“Oh, shut up.” Now the strong woman thrust her face into his window; Toba couldn’t help but recoil. “What do you think that means to us, ‘your property’? And anyway…” She pointed at the injured old fellow. “We can’t go anywhere with Adda in that state.” The old man, Adda, called something to her — perhaps an order to leave him — but she ignored him. “We’re not going to move. Do what you have to do. And we…” — she raised her spear again — “will do whatever we can to stop you.”

Toba stared into the woman’s clear eyecups.

At his side was a collection of small, finely carved wooden levers. Maybe now was the time to pull on those levers, to use the car’s crossbows and javelin tubes…

Maybe.

He leaned forward, unsure of his own motives. “What’s happened to him?”

The woman hesitated, but the boy piped up loyally, his thin, clear voice transmitted well by the Speaker tubes. “Adda was gored by a boar.”

The old man spat a harsh laugh. “Oh, rubbish. I was mangled by a pregnant sow. Stupid old fool that I am.” Now he seemed to be struggling to push himself away from his tree trunk to reach for a weapon. “But not so stupid, or old, that I can’t turn your last few minutes of life into hell, Pole man.”

Toba locked eyes with the strong woman. She raised her spear and grimaced… and then, shockingly, disarmingly, her face broke up into laughter.

Toba, startled, found himself laughing back.

The woman jabbed her spear at Toba, barely threatening now. “You. Toba Paxxax.”

“Mixxax. Toba Mixxax.”

“I am Dura, daughter of Logue.”

He nodded to her.

She said, “Look, you can see we’re in trouble here. Why don’t you get out of your pig-box and give us some help?”

He frowned. “What kind of help?”

She looked toward the old man, apparently exasperated. “With him, of course.” She stared at the car with new eyes, as if appraising the subtlety of its design. “Maybe you could help us fix up his wounds.”

“Hardly. I’m no doctor.”

Dura frowned, as if the word wasn’t familiar to her. “Then at least you can help us get him out of the forest. Your box would be safe here until you got back.”

“It’s called a car,” he said absently. “Carry him where? Your home?”

She nodded and jabbed a spear along the line of the trees, down toward the interior of the Star. “A few thousand mansheights that way.”

Mansheights? he thought, distracted. A practical measure, he supposed… but what was wrong with microns? A mansheight would be about ten microns — a hundred-thousandth of a meter — if it meant what it sounded like…

“What kind of facilities do you have there?”

“…Facilities?”

Her hesitation was answer enough. Even if Toba were inclined to risk his own health carting this old chap around the forest, there was evidently nothing waiting for him at home but more of these naked savages living in some unimaginable squalor. “Look,” he said, trying to be kind, “what’s the point? Even if we got there in time…”

“…there’d be nothing we could do for him.” Dura’s eyes were narrow and troubled. “I know. But I can’t just give up.” She looked at Toba, through his window, with what looked like a faint stab of hope. “You talked about your property. Is it far from here? Do you have any — ah, facilities?”

“Hardly.” Of course there were basic medical facilities for the coolies, but nothing with any more ambition than to patch them up and send them back to work. Frankly, if one of his coolies were injured as badly as old Adda he’d expect him to die.

He’d write him off, in fact.

Only in Parz itself would there be treatment of the quality needed to save Adda’s life.

He picked up his reins, trying to refocus his attention on his own affairs. He had plenty of problems of his own, plenty of work to finish before he’d see Ito and Cris again. Maybe he could be charitable — give these upfluxers the chance to get away. After all, they weren’t really likely to damage his ceiling-farm…

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to get out of this surprisingly awkward situation with some kind of dignity. “But I don’t think…”

The woman, Dura, stared through his window, her eyecups deep and sharp, acute; Toba felt himself shudder under the intensity of her perception. “You know a way to help him,” she said slowly. “Or you think you do. Don’t you? I can see it in your face.”

Toba felt his mouth open and close, like the vent of a farting Air-piglet. “No. Damn it… Maybe. All right, maybe. If we could get him to Parz. But even then there’d be no guarantee…” He laughed. “And anyway, how do you plan to pay for the treatment? Who are you, Hork’s long-lost niece? If you think I have funds to cover it…”

“Help us,” she said, staring straight into his eyecups.

It wasn’t a request now, he realized, or a plea; it was an order.

He closed his eyes. Damn it. Why did these things have to happen to him? Didn’t he have enough problems? He almost wished he’d simply blasted this lot with the crossbows before they had a chance to open their mouths and confuse him.

Unwilling to let himself think about it further, he pulled an Air-tank from beneath his seat, and reached out to open the door of the car.

A circular crack appeared in one previously seamless wall of Toba Mixxax’s wooden box — of his car. At this latest surprise Dura couldn’t help but flinch backward, raising her spear at the lid of wood which began to hinge inward into the car.

The door opened fully with a sigh of equalizing pressure. The richness of the car’s Air wafted out over her, so thick it almost made her cough; she got one deep breath of it, and for a few heartbeats she felt invigorated, filled with energy. But then the Air dispersed into the stale, sticky thinness of the forest; and it was gone, as insubstantial as a dream. Obviously there had been more Air inside the compartment than out… but that made sense, of course. Why else ride around in a wooden prison, dependent on the cooperation of young pigs, other than to carry with you enough Air to sit in comfort?

Toba Mixxax emerged from his car. Dura watched, wary and wide-eyed. Mixxax stared back at her. For long seconds they hung there, eyes raking over each other.

Mixxax was wearing clothes. Not just a belt, or a carrying-pouch, but a suit of some kind of leather which encased him all over. She’d never seen anything so restrictive. And useless. It wasn’t as if it had a lot of pockets, even. And he wore a hat on his head, with a veil of some clear, light material dangling over his face. Tubes led from the veil to a pack on his back. A medallion, a wheel shape, hung on a chain around his neck.

Mixxax was a good five years older than Dura herself, and only perhaps fifteen years younger than her father at the time of his death. Old enough for his hair — what she could see of it — to have mostly yellowed and for a network of lines to have accumulated around shallow eyecups. In the forest’s thin Air he seemed breathless, despite his hat and veil. He was short — a head shorter than she was — and looked well fed: his cheeks were round and his belly bulged under his clothes. But, despite his cargo of fat, Mixxax was not well muscled. His neck, arms and upper legs were thin, the muscles lost under the concealing layers of leather; his covered head wobbled slightly atop a neck that was frankly scrawny.

In a fair contest, Dura realized slowly, Mixxax would be no match for her. In fact, he’d be hard pressed to defend himself against Farr. Had all the people of his strange home — Parz City — become so atrophied by riding around in pig-drawn cars?

Dura began to feel confident again. Toba Mixxax was strange, but he obviously wasn’t much of a threat.

She found her gaze drawn back to the medallion suspended from his neck. It was about the size of her palm, and consisted of an open wheel against which was fixed a sketchy sculpture of a man, with arms and legs outstretched against the wheel’s five spokes. The work was finely done, with the expression on the face of the little carved man conveying a lot of meaning: pain, and yet a kind of patient dignity.