“Don’t I need the ropes?”

“Go and inspect the berg first,” Hosch called. “See if it’s done us any damage.”

He took deep breaths of the stale Air and flexed his legs. It would take only a few strokes to Wave to the lump of Corestuff.

As he neared, he saw that the berg’s surface was made rough by small pits and escarpments. It was hard to imagine that this was the material that formed the gleaming hoops around the Bell, or the City’s anchor-bands, or the fine inlays in Surfboards. He was within an arm’s length of the berg, still Waving smoothly… If he lived long enough, he would like to see the workshops — the foundries, Bzya called them — where the transformation of this stuff took place…

Invisible hands grabbed his chest and legs, yanking him sideways. He found himself tumbling head over heels away from the Bell. He cried out. He scrabbled at the Air but could gain no purchase, and his legs thrashed at the emptiness in a futile effort to Wave.

Trembling, he paddled at the Air, trying to still his roll. Hosch was laughing at him, he realized; and Bzya, too, seemed to be having trouble suppressing a smile.

Just another little game, then; another test for the new boy.

He closed his eyes, willing the trembling of his limbs to still. He tried to think. Invisible hands? Only a magfield could have jolted him like that — the Bell’s protective magfield. And of course he’d been knocked sideways; that was the way fields affected moving charged objects, like his body. That was why it was necessary, when Waving, to move legs and arms across the flux lines of the Magfield to generate forward motion.

So the Bell’s own magfield shell had thrown him. Big joke.

Logue would probably have told him off for not anticipating this, he realized. Laughed at him as well, to drive home the point.

Farr’s fear turned to anger. He looked forward to the day when he would no longer have so much to learn… and he could maybe administer a few lessons of his own.

His self-control returning, Farr began to make his clumsy way back to the Bell. “Give me the ropes,” he said.

12

The huge lumber caravan was visible for many days before it reached Qos Frenk’s ceiling-farm.

Dura, descending from a wheat-field at the end of a shift, watched the caravan’s approach absently. It was a trace of darkness on the curving horizon, a trail of tree trunks toiling through the vortex lines from the wild forests on the upflux fringe of the hinterland, on its way to the City at the furthest downflux. She wasn’t too interested. The hinterland sky, even this far from Parz, was never empty of traffic. The caravan would pass in a couple of days, and that would be that.

But this caravan didn’t go by so quickly. As time wore on it continued to grow in her vision, and Dura slowly came to appreciate the caravan’s true scale, and the extent to which distance and perspective had fooled her. The train of severed tree trunks, stretched along the vortex lines, must have extended for more than a centimeter. And it was only when the caravan approached its nearest point to the farm that Dura could make out people traveling with the caravan — men and women Waving along the lengths of the trunks, or tending the teams of Air-pigs scattered along the trunks’ lengths, utterly dwarfed by the scale of the caravan itself.

Another shift wore away. Rubbing arms and shoulders left stiff by a long day’s crop-tending, Dura slung her Air-tank over her shoulder and Waved slowly toward the refectory.

Rauc came up to her. Dura studied her curiously. Rauc had become something of a friend to Dura — as much of a friend as she had made here, anyway — but today the slim little coolie seemed different. Distracted, somehow. Although Rauc too had just finished a shift, she’d already changed into a clean smock and combed her hair free of dirt and wheat-chaff. The smile on her thin, perpetually tired face was nervous.

“Rauc? Is something wrong?”

“No. No, not at all.” Rauc’s small feet twisted together in the Air. “Dura, have you got any plans for your off-shift?”

Dura laughed. “To eat. To sleep. Why?”

“Come with me to the caravan.”

“What?”

“The lumber caravan.” Rauc pointed down beneath her feet, to where the caravan toiled impressively across the sky. “It wouldn’t take us long to Wave down there.”

Dura tried to conceal her reluctance. No thanks. I’ve already seen enough of the City, the hinterland, of new people, to last me a lifetime. She thought with a mild longing of the little nest she’d been able to establish for herself on the fringe of the farm — just a cocoon, and her little cache of personal belongings, suspended in the open Air, away from the cramped dormitories favored by the rest of the coolies. “Maybe another time, Rauc. Thanks, but…”

Rauc looked unreasonably disappointed. “But the caravans only pass about once a year. And Brow can’t always arrange an assignment to the right caravan; if we’re unlucky he ends up centimeters away from the farm when he passes this latitude, and…”

“Brow?” Rauc had mentioned the name before. “Your husband? Your husband’s with this caravan?”

“He’ll be expecting me.” Rauc reached out and took Dura’s hands. “Come with me. Brow’s never met an upfluxer before.”

Dura squeezed her hands. “Well, I’ve never met a lumberjack. Rauc, is this the only time you get to see your husband? Are you sure you want me along?”

“I wouldn’t ask otherwise. It will make it special.”

Dura felt honored, and she said so. She considered the distance to the caravan. “Will we have the time to get there and back, all in a single off-shift? Maybe we ought to go to Leeh and postpone our next shift — do a double.”

Rauc grinned. “I’ve already fixed it. Come on; find yourself something clean to wear, and we’ll go. Why don’t you bring your stuff from the upflux? Your knife and your ropes…”

Rauc followed Dura to her sleeping-nest, talking excitedly the whole way.

The two women dropped out of the ceiling-farm and descended lightly into the Mantle.

Dura dipped forward, extending her arms toward the caravan, and began to thrust with her legs. As she Waved she was still wondering if this was a good idea — her legs and arms still ached from her long shift — but after some time the steady, easy exercise seemed to work the pains from her muscles and joints, and she found herself relishing the comfortable, natural motion across the Magfield — so different from the cramped awkwardness of her work in the fields, with her head buried in an Air-mask, her arms straining above her head, her fingers thrust into the roots of some recalcitrant mutant plant.

The caravan spread out across the sky before her. It was a chain of Crust-tree trunks stripped of roots, branches and leaves; the trunks were bound together in sets of two or three by lengths of rope, and the sets were connected by more links of strong plaited rope. Dura had to swivel her head to see the leading and trailing ends of the chain of trunks, which dwindled with perspective among the converging vortex lines; in fact, she mused, the whole caravan was like a wooden facsimile of a vortex line.

Two humans hung in the Air some distance from the caravan. They seemed to be waiting for Rauc and Dura; as the women approached they called something and set off through the Air to greet them. It was a man and a woman, Dura saw. They were both around the same age as Rauc and Dura, and they wore identical, practical-looking loose vests equipped with dozens of pockets from which bits of rope and tools protruded.

Rauc rushed forward and embraced the man. Dura and the lumberjack woman hung back, waiting awkwardly. The woman was slim, strong-looking, with tough-looking, weathered skin; she — and the man, evidently Rauc’s husband Brow — looked much more like upfluxers than any hinterland or City folk Dura had met up to now.