. Not today. Not on my day�

The Magfield surged again, ramming upward into his board with force and immediacy.

I was winning! Oh, I was winning!

* * *

Like a fragment of food swimming toward its own consumption, the crude wooden
cylinder with its precious cargo of people and animals labored toward the
unblemished mouth of the Ur-human artifact.

Dura worked with the Air-pigs, feeding and patiently soothing as their farts drove
the turbine. To bring the "Pig" to the wormhole mouth Hork had taken the ship
through a long, flat sweep to a position above one facet of the Interface. Through
the wide windows she watched the wormhole gate sink briefly into the turgid
glimmering of the underMantle, to reemerge as if surfacing as they approached it
once more.

Now the Interface rose toward them, like an outstretched hand framed in the
clearwood panel set into the base of the ship; within it light flashed, impossibly
distant and vortex-line blue.

Hork worked his controls with savagery. For all his outer flippancy in the earlier
stages of the voyage, he seemed to have become enraged since the encounter with
Karen Macrae. Or perhaps that anger had been there in him all along, Dura thought;
perhaps he had always resented the position of humans, left stranded and helpless
in this Star. But now, for the first time, he had a focus for that rage: Karen
Macrae, and her intangible Colonist companions in the Core of the Star.

Dura wondered at her own composure. She was fearful, yes; and an inner fluidity
threatened to overwhelm her as she stared into the approaching maw of the wormhole.
But at the same time, she realized, she was not confronting the unknown, as was
Hork. The lore of the Human Beings was calm, detailed and analytical. The universe
beyond the Star, the universe of the past beyond the here-and-now: those realms
were abstract, remote, but they were as real to Dura as the world of Air, pigs,
trees. Although she had never seen them she had grown up with the Xeelee and their
works, with the artifacts of the Ur-humans, and to her they were no more exotic
than the wild Air-boars of the Crust.
Perhaps, in the end, the lore of the Human Beings�their careful, almost obsessive,
preservation of apparently useless knowledge from the past�was actually a survival
mechanism.

The Interface was very close now, Dura saw; the fine, perfect vertices of the upper
face spread away from the curving window of the ship, and the rest of the frame was
foreshortened by perspective.

Then the clean lines of the artifact began to slide across the windows of the ship,
as slow as knife-blades drawn across skin. The ship's downward trajectory had been
carrying it steadily toward the center of the face; but now they were clearly
drifting, sliding toward one knife-sharp edge.

Something was wrong.

Hork hauled at his levers and slammed his hand into the fragile console. "Damn it.
She won't respond. The Magfield here is disrupted�maybe by the presence of the
Interface�and�"

"Look!" Dura pointed downward.

Hork stared at the edge, its fizzing blue light painting deep, shifting shadows on
his face as it approached. He swore. "It's going to hit us."

"We might be safe. Maybe the Ur-humans designed this wormhole to be as safe as
possible; maybe the ship will just rebound, and�"

"Or maybe not. Maybe the Ur-humans didn't expect anyone to be stupid enough to go
careering through their doorway in a wooden ship. I think that damn thing is going
to cut us in two."

The Interface edge, wheeling past the windows, had widened from the abstraction of
a line into a glowing rod as broad as a human arm.

Dura wrapped her arms around herself. Behind her the pigs were a comforting, warm
mass, an oasis of familiarity. "At least try, damn you. Maybe you can get a
purchase on the Interface's magnetic field."

Now, beyond the walls of the ship, there was a spectacular flash, a sudden storm of
blue-white light which flooded the cabin and made her cry out. The pigs squealed,
terrified again. The ship lurched. Hork rolled in his seat and Dura grabbed at the
pigs' restraining harness.

"We've hit!" she cried.

Hork dragged at his levers. "No. It's the ship's own field; it must be brushing
against the edge� The ship's responding. Dura, I think you're right; I think we're
starting to work against the artifact's field. Keep feeding those animals, damn
you!"

The flashing persisted and the shuddering of the ship assumed a steady, violent
rhythm. Dura clung to the pigs' harness, striving to feed the pigs with an
unwavering rhythm of her own.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the wheeling of the edge lessened, and the blue glare
which had filled the cabin began to diminish. Dura glanced through the windows; the
edge was receding and the magnetic flashes lessened, growing fitful and irregular,
before dying completely.
The three edges of the face were all around the ship now, a fence of pale light
slowly ascending past her. At last the ship was passing through the face, Dura
realized; they were actually entering the Interface.

"Yes," she murmured. "But we're hardly safe."

Hork raised his hands over the control panel. Then he pushed all three of his
levers forward, deliberately; the ship surged forward into the Interface. She heard
the hum of current in the Corestuff bands around the hull. "We go on," Hork said.

Dura had expected to make out the blue lines of the Interface, this box of light,
from the inside. But there was no sign of the other faces, the rest of the
wormhole; instead, beyond the walls of the ship, there was only a darkness even
deeper than the twilit glow of the underMantle. It was as if they were entering�not
a box of light�but the mouth of a corridor, like one of Parz's dingy alleys. In
fact, it seemed that she could make out the lines of a corridor, stretching through
the wormhole and on into infinity; black on black, it was like staring into a
throat. Deep in the corridor there were flashes�sharp, silent and distant, light
which splashed briefly over the dim walls. Slowly a picture assembled in her mind,
each flash providing another fragment; the corridor was a smooth-walled cylinder
perhaps five mansheights across and�

And how deep?

The walls were all around them now; the ebony throat enclosed the fragile craft as
if it had been swallowed. She felt a rush of Air through the capillaries of her
head; illuminated in stabs, fragments of the walls raced upward past the ship like
pieces of a dream. The walls seemed to converge at a great distance, closing around
a point at infinity. But that was impossible�wasn't it?�because the Interface
itself, the four-faced frame of light, was only ten or a dozen mansheights across.

But of course the corridor was immensely long�impossibly long�for the very purpose
of a wormhole was to connect far-distant places. And now she was entering such a
wormhole; soon the ship would be passing through the device to emerge�

Somewhere else.

For a moment, fear, primitive, irrational and stark, surfaced in her mind; it was
as if the mystery of it all was ramming itself into her eyes, ears and mind. She
closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers in the soft leather of the pig harness. Was
she, now, going to crumble into superstitious panic?

The wormhole was an artifact, she told herself. And an artifact built by humans�by
Ur-humans, perhaps, but by humans nonetheless. She should not cringe before a mere
device.

She forced her eyes open.

The ship shuddered.

Dura cried, "Too fast! You're going too fast, damn it; we'll turn over if you don't
slow down� Are you crazy?"

The control levers were still buried inside Hork's fleshy hands, but when he turned
to her his wide face was empty, wondering. "It's not me," he said slowly. "I mean,
it's not the ship� we're no longer propelling ourselves. Dura, we're being drawn
into the wormhole." He stared at the little control console, as if seeking an
answer there. "And there's nothing I can do about it."
* * *

Cris rode the turbulent Magfield almost automatically. He stared at the neutrino
fount, fascinated, almost forgetting his own peril. The fount was a tower, dark,
unimaginably massive, thrusting out of the turbulent mass of the Quantum Sea. As it
rose into Mantle Air, the viscous purple Sea-stuff crusted over, shattering, the
fragments spiraling upward around the dense-packed flux lines of the Magfield.

Here was stuff from deep in the heart of the Star�deeper than any Bell had gone,
deeper perhaps even than Hork's wooden ship would reach. Here was an expulsion of
material from the immense, single nucleus that was the soul of the Star, from
within the nebulous boundary between Sea and Core. The fount's material was
hyperonic; each hyperon was a huge cluster of quarks far more massive than any
ordinary nucleon, and the hyperons were bound together by quark exchanges into
complex, fractal masses. But as the material spewed up through the throat of the
Pole its structure was collapsing, unable to sustain itself in the lower-density
regime of the Mantle. The quark bags were breaking apart, releasing a flood of
energy, and reforming as showers of nucleons; and the free nucleons�protons and
neutrons�were congealing rapidly into chunks of cooling nuclear matter.

That deadly hail was now lancing through the Mantle, and would soon come streaming
upward around the City. And he felt the energy released by that huge wave of
hyperonic decay as it surged upward, the neutrinos sleeting through his body, hot
and needle-sharp, on their way to the emptiness above the Crust.

Now, even as he watched, the spiraling paths of the charged chunks of freezing
Core-matter seemed to be distorting�flattening�as if the Magfield itself were
changing, in response to the disaster.

Suddenly Cris understood.

The Magfield was changing. The irruption of this immense freight of charged
material from the Core had disrupted the field; the Sea-fount was like an
electrical current, unimaginably strong, passing through the heart of the Star's
Magfield Pole, temporarily competing with the great magnetic engines at the Core of
the Star itself. What he'd felt�the unexpected surges in the field�had been no more
than distant echoes of that huge disturbance.

�But now another of those magnetic echoes hurtled up around him. This time his feet
slipped from the board and he fell forward, crying out; the board slammed against
his chest and thrust him upward toward the Crust. He clung to the board helplessly,
his legs scrabbling across its smooth surface, as he rose faster than he could ever
have Surfed. If he lost the board he was finished, he knew. His mind raced. Perhaps
he would be thrown beyond the Crust, board and all! What then? Would his body
collapse into cooling fragments in the emptiness beyond, just as the Core material
froze in the Mantle?

As it happened, would he be aware?

But the upward surge subsided, as suddenly as it had come.

The board stabilized in the Air, Gasping, Cris dragged himself forward across the
board; his chest ached from the pressure of the board in its flight. There was the
City, far below him, but still close enough for him to make out detail�the Spine,
the gaping cargo ports, the encrustation of Garden on its upper surface. He felt a
surge of relief, and even a little shame; he couldn't have been thrown so
impossibly high after all.

Carefully, cautiously, he tucked his knees under him, rested his feet against the
board, and stood up. The Magfield was quivering like a live thing under him, and he
rocked the board against it, tilting his aching ankles; but, for the moment, the
field was fairly stable. Predictable. He could Surf on it� and he was going to have
to, if he was to make it through this.

He glanced around the sky. He was alone now; there was no sign of any of the other
hundred Surfers. Again he felt a burst of triumph, accompanied by shame. Had he
survived because he was the best? Or the luckiest, perhaps?

And, he reminded himself, he might join the rest in the anonymity of death yet,
before this day was through.

The vortex lines around him writhed, tortured by instabilities, by impossible,

ungainly forms which warped as they propagated, gathering energy. The end of the
vortex lines�the boundary of the volume of Air in which there were no vortex
lines�was rushing toward him, a wall of emptiness. In that region, he knew, the
turbulence of the Air, lashed by the neutrino storm from the Core, was such that
its superfluid properties had broken down. He wouldn't be able to Surf; the
friction would be impossible. Damn it, he wouldn't be able to breathe. His
capillaries would clog, his heart strain at the thickening Air�

He shook his head, tried to focus. He looked down. He had to get back to the City
before the turbulence reached him. (That remote part of him prodded his mind over
this. Why should he be any safer in the City than outside?) Again he shook his
head, growling at himself. The City was the only place to go, safe or not.
Therefore he would go there. But already the chunks of frozen Sea-stuff were
hurtling up around the City. A graze from one of those�

Thinking about it was pointless. He spread his feet against the board, bent his
legs, and thrust.

He Surfed as he'd never Surfed before�perhaps as nobody had Surfed before. He

thrust at the board again and again, ramming its Corestuff web across the shaking
Magfield. He soared between rippling vortex lines, ducking and swooping. Soon he
was moving so quickly that the residual normal-fluid component of the Air whipped
at his hair, his face. But still he accelerated, slamming his feet against the
board until his soles ached.

There was something in the distance, a new factor in the chaos the sky had become.
He risked a brief glance. He saw lines crossing the sky, lancing down through the
Crust across the vortex lines, and penetrating the Core�blue-white beams which
stirred the Core like spoons.

Now he was entering the inverted rain from the exploded Sea. The frozen Sea-
fragments were irregular, solid chunks, two or three mansheights across. They
tumbled upward through the Air around him, sharp edges sparkling, Sea-purple laced
through their interior. The fragments had their own, whirling magnetic fields;
ghostly flux-fingers plucked at Cris as they passed him. He followed a curving
path, dipping down over the Pole toward the City; flexing his legs, his hips, his
neck, he slalomed through the crumbling vortex lines, the Sea-fragments.

What sport! It was wonderful! He roared aloud, yelling out his exhilaration.

The City was ahead of him now. It seemed to balloon out of the Air, its Skin
swelling before him, uneven, ugly, as if being inflated from within.

He was almost home.

By the blood of the Ur-humans, he thought. I might actually live through this. And
if he did, what a tale he would have to tell. What a hero he would become�

But now the Magfield surged again, betraying him.

This time he fell back; his spine was slammed against his board. The breath was
knocked out of him, and he tumbled off the board, vainly clutching for its rim.

The board fell away from him, tumbling across the face of the City.

Falling naked through the Air, he watched the board recede. He tried to Wave, to
rock his legs through the Air, but his strength was gone; he could get no purchase
on the Magfield.

He was moving too fast, in any case.

Oddly he felt no fear, only a kind of regret. To have come so close and not to have
made it�

The Skin of Parz was huge before him, a wall across the sky.

Chapter 23
All around the City, cooling fragments of the Quantum Sea, huge and threatening,
streamed upward from the Pole.

In the Stadium, there was panic.

Adda leaned forward in his cocoon and peered down. The bulk of the Stadium was a
turbulent mass of human torsos and struggling limbs; even as he watched, the
network of delicate guide ropes which had crisscrossed the Stadium collapsed,
engendering still more chaos as a thousand people struggled to escape. The crowd,
screaming, sounded like trapped animals. Lost in the melee, Adda saw the purple
uniforms of stewards and food vendors scrambling along with the rest.

They all wanted to get out, obviously. But get out to what? Where was safety to be
found�inside the cozy Skin of the City? But that Skin was just a shell of wood and
Corestuff ribs; it would burst like scraped leather if�

He was kicked in the back, hard. He gasped as the Air was forced out of his lungs,
and he fell forward; then the rope fixing his cocoon on one side parted, and he was
spun around.

He struggled out of his cocoon, ignoring the protests of stiff joints, and prepared
to take on whoever had struck him. But it was impossible to tell. The Committee Box
was full of panicking courtiers, their made-up faces twisted with fear, fighting
free of cocoons and restrictive robes. Adda opened his mouth and laughed at them.
So all their finery, and fine titles, offered no protection from mortal terror.
Where was their power now?

Muub was struggling out of his own cocoon with every expression of urgency.

Adda said, "Where will you go?"

"The Hospital, of course." Muub gathered his robes tight around his legs and
glanced around the Box, looking for the fastest way out. "It's going to be a long
day's work�" Apparently on impulse, he grabbed Adda's arm. "Upfluxer. Come with me.
Help me."

Adda felt like laughing again, but he recognized earnestness in Muub's eyes. "Why
me?"
Muub gestured to the scrambling courtiers. "Look at these people," he said wearily.
"Not many cope well in a crisis, Adda." He glanced at the upfluxer appraisingly.
"You think I'm a little inhuman�a cold man, remote from people. Perhaps I am. But
I've worked long enough as a Physician to gain a functional understanding of who
can be relied on. And you're one of them, Adda. Please."

Adda was surprisingly moved by this, but he pulled his arm free of Muub's grasp.
"I'll come if I can. I promise. But first I have to find Farr�my kinsman."

Muub nodded briskly. Without another word he began to work his way through the
crowd of courtiers still blocking the Box's exit, using his elbows and knees quite
efficiently.

Adda glanced down at the crowded Stadium once more. The crush there was becoming
deadly now; he saw imploded chests, limp limbs, Air-starved faces like white
flowers in the mass of bodies.

He turned away and launched himself toward the exit.

* * *

Farr could be in any of a number of places�with the Skin-riders outside the City
itself, or up somewhere near the Surfer race, or down in the Harbor with his old
work-friends�but he would surely make for the Mixxaxes' to find Adda. The Mixxaxes'
part of the mid-Upside was on the opposite side of Parz, and Adda began the long
journey across a City in turmoil.

It was as if some malevolent giant, laughing like a spin storm, had taken the City
and shaken it. People, young and old, the well-dressed rich and drab manual workers
alike, fled through the corridor-streets; screams echoed along the avenues and Air-
shafts. Perhaps each of these scurrying folk had some dim purpose of their own in
the face of the Glitch�just as Adda did. But collectively, they swarmed.

To Adda it was like a journey through hell. Never before had he felt so confined,
so enclosed in this box built by lunatics to contain lunatics; he longed to be in
the open Air where he could see what the Star was doing. He reached Pall Mall. The
great vertical avenue was full of noise and light; people and cars swarmed over
each other, Speakers blaring. Shop-fronts had been smashed open, and men and women
were hastening through the crowds with arms full of goods�clothes, jewelry. Above
his head, at the top of the Mall�the uppermost Upside�the golden light of the
Palace Garden filtered down through the miniature bushes and ponds, as peaceful and
opulent as ever. But now lines of guards fenced off the grounds of the Palace from
any citizen who thought that might be a good direction to flee.

Adda, close to the center of the Mall now, felt an absurd impulse to laugh. Guards.
Looters� What did these people hope to achieve? What did they think was happening
to the world around them? It would be a triumph if their precious City survived
this disaster intact enough for the looters to find an opportunity to flaunt their
ill-gotten wealth.

As if in response to his thought, the City lurched.

The Mall�the huge vertical shaft of light and people around him�leaned to the
right. He flailed at the Air, scrabbling for balance. The street had shifted with
shocking suddenness. There was an immense groan; he heard wood splintering,
clearwood cracking, a high-pitched scream which must be the sound of a Corestuff
rib failing.
People rained through the Air.

Helpless, they didn't even look human�they were like inanimate things, carvings of
wood, perhaps. Their bodies hailed against shop-fronts and structural pillars; the
Mall echoed with screams, with small, sickening crunches.

A woman slammed against Adda's rib-cage, knocking away his breath once more. She
clung to him with desperate strength, as if she thought he might somehow save her
from all this. She must have been as old as Adda himself. She wore a rich, heavy
robe which was now torn open, revealing a nude torso swathed in fat, her loose dugs
dangling; her hair was a tangled mess of blue-dyed strands with yellow roots.
"What's happening? Oh, what's happening?"

He pulled the woman away from his body, disengaging her as kindly as he could.
"It's a Glitch. Do you understand? The Magfield must be shifting�distorted by the
charged material erupting from the Quantum Sea. The City is trying to find a new,
stable�"

He stopped. Her eyes were fixed on his face, but she wasn't listening to a word.

He pulled her robe closed and tied it shut. Then he half-dragged her across the
Mall and left her clinging to a pillar before a shop-front. Perhaps she'd recover
her wits, find her way to her home. If not, there was little Adda could do for her.

He found an exit to a side-street. He Waved his way down it with brisk thrusts of
his legs, trying to ignore the devastation around him.

* * *

The journey through the wormhole lasted only heartbeats, but it seemed an eternity
to Dura. She clung to her place, feeling as helpless and as terrified as the
squealing pigs.

Out of control, despite all Hork's vain heavings at the console, the "Flying Pig"
rattled against the near-invisible walls of the corridor. Spectacular flashes burst
all around the clumsy vessel.

The end came suddenly.

Light�electric blue�blossomed from the infinity point, beneath the plummeting craft
at the terminus of the corridor. The light hurtled up the corridor like a fist,
unavoidable. Dura stared into it, feeling its intensity sting her eyes.

The light exploded around them, flooding the ship and turning the cabin's lanterns
into green wraiths. The pigs screamed.

Then the light died away�no, she realized; the light had congealed into a framework
around them, another tetrahedral Interface. The finely drawn cage of light turned
around them with stately grace; evidently the "Pig," spewed out of the wormhole,
had been brought almost to rest, and was now tumbling slowly.

Beyond the cage of light there was only darkness.

Dura glanced around the ship. There wasn't any obvious sign of damage to the hull,
and the turbine was still firmly fixed in place. The squeals of the pigs, the stink
of their futile escape-farts, slowly subsided.

Hork remained in the pilot's seat. He stared out of the windows, his large mouth
gaping like a third eyecup in the middle of his beard.
Dura drifted down toward him. "Are you all right?"

At first her question seemed not to register; then, slowly, his head swiveled
toward her. "I'm not injured." His face twisted into a smile. "After that little
trip, I'm not sure how healthy I am, but I'm not injured. You? The pigs?"

"I'm not damaged. Nor are the animals."

"And the turbine?"

She admired his brisk dismissal of the wonders of the journey, his focus on the
practical. She shrugged.

He nodded. "Good. Then we have the means to move."

"�Yes," she said slowly. "I suppose so. But only if the Magfield extends this far."

He studied her face, then peered out of the craft uncertainly. "You think it
mightn't? That we've moved beyond the Magfield?"

"We've come a long way, Hork."

She turned away, dropping her eyes to her hands. The shadows cast on her skin were
soft, silvery; the diffuse glow seemed to smooth over the age-blemishes of her
flesh, the wrinkles and the minute scars.

�Silvery?

Outside the ship, the light had changed.

She moved away from Hork and peered out of the ship. The vortex-blue tetrahedron
had disappeared. There was a room around the ship now, a tetrahedral box
constructed of some sheer gray material. It was as if this skin-smooth substance
had plated over the framework, turning the Interface from an open cage into a four-
sided box which encased the "Pig."

The walls weren't featureless, though. There was some form of decoration�circular,
multicolored patches�on one wall, and, cut in another, a round-edged rectangle
which could only be a door.

�A door to what?

Hork scratched his scalp. "Well. What now? Did you see where these walls came
from?"

Dura pressed her face to a clearwood window. "Hork, I don't think we're in the
underMantle any more."

"You're guessing." His face was creased with frustration.

She pointed to the room beyond the window. "I think that's Air out there. I think
we could live out there."

"How can you know that?"

"Of course I can't know." Dura felt a calm certainty fill her. She was starting to
feel safe, she realized, to trust the powers into whose hands she'd delivered
herself. "But why would we be brought to a place which is lethal for us? What would
be the point?"

He frowned. "You think this is all�designed? That our journey was meant to be this
way, to bring us here?"

"Yes. Since we entered the wormhole we've been in the hands of the ancient machines
of the Ur-humans. Surely they built their machines to protect us. I think we have
to trust them."

Hork took a deep breath, the fine fabric of his costume scratching over his chest.
"You're saying we should go out there. Shut down the turbine and our magnetic
shell�leave the 'Pig' and go outside."

"Why else did we come here?" She smiled. "Anyway, I want to see what those markings
on the wall are."

"All right. If we're not crushed in the first instant we'll know you're right." The
decision made, his manner was brisk and pragmatic. "And I guess the pigs need a
rest anyway."

"Yes," Dura said. "I believe they do."

Hork turned to his control console and threw switches. Dura tended to the pigs,
providing them with healthy handfuls of leaves. As they fed, their flight-farts
died to a trickle and the turbine slowed with a weary whirr.

The cabin fell silent, for the first time since the departure from Parz.

Hork whispered, "It's gone. Our magnetic field. It's shut down."

For a moment Hork and Dura stared at each other. Dura's heart pounded and she found
it impossible to take a breath.

Nothing had changed; the ship still tumbled slowly within the cool gray walls of
the wormhole chamber.

Hork grinned. "Well, we're still alive. You were right, it seems. And now�" He
pointed to the hatch in the upper end of the craft. "You first," he said.

* * *

The hatch opened with a soft pop.

Dura winced as gas�Air?�puffed into the ship past her face. She found herself
holding her breath. With an effort of will she exhaled, emptying her lungs, and
opened her mouth to breathe deeply.

"Are you all right?"

She sighed. "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. It's Air all right, Hork� We were expected, it
seems." She sniffed. "The Air's cool�cooler than the ship. And it's�I don't know
how to describe it�it's fresh. Clean." Clean, in comparison to the murky Air of the
City to which she'd grown accustomed. When she closed her eyes and drew in the
strange Air it was almost like being back with the Human Beings in the upflux.

�Almost. Yet the Air here had a flat, lifeless, artificial quality to it. It was
scrubbed clean of scents, she realized slowly.

Hork pushed past her and out into the room beyond. He looked around with fists
clenched, aggressively inquisitive, his robe garish against the soft gray light of
the walls. Dura, suppressing pangs of fear, followed him away from the wooden
ship's illusory protection.

They hung in the Air of the wormhole chamber. The "Flying Pig" tumbled slowly
beside them, a scarred wooden cylinder crude and incongruous within the walls of
this finely constructed room.

"If the Ur-human builders could see us now, I wonder what they would say?"

Hork grunted. "Probably, 'Where have you been all this time?' " He Waved
experimentally and moved forward a mansheight or so. "Hey. There's a magnetic field
here."

"Is it the Magfield?"

"I don't know. I can't tell. If it is, it's weaker than I've ever felt it before."

"Maybe it's artificial� put here to help us move around."

Hork grinned, his confidence growing visibly. "I think you're right, Dura. These
people really were expecting us, weren't they?" He looked over his shoulder at the
"Pig," inspecting the ship briskly. He pointed, his embroidered sleeve flapping.
"Look at that. We've brought a passenger."

Dura turned. There was something clinging to the side of the craft; it was like a
huge, metallic leech, spoiling the clean cylindrical lines of the ship. "It's
Corestuff," she said. "We've brought a Corestuff berg with us, all the way through
the wormhole. It must have stuck to our field-bands�"

"Yes," Hork said. "But by no accident." He made a mock salute to the lump of
Corestuff. "Karen Macrae. So glad you could accompany us!"

"You think she's in there? In that berg?"

"Why not?" He grinned at her, his eyecups dark with excitement. "It's possible.
Anything's possible."

"But why?"

"Because this trip is as important to Karen Macrae as it is to us, my dear."

Dura flexed her legs; the Waving carried her easily through the Air. She moved away
from the hulk of the "Pig" and toward the walls of the chamber. Tentatively she
reached out a hand, placed it cautiously on the gray wall material. Beneath her
fingers and palm its smooth perfection was unbroken. It was cool to the touch�not
uncomfortably so, but a little cooler than her body.

"Dura." Hork sounded excited; he was inspecting the wall display Dura had seen from
within the "Pig." "Come and look at this."

Dura Waved briskly to Hork; side by side they stared at the display.

Two circles, differing in size, had been painted on the wall. The larger was
colored yellow and was perhaps a micron wide. The color was deepest at the heart of
the circle and lightened, becoming almost washed out, as the eye followed the color
out to the edge of the circle. The disc was marred by a series of blue threads
which swept through its interior�a little like vortex lines, Dura thought, except
that these lines did not all run in parallel, and in places even crossed each
other.

Each blue line was terminated by a pair of tiny pink tetrahedra, one at each end.
Most of the tetrahedra had been gathered into the center of the disc, so that the
lines looped around the heavy amber heart of the disc. But five or six of the lines
broke free of the knot at the center. One of them terminated at a pole of the disc,
just inside its surface. The rest of the lines led, in wavering spirals, out of the
disc itself, and crossed the empty space of the intervening wall to the second,
smaller circle; a half-dozen tetrahedra jostled within the small circle like
insects.

Dura frowned, baffled. "I don't understand. Perhaps these little tetrahedra have
something to do with the wormholes�"

"Of course they do!" Hork's voice was brisk and confident. "Can't you see it? It's
a map�a map of the entire Star." He traced features of the diagram with his
fingertip. "Here's the Crust; and within it�this outermost, lighter band�is the
Mantle, which contains the Air we breathe. All the world we know." His fingertip
gouged a path into the heart of the Star image. "These darker sections are the
underMantle and the Quantum Sea�and here's the Core."

"And the tetrahedra, the threads connecting them�"

"�are maps of the wormholes!" His eyecups were wide and filled with the gray light
of the chamber. "Isn't it obvious, Dura? Look." He jabbed at the "Core." "And here
are the wormhole Interfaces, brought into the Core by the Colonists after the Core
Wars. Most of the Interfaces, anyway. And so the wormhole corridors�marked by these
threads�lead nowhere but back to the Core."

The implications of his words slowly sank into her. "So there are many
wormholes�dozens, hundreds�not just the one we traveled in?"

"Yes. Just think of it, Dura; once the wormholes must have riddled the Star." He
shook his head. "Well, the Colonists put a stop to that. Now we're reduced to
crawling around the Star in wooden boxes drawn by Air-pigs." Again anger,
resentment welled in his voice.

"Do you think we're still here?" She pointed to the Core of the Star map, at the
knot of wormholes which looped around it.

"No," he said briskly. "Why would we be given an Interface which took us into the
Core? Remember, the Colonists have a goal too�they also have to find a way to stop
the Glitches. They surely can't use the wormholes themselves�after all, we know the
wormholes were built for humans. Real humans, I mean. Us. So they have to rely on
us."

She found herself shivering. "Then if we're not in the Core, we must be here." She
drew her finger along the threads of wormhole paths which left the main circle and
crossed the gray spaces to the second, smaller disc. "�Outside the Star." She
looked at him. "Hork�what are we going to find when we open the door to this
chamber?"

He stared into her eyes, his brashness gone, utterly unable to answer.

* * *

Farr was waiting for Adda at Toba Mixxax's home. Ito Mixxax was there, but not Toba
or Cris. The City-tilt had made a mess of the Mixxaxes' domesticity: crockery and
other material had been smashed against the walls, and fragments drifted in the
Air.

Ito had her arm around Farr, trying to comfort or reassure him; when Adda opened
the door to the home, Farr greeted his arrival with relief, a smile, while Ito
looked merely disappointed that it wasn't her husband or son. They were both
uninjured, though Farr looked shocked. Adda came to them both and placed a hand on
their shoulders. The three of them drifted there, at the center of the Mixxaxes'
cozy room, their human warmth sufficient for a brief moment.

Then they pulled apart. Ito Mixxax looked drawn, but composed. "What are you going
to do? Do you want to stay here?"

He looked at Farr. The boy must be worried sick about his sister. But it would do
no good to stay here and let him brood. Besides, despite its lingering domesticity,
what sanctuary was this place, any more than the rest of Parz? "We're going to the
Hospital," he said firmly. "Or at least, we'll try to get there. We'll find work to
do there. What about you?"

"Toba was with me at the Games. In the Stadium." She sighed, looking more weary
than afraid. "We got separated. I'll have to wait for him here. Then we'll start
searching for Cris, I suppose. We ought to be able to get the car out of the City."
She looked at Adda, appraising him, evidently trying to concentrate on his needs.
"Do you want to rest here? Are you hungry?"

"No." He reached for Farr; the boy took his hand, meekly, like a child. "Come on,
Farr. It's not food they'll be short of in that damn Hospital, but strength, and
courage, and ingenuity. And�"

There was an explosion from the heart of the City�no, not an explosion, Adda
thought, but an immense tearing sound, a huge exhalation.

There was a moment of stillness. Then a shock passed through the City.

The very fabric of the structure seemed to flex. The little room rattled around
them, and the fragments of crockery, already smashed, rattled in a thin hail
against the walls.

When the tremor had passed, Farr asked, "What was that? Another settling in the
Magfield?"

"I don't think so. That was sharper�more abrupt� Come, lad. Let's move."

Ito kissed them both quickly on the cheek. "Be safe," she said.

The Hospital of the Common Good was in the upper Downside, and Adda decided that
the quickest way to get there�the most likely to be clear�would be through Pall
Mall. So he and Farr Waved along one of the main artery-streets toward the broad
axis of the City. It was a little easier to move now, Adda found; most people must
have reached whatever destination they had been looking for�or, he reflected sadly,
be lying hurt in some corner of the City. But the Air-cars were an increased
menace. The cars soared along the emptying streets behind teams of terrified Air-
pigs; several times the Human Beings had to lurch aside to stop themselves being
run down. Once they came across a car which had embedded itself nose-first into a
shop-front. There was no sign of the driver, but the Air-pig team was still
attached to its harness. The pigs strained against their restraints, their circular
mouths wide as they screamed.

Farr loosened the harness. Released, the pigs fled away into the shadows of the
corridors, caroming from the walls like toys.
They reached the junction of the artery-street and the Mall. Adda rested at the
street's rectangular lip for a moment, then prepared to launch himself out into the
main shaft. But Farr grabbed his arm and held him back. The boy pointed downward.
Adda stared into his face, then squinted down, blinking to clear his good eyecup.

The lower end of the Mall�the huge spherical Market�was filled with light. Too much
light, which glinted from the guide rails, stall sites, the huge execution Wheel�
Yellow Air-light, which flooded into the heart of the City from a new, ragged shaft
that cut right through the Mall itself, just above the Market.

So here was the cause of the shock they had experienced with Ito.

The edges of the shaft were neat�so neat that Adda might almost have thought it was
man-made, another avenue. But the cross-section of this shaft was
irregular�formless, nothing like the precise rectangles and circles which defined
Parz�and it was off-center, askew, too wide.

Adda drifted out into the Mall a little way and stared down at the gash.

The inner skin of the Mall had been sloughed away, shops and homes scoured off as
cleanly as if by a blade. And within the gash itself he could see the cross-
sections of cut-open homes, shops. There were splashes of broken flesh. He heard
human voices, but no screams: there were groans, and low, continuous weeping.

Farr joined him in the Air. "What is it? What's happened?"

"A Sea-fragment," Adda said grimly. "The City has been hit. Looks as if the berg
passed straight through� We're lucky the City wasn't smashed wide open� Come on,
Farr. Let's see if that damn Hospital is still working."

They dropped down the wide, almost empty shaft of the Mall, searching for a way to
get to the Hospital.

Chapter 24
Hork ran his thick fingers around the seam of the door. Then, impatient, Waving to
give himself leverage, he laid his hands flat against the door and shoved.

The door swung back on invisible hinges, heavy and silent; Air hissed.

Through the doorway Dura caught glimpses of another, larger chamber, walled by more
of the featureless gray material.

For a moment Hork and Dura hesitated before the doorway.

"Let's get on with it," Hork growled. He grasped the edges of the doorframe. With a
single fluid movement he hauled his bulk through; his small feet, Waving gently,
disappeared into the frame.

With a sigh, Dura took hold of the frame. Like the rest of the wall material the
frame edges were cool to the touch, but the walls seemed knife-thin and the edges
dug into her palms. She laid her hands carefully on the outer surface of the wall,
beyond the frame, and pushed herself through.

The outer chamber was another tetrahedron�and constructed of the ubiquitous gray-
bland material�but perhaps ten times as large, a hundred mansheights across or
more. This room would be as large as any enclosed space in Parz City. The chamber
from which she had emerged floated at the heart of this new room, its vertices and
edges aligned with the chamber within which it was embedded. Dura wondered vaguely
what was holding the smaller chamber in place; there were no signs of struts,
supports or ropes.

Perhaps they were in a nest of these tetrahedral chambers, one contained in the
other, she speculated; perhaps if they went beyond these walls they would swim into
a third chamber, ten times larger again, and then onward�

But there was no door in this outer chamber. The walls were featureless: unbroken
even by the map device which had adorned the inner cell. There must be no way out;
maybe this was the end of their journey.

Hork came Waving toward her. "Dura. I've found something." Taking her by the hand
he half-dragged her around the inner cell. He Waved to a stop, causing Dura to bump
against him, and pointed to his find. "There. What do you think of that?"

It was a box, irregularly shaped, about half a mansheight across. Dura circled the
thing warily a few microns from where it hovered in the Air. Sculpted of the
familiar gray wall material, it consisted of a massive block from which a thinner
rectangular plate protruded; smaller cylinders stretched forward from the sides of
the rectangle�

Its function was unmistakable.

"It's a seat" she said.

Hork snorted impatiently. "Obviously it's a damn seat." He prowled around the
object, poking boldly at its surfaces. Levers�thick stumps apparently designed for
human fists�protruded from the end of each of the chair's arms. A swiveling pointer
was inset into the left arm.

Dura asked, "Do you think it's meant for us� I mean, for humans?"

Hork groaned. "Of course it is."

Dura was offended. "There's nothing obvious about this situation, Hork. If that map
was right, we've traveled across space�away from the Star itself. Why should we
expect anything but utter strangeness? It's a miracle we've found Air to breathe,
let alone� furniture."

He shrugged; the fat-covered muscles flowed under his coverall. "But this is
obviously meant for humans. See how the back, the seat have been molded?" And,
before Dura could protest, Hork swiveled his bulk through the Air and settled into
the chair. At first he wriggled, evidently uncomfortable�he even looked alarmed�but
soon he relaxed and assumed a broad smile. He rested his hands on the arms of the
chair; it seemed to match the shape of his massive body. "Perfect," he said. "You
know, Dura, this chair must be three hundred generations old. And yet it looks as
good as new, and it fits my bulk as well as if it had been designed by the best
Parz craftsmen."

Dura frowned. "You didn't seem so happy when you got into the seat."

He hesitated. "It felt odd. The surfaces seemed to flow around me." He grinned, his
confidence recovering. "It was adjusting to me, I suppose. It was disconcerting,
but it didn't last long� What do you think these levers are for?" His massive fists
hovered over the rods protruding from the seat-arms.

"No!" She laid her hands over his.

After a moment he relaxed and lifted his hands away from the levers, leaving them
untouched. "Interesting," he said mildly. "These look just like the control levers
in the 'Flying Pig.' Maybe there are some basic commonalities of human design, a
certain way things just have to be�"

"But," she said firmly, "unlike with the 'Pig' we don't have the faintest idea what
these controls are for."

Hork looked like a reprimanded child. "Well, as you told me earlier, we're not
going to make any progress unless we take a few chances." He glanced down at the
arrow device inset in the left arm of the seat. "What about this, for instance?"

Dura Waved closer. The arrow was a finger-thick cylinder hinged at its center; it
lay at the heart of a small crater gouged out of the chair. The crater's rim was
marked by a band divided into four quarters: white, light gray, dark gray, black.
The arrow was pointing at the black quadrant. It seemed obvious that the arrow was
designed to be twisted by the occupant of the chair.

Hork looked up at her. "Well? This seems harmless enough."

Dura suppressed a manic giggle. "You haven't the faintest idea what it is�"

"Damn you, upfluxer, we didn't come all this way to cower." And with a convulsive
movement he grabbed the arrow and twisted it.

The device clicked through a quarter of a turn.

Dura flinched, wrapping her arms around her body. Even Hork could not help but
wince as the arrow came to rest, pointing to the dark gray quadrant of the scale
band. Then he exhaled heavily. "See? No harm done� In fact, nothing seems to have
happened at all. And�"

"No." She shook her head. "You're wrong." She pointed. "Look�"

Hork twisted in the seat.

The walls of the chamber had turned transparent.

* * *

Bzya was dozing, hands loosely wrapped around the Bell's axial support pole, when
the blue flashes started.

He snapped awake.

This had been a long, fruitless dive, and he had been looking forward to home, to
breaking some beercake with Jool. But now something was wrong.

He scanned quickly around the cabin. Hosch, his only companion on this trip, was
awake and alert; they shared a brief, interrogative glance. Bzya placed his hands
gently on the polished, worn wood of the support pole. No unusual vibration. He
listened to the steady hum of the great Corestuff hoops which bound about the hull
of the Bell; the sound was an even thrumming, telling him that the current from the
City still flowed down the cables as steadily as ever, throwing a magnetic cloak
around their frail ship. He looked through the nearest of the Bell's three small
windows. The Air outside�if it could be graced with the name, this far down�was a
murky yellow, but bright enough to tell him that they were somewhere near the top
of the underMantle. He could even see the shadow of the Spine; they were still
close to its lower tip, not much more than a meter below the City�
There. Another of the blinding blue flashes, just beyond the window. It was
electron-gas blue and it seemed to surround the ship; shafts of blue light shone
briefly through the small round windows into the cabin.

The Bell lurched.

Hosch wrapped his thin hands around the support pole. "Why aren't we dead?"

It was a good question. Clouds of electron gas around a Bell usually meant current
surges in the Corestuff hoops. Maybe the cable from the Harbor was fraying, or a
hoop failing. But if that was so the Bell's field would fail almost immediately.
The Bell should have imploded by now.

"The current supply is still steady," Bzya said. "Listen."

They both held their breath, and looked into the Air; Hosch adopted the empty-eyed
expression of a man trying to concentrate on hearing.

Another flash. This time the Bell actually rocked in the soupy underMantle, and
Bzya, clinging tightly to the pole, was swung around like a sack. He pulled himself
closer to the pole and wrapped his legs around it.

The supervisor's breath stank of meat and old beercake. "Okay," he said. "We know
the Harbor supply is steady. What's causing the flashes?"

"There have to be current surges in the Corestuff hoops."

"If the City supply is steady that's impossible."

Bzya shook his head, thinking hard. "No, not impossible; the surges are just caused
by something else."

Hosch's mouth pursed. "Oh. Changes in the Magfield. Right."

The Bell wasn't malfunctioning; the Magfield itself was betraying them. The
Magfield had become unstable, and it was inducing washes of charge flow in their
protective hoops and dragging them away from their upward path to home.

"What's causing the Magfield to vary?" Bzya asked. "Another Glitch?"

Hosch shrugged. "Hardly matters, does it? We're not going to live to find out."

There was an upward jolt, this time without the accompanying blue flash.

Bzya grasped the pole. "Feel that? That was the Harbor. They're pulling us up.
We're not dead yet. They're trying to�"

And then the blue light came again, and this time stayed bright. Bzya felt the
writhing Magfield haul at his stomach and the fibers of his body, even as it tore
at the Bell itself.

Electron gas sparked from his own fingertips in streamers. It was really quite
beautiful, he thought absently.

The Bell was hurled sideways, away from the Spine. Bzya's hands were torn from the
support pole. The Bell's curving wall came up, like a huge cupped palm, to meet
him. His face rammed into a window, hard. His body bent backward as it crammed
itself into the tight inner curve of the wall. The structure of the Bell shuddered
and groaned, and there was a distant, singing sound above him. That was the cables
breaking, he thought through his pain. He felt oddly pleased at his own cleverness
at such a deduction.

The walls wrenched, settled; the Bell rolled.

He fell into darkness.

* * *

Beyond the transparent walls, huge, ghostly buildings hovered over the humans.

The third chamber was immense, sufficient to enclose a million Parz Cities. The
walls�made of the usual gray material, it seemed�were so far away as to be distant,
geometric abstractions. Maybe this strange place was a series of nested tetrahedra,
going on to infinity�

She Waved to Hork and reached out for him, blindly; still in the chair, he took her
hands, and although his grip was strong she could feel the slick of fear on his
palms. For a heartbeat she felt an echo of the passion they'd briefly found, in
flight from terror during the journey.

The transparent structures hovered around them like congealed Air. They were
translucent boxes hundreds of thousands of mansheights tall. And within some of the
buildings more devices could be seen, embedded; the inner structures were ghosts
within ghosts, gray on gray.

The tetrahedral box containing the "Pig," the solid little chair, Hork and Dura
themselves, were like specks of wood adrift in some mottled fluid. In fact, she
realized, the whole of the tetrahedron they occupied was embedded inside one of the
huge buildings; its gray lines sectioned off the space around them, and she looked
out through its spectral flesh.

"Why do you suppose we can't see these things clearly? And I wonder what their
purpose is. Do you think�"

Hork was peering up at the "building" they were embedded in. He stared into its
corners and at its misty protuberances, and then glanced down quickly at the chair
he sat in.

"What's wrong?"

"The ghost-building we're inside. Look at it� It has the same shape as this chair."
The gray light of the translucent forms pooled in his eyecups. "It's a hundred
thousand times the size, and it's made of something as transparent as clearwood and
thinner than Air� but nevertheless, it's an immense�spectral�chair.

She lifted her head. Slowly she realized that Hork was right. This immense
"building"�at least a meter tall�had a seat, a back; and there, so far above her it
was difficult to see, were two arms, each with its control lever.

Hork grinned, his face animated. "And I think I know what it's all for. Watch
this!"

He twisted his body. His chair swiveled in the Air.

She gasped, Waving away in alarm; but the chair came to rest, and no damage seemed
to have been done. "What are you doing?"

"Don't you understand yet? Look up!"

She tilted her head back.

The other "chair"�the ghostly analogue�had turned too, swiveling to match Hork's
lurch.

"See?" he crowed. "The chair is keyed to mine, somehow; whatever I make mine do,
the big one must follow." Hork swung this way and that, laughing like a child with
a toy. Dura watched the giant analogue dance clumsily, aping Hork's movements like
some huge pet. Presumably, she thought, when the device swiveled, its substance
must be moving around her�through her, in fact, like an unreasonable breeze. But
she felt nothing�at least, no more than an inner chill which could as easily be
caused by her awe and fear.

At last Hork tired of his games. "I can make it do whatever I want." He looked a
little more thoughtful. "And so if I pull these levers�"

"No. We need to work this out, Hork." She looked up. "This�ghost, this City-sized
artifact�is a seat big enough for a giant�"

"That's obvious. But�"

"But," she interrupted, "a giant of a certain form� a human-shaped giant, meters
tall." She studied his face, waiting for him to reach the same conclusions.

"Meters� The Ur-humans."

She nodded. "Hork, I think the ghost-seat is an Ur-human device. I think we're in a
little bubble of Air, floating inside an Ur-human room."

She tilted her head back on her neck, feeling the flesh at the top of her spine
bunch under her skull, and looked up into a ghost-room which abruptly made sense.

They were inside a huge Ur-human chair. But there were other chairs�four of them,
she counted, receding into mistiness, like a row of cities. The chairs were placed
before a long, flat surface, and she caught hints of a complex structure beneath
and behind that surface. Perhaps that was some form of control panel. Looking
further out, the tetrahedral structure surrounding all of this was a sketch drawn
against fog.

Hork touched her arm. "Look over there." He pointed. On the side of the Ur-human
room opposite the row of seats there was a bank of billowing gas�but that must be
wrong, of course; she tried to forget her smallness, to see this through Ur-human
eyes. It was a structure made up of something soft, pliable, piled up on a lower
flat surface. It looked like a cocoon, laid flat.

Did the Ur-humans sleep?

Again Hork was pointing. "On top of that surface before the chairs. See?
Instruments, built for giant hands."

Dura saw a cylinder longer than a Crust-tree trunk. Its end was sharp, protruding
over the lip of the surface. Perhaps it was a stylus, as she'd seen Deni Maxx use
in the Hospital. She tried to imagine the hand that could grasp a tree trunk and
use it to write notes� Beside the "stylus" there was another cylinder, but this was
set upright. It seemed to be hollow�the cylinder was transparent to Dura's eyes,
and she could make out a structure of thick walls surrounding an empty space�and
there was no upper surface.
She frowned and pointed out the second cylinder to Hork. "What do you think that
is? It looks like a fortress. Perhaps the Ur-humans needed to shelter�perhaps they
came under attack�"

He was laughing at her, not unkindly. "No, Dura. You've lost the scale. Look at it
again. It's maybe�what?�ten thousand mansheights tall?"

"Ten times as big as your glorious Parz City."

"Maybe, but that's still only ten centimeters or so. Dura, the Ur-humans were
meters tall. The hand of an Ur-human could have engulfed that cylinder." He was
watching her slyly. "Do you see it yet? Dura, that's a food vessel. A cup."

She stared. A cup, large enough to hold a dozen Parz Cities?

She tried to keep thinking. "Well," she said, "then it's a damn odd cup. All the
food would float out of the top. Wouldn't it?"

Hork nodded grudgingly. "You'd think so." He sighed. "But then, there are many
things about the Ur-humans we can't understand."

She imagined this little box of Mantle-stuff from the outside. "It's as if they
created this inner chamber, around the wormhole Interface, as an ornament. A little
section of the Star, so they could study Human Beings. We would look like toys to
them," she murmured. "Less than toys; little animals, perhaps below the level of
visibility." She looked at her hand. "They were a hundred thousand times taller
than us; even the 'Pig' would have been no more than a mote in the palm of an Ur-
human child�" She shivered. "Do you think any of them are still here?" She imagined
a giant Ur-form floating in through some half-seen door, a face wider than a day's
journey billowing down toward her�

"No," Hork said briskly. "No, I don't. They've gone."

She frowned. "How do you know?"

He grinned. "For one thing, that's what your precious legends tell us. But the
clincher is this seat." He patted its arms. "The Ur-humans set up this place so
that we could work their machines. If I move the chair I can mimic anything an Ur-
human could have done� Dura, they have made me as powerful as any of them. Do you
see?" He probed at the unyielding surface of the chair. "If we had the wit we could
operate other devices." He looked around the ghostly chamber greedily. "There must
be wonders here. Weapons we've never dreamed of."

The Ur-humans had meant Star people to come here, to work the devices they left
behind, maybe when the Glitches got too bad. Perhaps there was something they were
meant to do now� But what?

"Your arrow device doesn't have an analogue, in the Ur-human chair," she said
slowly, pointing up. "See? So the arrow-thing must be something meant for us alone.
Maybe to help us see what's going on." She frowned. "It only turned one quarter.
What if you turned it again?"

"Only one way to find out."

He reached for the arrow.

At first he turned it back toward the darkest sector of the scale. Reassuringly the
walls of smooth gray material congealed around them, shutting out the chamber of
the Ur-humans. And when Hork twisted the arrow the other way the walls vanished, to
reveal the vast devices.

"All right," he said. "Going from the black to the dark gray allows us to see a
little more. A little further. And what if I turn it another quarter, to the light
gray?"

Dura shrank back despite herself. "Just turn it," she said hoarsely.

Confidently he twisted the arrow to the third of the four quarters.

Light seemed to bleed out of the Air.

The devices of the Ur-humans, the walls of their ghostly chamber, became still more
translucent. And there was darkness beyond those distant walls, darkness which
settled on the two humans, huddled as they were within layers of immensity.

Points of light hung in that darkness.

Dura twisted in the Air, staring around. "I don't understand. I can't see the walls
of the next chamber. And what are those lights?"

"There are no more walls," Hork said gently. "Don't you see? No more chambers.
We're looking out into space, Dura, at volumes even the Ur-humans couldn't
enclose."

She found her hand creeping into his. "And those lights�"

"You know what they are, Dura. They're stars. Stars and planets."

* * *

"Wake up, Bzya, you useless asshole."

Hosch was slapping him. Bzya shook his head, blinking to clear his eye. He was
surprised to be alive; the Bell should have imploded.

His bad eyecup blazed with pain. He raised a tentative fingertip to it to find the
cup filled with sticky matter. His back ached, right at the base, where it had been
bent backward against the curve of the Bell.

"So we're not dead," he said.

Hosch grinned, his thin face drawn tight with fear. "We aren't that deep in the
underMantle. We can't be, or the Bell would have collapsed already." He was kicking
at the rim of the hatch frame, trying to splinter it with his heel.

Bzya flexed his hands and toes. He felt a vague disappointment. Fishing wasn't the
safest of occupations; he'd always known it would finish him one day. But not
today�not so close to home, and after such a futile, wasted dive. "You'll make the
hatch collapse in if you keep that up."

"That's�" Kick "�the idea." Kick. Kick.

"And what then? Wave for it?"

"You've got it." Kick, kick. "We've lost the cable. We haven't any better options."
The frame was already starting to splinter. The hatch was a disc of wood, held in
place by external pressure against the flanged frame. Once Hosch damaged enough of
the flange, the hatch would fall in easily.
Bzya glanced out of the window. "We're not deep enough to crush the Bell, but we're
surely too deep for us. No one's ever come so deep unaided. We must still be ninety
centimeters."

"Then we'll become damn legends. Unless you've a better idea, you useless jetfart.
Help me�"

But Bzya didn't need to.

With a thousand tiny explosions all around the frame the flange splintered. Bits of
wood rattled across the cabin; they flew into Bzya's face and he batted at them
dimly. Then the hatch fell forward, yielding in a moment. Bzya had an instant's
impression of a mass of fluid�dense, amber and incompressible�crowding into the
breached cabin.

The wood-lamps died, overwhelmed.

Then it was on him.

It washed over his limbs, forced its way into his mouth and throat and eyecups; it
was a hard physical invasion, like fists pushing into him. He could not see, hear
or taste anything. He panicked, and twisted his head back and forth, trying to spew
the vile stuff out of his lungs. But he could not expel it, of course; he was
embedded in this dense, unlivable material�in a layer of it ninety centimeters
deep.

His lungs expanded, tearing at the material.

�And they found Air. Fragments, splinters of Air which stung as they forced their
way out of his lungs and into his capillaries. His chest heaved, dragging at the
fluid around him. There was Air here, but with just a trace of its normal
fractional density.

Damn it, maybe I can make it out of this�

Then the burning started.

It was all over his body, like a thousand needles. And inside him too�by the Wheel!
�scorching into his lungs and stomach; it flooded the capillaries that coursed
through his body, turning the network of fine tubes that permeated him into a mass
of pain, every threadlike capillary electric-alive with it.

Too dense. Too dense�

In these extremes of density and pressure the tin nuclei at the surfaces of his
body were seeking a new stable configuration. The nuclei were breaking apart from
each other and crumbling into their component nucleons, which were then swarming
into the fire-Air in search of the single, huge nucleus which filled the heart of
the Star� Bzya was dissolving.

He kicked at the fluid, driving his legs through it. He felt a dull impact as his
head struck something. It must be the wall of the Bell. He felt vaguely surprised
to find that there was anything left of the familiar, external universe, beyond
this pain-realm of dissolution. But he'd managed to move himself. He'd Waved.

He dragged his hand through the fluid, made a sign of the Wheel against his chest.
He couldn't see, but he could breathe, and he could Wave. He was going to get out
of here.
He'd bumped his upper face. He must be facing the rear wall of the cabin, then; he
must have been spun around by the incoming underMantle fluid. He turned around,
spread his hands behind him across the wall. The pain eclipsed his touch, but he
could feel the curve of the wall, the round profile of a window. He pictured the
cabin, as it had been in that last instant before the hatch came in. Hosch had been
somewhere to his right.

He pushed away from the wall and Waved that way, groping ahead of him.

His hands found something. Hosch, it had to be. He ran his hands over Hosch's chest
and head; Hosch didn't respond. Hosch's skin crumbled under Bzya's touch�or maybe
it was the flesh of Bzya's own fingers and palms.

He found Hosch's hand, wrapped it in his own.

Two strong kicks and he'd found the open hatchway. He was still blind, and his
sense of touch was fading�perhaps, he thought with horror, it would never return;
even if he survived perhaps he would have to live in this shell of pain, without
light or sound� But he could feel the rim of the hatchway, the splinters left by
Hosch's brave kicking.

He tried to fall forward, out of the Bell, but something was holding him back.
Something hard, unyielding, which pressed into his chest and legs�the Corestuff
hoops, wrapped around the Bell. He lifted his feet against the lower hoop, grabbed
the upper with a numbing hand, and tried to straighten his body. His lower back,
already injured, blazed with pain. He felt an abrupt shift as the hoops slid apart.
He lifted his feet and let his body slide forward through the gap; he held his
hands over his head and felt the limp form of Hosch rattle against the hoops,
following him.

He tumbled out of the Bell, dragging the supervisor after him.

He had to find the Spine. He turned to his left and kicked out. He held Hosch's
hand tight�at least he thought he did; only pain reached him now from his hands,
feet and face. He felt a whispering drag pull at his own body� No, he thought, it
was more than that; there were a thousand discrete tugs at his flesh, like hooks
dragging into the skin. His flesh was ablating, he realized slowly, crumbling off
him as he Waved.

He reached ahead with his free hand. His sight was gone, both eyecups useless now.
This was the way back to the Spine, as best he remembered it from the moment the
Bell had been torn away by the Magfield surges. Of course, since then he'd been
unconscious. The Bell could even have turned upside down�

But he didn't have any better guesses. He thrashed at the scouring liquid, trying
not to estimate how far he'd Waved from the Bell, how much further before he was
sure he'd missed the Spine.

Mercifully the pain seemed to be lessening. The burning, the decomposition of his
flesh, must be damaging the nerve endings themselves. Soon he genuinely would be
isolated inside his body.

Well, I'll never Surf again. Or sculpt. Or, and now his inner smile faded, or feel
a woman's skin.

There was a new stab of pain from his outstretched arm, his useless stub of hand.
The arm buckled, forced back by something solid.
His body collided with a hard surface. He tried to feel with his chest, thighs and
face.

The Spine. The blessed Spine.

He dragged his free arm across the surface until it snagged on something. There, he
had it�a Bell cable. He made his hand into a hook and wrapped it around the cable.
With Hosch still towed limply behind him, he flattened himself against the wooden
surface of the Spine, and began to Wave once more, along the length of the Spine,
using the Cable as a guide.

How ironic, he thought, if he were Waving the wrong way, down toward the Core.

* * *

By the time he was lifted out of the fluid, he was almost isolated from the world,
inside a deadened body. He felt as aware, as alert as ever, but he could feel
little. Even the pain had gone now. But he could feel his chest expand, dragging in
the thinning, clearing Air, and he could feel the Magfield pull at his stomach, the
center of him.

He was still here, he thought. Just a little battered around the edges.

He thought he'd kept Waving until the end, and he thought he'd kept hold of Hosch.
But it was hard to be sure.

And now he was being moved again, more delicately. He tried to smile. The Fishermen
must have come down for him and Hosch, in a second Bell.

He was glad he couldn't see the looks on their faces, as they nursed him.

Chapter 25
With a final heave from the team of volunteers, the patient was loaded through the
kicked-out Hospital wall and into the car waiting in the Air beyond. Adda watched
the car recede cautiously from the Hospital, and then turn to join the streams of
refugees fleeing to the upflux.

Once the evacuation of the City had begun, this ward of the Hospital of the Common
Good, directly behind the Skin of Parz, had rapidly been adapted to serve as a
loading bay. Now it was a three-dimensional swarm of Hospital staff, volunteers,
patients and those close to them. Patients screamed or moaned, and staff called
desperately to each other for splints, bandages, drugs. And as fast as the patients
were shipped off in the cars outside, more�ever more�were crowding in from the rest
of the broken City. Adda felt overwhelmed, daunted, dismayed, exhausted. Perhaps
I've finally seen too many changes. Too many disasters; too many shattered bodies�

He leaned out into the Air beyond the Skin. He opened his mouth, trying to expel
from his lungs the Hospital stink of stale capillary-Air. But even outside the Skin
the Air was sour; he could smell nuclear-burning wood, Air-pig jetfarts, the smell
of human fear. It was as if the City, in its death throes, was wrapped in an
invisible cloud of sour-smelling photons, like an immense dying creature leaking
its last capillary-Air.

The City, suffering hugely with groans of wood and the shearing scream of failing
Corestuff metal, shuddered around him. The Hospital was lodged in the Downside
belly of the City, so that Adda was peering out of the Skin like an insect gazing
out of a wall. The anchor-bands were still functioning; electron gas shone around
them in response to the huge currents surging through their superconducting
interiors as the City fought to maintain its position.
The Skin was a blur of motion. All over the City the fragile hull had been kicked
away. People clambered out of the City and into waiting cars; most of them dragged
possessions after them through the ragged holes they'd made. Cars and free-Waving
people diffused away from the City in a widening, blurring cloud. The Air was
filled with the yells of people, the braying commands of Speakers.

Beyond the pathetic human river the Glitch-wracked vortex lines were mere sketches,
scribbles of instability. The Magfield shuddered perceptibly as the massive
upwellings from the Quantum Sea continued.

And in the far distance, the blue-violet fire of Xeelee ships raked through the
Mantle. It was a sight he never thought he'd live to see.

"Adda!"

Reluctantly, he turned away from the open Air and concentrated on the ward once
more.

The next patient to be evacuated, a woman, was screaming in pain. She was so
swaddled in stained bandages that all that could be seen of her was a gaping mouth.
Deni Maxx trailed after this grotesque package, stroking the woman's hair and
murmuring futile words of comfort. Deni looked to Adda with a mute appeal. He tried
to mask his reluctance to touch the injured woman. He moved closer to the woman and
stared into her face, muttering gruff, calming words. It was like soothing a
wounded Air-pig. But the woman's eyecups were black with bruising, and he doubted
that she'd heard him.

They moved quickly to load the woman into a waiting Air-car. At last the car pulled
away from the building, and the screams of the woman dwindled slowly.

Deni lingered by the improvised doorway and gulped in breaths of dank Polar Air.
She looked into the mists of distance, at the violet limbs of the Xeelee
starbreaker beams walking easily through the Star.

"Let's hope those damn things keep away from the City," Adda said.

She brushed back a handful of filthy hair. "And from your people, wherever they
are� Anyway, if the beams do hit us directly, it will be mischance. The purpose of
the Xeelee is obviously to disrupt the Core; they wouldn't waste effort on a tiny,
helpless construct like a City."

"Yes. So much for Hork's expedition into the underMantle."

"Perhaps. But, Adda, that brave and foolish expedition was the only hope any of us
had. I have clung to it far beyond any rational point." She smiled thinly. "In fact
I still cling to it. Why not? As long as it keeps me functioning."

He surveyed the thin trails of Air-cars and people dispersing into the roiling Air.
In the distance the larger cars showed up as silhouettes, fleeing insects against
searing Xeelee light.

Deni rubbed her chin. "You may not understand this, Adda, but most of the City's
people have never strayed outside Parz before. To them, the City has always been
the safest place in the world. Now that it's falling apart around them, they
feel�betrayed. Like a child abandoned by its parents." She hesitated. "We're
talking of hope. But in a way, for many the worst has already come to pass."

"Do you think we're doing any good here?"

She looked strained. "Well, we're shoving the patients out of this improvised port
as fast as they are coming in�crushed in the Stadium, or burned and sliced open by
that Corestuff berg incursion through the Midside� But whether they are any safer
out there than in what's left of the City, I don't care to judge." She smiled
without humor. "But at least it makes us feel better to help them. Don't you
agree?"

Another patient was shouldered past them and out into a waiting car. Farr was in
this latest work party, and as soon as the patient�an unconscious child�was
delivered, Farr turned to make his way back into the chaos of the ward. Adda laid a
hand on his shoulder, restraining him. There were deep bruises around the boy's
eyes; his shoulders were hunched and his mouth was working as if he was mumbling to
himself.

Adda shook him gently. "Farr? Are you all right, lad?"

Farr focused on the old man. "I'm fine," he said, his voice high and thin. "I'm
just a little tired, and�"

"Listen, you don't have to carry on with this."

Farr looked offended. "Adda, I'm not a kid."

"I'm not suggesting you are, you damn�"

Deni moved smoothly between them, something of her old sheen of competence
returning to her. "Farr, you're doing a marvelous job� and I need you to keep on
doing it. So I agree with Adda; I think you should take a short break�find
something to eat, a place to rest."

Farr looked ready to protest further, but Deni pushed him gently in the chest. "Go
on. That's an order."

With a thin smile the boy complied.

Deni turned a quizzical face to Adda. "I can tell you were never a parent."

Adda growled wordlessly.

A new Air-car approached the rough lip of the opened-up wall; five nervous pigs
jostled together, bumping against the Skin like inflated toys. The car's door
opened and the driver leaned across. "Adda," Toba Mixxax said, his broad, weary
face splitting into a grin. "I'm glad to find you. Ito said you were trying to get
here, with Farr."

"Well, he's here. He's fine. He's working hard." Adda had always found Toba's
round, flat face rather bland and unexpressive; but now Adda could see real pain in
the set of Toba's eyecups, the small lines at the corners of his mouth. "Cris isn't
here. I'm sorry."

Toba's expression barely changed, but Adda could see a small light go out of him.
"No. I, ah�I didn't expect he would be."

"No."

The two men let their gazes slide away from each other, briefly embarrassed.

"How's Ito? Where is she?"

"At the ceiling-farm. What's left of it. She's found plenty to do. She's a
craftswoman, Adda, and she's launched herself into repair work, with the coolies
who've stayed." He shook his head. "Everything's smashed, though. You wouldn't
believe it." There was bitterness in Toba's voice. "This latest Glitch has done for
us, Adda."

Toba's words made him think of what Deni had said�that the Xeelee were here to
disrupt the Core, to devastate the Star itself. Adda wasn't very imaginative; he
focused on the here-and-now, on what was achievable. But, he suddenly wondered,
what if Deni Maxx was right�that the Xeelee truly had come, this time, to finish
the Star�to do for them all?

He glanced around the lurid sky. Inside himself, he'd been expecting this Glitch to
come to an end, eventually�just like all the other Glitches in his long life, no
matter how severe. But what if that wasn't true, this time? After all, the Xeelee
were manufacturing this Glitch; his previous experience wasn't a reliable guide.
What if the Xeelee kept on, persisted until the Core itself welled out from rents
in the Quantum Sea�

Up to now Adda had been anticipating only his own death, and the death of many
others�even of those close to him. But perhaps this new catastrophe was destined to
go much further�to encompass the destruction of the race itself. He was overwhelmed
suddenly by a vision of the Star scoured clean of Human Beings, of all future
generations�everything Adda had worked for�snuffed out, rendered meaningless.

Toba was still talking. Adda hadn't heard a word he'd said for a long time.

Adda pulled himself away and took a deep breath. If the world was to finish
today�well, there was little Adda could do about it. In the meantime he had work to
do.

Deni Maxx joined Adda in the improvised doorway. "Thanks for coming to help us,
citizen."

Toba shrugged. "I needed something to keep me busy." Another patient was being
brought through the ward now; Toba Mixxax stared past Adda at the broken body, and
his round face set into a mask of grimness.

"Well, you found it," Adda said darkly.

Deni Maxx touched his arm. "Come on, upfluxer. Let's get back to work."

In the distance the starbreakers, like immense daggers, continued to pierce the
Mantle. Adda stared out for one moment longer; then, with a final nod to Toba, he
turned away.

* * *

Once the Star had seemed huge to her. Now here she was stranded in the immensity of
this Ur-sky, of stars and planets, and she thought back almost nostalgically to the
cozy world of the Mantle�with the smooth purple floor of the Quantum Sea below her,
the Crust a blanket above her, the Mantle itself like an immense womb succoring
her. All of that had been stripped away by this astonishing journey, and by the
seeing-gadgets of the Ur-humans.

She tilted back her head and opened her eyes as wide as she could, trying to take
it all in, to bury her awe and build a model of this new universe in her head.
The sky around them�the space between the stars�wasn't utterly black. She made out
hints of structure: clouds, whorls, shadings of gray. There must be some kind of
air out there, beyond the transparent walls�air but not Air: thin, translucent,
patchy, but sufficient to give the sky an elusive shape. It was a little like the
fugitive ghost-patterns she could see in the darkness of her own eyecups if she
jammed her eyes tight shut.

And beyond the thin shroud of gas lay the stars, suspended all around the sky. They
were lanterns, clear and without flicker; they were of all colors and all levels of
brightness, from the faintest spark to intense, noble flames. And perhaps, she
thought with an almost religious awe, those lights in the sky were worlds in
themselves. Maybe there were other forms of humans on those distant lights, placed
there by the Ur-humans for their own inscrutable purposes. Would it ever be
possible to know?�to speak to those humans, to travel there across such
immensities?

She tried to make out patterns in the distribution of the stars. Perhaps there was
a hint of a ring structure over there�and a dozen stars trailed in a line across
that corner of the sky�

But as fast as she found such bits of orderliness in the unmanageable sky, she lost
them again. Slowly she came to accept the truth�that there was no order, that the
stars were scattered over the sky at random.

For the first time since leaving the "Flying Pig," panic spurted in her. Her breath
scraped through her throat and she felt her capillaries expand throughout her
flesh, admitting more strength-bearing Air.

Why should randomness upset her so? Because, she realized slowly, there were no
vortex lines here, no neat Crust ceiling or Sea floor. All her life had been spent
in a ruled-off sky�a sky where any hint of irregularity was so unusual as to be a
sign of deadly danger.

But there were no lines here, no reassuring anchor-points for her mind.

"Are you all right?" Hork sounded calmer than she was, but his eyecups were wide
and his nostrils flared, glowing like nuclear-burning wood above his bush of beard.

"No. Not really. I'm not sure I can accept all this."

"I know. I know." Hork lifted up his face. In the starlight the intrinsic
coarseness of his features seemed to melt away, leaving a calm, almost elegiac
expression. He waved a hand across the sky. "Look at the stars. Look how their
brightness varies� But what if that variation is an illusion? Have you thought
about that? What if all the stars are about as bright as each other?"

Her mind�as usual�plodded slowly behind his flight of logic. If the stars were all
the same intrinsic brightness, then some of them would have to be further away.
Much further away.

She sighed. No, damn it. She hadn't thought of that.

Somehow she'd been picturing the starry Ur-universe as a shell around her�like the
Crust, though much further away. But it wasn't like that; she was surrounded by an
unbounded sky throughout which the stars�themselves worlds�were scattered like
spin-spider eggs.

The universe ballooned around her, reducing her to a meaningless mote, a spark of
awareness. It was oppressive, beyond her imagination; she cried out, covering her
face in her hands.

Hork sounded uncomfortable. "Take it easy."

Irritation burrowed through her awe. "Oh, sure. And you're quite calm, I suppose.
Sorry to embarrass you�"

"Give me a break."

She turned away from him, striving for calm. "I wish I knew what is an appropriate
response to all this�to be here in this ancient place, to be seeing through the
eyes of the Ur-humans�"

"Well, not quite," Hork said gently. "Remember there are still walls around us,
which must somehow be helping us to see. The Ur-humans didn't see things the same
way we do. Ask Muub about it when we get back� We 'see' by sound waves which are
transmitted through the Air." He waved a hand. "But beyond this little bubble,
there isn't any Air. The Ur-humans didn't live in Air, in fact. And they 'saw' by
focusing beams of photons, which�"

She wrinkled her nose. "They could smell the stars?"

"Of course not," he snapped. "In Air, photons can travel only slowly, diffusing. So
we use them to smell. And we 'hear' temperature fluctuations.

"In empty space, it's different. Phonons can't travel at all�so we would be blind.
But photons travel immensely fast. So the Ur-humans could have 'seen' photons�
Anyway, that's Muub's theory."

"Then how did they hear? Or smell, or taste?"

He growled impatiently. "How the hell should I know? Anyway, I think this third
chamber is designed to let us see the universe the way the Ur-humans did." He
rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "And there's still a setting left on the arrow-
console, the fourth one� we haven't finished with our ways of seeing yet."

She'd forgotten about that last setting. Some core of her, buried deep inside,
quailed a little further.

Turning in the Air she looked around, still searching for patterns. The sky wasn't
uniformly dark, she realized; the elusive gas faded up from gray to a deep, crimson
glow on the far side of the room. "Come on. I think there's something beyond the
wormhole chamber�"

Still holding hands, they Waved past the control chair and around the darkened
tetrahedron which contained the wormhole portal and the "Pig." Through the open
door, Dura glimpsed their craft; its roughly hewn wooden walls, its bands of
Corestuff, the slowly leaking stink of Air-pig farts, all seemed unbearably
primitive in this chamber of Ur-human miracles.

The sky-glow intensified as they neared its source. At last the glow drowned out
the stars. Dura felt herself pull back, shying away from new revelations. But Hork
enclosed her fingers in a tight, smothering grip and coaxed her forward. "Come on,"
he said grimly. "Don't fold on me now." At the center of the glowing sky was a
single star: tiny, fierce and yellow-red, brighter than any other in the sky. But
this star wasn't isolated in space. A ring of some glowing gas circled the star,
and�still more astonishing�an immense globe of light hung close to the fierce
little star. The globe was like a star itself, but attenuated, bloated, its outer
layers so diffuse as almost to merge with the all-pervading gas cloud. Tendrils of
gray light snaked from the globe-star and reached far into the ring of gas.

It was like a huge sculpture of gas and light, Dura thought. She was stunned by the
spectacle, and yet charmed by its proportion, scale, depths of shading and color.

She was seeing the gas ring around the star from edge-on� in fact, she realized
slowly, the Ur-human construct around her was actually inside the body of the ring.
And she could see beyond the central star to the far side of the gas ring; distance
reduced the ring's far limb to a line of light on which the little star was
threaded, like a pendant.

She could see turbulence in the ring, huge cells big enough to swallow a thousand
of the Ur-human colonies. The cells erupted and merged, changing as she watched
despite their unthinkable scale. And there seemed to be movement around the star, a
handful of sparks dipping into its carcass�

"Then it's true," Hork breathed.

"What?"

"That we're not in the Star any more. That we've been transported, through the
wormhole, to a planet outside it." Ring-light bathed his face, casting complex
highlights from his beard. "Don't you see? That's our star�the Star�and, just like
the map said, we're on a planet circling the Star. But the map didn't show the
ring." He turned to her, excitement in his eyes. It was the excitement of
understanding, she realized, of piecing together a puzzle. "So now we know how our
Star's system is put together." He mimed with his hands. "Here's the Star, at the
center of it all. The gas ring encircles it, like this. The planet must drift
within the ring. And hanging above it all we have the globe-thing, glowing dully
and leaking gas."

Dura stared at their Star. It was small and mean, she thought, disappointing
compared to the glorious lanterns which glittered in other parts of the sky. And
yet it was home; she felt a strange dislocation, a pang of sadness, of loss. "Our
world is so limited," she said slowly. "How could we ever have known that beyond
the Crust was so much wonder, immensity, beauty�"

"You know, I think that big sphere of gas has a glow of its own. It isn't just
reflecting the Starlight, I mean."

The globe was like an immense pendant on the ring, utterly dwarfing the Star
itself. Hork seemed to be right; the intensity of its gray-yellow glow increased
toward its rough center. And it wasn't actually a sphere, she realized slowly;
perhaps it had once been, but now it was drawn out into a teardrop shape, with a
thin tip attached to the ring by an umbilical of glowing gas. The outer layers of
the globe were misty, turbulent; Dura could see through them to the darkness of
space.

"It's like a star itself. But�"

"But it doesn't look right." Dura searched for the right word. "It
seems�unhealthy."

"Yes." He pointed. "It looks as if stuff is being drawn out of the big star and put
into the ring." He glanced speculatively at Dura. "Perhaps, somehow, the Star is
drawing flesh from the big star to create the ring. Perhaps the planet we're on is
constructed of ring-stuff."

She shuddered. "You make the Star sound like a living thing. Like an eye-leech."
"A star-leech. Well, perhaps that's as good an explanation as we'll ever get�" He
grinned at her, his face spectral in the ring's glow. "Come on. I want to try the
arrow's last setting."

"Oh, Hork� Do you have any capacity for awe?"

"No." His grin broadened through his beard. "I think it's a survival
characteristic. Mental toughness, I call it." He led her back around the inner
portal-chamber and eyed her roguishly. "So we've seen the stars. Big deal. What's
left?"

"Twist the arrow and find out."

He did so.

The universe�of stars and starlight�imploded.

Dura screamed.

Chapter 26
The stars�all except the Star�had disappeared, dragging all the light from the sky.
The Star, with its ring and its huge, bleeding companion, hung in an emptied sky�

No, she realized, that wasn't quite true. There was a bow around the sky�a
multicolored ribbon, thin and perfect, which hooped around the Ur-humans'
habitat�and, she saw, passed behind the Star itself.

It was a ribbon which encircled the universe, and it contained all the starlight.

Hork loomed before her, the starbow adding highlights to the gray illumination of
his face. "Well?" he demanded irritably. "What now?"

She rubbed her forehead. "Each setting of that device has shown us more of our
surroundings�more of the universe. It's as if successive layers, veils, have been
removed from our eyes."

"Right." He lifted his eyes to the starbow. "So this must be the truth? The last
setting, which strips away all the veils?" He shook his head. "But what does it
mean?"

"The sky we saw before�of stars, scattered around the sky�was strange to us� even
awesome. But it looked natural. The stars were just like our Star, only much
further away."

"Yes, Whereas this seems distorted. And how come we can still see our Star? Why
isn't its light smeared out into this absurd hoop, too?"

Smeared starlight� Yes. I like that. Good; that's very perceptive�

Dura whirled in the Air, trying to suppress a scream. The voice, dry and soft,
emanating from the emptiness of the huge room behind her had been utterly
terrifying.

"Karen Macrae," Hork said, his voice thick with hostility.

A sketch of shoulders and head wrought in pale, colored cubes of light hung in the
Air a mansheight from them. The definition was poorer than within the
underMantle�the colors washed out, the jostling light-cubes bigger. Karen Macrae
opened her eyes, and again Dura was repulsed by the fleshy balls nestling within
the cups.

Hork had been right; somehow Karen Macrae had ridden with them in the lump of
Corestuff attached to the side of the "Pig," all the way from the depths of the
Star to this remote, austere place.

The starlight is smeared; yes. And it's crucial that you understand why it's
smeared, what's happening to you. The walls of this place aren't windows; they have
processing capacity�they're virtually semi-sentient, actually�capable of
deconvolving the Doppler distortions of�

Hork growled and Waved forward. "Talk straight, damn you."

The blurred head rotated slowly. Doppler distortion. Blue shift. You�we�are
traveling enormously quickly through space. Almost as fast as light itself. Do you
see? And so�

"And so we outrun starlight," Hork said. "�I think I understand. But why is it we
still see the Star itself, and its system of ring and giant companion?"

The Colonist seemed to be retreating into her own half-formed head; the fleshy
things in her eyecups slid around like independent animals.

Dura struggled to answer Hork. "Because the Star is traveling with us. And that's
why we can still see its light." She looked at him doubtfully. "Does that make
sense?"

Hork growled. "This Colonist and her riddle-talk� All right. Let's assume you're
right. After all, we haven't any better explanation. Let's assume we, and the Star,
are traveling through space as fast as light. Why? Where are we coming from? And
where are we going?"

There was no answer from Karen Macrae. Light-cubes crawled over her face like
leeches.

Hork and Dura stared at each other, as if seeking the answers in each other's
exasperated faces.

They looked around once more, trying to make sense of the distorted sky. Dura felt
small, fragile, helpless in this ensemble of hurtling worlds. There was a symmetry
to the smeared light around them, and after some argument they decided that their
departure point and destination must lie at the poles of an imaginary globe around
them, the globe whose equator was marked by the starbow.

Hork reached for the arrow device. "All right. Then let's see if we can see what
lies there�" He set the pointer at its penultimate setting.

The stars fled from the crumbling starbow and back to their scattered homes around
the sky.

Hork Waved toward one of the imagined poles, peering through the blocky Ur-human
cloud devices and into space. To Dura, who remained close to Karen Macrae, he
looked like a toy, a speck swimming against the Ur-humans' vague immensities.

"Nothing here," he called at last, sounding disappointed. "Just an anonymous patch

of stars."

"Then it must be at the other end of the chamber. The other pole. Come on."
She waited for him to return. Then, hand in hand, they Waved in the Star's
direction of flight.

�And there was something at the pole of the sky: something set against the backdrop
of stars, something huge�if diminished by distance�and precisely defined.

Karen Macrae was saying something. The rustling words sighed across the huge
silences of the chamber.

Dura and Hork hurried back and pressed their faces close to the Colonist's cloudy
lips. "What is it?" Dura demanded, almost despairing. "Won't you try again? What
are you saying to us?"

�The Ring. Can you see it? I've so little processing power here� hard to� the Ring�

Dura turned away and looked at the artifact; and a fear borne of childhood tales,
of old, distorted legends, welled up in her.

* * *

The car sailed away.

Adda hung on to the ward's improvised doorframe and sucked Air into his lungs. He
glanced around the sky. The panorama, now somber and deep yellow, grew less and
less like the secure, orderly Mantlescape he'd grown old with: the vortex lines
were discontinuous shreds of spin loops struggling to reform, and the starbreaker
beams continued to cut down through the Air and into the Core, unnaturally
vertical.

Tired as he was, something probed at the edge of his awareness. It seemed darker
than before. Why should that be? He pushed himself out of the ward and Waved a few
weary mansheights into the sky. Behind him, the Skin was a limitless wooden wall
which cut away half of the sky. It was bounded about by the huge anchor-bands and
punctuated by a hundred crude gashes; a slowing trickle of cars and people still
dribbled from the opened-up walls and diffused into the wastes of the Air. The Skin
was dark, intimidating�

Too dark. That was it.

Adda Waved a little further and twisted his head around, surveying the Corestuff
anchor-bands. The huge hoops were like a gray cage over the City's wooden face�but
they were dull, lifeless, where a little earlier they had crackled with blue
electron gas.

The glow of the gas had gone.

So the dynamos, the huge, wood-burning lungs of the City, had failed at last.
Perhaps they had been abandoned by their attendants; or maybe some essential part
of the City's infrastructure had failed under the strain of holding the City
against the fluctuating Magfield.

It scarcely mattered.

There was a sharp explosion. A hail of splinters fanned out from the base of the
City, at the junction of the Spine and the main inhabited section. The splinters
sailed away through the showers of sewage material still falling from the base of
Parz.
There might be no more than heartbeats left.

Adda Waved strongly back to the improvised Hospital port and dived into the melee
of swaddled patients, harassed staff and volunteers. He found Farr helping Deni
Maxx to fix a patient's bandages. He grabbed Farr's and Deni's arms roughly; he
hauled them away from the unconscious patient and toward the exit.

"We've got to get out of here."

Deni stared at him, the deep yellow Air-light scouring shadow-lines in her face.
"What is it? I don't understand."

"The anchor-bands have lost power," Adda hissed. "They can't sustain the City, here
above the Pole. The City's going to drift�come under intense stress� We have to get
away from here. The City will never withstand it�"

Farr glanced back to the patients and helpers. "But we're not finished."

"Farr," Adda said with all the persuasiveness he could muster, "it's over. You've
done a marvelous job, but there's nothing more you can do. Once the effects of the
band failure hit we won't be able to complete the evacuation anyway."

Deni Maxx stared into his face, her mouth tight. "I'm not leaving."

Adda felt his scarred old heart break once more.

"But you'll die," he said, hearing a plea in his voice. "These wretched people can
never survive anyway. There's no point�"

She pulled her arm from his grasp. She looked back into the ward, as if all this
had been a mere distraction from her work.

When he placed his hand on the crude doorframe he felt a deep, shuddering
vibration, coming from the very bones of the City, and shivers of turbulence crept
across the bare skin of his arms and neck.

Maybe it was already too late. He pulled himself through the improvised doorway and
into the open Air.

He looked back into the ward. Deni Maxx was making her way back into the chaos of
patients and helpers, her face set. Already she'd dismissed his warning. Forgotten
it, probably. But Farr still lingered close to the doorway; he looked back into the
ward, apparently torn.

Well, Deni was lost; but not Farr. Not yet.

Adda grabbed Farr by the hair and, with all his remaining strength, hauled the boy
backward out of the Hospital and hurled him into the Air. Farr came to rest in the
empty Air, struggling; he looked like some stranded insect, dwarfed by the immense,
wounded face of the City. He glared at Adda. "You had no right to do that."

"I know. I know. You'll just have to hate me, Farr. Now Wave, damn you; Wave as
hard as you've ever Waved in your life!"

There was a glow from the North, a deep, ominous red glow from all around the sky.
It was a light Adda had never seen before. It soaked the Mantle in a darkness in
which the starbreakers of the Xeelee glowed like opened-up logs.

Another shout of tearing wood and failing Corestuff was wrenched from the guts of
the City. The Skin rippled; waves perhaps a micron high spread over its surface,
and the wood broke open in tiny explosions.

Adda dropped his head and kicked at the seething Air, Waving away from Parz as hard
as he could.

* * *

The Ring was reduced by distance to a sparkling jewel, lovely and fragile.

"I believed most of it," Dura said slowly, "most of the stories my father told me�
But I don't think I ever quite believed in the Ring itself."

Bolder's Ring, the greatest engineering construct in the universe. So

massive�rotating so rapidly�that it had ripped a hole in space itself.

"The Ring is a doorway in the universe, a way for the Xeelee to escape their
unknown foe," she told Hork.

His fists clenched; dwarfed by the huge sky around him, his belligerence looked
absurd. "I know your legends. But what foe?" He crowded close to Karen Macrae and
drove his fist into the cloud of jostling cubes which comprised her face. His hand
passed through, apparently unaffected. "What foe, damn you?"

Slowly Karen Macrae began to talk, the globes in her eyecups glinting. She spoke
hesitantly, in fragments.

* * *

The Star was spawned in a galaxy, a disc of a hundred billion stars. It was
actually ancient, the cooling remnant of an immense explosion which had driven away
much of a massive star's bulk and devastated the gray companion which still
accompanied it. As time wore on the Star had drawn material from the companion,
knitted gas into planets.

Then the Ur-humans came.

They downloaded the Colonists�images of themselves�into the Core; and the Colonists
built the first Star-humans.

For five centuries the Colonists and the Star-humans worked together. Huge
engines�discontinuity drives, Karen called them�were built at the North Pole of the
Star. Teams of Star-humans wielded mighty devices under the instruction of the
Colonists.

Hork's eyes narrowed. "Ah," he breathed. "So they do need us, these Colonists. We
are the hands, the strong arms which built the world�"

The discontinuity drive engines hurled the Star from its birthplace. It soared out
of its galaxy and sailed free across space.

The Ring was close to the Star's native galaxy�so close that light would take no
more than ten thousand years to cross the void to the Ring, Karen Macrae said; so
close that the immense mass of the Ring was already distorting the galaxy's
structure, pulling it apart. The Star�with its companion, its planets and gas ring,
and its precious freight of life�fell across space toward the Ring, glowing in the
darkness like a wood-burning torch.

A century passed inside the Star. Thousands of years fluttered by in the universe
outside the Crust. (Dura could make nothing of this.)

The Ring neared.

The Colonists grew afraid. The Star-humans grew afraid.

"Why?" Dura demanded. "Why should they fear the Ring? What will happen when we
reach it?"

The Colonists retreated into the Core. They had constructed a wonderful virtual
world for themselves in there�unreal Earths� And they believed they would be safe
there, that they could ride out any disaster which might befall the Star.

The Star-humans were left bereft in the Mantle like abandoned children. They had
their wormholes and other gadgets, but without the guidance of the parent-Colonists
the devices were like so many gaudy toys.

Resentment grew, displacing fear. The Star-humans determined that they would follow
the Colonists into their Core haven if they could�or if not, they would make the
complacent Colonists as fearful as themselves.

Wormhole Interfaces were ripped from their anchor-sites in the Mantle and hurled
downward into the Core. Armies, grim-faced, lanced through the wormholes in
improvised ships. The technologies which had once built the discontinuity drives
were pirated to craft immense weapons.

"The Core Wars," Hork said slowly. "Then they really happened."

Hork's anger was intense; it was as if, Dura thought, the huge injustice of
abandonment had occurred only yesterday, not generations before.

The Colonists, insubstantial Core-ghosts as they were, had nevertheless retained

immense material power. The War was brief.

Power failed; weapons exploded, or dissolved, killing their operators. The

Interfaces were dragged into the Core, or fell into uselessness, their linking
wormhole tunnels collapsed. Once the Mantle had sustained a single community of
Star-humans, united by the wormhole network. In a few heartbeats that Star-wide
culture collapsed.

Humans, naked, defenseless, fell into the Air.

A huge silence fell over the Star.

With the War ended, the Colonists retreated into the Core and prepared for eternal
life.

* * *

Hork pounded his fist into his palm. "The bastards. The cowardly bastards. They
abandoned us, to generations of suffering. Illness, disease, Glitches. But we
showed them. We built Parz City, didn't we? We survived. And now, five centuries
after dumping us, they need us again�"

Dura couldn't drag her eyes away from the Ring. Lights flickered over the huge
construct, dancing silently. "What's happening to the Ring? I don't understand."

Hork snorted. "Isn't it obvious? The Ring is under attack. It's a war, Dura;
someone is attacking the Xeelee."
He pointed at the incongruously delicate patterns of light. "And it would be too
much of a coincidence for us to arrive here, aboard this Star, just as the first
battle is being waged. Dura, this war�the assaults on the Ring�must have been
enduring for a long time." He rubbed his chin. "Generations, perhaps; centuries of
war�"

She felt a pulse pound in her throat. "Humans? Are they Ur-human ships?" She stared
at the tableau, willing herself to see more clearly, seeking the huge ships of
those spectral giants.

The battle unfolded, slowly, even as she watched. Some of the sparkling ships
disappeared, evidently destroyed by Xeelee defenders. Others plummeted through the
Ring, she saw; and if the old stories were correct those ships were now lost in
different universes. She wondered if the crews of those ships would survive� and if
they did, what strange tales they would have to tell.

"Oh, yes," Hork said grimly. "Yes, the assailants are humans. Ur-humans, anyway."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because the Star is heading straight for the Ring. Don't you see it yet, Dura? The
Star has been aimed at the Ring. We're going to collide with it�"

* * *

Dura stared at the remote, twinkling battlefire. Was Hork right? "I don't know how
big the Ring is. Perhaps it's bigger than the Star; perhaps it will survive. But
surely the Star is going to be devastated."

Hork raised his fists to his chest. "No wonder the Xeelee have been attacking the
Star; they're trying to destroy it before it gets to the Ring. Dura, the Star has
been launched on this trajectory, straight at the Xeelee artifact, as a missile."
His tone had become hushed, almost reverent. Dura looked at him curiously; his eyes
were locked on the images of distant battle, evidently fascinated.

She wondered if he were still quite sane. The thought disturbed her.

So that is why we are here, she thought. That's the purpose of the whole project.
The Colonists, the manufacture of Star-humans� That is the meaning, the purpose of
my race. My life.

We are expendable weapons' manufacturers, serving a huge war beyond our

comprehension.

And when the Star destroyed itself against the Ring�or was destroyed first, by the
Xeelee starbreakers�then they would all die with it, their purpose fulfilled.

No.

The word was like a shout in the turmoil of her mind. She had to do something.

Without allowing herself to think about the consequences, she Waved briskly across
the chamber toward the floating control seat.

"What are you doing? Dura, there's nothing we can do here. We're in the grip of
immense forces; forces we barely understand. And�"

She took her place in the seat. Around her the ghostly Ur-human seat swiveled,
trembling in response to her touch. She grasped the twin handles fixed to the
seat's arms.

A globe swelled into existence in the Air, fat and sullen red; a neat grid covered
its surface, laid out like the anchor-bands around Parz City.

Dura, startled by this sudden apparition, lost her nerve; she screamed.

Hork laughed at her. His voice, thin and shrill, betrayed his own tension. "Damn
it, Dura, you've just witnessed a battle, immense beyond our capacity to
comprehend. You've learned that our world is doomed. And yet you're scared by a
simple conjuring trick like this!"

"But what is it?"

The globe was about a mansheight across; it hovered just in front of the seat.
"Isn't it obvious?" Hork snapped. "Take your hands off the levers." She did so; the
globe persisted for a few seconds, then deflated gracelessly, finally disappearing.
"It's an aid," Hork said briskly. "Like�" He gestured vaguely. "Like a window in an
Air-car. An aid to a pilot."

She tried to focus on this new puzzle. She glanced across the chamber and out at
the Star, that scowling yellow-red speck at the center of its immense setting of
gas and light. "But that globe looked like the Star itself."

Hork laughed, the shrill edge still present in his voice; his eyecups were wide
with excitement. "Of course it did! Don't you see? Dura, one is meant to pilot the
Star with these wonderful levers�"

"But that's absurd," she protested. "How can a Star�a whole world�be driven,
directed like one of your Air-cars?"

"But, my dear, someone has already done so. The Star has been launched at the Ring,
with deliberate intent. That we have found a device to do this is hardly a
surprise. And this is a map-Star, to help you pilot a world�"

She grasped the handles again and the globe sprang into existence, wide, delicate
and ominous. She gathered her scattered courage. "Hork, we can't let our world be
destroyed."

He moved closer to her. His eyecups were wide and empty, his breathing shallow. He
seemed huge. His hands were held away from his body. She closed her fingers tighter
around the chair handles, watching, half-expecting him to lunge at her.

"Dura, get out of the chair. For a thousand years our Star has crossed space. We
have a duty to fulfill, a destiny."

She shook her head. "You've lost yourself in this, Hork. In the glamor of it all�
It's not our battle."

He frowned at her, his bearded face a ferocious mask. "If it wasn't for the battle
we wouldn't even exist. Generations of humans have lived, died and suffered for
this moment. This is the purpose of our race, its apotheosis! I see this now� How
can a person like you take the fate of a world in your hands?"

"But I can't�accept�this. I've got to try something. We must try to save

ourselves."

Doubt�a kind of longing�spread across Hork's broad face. "Then consider this.
Suppose we're right. Suppose our world really is a missile aimed at the Xeelee.
Then�if it really is possible to aim the Star with this device�why is the device
here?"

She was frightened of him�not just physically, but of this new, unexpected side of
his character, this self-immolating fanaticism.

"Think," he demanded. "If you were the designer, the Ur-human who planned this
fantastic mission, what would you intend the occupant of that seat to do, now, at
the climax of the project?"

She hesitated, thinking. "It's meant to be used to refine the trajectory. To direct
the Star even more precisely at its goal."

He threw his arms wide. "Exactly. Perhaps there are devices lying dormant here,
messages instructing us�or whoever was planned to be here�how to do just that. And
what if we don't, Dura? What if we don't complete our mission? Perhaps the Ur-
humans themselves will intervene, to punish our arrogance."

Her palms were slick with sweat; his words were like the articulation of the
conflict inside her. Who was she to decide the fate of a world, of generations?

She thought back over her life, the extraordinary, unfolding sequence of events
that had led her to this point. Once, not a very large fraction of her life ago,
she had been adrift in the Mantle, at the mercy of the smallest stray Glitch along
with the rest of the Human Beings. Stage by stage, as events had taken her so far
from her home, her understanding of the Mantle, the Star, and the role of mankind
had opened out, like the layers of perception opened up gradually by the seeing-
walls of this Ur-human construct.

And now she was here, with more power over events than any human since the days of
the Core Wars. She was dizzy, vertiginous, a feeling she remembered from her first
trips to the fringes of the Crust-forest, as a little girl with her father.

Her awareness seemed to implode. She became aware of her body�of the wide, dilated
pores over her skin, the tension in her muscles, the knife still tucked into the
frayed rope tight around her waist. She looked into Hork's wide, staring eyes. She
saw recklessness there, exhilaration, intoxication, the fringes of insanity. Hork,
overwhelmed by the journey, the realm of Ur-humans, Colonists and stars, had
forgotten who he was. She hadn't. She knew who she was: Dura, Human Being, daughter
of Logue�no more, and no less. And she was no more, no less qualified to speak for
the peoples of the Star, at this moment, than anyone else. And that was why it was
she who would have to act, now.

Her uncertainty congealed into determination. "Hork, I don't care about the goals
of these damn monster-men from the past. All I care about are my people�Farr, my
family, the rest of the Human Beings. I won't sacrifice them for some ancient
conflict; not while I have some hope of changing things."

The wide, distorted mouth of Karen Macrae was opening again; as she spoke, Dura
saw, distracted by the detail, that Karen's lips were not quite synchronized with
her rustling words.

Time is long, inside our virtual world. But still, it is coming to an end. The
Glitches have damaged us. Some have already lost coherence.

Stop the flight. We discover we do not want to die.

Dura closed her eyes and shuddered. The Colonists could no longer act. And so they
had brought Star-humans�they had brought her�to this place, to save their world.

When she looked at Hork he was grinning, throwing his head back like some animal.
"Very well, upfluxer. It seems I am outvoted, and not for the first time�although
it doesn't usually stop me. We are humans too, whatever our origins, and we must
act, rather than die meekly as pawns in somebody else's war!" He shouted, "Do it!"

She cried out; she felt remote, numb. She hauled on the levers as hard as she
could.

Crimson fire erupted from the base of the map-Star.

Chapter 27
Blue Xeelee light illuminated the Air. Fragments of shattered vortex lines hailed
around Adda. He Waved furiously, squirming in the Air to avoid the deadly sleet,
disregarding the pain in his back and legs. But even Waving wasn't reliable; the
strength and direction of the Magfield was changing almost whimsically, and he had
to be constantly aware of its newest orientation, of which way his Waving would
take him among the lethal vortex fragments.

He came to a clearer patch of Air. He twisted, his hips and lower back protesting,
and Waved to a halt. He looked back toward the City, now about a thousand
mansheights away. The great wooden carcass was tilting noticeably, leaning across a
Magfield which no longer cradled it. Its Skin was still a hive of activity, of
kicked-out panels and scrambled evacuations; Adda was reminded of corruption, of
swarms of insects picking over a dying face.

There was no sign of Farr.

Adda looked back to the upper Downside, to the location of the Hospital. He could
see motion inside that widened gash in the Skin, but he couldn't make out Farr
himself. Damn, damn� He shouldn't have let go of the boy; he should have dragged
him physically away from the City, from the damn Hospital, until either his
strength ran out or the City fell apart anyway.

I'm an old man, damn it. He'd had enough; he'd seen enough. Now all he wanted was
rest.

Well, it looked as if he still had work to do. Shaking his head, he dipped his body
in the Air and Waved back toward the groaning City.

In the Hospital of the Common Good, patients continued to be brought to the exit.
Another dull explosion sounded somewhere in the guts of the City, but�to Adda's
disbelief�the laboring volunteers scarcely looked up. He wanted to scream at them,
to slap faces, to force these brave, foolish people to accept the reality of what
was happening around them.

There were no cars returning to the port now. But nevertheless a volunteer hauled a
helpless bundle�age and sex unidentifiable�to the breached Skin. The volunteer
climbed out after the patient, gripped the bandaging with both hands, and, Waving
backward, began to drag the patient away from the collapsing City. The volunteer
was a young man, nude, his skin painted with elaborate, curling designs. This was
evidently one of the acrobats who should have been taking part in the great Games
spectacle today; instead here he was, his body-paint smeared and stained with pus,
dragging a half-dead patient out from a dying City. Adda stared at the boy's face,
trying to make out how the acrobat must feel at this implosion of his life, his
hopes; but he read only fatigue, a dull incomprehension, determination.

"Adda!"
It was Farr's voice. Adda peered into the gloom of the ward, blinking to clear his
one working eyecup.

"Adda�you must help me�"

There. Farr was close to the rear of the ward; he was hovering over another
patient, a massive, still form wrapped in a cocoon. The boy seemed unharmed still,
Adda saw with relief.

He pushed his way over the heads of the crowd.

The patient was lost in the cocoon with only a little flesh showing: a huge,
crumpled fist, an area of shoulder or chest about the size of Adda's palm. The
exposed flesh was surfaceless, chewed up.

Adda suppressed a shudder and looked at Farr. The boy's face was drawn, the fatigue
showing in his eyecups, the dilated Air-pores like craters on his cheeks.

"I'm glad you returned."

"You're a damn fool, boy. I want you to know that now, in case I don't get a chance
to tell you later."

"But I had to return. I heard Bzya's voice. I�"

Something moved deep inside the cocoon�a head turning, perhaps?�and a claw-like
finger protruded from the lip of the material, to pull the neck of the cocoon
tighter closed. The tiny motion was redolent of shame.

"This is Bzya?"

"They had to pull him up from the underMantle. He was nearly lost�Adda, he had to
abandon his Bell. He dragged back Hosch, but he was dead." The boy looked down at
his friend, his hands twisting together. "We've got to get him out of here�away
from the City."

"But�"

There was another dull impact, deep in the guts of the City. The very Air seemed to
shake with it, and the ceiling of the ward settled, wood splintering with a series
of snaps. Then a mansheight-square section of the ceiling imploded, raining sharp
wood splinters. This time the workers and patients had to take notice; screams were
added to the bedlam of orders and frantic activity, and patients threw bare or
bandaged arms over their faces.

"All right," Adda said. "You take the head; I'll push at the feet. Move, damn you�"

They scrambled for the entrance to the ward, hauling the cocoon beneath the
splintered ceiling. They had to work through the melee, pushing with their feet at
slow-moving limbs and heads.

Deni was nowhere to be seen.

It seemed to take a lifetime to reach the open mouth of the ward. They bundled Bzya
out into the Air, over the port's splintered lip; Bzya rolled in the Air, helpless
in his cocoon. Adda and Farr scrambled after him. Farr made to grab the head end of
Bzya's cocoon once more, but Adda stopped him. He hauled Bzya around lengthways, so
that the Fisherman was almost lying across their laps. "We'll take him like this,"
Adda said. "Get hold. We'll both Wave backward�"

Farr nodded, understanding quickly. He took handfuls of the cocoon, and soon he and
Adda were kicking backward in parallel through the Air, hauling the massive cocoon
after them.

The City, looming huge over them, settled once more, this time with screeches from
deep within its fabric. Adda imagined the huge Corestuff girders, the bones of the
great carcass, twisting, failing one by one. Explosions of shattering wood erupted
all over the Skin. Huge, rectilinear creases emerged over the wooden face, as if
the Skin were starting to fold over on itself.

Adda kicked desperately at the thick Air, ignoring the numb ache of his legs, the
pain of fingers which were turning into claws as they dragged at cocoon material.
Vortex fragments continued to hail through the Air, rings and other fantastic forms
sleeting past them.

Suddenly Bzya's body twisted in the Air. The Fisherman's heavy legs thumped into
Adda's chest, causing him to lose his grip. Adda heard the Fisherman groan from
within his cocoon at this latest disruption.

Adda slithered to a halt and scrabbled at the slick, expensive material of the
cocoon, trying to regain purchase.

Farr had stopped Waving. He'd simply come to a halt in the Air and had dropped the
cocoon, and was staring back at the City.

"By the blood of the Xeelee, boy�"

"Look." Farr pointed back at the Hospital entrance. "I think it's Deni."

Adda rubbed dirt from his good eye and stared at the figures in the port. They were
dwarfed by the huge wooden panorama of Skin all around them. Yes, it was Deni Maxx;
the little doctor, all energy and competence, was working in the entrance to bring
out still another patient.

There was a new sound from within the bulk of the City�a yielding sigh which slid
rapidly to a higher pitch, almost as if in relief. Skin crumbled away in huge rafts
of wood, revealing the Corestuff girder framework beneath. It looked like bones
emerging through corrupt flesh. And, even as Adda watched, the girders, dully
shining, were creasing, folding over.

Adda grabbed at the cocoon and kicked at the Air. His hands slid over the material
and the inert bulk of Bzya barely stirred in the Air; but Adda clung to the
material and tried again. In a moment Farr joined him, and soon the two of them
were lunging backward away from the City, their Waving ragged, spurting.

The face of the City�huge rents gaping�collapsed under its mask of anchor-bands and
folded forward over them. The Corestuff structure showed no more resistance than if
it had been constructed of soft pig-leather. Splinters of wood rained forward,
bursting from the crumpling Skin.

Farr screamed: "Deni!"

Through the chaos of the crumpling face of the Hospital port, Adda could see the
compact form of the doctor, still working. She looked up, briefly, at the
collapsing Skin above her. Then she turned back to her patients.

The port of the Hospital ward closed like a mouth.

In the very last heartbeat Adda saw Deni raise her arm against the huge jaw of wood
and Corestuff which closed over her, as if�at last�trying to save herself. Ragged
edges of wood met like meshing teeth, bursting her body. A cloud of wood fragments
and dust billowed from the crushed face of the City, obscuring the Hospital from
Adda's view.

Farr was screaming incoherently, but he was still Waving, dragging at Bzya's
cocoon.

"Scream!" Adda yelled over the crashing roar of the City. "Scream and cry all you
want, damn you! But don't�stop�Waving!"

* * *

Hork pressed his face close to the surreally silent display. "It's a jetfart," he
said wonderingly. He laughed. "I can scarcely believe it. A jetfart, from the North
Pole of a Star!"

Dura gripped the control levers, forcing her hands to remain clenched. The levers
were warm, comfortable; they seemed to fit well in her palms. She felt as if she
were trapped inside her head, an impotent observer of her own actions. She tried to
imagine what must be happening inside the Mantle, if that map-globe really did
represent the Star itself.

Hork Waved to the transparent wall, and stared at the tiny image of the battle.
Eventually he turned to Dura and shouted, "I think that's enough� You can let go."

Dura stared at her hands. Her fingers wouldn't open; she had to glare at her
rebellious hands, consciously willing them to uncurl.

Released, the levers slid gently back to their rest positions.

The fount from the map-Star dwindled, thinning to a fine plume before dying
completely; the map itself folded up and disappeared.

"Is it over? We're not aimed at the Ring any more?"

Hork Waved back across the huge chamber. He turned the chair's arrow device this
way and that, alternately studying the starbow and the field of stars, trying to
judge the changes Dura had made.

Dura settled back in the chair, watching starfields explode silently across the
sky.

"We haven't turned the Star around, if that's what you mean," Hork said. "But we've
turned it aside. I think so, anyway� The Ring has moved away from the center of
that wall." He pointed. "We're still heading for the battlefield but we've
deflected the Star; we're going to miss the Ring."

She frowned, her feeling of distance, of unimportance, lingering. "Will that be

enough, do you think?"

"To stop the Xeelee destroying us?" He shrugged. "I don't know, Dura. But we've
done all we can."

Dura looked at Hork, seeing a match in his broad face for her own sense of
bewilderment, of anticlimax.
Hork held out his hand. "Come. We need to rest, I think, after such epic deeds.
Let's return to our wooden ship. We'll eat, and try to relax."

She allowed him to pull her out of the chair. Hand in hand, they Waved back to the
inner tetrahedron.

As they entered it, Dura made her way toward the "Pig's" open hatchway; but Hork
held her arm. "Dura. Wait; look at this."

She turned. He was pointing to the map on the inner wall of the tetrahedron�the
map-Star, the wormhole diagram they had studied earlier. One of the wormhole
routes�a path which snaked from the Core of the Star to its Crust, at the North
Pole�was flashing, slowly and deliberately.

Hork nodded slowly. "I think I understand. This is how the Star-fount was made." He
traced the wormhole with a fingertip. "See? When you hauled on your levers, Dura,
this wormhole must have opened up. It took matter from the heart of the Star and
transported it to the Crust. The Core material must have exploded at once in the
lower pressure, releasing immense energy."

Dura felt odd; she seemed to see Hork as if at the far end of a long, dark
corridor.

"At the North Pole there must be huge engines to exploit this energy�the
discontinuity drive engines Karen Macrae spoke of, which propel the Star itself."
His gaze was distant. "Dura, some day we must reach those engines. And I wonder how
the Colonists fared, when that wormhole belched�"

In Dura's eyes all the color had leeched from Hork's face; even the lurid map on
the tetrahedron wall had turned to shades of brown, and there was a strange, thin
taste on her tongue.

She was exhausted, she realized. There would be time enough in the future for plans
and dreams. For now, she longed for the comparative familiarity and security of the
"Pig," for food and sleep.

The rich, sweet stink of Air-pigs greeted her as she reached the ship's entrance.

* * *

He touched Farr's arm. "Wait. We stop here. That's enough."

Farr looked confused. He Waved through a couple more strokes, as if automatically;

then, uncertainly, his legs came to rest. He released his grip on the cocoon
material and looked down at his hands, which were bent into stiff claws.

Adda let himself drift away from the cocoon and hang in the Air, giving way to his
fatigue for the first time since the start of the disaster. The Magfield supported
him, but he could feel its continuing shudders. The aches in his legs, arms, back
and hands had gone beyond mere fatigue, beyond exhaustion now, he realized, and had
transmuted into real pain. He inflated his chest, hauling in dank Polar Air, and
felt the thick stuff burn at his lungs and capillaries. He remembered the dire
warnings of poor, lost Deni Maxx: that after his encounter with the Air-sow his
body would never regain its pneumatic efficiency. Well, this day he'd tested that
diagnosis to its limits.

The City was a battered wooden box almost small enough to be covered over by the
palm of a hand, with the long, elegant Spine spearing down from its base to the
underMantle. A cloud diffused around the upper City, a mist of rubble and
dispersing refugees.

The Xeelee starbreakers continued to walk through the Mantle. Vortex strings hailed
all around them, deadly and banal.

He felt his eyes close; weariness and pain lapped over his mind, shutting out the
world. This was the worst part of growing old: the slow, endless failure of his
body that was slowly isolating him from the world, from other people, immersing him
instead in a tiny, claustrophobic universe of his own weakness. Even now, even with
the Mantle in its greatest crisis�

Well, a small, sour part of him thought, at least I won't grow any older, to find
out how much worse it gets.

"�Adda." There was more wonder than fear in Farr's voice. "Look at the City."

Adda looked at the boy, then turned his aching neck to the distant tableau of Parz.

The City had already drifted far from its usual site directly over the Magfield
Pole, tilting and twisting slowly as it traveled. Now that drift was accelerating.
Parz, with all its precious freight of life, swung through the Air like a huge
spin-spider. It was oddly graceful, Adda thought, like a huge dance. Then there was
a cracking noise, a sharp sound which traveled even to this distance, uneasily like
breaking bone. Wood fragments burst around the junction of the City and its
Spine�splinters which must be the size of Air-cars to be visible at this distance.

The Spine had snapped off.

The Spine remained suspended in the depths of the Polar Magfield, like an immense,
battered tree trunk. The Spine must have been supplying much of the City's residual
anchoring in the Magfield, for now the box-like upper section of Parz, with green
wood-lamp light still gleaming from its ports, rolled forward like an immense,
grotesque parody of a lolling head.

The structure could not long stand such stress.

The Corestuff anchor-bands, dull and useless, folded, snapped and fell away in huge
pieces. The clearwood bubble which enclosed the Stadium burst outward, popping. The
Palace buildings on the upper surface, like elaborately colored toys with their
miniature forests and displays, slid almost gracefully away into the Air, exposing
the bare wooden surface beneath.

And now the City itself opened, coming apart like rotten wood.

The carcass split longitudinally, almost neatly, around the central structural flaw
of Pall Mall. From the cracked-open streets and shops and homes, Air-cars and
people spilled into the Air. The Market opened up like a spin-spider's egg, and the
huge execution Wheel tumbled out into the Air.

The sounds of cracking wood, of twisting Corestuff, carried through the Air,
mercifully drowning the cries of the humans.

Adda tried to imagine the terror of those stranded citizens; perhaps some of them
had never ventured beyond the Skin before, and now here they were cast into the
Air, helpless amid clouds of worthless possessions.

Now the residual structure of Parz imploded into fragments. All traces of the
City's shape were lost. The cloud of rubble, of wood, Corestuff and struggling
people, drifted through the Air away from the amputated Spine, slowly diffusing.
Adda closed his eyes. There had been a grandeur about that huge death. Almost a
grace, a defiance of the Xeelee's actions which had been, in its way, magnificent.

"Adda." Farr was pulling at his arm and pointing.

Adda followed the boy's finger. At first he could see nothing�only the lurid
crimson glow around the Northern horizon, the yellow chaos of the Air�

Then he realized that the boy was pointing out an absence.

The starbreaker beams were gone.

Adda felt something lift from his heart. Perhaps some of them might yet live
through this.

But then more vortex fragments came gusting toward them, precluding thought;
gripping the boy's hand as hard as he could, Adda stared into the mouth of the
storm and grabbed at Bzya's cocoon.

Chapter 28
The Interface was glowing.

The shouting woke Borz from a deep, untroubled sleep. He stretched and scowled
around, looking for the source of the trouble. He reached to his belt and pulled
out his Air-hat, jammed it on his head. He didn't really need the hat, of course,
but he thought it gave him a bit more authority with the scavenging, thieving
upfluxers who came by all the time and�

The Interface was glowing. The edges around its four triangular faces were shining,
vortex-line-blue, so bright he was forced to squint. And the faces themselves
seemed to have been covered over by a skin of light, fine and golden, which
returned reflections of the yellow Mantle-light, the vortex lines, his own bulky
body.

A deep, superstitious awe stirred in Borz.

There was no sign of the pigs, which had been stored at the heart of the
tetrahedron. And the various possessions�clothes, tools, weapons�which had been
attached to the tetrahedron's struts by bits of rope and net now tumbled around in
the Air. A length of rope drifted past him. He grabbed it and laid it in his huge
palm; the rope looked scorched.

People, adults and children alike, were Waving away from the Interface, crying and
wailing in their panic. Borz�and two or three of the other men and women�held their
place.

The Interface hadn't worked for generations�not since the Core Wars; everyone knew
that. But it was obviously working now. Why? And�Borz ran a tongue over his hot,
Airless lips, and he felt the pores on his face dilate�and what might be coming
through it?

The face-light died, slowly. The faces turned transparent once more. The glow of
the tetrahedral frame faded to a drab blackness.

The Interface was dead again; once more it was just a framework in the Air. Borz
felt an odd, unaccustomed stab of regret; he knew he'd never again see those
colors, that light.
The pigs had gone from the heart of the framework. But they'd been replaced by
something else�an artifact, a clumsy cylinder of wood three mansheights tall. There
were clear panels set in the walls of the cylinder, and bands of some material,
dully reflective, surrounded its broad carcass.

A hatch in the top of the cylinder was pushed open. A man�just a man�pushed his
face out; the face was covered by an extravagant beard.

The man grinned at Borz. "What a relief," he said. "We needed some fresh Air in
here." He looked down into the cylinder. "You see, Dura, I knew Karen Macrae would
get us home."

"Hey." Borz Waved with his thick legs until his face was on a level with the
strange man's. "Hey, you. Where are our pigs?"

"Pigs?" The man seemed puzzled, then he looked around at the dead Interface. "Oh. I
see. You kept your pigs inside this gateway, did you?"

"Where are they?"

The man looked amused, but sympathetic. "A long way from here, I fear." He sniffed
the Air and stared around, his gaze frank, confident and inquisitive. "Tell me,
which way's South?"

Chapter 29
Toba Mixxax, his round face pale in the heat, stuck his head out of his Air-car.
"Sounds like Mur and Lea are arguing again."

Toba's car had approached unnoticed. Dura had been laboring to fix ropes to a
section of collapsed Skin. She backed away from her work, her arms and hands
aching. Even here, on the outer surface of the dispersing cloud of debris that
marked the site of the ruined City, the heat and noise were all but unbearable, and
the work was long, hard and dangerous. As she listened now, she could hear the
raised voices of Lea and Mur. She felt a prickle of irritation�how long was she
going to have to hand-hold these people, before they learned to work together like
adults?

But as she studied Toba's familiar round face�with its uncertain expression, its
pores dilated in the heat�the irritation vanished as soon as it had come. She
straightened up and smiled. "Nice to see you, farmer."

Toba's answering smile was thin. "You look tired, Dura� We're all exhausted, I
suppose. Anyway," with a touch of strain entering his voice, "I'm not a farmer any
more."

"But you will be again," Dura said, Waving toward him. "I'm sorry, Toba."

Stretching the stiffness out of her back, she looked around the sky. The vortex
lines had reformed and now crossed the sky in their familiar hexagonal arrays,
enclosing, orderly and reassuring; the Magfield, restored to stability, was a firm
network of flux in the Air�a base for Waving, for building again.

She studied the lines, examining their spacing through her fingers. Their slow
pulsing told her that it would soon be time for Hork's Wheel ceremony, at the heart
of the ruined City.

"How's the farm?" she asked carefully. "Is Ito�"

"We're putting it back together again," Toba said. "Slowly. Ito is� bearing up.
She's very quiet." For a moment his small, almost comical mouth worked as if he
were struggling to express his feelings. "You know Farr's there with her. And some
of Cris's friends, the Surfers. Cris has gone. But I think Ito finds the young
people around her a comfort."

Dura touched his arm. "It's alright. You don't have to say anything. Come on; maybe
you can help me sort out Lea and Mur�"

Toba climbed out of his car.

Together, they made their way through the City site. Parz had become a cloud of
floating fragments of Skin, twisted lengths of Corestuff girder, all suffused by
the endless minutiae of the human world, spilled carelessly into the Air. She could
see, at the cloud's rough center, the execution Wheel, cast adrift from the old
Market. Even from this vantage point�close to the cloud's outer edge�Dura could see
clothes, toys, scrolls, cocoons, cooking implements: the contents of a thousand
vanished homes. Those few sections of the City which had survived the final Glitch
continued to collapse spasmodically�even now, weeks after the withdrawal of the
Xeelee�and to the careless eye the swarms of humans crawling over the floating
remains must look, she thought, like leeches, scavengers hastening the destruction
of some immense, decomposing corpse, adrift in the turgid Air of the Pole. Many of
the City's former inhabitants, recently refugees, had returned to Parz to seek
belongings and to help with the reconstruction. There had been some looting,
true�and too many people had come back here, intent on picking over the remains of
a City which would not be restored to anything like its former completeness for
many years.

But Hork's emergency edicts against a mass return to the City seemed to be holding.
Enough of the City's former inhabitants had dispersed to the recovering ceiling-
farms of the hinterland�and stayed there to work�to reduce fears of famine. And
genuine reconstruction and recovery was progressing now. Already teams of workers
had succeeded in locating the surviving dynamos. The great engines�which had once
powered anchor-band currents�had been cleared of rubble and stumps of
infrastructure. Now the dynamos floated in clear spaces, their lumpy Corestuff
hides gleaming dully in the purple light of the Quantum Sea as if they were
immense, protected animals.

It could still go wrong, Dura thought uneasily. The fragile society left adrift by
the Xeelee Glitch could still fall apart�disintegrate into suicidal conflict over
dwindling resources, over once-precious goods from the old Parz which had been
reduced in value to trinkets by the disaster.

But not just yet. Now, people seemed�on the whole�to be prepared to work together,
to rebuild. This was a time of hope, of regeneration.

Dura welcomed her own aching muscles and stiff back. It was evidence of the hard
work that comprised her own small part of the Mantle-wide rebuilding effort. She
felt a surge of optimism, of energy; she suspected that the days to come would
comprise some of the happiest of her life.

In a clear space a few mansheights from the car, the Human Being Mur had been
showing Lea�a pretty girl who had once been a Surfer�how to construct nets from the
plaited bark of Crust trees. The two of them were surrounded by a cloud of half-
coiled ropes and abandoned sections of net. Little Jai�reunited with his
father�wriggled through the Air around them, nude and slick, grasping at bits of
rope and gurgling with laughter. Lea was brandishing a length of rope in Mur's
face. "Yes, but I don't see why I have to do it over."

Mur's voice was cracking with anger, making him sound very young. Compared to the
City girl, Mur still looked painfully thin, Dura thought. "Because it's wrong," he
said. "You've done it wrong. Again! And I�"

"And I don't see why I should put up with that kind of talk from the likes of you,
upfluxer."

Toba placed his hands on the girl's shoulders. "Lea, Lea. You shouldn't speak to
our friends like that."

"Friends?" The girl launched into an impressive round of cursing. Toba looked pale
and pulled away from her, dismayed.

Dura took the rope which Lea was rejecting. "Perhaps Mur didn't explain," she said
smoothly. "You have to double plait the rope to give it extra strength." She hauled
at sections of it, demonstrating its toughness.

"But the way he speaks to me�"

"This plaiting is finely done." She looked at Lea. "Did you do this?"

"Yes, but�"

Dura smiled. "It takes most Human Beings years of practice to learn such a skill,
and you've almost mastered it already."

Lea, distracted by the praise, was visibly struggling to stay angry; she pushed
elaborately dyed hair from her forehead.

Dura passed the rope to her. "With a bit more help from Mur, I'll be coming to you
for instruction. Come on, Toba, let's take a break; I'd like to see how Adda is
getting on."

As they moved away Dura was careful not to make a show of looking around, but she
could see that Mur and Lea were moving back toward each other, warily, and picking
up sections of rope once more.

She felt rather smug at her success at defusing the little situation. And she was
secretly pleased at this evidence that the Human Beings were managing to adjust to
the situation they'd found here at the Pole�better than some of Parz's former
inhabitants, it seemed. Dura had expected the Human Beings to be shocked,
disappointed to arrive at the Pole after their epic journey across the sky, only to
find nothing more than a dispersing cloud of rubble. In fact they'd reacted with
much more equanimity than she'd anticipated� especially once reunited with their
children. The Human Beings simply hadn't known what to expect here. They couldn't
have imagined Parz in all its glory�any more than she herself could have, before
Toba brought her here for the first time. For the little band of Human Beings, the
immense number of people, the huge, mysterious engines, the precious artifacts
scattered almost carelessly through the Air, had been wonder enough.

One section of the rough, expanding City-cloud had been cordoned off, informally,
to serve as a Hospital area. Dura and Toba pushed through the cloud of debris until
they were moving through arrays of patients, drifting comfortably in the Air and
loosely knotted together with lengths of rope. Dura cast a cursory, slightly
embarrassed glance at the patients. Many people had been left so damaged by the
Glitch that they would never function fully again; but the care they were receiving
was clearly competent. The bandaging and splints seemed undamaged and clean. One of
the blessings of the destruction of Parz was that its scale had been so immense
many smaller, more robust items in the City�like medical equipment�had simply been
spilled into the Air, undamaged.
As they neared the heart of the improvised Hospital, Muub, once Court Physician,
emerged to meet them. Muub had abandoned his impractical finery, replacing it with
what looked like a Fisherman's many-pocketed smock. His smile was broad and
welcoming beneath his shining bare scalp, and the Physician looked as happy as Dura
could remember seeing him�liberated, even.

Muub led them to Adda. The old upfluxer was standing a sullen guard over an
outsized, sealed cocoon. Dura knew that the cocoon contained Bzya, the crippled
Fisherman, who still could do little more than bellow half-coherent phrases from
his ruin of a mouth. Bzya was evidently asleep. But Adda seemed content to spend
much of his waking time with his friend, keeping watch over him and serving as a
clumsy nurse when necessary, helping Jool and their daughter�Shar, who had returned
from the ceiling-farms�to tend to him.

Adda embraced Dura, and asked after the rest of the Human Beings. Dura told him
about Mur and Lea, and Muub added, "There are points of friction. But your
upfluxers are working well with the citizens of Parz. Don't you agree, Adda?"

The old man growled, his face as sour as ever. "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we're
'fitting in' too damn well."

Dura smiled. "You're too much of a cynic, dear Adda. Nobody forced the Human Beings
to come here, to help the City folk dig their way out of the rubble."

"Although we're delighted you're here," Muub said expansively. "Without your
upflux-hardened muscles we wouldn't be making half the progress we've managed so
far."

"Sure. As long as we're not using our 'upflux-hardened muscles' to build another
nice, neat cage for ourselves."

Dura said, "Now, Adda�"

Toba Mixxax said nervously, "But you were never in a cage. I don't understand."

Muub held up his hands. "Adda has a point. And while we're rebuilding our City,
it's a time to think about rebuilding our hearts as well. The Human Beings were in
a cage, Toba. As were we all: a cage of ignorance, prejudice and suppression."

Dura looked at him carefully. "You genuinely accept that?"

"Do we need a City at all?" Adda asked sourly. "Maybe it's time for a fresh start
without one."

Dura shook her head. "I don't think I agree with that. Not any more. The benefits
of a City�stability, a repository of understanding, the access to medicine�all of
these will help us all, everyone in the Mantle." She fixed Muub with a sharp
glance. "Won't they?"

He nodded seriously. "We could never advance from a base of subsistence farming.
But the City must never again become a fortress-prison. That's why we're planning a
whole series of satellite communities, with the City as the hub. We should not trap
most of humanity in one place, so vulnerable to disasters from without�and from our
own hearts."

Adda snorted. "You talk about human nature. What's to stop human nature from
reasserting itself where prisons and fortresses are concerned?"
"Only the strong and continuing efforts of good men and women," Muub said evenly.
"Hork shares these goals. He's talking about new kinds of power
structures�representative councils which would give all of the Mantle's people a
say in the way things are run."

"Knowing Hork," Dura admitted, "I find that a little hard to swallow."

"Then try harder," Muub said sternly. "Hork is no sentimental dreamer, Dura. He
faces realities and acts on them. He knows that without the ancient wisdom of the
Human Beings�without the clues you people brought about the Core Wars, the
possibility of retrieving some of the ancient technology�the City would have been
wiped out by the Xeelee attack, without even knowing why. Perhaps the race itself
would have perished� We need each other. Hork accepts that, and is going to make
sure we don't lose what we've gained. Surely his litany, today, is evidence of his
goodwill. Perhaps we could construct a new, integrated philosophy, incorporating
the best elements of all these strands�the Xeelee philosophy, the Wheel
followers�and build a new faith to guide us�"

Dura laughed. "Maybe. But we'll have to put the City back together first."

Adda rubbed his nose. "Perhaps. But I don't think we'll have Farr here to help us."

"No," Dura said. "He's determined to return to the Quantum Sea, in a new, improved
'Flying Pig.' To find the Colonists again. But he's accepted he needs to put in
some time rebuilding his own world first, before flying off to win new ones�"

"Not a poor ambition to have," Muub said, smiling thinly. "Quite a number of us are
intrigued by what you learned of the Colonists� and the huge Ur-human engines at
the North Pole. Of course, we don't know any way of traveling more than a few tens
of meters from the South Pole, let alone of crossing the Equator� but we'll find a
way."

"Why should there be a way at all?" Adda asked cynically. "This Star is a hostile
environment, remember. The Glitches have forced that home into our heads, if
nothing else. We've no guarantee we'll ever be able to achieve much more than we
can do now. After all the Ur-humans left us to die with the Star, they didn't
believe in any future for us."

"Perhaps." Muub smiled. "But perhaps not. Here's a speculation for you. What if the
Ur-humans didn't intend us to be destroyed when the Star impacted the Ring? What if
the Ur-humans left us some means of escaping from the Star?"

Dura said, "Like the wormhole to the planet�"

"Or," Muub said, "even a ship�an Air-car that could travel outside the Star
itself." He looked up at the Crust, a look of vague dissatisfaction on his face.
"What lies beyond that constraining roof over our world? The glimpses you saw,
Dura, of other stars�hundreds, millions of them�each one, perhaps, harboring
life�not human as we are, and yet human, descended from the Ur-stock� And then,
behind it all, the Ur-humans themselves, still pursuing their own aloof goals. To
see it all�what a prize that would be! Yes, Adda; many of us are very curious
indeed about what might lie at the far Pole�

"Yet even that will tell us so little of the true history of our universe. What is
the true purpose of Bolder's Ring? What are the Xeelee's intentions�who, where is
the enemy they seem to fear so much?" He smiled, looking wistful. "I will resent
dying without the answers to such questions, as I surely will�"

* * *
In the distance, in the opened heart of the City hundreds of mansheights away,
pipes began to bray: Hork calling his citizens to him. Muub bid a hasty farewell to
his friends.

With Adda, Dura began to make her way toward the heart of the debris cloud. As they
Waved, peacefully, she slipped her hand into his.

"We've come a long way, daughter of Logue," Adda said.

Dura looked at him with a little suspicion, but there was no sign of irony in his
expression; his good eye returned her gaze with a softness she hadn't often seen
there before.

She nodded. "We have�" And some of us a little further than others, she thought.
"How's Bzya?"

He sniffed. "Surviving. Accepting what he has. Which is a lot, I suppose; he has

Jool and Shar both with him now�"

"And you," she said.

He didn't reply.

"Do you think you'll stay with them?"

He shrugged, with an echo of his old cantankerousness, but his expression remained
soft.

She squeezed his hand. "I'm glad you've found a home," she said.

As they neared the Wheel at the heart of the debris cloud, they could hear once
more the thin, clear voice of Physician Muub as he addressed the crowd gathering
there.

"�The cult of the Xeelee, with its emphasis on higher goals than those of the here-
and-now, was impossible for Parz's closed, controlled society to accommodate. It
was only by the suppression of these elements�the expulsion of the Xeelee cultists,
the Reformation's expunging of any genuine information about the past�that the
authorities thought the City could survive.

"Well, they were wrong.

"Human nature will flourish, despite the strictest controls. The upfluxers kept
their ancient knowledge almost intact�across generations, and with little recourse
to records or writing materials. New faiths�like the cult of the Wheel�bloomed in
the desert left by the destruction of beliefs and knowledge." Muub hesitated,
and�unable to see him�Dura remembered how his cup-retinas characteristically lost
some of their focused shape, briefly, as he turned to his inner visions. "It's
interesting that both among the exiled Human Beings�and among the almost equally
disadvantaged Downsiders, here in Parz�a detailed wisdom from the past survived, by
oral tradition alone. If we are all descended from Stellar engineers�from a highly
intelligent stock�perhaps we should not be surprised at such evidence of mentation,
crossing generations. Indeed, the systematic waste of such talent seems a crime.
How much more might man have achieved in this Star by now, if not for petty
prejudice and superstition�"

Adda snorted. "Unctuous old fart."

Dura laughed.

"And I wish I could see Hork's face, as he Waves around having to listen to that."

"Maybe you misjudge him, Adda."

"Maybe. But then," he said slowly�carefully, she thought�"I've never been as close
to him as you have."

Again she studied the old man sharply, wondering how much he knew�or what he could
read, in her face. He was watching her, waiting for some reaction, his battered
face empty of expression.

But what was her reaction? What did she want, now?

So much had happened since that first Glitch�the Glitch that had taken her father
from her. Several times she had thought her life was finished�she'd never really
believed she'd return to the Mantle, from the moment she boarded the "Flying Pig"
in Parz's Harbor. Now, she realized, she was simply grateful to be alive; and that
simple fact would never leave her, would inform her enjoyment of the rest of her
time.

And yet�

And yet her experiences had changed her. Having seen so much�to have traveled
further, done so much more than any human since the days of the Colonists
themselves�would make it impossible for her to settle back into the cramped
lifestyle of a City dweller�and still less of a Human Being.

Absently she folded her arms across her stomach, remembering her single moment of
passion with Hork�when she had allowed her intense need for privacy to be overcome,
when she thought her life was almost lost, deep in the underMantle. She had found a
brief spark of human warmth there; and Hork was surely wiser than she had first
realized. But still, she had seen into Hork's soul in the Ur-human chamber, and she
had recoiled from what she had found�the anger, the desperation, the need to find
something worth dying for.

Hork could not be a companion for her.

"I've changed, Adda," she said. "I�"

"No." He was shaking his head sadly, reading her face. "Not really. You were alone
before all this�before we came here�and you're still alone, now. Aren't you?"

She sighed. A little harshly, she said, "If that's how I'm meant to be, then maybe
I should accept it." She turned; beyond Parz's cloud of rubble she could see the
ceiling fields of the hinterland: bare, scrubbed clean of their cultivation�and
yet, in a way, renewed. "Maybe that's where I will go," she said.

He turned to see. "What, and become a farmer? Making pap-wheat for the masses?
You?"

She grinned. "No. No, making a place of my own� a little island of order, in all of
this emptiness."

Adda snorted with contempt, but the pressure of his fingers around hers increased,
gently, warmly.

The pipers' calls were bright and harsh. From all around the cloud-City people were
Waving into the Air, converging toward the Wheel at the heart of the cloud. Peering
that way now, Dura could see the massive form of Hork�a colorful speck in his
robes, his massive arms resting on the huge Wheel. She imagined she could already
hear his voice as he recited the litany�the first legal Wheel-litany, a list of all
those known to have died in the final Glitch, whether they were from Parz, the
hinterland, the upflux, the Skin.

It was a litany intended to conciliate and heal.

About the Author

Stephen Baxter was born in 1957. Raised in Liverpool, he has a mathematics degree
from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. from Southampton. He now works in
information technology. Baxter sold his first short stories to Interzone in 1986
and is a prizewinner in the Writers of the Future contest. His first novel, Raft,
was published in 1991 to great acclaim, and was followed in 1992 by Timelike
Infinity. He is married and lives in Buckinghamshire, England.

Copyright � 1993 by Stephen Baxter

ISBN: 0-06-100837-0