Iron Sunrise

SYBARITE CLASS

She’d gone to ground in the morning lounge on A deck, finding a niche between a potted coconut palm and a baby grand piano the color of stressed titanium. Eyes swiveling, refugee instincts humming. This wasn’t anything like the trash hauler she’d been on, years ago. Everything around her screamed luxury! at high volume. What am I meant to do here? If anyone finds me — She had a ticket. Nobody was going to haul her off to the nearest airlock and make her walk home. Still, just being there felt profoundly wrong, and then there was whatever had happened to her family. Just trying not to think about it was a draining experience.

“Okay, Herman, what have you got me into?” she muttered angrily. A twist of her storage ring got her into the files he’d left her. They were copious, but at least he’d left an introduction.

“As soon as you’re on board, search for Frank the Nose and tell him about the items you left aboard Old Newfie. Do so before the ship departs. That will give him time to file a news report, after which your pursuers will be unable to achieve their goal of concealing the existence of the items by killing you. Let me emphasize this: Until you publicize the existence of the sealed orders and the body, your life is in danger. Once you have done so, they can gain nothing by killing you and may only lend credence to your story. And here’s a second point. Don’t assume that all ReMastered are automatically members of the group hunting you. They’re riddled with factions, and whoever is after you may even be using them as a cover. Don’t assume anything.

“Once you have broken the story, remain aboard the liner. Enjoy the facilities. You are traveling in Sybarite class with a personal allowance suitable to an heiress of independent means. Consider this to be part payment for your earlier work on my behalf. If you become bored by the formal passenger facilities — the shops, the bars and dining rooms, the dances and other social events — feel free to use the attached technical schemata to discreetly explore the service and maintenance spaces of the liner. If anyone asks you, your cover story is that you are a rich, idle, bored heiress. The Moscow trust has paid up a dividend big enough that your parents have agreed to you undertaking a grand tour as a prelude to your coming out. Here’s a hint: I don’t mind if you’re no good at spending money like water, but please find time to become bored. There will be an exam later.

“The next stop on your itinerary is New Dresden, for a four-and-a-half-day layover. The previous New Dresdener government is believed by many people to be responsible for the destruction of your home world. As you probably realize by now, that is untrue. Your layover coincides with the annual remembrance ceremony at the Muscovite embassy in the capital, Sarajevo. I would appreciate it if you would attend the ceremony. You might want to buy something more formal to wear before doing so.

“I will provide further instructions for you on arrival in New Dresden orbit. To recap: Find Frank the Nose and tell him about your adventure on Old Newfie. Doing so will ensure that you have an uneventful voyage. Feel free to explore the ship. On arrival, attend the remembrance ceremony at the embassy. Bon voyage!”

She shook her head in bafflement, but still began to do as he suggested. The ship hadn’t even departed yet, and residual nerves kept Wednesday looking over her shoulder as the big guy took her straight to an elevator, tastefully hidden behind a trompe l’oeil painting on one wall. What if Leo or whatever he’s called followed me aboard? But something about the hulking journalist made her feel safe: he looked like he could walk through walls, but he was mild enough toward her, clearly aware that his appearance tended to intimidate and trying not to look threatening.

The elevator car was narrow and sparse, polished metal with a button-laden control panel. “It’s a crew car,” he explained, finger-pecking at the panel. “Sven showed me how to use them. They don’t just go up and down, they go — aha!” The car lurched sideways, began to ascend, then twirled back on its route for a while before coming to a halt. The doors opened on a dimly lit corridor that reminded Wednesday of a hotel her parents had once taken her and Jerm to, a couple of years ago. “Here we are.”

Frank’s stateroom reinforced the sense of being in a hotel suite — a rumpled, used one pervaded by a horrible, indefinable stink, as if something had died there. She wrinkled her nose as he closed the door and ambled over to the writing desk, feeling a momentary unease. It passed as he bent down and pulled out a compact multimedia recording deck and positioned it on the table. “Sit down,” he invited. “Make yourself at home.” He smiled alarmingly. “This is a recording cut. We’ll do this once, then I’ll mail it right back to Joe — she’s my researcher and desk ed, back home — immediately. Joe can edit it into shape for a release. The sooner it hits the blog, the better. Comfortable? Okay. Let’s start. Would you tell me your name? It’ll go better if you look straight at the pickup…”

Almost an hour later, Wednesday was growing hoarse. On top of that, she was bone-tired and bored with repeating herself, not to say upset. While Frank was surprisingly gentle and understanding, having to relive the horror of those minutes in the corridor outside her home was disturbing, dredging up tears she’d thought she had under control. She’d managed to snatch a couple of hours of uneasy sleep in her stolen cattle-class seats aboard the ferry, but then she’d had the stress of finding her way to the ship and tracking down Frank. “I need something to drink,” she said. “And—”

“I said I’d buy you breakfast, didn’t I? I’m sorry, I got carried away.” Frank sounded apologetic — and something else. He hauled out a pad and pointed it at her. “Pick anything on the menu — anything you like. Listen, that was a great interview.” He frowned at the door. “Scum, like I said.” Judging from his thunderous expression there ought to be a huge blackened hole in the wall. “Now, I’m going to put a cover on that interview and push it out right away as unsubstantiated rumor. I mean, you really don’t want to leave this sitting around, do you? The sooner we get some physical corroboration, the better, though that might take a while. But the sooner this is out, the sooner the scum who killed your family are going to learn that trying to shut you up was a mistake.” He was positively glowering.

“You said you knew something about the — the ReMastered?” she asked diffidently.

“I, I—” He closed his mouth and shook his head angrily, like a bear pestered by hornets. Then he sighed. “Yes, I know something about the ReMastered,” he admitted. “Much more than I want to. I’m just surprised they’re snooping around Septagon.” He looked thoughtful. “Checking out your story about the station is going to cost real money. Need to charter a ship if I have to go poking around a hot station behind a supernova shock front. But the rest’s easy enough. You want to order up some food and make yourself at home in here?”

“Mmph.” Wednesday finger-shopped listlessly for agedashi tofu and tuna-skin hand rolls and sing chow noodles and a luminous green smart drink that promised to banish fatigue. “Food. I remember that.”

“Chill out.” Frank unpacked a battered-looking pocket keyboard of antique design and began typing like a machine gun. “When you’re ready, give it to me and I’ll put the order on my tab.”

“Do you think I’m in danger?” she asked, her voice catching.

He looked her in the eye, and for the first time she realized that he looked worried. Fear didn’t belong on that face, atop a gorilla of a man. It was just plain wrong. “Listen, the sooner this is on the net, the better for both of us,” he said. “So if you don’t mind—” He went back to hammering the keyboard.

“Sure.” Wednesday sighed. She finished her menu selections and shoved the pad back at his side of the desk. “Journalists. Feh!” She spread her fingers out, admiring the rings on her left hand. Smart rings, untraceable fake rings, rings that claimed she was a rich bitch and came with sealed orders. What’s it really like to be rich? she wondered.

Cymbals chimed: the floor gave a faint lurch, almost imperceptible, barely sufficient to rattle the china in the dining lounges as the huge liner cut over to onboard gravity. Junior Flight Lieutenant Steffi Grace shook her head. “That’s not very good.”

“It’s within tolerances, but only just,” agreed her boss, Flying Officer Max Fromm. He pointed at the big status board in front of her. “Want to tell me why?”

“Hmm. Kernel balance looks good. We’ve stabilized nicely, and the mass distribution is spot on — no problems there. Um. I don’t see anything on board. But the station…” She paused, then brought up a map of the ambient gravity polarization field. “Oh. We picked up a little torque from the station’s generators when we tripped out. Is that what you’re after?”

“No, but it’ll do.” Fromm nodded. “Remember that. These big new platforms the Septs are building kick back.” He brought back the original systems map. “Now, you’re going to talk me through the first stage of our departure, aren’t you?”

Steffi nodded, and began to take him through the series of steps that the Captain and her bridge crew would be running upstairs as they maneuvered the huge liner clear of the Noctis docking tree. Down here in the live training room things weren’t as tense; just another session in the simulator, shadowing the bridge team. The training room was cramped, crammed with console emulators and with space for only a couple of people to crowd inside. In an emergency it could double as a replacement bridge — but it would have to be a truly desperate emergency to take out the flight deck, five levels down inside the hull.

“Okay, now she’s pumping up the C-head ring. That’s, um, five giga-Teslas? That’s way more than she needs to maintain a steady one-gee field. Is she planning on buffering some really heavy shocks? Attitude control — we’re steady. No thermal roll to speak of, not out here in Septagon B, so she’s put just enough spin on the outer hull to hold us steady as we back out at five meters per second. That’s going to take, uh, two minutes until we’re clear far enough to begin a slow pitch up toward the departure corridor. Am I right?”

“So far so good.” Max leaned back in his chair. “I hate these stations,” he said conversationally. “It’s not as if there’s much other traffic — we’ve got nearly a thousand seconds to clear the approaches — but it’s so damn crowded here it’s like threading a needle with a mooring cable.”

“One wrong nudge—”

“Yeah.” The Romanov was a huge beast. Beehive shaped, it was three hundred meters in diameter at its fattest and nearly five hundred meters long. The enormously massive singularity lurking inside its drive kernel supplied it with power and let it twist space-time into knots, but was absolutely no use for close-range maneuvering; and the hot thrusters it could use for altitude control would strip the skin off a hab if the Captain lit her up within a couple of kilometers. That left only the cold thrusters and gyrodynes for maintaining altitude during departure — but they had about as much effect as a team of ants trying to kick a dead whale down a beach. “One-sixty seconds to burner ignition, and we can crank up to departure speed, a hundred meters per second. Then just under an hour and a half to make it out to fifty kilometers and another blip on the burners to take us up to a thousand meters per second at half a gee. Another two hundred kilometers out, then we begin kernel spin-up. I haven’t looked at the flight plan for this run, but if she does her usual, once the kernel is up and running the Captain will crank us up to twenty gees and hold for about twelve hours. And she won’t mess around. That’s why she ran up the bulkhead rings now, when she’s got spare power to pump into them.” He stretched his arms out overhead, almost touching the damage control board. “Seen one departure, seen ’em all. Until the next time.”

“Right.” Steffi pushed back her chair. “Do we have time for a coffee before the burn sequence?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Steffi stood up and squeezed past Max’s chair, trailing a hand across his shoulder in passing. He pretended not to notice, but she caught the ghost of his smile reflected in the screens as she turned toward the door. Two or three weeks of stealing time together didn’t make for a serious relationship in her estimate, but it beat sleeping alone on her first long cruise, and Max was more considerate than she’d expected. Not that she was incapable of coping. WhiteStar didn’t employ child labor, and she’d joined up at thirty-two, with her first career under her: she’d known exactly what she was letting herself in for. If anyone had accused him of taking advantage of her, she’d have taken a pointy stick to them. But so far discretion had paid off, and Steffi had no complaints.

There was a vending machine near the facilities pod down the gray-painted crew corridor. She punched for two glasses of iced latte, thought about some biscuits, and decided against it. Bridge crew, even trainee bridge crew, dined with the upper-class passengers on a rota, and Max was up for dinner at the end of his shift in a couple of hours. It wouldn’t do to spoil his appetite. She was about to head back to the auxiliary control center when she spotted a stranger in the corridor outside — probably a passenger, judging by his lack of ID. “Can I help you?” she asked, sizing him up. He was tall, blond, male, blandly handsome, and built like an army recruiting poster. Not at all like Max, a little voice in the back of her head said critically.

“Yah, yes. I was told the, ah, training bridge was on this level?” He had a strange accent, not hard to understand but slightly stilted. “I was told it was possible to visit it?”

“Yes, it is.” She nodded. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to make an appointment if you want to look around. It’s in use throughout the voyage, and right now it’s the backup control center — in case there’s a problem with the main bridge. Are you wanting a tour?” He nodded. “In that case” — she steered him toward the nearest door back into passenger country — “can I suggest you take it up with your liaison officer after dinner? He or she will be able to take your details and arrange something for you tomorrow or the day after. I’ve got to get back to work now, so if you’ll excuse me…”

She gently pushed him back toward the passenger section, waiting until he finished nodding and the door closed. Then she breathed a sigh of relief and ducked back through the closest door into wonderland. Max raised an eyebrow at her. “She’s begun pushback,” he said. “What kept you?”

“The passengers are wandering.” She passed him an iced coffee. “I had to herd one out of the corridor just now.”

“Happens every voyage. You lock a couple of thousand bored monkeys in a tin can, and you’ve got to expect one or two to go exploring. They’ll stop poking around eventually, when they realize everything interesting is sealed off. Just remember to keep your cabin door locked whether you’re in or out.”

“Hah. I’ll do that.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to a quiet life…”

“Wow!” Wednesday looked around the room, her eyes wide. It’s bigger than my bedroom back home. It’s bigger than our entire apartment! A pang of loss bit her. She shoved it aside hastily.

She stood in the middle of an ocean of deep-pile carpet the color of clotted cream and looked about. The room was so wide that the ceiling seemed low, even though it was out of reach. A couple of sofas and an occasional table huddled at one end as if they were lonely. One wall looked like raw, undressed stonework; there was a door in it, with a curved, pointy bit at the top, opening onto a boudoir like something out of a medieval fantasy, all rich wooden paneling and tapestries. A huge four-poster bed completed the impression, but the medievalism was only skin-deep. The next door along led to a bathroom with a tub almost as large as the bed recessed into the white-tiled floor.

“If you need anything, please call the purser’s office,” the steward told her. “Someone will be on hand to help you at all hours. Your trip itinerary should be able to tell you how all the suite utilities work, including the fabber in the closet over there.” (The closet lurking behind another open gothic archway looked to be about the size of a small factory.) “Do you need anything else right now?” he asked.

“Uh, no.” She looked around. “I mean, yeah, I have to go buy some odds and ends. But, uh, not right now.”

“By your leave.” He turned and left, smiling oddly, and the door to the corridor — no, the promenade deck, they called it — closed behind her.

“Wow!” she repeated. Then she glanced at the door. “Door, lock yourself.” There was a discreet clack from the frame. “Wow!”

Wednesday ambled over to the nearest sofa and flopped down in it, then unfastened her boots. “Ouch.” More than a day of wearing them had left her feet feeling like raw meat: she curled her toes in the carpet for almost a minute with her eyes closed, writhing slightly and panting. “Oh, that is so good!” After another minute, other senses began to intrude. “Hmm.”

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.

“I’m Junior Flight Lieutenant Steffi Grace, and, on behalf of WhiteStar Lines, I’d like to welcome you to our table for the first night banquet en route to New Dresden. If you’d like to examine the menu, I’m sure your stewards will be with you shortly. In the meantime, I’d like to particularly recommend the—” she glanced at her cuff — “Venusian Cabernet Sauvignon blanc to accompany the salmon entrees.” Imported at vast expense from the diamond-domed vineyards of Ishtar Planitia, the better to stroke the egos of the twenty-four-thousand-ecu diners.

Things went all right through the entrees, and Steffi made sure to knock back her antidrunk cap with the first mouthful of wine. It was an okay vintage, if you could get past the fact that it was wine, and — stripped of the ability to get drunk on it — wine was just sour grape juice. “Can I ask where you’re from?” she asked the square-jawed blonde as she filled her glass. “I’ve seen you around, I think, but we haven’t spoken before.”

“I am Mathilde, of clade Todt, division Sixt. These are my clade-mates Peter and Hans,” said the woman, waving one beefy hand to take in the strapping young men to either side of her. Are they young? wondered Steffi: they looked awfully self-assured and well coordinated. Normally you didn’t see that sort of instinctive grace in anyone who was less than sixty, not without martial arts practice. Most people eventually picked up that kind of economical motion if their bodies didn’t nose-dive into senescence by middle age, before they had time to mature, but this looked like the product of hard training, if not anabolic steroids. “We are traveling to Newpeace, as a youth enlightenment and learning mission.” She smiled superciliously. “That is, we are to learn about the other worlds that have discovered the benefits of ReMastery and spread harmony among them.”

“Uh-huh. And what is it, to be ReMastered, if you don’t mind my asking? Is it some sort of club?” Steffi prodded. They were, after all, paying her wages. Curiosity about her employers was a powerful instinct.

“It is everything,” Mathilde said gushingly. She caught herself. “It is a way of life.” Slightly shy and bashful now, as if she had let too much slip: “It is very fulfilling.”

“Yes, but—” Steffi felt her forehead wrinkling with concentration. Why do I feel as if I’m being looked down on? she wondered. Never mind. “And you?” she asked the kid with the black hair. If she was a kid; she was about the same build as Steffi, after all.

“Oh, don’t mind me, I’ll just sit in this corner and drink myself into a new liver. I’m sure the trust fund will pay.” The last sentence came out in a monotone as she caught Steffi’s eye, and Steffi realized: Something’s wrong here.

“We try to take our drinking easy, at least until after the meal,” she said lightly. “What was your name again?”

“Wednesday,” the girl — Young woman? Dangerous drunk? — said quietly. “That’s what they call me. Victoria Strowger on your passenger list. That’s what my ID calls me.”

“Whichever you prefer,” Steffi said warily.

The starters arrived, delicately poached small medallions of salmon served under a white sauce, and Steffi managed to get fat Fiona the merchant banker rolling on a paean to the merits of virtual-rate currency triangulation versus more indirect, causality-conserving means of converting funds between worlds separated by a gulf of light years. She was somewhat relieved to find that a lecture on the credit control implications of time travel was sufficient to hold the rapt if slightly incomprehending attention of the three youth leaders from clade Todt, whatever that was. Wednesday, meanwhile, plowed into her third glass of wine with a grim determination that reminded Steffi of some of the much older and more grizzled travelers she’d met — not actual alcoholics, but people possessed by a demon that badly wanted them to wake up with a hangover on the morrow, a demon that demanded an exorcism by the most painful terms available short of self-mutilation. Getting drunk this soon in a voyage, before the boredom began to bite, wasn’t a healthy sign. And as for her dress sense, even though Steffi was no follower of style, she could see that Wednesday was relying on a talent for improvisation that must have been labeled “not needed on voyage.”

The shit refrained from hitting the fan until dessert was served. Steffi had made the tactical mistake of asking Mathilde again just what being ReMastered could do for her — Is it a religion? Or a political theory? she’d been wondering ever since the very fulfilling crack — and Mathilde decided to deliver a lecture. “Being ReMastered would give you a new perspective on life,” Mathilde explained earnestly to the entire table. Even Peter and Hans nodded appreciatively. “It is a way of life that ensures all our actions are directed toward the greatest good. We are not, however, slaves: there is none of the submissiveness of the decadent and degenerate Dar al-Islam. We are fresh and free and strong and joyfully bend our shoulders to the great work out of common cause, with the aim of building a bright future in which all humans will be free to maximize their potential, free of the shadow of the antihuman Eschaton, and free of the chains of superstitious unscientific thinking.”

Wednesday, who until then had been rolling the stem of her empty wineglass between her fingers — Steffi had discreetly scaled back on the frequency of top-ups after her fourth — put her glass down on the table. She licked a fingertip, and began slowly rubbing it around the lip of the glass.

“The clades of the ReMastered are organized among divisions, and their members work together. We rear our children in the best way, with all the devotion and attention to detail that a creche can deliver, and we find useful and meaningful work for them as soon as they are old enough to need purpose and direction. We teach morality — not the morality of the weak, but the morality of the strong — and we raise them to be healthy; the best phenotypes go back into the pool to generate the next harvest, but we don’t simply leave that to brute nature. As intelligent beings we are above random chance.” Whir, whir went Wednesday’s finger. “We want strong, healthy, intelligent workers, not degenerate secondhanders and drones—”

Mathilde stopped talking, apparently oblivious to the glassy-eyed and slightly horrified stares she was receiving from the merchant banker and the actuary, and glared at Wednesday. “Stop doing that,” she snapped.

“Tell me what happens to the people you don’t need,” Wednesday said in a threatening monotone, “then I’ll stop.”

“We do not do anything—” Mathilde caught herself, took a deep breath, and looked down her nose at Wednesday. “Occasionally a planetary government petitions us for admission. Then we send advisers to help them work out how best to deal with their criminal elements and decadent factions. Will you stop doing that, child? It is disruptive. I would go further and say it was typical of your indolence if I didn’t believe this was merely an aberration on your part.” She smiled, baring even, gleaming teeth that gave the lie to her veiled jab.

Wednesday smiled right back and kept rubbing the rim of the glass. The Japanese lady cellist chose that moment to join in with her own fingertip, smiling and nodding at her in linguistically challenged camaraderie. Steffi glanced at Mathilde. If looks could kill, Wednesday would be a smoking hole in the bulkhead. “If you don’t take over worlds,” Wednesday said, slurring slightly, “how’s it that people want to join you? ’Mean t’say, I’ve only heard a bit about the concentration camps, an’ obviously he’s gotta grudge, but you’d think the summary executions and forced labor’d make joining the ReMastered ’bout as popular as rabies.” She bared her teeth at Steffi, in a flicker of amusement that vanished as fast as it had come. Hum, hum, hum went the fingertip.

“There are no concentration camps,” Mathilde said icily. “Our enemies spread lies” — her look took in the whole length of the table, as if no one was above suspicion — “and obviously some fools fall for them.” She lingered over Wednesday. “But repeating such slanders—”

“Wanna meet anin — an, uh, ex-inmate?” Wednesday cocked her head on one side. She’s drunk as a skunk, Steffi realized with a cold feeling in her overfull stomach. Damn, how’d she get so shit-faced? She’s handling it well, but — The last thing she needed was Mathilde going for Wednesday’s throat over the cheeseboard. Not if she wanted to keep the other Syb-class passengers happy. “Got least one of ’em aboard this ship. Call him a liar, why don’tcha.”

“I think that’s quite enough.” Steffi forced herself to smile. “Time to change the subject, if you don’t mind,” she added, with a warning glance at Wednesday. But the kid couldn’t seem to take the hint, even when it was delivered by sledgehammer.

“I’ve had more than enough,” Wednesday slurred, sitting up straight but staying focused on Mathilde. They’re like a pair of cats, squaring off, Steffi realized, wondering if she was going to have to break up a fight. Except that Mathilde didn’t look remotely drunk, and Wednesday looked as if she was too drunk to care that the ReMastered woman was built like the northern end of a southbound assault gunship, with muscles where most people had opinions. “I’m sick of this bullshit. Here we all are, sitting round” — she waved a hand vaguely at the rest of the dining room, then blinked in surprise — “sitting round the table when down in steerage refugee kids are, are…”

Steffi was out of her chair almost before she realized she’d come to a decision. Wednesday’s back was tense as steel when she wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “Come on,” she said gently. “Come with me. You’re right, you don’t need to be here. Leave everything to me, I’ll get it sorted out. Stand up?” For a moment she was sure it wouldn’t work, but a second later Wednesday pushed herself upright. She would have been swaying but for Steffi’s supporting arm. “Come on, come with me. You’re doing fine.” She steered Wednesday round toward the nearest door, barely noticing the ReMastered woman’s stone-hard glare drilling into her — or was it Wednesday? “Come on.” To the gold braid on her left cuff: “Table six — someone cover for me, please. Taking a distressed guest back to her room.”

They were barely past the doorway when Wednesday tried to break away. Steffi grabbed her. “No! ’M going to—” Oh shit! Steffi repositioned her grip and hustled Wednesday toward the potted palm she’d taken a tentative lurch toward. But once she was head-down over the plant pot Wednesday proved she was made of stern stuff, drawing deep gulping breaths and slowly getting her stomach under control.

“Table six. Is anyone there?” Steffi mumbled into her cuff. “I’ve got a situation here. Who’s covering?”

A voice in her earbud: “’Lo, Steffi. I’ve asked Max to cover for you. Are you going to be long?”

Steffi looked at the young woman, leaning on the rim of the plant pot, and winced. “Think I’m going to miss the tail end.”

“Okay, check. Banquet control over and out.”

She straightened up in time to see Wednesday doing likewise, leaning against the wall with her eyes shut. “Come on. What’s your room?” She prodded her guest list, still handily loaded in her cuff. “Let’s get you back there.”

Wednesday shambled along passively if somewhat disjointedly, like a puppet with too-loose strings. “Lying bitch,” she mumbled quietly as Steffi rolled her into the nearest lift. “Lying. Through her teeth.”

“You’re not used to drinking this much, are you?” Steffi ventured. Wow, you’re going to have a mammoth hangover, antidrunk or not!

“Not … not alcohol. Didn’t wanna be there. But couldn’t stay ’lone.”

Heads she’s maudlin, tails she’s depressed. Want to bet she wants someone to talk to? Steffi punched up A deck and Wednesday’s cylinder, and concentrated on keeping her upright as they passed through fluctuating tidal zones between the electrograv rings embedded in the hull. “Any reason why not?” she asked casually.

“Mom and Dad and Jerm — lying bitch!” It was almost a snarl. I was right, Steffi realized unhappily. Got her away just in time. “Couldn’t stay ’lone,” Wednesday added for emphasis.

“What happened?” Steffi asked quietly as the elevator slowed then began to move sideways.

“They’re dead an’ I’m not.” The kid’s face was a picture of misery. “Fucking ReMastered liar!”

“They’re dead? Who, your family?”

Wednesday made a sound halfway between a sob and a snort. “Who’dya think?”

The elevator stopped moving. Doors sighed open onto a corridor, opposite a blandly anonymous stateroom door. Steffi blipped it with her control override and it swung open. Wednesday knew which way to stagger. For a moment Steffi considered leaving her — then sighed and followed her in. “Your parents are dead? Is that why you don’t want to be alone?”

Wednesday turned to face her, cheeks streaked with tears. Weirdly, her heavy makeup didn’t run. Chromatophores, built into her skin? “Been two days,” she said, swaying. “Since they were murdered.”

“Murdered—”

“By. By the. By—” Then her stomach caught up with her and Wednesday headed for the bathroom in something midway between a controlled fall and a sprint. Steffi waited outside, listening to her throw up, lost in thought. Murdered? Well, well, how interesting …

It was 0300 hours, day-shift cycle, shortly before the starship made its first jump from point A to point A’ across a couple of parsecs of flat space-time.

The comforter was a crumpled mass, spilled halfway across the floor. The ceiling was dialed down to shades of red and black, tunnels of warm dark light washing across the room.

Wednesday rubbed her forehead tiredly. The analgesics and rat’s liver pills had taken care of most of the symptoms, and the liter or two of water she’d methodically chugged down had begun to combat the dehydration, but the rest of it — the shame and embarrassment and angst — wouldn’t succumb so easily to chemical prophylaxis.

“I’m an ass,” she muttered to herself, slouching to her feet. She headed back to the bathroom again, for the third time in an hour. “Stupid. And ugly, and a little bit dumb on the side.” She looked at the bathtub speculatively. “Guess I could always drown myself. Or cut my wrists. Or something.” Let the fuckers win. She blinked at the mirror-wall on the other side of the room. “I’m an embarrassment.” The figure in the mirror stared right back, a dark-eyed tragic waif with a rat’s nest of black hair and lips the color of a drowned woman’s. Breasts and hips slim, waist slimmer, arms and legs too long. She stood up and stared at herself. Her mind wandered, seeking solace a few nights back. What did Blow see in me? she wondered. No way to find out now. Should have asked him when I had the chance … She was alone here, more isolated than she’d ever been. “I’m a waste of vacuum.”

On her way back into the bedroom she spotted a blinking light on the writing desk. For want of anything better to do she wandered over. It was something to do with the blotter. “What’s this?” she asked aloud: “Ship, what does this light mean?”

“You have voice mail,” the ship replied soothingly. “Voice calls are spooled to mail while guests sleep unless an override is in force. Do you want to review your messages?”

Wednesday nodded, then snorted at her own idiocy. “Yeah. I guess.”

Message received, thirty-six minutes ago. From: Frank Johnson. “Hi, Wednesday? Guess you’re asleep. Should have checked the time — I keep weird hours. Listen, the story went out okay. Sorry I missed supper, but those social things don’t work for me real well. Ping me if you feel like hitting one of the bars sometime. Bye.”

“Huh. Ship, is Frank Johnson still awake?” she asked.

“Frank Johnson is awake and accepting calls,” the liaison network replied.

“Oh, oh.” Suddenly it mattered to her very much that someone else was awake and keeping crazy hours. “Voice call to Frank Johnson.”

There was a brief pause, then a chime. “Hello?” He sounded surprised.

“Frank?”

“Hello, Wednesday. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said tiredly. “Just, I couldn’t sleep. Bad thoughts. You mentioned a bar. Is it, like, too late for you?”

A pause. “No, not too late. You want to meet up now?”

Her turn to pause. “Yeah. If you want.”

“Well, we could meet at—”

“Can you come round here?” she asked impulsively. “I don’t want to go out on my own.”

“Uh-huh.” He sounded amused. “Okay, I’ll be round in about ten minutes.”

She cut the call. “Gods and pests!” She looked around at the discarded clothes, suddenly realizing that she was naked and what it must look like. “Damn! damn!” She bounced to her feet and grabbed her leggings and top. She paused for a moment, then wrapped the sarong around her waist, dialed her jacket to a many-layered lacy thing, threw the other stuff in the closet for sorting out later, and ran back to the bathroom to dial the lights up. “My hair!” It was a mess. “Well, what the fuck. I’m not planning on dragging him into bed, am I?” She stuck her tongue out at the mirror, then went to work on the wet bar in the corner of the main room.

When he arrived Frank was carrying a bag. He put it down on the carpet as he looked around, bemused. “You said your friends were paying, but this is ridiculous,” he rumbled.

“It is, isn’t it?” She looked up at him, challenging.

He grinned, then stifled a yawn. “I guess so.” He nudged the bag with his foot. “You said you didn’t want to go out so I bought some stuff along just in case—” Suddenly he looked awkward.

“That’s okay.” She took his arm and dragged him over to the huge floppy sofa that filled one side of the main room. “What you got in there?”

He pulled out a bottle. “Sambuca. From Bolivar. And, let’s see, a genuine single malt from Speyside. That’s on Old Earth, you know. And here’s a disgusting chocolate liqueur from somewhere about which the less said the better. Got any glasses?”

“Yep.” She walked over to the bar and came back with glasses and a jug of ice. She sat down cross-legged at the other side of the sofa and poured a glassful of chocolate liqueur for herself, pretending not to notice Frank’s mock shudder. “You weren’t at dinner.”

“Those fake formal feast clusterfucks don’t do anything for me,” he announced. “They’re there to make the rich passengers think they’re getting a valuable service — more valuable than traveling deadhead in steerage, anyway. I guess if you do business or are in shipping, you can make a lot of contacts that way, but in general the kind of people I’d like to talk to over a meal don’t travel by liner.” He looked at her sharply. “Enjoy yourself?”

She nearly took the question at face value, although his tone suggested irony. “I nearly threw up in a plant pot after making a fool of myself.” She winced. “She asked for it, though.”

“Who did?” Frank raised his glass: “Your health.”

“Bottoms up. Poisonous toy bitch kept going on about how great being ReMastered was—” She stopped. Frank looked stricken. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked.

“Was she a blonde? Head half-shaved at one side to show off a tattoo?” Wednesday stared at him through a haze of conflicting emotions. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”

He put his glass down, rattling on the tabletop. “You could have been killed,” he said shakily.

“What do you—” She leaned toward him. “You said they run Newpeace. Concentration camps, secret police shit. Do you think they’re that dangerous here, though?”

“They’re dangerous everywhere!” Frank straightened up and picked up his glass, took a hefty mouthful, and coughed for a while. “Never, never, push a Re-Mastered button. Please? Tell me you won’t do it again?”

“I was drunk.” Wednesday flushed. His concern was immediate and clear, cutting through the fog of worry. “Hey, I’m not crazy.”

“Not crazy.” He chuckled edgily. “Is that why you didn’t want to go out on your own?”

“No. Yes.” She peered at him, wondering why she trusted him. Alone with a gorilla after midnight and he wonders if I’m crazy? “I don’t know. Should I?”

“You should always know why you do things,” Frank said seriously. “Inviting strange men for a late-night drink, for example.” He picked up the liqueur bottle. “Want a refill? Or should I fuck off now before we both end up with hangovers tomorrow?”

She pushed her glass toward him. “Stay,” she said impulsively. “I feel safer while you’re around. Couldn’t sleep, anyway.” A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

Aas days passed the boredom subsided somewhat. She’d stayed in her room for the whole of the next day, playing with the ship’s extensive games library, but most of the other online players were old hands who had forgotten more about strategy than the entire Magna tournament team. After a while she ventured out, first to see if there really wasn’t anything she could find to wear, then to visit a public bar with Frank. Who introduced her to fresh zero-gee farmed seafood and single malts. Then she’d spent some time with Steffi, who had hastily introduced her to her old friend Sven the clown and made her excuses. Sven, it turned out, also knew Frank: it was a small world aboard ship.

“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?”

“Up, first.”

“You realize we’re only able to do this because I’ve got a badge,” Svengali remarked, as they climbed. The kid had long legs and was in good shape. He had to push himself to keep ahead of her.

“I guessed.” She snuffled something that might have been a laugh. “It’s still cool. What are those guts for?”

He followed her finger to the peristaltic pipes in the recess that ran alongside the stairs. “Probably semisolid waste disposal. They can reconfigure this stairwell into a tunnel if there’s a major gravity outage, you know.”

“Isn’t that unlikely?”

“Probably.” He carried on climbing for a bit. “Doesn’t it worry you to be climbing a staircase inside what is basically a skyscraper sitting on top of a stasis chamber containing a twenty billion-ton extremal black hole?”

“I assume” — she paused for breath — “that if anything went wrong with it, it would all be over too fast to worry about.”

“Probably.” He paused. “That’s why most of the crew — not me, I’m with Entertainments and Diversions, I mean the black gang, engineering ops — are along. In case something goes wrong, and they have to improvise.”

“Well, isn’t that comforting to know.”

More sarcasm from Wednesday. It ran off him like water off a duck’s back. Here we are.

“Where?” She gawked past his shoulder at the boringly ordinary-looking door.

“Here.” He smirked. “The backstage entrance to the live action theater on C deck. Want to see a performance? Or maybe the theater bar?”

“Wow.” She grinned. “Send in the clowns!”

With a flourish, Svengali passed her a red nose. Then they went inside.