Bzya was a huge man with muscles the size of Air-piglets. He was as bulky, powerful and gentle as the supervisor was small and needle-dagger vicious. Bzya's face was marred by a mask of scar tissue which obliterated one side of his head and turned one eyecup into a ghastly cavern that reached back into the depths of his skull. Farr had come to know him as a simple man who had lived his life in the poverty-stricken Downside, keeping himself alive by turning his giant muscles to the mundane, difficult and dangerous labor which allowed the rest of Parz City to function. He had a wife, Jool, and a daughter, Shar. Somehow, through a life of travail, he had retained a kind and patient nature.

Now he said to Farr, winking at him with his good eyecup, "You shouldn't be hard on old Hosch, you know."

Farr gaped, trying to suppress a laugh. "Me, hard on him? Why, the old Xeelee-lover has it in for me."

Bzya reached to the conveyor and raised a length of tree trunk longer than Farr was tall. With a single blow of his ax he cracked it open to reveal its glowing core. "See it from his point of view. He's the supervisor of this section."

Farr snorted. "Making himself rich out of our work. Bastard."

Bzya smiled. "You learn fast, don't you? Well, maybe. But he's also responsible. We lost another Bell, last shift. Had you heard? Three more Fishermen dead. Hosch is responsible for that too."

Disasters seemed to hit the Harbor with a depressing regularity, Farr thought. Still, he remained impatient with Bzya's tolerance, and he began to list Hosch's faults.

"He's all of that, and then some you're too young to understand. Maybe he isn't up to the responsibility he has.

"But — I'll say it again — whether he can cope or not, he's responsible. And when one of us dies, a little of him must die too. I've seen it in his face, Farr, despite all his viciousness. Remember that."

Farr frowned. He shoved more glowing wood into the hoppers. It was so complex. If only Logue or Dura were here to help him make sense of it all...

Or if only he could get out of here and Surf.

—

The rest of the shift wore away without incident. Afterward Farr filed out with the rest of the laborers to the small, cramped dormitory they shared. The dormitory, home to forty people, was a stained box slung across with sleeping ropes. It stank of shit and food. Farr ate his daily ration — today, a small portion of tough bread — and looked for a stable nest in the web of sleeping-ropes. He wasn't yet confident enough to challenge the older, powerful-looking Fishermen, men and women both, who monopolized the chamber walls where the Air was slightly less polluted by the grunts and farts of others. He finished up, as usual, close to the center of the dormitory.