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High up on the crater’s western wall, where the ground was so steep that even the Maydans had not tried to terrace it, a large house was descending gracefully through a long, vertical garden. As it went down, so the building next to it went up, windows flashing in the sunlight. Further along the cliff another pair of houses did the same, and as Fever looked quickly across the city she saw that dozens of structures were in motion.
    “See?” said Fern, with great satisfaction. She couldn’t recall ever proving Fever wrong before.
    “The locals call them funiculars,” announced AP, coming up on to the sun-deck in his dressing gown, a mug of coffee in his hand. “I remember them from when Mistress Persimmon and I last came to Mayda, more years ago than I care to say. Mansions, restaurants, whole hotels on the smarter levels move up and down the cliffs.”
    “But to what purpose?” Fever asked.
    “Oh, just for the fun of it, in the case of the restaurants and hotels.” AP slurped his coffee and watched the buildings rise and fall without much interest. “As for the rich men’s mansions, well, their masters like to rise each evening into sunlight and clear air, then descend again at dawn into the city’s heart where they do their business.”
    Fever shook her head. Mobile theatres, mobile mansions, mobile fortresses… Why were the people of her era not content to live in places which just stood still? Was it the same urge that drove the nomad empires on their ceaseless travels, and had made her grandfather dream of fitting wheels to London? Was it a leftover from the Downsizing, when plagues and earth-storms had kept the ragged remnants of Mankind forever on the move? Maybe, deep down, people just didn’t feel safe if their home was anchored to the earth. It was deeply irrational.
    And yet the Maydan funiculars were fascinating. She sat and watched as more and more started to move, whole neighbourhoods sliding up and down the crater walls like the shuttles of some enormous, pointless loom. She wondered what it would be like to ride in a funicular, and thought again of the glider which she had brought back from her midnight walk. She had imagined that Mayda would be a backward place, but so far it seemed full of wonders…
    “Fever,” said Ruan, nudging her. “There’s someone calling for you.”
    Fever looked at him, and realized that the annoying noise which had been intruding on her thoughts for the last half-minute was a human voice, and that it was shouting, “Miss Crumb!”
    AP went to look over the handrail at the edge of the deck. Fever joined him. Below, on the cobbled harbourside, she saw a man in travel-stained blue robes and a broad-brimmed hat looking up at her. “Miss Crumb?” he called when she appeared. “Miss Fever Crumb? Of London?”
    “That man was at Master Squinter’s stall aboard the Stone last night!” said Ruan.
    “’Ere, Fever,” said Lillibet, coming to join the growing crowd at the handrail, “that chap was ’ere last night after the show, asking after you. Dead good-looking he is. I told him he should call again today.”
    “Oh, you didn’t?” said Fever. Lillibet and Dymphna were always trying to find her a boyfriend, and never believed her when she told them that she simply didn’t want one. She frowned down at the stranger, wondering how she could get rid of him. But just then he pulled off his hat. He was good-looking, which of course meant nothing to Fever, but his head was as bald as a sea-stone, and that did. She had grown up surrounded by men who looked like that. She had looked like that herself until she came to live aboard the Lyceum and let her hair grow.
    “Miss Crumb?” the stranger called. By his accent she guessed he came originally from one of the Scottish city states; a refugee, perhaps, from ice-drowned Edinburgh or Aberdeen.
    “May I speak with you?” he asked. “I am Dr Avery Teal, of London. I arrived just yesterday, aboard the Rolling Stone.