"Oh! Well in that case sure, I only work out four times a week."

Truthfulness gets hoisted at the next landing, then, and Svetka if anything picks up the pace.  Four stories later they exit into the main part of the building, which is much less sparsely decorated although still notably lacking in variety of color.  Svetka sets her on her feet and continues briskly down the hallway.

"Thank you!" Truthfulness says. "What is the orientation program for newly portaled people like?"

"There is not such a program.  You might be the first one, or close to that."  Svetka has a device in her hand, apparently, she taps it against a doorknob and it opens.  She ushers Truthfulness inside to an apartment.

"Oh!" Truthfulness says. "Have the portals been newly developed?"

"Yes.  Unless they were created elsewhere in secret first."  Here's a door to a balcony enclosed in striped winterizing vinyl.  "How would you say you are at balancing?"

"Normal at balancing?" Truthfulness says. 

"Try not to fall, but if you do, I will catch you."  Svetka unzips a doorway out of the balcony cover, and hauls a metal stack of grates up to the edge.  When she thwacks a clasp on the side, it extends rapidly and lands, to form a bridge, on the railing of a balcony across the alleyway.

Svetka hops onto it and offers Truthfulness a hand up.

Truthfulness looks at this nervously. "...I think your world's normal at balancing might be better at balancing than my world's."

"Come, now.  You wouldn't be afraid to walk on something this width on the ground, would you?"  It's maybe a foot and a half wide.  She repeats: "If you fall, I will catch you."

Truthfulness begins to hyperventilate. "No-- no, I'm scared, I can't-- please don't make me." She presses her back as flat against the wall as she can. There are prayers to say, meditations for when you are frightened-- but Truthfulness can't find any of them, they keep slipping through her head-- she realizes that this notamonk has no idea what she's doing and Truthfulness is never going to go home again--

She starts to cry.

"Shall I carry you again?  In a professional capacity."

"No-- no it's-- if you're scared of something, then you have to do it, that's the commandment-- if it's the sort of thing you're supposed to do--" Snot is running down Truthfulness's face. She drilled the fear-prayers as a child until they came up naturally without her having to do anything-- Word give me strength, Word give me courage, Word give me strength, Word give me courage-- I will let the fear pass over me and through me and where the fear is gone there will be nothing and only I will remain-- the scariest thing is fear, the scariest thing is fear--

She visibly pauses and draws herself together. She takes a deep breath. She focuses, very intently, on the feelings in her feet. She deliberately places in a box any thoughts other than the ones about the situation she's in right now. She says, in a voice that is calm in the way of people controlling complete hysteria, "does your plan account for the possibility t that people in my world are significantly clumsier than people in your world?"

"...I am not at all clumsy, and quite sure I would catch you.  You did not fall going up many flights of stairs quite quickly, as I may have expected if you were much clumsier.  It is not windy; the buildings here block it."

"Okay. I will go."

She begins to cross, reciting Word give me strength, Word give me courage in her head. 

Svetka is so ready to grab her.  She can even hold her hands if she wants; apparently Svetka is confident enough in her not-falling abilities to take the crossing backwards.

That would be helpful, yes!

Then they can safely make their way across.  This railing's a bit higher than the other building's; Svetka jumps off the grate, still facing backward, and then lifts Truthfulness down.

"Thank you!" Truthfulness says. She seems completely unembarrassed by what just happened.

"You are welcome."  She hits some sort of spring-loaded mechanism and the bridge stacks back up in her hands.  She sets it down and leads Truthfulness through the next apartment.  "Do you still feel basically well?  Physically."

"Yes! Is there a worry that I'll feel sick?" Truthfulness considered it. "Now that you've pointed it out I expect to have normal, uh, psychosomatic-anxiety-hypochondria-salience-of-physical-experience? Why don't you have a word for that?"

"I don't believe I have ever experienced that feeling to need a word for.  I am not very worried you would become sick, but your heights encounter seemed to shake you."  Out into another hallway!  And to the elevator this time instead of the stairs.

"So if someone asks you if you're feeling sick, you don't immediately notice all the small pains and stomach upsets and so on, and then conclude that you're sick, and then your heart starts racing because you're worried that you're sick and you notice that and then you feel even sicker?"

"No.  I am sorry to have caused you this."  Once the elevator's closed, Svetka rapidly types a long series into the floor-selection panel.  They start descending more quickly than Truthfulness is used to elevators doing.

"Your society has a lot of technology!"