didn't see one bare-breasted woman on our way in and --" Again she stopped and frowned at him. "Do you really want me to assume that everything you say is a lie?"
"I thought it was worth a try."
"Don't be silly. I have no breasts."
"You have small ones," said Peter. "Surely you're aware of the distinction."
"I don't want to discuss my body with a man dressed in a badly planned, overgrown flower garden."
"Women are all dowds here," said Peter. "Tragic but true. Dignity and all that. So are the old men. Only the boys and young men on the prowl are allowed such plumage as this. I think the bright colors are to warn women off. Nothing serious from this lad! Stay to play, or go away. Some such thing. I think Jane chose this city for us solely so she could make me wear these things."
"I'm hungry. I'm tired."
"Which is more urgent?" asked Peter.
"Hungry."
"There are grapes," he offered.
"Which you didn't wash. I suppose that's a part of your death wish."
"On Divine Wind, insects know their place and stay there. No pesticides. Jane assured me."
"There were no pesticides on Path, either," said Wang-mu. "But we washed to clear away bacteria and other one-celled creatures. Amebic dysentery will slow us down."
"Oh, but the bathroom is so nice, it would be a shame not to use it," said Peter. Despite his flippancy, Wang-mu saw that her comment about dysentery from unwashed fruit bothered him.
"Let's eat out," said Wang-mu. "Jane has money for us, doesn't she?"
Peter listened for a moment to something coming from the jewel in his ear.
"Yes, and all we have to do is tell the master of the restaurant that we lost our IDs and he'll let us thumb our way into our accounts. Jane says we're both very rich if we need to be, but we should try to act as if we were of limited means having an occasional splurge to celebrate something. What shall we celebrate?"
"Your bath."
"You celebrate that. I'll celebrate our safe return from being lost in the woods."
Soon they found themselves on the street, a busy place with few cars, hundreds of bicycles, and thousands of people both on and off the glideways. Wang-mu was put off by these strange machines and insisted they walk on solid ground, which meant choosing a restaurant close by. The buildings in this neighborhood were old but not yet tatty-looking; an established neighborhood, but one with pride. The style was radically open, with arches and courtyards, pillars and roofs, but few walls and no glass at all. "The weather must be perfect here," said Wang-mu.
"Tropical, but on the coast with a cold current offshore. It rains every afternoon for an hour or so, most of the year anyway, but it never gets very hot and never gets chilly at all."
"It feels as though everything is outdoors all the time."
"It's all fakery," said Peter. "Our apartment had glass windows and climate control, you notice. But it faces back, into the garden, and besides, the windows are recessed, so from below you don't see the glass. Very artful. Artificially natural looking. Hypocrisy and deception -- the human universal."
"It's a beautiful way to live," said Wang-mu. "I like Nagoya."
"Too bad we won't be here long."
Before she could ask to know where they were going and why, Peter pulled her into the courtyard of a busy restaurant. "This one cooks the fish," said Peter. "I hope you don't mind that."
"What, the others serve it raw?" asked Wang-mu, laughing. Then she realized that Peter was serious. Raw fish!
"The Japanese are famous for it," said Peter, "and in Nagoya it's almost a religion. Notice -- not a Japanese face in the restaurant. They wouldn't deign to eat fish that was destroyed by heat. It's just one of those things that they cling to. There's so little that's distinctively Japanese about their culture now, so they're devoted to the few uniquely Japanese traits that survive."
Wang-mu nodded, understanding perfectly how a culture could cling to long-dead customs just for the sake of national identity, and also grateful to be in a place where such customs were all superficial and didn't distort and destroy the lives of the people the way they had on Path.
Their food came quickly -- it takes almost no time to cook fish -- and as they ate, Peter shifted his position several times on the mat. "Too bad this place isn't nontraditional enough to have chairs."