They were swept along with the marchers for about half a block, in the course of which the stranger maneuvered them outward toward one side of the flow. Then, as they came abreast of the entrance to a narrow passageway leading off between a shuttered shop front and the base of a pillar, he yanked at Hunt’s arm and nodded. “There!”
They detached themselves from the human river like hoboes jumping from a slowing boxcar and followed the passage to an iron stairway leading up. It brought them to an elevated pedestrian way where people were watching the confusion below. But at least it felt half way back to sanity. Hunt and the stranger stopped for a moment.
“Who the hell are you?” Hunt asked when he had regained his breath.
The glittering gray eyes looked back at him with an amusement that seemed friendly. “English, eh? Well, most people who like me call me Murray. The others usually think up something else.” He jerked his head to indicate the Jevlenese around them. “But let’s leave the formalities till later and get away from all the crazies first.”
Murray led the way through a warren of passages and arcades, up stairs and escalators, across footbridges. Within minutes Hunt had lost any idea of the way back to the intersection. It was like being inside an ocean liner, a supermall, and a Shanghai street market all rolled into one and swelled to a scale that would have encompassed New York’s avenues and Tokyo’s railroad system. Even though there were many shuttered shop fronts and vacated apartments, people were everywhere, though how much of the bustle and activity was normal, Hunt had no way of knowing.
The typical Jevlenese Hunt saw were not exactly like any of the Terran races, Hunt observed. They were orangy in hue, with hair that varied from copper to black. Their faces were wide and flat, their eyes rounded, the skin of many of them speckled or streaked with brownish blotches, and they wore every form of garb imaginable. They tended to be taller than the average Terran, but flabby-probably from spending too much of their existence inertly coupled into JEVEX, Hunt guessed. But there were enough who were shorter, darker, lighter, or pinker to make Hunt feel at least not obviously alien, even if something of an oddity.
Everything had happened too quickly and unexpectedly for Hunt to be in any state of mind to form a coherent picture of what was going on around him. He registered only disconnected impressions that came and went. Some were of people who seemed grandly attired and ornamented, strutting self-importantly, sometimes with retinues of attendants; others were of dirty and shabby individuals, panhandling from passersby. At one place they passed, which seemed to be a restaurant, a small honor guard of staff waited at the door to greet a party from a chauffeured automobile; a few yards farther on, a loudly protesting figure was tossed bodily from the back door of another place. In neither case did anyone else take much notice.
They came to a dingy, not-very-clean-smelling passage between a bar and some closed-down premises, and entered one of several doorways. Inside, a vestibule with a brave stand of exhausted flowers in a long tub opened through to a hall with several doors of various colors, all scratched and battered. One, larger than the rest, looked as if it might be an elevator, but Murray ignored it and, tossing back a terse “Busted” over his shoulder and making a throwing-away motion of his hand, led the way past it to a stairwell at the rear.
On the first landing, they had to step over a snoring body, drunk or under some other influence. A door on the next was open, with a pair of tots playing with toys on the floor outside. They greeted Murray with smiles. He ruffled their hair as he passed, muttering a few words in Jevlenese. From inside, their mother looked out blankly, saying nothing, while from behind a door opposite came strange, atonal music with a heavy rhythm, punctuated by two voices shouting and shrieking at what sounded like the borderline of murder. “Don’t worry about it,” Murray grunted, seemingly reading Hunt’s mind. “It won’t come to that. Jevs never do anything right.”
Two levels farther up, they stopped in front of a purple door with a white surround. Murray said something to it, and a female voice answered from nowhere identifiable. The door slid aside, and Murray ushered Hunt through, just as a woman came out of one of the rooms to meet them. She had a clear, dusky complexion, cherry-colored hair, and was wearing a skintight orange top with, glittery mauve, calf-length pants. By what seemed to be the Jevlenese norm, she was quite trim and shapely-in fact, her figure wasn’t at all bad by most Terran standards, either. Her voice had a bright up-and-down lilt as she chattered more Jevlenese at Murray, who replied in a series of short utterances and grunts.
“This is Nixie,” Murray said when he could get a word in. “All that was the Jev way of saying hi. They talk too much. Nixie, meet a new friend of ours…“ He cocked an eyebrow inquiringly.
“Vic’ll do fine,” Hunt said. Murray said something to Nixie in which Hunt caught the syllable “Vic.”
Nixie smiled, showing white and even teeth, and took Hunt’s hand. “Vic, how you do today? We go fuck? Have real good time.”
“No, no, you dumb broad.” Murray sighed. “He’s not a customer. Just visiting. Understand? Vis-it-or. Come here to say hello. Anyhow, it’s your day off.”
“Ah.” Nixie dismissed the error with a matter-of-fact shrug. “Is okay I guess.”
“How about a drink, then?” Murray said. “Can fix? Drink?” He raised his hand in a drinking motion. Nixie smiled, nodded, and turned toward a short passage that led to what looked like the kitchen, from which the sound of a popular jazz group was issuing-Terran, this time. Murray patted her behind as she moved away, then he steered Hunt into the lounge. “Put your feet up. Make yourself at home. I guess you’ve had a long trip.”
It was a cheerfully chaotic place, cluttered and colorful in an unapologetically gaudy kind of way, yet cleaner and better kept than Hunt’s impression of the exterior had prepared him for. It went with Murray’s hatband. There was a suite of puffy-looking chairs in gray and red that molded themselves into whatever shape the occupant assumed, with a couch of the same; a large table by the wall, bearing a vase of Jevlenese plants amid a litter of household oddments, a box of tools, and some magazines; and a fluffy pink carpet that looked like mohair. Various ornaments and knickknacks filled every shelf and recess, and most of the wall space was taken up by posters, pictures that included some raunchy girlie poses, both native and Terran, and several embroidered blankets of the kind that tourists everywhere liked to buy. A picture of the Golden Gate Bridge formed a centerpiece on one wall. It was surmounted by an American flag, with a Chicago University bumper sticker, dollar bills of various denominations, and an arrangement of Budweiser, Miller, Michelob, and Coors coasters framing the whole.
Murray tossed his hat across the room onto the table and flopped down in one of the chairs, stretching a leg out over a footstool. He had wiry hair streaked with gray, like his beard, that was beginning to show a thin patch at the crown. Hunt sat down in the chair opposite, pressing his body this way and that until the contours suited him.
“Her real name’s Nikasha,” Murray explained. “Don’t be taken in by the act. She’s smarter than she lets on. Keeps her sights on the real world out there-and that’s saying a lot for this place.” He reached up to a shelf near his chair and took down a silver metal box. Flipping open the lid, he offered it to Hunt. It was partitioned into two sections, holding rolled joints of different colors, thicknesses, and lengths in one end, and a selection of tablets and capsules in the other. “Burn up? Cool down? Blow a weed? Some of the local stuff’ll put you back into i-space.”