Mercifully the pain seemed to be lessening. The burning, the decomposition of his flesh, must be damaging the nerve endings themselves. Soon he genuinely would be isolated inside his body.

Well, I'll never Surf again. Or sculpt. Or, and now his inner smile faded, or feel a woman's skin.

There was a new stab of pain from his outstretched arm, his useless stub of hand. The arm buckled, forced back by something solid.

His body collided with a hard surface. He tried to feel with his chest, thighs and face.

The Spine. The blessed Spine.

He dragged his free arm across the surface until it snagged on something. There, he had it — a Bell cable. He made his hand into a hook and wrapped it around the cable. With Hosch still towed limply behind him, he flattened himself against the wooden surface of the Spine, and began to Wave once more, along the length of the Spine, using the Cable as a guide.

How ironic, he thought, if he were Waving the wrong way, down toward the Core.

—

By the time he was lifted out of the fluid, he was almost isolated from the world, inside a deadened body. He felt as aware, as alert as ever, but he could feel little. Even the pain had gone now. But he could feel his chest expand, dragging in the thinning, clearing Air, and he could feel the Magfield pull at his stomach, the center of him.

He was still here, he thought. Just a little battered around the edges.

He thought he'd kept Waving until the end, and he thought he'd kept hold of Hosch. But it was hard to be sure.

And now he was being moved again, more delicately. He tried to smile. The Fishermen must have come down for him and Hosch, in a second Bell.

He was glad he couldn't see the looks on their faces, as they nursed him.

25

WITH A FINAL HEAVE FROM the team of volunteers, the patient was loaded through the kicked-out Hospital wall and into the car waiting in the Air beyond. Adda watched the car recede cautiously from the Hospital, and then turn to join the streams of refugees fleeing to the upflux.

Once the evacuation of the City had begun, this ward of the Hospital of the Common Good, directly behind the Skin of Parz, had rapidly been adapted to serve as a loading bay. Now it was a three-dimensional swarm of Hospital staff, volunteers, patients and those close to them. Patients screamed or moaned, and staff called desperately to each other for splints, bandages, drugs. And as fast as the patients were shipped off in the cars outside, more — ever more — were crowding in from the rest of the broken City. Adda felt overwhelmed, daunted, dismayed, exhausted. Perhaps I've finally seen too many changes. Too many disasters; too many shattered bodies...