“So what’s the thing with the face paint about?” she asked Svengali, one late-shift afternoon.
The clown frowned thoughtfully. “Think caricature. Think parody. Think emphasis on nonverbal communications cues, okay? If this was a virtual, I’d be an avatar with a homunculus-shaped head and body, bright blue nose, and huge kawaii eyes. But it isn’t, and I’m not a surgical basket case, so you have to settle for programmable grease. It’s amazing what it can do to someone’s perception of you — you’d be really surprised.”
“Probably.” Wednesday took a swig from her glass — something fluorescent green, with red bubbles in it, and about the same alcohol concentration as a strong beer — and pointed at his jacket. “But the double seam—”
“Not going to leave me any tricks, are you?” Svengali sighed.
“No,” Wednesday agreed, and the clown pulled a ferocious face. “You’re very good at this,” she said, trying to be conciliatory. “Does it pay a lot?”
“It pays” — Svengali caught himself — “hey, that’s enough about me. Why don’t we talk about you, for a change?”
“Uh-huh, you don’t get off the hook that easily.” Wednesday grinned.
“Yeah, well, it gets hard when the audience is old enough to look behind the mirror. Mutter—”
“What?”
Svengali reached toward her head fast, then pulled his hand back to reveal a butterfly fluttering white-and-blue wings inside the cage of his fingers: “—hear me better, now? Or, oh dear, did I just disconnect your brain?” He stared at the butterfly thoughtfully, then blew on it, transforming it into a white mouse.
“Wow,” said Wednesday sarcastically. “That was really convincing.”
“Really? Hold out your hand.”
Wednesday held out her hand, slightly reluctantly, and Svengali released the mouse. “Hey, it’s real!” The mouse, terrified, demonstrated precisely how real it was with a highly accurate rendition of poor bladder control. “Ick. Is that—”
“Yes.” Before she could drop it, Svengali picked it up by its tail and hid it in his cupped hands. When he opened them a moment later, a butterfly fluttered away.
“Wow!” Wednesday did a little double take, then frowned at her hand. “Uh. s’cuse me.
“Take your time,” Svengali said magnanimously, leaning back in his chair as she hastily stood up and vanished toward the nearest restroom. His smile widened. “Homing override on,” he told the air in front of him. “Return to base.” The butterfly/mouse ’bot was stowed carefully away in the small case in his pocket long before she returned.
“Are you going to tell me how you did that?”
“Nope.”
“Lawyer!”
“Am not.” Svengali crossed his arms stubbornly. “Now you tell me how you did that.”
“What, this?” Her face slowly brightened from turquoise to sky-blue.
“Yeah, that’s pretty good.”
“Programmable cosmetic chromatophores.” Her face faded back toward its normal color, except for a touch of ruby on her lips and midnight blue lining on her eyelids. “I had them installed when we moved to Magna.”
“Uh-huh. Want to take a walk?” asked Svengali, seeing that her glass was nearly empty.
“Hmm.” She stared at him, then grinned again. “Trying not to let me get too drunk?”
“It’s my job to look after passengers, not line the sick-bay’s pockets. We can come back for another drink later.”
“Okay.” She was on her feet. “Where to?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said carelessly. “Let’s just walk. Have you explored the ship yet?”
Her grin widened. “That would be telling.”
Gods, but she’s sharp, he told himself. If she’s got the stomach for it, she might even make it in my field. “You’re right — this job doesn’t pay nearly enough,” he grumbled. “I’m supposed to keep you all amused, not be the amusement myself. They should have put an upper age limit on the clientele. Big kids, all of you.” They were already out in the corridor, another high-class hotel passage with sound-deadening carpet, expensively carved wooden paneling, and indirect lights shining on brightly meaningless abstract art installations every few meters. “Nine days. I hate to think what you’re like when you’re bored.”
“I can keep to myself.” Wednesday pulled her hands back into the long and elaborately embroidered cuffs of her jacket. “I’m not a child. Well, not everywhere. Legal standards differ.”
“Yes, yes, and if you’d been born in the New Republic you’d be married with three or four children by now, but that doesn’t mean you’d be an autonomous adult. I’m not supposed to keep an eye on you, I’m supposed to keep you from getting bored. All part of the service. What do you do with yourself when you want some cheap amusement, may I ask, if that isn’t an indelicate question?”
“Oh, lots of things,” she said idly. Raising an eyebrow at him: “But I don’t think you want to know all the details. Something tells me I’m not your type.”
“Well whoop-de-do. How perceptive, sister.” Svengali steered them down a side passage then through a door into a conference suite, then out the far side of the room — which doubled as an emergency airlock — and into another passage. “More competition for the boys.” He pulled a comical face. “But seriously. What did you get up to at home when you were bored?”
“I used to be big on elevator surfing. Vacuum tunneling, too. I was into tai chi, but I sort of let it drop. And, oh, I read spy thrillers.” She glanced around. “We’re not in passenger country anymore, are we?”
There were no carpets or works of art, the doors were wider and of bare metal, and the ceiling was a flat, emissive glare. “Nope. This is one of the service passages.” Svengali was disappointed at her lack of surprise, but he decided to continue anyway. “They connect all the public spaces. This is a crew lift. They don’t run on cables, they’re little self-powered pressurized vehicles running in the tunnels, and they can change direction at will. You don’t want to try surfing these cars — it’s too dangerous. That” — he pointed at an unmarked narrow door about half a meter high, sized for a small dwarf — “is the service door into a passenger suite. They’re automatically locked while the room’s occupied, but the valet ’bots use them while you’re out and about.”
“’Bots? Like, android amahs?”
“Who do you think made your bed?” Svengali carried on down the passage.
“Human spaces and human furniture are built for roughly human-shaped people. They could put something like an industrial fab in each room, or even make everything out of structured matter, but many people get nervous when they’re too near smart stuff, and having mobile valet ’bots on trolleys is cheaper than providing one per room.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re telling me that everywhere in the ship is, like, connected to everywhere else? Using old-fashioned doors and passages and ducts?” She was so wide-eyed that he decided it could only be sarcasm.
“If you design so that it’ll only work with smart-matter utilities, something dumb will happen. That’s the fifteenth corollary of Murphy’s Law, or something. This ship is supposed to be able to get home with just a human crew, you know. That’s partly why people are willing to pay for it.” A side door opened onto a spiral staircase, cobwebby steps of nearly translucent aerogel ascending and descending into a dim blue mist in each direction. “Up or down, m’lady?”