Malenfant grunted. “Guess you can’t go wandering across the reality lines without a little confusion.”

But Nemoto would not take the matter lightly. “This is not right, Malenfant. All this mixing. There is a reason the primitive hominids became extinct, a reason why the mouse deer’s descendants evolved new forms. An ecology is like a machine, where all parts work together, interlocking. You see?”

Malenfant said, amused, “These deer and antelopes seem to have been prospering before they ran into some hunter’s crossbow bolt.”

“It shouldn’t be this way, Malenfant. To meddle with ecologies, to short-circuit them, is irresponsible.”

Malenfant shrugged. “Sure. And we cut down the forests to build shopping malls.” He was feeling restless; maybe his first shock was wearing off. He’d had enough of McCann; he was eager to get out of here, get back to the lander — and progress his primary mission, which was to find Emma.

But when he expressed this to Nemoto she laughed harshly. “Malenfant, we barely managed to survive our first few minutes after landing. Here we are safe. Have patience.”

He seethed. But without her support, he didn’t see what he could do about it.

Manekatopokanemahedo:

When she was Mapped to the Market — when the information that comprised her had been squeezed through cracks in the quantum foam that underlay all space and time — she was no longer, quite, herself, and that disturbed her greatly.

Manekato was used to Mapping. The Farm was large enough that walking, or transport by Workers, was not always rapid enough. But Mappings covering such a short distance were brief and isomorphic: she felt the same coming out of the destination station as entering it (just as, of course, principles of the identity of indiscernible objects predicted she should).

A Mapping spanning continents was altogether more challenging. To compensate for differences in latitude and altitude and seasons — early summer there, falling into autumn here — and to adjust for momentum differences — people on the far side of the spinning Earth were moving in the opposite direction to her — such a Mapping could be no more than homomorphic. What came out looked like her, felt like her. But it was not indiscernible from the original; it could not be her.

Still, despite these philosophical drawbacks, the process was painless, and when she walked off the Mapping platform, her knuckles tentatively touching new ground, she found herself comfortable. The air was hot, humid, but caused her no distress, and even its thinness at this higher altitude did not give her any discomfort.

And the air was still. There was no Wind. Thanks to the Air Wall wrapped around it, the Market was the only place on Earth from which the perpetual Wind was excluded. She had been prepared for this intellectually, of course. But to stand here in this pond of still air — not to feel the caressing shove of the Wind on her back — was utterly strange.

This crowded Mapping station was full of strangers. She peered around, feeling conspicuous, bewildered. Some of the people here were small, some tall, some squat, some thin; some were coated with hair that was red or black or brown, and some had no hair at all;

some crawled close to the ground, and some almost walked upright, like their most distant ancestors, their hands barely brushing the ground. Manekato, who had spent her whole life on a Farm where everybody looked alike, tried to mask her shock and revulsion at so much difference.

She was met outside the station by a Worker, a runner from the Astrologers. She slid easily onto its broad back, wrapping her long arms around its chest, and allowed herself to be carried away.

Her first impression of the Market was of waste. The streets were broad, the buildings an inefficient variety of designs, and she could spot immediately places where heat would leak or dust gather, or where the layout must prevent optimally short journeys from being concluded.

All of this jarred with her instinct. The goal for every Farmer was to squeeze the maximum effectiveness and efficiency from every last atom — and beyond, to the infinitesimal. The mastery of matter at the subatomic level, resulting in such everyday wonders as Mapping and Workers, had brought that ultimate dream a little closer.

But, she reminded herself, this was the Market, not a Farm.

In the deepest past there had been a multitude of markets, where Farmers traded goods and information and wisdom. The transient population of the markets had always been predominantly male. Women were more tightly bound to the land, locked into the matriarchal Lineages that had owned the land since the times almost before history; men were itinerant, sent to other Farms for the purpose of trade, and marriage.

But as technology had advanced and the Farms had become increasingly self sufficient, the primary function of the markets had dwindled. One by one they had fallen into disuse. But the role of the markets as centres of innovation had been recognized — and, perhaps, their purpose in providing an alternate destiny for rootless men and boys. So some of the markets had been preserved.

At last only one Market remained: the grandest and most famous, perched here on the eroded peak of its equatorial mountain, supported now by tithes from Farms around the world. Here men, and a few women, dreamed their dreams of how differently things might be — and enough of those innovative dreams bore fruit that it was worth preserving.

It had been this way for two hundred thousand years.

The Worker carried her away from the Market’s crowded centre towards its fringe. The crowds thinned out, and Manekato felt a calming relief to be alone. Alongside an impossibly tall building the Worker paused and hunched down, letting her slip to the ground.

A door dilated in the side of the building. She glanced into the interior; it was filled with darkness.

Reluctant to enter immediately, she loped further along the gleaming, dust-free road. Not far beyond the building the ground fell away. She was approaching the rim of the summit plateau, worn smooth by the feet and hands of visitors. She leaned forward curiously. The mountain’s shallow flanks fell away into thicker, murky air; far below she glimpsed green growing things.

And she saw the Air Wall.

It was like a bank of windblown cloud, moving swiftly, grey and boiling. But this cloud bank hung vertically from the sky, and the clouds streamed horizontally past her. Now that it was not masked. by the buildings she could see how the great Wall curved around the mountain-top, enclosing it neatly. It stretched down like a curtain to the ground below, where dust storms perpetually beat against the struggling vegetation, and it stretched up towards the sky.

It was not easy for her to look up, for her back tilted forward, and her neck was thick, heavily muscled, adapted to fight the Wind. Besides, at home there was generally nothing to see but a lid of streaked, scudding cloud. But now she tipped back awkwardly, raising her chinless jaw.

It was like peering up into a tunnel, lined by scraps of hurrying cloud. And at the very end of the tunnel there was a patch of clear blue.

She had never before seen the sky beyond the clouds.

She shuddered. She hurried inside the building.

And there she met her brother.

Reid Malenfant:

While he waited for an opportunity to progress his mission, Malenfant ate and drank as much as he could, and after the first day put his body through some gentle exercise. He stretched and pushed up and pounded around the red dust of the neat little stockade in his vest and shorts, while Ham servants watched with a kind of absent curiosity, and Runners hooted and shook their shackling ropes. The low gravity made him feel stronger, but conversely the reduced oxygen content of the low-pressure air weakened him. If he over-exerted himself he would soon run out of air; his chest would ache, and, in the worst cases, black spots would gather around his vision.