Mixxax was wearing clothes. Not just a belt, or a carrying-pouch, but a suit of some kind of leather which encased him all over. She'd never seen anything so restrictive. And useless. It wasn't as if it had a lot of pockets, even. And he wore a hat on his head, with a veil of some clear, light material dangling over his face. Tubes led from the veil to a pack on his back. A medallion, a wheel shape, hung on a chain around his neck.

Mixxax was a good five years older than Dura herself, and only perhaps fifteen years younger than her father at the time of his death. Old enough for his hair — what she could see of it — to have mostly yellowed and for a network of lines to have accumulated around shallow eyecups. In the forest's thin Air he seemed breathless, despite his hat and veil. He was short — a head shorter than she was — and looked well fed: his cheeks were round and his belly bulged under his clothes. But, despite his cargo of fat, Mixxax was not well muscled. His neck, arms and upper legs were thin, the muscles lost under the concealing layers of leather; his covered head wobbled slightly atop a neck that was frankly scrawny.

In a fair contest, Dura realized slowly, Mixxax would be no match for her. In fact, he'd be hard pressed to defend himself against Farr. Had all the people of his strange home — Parz City — become so atrophied by riding around in pig-drawn cars?

Dura began to feel confident again. Toba Mixxax was strange, but he obviously wasn't much of a threat.

She found her gaze drawn back to the medallion suspended from his neck. It was about the size of her palm, and consisted of an open wheel against which was fixed a sketchy sculpture of a man, with arms and legs outstretched against the wheel's five spokes. The work was finely done, with the expression on the face of the little carved man conveying a lot of meaning: pain, and yet a kind of patient dignity.

But it wasn't the form of the pendant but its material which was causing her to stare. It was carved of a substance she'd never seen before. Not wood, certainly; it looked too smooth, too heavy for that. What, then? Carved bone? Or...

Mixxax seemed to become aware of her gazing at the pendant; with a start, oddly guilty, he masked the device in the palm of his hand and tucked it inside the neck of his jacket, out of sight.

She decided to puzzle over this later. One more mystery among many...

"Dura," Toba said. His voice sounded a lot better than the distorted croak she'd heard through the walls of the car.

"Thank you for helping us."