Day Nine

The cabin was no larger than a broom closet, lined with a slick, red metal that made Betaine feel distinctly uncomfortable. The hostess [or stewardess...what had she called herself? Steeress.] with him rocked back and forth on her heels, her face bright and fresh, smiling out the frustrations of her job. She had escorted him to this odd room, with its pressurized door and obvious lack of a bed or bath. Betaine took a step forward into it, turned once slowly, his nose wrinkling at the sharp scent of ozone which seemed to be coming from the rear wall.
He had been more than a little surprised that Bala had booked him passage on one of the relatively new Dyson ships, spherical vessels built like a Russian nesting doll, each inner chamber connected by massive bearings of a truly frictionless alloy. At the heart of the ship was still the Controller, this one with shaggy hair and large insect wings, slick brown and iridescent, grafted in pairs up each arm. They fanned and hummed spasmodically when Betaine had seen the pilot dashing down the gently sloping corridor, shouting for someone named Butterfly.
According to the steeress behind him, who's cheerfulness was solid and unwavering, the Dyson ship was in all ways like riding on the normal passenger rings, but with an increase in storage space by over sixteen hundred percent. The free spinning levels created a more gentle sensation of gravity and absorbed outer impact much better in case, well, you never know what you'll bump into out in space, our Controller tries, he really does. She had also asked three times if he had ever been off-planet before, despite his records showing his birthplace over thirty seven million light years away.
Betaine was thoroughly and unabashedly disgusted with her, the neat little boots, the trim little oil blend suit, wanted nothing more than to collapse after two dizzying days of the festival. After dancing, which he did passably, for the thirteenth time with the something-or-other Countess or Margravess or Creche Mother of somewhere he forgot, he'd wearily asked Bala how anyone had energy left afterwards for a month. She'd ceased the animated discussion about nano-precise security perimeters she was having with a kivin emissary, who looked quite human outside of the energy grid he was composed of, duck egg blue helixes of light shifting slowly through the shape of his limbs, and told him the festivities would continue for a week or so more.
Betaine had spoken to her Majordomo discreetly afterwards and discovered that Bala had already gotten him a cabin on the White Pearl, a Dyson ship that was one of the few allowed near Regulskek, currently docked in orbit for minor repairs. He'd been amused to find the goddess had anticipated his limits in regards to social gatherings such as this one and had spent the remainder of his time in Isla transfering funds to an account that required the proper series of dream impressions to access and avoiding a stone-skinned Duch who had repeatedly tried to purchase him from Bala and had eventually left on the second morning, furious his offers had been laughed at.
After the rich, masterful dishes, glass after glass of smooth liquors and the shallow and demanding company of a series of lovely young women Bala had thrown him at like a puppy to a herd of cats, all he wanted was to disconnect, re-establish his mental balance and sleep without dreaming. Instead, he was faced with a hellish robotic womb of a room.
"Thank you, and this is well and good, but where do I sleep?" he'd asked finally, when he realized the steeress wouldn't volunteer the information.
She slid past him smoothly into the cramped cabin, not brushing even a thread of her suit against him.
"There's a seal on the back wall here that's been tuned to your bio-electrical resonance, please. If you place your hand on it, you'll be granted access to the rest area. You can choose from a wide variety of sleep aides, please, as well as intraveneous or osmosis-type nutritional feeds in the event our kitchen is not to your liking."
Betaine stared at the barest lip of a protrusion that she had pointed at. He turned and she was once again on the outside of the cabin, clapsing the edges of her suit jacket and rocking back and forth on her thick heels.
"There is a commons area down the corridor to your left, should you feel like mingling with your fellow passengers. Please remember your manners, as our security staff would be very unhappy if an unpleasant incident occurs. Enjoy your stay, please."
And she was gone down the hall with a choppy wave of the hand.
His reinforced satchel was placed carefully in a rounded nook by the door, containing nothing more than a spare change of clothes, a small metal-bound book with seemingly blank pages, a bundle of dark blue indelible ink pens, a sensory recorder that was a retarded, crippled cousin to the Archivist creation, a bottle of anti-fatigue pills, and an opaque, indestructible box no larger than his palm that contained a full identification kit, including a composite teliphrase scan, a time-lapsed genetic signature that couldn't be replicated.
Betaine leaned against the glossy back wall, caught himself when the rest area gave way beneath him like a rubber sheet. No, maybe later he'd sleep in it, but for now, even as weary as he was, the chamber made his skin crawl. Checking that the contents of his inside shirt pockets hadn't shifted and they were still sealed shut, he let the cabin door close behind him and set off with long, forceful strides down the left corridor.
The ceilings were high, set with frosted half-orb lamps that were meant to give the impression of daylight, their brightness waxing and waning on a cycle carefully balanced between the departing and destination planets. Panels on the walls were stamped with clean, geometric patterns of parallel arcs and lines and painted in muted forest greens, plums, marigolds. Faux windows looked out onto incredible projected star scapes that rotated slowly with the subdued motion of the ship. The floor was a rubberized plasticene, muffling sounds at a ten yard range. He passed occasional sitting areas, comfortable over-stuffed couches, sling chairs and suspended lounges clustered for a feeling of intimacy. The young analyst wondered if they would let him sleep there.

He felt disconnected, rubbed at his temples in the hopes he could stop thinking so sluggishly. Everything seemed a fever dream, this strange ship, this sterile hall. The procession had shaken him strangely. Betaine had studied theology, modern and ancient, as well as the process by which gods came to be. A perceptual psionic such as himself saw the Universe as a rippling sheet, sentient beings like drops of inky rain against the surface, a black mark against the snow field purity of empty space before dissipating into the background. Those who'd found their purpose were heavier, more solid, wrapping time and energy around themselves as their spiritual signatures expanded.
Gods were darker yet, like marbles, so dense that space itself warped around them, forming a funnel for forces still undefined, called belief, faith, that damnable lie [for the few who still clung to atheism like tar to a lily]. Talks with Bala had revealed that they no longer even saw the Universe in the old way, but became aware of the ebb and flow of belief, watched the boundaries of it shift, clouds of coloured fog, existed on a sensual seesaw where either you felt the rush of being fed or the chilly stiffness as faith slid away.
Faith. Betaine had never had a use for it, wondered occasionally if it came as a revelation, like purpose. There was never a time when there wasn't an explanation for something. The insatiable search for knowledge had started out as a simple thing, to please the authority figures that he quickly eclipsed, and had evolved into a ferocious desire to understand, to follow every searing train of thought until the epiphany came, not through chance or luck, but through the connections made between seemingly disparate data sources.