Strata

there,’ said Marco, fishing a pouch out of his travelling bag. ‘I’ve never been down there in my life. Sometimes I’ve run freighters here, but only as far as Up.’
    ‘You mean you got that close and never went to look at your people’s world?’
    ‘Whose people’s world? I was born on Earth.’
    He brought out a bone-coloured pipe, filled it from a pouch and lit it with an everglow. Kin wrinkled her nose.
    ‘What’n hell’s that?’
    ‘Tobacco,’ said Marco. ‘Cutty Peerless VI. There’s a man in London sends it out to me. That’s London England, you understand.’
    ‘Do you enjoy it?’ There was a click as the cabin air filters came on. Marco took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at it reflectively.
    ‘On the whole, no,’ he said, ‘but it is historically satisfying. May I ask you a question?’
    ‘Go right ahead.’
    ‘Do you have a thing about kung? Sexually, I mean?’
    Kin stared into the great grey eyes and at the mottled skin, and the snappy answer died in her throat. She recalled occasional rumours. Marco radiated maleness from his matchstick figure. Kung males were almost unbelievably masculine. And priapic, apparently. Kung were directly polarized, male and female, with none of that subtle elision between the absolute male and absolute female psyches that humans possessed. To some human women the kung machismo was magnetic.
    ‘Never in a thousand years,’ she said levelly. ‘You can call me old fashioned if you like.’
    ‘Thank goodness,’ said the kung. ‘I hope I did not cause offence?’
    ‘Nothing that won’t heal. What, er, made you ask?’
    ‘Oh, you wouldn’t credit the stories I could tell you, Kin Arad. Of young human females with
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-comb hairstyles and what they think is genuine kung style dress and a superficial and uninformed taste in
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music. When I played piano in a nightclub on Crespo during the spacer slump I had to lock my windows at night, and once two young—’ He paused, then went on. ‘Of course, I realize you are a cosmospolitanwoman. But I once had to hit the wife of a New Earth Ambassador with a chair.’
    The raven fretted in its transparent cage. Kin glanced at it.
    ‘What are we going to do if Jalo contacts us?’ she said.
    Marco took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘Do? I intend to visit this flat world. What else?’
    Tide was up when the shuttle juddered into the terminal, smoke pouring from the brake pads. The kung had solved the water level problem by building the terminus buildings on a raft that rose up and down the Line as the migrating oceans shifted around the planet.
    Kin peered out into the grey rain. Around the station raft other woven buildings were bobbing at their anchor poles. A few kung were abroad this early, paddling coracles along the shifting streets like a regatta for Gollums.
    Marco splashed up, dragging a small and terrified kung behind him.
    ‘This says it’s been hired to pick us up. Not very dramatic, is it?’
    Prodded by Marco, the boatkung led them over the gaggle of boats moored around the platform to a human-built tourist speedster, its four balloon tyres now doubling as flotation bags. Kin settled into the back seat. The rain was warm, and she was already sodden. Maybe there was something particularly penetrative about kung water.
    Marco shoved the boatkung into the front passenger seat and fumbled with the controls. The mooring rope groaned and parted as the boat bucketed forward between wings of spray.
    He drove with three arms draped nonchalantly over the seat.
    Four arms. Four-arms were rare. In the bad old days before the Revolution, high-caste kung had used mitogenetic techniques to influence the growing embryo. Four-arms meant warrior caste. Kin decided to try tact.
    ‘How come,’ she asked, ‘how come you have to have shirts specially made?’
    He didn’t look round. ‘Family tradition,’ he said. ‘My family always sent one male into the warriors, and they operated on my mother, but – you remember the Line Break of ’58?’
    ‘Sure. Earth was cut off for a month. Some lunatic bombed both termini simultaneously.’
    ‘Yes. My parents were on the embassy staff at New Stavanger. By the time the Line was replaced my mother was in labour.’
    And the kung believed that when a child was born its receptive mind was taken over by the nearest available discarnate soul …
    ‘As a matter of fact my father was prevented from killing himself by the Shad cultural attaché, who was