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teeth. There were a few growls as more
and more dogs fed into the crowd, but it was too hot to really
fight.
    Mhumhi still stood out as the largest animal,
though as they got towards the edge of Oldtown there were more and
more larger ones. A family of rotund raccoon dogs trundled up to
join the fray, and a pair of thin black-backed jackals were
squabbling outside their door while a third panted on the sidewalk.
Mhumhi smelled the sickly-sweet musk long before a maned wolf,
leggy and ruffled-looking, stepped warily over several smaller dogs
and into the crowd. She was taller than Mhumhi, but she cringed
nervously away at the sight of him. He kept his white-flagged tail
waving high.
    Oldtown's crowded apartments and townhouses
soon gave way to larger buildings, squat and flat like the one that
had housed the subway station. Some of the dogs spilled through a
gap in a chain-link fence surrounding a playground, startling a
family of Rüppell's foxes that had taken refuge underneath the
roundabout into furious, sleepy yapping. Mhumhi could see movement
within the darkened and shuttered windows of the school beside
it.
    There were old cars here, too, scattered and
parked permanently in different areas along the roadside. Some of
them had their windows broken in and served as makeshift dens for
the smaller and less lucky dogs, but mostly they served as vantage
points, especially as the crowd continued to swell. Mhumhi broke
away from Bii for a moment to bound on top of a sedan, paws
thumping dully on the metal, adding dusty pawprints to the dozens
that were already there.
    Beyond he could see the line where Oldtown
ended and the rest of the city began. Far off there were
skyscrapers, some square, some spiraling. The rest of the city fell
into a kind of dip and formed a vast basin of buildings and metal
winking and shimmering in the sunlight. There seemed to be no end
to it at all. Mhumhi looked out to his left, where far in the
distance he could see a large flat patch of yellow and brown: that
was Big Park.
    "Come on," Bii called, putting his paws on
the car's fender, and Mhumhi leapt down.
    Their final destination was along the street
they called Wide Street, for it was exceptionally wide compared to
the single and two-lane streets that wound through Oldtown. Across
the massive intersection a single traffic light lay on the ground
like a dead thing, glass lights long shattered. The rest still hung
on their tall wire, flicking through colors for the carless
streets. A narrow lane of gleaming solar panels stretched high
above them; Mhumhi caught a glimpse of a lone fox running across
it.
    The horde of dogs hit Wide Street and fanned
out, filling it with their grumbles and yaps. On the other side of
the road there was a massive building, its tall walls a clean and
gleaming mismatch to the dirty, tired buildings of Oldtown. It had
a base of blue and white, and above that rose black metal struts
and tall windows of blackened glass. Narrow concrete booths
protruded every few feet along the outer wall.
    The dogs organized themselves into rough
queues behind each of these booths. Many were growling now, as
impatience mounted; puppies yapped and whined next to their
parents. The tall maned wolf cringed more than ever as her much
shorter neighbors jostled her on both sides.
    Mhumhi, panting from the heat of the sun and
the streets and the commingled dogs, helped guide Bii to a spot in
one of the queues. He was relieved to see that it wasn't terribly
far back from the booth.
    A sharp scent pricked at him, and he turned
to see a three large dogs sitting together atop a parked car,
surveying the crowd. Painted dogs, police dogs. Mhumhi, standing
out in the crowd of little dogs and foxes, tried to make himself
look small and solid-colored. Liduma, the head police dog for
Oldtown, sometimes liked to give him a hard time.
    Abruptly a loud tone rang out, and from
beyond the gleaming black glass, something hissed and ground to a
start. Several dogs