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scalp. Through the sparsely haired flesh she could feel the bones of the skull, the plates not yet
locked together. The child was pawing at her bag now, his tiny fingers poking at the lumps of food
contained there. Mur made to pull the infant away, but Dura pulled out a handful of bread, crumbled
it, and presented it to the child. Jai grasped the bread fragments with both hands and shoved them
into his mouth; his jaw scraped across his open hands, raking in bread, his eyes unseeing as he fed.
"What's that?"
"Bread. Food... I'll explain it all. Mur, what's happening here?"
"We are fewer." His gaze shifted from her face, and he glanced down at his feeding son, as if in
search of distraction. "The last Glitch..."
"The others?"
The child had finished the bread already. He reached up his hands wordlessly to Dura, imploring
more; she could see the fragment he'd devoured as a distinct bulge, high in his empty stomach.
Mur pulled the child away from Dura, soothing him. "Come on," he said. "I'll take you to them."

The Human Beings had established a crude camp in the fringes of the Crust-forest itself. The Air
here was thin, unsatisfying in Dura's lungs, and the Quantum Sea curved away from her, far below.
Ropes had been slung between branches of the trees, and garments, half-finished tools and scraps of
food were suspended from the ropes. Dura touched one of the bits of food gingerly. It was Air-pig
flesh, so old it was tough and leathery between her fingertips. The tree-branches for some distance
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around had been stripped of leaves and bark, revealing how the people had been feeding.
There were only twenty Human Beings left fifteen adults and five children.
They crowded around Dura, reaching to touch and embrace her, some of them weeping. The familiar
faces surrounded her, peering through masks of hunger and dirt. Her heart went out to these
people her people and yet she felt detached from them, distant; she let them touch her, and she
embraced in return, but a part of her wanted to recoil from their childlike, helpless pressing. She felt
stiff, civilized. The very nakedness of these upfluxers was startling. She felt massive, sleek and
bulky, too, compared to their starved scrawniness.
Her experiences, her exposure to Parz City, had changed her, she realized; perhaps she would never
again be content to settle into the small, hard, limited life of a Human Being.
She gave Mur her bag of bread and told him to distribute it as he saw fit. As he moved among the
Human Beings she saw how sharp eyes followed each move; the aura of hunger which hovered over
the people, focusing on the bag of bread, was like a living thing.
She found Philas, the widow of Esk. Dura and Philas moved away from the heart of the crude
encampment, out of earshot of the rest of the Human Beings. Oddly, Philas seemed more beautiful
now; it was as if privation was allowing the bony symmetry, the underlying dignity of her features,
to emerge. Dura could see no bitterness, no trace of the rivalry which had once silently divided them.
"You've suffered greatly."
Philas shrugged. "We couldn't rebuild the Net, after you left. We survived; we hunted again in the
forest and trapped some pigs. But then the second Glitch came."
The survivors had abandoned the open Air in favor of the fringe of the forest. It wasn't particularly
logical, but Dura thought she understood; the need for some form of solid base, to have a feeling of
protective walls around them, would dominate logic. She thought of the folk of Parz in their
compressed wooden boxes, their thin walls affording illusory protection from the wilds of the
Mantle not half a centimeter from where they lay. Perhaps people all shared the same basic instincts,
no matter what their origins and perhaps those instincts had traveled with humanity from whatever
distant Star had birthed the Ur-humans.
It was impossible to find Air-pigs now, no matter how widely the Human Beings hunted. The latest
Glitch, savage as it was, had scattered the herds of pigs as well as devastating the works of
humanity. The people were trying to survive on leaves, and were even experimenting with meals of
spin-spider flesh.
Of course, it was impossible to subsist on leaves. Without decent food, the Human Beings would
surely die. (And so will I, now that my bread is gone, she thought with a surprising stab of
selfishness.)
Dura turned in on herself, trying to understand her own motives for returning to her people. After
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Rauc's death, and after she'd helped to cope with the worst of the destruction at Qos Frenk's farm,
she learned that most of the coolies were to be released from their indentures. Qos, roots of yellow
showing in his pink hair, his small hands wringing each other, had explained that he intended to save
what he could of this year's harvest, and then start the slow, painful work of rebuilding his holding. It
would take many years before the farm was functioning again, and in the meantime it would not
generate any income for Frenk; so he couldn't employ them any longer.
The coolies had seemed to understand. Frenk provided rides back to Parz City for those who wanted
it; the rest, dully, had dispersed to seek work in the neighboring ceiling-farms.
Dura slowly realized that she had lost the indenture which should have paid for Adda's Hospital
treatment. Overwhelmed and shocked, she resolved to return to her people, the Human Beings.
Later, perhaps, when things had settled down, she would return to Parz and address the problems of
Farr, of Adda's debts.
Now, studying Philas's dull, silent face, she wondered what she'd been expecting to find, here among
the Human Beings. Perhaps a hidden, childlike part of her had hoped to find everything restored to
what it had been when she'd been a small girl... when Logue was strong, protecting her, and the
world was by comparison a stable and safe place.
Of course, that was an illusion. There was nowhere for her to hide, no one who could look after her.
She raised her hands to her face. In fact, she thought with a stab of shameful selfishness, by
returning here she'd only placed herself in danger of starvation, and had taken on responsibility for
the Human Beings once more.
If only I'd gone straight back to Parz. I could have found Farr, and found a way to live. Perhaps I
could have forgotten that the Human Beings ever lived...
She straightened up. Philas was waiting for her, her face grave and beautiful. "Philas, we can't stay [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]