They left the boat to do as she wished and went up the water stairs. The stone treads had been hollowed by a thousand generations of feet, and not one of them human. Or unhuman, depending on where you sat; Kettrick remembered a small lecture he had once given on Earth, roughly a million years ago before the Doomstar, to a girl who did not like people-sized things that talked. They all think of themselves as human, and us as not. The Achernan name for non-Achernans was "beast-born," which nicely covered all origins from ape to anything. So his feet were the interlopers, the unclean. He was glad he had Chai for company.
The building loomed massively above them. There were lights inside, and a long high hall of stone with a polished floor. This was a private landing and there was no way out of it to the public street except through the building.
They entered the hall. Even Chai's soft footsteps seemed to echo like thunder from the vault. Faces watched them, coldly smiling faces arched on slender necks, the necks poised on fluidly graceful bodies that seemed to coil upward along the spaced pillars. Kettrick felt extremely unwelcome. He had a sudden horror of being trapped in this hall, with the wet Achernans slithering out of the canal behind him and others in front, all enemies whether they served the Doomstar or not.
He began to run, with Chai loping beside him.
Just as they approached the outer entrance a couple came in, the man in a cloak of yellow silk, the woman in clinging white that emphasized her supple lines, her pale skin fired here and there with jewels. Her eye stripes were sharper, a brighter blue than the man's. The two froze staring as Kettrick and the big gray Tchell went past them. Kettrick heard their voices, in a manner remarkably human, begin to chatter in astonishment behind him. Then the night streets enfolded him and Chai and covered them, at least partially.
Kettrick slowed down to a fast walk. They seemed to have shaken the pursuit for a moment. How long that would last he didn't know. He felt the knife inside his tunic, to make sure it was still there. He paused a moment to get his bearings and continued on his interrupted way to the Market.
The Market could be heard long before it was seen. It had a busy sort of beehive sound, mingled with the lighter noises of a carnival. Guided by the sound, Kettrick came out of a quiet street onto the bank of the wide barge canal that brought the cargoes down from the spaceport, and the Market burst upon him from the other side.
It took up all the space on a good-sized island. There were closed storage sheds, and long open sheds for bartering, and all around the edges, like a wall against the ophidian world beyond, there were taverns and restaurants and sleeping units, all human. All the business done there was done by humans. The Achernans made their handsome profit simply by taxing the cargoes as they entered, as they changed hands, and as they left.
Kettrick crossed the nearest bridge over the canal. The brazen glare of the Market lights was harsh after the gentle lamps of Achern's streets. He loved them. He loved the loud, coarse voices of beast-born men arguing over the price of something. He loved their laughter. He even loved the smell of them, the acrid reek of humanity after a day of sweltering heat.
As he entered the covered walk around the Market it began to rain, a hard straight downpour that smoked off the shed roofs. Puddles appeared magically in the paving of crushed shell. Business continued uninterrupted, and in a matter of minutes the rain stopped and the puddles drained away. The night was only a little steamier than before.
Kittrick did not immediately see anyone he knew. He discovered that he was terribly hungry and badly in need of a drink. There was a tavern he had used to prefer, close to the southeast corner of the market. He cut across in a long diagonal between the sheds, where bales of goods from all over the Cluster were being opened and shaken out and touched and chaffered over and packed up again, flinging out a unique perfume of mingled scents on the heavy air, the exhalations of a hundred planets, enormously exciting. This was one part of Achern that Kettrick liked.
He passed one shed where the blue-skinned, white-crested men from a Hlakran ship were sweating bales off a loader, and he thought of Boker and Hurth and felt sick all over again. Then one of the men turned and saw him, stared, and shouted.
"Johnny! Johnny, am I seeing ghosts?"
"Clutha." Kettrick embraced him like a brother. The Hlakran was a friend of Boker's, a frequent visitor to his home in the Out-Quarter when he happened to be at Tananaru, and a cheerful pirate with whom Kettrick had gotten happily drunk on a dozen different worlds.
"But, man," Clutha asked him, "how does this happen? The last I heard…"
"I'll tell you about it over a drink."
Clutha glanced doubtfully at the bales. "Well…"
"Please," said Kettrick.
Clutha looked at him. Then he said something to the men and went with Kettrick.
The tavern was busy but not crowded. Kettrick found a place in a corner where they could talk.
And all of a sudden it was Old Home Week.
A small butterball man whose skin was pied black and white like a spaniel puppy came to take their order, looked twice at Kettrick, and let out a squeal of joy, bouncing on his short legs. "Johnny, Johnny! When did they let you back?"
His glad cry made the men at the nearest occupied table turn around, and one of them jumped up and came over. He was bald and lank, with huge pointed ears and a long face and a skin the color of a spanked baby. "Johnny," he said. "By all that's unholy."
A great horse-toothed grin split his face. He clapped Kettrick on the shoulder with one long arm and fetched the little pied man a swat on his rump with the other.
"Drinks are on me, Quip. Hello, Clutha. Where'd you find him, floating around somewhere in mid-space, poaching sunbeams? Does the I–C know you're back, Johnny?" Abruptly he turned and bawled to a man on the far side of the room. "Nedri! Come here, I've got a surprise."
The man rose and came over, carrying a drink in his hand. Kettrick watched him come. Nedri was a copper-haired, golden-skinned Darvan, and the last Kettrick knew about him he was skipper on one of the ships that he, Kettrick, had used to own in partnership with Seri Otku.
Old Home Week, for fair.
Nedri gave the glad cry, the crushing handshake, and they seemed as genuine as the others. But now Kettrick was feeling brittle and edgy, and hating it, because they were all his friends.
Well, that was what he had come to the Market for, to meet friends and talk. Might as well jump in with both feet and get it over with. The time, he thought, will not be long.
The little pied man brought a tray of drinks and put them down. "You can all pay," he said to the others. "This is on the house, for Johnny." He pulled a nearly full bottle of good Terran bourbon out of his tunic and banged it down in front of Kettrick.
Kettrick said, meaning it, "I have never seen anything so beautiful, Quip. And I am going to drink a great deal of it. So if you can dig me up a good thick Terran steak, or the equivalent thereof, to serve as blotting paper…"
"Oh, yes," said Quip. "I know what you like."
"And the same for my friend here, but heavy on the meat." He turned to Chai, who had sat down beside his chair. In her own tongue he said, "Look at me and say no names. Did this man come often to the house where you used to live?"
She knew perfectly well which man he meant. "No. Once, twice. Long time ago. Then never."
Kettrick nodded and turned again to Quip. "And she'd like a pitcher of water. She's too smart to drink the stuff we do."