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cloth caps, in red, green, yellow, and other colors, and the orange-red hair some of them had, gave them any color. They walked fearlessly on precariously narrow girders as though they couldn’t see the thousand feet of open space ­between them and the ground.
And one of the men, positioned at a far corner of the building under construction, towered over the rest.
He was a freak compared to the others. If Harris gauged his size correctly, he was enormous, the height of an NBA basketball player, the build of a boxer. He was nut-brown like most of the rest, but his hair was a long blond cascade. Unlike the others, he wore only boots and a pair of lightweight tan pants. He had two partners, one catching the rivets and the other helping him drive them into place; normal sized for men of Neckerdam, they looked like midgets next to him.
Doc spotted the gigantic man and headed toward him—casually walking out onto the metal that stretched weblike over that long, long drop to the ground.
Harris froze where he was. Doc reached the first ­upright girder and began to edge around it, then realized that Harris was no longer behind him. He looked back and after a moment said, “Stay here. I’ll return in a minute.” He stepped around the upright barrier and continued onward.
Something wilted inside Harris. He knew that, in Doc’s eyes, he had to have just ceased being an adult human and had become a child. Dammit.
He sat down and yanked off his shoes and socks. If he were going to do this, he wouldn’t do it on slick leather soles. Then he rose, poised for a long, long moment at the edge of the wooden platform . . . and stepped out onto the cool metal girder.
One step. Still alive. Two steps, still alive. He reminded himself that as a kid he was always good at walking on the top of the curb,