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unfinished-looking walls but it led, Farr saw, to an ellipse of clear, precious Airlight. He stared
hungrily into that light, marveling at how the bright yellow glow glittered from scraped-smooth
patches of wall.
"Are we going down here?"
"Through this cargo port? Out through the Skin? But that's against City ordinances..." Cris grinned.
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"You bet we are." With a whoop, Cris placed one hand on the lip of the elliptical entrance and
somersaulted into the shaft. His board clutched above his head, he flapped his arms, Waving in
reverse feet-first down the shaft. Farr, clumsier, clambered over the lip of the port and plunged
down. Laughing, their voices echoing from the wooden walls, the boys tumbled toward the open Air.
Farr shot out of the oppressive wall of the City and spread his arms and legs, drinking in the yellow-
shining Air and staring up at the arc of the vortex lines.
Cris was looking at him skeptically. "Are you okay?"
"I'm just glad to be out in the Air... even if it is this sticky Polar stuff."
"Right. Not like back in the good old upflux, eh?" Cris leveled his board, flexed it with the palm of
his hand experimentally against the Magfield.
Farr rolled luxuriously in the Air. The port they'd emerged from was a rough-rimmed mouth set in
the wooden outer hull the Skin and it loomed around them still, as if threatening to snap down on
them, to swallow them back into the City's wooden guts. But the boys were drifting in the Air, away
from the City, and Farr saw that this port was just one of an array of similar entrances which
stretched across the face of the City in all directions, as far as he could see. Farr tried to pick out
identifying features of "their" port, so he could find it again if he needed to. But it was simply a
crudely finished gash in the wooden Skin, unmarked, with nothing to distinguish it from a hundred
others. Farr soon gave up the effort of memorizing. After all, if he did get lost, even if he found this
particular port again he'd never find his way back to the Mixxaxes' home through the City streets.
He flipped his legs and pulled a little further away from the City. The Skin was like a gigantic mask,
looming over him. This close he could see its detail how it was crudely cobbled together from
mismatched sections of wood and Corestuff but it was hugely impressive nevertheless. The dozens
of cargo ports in this part of the Skin were, he thought, like mouths, continually ingesting; or
perhaps like capillary pores, taking in a granular Air of wood and food. As he pulled back still
further he saw the huge, unending falls from the sewage outlets spread across the base of the City;
the roar of the semisolid stuff tumbling into the underMantle seemed to fill the Air.
The City battered and imperfect as it might be was magnificent, he realized slowly; it was like an
immense animal, noisily alive, utterly oblivious of his own tiny presence before its face.
He heard his name called.
He glanced around, but Cris had gone. Farr felt an absurd stab of disorientation after all, he had a
far smaller chance of getting lost out here than in the City's guts and twisted, staring around. There
was Cris, his orange coverall bright, a distant, Waving figure suspended on his Surfboard. He was
close to the Skin but far above Farr's head. He'd slipped away while Farr was daydreaming.
Embarrassed, a little irritated, Farr thrust at the Air, letting the upfluxer strength in his legs hurl him
toward Cris.
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Cris watched him approach, grinning infuriatingly. "Keep up. There are people waiting for us." He
clambered back onto his board, turned and led the way.
Farr followed, perhaps a mansheight behind; one after the other the boys soared over the face of the
City.
Cris's Surfing technique was spectacular, bearing little relation to the cut-down caricature he had
shown Farr inside the City. Cris pivoted the gleaming board under one bare foot while thrusting with
the other heel at the back of the board, making it Wave vigorously. His bare soles seemed able to
grip at the surface's fine ridges. He kept his arms stretched out in the Air for balance, and the
muscles in the City boy's legs worked smoothly. The whole process looked wonderfully easy, in
fact, and Farr felt a dull itch in the small of his back and in his calves as he stared at Cris. He
longed to try out the Surfboard for himself. Why, with his enhanced strength, here at the Pole, he
could make the damn thing fly...
But he couldn't deny Cris's skill as he expertly levered his mass and inertia against the soft resistance
of the Magfield. The speed and grace of Cris's motion, with electron gas crackling around the
Corestuff strips embedded in the board, was nonchalant and spectacular.
They were climbing up and around the City's Skin, generally away from the sewage founts at the
base but on a diagonal line across the face. They crossed one of the huge Longitude anchor-bands.
Farr saw how the band was fixed to the Skin by pegs of Corestuff at intervals along its length. The
gleaming Corestuff strip was wider than a mansheight, and in response to the huge currents
surging through the band's superconducting core electron gas played unceasingly over its smooth
surface. The Magfield here was distorted, constricted by the band's field; it felt uneven, harsh, tight
around Farr's chest.
Cris clambered off his board and joined Farr in Waving away from the Skin, working cautiously past
the anchor-band. "Magfield's too spiky here," Cris said curtly. "You can't get a proper grip."
Past the anchor-band, the Skin unfolded before Farr's gaze. He'd expected the Skinscape to be
featureless, uniform, except for the random blemishes of its construction. But it was much too huge
to allow such uniformity, he soon realized. As they climbed toward the City's equator, toward the
Upside areas, the huge cargo ports and public Air-shafts became more sparse, to be replaced by
smaller, tidier doorways evidently meant for humans and Air-cars, and by small portals which must
be windows or light-shafts for private dwellings. A man leaned out of a window and hurled out a
bowl of what looked like sewage; the stuff sparkled as it dispersed. Cris cupped his hands around his
mouth and called down a greeting. The man squat and yellow-haired peered out into the sky,
startled. When he spotted the boys he shook his fist at them, shouting something angry but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]