One section of the rough, expanding City-cloud had been cordoned off, informally, to serve as a Hospital area. Dura and Toba pushed through the cloud of debris until they were moving through arrays of patients, drifting comfortably in the Air and loosely knotted together with lengths of rope. Dura cast a cursory, slightly embarrassed glance at the patients. Many people had been left so damaged by the Glitch that they would never function fully again; but the care they were receiving was clearly competent. The bandaging and splints seemed undamaged and clean. One of the blessings of the destruction of Parz was that its scale had been so immense many smaller, more robust items in the City — like medical equipment — had simply been spilled into the Air, undamaged.
As they neared the heart of the improvised Hospital, Muub, once Court Physician, emerged to meet them. Muub had abandoned his impractical finery, replacing it with what looked like a Fisherman’s many-pocketed smock. His smile was broad and welcoming beneath his shining bare scalp, and the Physician looked as happy as Dura could remember seeing him — liberated, even.
Muub led them to Adda. The old upfluxer was standing a sullen guard over an outsized, sealed cocoon. Dura knew that the cocoon contained Bzya, the crippled Fisherman, who still could do little more than bellow half-coherent phrases from his ruin of a mouth. Bzya was evidently asleep. But Adda seemed content to spend much of his waking time with his friend, keeping watch over him and serving as a clumsy nurse when necessary, helping Jool and their daughter — Shar, who had returned from the ceiling-farms — to tend to him.
Adda embraced Dura, and asked after the rest of the Human Beings. Dura told him about Mur and Lea, and Muub added, “There are points of friction. But your upfluxers are working well with the citizens of Parz. Don’t you agree, Adda?”
The old man growled, his face as sour as ever. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we’re ‘fitting in’ too damn well.”
Dura smiled. “You’re too much of a cynic, dear Adda. Nobody forced the Human Beings to come here, to help the City folk dig their way out of the rubble.”
“Although we’re delighted you’re here,” Muub said expansively. “Without your upflux-hardened muscles we wouldn’t be making half the progress we’ve managed so far.”
“Sure. As long as we’re not using our ‘upflux-hardened muscles’ to build another nice, neat cage for ourselves.”
Dura said, “Now, Adda — ”
Toba Mixxax said nervously, “But you were never in a cage. I don’t understand.”
Muub held up his hands. “Adda has a point. And while we’re rebuilding our City, it’s a time to think about rebuilding our hearts as well. The Human Beings were in a cage, Toba. As were we all: a cage of ignorance, prejudice and suppression.”
Dura looked at him carefully. “You genuinely accept that?”
“Do we need a City at all?” Adda asked sourly. “Maybe it’s time for a fresh start without one.”
Dura shook her head. “I don’t think I agree with that. Not any more. The benefits of a City — stability, a repository of understanding, the access to medicine — all of these will help us all, everyone in the Mantle.” She fixed Muub with a sharp glance. “Won’t they?”
He nodded seriously. “We could never advance from a base of subsistence farming. But the City must never again become a fortress-prison. That’s why we’re planning a whole series of satellite communities, with the City as the hub. We should not trap most of humanity in one place, so vulnerable to disasters from without — and from our own hearts.”
Adda snorted. “You talk about human nature. What’s to stop human nature from reasserting itself where prisons and fortresses are concerned?”
“Only the strong and continuing efforts of good men and women,” Muub said evenly. “Hork shares these goals. He’s talking about new kinds of power structures — representative councils which would give all of the Mantle’s people a say in the way things are run.”
“Knowing Hork,” Dura admitted, “I find that a little hard to swallow.”
“Then try harder,” Muub said sternly. “Hork is no sentimental dreamer, Dura. He faces realities and acts on them. He knows that without the ancient wisdom of the Human Beings — without the clues you people brought about the Core Wars, the possibility of retrieving some of the ancient technology — the City would have been wiped out by the Xeelee attack, without even knowing why. Perhaps the race itself would have perished… We need each other. Hork accepts that, and is going to make sure we don’t lose what we’ve gained. Surely his litany, today, is evidence of his goodwill. Perhaps we could construct a new, integrated philosophy, incorporating the best elements of all these strands — the Xeelee philosophy, the Wheel followers — and build a new faith to guide us…”
Dura laughed. “Maybe. But we’ll have to put the City back together first.”
Adda rubbed his nose. “Perhaps. But I don’t think we’ll have Farr here to help us.”
“No,” Dura said. “He’s determined to return to the Quantum Sea, in a new, improved ‘Flying Pig.’ To find the Colonists again. But he’s accepted he needs to put in some time rebuilding his own world first, before flying off to win new ones…”
“Not a poor ambition to have,” Muub said, smiling thinly. “Quite a number of us are intrigued by what you learned of the Colonists… and the huge Ur-human engines at the North Pole. Of course, we don’t know any way of traveling more than a few tens of meters from the South Pole, let alone of crossing the Equator… but we’ll find a way.”
“Why should there be a way at all?” Adda asked cynically. “This Star is a hostile environment, remember. The Glitches have forced that home into our heads, if nothing else. We’ve no guarantee we’ll ever be able to achieve much more than we can do now. After all the Ur-humans left us to die with the Star, they didn’t believe in any future for us.”
“Perhaps.” Muub smiled. “But perhaps not. Here’s a speculation for you. What if the Ur-humans didn’t intend us to be destroyed when the Star impacted the Ring? What if the Ur-humans left us some means of escaping from the Star?”
Dura said, “Like the wormhole to the planet — ”
“Or,” Muub said, “even a ship — an Air-car that could travel outside the Star itself.” He looked up at the Crust, a look of vague dissatisfaction on his face. “What lies beyond that constraining roof over our world? The glimpses you saw, Dura, of other stars — hundreds, millions of them — each one, perhaps, harboring life — not human as we are, and yet human, descended from the Ur-stock… And then, behind it all, the Ur-humans themselves, still pursuing their own aloof goals. To see it all — what a prize that would be! Yes, Adda; many of us are very curious indeed about what might lie at the far Pole…
“Yet even that will tell us so little of the true history of our universe. What is the true purpose of Bolder’s Ring? What are the Xeelee’s intentions — who, where is the enemy they seem to fear so much?” He smiled, looking wistful. “I will resent dying without the answers to such questions, as I surely will…”
In the distance, in the opened heart of the City hundreds of mansheights away, pipes began to bray: Hork calling his citizens to him. Muub bid a hasty farewell to his friends.
With Adda, Dura began to make her way toward the heart of the debris cloud. As they Waved, peacefully, she slipped her hand into his.
“We’ve come a long way, daughter of Logue,” Adda said.
Dura looked at him with a little suspicion, but there was no sign of irony in his expression; his good eye returned her gaze with a softness she hadn’t often seen there before.
She nodded. “We have…” And some of us a little further than others, she thought. “How’s Bzya?”
He sniffed. “Surviving. Accepting what he has. Which is a lot, I suppose; he has Jool and Shar both with him now…”