“It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Mur, hold her neck and shoulders. You’ll have to brace her there; if you Wave a little you’ll hold yourself in place, and…”

“I know what to do,” Mur snapped. Still holding Dia’s small head against his chest, he grasped her shoulders and Waved slowly, his strong legs beating at the Air.

Dura felt awkward, inadequate. Damn it, she thought, aware of the pettiness of her own reaction, damn it, I’ve never done this on my own before. What do they expect?

What next? “Farr, you’ll have to help me.”

The boy hovered in the Air a mansheight away, his mouth gaping. “Dura, I…”

“Come on, Farr, there’s nobody else,” Dura said. As he came close to her she whispered, “I know you’re frightened. I’m frightened too. But not as much as Dia. It’s not so difficult as all that, anyway. We’ll do fine…”

As long as nothing goes wrong, she thought.

“All right,” Farr said. “What do I do?”

Dura took hold of Dia’s right leg, wrapping her fingers tightly around the lower calf. The woman’s muscles were trembling and slick with Air-sweat, and Dura could feel the legs pushing apart; Dia’s vagina was opening like a small mouth, popping softly. “Take her other leg,” she told Farr. “Like I’ve done. Get a tight hold; you’re going to have to pull hard.”

Farr, hesitant and obviously scared, did as he was told.

The baby moved, visibly, further into the pelvic area. It was like watching a morsel of food disappear down some huge neck. Dia arched back her head and moaned; the muscles in her neck were stiff and prominent.

“It’s time,” Dura said. She glanced around quickly. She and Farr were in position, holding Dia’s ankles; Mur was already Waving, quite hard, pushing at his wife’s shoulders, so that the little ensemble drifted slowly through the Air. Both Mur’s and Farr’s eyes were locked on Dura’s face.

Dia called out again, wordlessly.

Dura leaned back, grasping Dia’s calf, and pushed firmly with her legs at the Magfield. “Farr! Do what I’m doing. We have to open her legs. Go on; don’t be afraid.”

Farr watched her for a moment, then leaned back and Waved in a copy of his sister’s movements. Mur cried out and shoved hard at his wife’s shoulders, balancing Farr and Dura.

Dia’s legs parted easily. She screamed.

Farr’s hands slid over Dia’s convulsing calf; in his shock he seemed to stumble in the Air, his eyes wide. Dia’s thighs twitched back toward each other, the muscles shuddering.

“No!” Mur shouted. “Farr, keep going; you mustn’t stop now!”

Farr’s distress was evident. “But we’re hurting her.”

“No.”

Damn it, Dura thought, Farr should know what’s happening here. Dia’s pelvis was hinged; with the birth so close the cartilage locking the two segments of the pelvis together would have dissolved into Dia’s blood, leaving her pelvis easily opened. Her birth canal and vagina were already stretching, gaping wide. Everything was working together to allow the baby’s head an easy passage from the womb to the Air. It’s easy, Dura thought. And it’s easy because the Ur-humans designed it to be easy, maybe even easier than for themselves…

“It’s meant to be like this,” she shouted at Farr. “Believe me. You’ll hurt her if you stop now, if you don’t help us. And you’ll hurt the baby.”

Dia opened her eyes. The cups brimmed with tears. “Please, Farr,” she said, reaching toward him vaguely. “It’s all right. Please.”

He nodded, mumbling apologies, and pulled once more at Dia’s leg.

“Easy,” Dura called, trying to match his motion. “Not too fast, and not jerkily; nice and smooth…”

The birth canal gaped like a green-dark tunnel. Dia’s legs parted further than it would have seemed possible; Dura could see, under the thin flesh around the girl’s hips, how the pelvis had hinged wide.

Dia screamed; her stomach convulsed.

The baby came suddenly, wriggling down the birth passage like an Air-piglet. It squirted into the Air with a soft, sucking noise; droplets of dense, green-gold Air sprayed around it. As soon as it was out of the canal the baby started to Wave, instinctively but feebly, across the Magfield within which it would be embedded for all of its life.

Dura’s eyes locked on Farr. He was following the baby’s uncertain progress through the Air, his mouth slack with wonder; but he was still firmly holding Dia’s leg. “Farr,” Dura commanded. “Come back toward me now. Slowly, steadily — that’s it…”

Dia’s only danger now was that her hinged bones would not settle neatly back into place without dislocation; and even if all went well, for a few days she would be barely able to move as the halves of her pelvis knitted together once more. With Dura and Farr guiding them, her legs closed smoothly; Dura could see the bones around Dia’s pelvis sliding smoothly back into place.

Mur had managed to snatch a rag, a remnant of some piece of clothing, from the littered Air; now he wiped tenderly at Dia’s relaxing, half-sleeping face. Dura took some of the rag and mopped at Dia’s thighs and belly.

Farr Waved slowly toward them. He had chased after and caught the baby, Dura saw; now he held the child against his chest as proudly as if it were his own, uncaring of the birth fluid which pooled on his chest. The infant’s mouth was still distorted into the characteristic horn-shape it had needed to lock on to the womb-wall nipples which sustained it before its birth; and its tiny penis had popped out of the protective cache between its legs.

Farr, grinning, held the baby out to its mother. “It’s a boy,” he said.

“Jai,” Dia whispered. “He’s Jai.”

Forty Human Beings had survived, of fifty. All but six adult Air-pigs, four of them male, were gone. The Net, torn and scattered, was irreparable.

Logue was lost.

The tribe huddled together in the Magfield, surrounded by featureless Air. Mur and Dia clung together, cradling their new, mewling baby. Dura uncomfortably led the Human Beings through a brief service of prayers, calling down the beneficence of the Xeelee. Adda stayed close to her, silent and strong despite his age, and Farr’s hand was a constant presence in hers.

Then the bodies they’d managed to retrieve were released into the Air; they slid, dwindling, down to the Quantum Sea.

Philas, wife of the dead Esk, approached Dura after the service, Waving stiffly. The two women studied each other, not speaking; Adda and the rest moved away, averting their faces.

Philas was a thin, tired-looking woman; her uneven hair was tied back with a piece of rope, making her face look skeletal. She stared at Dura, as if daring her to grieve.

The Human Beings were monogamous… but there were more adult women than men. So monogamy doesn’t make sense, Dura thought wearily, and yet we practice it anyway. Or rather, we pay lip-service to it.

Esk had loved them both… at any rate, he had shown tenderness to them both. And his relationship with Dura had been no secret to Philas, or to anyone else, for that matter. It had certainly done Philas no harm.

Perhaps Philas and Dura could help each other now, Dura thought. Perhaps hold each other. But they wouldn’t even speak about it.

And she, Dura, would not even be allowed to grieve openly.

At last Philas spoke. “What are we going to do, Dura? Should we rebuild the Net? What should we do?”

Staring into the woman’s dull eyecups, Dura wanted to retreat into herself, to bring forward her own grief for her father, for Esk, as a shield against Philas’s demands. I don’t know. I don’t know. How could I know?

But there was nowhere to retreat.