It grinned. A kung grin was a red crescent with harp strings of mucus.

'My name is Marco Farfarer,' he said, 'and if it will help you to cease staring, I am a naturalized human being. You only think you're seeing a kung. Don't let a mere unfortunate accident of birth confuse you.'

'My apologies,' said Kin. 'It was the second pair of arms.'

'Quite so.' He bent lower, and said in the voice laden with the breath of swamps: 'A flat world?'

Then he sat down, while they sought for clues in each other's face.

'How did you know?' said Kin.

'Magic,' he said. 'I recognized you, of course. I enjoyed your book. I know Kin Arad works for the Company. I see her sitting in Kung Line Top, a place one would not expect to find her. She looks ill at ease. I recall that about a month ago, when I was on Ehftnia and couldn't get a ship out -- being only the third best long-haul pilot in the region -- I was approached by a man who--'

'I think I know the man,' said Kin.

'He said certain things and made certain offers. What did he offer you?'

Kin shrugged. 'Among other things, a cloak of invisibility.'

The kung's eyes widened. 'He offered me a small animal skin pouch which produced these,' he murmured. Kin picked up the notes he laid on the table. There was a wad of 100 and 1000 Day bills, an Ehftnic ceramic 144-pjum bar, a thin roll of assorted human currencies, several hundred Star Chamber tokens and a computer card.

'Some of the currency I tendered to a moneychanger on Ehftnia,' said Marco, 'and she accepted it. There can be no greater proof of its genuineness, if you have ever done business with an Ehftnic. I think the card is a keycard to an autobank, probably on Ehftnia.

'There was a lot more, mostly Ehftnic dollar bars. I was poor at the time.'

Kin flicked a pjum bar and watched it roll across the table.

'The bag produced them?' she asked slowly.

'Aye. 'Twas no more than hand-sized. I watched it all come out. I thought he was Company. He wished to buy my services.'

'As a pilot?'

The kung waved two hands vaguely. 'I can fly all kinds of ship, no error. Even without matrix tapes. I'm the best -- what do these want?'

The bar-kung approached the table diffidently towing behind him a very large hairy bell, which kept up by hopping on its one foot. There was a voicebox strapped to the tuft at its tip.

'This is Green-shading-to-indigo. It's an Ehft,' he said, helpfully. 'It's the Line Top Sanitary Officer.'

'Pleased to make its acquaintance,' said Kin. With a deft flick the Ehft produced a transparent box from under its -- cloak, skin? -- and flourished it a few inches in front of Kin's eyes. She heard Marco hiss.

'Voila! Regardez!' screeched the voicebox. 'Earthian! Moutmout! Sapient! Question!'

A large black bird in the box looked beadily at Kin, and went back to preening its feathers.

'It turned up yesterday,' said the bar-kung. 'I told him, it's a bird, an Earth animal. Only it talks.

'We looked it up in the Guide to Sapient Species, but there is only one avian, and this is not it.'

'It looks like a damn big raven,' said Kin, taking the box. 'What's the problem?' She paused. 'I see the problem. You want to know, do you arrest it or destroy it? Anyway, how did a bird get in here?'

'Puzzle!'

'We don't know.'

On an impulse Kin opened the box. The bird hopped up on to the rim and looked at her.

'It's harmless,' she said. 'Probably someone's pet.'

'Pet?'

'Mental symbiote,' drawled Marco. 'Humans are crazy.'

The Ehft shuffled forward uncertainly and shoved its tentacle towards Kin again. It held a thick loop of intricately knotted string. With a sinking heart she recognized it as an Ehftnic touch-book.

'When I told it you were you, it went all the way back to its pod for its translation of your book,' said the bar-kung proprietorially. 'It wants you to--'

But Kin was already tying a personalized knot at the beginning of the coil.

'Understand! Not! Self!' squawked the voicebox. 'For! Pup! Belong! Sibling!'

'He means--'

'I understand,' said Kin wearily.

Jalo,' screamed the raven.

'You take it away,' said the bar-kung, thrusting the 'cage' into a pair of Marco's arms. 'She can feed it or eat it or make love to it or teach it to sing or whatever humans do with pests.'

'Pets,' said Marco. He took the cage. There didn't seem to be any alternative.

The Ehft watched them head towards the shuttle bay.

'Crazy?' it ventured.

'Humans run the universe now,' said the bar-kung bitterly. 'Such craziness, I wish I could get hold of some. Notice the way humans walk as if they own the galaxy?'

The Ehft considered this. It had always found it an effort to comprehend a method of locomotion that didn't involve tentacles.

'No,' it said.

There were few passengers on the shuttle. There was a moment of high-gee as strap-on rockets sent it swinging out of the hangar and down the Line.

'At least I'll have a native guide,' said Kin, and grinned to show that it was a joke. But this kung seemed to know about humour. Legally human?

'I was hoping you might be able to help me 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 Freffr-comb hairstyles and what they think is genuine kung-style dress and a superficial and uninformed taste in Tleng 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 cosmospolitan woman. 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.