Tongana woke up early. Sleeping on a mattress felt wrong, not because of the years she had spent sleeping in a cot, but because of what was happening back in Bonde Wakulima. When her friends were free from Ahriman's cruelty, then-- and only then-- she'd be able to sleep soundly.
She looked around the hotel room, at the flower-print drapes, the heavily polished wooden furniture and the obscenely wide bed that she and her friends shared. She looked at the pictures on the walls, showing star fields, lunar Earthrises and rolling hills covered in rainforest. The last image probably seemed exotic to these city-dwelling northerners.
Tongana opened the window blinds, then the window itself, letting in a wave of warm, thin air that smelled of the crowd below. The city bustled and roiled beneath her, with wide dirt roads separating the tall, grim old buildings. Soon, it would all be lit up by the city's haze-lights. They would stay lit for fourteen hours, then go dormant for another ten. Unlike Bonde Wakulima, where only a few lamps lit up the streets, this city had an artificial, Earthlike cycle of day and night, programmed by the first-generation colonists and never changed since.
The others in the room were sleeping better. Maya's eyes were open, but she only stared lazily at the wall, still comfortable beneath the covers, and the others were stacked behind her, some huddling together, some alone on their faces. One woman hugged a spare pillow like it was a stuffed animal. On the far the side of the bed, Hengsha lay sprawling and twisted. Without the snoring, Tongana would have thought she was dead.
Seeing Tongana's eyes on her, Maya stretched, groaning like an old wooden house, and got slowly to her feet, taking care to protect her broken arm. The others followed, a few of them mumbling their good-mornings to each other. Some stood in corners and prayed or made offerings, and one woman elbowed her way to the door, mumbling about breakfast as she left the room. She didn't seem to notice Hengsha slipping through after her.
At first, Tongana wanted to follow them and make sure Hengsha stayed out of trouble, but then she decided against it.
Tongana waited, seating herself on one of the cushioned office chairs in the back of the room. She watched as the other refugees remembered their worries, then whispered quietly among themselves.
"Tongana?" said someone, finally. "You're the leader, right? What's next?"
"We follow the plan," said Tongana. "Venus for All said we could meet them there in two hours. We have their address. For now, we wait."
More people filed out to breakfast, coming back twenty or thirty minutes later. Hengsha was gone for almost an hour, and when she returned, she was visibly fatter, tottering sickly into the room with a hand on her stomach. For the first time Tongana had seen, her face wasn't tense.
"Have a good meal?" Tongana dared to ask.
"Yeah," Hengsha moaned. "So good, it hurts."
"You've just gotten your first taste of civilization. It tastes good, doesn't it?"
As her response, Hengsha flopped down on the bed, looking ready for another night's sleep.
Unfortunately for her, after only one hour, Tongana stood up and said grandly, "It's time we headed out."
Fifteen people fumbled out of the hotel room, down the shallow, carpeted stairs to the lobby, then out into the hot, stinking streets, where people and vehicles kicked up a fog of airborne grit. Summoning the Venus for All address on her projector, Tongana looked around for a street sign, oriented herself and pointed the group in a direction that looked like it would get them there. On one side, carts with tall wheels threatened to run over their toes, while vendors harassed them on the other, hawking random goods from within their offensively bright-colored kiosks. The dirt in the air ground against the women's faces, carried on the wind that blasted along the streets.
