Dura frowned. “What was that?”

Hork looked up, his wide face bland. “The Harbor cable cutting loose. Right on schedule.” He glanced out of the window at the dark shadows of the superconducting hoops. “We’re falling under our own power now; the currents in the hoops are Waving us deeper into the Star. And the hoops are the only way we’re going to get back home… We’re alone,” he said. “But we’re on our way.”

20

Three meters deep.

It was a depth Dura couldn’t comprehend. Humans were confined within the Mantle to a shell of superfluid Air only a few meters thick. Her first journey with Toba to the Pole from the upflux — so far that she had felt she was traveling around the curvature of the Star itself — had only been about thirty meters.

Now she was drilling whole meters into the unforgiving bulk of the Star itself. She imagined the Star crushing their tiny wooden boat and spitting them out, like a tiny infestation. And it was small comfort to remember that their journey would be broken before reaching such a depth only if they achieved their goal… if the unimaginable really did, after all, emerge from the Core to greet them.

By the end of the second day they were already well below the nebulous boundary of the habitable layer of Air. The yellow brightness of the Air outside the windows had faded — to amber, then a deeper orange, and finally to a blood-purple color reminiscent of the Quantum Sea. Dura pressed her face against cold clearwood, hoping to see something — anything: exotic animals, unknown, inhuman people, some kind of structure inside the Star. But there was only the muddy purple of the thickening Air, and her own distorted, indistinct reflection in the wood-lamps’ green light. She was trapped in here — with her fears, and with Hork. She had expected to feel small, vulnerable inside this tiny wooden box as it burrowed its way into the immense guts of the Star; but the thick darkness beyond the window made her claustrophobic, trapped. She retreated into herself. She tended the fretting pigs, slept as much as she could, and kept her eyes averted from Hork’s.

His determined efforts to talk to her, on the third day, were an intrusion.

“You’re pensive.” His tone was offensively bright. “I hope this adventure isn’t causing you any — ah — philosophic difficulties.”

He’d left his console and had drifted up the cabin, close to her station near the pigs’ harness. She stared at the broad, fat-laden face, the mound of beard around his mouth. When she’d first been introduced to Hork she’d been fascinated and disconcerted — as Hork intended, no doubt — by that beard, by this man with hair on his face. But now, as she looked closer, she could see the way the roots of the beard’s hair-tubes were arranged in a neat hexagonal pattern over Hork’s chin… The beard had been transplanted, either from Hork’s own scalp or from one of his more unfortunate subjects.

So the beard wasn’t impressive, she decided. Just decadent. And besides, it was yellowing more quickly than the hair on his head; another few years and Hork would look truly absurd.

How huge, how intrusive, how irritating he was. The tension between them seemed to crackle like electron gas.

“Philosophic difficulties? I’m not superstitious.”

“I didn’t suggest you were.”

“We aren’t religious about the Xeelee. I don’t fear that we’re going to bring down the wrath of the Xeelee, if that’s what you mean. But Human Beings — alone — would never have attempted this journey into the Star.”

“Because the Xeelee will look after you, like mama in the sky.”

Dura sighed. “Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite… We have to accept the actions of the Xeelee without question — for we believe that their goals will prove in the long term to be of benefit to us all, to humans as a race. Even if it means the destruction of the Star — even if it means our own destruction.”

Hork shook his head. “You upfluxers are full of laughs, aren’t you? Well, it’s a chilly faith. And damn cold comfort.”

“You don’t understand,” Dura said. “It’s not meant to be comforting. Back up there…” — she jerked her thumb upward, to the world of light and humans — “there is my comfort. My family and people.”

Hork studied her. His face, under its layers of fat, was broad and coarsely worked, but — she admitted grudgingly — not without perception and sensitivity. “You fear death, Dura, despite your knowledge.”

Dura laughed and closed her eyes. “I told you; knowledge is not necessarily a comfort. I’ve no reason not to fear death… and, yes, I fear it now.”

Hork breathed deeply. “Then have faith in me. We’ll survive. I feel it. I know it…”

His face was close to hers, so close she could smell sweet bread on his breath. His expression was clear, set. Determination seemed to shine from him; just for a moment Dura felt tempted to let herself wallow in that determination, to relax in his massive strength as if he were her father reborn.

But she resisted. She said harshly, “So you’ve no fear of death? Will your power in Parz help you overcome the final disaster?”

“Of course it won’t,” he said. “And I’m not without fear. That surprises you, doesn’t it? I’m not a fool without the imagination to be afraid, upfluxer; nor am I so arrogant as to suppose myself beyond the reach of death. I know that in the end I am as weak as the next man in the face of the great forces of the Star — let alone the unknowns beyond it. But, just at this moment, I’m…” He waved a hand in the Air. “I’m exhilarated. I’m doing something more than waiting for the next Glitch to hit Parz, or coping with the devastation of the last one. I’m trying to change the world, to challenge the way things are.” His eyecups were dark wells. “And I couldn’t bear to allow anyone else to go into the dark at the heart of the Star, and not be there.” He looked at her. “Can you understand that?”

“Some say you’re running away from the real problems. That genuine courage would lie in staying behind and wrestling with the disaster, not flying off on a spectacular, wasteful jaunt.”

He nodded, his smile grim. “I know. Muub’s among them. Oh, don’t worry; I won’t do anything about it. It’s a point of view. Even one I share, in my darkest moments.” He grinned. “But I like to think my father would have been proud of me, if he could have seen me now. He always thought I was so — practical. So unimaginative. And yet…”

There was a thud from the hull of the “Flying Pig”; the little craft shuddered in the Air. The pigs squealed, thrashing in their stall, and with a single, involuntary movement Dura and Hork grabbed at each other.

The craft settled. Hork’s expansive belly, liquid beneath its covering of glittering material, was heavy against Dura’s stomach and breasts.

“What was that?”

The small, regular arrays of hair at the fringe of his beard wafted as he breathed. “Corestuff bergs,” he said, his voice tight. “That’s all. Corestuff bergs. If either of us was a Fisherman we’d not have been startled — that’s why they come down here in the first place: to fish for the Corestuff bergs. The “Pig” is designed to cope with little impacts like that; there’s nothing to fear.” His arms were still around her — and her arms were in turn wrapped around his torso, her hands clutching at the layers of material over his back — and now he reached up to stroke her hair. She wanted, suddenly, to bury herself in this bulky strength, to hide deep inside the warm darkness of the eyecups which were huge before her.

She scrabbled at his clothing, found a line of buttons down the seam at his side; and she felt his thick, clumsy fingers traveling over her own coverall.

A last shred of rationality made her assess his expression, his open mouth and flaring, shining nostrils, and she saw that his need was as great as hers.