This is an alternate timeline that splits off near the beginning of The
Robots of Dawn.
Elijah Baley was on the airplane on the way to the Spaceport. Suddenly,
there was a freak accident! The emergency door nearest him had been
ripped off, and the isolation doors had closed around him. He was
falling over 50,000 feet. Well, he mused, Better the loss of one C-7
detective than the entire plane. The plane would make an emergency
landing in the nearest City, incidentally Calcutta. [I know that Xining
is closer, but not all present-day cities were domed and enlarged to
become Cities, and Calcutta was mentioned in one of the books.]
He was acutely aware of the open space around him in all directions.
Like most terrestrial natives, he had a conditioned agoraphobia, and
blacked out. When he woke up, he was being pulled out of a pool of
water by a man in a uniform he had never seen before. He started
talking, in a strange dialect. "Very bad sir you fall into spring of
drowned girl, girl drown there 3500 years ago, now whoever fall into
spring take body of girl!" Baley finally placed the dialect. He was
speaking the dialect that was traditionally associated with the
legendary Undomed city! That figured out, he went on to more important
things; like why was his center of gravity off? And what was that extra
weight on his chest? Then, he looked down. And screamed.
I will be continuing this, as it doesn't require too much Ranma
continuity, and i have the Robots novels close at hand.
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