When the food was finished, they rested for a while. Then Bzya and Jool moved a little closer to each other, apparently unconsciously. Their huge heads dipped, so that their brows were almost touching. They reached forward and placed wide, strong fingers on the rim of the Wheel. Quietly they began to speak — in unison, a slow, solemn litany of names, none of them familiar to Farr. He watched them in silence.

When they finished, after perhaps a hundred names, Bzya opened his eyecups wide and smiled at Farr. "A little oral history in action, my friend."

Jool's face had resumed the sly, playful expression of earlier. She reached across the Wheel-table and touched Farr's sleeve. "Have you figured out what my job is yet?"

"Oh, stop teasing the boy," Bzya said loudly. "I'll tell you. She gathers petals from the Upside gardens, and delivers them to the pig-farms — the small in-City ones scattered around Parz, where the pigs for the Air-cars that run within the City are kept."

"Think about it," Jool said. "The streets of the City are hot and cramped. Enclosed. All those cars. All those pigs..."

"The petals are ground up and added to the pigs' feed," Bzya said.

Farr frowned. "Why?"

"To make them easier to live with." Solemnly, Jool bent forward, tilted her stump of leg, grabbed her wide buttocks through her coverall and separated them, and farted explosively.

Bzya laughed.

Farr looked from one to the other, uncertainly.

Then the smell hit him. Her fart was petal-perfumed.

Bzya shook his head, sighing. "Oh, don't pay her any attention; it will only encourage her. More beercake?"

16

THE DRIVER OF THE CAR FROM PARZ City was Deni Maxx, the junior doctor who had treated Adda. Dura wanted to rush to her, to demand news of Farr and Adda.

The Human Beings — all twenty of them, including the five children — emerged from their shelter in the forest and trailed after Dura. Deni Maxx peered out of the open hatch at her, staring indifferently past her at the ring of skinny Human Beings. "I'm glad I've found you."

"I'm surprised you managed it. The upflux is a big place."

Deni shrugged. She seemed irritated, impatient. "It wasn't so hard. Toba Mixxax gave me precise directions from his ceiling-farm to the place he first found you. All I had to do was scout around until you responded to my call."

Philas crowded close to Dura. The widow pressed her mouth close to Dura's ear; Dura was aware, uncomfortably, of the sweet, thin stink of leaves and bark on Philas's breath. "Who is she? What does she want?"

Dura pulled her head away. She was aware of Deni's appraising gaze. She felt a swirl of contradictory emotions: irritation at Deni's high-handed manner, and yet a certain embarrassment at the awkward, childlike behavior of the Human Beings. Had she been such a primitive on her first encounter with Toba Mixxax?