If Farr had closed his eyes he might have imagined he was listening to an old, time-beaten man like Adda rather than a boy at the start of his life. “But at least the City keeps you fed, and safe, and comfortable.”
“But not everyone wants to be comfortable. Isn’t there more to life than that?” He looked at Farr again with that odd tinge of envy. “That’s what Surfing offers me… Your life, in the upflux, must be so — interesting. Waking up in the open Air, every day. Never knowing what the day is going to bring. Having to go out and find your own food, with your bare hands…” Cris looked down at his own smooth hands as he said this.
Farr didn’t know what to reply to all this. He had come to think of the City folk as superior in wisdom, and it was a shock to find one of them talking such rubbish.
Looking for something to say, he pointed to the board Cris was still cradling. “What’s this?”
“My board. My Surfboard.” Cris hesitated. “You’ve never seen one before?”
Farr reached out and ran his fingertips over the polished surface. It was worked so finely that he could barely feel the unevenness of the wood; it was like touching skin — the skin of a very young child, perhaps. The mesh of shining threads had been inlaid into a fine network of grooves, just deep enough to feel.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” Cris looked proud. “It’s not the most expensive you can get. But I’ve put a hell of a lot of work into it, and now I doubt there’s a better board this side of Pall Mall.”
Farr hesitated, embarrassed by his utter ignorance. “But what’s it for?”
“For Surfing.” Cris held the board out horizontally and flipped up into the Air, bringing his bare feet to rest against the ridged board. The board drifted away from him, of course, but Farr could see how expertly Cris’s feet moved over the surface, almost as if they were a second pair of hands. Cris held his arms out and swayed in the Air. “You ride along the Magfield, like this. There’s nothing like it. The feeling of power, of speed…”
“But how? Do you Wave?”
Cris laughed. “No, of course not.” Then he looked more thoughtful. “At least, not quite.” He flipped off the board, doing a neat back-somersault in the cramped room, and caught the board. “See the wires inlaid into the surface? That’s Corestuff. Superconducting. That’s what makes the boards so damn expensive.” He rocked the board in the Air with his arms. “You work it like this, with your legs. See? It’s like Waving, but with the board instead of your body. The currents in the superconductors push against the Magfield, and…” He shot his hand through the Air. “Whoosh!”
Farr thought about it. “And you can go faster than Waving?”
“Faster?” Cris laughed again. “You can be faster than any car, faster than any farting pig — when you get a clear run, high above the Pole, you feel as if you’re going faster than thought.” His expression turned misty, dreamlike.
Farr watched him, fascinated and curious.
“So that’s what the board is for… sort of. But it’s also my way out of here. Out of my future. Maybe.” Cris seemed awkward now, almost shy. “I’m good at this, Farr. I’m one of the best in my age group; I’ve won a lot of the events I’ve been eligible for up to now. And in a couple of months I qualify for the big one. The Games. I’ll be up against the best, my first chance…”
“The Games?”
“The biggest. If you do well there, become a star of the Games, then Parz just opens her legs for you.” Cris laughed coarsely at that, and Farr grinned uncertainly. “I mean it,” Cris said. “Parties at the Palace. Fame.” He shrugged. “Of course it doesn’t last forever. But if you’re good enough you never lose it, the aura. Believe me… Will you still be around, for the Games?”
“I don’t know. Adda…”
“Your friend in the Hospital. Yeah.” Cris’s mood seemed to swing to embarrassment again. “Look, I’m sorry for going on about Surfing. I know you’re in a difficult situation.”
Farr smiled, hoping to put this complex boy at his ease. “I enjoy hearing you talk.”
Cris studied Farr speculatively. “Listen, have you ever tried Surfing? No, of course you haven’t. Would you like to? We could meet some people I know…”
“I don’t know if I’d be able to.”
“It looks simple,” Cris said. “It is simple in concept, but difficult to do well. You have to keep your balance, keep the board pressed between you and the Magfield, keep pushing down against the flux lines to build up your speed.” He closed his eyes briefly and rocked in the Air.
“I don’t know,” Farr said again.
Cris eyed him. “You should be strong enough. And, coming from the upflux, your sense of balance and direction should be well developed. But maybe you’re right. You’re barrel-chested, and your legs are a little short. Even so it mightn’t be impossible for you to stay aboard for a few seconds…”
Farr found himself bridling at this cool assessment. He folded his arms. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Where?”
Cris grinned. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
Ito took Dura to the Museum.
This was situated in the University area of the City — far Upside, as Dura was learning to call it; in fact, not very far below the Palace itself. The University was a series of large chambers interconnected by richly paneled corridors. Ito explained that they weren’t allowed to disturb the academic calm of the chambers themselves, but she was able to point out libraries, seminar areas filled with groups of earnest young people, arrays of small cells within which the scholars worked alone, poring over their incomprehensible studies.
The University was close to the City’s outer wall, and was so full of natural light the Air seemed to glow. There was an atmosphere of calm here, an intensity which made Dura feel out of place (even more than usual). They passed a group of senior University members; these wore flowing robes and had shaved off their hair, and they barely glanced at the two women as they Waved disdainfully past.
She leaned close to Ito and whispered, “Muub. That Administrator at the Hospital. He shaved his head. Does he belong here too?”
Ito smiled. “I’ve never met the man; he sounds a little too grand for the likes of us. But, no, if he works at the Hospital he has no connection now with the University. But he may once have studied here, and he wears the bald fashion as a reminder to the rest of us that once he was a scholar.” Her smile was thin, Dura thought, and tired-looking. “People do that sort of thing, you know.”
“Did you — study — at the University? Or Toba?”
“Me?” Ito laughed, gently. “Do I look as if I could ever have afforded it?… It would be wonderful if Cris could make it here, though. If only we could find the fees — it would give him something higher, something better to aim for. Maybe he wouldn’t waste so much time on that damn Surfboard.”
The Museum was a large cube-shaped structure at the heart of the University complex. It was riddled with passageways and illumination shafts, so that light seeped through the whole of its porous bulk. As they moved slowly through the maze of passageways, the multitude of ports and doorways seemed to conceal a hundred caches of treasure.
One corridor held rows of pigs, rays and Crust-spiders. At first the creatures, looming out of the darkness, made Dura recoil; but she soon realized that these animals were no threat to her — and never would be to anyone else. They were dead, preserved somehow, fixed to the walls of this place in grim parodies of their living postures: gazing at the magnificent, outstretched wings of a ray, pinned against a frame of wood, Dura felt unaccountably sad. A little further along a display showed an Air-pig — dead like the others, but cut open and splayed out with its organs — small masses of tissue fixed to the inner wall of the body — now glistening, exposed for her inspection. Dura shuddered. She had killed dozens of Air-pigs, but she could never have brought herself to touch this cold, clean display.