They raved through the warren of underground halls and corridors like a pocket riot, scattering ordinary passengers and dodging security guards, finally crowding onto a shuttle that went north to Sao Paulo, taking with them someone who looked remarkably like Talbeck: a burly black-haired, blue-eyed man, half his face a raw sheet of burn-scarred skin. And the ReUnited Nations Police tail went that way, too, while Talbeck caught a stratocruiser that arced high above the turning globe, a thirty-minute low orbital flight that came down at the river port of Chongqing, in the province of Sichuan in the Democratic Union of China, on the shore of the Yangtze Kiang. It was raining, in China. The gentle summer rain drifted through the indistinct light of a tropical dawn, hazing the signal lights of the high-masted ships that plied the broad, muddy river. Little stalls sheltered by red and blue canvas awnings lined the road out of the spaceport, where by the flare of glotubes smiling round-cheeked schoolgirls sold oranges and incense sticks and wads of fake money.
