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Neutra,_ I thought, _a touch of Tibet, Shangri-
la,_ trying to remember fragments of terrestrial art history that I had
explored before all my memory supplements had been removed.
The missing information bothered me. I shuddered slightly, stumbling onto a
lapse in some personal wisdom based on memory no longer accessible, like a
missing molar. I hated that sensation. It made me feel reduced, less capable;
it shook my confidence. What if I lurched into a crucial gap during an
emergency?
But none of this really mattered compared to what we had just experienced.
The launch slid smoothly into a covered berth at the municipal dock. As Shatro
secured the lines, I climbed out of the boat and took a deep breath, turned,
and found Randall staring at me blankly. Suddenly he smiled. He looked like a
wolf.
"We did some good back there," he said. "We'll go to the court tomorrow and
let them know you're here. You can stay with my family tonight."
Larisa came out from under the shade, stiff with dignity or perhaps
exhaustion. She barely looked at us. "I have family here," she said. "I do not
need your help."
"Thomas wants you at the court," Randall reminded her.
She nodded. "I will be there." She glared at me. Her eyelids drew together and
her face seemed full of hatred. "I do not need your help."
We walked through the center of Calcutta to Randall's home. Shatro said his
farewells and went off to his own home. He was unbonded, Randall said, and
lived with an older man and woman in the Karpos neighborhood. "They raise
fruits there. Pears and apples do well if you grind up lizboo parasols for
fertilizer. They naturally give up the right nutrients for those trees. It's a
luxury crop, but that's nothing against it."
The courthouse, center of the district's legal proceedings, sat just below the
elegant tower on Calcutta's highest hill. We walked up a long winding flight
of steps lined with homes and shops. The tower, Randall said, was the Lenk
Hub, seat of cross-district government and home of
Lenk himself when he chose to come to Calcutta.
"It's really quite spare quarters for such a fine man," Randall said.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"Through Captain Keyser-Bach."
The broad steps were caught in afternoon shadow, which seemed richly brown,
almost golden beneath the silver sky. The city smelled of cooking food, mostly
yeasty bread smells and rich molasses smells, dust from carts rolling on the
busy street below, orange and tomato and spice from the silva never completely
absent. Children ran laughing and shrieking down the steps beside us, boys and
girls from late infancy to middle childhood, wearing red shorts and white
vests with green vertical stripes, tended by a young man with a bemused look,
no doubt junior husband in a triad. Otherwise, the streets were quiet, the
citizens polite, their clothes muted, generally browns and grays or greens,
each however with one splash of color, a scarf or sash or belt, signifying
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solemnity within living joy. These traditions had held up well on Lamarckia.
I was relieved that not everything had fallen into chaos. After all I had
heard of famine and hardship, I was surprised that Calcutta looked prosperous
and its citizens well-fed.
At the top of the stairs, in a shaded courtyard graced with a single
terrestrial tree -- an ash, I thought, its limbs bare, not faring very well --
we turned into a narrow alley. The houses that rose on either side were made
of cut reddish lava held together by dark gray cement. An anonymous xyla
doorway no different from the others pushed open with a creak at Randall's
touch, and we entered cool shadow.
"Randall?" a woman called eagerly. "Erwin, is that you?"
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"That's me," Randall said. He smiled shyly, the wolf look gone. "That's my
wife, Raytha.
Head of family. I'm an infrequent extra here."
Randall's family totaled seven: four children, age two to twelve, two younger
girls and two older boys, who flocked around him with broad smiles and big
eyes, simply glad to see their father; his wife Raytha, a plump, pretty woman
the same age as he; and her mother, Kaytai Kim-
Jastro. Ser Kim-Jastro was tall and straight and gray and formidable, and she
did not hug Randall, but instead shook his hand and welcomed him back with
deep gravity.
The children gathered around me when they were finished welcoming their
father. They asked where I was from and whether I was married and had any
children, and why their father had brought me home with him. Randall answered
the last question by saying, "He's a researcher and he's our guest. He's not
used to a lot of company, so please give him some room until after dinner at
least."
The two older boys stayed to hear Randall's stories, but the younger girls
went with their mother and grandmother into another room down the hall. I
heard other voices in that room: a communal kitchen. Men from another family
in the triad were cooking today. "Nothing fancy," Raytha said as she walked
down the hall flanked by her girls. "But it's food."
"More gray piscids and flockweed paste," Randall said when she had left, and
confided another grimace. He led me into a room he said was his own, and his
alone, but he did not object when the boys followed. This tiny cubicle had a
window high in one wall to the outside, through which a cool evening breeze
was blowing. A small electric lantern hung in one corner, casting a dim yellow
light over shelves packed with crudely bound books.
"Father, what happened at the river?" the older of the two boys asked as we
settled onto woven fiber chairs. "The teacher dismissed us early today and
went to the river ... He said he was joining a committee."
"There was a fight," Randall said, lines growing deeper in his face. He did
not like describing this to his sons.
"Did anybody get killed?" the younger boy asked. He reminded me of the boy I
had saved by breathing life back into him. His eyes danced with intense
interest. My stomach knotted with the remembered love and hate all over again.
"A lot of people were killed, mostly pirates," Randall said. He did not
volunteer information about the children in the boats. A bell jangled near the
alleyway door and Randall got up to answer it. After a conversation of several
minutes, during which time the boys sat in the room alone with me, biting
their lips and staring at each other for support, but saying nothing, Randall
returned.
"A representative of the citizens rank, welcoming me back," Randall said.
"Thomas radioed them from upriver. They will indeed expect us tomorrow."
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