Yee Haw!

“No. We have no baggage allowance. Your parents can, and I imagine will, ship you whatever you need or want but as a mere leader’s wife you are limited to that rather full bag that you put in the conveyor. But we can wander around some and, given your pocket money, can buy anything you like to eat or drink.”

Illoia settled against her husband, glad that he was finally beginning to be comfortable using her money, and looked around. “Where are we going?” she asked, as he pulled her toward a set of stairs.

“The military liners embark on the lower levels,” Tom said. “I think it would be best to seek our entertainment there.”

Illoia gave a slight shutter and clutched his arm. She had never been on the lower levels of the space station. On her trip out, which had been her first time at the station, she had remained on the upper levels. Indeed the whole time she had been there they had been accompanied by an employee from the liner. A purser or some such.

And as they descended things got, well, louder. The stairway was bad enough but when they came out on the lower floor she could hardly hear herself think. “What is this?” she asked.

Tom sighed, “Lower station bars don’t have privacy curtains,” he said. “Each bar plays a different style of music and, unfortunately, the combination is chaotic. This is a little worse than I am used to. Come, I will take you somewhere that will be a bit quieter.”

They wandered down the hallway and she stared into the doors. The first bar was filled with lads in uniform, and lasses in an entirely different form of uniform! And the music was obnoxious, all bagpipes and drums.

The second bar seemed to have a water theme, with waterfalls and aquariums, and there seemed to be a lot of littlies in it. The music was annoying, though, all horns and some form of bubbly noises.

He took her past three more doors until finally pulling her toward a door, over which was a picture of a bull and some script she couldn’t read. This bar wasn’t exactly quiet, although not as loud as some of the others. In the front of the room was a man plucking strings on a dual harp, and singing about some lass that had left him when he was drafted. The room seemed about half and half men and families.

It might have been her imagination but the room seemed to get a bit quiet when they came in, and she was sure she saw several heads turn toward them, but her husband ignored that and took her too a free table.

“Ken I hep ya?” Illoia heard, as she tried to watch people watch them without looking like she was watching.

She turned to see a lass in a tight blouse and long skirt, the shirt in a bright weave and the skirt in heavy denim. She didn’t even have time to open her mouth before her husband said, “Two plates of heavy ribs and taters. Kimchi. Light froth.”

“You got it, honey,” the lass said and was gone.

“What?” she asked him.

“Hopefully you will enjoy the meal. I doubt you have had anything like it.”

“But what was she saying?”

He grinned, “Oh, that’s an affected dialect from Earth. No one really speaks that way anymore except for at this chain of restaurants…”

He broke off as an older lad had come up. He seemed to have come from the bar. He was wearing an outfit similar to that of the lass, but with darker colors for the blouse, and pants instead of a skirt. “Honoured to have you,” the man said, staring at Tom’s blouse. “There won’t be a bill.”

Tom nodded his head. “The lass is rich,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

The man turned to look at Illoia, and then back at Tom, “If her father owned the planet, I wouldn’t give you a bill. But I wonder… would you mind signing the wall for me?”

He pointed and they looked. The walls were all wooden, no doubt over a metal back,  and there were signatures all over one wall. “I would be honoured,” Tom said, and Illoia got up and followed him over to the wall. “What do I do?” Tom asked.

“Just use this pen,” the man said, handing it to him. “Write whatever you want.”

Tom hesitated a moment, and then scrawled out something that Illoia did not understand at all, in a script that she recognised as Greek. Then he signed Leader Cladin Tomirosh, and handed the man back his pen.

The man picked up a hand lamp and, turning it on, played it over the letters and Illoia watched, amazed, as the wood under the letters slowly burnt away. Then she turned and, not seeing her husband, hurried back to their table.

Where she was amazed to see a huge rack of ribs, all dripping with sauce, a baked potato, a side plate with things for the baked potato, and a huge mug, overflowing onto the table.

“What?”

“Let us pray,” he said, having already tucked the enormous napkin under his chin. “Lord, bless our food, our journey, our work, and our families…”

“Amen,” Illoia said, then lifted up her head and imitated him with the napkin. “What is this drink?” she asked.

“Try it and see,” he said, grinning, as he cut off a rib and tore into it.

She delicately lifted up the mug and, wincing a bit as the foam practically went in her nose, took a sip and… “Oh, my!”

“Good?”

“It is… amazing. What fruit is that?”

“It’s a mixture,” he said. “And I don’t know what ones, either. But they do something amazing with it.”

Illoia ate and enjoyed the ambiance. She certainly had never been in any place like this before! The musician had started a new tune, and two of the tables nearest him had started singing… and she couldn’t understand a word of it. Well, no, that wasn’t right, but she certainly didn’t understand the gist. It was all about a ‘range’ and ‘home’.

A few minutes later Illoia was nowhere near done and Tom reached over and cut a good third of her ribs away, cutting them apart and ripping the meat off. He had already finished his potato and that spicy pickled cabbage salad that she hadn’t noticed at first, and kept glancing at his comp.

“You will need to learn to eat quicker,” he said.

“I’m not that hungry,” she said.

“You don’t want to insult the chef,” he said. “Bad form.”

He reached over and shovelled more cabbage in, then took another rib. “But we have to go.”

He took the napkin off and wiped his face with it. When Illoia moved too slowly, he took her napkin and wiped her face like a littlie, then grabbed her and pulled her to the door.

“Tom!” she protested, but he kept pulling her till they were out the door and a few steps down the corridor.

“There, that will be no insult then,” he said. “We just ran out of time, I made that clear enough.”

“You didn’t have to…”

“Yes, I did. Insult else. I was taught that by a very good friend of mine.”

Illoia stared back down the corridor as she hurried after her husband, who was still walking quickly. He was afraid of insulting… no, not ‘afraid’. He thought it was important to not insult the managers of a particular restaurant.

“What did you write?” she asked, when she was alongside him again. “On the wall, there, in the restaurant?”

“Oh, I wrote a famous quote from Earth. Basically, ‘You should reach the limits of virtue before you cross the border of death.”

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Von