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“Okay, somewhat milder.”

“I mean nobody can make something that big.”

“Our hosts can. Took them a week. We’re in the northern Hoop; they’ve reserved the southern one for their own use. Our Hoop is broken into twelve hundred individual segments, each segment not quite sixteen miles long. That’s plenty big enough for each segment to hold several different small communities. Rice City is bigger than most and kind of spread out, with a couple thousand citizens. There are three other towns in this segment, but Rice City is the largest. A lot of segments are still empty at this point. People tend to cluster, and a lot of them stay near the place where they first arrive.”

I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around that. Rather than argue the improbability of an artifact as humongous as she was describing, and my argument would have been crippled by the fact that I obviously wasn’t in Kansas anymore, I jumped on another point.

“By arrived you mean where they get put. Or dumped.” I’d sure been dumped.

Trub ate a couple more of the red marked rice balls, studying me thoughtfully as she chewed. Thoughtfully enough to make me antsy. That one good eye of hers had something of the security camera lens about it, like you’re being watched as a shoplifter when you are only shopping. I tried to act unconcerned and sampled one of the black rice balls. It was pretty good. Spicy, but not insanely so.

“Placed is really the best way to describe it,” she said at last. “You see, our hosts are pretty damn good at reading affinity and intention.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “You’re saying they can read our minds?”

“Not really. They’re just good at sensing the ways people lean, and what they might do and like. Why, is mind-reading a problem?”

I stared at her in disbelief. “You don’t mind having aliens in your head?”

She laughed. “Let me tell you, after having a fist full of shrapnel in your skull, anything less hardly counts.”

I shook my head, dissatisfied with her answer. And, truth be told, a little freaked. This was too much weirdness to scarf down at a single sitting. It was nearly as indigestible as one of those red rice balls.

“I can’t believe any of this,” I said, then managed to damp down the shrill edge in my voice. “Giant tubes as gerbil runs for humans. Friendly brain-sucking. Sorting people like change or recyclables. I mean, if they’re such hot shit, then why am I here in Crouching Tiger land with you?”

The one-eyed woman seemed more amused by my attitude than put off by it. She helped herself to a couple more rice balls, then drained her mug.

“Kind of a hard case, aren’t you?”

“I’m not a chump,” I said stiffly.

“Good for you. So tell me, are you tough?”

I almost snapped back a glib answer, but looking at this woman who had survived such terrible injuries made me think twice.

“Tough enough, I guess,” I said at last. “I’ve spent ten years as a posto in New York.”

“Good for you.” She stood up. “I’ll be back in a minute. Eat a bit more. Finish your beer. You’ll need it.”

“For what?”

Instead of answering, she strolled toward the bar, detouring a couple times to trade complicated handshakes with fellow combatants. They all seemed to know and like her.

I glommed a handful of rice balls, picked out the dangerous ones and put them aside, then ate some of the ones left. As I munched I studied Trub. Being a guy, and so far unable to get any other sort of handle on her, I focused on her ass.

It was a fine example of that perennial favorite. Shapely but, I suspected, far firmer than average. There was a serious jock vibe in the way she moved, a centeredness and easy physicality that didn’t seem the slightest bit hampered by her fake arm and leg, and one missing eye. In spite of the scars there was something off my normal charts hot about her.

It was a surprise to be getting dicksignal from a woman who had to be a decade older than me and looked like she’d lost a hatchet fight. I figured maybe it was my near death experience giving me a taste for Corpse Bride.

Much as I hated to admit it—even to myself—I was totally lost, stuck in a place where the turf was nothing like the kind I was used to and the rules weren’t the ones I was used to bending. Trub seemed to be inviting me to tag along with her for a while. That offer had its attractions. In spite of her ball-busting attitude she was interesting, and even able to shake my spray can a bit. She seemed to know her way around.

Trub reached the Tiki bar counter and leaned against it, chatting with the Japanese man behind it. Having grown up in a part of the city with a substantial Asian population, I had no problem telling Japanese from Chinese, Korean from Vietnamese, Thai from Cambodian. Half the people around me were ethnically Chinese. Most of the rest were an Asian medley, except for two men whose tattooed faces marked them as Maori, and a scattering of whites.

All living in a village called Rice City. Put here on purpose? Why? I had serious issues with the concept of some higher power deciding where people would live, and who they would live with, stacking them like blocks of ghetto Lego. Though I had to admit that nobody I could see looked or acted like a prisoner or internee.

The man behind the counter passed Trub a battered leather and canvas bag. She slung the strap over her shoulder, bowed deeply toward him, then sauntered back over to where I waited.

I almost got up but didn’t. Then wished I had as she stood there staring down at me, looking amused.

“You see something funny?” I said.

She shook her head. “No more than I see in a mirror.”

“Riddles for dessert?”

“We’re done eating. I’ve got places to go and things to do. You game for riding shotgun?”

“What sort of things have you got in mind?”

“Oh, this and that. The usual.”

I knew I was being challenged. She was basically saying, Think you can keep up? And of course adding, kid.

I couldn’t help be aware that the people at the tables around us were grinning and nudging each other like they all shared a joke. One in which I was surely the punch line. But it was too late to back down.

I stood up. Knocked back the dregs of my beer. “I got no other plans.”

“Glad to hear it.” I noticed that she was wearing a plain white ring when she lifted her hand and touched the ring to her neck. A thin pearly disc about as big around as a donut appeared on her breastbone, just below the hollow of her throat. The disk clung there, shining softly.

“Break’s over,” she said to no one in particular.

What sounded like heavily sampled classical music featuring alien instruments and a chorus singing in Martian came out of nowhere. Trub listened intently, nodding.

I realized that she was talking to the Bugs—or at least listening to them. Which seemed to mean that she had a direct line to them, and had just told them her break was over. That led to the conclusion that she was some sort of agent of the Bugs. Or maybe a collaborator. It might even be possible she was one herself, whirled up into banged-up girl form.

The space opera soundtrack ended.

“Check,” Trub said. She gave me the eye. “You ready, kid?”

“For what?”

“For whatever happens next.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know Alice In Wonderland?”

“Sure.”

“We’re about to go for a cruise down the rabbit hole.”

Before I could ask what that meant, she raised her voice and said, “Transport.”

I jumped as a black doorway came out of nowhere in front of us, connected to nothing and hanging in the air like a black velvet sheet pinned to an invisible clothesline.