other survivors on the back of an armored personnel carrier thundering across desert sands, neck itching in the edgily imagined sights of the victor's gunships, and he'd spent a whole week huddled in the bottom of a motorized vaporetto in a swampy river delta near the town of Memphis, on Octavio. Compared to any of those experiences this was the lap of luxury. It was also puerile, bland, and—worst of all—characterless.
At the end of the gently curving corridor Frank pushed through a loose curtain that secured access onto a landing that curved around the diamond-walled helix of a grand staircase, spacecraft-style. The staircase itself was organic, grown painstakingly from a single modified mahogany tree that had been coaxed into a spiral inside its protective tube, warped into a half-moon cross-section, then brutally slain and partially dissected by a team of expert carpenters. It led up through the eleven passenger decks of the ship, all the way to the stellarium with its diamond-phase optically clean dome—covered, now, because the aberration of starlight from the ship's pilot wave had dimmed everything except gamma-ray bursters to invisibility. He glanced around, puzzled by the lack of passengers or white-suited human stewards, then did a double take as he checked his watch.
"Four in the morning?" he grunted at nobody in particular. "Huh." Not that the hour meant much to him, but most people lived by the ship's clocks, trying to keep a grip on the empire time standard that bound the interstellar trading circuits together, which meant they'd be asleep, and most of the public areas would be shut for maintenance.
The night bar on F deck was still open, and Frank was only slightly breathless from hauling himself round fifteen hundred degrees of corkscrewing staircase when he arrived, pushed through the gilt-and-crystal doors, and looked around.
A handful of night owls hung out in the bar even at this late hour: one or two lone drinkers grimly tucked away the hard stuff, and a circle of half a dozen chattering friends clustered around a table in the corner. It was often hard to judge people's age, but there was something that looked young about their social interaction. Maybe they were students on the Grand Tour, or a troupe of workers caught up in one of those unusual vortices of labor market liquidity that made it cheaper to take the workers where the work was rather than vice versa. Frank had seen that before—he'd been on the receiving end himself once, back when he was young and clueless. He snorted to himself and slouched onto one of the barstools. "I'll have a Wray and Nephew on ice, no mixer," he grunted at the bartender, who nodded silently, realized that Frank didn't want a whole lot of chatter with his drink, and turned away to serve it up.
"Good voyage so far, eh, what-what?" chirped a voice from somewhere by his left shoulder.
Frank glanced round. "Good for some," he said, biting back his first impulsive comment. You never could tell who you'd run across in a bar at four in the morning, as at least one senior government bureaucrat had discovered after being mugged by the Times and left for dead in the Appointments pages. Frank had no intention of giving anything away, even to an obvious weirdo. Which this guerrilla conversationalist clearly was, from the tips of his ankle boots—one of which was red, and the other green—to the top of his pointy plush skull cap (which was electric blue with a dusting of holographic stars). Soulfully deep brown eyes and crimson moustache notwithstanding, he looked like an escapee from a reeducation camp for fashion criminals. "You'll pardon me for saying this, but I didn't come down here for a co-therapy session," Frank rumbled. The bartender punctuated his observation with a clink of crystal on teak; Frank picked up his shot glass and sniffed the colorless liquid.
"That's all right, I didn't come here for a good laugh, either." The colorful squirt nodded in
At the end of the gently curving corridor Frank pushed through a loose curtain that secured access onto a landing that curved around the diamond-walled helix of a grand staircase, spacecraft-style. The staircase itself was organic, grown painstakingly from a single modified mahogany tree that had been coaxed into a spiral inside its protective tube, warped into a half-moon cross-section, then brutally slain and partially dissected by a team of expert carpenters. It led up through the eleven passenger decks of the ship, all the way to the stellarium with its diamond-phase optically clean dome—covered, now, because the aberration of starlight from the ship's pilot wave had dimmed everything except gamma-ray bursters to invisibility. He glanced around, puzzled by the lack of passengers or white-suited human stewards, then did a double take as he checked his watch.
"Four in the morning?" he grunted at nobody in particular. "Huh." Not that the hour meant much to him, but most people lived by the ship's clocks, trying to keep a grip on the empire time standard that bound the interstellar trading circuits together, which meant they'd be asleep, and most of the public areas would be shut for maintenance.
The night bar on F deck was still open, and Frank was only slightly breathless from hauling himself round fifteen hundred degrees of corkscrewing staircase when he arrived, pushed through the gilt-and-crystal doors, and looked around.
A handful of night owls hung out in the bar even at this late hour: one or two lone drinkers grimly tucked away the hard stuff, and a circle of half a dozen chattering friends clustered around a table in the corner. It was often hard to judge people's age, but there was something that looked young about their social interaction. Maybe they were students on the Grand Tour, or a troupe of workers caught up in one of those unusual vortices of labor market liquidity that made it cheaper to take the workers where the work was rather than vice versa. Frank had seen that before—he'd been on the receiving end himself once, back when he was young and clueless. He snorted to himself and slouched onto one of the barstools. "I'll have a Wray and Nephew on ice, no mixer," he grunted at the bartender, who nodded silently, realized that Frank didn't want a whole lot of chatter with his drink, and turned away to serve it up.
"Good voyage so far, eh, what-what?" chirped a voice from somewhere by his left shoulder.
Frank glanced round. "Good for some," he said, biting back his first impulsive comment. You never could tell who you'd run across in a bar at four in the morning, as at least one senior government bureaucrat had discovered after being mugged by the Times and left for dead in the Appointments pages. Frank had no intention of giving anything away, even to an obvious weirdo. Which this guerrilla conversationalist clearly was, from the tips of his ankle boots—one of which was red, and the other green—to the top of his pointy plush skull cap (which was electric blue with a dusting of holographic stars). Soulfully deep brown eyes and crimson moustache notwithstanding, he looked like an escapee from a reeducation camp for fashion criminals. "You'll pardon me for saying this, but I didn't come down here for a co-therapy session," Frank rumbled. The bartender punctuated his observation with a clink of crystal on teak; Frank picked up his shot glass and sniffed the colorless liquid.
"That's all right, I didn't come here for a good laugh, either." The colorful squirt nodded in
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