“Adda!”
It was Farr’s voice. Adda peered into the gloom of the ward, blinking to clear his one working eyecup.
“Adda — you must help me…”
There. Farr was close to the rear of the ward; he was hovering over another patient, a massive, still form wrapped in a cocoon. The boy seemed unharmed still, Adda saw with relief.
He pushed his way over the heads of the crowd.
The patient was lost in the cocoon with only a little flesh showing: a huge, crumpled fist, an area of shoulder or chest about the size of Adda’s palm. The exposed flesh was surfaceless, chewed up.
Adda suppressed a shudder and looked at Farr. The boy’s face was drawn, the fatigue showing in his eyecups, the dilated Air-pores like craters on his cheeks.
“I’m glad you returned.”
“You’re a damn fool, boy. I want you to know that now, in case I don’t get a chance to tell you later.”
“But I had to return. I heard Bzya’s voice. I…”
Something moved deep inside the cocoon — a head turning, perhaps? — and a claw-like finger protruded from the lip of the material, to pull the neck of the cocoon tighter closed. The tiny motion was redolent of shame.
“This is Bzya?”
“They had to pull him up from the underMantle. He was nearly lost — Adda, he had to abandon his Bell. He dragged back Hosch, but he was dead.” The boy looked down at his friend, his hands twisting together. “We’ve got to get him out of here — away from the City.”
“But…”
There was another dull impact, deep in the guts of the City. The very Air seemed to shake with it, and the ceiling of the ward settled, wood splintering with a series of snaps. Then a mansheight-square section of the ceiling imploded, raining sharp wood splinters. This time the workers and patients had to take notice; screams were added to the bedlam of orders and frantic activity, and patients threw bare or bandaged arms over their faces.
“All right,” Adda said. “You take the head; I’ll push at the feet. Move, damn you…”
They scrambled for the entrance to the ward, hauling the cocoon beneath the splintered ceiling. They had to work through the melee, pushing with their feet at slow-moving limbs and heads.
Deni was nowhere to be seen.
It seemed to take a lifetime to reach the open mouth of the ward. They bundled Bzya out into the Air, over the port’s splintered lip; Bzya rolled in the Air, helpless in his cocoon. Adda and Farr scrambled after him. Farr made to grab the head end of Bzya’s cocoon once more, but Adda stopped him. He hauled Bzya around lengthways, so that the Fisherman was almost lying across their laps. “We’ll take him like this,” Adda said. “Get hold. We’ll both Wave backward…”
Farr nodded, understanding quickly. He took handfuls of the cocoon, and soon he and Adda were kicking backward in parallel through the Air, hauling the massive cocoon after them.
The City, looming huge over them, settled once more, this time with screeches from deep within its fabric. Adda imagined the huge Corestuff girders, the bones of the great carcass, twisting, failing one by one. Explosions of shattering wood erupted all over the Skin. Huge, rectilinear creases emerged over the wooden face, as if the Skin were starting to fold over on itself.
Adda kicked desperately at the thick Air, ignoring the numb ache of his legs, the pain of fingers which were turning into claws as they dragged at cocoon material. Vortex fragments continued to hail through the Air, rings and other fantastic forms sleeting past them.
Suddenly Bzya’s body twisted in the Air. The Fisherman’s heavy legs thumped into Adda’s chest, causing him to lose his grip. Adda heard the Fisherman groan from within his cocoon at this latest disruption.
Adda slithered to a halt and scrabbled at the slick, expensive material of the cocoon, trying to regain purchase.
Farr had stopped Waving. He’d simply come to a halt in the Air and had dropped the cocoon, and was staring back at the City.
“By the blood of the Xeelee, boy…”
“Look.” Farr pointed back at the Hospital entrance. “I think it’s Deni.”
Adda rubbed dirt from his good eye and stared at the figures in the port. They were dwarfed by the huge wooden panorama of Skin all around them. Yes, it was Deni Maxx; the little doctor, all energy and competence, was working in the entrance to bring out still another patient.
There was a new sound from within the bulk of the City — a yielding sigh which slid rapidly to a higher pitch, almost as if in relief. Skin crumbled away in huge rafts of wood, revealing the Corestuff girder framework beneath. It looked like bones emerging through corrupt flesh. And, even as Adda watched, the girders, dully shining, were creasing, folding over.
Adda grabbed at the cocoon and kicked at the Air. His hands slid over the material and the inert bulk of Bzya barely stirred in the Air; but Adda clung to the material and tried again. In a moment Farr joined him, and soon the two of them were lunging backward away from the City, their Waving ragged, spurting.
The face of the City — huge rents gaping — collapsed under its mask of anchor-bands and folded forward over them. The Corestuff structure showed no more resistance than if it had been constructed of soft pig-leather. Splinters of wood rained forward, bursting from the crumpling Skin.
Farr screamed: “Deni!”
Through the chaos of the crumpling face of the Hospital port, Adda could see the compact form of the doctor, still working. She looked up, briefly, at the collapsing Skin above her. Then she turned back to her patients.
The port of the Hospital ward closed like a mouth.
In the very last heartbeat Adda saw Deni raise her arm against the huge jaw of wood and Corestuff which closed over her, as if — at last — trying to save herself. Ragged edges of wood met like meshing teeth, bursting her body. A cloud of wood fragments and dust billowed from the crushed face of the City, obscuring the Hospital from Adda’s view.
Farr was screaming incoherently, but he was still Waving, dragging at Bzya’s cocoon.
“Scream!” Adda yelled over the crashing roar of the City. “Scream and cry all you want, damn you! But don’t — stop — Waving!”
Hork pressed his face close to the surreally silent display. “It’s a jetfart,” he said wonderingly. He laughed. “I can scarcely believe it. A jetfart, from the North Pole of a Star!”
Dura gripped the control levers, forcing her hands to remain clenched. The levers were warm, comfortable; they seemed to fit well in her palms. She felt as if she were trapped inside her head, an impotent observer of her own actions. She tried to imagine what must be happening inside the Mantle, if that map-globe really did represent the Star itself.
Hork Waved to the transparent wall, and stared at the tiny image of the battle. Eventually he turned to Dura and shouted, “I think that’s enough… You can let go.”
Dura stared at her hands. Her fingers wouldn’t open; she had to glare at her rebellious hands, consciously willing them to uncurl.
Released, the levers slid gently back to their rest positions.
The fount from the map-Star dwindled, thinning to a fine plume before dying completely; the map itself folded up and disappeared.
“Is it over? We’re not aimed at the Ring any more?”
Hork Waved back across the huge chamber. He turned the chair’s arrow device this way and that, alternately studying the starbow and the field of stars, trying to judge the changes Dura had made.
Dura settled back in the chair, watching starfields explode silently across the sky.
“We haven’t turned the Star around, if that’s what you mean,” Hork said. “But we’ve turned it aside. I think so, anyway… The Ring has moved away from the center of that wall.” He pointed. “We’re still heading for the battlefield but we’ve deflected the Star; we’re going to miss the Ring.”
She frowned, her feeling of distance, of unimportance, lingering. “Will that be enough, do you think?”