Muub smiled. “A wise observation.”
Hork laughed, displaying well-maintained teeth. “And you’re a patronizing old fool who pushes his luck… Martyrs. Yet another subtlety of human interaction which seems to evade my poor, absent father.” Now Hork looked piercingly at Muub; the Physician found himself flinching. “And you,” Hork said. “Do you scent rebellion in the Air?”
Muub thought carefully. He knew he wasn’t under any personal suspicion; but he also knew that the Vice-Chair — unlike his father — took careful note of anything said to him. And Hork had dozens, hundreds of informants spread right throughout Parz and its hinterland. “No, sir. Although there are plenty of grumbles — and plenty of folk ready to blame the Committee for our predicament.”
“As if we had called the Glitches down on our own heads?” Hork wriggled in his cocoon, folds of brushed leather rippling over his ample form. “You know,” he mused, “if only that were true. If only the Glitches were human in origin, to be canceled at a human command. But then, the scholars tell us — repeating what little wisdom was allowed to survive the Reformation — man was brought to this Mantle by the Ur-humans, modified to survive here. If once we had such control over our destiny, why should we not regain it, ultimately?” He smiled. “Well, Physician?”
Muub returned the smile. “You’ve a lively mind, sir, and I enjoy debating such subjects with you. But I prefer to restrict my attention to the practical. The achievable.”
Hork scowled, his plaited hair-tubes waving with an elegance that made Muub abruptly aware of his own baldness. “Maybe. But let’s not forget that that was the argument of the Reformers, ten generations ago. And their purges and expulsions left us in such ignorance we can’t even measure the damage they did…
“Anyway, it’s not revolt I fear, Physician. It’s more the feasibility of government itself — I mean the viability of our state, regardless of whoever sits in my father’s chair.” The man’s wide, fleshy face turned to Muub now, full of unaccustomed doubt. “Do you understand me, Muub? Damn few do, I can tell you, inside this wretched court or out.”
Muub was impressed — not for the first time — by the younger Hork’s acuity. “Perhaps, you fear, the Glitches will render an organized society like Parz City impossible. Revolts will become irrelevant. Our civilization itself will fall.”
“Exactly,” Hork said, sounding almost grateful. “No more City — no more tithe-collectors, or Crust-flower parks, or artists or scientists. Or Physicians. We’ll all have to Wave off to the upflux and hunt boar.”
Muub laughed. “There are a few who would like to see the back of the tithes.”
“Only fools who cannot perceive the benefits. When every man must not only maintain his own scrubby herd of pigs, but must make, by hand, every tool he uses, like the poorest upfluxer… then, perhaps, he will look back on taxation with nostalgic affection.”
Muub frowned, scratching at one eyecup. “Do you think such a collapse is near?”
“Not yet,” Hork said. “Not unless the Glitches really do smash us wide open. But it’s possible, and growing more so. And only a fool closes his eyes to the possible.”
Muub, wary of what traps might lie under the surface of that remark, turned to stare down through the dusty, illuminated Air of Pall Mall.
Hork growled, “Now I’ve embarrassed you. Come on, Muub, don’t start acting like one of these damn piglet-courtiers. I value your conversation. I didn’t mean to imply my father is such a fool.”
“…But he does not necessarily share your perspective.”
“No. Damn it.” Hork shook his head. “And he won’t give me the power to do anything about it. It’s frustrating.” Hork looked at Muub. “I hear you saw him recently. Where is he?”
Shouldn’t you know? “He’s at his garden, at the Crust. He can’t take the thin Air, of course, so he mostly stays in his car, watching the coolies getting on with their work.”
“So he’s healthy?”
Muub sighed. “Your father is an old man. He’s fragile. But — yes; he is well.”
Hork nodded. “I’m glad.” He glanced at the Physician, seeking his reaction. “I mean it, Muub. I get frustrated with him because I’m not always sure he addresses the key issues. But Hork is still my father. And besides,” he went on pragmatically, “the last thing we need right now is a succession crisis.”
There was a buzz of conversation from around the Gallery.
Hork leaned forward in his cocoon. “What’s going on?”
Muub pointed. “The pipers are moving into position.” There were a hundred of the pipers, dressed in bright, eyecatching clothes, now Waving out of doorways all along Pall Mall and taking up their positions, lining the route of the parade. The closest pipers — four of them, one to each of the Mall’s complex walls — were earnest young men, efficiently stoking the small furnaces they carried on belts around their waists. Fine, tapered tubes led from the furnaces in elaborate whorls to wide, flower-like horns; the horns of polished wood gaped above the head of the pipers like the mouths of shining predators.
“There!” Hork cried, pointing down the avenue, his face illuminated with a mixture of excitement and avarice.
Muub, suppressing a sigh, leaned further forward and squinted down the Mall, trying to pick out the distant specks in the Air that would be the approaching Tribute parade: earnest, overweight citizens bearing vast sheaves of wheat, or grotesquely bloated Air-pigs.
The pipers pushed valves on their furnace-boxes. Within each horn, complex Air patterns swirled, sending pulses of heat along the necks of the horns — pulses which emerged from the horns, by a process which had always seemed magical to the resolutely non-musical Muub, as stirring peals of sound.
Far below, in the Market, the crowd roared.
Toba Mixxax twitched his reins and stared unblinking out of his window. “I’m going to take him straight into the Hospital. The Common Good. It’s a decent place. Hork’s own Physician runs it…”
Cars of all sizes came hurtling past them in a constant, random stream. Pig teams farted clouds of green gas. Speakers blared. Toba yelled back through his own car’s system, but the amplified voices were too distorted for Dura to understand what was being said.
It was, frankly, terrifying. Dura, hovering with Farr behind Toba’s seat and staring out at the chaotic whirl of hurtling wooden boxes, bit the back of her hand to avoid crying out.
But somehow Toba Mixxax was managing not only to avoid collisions but also to drive them forward — slowly, but forward — to the staggering bulk of the City itself.
“Of course it’s not the cheapest. The Common Good, I mean.” Toba laughed hollowly. “But then, frankly, you’re not going to be able to afford even the cheapest. So you may as well not be able to afford the best.”
“Your talk means little, Toba Mixxax,” Dura said. “Perhaps you should concentrate on the cars.”
Toba shook his head. “Just my luck to come into town with three upfluxers on the day of the Grand Tribute. Today of all days. And…”
Dura gave up listening. She tried to ignore the cloud of hurtling cars in the foreground of her vision, to see beyond them to Parz itself.
The South Magnetic Pole itself was spectacular enough — like a huge artifact, an immense sculpting of Magfield and spin lines. Vortex lines followed — almost — the shape of the Magfield, so it was easy to trace the spectacular curvature of the magnetic flux. It was nothing like the gentle, easy, Star-girdling curvature of her home region, far upflux; here, at the furthest downflux, the vortex lines converged from all over the Mantle and plunged into the bulk of the Star around the Pole itself, forming a funnel of Magfield delineated by sparkling, wavering vortex lines.