Canto Bight

by Saladin Ahmed

  Ubialla takes the bottle, looks at it, and smiles a small and secretive smile. “Coruscant Black. Really, Derla, you spoil me.”

  “Only the finest for my best customer.”

  Ubialla is not her best customer. But then, Derla has never once said she was.

  “I might have a booth available—oh, Derla, if only you had contacted me sooner, I might have been able to arrange something so much nicer.” Ubialla waves her hand. A server is suddenly there. She hands him the bottle of wine, and it is gone, whisked away to Ubialla’s private stores, where it will sit until she has some wealthy or renowned personage to flatter. Everything is a tool in this place, even Derla.

  Even Ubialla herself.

  “There wasn’t time,” says Derla, and now she is lying, the lies small and civil enough that she can hope they won’t be heard, that she will get away with them. The planning of this moment has been the work of many long hours, chasing lies and they are used to anchor, looking for the place where truth and fiction collide.

  The Grammus sisters seem to come out of nowhere, leaving nothing—not even a hyperspace trail—behind. They claim to be from another dimension, and maybe they are; stranger things have happened in this galaxy, where rich sapients can craft themselves a private sea, where the stars of hyperspace dazzle even in dreams. They claim a lot of things. None of them matter, not really, because here is the most beautiful part of all:

  People believe them.

  They look at these sisters, and they see possibility. They see potential. They see the clever tilt of a head, the strange cadence of a sentence sometimes in a language known only to the sisters, and they dream of a world where those things are commonplace and unremarkable. They want to believe there could be something more than the skies they know, and the Grammus sisters, in all their oddity, are that belief given flesh.

  None of that would have been enough to catch Derla’s interest had the sisters not, on their second such appearance, casually traded a bottle of an unknown vintage for dinner at a seaside restaurant that served several species of local crustacean and did not maintain a liquor list. The bottle had passed from the owner’s hands into the hands of a local tax collector, and from there to a senator, and from there to the dinner party of a queen.

  Derla had not been present at that celebration, but she has spoken to several people who were, and all have informed her, in tones of wistful wonder, that it had tasted like the wine they drank in dreams, crisp and light and sweet. No two had ascribed the same notes to the flavor, but each of them has insisted they would pay anything, anything, for another such bottle.

  Derla doesn’t believe the sisters come from somewhere outside the normal flow of space and time. The galaxy is not infinite, but it is near enough as to make no difference, and there are worlds where she has never been, where no one who was not born there has ever been. The simplest answer is often the truest one, and it is so much simpler for these sisters to have come from some unknown world, perhaps hidden by its own desire, and claim themselves to be something stranger than they are, if only to deflect attention. But.

  The legend. The lie. That is what matters, when people are dying for the chance to taste the wine they drink only in their dreams. Derla needs a bottle. She needs a bottle more than she can say. Not only for the cachet of having it—although that cannot be overstated—but for the chance to put it through the proper paces. She must analyze it, catalog each molecule, identify each delicate, dancing sugar, to be sure of its compatibility with her customers. The difference between a renowned sommelier—courted by the wealthy of a hundred worlds, welcomed wherever she appears—and a wanted poisoner is an updated catalog. Killing one’s clients is not a good way to remain in business for any length of time.

  “I see,” says Ubialla, and it’s impossible to tell, from her sweet expression, from the way she holds her arms, so poised, so relaxed, whether she knows she’s being lied to. That’s the trouble with dishonesty. One cannot simply ask whether it happens to be working. “Well, of course I have a place for you, especially after such a kind and generous gift. May I ask who you happen to be meeting?”

  “My client for this evening would like to remain anonymous for the time being, to prevent attracting undue attention,” says Derla formally. She’s fairly sure she’s wrong about that. The sisters thrive on notoriety and visibility, and make as much of a fuss as possible whenever entering a new city. Too much of a fuss, in fact: There’s no way they don’t know what they’re doing. They want to be looked at. They want to be seen.

  Derla would rather avoid fulfilling that particular desire, if possible. Some of the eyes watching from the shadows are less friendly than she prefers, and many of them might have their own ideas about the dispensation of something radiant and rare. Let her get what she came for, pay their asking price, and make the vital connections that will allow her to acquire more of this “wine of dreams,” assuming it can live even halfway up to its legend.

  For a moment, it appears that Ubialla’s eyes narrow; for a moment, it seems that she is looking at Derla as a predator looks at prey. The moment passes, a trick of light and shadow swept away by the motion of one of the servers in the background, and Ubialla is all smiles again, ever the perfect hostess, ever without fault or flaw.

  “Everything will be as you desire tonight,” she says sweetly. “For you, my dearest friend, everything will be perfect.”

  THE NEW RESORT IS IN every possible respect different from the old resort, and is simultaneously in every possible respect the same. Where the previous resort towered high into the air, this one plunges deep into an artificial flooded cavern, the water lapping against the crystal windows, the distant shadows filled with the motion of imported fish and aquatic mammals. Instead of being staffed primarily by indentured organics, it boasts a fleet of droids, each of them programmed to a specific need.

  They were able to tell the sisters apart within seconds of their arrival. The clerk, whose name the pair still have not asked, feels more than faintly uncomfortable as she considers this fact. None of them would ever have been caught as she has been.

  The similarities between this resort and the last are even more striking than the differences. The rooms follow almost the same layout, which saves on programming costs for the cleaning droids that sweep through every resort save for a few that charge a premium for organic cleaning—not as prestigious as being driven by an organic, as so many resort guests have things in their room they would rather not be touched by another’s hands. The toiletries in the bathroom are relabeled and rethemed to smell of ocean and air rather than flowers and soil, but they come from the same manufacturer, the same basic set of options.

  This is the same resort, remade into something new by a simple change of the superficial, still perpetually and utterly itself.

  One of the sisters drapes herself across a bed, eyes on the window to the water, and waves a lazy hand. “Souvenir, go to the desk and tell them we will need a speeder called for us precisely at sunset. Not a second later, nor a second before.”

  The clerk is unsure that sunset can be measured with that sort of precision. She says nothing, only bobs her head and asks, “Will there be anything else?”

  The second sister emerges from the bathroom with the bromeliad in her hands. She has managed to find a vase for the thing, and it spills out on all sides, vines like tendriled roots reaching for the ground.

  “There must be a manager,” she says. “Tell them we will wish to speak to the manager come morning. The manager must be an organic. If they do not have an organic manager, they will need to find one before the sun comes up. That gives them all of a night and some small sliver of a day. Quite reasonable, don’t you think?”

  The clerk blanches. “I don’t—”

  “When we came to Canto Bight, they told us this was the city of dreams,” says the sister on the bed dreamily. The clerk decides she must be Rhomby, as Parallela was the one enamored of the lobby bromeliad. “They said whatever w
e could see when we dreamed of hyperspace would be found here, walking the avenues, shining in the sky.”

  “We dream of an organic manager,” says Parallela. “This resort dreams of our money. Let us hope that tonight both of our dreams come true.” She places her bromeliad, vase and all, lovingly on the room’s second bed.

  There is no third bed. The clerk has yet to ask where she is intended to sleep. She is afraid that none of the available answers would be pleasant ones.

  “I also dream of food,” says Rhomby. “Of sweet food and savory food and something to tear with the fingers and something to tear with the teeth. You should go, Souvenir, and find us these things. We want them.”

  The clerk considers objecting. Considers shouting. Instead, she says in a small voice, “My name is Calla,” and exits the room, leaving the door to slide shut again behind her.

  Silence reigns. Rhomby looks at Parallela. Parallela looks at Rhomby. Rhomby is the first to sigh.

  “A person?” she asks. “When I said you should acquire something charming to make the resort remember our stay, I meant—”

  “The lobby décor? Small. Provincial. I’m sure they have people wandering off with their centerpieces and shiny objects all the time. A desk clerk, now. That makes an impression.” Parallela sits daintily on the bed’s edge, stroking one of the bromeliad’s leaves with a thoughtful hand. “It will ease things tonight to have someone native to the city as our guide.”

  “As native as any of them get.”

  “As native as any of them get,” Parallela agrees. “I have never seen any place so eager to pretend itself entirely rootless. No one comes from here. They all speak of away as if it were a dream, and this the place they found themselves on waking. It is a glorious showpiece of a city. I think I will want to return here, when we go.”

  “Then we should not be seen to be acquiring too many people,” says Rhomby. “People make poor collectibles. They always ask after one another, and I’ve no stomach for keeping them.”

  “We will resettle her. Find her a position here, or at another resort. One that will view her as a rare commodity for knowing our ways, for how many on this world can boast such an intimate association?”

  Rhomby heaves another sigh, louder this time. “How many on any world can boast such an intimate association?”

  “Sister. We are here for business as much as pleasure.”

  “Yet it pleases me to remind you that we are in the business of creating a certain amount of confusion about our pleasures. She will see too much.”

  “She will see what we choose to show her. Let them think us this kind of capricious, that we would acquire and then discard a sentient. Let her carry stories of us out into the world.” Parallela strokes her bromeliad again. “Nothing convinces the ear like a story from a source who was there.”

  Rhomby is silent for a moment before she asks, “Is everything prepared for this night?”

  “Oh, yes,” says Parallela. “The stage begins to set itself; the pieces fall into place.”

  Rhomby smiles.

  UBIALLA GHEAL DID NOT, AS so many assume, reach her current position of comfort and connection by playing the fool, nor by allowing others to exploit her. She is lovely, yes: She knows the value of loveliness, and so she has worked tirelessly to maintain it, never elevating herself to the type of beauty that disturbs, never allowing her appearance to falter or to fail her. She is cultured in cultured company and inappropriately vulgar when the moment is right, allowing the stories of her quick tongue and matchless wit to spread across Canto Bight. Her patrons are many. Her debts are even deeper, and that affords her a measure of security. The people she owes know that she is worth more to them alive and working than she could ever be sinking to the bottom of the sea.

  Perhaps one day, she knows, she will acquire the wrong debt or offend the wrong person, and all of this will come tumbling down. But this is not that day.

  “Well?” she asks of the street urchin—filthy thing—standing in the doorway of the club’s kitchen. None of them are allowed inside. That would be an insult not worth bearing.

  “Took the parameters you gave to the port, ran them through,” says the urchin, gills working desperately. “Got the list. Food now?”

  It’s amazing, how base and animal these children can be. Ubialla holds her hand imperiously out. “The names.”

  Reluctantly, the child hands over a thin copper card with the names embossed in governmental font. Ubialla makes it disappear and turns to the nearest cook.

  “Enough for this belly and two more, before you head back to the stables,” she says. She can afford to be seen as generous, as long as she is never seen as soft. Generous keeps them coming back.

  The child makes a squealing sound of delight. Ubialla ignores it. So far as she is concerned, this is already over, and she is ready to move on.

  The club is preparing to open fully at sunset, when it will blossom into the jewel of Canto Bight, when everyone who is anyone will be clamoring at the doors to be admitted. Clearing a booth for Derla required canceling a standing reservation by a mid-range jockey who will no doubt be terribly offended. Let him be. Maintaining a reputation for exclusivity requires work, at times. Perhaps it will inspire him to race better, win more, improve his station. He will forever link her with his good fortune, even if he can’t quite find his way to “why.”

  The question is who Derla intends to meet in that booth when she returns from her afternoon in the city. Ubialla knows Derla wouldn’t reserve a booth to meet with someone who lives in Canto Bight. The sommelier would meet with them in their homes, or in her rented room, or in a temporary accommodation arranged by one or another of the resorts. Only tourists do their business in public. Tourists, and people who desire to be seen. Ubialla does not care for secrets that do not include her. She slides into her own private booth, which is never canceled nor offered to any other, and produces the card, running her fingers across the text. Every name is someone whose travel plans have corresponded with Derla’s, on a delay, as if they had been chasing each other across the sky.

  Most are minor dignitaries, functionaries whose work would never have brought them into contact with the sommelier. A few she recognizes—a celebrity, some sporting professionals, a senator—but the rest are so much meaningless noise, inconsequential.

  Then she pauses, fingers still pressing against the list, breath catching in her throat, until the room spins and the veins along her long, smooth forehead pulse with excitement and dismay. The Grammus sisters are in Canto Bight. That is no surprise: She heard of their arrival when it happened, as did all the other movers and shakers of her level. She has been hoping their wanderings would bring them to her door sooner rather than later so she might charm them without seeming inappropriately eager to do so. They are something new, and novelty sells very, very well in certain circles. If she could convince them to become regular fixtures at her club, she could increase patronage by some glorious amount.

  And they have traveled the same long, looping elliptical as Derla, touched on the same worlds, breathed the same air. They have been luring the sommelier here, always one step ahead of her, whether intentionally or through fortuitous accident, and now she is here, and they are here, and there is no one else who fits the bill of Derla’s mysterious client.

  One does not achieve a position in Canto Bight’s underworld without knowing all the angles of profit and risk, all the ways and places the world can either benefit or betray. Ubialla knows as much as it’s possible for anyone to know about the chaotic, capricious sisters. She knows their world has never been identified, and that they claim to have come from a reality on the other side of hyperspace, a place they are absolutely firm about existing, but about which they will disclose no details.

  She knows that sometimes the sisters bring things from their home, wherever or whatever it is, to sell to the interested. Trinkets, toys, little things that betray nothing of their true origins—almost like they’re trying to
guarantee that they’ll be remembered after they’ve moved on.

  And sometimes they sell wine.

  It would be impossible to move in the circles she moves in and not have heard of the Grammus sisters’ wine. She has asked Derla to acquire a bottle for her three times, only to be politely but firmly rebuffed as the sommelier claimed that the vintage was impossible to acquire, and would need to be fully analyzed before it could be sold. Ubialla has promised one of her…benefactors…that she will, someday, be able to fulfill his desire to taste this supposed “wine of dreams.” At the thought, her skin goes cold and the veins in her forehead pulse again, this time with fear.

  If this exchange goes off as Derla has no doubt planned—the sisters handing over their wine, the sommelier slipping away to decant and catalog it, as if anyone would, upon acquiring a single bottle of the stuff, ever be so foolish as to drink it—then Ubialla will be left in the cold. When her benefactor hears that the wine was not only onworld but in her club, in her grasp, without her being able to secure it for him…

  She swallows, hard. She has spent a very long time dancing away from his wrath, and she has no intention of stopping now. Derla has been an excellent customer, and a source of many delicious and valuable prizes. None of that matters as much as Ubialla’s own skin. None of it ever could.

  The wine will be hers. There is no other option.

  NIGHT COMES TO CANTONICA AS it comes to any other world: The planet rotates, the sun slips over the horizon and is gone, and darkness descends, riding a rainbow of sunset light, carrying a cascade of stars. Some say the best stargazing in the system is in the vast deserts of Cantonica, far from the blinding lights of Canto Bight, where nothing pollutes or diminishes their brilliance.

  Night comes to Canto Bight merely as a change of backdrop. The buildings blaze in the new-fallen dark. Some glow, either artificially or through cultured bioluminescence. Others turn on a hundred lights, a thousand, becoming shifting auroras of controlled glory. The sky is a river of colors, reflecting off the casinos, the resorts, the racetracks.