They flew past an area of hull covered by a crude framework, a rectangular lattice of wood. Behind the framework the Skin was broken open, exposing small chambers within the City lit by dim green wood-lamps. Huge sections of wooden paneling drifted in the Air outside the City, attached loosely to the framework by lengths of rope; men and women clambered over the framework, hauling at the panels and hammering them into place in the gaps in the Skin.
“Repairs,” said Cris in uninterested response to Farr’s question. “They go on all the time. My father says the City’s never really been finished; there’s always some section of it that needs rebuilding.”
They arced high across a comparatively blank area of hull, unblemished by door, window or port. Farr looked back to see the last small portals recede over the City’s tightly curving horizon, and soon there was no break in the Skin in sight. Cris Surfed on in silence, subdued. Moving over this featureless Skinscape Farr felt absurdly as if he had been rejected by the City, thrown out and shunned — as if it had turned its back.
Now they passed another group of humans clambering over the Skin. At first Farr thought this must be another set of repair workers, but the Skin here was unbroken, clearly undamaged. And there was no repair scaffolding — just a loose net spread across the Skin. A group of perhaps twenty adults were huddled in one corner of their net, engaged in some unidentifiable project. Peering down as they passed, Farr saw how belongings had been stuffed loosely into the net; he saw spears, crude clothing and smaller folded-up nets that wouldn’t have seemed out of place among the belongings of the Human Beings. There was even a small colony of Air-pigs which jostled slowly against the wooden wall, bound by ropes to a peg which had been hammered into the Skin. An infant child squirmed inside the net, crying; its wails, sweet and distant, carried through the silent Air to Farr.
A woman, fat and naked, turned from whatever she was engaged in with her companions, and peered up at the boys. Farr saw how her fists were clenched. He looked to Cris for a lead, but the City boy simply Waved on with his board, keeping his eyes averted from the little colony below.
Farr, burning with curiosity, glanced down again. To his relief he saw that the woman had turned away and was returning to her companions, evidently forgetting the boys.
“Skin-riders,” Cris said dismissively. “Scavengers. There are whole colonies of them, living off remote bits of the Skin like this.”
“But how do they survive?”
“They take stuff from the sewage founts, mostly. Filter it out with those nets of theirs. Some of it they consume themselves, and some they use to feed their pigs. Many of them hunt.”
“Doesn’t anybody mind?”
Cris shrugged. “Why should they? The Skin-riders are out of the way in places like this, and they don’t absorb any of the City’s resources. You could say they make Parz more efficient by extracting what they can out of everyone else’s waste. The Committee only takes action against them when they go rogue. Turn bandit. Some tribes do, you know. They ring the exit portals, waiting to descend on slower-moving cars. They kill the drivers and steal the pigs; they’ve no use for the cars themselves. And sometimes they turn on each other, fighting stupid little Skin-wars no one else understands. Then the guards step in. But apart from that, I guess the City is big enough to support a few leeches on its face.” He grinned. “Anyway, there’ll always be Skin-riders; you could never wipe them out. Not everyone can live their lives inside six wooden walls.” He bent his knees, flourishing the board. “Which is one reason I’m out here today. I’d have thought you’d understand that, Farr. Maybe the Skin-riders are a little like your people.”
Farr frowned. Maybe there was a surface comparison, he thought. But Human Beings would never allow themselves to become so — so filthy, he thought, so poor, to live so badly — as the Skin-riders he had seen.
And no Human Being would accept the indignity of living by scavenging the waste of others.
The squalid little colony of Skin-riders was soon hidden by the wooden limb of the City face, and Cris led Farr further across the featureless Skin.
Farr spotted the girl before Cris saw her.
She was a compact, lithe shape swooping around the vortex lines, high above the City. Electron gas sparkled around her Surfboard, underlighting the contours of her body. There was a grace, a naturalness about her movements which far eclipsed even Cris’s proficiency, Farr thought. The girl saw them approaching and waved her arms in greeting, shouted something inaudible.
They came to another net, stretched over the wooden Skin between a series of pegs, just as the Skin-riders’ had been. But this net was evidently abandoned: torn and fraying, the net flapped emptily, containing nothing but what looked like the sections of a Surfboard snapped in half, a few clothes tucked behind knots in the net, and some crude-looking tools.
Cris drifted to a halt over the net and locked an anchoring hand comfortably into a loop of rope. “That’s Ray,” he said enviously. “The girl. That’s what she calls herself anyway… after the rays of the Crust-forests, you see.”
Farr squinted up at the girl; she was spiraling lazily around a vortex line as she approached them, electron glow dazzling from her skin. “She looks good.”
“She is good. Too bloody good,” Cris said with a touch of sourness. “And she’s a year younger than me… My hope is there’s going to be room for both of us in the Games.”
“What is this place?”
Cris flipped his Surfboard in the Air and watched it somersault. “Nowhere,” he said. His voice was deliberately casual. “Just an old Skin-rider net, in a bit of the Skinscape that’s hardly ever visited. We just use it as a base. You know, a place to meet, to Surf from, to keep a few tools for the boards.”
Just a base to Surf from… Cris’s tone made it sound a lot more important than that, to him. Farr watched the girl approach, casually skillful, slowing as she rode the Magfield toward the Skin. He thought of what it must be like to be accepted by a group of people like Cris and this girl Ray — to have a place like this to come to, hidden from the gaze of families and the rest of the City.
He could barely imagine it. He realized suddenly that he’d never even been out of sight of his family before the Glitch that killed his father. A place like this must mean a great deal.
He wanted to ask Cris more questions. Who were these Surfers? What were they like? How many of them were there?… But he kept quiet. He didn’t want to be the clumsy outsider from the upflux — not here, not with these two. He wanted them to accept him, to make him one of theirs — even just for a day.
Maybe if he kept his mouth shut as much as possible they would think he knew more than he did.
The girl, Ray, performed one last roll through the Air and stepped lightly off her board before them. With one small ankle she flipped the board up, caught it in one hand, and tucked it into a gap in the net. She hooked a hand into the net, close to Cris’s, and smiled at him and Farr. She was nude, and her long hair was tied back from her face; there were streaks of yellow dye across her scalp, just as Cris affected.
“You’re on your own today?” Cris asked.
She shrugged, breathing heavily. “Sometimes I prefer it that way. You can get some real work done.” She turned to Farr, a look of lively interest on her face. “Who’s this?”
Cris grinned and clapped a hand on Farr’s shoulder. “He’s called Farr. He’s staying with us. He’s from a tribe called the Human Beings.”
“Human Beings?”
“Upfluxers,” Cris said with an apologetic glance at Farr.
The girl’s smile broadened, and Farr was aware of her light gaze flicking over him with new interest. “An upfluxer? Really? So what do you make of Parz? Dump, isn’t it?”