“Please stop apologizing.”

“Anyway, we’ve made good time. Considering it’s such a hell of a long way from the Pole to my ceiling-farm.” His round face creased with anger. “Humans can’t survive much more than forty, fifty meters from the Pole. And my ceiling-farm is right on the fringe of that, right on the edge of the hinterland of Parz. So far upflux the Air tastes like glue and the coolies are weaker than Air-piglets… How am I supposed to make a living in conditions like that?” He looked at her, as if expecting an answer.

“What’s a meter?”

“…A hundred thousand mansheights. A million microns.” He looked deflated, his anger fading. “I don’t suppose you know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry; I…”

“How deep is the Mantle?” she asked impulsively. “From Crust to Quantum Sea, I mean.”

He smiled, his anger evaporating visibly. “In meters, or mansheights?”

“Meters will do.”

“About six hundred.”

She nodded. “That’s what I’ve been taught, too.”

He studied her curiously. “You people know about things like that?”

“Yes, we know about things like that,” she said heavily. “We’re not animals; we educate our children… even though it takes most of our energy just to keep alive, without clothes and cars and Air-boxes and teams of captive Air-pigs.”

He winced. “I won’t apologize again,” he said ruefully. “Look… here’s what I know.” Still holding his reins loosely, he cupped his long-fingered, delicate-looking hands into a ball. “The Star is a sphere, about twenty thousand meters across.”

She nodded. Two thousand million mansheights.

“It’s surrounded by the Crust,” he went on. “There’s three hundred meters of that. And the Quantum Sea is another ball, about eighteen thousand meters across, floating inside the crust.

She frowned. “Floating?”

He hesitated. “Well, I think so. How should I know? And between the Crust and the Quantum Sea is the Mantle — the Air we breathe — about six hundred meters deep.” He looked into her face, a disconcerting mixture of suspicion and pity evident there. “That’s the shape of the Star. The world. Any kid in Parz City could have told you all that.”

She shrugged. “Or any Human Being. Maybe there was no difference once.”

She wished Adda were awake, so she could learn more of the secret history of her people. She turned her face to the window.

In the last hours of the journey the inverted Crust landscape changed again.

Dura, with Farr now awake and at her side, stared up, fascinated, watching the slow evolution of the racing Crustscape. There was very little left of the native forest here, although a few trees still straggled from small copses. The clean, orderly regularity of the fields they’d passed under to the North — further upflux, as she was learning to call it — was breaking up into a jumble of forms and textures.

Farr pointed excitedly, his eyes round. Dura followed his gaze.

They weren’t alone in the sky, she realized: in the far, misted distance something moved — not a car; it was long, dark, like a blackened vortex line. And like Mixxax’s car it was heading for the Pole, threading along the Magfield.

She said, “That must be thousands of mansheights long.”

Toba glanced dismissively. “Lumber convoy,” he said. “Coming in from upflux. Nothing special. Damn slow, actually, if you get stuck behind one.”

Soon there were many more cars in the Air. Mixxax, grumbling, often had to slow as they joined streams of traffic sliding smoothly along the Magfield flux lines. The cars came in all shapes and sizes, from small one-person buggies to grand chariots drawn by teams of a dozen or more pigs. These huge cars, covered in ornate carvings, quite dwarfed poor Mixxax’s; Toba’s car, thought Dura, which had seemed so grand and terrifying out in the forest upflux, now appeared small, shabby and insignificant.

Much, she was coming to realize, like its owner.

The colors of the Crust fields were changing: deepening and becoming more vivid. Farr asked Mixxax, “Different types of wheat?”

Mixxax showed little interest in these rich regions from which he was excluded. “Maybe. Flowers, too.”

“Flowers?”

“Plants bred for their beauty — their shape, or color; or the scent of the photons they give off.” He smiled. “Actually, Ito grows some blooms which…”

“Who’s Ito?”

“My wife. Nothing as grand as this, of course; after all, we’re flying over the estates of Hork’s court now.”

Farr had his face pressed to a window of the car. “You mean people grow plants just for the way they look?”

“Yes.”

“But how do they live? Don’t they have to hunt for food, as we do?”

Dura shook her head. “Folk here don’t hunt, Farr. I’ve learned that much. They grow special kinds of grasses, and eat them.”

Mixxax laughed bitterly. “ ‘Folk here,’ as you call them, don’t even do that, I do that, in my scrubby farm on the edge of the upflux desert. I grow food to feed the rich folk in Parz… and I pay them taxes so they can afford to buy it. And that,” he finished bitterly, “is how Hork’s courtiers have enough leisure time to grow flowers.”

The logic of that puzzled Dura, but — understanding little — she let it pass.

Now, suddenly, the queue of cars in front of them cleared aside, and the view ahead was revealed.

Dura heard herself gasp.

Farr cried out, sounding like a small child. “What is it?”

Mixxax turned and grinned at him, evidently enjoying his moment of advantage. “That,” he said, “is Parz City. We have arrived.”

Muub arrived at the Reception Gallery shortly before the start of the Grand Tribute. He moved to the front of the Gallery, so that he could see down the full depth of Pall Mall, and selected a body-cocoon close to Vice-Chair Hork’s customary place. A servant drifted around him for a few moments, adjusting the cocoon so it fit snugly, and offered him drinks and other refreshments. Muub, unable to shake off weariness, found the harmless little man as irritating as an itch, and he chased him away.

Muub looked down. Pall Mall was the City’s main avenue. Broad and light-filled, it was a rectangular corridor cut vertically through the complex heart of Parz — from the elaborate superstructure of the Palace buildings at the topmost Upside, down through hundreds of dwelling levels, all the way to the Market, the vast, open forum at the center of the City. The Reception Gallery was poised at the head of Pall Mall, just below the Palace buildings themselves; Muub, trying to relax in his cocoon, was bathed in the subtly shaded light filtering down through the Palace’s lush gardens, and was able to survey, it seemed, the whole of the City as if it were laid open before him. Pall Mall itself glowed with light from the Air-shafts and wood-lamps which lined its perforated walls; threads of the shafts, glowing green and yellow, converged toward the Market itself, the City’s dusty heart. The great avenue — normally thronged with traffic — was deserted today, but Muub could make out spectators peering from doors and viewing-balconies: ordinary little faces turned up toward him like so many flowers. And in the Market itself — all of five thousand mansheights below the Palace — the Tribute procession was almost assembled, as thousands of common citizens gathered to present the finest fruit of this quarter’s labor to the Committee. No cocoons down there, of course; instead the Market was crisscrossed by ropes and bars to which people clung with their hands or legs, or hauled themselves along in search of vantage points. To Muub, staring down at the swarming activity, it was like gazing into a huge net full of young piglets.

The Gallery itself was laced with ropes of brushed leather — to guide those Committee members and courtiers, Muub thought sourly, too poor to be simply carried to their cocoons. The Gallery’s cool, piped Air was scented with fine Crust-flowers. Vice-Chair Hork was already in his place close to Muub, alongside the vacant cocoon reserved for his father, Hork IV. Hork glared ahead, sullen and silent in his bulk and glowering through his beard. Perhaps half the courtiers were in their places; but they had congregated toward the rear of the Gallery, evidently sensing, in their dim, self-seeking way, that today was not a good day to attract the attention of the mercurial Vice-Chair.