Jool turned to Farr. “Of course, we weren’t so clever as to avoid setting up a rigid, stratified society to control each other with.”

“Here in Parz, anyway,” Farr said.

“Here in Parz,” she conceded. “You Human Beings are evidently much too smart to put up with it all.”

“We were,” Farr said mildly. “That’s why we left.”

“And now you’ve come back,” Bzya said. “To the lowest strata, at the bottom of the City… Upside, Downside, bottom, top; all those up-and-down concepts are relics of Ur-human thinking — did you know that?… here in the Downside we’re regarded as less intelligent, less aware, than the rest. In the past people here have reacted to that.” His large, battered, thoughtful face looked sad. “Badly. If you treat people as less than human, often they behave like it. A couple of generations ago this part of the Downside was a slum. A jungle.”

“Parts of it still are,” Jool said.

“But we’ve pulled ourselves out of it.” Bzya smiled. “Self-help. Education. Oral histories, numeracy, literacy where we’ve the materials.” He bit into a slice of beercake. “The Committee does damn all for this part of the City. The Harbor does less, even though most of us are Harbor employees. But we can help ourselves.”

Farr listened to all this with a certain wonder. These people were like exiles in their own City, he thought. Like Human Beings, lost in this forest of wood and Corestuff. He told them of lessons and learning among the Human Beings — histories of the tribe and of the greater mankind beyond the Star, told by elders to little huddles of children suspended between the vortex lines. Bzya and Jool listened thoughtfully.

When the food was finished, they rested for a while. Then Bzya and Jool moved a little closer to each other, apparently unconsciously. Their huge heads dipped, so that their brows were almost touching. They reached forward and placed wide, strong fingers on the rim of the Wheel. Quietly they began to speak — in unison, a slow, solemn litany of names, none of them familiar to Farr. He watched them in silence.

When they finished, after perhaps a hundred names, Bzya opened his eyecups wide and smiled at Farr. “A little oral history in action, my friend.”

Jool’s face had resumed the sly, playful expression of earlier. She reached across the Wheel-table and touched Farr’s sleeve. “Have you figured out what my job is yet?”

“Oh, stop teasing the boy,” Bzya said loudly. “I’ll tell you. She gathers petals from the Upside gardens, and delivers them to the pig-farms — the small in-City ones scattered around Parz, where the pigs for the Air-cars that run within the City are kept.”

“Think about it,” Jool said. “The streets of the City are hot and cramped. Enclosed. All those cars. All those pigs…”

“The petals are ground up and added to the pigs’ feed,” Bzya said.

Farr frowned. “Why?”

“To make them easier to live with.” Solemnly, Jool bent forward, tilted her stump of leg, grabbed her wide buttocks through her coverall and separated them, and farted explosively.

Bzya laughed.

Farr looked from one to the other, uncertainly.

Then the smell hit him. Her fart was petal-perfumed.

Bzya shook his head, sighing. “Oh, don’t pay her any attention; it will only encourage her. More beercake?”

16

The driver of the car from Parz City was Deni Maxx, the junior doctor who had treated Adda. Dura wanted to rush to her, to demand news of Farr and Adda.

The Human Beings — all twenty of them, including the five children — emerged from their shelter in the forest and trailed after Dura. Deni Maxx peered out of the open hatch at her, staring indifferently past her at the ring of skinny Human Beings. “I’m glad I’ve found you.”

“I’m surprised you managed it. The upflux is a big place.”

Deni shrugged. She seemed irritated, impatient. “It wasn’t so hard. Toba Mixxax gave me precise directions from his ceiling-farm to the place he first found you. All I had to do was scout around until you responded to my call.”

Philas crowded close to Dura. The widow pressed her mouth close to Dura’s ear; Dura was aware, uncomfortably, of the sweet, thin stink of leaves and bark on Philas’s breath. “Who is she? What does she want?”

Dura pulled her head away. She was aware of Deni’s appraising gaze. She felt a swirl of contradictory emotions: irritation at Deni’s high-handed manner, and yet a certain embarrassment at the awkward, childlike behavior of the Human Beings. Had she been such a primitive on her first encounter with Toba Mixxax?

“Get in the car,” Deni said. “We’ve a long journey back to Parz, and I was told to hurry…”

“Who by? Why am I being recalled? Is it something to do with my indenture? Surely you saw Qos Frenk’s ceiling-farm — or what was left of it; it’s no longer functioning. Qos released us, and…”

“It’s nothing to do with your indenture. I’ll explain on the way.” Deni drummed her fingers on the frame of the car’s door.

Dura was aware of the staring eyes of the rest of the tribe, as they waited mutely for her to make a decision. She felt a brief, selfish stab of impatience with them; they were dependent, like children. She wanted to go back to Parz. She could surely — she told herself — find out more about the situation of Farr and Adda there than if she stayed with the Human Beings as just another simple refugee upfluxer. And, in the long run — she justified to herself — she could maybe do more to help all the Human Beings by returning than by staying here. Something important must be required of her, for the City to send someone like Deni Maxx to fetch her. Perhaps in some odd way she would have influence over events…

Philas tugged at her arm, like a child, demanding attention. Dura pulled her arm away angrily — and instantly regretted the impulse.

The truth was, she admitted to herself, she was relieved that she had an excuse, and the means, to get away from the suffocating company of the Human Beings. But she felt such guilt about it.

She came to a quick decision. “I’ll come with you,” she told Deni. “But not alone.”

Deni frowned. “What?”

“I’ll take the children.” She widened her arms to indicate the five children — the youngest was Mur’s infant, Jai, the oldest an adolescent girl.

Deni Maxx launched into a volley of complaints.

Dura turned her back and confronted the Human Beings. They pulled their children to themselves in baffled silence, their eyes huge and fixed on her. She ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. Slowly, patiently, she described what awaited the children at Parz City. Food. Shelter. Safety. Surely she could prevail on Toba Mixxax to find temporary homes for the children. They were all young enough to seem cute to the City folk, she calculated, surprising herself with her own cynicism. And in a few short years they’d be able to turn their upfluxer muscles to gainful employment.

She was consigning the children to lives in the Downside, she realized. But it was better than starving here, or sharing their parents’ epic trek across the devastated hinterland of Parz. And eventually, she insisted to the bewildered parents, they would reach Parz themselves and be reunited with their offspring.

The adults were baffled and frightened, struggling to deal with concepts they could barely envisage. But they trusted her, Dura realized slowly, with a mixture of relief and shame — and so, one by one, the children were delivered to Dura.

Deni Maxx glared as the grimy bodies of the children were passed into her car, and Dura wondered if Deni was even now going to raise some cruel objection. But when the doctor watched Dura settle little Jai — frightened and crying for his mother — in the arms of the oldest girl at the back of the car, Deni’s irritation visibly softened.