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.'
'Funny, we didn't see any small communities off the road,' I said.
'Oh, few have been built on this planet. It is desert, phooey on it. They are coming here from planets which are more hospitable. This commercial faln is being usually less congested than others. More parking, too.'
Susan and I looked at each other.
The train started forward, gaining speed in a smooth, powerful surge, then shot into a tunnel.
'It's always somehow disconcerting,' Susan told me, 'when you realize that alien cultures are just as complex and screwed up as ours.'
'Yeah. Must have been all that fiction that was written in the twentieth century. You know, superbeings in silver spaceships saving the collective butt of mankind-that sort of thing.'
'Must've been. Of course, I haven't read much of anything that far back.'
'Ideas like that tend to stick in the mass mind,' I said.
'That's me all over,' Susan lamented.
I clucked. 'You have a habit of putting yourself down did you know that?'
'Just one of many bad habits,' she said, 'which is why I'm down on myself so much. Ipso facto, Q.E.D., and all that.'
'That's quite a hole you've dug for yourself.'
'Got a shovel?'
I kissed her on the cheek instead and put my arm around her. Ragna and Tivi smiled appreciatively at us. Weren't we cute.
Some of the Nogon were staring at us. Most of the aliens weren't. Ragna had said that word of our arrival on the planet had been spreading and that there was great interest in us. It looked more like a detached kind of curiosity, to me. I couldn't imagine the general public getting worked up over the discovery of yet another alien race, no matter how interesting.
We passed through three stations, each progressively more congested, before reaching the end of the line, by which time the train was packed with passengers standing elbow to pincer. The train slid to a smooth stop and we joined the crush to get out.
The next hour or so was a succession of visual, aural, and perceptual wonders. Susan and I walked goggle- eyed through a series of spaces that defied description. The scale was immense. It was a shopping mall, yes; it was also a vast strange carnival with attractions at every turn?here, street musicians and acrobats, there, some sort of sporting event, here, an orchestra pouring out ear-splitting cacophony… and everywhere all kinds of activity that anyone would have a hard time describing. There were festivals within festivals, there were celebrations and ceremonies; there were public meetings with people up on platforms shouting at one another?politicians? Or a debating society? Maybe it was drama. There were sideshows and circuses, pageants and exhibitions, shows and displays. There were flea markets and bazaars, agoras and exchanges. There were stalls, booths, rialtos, and fairs, with hawkers, wholesalers, vendors, jobbers, and every other variety of merchant in attendance. You could buy anything at any price. You could eat, drink, smoke, inject, or otherwise assimilate everything imaginable into your body, if you so chose. You could purchase hardware, software, kitchenware, and underwear. There were trade fairs of strange machinery, appliances, and unidentifiable gadgets and gizmos. Salespeople demonstrated, prospective customers looked on. Huge video screens ran endless commercials extolling the virtues of myriad products. There were presentations, parades, dog-and-pony shows, and every sort of inducement.
And all of this took place in a nexus of interpenetrating spaces whose complexity was overwhelming. There were levels upon levels, series of staggered terraces, promenades and balconies, all connected by webs of suspended bridges, cascades of spiraling ramps and stairways, escalators, open-shaft elevators, and other conveyances. Walls and floors were variously colored in soft pastels and metallic tints. Surfaces of shiny blue metal formed ceilings and curtainwalls, stairwells and platforms. There were hanging gardens, miniature forests, waterfalls, small game preserves, lakelets, parkets, and playgrounds. Hanging mobile sculptures wheeled above, towering alien monuments rose from the floors. And everywhere there was activity, action, color, movement, and sound.
And noise.
'Plenty loud, eh?' Ragna said.
'What?' Susan answered. 'Oh, Jake, it's all so familiar yet so utterly strange. I can't get over it.'
'What I find strange is all this chaos contained within a controlled environment.'
'Maybe this is how they keep from feeling confined.'
'Hard to realize we're indoors. Where's all this light coming from?'
'I'd swear that's sky up there,' Susan said, pointing to the distant roof.
'They must pump in sunlight through a series of mirrors,' I guessed.
'This is being true,' Ragna said. 'Quite a neat trick, but it is also being much too damnably bright in here.'
Neither of our guides had bothered to take down their protective hoods and both still wore wraparound sunglasses. I wondered if their aversion to sunlight was more psychological than physical. The other Nogon seemed to be at home, though I did notice some wearing wide-brimmed hats and some with dark glasses.
'What do we do first?' Susan asked. 'Where do we go?'
