Free Odd Girl Out by Timothy Zahn

undoubtedly, at this point. Nevertheless, it was a vote of confidence in the colony’s future, and a nice psychological boost besides.
    The locals had done their part, too. There were all sorts of businesses nestled in among the houses, from bakeries and neighborhood grocery stores to the more homespun sorts of places like leather-workers and pottery makers. I spotted electronics shops, small-engine assembly plants, and even a tool-and-die manufacturer, all the signs of a colony determined to become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.
    The colonists’ private lives also seemed to have been taken care of. The houses were simple but nice and seemed reasonably well-kept. There was a fair sprinkling of homes that looked unoccupied, but it was possible their owners were simply off at long-term jobs elsewhere on the planet, working the mines or forests or else renting scuba equipment to holiday-makers at Janga’s Point. Nowhere in Imani City, not even in those half-empty neighborhoods, did I sense anything remotely resembling an atmosphere of defeat, as one of the more effusive commentators had dubbed it.
    Not, that is, until we reached Zumurrud District.
    If the reporters had come to New Tigris looking for doom and gloom—and knowing reporters, I had no doubt that they had—this was definitely where they’d spent most of their time. The houses here, which had probably started life as nice as those in the rest of the city, were showing the signs of severe neglect. Worse, there were a surprising number whose broken windows and carved graffiti showed complete abandonment. The handful of shops had security grates on windows and doors, and there seemed to be at least twice as many taverns decorating the street corners as I’d spotted elsewhere in the city.
    There were also a lot more people on the streets. Some of them were walking purposefully along, but there were a goodly number who were merely sitting or standing in small groups, clustered together on doorsteps or leaning on lampposts. The groups seemed self-segregated by age, with one block’s loiterers consisting of bitter-faced middle-aged men, while the next block’s were composed mostly of teenagers.
    There were few women in evidence in any of the groups. Possibly they were gathered inside the houses instead, looking as bitter or depressed as the men. Or maybe the majority of the women had long since moved out of the neighborhood.
    “All this in only twenty years?” Bayta murmured as we walked past another group, this one composed of bitter-eyed men in their mid-twenties.
    “It’s actually worse than that,” I said. Like the other groups we’d passed, the men here had broken off their conversation as we approached, gazing at us with the odd expressions of people who wanted to be suspicious of the strangers but weren’t sure we were worth even that much effort. “It’s probably really only ten years of decay, not a full twenty. The first ten years would have been filled with typical mad-dash government activity and excitement. Hordes of new colonists being brought in, buildings and businesses going up, industries started, and everyone as optimistic as hell.”
    “What happened?”
    “What happened was the same thing that happened with all the colonies,” I told her, feeling a quiet pang of sympathy for these people who’d been casually brushed aside when the governmental winds changed direction. I knew exactly how they felt. “The initial push wound down, the UN brought all the temporary workers back home, and all the extra torchliners they’d rented for the big push were flown to the Tube, disassembled, and packed back aboard Quadrail cargo cars. Suddenly the colony found itself basically ignored while the UN started pouring its money and attention into the newest rage to catch its eye.”
    Bayta shivered. “Yandro,” she murmured.
    “In this case, yes, it was Yandro,” I confirmed. “But it could have been anything that caught the bureaucratic