For Clavists, when they weren't racing, Ruis Calvario's penthouse was the place to be. Del didn't like it much. The atmosphere was always too frenzied, or too sexual, or simply too crowded. And although he usually had his guitar close to hand, he didn't often play. For one thing, there was nearly always recorded music blasting from the speakers. And it wasn't that he didn't play for audiences; at the frequent music festivals held in New Orleans, he'd often joined groups on stage to lend his skilled hands or his voice to the shared camaraderie. At the penthouse, however, he feared it wouldn't be sharing. He'd feel like an old-time organ grinder's trained monkey performing for the amusement of the crowd.
That was, until he discovered that just the right amount of bourbon combined with just the right amount of sapphire gave him an equilibrium of sorts: the thoughts and emotions of others were still a plague, but he simply no longer cared enough to want to either a) ground himself into a coma or b) beat the people around him off with a verbal bat.
During a lull in the recorded music, he picked up the battered instrument his mother had given him when he'd been ten years old. It hadn't been battered then - it had been brand new, one of the few brand-new things he'd ever received. It hadn't been real expensive, though, and he hadn't always taken great care of it, but it still made sweet music under his fingers, and it had a rich, somehow lived-in sound.
He plucked idly at the strings, not really sure if he was going to do any more, when a wondrous thing happened: the minds around him went quiet. He blinked, glancing covertly around him through his thick lashes. He could see Groupie and Gypsy and Barak, but he couldn't hear them. He couldn't feel them. Their thoughts and emotions were still with anticipation as they waited for him to fill the silence with melody.
A song he'd once heard an old man sing on the streets of New Orleans came to him, and he began to play the simple tune. Before he knew it, he was singing the remembered words.
Aw, yes, this is powerful stuff
Got me circlin' like th' moon roun' th' sun
Actin' crazy like a fool all drunk
Mmm, hear me, this is powerful stuff
More Clavists stopped what they were doing, gathering around the sunken couch. The lyrics were making connections all around him, flitting through his brain like errant fireflies. Some equated them with racing, some with the multi-colored Haven chemicals that were as much a part of the Clave as were the needles themselves.
There no way fo' you t' give this up
It in your body, it all in your blood
It tear you down, it'll lift you up
An' keep you turnin' like it never enough
He found himself sinking into the enjoyment, emotions growing stronger yet without the confusing bombardment that had always before been the constant irritant just under his skin. He opened up to it, pulling more in, expanding the circle of his awareness; past the main room, out to the balcony, beynd the kitchen and the grand foyer, even up the wide, curving staircase that led to the private rooms of the apartment.
Aw, hit me, this is
Alright, now, let's turn it up
Ever' day do like a flower does
Th' sun it rises an' she opens up
Th' sun it rises an' she sing
Powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful...
Just like the emotions that ran in time with the rythym of the song...
Powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful...
Like Jeremy's need screaming into his brain, joined by the answering ferocity of his best friend and beloved...
Powerful, powerful, mmm-hmm...
Those around him were swaying to the music, some dancing in a slow, dreamy way, Gypsy turning by herself in lazy, sensual circles. Del was falling deeper and deeper into the spell he was weaving, becoming one with the sound, one with the galaxy of desire that was spinning around him. The music was a cocoon, insulating yet transforming, the promise of new beauty, new growth, powerful, powerful, powerful....
You can't give it, won't give it
Yeah, now tell me are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you ready when a t'ing's so strong?
watch it turnin', yearnin', burnin'
Can't give it up, won't give it up
Even when you're yearnin', burnin', turnin'
Can't give it up, won't give it up
mmm-hmmm...
Won't give it up, never gonna lose this, so calm an' sure an' perfect...
Powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful
Powerful, powerful, powerful, powerful
Powerful, powerful, mmm-hmm...
There was applause after he let the strings of his guitar vibrate into silence, but he didn't hear it. His mind was filled with the wonder of his new-found strength and peace. It didn't last, of course, but it made him willing to play more often.
"Jus' try keepin' your motherfuckin' nose out my motherfuckin' business fo' a damn change!!"
Jeremy Paget sighed and consulted the chronometer on the wall of the workpod bay as discreetly as he could. The subject he was trying to broach with the Cajun was far too delicate to be aired in front of an audience and the minutes were clicking away until Sulu would be up from his nap and once more warming the pilot seat of his glorious, but still unfinished needle. "You're not being reasonable."
NC pointed a laser wrench at him accusingly. "You bein' a motherfuckin' busybody. That what you doin'."
"I'm just tryin' to look out for you, man," Paget assured his friend, offering up a neatly arranged tray of the bolts the Maker was about to request.
"Mais, then you need t' look out fo' nosin' into my damn business," DelMonde muttered darkly as he snatched two connectors.
"I'm just tryin' to be honest with you," Jer insisted, patiently replacing the parts the Maker had chosen. "You're always telling me how much you value honesty."
NC glared at this rhetorical gambit before turning back to the part he was fitting into the gleaming guts of Sulu's lovely needle.
"And honestly," Paget continued, "You're handsome. You're brilliant. You're talented. But the outfit..." Jer waved a hand at the Cajun's perpetually grease-stained attire. "It's just not cuttin' it, pal."
DelMonde shook his wrench at his friend accusingly. "You just be wantin' me t' dress up like you."
Paget rose up to his full height (which at this point in time was at least an inch and a half taller than DelMonde) and looked down at the elegant turquoise and gold jumpsuit he was wearing. "And what's wrong with the way I dress?" he asked, putting an extra dash of menace in the question to go with the aggressive cut of his outfit.
"Not'ing..." The Cajun rolled his black eyes up at him, ostentatiously unimpressed. "If you wanna look like you'd blow spacers fo' a credit an' hand back change."
Paget snorted derisively as he reseated himself. "This from the man I had to rescue from bein' kicked out of that party in Buenos Ares when the waitstaff decided he was a janitor who'd snuck in to steal food."
DelMonde growled in remembrance. "Fuckin' snobs..."
"Look, what you wear is fine for here, but when you go to parties..." Paget shook his head. "You just don't shine."
"I not wanna shine," the Cajun retorted firmly. "I not want Calvario an' his slime-fuck pals eyeballin' me any more'an they already do."
"Part of the reason they look at you is because you look out of place," Paget replied, arguing with the only part of that fact he could reasonably raise an objection to. "Everyone else is dressed like me and you're dressed like you just crawled out from under a needle with a leaky bilge system."
The Maker gave him a narrow look for resorting to an example that had actually happened in the last few weeks. "I not ashamed o' what I do," he declared defiantly. "If folks be too good fo' me then I jus' not go to they damn parties."
"No, you need to go," Paget corrected quickly. "There's potential clients you're gonna contact at parties that you're not gonna meet any other way. You've been complaining that you're tired of workin' for kids who just tear up what you do right away. After this ship starts to win races..."
"Oh, so that what this is really 'bout, non?" DelMonde smiled smugly. "After your friend here wins races, you gonna want ever't'ing t' be perfect fo' his coronation as Le Roi an' subsequent triumphal tour o' all th' best partyin' spots in this hemisphere, non? Don't want some dirty old Cajun spoiling' that pretty picture, do we?"
Paget drew in a deep breath. There were many pitfalls in the task of trying to persuade someone who could perceive your motivations more quickly than you could yourself. "Well, there is that..." he conceded grudgingly. "But I'm thinkin' of you too. If you want to do big jobs for the big spenders, you gotta look the part. People don't want to hand over thousands of credits to a greasy teenager with black under his fingernails."
NC started to protest, but paused first to sneak a look at his hands. "Shit."
"Who smells like he hasn't taken a shower since that last crate of flux couplers came in three days ago," Paget continued, pressing his advantage.
"I do got some people rushin' me a bit on this job, as you so fuckin' well know," the Cajun pointed out defensively.
"How you look is fine for this hangar bay, but..." Paget let his estimation of the young Maker's ability to read other's minds dangle in the air between them. "Well, I don't have to tell you. You know the assumptions people make about you."
DelMonde scowled mightily, but after a moment a grin began to pull at his lips. "There were that one fella at th' las' shindig we went to in Rio who - drunk off his ass - thought, 'Calvario sure throw a hot party. Hell, I even fuck that guy they brought in t' work on th' air conditioner...'"
"Surely you'll at least do me the courtesy of lookin' at a mockup," Paget said, holding out a datapad.
The Cajun sighed as longsufferingly as a martyr on the rack as he grudgingly accepted the pad and activated the 3-D display.
Guessing that a careful balance of accuracy and ambiguity would be best received, Paget had blanked out the face of the 3-d figure, but had given it the exact coloring, hairstyle, and measurements of his friend.
"Oh sweet Mary..." The Cajun wrinkled his nose. "You not try t' put me in red."
"It's not red," Paget protested in what he knew was going to be a futile gesture. "It's maroon. Maroon's a good color. You look good in maroon."
DelMonde snorted. "I look like a slutty clown."
Paget reached past his friend to make an adjustment to the display. "How about blue?"
"Now I look like an acrobat gigolo."
Jer had to laugh at the unexpected circus theme developing in the Cajun's objections. "I bet those acrobatic gigolos rake in the cash."
"You gotta bet they do," the Maker retorted loftily -- as if there were such a profession. "However, as I done said, I got no interest in creatin' false expectations... unlike some people I could name."
Paget grinned wickedly. "Hey, I've got skills, man..."
"Not gonna bother t' waste breath arguin' that," the Cajun replied paging forward to the next selection. "That color make me look green... an' that color is green. Why th' hell it all gotta be so tight? I not be able t' sit down wit'out cuttin' off my circulation."
"I can arrange a massage for anything that goes numb," Paget offered.
"Or jus' have pants on me instead o' painted on pantyhose," DelMonde suggested firmly.
Jer sighed in mock resignation and altered the fit of the 3-d outfit. "How's that?"
"Not green," the Cajun insisted. "I look like a trampy Robin Hood."
"What about black?" Paget asked, near exasperation as he changed the display once more. "Or are you gonna tell me you look like a whore-y undertaker?"
The Maker twisted his lips at the gorgeously stylish image before him. "Black all right, I guess."
"Okay." Paget was careful to keep his tone businesslike instead of triumphant. "But we need to add a little trim or you'll look like the butler. How about a little splash of silver?"
After several seconds of frowning at the deliciously elegant image of himself, the best the Cajun could come up with was, "If you dude me up in black an' silver like that, people gonna t'ink I Haven."
Paget raised an eyebrow. "And the downside of that would be...?"
DelMonde's mouth worked for a few minutes, but when it came to doing business at the Clave, there were nothing but advantages to even being temporarily mistaken for a member of that race of master tradesmen. The only pitfall that Paget could project would be if the Havens themselves found the imitator's attempt ridiculous and fell to cruelly mocking the pretender. However, Jer thought the Cajun's estimation of his own attractiveness was too healthy to admit to such a possibility.
"All right." The Maker grudgingly switched off the display and handed the data pad back to Paget. "Sold."
Jer resisted the urge to crow exultantly but instead grinned and stuck out a hand. "Deal?"
The Cajun made a sour face, but after a moment had to return his smile. "An' done, mon ami," he assented, shaking his friend's hand with mock solemnity. "An' fuckin' done."
Jeremy had just come from the work bays, after having been unceremoniously told to get the fuck out because he was allegedly dripping lust all over NC's work. He had, of course, countered with, "How can I help it? You're gorgeous and you're making a gorgeous needle for my gorgeous lover."
The Cajun's response had been, "An' unless you want him comin' all over th' controls when he flies her..." followed by a suggestive raised eyebrow.
"If he did, I'd lick it clean for him," Jer had leered, then ducked the laser wrench thrown at his head and left the bay, grinning.
The grin turned to a grimace at the sight of the man approaching him.
"My dear Cobra, how is the build coming?" Ruis Calvario asked with his usual superior smile.
Jeremy knew not many other Clavists considered Cal's manner at all condescending or smug. But then, not many other Clavists had been wary of the man on sight. And that wariness had turned, in the short time Paget had known the man, into suspicion and intense dislike.
It was, however, not something he ever showed to the man himself.
He quickly rearranged his expression, already calculating how he was going to explain the sour look; it wasn't something Cal was likely to let slide.
"I don't know," he muttered, deciding to go with the best defense. "Cajun is pretty picky about who he lets in there when he's workin'."
Cal laughed in a tone meant to be sympathetic and understanding. "Ah, our new Maker is a bit temperamental, yes?"
Paget shrugged. "The needles he builds are worth it," he replied.
"So far, so far," Cal returned. He leaned in closer. "Can you tell me nothing? Nothing at all?"
"The Heir seems happy with it."
Cal chuckled again. "It does seem all he is able to talk about," he agreed. "Well, as long as it's going well." He paused. "You can tell me that much, hmm?"
"If how dedicated Cajun is to workin' on it is any indication, yeah, it's goin' well," Jer said, and forced himself to smile.
"Good, good," Cal returned. "Do tell him to let me know if he needs anything more. For the Heir Apparent, my purse is wide open." He grinned again, chucked Jer under the chin, then turned and walked away.
Paget shuddered, rubbing at the spot in disgusted irritation. As far as he knew, Sulu hadn't come up to the Clave yet that day. And for once, he was very, very glad of it.
"What are you gonna do with this?" Sulu asked, breaking the first two cardinal rules Jer had given him concerning the proper care and feeding of his temperamental Cajun Maker.
"Beat th' shit out o' you if you don't get out o' here an' quit botherin' me," the boy replied with his customary degree of menace.
The guidelines for peaceful coexistence with the Cajun as Jer had outlined them were much the same as one might adopt to build up the trust of a feral cat: Don't talk. Sit still. Stay calm. Above all, don't touch anything. And never, never, never question any of his choices.
"Is it wood?" Sulu asked, turning the incongruous piece of what looked to be carved railing over in his hand. "What's it for?"
The boy turned and looked for a moment like he was going to stalk over and snatch the railing from Sulu's hands. Then he reconsidered, crossed his arms and demanded, "What d'you smell?"
"It looks like wood." Sulu frowned and continued to look the railing over for clues to its function. "Is it for some kind of trim?"
"No, I gonna whittle a crank fo' th' front so you can wind th' engine up 'fore you take off," the Cajun replied acidly before turning back to the thruster component he was in the midst of attaching.
"Feels like real wood. Pretty solid." Despite the Cajun's profound demonstrated allergy to criticism, Sulu could not force himself to refrain from commenting, "I've never seen a needle with decorative cockpit trim..."
The young Maker favored him with a forbidding glare. "Mais, you not seen this ship yet."
Although he knew he was treading on very, very thin ice, Sulu felt compelled to ask, "And what if I don't want something like that in my ship?"
Instead of blowing a fuse, the Cajun gave him a strange look and tilted his head to one side. "If you not want it an' it not serve no purpose," he asked, as if posing a riddle, "then I hafta be crazy t' install it, non?"
"Well... yeah," Sulu admitted, bluntly.
"So..." The Cajun turned and crossed his arms. "You t'ink I crazy?"
"Crazy?" Sulu considered, before answering honestly, "I think you're annoying."
The Cajun made a contemptuous noise through his teeth and continued working.
"...And arrogant," Sulu added for accuracy's sake.
"You one to talk," his Maker tossed over his shoulder.
"...And irascible..." he amended.
"Oh, pullin' out th' big words, now, huh?" the mechanic asked mockingly.
"...And ingenious..." Sulu had to admit.
"You bet your ass I am," the Cajun affirmed immodestly.
"... And maddening..."
"You not hafta hang 'round here," the young man reminded him.
Sulu started to tick the descriptors off on his fingers. "... And eccentric..."
"Hmph," was the Cajun's only rebuttal.
"...And brilliant..."
"You tryin' to butter me up now," the young man accused, crossing over to the pile of parts Sulu was sitting on to retrieve an item.
"...And good-looking..."
"Gettin' personal," the Maker warned, selecting a bag of bolts.
"...And vain..."
"Why people always say stuff 'bout me lookin' good an' always gotta follow up by callin' me vain?" the young man wondered irritably as he crossed back to the needle.
"Could be the way you tend to compliment them on their good taste," Sulu suggested.
"We talkin' 'bout me not you," the Cajun retorted.
"So we are," Sulu conceded lightly. "Where was I? And anti-social..."
"Well, that depend on th' company..."
"... And inimitable..."
"Sure hope nobody tryin' to imitate me."
"...And temperamental..."
The Cajun shook his head as he loaded the bolts into a slot in a large tool hanging from his belt. "If I not have a herd o' jackasses aggravatin' th' livin' piss out o' me all day ev'ry day..."
"...And insightful..."
"Seein' a lot more'an I get credit fo'," the boy grumbled.
"...And artistic, and original, and thoroughly exasperating," Sulu enumerated.
The Cajun turned and gave him an expectant look. "An' crazy?"
Sulu took a moment to evaluate, then shook his head. "But not crazy."
"All right, then." The Cajun seemed pleasantly surprised, but determined not to show it. "If I not crazy, then answer my question.
"What question?"
The young man gestured at the piece of railing in Sulu's hand. "What d'you smell?"
Feeling a little foolish, Sulu brought the railing near his nose. Wood. Real wood. He inhaled again. Lacquered... like furniture... Very like familiar scents from his past... The scent of decorative chests with tasseled closures... The clean scent of dojos... of practice swords... The sort of aroma that brought to mind generations of unknown warrior grandfathers... and warrior grandmothers too... Japan... Korea... Not a wistful adherence to some vaguely constructed stereotype of homelands he'd never known, but the real things he'd experienced... The fencepost of a rock garden... The grip of a katana in his hands... Wood that was brand new but carried the echoes of a past that transcended cultures, fates, and personalities ... An unending intergenerational quest for honor hand in hand with an undying lust for glory...
"Victory," he decided quietly. "It smells like victory."
The Cajun nodded, pleased. "So," he asked gruffly, "you t'ink you want that?"
"I want that," Sulu confirmed.
"So we put it in, non?" the Cajun asked, holding his hand out for the piece.
Sulu nodded, handing it to him. "We put it in, hai."
As Jeremy Paget carefully balanced his heaping tray of sandwiches on a discarded crate, he made a mental note to explain to Sulu that the care and feeding of his new Maker actually involved some literal feeding. When the Cajun was deep into a project like this one, he sometimes put off sleeping and eating until he collapsed from exhaustion. To head off such a disaster, one had to be very circumspect. It wasn't a matter of tricking NC into eating -- He always knew what you were up to. It was more a matter of selecting the correct approach that least offended the Cajun's sensibilities.
One could not, for example, simply say, "Hey, man, you need to take a break. Get something to eat and then grab a nap for a few hours." This affront to the Maker's dignity would only elicit a long, emphatic declaration of the heroic degree of self-sufficiency of which the Cajun believed himself to be possessed decorated liberally with startlingly unflattering speculations on his would-be-rescuer's motivations for making such a clearly unwarranted observation.
Food that was brought unasked for would languish pointedly uneaten.
To make sure all parties saved face, one had to engage in a bit of dramatic ritual worthy of Kabuki theatre. One needed to bring sufficient quantities of food and drink for two and the appetite to eat at least a quarter of the offering. In order to assuage the Cajun's fierce independence, it was necessary to convincingly create the illusion that one had grossly overestimated his own appetite. Only then could DelMonde comfortably step in to do his angel of mercy the favor of eating their "extra" provender.
Paget's knowledge of the degree to which the Cajun could read through any pretense gave this little charade an air of high ridiculousness. However, if such rituals were what it took to help his friend through lingering hurts and traumas resulting from the time he'd spent homeless on the streets of New Orleans, then Jer was happy to oblige.
Paget carefully put such thoughts from his mind as the Maker approached with the studied coolness of a feral cat. After first defiantly sweeping past the tray on his way to get a tool he probably didn't need, DelMonde deigned to grab a sandwich on his way back without comment or eye contact.
Jer pretended not to notice. Instead he took a long moment to smile at the lovely bones of the ship the Cajun was conjuring into existence. As the Maker strode back into range, Jer wrapped his long arms around his knees and eagerly asked, "So, how do you like your new client so far?"
Paget's comment gave the Cajun sufficient excuse to pass near enough to inhale another sandwich and shrug. "He all right, I guess."
Jer blinked at this unprecedented lack of derision. "Wow. That good?"
"He a pilot," NC replied diffidently around a third sandwich.
"Not shit for brains?" Paget ventured.
The Cajun frowned at him as he made short work of another sandwich. "When it come t' stuff like his personal life, he got an unerrin' propensity t' screw himself seven ways from Sunday in each an' every possible orifice. But when it come to knowin' stuff like what it take t' make a needle go fast, he got a lot more sense 'an most."
"Wow," Paget repeated. Usually the Maker's relationships with his clients reached a nadir around the point where NC was this absorbed in construction. "So you like him?"
"I not go that far," the Cajun replied, pulling up a crate to serve as chair as he helped himself again to the dwindling pile of sandwiches. "I mean, he a strange sort o' fella, non?"
The look that DelMonde was giving him put an uncomfortable tingling inside Paget's brain. "What do you mean?"
"I mean most o' th' time hangin' 'roun' here, he jus' as sweet as he can be, happy as a junebug in a mound o' manure, but then I say somet'ing that hit him wrong an' he go all cold." The Cajun's black eyes searched Paget's for confirmation. "Hotter 'an the tip o' Satan's tongue but cold as th' fuckin' grave. You done seen it happen too, non?"
Since confirmation was not absolutely necessary, Paget picked up a sandwich and chose to remain silent out of protective loyalty to his beloved.
"Like he almos' a different person," DelMonde pressed.
Paget made sure his mouth was too full for an intelligible reply.
The Cajun frowned at the transparency of this tactic, then sighed and shook his head as if he understood the reasoning behind it. "Sometime we be goin' along, workin' through some problem, pretty as you please," DelMonde complained. "Then out o' nowhere, he go all cold an' start t'inkin' shit like, 'If I was t' fuck this bastard 'bout now, I not have t' put up wit' his damn mouth no more.'"
Even though the Maker had accurately hit on the very aspect of his lover's troublingly split personality that kept him up nights with sickened worry, the plaintively aggrieved tone of the Cajun's complaint struck Paget as incongruously comical. "Well, I'll talk to him about that," he promised.
"I wish you would."
"Yeah, I'll tell him that as far as I've observed, even good sex doesn't do anything to shut you up," Paget replied seriously, then giggled as he dodged the rain of sandwiches pelted in his direction.
"Now look," the Cajun commanded, reaching over Sulu's arms to point out a spot on the control panel of the nearly completed needle. "There a total o' six buttons here..."
Sulu felt as impatient as a kid at Christmas whose parents were making him memorize all the instructional manuals before he could play with any of his new toys. Sitting in the cockpit of his new ship, his blood was singing, "Fly! Fly! Fly!" But the Cajun, as stern and crafty as a Japanese mother-in-law, had insisted his preflight tutorials had to take place before the ship was actually made space-worthy - accompanied with dire and profane warnings about what might happen to Sulu's already much beloved needle if his lectures were not attended to properly.
Sulu frowned at the little row of blue buttons. "Usually there's only four."
The Cajun nodded. "Yeah, but I bumped th' dioxin compression rate up to eighty percent, which is essentially gonna give you two extra stages of gravilinear...."
"Eighty?" Sulu's eyebrows rose. "Isn't the usual rate about fifty?"
"More like thirty-five," the Cajun corrected. "But I seen you fly an' know you one o' them hard-headed jackasses who'll pull a bicameral inversion in low g's to squeeze a li'l extra juice out your turns - even though that th' surest way t' crystallize your oxygen supply - so you prob'ly used t' th' equivalent of a 65 percent compression rate..."
Sulu stroked the little panel reverently as his brain tried to wrap itself around what could be done with that much extra maneuverability. "But now I've got access to eighty..."
"You can handle it." The Cajun gave him one of his rare, crooked smiles. "No problem."
Sulu returned it with a sunshine grin of his own. As much as their differing personalities frequently grated on each other, the love they both had for this beautiful spaceship was infectious. They basked in the shared glow for a half-second before the Cajun caught himself and cleared his throat.
"I'd bump th' ratio up further," he said, safely all business once again. "But there be a trade off wit' structural integrity that I not willin' to make..."
Sulu crossed his arms. "You're beginning to like me," he accused the Maker.
The Cajun rewarded him with a singularly magnificent frown. "Shut th' fuck up."
"You are," Sulu persisted with a smile designed to be maddening. "Might as well admit it."
The young mechanic crossed his arms forbiddingly. "Look, th' fact that I t'ink you can handle a 90 degree g.u.i. deceleration better than 9 out o' th' 10 needle-jockeys bangin' a groupie on th' deck above us don't mean I wanna go steady or not'ing."
"Well, I guess I'm not looking for a commitment either," Sulu replied lightly. "But it might be nicer if we were friends."
"Why?" The Cajun snorted dismissively. "I jus' buildin' a ship fo' you. That's all."
"No." Sulu ran his hands lovingly down the sides of his perfectly designed control column. "You're building THE ship -- A ship greater than 10 out of 10 of wrench-monkeys draining a bottle of gin in the hangar bay below us could even conceive of. "
"True dat," the Cajun agreed with a typical lack of humility.
"When I begin to race this beauty, your name and mine will be forever joined. You'll always be known as my Maker."
"No offence," the boy replied archly, "but I gonna be lotsa people's Maker. That kinda th' point o' this exercise..."
"No doubt," Sulu conceded. "But..."
"But none o' them gonna be Le Roi," the Cajun finished for him.
Sulu was taken off guard by the sudden transition to French. "Le what?"
"The King," the Maker articulated. "Monsieur Le Roi. That what you always t'inkin' 'bout, non?"
"Don't worry. I plan on being a benevolent despot." Sulu smiled at the thought. "Very, very, very benevolent."
"Don't see what difference that gonna make," the Cajun grumbled. "Already got 'nough free drugs, booze, an' sex to kill myself anytime I take a mind..."
"Oh, it's gonna make a difference," Sulu assured the boy. "You'll see. All the difference in the world."
"You all the time t'inkin' 'bout bein' Monsieur Le Roi an' spreadin' you some benevolence." The Cajun made the prospect sound positively lewd. "You 'bout to forget all them races you gotta win in this motherfucker."
"Oh, don't call my beautiful ship a motherfucker," Sulu protested, covering the control panel with his hands as if to block the needle's delicate ears. "She's a pure, exquisite lady."
"It may be pure an' beautiful," the mechanic conceded, pointedly using a gender-neutral pronoun. "But don't go t'inkin' of it as a lady. In a race, this t'ing gonna be a shit-kickin', ass-chappin', junkyard bitch."
Sulu smiled and traced the clean lines of the top trim of the control panel. "But still proud and noble at heart..."
"It is a t'ing o' power an' possibility," the Cajun admitted, placing a reverent hand on the needle's metallic skin.
"Like a force of nature..."
"Like..." The Maker suddenly broke off and cleared his throat. Sulu could have swore the Cajun was about to say, 'Like you.' He watched as, with a scowl and a particularly fetching frown, the boy firmly filed however he had almost finished his sentence into a "Things I'm Not Going To Say To That Shit-For-Brains Bastard" folder.
"Now look here," his Maker ordered, stabbing his finger at an array of controls on the other side of the cockpit. "I give you two extra buttons over there, but I take 'em away on th' nitro-injection system here. Like I said, I done watched you fly, so I know they not no use in puttin' in controls for not'ing but 'None' or 'Too Damn Much'."