"The sand blows around. One day it will be deeper than a man can dig, and next day it's bare rock. It wears the rock away, and makes more sand, and the rock cracks in the heat."

"It seems very hot now," he ventured.

"It isn't. If the sun were on, all this would be too hot to touch, almost. Keep down, so the wind doesn't get you."

"I'll try," he promised, "but it seems very windy."

"That's because we're going uphill." The white glow of the surgeon's headlamp vanished in the middle distance, but the surgeon's voice still reached him, the only calm element in that wild night. "You've got to kick off with your legs."

"No fly!" Oreb insisted.

The surgeon's light reappeared, surprising close. "Your legs are a lot stronger than your arms."

He gasped for breath and spit out sand. "I didn't even know we were climbing."

The white light had halted. "You don't weight much, but don't let that make you think you won't get hurt if the wind slams you into some rocks. It's happened to me, and it hurt like Holy Hierax. People are killed, sometimes."

He wanted to say that he would try to be careful; but it was all he could do to struggle forward, half crawling.

"We're not supposed to fix up Cargo." They were near enough that his deep-set eyes and broad flat nose showed dimly. "But I'll make exception for you. Ask for me if you get hurt."

"You made…" He was panting. "An exception… For Pig. Thank you."

The surgeon caught his arm and helped him over the final two cubits. "I ought to tell you about that."

"Please do."

"Hold on to this and you can stand up."

Again the surgeon guided his hand to it; over the whistling wind, the snapping of his augur's robe sounded like the incessant cracking of a whip.

"Look over there. Can you see my arm?"

Oreb repeated, "See arm?"

"Yes." The pale sleeve made it easy, although there appeared to be no hand at the end of it.

"That green light. Got it?"

"I think so. Is it blinking?"

"That's where you're going. That's the sick bay. It's a league or a league and a half, something like that. Tell him I said hello."

"I certainly will."

The wind was rising again, and the surgeon had almost to shout to make himself heard. "You're still going?"

"I-yes."

"You can come back with me if you want to."

He nodded, although their faces were nearly touching. "Thank you. You're very kind."

The surgeon took his arm. "Then let's go."

Oreb added his own vote. "Go now!"

"No," he said. "You misunderstood me. I didn't mean that I was going back with you, only that you've shown extraordinary courtesy. I'll always be indebted to you."

"I thought you'd want to turn around once you'd seen it."

"No," he said.

"Just to visit a sick friend."

"It's Pig." At the moment that was all the explanation he could give.

"All right. Look behind you. See the red light?"

He nodded again. "That's where we came from."

"Right. There's a box at the base of the pylon. Open it, pull the lever, and close it again and you can go inside. Not the Remote Viewing Room, but close. Ask for me."

"Will I have to go back there to get back to our lander?" The thought to making the league-long journey twice was almost more than he could bear.

The surgeon shook his head, and it was possible to think of living again, of Pig resting in a white bed, and silence, and prayer. The surgeon said, "This is in case you turn back."

"I won't."

"You might, if you're hurt." The surgeon clasped his shoulder. "If you don't… Well, good-bye."

"Good-bye, and thank you again." He would have turned then and gone, but the surgeon's hand maintained its grip.

"You'll be farther from the Pole. You'll have a little more weight as you get nearer the sick bay."

"That's good to know."

"I wish I could go with you."

He felt a surge of gratitude. "So do I."

The surgeon released his shoulder. "I'll tell them to expect you, and ask them to change your dressing. There'll be sand in it."

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you again."

He had started down the slope when the surgeon's hail stopped him. "What is it?"

"You thanked me for patching up your friend Pig."

"Yes!" He had to shout to make himself heard.

"They told us to. A flier did. Wait up."

He watched the surgeon's bobbing headlamp ascend the rocky slope a good deal more quickly and skillfully than he had.

"The flier said we should. Maybe I ought to tell you about it. Mainframe's the captain. You probably know."

His instinct urged caution. "I knew it was in the east. I wasn't sure you obeyed it as well."

"We do." The surgeon drew him toward a boulder that offered shelter from the wind-driven sand. "It used to communicate with us directly. It can't anymore because the cable's been cut. So it sends fliers. Or godlings, but mostly fliers."

"No fly!" Oreb advised.

"We've found the break and we're fixing it, but it isn't as simple as hooking your optic nerve up to your friend's. There are millions and millions of fibers and every connection has to be right."

"I believe I understand."

"Still, it's got to be fixed before we leave. So do a lot of other things." The surgeon paused, clearly wrestling with whatever it was he really wanted to say.

"I'm very glad you agreed to operate on Pig, in any case."

"The thing is, we can't always be sure the flier's telling us what Mainframe said. Sometimes we think he may be adding on his own, or leaving something out. You know about the animals?"

"What animals?"

"Great Passilk is supposed to be mad at his wife and half his sprats. Frankly, I don't believe it." (Doctor Crane's chuckle seemed to echo among the rocks.) "But people say they've turned themselves into animals to get away from him."

"No cut," Oreb muttered in his master's ear.

"I heard something about that," he told the surgeon.

"So when we were told to fix up somebody, and it turned out he was called Pig, well, we had to wonder. Do you follow me?"

"Well enough to guess that you're in awe of gods you do not reverence."

"I suppose that's fair." The surgeon turned to go.

"You have been very good to us-to Pig and me. You've been a friend when we needed one in the worst way. So let me assure you that you've nothing to worry about. Pig doesn't harbor Echidna or any of Echidna's children. I won't explain how I know; but I do know. You needn't fear that I'm mistaken."

The surgeon turned back to him. "Thanks. You seem like somebody who can be trusted."

"You can trust me in this, at least."

The surgeon held out his hand. "What's your name? I know you told me, but I've forgotten it."

"Horn," he said; somewhere Doctor Crane chuckled again.

"M'to. It means a river." The surgeon cleared his throat and spat. "Those little men up on the bridge think we're pretty crude here in the black gang, and maybe we are. But we're not tricky, and we know a lot more medicine, because we get a lot more people hurt."

"I doubt that their opinion of you is nearly as low as you believe. The flier who told you about Pig-was Flannan his name?"

The surgeon shook his head. "I didn't talk to him. I don't know what his name was. I've got to get back."

They shook hands again.

When he had crawled over twenty or thirty cubits of rocky, windswept ground, he heard the surgeon's voice behind him, borne on the hot polar gale. "Don't disregard your monitor!"

He shouted, "I won't!" hoping to be heard.

"And don't piss into the wind!"

At his elbow Crane's ghost murmured, "Is it really worth all this to fight free of Hari Mau for an hour or two, Silk?"