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.
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!”