Page 105

Her doofus of a wife leaned toward her, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “You have to be capcom also,” she deadpanned. “You’re the one with the shopping list.”

Despite herself, Signy let out a snort. “You have the same list. It’s a shared list.”

Cora gestured with faux exasperation toward the shuttle’s control panel. “I can’t do a preflight check and look at the list. That’s what capcom is for.”

Signy sighed again, heavier this time. She pulled her phone from her pocket and opened the list. “Kitchen knives, check?”

Cora nodded toward the netted storage space behind their seats. This held her backpack, which in turn contained the bundle of dull knives wrapped in a clean dish towel. “Knives, go,” she said.

“Torn pants?”

The backpack received another nod. “Pants, go.”

“Grocery baskets?”

A nod to the pair of baskets. “Baskets, go.”

“Something for James?”

“Fresh batch of cookies, go.”

“Where?” Signy demanded. She looked to the storage net, trying to spot the hidden treasure. “What kind?”

“Thumbprint.”

“What kind?”

“Persimmon.”

“Ugh,” Signy huffed. Cora’s thumbprint cookies were already a triumph, but the persimmon jam she’d made a few months back was an exceptional batch. “Do I not get any? Does being capcom mean nothing anymore?”

If Signy hadn’t been permanently smitten with the woman seated beside her, the smug smile on her face would’ve been so annoying. Cora opened the storage compartment a few inches from Signy’s knees, revealing four thumbprint cookies made with persimmon jam, bundled in a cloth napkin and tied with twine so they wouldn’t fly all over the place when gravity went away.

“I adore you,” Signy conceded.

Cora kissed the tip of Signy’s nose. She gazed longingly into her eyes. She stroked her cheek with the back of her fingertips. And then, lowering her voice into a private caress, she said, “Capcom, please confirm, is check complete?”

Without so much as a word or a blink, Signy looked away from her—far, far away, far beyond the shuttlebay walls, off into a distant place where she’d never gotten married and never had to endure moments like these. She reached into her own jacket and removed a pill bottle. “Meds, check?” she said, thwacking the bottle against Cora’s chest.

Cora winced an apology. She was unimpeachable when it came to taking her meds twice a day, but recently, she’d started to need an occasional supplementary dose in the afternoons, and she hadn’t yet developed the habit of keeping a supply somewhere other than on the kitchen counter. Cora took the backup bottle, slipped it into one of her pockets, and zipped the opening shut. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

Signy gave her a sharp look. “You’re supposed to say go,” she corrected.

Cora grinned from ear to ear. She gave Signy a kiss—a real kiss, not a tease, not a goof—before they pulled their helmets on. “Capcom and passenger,” she said, “we are go for launch.”

Chapter 33 Signy, Fortune

Of the many things Signy was learning about Cora, one of the most surprising was how well someone who spent a significant portion of the year off-planet knew her way around the Berth. Signy hadn’t ever had much reason (or desire) to explore rafts she didn’t live or work on. Cora, on the other hand, seemed to always have the pulse of something going on somewhere. And so, in the weeks when Cora was resting on Fortune, Signy found herself in cafés, art studios, after-hours shops doubling as concert venues—all sorts of places she hadn’t known existed and hadn’t thought to seek out.

It was a little exhausting.

Signy didn’t need new menus or new music all the time, but she hadn’t found the heart to tell Cora that. Cora could’ve invited her to a live reading of tax law and she would’ve accepted, because Cora was delightful and Signy was only human. And it was nice, to eat delicious meals and feel the magnetism of live music. Indisputably, those were nice things to do. It also seemed only fair to take Cora up on whatever invitation had been extended, because Signy didn’t feel she was offering much in exchange. She never had good ideas for dates, and there were only so many times you could say Why don’t you just meet me at the shop? or Why don’t we get takeout and go back to my place? before you ran the risk of nobody inviting you anywhere ever again.

Still, though. She was spending an awful lot of time on the ferry.

The station at raft two could not have been more different from Signy’s usual stops. It was one of the new builds with a fully enclosed dome, and god, it made such a difference. There was a whole little market hall inside, with vendors selling sundries and sandwiches. Benches were arranged around planters filled with uninspired but decently tended greenery, and there was a chicory shop, even—not an airlock counter, but a place to sit down and have a drink, because evidently some people wanted to hang out at a ferry station.

As soon as she was off the boat and through the airlock, Signy took full advantage of being able to remove her mask. Raft two had a lot of money floating on it, and you could tell from how meticulously the air was filtered. The city bank was headquartered here, as well as a lot of admin offices—the sorts of businesses that decided how other people should work. This was a place where OCTA’s promise of galactic wealth was placed on a pedestal. People who viewed the Primer as the only map worth following could be found everywhere, but they were in high concentration on raft two—a fact Signy observed in the way the crowd was dressed. Safe beneath the dome, some people had removed their barrier jackets and masks, and under their outer layers, they were clad in the emulated fashions of archival movies and photographs. Signy even saw facsimiles of OCTA mission patches sewn onto a few sleeves, as though a shuttle to Earth were just one sales report away. But every garment was made of the same cheap synth fabric as everyone else’s, and their breathing masks were all of the same five brands you could buy anywhere. These people counted their liters of water as they heated the kettle each morning. They had opinions about porridge powder. They knew to stay back when the ferry pulled up so as not to get splashed with acidic wake. Take off the mission patches and the pretentious sleeves, and you’d find human bodies, just as fragile as any.