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“Very well, then, M. Roubaille, I think these will do. If I could see the statement?”

His assistant had a pleased little smile on her face as she presented me with the tablet displaying the accounting and then slipped back into the background while I consulted with Brill, Diane, and Beverly once more. The tab was two thousand two hundred and eight credits.

Diane gasped when she saw the amount. “Wow, I knew it was going to be steep but…”

“I can loan ya some if you need, Ish,” Bev offered in a lowered voice.

I looked to Brill. “Well, you really should keep the jacket. That’s only a kilocred and it is spectacular on you.”

I looked from one to the other before speaking. “No. The question is: how does this relate to clothing in general? I don’t buy clothes and I have no idea what a pair of jeans costs.”

Bev caught on first. “It’s about ten times what you would pay anywhere else, but you are never going to find clothes that fit that well ever again. I can help you if you’re short.”

I grinned and turned to the proprietor. “Thank you, M. Roubaille. This will be most satisfactory.” While Brill, Diane, and Bev looked on dumbfounded, I thumbed the bill.

He led me back to the dressing room where I retrieved my tablet and loose articles. The dolphin slipped nicely into an inside pocket of the jacket, and there was even a pocket for my tablet. His assistants bundled up my old clothing separately from my spare shirts and took everything back out to where Bev, Brill, and Diane waited.

“Are we ready, ladies?” I asked.

They all nodded, and M. Roubaille showed us out. On the way he handed me another data chip, this one inscribed with an ornate R on the case. “Anytime I can be of assistance, M. Wang, this will get my attention.” He smiled and added softly, “It’s not every day my assistants get to enjoy themselves so much, Monsieur. They hope you’ll return soon.”

“Thank you, M. Roubaille.” I offered him a smile and small bow. “This has been an amazing experience.” I tucked the case into my pocket beside the dolphin.

On the way out, I took the bundle of old clothes and stuffed it down the first disposal chute I came to. Brill, Bev, and Diane smiled at me. “Can’t afford the mass,” I told them.

“Well, let’s go out to dinner,” Bev said. “I feel like celebrating.”

On the way to the lift, I found myself in the lead with the women walking abreast behind me, Brill in the middle flanked by Diane and Bev. They looked terribly pleased with themselves for some reason—almost proud.

“One of you will have to cover dinner for me,” I said. “That was almost all I had.”

“Oh, after this afternoon’s performance, I think the least we can do is buy ya dinner,” Brill said.

Chapter 17

DUNSANY ROADS ORBITAL
2352-APRIL-15

We were on the lift heading for the restaurants on level eight when Diane’s tablet bipped. “I’m going to have take a rain check on dinner,” she said. “I’ve got to relieve Francis in half a stan.”

I checked the chrono and was shocked to discover that we had spent the whole afternoon at Chez Henri. Diane had the watch starting at 18:00 and it was already 17:15. My brain was having trouble processing everything. Of course it was late, we were headed for dinner, but somehow I had not connected the passage of time with Diane’s impending watch. I pulled my own tablet out and set an alarm for 05:15 just in case.

“You planning on staying out all night, boy toy?” Bev asked with a grin.

I shook my head. “No, but as crazy as this day has been, I don’t wanna take any chances.”

“You better not be late,” Diane said with a laugh. “I’m gonna be exhausted after this afternoon and staying up all night on the midwatch tonight.”

“We’ll get him back early,” Brill told her.

“Who says?” Bev demanded. “We need to take him out and show him off a little, don’t we?”

“Oh, yes,” Brill agreed, “but we ought to let him sleep tonight. He’s running on less than six stan’s sleep now. He’s got day watch tomorrow and he’ll be fresher tomorrow night.”

They were grinning at me the whole time they discussed my fate. “Don’t I have any say in this?” I asked.

Brill and Bev looked at each other and then at Diane. Finally, they turned back to me and Bev said, “No. Why do you ask?”

“Silly me,” I said. I was getting a bit giddy by then. I had not eaten since sometime in the midwatch when I had raided the cooler in the galley. For all her joking, Brill was actually right on the mark on how tired I really was. I just hoped I would not fall asleep in my soup.

When the lift stopped at level eight, Diane gave me a little hug and a peck on the cheek. “You did good today, Ishmael. Thanks for letting me come along.”

I was too flustered by so much stimulation to say anything except, “You’re welcome.”

Brill led us off the lift and we waved to Diane as the doors closed. Brill asked, “So, what’ll we eat?”

“Chicken,” I said. “Or beef.”

They looked at me strangely.

“Chicken is a local specialty according to Pip. We’re getting some for the stores trading. Cookie’s going to be in his element between the chicken and lamb.”

“Lead on, McDuff,” Brill told me. So I started down the corridor with Bev on one side and Brill on the other. As we walked along, I noticed people staring. I had gotten used to it whenever I went out with either Brill or Bev. Brill because she was so tall, and Bev because she was so tough looking. With both of them decked out as they were, it did not surprise me that we were getting a lot of second glances. I myself liked catching glimpses of them in any reflective surface we passed. What did surprise me was that a lot of the stares were directed at me.

About fifty meters around the station, we came to a nice looking place with chickens spinning in a rotisserie oven in the window. We had smelled the roasting chicken from halfway down the corridor and Brill said, “That’s gotta play hell with the scrubbers. Do you know how hard it is to get that out of the air?”

We all chuckled and went in.

It was early for dinner, barely 17:30, so we got a table right away. We ordered a large chicken paella which they served family style in a huge crock pot in the middle of the table along with some superb crusty yeast rolls. I did not think we could possibly eat it all when I saw the size of the serving dish, but we left only a few loose grains of rice in the bottom when we were done. It was delicious and I confess I enjoyed having two of the three most strikingly beautiful and charming women in this end of the galaxy as dinner companions.

We did not spend that much time over dinner, perhaps a couple of stans. After we finished our paella and a dessert, the server brought our check and hovered. There was quite a line built up at the front door, and needing the table, they were not shy about letting us know it was time to go. Brill picked up the check over Beverly’s objections. Realistically, I knew I could have covered my part of the tab. I was not broke by a long shot, and compared to the two kilocreds I had just dropped on clothes, the twenty creds or so dinner would have cost me was not much. But I also knew that buying dinner for a friend or two was something that gave Brill pleasure. I was oddly pleased by her caring gesture and found myself looking forward to an opportunity to reciprocate.

After dinner, we sauntered down through the station’s levels, bypassing the office levels, and lingering on the shopping and entertainment decks. As we strolled, we garnered rather a lot of admiring attention. I could tell the women were as aware of it as I was and I tried to emulate their easy nonchalance over being admired.

As we got closer to the ship, I was also aware of a new feeling of which I did not quite have a name for. It manifested in odd little ways—small comments and little smiles, a hand on an arm, a few steps taken hip to hip, and the warmth of shared laughter. It was an easy intimacy I could not remember ever feeling before. As I grew aware of it in myself, I noticed that it was also something that Bev and Brill shared with each other as much as with me. It was not a sexual thing, although there was certainly an overtone of sensuality.

We hit the docks about 21:00 and Bev and I fell into step on either side of Brill. It was cold, so we crossed quickly to the
Lois’s
lock. We strolled along, the three of us, and I could feel the looks of the dockhands as they watched us pass. I had a mental flash of how I had felt leaving the ship in the afternoon. We had left with the women in complete control, but returned as members of the same tribe. While we had been shipmates all along, I felt like I had been initiated into some higher level of relationship. I had passed some milestone. Whether it had been that self-inspection in the dressing room, or the sudden realization of my own power to arouse, I could not say. Maybe it was something as simple as wearing clothes that really fit me for the first time in my life, but I could not help marveling over—and reveling in—the dichotomy.

Bev punched the lock code and the three of us strode onto the ship. Rhon Scham had the gangway watch and when she saw the three of us coming, I saw the reaction on her face. Her eyes danced from Bev, then to Brill, and came to rest on me. I smiled at her and unbuttoned my jacket, slipped just the fingers of my right hand into the pocket of my jeans, and stood with one hip cocked while Bev and Brill checked in. I pretended not to notice the way Rhon kept swallowing hard or the blossom of color around her ears and down to the collar of her shipsuit.

It took a bit longer for me to check in because of the adjustments to mass. While I left with only the clothes on my back, I came back with considerably more. The difference in mass was not all that much, an extra couple of kilos perhaps. Most of what I brought back did not weigh much.

As I followed Bev and Brill down the passage into the ship, I slipped off my jacket and slung it over my shoulder so Rhon would get the full effect of my jeans walking away. I did not look back but I was pretty sure she was watching. Brill caught the gesture and gave a low chuckle.

“Bev, I think we’ve created a monster,” she said softly.

Bev looked over my shoulder to where Rhon would be standing and grinned. “No,” she said, “he’s always been a monster.” She went on to add softly, “I think Rhon likes the new outfit, Ish.” We split up at the head of the passage to go to our separate bunks.

As I walked into engineering berthing, Rebecca Saltzman was standing at her locker and I savored the double take she had when she saw me coming. “Wow, you did good, Ish,” she said in open admiration.

“Thanks, Rebecca. It’s been a pretty interesting day.”

“I can see that,” she said with an easy grin. “Did you have help picking that out? Or did you do it on your own?”

“Well, I had to take a woman with me to go clothes shopping, didn’t I? I wouldn’t want to violate any Confederation regulations.”

She looked confused. “Regulations?”

I nodded. “Yeah, the one about men not being allowed to go shopping for clothes without at least one woman?”

“Who told you that?”

“Brill.” I shrugged.

At that moment I knew from the look on her face that I had been had.

“She got me, didn’t she?”

Rebecca nodded and filled the berthing area with that liquid laugh she had. “Big time.”

“Ah, well. It worked out really well. Maybe they should make it a reg.”

Rebecca looked me up and down in a rather frank and appraising manner that I might have found disturbing earlier in the day. “Maybe they should,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Well whoever helped, it worked for you.” She grabbed a towel out of her locker and headed for the san. “If you’ll excuse me. I’m in sudden need of a cold shower.”

We shared a laugh and I started to unpack my purchases and stow them in my locker. In addition to the extra shirts, I found that M. Roubaille had included a couple extra pair of socks and a half-dozen pairs of the skimpy briefs. I grabbed a ship-tee and boxers from my locker and went into the san to change for bed.

***

Tabitha Rondita was the morning watch stander and she woke me just as my tablet bipped. I blinked some of the gunk out of my eyes and rolled out of the sack. I grabbed a quick shower, zipped into a fresh shipsuit, and headed to the mess deck for coffee. Pip and Sarah were setting up the omelet station and they both waved when they saw me come in.

“Hey!” I said. “How’d it go at the booth yesterday?”

Sarah beamed. “I sold all my shawls and made over three hundred creds!”

“I hear she’s a natural, Ish. Biddy said she dominated the table yesterday.” He looked at me oddly and asked, “Did you get a haircut or something? You look different.”

“I went clothes shopping with Bev, Brill, and Diane yesterday.”

He nodded sympathetically. “I can see where that would change a man. You going on watch?”

“Yeah, I’ve got day watch today. I just came to grab some coffee for now. I need to go relieve Diane and then I’ll be back for an omelet once I get things settled down there.”

“We’ll be here,” Sarah said.

I filled a mug with coffee and waved as I left.