The officer entered the time in a box Koldin had missed.
 
“Location?”

Koldin gave the shop’s position on the eastern road.

“Owner’s name?”

“Didn’t ask.”

The officer looked up.

“You reported a theft on behalf of a man whose name you do not know.”

“I reported what I saw.”

“Yes.”

The officer’s tone indicated that this answer was both sufficient and somehow inadequate.

He applied a rectangular stamp to the bottom of the statement. The ink read RECEIVED above the date. Then he placed the paper on a tray beside the typewriter.

Koldin waited.

“Is zhat all?”

“That is all.”

“Are you going to do anyzhing?”

The officer looked toward the tray.

“The statement will be entered.”

Koldin glanced at the paper. It had entered.

“Right,” he said.

He stepped away from the counter.

Defort was now studying a wooden baton preserved beneath glass.

“This thing’s older than Obs’rt.”

“You don’t know how old Obs’rt is.”

“No one does.”

Koldin went to the nearest air-conditioning vent and stood beneath it.

Cold air descended over him and traveled through the fur and hair on his scalp. For a moment, Koldin was in heaven. The vent made a low steady sound. It asked nothing of him. It did not smell of mud, hot engines, or rotting vegetation. It took the same air repeatedly and returned it scrubbed clean of everything.

For a moment he understood why the police station had been kept so clean.

Not for the public.

For the police.

Outside, disorder waited without shade. Inside, every object had a label. Every complaint had a form. The floor reflected the ceiling lights without distortion. A stolen bottle could be turned into paper and placed into a tray, where it would remain obedient until somebody decided what category of neglect belonged to it.

Defort came over.

“Ready?”

Koldin looked toward the door.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

They remained beneath the vent for another half minute.

The officer resumed typing. The electric keys struck the paper. A telephone rang somewhere behind a partition and was answered immediately. Beyond another door someone laughed once, then lowered his voice.

Koldin put his hat back on.

“Alright.”

Defort sighed. 

They returned to the entrance.

This time Defort opened the door. Heat flooded through the widening gap before either of them stepped outside. The smell of town entered with it: oil, dust, food, drains, wet timber. The conditioned air retreated deeper into the station as though unwilling to become involved.

They crossed the threshold. The door closed behind them with the same heavy certainty.

Koldin stood on the stone perron while his eyes adjusted to the afternoon glare. Sweat began to form on his hands almost at once.

Defort looked back at the building.

“Could’ve stayed longer.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Zhey would’ve given us work.”

Defort accepted this.

They descended the steps and continued toward the market.

Behind them the police station remained clean, cool, and solid. Inside it Koldin’s statement waited in a tray beneath the date stamp. Somewhere in town a man possessed a bottle of fruit spirit that had now acquired an official existence independent of him.

The market lay ahead, spreading across several streets beneath awnings and patched canvas. Its noise reached them before its smells did. After that, the airport perimeter.

Defort adjusted the empty submachine gun across his back.

Koldin touched the haversack at his belt and found only one unopened bottle remaining. The day had entered its hotter half.

The market announced itself before it appeared.

At first it was only a low continuous murmur beyond the buildings, something almost environmental, like insects in the trees or rain falling several streets away. Then individual noises began separating themselves from it. Engines. Voices raised in barter. Bottles knocking together in crates. A handbell. Somebody laughing. Somebody else shouting after somebody who apparently had no intention of returning.

The smell came afterward.

Cooking oil and fruit and hot cloth and animals. Tobacco smoke. Fish. Mud. Sweet things fermenting where they had fallen beneath tables and been stepped upon until they became part of the road.

Defort adjusted the communications satchel against his shoulder.

“Sounds peaceful.”

“It is.”

“That sounded sarcastic.”

“It wasn't.”

They turned the final corner.

The market occupied several intersecting streets and seemed to have expanded beyond every boundary originally intended for it. Canvas awnings had been tied from roof to roof. Stalls leaned against buildings and other stalls leaned against them. People sold things from carts, tables, shelves, boxes, baskets, wheelbarrows, and mats spread directly over the ground. Motorized carriages entered where no vehicle should reasonably have fit and unloaded sacks, crates, furniture, live animals, machine parts, bundled cloth, cookware, fruit, fuel, and inexplicable objects whose usefulness apparently became obvious once money had been exchanged for them.