“I thought so. Go ahead.” The X glanced elsewhere.
“Thank you for the drink, sir.”
“Nothing. Come in whenever you want. I’ll tell Ilm to remember you and serve you. I’m here pretty often. But don’t yarn to me about the worlds out there. I don’t want to hear that.”
“No, sir. Thank you. Good night.” Kenri left most of his drink untasted. As he went out, the dice clattered across the bar again.
While she waited on Maia for Fleetwing’s departure, Nivala had taken the opportunity to see the Tirian Desert. She could have had her pick of the colony for escorts, but when she heard that Kenri had been there before and knew his way around it, she named him. Less annoyed than he would have expected, he dropped promising negotiations for vivagems and made the arrangements. An aircamper brought them to the best site. He had proposed that from this base they tour the area for two days, overnighting here in between. She readily agreed, though they’d be alone. Both knew he wouldn’t touch her without leave, and to a person of her status scandal was as irrelevant as the weather on another planet.
For a while they rode quietly in the groundcar he had rented. Stone and sand stretched around them, flamboyantly colored. Crags lifted from the hills in fantastic shapes. Scattered thornbush breathed a slight peppery odor into thin, cool air. Overhead the sky arched cloudless, royal blue.
“This is a marvelous world,” she said at last. “It’s just as well we’re leaving soon. I might come to like it too much.”
“Aside from the scenery, Freelady, I should think you’d find it rather unexciting,” Kenri ventured. “Hardly even provincial.”
The fair head shook. “Things here are real. People have hopes.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
After a few more minutes she murmured thoughtfully, “I envy you, Kenri Shaun. All that you’ve seen and done. That you will see and do. Thank you for the data your ships bring. Infinitely better than any fiction or … entertainment. On Earth I spent much of my virtuality time playing Kith documentaries — riding along with you like a ghost. You live it.”
The wistfulness made him feel he could ask: “Was that why you came here, Freelady?”
She nodded. “Yes. Inspecting the property was an excuse. Worth doing, but an agent, or perhaps even a robot, could have done it better. I wanted the experience. A taste of the reality.”
He thought of weeks and months on end in a flying metal cave, of huddling in a groundside shelter while deadliness raged outside, of toil and danger, hurt and death — fleeting days of friendship, and then your friends were gone on their next voyage and you wondered if you’d ever meet them again; sometimes you didn’t, and then maybe you wondered how they had come to die. “Reality doesn’t always taste good, Freelady.”
“I know. Because it is reality. But I didn’t quite know how hungry I was till I made this trip.”
The words stayed with him. When they returned to camp he suggested that he build a fire and cook their evening meal over it, primitive style. Her delight chimed in him.
The sun set while he worked. A small, hasty moon rose, nearly full, to join the lesser half-disk already aloft, and argency rippled over the dunes. Afar a creature wailed — a hunting song? Warmly clad, they squatted close to the fire. Flamelight and shadow played across her, and her hair seemed as frosty as her breath. “Can I help?” she offered.
“It isn’t fitting, Freelady.” You’d make a mess of it. The filets in the skillet sizzled, savory-smelling. They were natural food, purchased at a waterfarm.
She regarded them. “I didn’t think you people ate fish,” she said.
By now he knew she didn’t intend any condescension. “Some do, some don’t, Freelady. You’ve seen we grow fruits and vegetables aboard, along with flowers, more for the sake of the gardening than to supplement the nanosystems; and we often have aquariums, also mainly for pleasure but sometimes for a special meal. In early days, when ships were smaller, an aquarium would have crowded out a substantial piece of garden for the benefit of a very few. Crews couldn’t afford the resentment that would cause. Abstention acquired almost the force of a taboo. Even offship; it was a symbolic act of loyalty. Nowadays, mostly, only older folk observe it.”