warehouses and shops nearest the docks and their eyes were drawn upward toward Galatna Palace, set like a jewel in the deep aquamarine vegetation of the central mountain. This was the best time of day to see the city— when the sky took on colors that always reminded Supaari of marble from Gardhan. It was also the safest time to bring the foreigners into port.
Marc smiled at Jimmy and George, transfixed by the sight, and was glad for them. For almost six years of subjective time, these two men had dreamed of seeing the City of the Songs, which they now knew to be Gayjur. Whenever Supaari was in Kashan, they'd hinted, bargained, very nearly demanded and almost begged him to take them there. They wanted to see a real city, they told him. They had trouble explaining why they were so anxious to go. They had no Ruanja words for much of what interested them, which was everything. They wanted to find out what the buildings looked like, see where the food came from, where the sewage went, how the universities and government and hospitals were run, what transportation was like, how electricity was generated and stored and used. They wanted to talk to chemists, physicists, astronomers, mathematicians. See how the principles of the wheel, the lever and the inclined plane played out on this planet. Everything. They wanted to know everything.
Marc himself was less frantic to get out of Kashan, but he too yearned to see the architecture and the art, to hear the music and see the sights. Were there parks? Museums? Zoos! And Supaari said there were gardens. Formal or unplanned, utilitarian or purely decorative? Were there houses of worship? Who went? Were there religious specialists—priests or priestesses, monks, adepts? Did they believe in magic, in God or gods, in fate, in destiny, in the reward of good, the punishment of evil? How were the milestones of life marked? With cadenced ceremony or brief informal acknowledgments? And the food—was it better in the city? What did people wear? Were they polite or pushy, punctilious or casual? What was crime? What was punishment? What was virtue and what was vice? What was fun? Everything. Marc too wanted to know everything.
Finally, after stalling them for a full Rakhati year, Supaari VaGayjur had deemed the considerations to have been fully considered, the arrangements adequately arranged and the time, at long last, ripe for their visit to his adopted city. On the three-day trip downriver from Kashan, moving past slow trade barges and small skiffs, he answered as many of their questions as he could. They were interested in the sulfur-aluminum batteries that powered his craft, the material from which the hull was made, the waterproof coatings, the navigation equipment. When he finally convinced them that he simply used the boat, he did not make it, they went on to questions about the city itself, and when at last he could stand no more and told them finally, 'Wait! You shall see it all shortly,' they talked among themselves in H'inglish, never resting from their curiosity.
They stopped overnight at two villages along the way, the first one just above the Pon delta and the second on the Masna'a Tafa'i coast about twelve hours out of Gayjur. As in Kashan, the foreigners were accepted by the Runa without fuss. Supaari simply introduced them as traders, from far away. He was counting on this kind of reception by VaGayjuri Runa as well and was heartened to see the reality of it in these outlying villages, after so much worried anticipation. He began to hope things would go well. But once again he made the foreigners promise that they would only go out at redlight, and even then accompanied always by his Runa secretary, Awijan. It was important that they not be seen by other Jana'ata.
This restriction was in direct opposition to D. W. Yarbrough's desire to make contact with the Jana'ata government. It was past time, he believed. If the Jesuit party hung around much longer without making itself known, the authorities might think there was something sneaky about them, wonder why they'd kept themselves a secret such a long time. But they owed Supaari a debt of gratitude for all his assistance and in the end, D.W. decided that they should abide by his rule. 'Get the lay of the land, this trip,' Yarbrough told Marc and George and Jimmy before they left. 'When you get back, y'all talk it over and decide what the next move is.' He knew he wouldn't be a part of the discussion. He knew that he was dying. They all did.
Now, faced with Gayjur itself, the three humans understood that it would be a real job just to get a superficial impression of the city in the six days allotted to this visit. Marc Robichaux began to feel that this was another of the step-by-step increments they were meant to take.
Coming within line of sight to his compound, Supaari radioed Awijan, announcing their arrival, and steered the little powerboat through the towering mass of shipping. He docked with insouciant skill and a yawn and pointed out his compound's gateway with casual pride, trusting its impressive size and the obvious signs of prosperity to tell his visitors that they were dealing with a man of consequence. 'Shall you rest now or go out to see the city?' he asked them, knowing full well what they would say. When they said it, he handed them over to his secretary and told them to trust Awijan to escort them properly and to answer their questions. He, Supaari, was going to sleep now and would see them the next day, in the morning at second sunrise.
And so, with as much preparation as they could have hoped for, Marc Robichaux, Jimmy Quinn and George Edwards plunged into an alien city for the first time. It was all very well to expect to be surprised and confused, but it was sheer bedlam to experience. The scents and noise of Gayjur assaulted them: warehouses filled with the sweet and spicy and grassy fragrances of perfume components; docks and shipyards smelling of wet sail, rotting sea life, sealants and paint, sailors and loaders shouting; cookshops and street stalls and factories turning the air fragrant and stinking by turns with soups and ammonia and frying vegetables and solvents. There was a vast amount of exchange going on, of buying and selling, of business being done in temporary but well-made booths with handsome fittings leaning against beautifully built masonry walls. Vendors hawked unidentifiable objects from pushcarts, simply designed and nicely balanced. Moving through the cramped side-streets, they caught glimpses through half-open doors of Runa working with their ears clamped shut amid a deafening clamor of hammers and chisels, drills and electric saws.
The pace was much faster than in Kashan, and there was far more variety of physical type, Marc noticed. The dockworkers were stockier, sturdy and drop-eared; there were others, robed as Supaari had been when they met him, but smallish and subtly different in the face, alert and fine-boned, with a direct and disturbing gaze, and Awijan was one of these. And there were differences in coat: the colors and textures varied, some rough and curling, others silkier and longer than normal in Kashan. Regional variations, Marc thought. Immigrant populations, perhaps, natural in a port city.
It was a weird feeling, walking along in plain view, undeniably strange, and yet no crowds gathered, no children screamed or pointed or hid. They were noticed and commented upon quietly as they passed through the streets, but when Awijan offered to buy them kebablike sticks of roasted vegetables, the vendor simply handed them their food with ordinary courtesy. They might have been buying pretzels in Philadelphia.
As night fell, Awijan led them back to Supaari's compound and took them through an open courtyard, past many small storage buildings, along the edge of an impressive warehouse, and then into the living quarters, spare and plain-walled but hung with brilliant tapestries and cushioned with deep carpets. After years of sleeping in the huddled company of Runa, they were astonished to be given small private rooms and found the circular bedding on raised platforms nestlike and very fine to curl up in. They slept soundly until long past first sunrise.
It was midday when Supaari met them for their first and his only meal. As they reclined against the pillows and cushions along the walls, a long low table was carried in and then paved with a stream of plates and bowls and platters emerging from the kitchen. There were roasted meats, soups, extraordinary things that appeared to be seafood stuffed with pastes of something savory and then formed somehow into loaves and sliced, and fruits they had not seen before and many kinds of vegetables, plain and with sauces and carved cunningly and left whole. There were strong flavors, and delicate and bland and spiced. The service was soft-footed and discreet, and the meal took hours. Awijan sat nibbling at a little distance and observed; Marc noted the next day that the dishes that had pleased no one were gone from the array and those that the guests had most enjoyed were prominently offered again, surrounded by other choices not seen earlier.
That second evening, Awijan took the foreigners farther uptown, and it was on this tour that they began to get a feel for the strangely hybrid layout of the city. There was, they now realized, the skeleton of rational gridwork, a rectilinear system of main streets well paved with good heavy cobbles and a system of canals, dividing the city into segments that linked incoming freight from the countryside or ocean to processing and distribution centers in the city.
The city was not crowded in the way that the teeming ports of Earth were. There were no beggars, no limbless cripples, no emaciated loners picking through garbage or potbellied children tugging at weary despairing parents. There was an increasingly noticeable contrast between the rich and the poor as they moved uphill and the congestion thinned and the buildings became more imposing, but it did not disturb the humans as they might have been disturbed in Rio or Calcutta or Lima or New York. Here, one had the impression that prosperity was attainable,
