Toba brought them to the widest avenue yet. Its walls — at least a hundred mansheights apart — were lined with green-glowing lamps and elaborate windows and doorways. Toba pulled the car out of the traffic streams and hauled on his reins. “Here you are — Pall Mall,” he announced. He embraced Ito. “I’ll head off to the farm; I’ll be back in a couple of days. Enjoy yourselves…”

Ito led Dura out of the car. Dura watched, uncertain, as the car pulled away into the traffic.

The avenue was the largest enclosed space Dura had ever seen — surely the largest in the City itself. It was an immense, vertical tunnel, crammed with cars and people and full of noise and light. The two women were close to one wall; Dura could see how the wall was lined with windows, all elaborately decorated and lettered, beyond which were arrays of multicolored clothes, bags, scrapers, bottles and globes, elaborately carved lamps, finely crafted artifacts Dura could not even recognize. People — hundreds of them — swarmed across the wall like foraging animals; they chattered excitedly to each other as they plunged through doorways.

Ito smiled. “Shops,” she said. “Don’t worry about the crush. It’s always like this.”

All four walls of the avenue were lined with the “shops.” The wall opposite, a full hundred mansheights away, was a distant tapestry of color and endless human motion, rendered a little indistinct by the dusty Air; lamps sparkled in rows across its face and shafts of light shone from round ducts.

Pall Mall was alive with traffic. At first the swarming, braying cars seemed to move chaotically, but slowly Dura discerned patterns: there were several streams, she saw, moving up and down the avenue parallel to its walls, and every so often a car would veer — perilously, it seemed to her — from one stream to another, or would pull off Pall Mall into a side-street. The Air was thick with green jetfart, alive with the squealing of pigs. For a while Dura managed to follow Toba’s car as it worked its way along the avenue, but she soon lost it in the swirling lanes of traffic.

There was a strong, sweet smell, almost overpowering. It reminded Dura of the scented towels in Ito’s bathroom.

Ito, touching her arm, drew her toward the shops. “Come on, dear. People are starting to stare…”

Dura could hardly help goggle at the people thronging the shops. Men and women alike were dressed in extravagantly colored robes and coveralls shaped to reveal flashes of flesh; there were hats and jewels everywhere, and hair sculpted into huge, multicolored piles.

Ito led Dura through two or three shops. She showed her jewelry, ornaments, fine hats and clothes; Dura handled the goods, wondering at the fine craftsmanship, but quite unable to make sense of Ito’s patient explanations of the items’ use.

Ito’s persistence seemed to be wearing a little now, and they returned to the main avenue. “We’ll go to the Market,” Ito said. “You’ll enjoy that.”

They joined a stream of people heading — more or less — for that end of Pall Mall deepest inside the City. Almost at once Dura was thumped in the small of her back by something soft and round, like a weak fist; she whirled, scrabbling ineffectually at her clothes in search of her knife.

A man hurried past her. He was dressed in a flowing, sparkling robe. In his soft white hands he held leaders to two fat piglets, and he was being dragged in an undignified way — it seemed to Dura — after the piglets, his feet dangling through their clouds of jetfart. It had been one of the piglets that had hit Dura’s back.

The man barely glanced at her as he passed.

Ito was grinning at her.

“What’s wrong with him? Can’t he Wave like everyone else?”

“Of course he can. But he can afford not to.” Ito shook her head at Dura’s confusion. “Oh, come on, it would take too long to explain.”

Dura sniffed. The sweet smell was even stronger now. “What is that?”

“Pig farts, of course. Perfumed, naturally…”

They dropped gently down the avenue, Waving easily. Dura found herself embarrassed by the awkward silences between herself and this kindly woman — but there was so little common ground between them.

“Why do you live in the City?” Dura asked. “I mean, when Toba’s farm is so far away…”

“Well, there’s my own job,” Ito said. “The farm is large, but it’s in a poor area. Right on the fringe of the hinterland, so far upflux that it’s hard even to get coolies to work out there, for fear of…” She stopped.

“For fear of upfluxers. It’s all right.”

“The farm doesn’t bring in as much as it should. And everything seems to cost so much…”

“But you could live in your farm.” The thought of that appealed to Dura. She liked the idea of being out in the open, away from this stuffy warren — and yet being surrounded by an area of cultivation, of order; to know that your area of control extended many hundreds of mansheights all around you.

“Perhaps,” Ito said reluctantly. “But who wants to be a subsistence farmer? And there’s Cris’s schooling to think of.”

“You could teach him yourself.”

Ito shook her head patiently. “No, dear, not as well as the professionals. And they are only to be found here, in the City.” Her tired, careworn look returned. “And I’m determined Cris is going to get the best schooling we can afford. And stick it to the end, despite his dreams of Surfing.”

Surfing?

Dura fell silent, trying to puzzle all this out.

Ito brightened. “Besides — with all respect to you and your people, dear — I wouldn’t want to live on some remote farm, when I could be surrounded by all this. The shops, the theaters, the libraries at the University…” She looked at Dura curiously. “I know this is all strange to you, but don’t you feel the buzz of life here? And if, one day, we could move a bit further Upside…”

“Upside?”

“Closer to the Palace.” Ito pointed upward, back the way they had come. “At the top of the City. All of this side of the City, above the Market, is Upside.”

“And below the Market…”

Ito blinked. “Why, that’s the Downside, of course. Where the Harbor is, and the dynamo sheds, and cargo ports, and sewage warrens.” She sniffed. “Nobody would live down there by choice.”

Dura Waved patiently along, the unfamiliar clothes scraping across her legs and back.

As they descended, the walls of Pall Mall curved away from her like an opening throat, and the avenue merged smoothly into the Market. This was a spherical chamber perhaps double the width of Pall Mall itself. The Market seemed to be the end-point of a dozen streets — not just the Mall — and traffic streams poured through it constantly. Cars and people swarmed over each other chaotically; in the dust and noise, Dura saw drivers lean out of their cars, bellowing obscure profanities at each other. There were shops here, but they were just small, brightly colored stalls strung in rows across the chamber. Stallkeepers hovered at all angles, brandishing their wares and shouting at passing customers.

At the center of the Market was a wheel of wood, about a mansheight across. It was mounted on a huge wooden spindle which crossed the chamber from side to side, cutting through the shambolic stalls; the spindle must have been hewn from a single Crust-tree, Dura thought, and she wondered how the carpenters had managed to bring it here, into the heart of the City. The wheel had five spokes, from which ropes dangled. The shape of the wheel looked vaguely familiar to Dura, and after a moment’s thought she recalled the odd little talisman which Toba wore around his neck, the man spreadeagled against a wheel. Wasn’t that five-spoked too?

Ito said, “Isn’t this great? These little stalls don’t look like much but you can get some real bargains. Good quality stuff, too…”

Dura found herself backing up, back toward the Mall they’d emerged from. Here, right in the belly of this huge City, the noise, heat and constant motion seemed to crowd around her, threatening to overwhelm her.