Free Escape from Kathmandu by Kim Stanley Robinson Page B

that had sunk axle-deep, waving off the agents in desperate sign language. “Hooked for good,” I said.
    “Yeah,” Freds replied without moving his lips.
    The bus was now completely packed; an old woman had even been insinuated between Freds and me, which suited me fine. But it was going to be another miserable trip. “You’re really doing your part for the cause,” I said to Freds as I prepared to depart, thinking of the cramped day ahead of him.
    “No hroblem!” he said liplessly. “I like these ’us trits!”
    Somehow I believed him. I weaseled my way upright in the aisle and said good-bye. Our tails were watching the bus’s only door, but that wasn’t really much of a problem. I just squirmed between the Nepalis, whose concept of personal “body space” is pretty much exactly confined to the space their bodies are actually occupying—none of this eighteen-inch bullshit for them—and got to a window on the other side of the bus. There was no way our watchers could have seen across the interior of that bus, so I was free to act. I apologized to the Sherpa I was sitting on, worked the window open, and started to climb out. The Sherpa very politely helped me, without the slightest suggestion I was going anything out of the ordinary, and I jumped down into the mud. Hardly anyone on the bus even noticed my departure. I snuck through the no-man’s-land of the back buses. Quickly enough I was back on Durbar Marg and in a cab on my way to the Star.

XV
    I got the cabbie to park almost inside the Star’s lobby, and Buddha barreled into the backseat like a fullback hitting the line. While we drove he kept his head down, just in case, and the taxi took us out to the airport.
    Things were proceeding exactly according to my plan, and you might imagine I was feeling pretty pleased, but the truth is that I was more nervous than I’d been all morning. Because we were walking up to the RNAC desk, you see…
    When I got there and inquired, the clerk told us our flight had been canceled for the day.
    “What?” I cried. “Canceled! What for?”
    Now, our counter agent was the most beautiful woman in the world. This happens all the time in Nepal—in the country you pass a peasant bent over pulling up rice, and she looks up and it’s a face from the cover of
Cosmopolitan
, only twice as pretty and without the vampire makeup. This ticket clerk could have made a million modeling in New York, but she didn’t speak much English, and when I asked her “What for?” she said, “It’s raining,” and looked past me for another customer.
    I took a deep breath. Remember, I thought: RNAC. What would the Red Queen say? I pointed out the window. “It’s not raining. Take a look.”
    Too much for her. “It’s raining,” she repeated. She looked around for her supervisor, and he came on over; a thin Hindu man with a red dot on his forehead. He nodded curtly. “It’s raining up at J—.”
    I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I got a report on the shortwave from J—, and besides you can look north and see for yourself. It’s not raining.”
    “The airstrip at J— is too wet to land on,” he said.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you landed there twice yesterday, and it hasn’t rained since.”
    “We’re having mechanical trouble with the plane.”
    “I’m sorry, but you’ve got a whole fleet of small planes out there, and when one has a problem you just substitute for it. I know, I switched planes three times here once.” Nathan and Sarah didn’t look too happy to hear that one.
    The supervisor’s supervisor was drawn by the conversation: another serious, slender Hindu. “The flight is canceled,” he said. “It’s political.”
    I shook my head. “RNAC pilots only strike the flights to Lukla and Pokhara—they’re the only ones that have enough passengers for the strike to matter.” My fears concerning the real reason for the cancellation were being slowly confirmed. “How many passengers on this