Cordelia was about ten yards away, on the other side of a thick flow of disembarking passengers. She held a battered floral-print suitcase with one hand, a leather handbag with the other. A tall, slender, expensively dressed Hispanic man was trying to help her with the suitcase. Jack was instantly suspicious of any helpful stranger wearing a purple pinstripe suit, slouch hat, and a fur-trimmed coat. It looked like baby harpseal pelts.

"Hey!" Jack shouted. "Cordelia! Over here! It's meJack!"

She obviously didn't hear him. For Jack, it was like watching television, or perhaps the view seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He couldn't attract Cordelia's attention. With the noise of the terminal, the buses revving their engines, the massed roar of the crowd, his words wouldn't cross the intervening distance.

The man took her suitcase. Jack yelled helplessly. Cordelia smiled. Then the man took her elbow and steered her toward a near-side exit.

"No!" It was loud enough that even Cordelia turned her head. Then she looked puzzled briefly, before continuing toward the exit at the behest of her guide.

Jack uttered a curse and started to pull and shove people out of his way as he tried to cross the waiting area. Nuns, jokers, punkers, street bums, it didn't matter. At least not until he fetched up against the bulk of a joker who looked to have the general shape and about half the mass of a Volkswagen Beetle.

"Goin' somewhere?" said the joker. "Yes," said Jack, trying to move past.

"I come all the way from Santa Fe for this. I always heard you people here was rude."