Bounce nearly broke down and cried when she saw they didn't have cradles.

The Native Eurasians were perched on rickety wooden gantries, legs dangling to the floor, gathered around a raised platform set in front of a fire. Sullen flames licked crusted cookpot and blackened bricks, their black residue fading into the shadows that gripped the tiny room. It was like an Enlightenment etching: "Cultic Savages of the Extreme North at Repast."

There were six of them, a child, five adults, and an infant in its own special scaffolding. All except the baby were skinny and sharp-faced. The old man and women had normal hair, if un-clayed, but the boys and the girl sported the naked, sand-colored hair of only the most inbred Eurasian indigenes. At least none of them were as threatening as the hulk who had greeted her—failed to greet her—at the door. But all of them were staring at her breasts.

Bounce tried to psych herself up. This was a cultural experience. Dinner with Eurasians! She signed respectful greetings, and tried to remember the English phrases she'd scanned in the taxi. "Um, Hey-loh."

Everyone started yelling at once. The woman bounded to her feet, hands in the air, shrieking like a monkey at the adolescents behind Bounce. The male, the hulk, barked back at them, then at the patriarch, who pounded his hand on the platform, repeating the same question over and over. The little boy howled. Even the baby cried at her. Bounce had to fight to stop herself from running away.

Only the cloth-wrapped old woman did not join the frenzy. She turned her wrinkled, blot-less face to Bounce and touched the little boy on his arm.

As the rest of the kin group bellowed and cavorted, the boy unwrapped one of the cloth sheets from the old woman's upper body, scampered across the tiny room, and held the cloth out to Bounce, face averted.

It was a blanket of stinking, scratchy, animal hair. Bounce wrapped it around herself with gratitude.

The furor subsided, the Native Eurasian people, no longer driven mad by the sight of her chest, settled back into their seats. And now on to that next challenge.

The wooden sitting gantry felt as uncomfortable as it looked. Why didn't these people crouch in cradles like everyone else in the world? The bustle of Bounce's quill skirt dug into her lower thighs and the blanket itched horribly. And everyone at the table was talking at her.

"You're pretty," said the little boy in oddly-accented Ilinwa. "You have a pretty spotty face. It's like in videos."

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Bounce stared at him blankly for a moment before she figured out what he was saying.

"You mean my blots? All Gondwanans have them. Just like you Native Eurasians have..." What? Enormous noses? Crazy-colored eyes? Bad skin? Bad teeth? "...sand-colored hair," Bounce finished.

"The word is blond."

That grumble came from the young man, whose own nose was covered in irregular freckles. His eyes were pale, but weirdly blue. It was like his biology was trying to make a Gondwanan, but hadn't gotten the details right.

The hulk looked back at her, lips curved down. That was probably a frown, though it was hard to tell on his blank, blotless face. He had nice lips, though, and Bounce decided she liked the eyes, too. They were exotic and intense, like the electric arc from a powerful Grid node.

The girl cleared her throat. "And your hair is…is it gray?"

Bounce ran a self-conscious hand over her hair clay. "Most southern Gondwanans have dove-colored hair, yes."

The boy still aimed his inscrutable north-hemisphere expression at her. "And why is there mud in yours?"

"Oh! You had such a long journey," the woman on the other end of the platform leaped in as if to stop Bounce from revealing a shameful confession. "All the way from Gondwana."

Bounce signed agreement, trying to remember the words in Ilinwa to explain that her hair clay was made of molded ochre and plastic. It was hygienic, not that she thought the naked hair of her hosts was disgusting in any way.

"Such a long way," the middle-aged woman said. She made a disgusting noise with her tongue on the roof of her mouth roof of her mouth like a monkey splitting open a coconut. Tsk tsk. The Eurasian reached across the cluttered surface of the platform and poured a yellow-brown liquid into the cup in front of Bounce.

"Thank—" Bounce began, but again the woman interrupted her. Holding her own cup above her head, the Native Eurasian intoned something in English, then in bad Ilinwa, "Minooko! Drink! To our Gondwanan guest."

"Thank—" Bounce tried again, but the other people seated around the platform erupted in noise.

"Chiirs!" they said, or something like it.

They all reached across the platform and smashed their cups together. Bounce tried to imitate them, and splashed the front of her shawl, which fell open. Their eyes all widened.

The meal did not get easier.