Suddenly a commotion started behind the gate. Someone was having trouble with papers. Then a dark-haired, barefoot boy broke from his place in line, ran to the wooden gate, and vaulted over. The wooden structure was flimsy. As the boy landed, feet running, the fence collapsed.
Behind the fence they hesitated like an unbroken wave. Then they came. At the table the officials stood up, waved their hands, shouted, then stood on their benches and shouted some more. The officer who had shoved the vending woman disappeared in the wash of bodies.
Rara clutched her box of trinkets and scurried to the corner, then melded with the herding crowd for two blocks into the slums.
"Rara!"
She stopped and looked around. "Oh, there you are," she said, joining a young girl who stood back from the crowd, holding a box of trinkets like the other woman's.
"Rara, what happened?"
The birthmarked woman laughed. "You are watching the beginning of the transformation. Fear, hunger, a little more fear, no work, more fear, and every last one of these poor souls will be a first class, grade-A citizen of the Devil's Pot. How much did you sell?"
"Just a couple of units worth," the girl answered. She was perhaps sixteen, with a strange combination of white hair, blue eyes, and skin that had tanned richly and quickly, giving her the large-eyed look of an exotic snow-maned animal. "Why are they running?"
"Some boy started a panic. The fence gave way and the rest followed him." A second surge of people rounded the corner. "Welcome to the New Land, the Island of Opportunity," Rara called out. Then she laughed.
"Where are they all going to go?" Alter asked.