Oddly, he said it in a soothing, melodic voice. That was… interesting—Rachel’s usual dodge description. She had always disliked the way women would refer to men as “cute” and think that explained something. Men weren’t cute. They were handsome or ugly or boyish or an éminence grise in the making. Cute, no; not to Rachel. More like rugged.

A plonking rhythm started up on the other side of the ample room.

Behind the semielliptical bar four cowboys who had never been near a cow sang western songs. These sounded as if they had originated in the Far East, at best. Somebody dropped the acoustic dome over their table, a sonic interferometer, and the fake folksy mercifully faded.

Somebody passed an inhalant she called a “spritzer” and Rachel had a lung or two. Then a sip, maybe two, of a red wine somebody said was Lunagrown and tasted like it. Talk accelerated around her, an effect she noted with owlish fascination.

“—so I said to him, quoting the old saying, ‘Don’t look into laser with remaining eye.’ And he just shrugged. Not like he can’t get his fried one replaced.”

“—as Lunaticky as a plaid rabbit—”

“—this guy’s face is his autobiography, right there.” A man flaunting oakpale hair beside her shot back, “These days, a woman’s face is her work of fiction.”

“—We all need to wake up and smell the Kafka, gang—”

“—the Cauchy singular integral operator on weighted variable Lebesgue spaces—how charming!”

Here came a refresh of her old lesson: watching other people getting drunk and more brilliant by the moment, so they thought, was even less interesting than watching other people having sex. Though that, at least, had an athletic payoff.

She just sat and drank some and watched, gathering info, while a guy across from her directed a fast stream of talk at her, a standard brilliant disheveled klutz, going on about something in basic decoding software. She relaxed. Men loved explaining things. But when a guy was explaining something you already knew, she had learned that while it might be tempting to say, “I already know that,” it was not a wise move. Instead, she let him explain it to make him feel useful. That gave her time to think about how to avoid him in the future. Plus about a half dozen others among the present company, off her list. She was studying her social landscape and making maps. Not for the first time, or even the dozenth. Still, fun, in its way.

A hand jerked her up, out of her seat, away. “Bedtime, roomie,” Catkejen whispered.

“What? Uh. I was just—”

With a sigh, Catkejen said, “See that bongo silver-haired guy from Mars? As sleek as a jet plane with all the right muscular massive curves in all the right swervy places, with the kind of quiet voice that does nothing to disguise the turbocharged power purring under that immaculate chassis.”

“Uh…”

“He’s eyeing you. Best not let him see you barf up the slop we’re ingesting. Unladylike, even by Earthside standards.”