Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Aweek and a half had passed, and Holly was in the lounge.
Cupcakes were arranged on the counter beside a full pot of Harry’s mushroom tea blend.
She had meant to hold this meeting four days ago, and then three days ago, and then the day before yesterday, and each time something had gotten in the way.
A new batch of hotel guests with a finicky landing thruster.
Two more days of garden repair with Mish, hauling soil and replanting.
A wall panel in unit six that had begun making a sound she could only describe as “unhappy.”
It was morning now, and everyone was here, and the cupcakes were good, and she was going to get through this.
She’d arranged the lounge in the same semicircular configuration as the first meeting.
Alyce chose the chair next to Sam, and Sam sat next to Holly.
Harry was across from her and was already on his second cupcake.
Mish sat on her other side, her hair in its characteristic lopsided bun, with Orba and Sula sitting beside her.
This time, Mish’s fourteen children had come along.
Apparently, the “happy room” wasn’t going to cut it.
They sat in two silent rows at the back of the room, cross-legged on the floor.
Tyer sat next to Harry, empty-handed, the cupcakes having presented a problem.
“I’m allergic to…” He’d circled a finger over the plate.
“What?” Harry had interjected, plucking a cupcake for himself as he breezed by. “Fun? Sensory delight?” He took a bite and grinned. “Pity. More for us.”
Tyer had smirked, looked at the pot of mushroom tea with suspicion, and gotten himself a glass of water instead.
Cody lounged in a chair next to Harry, wriggling his bare toes in his sandals, and Luv was here this time, just behind Holly.
Luv was a resident, and she was going to be treated as one.
The other new addition was Bean. He sat with his rump sharing Holly’s seat and with his front paws on her lap.
The dog had decided she was now his person, and he took that responsibility seriously by never leaving her side.
Holly wasn’t interested in arguing this, as she had become utterly smitten with him.
He surveyed the room from his throne of Holly’s lap. His white-browed, sober gaze surveyed all with equal parts skepticism and side-eye. No one commented about it. Bean had been an established fixture of Moone’s Landing before Holly, and now he went where Holly went. It was simply the arrangement.
Rasker sat apart, as outsiders do when they know they’re not part of a group.
He had departed on a transport the day after their underground kiss, and had been gone for the better part of the previous week for a “work obligation,” which he’d not elaborated on.
Holly had not pressed, but she’d expended just enough mental energy wondering what that kiss meant to be annoyed with herself.
Whatever his mystery trip had been about, he’d returned from it the previous evening, quietly.
Holly had received a notification that the guest in room seventeen had re-checked in at the front desk late at night, and she had then spent a longer than reasonable amount of time staring at her ceiling.
“Thank you all for being here,” Holly said, scratching Bean’s neck where his silver charm rested on the back of her fingers.
“I know it’s been a few weeks since the first meeting, and I know some of you have been looking for updates.
So we’ll start with the obvious ones. The rain system now falls on all parts of the station, including the square, which desperately needed the water.
The force field around the landing pads now operates at full charge thanks to a repaired solar energy system, and the daylight cycle is putting out the optimal amount of light for the forests to thrive.
Although we still do need a groundkeeper at some point, the refurbished cleaning bot is keeping the paths and roads tidy—thank you, Sam,” she said with a nod to the man on her left.
“You’ve likely noticed that the air circulator has been replaced. ”
“I noticed the morning after it went in,” Alyce said. “I thought I was imagining it at first. My sinuses have been dramatically improved.”
“We like the rain,” Orba said in a whispery voice.
“Also, the whole outpost smells better,” Harry added. “Overall, the station is much improved.”
“Which brings me to the reviews,” Holly said. “We’ve had three new ones in the past few weeks.” She’d read them so many times, she no longer needed her d-pad. “The first is positive. A guest who came through for hull maintenance noted a marked improvement over their previous visit.”
Harry made a sound of approval and crossed his arms.
“The second one,” Holly continued, “gave us a three out of ten. They cited the replicator options as limited and outdated. They also had thoughts about the hotel’s decor and the age of the room functions.
Neither of which I disagree with.” She glanced at Harry, who looked like he wanted to interject.
“Before you start in, a new food replicator is not in the budget right now. Honestly, it’s going to be a while before it is. I’m sorry about that.”
“How long is a while?” Harry wanted to know.
“Commercial-level models start at twelve thousand nits, so I genuinely don’t know.”
He grimaced, but absorbed the bad news graciously, which was the best she could ask for.
“The third review,” she said, “was neutral at five stars out of ten. They noted that their landing thruster was repaired in an acceptable amount of time and that the fee was not exploitative.”
“Not exploitative,” Sam murmured. “High praise.”
“I’ll take it,” Holly said. “And it says to other travelers that we don’t up-charge, so that’s actually a strong check in the plus column.”
“Can we leave reviews?” Harry asked. “Residents? Would that help?”
“Absolutely not,” Tyer said, not looking up. “Harry. We live here.”
“I’m just asking a question.”
“Harry,” Sam said, taking on a tone that did not invite discussion. “It takes time to turn these things around. We keep doing what we’re doing. That’s how it works.”
“Sam’s right,” Mish said. “But.” She folded her hands in her lap.
“If one big thing goes wrong right now, we’re in trouble.
There’s nothing in reserve. If the water system has a serious failure, or the dome develops a crack, or the power grid has another problem…
” She spread her hands. “We’re spread too thin to fix it. ”
The room was quiet for a moment. It was true. They all knew it.
Holly glanced toward Cody, who sat there with his ankles crossed, eating a cupcake. He looked relaxed, like someone watching a mildly interesting sport on their screen. He caught her eye and gave her the small, lazy nod he gave everyone.
When she finally allowed herself to look toward Rasker, he was not looking at Cody. He was looking at her. And there was that thing between them, heavy and warm and entirely unaddressed. She moved her gaze firmly elsewhere before her face revealed something she didn’t want it to.
“I want to talk about the garden,” Holly said.
The room’s temperature shifted slightly. Unsurprising, since this was a subject everyone had been carefully avoiding.
“You all know what happened,” Holly continued.
“I don’t believe anyone in this room is responsible, but I do want everyone to keep their eyes open.
If you see anything out of place, anyone acting strange, I want to know about it.
” She paused. “I’ll be direct: there are some very powerful developers that want this outpost, and I don’t know yet what lengths they might go to in order to make a sale happen.
I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just asking you to be aware.
And do not accuse Rasker. He isn’t responsible for any of this. ”
Still, most pairs of eyes traveled, with varying degrees of subtlety, to Rasker.
He raised his hands, palms out. “I’m not here to cause trouble,” he said. “I’m here to make a case for my client, if Holly decides to sell. That’s the beginning and end of my involvement.”
“You’re causing trouble,” Luv said, pleasantly, from her spot near Holly, “by trying to romance the station out from under our Holly.”
Holly would have enjoyed taking in Luv’s possessive “our” before “Holly,” but the room erupted.
“—Has he? Has something happened?”
“—I knew it, I said this the day he arrived. His hair is too good…”
“—See? This is what I was worried about…”
“Hey,” Holly said. “Just a moment, now—” But she was drowned out.
“—Because you can’t trust a situation like this to stay professional—”
“—Does Sam know?”
“Do I know what?” Sam asked, looking utterly baffled by it all.
Holly cleared her throat. “Quiet!” she bellowed.
The room went silent. “No one is romancing anyone. And I don’t appreciate being the center of baseless gossip.
Honestly, Luv.” She slanted a scolding look toward Luv.
She could all but hear the gossip now: Holly’s usually so nice and soft-spoken, but have you heard her yell?
It was time to get a hold of things, before the meeting completely unraveled.
“Look, Mish is right. We are low on funds and developers are circling like buzzards—they’re birds on Earth that…
never mind. Anyway, unless someone has a constructive idea for how we raise funds and increase traffic to this station, this meeting is concluded. ”
There was a long pause. Mish’s children rose in unison and clustered around their mother, and, because she was sitting next to Mish, Holly. Bean stretched out his nose to sniff the closest one, and Holly gently recentered him on her lap.
Tyer glanced uneasily at Mish’s offspring. “Concluded, then.”
The lounge cleared, comfortable and unhurried, as it did when people knew each other long enough to disagree and not hold grudges.
Harry took a cupcake to-go and paused to tell Holly that regardless of the three-out-of-ten review, things were genuinely looking up, and he meant it, and she should know that.
Sam clapped her once on the shoulder without a word, which she had come to understand was Sam’s equivalent of a full-throated endorsement.
Mish gathered her children with a series of looks that communicated something across their shared frequency, and they filed out in two neat rows.
Tyer said a polite goodbye. Cody gave her a big, incense-laden hug, called her “cuz,” and wandered out with his hands in his pockets, humming something.
Orba and Sula said nothing as they glided from the room.
Alyce was the last resident to go, and she turned on Luv. “You know better than to say something like that.”
Luv rolled forward and her visual indicators lit up red. “I’ve got my eye on that one,” she said, gesturing with a metal arm toward Rasker. “He looks at her entirely too much. And their heart rates increase when they make eye contact.”
“How is that any of your business?” Alyce asked, exasperated. “I’ll tell you right now, my heart rate increases when I talk to you.”
Luv rolled back a little bit. “I’m protective of my human, is all. Don’t want to see her sell this place because of some smooth-talking—”
“I appreciate that, Luv,” Holly said, cutting the Homeboti off before she went on an entertaining, but embarrassing, rant. She rose, keeping Bean tucked under one arm. “But I don’t need protection. I need friendship, and for you to trust that I can take care of myself.”
Luv’s visual lights turned back to blue. “I will process that and adjust my communication style. In the future, I’ll only tell you if something worries me.”
“That would be fantastic,” Holly said dryly. “And you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to sell this place. Not to Mr. Vipp. Not to anyone.”
That calmed the fiery robot, and Alyce let out a loud sigh as she tossed back a thin braid that fell in her eyes. “You need anything, let me know.” She winked and scratched under Bean’s chin. “You’re a good boy, you know that?”
Bean blinked solemnly. He did know that.
Alyce departed, dragging Luv with her, leaving Holly and Rasker alone.
He crossed the lounge toward her at the unhurried pace she’d come to recognize, and Holly stayed where she was. Bean was getting heavy, but she kept him in her arms, like a shield.
“How are you?” Rasker asked.
“Fine,” she said. “Busy. Both.”
He reached out and ran his hand down her arm, a light, easy gesture, like it was a thing he’d decided was permitted. It was, she supposed. Given circumstances.
“Luv hit a nerve,” Holly said. “Is she? Is this—” She gestured between them. “Part of the strategy?”
He looked at her steadily. “No.” He said it without hesitation. “And honestly, I don’t see a strategy like that working on you anyway.”
“Thanks. It wouldn’t.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “For what it’s worth, I believe that you won’t sell.
I think you’re going to stay here and fix this station up piece by piece until it’s a place people look forward to stopping at.
And then you’re going to be very smug about it.
” He pet Bean, who leaned into his touch. “Rightly so.”
Holly looked down. The gulf between now and Rasker’s imagined future for Moone’s Landing was enormous. “The nit problem is real,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about dipping into my own savings. Or going back to Beenan for more consulting work.”
Rasker’s expression shifted slightly. “I wouldn’t recommend either of those.”
“I know. It doesn’t make them less tempting.”
“Have you considered an event?” he said. “Something to bring people in. A gathering, a festival, something with a reason attached to it. Travelers talk. If Moone’s Landing becomes the place where interesting things happen, it stays in people’s minds.”
Holly looked up at him.
It was not a bad idea. It was, actually, a surprisingly good idea, and she resented how quickly her brain started working on it.
She could already see the shape of it: a day with food and music and an easy atmosphere.
The outpost could genuinely offer this when it wasn’t falling apart.
Something small enough to manage and large enough to matter.
The field was a perfect location for it.
“I’ll think on it,” she said.
“Just an idea.” He shrugged. “Also, have dinner with me tonight. I brought some food back from my trip that I think you’ll like. Come to my quarters. You and Bean, obviously.” He glanced toward the door with a wry smile. “Not Luv, though, please.”
Holly smiled and thought about the idea of a quiet dinner with an interesting man. A man with whom she’d shared a kiss at the edge of a pool, soft and unhurried and entirely unresolved. “All right,” she said. “Tonight.”