by heavy braking, sharp cornering and constant use of the horn. Street signs, in two languages, obeyed no apparent overall system, nor even consistency in their use. Shops in the streets were open to the world, quite unlike the prim emporia of Jethra's main boulevards, and their goods spilled out in a colourful mess across the pavements. Discarded boxes and bottles were all over the place. People lounged around in the sun, lying in the grassy squares, leaning against the walls of buildings or sitting under the bright canopies of the open-air bars and restaurants. One street had been completely blocked by what appeared to be an impromptu football match, causing my driver to swear at me and reverse violently and dangerously into the main street. Further complicating the city were the buses, which hurtled down the centres of the carriageways, passengers bulging from windows and doorways, and claiming right of way by sheer nerve alone. The layout of the city seemed to have no overall design, being a warren of criss-crossing narrow streets between the ramshackle brick buildings; I was used to the stately avenues of Jethra, built, according to tradition, sufficiently wide for a full company of Seigniorial troops to march abreast.
All this was glimpsed and absorbed in the few minutes I was in the taxi, whirled through the streets in a sort of car I had only ever before seen in movies. It was a huge, battered old saloon, spattered with dust and dried mud, the windscreen plastered with dead insects. Inside, the seats were covered with synthetic fur, and were far too soft for comfort; one sank into them with a feeling of excessive and cloying luxury. The fascia of the car was tarnished chrome and peeling wood veneer; the inside of the windscreen was stuck all over with photographs of women and children. A dog lay asleep on the back seat, and shrilling, distorted pop music was blasting from the radio. The driver steered with only one hand on the wheel, the other out of the window and clasping the roof, slapping in time with the music. The car swooped through corners, setting up a banging noise from the suspension and a rocking motion inside.
The whole city was a new kind of sensation: a feeling of careless indifference to many things I took for granted_quiet, safety, laws, consideration towards others. Muriseay Town seemed to he a city in eternal conflict with itself. Noise, heat, dust, white light; a teeming, shouting and colliding city, uneven and untidy, yet charged with life.
But I did not feel unsafe, and neither was I excited, except in a way best described as cerebral. The taxi driver's careering progress through the milling traffic was something that took the breath away, but it was in a larger context of confusion and disorder. A car driven like that in Jethra would certainly crash within a few moments, if not stopped by the police, but in Muriseay Town everything was at the same level of chaos. It was as if I had somehow crossed over into another universe, one where the degree of activity had been perceptibly increased: reality's tuner had been adjusted, so noises were louder, colours were brighter, crowds were more dense, heat was greater, time moved faster. I felt a curious sense of diminished responsibility, as if I were in a dream. I could not be hurt or endangered in Muriseay, because I was protected by the dangerous chaos of normality. The car would not crash, those ancient leaning buildings would never fall, the crowds would always skip out of the way of the traffic, because we were in a place of higher response, a place where mundane disasters simply never occurred.
It was an exhilarating, dizzying feeling, one that told me that to survive here I had to adjust to the local _ad hoc_ rules. Here I could do things I never dared at home. Sober responsibilities were behind me.
So as I stood by the Lotterie-Collago office, waiting for the doors to be unlocked, I was still in the early throes of this new awareness. On the ship, receptive to the new though I had thought myself to be, in fact I had been moving in a protective bubble of my own life. I had brought attitudes and expectations with me. After just a few minutes in Muriseay the bubble had been popped, and sensations were still pouring in on me.
The lock rattled and one of the two doors swung open.
The young woman said nothing, but stared at me.
'I'm Peter Sinclair,' I said. 'I was told to come here as soon as I landed.'
'Come in.' She held the door open, and I walked in to the shock of air conditioning. The office was dry, refrigerated, and the chill of it made me cough. I followed the girl to her desk.
'I've got you down as Robert Sinclair. Is that you?'
'Yes. I don't use my first name.'
My eyes too had needed to adjust to the relative dimness of the office, because when she got to her desk and faced me, I noticed the girl's appearance for the first time. She bore a remarkable physical similarity to Mathilde Englen.
'Won't you sit down?' She indicated the visitors' chair.
I did as she said, making a small production of putting my holdall to one side. I needed a few moments to collect myself. The resemblance between her and Mathilde was extraordinary! Not in detail, but in colouring, hair, body shape. I supposed that if the two women could be seen together it would not be so obvious, but for the last few days I had been holding a mental image of Mathilde and suddenly to meet this girl came as a distinct surprise. The generalities of my memory image were fulfilled exactly.
She was saying: 'My name is Seri Fuiten, and I am your Lotterie representative here. Any help I can give you while you're here, or--'
It was the company speech, and it drifted over and past me. She was shaped in the company mould: she was wearing the same bright red uniform of skirt and jacket I had seen on the staff in the Jethran Lotterie office, the sort of clothes that are worn in hotel receptions, car rental firms, shipping offices. It was attractive in a bland way, but sexless and multi-national. Her one gesture to individuality was a small badge pinned to her lapel: it had the face of a well-known pop singer.
I did find her attractive, but then the company image supposed I would.
Beyond that, the coincidence with Mathilde was setting up distracting resonances.
I said, when she had finished her patter: 'Have you been waiting here just for me?'
'Somebody had to. You're two days late.'
'I'd no idea.'
'It's all right. We contacted the shipping line. I haven't been sitting here for two days.'
I judged her to be in her late twenties, and either married or living with someone. No ring, but that meant nothing anymore.
She opened a drawer in the desk and brought out a neatly packaged folder of papers.
'You can have this,' she said. 'It tells you everything you need to know about the treatment.'
