Besides, sometimes it was fun to throw caution to the wind.
“Off the record,” she said. “You have a personal comtab with you?”
He looked surprised, but then he nodded and pulled the device out of a pocket. He held it up to show her, the questioning expression still on his face. She took her own comtab out and tapped it against his.
“That’s my private node, not the business one. For the next time you are off the clock and in the mood for some spicy food. And you feel like having company. No legal or ethical pitfalls.”
Berg looked at the node information flashing across his screen. She had formulated the offer in casual terms. If he wasn’t interested, or if he was with someone else, it would be easy for him to be politely noncommittal without rejecting her outright.
He smiled and tucked his comtab away again.
“I will take you up on that.”
She barely avoided being late for her ride home. When she stepped through the rooftop access door, it was 2128 hours. Tonight, ninety minutes had passed much more quickly than usual.
On the rooftop landing pad, Edric was waiting for her next to the gyrofoil that would bring her home. Solveig stopped at the edge of the pad for a moment and turned to look at the city. The sun had set, leaving only a faint streak of purple and red at the horizon. Down in the streets, thousands of AI-controlled pods formed never-ending rivers of blinking lights that crisscrossed each other and converged in the distance. The evening air carried the smells of the city, ozone and warm steel and sunbaked photovoltaic glass.
“Good evening, Miss Solveig,” Edric said when she walked over to the gyrofoil’s open door. “You look like you had a good day.”
“How so, Edric?” she asked.
“You look pleased.”
Edric climbed into the cabin behind her and closed the door. A few moments later, the pilot started the rotors and lifted off into the night sky. Solveig checked her reflection in the window next to her seat. There was a little smile stuck in the corners of her mouth after all, she saw, one that wasn’t usually there after a long day at Ragnar.
When she walked the path from the landing pad to the main house half an hour later, the music from the house was so loud that she could already hear it halfway across the central terrace. The noise increased exponentially when the front door sensed her approach and opened. An orchestral soundtrack, heavy with percussion and dramatic. Solveig sighed. She knew how her father’s day had been going, and where she would find him tonight.
“Computer, turn it down seventy percent,” she shouted at the housekeeping AI. The thundering drums lowered their volume to a more tolerable level. She made her way straight to the bar next to the main sitting room. If he wanted company—and on nights like this, he usually did—there was no avoiding him. If she went to bed without stopping to see him, he’d just have her summoned anyway.
Falk Ragnar sat at the bar, on one of his old-fashioned stools that were covered in ancient leather. A screen projection was floating in front of a wall, taking up the entire side of the room. It was playing three news streams side by side, with the sound turned off.
“You are going to make yourself deaf, Papa,” she said when she walked in. “Listening to music at that volume.”
“Cochlear replacements are cheap,” he said. “Takes half an hour. I’ve had it done twice already.”
He patted the bar stool next to his.
“Daughter of mine. Come on, have a drink with me before you go to bed. You worked late. You’ve earned one.”
She could tell by the light slur in his speech that the drink in front of him wasn’t his first tonight, or the second. There was a bottle by his right hand. She recognized the label—Rhodian single malt that was older than she was, a thousand-ag bottle of liquor. As much as her father detested the Rhodians, his hatred did not let him deny himself the pleasure of their finest and most expensive distillates.
“Sure,” she said, knowing that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “But just a little.”
He took another glass from the overhead rack and put it down on the counter, then poured a finger’s height of liquor into it. Even drunk, he had supreme physical control. He’d sway just like anyone else, but she had never seen him stumble or fall while intoxicated, not even when he’d had an entire bottle by himself, and he never threw up. Solveig sat down on the stool and touched glasses with him. It wasn’t her sort of drink, but she could understand why people enjoyed it. There was an almost infinite complexity to the flavor. She held the sip of liquor on her tongue for a moment and breathed in through her nose before swallowing, just like he had taught her, and he nodded his approval.
“He should have been like you,” he said. “Aden.”
She took another sip of the liquor to avoid a reply. There was no good way to bring up Aden with her father, and she was surprised he had broached that subject on his own. Maybe he wasn’t even on his third drink anymore.
“You went and walked the path. You got top grades. And then you took the chair. The one he was supposed to claim. And instead, he runs off and becomes a soldier.”
