a few moments, and then Arran laughed softly. "Funny. I never think of Capitol as having winds. Just drafts. Just little breezes from the vents. Capitol is a planet after all."
"The surface is the worst desert you'll ever find, though. Any interference with our food supply or energy sources, and it'd be a desert down below, too. Sleep."
They both slept. When Hop woke, Arran wasn't beside him. He got up quickly, looked into the dimly - lighted distance for her. She wasn't too far away - sitting at the edge of the huge exhaust duct they had slept on, off toward the ladder they had climbed to reach it. Hop walked toward her. His steps were muffled by dust and the distance of the walls - no echoes here. But she heard him a few steps off, and turned to look at him. Wordlessly she waited until he came to the edge and sat down beside her.
"A long way down," he said. She nodded. "Ever been this close to the surface?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I woke just now without a toothbrush," she said. "I couldn't bathe. I couldn't go to the wardrobe and choose what I would wear for the day. Nobody's coming to call."
"You've got problems," Hop said. "I've already missed about fifteen appointments, and Jazz's latest tape isn't ready for distribution. It's costing me about a thousand a minute just to sit here."
"What will we do, even when we get to another district?"
"You're asking me?"
"We can't use our credit cards. They'd track us down in a moment."
Hop shrugged. "Maybe they aren't looking for me. Maybe I can use mine."
"And maybe not."
Suddenly there was an abrupt change of pitch in the hum of the air passing under them. "What was that?" asked Arran.
"Maybe eight thousand people flushed their toilets all at once in this district. Maybe fifteen thousand people turned down their thermostats. Maybe there's a fire."
"I wonder what Capitol looked like before," Arran mused.
"That's a strange thing to wonder."
"Is it? But there must have been a time before men came here. What did the first colonists see?"
Hop laughed. "A virgin world, ready for raping."
"Or perhaps a home."
"What is this, a lifeloop? Nobody talks about home in real life," Hop said.
"Nobody talks about home in lifeloops, Hop," she said, a little annoyed. "Nobody has used the word in thousands of years. But we keep it in the language. Why?"
Hop shrugged. "Everybody says, 'I'm going home'."
"But nobody says, This is my home. Come in.' We live in flats. We walk through corridors. We travel in tubes. What would it be like to live out under the sky?"
"I hear there are bugs."
"A huge park."
"Well," Hop said, "that's your solution. Go to a colony. Get on a colony ship, and your troubles are over."
Arran turned to him, horrified. "And go off somec? Are you crazy? I'd rather die."
She got up and walked back toward where they had slept, and Hop joined her. They looked around at the two patches where the dust had been largely cleared away by their sleep. "Nobody's ever going to believe this," Hop said. "Here I was, alone with Arran Handully for hours on end. We slept together, and not only did I not try to make love, lady, I didn't even have my loop recorder going."
"Thank God."
"Let's go."
They went to the opposite end of the duct, where it turned a ninety - degree angle and shot upward to the distant ceiling. A thin, spidery ladder crept up the shaft. They both stood and looked upward for a few moments, and then Arran said, "Me first?"
"Yeah. Try not to fall."
"Just don't tickle my feet."
And they began to climb. Their muscles were still cold from sleep; at first they climbed awkwardly, slowly, carefully. After a short while, though, they settled into a rather quick rhythm, hand - foot - hand - foot, the motion carrying them endlessly upward. Once Arran spoke, saying, "How many kilometers to go?" The speech broke her rhythm, and she missed a step, and for a mad moment she felt herself fall. But her hands never left the side shafts of the ladder, and her foot caught on the next rung down. From then on neither of them spoke.
At last the rhythm slowed down again. There are only so many rungs of a ladder that untrained, weary bodies can climb. "Stop," Hop said. Arran took a few more steps and came to a halt.
"Tired?" Hop asked.
"Are you?"
"I think maybe