“Is this the part where your one starts feckin’ us about?” Regan asked after they passed through the turnstiles. “Because I coulda sworn we’d just gone into the casino, like.”
The two of them found themselves at one end of a long glittering street lined with glass and metal monuments to an era and a planet gone by. Neon lights blazed, their light reflecting off gleaming chrome. High over head, a clear dome gave the faux-city a perpetual night sky. From the many variously shaped and themed edifices came the unmistakable sound of slot machines.
“We did,” Lilliana said as they headed down the street, not from having any particular plan to do so but merely to avoid being trampled by the stream of people entering behind them. “This is The Meadows.”
“I thought there’d be more sheep, like,” Regan said.
“What?” Lilliana asked, practically shouting to be heard over the noise of the crowd, the noise of the slots, and the clatter of coins.
“‘The Meadows’… I thought there’d be sheep,” Regan repeated more loudly.
“It’s called ‘The Meadows’ because it’s named after the legendary birthplace of gambling on Old Earth,” Lilliana said.
“Just hold on, now, the Gypsy,” Regan said. “I know me history. Gambling was invented by the Americans.”
“Yes, according to the legends, anyway.”
“But ‘The Meadows’ is English, like. Why wouldn’t an American place have an American name?”
“It’s translated from the American because nobody except dusty old scholars can even understand American anymore,” Lilliana said. “It’s been a dead language for centuries. Now will you please quit distracting me with the trivia questions, Bard? I need to think.”
“An’ I need a drink,” Regan said. “Which of these little places do ya conjure is most likely to have one o’ them purple-coded bars the lady was talkin’ about?”
“Oh, no, we are not using that voucher chit,” Lilliana said.
“Do ya think they have American food here?” Regan shouted, heading towards a building front labeled “The Meadows Ranch”. “I could really murder a plate o’ nachos, like.”
“Bard!” Lilliana called after her. She lunged for the mechanic’s cape, but the crowd had filled the gap between them. “We have to stick together!” she yelled and started making her way through the river of people after her.
Back aboard the Rebellion, most of the crew had either disembarked already, eager to spend the thousand credit windfall which Lilliana had disbursed, or else they were hard at work shifting cargo.
There were three and one third exceptions to this. The doctor had returned to his state of slumber. Dick Unger remained at his post in the captain’s seat. Handy was going over the ship’s maintenance passages from top to bottom, looking for damage to the rickety patchwork of pipes, ducts, and cables which carried power, water, air, and waste throughout the ship, to find all the damage that might have been sustained in the ship’s recent travails before the small leaks had a chance to turn into big problems.
Nobody had asked Handy to do this. It was the sort of thing that nobody else thought of. She didn’t properly understand what a casino was, and she had only the barest inkling of the interpersonal politics in which Lilliana found herself enmeshed. She only knew that leaky pipes rarely fixed themselves.
Cicada and Daniel Shays were still on board, but of course, they weren’t crew.
The one third of an exception, of course, was in the form of the person of Nick Bradley, clone lifer. It was normally his preference to share all experiences among his body equally, since he could only afford to have his bodies’ memories merged once a year, but with fifty-six hours of shore leave in a place the Rebellion wasn’t likely to dock twice, he’d talked among himself and decided to take it in shifts in order to get the most out of it. That way, one of him could rest while the other two split up to take in some sights before the three of him met up for dinner and a different body went home to rest.
Left alone, the portion of Nick Bradley which had been left behind was feeling an acute reminder of why exactly he normally shared experiences. As much as he lived and breathed the doctrine of “one person, many bodies”, there were times when it was hard for an individual brain to not feel like exactly that. Knowing that his brother-selves were out having fun, being served complimentary drinks, watching floorshows, and throwing around a portion of their triple pay… well, it was all very well and good to tell himself that they were he and he was them, but he still felt an awful lot like him.
“Come on, Nick,” he said—not feeling at all silly for talking to himself, as that’s how most of his conversations went. “You’re being silly. It will all balance out at the next memory merger, and anyway, this attitude is a complete betrayal of the clonist identity.”
To distract himself, he grabbed a book off the nightstand and rolled over to lay across the extra-wide bunk diagonally. The other two brains were stocking up interesting experiences for the collective to share in… even if he couldn’t join in, this Nick Bradley would have something more interesting than the ceiling of their quarters to contribute for these few hours when they merged.
He’d just settled in to read when there came a knock at the door.
“Enter,” he said, and then winced at the screech of metal and hydraulics as the door grudgingly lurched about three quarters of the way open.
“Man, you guy should really have somebody look at that door,” Leo said, squeezing easily through the opening.
“It’s been like that for months,” Nick said. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Leo asked, sounding affronted and touching a paw to the center of his chest. “What do I want? Nick, buddy, I just came here to check in on you… I’m sure you must be going out of your mind with boredom, with everybody else off-duty and you stuck back here.”
“Most people only have one body and brain out on shore leave,” Nick said. “If that. I’m way ahead of them.”
“Well, sure, and you know what?” Leo asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I respect that. I respect your lifestyle. But at the same time, I know how you must struggle at a time like this, and I have come to help.”
“What do you want?” Nick repeated.
“I’ve come to help you take your mind off what your… other parts… are doing,” Leo said. “After all, what’s better…”
“You want me to take over in the cargo hold so you can go gamble,” Nick said.
“I’ll split whatever I earn with you evenly,” Leo said. “Sixteen percent, right off the top.”
“Sixteen percent is an even split?”
“You’re only a third of you,” Leo said. “And half of that…”
“How about you give me three-fourths because I outnumber you?”
“How about we forget all that clone nonsense and just go fifty-fifty?” Leo asked.
“Fine, but I’m out of here in… six hours,” Nick said. “If you aren’t back by then, it’s your tail.”
“Six hours? That’s plenty of time.”
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