Magdalena stared around the hotel room in a tight-lipped, tips-of-her-fangs-bared way far too familiar to Anderssen. They were on the fiftieth floor of a crumbling concrete tower in south-central Parus. Gretchen had been struck, as they walked down the hall to their room, by the wear pattern on the floor. A shallow basin nearly four centimeters deep described the middle of the passage. The room was low ceilinged, dark and very musty.
"Well," Gretchen said brightly, "this is nice." She was looking for somewhere to put her duffel. Jaganite budget hotel rooms seemed to have been designed by Russian efficiency experts. There were no chairs, only high beds on heavy wooden frames and medium-height tables reminding her of spindly armoires. Given the tripodal, tail-heavy stance of the natives, Anderssen realized there might not be any chairs on the whole planet.
That's odd. She was suddenly struck by the seating arrangements on the bus they'd taken from the shuttleport. Was that a human-built vehicle?
"Hhhhhrrrrr!" Maggie's tail twitched sharply from side to side. "Parker is happy – I think his whole clan have laired here with their nose-biting smoke."
The pilot ignored her, peering curiously at a mechanism controlling a set of louvered blinds over the windows. Gretchen dumped her bag on the foot of the smallest bed – both Maggie and Parker were taller. The pilot tried one of the buttons on the face of the device and was rewarded with a whining groan from some kind of pulley system.
"This won't blow up, will it?" He poked another button and the blinds shivered into motion, rotating out to reveal a view of the rain-soaked city below. At the same time, a gust of damp, chilly air blew into the room. The pilot grimaced, then started to cough. "Urgh. Smells like a benzene cracking facility. How long are we staying here?"
"One night." Gretchen had opened the 'bathroom' door to stare at an uneven tiled floor, rusty drain and complete lack of a bathtub with horror. How would some giant lizard-thing with a tail like a third leg take a bath, o child? Her eyes swung unerringly to a bin along the wall. Sand. They abrade their thick, scaly skin with sand. What a nice scraper made of stone. Oh blessed Mother of Our Savior, deliver me from working off-world.
"Tomorrow," she declared, "we're going to find someplace catering to human tastes. I promise. Well, you two will find a place to stay while I visit the Legation and see about our permits."
"These beds are not soft," Magdalena declared, having stripped away a coarse blanket to reveal a metal frame holding a suspended net of stout-looking ropes. "I do not like hummocks. No. Not at all."
Parker started to correct the Hesht, caught Gretchen making an 'are-you-stupid' face and turned back to staring out at the rain. Parus at sundown was a forest of tall, round towers with softly glowing windows. The local ceramacrete tended to dusty red. Coupled with the setting sun, the city was being swallowed by a foreboding, sanguine night. The pilot squinted through the murk – individual storm cells were visible, pelting the crowded, twisting streets below with rain so thick it made patches of early darkness.
Rubbing his stubbly chin, Parker was puzzled for a moment before he realized the odd layout of the buildings was caused by the presence of broad, curved boulevards looping across the city. Hundreds of tiny, straight streets intersected them at unnatural angles. Weird. Why did they build everything all higgle-piggle like that? Crazy aliens.
Gretchen sat down on the end of her 'hummock' and began digging in her duffel. All of their heavy dig equipment – tents, analysis sensors, environment suits, hand tools – was in storage at the port, in the dubious care of the Albanian Spaceways office. Thankfully, she'd thought to stow a clutch of threesquares in her personal effects. Just the effort of finding them made her feel faint. Too big a day for us. Oh yeah.
"Here," she said, pitching a bright blue and orange food bar to the pilot. "I really don't think we should risk room service. Though, Maggie, they might have something live for you to eat…"
"Not hungry." Magdalena had curled up in a corner on the wool blanket, plush tail over her nose, as far as she could get from the 'hummocks.'
"Right." Gretchen began chewing on the molй-flavored ration bar. It sure didn't taste like chocolatl. They never did, no matter what the advertisements said.
The office of the Imperial Attachй for Antiquities had tall windows opening on a garden filled with riotous blossoms. Something like a rhododendron tree shaded the windows, heavy boughs of pinkish red flowers hanging against the open shutters. Gretchen was sweating mildly, sitting in a wide-backed chair covered with leopard skin.
While the rest of the Legation was air conditioned and dim, this room was bright, sunny and warm. Around the garden, three stories of windows set into whitewashed, ivy-covered brick reached up to a murky yellow sky. Despite thunderstorms growling and muttering through the night, the pollution hanging over the city had not been washed away.
"Hmmm." The attachй made a noncommittal noise, his head bent over Gretchen's identity papers and transit visa. She guessed the windows in this room were flung wide to embrace the hot, tropical smell of the flowers outside because the slim young man sitting across from her was a Mixtec. A climate like this would remind him very much of home. She had never seen the great cities of Timbuktu or Ax Idah or Brass herself, but articles in the travel magazines endemic to starliner waiting lounges indicated gorgeous architecture, sprawling gardens and a lively social life. The old Mйxica colonies in sub-Saharan Afrika had flourished after the end of the War.
He looked up, fine-boned features sharp under dark cocoa skin. The young man's face held such a look of seriousness Anderssen was struck by unexpected sadness. Such a handsome man should be letting himself live a little more. Just a tiny bit. Does he remember how to smile?
"I am sorry, Anderssen-tzin, but I cannot give you a survey permit for any region on Jagan." He gathered her papers together and put them into a folder. "I understand you've wound up here by accident, more or less, but an exclusionary planetary excavation, analysis and recovery grant has already been made to the University of Tetzcoco department of Extrasolar Anthropology."
Gretchen grimaced. Tetzcoco EXA had quite a reputation. She tried to hide her reaction, but the young man's eyebrows rose in surprise.
"Have you worked with Professor Der SГє before?"
"Not directly, Soumake-tzin. But I spent two years on Old Mars working for one of his graduate students. He has a towering reputation among my peers."
"Does he?" The attachй rose from his chair and moved to the window, long-fingered hands tapping on the sill. "Well, I have only met with him once or twice since my arrival." Soumake turned, still dreadfully serious. "He is – in my personal opinion – an ass of a man, with half the sense. I do not know what kind of agreement my predecessor struck with the local princes, but SГє is running his own fiefdom up at Fehrupurй and I doubt the local kujen would care if a hundred tons of artifacts were being shipped out every month. He'd be using his cut of the proceeds to buy guns."
Anderssen settled a little in her chair, realizing the attachй was giving her a particularly searching look. "You're…um…worried about smuggling?"
"I am." Soumake leaned against the window. Like most of the officials and staff Gretchen had seen while wending her way through the halls of the Legation, he was dressed in a long, narrow-cut cotton mantle over a light shirt and dark pants. She sighed inwardly to see he carried off the look very well. Most people in official costume looked like they were wearing a tent…