in a pair. The arm of each man projected from the middle of his chest, waving like a trunk. I studied their faces and caught my breath. Each had a big, single eye directly above his nose, all his features in a vertical line, a wide mouth and rough skin. The men turned their great round eyes on me as they passed. Their guide announced, “This is the edge of the Tine’s Quarter. Take special care on the road please…And if you see any Tine,
Behind the nearest stall sat a big, bearlike animal. Its fur was pure black and white splodges. Backward- pointing spines grew around its neck and down its back. The beast shook itself and its quills clattered. Its head was bowed; it looked so hunched and miserable that I stopped, intending to buy it and set it free. The stall holder was a greasy man with a glass eye. A parrodi perched on his shoulder, with colorful ruffled feathers. It rolled its eyes and copied his every gesture.
The stall holder saw that I was a tourist and delightedly shook the bear’s chain. “A porcupanda, sir! A highly prized delicacy. Not five hundred pounds, not four hundred pounds. Three hundred pounds to you only, sir!”
“To you only, sir,” drawled the parrodi.
I concentrated and imagined the right amount of money in the pocket of my suit. I paid the stall holder and freed the porcupanda. When I patted its head, it licked my hand then bounded away.
I walked on, to the central fountain built with stinguish technology out of solidified water. White cement could be seen between the transparent blocks. It made a wonderful three-dimensional matrix with beams of sunlight dancing through, cast by the liquid water lapping inside the fountain. A couple of wet thylacines barked and played in the great jets that fell like diamonds.
A bouquet of chloryll courtesans lounged beside the pool. The chloryll co-cultivate this quarter of the city. Their extreme beauty reminded me of Tern, slight and exquisite; their skin was ebony black. One had tiny fruits growing in her shining hair, piled on top of her head. Her floor-length dress rustled, it was made of living foliage; here and there tiny pink roses budded among the leaves. Vines wrapped around her arms like long net gloves. Behind her hung a trail of coiling tendrils, fronds and variegated ferns. These fruiting bodies were great to sleep with, but instead I wanted to have a good look around Epsilon after so long away.
The market continued into the Tine’s Quarter, where a wide road paved with eighteen-carat gold formed one side of the market square. A shiny building with smooth pillars housed four tall rectangular machines that emitted a low vibration. The salt-copper, watery-rotten smell of the Tine’s red liquid was thick in the air. A sign hung above the machines read:
TINE AUTOMOBILES, THE HEART OF MOTORING
Driving the arteries of Epsilon, you can’t beat the Carotid Cafe. All tastes catered for: blood, beer, coffee. Next: ten miles.
A girl sat in a low carriage underneath the sign. It was made of gold, so it must be of Tine manufacture. It was molded in feminine curves, with bulging panels over its small, spoked wheels, doors as in a roofless coach but an upright glass window fixed at the front. It had no shaft for horses.
I vaguely recognized the girl inside. She waved. “Hey, winged boy! Jant! Remember me from court? I was the Shark!”
“Tarragon!”
“Come over. Don’t worry about the Tine.” A Tine was attending to her car. He was a carnivore like all his species, three meters tall, bursting with muscle. He was naked except for a loincloth, his sky-blue skin scarred and tattooed. His blank eyes were pupil-less, uniform blue. His eyebrows were two pierced rows of steel rings: the Superciliary Sect. I thought that he could live for a week on the meat stuck between his sail-needle teeth. His taloned hands held a black rubber tube which snaked down and disappeared under the ground. He was pumping the red liquid into Tarragon’s gold automobile.
The whole floor hummed. I trod carefully, ready to sprint at any time. I kept Tarragon between myself and the growling attendant, but Tarragon was a Shark, or rather the Shift projection of a Shark, and she was just as dangerous.
Tarragon grinned with sharp teeth. Fins emerged from the middle of her back and the sides of her body. With a look of concentration she mastered her shape transformation so they retracted and her skin smoothed. She briefly became a beautiful woman rather than a Shark.
“Do you like my shape?” she said. “I find that air-breathers are nicer and more obliging to pretty girls.” Then, lost in thought, the changes gradually reasserted themselves, so that I was confronted with the difficult challenge of talking to a frothy blond teenager in a strapless dress and stiletto heels, with three rows of triangular teeth. Parallel slashes appeared in her neck; deep gills like black ribbons. They widened, inhaled, and vanished.
She concentrated on improving the shiny crimson dress wrapped around her body. A furry phlogista stole draped her shoulders. Phlogistas are rare and expensive; they’re long, like mink, but dark red in color with deep, sumptuous fur. It had a little lion’s head, but instead of a mane its face was framed by a ring of fleshy petals. This feline flower-face formed the clasp of her stole, and its yellow glass eyes glittered. Phlogistas are resistant to fire; to clean a fur you place it in flames.
I offered Tarragon my hand, but she looked at it as if it was her favorite sandwich. “You can touch the car, you know,” she said.
I surveyed the vehicle. “It’s not alive?”
“No, Jant. It’s not alive…
It was made of a thin sheet of pure gold, and the complicated fittings inside were gold, too: a wheel where Tarragon rested her delicate hands, and a dial that looked like a clock face but wasn’t.
“The car won’t hurt you,” she said carefully. “But keep clear of the Tine. They invented these sports cars to do their hunting and to make religious sacrifices, injuring victims in interesting ways for the purpose of their worship. They’re keen on fast, fast cars, the faster the better, like this rocket; the best that meat can buy. To build speedy cars they need good athletes. You are an athlete, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Tine will do anything to lay their hands on a runner as excellent as you. If they knew about Rhydanne you would already be dead. They need athletes, that’s what makes these babies go,” she said, tapping a flipper lovingly on the steering wheel. “Take a look.”
She pressed a button and a trapdoor popped open at the front of the vehicle. I sloped around and peered inside.
Lying under the bonnet, a mass of green-purple guts quivered and heaved. Clear rubber tubes ran red liquid around them. They stank of ripe meat. Diagonally across the center were six big hearts, doubled up in a line. Solid red-brown muscle pumped in unison. I had an impression of the mighty strength they produced to drive the spoked wheels.
At the top two pale pink lungs inflated and deflated of their own accord like bellows. They were joined to the depths of the engine by a windpipe ringed with cartilage. Dark clots lay slickly around it. Nearest me was a blood- smeared glass tank of water; gleaming veins ducted it out to cool the hearts. I saw about twenty red-brown kidneys attached by a network of ligaments to a porous gold pipe that led toward the rear of the car. As I watched, hot yellow liquid spattered out of the pipe onto the forecourt making a steaming puddle; the car relieved itself.
“Ugh.” I shrank back. “God, it’s disgusting!”
“I bought it to help me in my search,” Tarragon said. “I’m looking for a way to save the sea kraits. That’s why I’m here in Epsilon instead of at home studying, basking and eating tuna.”
Sea kraits were the largest animal I had ever heard of, but I had thought they’d all died out centuries earlier in the worst disaster Insects ever caused. “I don’t understand. Why are you bothered about sea snakes? And anyway, aren’t you a bit late? Their ocean dried up a long time ago-and good riddance.”
“Yes, but I have ways to talk to them. Sea kraits are intelligent animals with a sophisticated knowledge all their own. I think it’s a great pity they died out. All their learning was lost, Jant; don’t you care? I saw you free the porcupanda just now.”
“There’s a difference between a porcupanda and a kilometer-long sea snake! The Shift’s better off without
