...

"Station-to-station stasis has put an end to any adventure in space travel, and I don't mean the 'adventures' of earliest wormhole traveling either. I mean the romance of ships and trains. Uncharted coasts and intriguing local customs. Maybe they still look at it that way on survey ships. But, I mean, new species can still be encountered, and unexpected phenomena aren't unheard of."

"I'm told that that is also rather uneventful. One of the Spivulet's crew was a rogue of my clan. He described it essentially as scientific laboratory work where the laboratory was contained within the experiment rather than vice versa. And then there is the risk of mechanical failure and whatnot. Surveyors are getting gradually bigger mainly because they desire to take more and more communication blimps along. Rest assured, stasis removes the unpleasant passage of time, and in addition, advances us safely beyond adverse constellations."

Without any hope, Luke concluded: "So you don't want to be taken out of stasis on the way? We have stops of a couple of days at Hiakaton and later at Gate 395. I read somewhere that they can take you out of stasis, although it is incredibly expensive."

"No. No ... That would be most awkward. Feel free to enjoy as many sights as you like, but I prefer to circumvent them in other dimensions. Even Daimando may prove unpropitious."

Stasis was an Urrr invention and, after space travel, probably the most significant technological advancement in the Federation. Its development was inspired entirely by Urrr religious zeal. The required presence of moons, or rather certain celestial constellations, made space travel an insurmountable obstacle for Urrr gentlemen. Only rogues, having left the path of righteous zeal, would stray into adverse conditions.

Stasis essentially isolated a fragment of our three-dimensional space, or rather our ten-dimensional reality, and shunted that fragment ever so slightly beyond. Whatever was contained in the fragment traveled neither in time nor in space until it was pulled back again into our reality. Accordingly, stasis was very auspicious, at least so your points of departure and arrival.

Luke considered seriously getting out on the way because he would very much have liked to see empty space around Gate 395. And the gate itself, of course, -- one of the few relics of early days space travel. But in the end, he decided against it. It was too expensive: $500, two months' pay, just for two days of deep space tourism.

Accordingly, their journey was entirely uneventful. They didn't perceive boarding their six different starships, nor did they notice being stored in various places for various lengths of time or the actual movement on rockets and repulsor thrust. Wormhole travel was unnoticeable even had they been fully present, so from their perspective, they went into stasis on Bethnell Prime space station and got out immediately over Daimando.

...

Daimando starport wasn't at all what they expected.

Greater Bethnell starport, one of three on Bethnell, was perhaps not the busiest place Lucas had ever seen, but it was more than lively nonetheless. When it was built, it was, by regulation following various cable-car mishaps, still located a safe distance away from the city and the airport. But there were frequent bullet trains to the airport and nearby major cities, including trains into Greater Bethnell every five minutes. In addition, there were ramjet services circling between starport, airport, city center, and key places around the vast city. Hardly a day went by without a starship visiting Bethnell. In addition, most freight between the surface and the asteroid mines, the microgee factories, and several other places went through the starport.

Not so Flianderel, Daimando's starport. The trip down had already given Lucas the shivers. He had the distinct impression that he could hear the rush of escaping air in the cable car. Whenever the flight attendant thought they were unobserved, they fingered the masks at their belts nervously, or so it seemed.

The real shock came as they alighted: only four pylons about a hundred yards apart, converging something like five hundred yards overhead. Only four cable cars for an entire planet. And by the look of it, one was out of service. It lay on its side next to its pylon.

"Man, I only ever want to do that once more, and if we can rent a shuttle seat, I'm all for it."

"Agrrr. How's your Pli?"

"Sorry?"

"Your Pli. How well do you read Pli? The thing is, I do. Or at least I can render a semantic gestalt stream that compares agreeably to translations I've seen. I can't say that I understand Pli. I'm not sure anyone does, except the Pli, apparently. Anyway, here is what I would call a disclaimer on the back of our stub, which is written in Pli. I was about to throw the ticket away as you did when I suddenly wondered why on earth they would write it in Pli. I can't imagine Pli ever coming here. So here's your first Kudri Hadratar."

Lucas took the ticket and looked at the back. Of course, he had seen Pli in school, but this seemed more stylized. If Xolorrr hadn't told him it was Pli, he would have thought it was a decoration.

"So why is this a Kudri Hadratar?"

"Oh. Well. It portents your heroism and lauds you for it. You might say this ticket establishes beyond any doubt that you are a hero, which, in your culture, as in mine, includes an element of free choice." The last words were hard to catch, being stifled in grating. Xolorrr was laughing his head off.

"I'm happy for you that you're having fun, but I still don't get it."

"The Pli are cowards. I mean, they have cultivated cowardice to the highest of art forms. A Pli will not cross the road or enter a car. Having breakfast requires a significant amount of contemplation and determination. And yet, they strive to be heroes. All the Pli you have ever seen have the highest rank among their people: they are the penultimate heroes. Every day they undergo, willingly, the most dangerous threats, such as conversing with humans.

"The thing is, they can only actually become heroes by dying. For the Pli, it is a title: being a hero means being dead other than through natural causes. Choosing a cause of action that will kill you as likely as not earns you to be lauded. Every Pli must bow to you and recognize your superiority, your heroism. So there you have it. The ticket lauds you as a hero."

"Ok. Thanks for the ticket. So why? And why is it on the back of our ticket, in Pli?"

"Oh. I think it's a legal thing. If you are going to print a legally binding disclaimer, you have to make it in an official language of the Federation, which Pli is, of course. And any legal Pli interpreter will tell you that this text expresses that you have chosen the path of penultimate heroes. That is that you undertake this action even though you are aware that you are likely to die and that you do so willingly and unreservedly. I imagine they use Pli to keep at least some of their clientele. Putting 'the bearer of this will probably die and is aware of that fact, so should that circumstance arise it is all their own fault' on the back of your tickets in any plain language is bound to deter people."

"That what it says?"

"Essentially, yes."

"Can they do that?"

"Well, they did. I'm not a lawyer, but I think the case could be argued. Probably they have tickets with the proper text in English, which you should only have asked for. I think it would rather depend on where the case was tried. If it was here, who knows?"

...

The Flianderel Shuttle, like everything in the starport, was well-used edging on threadbare, which filled Luke with misgivings: this didn't seem at all like the world they had read about.

However, as they came to a halt in Brodin Grand Central, the largest station in the capital of Daimando, it was clear that their first impression had been misleading. The station was huge and modern. Industrial in a vaguely Victorian way. But modern nonetheless.

The station was built in more than fifty layers. In the middle was a giant transparently domed pit, aptly named "the pit', which showed a cross-section of the station. The pit narrowed down towards the bottom. It was perhaps fifty yards wide at its first floor but hundred of yards towards the top. At each level, a single train track crossed the pit dead center. The pit was cut in half with this ladder of tracks and, on occasion, trains.

Around the pit, a multitude of escalators and elevators allowed people to go to different levels. Many people used slide boards to be brought about, but most walked. Given the enormity of the station and the fact that trains would be coming and going more or less continuously, the noise level was surprisingly low. But Luke couldn't discern what technology was being used.

After gawping into the pit for a while, Xolorrr became restless, and they decided where to go next. Lucas's implant wasn't compatible with Daimando protocols, but the 'partout he'd bought at the Jamboree, an age ago, soon came to life and chattered away with attractive discounts for all the niceties and necessities one should acquire in Daimando. After setting up the appropriate filters, he was finally able to wade through the mire of commercials and get at local traveling information. The travelers' guides at home had given them enough information to decide where they wanted to go but not enough to determine how to get there.

Apparently, they could either take a train at the third level from the bottom of the pit or at the second level from the top, the latter connecting all boroughs with fast local trains. Lucas didn't feel comfortable too deep in the ground, so they opted for the upper train.

As they arrived at their level, they chanced upon a terrace advertising a Xeno synthesizer, and Xolorrr fell for it. So far, they hadn't seen any non-humans, and Xolorrr reasoned that it might well be a while before he saw anything like this again. A scan on the net supported this, and so it was decided. However, Daimando proved to be every bit as modern and developed as the next world: both their stupendously expensive coffees were weak, if not tasteless, and the synthesized Urrr pastry was indistinguishable from its wrapper, which displayed an exhaustive list of constituents and disclaimers. While Lucas was checking on their carryall robot to see if its safeties were still up, his shrink-wrapped cookie was stolen, so they never got to know what that was like either. Thus strengthened in resolve only, they boarded their train to The C'aing, the borough they had decided to visit first.

Their plan was exceedingly open-ended if you could call it a plan at all. They had selected two areas in Brodin, and three of the major cities, as potentially interesting. They would stay there as tourists for a short while and decide how to proceed there.

As their train left Brodin Grand Central, the view was truly spectacular: the station lay as a doughnut of gigantic proportions amidst a plane of four and five-story buildings, with some high-rise here and there, and around that shape, six bridges sprouted like gossamer threads suspended far above most buildings, disappearing in the distance between high-rise and then into the ground. Not a single support was in sight for these bridges: each was suspended using tethers that merged far overhead and diverged again into three orbital tethers. Luke had never seen anything like it and hadn't known it was at all possible. Daimando was clearly as technically advanced as Bethnell, or probably even superior, and much wealthier at that: imagine three orbital tethers being used to support only bridges!

Fortunately, their train used one of the six bridges, so they could enjoy the view for several miles. Brodin was impressive, even according to Xolorrr. The layout was roughly the same as far as the eye could see. Low buildings everywhere: residential buildings, offices, and shops. Here and there is a small park or a lake. And then, high-rises, also everywhere. On Bethnell, most city centers had high-rises, but it wasn't cost-effective beyond that. Apparently, here it was. And then, factories, refineries, and a gaping hole that appeared to be a mine, or was it just a tunnel?

And finally, there were the immense structures like Brodin Grand Central. They saw one more structure that appeared to be suspended from an orbital tether. However, its proximity to the station suggested that it was probably the same tether. Other structures included a pyramid as big as a mountain, literally; three interconnected towers several miles high; a perfect cube with impossible dimensions, apparently cut as a single piece from bedrock; and a mushroom-shaped building which Xolorrr called a Ginch, one of their many religious buildings, which seemed to defy gravity. And it didn't end. As far as the eye could see, this same pattern was evident. In the distance, a few shapes greater yet could be seen, but Luke wouldn't believe they were man-made. Xolorrr wasn't so sure.

As their train descended underground, they had a brief moment to digest what they had seen. Lucas said: "That is really astounding. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"Certainly not on Manaat. That would be most unpropitious. Wasn't your root world like this?" When Luke first met Xolorrr, he thought that the Urrr was plain rude, and maybe all Urrr, precisely with comments like this. Notwithstanding the many courses in Xeno cultural perception, he'd had. Later, as Luke got to know him better, he knew that Xolorrr would never be rude, and he thought it was naivety. And later still, when he started to know him quite well if that could be said at all, he took it to be a private kind of humor. In Humans, it might be considered condescending, but in Urrr, it was not, honestly. For that condescension was very inauspicious, and the condescension was towards himself at least as much.

...

Later, after they walked around a bit and were sitting in their hotel room: "This is weird. All those buildings, I mean, are truly really impressive. But I haven't seen anything beautiful yet. It's all boring, in a way. Or not boring. I don't know."

They sat in silence for a while. Luke thought of his dentist. "I know what it is!" He saw his dentists' waiting room. Stainless steel and titanium glass, glass foam lamps suspended from monofilament, and then the art on the wall, the table, the floor, in the corner, and on a ledge just outside the window. Most of the drawings, paintings, and statues were sort of nice, but they never made any lasting impression. They were made to the latest and hottest trends. Or maybe not the latest, but those that featured in the snazziest magazines, copies of which were available to his node while he waited. They were art by the numbers. Luke imagined an army of would-be artists, or indeed, AI's producing variations on a theme for the rich and famous. And he imagined an agent where you could set the parameters: your price and your taste, and appropriate art would be shipped to you.

"I know what it is. Those buildings are all awe-inspiring, but they aren't beautiful. They aren't art. Artsy, but not art."

"I've never understood Human art. It's all so bloated and extravagant," but Luke could see he was just pushing his buttons. Perhaps Xolorrr truly couldn't see it because he didn't understand art as humans did. Urrr art came in two ways. One type of art concerned the subtle and complex way certain scientific and religious matters were presented. Stylized from their religious background into pure theoretic constructs. Apparently, Xolorrr made stuff like that on occasion, but Luke hadn't even tried to understand: that was certainly way beyond him.

The second type could be expressed in any manner, and painting and sculpting were as favored as they were for humans. Urrr expressive art was purely emotional and abstract rather than figurative. Over the ages, the emotion was stylized or rather symbolized, and pieces of art could evoke an exact and distinctive emotion, in Urrr, without expressing what might evoke such an emotion in actual life. Art as an explicit emotional langue. Apparently, some paintings resulted in the emotion of having enjoyed a delicious meal, having read an unpleasant book, or having hit one's thumb with a hammer. For humans, Urrr art was unimaginable.

...

Lucas's 'partout could access the net. But, by accident, they discovered that it couldn't be reached. Xolorrr had tried to call Luke when he was downstairs to get some food and beer and had been unable to.

The following day they first went to look for a shop or repair center to fix the node. Looking for such a shop proved to be complicated. Somehow things were indexed differently on Daimando, or whatever the reason, but the best they could do was to produce a list of places that might very well be able to help them, but that might just as well be concerned with something else altogether.

Their fifth visit, just as they started to be depressed about it, turned out to be the one. It was a small shop located in an alley, around the corner from a gigantic drugstore. The shop displayed an assortment of electronic and software components that Luke couldn't even begin to identify. But then again, they did seem to have a tech problem, so what could they expect.

As Luke tried to explain the problem to the guy, he looked non-plussed, but as soon as he got his hands on the 'partout, or rather as soon as he could see the inside after opening the partout with what appeared to Luke to be a conjuring trick, his eyes took on a glow of enthusiasm.

"I've read about this. This is illegal. You can't have this."

"Sorry?"

"Well, you can have it. You obviously do. But you couldn't buy it. They are made on Drury 165, The Shack, or at least, they used to be. Apparently, they don't anymore. What they did was use the inware protocols. There are over a hundred worlds where they don't use Federation standard protocols for various reasons. Like here, it was more effective to develop our own than to wait and have to ship in all nodes. So our protocol differs from yours. These guys in The Shack started out from the templates because they didn't have the protocols. They broke in at that level, the inware. There were only thirty templates or so, so it worked, and still works. Now new templates are coming out, so it will gradually cease."

Luke looked at Xolorrr, who wasn't even pretending to follow the conversation. The guy peering into his 'partout seemed not to have noticed Xolorrr.

"But can people contact me?"

"No, they can't. Like I said, this thing doesn't register in our protocols."

"And you're saying this is illegal."

"Yeah. Oh, but don't worry. They can't find it. That's the point."

"Could you just for a moment imagine I am a total retard, and could you explain this to me?"

"Sure."

...

The guy continued peering in the 'partout.

"Suppose I want people to be able to call me. Can this 'partout be fixed?"

"No. Let me explain. This node breaks in at the lowest level protocols of any and every gateway around. At that level, there is no network, so any node or any gateway at least is faced with a new peer. Many block it out immediately, but many will just assign a random address to it. At that level, it's a feature, but it isn't intended for this, of course. New templates don't support that. Anyway. Whenever you communicate, you appear as a sequence of random, unrelated id's. As long as you stay in one place and stay connected to the same gateway, you keep the same id, but those connections are dropped every second or so, anyway."

"So I can't be contacted."

"No."

"What would another node cost me?"

"Just so people can contact you. You shouldn't do that. Why not use a dropbox?"

"What's a dropbox?"

"Oh. It's just some software." He took a small package from one of the shelves behind him. "It wasn't intended for this, but it should work all right. It sets up a cache somewhere on the net, and your node can poll it. Anyone wants to contact you, they call the drop-box, and your node calls them instead."

"They'd have to wait?"

"Well, only for a millisecond or so. You can set how often you poll."

He opened the package, took out the tiny crystal, and inserted it in a slot in the 'partout. Then he appeared to communicate with the 'partout.

"There. You have a drop-box, and I set it to poll every twenty milliseconds. I've left the address and stuff for you. You can talk to this thing, right?"

"Yeah. Where is it located, physically, this drop-box."

"Oh, on one of our servers. It's included in the package, so you don't have to worry about it. There's a read-me that tells you how to set it up again, should anything fail. The polling, I mean. The drop-box can't fail."

"Well. Is there anything else you think I should know?"

"No. Like I said, it's illegal, so don't talk about it too much. Proximity doesn't work, of course. I mean, people can't contact you just by looking at you. Other than that, nothing. If you ever buy anything else, I'd like to have this. Just for fun."

Problem solved. The drop-box set him back fifteen dollars, but it would prove to be money well spent.

...

Two blocks down from their hotel was the cafe Pompidou, which Luke and Xolorrr frequented the first few days of their stay. They served excellent coffee and fresh cream cheese and jelly bagels, and at night, beer, wine, and quite a few decent meals. They were even able to produce a freeze-dried, post-mix Urrr beer, which, they had established, was more choice than usual, and a gruel which, according to the chef, was Urrr staple food. Xolorrr expressed his doubts but ate it nonetheless.

The decoration consisted of age-darkened wood, polished glass, mirrors, gold-painted metal grilles, and red fabrics. At first, Luke thought it was just weird and incredibly old-fashioned, but after they had visited various 'sights,' he noticed that there was more to it. The composition of materials in the Pompidou was organic and haphazard, not at all sharp or industrial, and all in all, it was pleasant in an unobtrusive way. Gradually he came to regard it as understated anti-industrial.

The people that came there were also different. Different than the thousands of Daimandos they had seen. Less uptight. But then again, maybe they were just relaxed because they were in a bar.

For three days, they followed the same routine. Breakfast at the Pompidou, taking some time to browse the net and see what they would like to visit. Then go there, gawp, and go back again. They had to be selective: Brodin was so big that most sights were too far away.

They had now seen C'aing Municipal Museum -- Luke's choice, which had turned out to be an industrial museum; Daimando Modern Arts 4 -- a mutual choice, which had turned out to be an industrial museum, albeit with an interest in esthetics and industrial design; the Federation Ethnographic Society -- Xolorrr's choice, which offered interesting new insights, especially as to the relations between culture and industry; and a fourth-generation software design studio -- a mistake, but in retrospect the best they had seen so far.

Luke had attempted to understand how Xolorrr would go about establishing whether Daimando's lunar constellation was auspicious, but apparently, it wasn't something one could 'do'. It was something that would reveal itself to Xolorrr in its own time. Every night, Xolorrr took an hour or so to meditate, or contemplate, merely, as he indicated, to allow the weakest of signals to imprint suitably on balance.