At last it was done. Dura gathered the bereft adults in a huddle and gave them strict instructions on how to get to the Pole. They listened to her solemnly. Then Dura embraced them all, and climbed into the car.

As Deni flicked the team of Air-pigs into motion, Dura stared back through the huge, expansive windows at the Human Beings. Shorn of their children, they looked lost, bewildered, futile. Dia and Mur clung to each other. I’ve taken away their future, Dura realized. Their reason for living.

Or, perhaps, I’ve preserved their future.

When the Human Beings were out of sight — and despite the continuing crying of the frightened, disoriented children — Dura settled into one of the car’s expensive cocoons, relief and guilt once more competing for her soul.

Deni steered the car with unconscious skill along the renewed vortex lines. “The City is taking in injured from the hinterland. It’s not been easy, for any of us.” The doctor was scarcely recognizable from the cheerful, rather patronizing woman who had treated Adda, Dura thought; Maxx’s eyecups were ringed by darkness and crusty sleep deposits; her face seemed to have sunk in on itself, becoming gaunt and severe, and she hunched over her reins with tense, knotted muscles.

Dura stared moodily out of the car’s huge windows at the Crust as it passed over them. She remembered how she had marveled at the orderliness of the great hinterland with its ceiling-farms and gardens, as she had viewed it that first time with Toba Mixxax. Now, by contrast, she was appalled at the destruction the Glitch had wrought. In great swathes the farms had been scoured from the Crust, leaving the bare root-ceiling exposed. Here and there coolies still toiled patiently at the shattered land, but the naked ceiling had none of the vigor of the natural forest; obscenely stripped of its rectangles of cultivation it looked like an open wound.

Deni tried to explain how the Crust had responded to the Glitch by ringing — vibrating in sectors, apparently all over the Star; the devastation had come in orderly waves, with a lethal and offensive neatness. Dura let the words wash over her, barely understanding.

“The destruction persists right around the hinterland,” Deni said. “At least half the ceiling-farms have stopped functioning, and the rest can only work on a limited basis.” She glanced at Dura. “Parz City doesn’t have much stock of food, you know; she relies on the daily traffic from the ceiling-farms. And you know what they say…”

“What?”

“Any society is only a meal away from revolution. Hork has already instituted rationing. In the long term, I doubt it’s going to be enough. Still, at the moment people seem to be accepting the troubles we’re having: patiently waiting their turn for medical treatment behind ranks of coolies, following the orders of the Committee. Eventually, I guess, they will blame the Committee for their woes.”

Dura took a deep breath. “Just as you’re blaming me?”

Deni turned to her, her eyes wide. “Why do you say that?”

“Your tone. Your manner with me, ever since you arrived to bring me back.”

Deni rubbed her nose, and when she looked at Dura again there was a faint smile on her lips. “No. I don’t blame you, my dear. But I do resent being a ferry driver. I have patients to treat… At a time like this I have better things to do than…”

“Then why did you come to get me?”

“Because Muub ordered me to.”

“Muub? Oh, the Administrator.”

“He felt I was the only person who would recognize you.” She sniffed. “Old fool. There aren’t that many upfluxers on Qos Frenk’s ceiling-farm, after all.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re here.”

“Because that friend of yours insisted on it.” She frowned. “Adda? Worst patient in the world. But what beautiful work we did with his pneumatic vessels.”

The Air seemed thick in Dura’s mouth. “Adda is alive? He’s safe?”

“Oh, yes. He was with Muub when the Glitch hit. He’s quite well… or at least, as well as before. You know, with injuries like that it’s a miracle he’s able to move about. And…”

Dura closed her eyes. She hadn’t dared ask of her kinsmen earlier — as if phrasing the very question would tempt fate. “And Farr?”

“Who? Oh, the boy. Your brother, isn’t he? Yes, he’s fine. He was in the Harbor…”

“You’ve seen him? You’ve seen that he’s safe?”

“Yes.” Some compassion entered Deni’s voice. “Dura, don’t worry about your people. Adda had Farr brought to the Palace…”

“The Palace?”

“Yes, it was a condition of him working with Hork, apparently.”

Dura laughed; it was as if a huge pressure had been lifted from her heart. But still, what was Adda doing handing out orders at the Palace? Why were they so important, all of a sudden? “Things have changed since I’ve been gone.”

Deni nodded. “Yes, but don’t ask me about it… Muub will tell you, when we dock.” She growled. “Another Physician taken away from healing people… I hope this project of Hork’s, whatever it is, really is important enough to cost so many lives.”

They were approaching the South Pole now; the vortex lines, deceptively orderly, were beginning to converge. Dura studied the Crust. The elegant, pretty farms and gardens of the ceiling-scape here had largely been spared the Glitch’s devastation, but there was something odd: the Crust had a fine texture, as if it were covered by fine, dark furs — furs which Waved in slow formation toward the Pole.

Dura pointed this out to Deni. “What’s that?”

Deni glanced up. “Refugees, my dear. From all over the devastated hinterland. No longer able to work on their farms, they are converging on Parz City, hoping for salvation.”

Dura stared around the sky. Refugees. The Crust seemed black with humanity.

The children started to cry again. Dura turned to comfort them.

When Hork heard that the two upfluxers — the boy from the Harbor and the woman, Dura — had been located and were being returned to the Upside, he called Muub and the old fool Adda to another meeting in the Palace anteroom.

Adda settled into his cocoon of rope, his splinted legs dangling absurdly, and he swept his revolting one-eyed gaze around the anteroom as if he owned the place.

Hork suppressed his irritation. “Your people are safe. They are inside the City. Now I would like to continue with our discussion.”

Adda stared, eyeing him up as if he were a coolie in the Market. At last the old man nodded. “Very well. Let’s proceed.”

Hork saw Muub sigh, evidently with relief.

“I return to my final question,” Hork said. “I concede the existence of the Xeelee. But I am not concerned with myths. I don’t want to hear about the awesome racial goals of the Xeelee… I want to know what they want with us.”

“I told you,” Adda said evenly. “They don’t want anything of us. I don’t think they even know we’re here. But they do want something of our world — our Star.”

“Apparently they wish to destroy it,” Muub said, running a hand over his bare scalp.

“Evidently,” Adda said. “Hork, the wisdom of my people — handed down verbally since our expulsion from…”

“Yes, yes.”

“…has nothing to say about any purpose of the Star. But we do know that humans were brought here, to this Star. By the Ur-humans. And we were adapted to survive here.”

Muub was nodding at this. “This isn’t a surprise, sir. Analogous anatomy studies have come to similar conclusions.”

“I am struggling to contain my fascination,” Hork said acidly. Restless, frustrated, he pushed his way out of his sling and began to swim briskly around the room. He watched the turning of the small, powerful cooling-fan set in one corner of the painted sky; he studied the captive vortex ring in its nest of clearwood spheres. He resisted the temptation to smash the spheres again, despite his mounting frustration; the cost of repair had been ruinous — indefensible, actually, in such times as now. “Go on with your account. If humans were brought here, made to fit the Mantle — then why isn’t the evidence of this all around us? Where are the devices which made us? Where are these ‘different’ Ur-humans?”