Buenos Aires
Aris Merquoni

--=_=--

o/~ Fill me up with your heat, with your noise, with
your dirt, overdo me! / Let me dance to your beat, 
make it loud, let it hurt, run it through me! / Don't 
hold back, you are certain to impress / Tell the 
driver this is where I'm staying. o/~
                              - Buenos Aires, Evita
--=_=--

	"Asta vi nimya blish tarta?"

	I blinked up at the lack-and-orange-uniformed guard who 
was jabbering at me. "Excuse me," I said in Th-varian, "I don't 
understand."
	He blinked a few times in response. "Verni yukva? Shasti 
tel astrina? Do you speak Hero's Tongue?"
	The last was a fairly recognizable version of the Hero's 
Tongue, the language of the Kzinti. "Yes, I do," I said in the 
friendly tense. I hoped that he wouldn't try to use the language 
to try to manipulate me- it'd been years since I'd spoken any 
Kzinti and it was a tricky language.
	"Ah." The guard nodded to me. "Are you planning on 
staying there all day and night, sthondat?" The friendly tense 
took most of the sting out of the insult, but not all.
	"I'm waiting for a friend," I replied, although the 
connotations of 'friend' were kind of screwed up. "Look, do you 
speak anything but Heros' tongue? Er, scratch that, do you speak 
English? Espanol? Kai'iit? Elven freeholder's tongue? Dragon? 
Kaled'a'in? Anything?"
	He frowned, and finally said, "I can do a good rendition 
of Interworld..."
	"Thank Firefoot," I sighed. For all that it wasn't plain 
English, Interworld was at least a *human* language. And now that 
I was stuck with a hayuman's lung capacity... "I'm waiting for a 
friend who's a citizen to come pick me up, get me ID."
	"Do you have identification?" he asked.
	I nodded. Reaching into my backpack, I managed to pull 
out my DTA ID. I handed it over with a sigh. He looked over the 
card, frowning.
	"It's all updated," I said. The mini-hologram showed me 
in dragonform, hayumanform, and Kzinform, so there shouldn't be 
much of a problem.
	"All right," he said, and swiped the card through a 
reader. "I'll need some blood for the DNA test."
	"Right," I said, "as long as you're not collecting it on 
silk."
	"Stainless steel and glass okay?"
	"Etched?"
	"No."
	"Fine."
	I waited while he got a positive ID on me, waited for the 
computer to process the information, and spit out another ID. He 
handed it over and I stuck it in my wallet, then stuck the wallet 
in my backpack. *I need a vest, badly,* I thought to myself 
randomly. *Something with pockets.*
	"All right, Aristalarus, you are now a listed citizen of 
Chi-lin. I suggest that you wait for your friend inside the city 
gates instead of outside. Welcome to civilization." He waved me 
inside and I followed his arm, a little bemused. There was a 
vendor nearby who was selling some very nice silk vests, so I 
haggled for a blue one and a matching wrap skirt that wouldn't be 
too confining while I waited for Nexx. I settled at a price that 
was equal to about $40 earthside, leaving the dealer wringing his 
hands in anguish.
	Nexx didn't take too long to show up. She looked over my 
purchases and the amount of money changing hands and remarked, 
"You were cheated."
	The resulting conversation between us and the merchant 
had another ten knocked off the price, and I walked away feeling 
quite smug. Nexx was chuckling behind her hand, and I asked her, 
"What?"
	"Oh, nothing," she said, "except that you probably just 
got the best deal on silk in the whole city. I didn't see the 
amount on the last bill you were handing over, and thought it was 
another twenty..."
	I chuckled along with her as we navigated through 
traffic. "What happened to Selvane?"
	"Shut up in kaetoonk for assaulting a city guard," she 
said. "I'm waiting for notice of the custody transfer." Nexx had 
an accent that I couldn't place, and an odd way of patterning her 
words, and it was hard to hear her above the crowd noise, so I 
gave up on conversation until we made it to the hotel.
	The elevator doors opened on a room with green walls, a 
white ceiling, and white carpet so thick you sank into it. There 
were plants with broad green leaves in each corner, a white sofa 
and table on the left, ornate double doors in front of us, and 
more furniture on the left. I didn't have any more time to look 
as Nexx pulled me toward the doors and pushed them open.
	There was a room beyond that with several halls branching 
out of it, decorated with the same carpet and the same wall 
color. I nodded hi to Shad and Phoenix, who were on the couch and 
using one of the walls as a screen to play a Mortal Kombat 
tournament. They both looked equally challenged, so I left them 
to it while I wandered off to the bathroom. I needed a shower 
like nothing else in my life.