Masurathoo eyed the turgid flow uncertainly. “Then I am correct in assuming it will not bother us up here, on these branches?”
Utterly at home in the varzea, Jemunu-jah leaned back against the convenient stalk of an emerald-striped mushroom that was nearly as tall as he was. “Giimatasa kills with whirlpool. Has no arms, nothing else with which to fight. Not like darter or casoko. Or nougusm,” he finished with a wary look.
Confronted with one fellow traveler who was completely exhausted and another evidently preparing to spend the night, a dissatisfied but resigned Hasa found himself a suitable resting place slightly higher, where several intertwining branches formed a constricted but adequate sleeping platform. He chose to remain with his companions not because he felt uncomfortable about forging ahead or traveling by himself, but because he was prudent enough to know that in a place like the Viisiiviisii it was useful to have someone always watching your back.
Even if that someone was a skinny sumbitch like an overeducated, know-it-all Sakuntala or a goggle-eyed, malodorous wimp of a Deyzara.
10
Expecting chaos, Lauren Matthias was not disappointed. Having been almost completely taken over by the several departments responsible for local affairs, the skimmer port had been transformed into the largest refugee camp on Fluva. Thousands of displaced Deyzara crowded onto the main liftoff platforms, spilled over onto walkways and service chutes.
Supported by deep-driven pylons, the central portion of the port was as sturdy as anything ground-based could be on Fluva. But the ancillary facilities, like most of the structures added later by the Commonwealth, were underpinned or hanging from cables of strilk. The strands wouldn’t break, she knew, but the same could not be said for the trees or smaller pylons to which the glistening lines were attached. As she was escorted toward the port’s administrative offices, she saw at least two seriously stressed spinner crews working nonstop to reinforce dangerously overloaded lines.