“And you feel wonderful.”
“Yeah. But if you use it too often, you can’t recover. The capillaries stay dilated…”
Adda gazed around the bar, at this safe, marvelous place. “That seems all right to me.”
“Sure. Your head would be a wonderful place to live in. But you couldn’t function, Adda; you couldn’t do a job. And if it gets bad enough you couldn’t even feed yourself, without prompting. But, yes, you’d feel wonderful about it.”
“And I don’t suppose this City is so forgiving of people who can’t hold down jobs.”
“Not much.”
“Don’t the Harbor managers worry they’re going to lose too many of their Fishermen, to this cake stuff? Why dole it out free?”
Bzya shrugged. “They lose a few. But they don’t care. Adda, we’re expendable. It doesn’t take long to train up a new Fisherman, and there’re always plenty of recruits, in the Downside. And they know the cake keeps us here in the bars, happy, quiet and available. They gain more than they lose.” He chomped another mouthful. “And so do I.”
Adda worked his way slowly through the bowl, cautiously observing the cake’s increasing effects on him. Every so often he moved his fingers and feet, testing his coordination. If he got to the point where he even thought he might be losing control, he promised himself, he’d stop.
The Fisherman had fallen silent; his huge fingers toyed with the cake.
“I hear you’re on double shifts. Whatever that means.”
Bzya smiled, indulgent. “It means I’m assigned to the Bells twice as frequently as usual. It’s because they’re running twice as many dives as usual.”
“Why?”
“The upflux Glitch. No wood coming into the City. Not enough, anyway. People bitch about food rationing, but the wood shortage is just as important in the longer term. And let’s hope the day never comes when they have to ration beercake… Anyway, they want more Corestuff metal, to use as building material.”
“Building? Are they extending the City?”
“Rebuilding. It goes on all the time, Adda, mostly deep in the guts of the place. Small repairs, maintenance. Although,” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially, “there are rumors that it isn’t just the need to keep up routine repairs that’s prompted this increased demand.”
“What, then?”
“They’re trying to strengthen the City’s structure. Rebuild the skeleton with more Corestuff. They’re not shouting about it for fear of causing panic; but they’re endeavoring to make it more robust in the face of future problems. Like a closer Glitch.”
Adda frowned. “Can they do that? Will it work?”
“I’m not an engineer. I don’t know.” Bzya chewed on the cake, absently. “But I doubt it,” he said without emotion. “The City’s so huge; you’d have to rip most of its guts out to strengthen it significantly. And it’s a ramshackle structure. I mean, it grew, it was never planned. It was built for space, not strength.”
Parz had been one of the first permanent settlements founded after humanity was scattered through the Mantle following the Core Wars. At first Parz was a random construct of ropes and wood, no more significant than a dozen others, drifting freely above the Pole. But at the Pole the bodies of men and women were significantly stronger, and so Parz grew rapidly; and its position at the only geographically unique point in the southern hemisphere of the Mantle gave it strategic and psychological significance. Soon it had become a trading center, and had wealth enough to afford a ruling class — the first in the Mantle since the Wars. The Committee had been founded, and the growth and unification of Parz had proceeded apace.
Parz’s wealth exploded when the Harbor was established — Parz was the first and only community in the Mantle able to extract and exploit the valuable Corestuff. Soon the scattered community of the cap of Mantle around Parz, the region eventually to be called the hinterland, fell under Parz’s economic influence. Eventually the hinterland and City worked as a single economic unit, with the raw materials and taxes of the hinterland flowing into Parz, with Corestuff and — more importantly — the stability and regulation provided by Parz’s law washing back in return. Eventually only the far upflux, bleak and inhospitable, remained disunited from Parz, home to a few tribes of hunters, and bands of Parz exiles like the Human Beings themselves.
Adda bit into more cake. “I’m surprised people accepted being taken over like that. Didn’t anybody fight?”
Bzya shook his head. “It wasn’t seen as a conquest. Parz is not an empire, although it might seem that way to you. Adda, people remembered the time before the Wars, when humans lived in safety and security throughout the Mantle. We couldn’t return to those times; we’d lost too much. But Parz was better than nothing: it offered stability, regulation, a framework to live in. People gripe about their tithes — and nobody’s going to pretend that the Committee get it right all the time — but most of us would prefer taxes to living wild. With all respect to you, my friend.” He bit into his cake. “And that’s still true today; as true as it ever was.”
Two of the bowls were already empty. Adda felt the seduction of this place, that he could have sat here in this companionable glow with Bzya for a long time. “Do you really believe that? Look at your own position, Fisherman; look at the dangers you face daily. Is this really the best of all possible lives for you?”
Bzya grinned. “Well, I’d exchange places with Hork any day, if I thought I could do his job. Of course I would. And there are plenty of people closer to me, in the Harbor, who I’d happily throttle, if I thought it would make the world a better place. If I didn’t think they’d just bring in somebody worse. I accept I’m at the bottom of the heap, here, Adda. Or close to it. But I believe it’s the way of things. I will fight injustice and inequity — but I accept the need for the existence of the heap itself.” He looked carefully at Adda. “Does that make sense?”
Adda thought it over. “No,” he said at last. “But it doesn’t seem to matter much.”
Bzya laughed. “Now you see why they give us this stuff for free. Here.” He held out the third bowl. “Your good health, my friend.”
Adda reached for the cake.
A couple of days later Bzya’s shifts should have allowed him another break. Adda searched for Farr, but couldn’t find him, so he went down to the bar alone. He entered, awkward and self-conscious in his dressings, peering into the gloomier corners.
He couldn’t find Bzya, and he didn’t stay.
21
In the interior of the Star there were no sharp boundaries, merely gradual changes in the dominant form of matter as pressures and densities increased. So there was no dramatic plunge, no great impacts as the “Flying Pig” hauled itself deeper: just a slow, depressing diminution of the last vestiges of Air-light. And the glow cast by the wood-lamps fixed to the walls was no substitute; with its smoky greenness and long, flickering shadows, the gloom in the cabin was quite sinister.
To Dura, hunched over herself in her corner of the ship, this long, slow descent into darkness was like a lingering death.
Soon, though, the ride became much less even. The ship swayed alarmingly and at one point was nearly upended. The laboring pigs, their shadows huge on the ship’s roof, bleated pathetically; Hork laughed, his eyecups pools of green darkness.
Dura’s fingers scrabbled over the smooth wooden walls in search of purchase. “What’s happening? Why are we being pummeled like this?”