Csongor turned and looked. Marlon had used the wrong English word, but it was obvious what he was referring to. Every discarded tire in the entire industrialized world seemed to have ended up here on the Chinese coast, where they were used by the locals in the same way that their landlubber cousins used bamboo: as the Universal Substance out of which all other solid objects could be made. Sometimes they had to be hugely reprocessed in order to serve their intended function. In other cases, they still looked like tires. Every boat—nay, every floating object—in this universe was protected on all sides by tires slung from its gunwales on ropes, lined up in rows like shields on a Viking ship. This one was no exception. They dangled just above the waterline. It would be easy to reach up from the rowboat, grab one, and use it to climb aboard the larger vessel. The wheels .