New Hlobane International wasn’t what Serrin had expected. He had vague memories of Johannesburg as a grimy, depressingiy Americanized city with atrocious poverty in its satellite towns and enough crime to make New Yorkers feel at home. But the Zulu airport, the drive to the city through suburbia, and the rising skyline of New Hlobane itself had a quite different air. Pietermaritzburg, as it had been known before the Zulu people renamed it and made it their capital in the accords of 2039, even seemed to have chromed industrial plants ringing it. The country was rich, that much was clear; and if there were pockets of poverty, they were damn well hidden. The impression of elegance and style he’d gotten at the airport was strengthened by the sight of the spacious boulevards of the capital city.