This is familiar ground. Derla’s shoulders relax slightly, some of the stress of the moment slipping away. “Wine is made by fermenting fruit or other vegetation with a rising agent, usually yeast, although I have tasted some truly remarkable fungal wines. Grains are used for beer or ale, biological sugars for mead, and other pressed, fermented, and blended ingredients for liquors. Our definition of what is or is not wine has to expand every time a new world joins our understanding of the galaxy, but all good sommeliers will tell you that wine is something they know when they taste it. Or in my case, when I hear it described. The alcohol you have sold before could be nothing other than wine, and as you have promised me more of the same, I feel comfortable using the name.”
“Sapience likes similarity,” says Parallela. “It is easier than too much difference. In that your people and ours are united. We are very fond of knowing that things we find in one place can also be found in another.”
“All by twos, and two at a time, we will see all there is to know,” agrees Rhomby.
Derla places her valise on the corner of the table, undoing the clasp with a flick of her fingers. “Is that why you have invited Ubialla to join us? Because all things must come by twos?”
“That, and we were not particularly interested in anyone being shot because of us,” says Parallela. “She was prepared to do it, you know, and all over a single bottle of wine. Your dimension is not a peaceful place. It’s a wonder you’ve discovered horticulture, with as much time as you spend stabbing one another in the back. Do you ever make wine from blood?”
“Technically, that would be a mead, as it would be fermented from a biological sugar,” says Derla.
Ubialla, as all of them have in some degree expected, snaps. Slapping her hands flat against the table, she demands, “Where is the wine?”
Rhomby and Parallela look at her in silent, reproachful unison. Ubialla slowly lifts her hands, tucks them back into her lap.
“My apologies,” she says. “My excitement got the better of me.”
“Indeed,” says Rhomby. “There is a time and a place for excitement, and who are we to dictate the forms it takes? The sky is excited every morning, and none dares bid it stop. Sister?”
“I am ready,” says Parallela, and opens her valise, reaching inside to draw a bottle carefully—not reverently; for her, this is something precious but common—into the light.
Ubialla leans forward, suddenly every bit the predator. Derla remains perfectly still, if no less predatory, eyes fixed on the bottle.
It is a beautiful thing. The glass is smooth and clear, polished until it glimmers in the dim nightclub light. There is a label, but the script is no language either of them has ever seen. Derla shivers in approval. A mysterious label for a mysterious libation. It doesn’t matter if what it says is “do not drink” or “cooking only.” People will still drink the contents, and feel themselves blessed for the opportunity.
“Whatever she’s offering you, I’m prepared to double it,” says Ubialla sharply.
Derla leans back a little, pleased. She has expected Ubialla to overplay her hand, and she has not been disappointed. Everything she knows about the sisters tells her that they dislike being pressured, which is why it has taken her so long to arrange this meeting in the first place. She could win simply by being the less offensive of the potential buyers.
“No figures have been discussed as yet; double of nothing is still nothing.” A server appears, putting down the drinks that were previously requested. Rhomby favors him with a smile. “Two clean, empty glasses, please.”
He nods, and vanishes back into the crowd. Derla, who understands the ritual of sale, nods understanding. Ubialla looks outraged.
“We’re here to make a sale, not to have a drink,” she snaps. “Stop this foolishness at once.”
“This isn’t foolishness,” says Parallela.
“The waters are for you,” says Rhomby, and pushes the tumblers toward Derla and Ubialla. Patiently, she explains, “It will clear your palates, wash away the dust of this world. It is better to drink what we bring with nothing to change the flavor. You have such distinctively sour dust.”
Ubialla, who has never noticed anything sour about the dust of her world, scowls. “I don’t see the point in clearing our palates. There’s no reason to drink.”
Parallela cocks her head, the precious bottle still cradled in her hands. “But how will you know that what we offer is real, if you do not take the opportunity to taste it? The agreement we made with the lady of trade was for a partial bottle, following decanting for tasting and verification.”
“We are willing to allow you to participate, if only for the sake of balance, and by allowing you to participate, we have allowed you the opportunity to win,” says Rhomby. “That does not mean we have extended you the authority to change the rules. That would be…foolish of us.”
Ubialla pulls her blaster from beneath the table. Derla, moving with surprising speed, grasps her wrist and holds it tight.
The look Ubialla gives her then is as sweet as Coruscant brandy, and twice as precious. Derla half-lids her upper eyes in satisfaction.
“That,” she says patiently, “is a glass bottle. If dropped, it will shatter. If the bottle is shattered, the wine will be lost. You might be able to sop it off the floor and wring it into a bucket, but would your client, powerful man as he must be to make you come to heel as he’s done, really desire a draught that has been painted across the floor? Shoot and lose.”
“She is correct,” says Parallela.
“She is wise,” says Rhomby.
“We will open the bottle; you will see what we offer, and see that it is good, and then conversation will continue,” says Parallela. “Remember that there are two paths through every city, two ends to every tale, and two prizes in every race. Sister?”
“Sister,” agrees Rhomby, and produces a small, overly complicated device from inside her robes. She waves it above the bottle of wine. The stopper dissolves into a line of beads that wind their way down the outside of the bottle, wrapping tight around it in an intricate design.
It is not new technology: Derla makes note of it as one more piece of evidence that the sisters come from this world, this reality, and not from someplace farther or stranger. It is still impressive. Ubialla is staring. She, surely, must have seen the trick before; she deals in too much high-end liquor to be fooled by a parlor trick.
“I regret interrupting at this most elegant and essential of moments, but my reputation for preserving the safety of my clients and my desire to continue drawing breath combine to require me to ask this question,” says Derla. “How are we to know that we can drink this delicacy and live? Allergic reactions and incompatible sugars must be taken into account, which is why I desire the wine. Proper analysis and cataloging would allow me to determine—”
“We knew you were clever,” says Parallela approvingly.
“I am still not assured that we can safely drink,” says Derla.
Parallela reaches into the valise again, extracting a bioreader. She extends it toward Derla. “We took the liberty of running a basic analysis between your biology and the chemical makeup of our wine. It is not, perhaps, the thorough breakdown you would need before brokering a sale, but it will prove that you can drink safely.”
Derla takes the reader, slides her finger down the screen, and frowns. “You have a record here for Ubialla as well.”
“Yes,” says Rhomby.
“She wasn’t exactly…invited.” Derla shoots a dark glance at the other woman. “How did you know to prepare an analysis for her?”
“Her inquiries had reached us in our travels,” says Parallela. “It seemed likely she would want to be included in the negotiations. We acquired our souvenir as a backup plan, in case Ubialla did not decide to involve herself in your private business.”
Parallela smiles at Ubialla. Ubialla, for her part, does not look chastened in the slightest.
“This is my club
,” she says. “There is no private business here, only business I haven’t become a part of yet. Derla should feel honored that it took me this long to decide that I wanted my cut. Really, she owes me. She should relinquish her claim immediately.”
“I think not,” says Derla.
Rhomby picks up her glass and takes a sip of ice wine, nose crinkling briefly in pleasure. “You are so fascinating, you mismatches,” she says. “To find a proper two in this dimension, we must build it ourselves, one plus another to form a whole. You never quite synchronize as you should. How wonderful. How lonely.”
The second server returns, carrying two empty glasses, which he places in front of Parallela. She nods to him and he vanishes again, back into the dim recesses of the club, where the rest of Canto Bight—or so it seems—has come to play, laughing and drinking and plotting and weeping, all unaware of this small and terrible drama.
Most dramas are like that. They are small, and petty, and inconsequential to everyone who stands outside them, while mattering more than anything else in the galaxy to those who are fully committed, who are fully involved. They fill their jaws with moments, and they do not release them until they have been shaken lifeless, dead things to be thrown at the feet of the next drama to come along.
Carefully, Parallela tips the bottle to first one glass and then the other, filling them halfway with a liquid that seems to hold every color of the setting sun, somehow dividing them as it settles, so that the bottom of the wine is clear as crystal, and the top is the deep, bruised purple of night. Between those states stretch yellow, orange, pink, a dazzling array of shades swirled and twisted and impossible. Derla frowns.
“Are you satisfied that you may drink safely?” asks Parallela.
“I am satisfied that we can drink the wine,” says Derla. “I am not satisfied that we can safely drink a blended liquor. Can you provide an analysis?”
“Oh,” says Rhomby. “This is the wine.”
Derla’s breath catches in her throat, and everything is understood, and everything is different. She sips her water to clear her head. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Ubialla do the same, possibly for the same reasons.
When people spoke of the wine—the wine of dreams they called it, over and over again; the wine of dreams—they never seemed to give the same color twice. They would call it dark, and she has, until this moment, believed they referred to a red wine. They would call it light, and she has, until this moment, believed they referred to a different wine, a white wine from the same vineyard, perhaps, something meant to be carried and presented in tandem. She has not understood—did not, could not understand—that they meant the same wine, a single beverage that did too many impossible things to comprehend without seeing them.
“I…see,” she says, voice squeaking under its burden of eager avarice. “Do you know, perhaps, how the effect is achieved?”
“We’re tourists, not winemakers,” says Parallela. “Are you prepared to try what we offer you?”
Ubialla greedily grabs the first glass before the sentence is finished, bringing it to her lips and drinking her first mouthful in a gulp better suited to something much more common, some rum or brandy or bitterfruit liquor. Derla takes her glass but does not raise it to her lips until she sees Ubialla take another gulp. Then, finally, she allows all four of her eyes to close, and smells what is before her.
Sweetness, yes, but sourness, too, and notes of soil and rock and green growing things. This single glass of wine smells like an entire field of potential. She sniffs again. The fruit, as expected, is unfamiliar, likely native to the world that birthed the Grammus sisters. The rest of the notes are familiar enough to reaffirm her belief that they have come from a world she has yet to see, and not from the other side of hyperspace. However amazing and impossible their wine appears, it smells too much like every other wine she has had the good fortune to know for it to really be from another dimension.
Her first sip, in contrast with Ubialla, is taken with the utmost precision and care. She rolls it gently on her tongue, teasing out all of its secrets. The sweetness is dominant here; the wine is deep and rich and blankets her mouth in a gentle veil of mysteries yet to be solved. She swallows, taking another sip, and then another, and marvels at the way the flavor shifts with the color, sweetness being slowly replaced by something much sharper and less cloying, until the glass finishes, far too soon, on a crisp, astringent note.
There will be no need for hosts to buy a dozen different bottles for their parties: a single vintage will supply every flavor profile, cleansing the palate and allowing the drinker to begin again, refreshed, never tiring of the wine presented. The other vineyards will revolt when she brings even a single glass of this to the market. She will be able to ask any price she likes, and people will pay, oh, yes, they’ll pay in full, they’ll pay in plenty. The other vintners, once they realize that she’s done the impossible—oh, no one loves a challenge like an artist. She expects they’ll bring competing brews to market inside a standard decade. Long enough for her to make a hefty profit, quickly enough to be a true innovation.
She’s going to change her own world, and she’s going to delight in doing it, and all she needs to do is walk away from here with the wine in her possession. All she needs to do is win.
“As advertised,” she says simply, and puts her glass down on the table. Parallela moves as if to refill it.
“No!” Ubialla does not go so far as to put her hand over Derla’s glass. She flinches as if nothing would please her more. Composing herself, she says, “We were promised—I was promised—a bottle for sale. The more we drink here, in the process of supposed negotiation, the less will remain for me.”
“You were promised nothing, Ubialla Gheal,” says Rhomby. For the first time, her voice is truly cold, truly unforgiving. “You came to this table as one uninvited, but essential, part of a negotiation begun without you, planned without you, promised without you. That you are here at all is upon our sufferance and because we must have balance. We control how this is to be done. If you do not approve, you are welcome to break the negotiation and go.”
“Wait.” Derla looks between Rhomby and Ubialla before asking, with exquisite care, “What happens to the negotiation if she leaves us?”
“Balance will be gone,” says Parallela. “Without balance, there can be no auspicious result, and we will go as well, hoping that we may have the chance to meet with you again in some better time, under some better circumstance. We will sorrow greatly, Derla Pidys, for we have hoped for this meeting for a very long time, but when balance has been lost, there is nothing to be done but walk away as quickly as feet can carry.”
“So you need me,” purrs Ubialla.
“Apparently so.” Derla holds her glass toward Parallela. “I would adore another sample to consider as we discuss.”
“So be it,” says Rhomby as Parallela fills the glass again.
Derla brings it to her lips.
It has barely reached them when the lights go out.
The lights of an establishment such as Ubialla’s are not an inconsequential thing to extinguish: They are not, as they might be in a shop or a university, all the same, nor are they run off a single circuit. Stopping the lights of the individual booths, the overheads, the floor lights, even the lights behind the bar, all with the flip of a switch or the press of a remote, should be quite impossible. But off they all go, casting the room into brief and absolute darkness. Someone screams—several someones, their voices joining in strange, bone-tingling harmony. Someone else laughs, the high, delighted tones of a person whose species sees perfectly in the dark.
“Do not move,” spits Ubialla.
Derla, closest to her, does not. As for the sisters, who could say? They are only a meter or two away. They might as well be on another planet, in another system entirely. The darkness is too deep.
Something falls over at another table. Something shatters. It is only the fear of hearing that sound again, much closer, tha
t stops Derla from grabbing for the bottle with the remaining wine. She is still sitting, paralyzed by fear, when the lights come back up and the nightclub is revealed.
Nervous laughter spreads from all the tables around them as people reassure themselves that nothing has changed, there was no robbery or attack or invasion. They are still the people of Canto Bight, still in one of the most beloved and luxurious settings in the world, and nothing can harm them here. Let the rest of the galaxy go as it will, it can neither find nor reclaim them.
There is no laughter at the table shared by Ubialla, Derla, and the Grammus sisters. Silence falls over them, weighted around the edges, driving them down. Finally, Ubialla finds her voice.
“Where,” she asks darkly, “is the wine?”
A sister spreads her hands. “Not here.”
Ubialla lunges for Derla’s valise, snatching it up and spreading it open. Wisely, Derla does not object, merely watches as the other woman’s search turns quickly frantic. There is nothing she can say. The wine, precious and irreplaceable thing that it is…
The wine is gone.
CALLA TOUCHES HER PALM TO the room door, which reads her prints, verifies them against the list of authorized residents, and slides smoothly open, allowing her to step inside. Everything is as they left it, even down to the ridiculous bromeliad on Parallela’s bed. It seems to be regenerating portions of its broken root system; they are beginning to quest across the duvet, looking for something to bury themselves inside.
This particular species is large, ornamental, and considered a terrible, invasive pest on all worlds with more arable land and available water. So far as Calla is aware, only Canto Bight is cocky enough to consider it a candidate for use as an ornamental. She wonders whether Parallela is aware of the origins of her new “pet,” and whether the sisters will be trying to take it back with them to their homeworld, or home dimension, as the case may be. She spares a moment to consider an entire planet choked under a veil of bromeliads. Then she gets to work.
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