…But there was something in those eyecups, she saw. There was flesh in there, spheres which moved independently of the face, like animals trapped inside the skull.
She felt the leaves rise in her throat; she wanted to scream, scrabble at the walls of the craft to escape this. She held herself as still as she could, forcing herself to study the vision.
“It’s like a woman,” she whispered to Hork. “A human. But that’s impossible. How could a human survive down here? There’s no Air to breathe, or…”
Hork sounded impatient, though his breath still rattled with fear. “This isn’t a human, obviously. It’s… something else, using the form of a human. A human-shaped sac of fire.”
“What else? What is it?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Do you think it’s Xeelee?”
“No human has ever seen a Xeelee. Anyway, the Xeelee are just legend.”
Astonishingly, she found anger building inside her. At a time like this, she felt patronized. She glared at him and hissed, “Legends are why you brought me here, remember?”
The Chair of Parz City shot an exasperated glance at her; then he turned to face the woman-thing, and when he spoke Dura found herself admiring the steadiness of his tone. “You,” he challenged. “Intruder. What do you want with us?”
The silence, broken by the wheezing of the pigs, seemed to stretch; Dura, staring at the ugly flaps of flesh which covered the woman-thing’s ear-cavities, wondered if it could hear Hork, still less answer him.
Then the woman-thing opened its mouth. Light poured out of its straining lips, and a sound emerged — deeper than any voice originating in a human chest — and, at first, formless.
But, Dura realized, wondering, words were beginning to emerge.
I… We’ve been expecting you. You took your own sweet time. And we had a devil of a job to find you. It looked around at the “Pig,” its neck swiveling like a ball joint, unnaturally. Is this the best you could do? We need you to come a lot deeper than this; transmission conditions are awful…
Hork exchanged an astounded glance with Dura.
“Can you understand me?” he asked the thing. “Are you a Colonist?”
“Of course it can understand you, Hork,” Dura hissed, exasperated in her turn. She felt fascinated beyond her horror of this bag of skin. “How is it you can speak our language?”
The thing’s mouth worked, obscenely reminiscent of an Air-pig’s, and the flesh-balls in the eyecups rolled; as she watched, it seemed to Dura that the woman-thing appeared less and less human. It was merely a puppet of some unfathomable hyperonic creature beyond the hull, she realized; she found herself glancing through the window, wondering what immense, dark eyecups might be fixed on her even now.
The woman-thing smiled. It was a ghastly parody.
Of course I can understand you. I’m a Colonist, as you call us… but I’m also your grandmother. Once or twice removed, anyway…
A week before Games Day, Muub, the Physician, sent Adda an invitation to join him to view the Games from the Committee Box, high over the Stadium. Adda felt patronized: he had no doubt that in Muub’s eyes he remained an unreconstructed savage from the upflux, and to Muub, Adda’s reactions to the City’s great events would be amusements — entertainments in themselves.
But he didn’t refuse immediately. Perhaps Farr would enjoy seeing the Games from such a privileged vantage point. Farr’s mood remained complex, difficult for Adda to break into. In fact he saw little of Farr these days; the boy seemed determined to spend as much time as possible with the rebellious, remote community of Surfers who lived half their lives clinging to the City’s Skin.
In the end, Farr wouldn’t come to the Games.
The City wasn’t what it was. Even in Adda’s short time of acquaintance with it, Parz, battered by the consequences of the Glitches, had lost some of its heart. In the great avenues half the shops and cafés were closed up now, and the ostentatiously rich with their trains of perfumed Air-piglets were conspicuous by their absence. There was a sense — not exactly of crisis — but of austerity. Times were difficult; there was much to be done and endured before things improved and the City could enjoy itself again.
But the Games were going to be different, it seemed. As the Day approached he sensed a quickening of the City’s pulse. There seemed to be more people on the streets, arguing and gambling over the outcome of the various strangely named events. The Luge. The Slalom. The Pole-Divers… The Games would be like a holiday for the City, a relief from drudgery.
Adda was curious.
So, in the end, he decided to accept Muub’s invitation.
The Stadium was a huge, clearwood-walled box fixed to one of the City’s upper edges. The Committee Box was a balcony which hung over the Stadium itself from the City’s upper surface, and to reach it Adda had to travel to the uppermost Upside, to the Garden surrounding the Palace itself. Feeling more out of place than ever in the opulent surroundings, he Waved past the miniature, sculpted Crust-trees, brandishing his begrimed bandaging like a weapon. He was subjected to scrutiny by three layers of contemptuous Guards before he reached the Box itself; he enjoyed insulting them as they searched his person.
At last he was ushered into the Box, a square platform twenty mansheights on a side domed over by clearwood. Neat rows of cocoons filled the platform, bound loosely to the structure by soft threads. About half the cocoons were already full, Adda saw; courtiers and other grandees nestled in the soft leather of the cocoons like huge, glittering insect larvae. Their talk was bright and loud, their laughter braying; there was a heavy, cloying scent of perfume.
Adda was escorted to the front row of the Box by a small, humble-looking woman in a drab tunic. Muub was already there. He rested in his cocoon with his long, thin arms folded calmly against his chest, and his bare scalp shone softly as he surveyed the Stadium below. He turned to greet Adda with a nod. With ill grace Adda let the woman servant help him into a spare cocoon; his legs remained stiff and his right shoulder barely mobile, so that, embarrassingly, he had to be levered into the cocoon as if he were a statue of wood. Another woman, smiling, approached him with a box of sweetmeats; Adda chased her away with a snarl.
Muub smiled at him indulgently. “I’m glad you decided to come, Adda. I believe you will find the Day interesting.”
Adda nodded, trying to be gracious. After all, he had accepted Muub’s invitation. But what was it about this man’s manner that irritated him so? He nodded over his shoulder at the sparkling ranks of courtiers. “That lot seems to agree with you.”
Muub regarded the courtiers with aloof disdain. “Games Day is a spectacle which does not fail to excite the unsophisticated,” he said softly. “No matter how many times it is viewed. And besides, Hork is absent. As you know very well. And there is something of a vacuum of authority, among my more shallow colleagues, until the Chair’s return.” He listened to the jabber of the courtiers for a moment, his large, fragile head cocked to one side. “You can hear it in their tone. They are like children in the absence of a parent.” He sighed.
Adda grinned. “Well,” he said, “it’s nice to know that your superciliousness isn’t restricted to upfluxers.” He deliberately ignored Muub’s reaction; he leaned forward in his cocoon and stared through the clearwood wall below him.
He was perched at the upper rim of the City. Its wooden Skin swept away below him, huge, uneven, battered; the great Corestuff anchor-bands were arcs of silver-gray cutting across the sky. Far below the City the Pole was a mass of bruised purple. Vortex lines shimmered across the sky around the City, on their way to their own rotation pole around the curve of the Star…