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Calcutta's highest hill. We walked up a long winding flight of steps lined with homes and shops. The
tower, Randall said, was the Lenk Hub, seat of cross-district government and home of Lenk himself
when he chose to come to Calcutta.
"It's really quite spare quarters for such a fine man," Randall said.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"Through Captain Keyser-Bach."
The broad steps were caught in afternoon shadow, which seemed richly brown, almost golden
beneath the silver sky. The city smelled of cooking food, mostly yeasty bread smells and rich molasses
smells, dust from carts rolling on the busy street below, orange and tomato and spice from the silva never
completely absent. Children ran laughing and shrieking down the steps beside us, boys and girls from late
infancy to middle childhood, wearing red shorts and white vests with green vertical stripes, tended by a
young man with a bemused look, no doubt junior husband in a triad. Otherwise, the streets were quiet,
the citizens polite, their clothes muted, generally browns and grays or greens, each however with one
splash of color, a scarf or sash or belt, signifying solemnity within living joy. These traditions had held up
well on Lamarckia.
I was relieved that not everything had fallen into chaos. After all I had heard of famine and hardship,
I was surprised that Calcutta looked prosperous and its citizens well-fed.
At the top of the stairs, in a shaded courtyard graced with a single terrestrial tree -- an ash, I
thought, its limbs bare, not faring very well -- we turned into a narrow alley. The houses that rose on
either side were made of cut reddish lava held together by dark gray cement. An anonymous xyla
doorway no different from the others pushed open with a creak at Randall's touch, and we entered cool
shadow.
"Randall?" a woman called eagerly. "Erwin, is that you?"
"That's me," Randall said. He smiled shyly, the wolf look gone. "That's my wife, Raytha. Head of
family. I'm an infrequent extra here."
Randall's family totaled seven: four children, age two to twelve, two younger girls and two older
boys, who flocked around him with broad smiles and big eyes, simply glad to see their father; his wife
Raytha, a plump, pretty woman the same age as he; and her mother, Kaytai Kim-Jastro. Ser Kim-Jastro
was tall and straight and gray and formidable, and she did not hug Randall, but instead shook his hand
and welcomed him back with deep gravity.
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The children gathered around me when they were finished welcoming their father. They asked where
I was from and whether I was married and had any children, and why their father had brought me home
with him. Randall answered the last question by saying, "He's a researcher and he's our guest. He's not
used to a lot of company, so please give him some room until after dinner at least."
The two older boys stayed to hear Randall's stories, but the younger girls went with their mother and
grandmother into another room down the hall. I heard other voices in that room: a communal kitchen.
Men from another family in the triad were cooking today. "Nothing fancy," Raytha said as she walked
down the hall flanked by her girls. "But it's food."
"More gray piscids and flockweed paste," Randall said when she had left, and confided another
grimace. He led me into a room he said was his own, and his alone, but he did not object when the boys
followed. This tiny cubicle had a window high in one wall to the outside, through which a cool evening
breeze was blowing. A small electric lantern hung in one corner, casting a dim yellow light over shelves
packed with crudely bound books.
"Father, what happened at the river?" the older of the two boys asked as we settled onto woven
fiber chairs. "The teacher dismissed us early today and went to the river ... He said he was joining a
committee."
"There was a fight," Randall said, lines growing deeper in his face. He did not like describing this to
his sons.
"Did anybody get killed?" the younger boy asked. He reminded me of the boy I had saved by
breathing life back into him. His eyes danced with intense interest. My stomach knotted with the
remembered love and hate all over again.
"A lot of people were killed, mostly pirates," Randall said. He did not volunteer information about
the children in the boats. A bell jangled near the alleyway door and Randall got up to answer it. After a
conversation of several minutes, during which time the boys sat in the room alone with me, biting their lips
and staring at each other for support, but saying nothing, Randall returned.
"A representative of the citizens rank, welcoming me back," Randall said. "Thomas radioed them
from upriver. They will indeed expect us tomorrow."
"Any more news?" the older boy asked.
"Ser Olmy, let me name these chatty ones for you," he said, patting their heads. "This is Nebulon,
and this is Carl. Carl is a year and a half younger than his brother."
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