Ozzie got out of the first-class section and stood on the solitary platform. He was wearing fawn-colored leather trousers, a thick woolen red and blue checked shirt, a wide-brimmed olive-green oilskin hat that was crunching up his big hair, and the best hiking boots money could buy, manufactured on the Democratic Republic of New Germany. His luggage was a towering backpack full of spare clothes, top-quality camping equipment, and packaged food. There was a saddle under his arm, which was proving exceptionally heavy and awkward to carry.

He looked around to see who was about to help him. A couple of CST staff were standing at the end of the platform talking to the train manager; other than that the only people in view were his fellow passengers, seemingly as bemused as he. When he looked behind the train, he saw the rail leading back to the pearly luminescence of the gateway, not two hundred yards away. Beyond that, the countryside was standard for any H-congruous world, with green vegetation and a light blue sky. There were mountains in the distance, not quite tall enough to have snowcaps. Ahead of him was the town, a drab brown sprawl of small buildings, few of which were more than one story. They clustered along the slope above the harbor, where a natural spit of rock curved defensively around a long beach. Wooden boats were drawn up above the waterline, their nets draped over masts to dry out. A bunch of kids were playing a game similar to football on the sand.

The passengers started to wander along the platform toward the town. Ozzie shoved the saddle over one shoulder, and moved off with them. The CST staff never gave him a second glance. He thought it strange nobody at all from the town was at the station; the train left back for Bayovar in another two hours. Surely someone must be returning home to civilization?

There were houses right up to the station, the oldest section of town. These were either drycoral or prefab, the kind found on any frontier planet. The streets knitting them together were made from thick stone slabs, their only drainage a deep open gutter at the side. Ozzie soon realized why they needed to be so deep; he wished he’d brought some kind of scarf he could wrap over his nose. The transportation was either bicycle or animal. Horses clumped along passively, as did the quadruped galens from Niska; and lontrus, big, shaggy-pelted octopeds that looked terribly hot on this sunny afternoon; he also saw tands being used, some finnars, and even a giant bamtran, which had been given a saddle platform and a harness that pulled a cart the size of a bus. The domesticated beasts either carried riders or pulled wagons. People and cyclists took care to avoid the muck they left behind them, but the smell couldn’t be missed so easily.

Farther into town, the buildings were made from wood or stone; many had thatched roofs. Brick and clay chimneys puffed out thin blue-white tongues of smoke, the scent of burning wood mingling with the smell of animals and cooking. Creeper plants swarmed up every vertical wall, adding to the overall impression of shabbiness. They weren’t cultivated for decoration; in some cases they completely swamped buildings, with just a few holes hacked into the bedraggled greenery to keep windows clear. The stone paving under his feet had given way to hard-packed gravel with a thick top layer of mud and manure. He could see the neat white rectangular offices of the Commonwealth cultural mission sitting at the top of the town, overlooking all the rooftops, but that was the last place he wanted to be. This wasn’t any part of the ExoProtectorate Council mission.

Ozzie kept on walking. As he suspected, the sophisticated handheld array in his rucksack was almost useless, operating at the most basic level and with frequent glitches. There was no cybersphere here, nothing his e-butler could link him to. But all his OCtattoos seemed to be working, for which he was grateful; he’d spent nearly two days in an expensive Augusta clinic having new ones etched into his body, along with several modern biochip inserts, which also appeared to be operational. Whatever the Silfen used to glitch human technology, it only affected photonic and electronic systems. Bioneural chemistry was relatively immune.

The inn was called the Last Pony, a long shambling wooden building camouflaged by an ancient vine that had colonized the sagging front wall to such an extent it was probably all that was now holding it up. The big indigo valentines of semiorganic precipitator leaves were draped along the eves, sucking clean water out of the humid air and funneling it into the building’s pipes for drinking and washing. A dozen young kids were playing in the dusty soil outside. The boys were dressed in badly worn trousers and shirts, made from natural fabrics in dark brown and gray colors. Most of the girls wore dresses that were frayed and patched. Their hair was wild and grubby, detonating out from their heads in frizzy strands. Ozzie smiled at them, enchanted; their faces were those of miniature angels, all happy and curious. They’d all seen him, the clean stranger in decent expensive clothes. Their games were drying up as they whispered among themselves. One ran over, the boldest of all: a little girl no more than seven, wearing a simple fawn-colored sleeveless dress.

“You’re new here,” she said.

“That’s right, my name’s Ozzie, what’s yours?”

“Moonshimmer.” She grinned knowingly. “But you can call me Moony.”

Ozzie resisted the urge to look up at the sky; Silvergalde had twin moons in the same half-million-kilometer orbit. “That’s nice. So tell me, where’s a good place to stay in this town?”

“In there.” Her little arm rose to point at the Last Pony.

“Thanks.” He flipped a coin to her, a fifty Earth cent, which she caught neatly and smiled up at him, revealing two gaps in her front teeth.

Ozzie pushed aside strands of fur-leaf creeper from the front door, and walked in. The main bar was a simple rectangular room, with a counter along one side. Heavy wooden tables, darkened by age and ale stains, cluttered up the floor space. Bright sunbeams from the windows shone through the dusty air. A huge brick fireplace filled the far wall, with black iron doors of ovens built into both sides. The grate contained a high pile of ash and embers, with the blackened ends of logs sticking out, glimmering weakly as they smoldered away.

Just about every head turned to look at him as he entered; conversation ebbed away. It was all he could do not to laugh at the cliché. He walked over to the counter. The landlord eyed him up; a thickset Native American with his graying hair tied back in a neat tail.

“Afternoon,” Ozzie said politely. “I’d like a drink, and a room for the night, please.”

“Yes, sir,” the landlord said. “Will that be ale?”

Ozzie glanced at the shelves behind the counter. There were five big wooden barrels set up, already tapped. Various bottles were ranged along beside them. He didn’t recognize any of them. “Sure. You got a wheat beer?”

The landlord blinked, as if that wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “Yes.” He took down a tall glass, and went over to one of the barrels.

The two men leaning on the counter next to him were exchanging significant looks. Now they started sniggering quietly.

“Anything wrong?” Ozzie asked.

The smaller one turned to him. “Not with me. You here for the Silfen are you?”

“Jess,” the landlord warned. “There’s to be no trouble in here.”

“I’d like to meet them, yes,” Ozzie said.

“Thought so. Your type always does.”

“My type?” For a moment Ozzie wondered if he meant his color. Prejudice in the Commonwealth worlds wasn’t anything like as strong as it had been back in San Diego while he’d been growing up, but that didn’t mean it had disappeared. There were several planets where he would be in real trouble if he ever walked into a bar like this. He hadn’t expected it on Silvergalde, though.