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they gain knowl-edge, they may be able to contain or even trap him."
"So? What is he?" O'Leary and Nakitt asked almost as one.
"That remains a secret for now, in the hope that it will cause Chalidang to
remain nervous for a while longer. Even-tually they'll figure it out, but
until then it keeps them on their guard and perhaps throws them off. We made
an agreement with Citizen Kincaid. He does no more revenge in Zone, and we few
keep his secret."
"You can't trust his word," O'Leary warned. "He's a lu-natic with only one
mission in life."
"He'll keep his word to us.
Otherwise, we'll exchange his invisibility for a very large target and drop
him at the Chali-dang embassy."
Abudan, Capital of Yabbo
NOW
THAT
WAS A RIDE!
MlNG'S ENTHUSIASM WAS NOT MATCHED
by Ari, who shared everything with her except her soul.
I feel like I've been beat up, stuck in a garbage disposal, and run through a
grinder, Ari grumped.
The steam-powered cars had pretty obviously not been built for Kalindans, but
even if they had been, he doubted that he'd have liked them. He had never been
much for simulators, roller coasters, or anything else that wasn't extremely
com-fortable. While he'd always understood why people like pilots had to go
through stuff like that, he'd never understood why others thought people like
him would enjoy such things just for laughs.
Party pooper! I sure won't get any fun sharing a body with the likes of you!
Maybe not, but you'll grow older and also keep your din-ners down.
Traveling in the cars was like being packed into an aerated tin can and shot
from point to point out of pressurized guns, and it was fast. Abudan, the
capital city, was almost in the dead center of the hex, or roughly two hundred
kilometers from the border. Under normal circumstances that was quite a swim.
With all this murky soup they called water, it would have been several days of
slow and miserable work. Now, here they were in only six hours, although the
aches and pains were beginning to show.
Nor were they the only Kalindans to take this route. Pos-sibly because of the
slow going and low visibility, almost all the neighboring hexes seemed to use
it. Since the Kalindans were fabricating and assembling a good deal of both
the large and local systems, there were a lot of them around.
The city itself was huge, at least on the scale of Kalinda's own capital of
Jinkivar. It seemed even larger because it was low to the ground. Few
buildings rose more than four stories, yet the population was approaching a
million of the lobster-like Yabbans. They were by no means reclusive, either,
going to and fro in such great numbers that they seemed a steady stream
filling the streets. They tended to keep to the bottom. Rising only as
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required allowed fish and related creatures who preferred swimming a group
that
included Kalindans the upper reaches.
Where are they going?
Ari wondered.
Maybe it s rush hour, Ming responded, taken aback herself. The place seemed so
damned busy, even by the most active and crowded of Terran standards, let
alone Kalindan ones.
"First time in the city?" a voice asked them. They turned and saw a portly
Kalindan with both a backpack and large travel case emerging from the station.
"Yes," Ming responded. "It's all so overwhelming. What do they all do
?"
The other laughed. "
That is a question no one dares ask, not because it's any mysterious plot but
because one of them might stop and try and explain it all to you. I assure
you, after that you will be totally confused.
I think our translators and certain common traits involving commerce and trade
blind us to the fact that all of us are truly alien species to the others.
Cheer up! They're friendly!"
She laughed. "I gathered that much."
"Where are you staying? Do you know your way around the city?"
Ming hesitated. They had no plans. "We hadn't really thought of it. The budget
is tight, though."
"I see! You young people! I suppose the parents decided while you waited for
some university slot you should see a bit of the world, eh?"
"Something like that." It was also hard getting used to hav-ing a teenager's
body albeit a very different body than the ones they'd grown up in. The Well
World essentially reset newcomers, not to a child that would have insulted
their intelligence and been another hurdle to handle but as a postpubescent
young adult. The others had been similarly de-aged, as it were, although with
a few races it was hard to tell.
"Well, this is certainly the direction in spite of the prob-lems. Come with
me! There's a sort of Kalindan colony here under a filtered dome. I'll take
you there. If worse comes to worse, you won't be the first or last to sleep at
the top of the dome!"
They followed the Kalindan, wondering about the friendli-ness of their fellow
country people.
I don't remember folks back in Kalinda being all this friendly and helpful,
Ari noted.
Me, neither. I have memories of being tossed around and locked up a lot. It
might just be that
we're all in a foreign land, or it might be something else.
You think we're being led?
Maybe. Or maybe both of us have just been in the under-cover business too
long. Either way, it gets us where we need to go.
"You lead and we'll follow, Citizen . . . er?"
"Mitchuk. I'm an engineering technician specializing in epoxies."
"Epoxies?"
"Glues. Cements. Sealants. Things that stick to one an-other forever. You just
rode one of the trains. Can you imagine what would happen if any of those
seals had come apart in transit?"
You mean they didn't?
"Uh, yeah. I suppose. I never really thought about it."
"Well, that's the part of my job that's both satisfying and a bit frustrating.
I know if I did it right, lives are safe due to my work. Still, if I do it
right, nobody ever notices the work, which is quite difficult and demanding.
If you do it wrong, of course, you lose all that satisfaction and, well, you
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wind up heading the news in at least two hexes."
Like the other Kalindans who worked in the hex, Mitchuk swam much faster and
more confidently than they did, but they managed to keep up, going perhaps ten
meters over the roofs of the tallest structures in the city and avoiding much
of the mob below. The site of those vast hordes packed in and going this way
and that on unknown missions reminded them less of underwater denizens than,
again, of an insect colony.
It was also noisy, but the din was steady and at a reasonable level. They
quickly learned to tune it out.
They went right through the center of the city and found the only point where
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