Jool frowned. "What? How we can live apart, like this?" She shrugged. "I'd rather have her away from us and safe, than here but in the Harbor. It's just the way things are for us..."

"Farr has family," Bzya said.

Jool nodded. "A sister. The coolie. Yes? And there's another with you from the upflux, an old man..."

"Adda."

"And you're separated from them both. Just like us, with Shar."

Farr nodded. "But Dura's being brought back from her ceiling-farm. Deni Maxx has gone to get her."

"Who?"

"A doctor. From the Hospital of the Common Good... And Adda has been taken to see the Chair of the City. It's all to do with sorting out the Glitches..."

"Hm," Bzya said. "Perhaps. Farr, I don't believe everything I hear from the Upside, and I'd suggest you grow a little skepticism too. Still, I hope you see your sister soon."

Jool was working toward the bottom of the bowl of piglet meat. "So what do you make of our part of the City?"

Farr finished his mouthful. "It's different. It's..." He hesitated.

"Dark, dirty, threatening. Right?"

Farr shook his head. "I was going to say cramped. Even more cramped than everywhere else."

"Well, this is the heart of the City," Jool said. "I'm not sentimental about it, but that's the truth... It's the oldest part of Parz. The first to be built, around the head of the Harbor, when the Spine was first driven into the underMantle."

Farr imagined those ancient days, the bravery of the men and women determined to extract the Corestuff they needed to build their City, and then constructing that immense structure with their bare hands and tools little more advanced, he guessed, than the average Human Being's today.

Jool smiled. "I know what you're thinking, boy from the upflux. Why would anyone build a little box like this around themselves? Why shut out the Air?"

"Because," Bzya said, "they were trying to rebuild what they thought they'd lost, when the Colonists withdrew into the Core." He looked thoughtful. "So Parz is a representation in wood and Corestuff of an ancient dream..."

"You're both very intelligent," Farr found himself saying.

Husband and wife together tilted back their heads and opened their throats with laughter. The pair of them made a ludicrous, outsized, merry sight in the room's cramped Air.

Jool wiped her eyecups. "You say what you think, don't you?"

Bzya patted her arm. "We aren't fair to laugh, Jool. After all, we know plenty of people — even in the lower Midside, let alone the Upside — who think Downsiders are all subhuman."

"And," Farr said, "with Human Beings — upfluxers — worse than that."