“Is he yours?” the girl asked Kieran, as if there could have been any doubt.
“That’s some intelligent dog,” the baggage handler complimented. “I swear he understands everything we say.”
“Actually, he’s really not that smart,” Kieran said. “Languages confuse him. He does it by telepathy.” Guinness’s brow knitted. He blinked and turned his eyes toward the spaceport workers as if in silent appeal.
“What is he?” the girl asked as Kieran presented the claim document and a card to verify receipt.
“Part doberman, part labrador. The doberman came out in the coloring. The face and the temperament are all lab.” Kieran took the leash from a pouch in his bag and stooped to unlatch the cage door. Guinness bounded out and treated him to a slurp of affection across the nose before Kieran diverted him with a strip of beef jerky from his jacket pocket.
“Guinness,” the handler read from the transaction details that appeared on the screen, while the girl ruffled the dog’s ears. “Are you Irish?”
“Oh, there’s some lurking back in the ancestry somewhere, sure enough. But with a color scheme like that, what else could you call him in any case?”
“The trip doesn’t seem to have bothered him the way it can some animals,” the girl said. “Did you come in on the Earth ship?”
“No. From Urbek Station, near side of the Belt. Before that, places around Jupiter. But he’s used to all that.” Kieran scratched the center of Guinness’s forehead. “Aren’t you, boy, eh?”
The girl studied Kieran: tall, broad and powerfully built, with lean, tanned features, wavy brown hair, clear blue eyes, and a smile that came easily. His clothes were casual for traveling, but good quality. “Do you two travel around a lot, then?” she asked.
Guinness looked at Kieran expectantly. The jerky was gone. Kieran tossed another piece, which the dog caught expertly. “We get around, sure. There’s a lot out there to see. I’ve always been insatiably curious.”
“So where’s home?”
“Oh, a place here, a place there. Maybe I’ll check out some possibilities on Mars while I’m here. It’s getting more interesting. I suppose you could say the Solar System is home now.”
* * *
Two levels farther down, a maglev car riding the field trough between two induction rails carried them from the subterranean part of the spaceport, out from beneath the plateau and into Gorky Avenue, one of the three main canyon-bottom arms of Lowell City. The surroundings resembled a curious mixture of multilevel mall, residential units, and recreation spots spread through a confusion of interconnecting spaces separated by normally-open pressure locks. From a grotto of rocks and palm fronds forming a ledge below several rows of office windows, a man-made waterfall cascaded between a restaurant terrace and a children’s play area to an artificial beach washed by breakers from a mechanical wave maker. Farther on, the track ran above a sinuous lake with leafy banks and reedy shallows, winding its way around sandbars where wading birds preened beneath steel piers supporting the upper structure. Guinness stood with his front paws up on the window ledge, missing nothing. Everywhere was busy, colorful and vibrant with people—an expression of the thrusting, restless culture that had taken root in and was now rising from the red sands. Yes, Kieran told himself. The time was about right here for a little real-estate investment to tie up some surplus funds.
On the far side of Gorky, the track entered another tunnel to pass through concrete galleries excavated under the mesa, filled with plant and machinery, before exiting into Nineveh, beyond—the other arm of the branching Y of canyons containing Lowell. Nineveh was greener and more suburban than the metropolitan setting they had left in Gorky. Algae cultivated in the aquatic radiation shield between the outer layers of the domes and roofing gave its sky a peculiar pale-lime color. Prospect Park lay out toward the end of the roofed-over section, ending at the access lock out to the surface. It contained flower and plant nurseries as well as irrigated slopes of grass with a few trees, and was also a zoo. Near its center was a crescent-shaped lake with an island in the widest part. Opposite the island on the outer curve of the lake, a complex of apartment units rising in terraces overlooked a bathing area next to a parking strip for regular road vehicles. Here, the maglev car halted by an automated cafeteria and shop.