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Picture by Timothy Morris

Multi-species public transport is a fascinating subject of study. Obviously, one can't just install a single kind of seating, or even two. In the case of the omnibus Koen and Laura rode into the Zogreion, the solution looked something like a children's play area installed in the belly of a giant worm.

Padding-swaddled poles connected floor, ceiling, and walls, allowing passengers to clamber, slither, or ooze to whatever spot they liked. Koen wasn't sure what would happen if one of the Convention's larger species boarded this bus. Maybe the poles could slide around. Maybe there were different buses for giants.

An efficient arrangement, anyway. It wouldn't have been so bad, either, except for the mucus. Koen wore a raincoat and galoshes, but his face was starting to get sticky.

The Zogreion was not a human city. The vast majority of its inhabitants didn't know there was such a thing as a "human." If you went up to any random sophont in the omnibus, and tried to explain humans to them, you would have to start with the pharyngial slits of the acorn worm.

This was what Koen was attempting to do.

"Does your earth have acorn worms?" he asked the gelatinous tripod in the next seat over. "How about tunicate larvae? Salps? You know salps? No? Alright, so back to the worm. It has slits in its neck that it breathes through. The skin in between those slits, that became my jaw bone." He indicated this feature. "And the bones of my inner ear, and also my ribs. Funny how evolution works."

"Are you trying to sell me something?" asked the tripod.

"No, we're not trying to sell you anything," said Laura. "Koen, leave the nice sophont alone."

"Yes, please," it bubbled.

Koen gave the tripod a hurt look. "You were the one who asked what species we were."

"I was just trying to be polite. I didn't know how to address you." The tripod rotated, facing Koen with two of its legs. "Honored…larva," it said, "please stop secreting so many peptides."

Laura looked mortified. "What are peptides?" she whispered at Koen. "How do I stop secreting them?"

Koen batted her hands away, which hurt Laura's feelings. "Honored 'humans,'" he corrected the tripod, "and I'm afraid that we have no conscious control over our sweat."

It pivoted to one leg toward them and two away. "I am disappointed."

"It's saying we stink?" whispered Laura. "What are we supposed to do about that?"

"Excuse me!" chittered a Quotidian hanging from the roof of the bus. "Some people are trying to form a cyst."

The three of them looked up.

"In public?" said the tripod. "Disgusting!"

"Only if you have a male handy. I don't suppose you have a male handy, do you?"

The tripod scrunched down, coiling its tentacles. "Why did I have to choose the bus filled with deviants?"

"We're very sorry for disturbing you, honored sophonts," said Laura. And to Koen, "Let's just go stand somewhere else."

"Thank you!" said both nonhumans.

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"Even our sweat is offensive out here," Laura fretted.

What she wanted was for Koen to say, "don't worry; you don't stink." Instead, he shrugged. "Nothing we can do about it, so…" He thought. "But the Zogreion is full of species. Some of them must smell bad to others. They must have a solution to that problem too." He pressed his finger into the padding on his pillar, which glooped. "We'll have to ask someone."

"Oh, please, no," said Laura. "Don't ask anyone. Who knows what they'll tell us. Some other problem we have no way to solve." She glanced up at Koen, who was looking at her in a way she didn't like. "Never mind. Sorry. Let's just shop." She straightened her spine and took a deep breath. "That is where you're taking us, right?"

"Yes," said Koen, not entirely confidently. The translator bugs connected to some kind of Quotidian information network, but the user interface was very confusing and Laura didn't know much more than him. In the end, he'd just ordered his translator to tell him where to find "a ride to a place where we can buy local food." And here they were.

The omnibus decelerated smoothly on its hundreds of hooked wheels, descending through the girders and snaking around to deposit its passengers at the riverfront where, perhaps, the ritual of shopping might be performed.

Or at least so Koen hoped. Really, he had no idea if they were in the right place. Or, indeed, how to pay for the bus ride.

As Laura and Koen stepped off the bus, their bugs both belched. Koen decided to take that as a good sign. At least nothing seized them in its jaws and demanded cash.

They stood for a moment on the river bank. Then, after a shark-toothed giant tortoise shoved past him, on a different part of the river bank.

Koen watched the plated back lumber away, stroking his chin and mumbling about denticles. "You think that one might actually be a vertebrate?"

Laura just stood, hand to heart, trying to breathe.

The sun was warm. The air smelled like spring.

Koen turned around, looked up, and saw the sky for the first time in two weeks. Quotidians tended to feel uncomfortable in open spaces, and buried their apartments in the inner girders of their sprawling, tangled cities. The bank of the river, however, seemed to be an exception. Green bridges webbed the water, and brown-silver pennants flapped from the walls of the buildings that humped up on both banks like honeycomb cliffs.

Struts of fullerene and foamed titanium defined tall, tangled volumes through which traffic scurried and darted like sea creatures in a reef. Vehicles, pedestrians, and forms that might be either glittered in sudden, irregular spears of light.

Overhead, an aircraft hissed down, honey-comb wings curving to embrace and merge with a hump of building. The moon, if one looked closely, was surrounded by nested gossamer cages, the same color as the high, hazy clouds.

Koen slid his gaze up and down the parabolic rooftops, wondering what processes had created them. Who or what ensured that each building got a view?

"Excuse me, honored whatever-you-are."

Koen stepped aside to allow a Quotidian to crouch over the spot on the pavement where he'd been standing. A grate there that he'd assumed was a storm drain gave a cough and extruded a sheaf of flexible, spaghetti-like tubes. The Quotidian slurped these up and chittered something that Koen's bug translated as "Old mix Rut is at it again. Why even bother voting?"

Eyes alight with curiosity about Quotidian politics, Koen leaned toward the heaving abdomen of the Quotidian. "Pardon me…"

"No, I don't have any spare resistance. Clear off."

"I just wanted to know. Who's mix Rut?"

"If you don't already know, you can eat your own newspaper and find out!" The Quotidian lashed its tufted antenna and scuttled backward. "What are you supposed to be anyway? Some kind of priapulid? Don't crowd me."

Koen watched the nonhuman depart, thinking about New Yorkers in all iterations of evolutionary probability.

"It's always like that," said Laura. "This place is just impossible."

Koen turned to her, feeling rather annoyed. How can you live on another planet and not want to find out how it works? he wanted to say. Where is your curiosity? Your courage? Even your sense of humor. Go back and hide in the embassy, if you're so very anxious. Stop tugging on me. Stop expecting me give up all my plans and help you cultivate your cowardice.

Laura read his expression.

Oh, so you're annoyed with me? she wanted to say. You're the one who dragged me out here after I told you I didn't want to come. I told you that this place makes me want to hide and you didn't listen. There's nothing I'd rather do right now than go home, but I can't because if you get yourself eaten or start an interspecies incident, I'm the one who'll take the blame. I'm responsible for you, you overgrown man-child.

If these two one-sided, silent conversations had gone on much longer, Koen and Laura might have ruined the rest of their day. But each of them had been on dates before. They were wise enough to look away from each other, and save the day-ruining for later.

"I'm not ready to give up," Koen said. "Let's find somebody we can ask for directions."