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Jolly-car rumbled past behind her, iron wheels striking sparks from the cobblestones. There was a burst of raucous laughter from the tars within, returning to the North Station for the journey back to the royal dockyards. She dodged nimbly, then reached the safety of the sidewalk.
    The pedestrian traffic was thicker near the fish market and the chandlers and other merchant suppliers. The woman glanced at a winter chestnut seller, raised her nose as she sidestepped a senescent pure-collector mumbling over his sack of dogshit, then paused on the corner of The Mall and Jefferson Street, glancing briefly over one shoulder before muttering into her scarf.
    “Memo: This is not Boston—at least, not the Boston I know. All the street names are wrong and the buildings are stone and brick, not wood or concrete. Traffic drives on the left and the automobiles—there aren’t many—they’ve got chimneys, like steam locomotives. But the signs are in English and the roads are made of cobblestones or asphalt and it feels like Boston. Weird, really weird. It’s more like home than Niejwein, anyway.”
    She carried on down the street, mumbling into the tie-clip microphone pinned inside her scarf. A brisk wind wheezed down the street, threatening to raise it from her head: She tugged down briskly, holding it in place.
    “I see both men and women in public—more men than women. Dress style is—hmm. Victorian doesn’t describe it, exactly. Post-Victorian, maybe? Men wear cravats or scarves over high collars, with collarless double-breasted suits and big greatcoats. Hats all round, lots of hats, but I’m seeing suit jackets with yellow and blue stripes, or even louder schemes.” She strode on, past a baroque fire hydrant featuring cast-iron Chinese dragons poised ready to belch a stream of water. “Women’s costume is all tightly tailored jackets and hems down to the ground. Except some of the younger ones are wearing trousers under knee-length skirts. Sort of Oriental in style.” A woman pedaled past her on a bicycle, back primly upright. The bike was a black bone-shaker. “Hm. For cycling, baggy trousers and something like a Pakistani tunic. Everyone wears a hat or scarf.” She glanced left. “Shop prices marked in the windows. I just passed a cobbler’s with a row of metal lasts and leather samples on display and— Jesus Christ —”
    She paused and doubled back to stare into the small, grimy windows of the shop she’d nearly passed. A distant buzzing filled her ears. “A mechanical adding machine—electric motor drive, with nixie tubes for a display. That’s a divide key, what, nineteen-thirties tech? Punched cards? Forties? Wish I’d paid more attention in the museum. These guys are a long way ahead of the Gruinmarkt. Hey, that looks like an Edison phonograph, but there’s no trumpet and those are tubes at the back. And a speaker.” She stared closer. The price … “price in pounds, shillings, and pennies,” she breathed into her microphone.
    Miriam paused. A sense of awe stole over her. This isn’t Boston, she realized. This is something else again. A whole new world, one that had vacuum tubes and adding machines and steam cars—a shadow fell across her. She glanced up and the breath caught in her throat. And airships, she thought. “Airship!” she muttered. It was glorious, improbably streamlined, the color of old gold in the winter sunshine, engines rattling the window glass as it rumbled overhead, pointing into the wind. I can really work here, she realized, excitedly. She paused, looking in the window of a shipping agent, Greenbaum et Pty, “Gateways to the world.”
    “’Scuse me, ma’am. Can I help you with anything?”
    She looked down, hurriedly. A big, red-faced man with a bushy moustache and a uniform, flat-topped blue helmet —oops, she thought. “I hope so,” she said timidly. Gulp. Try to fake a French accent? “I am newly arrived in, ah, town. Can you, kind sir, direct me to a decent