* * * * *
Ah, hours and days of exciting preparation! What a round of packing and
buying; what a filling out of forms and a stamping of visas; what an
orgy of injections and inoculations and preventive therapy! Merely
getting ready for the trip made my pulse race faster and my adrenalin
balance rise to the very point of paranoia; it was like being given a
true blue new chance to live.
At last I was ready. I stepped into the transmission capsule; set the
dials; unlocked the door, stepped out; collapsed the capsule and stored
it away in my carry-all; and looked about at my new home.
Pyew! Kwel smell of staleness, of sourness, above all of coldness! It
was a close matter then if I would be able to keep from a violent
eructative stenosis, as you say. I closed my eyes and remembered warm
violets for a moment, and then it was all right.
The coldness was not merely a smell; it was a physical fact. There was a
damp grayish substance underfoot which I recognized as snow; and in a
hard-surfaced roadway there were a number of wheeled vehicles moving,
which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me. I adjusted my coat
controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do.
The reek of stale decay remained. Then there were also the buildings,
painfully almost vertical. I believe it would not have disturbed me if
they had been truly vertical; but many of them were minutes of arc from
a true perpendicular, all of them covered with a carbonaceous material
which I instantly perceived was an inadvertent deposit from the air. It
was a bad beginning!
However, I was not _bored_.
* * * * *
I made my way down the "street," as you say, toward where a group of
young men were walking toward me, five abreast. As I came near, they
looked at me with interest and kwel respect, conversing with each other
in whispers.
I addressed them: "Sirs, please direct me to the nearest recruiting
office, as you call it, for the dread Camorra."
They stopped and pressed about me, looking at me intently. They were
handsomely, though crudely dressed in coats of a striking orange color,
and long trousers of an extremely dark material.
I decreed that I might not have made them understand me--it is always
probable, it is understood, that a quicknik course in dialects of the
past may not give one instant command of spoken communication in the
field. I spoke again: "I wish to encounter a representative of the
Camorra, in other words the Black Hand, in other words the cruel and
sinister Sicilian terrorists named the Mafia. Do you know where these
can be found?"