“Fung Zao,” I said, my mouth full of barbequed pork.
“And that is what?”
“Good!” Bahram said, looking surprised. And dug into his feet.
A large, shiny, floating limo glided toward us, not bothering to dodge anything as we, and everyone else in the skies, had been doing. But then, it didn’t need to, as everybody gave it an extra wide birth. It reminded me of a shark cutting through the ocean and fish suddenly remembering somewhere else they needed to be.
Only it wasn’t a shark that decorated the face of the man who looked out of the back window, after it silently lowered.
I didn’t know him, but I knew that tat. A beautifully rendered tiger prowled across the cheek of a handsome Chinese guy in an expensive suit. The tat matched the one I’d put on before we landed, because Kitty was not only security in these parts; she was my calling card.
I held up an arm, and my own tiger growled a little at his, before the two recognized each other and settled down.
“Dorina Basarab,” the man said, and bowed his head slightly. “If you will come with me?”
The door was opened and a hand extended. I grabbed my buns and happily scuttled over. Louis-Cesare followed, despite not being asked, and got away with it because he always did; it was a talent.
But Rashid found the door closed in his face.
“What—we are with them!” he said indignantly.
My new guide popped an eyebrow worthy of Mircea. “I was told to pick up two senators. Are you a senator?”
“I—no, but—”
“Then you can follow us.”
“But—but—we don’t know how to drive this thing!”
“You were just saying you could do better,” Bahram said, around a mouthful of feet.
“I did not!”
“Yes, you did, just a minute ago—”
“Be quiet!” he was told.
He may have been told other things, as well, but I didn’t hear them. Because our ride was smoothly gliding across the skies, which seemed much less chaotic with tinted windows and soft music tinkling in the background. And champagne on offer.
“I left my beer,” I realized.
“Bahram will no doubt handle it,” Louis-Cesare said, accepting a glass of bubbles for us both.
I smiled and ate pork buns.
I could get used to this.
Chapter Thirty
Dory, Hong Kong
“Okay, how did I miss this?” I asked, after Louis-Cesare helped me out of the limo.
It looked like there was already stratification taking place in the new, floating city. The rusted-out buses we’d passed earlier were nowhere to be seen, nor were there any tire buffer zones. Instead, the limo pulled smoothly into a berth beside what reminded me of a dockside village, only there was no water. It floated on air instead, high above the ruined cityscape, like a manmade island complete with greenery and a central fountain.
The buildings were wood, I guessed because it was lighter and quicker to build, but they weren’t houses. The ones I could see from the outskirts looked like nightclubs, bars and restaurants, with a few shops littered in between. There was a movie theatre, a couple of dueling karaoke bars blasting waves of sound back and forth, and even a miniature night market down the center.
It was a floating entertainment complex, I realized, and appeared to have a large clientele.
The limo was secured by a little gate in back of the berth, and we exited straight onto one of the wooden sidewalks that connected the buildings. They were broad and a little bouncy, but perfectly walkable. On either side, there were shrubs in pots and squares of grass in planters, on what, now that I looked at it more closely, did seem to be a base of old tires. But they were covered by the sidewalks and greenery and thus almost invisible.
“How do you keep from floating off?” I asked our guide, whose name—I shit you not—was Elvis.
“Engines underneath. Enough to move us about, when we need to.”
“Why would you need to do that?”
“Hot spots,” he said, which didn’t tell me anything, and he strode away toward a large building before I could ask.
It was nothing special on the outside, not that any of the buildings were. There hadn’t been a lot of time for decoration, I guessed, or even painting. The bare wood had mostly been left the way it was, except for a few signs and some ads rippling across the surface of the boards.
In this case, the ads had gotten an upgrade, with the two scantily clad, cartoon cuties who hedged the door encased in