'Carl.'
'Carl, do you want to stay with us?'
'The eld skyle sent me to you,' Carl answered. 'He warned me about the zotl and gumper hogs and blood beetles and told me that you could teach me how to survive here. I'd really appreciate that.'
'I'm sure you would,' the wizen -acknowledged. 'But our ranks are closed. There are other human communities in the Werld. Rhene is a city where someone like you would be much happier.'
'I would still prefer to stay here.'
'Then you must demonstrate your usefulness to the Foke.' The wizan's voice teetered on boredom. 'What skills does a trader and a brewseller have?'
can learn.'
'Tarfeather is not a school.' The black bits of his eyes drilled Carl. 'Can you make plastique? Can you' ride the fallpath? Can you even tell time?' His eyes hooded, and he went into a rote routine: As a wizan of the Foke, I find you unacceptable for inclusion in our ranks by reason of your inutility-'
'I can work,' Carl objected. 'I'll do labor.'
'We all work, Carl,' he explained, his voice a scaly integument. 'There are no laborers. We share responsibility for labor equally'
'I'm sure I'm good for something.' Carl didn't want to start off his new life by thwarting the eld skyle's will: He wanted the Foke to accept him. Allin was grinning lushly, and Carl knew that whatever pleased Allin was no good for him.
'Is there a court of appeal?'
'No, my review is sufficient,' the wizan replied in a voice of ravening flatness. 'I order that you be taken directly to Rhene and traded for imprisoned Foke or sold for manufactured goods. Away-away.'
Carl let himself be dragged out of the stall. Allin strode beside him, kicked him into a walk, and leered with satisfaction. The blue-robed guards followed to the exit.
'What is Rhene?' Carl asked at the doorway.
'You speak Foke and you don't know of Rhene?' He slapped Carl on the back and pushed him out of the wizan tent.
The beauty of the blued clouds and dark skyles had an unearthliness that made Carl shiver. 'Is Rhene a prison city?'
Allin allowed himself a black laugh. 'You were the reason ,my friends died, dropping. I'd just as soon imprison you as flay and gut you. But I am a Foke. ,We don't have penalties or prisons. Just exclusion.'
He motioned Carl toward a steep trail that mounted a sinuous, reptilian terrain to the giant log moorings of a sky barge. The barge was a sleek wooden craft with a needle prow and furled black sail-fins.
'Rhene,' Allin explained, 'is a zotl-built city for people-their favorite food. You might say it's a farm. Because it exists, we are spared the zotl hunt.'
'You said Rhene wasn't a prison,' Carl reminded him.
'It isn't,' he answered.
'Then what keeps the people inside?'
'The people are free to come and go. But going isn't really a hope for most of them.'-He gestured at the yawn 4 purpling sky and the skyles that cluttered space like motes of dust. 'The cloudlanes, the fallpaths, and the skyles, that is the home of the Foke. But most of the people, in Rhene would not survive to their next meal out here. They are content with their busy lives in the city. The zotl androbs do most of the manual
work and the people are free to cavort with one another. The only price they must pay is the lottery'
'I get a bad feeling from that word.'
'When the zotl need to feast, they conduct a lottery. The one percent who lose are eaten. If you survive seven lotteries, your name is permanently removed from the risk. Many people find the seven percent odds of losing more attractive than struggling for existence all the time out here. Isn't that really the way with you?'
They had come to the boarding ramp of the barge, where Foke bustled to load the hold with crates of blue cabbages. The sweet citron fragrance of the vegetable swirled in the air.
Unbidden, the thought rose to Carl's mind that those were dream boles, a muscularly euphoric hallucinogen.
'There are great pleasures in the Werld,' Allin said with a chill in his voice.
'Yeah, well, where I come from, the greatest pleasure is to be free:'
Surprise ticked across Allin's face. He gripped Carl's beard and shook his head once. 'Then why are you so obedient to fear?' He shoved Carl up the ramp. 'Go on, get on board, dropping.'
Carl boarded the ship and was steered by-Allin's firm hand to a foredeck cabin. A dozen Foke sat on the benches that extended from the hull's ribs. They were conversing and staring out of the port visors at the scaffolding being slanted to slide the sky barge off the mountain and into the cloudy flightlanes.
Allin and Carl sat with them until the barge jolted, tilted, and sledded into the sky.
'Do you know how this works?' Carl asked, after the barge had bucked violently and rocked into the steady sway of its cruise.
'Don't gad me with your questions, dropping.' He swung to his feet. 'Let's eat.'
Carl's first full meal was braised cloud trout on a bed of butter-seared owlroot. He learned then that the Foke's
