Colly jaunted around the room like an old-fashioned maid robot, inspecting everything and trying out acrobatic maneuvers with both her wings and her child-strength thrusters, having the time of her life. Every few minutes she found something that made her giggle and call Rhea or Rand to “Look!” or “Come see!” Rhea let her roam unchecked, knowing she would tire herself out and nap soundly soon. They’d all had to get up before dawn to make the flight, and it was now nearly 6 PM, Shimizu time. Besides, this suite was safe for kids. It was probably safe enough for a blind hemophiliac epileptic.
One of Rand’s early songs, “Blues in the Dark,” was playing in the background. It was relatively obscure, but one of her personal favorites, since it was about her and Rand’s courtship. Jay had selected it when they came in; either he had remembered some casual reference she’d made in a phone chat, or they shared similar tastes. Either way, it helped her warm to him.
She had to admit, it did feel good to be in free-fall again. She had forgotten how restful it was, how reminiscent of childhood fantasies of being able to fly, like the Little Lame Prince. The drugs had controlled the stuffy-head feeling this time, and her stomach felt fine. Rand had already inserted his personal wafer into a terminal in the suite: Maxwell Perkins, her own personal AI avatar, was again at her beck and call, moved from home into new quarters in the Shimizu’s memory cores, as was Rand’s version, Salieri—while their original copy still maintained the house back in Provincetown. (Also present, and presently in use, was the persona by which Colly addressed it: a large rabbit named Harvey.) Before long Rhea found herself thinking that this wasn’t the worst possible place in the world… and then reminded herself sharply that it wasn’t in the world. Not the same one P-Town was. She glanced out the window at the distant Earth and failed to locate New England.
Look on the bright side. Your husband might fail spectacularly. You might get a terrific divorce settlement. You might even convince your daughter to come back to Earth with you. The damned hotel could get hit by a runaway planet. Some Rapturist might put laughing gas in your air tank. The future holds infinite possibility.
If Jay was scheming to convert her, his next move was below the belt—literally. He led them all to dinner at the Hall of Lucullus. Not the Grand Dining Room, which peasants like governors and pop stars had to make do with—where Rhea had dined on her last visit—but the Lucullus, the most famous oasis in human space. Rhea had dined well in her time, but this was something out of the realm of her experience. They did not turn the cherries into beans for her dessert coffee until she had named the blend she preferred—then roasted them before her eyes… and under her nose. The coffee waiter—there was a separate, live coffee waiter—announced proudly as he was pulverizing them (pausing every few seconds so as not to overheat them prematurely) that these cherries had seen the sun rise from a tree on the island of Sulawezi that very morning. When she had tasted the result, she believed him.
The meal preceding had been so perfect that Rhea took the coffee almost in stride, which mildly shocked her. Lucius Licinius Lucullus, dead over two millennia, would have been proud of what was being done in his name. She was halfway through her bulb before she realized how many live human beings had been waiting on them hand and foot throughout dinner, with only the maitre d’, wine steward and coffee waiter ever coming to her conscious attention. Zero gee left a lot of ways to skirt the edges of peripheral vision, but still…
Jay saw her glance around and read her mind. “They’re a highly specialized breed of dancers,” he said, grinning. “A few of them take class with me. The standard joke is, if you can see one, you don’t have to tip him.”
Rhea was used to superb service from machines. From human beings it was much less common, and a bit unnerving. It made her feel a little like a plantation owner before Civil War One. She reminded herself that these serfs almost certainly made more money than she did—and didn’t have to keep thinking up new ideas.
Even Colly, who hated restaurant dining, was impressed. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich she was served (by yet another waiter! They couldn’t keep one around just for that; he must be a kind of utility infielder) precisely matched her specifications down to brand and relative proportion of ingredients, and when she challenged the kitchen by impishly requesting an obscure brand of ice cream only sold in Provincetown, they accommodated her without batting an eye.
For all of Rhea’s life, “cooking skill” had consisted of selecting the right equipment. It still tended to be the wife who told the equipment to start working, but it had been half a century or more since women’s sense of self-worth had depended to any significant degree on the results. Nonetheless, she was mildly irritated to see Rand put away twice as much food as usual.
She managed to find a more acceptable reason to be disgruntled almost at once. A glance around the sumptuous room reminded her of how terrifyingly easy it was to get fat in free-fall. A fat person floating overhead will never again be able to impress you face to face. She had heard that plumpness was fashionable in space—at least among those raised in gravity—but she didn’t care if it was.
For his pièce de résistance, Jay let Rand pick up the check… making the point that he could now afford to. Colly’s eyes grew round at that, and Rand swelled visibly as he thumbprinted the pad.
What can I do? What can I possibly do?
The second press conference was a little more fun than the first, because at least half the time was devoted to asking her to expand on her comments about Rapturism, which by now had acquired an audible capital letter. The fun part was ignoring Martin’s frantic attempts to change the subject or put words in her mouth. Book interviews were wonderful training for that sort of thing. And Rand didn’t seem to mind sharing the camera—perhaps because this time the implied larger audience was spacers, people he didn’t identify with yet. Or perhaps, she had to concede, he was just being in love with his wife.
An hour later, on that assumption, she gave him the fuck of his life in the ingeniously designed bedchamber of their lavish new suite, using tricks only possible in free-fall, and drifted (literally) off to sleep curled around his back, furious at him.
The next day she and Colly were peeled away from Rand, and sent on a tour of the hotel with a slender, frail-looking, yet strikingly handsome young Orientator, while the two brothers holed up in Jay’s studio to try and salvage what Pribhara had started.
Colly gaped at him when he stated his name. “Duncan Iowa?”
Rhea started to chide her, but Duncan only grinned broadly. “My mother was a Frank Herbert fan.” Seeing that she didn’t get it, he went on, “He wrote a book called DUNE with a character named Duncan Idaho. So she always wanted a son named Duncan… and then she married my dad, Walter Iowa, and just couldn’t resist.”
Rhea noticed that he did not go one step too far, and explain to an eight-year-old Terran that Idaho and Iowa were both the names of states. That was careful diplomacy. He was spaceborn, and would have explained it to another spaceborn, to whom states were distant and remote abstractions. But he could think like an earthborn, well enough to preserve a child’s dignity. She decided she liked him.
So did Colly. “I have the same problem,” she said solemnly. “My own parents thought it would be fun to name me after a breed of dog.”
Duncan nodded gravely. “That’s something to bitch about.”