She walked toward the bathroom, leaving a trail of discarded clothing behind her. By the time she reached it she was naked. “Shower, shower, where are you?” she called. It turned out that the shower was in a separate cubicle from the toilet, the bathroom proper, and the — “A full-body hair remover?” She boggled slightly. What would you want to remove all your hair for? Legs or armpits or pubes she could see, but eyebrows?
“Manicure and pedicure facilities are available on D deck,” recited a recording, just grainy enough not to make her wonder if a real person was in the room with her. “A range of basic clothing is available from the apartment fab. Fitted and designer items are available from the tailors on F deck. See the panel beside the sink for additional makeover and service options.”
“Urk.” Wednesday backed toward the shower cubicle, pulled a face, and sniffed one armpit. “Eew!” First things first. What did Herman say? You’re a rich, idle, bored heiress: play the part.
She showered thoroughly, staying under the spray nozzles until her skin felt as if it was going to come off. She washed her hair thoroughly, trying to get the grit and desperation of the past week off her body. The all-body depilator she gave a wide berth — the consequences of an accident with the controls could be too embarrassing for words — but the mirror wall by the sink had a full skin programmer that could talk to her chromatophores, so she spent an absorbing half hour reprogramming her makeup: night-dark eyeliner, blue lips, dead white skin, and glossy black hair. If anyone asks, I’m in mourning, she thought, and a sudden stab of agonizing guilt made it less than a lie.
She hatched from the bathroom an hour and a half later, naked as the day she was born. The lounge seemed enormous, cold, and empty. Worse, she couldn’t imagine putting on her old clothes. So she wandered over to the closet and looked inside. “Is there a clothing menu for this thing?” she asked.
A lightbug led her to the fabber, a large boxy extrusion from the wall of a walk-in wardrobe she hadn’t suspected. “Please select options. Materials and energy will be billed to your room service total.”
“Oh.” Five minutes scrolling through patterns convinced her of one thing: whoever’d programmed the fab’s design library hadn’t done so with her in mind. Eventually she settled for some basic underwear, a pair of black trousers and a long-sleeved top that wasn’t too offensive, and rubber-soled socks for her feet. The fab hummed and burped up a load of hot, fresh clothing a minute later, still smelling faintly of solvents. Wednesday pulled them on immediately. Bet the shops are more expensive but have better stuff, she thought cynically.
An hour spent poking around the shops on F deck convinced her that she was right. The names were unfamiliar, but the attitude of the staff — and the items in the displays — said it all. They were priced to satisfy exactly the sort of rich bitch Herman had suggested she play, but as far as Wednesday was concerned they were a dead loss: the target audience was too old, even if they were well preserved. The ultrafemme gowns and dresses had icky semiotics, the shops for people from cultures with sumptuary laws and dress codes were too weird, the everyday stuff was too formal — What would I want to do with that, wear it to a business meeting? she thought, fingering one exquisitely tailored jacket — and there was nothing flaky or uplevel to catch her imagination. No fun.
In the end, she bought a lacy white trouser-skirt combination to wear to dinner, and left it at that. The horrible truth was beginning to dawn on her: I’ve got an enormous suite to myself, but nothing to do! And I’m here for a week! With no toys. Wednesday didn’t have anyone to share the voyage with unless she felt like pestering Frank, and she wasn’t sure how he’d respond. He looked young, but it was hard to tell. And he’s got a job to do. And there’s no news. Not while the ship was engaged in a series of causality-violating jumps, lock-stitching space time to its drive kernel. And the shops are crap. She glanced across the diamond-walled atrium in growing disbelief. And I bet the other Sybarite-class passengers are all boring assholes, diplomats, and rich old business queens and all. Clearly, very few people her age traveled this way.
I’m already bored! And there are still three hours to go before dinner!
“Feeding time at the zoo,” Max muttered darkly. “Wonder who they’re feeding?”
“The social director, with any luck. Stuffed and basted.” Steffi kept a straight face, staring right ahead as they headed into the dining room. “Stupid custom.”
“Now, now.” Max nodded politely to a plumply padded dowager whose thirty-year physique belied the fact that her formal business suit was at least a century out of fashion. “Good evening, Mrs. Borozovski! How are you tonight?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Fromm!” She bobbed slightly, as if she’d already been hitting the martinis. “And who’s your little friend? A new squirt, or am I very mistaken?”
“Ahem. Allow me to introduce Junior Flight Lieutenant Stephanie Grace, our newest flight operations officer. If I may beg your pardon, it’s considered bad form to refer to trainees as squirts, outside of the training academy; and in any case, Lieutenant Grace has graduate degrees in relativistic dynamics and engineering.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” To her credit, the dowager flushed slightly.
“It’s perfectly all right.” Steffi forced a smile and breathed a sigh of relief when Max peeled off to steer Mrs. Borozovski toward a table. No, I don’t mind being patronized by rich drones one little bit, Mrs. Borozovski. Now, where’s the table I’m supposed to ride herd on?
It was a completely spurious ritual, from Steffi’s viewpoint. All the business class and higher suites were fully self-catering. There was no damn need to have a central galley and serve up a restricted menu and waste the valuable time of human chefs, not to mention the line officers who were required to turn up wearing mess uniforms and act like dinner party hosts. On the other hand, as Commodore Martindale had put it back at staff college, the difference between a steerage passenger flying in cold sleep and a Sybarite-class passenger flying in a luxury apartment was about two thousand ecus per day of transit time — and the experience. Any peasant could afford to travel cold, but to balance the books and make for a healthy profit required cosseting the rich idiots and honeymooning couples, to which end any passenger line worthy of the name devoted considerable ingenuity. Up to and including providing etiquette training for engineers, tailored dress uniforms for desk-pushers, and anything else that might help turn a boring voyage into a uniquely memorable experience for the upper crust. Which especially meant sparing no expense over the first night and subsequent weekly banquets. At least they’re not as bad as the house apes Sven puts up with, she thought mordantly. If I had his end of this job, I swear I’d go nuts … At least the honeymooning couples mostly stuck to ordering from room service or the food fabs in their rooms. Which left her sitting at the head of a table of twelve extremely lucrative passengers — think of it as twenty-four thousand ecus a day in value added to the bottom line — smiling, nodding politely, introducing them to one another, answering their inane questions, and passing the port.
Steffi made her way to her table, guided by a discreet pipper on the cuff of her brocade jacket. A handful of passengers had already arrived, but they knew enough to stand up as she arrived. “Please, be seated,” she said, smiling easily as her chair slid out and retracted its arms for her. She nodded to the passengers, and one or two of them nodded back or even said “hello.” Or something. She wasn’t so sure about the sullen-looking girl in the deliberately slashed black lace top and hair that looked as if she’d stuck her fingers in a power socket, but the three hail-fellow-well-met types in the similar green shirts, two blond men and a straw-haired woman, all looked as if they were about to jump up and salute her. The fat probably-a-merchant-banker and her anorexic beanpole of a male companion just ignored her — probably offended that she wasn’t at least a commander — and the withered old actuary from Turku didn’t seem to notice her, but that was par for the course. Senile old cretin, Steffi thought, writing him off. Anyone that rich who wouldn’t stump up the cash for a telomere reset and AGE purge when their hair was turning white was not worth paying attention to. The middle-aged lady cellist from Nippon looked friendly enough, but a bit confused — her translator wasn’t keeping up with the conversation — and that just left a honeymooning couple who had predictably elected to call room service instead.