Read Strata for Free Online Page B

concourse said there was an hour to wait until the next downward shuttle. Kin found a bar with a window overlooking the shuttle hall. The bar was called The Broken Drum.
    ‘Why?’ she asked the kung behind the bar. Saucer-eyed he fixed her with the bland stare of barmen everywhere.
    ‘You can’t beat it,’ he said. ‘Your wish?’
    ‘I thought kung had no sense of humour.’
    ‘That is so.’ The bar-kung looked at her carefully. ‘From Earth?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Kin.
    ‘Which one? I’ve got a brother-uncle on Real Ea—’
    ‘The genuine one,’ said Kin sharply. He looked at her thoughtfully again, then reached underthe counter and pulled out a filmy cassette that Kin recognized with a sinking heart.
    ‘I thought the face was familiar,’ said the barkung triumphantly. ‘Soon as you walked in, I thought, very familiar face – of course it’s a bad holo on the filmy, but still … Ha. Do you think you could do a voice print on it, Miss Arad?’ He grinned horribly.
    She smiled valiantly, and took the tape translation of
Continuous Creation
from his damp four-fingered hands.
    ‘Of course, it’s not for you, I understand, it’s for your nephew Sam,’ she murmured cruelly. The kung looked startled.
    ‘I have no nephew Sam,’ he said, ‘although I had intended it for my son-brother Brtkltc. How did you know?’
    ‘Magic,’ sighed Kin.
    She took her drink to the big window, and idly watched tugs shunting cargo shuttles across the marshalling wires while behind her she half-heard the bar-kung talking excitedly to someone on the intercom. Then a someone was standing by her chair. She looked round, and then up. A kung was standing beside her.
    Look at the kung. Seven feet tall, and then topped off with a red coxcomb that was made of something like hair. Two saucer eyes filled the face, and they were now two-thirds closed against the lights that had been turned up by the bar-kung out of deference to Kin. The body wasskeletal, with body-builder’s muscles strung like beads on a wire and a bulge between the shoulder blades for the third lung. The shipsuit it wore was a masterpiece of tailoring. It had to be. The kung had four arms.
    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