Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,45

that was more like what she’d expected.

CHAPTER 13

Earthday, Messis 12

Jana repacked her toiletry kit and left the public showers in the train station. She handed the attendant the washcloth and towel, along with the ticket that confirmed how many items she had received, so that she could get back the deposit she’d had to put on the darn things—as if someone would want to take a threadbare washcloth and scratchy towel.

Then again, those things might be a luxury for some people at this point. At least she’d thought to bring some of her own soap in a waterproof container and didn’t have to use the bar soap that was supplied for everyone’s use.

She was grateful that she didn’t have to spend money on a hotel room in order to take a shower, which some of her more fastidious fellow passengers had done, but this hadn’t been something she had considered about the reality of traveling a long distance. Their car had toilets and small sinks to wash your hands and splash water on your face, but that didn’t alter the fact that after two days of travel, everyone was starting to smell a bit ripe.

Part of the adventure. But it made her wonder about the personal side of her new life. She’d thought plenty about the professional side, imagining different scenarios of meeting her boss, the Wolf, for the first time. What about the woman who would be her housemate? What kind of house would they be living in? There had to be indoor plumbing, right? Right?

Which was a harder way to travel—four straight days with the nightly stopovers or breaking up the journey and being stuck in a small town for a full day because trains didn’t run on Earthday anymore? More experienced travelers probably used the day to take in a movie or eat a decent meal or rent a room at the hotel. Some of the people going to Bennett had done enough traveling in the Northeast to feel confident that they could navigate through an unfamiliar town and believe the train wouldn’t pull out of the station when they were still a couple of blocks away. For the rest of them, the thought of being stranded in a border town, without luggage, without the papers that proved you had the terra indigene’s permission to cross the border, without anything to go back to even if you had enough money on you to pay for a ticket … Those were the reasons most of the passengers who had traveled from Lakeside were staying close to the station, making use of a sandwich shop or the diner that was open. And even those businesses would close an hour before dark, leaving passengers to spend another night on the train or in the train station.

Part of the adventure, Jana reminded herself as she wandered over to the station’s shop. The small space held everything from bottles of aspirin and toiletries to coloring books and decks of cards. There were a few postcards, but nothing that appealed to her.

Turning away from the postcards, Jana focused on the paperbacks in a spin rack. She’d found out the hard way that she couldn’t read when the train was in motion. She hadn’t embarrassed herself or caused her fellow passengers any discomfort, but she didn’t want to gamble with nausea again. Still, she’d have plenty of time to read this evening, just like the other evenings when the train pulled into a station for the night.

She looked at each book that was available. Some of the books held no interest for her and others she’d already read. But it was something to do, a reason to linger away from the train a little while longer.

No authors with last names ending in “gard.” Was that because the station didn’t want to stock anything written by a terra indigene or was it because the person who ordered the books didn’t know such books existed? Would the bookstore in Bennett carry books written by the Others as well as books written by Intuits? She’d have to ask John Wolfgard, since he’d told her he was going to manage the bookstore.

She selected a thriller, then put it back when she realized the gun for hire was a human and the villains in the story were terra indigene. That was when she noticed the woman sitting in a dark corner, half hidden by the spin rack. The body language made her think runaway, but the woman was an