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transiting their territory with an ultimate destination of China.
Kilani’s careful statement underscored ongoing tensions between the
belligerents and various neutral powers who are struggling to maintain trade
relations with all parties without following Canada’s path and becoming
directly involved in the conflict.
    San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente
    When Das arrived in Tecolote, the government gave him a
few thousand in the nearly worthless local currency, enough for maybe a week of
food from street vendors and grocery stores. He ate for three days before being
robbed of his cash card by others like him – he recognized several of the young
toughs from his transport from Earth.
    Bleeding in the street, Das might have given up then, and
killed himself, a common enough occurrence among some of the older transportees
whose religion did not forbid suicide. Or he might have turned himself over to
one of the unregulated biologics factories on the island’s western coast, which
would be tantamount to killing himself, anyway, but with more pain.
    But he saw something odd, a cop giving money to a man
sweeping the street.
    The man’s gray clothes marked him as another transportee
recently off the ship. He and Das didn’t speak the same language, but the man
led him to a sign that explained everything in multiple languages.
    Das stole a broom from behind a shop the next day, found a
corner, and began cleaning it. He was chased off that one by a competitor, and
then chased off from another, and then another. He spent several days at two
more corners, not earning anything, before he figured out the system.
    After President Conrad and his associates took power in Tecolote,
they decided they couldn’t afford much of a public works crew, so they
initiated a program aimed at keeping the streets clean at low cost to
themselves. A few cops would be issued some money to provide to anyone they saw
cleaning up a public street. It was a lottery, more or less, and many of the
cops, not well paid themselves, found ways to pocket the cash. But those cops
were watched by still other cops, so some money did make it to the street. Das deduced
that the best spots were near government and police buildings, so he relocated to
a corner near the presidential residence, and started cleaning. Enough cops and
paramilitaries were around to prevent any fighting over territory, and while he
didn’t make money every day, he ate often enough that he could sense his mind
sharpening again as the dull animal ache of constant hunger receded. In time,
he grew proud of his corner. He was intelligent enough to recognize its
insignificance – his domain was the trash and filth on a section of street in a
minor dictatorship thirty light-years from Earth – but it was his, and he was
determined to keep it.
    His corner was at the intersection of Zaragoza and 12th,
behind the residence and adjacent to the six-story office building – the city’s
tallest – that served it. Here he saw the real government at work, not the
pretty veneer for the tourists and diplomats out front. The bureaucrats and
guards walked this way every evening to get to their cars, and the delivery
trucks came by at all hours. To most he was one reedy brown man among many in
the streets of the capital, but a few grew familiar with his presence, and one
of the restaurants even let him use their bathroom once a day.
    But one Tuesday night the restaurant closed early, and Das
missed his chance, so he went into an alley to urinate on a wall. He disliked
doing so – after all, it was his job to keep things around here clean.
    “I will not do this,” said a voice from around the corner,
causing Das to clench, painfully, to prevent his discovery. “He has been good
to me. It is a betrayal, and he has defenses against such things anyway. I
would be caught, and my family and I will be just as dead as you threaten to
make us.”
    “Very well,” said a second voice, this one female. They