At midday the yard changed shifts. A whistle sounded and hundreds of people appeared from between the containers as though they had been stored there with the freight. They crossed toward the meal sheds carrying tins, bottles, and folded cloths. Another wave entered from the gate and dispersed among the lanes.
 
Koldin stood aside.

A human worker passed him eating a boiled gulluk egg. Another carried a bowl of rice thick with sauce. Two yinglets shared fried shellfish wrapped in newspaper while walking, their ears angled toward one another in conversation. The smell reached Koldin and awakened hunger despite his breakfast still sitting heavily in him.

He drank more water.

By early afternoon he had completed the inner routes. He returned along the southern fence, where vines had begun climbing the wire. Insects moved in the leaves. One large beetle landed on the brim of his hat and remained there until he removed it with two fingers and placed it on a post.

At the gatehouse he signed out.

“Find the missing freight?” the clerk asked.

“No.”

“Neither did they.”

“Did zhey look?”

“They opened the office door several times.”

Koldin gave back the pen.

Outside the yard the road lay nearly empty beneath the heat. The bus shelter was vacant now. On the bench remained a syrupbloom bottle and a small hill of cigarette ash. The bus had perhaps come. The worker had perhaps grown tired of waiting and walked.

Koldin left the road and followed a narrow path along the freight-yard wall. It led to a patch of neglected ground where several broad trees stood above weeds and discarded packing material. The shade beneath them was dense and damp. The noise of the yard reached the place was muted by foliage and masonry, transformed from individual engines and voices into a continuous industrial murmur.

He had slept there before.

One tree had roots raised enough to keep his body above the wettest ground. Koldin checked the grass for biting insects, snakes, and anything else that might object to being slept upon. Finding nothing obvious, he sat with his back against the trunk.

He removed his hat and placed it over his eyes for a moment.

The golok made lying on one side inconvenient. He loosened the scabbard and rested it beside him within reach. The pistol remained on his belt. He checked that the magazine pouch was closed.

A human might have regarded the location as unsuitable for sleep. Koldin required less negotiation with the world. His kind had never surrendered the old division of rest into smaller portions spread throughout the day. Civilization had provided clocks, labor schedules, upholstered furniture, electric lamps, and supervisors who preferred continuous wakefulness. The body retained its own opinion.

He set the small mechanical alarm he carried in his pocket.

One hour.

Enough.

Koldin folded one arm beneath his head and drew his tail close against his side. The tree bark pressed through the fabric at his shoulder. Heat moved over him. Sweat on his hands cooled slightly where the air could reach it.

He listened.

Vehicles passed on the other side of the wall. Men shouted. A crane cable clanged. Birds moved in the branches above him. Somewhere farther away an engine attempted repeatedly to start and failed with perfect consistency.
The sounds arranged themselves according to distance and importance.

Nothing approached. His eyes closed.

Sleep arrived quickly and without ceremony.

For a time there was no freight yard, no VSEA, no House Ivenmoth, no pistol hanging empty at his side. There was only a depthless interval in which the world continued without requiring his participation.

The alarm began to buzz.

Koldin opened his eyes at once.

Sunlight had shifted across the ground. One leg had gone numb beneath him. His ears rose and turned independently, collecting the yard, the road, the wind in the leaves. No immediate danger presented itself.

He switched off the alarm.

For several seconds he sat unmoving while wakefulness rebuilt the practical world around him. Freight-yard wall. Tree. Golok. Belt. Haversack. Afternoon patrol.

His mouth was dry.

He took out the water bottle and drank until it was empty. It was the third bottle he had finished that day. He tilted his head upward and held it upside down above his mouth, waited for the final drops, then recapped it and returned the empty glass to his bag. Bottles carried value even after surrendering their contents. The restaurant would take them back. Someone always wanted the glass.

Koldin stood and stretched.

His spine gave a series of small clicks. He shook out the numb leg, retied the golok, and set his hat upon his head. The nap helped Koldin gain back any energy he lost.

Beyond the trees the freight yard continued moving cargo through the country.

The pressure vessel remained beneath the broken crane. The House officials still disputed their missing crates. Workers arrived and departed. The machinery of commerce had not noticed Koldin’s absence and offered no sign of gratitude for his return.

He stepped back onto the road.

Koldin recalled what he had to do next: the water stand, market, and the old airport perimeter. Heat trembled above the mud. The sky had darkened slightly toward the east, where clouds gathered beyond the trees without yet deciding whether to become rain.

Koldin adjusted the strap of his haversack and continued.

The day was no longer beginning. It had settled into itself.

Koldin resolved to visit the water stand at the southern junction before continuing toward the old airport.

The clouds to the east had thickened without yet lowering the temperature. Heat remained caught between earth and sky, pressing the odors of the road downward until mud, fuel, dung, and flowering weeds all seemed part of the same substance. Every few minutes a breeze moved through and promised rain. It left before fulfilling the promise.

At the junction a cafe occupied the shaded side of the road beneath a sagging awning. Three tables had been set outside on an uneven platform of gray boards. At one of them sat Defort.

He was difficult to mistake for anyone else.

The human had dressed as though ordered into the jungle and then abandoned the effort halfway through. Over his olive fatigues he wore a chest rig loaded with empty magazine pouches, signal wire, a field dressing, and several things whose purpose Koldin had never asked. A open bolt Peshtulan submachine gun hung across his back. Its metal stock had been folded flat against the receiver, the bolt was closed, and no magazine occupied the well. The weapon was therefore harmless in a strict mechanical sense while remaining sufficiently visible to alarm anyone who did not know that.