"Couldn't we--couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city--cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play _Beautiful Blue Deneb_ just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word _hotel_," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means--a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."