We were vulnerable in our immobile state. The caves were dark and warm and womblike, but I didn't want to be lulled into a false sense of security, so I was glad that the Time of Finding Deeper Levels was over. I wanted to finish the repairs and get moving.
The trip to the faln complex was on. Ragna would go along with Tivi, and both would act as interpreters and guides.
Everybody wanted to come, but I put my foot down. Then Susan stomped on my toe.
"I need to do a little shopping," she contended. "What's so hard to understand about that?"
"But what could you possibly―?"
"I left my backpack and most of my camping gear in that damn hotel. That was the third pack I've lost since this crazy business started. Clothes I don't expect to replace, but alien camping gear is as good as human."
"I really doubt we'll be doing much camping, Susan."
"Look, I'm a starhiker, albeit an unwilling one, and I want a complete starhiker kit. I need it. Besides, I haven't been shopping in a month of Sundays."
"But it's not fair to the others."
"Let her go, Jake," Roland said. "If she's left behind she'll bitch and bitch all day and we'll all be miserable."
I stiffened. "See here. Everybody's been telling me I'm the leader of this expedition. So, by God, I'm ordering you―"
She brushed by me. "Oh, shut up and let's go."
"Yes, dear." I slunk after her.
I had expected the faln to be immense structures, and they were… real big.
We were well off the Skyway on a local extension, riding in one of the Ahgirr's collectively owned vehicles, a low-slung four-seater with a clear bubble top. Endless stretches of desert rolled past. We had been chatting pleasantly but I had gradually drifted off into a reverie. I was gazing moodily into Ragna's side rearview mirror. A vehicle was following some distance back, a tiny blue-green dot almost at the road's vanishing point. I hypnotized myself for a while, watching it. Something about it rang a bell-just the color of the thing. I'd seen that exact color before… but no. The road swung away from the sun and the color changed. Just a reflection, I guessed. Just paranoia on my part. Presently, I looked away.
Susan gave a little gasp as the faln took form in the wavering veils of heat out on the plain. From a distance they had looked like mountains; now they were almost too big to be compared to anything.
I leaned forward and spoke over Ragna's shoulder. "What's the average population of those things?"
"Oh, several of millions. They were being very crowded even with respect to their immensehood."
Tivi said, "We were not meant to be living in this manner that is to say, we of our species. Yet Ahgirr are the very few of whom it may be said that they are in agreement with this statement."
"Yeah," I said, and sat back.
"My God," Susan whispered. "If they have this kind of population level on a colonized planet, and on a backwater one at that"
"Right, think of what the home world must be like."
"Look. There are more of them on the horizon. Tivi told me there were at least fifty faln complexes on this world alone."
"These people couldn't have stayed in caves," I said. "They would've been trodding on each other's faces."
"And ganging together into arcologies was the only way to keep from totally destroying the environment."
I noticed Ragna eavesdropping as he drove.
"Sorry, Ragna," I said. "Susan and I were just speculating."
He laughed. "Oh, all of what you are saying is being of indubitable truth, partly. Ahgirr have always been believing in rational control of the population. Not so of many cultures. Alas and shit."
We came to the edge of a vast parking area crammed with vehicles. Ragna swung off the road and entered it.
"Now we are being faced with the heartrending task of finding a space in which to insert this conveyance for purposes of parking therein. I heave a great sigh."
I was surprised how crowded it was. "Where do all the people come from?"
"Oh, all from over the place," Tivi said. "Many aliens too. This is being a major shopping and commercial faln."
"A shopping mall!" Susan laughed. "I haven't walked a mall in a coon's age." She turned to me. "It's in my blood, you know. I spent my childhood as a mall brat."
"Oh, you're a maller? You never told me."
"Didn't think it was anything special. There are millions of us.
"You were born in one?"
"Born and raised. South Gate Village, very near Peoria, Central Industry."
I sat back. "You know, at one time people only used to shop in those things."
"I know. Then they became arcologies, just like these. Lots of factors contributed. I can go on and on about mall history. Every mall brat learns it in school."
"I'd be very interested in hearing about it."
"Right." She gave a sarcastic grunt. "It's history. Terran history. Who needs it."
Ragna swerved to pull into an empty slot but was cut off and usurped by an electric-blue, beetle-shaped gadabout. The occupants, their purple lizard faces impassive behind darktinted ports, nodded in what seemed an apologetic manner. Sorry, but every being for himself, you know.
"Nasty slime objects!" Ragna shouted, then grumbled to himself in his own tongue.
But a little farther along, another unoccupied slot presented itself and Ragna slipped in, cackling triumphantly. "We are having luck for once, by gosh."
The faln complex was still some distance off, titantic mushroom-shaped hulks baking in the fierce desert sun. They were a striking salmon pink in color. I counted six separate structures of varying heights, all linked by a web of walkway bridges with transparent polarized canopies. Service buildings, tiny by comparison, huddled about the bases of the larger structures.
"Do we have to walk?" I asked. " Looks to be a good hike from here to the base of that nearer one."
"Ah, no," Ragna said. "We may be taking the girrna-falnnarrog, the underground conveyance below the faln. What is it called?" He tapped his blue headband. "The subway. Over there." He pointed right to a descending stairwell. It looked like a subway entrance all right.
Steps led down to a landing from which we took a descending escalator that was at least ten meters wide―sort of a moving grand staircase. Other people and a few aliens had come down with us, and we found a crowd waiting for the next train. The station was well lighted, clean, expansive, and looked spanking new.
I noticed something while we waited. Compared to their brethren, Ragna and Tivi were rather drab figures. Most Ahgirr, male and female, seemed to dress alike, favoring tight-fitting tunics of gray or brown cinched at the waist with a white sash. The other Nogon flounced around in garish, flamboyant gowns and robs, all brightly colored, elaborately designed, busy with embroidery and woven and printed patterns. Hairstyles ranged from the highly imaginative to the entirely outrageous (judging by human standards in general and mine in particular, of course). Ahgirr, it seemed, were the Plain People of their race.
The train was a beauty, levitating along the track on magnetic impellers. Bullet shaped, gleaming white with pink trim, it whooshed into the station and slid along the platform, coming to a smooth stop. Doors hissed open, and the crowd began to board. We entered a nearby car and ensconced ourselves in comfortably overstuffed seats.
I asked Ragna, "If you can get from faln to faln in these things, why does anybody drive?"
"These are people who are not living in faln. No, they are living outside and waiting to be permitted to live in faln. There is no room for them."
"Oh, so there are some who live out on the land besides you people," Susan remarked.
"Yes, many," Tivi answered, "but they do not wish to be living there. Residential privileges in the faln are being passed from parents to children. Privileges may be bought and sold, but there-is being great competition for them. Many legal fights and also violence resulting. Oh, my."