The City hovered in the Air over the Pole. Parz was so far below him he could cover it with the palm of his hand, and imagine he was alone in the sky — alone, save for his fellow racers. Parz looked like some elaborate wooden toy, surrounded by its cage of shining anchor-bands and pierced by a hundred orifices from which the green light of wood-lamps seeped, sickly. Sewage cascaded steadily from its underside, around the Spine of the Harbor. He could see the shining bulge that was the Stadium; it clung to the City's upper lip like a fragile growth, with the Committee Box a colorful balcony over it. Somewhere in there his parents would be watching, he knew — praying for his success, he'd like to think. But perhaps they were wishing he might fail — give up this dream, this distraction of Surfing, and join them in their quiet, constrained lives once more.

He shook his head, staring down on the City as if he were some god, suspended over it. Out here the inwardness, the frustration of his life in and around the City, seemed remote, reduced to the trivial; he felt exalted, able to view it all with compassion, balance. His parents loved him, and they wanted what was best for him — as they saw it. The cries of the race marshals, tiny in the huge, glowing sky, floated to him. Almost time. He glanced around. There were a hundred Surfers, drawn into a rough line across the sky; now they were drawing precisely level, into line with the squads of marshals in their distinctive red uniforms. Cris flicked at his own board, once, twice; he felt it kick at the Magfield and bring him exactly into his place in the line. He stared ahead. He was facing along the direction of the vortex lines, toward the rotation pole; the closest line was a few mansheights from him, and the lines swept around him like the walls of some intangible corridor, beckoning him to infinity.

The challenge of the race was to Surf along the vortex lines, far across the roof of the world — across the Pole — to a finishing cross-section; there another group of marshals marked out an area of the sky, like human spin-spiders. The race was won — not just by the fastest, the first to complete the course — but by whoever applied the most technical skill, the most style in following the course.

He looked along the line. Ray, he knew, was three places down from him — the only other of his friends to have qualified for the Games this year. There she was, her lithe, bare body coiled over her board, her hair swept back and her teeth shining in a broad, hungry grin. He caught her eye, and she raised a fist, her smile broadening.