Calm!
Jim took his own look around the bazaar. It didn’t feel dangerous, but ‘bad vibes’ in a place was something you read about in books, not see in real life. The various Birminghamites weren’t being skittish or nervous, except for the slight wariness towards civilian officials you still got in Reclamation Zones. It’d probably take another generation before any of these people could be comfortable looking someone like him in the eye, and that wasn’t just because nutrition under the Invaders had been so bad.
But even if it wasn’t dangerous, things still weren’t normal. And Jim couldn’t quite work out why. “Dammit, I’m rusty at this,” he muttered. “You feeling anything weird, Alex?”
“Yes,” she said. “Where are all the crimefulls?” She used the old collaborationist word for criminals, dissenters, and the simply obnoxious with no more than a momentary twitch of the mouth; good tradecraft, but not something she evidently enjoyed. “There should at least be somebody off in a corner, ranting about the Queen.”