crawling across his lips shortly after he first began to doze. He slapped the disgusting insect away and then he could hear Caster breathing evenly. She was asleep. It was bad. He'd never been in the same room with a female. Even though he was fully clothed and she was sleeping in her clothing, too, he knew it was wrong. He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed that the intent of the mission would make up for the sin of sleeping in the same room with a female. Finally, long after the factory horns blew midnight, he dozed. He awoke with a headache. His limbs were stiff. His hipbone felt as if he'd been sleeping on rocks. Caster, awake before him, had a meal ready. Fish meal and coffee. After the decent food of the underground, it was terrible. In the streets, they were assailed by the ever-present noise, harsh, ear-achingly persistent. Their lungs felt the burning, acrid fumes which closed the city from the sky. Around them people moved in streams. The streets crawled with ground cars belching more smoke into the already overladen air. They walked, caught up in the hopelessness of the city, a feeling Luke had never experienced. Before the Brothers had taken him to the Hall of Justice, he'd known no life but the city, if one discounted his brief stay at the University. He had accepted it. There was the knowledge
that he'd lived half or more of his life, true. There was the knowledge that the lung sickness or his heart would kill him, but, before he went underground and learned that there were alternatives, he had been only one of a billion people who faced the same fate and he had not asked why. He had accepted it as God's will. Now he found himself asking why and suffering guilt for having asked it. For one does not question God. «You forget,» Caster said, after they'd walked for blocks in silence. He knew she meant the city, the teeming, hopeless life, the ear-hurting
noise, the lung-searing air, the jostling and fighting for a place to stand. «Somewhere west there's a place where they work on nothing but space
travel,» Caster said. «They think that would be the answer, to ship millions of people to other planets, give those who are left a chance to breathe and move.» «Watch what you say,» Luke said. «You're not underground.» «Sorry.» Two ground cars collided. Thin metal crumpled. Heavy engines broke loose, crushing the people in one car, one engine bouncing along the street into a crosswalk, mangling pedestrians. They halted. Luke accepted it as a matter of everyday course. Caster was appalled. Wrecking machines came. Cars were lifted, crushed, moved toward the big barges which would carry them down the river to the dumping grounds in the gulf. Bodies were tossed into other vehicles. The wounded, if unable to walk, were taken to—Luke paused in his thoughts. Taken where? He'd never thought about that before. What became of seriously injured accident victims? Once he'd seen an aid station in Old Town. Those with nonfatal injuries were given Newasper. Broken arms were set roughly by aid attendants and wrapped in slings. But what happened to the more seriously injured victims? There was a neighbor who had been hit by a ground car in the street in front of Luke's building in Old Town. He'd been taken away. Luke never saw him again. Were such people given the benefit of medicine? Near them, as they watched the bodies and the wounded being taken away, stood a woman with a horribly scarred face. One eye was raw and protruding with deep, livid scars running away from it. Her mouth was twisted and scarred. Her cheeks were pocked and rutted. And, looking around, Luke saw others. He felt like crying. He could imagine the agony those people went through, healing from such injuries with only Newasper to help. «I've just decided that I hate them,» he said. «Yes,» Caster said. «I mean the Brothers.» «Yes.» That night they found a small park. Caster stood in the shadows while Luke, armed with a permit from the local Brotherfuzz, preached. He was shy, at first. Then, standing on a rock, he began to see that Middle City was no different. It was like Old Town, without the tall, crumbling skyscrapers. The people were the same. They spoke the same. Regional accents had long since been replaced with a speech patterned after the countrywide viewscreen network, the great leveler. People in Middle City were the same, Fares, Techs, Lays. He preached. He talked quietly about the Lord and his promise of everlasting life. A Tech, high on Soul Lifter, razzed him, grew bored, moved on. Two old Fares nodded and said, «Amen.» The Tireds moved in close, some with the bloodfleeks of the lung sickness on their lips, others looking up at him with glazed eyes, drinking in the promises. «Amen, brother.» «You tell it so sweetly, brother.» «Praise the Lord!» And Luke crying inside thinking of them going through each day not even knowing that there was another way. And then crying openly and
they, his little audience, thinking he was in a religious ecstasy and saying «Amen» and «Praise the Lord» and Caster standing in the shadows looking on sadly. And Luke talking about faith and how it could move mountains. But man could and had moved mountains to build the sprawling, acid infections called cities and no one wanted to move mountains but faith could do more. It could heal man of his ever-present miseries and, come forward, brothers and sisters, come and give me your faith and be healed and then laying on his hands and not feeling it and looking up and praying through his tears for help and not getting it. Back in the room, tired, lying on the floor with Caster breathing evenly from the bed. «Oh, God, look down on me and send me a sign.» And, bitterly: «In your mercy, help us. Help us overcome them and help us be human again.» And only the sounds of the city outside seeping through the thin walls. And the people next door high on Soul Lifter yelling and singing and banging things against the wall. Uneasy sleep. Caster and the morning meal. She was dressed in a Fare one-piece, her hair wrapped in a faded cloth. She looked as young as a girl. They ate in silence. It was raining outside. The meal finished. Caster washed the two plates at the