"Not much." He looked at Bzya, hesitating. "And I don't understand how you've kept your sense of humor, my friend."

"By accepting life as it is. I can question, but I can't change. Anyway, Parz isn't some kind of huge prison, as you seem to imagine. It's home for a lot of people — it's like a machine, designed to improve the lives of young people like Cris."

"Then the machine's not bloody working."

Bzya said calmly, "Would you exchange Farr's life and experiences, to date, for Cris's?"

"But Cris's thinking is so narrow. The Games, his parents... as if this City was all the world, safe and eternal. Instead of..." He searched for the words. "Instead of a box, lashed up from old lumber, floating around in immensity..."

Bzya touched his shoulder. "But that's why you and I are here, old man. To keep the world away from boys like Farr and Cris — to give them a place that seems as stable and eternal as your parents did when you were a child — until they are old enough to cope with the truth." He turned his scarred face to the North, staring into the diverging vortex lines with a trace of anxiety. "I wonder how much longer we're going to be able to achieve that."

Again and again, Cris Mixxax looped around the huge Corestuff band.

—

It was the day of the launch. The down-gaping mouth of the Harbor, here in the deepest Downside of the City, framed clear, yellow Air. A few people Waved beneath the entrance and peered up into the dark. Engineers talked desultorily as they waited for Hork to arrive, and to begin the launch proper. There was a smell of old, splintering wood.

Dura clung to a rail close to the lip of the access port, keeping to herself. She had already said her good-byes. Toba had cooked them a fine meal in his little Midside home, but it had been a difficult occasion; Dura had had to work hard to break through Farr's resentful reserve. She'd asked Adda, quietly, to keep Farr away from the launch site today. She'd have enough to think about without the emotional freight of another round of farewells.

Even, she thought, wrapping her arms around her torso, if they turned out to be final farewells.