Cross The Amazon

by Chatoyance

20. The Shy Little Kitten

Chapter Twenty: The Shy Little Kitten

Calloway awoke to the sound of a faint flapping, scratching, struggling sound. The air was nearly still, with little breeze. The scrabbling was not caused by atmospheric conditions. It clearly sounded like a living creature. It reminded Calloway of the time he had found a mutie-rat scavenging in his apartment near Cape Kohlsaat, on Graham Bell Island. It had gotten caught in the no-kill trap he had placed, and it wasn't happy about captivity.

He rolled slightly, and wiped his own drool out of Dropspindle's mane. How long had they been sleeping? It seemed like mid-day, but was it the same day? He patted Dropspindle's flank, and called to her softly, but she only moaned and grumbled. He decided to let her continue to sleep. Maybe he could find something to eat or drink, or some sign of a ship - anything useful or positive.

He pulled himself to his feet. He felt better, but still shaky and sore. There was sand in his hair, and in what remained of his clothing. There wasn't much of that remaining - just his Red-Level borrowed trousers and his shoes. The small black spots on his hands and arms and chest itched. He knew better than to scratch them, but it was hard to resist.

The Barrier remained immobile, thankfully. It must be at that mysterious equilibrium he had heard mentioned in the ham radio broadcast. How long that blessed state would remain unchanged was anyone's guess. They needed transport. If the Barrier began to expand again, there was nowhere to go but the poisoned sea.

He followed the sound of the animal noises, his singed shoes crunching in the sand. There were piles of debris on the beach, some quite large, washed up by the waves. On the other side of a nearby pile of garbage, tires, and driftwood, he discovered the source of the sounds.

The man - it was probably a man from the look of his bare feet - must have been laying on the blanket when the Barrier jumped forward to the shore. Clearly, he had come to picnic, his 'basket' - a cooler-container - stood open nearby. Calloway followed the edge of the blanket with his eyes, to the man's naked toes, his dark ankles, and then to his legs. He followed the man's legs up to just past the knee, where they abruptly ended at the Great Barrier Of Equestria.

Just beyond the shimmering wall, lush, unearthly green grass and enormous flowers adorned small hills. The scene ran off into some unfathomable distance, where it met the most perfect, beautiful, strangely teal sky that Calloway had ever seen.

The small bunny blinked at Calloway, from behind the Barrier. It then even more vigorously worked to pull itself free from the stump of the human leg it had been born from. Other bunnies approached, concerned for their sibling. They must all have been created by the living mass of the unfortunate man's torso, arms and head. The Barrier had indeed gotten quite clever. It could preserve life, even human life, after a fashion. It had gradually, iteratively learned to convert primate flesh into something that could live in Equestria. Not yet a complete pony. Instead, it made bunnies, multiple bunnies, from the living flesh. Or at least from this one man's flesh.

Perhaps the choice was random. Perhaps some bodies became butterflies, or doves, or frogs. The Barrier had finally decided that meat was meat, and let even primate flesh through. The king of all animals was welcomed by the Barrier at last. But it had still not conquered the problem of pony-level intelligence, or the complexities of the Equestrian form. It was clearly trying - but it had a long way to go.

The little bunny was almost completely formed. Only one rear leg was still connected to the human stump, a single unlucky rabbit's foot that had not yet been shaped and molded from the flesh of the absorbed man on the beach. The poor bunny was tired - it must have been struggling for some time to pull more of the heavy leg stump through. Calloway felt pity for the sad little creature, attended by its brothers.

Calloway, fighting his own mortal revulsion and horror, forced himself down on his knees before the pair of legs. The majority of the bunnies beyond the Barrier scattered into the tall grass to hide. One brave brother remained to comfort the trapped animal. It stood defiant, ears tall, body rigid, studying the human creature crouched on the sand on the other side of the rippling wall.

Calloway grit his teeth, and hesitantly placed a hand on the sole of the foot of the amputated leg. It somehow made it worse that the truncated human limb felt warm under the unrelenting sun. He grimly began to slide the leg forward into, and through, the Barrier. He had no certainty that his plan would work, but at least it was something, at least it was an effort to help. The trapped bunny seemed startled, but there was a strange intelligence in those tiny blue eyes. It was no earthly lapine, there was something bright and thoughtful under those floppy ears.

The trapped bunny's companion immediately grabbed hold of its friend and began to pull as Calloway morbidly pushed the disembodied leg. The pinned bunny struggled beyond the stump, squealed, and then finally pulled free. It tumbled onto the matted grass around where it had been stuck, and licked its now completely formed limb. Perhaps there had been just enough viable cells in the leg stump to generate the rest of the bunny's foot as it was pushed through. Perhaps the Barrier even had some control over life and death itself.

The bunny was free, and it was whole. Calloway pulled the leg back and away from the Barrier, so that no new creatures would begin to form and possibly get trapped. It was an awful task, but he managed to lift and toss both dead human limbs away from the Barrier and onto a driftwood pile. This made them even more visible - they were high on the pile now - but Calloway could not stomach climbing after them to do any more. He sank again to his knees and rubbed his hands through the sand, desperate to somehow purify them.

The bunny stared at him. When Calloway looked up, It waved a paw, as if it knew what he had done - as if to say thank you. It's companion also waved. Then the two Equestrian rabbits ran away to join their recently created clan, mayhaps off to populate the incomprehensibly vast Exponential lands. Calloway watched them until they were specks amidst distant, perfect green.

Dropspindle was stretching and yawning when Calloway returned with a cooler full of beer, a cloth filled with delicious smelling coxhinas, and a tub of still warm feijoada. Whoever had become all those bunnies either had been, or had known, someone very clever with cookery. They had also known ponies, and those ponies had grown real food earthside - as they often did in the favelas and fallen cities. Of course both dishes would be meatless, and thus safe for Dropspindle to eat. The still-fresh food inside the cooler smelled beyond wonderful. Calloway could not help but wonder why the man had not Converted in time, if he had access to such treats? Only ponies could grow anything on the deceased earth. The dead man's story had vanished forever, like his face - unless, impossibly, some remnant of the man lived on somehow, within all of those many Equestrian buns.

Throughout their journey, Calloway and Dropspindle had always been within a cancellation zone. Even now, the only damage to Calloway was a few black spots. He had just sat less than a meter from the Equestrian Wall. How intelligent - and compassionate - was the Great Barrier? Had it somehow chosen to avoid fatally irradiating most of the humans in its path? That would not excuse the sudden leap forward... unless the Barrier had somehow lost the battle against its own growth. Perhaps it leapt forward only because it could no longer resist the inevitable higher-dimentional collision with earth? How smart and aware could such a bizarre structure become? Could it think? Could it... care?

Calloway craned his neck as he followed the curve of the immense energy shield up, up, beyond the small puffy clouds that were forming in the wake of the receding smog. Up beyond the intense blue of the sky he so seldom had ever seen. Up into harsh brightness, reflecting the unfiltered light of earth's star, beyond the very atmosphere, into space itself. "Thank you, if you can hear me."

"You're welcome... though I have no idea how I did it." Dropspindle shook her head as if trying to flick fleas of drowsiness out of her mane. "I just got so mad! I've never been so angry in all my life!" She almost seemed happy about the fact.

"Huh? Oh! What?" Calloway opened the containers of food, and set them down, which set Dropspindle's nose twitching.

"How did you ever... oh sweet... whatever... that... food! You found food!" Dropspindle sniffed deeply. "It smells like real food! Really real, real food! How? Are there other ponies here? Gardens? This... this is Equestrian... grown here, I think, but the vegetables and grains could only be Equestrian - you don't have them here, anymore." A small blob of the vegetarian feijoada floated out of the container and hovered up to her waiting mouth. "Mmmmmnnn... oh... oh my. Real... food."

Calloway checked the cooler. There were no plates, and no utensils. Anything of that sort must have been placed where the Barrier now covered. "Dropspindle... there's no... nevermind." Calloway resolved to stick to the dry, lumpen coxhinas because they seemed to be clearly finger-food. He couldn't think of any polite way to eat the stew-like feijoada. He wasn't just going to stick his fingers in and scoop. The coxhinas looked good too. The instant the roughly drumstick-shaped delight hit his tongue, his stomach rumbled and nearly cramped from hungry expectation.

"Are you alright?" Dropspindle, savoring another levitated glob, had noticed Calloway's slight wince and grimace.

"Just... really hungry. Too hungry. And thirsty." Calloway opened two beers, locally nanofabbed reproductions of 'Antarctica Cerveja'. They weren't antique originals kept in storage - Calloway noticed the little 'N' set in a stylized benzene-like molecule that was the official symbol of nanoreplication. Replicated or not, they were still cool, if not cold, and the contents were wet. "Oh, sweet Celestia, hallowed be thy name. I thank you for this beer!" Swallow followed swallow, conquering his thirst, and helping sooth his physical pains.

Dropspindle glared at Calloway for the latter comment and sipped her beer, levitating it to her face. "It's a bit sour and bitter. But I taste an attempt at grains, so that's not bad. It's almost like a strong barley tea, with a lot of lemon in it or something. It's a bit spoiled, though - be careful - I'm not certain it won't poison you."

Calloway laughed. "That 'spoilage' you taste is alcohol. I guess it would just be that to you, wouldn't it? You guys get high on salt, or so I've heard. Alcohol is salt for humans."

"Wait... this is alcohol? The stuff that makes humans loud and violent?" Dropspindle remembered the bar in Huancabamba on Saturday nights. "Stop! Don't drink any more of that!"

She seemed truly frightened. Calloway had to struggle to not spray, and swallow before he laughed again. "It's okay. Really it is! Not all humans react the same. And this is not enough to get a man drunk, I promise. I'd need to down quite a few more than this to be affected at all." She seemed doubtful in the extreme. "Look, here.." He pointed to the label "...four percent. That means that only four percent of this entire bottle is alcohol. The rest is just water and... hops and crap. It's mostly just flavored water with a dash of spirits in it. You can get drunk on beer, but it takes a bit of effort." He took another swallow. "Depending on weight and tolerance. I'll be alright, and I won't get mean. I'm not a mean drunk in any case. I'm the sleepy-silly type."

"There are types?" All Dropspindle had seen was loud men shouting in Spanish and trying to cut each other with knives. It was horrible. She had stayed indoors, with her door locked, all Saturday long.

"Oh, god yes. Alcohol is a poison, you're right about that - but it affects brains in a weird way. Shuts down judgement and self-control. Whatever is inside, bottled up - so to speak - tends to come out. Bitter, angry men become mean. Sad men cry into their beers. Some men just... I guess I'm childish, really. I just get silly, then I get sleepy, then I sleep. Just a big kid. That's me." The small amount of alcohol was beginning to affect Calloway, much to his surprise. Then again, he was severely dehydrated, starved, and suffering from heat exhaustion. He could feel a numbness in his lips and tongue that normally only came with quite a lot of beer. He finished his bottle and opened another. He wasn't interested in getting buzzed, he was just terribly thirsty. Both of them were.

"Another for me, too, please?" Dropspindle found the taste of the human beverage less than pleasant, but the water content was beyond desirable. They had gone too long, in too much heat, without water. The ocean was no use - not only was it poisoned with dangerous metals and other toxins, but the bizarre seas of earth were salty. A pony would quickly become utterly blintzed drinking the oceans of earth.

"How the flying baby-shit did we survive? That is the question!" Calloway looked up and down the narrow beach that bordered the invincible Barrier. "I guess I'm a believer now. Celestia... or the... the other one... must have heard our prayers. She - they - really do listen! I'll be damned!" He giggled. "Or not. I guess I'm not damned. Hell - I'm saved! We're saved! Bathed in the glory of pony, hallelujah!" He laughed at that.

"It wasn't... them. It was me." Dropspindle seemed serious, and a little bit miffed, too.

Calloway swallowed beer and ate another vegetarian drumstick. "It couldn'ta been. Had to be them."

"I'm telling you I brought us here. I teleported us to this location. It almost killed me to do it!" Dropspindle was strangely upset.

Calloway took another pull. "Nuh-uh. You can't do teleport... tate... ing. Whatever it's called. If you could have, you would have. We wouldn't had'ta drive across most of the Amazon if you could teleport. Besides - think about it!" Another 'drumstick'. "The two of us, all our molecules, transported instantly thousands of... hundreds of kilometers... and plopped down just inches - well, meters - from the Barrier! And all of that while accounting for the curvature of the earth, and the speed of rotation, and the earth orbiting the sun, and the sun... doing whatever it does... this isn't some flat, eternal paradise, girl, this is... a... a bunch of complex stuff! We didn't appear up in the sky, or down in the dirt! It's more than one brain can do!" The food tasted so damn, damn good. "Only a god... thing... could do something like that."

Dropspindle was frowning. Had her pride been hurt? Calloway felt the need to mollify her.

"You're amazing! Droppers! You are just incredible! The way you handled those bastards, your clever yarn spells... that was brilliant, and I will always be amazed. Pretty funny too. But... that stuff is way far from teleportatiation... telepor... blinking us here in an eye! No, no, that was Celestia and the other one doing that. Wow." Calloway licked his cracked, parched lips. "I've finally got religion. Damn. Is there a church or something in Equestria? Our pony full of grace?"

"NO! And it wasn't Her!" Dropdspindle was standing now, stomping in the sand. "I've been helped once, remember? But not by Her. Not by that Celestia. And that is not how they do things. I teleported us here, I did this, I don't know how, I may never be able to do it again - and I don't care how difficult it was, you don't know borscht about magic! You don't know anything! I do know, I actually have seen Luna, as a filly, and they come in person, not through some vague, ill-defined 'miracle' that is really just mere coincidence like what you creatures cling to - they show up, right there, larger than you can imagine, and they talk right at your muzzle and there is NO DOUBT!"

"Hey! That's soup!" Calloway found this incredibly funny for some reason. "You just swore in soup!"

Dropspindle's mouth hung agape for a moment. "What?"

"You just swore... you cussed... in soup!"

"Have you heard a single thing I said?"

"You always cuss in pastry. All ponies do. At least all the ponies I've ever heard." Calloway opened a third bottle. Noticing Dropspindle had finished both of hers off, he lifted another for her and shook it at her. Repeatedly. While grinning.

"NO THANK YOU!" Dropspindle paced away then back. "You want to know what I've learned on this little trip, Calloway? I've learned that my princesses are fallible and foolish! They didn't help us, they aren't going to help us, and they aren't anything like I thought they were..."

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Calloway felt rebuffed and his stomach felt upset. So long without food or water and now they had both - after a fashion - and all she could do was fuss and carry on. "You..." he said, pointing at her "... are bitter. You are a bitter pony, and I don't blame you, because it's been hard, it's been difficult as hell, and we're still not safe, hell, you're probably scared, too. I certainly am. I've been terrified this whole time - fuck, I've been scared to death of you!"

"Scared of me?" Dropspindle appeared shocked.

"'I hate you?'" Calloway "'Little bubbles of force or whatever waving around inside?' Remember that? You dug your hoof into my arms, I have a huge-ass bruise there - both arms, actually. You nearly killed me right there, Dropspindle! I was scared for my life!"

"I... I didn't mean that... I... it wasn't me, that wasn't... I wasn't thinking right, there..."

"No. You certainly wasn't! Weren't. You definitely weren't thinking right. You sounded like my old man back then. Terrified the crap outta me." Calloway offered a beer once again. This time Dropspindle nodded. He opened it. She took it from him with her hornfield, and floated it in front of her mouth so she could drink. "Uh oh." Calloway was staring at his hand.

Dropspindle folded her legs and sat on the sand. "What?"

"I can't feel part of... the skin on my finger and here... the inside of my thumb. There. When you took the bottle just now."

"Oh?" She thought a moment. "Oh! Let me see!" She crawled on her folded legs close to Calloway. "I'm sorry... I'm really sorry. I... I forgot. I was so upset I just... I think I caught part of your skin in my field. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

"It doesn't hurt."

"No... thaumatic radiation. My field was too strong, I grabbed the bottle too hard, the field strength... oh... no... that's looking red, isn't it?"

Calloway studied the skin on the side of his index finger down the webbing to his thumb. The flesh was becoming red and swelling, clearly inflamed. "Yeah. I don't think that was good for it. Jesus - you don't even need to dick around with balls of force to kill us, do you? Just grab at us with that horn of yours and we're right fucked! Dammit. It isn't turning dark, though. Not yet, anyway. But it is starting to sting. Ow. Damn... it's like a burn. I guess that's what not getting a full dose is like. Damn that stings." He drank more beer.

"I'm afraid, Calloway."

"You're afraid. I might still need my thumb to get us out of this mess!"

"I'm afraid I'll never fit in again. I'm... I don't think I'm... I'm broken, Calloway. I'm broken now." A tear ran down Dropspindle's muzzle. "Who would ever want to be around me after this? With what I've become?"

"I would." Calloway sucked at the webbing of his hand, between his thumb and forefinger.

"Why? I've threatened you - I've never threatened anyone, ever! And I hurt human people!" Another tear ran down Dropspindle's face. "And I think you already know I don't particularly like you." She lowered her eyes, and ears, at that. "I don't hate you, exactly, but..."

"Yeah, well, that's pretty much the average human marriage right there." Calloway laughed, briefly, then stared at the puffy red skin of his hand. "I know you're not the same - hell, you just said 'anyone' and not 'anypony' back there. You really got my attention back then with the threats and all... I kind of listen really close now. So, no, you're not the same, but... who would be, after what we've been through? I'm not the same as when we started either!"

"How have you changed?"

"Well, for one thing, I realize that I've been wasting my life. There are things more important than playing video games and getting to splurge on the elite stick... on the credit of the eli... get stuff free. There really are bigger things, it isn't just pointless and empty... at least not where you come from. You... you shouldn't talk like you do about your princesses. I think they did help - I know you don't agree, I know you think it's just me spouting human religious crap - and maybe it is.

"Maybe I'm just a funny talking animal that thinks crazy things, but... I honestly think we were somehow helped. Rescued. Something put that knowledge into your dreams. I don't know who or what or... but I do know that teleporting-tation - whatever - that teleporting is not something you could do before and somehow you did it. You can't explain that, I can't explain that, you don't even know how you did it! But it happened, and we're alive. How unlikely is that, huh? And we've been praying like crazy to the princesses all this time! It has to be them! They helped us, Dropspindle!"

Dropspindle drank more from her bottle, then set it in the sand. "I haven't been 'praying'. I wouldn't even know how. We don't do that. We don't have gods."

Calloway laughed for some time, then choked and coughed. "Oh, yes you do! Oh, you absolutely do. Maybe not 'Wrath And Brimstone' King of the Jews, Old Testament, 'Allah Akbar' type gods, but you got gods. Goddesses. Two of them. You're so used to it, you don't even notice it. They're just there. Call 'em up on the 'net and stare 'em down in their little beadies. Ask 'em out to lunch, and they might actually go. But they're gods, make no doubt. And I did pray, I prayed this whole trip. I whipped off a prayer right before we did the big transporter beam. I prayed, and BOOM! Here we are!"

"That's... that's not even a decent causal connection!"

"Dropspindle - when the impossible happens, there is no point in denying it. I don't even know why you are... " Calloway finally figured out how he could eat the feijoada without jamming his fingers into it. He lifted the container and poured some of the thick stew-like substance directly into his mouth. He chewed the cooked beans and tomatoes and carrots and swallowed. He replaced the container. The feijoada was cold, but it was food, and it was good. "Actually, I do know why you're denying so hard. You expected the one that helped you before..."

"Luna. Princess Luna. She saved me."

"Luna. You expected princess Luna to appear and save you, whisk you away from all of this. But maybe here - earth - is dangerous for her. Maybe she has more important things to do right now - there are two entire universes colliding, you know! Maybe all she could do is send you a dream, or get somepony else to send you a dream... or whatever... the point is, these are tough times, Droppers! Not even gods can always be there, in person, right in your face. We were saved, impossibly, in the most unlikely way. Something happened. Something... well, miraculous."

Dropspindle lay down, her belly and head flat on the sand. "I don't know anything anymore. I certainly don't know who I am anymore."

"I know who you are." Calloway lay down too, flat on the sand, looking up at the sky. Half of it was Barrier, the other blue. "You are Dropspindle, a very nice unicorn who came to Peru to study weaving. You've had a spot of trouble, met a devilishly handsome man - that's me, by the way - experienced a miracle, got beat up a little, but you're here! Alive. Eating cold food from a dead man's chest and drinking beer. On earth, on this planet, well, kiddo, you just won all the lotteries."

"Dead man?" Dropspindle did not seem the slightest bit happy to hear this news.

Calloway jerked. There was no point - and probably much upset to suffer - in describing the Man Who Became Bunnies. "Uh... turn of phrase! Old pirate days. 'Yo-ho-ho, dead man's chest, bottle of rum?' They didn't teach you that back in 'Let's Go To Earth' school?"

Dropspindle relaxed. "Everything about your world is grim."

Calloway laughed. "Now THAT'S the Dropspindle I know!"

Calloway was careful to lead Dropspindle down the beach in the opposite direction as the downed Watership man. There was no use in her having to deal with the ghastly view of two rotting human legs, and truth be told, Calloway was less than eager to see them again himself. They traveled South, instead, along the narrow corridor between sea and Barrier.

Half a kilometer from where they started, they came to a set of plascrete and arborite docks. The docks were in good repair, but there were no boats to be found. Plascrete walkways ran from the docks up the beach and straight into the Barrier. Covered tables, a portable bar, and banners also ran up the beach and into the Barrier. It had been a resort, likely for the lesser elite. An affordable vacation spot for those who still possessed wealth enough to take vacations - but not position enough to no longer need them. The outdoor bar was set up next to half of a stage for performances. It provided the pair with all the bottled water they could drink. Calloway took delight in surprising Dropspindle with her first taste of 'fuzzy water' - carbonated water, used as a mixer, stored also in bottles.

They were searching for any hope of food when Dropspindle spied the airship. Calloway strained his eyes, unable to pick it out at such a distance. As they sipped seltzer, reclining on the beach, the huge vessel drew near. It was clearly designed for long-range travel, nearly a small city in the sky. It was painted in bright crimson, with white highlights and was extremely stylish. It was the sort of airship that someone with far too much wealth and no sense of scale might have custom built to circle the globe, endlessly.

There was only half a globe left to circle, at this point. Calloway briefly hoped that whoever owned the stunning ship had already seen the part that was absent - there were no second chances when universes collided.

Calloway and Dropspindle made a great fuss of waving banners and trying to reflect light with serving trays from the bar until they grasped that the airship must be coming just for them. The sheer unlikelihood of a colorful, eccentric lifting-body suddenly arriving at the exact point they happened to be along what remained of the coast of the Southamerizone was vast. They sat down once more, and continued to sip seltzer. Calloway made Dropspindle a fizzy soda using hibiscus syrup which she greatly approved of.

Finally, as the sun began to set, the slow moving, gargantuan airship finally found a safe, low position from which to lower a ramp. Dropspindle and Calloway waved back at the pleasant man wearing a captain's hat who gestured at them from the huge open hatch. They climbed the ramp, the dark-haired man grinning as he greeted them.

"Welcome aboard the I.D.B. 'Lady Venice', the most beautiful and luxurious airship of exploration in the entire world!" The apparent captain stated grandly.

Calloway goggled at the gorgeous interior. Synthetic wood and marble, crystallite chandeliers and brass fixtures gleamed under mood-regulated artificial lights. "I... D... B?" It was no commission prefix he had ever heard of. This certainly wasn't a Worldgovernment registry ship.

The captain laughed heartily. "I Don't Bow!" He tapped something embedded within his forearm and the ramp withdrew into the ship and the hatch began to close. "To anyone. Not yet, anyway. Soon, maybe, but not now." He nodded in the direction of the Barrier, just vanishing behind the closing hatchway. He saluted it. "To She who cannot be denied!"

Calloway and Dropspindle felt cool air blow over them. Air conditioning. At last. At last.

"I am quite impressed - you were just where she said you would be. And sipping drinks no less! Such style! You must have quite the story to tell! But later, after showers, a big meal, and bed perhaps? In the morning then."

Calloway couldn't help it. The tears were rolling down his face and there was no force within him to stop them.

"There there, my friend. All will be better soon. You shall see. Come." The captain waved them on, through the fantastic and palatial craft. "Oh - introductions. I know who you are - Mr. Kotani, the lady Dropspindle - but you do not know me. Nor should you - I strive to keep off the detection grid at all times, both socially and especially governmentally. My name is Bertand Cudicini, and I am captain of the Lady Venice. Our mission is to see the last of the earth, before it is gone. Well, that, and to do favors for She who can not be denied!"

"She who... cannot be denied?" Dropspindle stared into the vast, gilded chamber that captain Cudicini seemed to be indicating was now their personal cabin.

"Well, her servant, anyway. She's gone now. The cat, I mean. She sends her cat when there is work for me, and in return, she provides... freedom, shall we say... to one such as I, despite the Worldgovernment. I am a fugitive, you see. I may not bow, but I also know which way the wind blows. One must, when one lives on a ship of the air!"

Cudicini thought his jest was funnier than either Calloway or Dropspindle did, but they laughed anyway. It seemed their host was perhaps a tiny bit on the insane side, what with taking orders from cats, and flitting about the globe while the world ended. But he did have excellent, and extravagant, tastes. They chuckled and smiled. It was the polite thing to do, after all. It was also the fastest way to the showers, food, and bed. Suffering, inevitably breeds pragmatism.