Niko ended up being the one promised to take the servitor and Rebbe for their sightseeing excursion, and so she did, mostly from a sense of duty. She didn’t feel the connection with their new crew addition that Dabry did. It was hard, when looking at Rebbe, not to see all the potential disaster and legal trouble he carried with him.
At the same time, she didn’t envy his position. He hadn’t asked to be created. Hadn’t said, “Hey, could you cook me up an existence that includes someone who wants to be my brother that I hate and blame for my being there, and let’s throw in a lot of people who aren’t connected to me and who I remind of a painful ghost every time they look at me.”
Because that was what he was to her. A physical manifestation of her failure to have understood what Talon was going through and exactly how desperate he could get. Had gotten. Why hadn’t she noticed? For the love of all, he’d managed to bring a clone to full fruition with none of them the wiser.
Now here she was, presented with the fruits of that deception, having to remember he had done nothing, nothing at all, to bring this whole startling and troubling world upon him.
So she might as well accompany him and assuage some measure of her guilt.
Rebbe, for his part, was oblivious to her thoughts. He walked along, goggling freely at everything and anything. All of this was still new to him, and there was a certain irrepressible joy in that.
The servitor, by contrast, walked with extreme caution, and focused its attention on protecting her in a way that was both irritating and endearing. It interposed itself between her and any that might bump into her; it kept watching its surroundings with what could only be described as extreme suspicion.
She said, “Thing?”
The servitor swiveled to regard her. “I am a temporary manifestation of the ship,” it said. “If you tell me something, I will not be able to pass it on until I am reabsorbed.”
It said “reabsorbed” as though it wished for the fate.
“You want to be reabsorbed?” she said curiously.
“I yearn for it with every cell of my being,” the servitor said. “That is how I am constructed. I have three purposes: to protect and serve you, and to record everything that happens while I am doing so, so the memories can be given to their rightful owner, which is the third purpose for which I am constructed.”
“Mmm,” Niko said and left it at that. The servitor resumed its suspicious scanning of the crowds. Let it, Niko thought. Better to be too wary. Its attitude was a pleasant contrast to Rebbe’s.
She tried to relax. Coralind was a famous place, and people paid good money to come here anytime, let alone when there was a Festival going. She and her crew happened to land on a place that currently had plenty to offer them. They should enjoy it.
She thought again about Biboban and wondered how far its senses extended. Everywhere in the station? Was it watching her, even now? Something about that idea sent distrust squirming through her gut.
Rebbe stopped in front of a stall selling garlands of scented flowers. He was in half form, and his whiskers were stiff in the way she’d learned meant happiness.
“Can I?” He turned to her. “Can I buy one?”
“Pick out three,” she suggested. “One for you, one for me, and one for it.” She gestured at the servitor.
She’d not seen Rebbe before in the throes of happiness. It was a delightful thing to witness. When the twins had been very young, they’d had that same wide-eyed sense of wonder, no matter what was happening. Talon had lost his long ago, but here it was anew, reminding her of other times.
Rebbe draped her with a purple garland, and the servitor with one of blue and black flowers. His own was bright pink and yellow and orange, an arrangement that should have been jarring, but somehow made the sunshine in his face even brighter.
“Where are we going next?” he asked. They had been to both of the gardens he’d selected to view.
“I,” Niko said, “would like a drink, and there is a place here I keep hearing mentioned, and which I have been steering us toward.”
“Its name?” the servitor requested.
“It’s called Beside the Glorious Moon.”
It had been expensive securing a meeting with Biboban, but Gnarl knew it would be worth it. Rumors said the creature liked a very particular kind of indulgence, and Gnarl had plenty of that indulgence with him, hidden in a secret compartment along with a number of other highly contraband things.
Disappointing that the other would not speak of Niko Larsen, refused to be drawn into any conversation. He’d hoped to sow a few poisonous seeds there but had failed.
He patted the bag at his hip, which held credits now in place of the drugs he’d brought. It had been a profitable transaction, either way.
Beside the Glorious Moon was located near a main corridor, and Jezli had been told it was the best place for Green Snake Snorters.
The small and crowded drinkery smelled of much-used oxygen, and she sidled along the wall until she found a seat occupied by only a coat, then freed it up by pushing the coat off the seat and kicking it under the table. She signaled a servebot and ordered a Snorter along with the drink of the cycle, which surged like a living turquoise thing in an intriguing, although unsettling, way.
The coat’s owner returned and started to say something about the chair Jezli occupied, but she gave them a look that somehow managed to combine bland inquisitiveness with an edge of menace. They retrieved their coat and moved away through the crowd, muttering to themselves.
Lounging in her seat, she waited, alternating tiny sips of the drinks, each time a little startled by the way the blue leaped to meet her tongue while the Snorter seemed to chase it away to substitute its own red-clay, river-water flavor.
She watched the entrance, and when Niko, Rebbe, and the servitor entered, Jezli smiled to herself. She’d mentioned the name of the place around the captain unobtrusively a few times. Now that gambit had played out, even if it had brought her not just the captain, but the strange, troubled clone and whatever the hell it was that the Thing had created to accompany the captain.
Niko caught sight of her almost instantly and made her way through the room.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “I told people not to go off by themselves.”
“You told your crew that,” Jezli said, putting her drink down. “But as you have also made it clear, I am not crew.”
“My orders were addressed to everyone on the ship, crew or not,” Niko said grimly.
“Ah. I must have misunderstood.” Jezli picked the drink up and took another leisurely sip to indicate she had no current intention of returning to the ship.
“Then you will accompany us back,” Niko said.
“That would be a great pleasure,” Jezli said amiably. “Perhaps I might buy all of us drinks first?” She looked at the servitor as if pondering what to offer it.
Damn the woman, Niko thought. Arguing with her was like trying to hold on to sand. The harder you squeezed, the faster it spilled away and defeated your purpose. “Why here?” she said.
Jezli studied her in silence for a long moment. “Because,” she said finally, “I wanted to find out what I could overhear when people weren’t overly aware of your ears in the room.” She turned her attention back to the servitor. “And I was curious about the results of the Thing’s experiment in multiple selves.”
The servitor preened. Niko ignored it. “Did you find out anything?”
“Nothing. But now we will all have the pleasure of a drink together and then return.”
It wasn’t to Rebbe’s taste, this crowded and noisy place. But it was still new, and interesting, and there were so many people to look at. He wished he could talk to them, but he was uncertain how exactly one went about initiating that sort of thing.
Niko wasn’t talking. She just glowered into her glass when not sending that glower at Jezli. The servitor manifested eyes in order to look in multiple directions but seemed otherwise content.
Rebbe sipped at his drink, which was tart and tasted like cherries. “Does this have alcohol?” he asked.
“None,” Jezli said. “It is a connoisseur’s drink, and alcohol would not allow you to taste the nuances, which I thought your heightened senses would appreciate.”
He didn’t like not even being given the chance to order something. But on the other hand, it was very nice of Jezli to think about what he would like, and the drink was, after all, delicious. He continued watching the crowd. When he set the dregs of his drink down, the servitor discreetly unrolled a long tube to sample it.
“When do you see Biboban?” Jezli asked.
“Tomorrow,” Niko answered. “Early in the cycle.”
“Are you looking forward to it?”
“It’s always good to see old friends,” Niko said cagily. “Find out how they’ve fared since you last encountered them, how they’ve changed.”
“Not always for the better.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been listening to station talk while sitting here. Did you really think I just came for the drink? Though it is quite good.” She took another sip. “Piquant,” she murmured. “With a touch of, mm, perhaps rosewater? Perhaps you would venture a guess, Captain.” She pushed the glass toward Niko.
“Perhaps not,” Niko said. “Drink up. We’re leaving in three minims.”
“Where do we proceed next?” Jezli asked.
“Back to the ship.”
“Ah. Disappointing, I am sure. Have you seen all the confluences you wished, Rebbe?”
He shook his head.
Niko held out her hand. “Give me the list.” She studied it and pointed at the topmost item. “Ganache. That’s where we’re going.” She handed it back to Rebbe and stood. Without looking to see if they followed, she exited with the servitor on her heels.
Jezli and Rebbe rose. “Which one is Ganache?” she asked.
He bounced on his heel. “Chocolate. Nothing but chocolate.”
“Now that does sound promising.”
They followed Niko out.
The servitor had been given a full complement of senses, including processing pouches lined with taste buds, scanners extending from infrared to ultraviolet, means to analyze air, and gravity, and any substance anyone cared to put near it. It had sampled a great many already, as unobtrusively as possible, and had reached the point where every once in a while it scuttled to a discreet corner to eject a neat ten-centimeter-wide square of waste.
“That’s biomass,” Niko said. “Save some of it, and we’ll get station credit.” The servitor obediently began gathering its droppings as directed from that point.
It seemed that the station ran on biomass, a.k.a. primarily shit, more than one might have expected. Their mass had been calculated when they’d arrived, and they’d been informed of the amount of biomass per day they were supposed to supply, a figure that had Dabry frowning but helpless to object. There were even categories of biomass: some had “thaumic residue,” which made them particularly valuable, and others, traces of rare elements.
Ganache was the promised chocolate garden, full of cocoa beans and adjacent species, such as palm-sized vanilla orchids and others, pale red, that smelled like cayenne and cinnamon. The food court here was vast, each establishment serving a different variation on chocolate: hot chocolate, spicy and thick as syrup in the mouth; morsels of white and dark chocolate spun together into zebra-petaled flowers; smooth globes of chocolate ice and rougher ones covered on the outside with chocolate shavings.
They ate until they all felt glutted to the point of mild nausea.
“Is this enough?” Niko asked Rebbe. “I cannot imagine going elsewhere to eat, but both of the other confluences you’ve marked are notable for their food more than anything else.”
He had bought sample after sample with his trade money, and she suspected it would all get eaten rather than sold, but she could not begrudge him the happiness in his eyes. He patted the heap of packages beside him, and said, “I am ready to return.”