She turned her face away. She knew it was important to make sense of the ways of these people, if she were ever to extricate herself and her charges from this mess, but the flux lines of understanding across which she would have to Wave were daunting.
Now another man came to inspect her. This one was short, fussy and dressed in a loose suit; his hair-tubes were dyed a pale pink. He and Toba shook hands. They seemed to know each other. The man called her out of the booth and, to her shame, began to subject her to the intimate examination which Farr had suffered earlier.
Dura tried not to think about the strange little man’s probing fingers. She watched the captive, who had now been led to the wooden Wheel. His arms and legs were crudely outstretched by the guards and fixed by ropes to four of the spokes, while a thong was drawn around his neck to attach his head to the fifth spoke. Dura, even as she endured her own humiliation, winced as the thong cut into the man’s flesh.
The crowd bellowed, squirming around the Wheel in a frenzy of anticipation; despite the finery of their clothes, Dura was reminded of feeding Air-pigs.
Toba Mixxax touched her shoulder. “Dura. This is Qos Frenk. He’s interested in your labor… Only five years, though, I’m afraid.”
Qos Frenk, the pink-haired buyer, had finished his inspection. “Age catches up with us all,” he said with sad sympathy. “But my price is fair at fifteen skins.”
“Toba Mixxax, will this cover the costs of Adda, with Farr’s fee?”
He nodded. “Just about. Of course, Adda himself will have to find work once he’s fit. And…”
“I’ll take the offer,” she told Toba dully. “Tell him.”
The Wheel started to turn about its axis.
The crowd screamed. At first the revolutions were slow, and the man pinned to it seemed to smile. But momentum soon gathered, and Dura could see how the man’s head rattled against its spoke.
“Dura, I know Qos,” Toba said. “He’ll treat you well.”
Qos Frenk nodded at her, not unkindly.
“How close will I be to Farr?”
Toba hesitated, looking at her strangely. Qos Frenk seemed confused.
Now the victim’s eyecups had closed; his fists were clenched against the pain of the rotation. Memories of Adda’s attack by the sow returned to Dura. As the man was spun around, the Air in his capillaries would lose its superfluidity, begin to coagulate and slow; a sphere of agonizing pain would expand out through his body from the pit of his stomach, surrounding a shell of numbness. And…
“Dura, you don’t understand. Qos owns a ceiling-farm which borders on mine. So you’ll be working at the Crust… as a coolie. I explained to Qos how well adapted you upfluxers are for such work; in fact I found you at the Crust, and…”
“What about Farr?”
“He will be in the Harbor. He will be a Fisherman. Didn’t you understand that? Dura…”
Now the man was rotating so fast that his limbs had become a blur. He must be unconscious already, Dura thought, and it was a mercy not to be able to see his face.
“Where is the Harbor, Toba Mixxax?”
He frowned. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely contrite. “I forget sometimes how new all this is for you. The Harbor is at the base of the City, at the top of the Spine… the pillar of wood which descends from the base of the City. Bells from the Harbor follow the length of the Spine, diving deep into the underMantle. And…”
“And it’s not acceptable,” she snarled. Qos Frenk flinched from her, eyecups wide. “I must be with Farr.”
“No. Listen to me, Dura. That’s not an option. Farr is ideal for the Harbor; he’s young and light but immensely strong. You’re too old for such work. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“We won’t be parted.”
Toba Mixxax’s face was hard now, his weak chin thrust forward. “You listen to me, Dura. I’ve done my best to help you. And Ito and Cris have grown fond of you; I can see that. But I’ve my own life to lead. Accept this now or I just Wave away out of here. And leave you, and your precious brother, to the mercy of the Guards… and within half a day you’ll be joining that man on the Wheel, two more unemployable vagrants.”
Now the Wheel was a blur. The crowd bellowed its excitement.
There was a popping sound, soft and obscene. The Wheel rapidly slowed; the man’s hands, feet and head dangled as the Wheel turned through its final revolutions.
The prisoner’s stomach cavity had burst; Air-vessels dangled amid folds of flesh like fat, bloody hair-tubes. The crowd, as if awed, grew silent.
Toba, oblivious, still stared into Dura’s face. “What’s it to be, Dura?” he hissed.
The guards cut the Broken man down from the Wheel. The crowd, with a rising buzz of conversation, started to disperse.
Dura and Farr were allowed to visit Adda in his Hospital room — his ward, Dura remembered.
A huge fan turned slowly on one wall and the ward was pleasantly cool — it was almost like the open Air. The Hospital was close to the City’s outer wall and the ward was connected to the outside world by only a short duct and was comparatively bright; entering it, Dura had an impression of cheerfulness, of competence.
But these initial impressions were rapidly dispelled by the sight of Adda, who was suspended at the center of the room in a maze of ropes, webbings and bandages, almost all of his battered body obscured by gauzy material. A doctor — called Deni Maxx, a round, prissy-looking woman whose belt and pockets bristled with mysterious equipment — fussed around the suspended Human Being.
Adda peered at Dura and Farr from his nest of gauze. His right upper arm, which had been broken, was coated in a mound of bandages, and his lower legs were strapped together inside a cage of splints. Someone had scraped the pus from his good eye, and applied an ointment to keep out symbiotes.
Dura, oddly, felt more squeamish about Adda’s wounds now than when she had been trying to cope with them with her bare hands in the Crust-forest. She was reminded, distressingly, of the dead, displayed animals in the Museum. “You’re looking well,” she said.
“Lying sow,” Adda growled. “What by the bones of the Xeelee am I doing here? And why haven’t you got out while you can?”
The doctor clucked her tongue, tweaking a bandage. “You know why you’re here.” She spoke loudly, as if Adda were a deaf child. “You’re here to heal.”
Farr said, “Anyway, we’ll be gone soon. I’m off to work in the Harbor. And Dura is going to the ceiling-farm.”
Adda fixed Dura with a one-eyed, venomous stare. “You stupid bitch.”
“It’s done now, Adda; I won’t argue about it.”
“You should have let me die, rather than turn yourselves into slaves.” He tried to raise gauze-wrapped arms. “What kind of life do you think I’m going to have now?”
Dura found Adda’s tone repellent. It seemed wild, unconstructed, out of place in this huge, ordered environment. She found herself contrasting Adda’s violence with the quiet timidity of Ito, who was living out her life in a series of tiny movements as if barely aware of the constraints of the crush of people around her. Dura would not have exchanged places with Ito, but she felt she understood her now. Adda’s rage was crass, uncomprehending. “Adda,” she said sharply. “Leave it. It’s done. We have to make the best of it.”
“Indeed we do,” the doctor sighed philosophically. “Isn’t that always the way of things?”
Adda stared at the woman. “Why don’t you keep out of it, you hideous old hag?”
Deni Maxx shook her head with no more than mild disapproval.