Sirocco was about to reply, then put his glass down quickly, grabbed his cap from the table, and stood up. “Time I wasn’t here,” he muttered. “I’ll be up in Rockefeller’s if anyone wants to join me there.” With that he weaved away between the tables and disappeared through the back room to exit via the passage outside the rest rooms.
“What in hell’s come over him?” Hanlon asked, nonplussed. “Aren’t they paying captains well these days?”
“SD’s,” Swyley murmured, without moving his mouth. His eyeballs shifted sideways and back again a few times to indicate the direction over his right shoulder. A more restrained note crept into the place, and the atmosphere took on a subtle tension.
Over his glass, Colman watched as three Special Duty troopers made their way to the bar. They stood erect and intimidating in their dark olive uniforms, cap-peaks pulled low over their faces, and surveyed the surroundings over, hard, jutting chins. Nobody met their stares for long before looking away. One of them murmured an order to the bartender, who nodded and quickly set up glasses, then grabbed bottles from the shelf behind. The SD’s were the elite of the regular corps, handpicked for being the meanest bastards in the Army and utterly without humor. They reminded Colman of the commando units he had seen in the Transvaal. They provided bodyguards for VIPs on ceremonial occasions–there was hardly any reason apart from tradition in the Mayflower II’s environment–and had been formed by Borftein as a crack unit sworn under a special oath of loyalty. Their commanding officer was a general named Stormbel. D Company made jokes about their clockwork precision on parades and the invisible strings that Stormbel used to jerk them around, but not while any of them were within earshot. They called the SD’s the Stromboli Division.
“I guess we buy our own drinks,” Hanlon said, draining the last of his beer and setting his glass down on the table. “Looks like it,” Stanislau agreed.
“I ‘got the last one,” Colman reminded them. Somehow the enthusiasm had gone out of the party.
“Ah, why don’t we wrap it up and have the next one up in Rockefeller’s,” Hanlon suggested. ‘That was where Sirocco said he was going.”
“Great idea,” Colman said and stood up. Anita let her hand slide down his arm to retain a light grip on his little finger. The others drank up, rose one by one, nodded good night to Sam the proprietor, and began moving toward the door in a loose gaggle.
Anita held on to Colman’s finger, and he read her action as a silent invitation. He had slept with her a few times, many months ago now, and enjoyed it. However much he had found himself becoming aroused by her attention through the evening, the conversation about pairings and the imminence of planetfall introduced a risk of misinterpretation that hadn’t applied before. Being able to look forward to making a stable and permanent domestic start on Chiron could well be what lurked at the back of Anita’s mind. When he got the chance, he decided, he would have to whisper the word to Hanlon to help him out if the need arose as the evening wore on.
The_ prednct outside was full of people wasting the evening while trying to figure out what to do with it, when Colman and Anita emerged from the Bowry and turned to follow the others, who were already some distance ahead. Anita stopped to fish for something in. her pocketbook, and Colman slowed to a halt to wait. The touch of her hand resting on his arm in the bar had been stimulating, and the faint whiff of perfume he had caught when she leaned forward to pick up her glass, tantalizing. What the hell? he thought. She’s not a kid. A guy needed a break now and again after twenty years of being cooped up in a spaceship;
He turned back to find her holding a phial of capsules. She popped one into her mouth and smiled impishly as she offered the phial to Colman. “It’s Saturday, why not live it up a little?” He scowled and shook his head. Anita pouted. “They’re good. Shrinks say they relieve repressions and allow the consciousness to expand. We should get to know ourselves.”