Some of the names must go back generations, she thought, their deaths so ancient that all details had been forgotten. But the names remained, preserved by this gentle, graceful Wheel cult.

And people who lived in the sky could have no other memorial than words.

At last the list came to a close. Rauc hung in the Air before the fading glow of the Wheel trenches, her face empty. Then she stirred and looked around at the faces watching her, as if waking up. She Waved back to her husband.

The group broke up. Brow enfolded his wife in his arms and led her away. All around the group, couples bid farewells and drifted off.

Dura observed Kae surreptitiously. The woman was watching Brow and Rauc, her expression blank. She became aware of Dura. She smiled, but her voice sounded strained. "I've the feeling you're judging me again."

"No. But I think I understand your compromises now."

Kae shrugged. "We're together, Brow and I, for most of the time. Rauc knows it, and has to live with that. But Brow — loves — Rauc. This day with her is worth a hundred with me. And I have to live with that. We all have to compromise, Dura. Even you."

Dura thought of Esk, long dead now, and a similar painful triangle. "Yes," she said. "We all have to compromise."

Kae offered her a place to sleep, somewhere in the tangle of nets and ropes that comprised this strange, linear City. Dura refused, smiling.

She said farewell to Kae. The lumberjack nodded, and they regarded each other with a strange, calm understanding.

Dura pushed away from the trunk and kicked at the Air, Waving for the ceiling-farm and her secure, private little nest.

The caravan spread out beneath her, Wheel-shaped fires burning in a dozen places.

13

ACCOMPANIED BY A NERVOUS-LOOKING nurse from the Hospital of the Common Good, the injured old upfluxer diffidently entered the Palace Garden. When Muub spotted him he beckoned to the nurse — over the heads of curious courtiers — that she should bring the upfluxer to join him at the Fount. Then he turned back to the slow ballet of the superfluid fountain.

The Garden was a crown perched atop Parz City, an expensive setting for the Palace of the City Committee. The Garden had been established generations before by one of the predecessors of Hork IV. But it had been the particular genius of the current Chair, and his fascination for the natural world around him, that had made this place into the wonder it was. Now it was a lavish park, with exotic plants and animals from all around the Mantle brought together in an orderly, tasteful display. The low — but extravagant — buildings which made up the Palace itself were studded around the Park, gleaming like Corestuff jewels set in rich cloth. Courtiers drifted through the Garden in little knots, huddling like groups of brightly colored animals.