Eyas hadn’t had sex on her home ship since her thirtieth birthday, two standards prior. It had been even longer since she’d done so with anyone who wasn’t a professional. The combination of those decisions was the best thing she’d ever done for herself (well, second maybe to moving out of her mother’s home and in with friends). People got weird around caretakers. That was part and parcel of the job, and she’d long been accustomed to it. But it did get in the way of relationships, especially the kind where clothing was optional. Whenever she told a potential partner what she spent her days doing, the reaction was either one of stumbling deference – which invariably led to the exhausting business of guiding them to the conclusion that she was just an ordinary person who wanted an honest, uncomplicated hookup – or discomfort, which shut the whole thing down. Her choices were then either her peers – and yes, the caretaking profession was pretty incestuous that way, but she didn’t have any workmates she thought of in those terms – or the tryst clubs. She’d learned that her use of the latter benefited from a bit of distance. The last time she’d visited a club on her own homesteader, the host whose room she’d been sent to had been one of the family members present at a laying-in she’d conducted the tenday prior. He’d realised who she was before they’d gotten much of anywhere, and she’d spent the next two hours helping him tearfully talk through the death of his uncle. Not an activity she minded, but definitely not the one she’d been after. Since then, she visited clubs off-ship, where nobody knew her face or what she spent her days doing, and nobody would start crying when she took her pants off (she knew the crying hadn’t been in response to her lack of pants, but still).

She took the exit ramp to the dockway, the dockway to the transport deck, and the transport deck to the plaza, which led her, at last, to the club. All clubs had fanciful names – Daydream, Top to Bottom, the Escape Hatch. The establishment she entered now was called the White Door; she’d never been to this one before (she was pleased to note the door matched the name). She left the dimming artificial light of the plaza for a very different kind of illumination: dim, yes, but with a welcoming warmth as opposed to a sleepy absence. The decor was classy and simple, like the others. She’d noticed supposedly similar establishments on her one teenage trip to Mars, but she hadn’t been able to get past their appearance: windowless shop fronts that popped up around bars and shuttledocks, painted slippery red and emblazoned with disembodied mouths and muscles. She had a hard time imagining anybody finding such a place appealing, let alone paying creds for it. Creds weren’t part of the exchange in the tryst clubs, nor was barter. They provided a service, not goods, and their hosts fell into the same broad vocational category she did: Health and Wellness. The clubs were an old tradition, a part of the Fleet practically since launch, one of many ways to keep everybody sane during a lifelong voyage. Hosts took that tradition seriously, as seriously as Eyas did her own. Plus, they were often some of the loveliest folks she’d ever met. It went without saying that to work in a club, you had to really like people.

The hallway opened into a large lounge, filled with flowering vines, hovering globulbs, and comfortable furniture. A welcome desk stood at the entrance, staffed by a friendly-looking woman with ornately braided, electric blue hair. Eyas approached the desk, feeling a crackle against her skin as she passed through the privacy shield that blocked any conversation from those outside its radius. One of the many touches Eyas appreciated.

‘Welcome,’ the woman said with a kind smile. ‘I haven’t seen you here before, have I?’

‘No,’ Eyas said. ‘I’m from the Asteria.’

‘Oh, well then, doubly welcome, neighbour!’ She gestured at the discreetly shielded pixel projector in front of her. ‘You’ll be in your ship’s system, then?’ The woman nodded toward the patch scanner bolted to the edge of the desk. ‘Do the thing, and I’ll get your info transferred over. Just needed a change of pace?’

Eyas swiped her wrist. ‘Yes.’

‘I hear that,’ the woman said as she assessed the new pixels conjured up by Eyas’ patch. Some of the information there Eyas had submitted herself – what she liked, what she didn’t, that kind of thing – but she imagined there was more in her file than that. Health records, probably. Maybe some kind of note that she’d always followed the rules. ‘All right. Are you looking to take a chance, or for a sure thing?’ This was the option always given at the entrance. Were you interested in meeting a fellow visiting stranger and seeing where the night took you, or . . .

‘The latter,’ Eyas said. Not that it was a sure thing. The host could decline service, for any reason, and she could leave at any time. Neither party was pressured to do anything, and mutual comfort was paramount. But being matched with another walk-in would’ve defeated the entire purpose of her being there.

A polite nod, a bit of gesturing. ‘Are you interested in a single partner, or multiples?’

‘Single.’

‘Any changes to your usual preferences?’

‘No.’

‘And how long of a visit would you like? Overnight, a few hours . . . ?’

‘I’ll take a half night.’ Long enough to make the trip worth it, but with plenty of time to get back home and sleep in her own bed. And that, right there, in addition to everything else she’d been asked, was why the sure thing was the better option by far. She saw so many similarities between this kind of work and her own, polar opposites of the life experiences spectrum though they were. She, too, had strangers’ bodies placed in her care. They couldn’t speak, but they’d been assured their whole lives that when the time came, they’d be treated with gentleness and respect. Nobody would find them odd or ugly. Nobody would do anything unkind. They’d be handled by someone who understood what a body was, how important, how singular. Eyas undressed those bodies. She washed them. She saw their flaws, their folds, the spots they kept hidden. For the short time they had together, she gave them the whole of her training, the whole of her self. It was an intimate thing, preparing a body. An intimacy matched only by one other. So when she placed her own body in someone else’s hands, she wanted to know that her respect would be matched. You couldn’t make guarantees like that with a stranger at a bar. You couldn’t know from a bit of conversation and a drink or two whether they understood in their heart of hearts that bodies should always be left in a better way than when you found them. With a professional, you could. And you’d know, too, that their imubots were up to date, that the kind of sex that could lead to pregnancy carried no such risk, that there wouldn’t be any dancing around whether or not to stay the night or see each other again or if it meant something. Of course it always meant something. But you couldn’t know if that something was the same. In Eyas’ opinion, going to a club was the safest way to have sex, both physically and emotionally. The alternative was a minefield.