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Wedge saw workers moving and laboring. He saw none smiling. None looked up to see him or his companions on the catwalk far above.

“Where do they all live?” he asked. “I can’t remember seeing masses of people wearing workers’ garments like those. Not anywhere.”

Berandis, the plant’s assistant manager in charge of public concerns, a lean man whose mustache was topped by a series of ridiculous curls held in place by some sort of wax, gave him an easy smile. “Well, they live wherever they want and can afford, of course. Most are in turumme-warrens, above.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Cheriss said, “Turummes are reptiles, distant relatives of the farummes you’ve seen. They dig elaborate nests in the ground. So large banks of apartment quarters built below the surface are often called turumme-warrens. The warrens above a plant like this are always owned by the plant.”

“Some workers live aboveground, of course,” Berandis said. “There are no laws to keep them in the warrens. But few can afford aboveground housing. Mostly you see it with managers, stewards—”

“Informants,” Cheriss said. “The occasional parasite.”

Berandis’s smile did not waver, but he lowered the tone of his voice. “Manufacturing plants are the same all over Cartann,” he said. “But we do offer a difference. Our missiles are the best, which is why we are the recipient of the government contract for all missiles for Cartann’s Blade-Thirties and Blade-Thirty-twos. A pilot like you can stake your life on a Challabae missile and know that it will serve your purpose faithfully and reliably. This gives our workers something to be proud of.”

Hobbie nodded. “I can tell. You can see the pride on their faces.”

Berandis beamed, oblivious to sarcasm.

On the long walk back to their start point, Cheriss dropped back behind Berandis to march with the pilots. Her voice artificially cheery, she said, “There is another advantage to having worker quarters above plant facilities of course.”

“Which is what?” Wedge asked.

“Well, if some enemy were to fill the skies above Cartann City and drop Broadcap bombs on the plant, the bombs would only penetrate as far as the warrens before exploding. The plant would take little or no damage.” Her tone was light, but Wedge detected something in it—bitterness or sarcasm, or perhaps both. He couldn’t tell.

Tycho said, “You’ve either worked at a plant like this or lived in the turumme-warrens, haven’t you?”

“Both,” she said. “My mother worked at a food-processing plant until brownlung killed her. I worked there for a season before I was well established enough to make my living with my blastsword.”

“How, precisely, do you make your living?” Wedge asked. “By taking trophies from the enemies you defeat?”

“No … though I did that at first. Now I use only blastswords manufactured by Ghephaenne Deeper-Craters Weaponmakers, and they pay me regularly so that they can mention that fact in their flatscreen boasting.”

“Endorsements,” Hobbie said. “I could do that instead of flying. I’ve had offers from bacta makers. Bacta’s a sort of medicine,” he added for Cheriss’s benefit.

She offered a little frown. “You are not a well man?”

“I’m well enough. But the ground and I get along so well we sometimes get together a little too vigorously.”

“So let me be sure I understand this,” Wedge said. “Under Cartann City, there are lots of underground manufacturing concerns, huge ones, where they make missiles and preserved food and Blades and everything Cartann needs, with worker quarters—where most workers have to live because they can’t afford anything else—above them but still underground.”

Cheriss nodded.

“And we don’t see these workers aboveground because?”

“Because they’re too tired at the end of a long day of working to do much but eat and watch the day’s flatscreen broadcasts,” Cheriss said.

“How much of the population lives belowground, compared to what we’ve seen aboveground?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Forty percent, perhaps. But don’t feel that