Somewhere beyond all of this there must be actual land, and some kind of port town, but Zula saw it only in glimpses. For there was a cleft in all this improvised rafting that penetrated to a dock: just a single pier, where at the moment a passenger ferry was drawn up. From it a road rambled up the hill, forming the spine of a town. The road was lined with low buildings and half choked with people in doulis squatting on the hot pavement to mend stretched-out fishnets or string bald tires onto cables. Welding arcs and cutting torches glinted everywhere, bluer and brighter than the sun. Smaller boats like the one that they were on circulated through every patch of water large enough to float them, like mitochondria in cells. The sheer complexity of the rigging and the traffic and the patterns of movement baffled the mind and faded into the haze and humidity long before it started to make sense.