It made Bogdan wonder if anyone, besides Kitty and himself, was keeping up with their body maintenance. And if not, why not? Didn’t the charter still have juve insurance for keeping everyone on the sunny side of forty?
Free unlimited juve treatments, Bogdan recalled, would be a standard plankholder right aboard the Oships. The weird reverend had made that clear, and Lieutenant Perez had further emphasized it during their tour of the hab drums.
The lieutenant had taken him to Hab Mead, a drum that contained a freshwater lake. They strolled down a country lane that, because of the curvature of the drum, seemed to go uphill. The horizon was so steep, in fact, that the town in front of them was tilted nearly vertical, like a wall map, and Perez easily pointed out local attractions. “There’s the stadium over there,” he said, “and the complex below it has a theater, concert hall, and exhibition space. Library and health spa over there. Clubs and theaters. And way up there the marina.” Bogdan had to crane his neck to see the lake. Its blue water was oddly curved and it extended the full length of the drum. The lake was bordered on one side by a forest and golf course and on the other by cultivated fields.
There was no vehicular traffic on the lane, and the few pedestrians they met stopped to gossip and wish them a wonderful day. Everyone was young, attractive, and friendly. Everyone seemed to know Bogdan’s name, especially the girls who beamed him high-energy smiles.
“It’s no mystery,” Lieutenant Perez said with a grin. “It’s the uniform. Don’t ask me why, but the girls seem to especially like you jump pilots.” Hearing this, Bogdan puffed out his chest a little.
“Here we are,” Perez said, stopping in front of a trim, two-story residence that sat in the middle of its own spacious, landscaped yard. They opened a wooden gate and walked up flagstone steps. “It’s intentionally small so you can also have a place in one of the cities.” The tan-colored house didn’t seem small to Bogdan. The whole charter would easily fit into it. “The next drum over,” Perez went on, “will be the designated party hab after the General Awakening, when everybody’s up. Having a quiet country place right next door isn’t such a bad idea.”
The front door opened without hesitation, and they walked right in. They passed through a large foyer into a tiled courtyard at the center of the building. The courtyard was open to the blue sky, which Bogdan realized was actually the lake.
“A fully auto kitchen over there,” Perez said, pointing out the rooms surrounding the courtyard. “Media room, three full baths, small gym with sauna and hot tub, full arbeitor staff, houseputer. Oh, and check it out.” He waved his hand, and the courtyard tiles beneath his feet turned into windows to space. Bogdan was suspended between a watery ceiling and starry floor.
“It’s fantastic!” Bogdan said. “So much room. How many people live here?”
“Just you, Cadet Kodiak, and anyone you want to live with you.”
2.16
Mary and Fred swallowed oxytabs before leaving the apartment. Rolfe’s was located on a floor nearly three thousand meters above sea level, and they planned to spend some time on its unpressurized Stardeck. An uptraffic watch advised them of a dixon lift making nonstop trips between the 150th and 475th levels.
Mary wore a subdued cocktail face; a sleeveless sheath of plum-blue crepe de chine; a pair of pearly black, open-toed heels; and a necklace of black coral beads. Her newly black hair was glued into a stack on top of her head.
However, it took her only one glance at the crowds in the elevator station to see that her initial, wilder impulse had been closer to the mark. She and Fred were surrounded by a group whose party clothes played off each other’s in gaudy ripples of color from one end of the station to the other. Mary felt conspicuously drab.
It was no better in the dixon lift where there was too much shrieking, singing, and drinking. Too many people wearing smart perfumes, fragrances with competitive algorithms that vied for exclusive niches along the sweet and randy scales. To Mary, the elevator car stank of rotting swamp flowers, and she felt vomit tickle her throat. She closed her eyes and clutched Fred’s hand.
Fred said something to her, but she couldn’t hear it. She tabbed their personal channel, but he didn’t reply, and it took her a moment to realize that he was off line. The dry-cleaning would have stripped him of his implants, and he’d left his loner valet down in the apartment.
Fred leaned over and spoke directly into her ear, “Do you copy?”
Mary nodded her head once.
“I was saying,” Fred continued, “doesn’t this remind you of the centennial celebration? Nuts, eh?”
Mary nodded again. It was so Fred to forget that evangelines had been released to the world only in this century, and thus had missed out on one of the defining parties of the previous century.
IT WAS QUIETER on the upper pedways, and Fred could finally hear himself think. What he was thinking about, as they steered a course from the elevator station on Level 475 to Rolfe’s at the southeast corner of Level 500, were those fiery little rollmops of Mary’s that still glowed like coals in his gut. He wondered what had happened today to propel his Mary into the kitchen to experiment with dangerous recipes? Something must have happened, and he debated coming right out and asking her what. She had looked pale in the elevator. She seemed better now, but hardly festive. Opening his mouth was risky, but if he didn’t at least try to prick the bubble of her mood before they got to Rolfe’s, she’d suffer silently all through the evening, and by extension so would he. So, avoiding all known pitfalls, and as breezily as he could, he said, “You look lovely tonight.”
“Yes, for a funeral, I suppose.”
Fred nodded his head. This didn’t sound promising, but he had to have faith and go with it. “Someone we know?” he said and braced for bad news.
She glanced up at him with bewilderment.
“The funeral,” he said.
Mary slumped against him in total evangeline resignation. “There’s no funeral, Fred. Only a cake.”
“Ah, a cake.”
“Yes, a cake. I did an intro unit in Cake Design this morning. My friend Marion told me about it.”
“Cake Design.”
“Yes, Fred, as in birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cupcakes, petits four, blintzes, torts—a ‘veritable array of confections,’ as the professor says. Don’t let the name mislead you. Cake Design covers ‘a broad field and ambitious craft.’”
As dispassionately as humanly possible, so as not to reveal any bias for or against the idea, Fred said, “This interests you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not as bad as I thought. You get to design not only cakes but also ice statuary, punch fountains, wine grottoes, chocolate installations—stuff like that. The requirements are strict enough so not everyone can get into the program. A number of evangelines have already been admitted, but no dorises, so that should tell you something.
“There’s real chemistry involved too,” she went on, “colloidal emulsions and the branching properties of starch molecules, for instance—as well as sculpting, composition, and subem-assisted engineering and physics. It takes about a year to learn the basics, and another year of journeywork.”
“And?” Fred prompted, but probably too eagerly, for she fell silent again. So he put his arms around her and didn’t push his luck. Probably she’d gotten some insulting duty offer on the DCO board this morning that had driven her to the course on cakes. Pet-sitting or something like that. Bartending maybe, or worse, closet management for some rich fool—the kinds of call outs that evangelines dreaded. Fred didn’t envy Mary her evangeline lot—never to work in the field they were bred to. To have the lowest duty person/hours of all commercial iterants. No wonder she was driven to the kulinmate to dial up gut grenades.