22
A RATHER STRANGE procession boarded the train in the morning. I had persuaded the guards to dress less conspicuously, but that didn’t take away from the fact that two of them were dark-skinned and very tall, and they still had to wear sunglasses to hide their green eyes, and that the others all had peacock hair and included a woman more muscled than an Earth champion weightlifter. Earth clothes fitted them poorly. Only Ezhya Palayi looked remotely normal. At least his clothes fitted him, but his hair gave him away. He sat a little apart from the rest of the group, fiddling with a comm unit. Something to be taken care of at home no doubt.
I sat and stared out the window, where green fields whizzed past under a leaden sky. I was exhausted, my eyes gritty. I kept seeing Eva’s face, and w
