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.