There are many small boats moored to the piers, but only a couple or three of any size, and nothing approaching our ship’s dimensions. The pilot guides us toward an empty dock just off the center. Already a number of people stand there, waiting for us in silence. They do not move, they make no gesture, nor do they speak to or in any way I can see acknowledge us or, for that matter, each other. They are like statues.

The pilot is taking a long time angling the ship in toward the dock. Still, no one moves. The upturned faces blink, but they do not vary their position, they are not passing their eyes over the unfamiliarities of our ship. Only when ropes flop down toward them do a few of them move, without any particular speed, to retrieve and tie them.

Makemin strides up and down the pier giving orders; the locals totter out of his way like mill horses, and meanwhile many of the loonies are capering off the gangplank and scooting up the stairways toward the town permission or no. I’m asking Makemin about Nardac, specifically what I, as her physician, should do with her.

“We might leave her in the boat. Do you think she can be moved?”

“She’s not in any danger, but she’d be better looked after on land.”

“Well, fine, fine,” he is looking away, watching as our ship’s laden cranes swing out over the pier. “We’ll make arrangements.”

He wants her out of the way; he seems to want to avoid her now.

“Tell them who we are,” he says.

I climb up the gangplank and address the crowd in Lashlache.

“Aw hawdemin-herleken! Hawr s’dan s’dess! Aw d’hadr s’dess! Aw w’hodet s’hodet hodet woi m’set! M’swedet sherd’dhemeto, m’dqess ...” and so on.

This kind of formal speech in the vocative mode is nothing like the written or formal Lashlache upon which my studies concentrated, but as often happens with this sort of thing, I find my memory serves me better than I would have expected. I enjoy unshackling my voice like this. The people on the pier plainly understand me, although they do not attend to me.

The steps leading up to the city are steep and narrow, slotted into concrete like hardened custard. Ascending one by one, we gather in the open area above the harbor, where there is a profusion of water tanks, coal hoppers, rails set into gravelled scars, scaffolds thickly painted with creosote, barrels, carts, and warehouses with arched mouths standing open. The air here is still. The city doesn’t embrace the upper ring of the harbor, but only touches it, gingerly, at one point, where we are gathered now. The buildings here are tall, lean, and close together. They fill a narrow alley between two steep slopes of coffee-colored rock. The port is at one end of this alley; the city is at the other, where the slopes fall open. Apart from a few paths, there are no buildings or terraces to be seen on the sides of the mountains.