At length they left the busiest streets behind and came to an area which seemed quieter — less full of rushing cars and howling pigs. The corridor-streets here were wide and lined by rows of neat doors and windows which marked out small dwelling-places. Evidently these had been virtually identical when constructed, but now they had been made unique by their owners, with small plants confined in globe-baskets by the windows, elaborate carvings on the doorways, and other small changes. Many of the carved scenes depicted the Mantle outside the City: Dura recognized vortex lines, Crust trees, people Waving happily through clear Air. How strange that these people, still longing for the open Air, should closet themselves inside this stuffy box of wood.
Toba tugged his reins and drove the car smoothly through a wide, open portal to a place he described as a “car park.” He slowed the car. “End of the line.” Dura and Farr stared back at him, confused. “Go on. Out you get. You have to Wave from here, I’m afraid.”
The car park was a large, dingy chamber, its walls stained by pig feces and splintered from multiple collisions. There were a half-dozen cars, hanging abandoned in the Air, and thirty or forty pigs jostled together in a large area cordoned off by a loose net. The animals seemed content enough, Dura observed; they clambered slowly over each other, munching contentedly at fragments of food floating in the Air.
Toba loosened the harnesses around his own pigs and led them one by one over to the cordoned area. He guided the pigs competently through a raised flap in the net, taking care to seal the net tight after himself each time.
When he was done he wiped his hands on his short under-trousers. “That’s that. Someone will come by shortly to feed and scrape them.” He sniffed, peering at the grubby walls of the car park. “Tatty place, isn’t it? And you wouldn’t believe the quarterly charges. But what can you do? Since the ordinances banning so much on-street parking it’s become impossible to find a place. Not that it seems to stop a lot of people, of course…”
Dura strained to follow this. But like much of Toba’s conversation it was largely meaningless to her, and — she suspected — contained little hard information anyway.
After a while, and with no reply from the silent, staring Human Beings, Toba subsided. He led them from the car park and out into the street.
Dura and Farr followed their host through the curving streets. It was oddly difficult to Wave here; perhaps the Magfield wasn’t as strong outside. Dura felt very conscious of people all around her, of strangers behind these oddly uniform doorways and windows. Occasionally she saw thin faces peering out at them as they passed. The stares of the people of Parz seemed to bore into her back, and it was difficult not to whirl around, to confront the invisible threats behind her.
She kept an eye on Farr, but he seemed, if anything, less spooked than she was. He stared around wide-eyed, as if everything was unique, endlessly fascinating. His bare limbs and graceful, strong Waving looked out of place in this cramped, slightly shabby street.
After a few minutes Toba stopped at a doorway barely distinguishable from a hundred others. “My home,” he explained, an odd note of apology in his voice. “Not as far Upside as I’d like it to be. But, still, it’s home.” He fished in a pocket of his undershorts and produced a small, finely carved wooden object. He inserted this into a hole in the door, turned it, and then pushed the door wide. From inside the house came a smell of hot food, the greenish light of woodlamps. “Ito!”
A woman came Waving briskly to the door. She was quite short, plump and with her hair tied back from her forehead; she wore a loose suit of some brightly colored fabric. She seemed about the same age as Dura, although — oddly — there was no yellow coloration in her hair. The woman smiled at Toba, but the smile faded when she saw the upfluxers.
Toba’s hands twisted together. “Ito, I’ve some explaining to do…”
The sharp eyes of the woman, Ito, traveled up and down the bodies of the Human Beings, taking in their bare skin, their unkempt hair, their hand-weapons. “Yes, you bloody well have,” she said.
Toba’s dwelling-place was a box of wood about ten mansheights across. It was divided into five smaller rooms by light partitions and colored sheets; small lamps, of nuclear-burning wood, glowed neatly in each room.
Toba showed the Human Beings a place to clean themselves — a room containing chutes for waste and spherical bowls holding scented cloth. Dura and Farr, left alone in this strange room, tried to use the chutes. Dura pulled the little levers as Toba had shown them, and their shit disappeared down gurgling tubes into the mysterious guts of the City. Brother and sister peered into the chutes, open-mouthed, trying to see where it all went.
When they were done Toba led them to a room at the center of the little home. The centerpiece was a wooden ball suspended at the heart of the room; there were handholds set around the globe’s surface and fist-sized cavities carved into it. Ito — who had changed into a lighter, flowing robe — was ladling some hot, unrecognizable food into the cavities. She smiled at them, but her lips were tight. There was a third member of the family in the room — Toba’s son, whom he introduced as Cris. Cris seemed a little older than Farr, and the two boys stared at each other with frank, not unfriendly curiosity. Cris seemed better muscled than most City folk to Dura. His hair was long, floating and mottled yellow, as if prematurely aged; but the color was vivid even in the dim lamplight, and Dura suspected it had been dyed that way.
At Ito’s invitation the upfluxers came to the spherical table. Dura, still naked, her knife still at her back, felt large, clumsy, ugly in this delicate little place. She was constantly aware of the Pole-strength of her muscles, and she felt inhibited, afraid to touch anything or move too quickly for fear of smashing something.
Copying Toba, she shoveled food into her mouth with small wooden utensils. The food was hot and unfamiliar, but strongly flavored. As soon as she started, Dura found she was ravenously hungry — in fact, save for the few fragments of the bread Toba had offered to Adda during the long journey to the City, she hadn’t eaten since their ill-fated hunt — and how long ago that seemed now!
They ate in silence.
After the meal, Toba guided the Human Beings to a small room in one corner of the home. A single lamp cast long shadows, and two tight cocoons had been suspended across the room. “I know it’s small, but there should be room for the two of you,” he said. “I hope you sleep well.”
The two Human Beings clambered into the cocoons; the fabric felt soft and warm against Dura’s skin.
Toba Mixxax reached for the lamp — then hesitated. “Do you want me to dampen the light?”
It seemed a strange request to Dura. She looked around, but this deep inside Parz City there were, of course, no light-ducts, no access to the open Air. “But then it would be dark,” she said slowly.
“Yes… We sleep in the dark.”
Dura had never been in the dark in her life. “Why?”
Toba looked puzzled. “I don’t know… I’ve never thought about it.” He drew back his hand from the lamp, and smiled at them. “Sleep well.” He Waved briskly away, sealing shut the room behind him.
Wriggling inside her cocoon, Dura uncoiled her length of rope from her waist, and wrapped it loosely around one of the cocoon’s ties. She knotted the rope around her knife, close enough that she could reach the knife if she needed to. Then she squirmed deeper into the cocoon, at last drawing her arms inside it. It was an odd experience to be completely enclosed like this, though oddly comforting.