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In some ways, a station was a station was a station. Same hallways, same dry air, same page after page of regs. But coming in as a rider off the Azores? Stations rolled out the carpet. Literal carpet, in places. Corridors soft under your feet, not in case a maneuver changed up to down, but because it felt good.
As far as Ben could figure, Dekker didn't notice. He was looking at stars. Pressing his nose up against the observation window. That pair of dull red lights meant something to him. Something more than a warning signal or a bad imitation of the sun.
Ben didn't know what was eating Dekker, but it couldn't chew him too badly in a room full of carpet. Ben wanted to see the normal parts of Venture station and get himself a beer. Left to himself, maybe beer first and station later. But Meg and Sal had their own ideas. Ideas that, after a pat on Dek's shoulder, meant Sal on Ben's arm or Sal's arm round Meg's waist, and a tour of every luxury Venture station had to offer. Tapes full of stories none of them had heard. A clever variation on the game of Go. A scarf lighter than a sandwich wrapper and brighter than Meg's hair.
They ended up in a shop tucked between a noodle stall and a rec center pushing dance classes. The shop was run by a merchanter off the Dinah. Staheli family; his given name was Nael. He'd met a girl, and stayed. Not merchanter custom, but he kept some of the old family connections. Or so he claimed. He opened tiny box after tiny box and told stories about planets Ben had never seen.
A bag made from twisted gray fiber held a necklace made of spikes. They shone soft blue like Neptune. Ben touched them, expecting ice. They bent like fingernails.
"Quills," said Nael Staheli. "A creature on Pell's world grows them, and the Downers make them into jewelry."
"How many beads did we trade them, cher?" Meg was ice beyond the comet belt, of a sudden.
"Weather satellites, ma'am—my apologies, Rider"—with a glance at the pins on Meg's collar. "It's all weather data. The Downers like to know, when storms are coming."
"Huh," Meg said, not buying it.
"Huh," said Sal, more cheerful. Or less willing to fight Earth battles, at this other star. "What's in here?"
"Here" was a shiny canister with a star pattern scratched into the lid. "Vanilla sugar," the merchanter told them.
"Hell, did we miss the algae farm tour?" Ben asked. There would be rows and rows of filters somewhere, scum spitting out sugar to protect itself from salt.
"Not vanillin, sir. True vanilla, all the way from Sol. The canister opens with a twist, like so—"
Sal breathed in and made a face like she was calcing something. Meantime, Mr. Staheli spun stories. Vanilla came from a flower. It hung off a vine like beads off a dancer's necklace. To make vanilla fruit you needed bees. Those bees only lived in one place—"México, jeune rab, México," Meg said—and with the droughts and the earthquakes, maybe not even there. So people went in, gloved because the vanilla vines stung, and touched pollen down into the throats of the flowers.
"Trez gentille." Sal twisted her tongue in a pattern as dangerous and as gentle as a planetary bee.
Ben took the canister from her. Wild-ass blue-sky thinking, lining people up to pet the poison flowers. Only Earth had people to waste on that kind of game.
He expected the sugar to sting at the back of his throat. Instead, it smelled like childhood. Like being a kid and licking soft-freeze, only richer. Like soft-freeze given a spin through Captain Mazian's liquor cabinet.
But Ben was on liberty. Free and clear, on the station. Not thinking about ships or captains for a hundred hours yet. "Figure that's my biology lesson for this shift," he said, and passed the can to Meg.
Meg, now. Meg took a long, slow breath. Looked like she was running the numbers on whether to call the whole thing a scam. But halfway through the scent hit the back of her brain and she went soft around the edges. Like she was staring at Dekker and he hadn't woken up yet. Like she'd charted out a new star all for herself.
"It's real?" Ben asked.
"Real as gravity, jeune rab. Real as gravity." Another breath. Then Meg shook her shoulders in a spacer's shrug, tight-controlled momentum, and screwed the cap back on. "I better check on Dek, back there. Nael, thanks for the comp'ny."
They left the shop together, arm in arm in arm. Clustered up together like a mess of moonlets. But Meg peeled off right after. Still thinking about Dekker. Or more shook than she was letting on.
Ben and Sal wandered through another shop or two, Sal pretending that another pair of earrings would be just the thing. Even Ben could tell her mind was elsewhere. At last he spun her round by the elbow and said, "Meg seriously wanted it, you think? That flower sugar?"
"What the hell do you think, chelovek?" But Sal was grinning as she said it.
"Who's the soft one, me or you?"
"You, cher. You are downright squashy."
Hell if either of them had soft edges left, after everything they'd seen. But that gave Ben his script for Mr. Staheli.
They sauntered back to the shop together. Ben asked the prices of a couple things—dammit, that spiral earring would suit Sal. When Staheli gave them the price of vanilla sugar, Sal straight-out laughed.
Ben would've laughed too, in his old life. All those credits scattered for the echo of a flower. But as a rider? The Azores gave them bed and board and weird ass-backwards security. All they had to do was spin out toward the stars.
Credits were cheap, for remembering what the sun was like, when they made that jump.
But by the time they walked out of the shop, Sal had talked the price of vanilla sugar down by a third, and gotten an earring thrown in.
They found Meg and Dekker back in the observation room, not quite touching. Rotating around a point you couldn't see, like that pair of red half-suns. Physics said, with two more bodies, no orbit could be stable.
Plain sense said, drag Dek back into this dimension before he got lost for good. Ben dragged the canister out of Sal's bag, tithing her a kiss in the process.
"Wrecking my pro-duc-shun," Sal protested.
Staheli had wrapped the can in bright-striped translucent film. Meg tore it off and folded it, neat, then stared at the canister like she didn't know what was inside.
"Has anybody on this fancy-ass observation deck got a spoon?" Ben asked.
Dekker woke up then, manifesting a practical knowledge of the drink machine in the corner, which would make you a foam cup full of brownish liquid and a stirring stick. Dekker dipped the stick into the sugar and touched it to his tongue, like someone back on Earth pollinating a flower.
He didn't pass out with a face full of Martian memories. He stood there, lips just parted. But his eyes were on Meg's face, tracking.
"Gonna share, cher?" Meg asked him, snagging the stir-stick and using the clean end to brush grains into her palm.
"Gonna compliment Sal's new earring?" Ben asked the room at large.
Overlap of voices then, Meg and Sal together, Dekker sliding a protest in the edges. The big soft-carpeted room felt more lived in, of a sudden. Not like it was built for them—more like they'd bent the space to fit.
Ben didn't need a stable orbit. Wouldn't know what to do with it if he had one, probably. But keep on spinning back in toward each other? Those were numbers Ben could track.