The guides take us to where they have cars waiting for us. We wait until the other groups are off on their way before we get ready to go.

“So what you want to see first?” Akara asks. Her accent is fairly thick, but according to my index she speaks a dozen languages, so I’m not surprised that she hasn’t perfected the native inflections of each one.

“How about some food first?” I suggest. Gramps had great things to say about the food here in his emails, though he hadn’t had a lot of it since he served here during the war. Evan, Valerie, and Louise all nod vigorously. “What’s the best thing to eat around here?”

“Street food is best,” she says. “Ben Thanh Market, you will like it. Get in!”

Akara takes the front seat so she can talk to the driver, the rest of us pile in the back of the minivan. We whiz through streets absolutely packed with scooters at a frantic pace while I grip one of the handles with white knuckles. I’m pretty sure my bots would protect me if we crash, but I’d rather not put it to a test. The driver knows his business though, and fifteen minutes later he drops us off in front of a big arch proclaiming Street Food Market in English. We pile out and he speeds on after Akara says something fast in Vietnamese.

“He be back when we need him,” she turns and tells us, speaking as fast in English as she had in Vietnamese. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

She leads the way into the crowded Market, past rows of stalls full of everything you could ever want to eat. Evan and I get little pork sandwiches on rolls. They’re super good, but I almost regret it when I see and smell the noodles that Louise and Valerie get.

With our hunger sated, we check out the rest of the market. There’s a huge enclosed area with hundreds of booths carrying everything: toys, fruits, jewelry, soap, pastries, purses, clothes, electronics, and a whole bunch of stuff that I can’t even identify. Knicknacks, I guess I’d call them. The noise and crowds and colors are just too much with my cloud senses blaring, so I pull my bots in close by me and tune the sensitivity way down. Better. I hear Louise doing some controlled breathing. She’s getting so good at dealing with her panic attacks. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed if I didn’t know that crowds like this set her off more than anything.

“Watch your stuff,” Akara warns over the hubbub. “Lots of thieves. Pick your pockets.”

I spread my cloud out just big enough to cover our whole group. I’ll know if anything gets swiped.

“Pick whatever you want,” Evan tells Valerie. “It’s on me.”

She gives him a huge smile and takes him up on it. She and Louise pick out some clothes, long dresses in several styles. Hopefully what they find is somewhere near the right size, because there’s no way we are going to be able to try anything on here. For each purchase, Akara makes us walk away before she starts haggling with the vendor.

“They overcharge you, they know you have money,” she explains. “Me, they don’t mess with.”

I’m not super worried about it. I run my implant’s calculator on what she ended up paying and turn it into dollars. This stuff still would have been cheap at twice the price. But Akara seems to want to make sure we get good deals, and it’s fun to watch her do her thing from down the narrow aisle. She’s wildly animated, her thin arms gesticulating as she argues. By the time she’s done with buying one thing, we have our next purchases decided on for her to haggle on next. We work our way down a few of the aisles that way. Evan and I get some cool robes which I’ll probably never wear. Evan’s sense of fashion is more adventurous than mine. But they seem cool right now as Akara is packing them up in a backpack that seems like it’s almost as big as she is with all our new purchases in it.

My cloud feels a hand reaching into Louise’s purse in a particularly crowded aisle and I respond with a stiff electric shock. I hear something that sounds like a curse and see a young man gripping his hand as he abruptly changes direction. His fingers will tingle for a while, but he shouldn’t have any permanent damage.

“You guys want to see the water puppet show?” Valerie asks as we get near the end of the row where the crowd dies down a little.

“Sure,” I say, not sure what a water puppet show is. Whatever it is, I didn’t index it.

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“Sounds good to me,” Louise replies.

Evan is in, of course.

Out on the street, the humidity is even more oppressive than in the shaded market. I’m way too used to the dry desert air of the campus. I start thinking of ways to set up some localized air conditioning with my bots when Akara gets us coconuts with straws from a street vendor and we suck down the cool juice inside. I guess I can just get used to the climate. That’s probably better since we’re going to be here for a while. The theater is just a short walk away and Akara says if we hurry we can get there in time for the next show.

“My grandmother used to tell me about these shows,” Valerie says. “I’ve always wanted to see one.”

“So are you Vietnamese?” I ask. My index reminds me that I’ve been curious about her heritage for a while now.

“Only an eighth,” she answers. “Grandma was one of the war babies. The bui doi. Though I think they mostly just called them that in America.”

A memory tugs loose. Mom took me to see Miss Saigon. It wasn’t all that long before she died. They sang about the bui doi. After the show we talked about war and what it does to people. I drop out of the conversation for a little while as I focus on indexing the memory. By the time I’m paying full attention again, we’re at the theater.

The show is a little different from anything I’ve ever seen. Instead of a stage, there’s a pool of murky water with an ornate palace set behind it. Without feeling around with my bots, it would have seemed like the dragon, farmer, and dancer puppets moved like magic on top of the water. I do reach around though, and see the puppeteers hidden behind a screen with their hands submerged. I guess they have sticks or strings or something under there that lets them drive the puppets, but the murky water keeps it all hidden from the audience and from me. The orchestra plays off to the side and I’m sure the story is great, but I don’t understand any of it. It’s fun to watch anyway.

“Something religious next? A pagoda?” Louise requests as the show ends and the audience starts clearing out.

“Jade Emperor Pagoda,” Akara declares. “Best in the city.”

When we get to the street, our van is waiting for us like magic. Akara is as good at this as Alan promised she would be. It’s not a long drive, we’re there in just a few white-knuckled minutes. So many scooters.

The Taoist temple is beautiful. The red and yellow robed monks show us around and Akara translates the history and what each of the statues is for. I mostly like the turtle pond. We take a few minutes and just watch them languidly swim around as the sun sets. Outside the temple, a cart is selling yellowish drinks, squeezing small limey fruits and stalks of what look like a cross between asparagus and bamboo.

“Sugar cane juice,” Akara says, seeing me eyeing the wares. “You want?”

“Yeah, let’s try it,” Louise replies.

The drinks are sweet, cold, and refreshing, a nice contrast to the still hot evening air.

“Time for one more thing,” Akara announces. “What you want?”

“What do you recommend?” Evan asks.

“You want to see whole city?”

“Sure!” he says.

We head back to the curb where the van awaits and take another harrowing ride that drops off in front of a skyscraper. Akara ushers us into an elevator that whisks us up forty-nine floors to the Saigon Skydeck. Floor-to-ceiling windows in every direction give us a fantastic view of the city below. The cars and buildings are like toys down there again. So very many scooters.

“See there,” Akara says, indicating one of the buildings with her open palm. “That your hotel. Best in the city. You will like it.”

Louise and I stroll around the curve of the windows and catch Evan as he starts to put his arm around Valerie.

To Evan: Manners, man.

He shrugs his reach into a stretch instead and puts his arm back down to his side.

From Evan: Right, sorry. No touching in public in Vietnam.

We spend a good while taking in the sights. Things are calm here. I turn the senses on my bots back up to full and let them spread out normally again.

“Come on, time to go,” Akara declares. “Time to meet with others for dinner.”

The restaurant is within walking distance, and the smells coming out of it are amazing. We run into Marc, Andrea, Stan, and Mai on the sidewalk just outside. I reach out and feel the rest of my siblings heading this way. They should be here in a few. We have a room reserved in the back of the restaurant for us. The hostess walks us back towards it.

I feel Chad seated inside between two women. They must be his staffers that he brought, Keeya and Lucie. I’m looking forward to meeting them after reading their reports for so long. They must be great if Chad thought that he needed them along. Then I notice that under the table, beneath the cloth where human eyes wouldn't see, one of them has her hand on Chad’s thigh. Way up on his thigh. And Chad has his hand on the other one’s thigh. Way up on her thigh.

Shit.

The hostess opens the door. The facial recognition for my index pulls files on both women. I see their paperwork, their NDAs, and the fact that when Chad and Father hired them, they used the same contract that Father used to use for his staff on campus. The exact same contract, right down to the sexual consent forms and childbirth agreements. I never noticed that before.