Yeah, as cranky as they all are, they’d come over and beat the crap out of you for infringing on their ear space, Jay mused.

The number of young moms and young dads with babies and toddlers in slings or glider prams were about equal. Apparently child rearing was an equal-opportunity task among the Tarhiji. And then there were the old, all of whom were treated with the gravest courtesy.

The tram sighed to a stop, and about half the passengers rose and began to disembark. Though they were clearly in a financial and business district, Jay decided to go with the flow. He joined the mass exodus.

“Excuse me,” Jay said in halting Sham’al. The woman turned and looked at him with an expression of polite inquiry. “What is this office that you’re going into?”

“Jhaconda and Stirpes. We’re providers of @^ amp;*.” Static again. Jay shook his head. She tried to explain. “We guarantee objects against loss or damage. People too.”

She vanished into the building, and Jay accosted another worker well dressed, at least by Takisian standards. And got the same answer. Again. And again. He’d either hit the wrong street, or everyone on Takis was either a pooftah or an insurance salesman. It was really depressing. Jay was beginning to wish he’d followed the young moms and dads, or the old grandmas and grandpas shopping or wherever they were going.

Interspersed with the office buildings were shops of various kinds. Jewelry, shoes, clothes, electronic gadgets. As he strolled and gawked, certain facts pummeled their way past the resistant barriers in his mind. The streets were very clean. No garbage in the gutters. No graffiti marring the pastel walls. There were lots and lots of tiny parks complete with the obligatory Takisian fountain, flowers, grass, and trees. And no homeless people sleeping in them. No homeless huddled like shapeless sacks in doorways or shuffling down the sidewalks accosting passersby for money.

Maybe they kill ’em and eat ’em.

Or maybe there weren’t any. It didn’t jibe with the implicit and (in his brief experience) the fucking explicit cruelty of the culture, or the elitism of the psionic overclass. Then Jay reflected on his brief acquaintance with Tachyon – the paternalistic attitude the alien held toward humans in general and jokers in particular. The whole noblesse oblige act. Probably the motive was pride – there aren’t going to be any hungry or homeless people in our cities, by damn – but the result was good, grudging though Jay’s admission of that fact might be.

They think they’re so goddamn special, Jay thought resentfully, though no psi lord was in view to trigger the reaction. And it’s just a fluke of genetic mutation which could be a universal gift if the elegant lords and ladies would deign to mix their precious bodily fluids with some of the lower order.

No, that wasn’t the problem. Metaphorically and literally speaking, the telepaths would fuck the mind blind with the greatest alacrity. They just wouldn’t breed with them.

Jay wished he had someone with whom to share these thoughts and revelations, and then suddenly the emotion that had been tugging at the edges of his mind like a shy child came clearly into focus. He was lonely. He didn’t have a damn soul on Takis to talk to… come to that, he didn’t have a damn soul to talk to back in Manhattan. He had an inflatable sex doll that doubled as a receptionist. He knew a couple of sympathetic waitresses at the Java joint who served him patty melts and coffee and let him ramble, but he realized he knew nothing about them beyond their names. His one deep friendship with Hiram Worchester had sorta gone down the shitter when Jay helped unearth the evidence that Hiram was a murderer – however exonerating the circumstances.

Jay’s thoughts went back to Vi and Flo at the seedy Times Square coffee shop, spurred no doubt by the aromas floating through the open door of the Takisian equivalent. Jay hesitated a few more minutes. Then a pretty woman, carrying an armful of cut flowers, came whisking through a back door and began filling the empty vases on the fifteen tables.

Like most of the Tarhiji she was on the zaftig side, but her soft hair looked like spun caramel, and the pure oval shape of her face reminded Jay of a painting he’d seen in one of his catechism books – the Madonna of the Cherries. It was the only picture of the Virgin he’d ever liked. Instead of looking sappy the Virgin looked sensual, and she seemed genuinely thrilled to be kissing her baby.

The woman sensed his scrutiny, looked up, and frowned. “Are you eating? Or rusticating?”

“It’s a little early for lunch,” said Jay, amused at her acidity.

“Then move out of my doorway so you don’t block the paying trade.”

That decided it. Jay walked in and settled at a table. Nodded toward the empty vase.

“I haven’t got a flower yet.”

The lips parted, were folded back into a tight line. The woman searched through the bouquet until she located one rather sickly, wilted bloom and placed it in the vase. Her velvet brown eyes challenged him. Jay just laughed. She completed her preparations, returned to Jay’s table, and stood, arms akimbo, staring at him.

“What?” the human asked.

“Are you eating or are you still rusticating?”

“Gimme a menu, and I’ll order. I’m not a mind reader.”

Sighing like a mother confronted by a backward child, she lightly touched an indentation in the lip of the table. The menu sprang to life in the air above the table. The squiggles looked like worm trails in the dust.

Jay shot her a sheepish look. “I forgot… I speak Takisian, I don’t read it.”

“Don’t speak it very well, either.”

“You always this nice to everybody who comes in?” She stared, a wall of unblinking hostility filming her eyes. “I’m surprised you have any customers at all.”

“I have the kind of customers I like.”

“And I take it I’m not among the select. Well, you want to translate this for me? Got anything on there that resembles a patty melt?” he added.

She didn’t. And the explanation didn’t help much. Too many of the words were unfamiliar. He finally settled on something that appeared to have cheese and bread in it – maybe it was a sandwich – and a bowl of soup. There weren’t too many ways to wreck soup – he hoped.

It was an open-face sandwich made of something that resembled raw spinach stirred with cream cheese and nuts. It was way too yuppie for Jay’s taste.

“You got anything with burnt pieces of animal flesh in it?”

“You don’t want this?” she indicated the sandwich.

“No.”

“Are you going to pay for both?”

“Naturally.”

“Is the soup to your satisfaction?”

Jay didn’t mistake the polite words for politeness. There was a sting on the edge of them.

“Yeah, the soup’s great.”

It was a thick, dark concoction with tiny blue beans that looked like a cross between lentils and pintos. Floating in it were dried yellow critters that gave it a sharp, citrusy taste. And it was really good. Jay wondered if he could get the recipe for Hiram. He told the woman about his friend and the restaurant, and how he’d really love this soup.

“Only problem,” Jay said, “the produce delivery is going to be a bitch over twenty-three light-years.”

He thought that might get some reaction out of her. How often did you meet an alien? Up until a month ago he’d met only one. In retrospect he decided one would have been enough. His revelation didn’t impress her.

“What are you doing off the Bonded station? We don’t permit aliens on the Crystal World.”

“Would you believe I’m a close personal friend and bodyguard to the heir to House Ilkazam?”

“No.”

Jay studied that pretty face, the soft, rich swell of her bosom beneath her blouse. Dispensed with the notion of trying to impress her. He’d settle for getting to know her.

“Have you got a name?”