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infants and small children, safely confined inside a fine-meshed net.
"Why," she said, "the caravan's like a little City in itself. A City on the move. There are whole families
here."
"That's right." Kae smiled, a little sadly. "But the difference is, it's a City that will be broken up in another
few months, when we get to Parz. And we'll be shipped back to the hinterland in cars, to start work on
another."
They passed another netful of sleeping children.
Dura asked gently, "Why doesn't Rauc travel with the caravan? With Brow?"
Kae stiffened slightly. "Because she gets better pay where she is, doing coolie-work for Qos Frenk.
They have a kid. Did she tell you? She and Brow are having her put through school in Parz itself. They
have to work like this, to afford the fees."
Dura let herself drift to a stop in the Air. "So Rauc is on a ceiling-farm in the hinterland, her child is in that
wooden box at the Pole, and Brow is lost somewhere in the upflux with the lumber caravans. And if
they're lucky they meet what? once a year?" She thought of the Mixxaxes, also constrained to spend so
much of their time apart, and for much the same motives. "What kind of life is that, Kae?"
Kae drew away. "You sound as if you disapprove, Dura." She waved a hand. "Of all of this. The way
we live our lives. Well, we can't all live as toy savages in the upflux, you know." She bit her lip, but
pressed on. "This is the way things are. Rauc and Brow are doing the best they can, for their daughter.
And if you want to know how they feel about so much separation, you should ask them."
Dura said nothing.
"Life is complex for us more than you can imagine, perhaps. We all have to make compromises."
"Really? And what's your compromise, Kae?"
Kae's eyes narrowed. "Come on," she said. "Let's find the others. It must be time to eat."
They worked their way back along the complicated linear community in stiff silence.

A dozen people had gathered, close to the trunk of one of the great severed trees at the heart of the
caravan. A Wheel design had been cut into the trunk: neat, five-spoked, large enough to curve around
the trunk's cylindrical form. Small bowls of food had been jammed into the glowing trenches of the
design.
The people anchored themselves to the trunk itself, or to ropes and sections of net dangling from the
trunk, arranging themselves around the glow of the nuclear fire. Occasionally one of them reached into
the fire and drew out a bowl.
Dura joined the group a little nervously. But she was greeted by neutral, even friendly nods. With their
nomadic lives, crisscrossing the hinterland, these caravanners must be as used to accepting strangers as
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anyone in the huge, sprawling hinterland around Parz.
She found a short length of rope and wrapped it around her arm. The rope, leading to the tree trunk,
hauled at her with a steady pressure. So, she realized, she had become part of the caravan, bound to it
and swept along by its immense momentum. She glanced around at the group. Their faces, their relaxed
bodies in their practical vests, formed a rough hemispherical shell over the exposed wood core. The
green glow underlit their faces and limbs and cast soft light into their eyecups. Dura felt
comfortable accepted here and she drifted closer to the warmth of the nuclear fire.
She spotted Rauc and Brow, huddled together on the far side of the little group. Rauc waved briefly to
her, but quickly returned her attention to her husband. Glancing around discreetly, Dura saw that most of
the party had separated out into couples, bonded loosely by conversation. Alone, she turned to stare into
the steady glow of the fire.
There was a tap on her arm. She turned. Kae had settled into place next to her. She was smiling. "Will
you eat?"
Dura couldn't help but glance around surreptitiously. There seemed to be no one with Kae, no partner.
There was no sign of Kae's earlier flash of hostility she had the impression that there was a core of
deep unhappiness in Kae, hidden not far beneath the surface. She smiled back, eager to show good
grace. "Thanks. I will."
Kae reached toward the fire-trenches cut into the wood. She drew out one of the bowls embedded
there, taking care to keep her fingers away from the hot wood itself. The bowl was a small globe carved
of wood, and it held food, a dark brown, irregular mass. She held the bowl out to Dura.
Dura reached into the bowl and poked at the food tentatively. It was hot to the touch. She took hold of
it and drew it out. The surface was furry, but the furs were singed to a crisp, and they crackled as she
squeezed.
She looked at Kae doubtfully. "What is it?"
"Try it first." Kae looked sly in the green underglow.
Dura picked at the fur. "The whole thing?"
"Just bite into it."
Dura shrugged, raised the lump briskly, opened her mouth wide and bit into the fur. The surface was
elastic, difficult to pierce with her teeth, and the furs tickled the roof of her mouth. Then the skin broke,
and bits of hot, sticky meat spurted over her mouth and chin. She spluttered, but she wiped her face and
swallowed. The stuff was rich, warm, meaty. She took a bite from the skin and chewed it slowly. It was
tough and without much flavor. Then she sucked at the remaining meat inside the shell. There was a hard
inner core which she discarded.
"It's good," she said at last. "What is it?"
Kae let the empty bowl hang in the Air; she poked at it with her forefinger and watched it roll in the Air.
"Spin-spider egg," she said. "I knew you wouldn't recognize it. But it's the only way to eat it. It's actually
a delicacy, in some parts of the hinterland. There's even a community on the edge of the wild forest who
cultivate spiders, to get the eggs. Very dangerous, but very profitable. But you have to know how to treat
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the eggs, to bring out the flavor."
"I don't think I would have recognized this as a spider egg at all."
"It has to be collected when freshly laid when the young spider hasn't yet formed, and there's just a
sort of mush inside the egg. The hard part in the center is the basis of the creature's exoskeleton; the
young spider grows into its skeleton, consuming the nutrient."
"Thanks for telling me," Dura said drily.
Kae laughed, and opened up a sack at her waist. She drew out a slice of beercake. "Here; have some of
this. In Parz, there's a good market for exotic deep-hinterland produce like that. We make a good
side-profit from it. Now. How about some Air-pig meat?"
"All right. Please. And then you can tell me how you came to join these lumber caravans."
"Only if you tell me how you ended up here, so far from the upflux..."
With food warm inside her, and with the exhilarating buzz of beercake filling her head, Dura told Kae her
tangled story; and a little later, in the steady glow of the nuclear-fire Wheel, she repeated her tale for the
rest of the lumberjacks, who listened intently.

The food globes, nestling in the fire trenches, were finished. The conversation gradually subsided, and
Dura sensed that the gathering was coming to an end. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]