STARLINER by David Drake

“Let’s get cleaned up and help the commander,” Ran said. “If he’s got a hundred Grantholm slave drivers coming aboard, he’s going to want us around.”

IN TRANSIT:

BISCAY TO AIN AL-MAHDI

Miss Oanh found the Quiet Room tucked at the end of a blank corridor. The bulkheads whispered. They enclosed the starliner’s service mains, not living spaces.

The Empress provided a generally acceptable ambiance for her Third Class passengers and expected them to adapt to it For those who could pay, however, the huge ship had nooks and crannies molded to every foible.

Most passengers would visit the Starlight Bar only once in a voyage, if that often; but the “experience of sponge space,” or the possibility of that experience, might affect their choice of a starliner and the enthusiasm with which they recommended the Empress of Earth to their friends.

The wrought iron gateway of the Quiet Room passed even less traffic than entered the Starlight Bar; but those who wanted solemn silence in a setting apart from that of their suite often wanted it very much.

Lanterns hung to either side of the arch, softly illuminating through the grillwork an interior paneled in dark pine. A Kurdish runner, woven from deep reds and browns, carpeted the center of the small retreat The exposed flooring was of boards thirty centimeters wide, pinned to the joists beneath by dowels. The four high-backed chairs were of black oak, with leather cushions fastened to the frames by tarnished brass brads.

At the end of the room was what could have been an altarpiece, richly carven but without specific religious content. A pair of electronic “candles” stood on the wood, programmed to sense the slightest breeze and to flicker in response.

Miss Oanh stepped into the empty room. Two of the chairs faced the altarpiece. She started to sit down in one of them.

It gave a startled gasp. She screamed.

The young man who’d been sitting in the chair jumped to his feet. “I’m terribly sorry!” he blurted. “I didn’t hear you come—”

Oanh put a hand to her chest. “Oh my goodness!” she said. “I’m so sorry, I thought the room was empty.”

As Oanh spoke, she looked around quickly to be sure that there weren’t people scowling from the chairs feeing one another from the sides of the room.

“No, no, it’s just us,” the young man said. “Ah—I’m Franz Streseman. Though if you want to be alone, miss, I should be going anyway. I’m just . . .”

“Oh, please, no,” Oanh said. Franz was a slim man of average height—for most cultures, the delicate builds of Nevasa being an exception. He had strong, regular features with a small moustache which to Oanh gave an exotic tinge to his good looks. “I wasn’t . . . That is—”

She looked at her hands. “It isn’t that I wanted to be alone, but if—”

“—you were going to be alone anyway, you didn’t want to do it in a lounge with a thousand people watching you,” Franz said, completing her sentence and her thought perfectly.

“Yes,” she said, meeting the young man’s eyes. “That’s how I felt.”

“Ah—”Franz said. He looked away, then back. “Ah—I was planning to get something to drink. Ah—coffee, perhaps, or . . . ?”

“I’ve thought of seeing the Aviary Lounge,” Oanh said, smiling shyly. “If you’d like that, I . . . ?”

Franz offered his arm. “Let’s do it now,” he said. His face wore a lithe, active expression, a complete change from the cold gloom with which he’d been staring at the altarpiece.

“You know how to find it, then?” Oanh asked. “The ship is so big, I’m afraid I’ll get lost every time I leave father’s suite.”

The woolen carpet was only a meter wide, so their outside heels clicked on the boards until they passed through the archway. The corridor floors of the Empress of Earth were of varied appearance, but all were of a synthetic which deadened noise as well as cushioning footsteps.

Franz laughed cheerfully. “We’ll find it,” he said. “We’ll have an adventure, just the two of us.”

Oanh joined his laughter. It occurred to her that this was the first time in . . . weeks, certainly—and probably longer—that she’d felt cheerful.

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