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in a couple of seconds—which might mean I won’t reach the water, so I wave her off. But she collides with me and grabs my foot and uses her momentum to knock me off course. Now we’re both moving down, but also passing over the water to the opposite channel wall.
Only now do I see how fast the water is moving. It’s a weird taffystreaming blur. I can make out currents, mostly parallel to the channel walls, but also whirlpools that rush past, relative to the girl and me, at about a hundred kilometers an hour.
I’ll die, but I don’t care. I’ll die wet. I’m philosophical about the entire gambit. It’s going to be a close thing either way. The girl knows more about this sort of flying than I do but seems to actually be risking her life for me.
Maybe it’s a game.
I start laughing. “We’re going swimming!” I shout.
The girl looks along the length of my leg and body—she’s still hanging on to my foot—in a kind of anxious pity. Her face seems so mature, so experienced—maybe I’m the child and she’s the grown-up.
The wind has pulled us toward the center. The water is right below us. I stretch out my hand. I’m totally insane—the smell of it is like a promise of heaven. My hand touches the stream, and instantly I’m in intense pain, hand wrenched, whole body spinning head over heels, the girl at my foot also swinging, scared—
But the dynamics of our new, combined shape pushes us outward. We strike the opposite sloping wall of the channel and carom back in a tangle, but farther from the channel, lifting over the water—and still, of course, moving briskly along the tube.
My hand feels like it’s broken, but I suck at the moisture left on my fingers—very little of it, actually. Hardly worth the effort.
“That isn’t how it’s done,” the girl says when she’s caught her breath.
“I could have made it,” I insist, and kick against the breeze, hoping to return to the channel.
“The water’s in a trough,” she says. “The trough is spinning free of the walls. That’s why the water stays in the trough. It’s going really, really fast. Look.”
She points across the channel to the three fellows on the other side. Picker is holding out a stick and honking above the roar and hiss as if relaying instructions. Blue-Black responds in high whistles.
He’s going to thrust the stick into the spinning stream.
“That’s Pushingar,” the girl says.
I have no idea where she’s getting her names, but they stick.
The others grab hold of Pushingar’s feet. The stick goes in and they all spin like tops but remain above the channel. And a few splashes are liberated by the stick, forming quivering, shimmering globules.
Where’s the third fellow, Scarlet-Brown?
He comes out of the shadows behind us, arms out, hooting in ecstasy. He’s kicked out over the channel, off the opposite wall, and is now rather expertly arrowing toward a fist-sized pearl of water pushing along through the air. He opens his mouth—it’s an impressive mouth, filled with broad yellow teeth, big canines, and even bigger incisors—and grabs a great big drink. He scoops the rest of the broken globule into his outstretched tunic.
“What’s his name?” I shout above the roar.
“Satmonk,” the girl says.
The other two intercept Satmonk, and they rebound, join hands, and float together, scooping and aiming drops and globules with hands and feet, moving their heads to Pushingar’s midriff, where he’s busy wringing out the tunic.
All drink greedily.
“That’s how it’s done,” the girl says. “But unless they give us a little shove, it’s going to take a few minutes to cross to where we can join them.”
“My fault,” I say, my lips and tongue just moist enough now to manage a few words.
“Can’t be helped,” the girl says. “Everything here is about waiting and seeing and being patient. Otherwise, someone else fills in your book. Or worse— the book gets lost.”
She points to the channel, the rushing