Flux

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…”