The omnivator disgorged Mark and Koen onto what might even be called a "street." It ringed the base of the embassy building, fenced off with sticky, shoulder-high bollards. These had to be squeezed between, which was why Mark had worn a raincoat.

Once free on a larger street, Koen turned around to look up at his building. It looked like a tree colonized by geometrically-minded birds. Cubical, prism-shaped, and octohedral residence pods had been trussed together into clusters nestled against black support trunks. Wires dangled and antenna bristled.

"Do we have neighbors?" he asked, pointing to a trio of truncated octohedra under the rectangular pods of the UN Embassy.

"We don't really talk to them," said Mark. "I don't think this is actually a very good neighborhood."

Compared to the downtown area where Koen had shopped, the buildings around the UN embassy were smaller, and the spaces between them narrower. People used the streets to walk on rather than wage mock-battle upon, and some of the canals were still of the open-air type.

Koen walked with Mark alongside one of these, wondering if he should feel at home. He hadn't been back to Rotterdam for many years, and mostly he just thought the lack of cars was weird. Omnivators and omnibuses were more likely to crawl along the sides of the buildings than come down here. The architecture wept slow, steady streams of mucus.

The green water in the canal parted around a quartet of what looked like old-fashioned vacuum-cleaners with flippers, whether animal or sophont Koen didn't know. The trees planted in and along the canal were coated with orange lace, around which pollinators buzzed.

Mark found it easiest to stand out of the way and close his eyes. The smells were still off, but the air was the familiar caress of a warm towel. Mark remembered the summers of his childhood, the humid wind on his face and the chilly Atlantic around his legs. His family would go to the beach, and look across the water to where the planes waited, sedate as cattle. Later in the afternoon there would be a meatball sandwich and cookies-and-cream cake.

"Did you have anywhere in particular you wanted to go?" asked Mark, knowing the answer was "no."

Koen worried about burning. Sunscreen. That was something he hadn't thought to order from Earth. Did any species in the Convention produce ultraviolet-blocking secretions? Did they sell them? He shook his head. "I thought we'd just explore."

Mark knew that that "we" wasn't supposed to include him, but he was feeling mellow. Koen was a good guy, and Mark didn't feel like working. "Maybe you can make more sense of this place than I've been able to. Are there cafes? Parks where we can sit? Playgrounds for the baby Quotidians? I've never found signs of any."

Koen scratched the side of his mouth. "From what I've read about Quotidian behavioral biology, they don't, uh, hang out in the open. They stay in their hives unless it's for mass sports or official business. And signs are more likely to be olfactory. Visual writing on exterior surfaces is considered crass."

"So how are we supposed to find out what's in these buildings?"

Koen frowned at the nearest structure. It looked like a giant coat-rack covered with netting and slime. "Translator," he said. "Does this building contain any businesses?"

The translator bug let go of his shoulder and zipped away. It dipped its tail into the mucus on the building's net, as delicate as a damselfly, and returned to Koen.

"Lung massage," it said.

"Great," said Mark. "Lung massage."

"Is there a cafe around here?" asked Koen hopefully.

"The percolation of the roasted and ground seeds of the coffee bush are available only in the Embassy of the United Nations to the Convention of Sapient Species."

Mark grinned and pointed his thumb back the way they'd come. "Now, there's a business idea. We open a coffee shop."

"Translator, is there around here a place where we can sit on the street…no, is there a place where we can rest and drink something hot?"

"Hope never dies, huh?" said Mark.

"There are fifty-six places in line of sight that match your description."

The two humans looked around.

"What's the nearest?"

"The lichenous growth to your left produces a sugary nectar, which can be extracted from the symbiotic reticulum."

Koen and Mark examined the nearest bush. Its orange draping of slime mold pulsed invitingly.

"No," said Mark.

"Translator, where is a place where we can sit in a chair and drink from a cup?"

"The only chairs and cups on Quotidia may be found in the United Nations Embassy to the Convention of Sophonts."

"Uh, is there a place where I can…" Koen thought hard, "…take my weight off my feet and drink from a container that I hold in my hands?"

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"There are three hundred eleven places in line of sight that match your description?"

"Drinking something that won't make me ill?"

"There are fifty-six places—"

"Koen, this isn't going to work," said Mark.

Koen clenched his fists. "I'm making progress. Translator, copy the previous request but narrow it to include only drinks that Mark and I will enjoy."

"Insufficient data."

Koen growled, startling a group of Quotidian spinsters scuttling up the wall of the lung massage parlor.

"I know what I'll do!" Koen started walking. "I'm going to ask the translator to tell me what's going on in each of these buildings. There has to be something here. Translator! What's being sold in that building?"

"Eyeball polishing service."

"That one?"

"Bacterial toxin injection. Furniture gnawing. Mutual torture chamber, entrance by appointment only."

"Yikes," said Mark, pausing to eye the very nondescript building. "I didn't realize this was such a rough neighborhood."

"Hmph! Translator, what's in that building?"

"Used clothing store. Specialty in remodeled exoskeletons."

"I might be able to boil those for soup," muttered Koen, and Mark tried again.

"It is nice being outside the embassy, though, huh? Get out of the old panopticon. Why haven't we done this before?"

Koen blinked. He'd forgotten why he'd wanted to get out here so much. "There isn't surveillance out here? We can say what we want?"

"Yup."1

"Then why the hell is Laura so angry at me? I thought that when she invited me to the embassy—"

"She didn't invite you here to be her boy-toy."

"No, of course not!" But they both knew that was exactly what Koen had been hoping for. "Translator, what's in that building?"

"Scholarly perfumes."

"Look," said Mark, "there's no dating at the Embassy. Nobody sleeps with anybody."

"Because of the cameras."

"Not just that. We all have lives to get back to on Earth. We're here as representatives of our countries. If we got involved with each other, it would look bad. Like we were more connected with each other than with the rest of the human race. We'd look like colonists."

Koen had already said that he didn't think that Laura had hired him to come to Quotidia and be her boyfriend, so he couldn't now say that he was disappointed to find out that this was not the case. But because he was disappointed, he didn't have anything left to say.

"Translator, what do they sell there?" he asked.

"Notary-bride. Sexual and/or devouring services provided."

"That's almost a restaurant," said Mark.

"Come on!" Koen splashed through a puddle, disturbing a cloud of animals that looked just like butterflies.2

"Is that why you think Laura's angry at me?" he asked. "Because she thinks I'm attracted to her?"

Mark thought that Laura was angry because he wasn't getting the message that this stint of his as embassy chef was actually a wedding interview. He wasn't about to sell this insight cheaply, though, so he said, "I don't know. What do you think?"

"What do I think?" Koen walked past a coat-rack building, forgetting to ask his translator what was in it. "I think she brought me here to be a chef and a help with interpreting the nonhumans. I screwed up with that last night but I'll do better."

"Hm?"

"I need to do better as a friend, too," said Koen. "I think Laura confessed something to me last night. Or tried to."

That she wants you but has to marry you first, Mark thought, but said nothing.

The vacuum produced by his silence pulled on Koen until he said, "I think she confessed that she hates nonhumans. Like, she's disgusted by them. Species-level racism."

Well, obviously, thought Mark. Who wouldn't be disgusted with those disgusting creatures? But out loud he said, "I'm sure that's not true. She's a good person."

Mark watched Koen for his reaction. If he twitched, that would mean that Koen shared Laura's xenophobia, which would be a useful thing to know. But Koen only shook his head. "Of course she can't say anything like that where the cameras can see her. I wanted to bring her out here where she can speak her mind, and then I could show her." He gestured at the dangling buildings, scuttling with incomprehensible activity. "I could show her that that this city isn't so strange or impossible."

Mark would have laughed if he'd thought Koen was joking, but no, the poor nerd was serious. Xenophobia, meet xenophilia. But that wasn't a handle on Koen either. There was something else here.

"Translator," said Koen as Mark watched him. "What's in that building?"

"Happy Brain and Bowel Protein Paps."

Koen stopped. "Clarify: meat soups?"

"Please ask a native speaker for semantic clarification."

"Alright, I will!" Koen turned and marched into the shop.

"Hey, translator. What's paps?" Mark asked.

" 'Paps' is the plural of 'pap', food in the form of a soft paste, often a porridge, especially as given to very young children."

"Will it poison us if we eat it?"

"Insufficient data."

"Great," said Mark, and hurried to follow Koen.

1 This was not entirely true. The nearest Quotidian hives kept extensive records of everything said and done on the streets . They were not in the habit of sharing this data, however.

2 They were actually more closely related to horseshoe crabs.