She saw all this in the heartbeat it took to cross the space between them and take her brother in her arms. He hugged her back — but not as an uninhibited child, she slowly realized; he put his arms around her and patted her spine, comforting her.

She let him go and held him at arm's length. His face was square and serious. He seemed to have grown older, and there was more of their father about him.

"I'm well, Dura."

"Yes. So am I. I thought you might have been injured in the Glitch."

"I wasn't in the Bells when the Glitch came. It was my off-shift, and I was in the Harbor..."

"That doesn't matter," she said bitterly. "You're too young to have been sent down in those things."

"It's just the way things are," he said gently. "Boys younger than me have served in the Bells. Dura, none of it is your fault... even if I'd been hurt it wouldn't have been your fault."

He was comforting her. He really was growing up.

"Anyway, I haven't been back to the Harbor for a while," Farr went on. He smiled. "Not since Adda had Hork send for me. I've been staying with Toba."

"How are the family?"

"Well. Cris has been teaching me to Surf." Farr held his arms out in the Air, as if balancing on an invisible board. "You'll have to try it..."

"Dura. You've made it; I'm glad." Adda came paddling through the Air toward them. Dura glanced quickly over the old man; his shoulders, chest and lower legs were still bound up with grubby bandages, but he was moving freely enough. He was towing an object which looked like the skin of an Air-pig; sewn up and inflated, it bobbled behind his clumsy progress like a toy.

She found a clear place on his face — away from the eye-leech — and kissed him. "I'd hug you if I wasn't scared of breaking you."

He snorted. "So you got through the Glitch."

Briefly she told her story; Farr's eyes grew round when she described the Xeelee ship. She told them how the Human Beings had fared in the Glitch — of their twenty dead. As she recited the familiar, lost names, she was reminded of the simple, moving name-litany ceremonial of the lumberjacks.

She told Adda and Farr of the five upfluxer children lodging, for today, with Deni Maxx. Farr and Adda smiled, and promised to visit the kids.

"Now tell me what we're doing here. And why you're towing a dead pig about the place."

Adda grimaced, making the leech slither across his crumpling cheek. "You'll find out... damn foolishness, all of it." He glanced around to the rest of the party; Dura recognized Muub, the Hospital Physician, with two other men. "Come on," Adda said. "We'd better get on with it."

With Dura and Farr helping Adda, the three Human Beings made their way to Muub and his companions.

—