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.”
“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
