There was a time in her life when she would never have allowed anyone to study her like this. It made her feel like a laboratory animal, poked and prodded with knife-edged words while dispassionate scientists muttered profound things like “Hmmm” and “That’s interesting.” But she knew this was the price she had to pay to explore new worlds and discover lost civilizations, so she endured. It was harder than usual with Tully absent, though. His empty chair was a painful reminder that she had lost not only a partner but a friend, and even an occasional lover. Once or twice she had to stop talking while she struggled to compose herself; the nantana no doubt took mental notes about her state of mind while they waited. What was considered “normal” when you were mourning a partner whose relationship with you had been so intimate, so complex?
She did manage to get through the interview without revealing the real cause of Tully’s death, which was a small victory. There was no reason anyone had to know that it was Tully’s unwise choice of a sex partner that had caused the official First Contact strategy on Proxima 5 to explode. Apparently having sex with a woman in the priestly caste was punishable by death, if that woman didn’t seek her gods’ approval first. Jericho helped with that, redirecting the interview when it strayed in an unseemly direction. Why? Did he know that there were outriders who considered sexual experimentation to be one of their job benefits, who competed to see which one of them could rack up the most “first contact” experiences? If so, he didn’t say anything about it, for which she was grateful
Thanks to Jericho, she never had to reveal that detail. Thanks to him, the meeting ended without her feeling angry, or anxious, or upset—her usual responses to administrative rituals like this. She nodded a curt farewell to her interrogators and headed for the exit. Her mission was officially done now, and the Guild no longer had any right to tell her where to go or what to do. At least until she signed on for her next job.
There was a bar in the outer ring that had a drink with her name on it. The sooner she got to it the better.
* * *
The Lucifer Club was gone.
Standing in the middle of the crowded promenade, Ru stared at the place where it had once been. PROMETHEUS CLUB, the sign said now. Same location, same storefront design, even the same font for the title—but a different name. So was it the same franchise? Lucifer’s whole selling point was that it never changed, so the thought that it might have done so, even in such a small detail, was disconcerting.
A sensor light flashed briefly overhead as she approached the entrance, acknowledging that the club’s guest program had identified her. No doubt it was streaming her personal data to the staff right now. The familiar protocol soothed her nerves a bit, and when the doors parted she saw that the inside of the club was indeed the same as always. The floor plan, the lighting, the décor, even the music playing softly in the background were exactly the same as they had been twenty years ago, the last time she’d visited, and the time before that, and the time before that, ad infinitum. Worlds might change while an outrider slept, fashion and culture might race headlong into the future during her cold stasis sleep, but the Lucifer Club was always the same. Always home.
Except for the name.
There was a Runyat behind the polished wooden bar. Ru had never seen him before, but he nodded to her as if she were a regular. “Welcome back, Outrider Gaya.” His arms were bare, no doubt to show off their snake-like patterning. “The usual?”
She nodded. “Please.”
She flashed a quick query to the outernet to access his name and public profile, so she could address him as if they knew one another. The illusion of intimacy was the heart and soul of the Lucifer experience. Treat each guest as if they had been there yesterday.
The drink that he handed her was clear blue with a minty aroma. “Blue galaxy, sans salt.” Then he offered her a small data chip. “Newly updated.”
“Thank you, Basil.” She slid the chip into her headset but didn’t activate it. “If I may ask . . .” She glanced toward the portal. “What’s with the name change?”
The bartender sighed. “There was a digital virus making the rounds a while back. Nasty thing. At first it only targeted Guild pilots, but then it started mutating into more destructive forms. Took them a good three years to hunt down every last version of it.”
“Ah, let me guess . . . they named it Lucifer?”
The bartender nodded. “People came here thinking there was some kind of connection. I’m not sure what they imagined that would be, but we started getting some really weird types in here. I mean, think about the kind of person who would find a bar appealing because it was named after malware. So in the end, management decided the old name had to go. The rest is all the same, though, I promise you.”
And the myth is similar enough, Ru thought. Prometheus, bringer of knowledge to humankind, tortured for eternity. “Thank you.” She took a sip from her drink and looked around the club.
“If you need anything more,” he said, “let me know.”
“Of course.”
The main floor was dominated by a restaurant, moody in color and dimly lit by faux-candles. That had been the style back when the Lucifer Club was founded, and so it would remain the style forever. A few tables were occupied, and she spotted one or two other outriders. Even if they had not been wearing the sakuna kaja—the symbol of their profession—she could tell they were outriders by the way they looked around the room: eyes yearning for some unseen comfort, souls strangely disconnected from everything around them. Experts had written volumes about the psychological effect of long-term stasis, but no outsider could truly understand what it was like to exist in a universe that was different every time you returned to it. This club, with its artificial familiarity, was a psychological lifeline.
As she headed toward the back of the room she spotted an outrider she knew. There were three Belial twins perched on high stools opposite him, bald heads and half-bare breasts gleaming in the candlelight as they flirted in eerie unison. Outrider groupies. Tully had enjoyed such attention, but Ru found it distasteful; as she nodded briefly to her colleagues she tried to avoid the groupies’ fetishistic gazes, so they would not address her.
In their eyes you are a romantic figure, she reminded herself. Fearless explorer, discoverer of lost worlds, rescuer of civilizations. Such types have always been the object of lust.
That didn’t make it any less creepy.
In the back of the club were smaller, more private spaces, and she chose a shadowy alcove as far away from the other patrons as possible. There she settled into a chair, shut her eyes, and activated the bartender’s chip.
WELCOME TO THE PROMETHEUS OUTRIDER PORTAL. PLEASE ENTER YOUR LICENSE NUMBER TO PROCEED.
She was about to do that when an image suddenly appeared in her field of vision: a flock of animated birds trailing a banner behind them: HAI KAWAII! Annoyed, Ru directed her headset to block the image and anything like it. Advertising was one thing she didn’t miss when she was on a mission. She focused again on the task at hand, visualizing each letter and number of her outrider license and letting her headset transmit the images to the club’s private innernet.