by Aeon Authors
Scorpius Digital Publishing - Science Fiction, Fantasy
Scorpius Digital Publishing
www.scorpiusdigital.com
Copyright (C)2004, Scorpius Digital Publishing
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Aeon One is copyright © 2004, Scorpius Digital Publishing, all rights reserved. Individual columns, articles, and stories are copyright © the authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, by any means electronic or mechanical, without prior permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief passages quoted in reviews.
Short Story: A Mythic Fear of the Sea by Jay Lake
Novelette: Blood and Verse by John Meaney
Short Story: The Russian Winter by Holly Wade Matter
Nonfiction: SEX CHANGE—A Few Simple Rules by Pat MacEwen
Short Story: Emerald City Blues by Steven R. Boyett
Short Story: Little House on the Accretion Disk by Gordon Gross
Short Story: Talk of Mandrakes by Gene Wolfe
Novelette: Silver Land by Lori Ann White
Short Novel: Logs by Walter Jon Williams
I recently ended a long-standing business relationship because of a single word. The word? Can't. The word morphed into “No” or my personal favorite, “It's been done before,” but the ultimate meaning was always can't.
Can't do it. Scares me to do it. No. Can't.
A few days later, I picked up Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, and I could just imagine what might have happened if Ms. Clarke and my old colleague had had a discussion before the book was finished.
You can't write a fantasy novel without a quest in it that's nearly 800 pages long.
You certainly can't write one in Dickensian English and publish it in today's market.
You can't have footnotes throughout. You'll get laughed out of editorial offices.
Yet fortunately for literature, Ms. Clarke didn't work with my old friend. She had someone around her who said, “Try it. Let's see how it does. You never know what good'll come from it."
Try it.
Two very scary words. Because if you try, then you might fail, and if you fail, you've lost, right? Wrong. You've at least tried.
Why am I bringing this up now? Not because I'm slamming an old colleague, but because the importance of failure has recently become a motif in my life.
George Lucas gave a marvelous interview to Charlie Rose on PBS in early September, most of it on failure and the artist. Now, you'd think someone as obviously successful as Lucas would want to talk about success—and he was, in a way—but mostly he was talking about the role of failure in artistic vision.
He said—and I'm paraphrasing—that an artist, in any society, must plan for failure. On each and every project. Why? Because the system is set up for failure. And it doesn't matter which system. The patronage system, in which Michaelangelo managed to create his great works of art, encouraged failure as much as our current capitalistic system does.
According to Lucas, the artist who expects riches each time out is the one who is chronically disappointed. The artist who expects failure has a plan. That artist knows he'll have to continue working even if his current project fails. So he plans for the failure, and determines how to get the next project off the ground in spite of that failure.
If you're an sf and fantasy fan, why should you care about an artist's attitude toward failure? Because artists who have accepted failure as part of the process are the ones who are going to succeed. Those artists have the courage to face the “can'ts” of the world, and have deemed them irrelevant.
If Lucas believed in “can't,” he wouldn't have tried to make Star Wars. If Lucas had believed in “can't,” we would have lost other things as well—like Peter Jackson's marvelous cinematic interpretation of Lord of the Rings. Because Jackson heard “can't” more than he heard “try it.” And he planned for failure. He told the studio he'd film all three movies at once, so that the studio would have so much invested, they were no longer able to say “can't."
Why am I writing about an artist's attitude toward failure in this very first column for Aeon? I'd think that'd be obvious. I've known Bridget McKenna for 18 years, and I've never once heard her utter the word “can't.” I've known Marti nearly as long, and I don't think she even knows the word.
Starting a new magazine—in print or electronically—takes a tremendous act of courage, particularly in the sf/f genre. I know. I've done it. And once you mention the idea, everyone says, “Can't. Look at so'n'so. He failed. Look these folks. They failed. Don't try. You'll lose money. You'll lose time. You'll lose."
Ignoring those voices is hard, but extremely important. Because all of the failures are little road maps toward success. Even though the magazine I started with my husband years ago no longer exists, once a year we sit down with a person about to do a new start-up and tell them what our successes were—and most importantly—what our mistakes were. We do this so that the start-up will make new mistakes—their own mistakes—not reinvent the wheel.
And so the field builds on each other's successes, and on each other's failures.
I'm going to be talking a lot about attitude in this column Because I think the “can't” attitude has taken over much of the literary side of the sf/f genre. Sf/f is strangling itself with the word “can't” disguised as “It's Been Done Before.” Even though sf/f movies are among the highest grossing films ever made and sf/f games are the most popular in that huge industry, sf/f books compose the smallest share of the fiction market.
Why?
Can't. Don't Even Try. Because ... It's Been Done Before.
To which my short answer is to quote from an old writing professor of mine:
“There are seven plots. Shakespeare did them better than anyone else ever could. If that scares you, get out of my class. If not, stick around. We'll get some writing done."
If harsh opinions scare you, move on to the next column. If not, stick around. We're going to try a few things.
And who knows what we're going to come up with.
"Aeternum” is just a fancy word for a really, really long time, and that's what it feels like it's been since we started putting together Aeon One; in actual fact it's been more like six months. In that time we've gone from the raw idea stage through choosing stories, designing our publication from the cover in, and all the myriad tasks large and small that go into producing a creative enterprise. This is the result. We're pretty proud of it.
Why Aeon? We're glad you asked. We were looking for a title that covered a lot of ground, and a word one of whose definitions is “...the sum of all the time in the universe...” seemed to fit the bill. Note our nifty universe-themed cover, with a detail from a Hubble telescope photograph of the Eagle Nebula that seems to capture at least a tiny slice of the scope we had in mind. The name of the game is time and space—outer, inner, micro, macro—choose your poison. Science fiction? We've got that; fantasy, too, of all shades. And we're more than happy to publish stories that don't fit neatly into either of those boxes. We'll publish nonfiction if we find something that we think will be of interest to you; this month's article reveals the simple rules for changing gender (there will be a test).
Now and then we'll publish a reprint of a story that wasn't widely-enough seen in its original publication. This issue has two of them. Chances are you haven't read either of them, but if you have, we hope you enjoy the return visit.
We filled Aeon One and Aeon Two by invitation in one great orgy of reading, buying, and (sorry, guys!) returning stories. As the stories trickled, poured, and flooded into our inbox we saw at first hand just how broad the science fiction/fantasy spectrum can be, and how much fits within its nebulous boundaries. Battles in space; struggles in time; mysterious extraterrestrials and surreal visions; mythically-scaled beings and spacefaring poet-assassins; F-18 fighters and covered wagons. Ghosts. And gods. Lots and lots of gods.
We were surprised by the number of stories we received that contained in them some element of deity, some in broader senses of the word, some a great deal more specific. We were delighted by how many ways writers found to play with that particular cosmic theme, and how different their stories were, from hard-science sf to gentle fantasies, and some that are somewhat less than gentle. Not all the god stories we bought ended up in Aeon One, though you will recognize that element in a few of them. We're saving up quite a few more for future issues.
In addition to all this excellent fiction we are also proud to present a new column by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Signals. Kris will make an appearance in each Aeon, and we predict her department will come to be the first page you turn to whenever you download a new issue.
So here's the lineup for Aeon One. We're extremely proud to present these stories and their authors:
2004 Campbell Award winner and Hugo finalist Jay Lake introduces us to a mountain of a man with the power to hold back the sea, in “A Mythic Fear of the Sea."
British Science Fiction Award finalist John Meaney takes us on a quantum voyage to adventure and love, in “Blood and Verse."
Holly Wade Matter tells of scrambled timelines and a wannabe goddess, in “The Russian Winter."
Pat MacEwen instructs all interested species in the requirements for gender reassignment, in “Sex Change: a Few Simple Rules."
The U.S. Air Force flies over the rainbow in Steven R. Boyett's “Emerald City Blues."
Gordon Gross show us that a dying universe can be a lonely place to live, in “Little House on the Accretion Disk."
Gene Wolfe spins a sly tale of exobiology gone terribly wrong in “Talk of Mandrakes."
A Civil War veteran becomes a pioneer in a land not meant for the living, in Lori Ann White's “Silver Land."
A young officer attempts to solve a series of brutal murders aboard a spaceship, in “Logs,” by Walter Jon Williams.
So read, enjoy, and don't forget to write and tell us what you think. And be looking for Aeon Two when it goes on sale in February of 2005.
THE MORNING OF THE DAY I turned twelve years old, Daddy brought out the crampons and the skin-spikes.
“Little Ozzie,” he said in that rough-burred voice I'd always loved, “it's time."
I had no need to ask, time for what? Even at twelve, I knew we had all the time in the world and none. My grandfather loomed over our little town, his long shadow creeping across our fields and orchards with every day's setting of the sun. He guarded us all around, kept the water away, fed us when times were lean, kept our souls safe within our bodies.
It was time to meet Granddaddy.
We went out to the kitchen, fetched some guavas in their canning jars and a rope-slung pot of sour milk—which would keep through the day's heat, as it was already half-bad, though the stuff never sat well in my tummy. I reached for the twists of beaver jerky, but Daddy shook his head. “We'll dine on the old man's grace,” he rumbled with a smile which was for him small and secret.
So I followed him out through the yard, limping between the pumpkin and squash vines, and into the sole street our town still claimed. I was surprised to see everyone in the world there, smiling, laughing, sipping hot chickory from china cups and toasting me with all the good will of a happy funeral.
“Good day, Ozzie!” shouted Miss Kermand, our teacher.
Old Doc Liang grinned, showing his silver teeth, then bowed, never spilling a drop.
The Boordma twins, trapped forever in a lumpish childhood I never had quite trusted, grinned and hooted.
And so it went through the town, until every one of our fifty-seven people had sent me off. Mom was last.
She knelt before me, so that I could see the top of her head where the hair was thin as wheat in a winter field. “Ozzie,” Mom whispered, then hugged me. “We all love you. Even ... him."
And that was it. It remained only for Daddy and me to pass through a desert of empty pavement, streets like angular arteries leading between blackberry brambles and into fern breaks. In some places the pavement had aged faster that others, Douglas firs already spearing the sky from broken beds of stone, while others looked as if they had just yesterday seen their last wagon. In those places even the tiny, round-shouldered spirit guides seemed fresh-painted, their little chain beards scraping in the wind of my farewell.
All children visit Granddaddy. Some haunt the slopes below his vast, rumpled trousers, chasing hares and pheasants through the thinning brush. Others play tag or hide-and-go-seek among the drifting lint of his sweater, where the stuff has caught on an aspen forest. There are secret places known only to the fraternity of children where you can even stand and hear the susurrating echo of the distant, forbidden, angry sea. It as if the sound travels by secret paths through the folds of Granddaddy's skin, or perhaps arrives on his breath that draws and shudders once every year or so.
We all visit him, and we all avoid him at the same time. Though one eye is lost where his face is propped within the reach of his upper arm, the other can be seen below its vasty wrinkled lid, moving slow as the moon in the summer sky with the rhythm of his dreams.
Jamie Brautigan told me Granddaddy dreamed of the sea, and his dream was the sea. I thought that was stupid—how could your dream be anything besides a thought in your head?—but Jamie's words stayed with me.
Approaching the Lower Right Sleeve with Daddy, I began to believe what she had said. Even among the shadowed forest of lint and dying aspen, which smelled of nothing so much as wet, old tobacco, I could hear that soft and distant rhythm.
“Daddy..."
“Hmm?” He'd stopped to wipe the early sweat from his brow and check our path. Even though this was my trip, Daddy's attention was on something far ahead and far away. Mom always said that was just how he was.
A dreamer, like Granddaddy.
“I can hear the sea.” I was ashamed of the words as soon as I said them.
“Ozzie.” He looked at me, caught me with those eyes the color of cold water. Then, to my surprise: “It's all right, son. Walk, don't think.” His voice was kind.
Walk. Don't think.
I walked without thinking a while.
The Lower Right Sleeve wasn't a particular challenge. Jamie and I had climbed almost all the way to the Crook when we were both ten, before she turned eleven and became too old to play with me, especially when Mannie Vingh started paying attention to her. But the Crook itself, there was a challenge.
Granddaddy's sweater had begun to rot there, and ravel. It was like a wool mine, source of much of the lint on the lower slopes. Great foetid pits interrupted the weave which clothed his arm, pits that we had to pick our way around with frustrating care. There were mites up here, slow, pale things the size of cows, but their jaws could crush a grown man's torso, so it didn't do to fall down their dark holes.
All of it made for slow going, but Daddy simply walked like time was his to command. I followed, wondering what it would be like to finally meet the old man.
Soon enough the pits and the troubled surface of the sweater gave way to a vast crevice. The fold of the Crook. It was dark as any of the mite-dens, but much more huge. The far side rose at a steep slope, nearly a cliff, to meet the wrinkled network of the top of Granddaddy's head where he had it pillowed on his arm.
“How are we going to cross that?” I asked.
“Faith, patience and skill,” Daddy replied with another of his not-so-secret smiles. He unslung one of his skin-spikes and handed it to me. The thing was perhaps four feet long, with a curved hook at one end and handle at the other, and a leather thong. He took the other in his own right hand, slipping the thong over his wrist.
I stared from his to mine and back again. “Faith, patience, skill and a skin-spike?"
“And a skin-spike."
Then Daddy scrambled down the steepening slope, facing close to the nap of the sweater, snagging the skin-spike in among the weave for balance.
I learned to climb that morning, down into the Crook and back up.
Later we stopped for guavas and sour milk in a fold that rubbed up against the skin of Granddaddy's scalp. It was hot by then, and Daddy sweated a river. Something in the salt smell of him seemed to bring the sea that much closer, or maybe it was Granddaddy's great, slow pulse echoing behind me.
I'd never touched the old man's skin before.
It was a wall of leathery warmth that towered hundreds of feet above my head to disappear behind the curve of his skull. So close, the skin was composed of a mosaic of little islands of pale tan, ringed with paler canals. I studied the back of my own hand. Surely there was that same pattern—as if I in turn were built from tiny bricks of leather. Great brown blotches interrupted the curving surface of his head, liver spots each bigger than our house.
And Granddaddy was warm. He was warm like the ashes of the Beltaine bonfire. He was warm like the mown fields of autumn. He was warm like the sun upon my face.
Beneath my hand I felt the life of a man who was a mountain to his people. I leaned forward and kissed his scalp.
Daddy chuckled. “You're getting closer to him, Little Ozzie. Ready to climb."
And so we left our boots behind, strapped on crampons, and ascended that wall of liver-spotted skin.
You set the spike in one of the pale canals between the leathery islands. You move one foot up, wedge it in another canal with the crampons. Move the free hand, searching for some rough grip. Move the other foot. Set the spike again.
This is how you climb Granddaddy's head. If he'd had hair, it might have been easier, but then there would have been mites.
And when you stop and rest, body pressed flat against his vast and ancient scalp, you can hear the sea echoing deep inside, and even smell the salt.
It was the hardest, most fearful day of my life. Daddy said nothing, just climbed ahead of me.
We finally crested the dome and came to a place where I could stand and walk. Everything hurt, as if I'd been rolling down hillsides for hours. Daddy pointed to a distant, curving wall.
“We'll make for the ear,” he said. “That's where we need to be."
So I trudged after my father, toward the temple and the ear, through thin spears of gray hair that erupted from the skin from time to time. There was dirt up here too, blown by the wind, and little plants had taken root. Someday the old man would be a forest.
Daddy didn't take his crampons off, so I kept mine on as well. It felt strange to sink into Granddaddy's skin with each step, but he was so vast that perhaps he never took note of our passage at all.
When we finally got to the shadow of the ear, Daddy sat down. “Rest, son,” he said, and began hacking in to a reddened fold of skin. I watched, both horrified and fascinated, as Daddy grinned and added, “The old man's grace."
Strips of flesh tore free from the wound with the sound of ripping cloth. Daddy handed me one, then began chewing on another. I stared at it—something like a red licorice rope, but damp. Not bloody, just damp.
My stomach jumped hard, the sour milk rebelling.
“Take of him and be comforted,” Daddy said around a mouthful of meat.
So I touched it to my lips, this stringy relic of Granddaddy, and gnawed a tiny shred. It tasted salty, like the sea was said to taste, but sweet, too, like springwater drunk in the shade of summer. Then I found sour, and the thick taste of meat, and the dance of chocolate.
Granddaddy tasted like the world.
Slowly I ate of him, until my strip of meat was gone and my belly was full. The milk in my gut settled and I felt better.
Then we climbed the winding path of the ear. Hairs like great swords rose up to block our path, and boulders of brown wax, but Daddy marched on. There was a new spring in his step, as if the old man's grace had made of my father something new.
After a while I realized I was bouncing after him.
The upper rim of the ear was a narrow path that shook beneath our weight. To my right was an overhanging curl that dropped down into a sort of fleshy spiral which in turn descended to a dark, hairy vortex.
To my left was ... the sea.
I'd always though Douglas firs were large. Great trees that speared the sky, they grew throughout our little valley. I'd always thought Granddaddy was large, his bulk like a mountain protecting us all the way around.
But the sea went on forever. It passed into a distance that made my stomach lurch all over again, sparkling silver and blue and gray, and it moved. It was a live thing, bigger than the world, and everywhere around me.
Granddaddy didn't just lie on each side of our little town. He lay around it, like a cat curled on a hearth, and his back and legs kept the sea from swallowing us whole. Like a beaver damming a creek, Granddaddy dammed the world out.
Daddy's hand took my shoulder. “Here is the old man's secret."
“That he keeps the sea out,” I whispered. Terror of the distant, salty water was turning my knees to butter.
“No.” Daddy's fingers tightened. “That the sea keeps him in. Listen, son. He is not our protector, he is our terror. If he were ever to waken, his feet would crush our town to dust. His voice is the whirlwind, Little Ozzie. So we climb here to pray to him to remain asleep for ever, and to thank the sea for wrapping him so tight in salty comfort."
Daddy was wrong, I knew he was wrong, but the sight of that endless sea around me, rising to meet the sky, heaving like a mad, live thing, had struck away what was left of my voice.
In the end I could neither pray to Granddaddy nor thank the sea. It was a thing bigger than me, bigger than anything in the world should be. My father had to hoist me onto his shoulders and carry me down, I was so taken by my fear, though climb pick-a-back terrified us both. I was past caring.
Step by step we walked into town in the deepening dusk. People smiled from porches, then turned away at a slight shake of Daddy's head. I mostly watched my feet kick the brittle-veined ghosts of leaves out of the way. It was easier than meeting disappointed eyes.
By the time we reached our own yard with its ankle-high forest of pumpkins and squash, Mom must have had the news. There were no lanterns lit, and though I could smell cake fresh from the oven, it wasn't laid out in celebration.
“Little Ozzie,” she said, then knelt down to hug me.
“Lies.” The first word I'd spoken since leaving the ear, and it made my mother burst into tears.
“He's too young,” Daddy said from behind me, his voice rough. He reached for my shoulder, that gripping hug, but his hand faltered and it became a soft slap.
“This is something we all do, honey,” Mom whispered to me. Her voice shuddered like a wood saw.
“It can't...” I couldn't answer her. I took a deep breath. “It can't be true.” Visions of an impossible silver immensity filled my head. Like a puddle, grown to overwhelm all of existence. “The sea is too ... big."
“I'll put him to bed with some strong tea,” she told Daddy, talking over my head is if I were already nothing.
After that the grown-ups were kind to me, kind they way they were to the Boordma twins. I hated it. Miss Kermand suggested I spend more time in the library. If I came and went from school at odd hours, no one threw apples or walnuts at me in the street.
I read about water. Rain, and streams, and the ecology of ponds. Slowly I worked my up to bigger water. If there was a thing as impossible as the sea in the world, it must be in the library.
And it was. Pelagic Argosy, by Wolfe Jeanison, a book that drove me to the dictionary time and again, full of prophecy and portent. And weirder books, A Gift From the Sea, for example, that spoke of tide pools and beaches and island shores.
There were pictures of boats.
I realized that I would sooner go live in the woods and eat squirrels than climb to Granddaddy's ear again. But a boat. That was something else.
Maybe the sea wasn't so big up close. Maybe that had been an illusion.
I spent the autumn building model boats to sail on forest streams and nameless ponds, filching adult tools when I could.
I would build me a boat, I resolved, and cross over my fear. I would show them all.
By the following summer I was living in a lint cave near Granddaddy's Waist. Daddy hadn't spoken to me in months, though Mom brought me tea bags and home-baked bead from time to time. When I went into town, I was a ghost. Miss Kermand smiled sometimes, and Boordma twins squalled and pointed, but no one else met my eye, touched me. People just stepped aside when I walked toward them.
Granddaddy had started rumbling during the winter.
Was it my refusal to pray? What had disturbed the old man? The sooner the town was rid of me, the happier everyone would be, including himself.
But I had a keel, tucked in a trouser fold somewhat kneeward of the waist. Close enough to the water for me to lower my boat off the seaward cliffs, but far enough that I didn't have to look. The swishing of wind and tide—I had learned that word, “tide,” from the library—was bad enough. The reek of iodine and salt was worse. I would not look at that silvered horizon.
“Horizon,” another word our town had never needed to teach me.
My keel had ribs, and planks were curing over slow fires hidden several places in the forests that lined the intersection of pants and earth.
The sail was the hardest part. That next autumn I went to see Mom.
Granddaddy's rumbling had become a sort of wheezing roar by then, a distant storm that never quite passed on out of hearing.
When I entered town, I was stared at. Glared at. Hands cupped over mouths as secrets were whispered. Children I had known followed me with sticks.
She waited on the porch of my family's house. Daddy was nowhere to be seen.
“Mom, I...” My voice was harsh, squeaking like a crow. I realized I hadn't spoken in months.
“Your father can take you back up there,” she said.
“No."
There was a rustle, the feathers of a hundred birds, at my word. She glanced toward the Head, out of sight behind the bulk of the house. “Everyone says it's you."
“Maybe. I'm doing something about it, though.” It was the first time I'd admitted my plans, to even having plans.
“What?” Mom's nerve raveled, her voice rising in fear. “Are you going to climb and pray? Put him back to a sound sleep before he does something?"
” No!"
The crowd that had followed me moaned.
“You will be the death of us,” Mom said. “When Granddaddy awakens."
“Fine! Give me six yards of stout canvas, and I will never trouble you again."
Then a voice as big as the world said, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO...” and my former friends began to beat me.
I awoke, stiff, sore, itching from cuts and bruises, covered with an enormous blanket. Nearby, people whispered.
No, I realized. It was my canvas, and I lay in the hull of my little boat listening to the sea. Someone had carried me here, and brought the cloth as well.
I sat up to find Daddy squatting by a small fire. He was preparing to roast a bird.
“Sooner gone, sooner done,” he said without meeting my eye.
I glanced upleg, toward the Waist and the vast curve of Granddaddy's bulk beyond. “Is he moving?"
It was almost like having a normal conversation.
“Mayor Fentress swears the Fingers are twitching.” The bird sizzled as it went over the flames. “There's a lot of talk about what should be done ... hard talk, Little Ozzie."
I climbed out of my boat and laid my sail flat, thinking. Only one ridge of flannel, and the fall of the thigh backs, separated my boat from her water. Then Daddy and the rest of the town could have the rumbling, grumbling old man to themselves.
All I had to do was go down to the sea in my boat. My gut jellied at the prospect.
“It's only a prayer, son,” Daddy whispered.
“No.” I had to go, to prove the world wasn't as impossibly big as it seemed.
I took my shears and my needles and began to sew my sail. After a time, Daddy helped.
In the end, we hauled the boat up to the last ridge. Daddy braced the lines while I picked and sliced more threads from the weave of Granddaddy's trousers. My boat slid down the slope of the old man's thighs, out of my sight, away from Granddaddy and toward the salty, murmuring sea.
When the line went slack, it was my turn.
“I love you,” Daddy said. His face was red, sweat beading on it, the rope of threads wrapped around his waist as if he were a Hero of Industry from one of the old engravings in the library.
“Tell Mom...” I began, but I could think of nothing to say.
He smiled. “I know."
“And...” Again, words fled my mouth unsaid.
Daddy just shook my hand, then nodded past me at the direction of my future.
Then I followed my boat down, staring at the heaving, living skin of the sea, the white-flecked veins of foam, the strange silver shadows which crossed the water. Even then, I would not raise my eyes to the impossible horizon.
Daddy was tiny against the sky, waving. I wished him the joy of life in the circle of Granddaddy's iron will, and turned to face the edge of the world. Though my stomach wrenched and my it made my head ache, smiling I set my course away from the old man and into the compass quarter of my greatest fears.
How deep was the sea, I wondered?
AND RAIN. I'm not going to forget this rain.
Now I'm in love. Not wholly good news.
For the woman I've fallen in love with...
My father. I will honour your memory.
...is not the one I'm meant to kill.
Silver rain hisses on the dark wooden dock. Ocean swirls, in all directions. Swollen, dark purple-grey skies hang overhead, their sombreness broken by twin arcs of white points: the sunlets which ring this world.
I stand beneath dripping ceramic eaves, watching. Twelve of Quinvère's tiny suns are visible—thirteen, if I lean outwards, over the waves—above the boundless seas which define this place.
No skimmers are visible amid the falling rain.
She's gone...
For a moment, our eyes met: minutes ago, or was it years? Perhaps twenty SY old, lithe with clear ivory skin and cropped hair, she stood straight-backed, and her stare was as helplessly lost as my own. Then she shook herself, walked out onto the dock, and climbed on board the public skimmer which had brought me here. Striding forward with athletic grace, she called to the driver, then took the controls, span the long skimmer into open ocean, and—in a burst of flying spume—straightened her course and red-planed the speed.
Did she look back, as waves churned and the skimmer diminished with distance and the misty rain?
None so blind as a love-struck poet.
My first commission, and already I'm smitten with the wrong person. It does not render the task impossible. But artistic difficulty just leaped upwards by several orders of magnitude.
For the beauty of my target's death must become transcendent.
The hotel's convex carapace is midnight blue, steady upon the waves. Behind me, the entrance glows: a warm, welcoming orange light. Time to go in. I wipe rain from my face, pull my sodden cloak around me, snap my fingers at the mesodrone which bears my luggage. It rises above the walkway's glistening slats, and floats inside ahead of me.
But I can't resist one last sweeping glance at the endless sea and rain.
Will I grow used to this?
For the rainfall has lasted ten thousand years. I don't expect it will stop anytime soon.
Inside, a wizened old man, hunched behind a black quickglass desk, nods in welcome. Orange highlights glint upon the obsidian teardrop implanted in his forehead: jewellery, or something more? A velvet skullcap sits on his bald scalp.
“May I take your details?” His voice is surprisingly sonorous, couched in the local twenty-tone Lingshua dialect. “If I may, sir..."
I hold up my hand, wondering why my tu-ring hasn't done its job. With a tsk sound which might mean anything, the old man shakes head.
“Our omninterface isn't translating. Please respond verbally."
I look around, but there's nothing special to be seen: just ornate woodwork and ceramic. Orange glowglobes. A small black floating mesodrone which appears to be engaged in earnest machine communication with my own. No other visible devices.
“Go ahead.” My voice sounds strange, though I've been practising Lingshua for nearly a Standard Year, subjective. “What do you need to know?"
“Your name?"
I pause, considering a lie, then: “Andrei v'Danshin KaDonnel."
“Age?"
Why the Hades should he need to know that? But I'll obey the local mores where I can.
“Twenty SY."
I wonder if I'm the only person here who knows that Standard Years are based on ancient Terra's rotation period. From what I know of the local education system—
“—and designation?” Another question.
“I'm sorry?"
“Your world of origin, young sir, and societal designation."
I could hide the truth.
It is allowed, among the rules—it just lacks elegance. This first time, for this first death, everything should be perfect. And, this far from the Core Worlds, no one will understand—
“My homeworld is Calazzo IV, and I am of the Mazhin a'Stansa Corisma.” I pause, then translate my oath-family's name: “House of the Crimson Stanza."
The old man's eyes widen.
He knows.
Closing his eyes, the old man seems to shrink inwards, as though dreaming of lost childhood ... or immersing himself deep in communication.
Then he is back in the moment.
“The machine"—he beckons the black mesodrone—"will show you to your suite. Ask it for anything you require. We break our fast at oh-eight-hundred."
“My thanks."
“You are"—with a small bow—"most welcome, honoured guest."
But his body language declares otherwise: it is more than old age which stiffens his shoulders. I smile with genuine warmth; he looks a little puzzled.
Then I turn and follow the drone, which is already gliding down the polished-wood corridor, leading me to my room.
I'm offworld!
And truly an adult now. Or almost.
As soon as You die, my royal target, my beautiful obsession, whom I will adore though I cannot truly love thee—
For with every poem, in every worthwhile piece of art, it is the tortured beginning which brings pain and confusion to the one who calls it forth. The rest is discipline.
And willingness to pay the price.
Here's the image: a grey-blue world, crowned with twin equatorial rings of miniature suns; the occasional ripple above either pole where hidden singularities refract the starlight; the distant glow of a hyperon star which was Quinvère's original, natural sun.
Twin diamond-studded crown
'Gainst boundless velvet round,
Where silent night holds promise of
Soft target's mewling sound...
Too soon. The verse will come in its own time.
And there's another image, overlaying my picture of Quinvère from far orbit. Clear-complexioned, her face, with her hair cut very short. Eyes: dark, intense. Her shoulders look strong; she moves like an athlete. And that wordless look which passes between us ... before she steps from the dock into the skimmer, takes control, is gone.
I don't even know your name.
But we'll meet again.
I'm sure of it.
It's another world!
I'm sitting in half-lotus, on a soft blue mattress upon a lustrous wooden bed—no lev-cots or gel-pallets here. The bed is carved (or force-grown) from the same golden timber as the room itself. Offworld! Far from home, carrying out my first commissioned work, in a place where everything is subtly different—the gravity, the pure air's tang—and minute details rush upon me, crowd my senses.
I could send myself to sleep, but why bother? Perhaps I can explore a little.
So I snap my fingers at my drone, point downwards in the Stay Here gesture. Rolling to my feet, I check the blades secreted in my tunic, grab a cloak, wave the external doorshimmer from existence, and step outside.
The sea at night enthrals. Amid the black waves, unexpected ripples of phosphorescence shine as a magical reminder that worlds are filled with life. The soft susurration of night-rain and rolling sea are hypnotic; I could stand here forever. But Quinvère's nights are transient black-cloud polarised-light phenomena—that's what happens when you have two rings, each of twenty seven miniature suns: you take nights when you can get them—and already the sky is brightening, touching the waves with mint-green highlights.
As the faux-night ends, I regard the veranda-like boardwalk on which I'm standing. It runs beneath the carapace-eaves, encircles the hotel. Waves lap at the shining wooden slats. Doorshimmers, here and there, lead to guestrooms like my own.
I could slip inside and use my blades—
It would be inelegant and clumsy to leave each room crimson-spattered, but I'm almost tempted. Just a desire to teach people a lesson, to let them know they should be more careful. The doorshimmers may be kirlian-locked to their occupants, but my tu-ring's resonance can de-tune such fields, and it is the least of my infiltration tools.
“Ah, well."
I talk to myself too much. Many poets do. Not a phenomenon to be analysed closely.
And we know love at first sight.
I will see her again. Inevitably, if she is my true love, the twin soul whom Destiny created in entangled Heaven.
It just makes the Poem harder.
True pathos occurs when the loved one is the target ... but it's too late for that. And, too, my favourite Verse Master, Guido del'Karinzo, always considered that adversity produced my best results.
I hope so.
Pulling my cloak around myself, I go inside.
I'm late for breakfast, though I've been up for hours. It's 08:37 by the local (twenty-seven hour) clock; there are no free breakfast nooks. Each nook is in fact a circular well, sunk in the richly polished floor; inside each one is an embroidery-padded bench-seat, encircling a round table.
At the nearest, a pale-faced lady sits. Her cowl is of ivory edged with golden pearls; her pantaloon suit is shiny silk, silver and gold. Strings of ruby beads hang necklace-like in catenary curves from sleeves and bodice. She nods to me, waves me to her table.
“Thank you, my lady.” I give my most courteous bow.
I'm not sure how you're supposed to lower yourself onto the sunken seat. I look around for guidance, but everyone's happily in place, chatting and eating. With an inward mental shrug, I vault lightly into the circular well, drop back and sit.
“Well"—with a raised elegant eyebrow—"that's quite an entrance."
“Um, thanks."
Behind her, a serving-girl appears (though I expected a drone or simply to ask the house system) and saves me further embarrassment. I make my selection from the dishes I recognize, and sit back to wait.
“You're even less local"—the lady pauses, sips tea from a porcelain bowl—"than I am. An offworlder?"
“That's right, ma'am."
I'd hoped my Lingshua was perfectly accented. Obviously, that's not the case.
“When did you arrive?"
“At TangleDrop 137, two days ago.” The tangledrop station was in far orbit: that's where I gained my outsider's view of Quinvère and her orbiting sunlets. “The shuttle took me to the airpad.” A richly appointed stopover and conference-centre, floating inside the atmosphere, above the clouds. “And yesterday I took a dropbug down."
She reaches across the table, and places her hand on mine.
“You must be lonely."
“Um—"
I am lonely.
Mother...
For I will never see her again.
Picture her now: in her favourite salon, tinkering with crystal microsculpture while soft insistent tarantismo music plays ... But now is relative. If I leave here this instant, two centuries will have passed upon Calazzo by the time I return.
And as for Father—Viktor e'Skelvin KaDonnel, a finer Blood Poet than I could ever hope to be—I can picture him, also. In his usual steel-chased tunic, standing over Mother, his beloved Aylishah, stroking his grey-streaked beard as he watches her work.
Stay with her, Father.
Because he might take another commission, leave home as I have done. There would be a chance, however small, that we could meet again upon Calazzo IV. For honour's sake, Mother would not try to stop him, however much she might weep in private. From their courtship's initial, delicate days, poets’ wives grow accustomed to the possibility of virtual widowhood, likely to fall upon them at any moment, should their husbands depart on far journeys, effectively forever.
“—around the city?"
“Um...” I drag my attention back to my surroundings. To the press of the lady's hand upon my own. “I beg your pardon, ma'am."
She sits back, releasing me.
“I'll give you the full city tour,” she promises. “On my personal skimmer."
You know what they mean by ‘city’ here?
Look out of the hotel, you'll see nothing but sea and misty rain. Twenty minutes by skimmer: that's how you get to the nearest buildings. But they're classed as neighbours, and this loose extended confederation is termed Sherkalian City. Hardly my idea of urban dwelling.
“That's very kind,” I say.
Which she seems to take as acceptance, though I don't mean it that way at all. How does one say no to those who are deaf to nuance?
“My name is Elaina.” Musical voice. Turquoise eyes—though a little opaque with age—hold a certain promise. “And yours, my handsome young man?"
But I'm in love.
“Andrei,” I say. “Andrei v'Danshin KaDonnel, ma'am."
“And politely spoken, too."
The serving-girl arrives, accompanied by a lev-tray which she gestures into place. Dark-blue bowls: fruit, rice. Fragrant tea.
“Thank you.” I bow as well as I can from my seated position.
The serving-girl smiles as she backs away.
“Charming.” Elaina sounds peeved. “There's no need—"
She stops.
No need to be polite to servants, she was going to say. Smiling, though, she asks instead: “How many lightyears have you travelled, Andrei?"
“'All and none.'” A quotation from a Lingshuan ballad. “No distance at all."
Or time, I remind myself.
Her eyes widen.
“You don't mean—?"
With a nod: “I untangled."
For a long moment, she can think of nothing to say.
Who am I, she must be wondering, to have been implanted thus before birth? Nervous system wired with tanglethreads, able to make the instantaneous—but one-way—no-time trip to anywhere. To be reconstituted in any tangledrop station in the galaxy.
“I—"
Growing pale, her skin.
She could not have guessed. Ordinary lightspeed vessels use tangledrop stations, too—but purely as orbiting way-stations for passengers who disembark on their own two feet. Those passengers are few enough in number; fewer still, are those whose quantum-entangled selves are rebuilt inside the great attocompilers, while their original selves decohere into messy chaos.
“Where did you say you're from?"
“My homeworld is Calazzo IV."
Her skin is bone-white now. Even her lips are bloodless.
“This is a civilised society, Blood Poet.” She is shaking, with fear or rage. “Your kind's not welcome here."
Entangled particles can belong to many pairs simultaneously: hence the overlapping connections of the galaxy-wide topology, so that tangledrop stations orbit all the civilised worlds. Each journey is instantaneous and irreversible.
Once my commission is done, I can choose to remain here—for life (if that is safe)—or to voyage home at lightspeed. There, perhaps, I will undergo years-long resetting, involving weekly boring sojourns in the House tanglewomb, until I am tangle-enabled once more, and ready for a second commission.
At least I could catch up on my reading.
But Mother, if not Father as well, will be two centuries dead by the time I set foot upon Calazzo's soil.
It's not as though I wasn't warned. Scant comfort.
I'm in my room, alone, trembling with delayed anger at the woman's presumption and dismissal.
Is there no honour on this world?
Local mores. Ha! Ignorance, more like.
There are Great Houses devoted to the Tao San'Verso, the Way of Blood and Verse, in every kingdom of Calazzo IV. Each House is honoured and respected, even venerated. Saint Alphonse of the Scimitar belonged to my own House, which has endured for ten millennia, and will be there still when I return.
Parochial bumpkins...
I could slay them all; but that goes against every tenet of artistry I have ever learned.
The large, pretty girl behind the quickglass desk is dressed in white and crimson—my House's livery colours: a good omen. Her open smile is welcoming.
No one's warned her about me.
Because no one here could be a worthy subject for my work?
Perhaps they'll leave me alone, just long enough.
“Excuse me, please,” I say. “Does the hotel have skimmers for rent?"
“Oh, sorry. They're all gone.” She stares: a lased-in her-eyes-only display. “But we've some pogos left."
“I beg your pardon?"
“Po—Oh, skimmerettes.” Frowning, she adds: “You need a sense of balance to use one."
This morning, in my room before breakfast, I ran for an hour upon my folded travelling-cloak. In that configuration, its smartfibres slide in laminar flow, allowing me cardio conditioning while deadening the sound. Afterwards, I stretched for half an hour. Then I drew poignards, fistblades and needles, to enact the Ballad of Cut and Fade in all its subtle glory. It's one of my House's premier fighting poems, whose penetrating words and vivid mind-frames re-circuit the nervous system with devastating artistic strength. Wielding imaginary death with finesse and style, I sang its major verses, raising Zen Neuronal Coding to the level of high art and warrior honour.
“My balance is ... reasonable,” I tell the girl.
“Well, then.” Her smile dimples her face. “Around the back, take any one you like."
“Thanks. Is there anything special to see right now? Any interesting events taking place?"
She gestures a holomap of Sherkalian City into being.
“The Travelling Fayre's in Convenors’ Hall"—she indicates a tiny green hemisphere on the map—"for the next two ninedays. That's about all."
So you don't know who I am.
“I'll make sure I see it. Thanks again."
“You're very welcome."
Outside, the waves are a little rougher than last ‘night', yet the rainfall is gentle, a fine silver mist. In the distance, small low shapes, buildings, are just visible against the waves.
Around the back, where the boardwalk curves inwards, seven skimmerettes—pogos -are bobbing in a row. Each has a thick octagonal base, little more than a metre wide, with a dark shiny covering. From it, a stubby pillar rises, with a saddle on the top. Two pedals provide control. They look precarious—more than I expected—but I've ridden jesters’ unicycles around the corridors at home. I'll keep my balance.
The one I pick has a nacreous base, dark-blue and black, matching the hotel's roof-carapace. The pogo bobs beneath me, then thrums into life, rising centimetres above the waves.
The locals don't know about the Royal visit.
Judging by the hotel-girl's ignorance, that is.
So no one will expect me to carry out my commission right here.
It's appalling, that the locals don't hold the Way of Blood and Verse in highest honour. Yet that may not be a bad thing: their grief upon the Queen's sudden, unexpected death will form a vital part of my poem's denouement. And for now, let me embrace anonymity—
Water churns, and I let out a whoop as the pogo shoots forwards, splashing rain and sea-spray in all directions.
Grey-swept, cloud-cloaked
With saltspraywind upon my face:
Dark its glow, on aqua plane a carapace.
Rain's silver lace. While overhead, beyond dour sky,
Dark-soaked, peer jewel suns arranged in space
By Ancient Ones of unknown race...
My words are throwaway: mere thumbnail background-sketches, preparation for the work to come. I need local colour.
Convenors’ Hall comes into view.
The structure is like the hotel's, but on a larger scale, with a lustrous dark-green carapace that is speckled with black and indigo. The dark, polished wooden substructure is rock-steady atop the waves.
White spume rushes beneath me as I take my pogo through an arcing approach. At the jetty's end, churning waves, I stop. Someone throws a mag-line, and I make it fast.
“Not bad for a stranger."
It is the young woman: more beautiful, even, than I had realized. Her voice is clear, her stance relaxed, commanding. Her gaze holds mine.
“My thanks."
Inadequate words. The poetry which flows between us is non-verbal, as old as Terra's seas. I vault upwards to the jetty, but in that moment I break the visual trance, and she is already turning away.
“If you'll excuse me—"
She starts to wander back. To the right, abutting the jetty, floats a large vessel with wooden decks. The crew—bare-armed, bearded men and tough-looking women—wave at the woman with whom I'm in love.
A scorpion-tail crane lifts a full net from the boat's open hold.
“Hey, Shera. Gonna give us a hand?"
Shera. So that's her name.
“I thought you couldn't manage alone.” She, Shera, glances back at me, then reaches out to guide the net down onto the jetty's polished planks. “Where would you be without me?"
One of the fishermen, a shaven-headed man with heavy earrings, says: “Adrift on the cold grey ocean, today and forever, my love.” It sounds like a song-fragment, and good-natured laughter ripples among the crew.
But it is their catch which draws me.
New life—
The entire net is wriggling, with an amazing variety of lifeforms trapped inside. Are they all Terra-muties, cloned and tailored? Or are there indigenous native species among them? Scarlet triple-winged fish; black/white/silver wriggling dart-shapes; tendrils which—
“Look out!"
I whip my hand back, but the flailing sting-mouth just catches me.
Acid burn...
“Bloody fool!” Shera sounds furious. “Never stand close to a snapper. Not without protection."
The shaven-headed fisherman leaps onto the jetty, grabs hold of my wrist, and turns my hand over. Scales and blood glisten across my palm.
“No toxin.” He looks up at me. “Or your skin would've blistered already, pal."
“That's good then."
“Yeah. I've never seen anyone"—he spits into the ocean, grins—"move so fast. Most folk would've lost their hand."
While he speaks, two other crew-members reach into the net with long stun-lances, and I gather the danger has passed.
“How hurt is he?” Shera addresses the fisherman, not me.
“Just a little blood, is all."
“Good.” She stares at me. “You were lucky."
“Yes. Your name is Shera? I am lucky, Shera."
“Hmm.” A faint smile touches her mouth. “You still need to clean that wound, Master Lucky."
“Momento..."
I walk back a ways, beyond the boat's stern, and reach out above the waves to squeeze my offering—seven drops: no more, no less—into the ocean which reminds me of the endless Tao.
“In blood, as Life
With flood-speed blessed,
To mingle flows in Fate's fine race
At laughing Death's behest."
Shera's watching me, with one eyebrow raised.
“Is that a prayer?"
“Kind of,” I answer. “That sort of thing."
“Here.” She fumbles at her jumpsuit's belt, and pulls out a small block of cleangel. “Use this."
“Thank. My name's Andrei."
Shera smiles quietly, as though this pleases her.
I apply the gel, and breathe in sharply—the stuff has no anaesthetic: do they think pain must accompany all healing?—and her smile broadens.
“Hurts, doesn't it?"
“No,” I answer truthfully, for I have just made the pain go away.
“Really?"
Shera's jumpsuit is plain grey, with a high collar: functional, so different from the lady, Elaina, with whom I shared breakfast. And Shera's limber grace, to me, is far more powerful and enthralling than the most carefully conceived cosmetic artifice. Her fingernails are cut short, for work.
“You're visiting the Fayre?” She nods towards Convenors’ Hall.
“I thought I might."
“It's worth a look."
“You don't work on the boat"—I gesture at the crew, who are discussing something among themselves—"with your friends."
“No. I'm a ... civil servant. Taking the day off."
“On vacation?"
“I've a report to write.” Looking out across rain-swept ocean, waves reflected in her eyes, she adds: “But I can do it later."
The crew have come to some decision, and—as I look over Shera's shoulder—it seems they want to talk to her. I nod in their direction.
“Shera?” says the shaven-headed crewman. “We're headed for Whirlpool Dell. Need to pick up a load."
“You offering me a ride, Linkan?"
“Yeah. And your friend, if he wants to come."
“His name is Andrei.” There's mischief in her eyes when she looks at me. “Want to see a floating forest?"
Among Quinvère's Floating Forests. That's a title with promise.
“I'd love to."
“Good."
Cold peach, the skies glimmer, as the clouds part for a time. The rainfall lessens, grows insubstantial: a silvery mist which looks about to die away.
“It won't.” Shera, on the deck beside me, appears to read my mind. “Dry spells are localized. In any one spot, they occur about once every ten millennia."
“The suns must have an effect."
Already the clouds are beginning to close in again.
“Oh, yes. I like them.” She looks up, staring directly at the orbs. Translucent polygons drift across the surface of her eyes. “Reminders that life's a mystery."
Her eye-protection is corneal smartgel—to the same specification as my own, I'd say.
Interesting.
“What do you know of the Ancient Ones?” I ask.
“No more than offworlders."
The rain is growing heavier now. I pull up my cloak's hood, more interested in watching Shera than the twin arcs of sunlets across the sky. Behind her, around us, the crew are busy with small tasks. The boat rides the waves easily, though the sea is growing choppy.
“Why did they do it? Or when?” I mean the Ancient Ones. “After the original sun condensed to a hyperon star?"
“No one knows.” Shera shrugs. “The Ancient Ones boiled away, is what the old tales say. Primordial icecaps melted, and the elder lifeforms sublimated. Whatever that means."
“Sounds like—"
“There's your forest now."
“God's Blood!” The oath is involuntary. “Will you look at that."
Twisted trees, with orange-brown bark, stretch across the ocean for many kilometres. They bob easily, changing configuration to match the ocean's swell, forming a child's tangled puzzle that is perfectly adapted to this place.
“It's beautiful."
Shera nods, and lightly touches my arm.
“Yes, it is."
It's a natural gymnasium, too. Our climbing journey is punctuated by clicks and squeaks of the ever-moving forest. We squeeze through tangled openings, haul ourselves onto branches, run lightly up the broader limbs. The distinction between trunk and branch becomes academic: we're following a maze of twisted wood.
The crewmembers are several klicks behind us now, out of sight, harvesting selected portions of the wood. One of the rough-looking women is an aquabotanist with a global reputation; their work is carefully directed so that the forest replenishes itself.
“This way."
Shera's breathing no more heavily than I. We're both enjoying this ... but the point is, I've spent at least two hours working out, hard, every single day since I was ten SY old.
“Don't worry.” I dodge a branch, squeeze through an opening. “I'm right behind you."
By the time we reach the tall tree's pinnacle, we're fairly glowing with the effort. It is time to sit down, and stare out across the ocean.
“You're fit enough.” Shera passes over an electrolyte-replacement tablet from her belt.
“That makes two of us. Thanks."
Exotic fruit flavours burst on my tongue.
For a long time we sit there, side by side on our high swaying perch, simply watching: ocean and sky; the rain and clouds; twin rows of suns. Beneath us, the forest moves and adjusts like a single breathing, living being.
A flash of silver glints beneath the waters, far off to my right.
“What was that?"
“Not a fish. An outrider.” Shera double-blinks her corneal smartgel. “A Shoal City scout."
Shoal Cities featured in my briefing: great ellipsoid bubble-cities that float forever beneath the surface, following submerged ocean currents or routes of their own devising. They are closed societies, for the most part. Few offworlders are allowed inside, and those under strict supervision.
A Blood Poet requires creative solitude.
“You're intending to visit a Shoal City?"
“No.” I shake my head. “I don't think so."
“Good,” she says softly.
I'd rather stay near you.
But I know Queen Rhiannon's visit is only days away. She'll be surfacing inside Sherkalian City boundaries, though the locals appear not to know of this.
Then, at that moment, will my poem reach its natural, triumphant conclusion.
"Sixteen bits per second," Verse Master del'Karinzo once said in a tutorial, "is the total information flow into the conscious mind. Gestalten-rich bits, to be sure, but a millionth of the perceptions flowing into the human organism.
"For a poet, particularly a Blood Poet"—with an ironic smile—"it makes for interesting challenges, and opportunities."
I climb downwards, following Shera's every practised move.
We've spoken few words, she and I, yet a lifetime's worth of interchange has already taken place. And then, as she goes first over a broken branch, turns back, and reaches out to help me—
Electric, that touch.
There is more power in the one-second contact of her hand than in every erotic encounter of my life combined into one moment. We stare, almost stricken, at each other. Then Shera smiles, and we continue our descent.
After we've boarded, the boat edges away from the floating forest. Lase-cut tree-limbs half-fill the hold. The crew chat among themselves, leaving us alone (for courtesy comes naturally among their kind) as we head back towards Convenors’ Hall. Shera and I stand on the afterdeck, saying nothing, but tightly holding hands: communicating more than this poor poet's words could ever say.
A flash beneath the waves—"Fish,” says Shera, with a quick smile—and then it is gone.
It makes me wonder, though, that sign of submerged life ... about the hidden complexities of the local situation. Who commissioned my work? A slighted lover? Another kingdom? A jealous/wronged/ambitious courtier?
The House Officers excluded such information from my briefing. My poem, deliberately innocent of the past, is to celebrate the manner of Queen Rhiannon's death. Vindictiveness, the petty motives of revenge ... they're for poor satirists to deal with. My commission is a just one, approved by the House Ethics Committee, and that's all I need to know.
“Look.” Shera points. “The Fayre's begun."
We're approaching Convenors’ Hall. Bright columns of holoflame twist and blaze beneath its eaves.
“Have you time to watch it with me?"
“Oh, yes.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “We need to eat dinner, don't you think?"
“I'm starving."
“Afterwards, I will have to go home, and do some reading."
“Where's home?” There's so much we haven't talked about.
Pointing, Shera says: “The Apprentice Hostel, over that way. A temporary room, is all."
Through the rainfall, it's impossible to make out the building. It must lie beyond the hotel, and even that's not visible from here.
“I can stay here,” she adds, “for another two hours."
The boat impinges against the jetty, softly as a kiss.
“Good."
The crew are smiling as we take our leave, but they make no smart remarks. They are boisterous or quiet by turns, these people of the sea; and they have a sensitivity which would not be out of place among poets.
This is an insight which I must remember. It will inform each verse which describes Quinvère's people, and the boat-crews in particular, as they react to their Queen's unexpected death.
“Look.” Shera takes my arm. “There's room over there."
We sit facing each other at a long trestle-table, among a noisy group of diners. The other tables are full, and it takes a while for the overworked serving-girls to take our order. Neither Shera nor I mind the delay.
There are jugglers and acrobats, performing around the hall's periphery, while the diners eat in the centre, marvelling at their balletic expertise. Shera and I hold hands across the table, watching. My own training keeps me as limber as most professional gymnasts, but these people can execute moves which are beyond me.
See: the placement of balance for a one-hand handspring, twisting the torso thus—I'm making small twitches, kinaesthetically memorizing the movement, and I realize suddenly that Shera is doing the same.
“Look."
There's a flamboyant trick which takes two people: opposing somersaults between each other's legs.
Shera: “Some day—"
Me: “—we'll try that."
We smile.
The main course arrives, and we work our way through it. The performance continues, but I'm more interested in conversation. Afterwards, when Shera excuses herself for a few minutes, the hall seems to dim, the polished dishes to lose their lustre, and the other peoples’ conversation to degenerate into noisy graceless gabble.
Then she returns, making her way among the tables, and the world seems real again.
“You look at me like a drowning man who sees a lifeline.” She smiles, but it is no joke, and I feel the truth of it.
“I am drowning."
After a moment, she nods. Then, with utmost seriousness: “So am I."
Dessert is served. There is no need for us to speak, as we pick at the fruit bowls and stare at each other. No need for words at all.
Then flames without heat lance through the air above our heads: a holo, announcing a new performer's entrance.
“Wait and see,” says Shera. “The magician was here last night. He's good."
I'm predisposed to approve, if she does, so I sit back and watch the slender man make his way into the hall. The gymnasts and jugglers have all gone; he holds the stage alone, throwing small objects into the air and keeping them moving.
He is good: the most skilful conjurer I have ever seen.
I laugh, along with everyone else, as he stumbles and everything falls as if by accident, thumping the floor in a one-two, one-two-three rhythm: the opening notes of the national anthem. Then he begins to work through the first conjuring routines, mixing things up and dropping balls or silken kerchiefs—with a shrug, and a self-deprecating “Oops"—while the audience giggles. His comic timing is perfect ... and each failed illusion somehow resolves itself—through masterful sleight of hand—into a trick far better than the one he claimed to be attempting.
Wait, now...
After a while, I find myself growing very still and watchful. My perceptions of the surrounding hall attenuate to nothingness. I focus hard: upon the magician's deft hands.
Exploding animals which become floating paper streamers; a juggled arc of balls which disappear, one by one, even as they're moving; steel cards and artificial blossoms produced from nowhere. All delivered with a mock seriousness which belies his skill.
If it is skill, and not something more.
By the Tao ... Can this be?
Shera touches the back of my hand, and I force myself to nod and smile.
But the magician removes his voluminous cloak, hat and tunic; he's almost bare above the waist now, with only a thin decorative strap around his chest and shoulders. No rings, no bracelets. He holds his hands outstretched, making scarcely a move of misdirection, while objects manifest themselves or disappear at his command.
And none of them are holos. My corneal smartgel, once triple-blinked, reveals the IR radiation. My hearing, tympani reconfigured at my internal command, detects the sounds of movement through the air. Every object is as solid as I am.
Yet disappears at the magician's whim.
“I said he was good,” Shera whispers. “Didn't I?"
I agree, but cannot speak.
The magician is walking towards our table.
Afterwards, I'm not quite sure what has occurred. Everyone around me is laughing, except for Shera. There's a tiny frown between her dark eyebrows. And I'm standing at the edge of the hall, alongside the magician.
I've been in a trance, for the audience's amusement.
Keep composure.
“Thank you.” I bow to the magician. “I hope I entertained everyone."
“You were masterful,” he says, amid general laughter.
“By the way"—he's still almost nude above the waist, standing with arms outstretched—"why don't you pick a card? Just in your mind, I mean. Any card will do."
For a man of my profession—even one who hasn't carried out his first commission—there's only one card which will do.
“Have you chosen?"
“I have."
There's a heptagonal steel card between his fingertips. It wasn't there a second ago.
“Is this the one?"
This trick is not much of a crowd-pleaser. They don't know which card I chose ... and surely the magician recognizes that deficiency. But I say nothing. Instead, despite all self-control, my hand trembles slightly as I take the card and turn it over, knowing in advance which one it will be.
The Ace of Swords.
He knows who I am.
I turn to give him back his card—
Shera's eyes widen.
—but he is gone.
God's Blood...
A stunned silence fills the hall.
All of them, the whole audience, were staring at him, and now he's not here. Disappeared. Impossibly gone.
Then everyone bursts into thunderous, rapturous applause, and I return to my seat smiling, as though I am the one who has performed the trick. An amazing day.
I slip the steel card into my tunic pocket, and take Shera's hands in mine, while our neighbouring spectators hoot and catcall, and the warm air throbs with cheers, and eager demands for an encore which does not appear.
Here, an entanglement
(Not quantum-paired):
Hearts bound in resonance—
Two souls are shared.
Back in my room, I am thinking: not of my commission, nor the world in which I find myself, but of its most important inhabitant.
Shera. You are my twin soul.
It was Verse Master del'Karinzo who told me this: only poor, dumb folk do not believe in love at first sight. They remain blind to experience, bypassed by Destiny because they did not seize their day.
And that's most people, he added, with his voice full of pity, not cynicism.
One thing bothers me: the skimmer which took Shera back to the hostel.
There were two men already on board. One was dressed in deep purple, the other in blue so dark it was almost black: jumpsuits tailored identically to Shera's own. Both men were fit-looking and alert. As they arrived, Shera leaped down lightly from the jetty, and they stepped back to make room for her. One of them gave me a piercing look as the other took control, span the skimmer away, and headed for the Apprentice Hall at foam-churning speed.
No ... There are two things to cause me disquiet.
I wave a mirrorfield into existence.
Now try.
My hands become a blur as I whip through my passes. Blades wink into and out of sight; I spin and whirl as diamond blades and long, thin poignards stab empty air, then disappear once more into my tunic's hidden folds. Again and again, I repeat my deadly sleight of hand, my assassin's conjurations, until I fling all of the blades into the air at once, all twenty two of them...
Fast.
...and spin around, catching them, plucking blades from the air as the whole ensemble drops floorwards. I secret them all inside my tunic, save the last ... as I fumble the catch, miss, and the poignard drops point-first into the floorboard. It stands there, quivering.
I snatch it upwards and cause it, too, to disappear.
That's my magic.
For in my House, we learn dagger, needle and sword before we learn to fight empty-handed. "The hand is an extension of the blade," Weapons Master Gryasin always said. "Not the other way around."
We use the same techniques, drill the same movements, with weapons and without, to form an economy of style. We learn the subtle ways of misdirection: sleight of hand allowing us to slip a blade or a poison needle inside a victim in plain view, while onlookers see nothing. It is the art of killing with covert finesse. And we, masters of illusion, know our peers of conjuration when we see them.
And when we don't.
For the magician who performed tonight drew objects straight from the void, then returned them to nothingness; and I know of neither science nor magic which is capable of that.
Lying on the bed, I try meditative techniques to still my thoughts.
O Queen beneath the sea, about to die,
Whose palace weeps for thee (and so do I)...
Our Fate conjoined will see your Royal blood
and something-something-something ocean's flood...
Sleep falls upon me like a waterfall, saves me from my doggerel, and I drown.
Wood-sky-wood. The feel of deck-slats passing beneath my back. There is something liberating about this: rolling breakfalls performed outdoors. It is an acceptance of nature, the antithesis of tightly strung adults who are afraid to fall.
I roll to my feet, warm-up almost over ... and stop.
Far out, among the waves, I perceive a tiny speck. Blinking my corneal smartgel to maximum zoom, I confirm my intuition: it's Shera, swimming with long repetitive strokes, deeply into the movement. Extrapolating her route, I'd say she's swimming from the Apprentice Hostel to Convenors’ Hall, and neither building is visible to the unaided eye from here. Not through the silvery rainfall.
I go back inside my room, fold my cloak to serve as a running-pad, and begin my hour-long run to nowhere. As I run, I see visions in my mind's eye—featuring the two watchful men aboard that skimmer—which I can't dispel.
Afterwards, I perform my stretching outside, and see Shera swimming back the other way. I want to call out, but don't: her exercise is spiritual discipline, an austere ritual which is not to be disturbed.
Why did I have to meet you now, under these circumstances?
Instead, I go back through the doorshimmer, find my blades, and fight imaginary opponents over and over until salt sweat blinds me, and the room begins to spin.
I've grown used to the pogo. It carries me from building to building, letting me explore as a true tourist should. There are amusement arcades and weapon shops (where I take care not to linger, despite enormous curiosity); drama-crystal stores and garment boutiques; places to eat, to drink, to meditate or pray.
And, between four buildings, all within easy swimming distance of each other, lies a children's Aqua Park, where polarization fields keep shimmering water sculpted into slides and climbing-frames, into fanciful transparent castles and dragons, while squealing kids chase each other, radiating innocent energy.
I sit inside a small café, leaning on a wooden table, and admire the net-strung glowglobes which colour-shift in time to near-subliminal wood-pipe music. I sip at the chocolate-laden mixture they've served me. And I admire, too, the expertise of the man who's trying to observe me without my spotting him.
The cut of his jumpsuit is familiar.
I pay the café's owner—his thanks are expressed in a guttural Lingshuan dialect I barely understand—then go outside to reclaim my pogo. I jump onto the saddle, and direct it into motion.
No one follows, as I head across the waves to Convenors’ Hall.
There's another watcher stationed at the Hall. I spot him immediately, as I mag-tag the pogo against the jetty. Yet he's not waiting for me in particular: his gaze sweeps over me, and continues.
General observation duty, then.
Shoulders relaxed, thinking myself into a tourist's innocent, inquisitive state of mind, I walk whistling past stalls and tiny booths overlooking the water, then nip inside to the central hall. My instincts guide me to the dressing-rooms, where acrobats are already limbering up for the performance.
A small misshapen dwarf slips from his stool.
“Is there anyone in charge?” I ask him.
“That'll be me.” Waving a strong, pudgy hand, “Owner of this sorry troupe."
A dancer, stretched out in splits with her cheek pressed against the floor, grins up at him. “You love us really, boss."
“Ha. Given half a chance, darlin'."
I can't help smiling.
“So, what can I do for you, young sir?” The dwarf's ugly face exudes presence, and I'm sure he has no trouble in charming the ladies into bed. “We don't give refunds, autographs, or personal tuition. If you know what I mean."
“Um ... The magician who performs after you folk.” I clear my throat. “Could I speak to him, please?"
“Well"—the dwarf rubs his large nose, and for a moment I think he's going to pick it, but then he stops—"he's not one of us, strictly speaking—"
“He's gone.” The dancer shifts position on the floor. “Lit out last night. His stuff's disappeared."
“Damn."
“Sorry, friend."
I bow then, and thank them for their time.
Threading my way back through the hall, I see that the observer is paying more attention to me now. I'm not sure what to make of this: I'm moving by instinct, not strictly according to my training.
But on the pogo's saddle, when I reach the jetty, lies a small piece of flotsam, or possibly jetsam, whose provenance I recognize. When I look back, I briefly see the dwarf's crooked face grinning from an open window. Then he is gone.
It's a piece of wood from the floating forest.
Nothing is carved on it. No substances impregnate it. But the shard is a message nonetheless, and I kick the pogo into motion.
Shera...
Waves churn beneath me.
I spin the skimmerette around in a full circle, trying to catch sight of the observer, but failing. Then I press the right pedal, max the speed, and take a long arcing route away from the hall.
Why did I have to fall in love—
Shera. So beautiful.
—with an officer of the Royal Bodyguard?
Twin necklaces, are the small white sunlets across grey skies. Steel, now, are the waves beneath me. Rain is a constant force against my face.
I'm taking a deceptive tack, eventually to end up at the floating forest, and I can use the extra time to think. I kick outlandish theories back and forth in my mind, but I keep coming back to the one which makes sense. She's an athlete, trained and watchful, and there are others like her—all strangers in Sherkalian City. And this is with the Royal Visitation about to occur, although the locals do not know of it.
A single conclusion stands.
She positions herself between me and the subject of my verse.
For a Blood Poet, only one solution can exist.
It stretches wide and confusingly, the floating forest, but eventually I spot the small cove we made fast in yesterday. Once there, I tag the pogo in place by looping its magline around a branch, then climb along a broader limb and into the thick of the forest.
Now, a decision. Do I wait in place? Or do I retrace yesterday's route, and find the tall tree which Shera and I climbed together?
I search inside for intuition, find nothing tangible. In the end, I shrug my shoulders, and set off along a different path: the direction in which the crew went yesterday, to gather the particular wood they needed.
The Tragedy of Whirlpool Dell. It makes a nice title. Let's hope today does not live up to such dark expectations.
Climbing, clambering...
It is much longer than I expected, this maze-journey of twisted limbs, of curling trunks and spreading branches, but eventually I come out into the open. I'm hanging off a branch high up in a natural amphitheatre. Below me lies a circular gap in the forest, some two hundred metres wide, that holds shining, grey, swirling water. There is no foaming turbulence, yet water spirals endlessly downwards into a central dip, pulling the surface below its natural level. It looks less chaotic yet far, far stronger than I expected.
The eponymous whirlpool calls to me, with more than the force of rotating water.
I climb down towards the surface.
I'm out on a limb ... above the torrent. Quite why I'm here, it would be hard to say. But I sit down anyway—the bark feels smooth beneath me—and dangle my feet above the water.
“Do you like it here?” The voice is soft, almost a whisper upon the rainy breeze.
“I think so. Aesthetically speaking."
He's sitting beside me on the limb, the magician, although I did not hear him approach.
“A work of art?” Looking up at the sky, he adds: “And if so, is it a good one?"
I squint, eyes almost shut, all the better to regard the twin rows of suns above the clouds.
“The Ancient Ones,” I murmur. “Whoever they were, created magnificence."
“Even so.” He nods, looks downwards, and I think he is pleased. He repeats: “Even so..."
Neither sea nor rain has made me cold, but I shiver nonetheless. “You're performing no tricks tonight, magician?"
“Maybe.” There's amusement in his glance, his voice. “Maybe not."
A hood half-covers his shaven head, and his robe is dark and voluminous. It could hold numerous trick pockets and holoprojectors, but his illusions require no such devices.
I look up at the sky.
“If I go home,” I say, musing, “it will be by lightspeed vessel. They can make the shift instantaneously, you know, by massless resonance."
“Ah.” As if I am revealing a great mystery to him. “And how does that work?"
“A shift of vibration into Calabi-Yau space,” is all I can tell him. “Moving energy into the unseen dimensions of spacetime. It transforms every particle in the ship to a massless state, which can only exist by travelling at lightspeed. And so it does."
“Until it reaches its destination."
I use his own words: “Even so."
“And what other use do you make,” he asks, “of these hidden spaces beneath the universe?"
“Me personally? Or the human race?"
“Either or both, whichever you prefer."
“Um ... No other use, either way."
“Hmm."
“There are other uses"—I'm guessing—"which we haven't found yet."
“Really? Such as?"
“Such as plucking forth playing-cards at will."
He chuckles then, and I follow suit.
“There, you see?” The magician laughs hard, then coughs and begins to choke. “Four billion years of evolution, and it hasn't gone to waste."
I pat him on the back.
“Thank you.” He wheezes, then regains his breath. “I love your race. You bring such unexpectedness into my life."
For a moment, I can only regard the whirlpool beneath my feet, not knowing what else to say. Then, “You personally?” I ask. “Or all the Elder Race?"
Smiling: “Neither one, my young, ephemeral friend."
What does he mean?
“Just some of you, then. The ones who are left.” I work my way through the puzzle of his words. “A few individuals."
“The ones who maintain an interest"—he waves his hand: a gesture which takes in sea and sky and forest, and the physical world in general—"in all of this."
“While the others have moved on to better things."
“Hmm.” For a moment, there is a darkness in his eyes beyond imagining. “More abstract, more abstruse. But not necessarily better, young Andrei."
I don't ask how he knows my name. I've a feeling there's not much—not anything—I can hide from him.
Nor do I want to know his name, if he has one. Call it superstition, but there's a link between humans and the demons they've invoked, in every mythology I've read ... so let's just leave it there.
“Why—?” I stop.
He's removing a slender twig-like branch—how, I don't know—from the main limb, and braiding it into a loop. He places it on his head like a garland, or a crown.
“Why what?"
I know for a fact that the boat-crew used lase-cutters to get the wood. (They are the only folk who are licensed to carry energy-weapons here. Every building has smartscan enabled, to detect violations. Yet another reason for Blood Poets to prefer the blade.)
But the tough, iron-hard wood came apart in his hands—
It dawns on me, then, that the magician—I might as well continue to think of him that way—can kill me with a thought or a gesture.
“You say"—and I can hear the quaver in my so-called trained voice—"that you take an interest. Does that extend to petty human affairs?"
“Well.” Pursing his lips: “It depends on what you mean by petty."
I swallow, look down into the water.
“The death of a ruler, perhaps."
There's another chuckle, but this time I have no inclination to join in.
“Well put, my young friend. Most often, the answer would be no."
“That means—"
“Queen Rhiannon is also a friend of mine. In a way."
I stare at him.
“She comes to see you?"
A smile. “She dreams of me, and thus I visit her."
“I don't—"
“You understand enough."
There's a finality to his words. I understand mainly that there is no point in arguing.
Why hasn't he destroyed me already?
“Is this a test?” I ask.
“Why? Do you want a certificate?"
There's nothing to say to that. After a moment, I get up slowly—awkwardly—to stand on the limb.
“I think it's time for me to go."
“Ah, time."
“A pervasive phenomenon. I'm sure you remember it."
Bravado, bravura. If I'm going to die anyway, it might as well be as a smart alec.
“What if I said"—the magician is standing too, though I did not see him rise: he sat, now he stands—"there's an energy you don't recognize, which flits around in loops, and always at lightspeed?"
“Dark matter, you mean? Quintessence? Ancient tales—"
“But with a mass, which if you know your history, is how it was—Well, anyway. You see so little of the world which is truly there."
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
“Not even a tiny bit."
The whirlpool swirls beneath me, while all around, the forest creaks ominously, continuously, in a way I did not recognize until just now. Even the wind, trapped and buffeted within the twisted maze of branches, whistles and echoes with nearly-words, a braided almost-sound of whispered conversation.
“Tell me, young Andrei. Have you never heard of a leap of faith?"
“Never."
“Ha. But my gift is reserved for those who know their own hearts."
A gift—
I stare downwards into the whirlpool.
“Nice meeting you ... “ Distant words which might have been the wind. “My friend..."
Downwards.
Shera.
Maelstrom beneath me, roaring faster now.
For you...
Ever faster. Am I mad?
Shera, my love.
And leap.
...And snap into awareness, lying on my bed, the hotel-room's safe wooden walls surrounding me.
A dream?
Except that I am dripping wet. I sit up, cursing, in my sodden clothes.
Some nightmare.
Outside, around the back of the hotel building, my pogo is neatly tagged in place with all the others, with one small addition. A braided crown of wood is hanging from the saddle.
I pick it up, and go inside via the public doorshimmer.
Walking past the hotel desk, I see the pretty, plumpish girl staring at me—I am dripping on the floor, after all—and I give her a rueful smile.
“You were right. You do need a sense of balance."
“What—? Oh, I'm sorry. You fell in?"
“In a big way, yes."
“Never mind. It happens to everybody."
Not quite like this, I'm tempted to say.
But there are times when even a poet of the Mazhin a'Stansa Corisma should maintain his silence.
I lie awake, but no words come.
The next three days pass strangely, awkwardly.
Our dinner date was tentative, but when Shera failed to turn up at Convenors’ Hall, a deep, sure sickness took hold of me. I ate alone, morosely, not looking at the acrobats who were performing for the crowd. During an interval, I thought I saw the dwarf making his way towards me. I got up quickly and left, using my tu-ring to transfer payment and adequate tip.
As a quasi-tourist, I spend my time perusing local histories, looking at the sights, eating—small amounts—in as many different places as I can. Sometimes I notice the watchful men and women.
Twice, I see her.
She's aboard a skimmer, both times, with men either side of her. It travels past the open restaurant where I'm having my solitary lunch, and for a moment her gaze catches mine—I know why you're here, the look seems to say—and then she is past, leaving a white wake amid bobbing waves.
Later, inside a krifnajuice house, I find myself playing solo shachmati by candlelight, on three-dimensional wooden boards—every tabletop has them, along with other games—while I sip my drink and listen to the philosophers gathered at the next table over.
“—dialectic imperative,” one of them is saying, tugging earnestly at his long beard. “Forms the only possible explanation for—"
“Tsk, tsk.” A man wearing a soft white cap wags his knobbly finger. “Quantum predestination not only allows for teleological explanations, it positively demands them. Surely you must realize—"
“No!” Another man sits upright so abruptly he nearly tips the table over. “The prima causa which defines spacetime's origin is both the tao-function's boundary condition and the Divinity."
I get up slowly, leaving them to it.
Perhaps I should work on my poetry, but I doubt the words will come tonight. That's alright: the moment of ‘stuckness’ which precedes true inspiration. When I see Queen Rhiannon's eyes at the moment of her death, that is when the whole poem will form in my mind—sua sponte, as these part-time intellectuals might say, and all of a piece—and I will strike.
Afterwards, I will use all my art and craft, through sleepless days and nights, to hone the words to perfection. But the true verse will strike in a split second: the rest is artifice.
“—mankind. I say..."
Someone's talking to me, and for an instant my fingers twitch in a blade-release mudra, but I stop myself in time. It's an old man, gesturing at his cronies.
“You heard their arguments. What do you think, young fellow?"
Are you addressing me? is the response which comes to mind. But I answer politely: “I think it's all a bit beyond me."
“Ha! See—” One of them is pointing an accusing forefinger at the old man who addressed me. “Nincompoops. No education. What I've said all along is—"
From a neighbouring tabletop where no one's sitting, I cause a dinner-knife (no tine-spoons in this place) to disappear into my sleeve.
“Really, gentlemen.” I lean towards them. “My theory is—"
The knife is suddenly in the centre of their table, spinning. They twitch in time, like some group organism, noticing its presence.
“—that humankind knows nothing—"
Its spin slows.
“—about anything—"
And stops, pointing at the one who spoke to me.
“—at all."
Their silence accompanies me as I leave.
I stop outside, leaning against a pillar, watching the waves. Thinking about quantum predestination, and the limitations of human understanding. Not to mention time's true nature, and life and death. Like that.
Ha!
But perhaps it is my Fate to be standing right here, right now, as the sea itself begins to foam and bubble before my eyes.
It begins—
Slowly at first, huge and convex and silver and magnificent, it starts to rise from the waves. Soon it towers: vast twin windows, hundreds of metres tall, like eyes to stare upon the tiny-by-comparison buildings it threatens to engulf. Those silver windows are at the great prow; behind it, long and magnificent, stand smooth panels surrounded by curlicued detail, all of it in silver. The body of the palace stretches back for kilometres ... maybe tens of kilometres. If I trod upon its hull, where it flares outwards, I could make my way from here back to my hotel on foot. And still, I sense, most of it remains submerged below the surface.
It is huge, and it is beautiful, and I find myself in awe of it. And pity myself, that I should dare to challenge the one who owns it, the one who rules within.
For Queen Rhiannon has arrived.
Halls of silver and glass. But it is not a monochrome palace: there are also great rooms and corridors of sapphire, of cream and gold, of burgundy. Royal-blue and azure tiles decorate a tesselated cloister bordering a courtyard—all within the palace hull—where fountains play and strange exotic birds (the first I've seen upon this world) fly and cavort and whistle their songs of courting and territorial warning. Fabulous half-seen serpents swim in transparent-sided tanks larger than most buildings.
Guards, wearing traditional half-armour and bearing halberds, stand at every major intersection and doorway. Halberds! But then, there are few energy weapons within the palace bounds. I felt the tingling of scanfields as I queued, along with hundreds of local commoners, to be allowed access into the palace's public decks. Not even my House's Weapons Masters know how to smuggle power-crystals through smartscans: the essential components are always detectable.
My blades, on the other hand, appear part of my decorative tunic, and so pass inspection. One poignard, in the hand of a Blood Poet, is more dangerous than a dozen armed troopers bearing grasers or stringwhips.
And I have two dozen blades upon my person.
“Oh, look. How marvellous."
It's the visitors’ group that I'm with: they're admiring the paintings, loudly. I have to smile—not at their aesthetic sense, for the artwork is in fact well executed, but at their accents. They're adopting the patrician tones of their betters, as though the inanimate surroundings force linguistic patterns upon them.
“My word. Look at the infinite regression..."
We're in a hall of mirrors now, with shining pillars and sculptures everywhere, forming a maze of never-ending reflections in which it is easy to get lost without a guide. And that's where I slip away, into the nether world which visitors, unless they are damned unlucky, never get to see.
It's cold inside the shadowed slave-ducts, where the palace life-servants haul goods, or crawl from place to place, bearing new parts for servodrones—the public face of slavery—or merely food-cases (which they may not open) ... or anything at all. There is low illumination, pale among black shadows, for the benefit of overseers who must occasionally come inside.
Not for the slaves: they are dressed in ragged tunics, men and women alike, regardless of the cold. Pale-grey and silver scars ripple in the sockets where their eyes used to be.
There is no manumission for those taken into palace service.
I suppose I should not be surprised—the House Ethics Committee approved of my commission, after all—but I watch the slaves for a long, cold moment, before taking a deep breath, then moving on through the ducts and tunnels, to the great chamber where the Royal Audience takes place.
I look down upon it.
A sloping oval panel, transparent from my side, lets me view everything in the great chamber below: the grand throne, with its spray of precious-metal jewel-encrusted rods, luxurious and threatening at the same time; the black, shining, obsidian floor which looks as cold as ice; the gathered petitioners by the thick baroque pillars; the armoured halberdiers.
The Queen, young and elegant, stands tall in her robes. Her dark crown pulses, and seems occasionally to twist out of existence. She's within the protective shimmerfield centred on her throne.
I peel the ceiling-panel open, ease myself through—out of sight from below, by virtue of an ornate platinum pillar—and drop downwards, spider-like. My belt-cord unravels, slowing my fall. I snap it off at the last moment, roll silently into a crouching position behind the pillar, and wait.
Heart beating faster—
There she is.
Behind the halberdiers, just outside the shimmerfield, stand the real defence: the plain-jumpsuited figures of the Royal Bodyguard. There are seven of them on duty, and Shera is among them.
“Look out! Over there!"
One of the petitioners is shouting, and pointing in my direction. Behind me, there's a discreet exit leading to the washrooms. What a mundane joke: he must have felt a sudden need (born of nervousness), tried to make an unobtrusive exit, and spotted me hiding here.
The nearest halberdiers come running at me, and there is no avoiding them. In a second, the first man is upon me.
Not Shera...
His blade passes close but I lean back just far enough. Then the edge of my thrust foot snaps his knee with a sickening crack. First man down.
Two more attackers are here, but I spin and pass my hands through an infinity-symbol gesture and now they're on their knees. Weapons clatter to the floor. They use their hands to stem the bloodflow. Crimson drops spatter from my twin blades.
“Stay back!” I cry out. “I'm not—"
But there's no arguing with them.
I use the daggers to block, digging into a halberd's haft, and take out the halberdier with a leaping knee-strike to the chin. Then I spring over him, away from his comrades...
And into range of the Royal Bodyguard.
The man is small and lean, and very fast, armed with two knives similar to my own. They slice through the air in dazzling patterns of speed and light. My right triceps suddenly burns—
"Never look at your wounds!" It's my Blade Master's remembered voice, yelling at me across the years. "Fight for your life!"
—but I take the bodyguard's lead wrist, and then the other, cutting twice. Disarming him, even as his final strike knocks both of my weapons from my hands. I spin away, leaving him to clasp his wrists—the arteries are severed—but his work is accomplished.
Shera is facing me.
“I didn't come to fight.” I get the words out quickly.
“You're a Blood Poet."
From beyond the shimmerfield: “Don't dance with him.” It's a Royal command. “Kill him."
I appear disarmed, but there are more blades within my tunic. Does Shera know this? She advances open-handed, weapons still tagged to her belt.
“I'm sorry.” Her glance flickers to one side. “This is my job."
To prove her loyalty. Of course.
“Shera. You don't have to—"
She spins then, while my own words are distracting my cerebellar processes—or would be, in a fighter not trained in the distractive arts. Her heel grazes my jaw but I'm already moving in that direction, rolling as I grab—a sacrifice throw—and then we're both down on the ground but she's straddling me, in the superior position, ready to strike.
“Halt.” Queen Rhiannon gives the command. “But don't let him rise."
Shera's hand is raised—in a hammer-fist, poised to descend—and a small deadly needle glints, reflecting the chamber's opalescent light.
I wonder how fast the needle's toxin works.
“Your majesty.” I address Her Royal Highness, though I'm looking into Shera's eyes. “I'm not here to kill you."
“You're not?"
But Shera's body relaxes slightly. In that moment, we know everything of importance in our lives.
“He's telling the truth,” she says.
Humans cannot lie to each other. Not when they communicate in all modalities, with their entire beings. Body language does not, cannot ever, deceive those who are open to its messages.
“I don't believe—"
Time to use the magician's gift.
I concentrate, and cause one of my poignards to snap into existence inside the shimmerfield, point slammed into the obsidian floor.
Now.
And then I am standing before the Queen, while her bodyguards are trapped outside the shimmerfield designed to protect their sovereign, not keep them from her.
“No commoner"—her face is pale with fear, but she does not step back—"may walk in here and live."
At that, I go down on one knee, and lower my head.
“I am Prince Andrei v'Danshin KaDonnel of the Mazhin a'Stansa Corisma de Calazzo Quattro. And I came here only to bid farewell to a warrior, one who would lay down her life for yours."
The shimmerfield snaps out of existence.
Someone's found the master control—
“No.” The Queen's hand is raised.
Then she bends down, attempts to lift the embedded dagger, fails. Its blade is part of the floor now, metal and obsidian intermingled at the molecular level.
“Hmm.” She stares at me. “I know you—"
“No, ma'am. But we have a friend in common."
“A friend."
“The kind to dream for. Or about."
The Queen swallows then, and nods.
It's true. She knows who I'm talking about. I stand close, then, and murmur, so softly that only she can hear: “And he does not approve of slavery."
If I'm lying, who's to say?
Though it's a gambit, something changes in her eyes. Matching some message within her dreams? Perhaps I'm not so far off the mark, after all.
“Are any of my guards dead?"
The Queen addresses the question to me, but it is Shera who answers: “No, ma'am. Wounded, all treatable."
I look behind me.
Medics are tending to the injured. The petitioners are huddled in a group at the rear, with guards protectively surrounding them. There are dozens more dragoons and halberdiers inside the great chamber, energy weapons levelled in my direction, ready to slay me at their queen's command.
“So, Prince. What do you intend?"
“Only to say..."
I turn to face Shera, whose eyes are wide with sudden hope.
“...goodbye..."
My love.
“...before I leave for Calazzo IV."
Did you think that I would kill Her Majesty? Even after I found out that my true love's life—her entire warrior's path, her way to enlightenment—was dedicated to preserving her ruler's health?
But that would ruin my mysterious benefactor's joke. On the one hand, to have given me the sole gift which would guarantee success; on the other, to have made success's consequence unbearable to me.
Shera. Your discipline, as profound as my own—
For insight was the true gift I received at the magician's hands.
And courage, to accept what I already knew.
Twin straight lines of blazing white spheres: they stretch back along a hall whose rectilinear interior is cut from featureless blue stone. Perhaps two metres in diameter, each globe shines so brightly that no motion is visible. They are spinglobes.
“It's peaceful, this place.” Shera's voice echoes back oddly. “Don't you think?"
“No. I think you shouldn't be here."
Not here, my darling.
But the shuttle-pad lies beyond the far doors, and this—by design—is the only way to reach it. I am leaving, and Shera must remain behind.
“I'm going to do it.” Her tone is soft but determined. “I will."
Then we kiss, just for the briefest moment. Her warm lips are silk-like, desperate to absorb me. I want to sink into her. I want to stay here, with her, forever. She is me, and I am her: entanglement can't even begin to describe it.
“Please don't, Shera. I don't know what will happen there, back home."
I love you.
But I cannot stay. I must not. The consequences, to me and to Shera and the Queen, and to the Great House I belong to, are all unthinkable.
This departure hall is a deliberate reminder, to those who are embarking on voyages across the light-centuries, that there are others waiting at home, spinning in their chambers at the speed of light, where duration has no more meaning than to a photon, or a lightship. They are frozen in place. Waiting, perhaps forever...
Spinglobes are illegal upon Calazzo IV.
“It's the only way,” Shera says, “that I know you'll keep yourself alive. Or try to."
“No.” If I fail to live, she'll never waken. Is that better or worse than death?
I love you! It's a silent howl inside me, tearing me open.
“So someone must die? Then let me come with you."
I shake my head. “It's not allowed.” Allowed. As if rules matter. As if anything matters more than her.
Shera shrugs her shoulders, then, as if to say: See? That proves I'm right.
“Take care, my prince. My love. Use your new strength. Come back to me."
I want to stay. I need to.
Her hand is soft against my face.
But the consequences...
It's time for me to go.
Fate and consequence. Shuffle the deck, and deal. Pick a card, any card—
The Joker grins, then chuckles.
Face pressed against the cold viewpanel, I watch the landing-pad drop away below, until her small figure is lost amid drizzling rain, clouds closing in ... And she is gone.
Shera, my true eternal love.
Soon there is darkness outside the viewport—we're at low-orbit altitude—and for the first time in days there are stars visible, beyond the twin rings of suns placed here by the Ancient Ones: dealers in unknowable magics, sometime bringers of gifts.
My soul has been torn apart, and I groan with the ache of it.
It will be a while before the tangledrop station is visible, or the lightship which is waiting there. Waiting for me, to take me home. It will send a tangleblip—there is bandwidth enough for such short messages—so that the Tribunale Transgressioni will know in which year to expect me. They will activate no punitive action against anyone here on Quinvère.
If I don't go, they might send Dad.
For who else would take responsibility—leave his wife forever, on a one-way trip to right the worst wrong imaginable—for dealing with a Blood Poet who has besmirched the name of the Mazhin a'Stansa Corisma?
I wish I could see you both, my parents. But I pray that you'll be centuries dead, long at peace, by the time I get there.
Silver stars, black velvet space. And at journey's end, a red climax awaits, within the long Duello Cruciato.
Forgive me ... however this ends.
For whatever else is true, I do know this: I am a Blood Poet of the House of the Crimson Stanza, a prince of the finest Great House upon Calazzo IV, and we have endured ten thousand Standard Years by the strength of our discipline, the depth of our perception, the power of our love. I love you, Shera! Yet greater than any man or woman is the Tao San'Verso, the Way of Blood and Verse, and none shall gainsay the insight which kills, the enlightenment of word and blade.
Of those who were to die, some have lived. This has been known. Yet never has a Poem, once commissioned, failed to come into being ... however much the poet must suffer.
Tao San'Verso, I dedicate myself to thee—
And every great Poem ends with Blood.
LIKE A PAGAN IDOL, Balboa Stabilo sat on a purple and gold cushion in the middle of the splintered kitchen floor. She balanced a skull full of fortune cookies in her right hand; the fingers of her left hand formed a rude mudra. Thirteen stainless-steel doves clanked aimlessly around her; and behind her rose the arched doorway, quiescent, for the time being, of the MindFuck Instantaneous Gratification Unit.
Noble and naked (but for her metallic gold wig and a rope of raw turquoise beads), she presented a complex visual challenge to Auburn, who sketched her for a future mosaic. Balboa was magnificently and sensually fat, and really needed no ornamentation but her blue-black pubic hair. Auburn, herself thin in severe grey wool, envied Balboa's luxurious body. Of course, Auburn need not have patterned herself in the style of a Russian intellectual circa 1917, with steel-rimmed glasses and starvation cheekbones. She could have chosen something Byzantine, for instance, the enormous eyes and elongated face of an ikon. She could have adorned herself in the murky colors of El Greco. Yet she would still have been long and thin, uninviting, a plank bed on which to lie, and devoted to the representation of what she adored but could not be.
“I'd kill,” said Balboa, barely moving her lips, “for a Diet Mecca."
“I wish you wouldn't,” said Auburn. “It makes me uncomfortable and it spoils the composition."
“But gods have to kill people,” said Balboa. “It's in the job description."
She was a tabla, she was a drum on which tiny hands beat, a tabla inside out, for the tiny hands beat inside her, inside a membrane of blood and flesh. The tiny hands that beat inside her were now grown, almost thirty-three years old, and they raised a fork to red lipstick puffs. Her daughter chewed with teeth ground flat from trouble in her dreams, and swallowed with a throat that rattled like a gourd full of dried split peas.
And there sat the man who once beat inside her, blood against blood, skin against skin, whose own heart beat against her chest in strong thuds after he'd sent his half of the child into her. Now he was silent, an echo to her silence, and no longer remembered the nights of wild tattoos beneath a canopy of plaster cumulus, amid the trunks and branches of china trees.
The phone rang. Bobbi lay down her fork and rose from the table, where her husband and daughter argued about Napoleon's defeat in Russia. It seemed she'd heard this argument before, long ago, when Lola was a child, when Bill's hair was chestnut-brown and full.
“The Russians did so beat Napoleon,” Lola insisted.
“No, they did not,” said Bill.
“Excuse me, are you changing history just to win an argument?"
“I'm telling you, the Russians did not defeat Napoleon."
“Okay. They didn't. Napoleon won. Jesus Christ, you want me to get the World Book?"
“Watch your phraseology, miss."
Bobbi picked up the phone. “Hello?"
“It's six o'clock,” said the woman. “What are you doing?"
“Eating dinner,” Bobbi said.
“Thank you."
Bobbi hung up and sat back down.
“Who was that?” asked Lola.
“A pollster,” said Bobbi.
“A what?"
“The Russians did not beat Napoleon,” said Bill, with finality and triumph. “Russia did."
“What kind of pollster? What did they ask you?"
Bobbi shook her head, leaned toward Lola and said, “It was the Russian winter that defeated Napoleon."
“What are you talking about, Mother?"
Bobbi sat back, confused. “What were you talking about?"
“Men's formal attire,” said Lola. “Whether or not you can wear an ascot with tails."
“Oh.” Bobbi pressed her hands together in her lap. It had happened again. It happened all the time now. Next thing she knew, Bill would tape together a strip of notebook paper and travel it with a pencil, to prove to Lola that a piece of paper could have only one side. And then he would teach her the number-prediction trick, and then they would argue about everything, everything under the sun—law and science and math and books, everything disputed to the finest point, the most precise use of words and implications.
And she wouldn't understand a word they were saying.
She was a tabla, her mind, her ears resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the lie that time was a Moebius strip, that it had one side alone and could be traveled again and again. If that were so, if it were true, she'd travel further back, or further forward, and find everything she'd lost.
But she was a tabla, to be drummed by everyone but herself.
Silo slouched over her government-grey desk, pulled up the next phone number, and dialed. She was sick of her job, which seemed as meaningless as it was intrusive, since the data would probably never be used. Who the hell really cared what Americans were doing at any given time? Occasionally she'd get an answer that made her evening worthwhile—like that guy who said he'd draped himself in his boa constrictor and was dancing naked to the theme song from “The Patty Duke Show.” That made an interesting crimp in the data. Or the woman welding a block-long sculpture depicting the life and career of greeting-card poet Suzanne Peels Skits.
However, those sweet crimps and kinks were far too rare.
A woman answered the phone. “Hello?"
“It's six o'clock. What are you doing?"
“Eating dinner,” said the woman. A man and another woman argued in the background.
“Thank you."
She broke the connection, keyed in the data, and dialed the next number.
Some people reacted to her with hostility, as if her question caused their emptiness, rather than simply revealing it. Most took her for granted, as they would any other kind of meter reader. Some, in conversations she'd overheard in a restaurant or on the train, complained because they'd never been polled. As if it were their right. As if it made the slightest difference. As if having their everyday lives documented would somehow validate them, or preserve them.
“Hello?"
“It's six-oh-two. What are you doing?"
Silence. Then, “Preparing to bury my child."
“Thank you."
After she broke the connection, Silo realized that she'd dialed the same number twice in a row. She double-checked the log, and stared at the screen, gently biting her forefinger and trying to understand. Eating dinner and Preparing to bury my child. Uh-uh.
She dialed the number again.
“Hello?"
“It's six-oh-nine. What are you doing?"
The woman laughed. “Working on scoring a six-pack of Diet Mecca. How do you like that?"
“Is this—” she read the number off.
“Sure is, cutie. Better hang up before you give yourself a Norman architecture nosebleed."
“Did I just talk to you? Twice?"
“In your dreams, sweets."
The woman broke the connection. Silo stared at the screen, at her hands, at the walls of her cubicle. Then she launched her glossary and keyed: “What the hell is Diet Mecca?"
Diet Mecca was a misleading name. The product had nothing to do with dieting, everything to do with euphoria. The soft drink had long been outlawed by the Blue Law Board, but certain religious groups were allowed limited access. Balboa hoped to form her own.
Auburn's sculptures and mosaics were in the manner of graven images, the first step in Balboa's master-plan for deification.
After dinner, Lola escaped the kitchen and went outside to smoke a cigarette. Fog had risen as the night fell, and smudged the pasture, the hills, the bright light at the construction site deep in the woods.
What was her state of being, standing in the fog, looking at the branches and nerve-endings of the trees, at the dim small dot of light in the hills, listening to trillions of water molecules rubbing against each other? Who else would know, and see, this melting away of the world, but her? What if it weren't the world at all, but her own dissolving away? What if it were actually full daylight, no fog, and the dim small dot the sun?
It seemed inappropriate to smoke a cigarette while thinking things like this, but she didn't put it out, not even when the rattle in her throat built to a crescendo of coughing.
Should she share this night? Should she call out her mother and father, and see if they saw what she saw? Better not. Dad would pick her brain, examine each thought through a telescope, a microscope, an opera glass, and argue with her: What do you mean by state of being?
And Mother, who seemed, nowadays, lost in her own nebulous state of being most of the time, would simply say, “The fog's too thick for you to drive home, honey. Better stay here tonight."
Lola dropped the lipstick-stained cigarette onto the gravel and watched the coal burn, dim, fade away.
Bobbi, fearing the fog, insisted that her daughter stay the night.
Lola complied.
Auburn had never intended to devote her life to the making of idols. She'd distinguished her academic career by developing the Virginia cowslip viscosity index at the age of 19. Out of school, however, she'd turned from the ivory tower, donned the grey wool and steel-rimmed spectacles of a Bolshevik, and worked in a dim factory as an aspect ratio assembler. Her immersion in proportions triggered a deep-seated geometrical passion, which found its apotheosis when she met Balboa, so perfectly composed of spheres.
Nowadays, she lived with Balboa in a derelict house, and devoted her time to art and scoring, for her addicted beloved, the occasional six-pack of Diet Mecca. The enormous brick complex across the street, which had in the 1920's been a Home for Unwed Mothers (and was now again a Home for Unwed Mothers, thanks to the past ten years of backlash politicos breaking the public's fingers on morality charges), was the major supplier, until the Freds busted the matron and turned the whole place inside-out.
Balboa, on the other hand, had neither the need nor the inclination to work. Ever. She generally preferred to stay in the house stark-naked, pose for Auburn's ubiquitous art projects, and play with the lifelines of people from the past—Reality Cut-Ups, an art form in itself.
And patently illegal.
“Sweet Columbines o’ mine, my doves, my dears,” Balboa cooed to the strutting birds, whose talons scraped the floor with the sound of minute car crashes. “Mama Willendorf has some messages for you to deliver."
Balboa rested the skull in her lap and cracked open one fortune cookie after another after another. The doves rose in mechanical flight. Their talons stretched and retracted, grasping the cookie fortunes that Balboa fed to them. Each of the doves clattered through the arched doorway, no longer quiescent, of the MindFuck Instantaneous Gratification Unit.
“Is it wise,” said Auburn, “to feed it so much?"
Balboa crunched a fortune cookie. “Let's just see what comes out."
Auburn shook her head in Russian. Her face was grave. “You will hurt somebody."
“Several somebodies, I'd imagine,” agreed Balboa.
“It's six o'clock,” said the woman. “What would you do for your child?"
“I'd kill,” Bobbi said.
“Thank you."
Bobbi hung up and sat back down.
“Who was that?” asked Lola.
“That dim-fated Napoliticosity,” said Bobbi.
Lola stared at her. “That what?"
Bobbi tried to explain, to an empty kitchen table, but she broke down.
Next thing she knew, Bill would teach her law and science and math and books, everything she needed to bury her child.
Her mind, her ears, resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the drumming of years and years ago...
A man and another woman argued in 1917. The street had the dark, murky colors of El Greco.
“But gods have to kill people,” said Bill, with finality and triumph. “Russia did."
It happened again. It happened all the time now. Next thing, she'd lost everything.
“It's six-oh-two. What are you talking about, Mother?"
Looking at the dim small dot of light deep in the past, she was silent. Once, she had hung time's luxurious Byzantine growth around her neck, over her breast.
But now, all she owned was thanks and tolerance and water-daughter hands, twisted.
She fell, further back, and further back, and further into the sun. There was Lola, three years old, raising a gourd full of dreams.
And there sat the moment of death, the street to the child inside her.
Silo slouched over her government-grey desk, pulled up the next phone number, and dialed. She was sick of her job. Who really cared that Americans were allowed limited access to Stravinsky's “The Patty Duke Show"? She could have adorned herself in the data, for all anybody cared. She could have eaten it. She could have deleted it all, and the world would not, Not, NOT have become a tabula rasa.
A woman answered the phone. “Hello?"
“It's six o'clock. What are you doing?"
“Eating dinner,” said the woman. A man and another woman argued in the background.
“Thank you."
She broke the connection, keyed in the data, and dialed the next number.
“Hello?"
“It's six-oh-two. What are you doing?"
Silence. Then, “Preparing to bury my child."
“Thank you."
After she broke the connection, Silo realized that she'd called the same number twice in a row. She trouble-checked the log, and stared at the screen, gently biting her forefinger and trying to understand. Eating dinner and Preparing to bury my child. Uh-uh.
She dialed the number again.
“Hello?"
“It's six-oh-nine. What are you doing?"
The woman laughed. “Working on scoring a six-pack of Cadet Mice. How do you like that?"
“Is this—” she read the number again and again. It happened all the time now. Silo pressed her hands against the walls of her cubicle. “Hello?"
“I'm still here, cutie. Are you?"
“It's six-oh-nine. What are you changing?"
The woman laughed. “You. You are no longer remembered in the data, like that guy who said he had draped himself in his boa construction site and was dancing naked to the finest point, the most precise use of words and implications."
Silo covered her eyes. She felt dizzy.
“Score a six-pack of Cadet Mice right now. That's a six-pack of Cadet Mice, right. Do it right."
The woman broke the connection. And then there was silence. Silo stared at the screen, at her trembling hands, at the walls of her cubicle. Then she launched her glossary and keyed: “What the hell are Cadet Mice?"
Cadet Mice were a sort of goddess.
Bobbi, fearing the fog, insisted that her daughter stay the night.
Lola declined.
Lola switched on the car radio for company. The classical station played Stravinsky's “The Firebird.” As the car crested the hill, the fog swallowed the road, swallowed the car, swallowed Lola, and spat her out over the edge.
She flew, she fell, further than time, into bright killing burns.
Balboa Stabilo rocked back and forth on her purple and gold cushion, laughing at the streamers of chaos her stainless steel doves brought back to her.
Auburn considered Balboa's addiction-fueled master-plan for deification. Was it worth the broad palm of Balboa Willendorf smacking time's flies, extinguishing time's little matches?
“Stop killing them,” she said.
Balboa rocked back and forth, back and forth, laughing.
“What does it matter?” she hooted. “They're all dead anyway. They've all been dead for years!"
“Why are you changing history just to score a six-pack of Diet Mecca?"
“Why not?"
Auburn snatched one of the stainless-steel doves and held it fast with one hand, while with the other she wrote one word on a sheet of sketch paper. She stuffed the paper into the bird's beak and flung it through the arched doorway.
“Because I asked you not to."
Balboa stopped laughing. “What did you tell it?"
Auburn blinked once, behind her steel-rimmed glasses, eyes as grey as a Russian winter.
“Undo,” she said.
She was a tabla, she was a drum on which tiny hands beat, a tabla inside out, for the tiny hands beat inside her, inside a membrane of blood and flesh. The tiny hands that beat inside her were now still.
And there sat the man who once beat inside her, blood against blood, skin against skin, whose own heart beat against her chest in strong thuds after he'd sent his half of the child into her. Now he was silent, an echo to her silence, and no longer remembered the nights of wild tattoos beneath a canopy of plaster cumulus, amid the trunks and branches of china trees.
The phone rang. Bobbi lay down her gloves and rose from the table, where her husband and daughter had once argued about Napoleon's defeat in Russia, long ago, when Lola was a child, when Bill's hair was chestnut-brown and full.
Bobbi picked up the phone. “Hello?"
“It's six o'clock,” said the woman. “What are you doing?"
Silence swallowed the number.
“Preparing to bury my child,” Bobbi said at last.
“Thank you."
Bobbi hung up and sat back down.
“Who was that?” asked Bill.
“A pollster,” said Bobbi. She shrugged. She laughed. She covered her eyes. She uncovered her eyes.
Next thing she knew, Bill taped together a strip of notebook paper and traveled it with a pencil, to prove to Lola that a piece of paper could have only one side. And then he taught her the number-prediction trick, and then they argued about everything, everything under the sun—law and science and math and books, everything disputed to the finest point, the most precise use of words and implications.
It was happening again.
“Lola,” she said to the child, with infinite longing.
Of course Lola didn't hear her. Could not hear her.
The child Lola, the young Bill, were echoes, phantoms. But who else would preserve them?
She was a tabla, her mind, her ears resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the lie that time was a Moebius strip, that it had one side alone and could be traveled again and again. She wondered if the dead traveled continuously as well, or if, at the moment of death, the strip tore, flattened out, had two sides, and an abrupt beginning and an abrupt ending.
Bobbi rose from the table and tore a strip of paper from the notebook by the phone. She taped it together, and wrote Lola's name on it, over and over, in pencil.
She took the kitchen scissors and cut it up into fragments, into confetti, and tossed them in the air. The fragments swirled down like flakes of snow in the Russian winter.
She was a tabula rasa.
“I hope you're happy,” said Balboa, pouting.
“I'm never happy,” said Auburn.
“Go score a six-pack of Diet Mecca right now."
Auburn left Balboa sitting on the purple and gold cushion, and went across the street to the enormous brick complex, which had in the 1920's been a Home for Unwed Mothers (and was now again a Home for Unwed Mothers [and was now again a Home for Unwed Mothers]).
After dinner, Lola escaped the kitchen and went outside. Fog had risen amid the trunks and branches and nerve-endings of the world, and smudged the past ten years. She sensually preferred the night now, and silence. All was silent, an echo to her silence, yet she could not defeat Napoleon.
A cancer marched through her temperate body, and the Russian winter wouldn't come until she was dead.
This is what it will be like. Nobody else would know, and see, the melting away of the world, but her.
Should she tell them? Should she call out her mother and father, and tell them? Tell Dad, who would argue even with the bright light at the moment of death? Tell Mother, who seemed, nowadays, lost in her own nebulous state of being most of the time, and wouldn't understand a word she said?
Better not. Not now.
Sex is a topic of longstanding interest to most of us, whether or not we read science fiction. It is literally built into our bodies and psyches. Alien sex is even more interesting. It focuses on the enticing ‘other’ and lets us ring changes on human norms that sometimes yield astonishing insights into what the word ‘human’ means. Thus are born works like Ursula K. LeGuin's classic Left Hand of Darkness, Poul Anderson's Fire Time and John Varley's Steel Beach. All three authors examine societies in which individuals change their sex on a regular basis.
For humans, this ability to switch remains a pipe dream. Sex reassignment surgery is possible, but it's also one-way, expensive and painful. It isn't a path to be chosen lightly. For dozens of other species, however, sex change is the norm. The California sheepshead (Semicossyphus pulcher), for example, is born female.
The juvenile is a rather nondescript looking pinkish gray fish with buck teeth and a round whitish spot on its tail. As the fish grows, she loses the spot and develops an adult profile. At 4 to 5 years old and about 6 inches in length, she begins to mate and lay eggs. When the sheepshead gets to be 7 or 8 years old and reaches a length of about 12 inches, however, a change sets in. She acquires a bulging forehead along with striking red and black stripes. More important, she very quickly becomes a he. At this point, the sheepshead also becomes a favorite target for anglers. In fact, overfishing of showy male sheepshead has led to such drastic reductions in most populations along the coast, the California Department of Fish and Game has been considering size limits—in reverse. To maintain a large enough number of fertile males, fishermen would be prohibited from keeping any sheepshead longer than 18 inches although they can reach 3 feet and 30 pounds.
Among vertebrates, only the bony fish indulge in this kind of alternating life style but there are lots of other species known to flip flop sexually, including sponges, jellyfish, corals, brittle stars, shrimp, mussels and clams. There are many more who do so in times of need, as one sex or the other runs short and replacements are needed. New research, however, shows that the timing of sex change is governed by a set of overarching rules that apply across large parts of the animal kingdom.
According to work done by Eric Charnov of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, one of those rules governs which sex a changer will take first. Charnov says it's a matter of cost/benefit analysis. As size increases, reproductive ability also increases. The creature can produce more eggs or more sperm, or carry larger litters, or succeed in mating more often. The improved rate is usually larger for one sex than it is for the other. So, starting out, the sex-changing animal opts for the sex that benefits least from increasing size. In the sheepshead or the red grouper , that's the female. In northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis), it's the male.
Another rule governs the ratio of life span to age at first breeding. For mammals, the ratio for animals as different as squirrels and elephants is 1.4. For fish, it's 0.5, and for birds, it's 2.25.
A similar rule applies to reproductive effort, as estimated on the basis of gonad size in proportion to total body weight. For mammals, the ratio is 1.7. For fish, it's 0.6 and for birds, it's 1.7.
Now researchers have looked at body size at the time of sex change and divided it by maximum body size. The first such study was done on northern shrimp by Charnov and Unnur Skúladóttir of the Marine Research Institute in Reykjavik, Iceland. This study found that northern shrimp tended to change sex at the same stage even when the various populations lived in different habitats and had different growth rates.
A pair of follow-up studies were then done by Stuart A. West and David Allsop, both of the University of Edinburgh. The first looked at 77 species, including fish, echinoderms, mollusks and crustaceans. Regardless of phylum, habitat and population size, West and Allsop found that all of these species changed sex when they reached 72 percent of their maximum body size (see Nature, Oct. 23, 2003).
The second study by West and Allsop looked at 52 species of fish. The ratio didn't change much. Fish change sex when they reach 80 percent of their maximum body size, and at a point that is 2.5 times their age at maturity (see the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Sept 2003).
Finding body-size and life-stage ratios like this that apply across species, phylum and habitat boundaries is fairly astonishing, and a hot topic in the emerging field of ‘dimensionless’ biology—where ratios and proportions are tested rather than absolute values. The simple fact that a ratio like this applies says that sex-changers must all be making pretty much the same kinds of trade-offs between growth, lifespan and reproductive success. If so, then we should be able to figure out what those trade-offs are. But what does it mean to science fiction?
Well, for one thing, it should help writers build better aliens. An author who wants to emulate LeGuin, or Anderson or Varley and write about sex roles, about how other species might do it or how we might, ourselves, in the future can use these ratios to give an alien or post-human species a solid biological basis. For instance, if an alien lives as long as humans did in 1900 (45 years, on average), when would they reach maturity? If they're a mammal, remember, the ratio is 1.4—that would be 13 years old. When would they change sex? When they reach 72-80 percent of maximum body size, or 2.5 times the age of maturity. If the alien (or post-human) maxes out at, say, 200 pounds, then he or she should change at somewhere between 144 and 160 pounds, and at about the age of 32.5 years. And because mammalian reproduction is far more expensive for females than males, we can predict that the creature will start out female and change to male. If, on the other hand, the alien's basic body plan is more shrimp-like, then it will be the other way around. The creature will start out male and change into female.
Then, of course, one has to ask—what happens when somebody doesn't change? Could the change be delayed by limiting growth, via starvation, perhaps? What would sex changers think of those who don't? What about their mythology? Their legal system? And how do the social roles of mothers and fathers differ if anyone can become both? There's room here for questions that no one has asked yet.
LIEUTENANT RHINO LOVES HIS F-18. After thousands of hours nestled in its warm and pressurized cockpit, the Hornet is as responsive to the commands of Lieutenant Rhino's brain as his hands. He enjoys the power at his fingertips and beneath his hard-soled boots. He can make the horizon pinwheel with the slightest turn of gloved wrist. A push will fill the wedge of windshield with the monotony of sea or confusion of land. A pull, and the horizon drains in an even line.
A finger on this button, and the load would lighten beneath his wings, to explode somewhere and someone ahead of him.
Lieutenant Rhino smiles, sliding his rubber cup of oxygen mask a half inch up his nose. On his nose is the wart that gives Rhino his nickname; the wart that all the kids made fun of in school; the only wart on his body, and in the most conspicuous place possible; the wart he absolutely refuses to have removed.
His oxygen mask irritates the wart.
Rhino thinks about the payload specialists on bombers. They have time to plan, to add some style to their button-pushing. A bombardier—payload specialist—can arc his hand out, add a flourish, extend an index finger, and push. Or he can jab like a concert pianist attacking ivory, then wait for the welling of megaton timpani. Or simple and direct, the Air Force Way. Or, better still, simple, direct, and with little finger.
Rhino envies them this time to plan. Fighter-pilot decisions don't allow much planning—in fact, they're hardly conscious decisions at all. Rhino feels he is the perfect man for his job.
He glances right, looking out the Windex-clean window at Kneecap, the 747 with the Presidential Seal.
There are campfires all over Oz tonight. Gillikins from the north, Quadlings from the south, Munchkins from the east, and Winkies from the west, all flock toward the Emerald City, taking care that their torches, lighted ceremoniously in their home cities, remain burning. They wish to add to the bonfire already blazing in celebration of the imminent return of Dorothy.
The first delegation of Munchkins arrives at the end of the Yellow Brick Road. They are greeted with glee by the revelers, who are becoming a little drunk from the flow of Winkie country wine.
Wine leaves no hangover in Oz.
The Munchkins bow their short little bows and with great pomp add their torches to the bonfire. The Scarecrow thanks them solemnly from his gilded platform, which is located a respectful distance from the flames.
Lieutenant Rhino snakes a gloved finger beneath the damnable oxygen mask to scratch at the wart. He wonders—not for the first time, certainly—if he can get one of the masks custom built, with a rubber dot of a hump for his nose.
Kneecap plods along in its clumsy-graceful way, like a pregnant guppy swimming upside down. “Kneecap” is for NEACP, which is for National Emergency Airborne Command Post.
Rhino frowns, and his oxygen mask lowers snugly where it belongs. Looking at the bulbous-headed airplane, he has just been struck by the notion that the craft looks remarkably like a winged penis. He squashes the thought and glances ahead of the 747. There flies Tee Dee One, the point plane in the Tasmanian Devil Group, spewing a gray contrail. Tasmanian Devil Group is the hastily assembled escort of F-18s flying in a diamond configuration so perfect it would have given Euclid an erection. In the center of the diamond flies Kneecap, and inside Kneecap sits the President of the ephemerally United States.
In the mid-1970s it had been decreed that, when the balloon finally went up, so would the President—hence Kneecap. Several hours ago the United States’ spy-satellites peeking in at the escalating situation in the Persian Gulf had politely informed those who get informed that the balloon was as up as a Pittsburgh Steeler before the Superbowl; and so, up went Kneecap.
A voice crackles in Lieutenant Rhino's ear, the voice of Kneecap. “Kneecap to Tasmanian Devils. Deploying antenna. The air drag'll slow us up a bit, so stay with us. Tee Dee Three will want to climb a hundred feet. Acknowledge."
Tee Dees One and Two acknowledge. Tee Dee Three adds that he is climbing, since he is flying behind Kneecap and wants no part of the long antenna that is deployed to collect vital information.
Rhino thumbs his radio transmitter. “Tee Dee Four acknowledges. Do we have an ETA Goldilocks?"
Goldilocks was SAC—Strategic Air Command—headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska; ETA was Estimated Time of Arrival. It was fun to think up names to go with important things.
“We can't give that on the air, Tee Dee Four,” answers Kneecap smugly. “It shouldn't be too hard to work out yourself. Keep this channel clear. Kneecap out."
Well! Rhino toys with the idea of peeling off and shoving a bang or six under Kneecap's nose, but dismisses it. If he does and is somehow caught after this mess is over, he will be court martialed.
The Tin Woodman swims the length of his Olympic-sized pool, breast-stroking his hollow body through the Quaker State forty-weight. He emerges, dripping viscously, and bends his legs and flexes his arms to work the oil into his knees and elbows. A bespectacled assistant hands him the evening edition of the Green Street Journal; he turns immediately to Commodities.
Hearing himself scrape as he sits on a stone bench, he thinks, I ought to do something about that. A little foam padding, perhaps.
He opens his chest and pulls out his heart. Nine twenty-five already. The revelry will go on for another two and a half hours—until Glinda makes everybody go to bed.
Being one of the good guys sure has its drawbacks, he reflects. But it's probably for the best, since Dorothy arrives tomorrow.
Dorothy....
He looks down and, for the ten thousandth time, curses his incompleteness. “If I only had a hard,” he sighs.
“Tee Dee One.” The voice of Kneecap crackles to life, calling the F-18 Hornet leading the diamond formation.
“One here."
“We show activity on long-range. DSB confirms. Speed and signature suggest Soviet cruise missile, type unknown, target Goldilocks probable.” Kneecap gives coordinates and velocities, then adds a command that Lieutenant Rhino yearns to hear directed to him: “Go for it, Tee Dee One."
The trail farting from Tee Dee One's tail darkens as the F-18 shoots ahead and veers southwest on an intercept course.
How come I never have any fun? Lieutenant Rhino whines to himself.
The Once-Cowardly Lion, King of the Beasts, ignores the big-breasted woman plaiting his calves as he searches through the matted fur of his emaciated arm. He finds a healthy vein and grins carnivorously. He wraps his tail tightly around his elbow and clenches his fist several times, then slips the needle of a hypodermic syringe into the vein and pushes the plunger.
Euphoria courses up his arm and throughout his undernourished body. Courage, he thinks.
The woman gives up plaiting his legs and sits on the polished floor giggling to herself.
The Lion folds his paws behind his head and feels himself beginning to float above the couch. He stares contentedly at the emerald ceiling and thinks of the revelers outside the city walls. Whatta they got that I ain't got?
Brightness blossoms in the southwest, where Tee Dee One veered off for his rendezvous with destiny.
The three Tasmanian Devils still escorting Kneecap remain in tight formation until Tee Dee One is sighted, first on radar, then visually. The phrase “visual sighting” is not redundant to a fighter pilot.
The returning fighter jet banks, and Rhino sees that it has expended only two air-to-air missiles. Tee Dee One resumes formation, and the Tasmanian Devils are a diamond once again. He is back in lead position and reporting before the shock-wave reaches them.
Smug-ass bastard, thinks Rhino. Still, he thumbs the “transmit” button and joins the others in congratulating Tee Dee One.
Ninety minutes later Kneecap touches down at SAC headquarters. The four escort jets shoot ahead, fifty feet from the tarmac, then peel off in four directions.
Flight crews glide out to Kneecap on maintenance trucks, sticking long hoses into its delicate underparts.
The President and his staff, including an officer carrying a little black bag known as the Football that contains the codes for launching U.S. nuclear forces, hurry down the roll-up stairway and are quickly bundled away in a van that hurries them to another airplane: Looking Glass, commanded by an Air Force general in charge of directing U.S. ICBMs and bombers.
Fifteen minutes later Kneecap is airborne again, heading north. Looking Glass noses into the air soon afterward, gains a respectful height, and turns south, toward Kansas.
The Wicked Witch of the North cackles gleefully. “Melt my sister, will she?” Her voice is a silken sssliiiding across a sheen of oil. “Start a housing development on my other sister, will she?"
Perched beside her, the King of the Flying Monkeys cocks his capped head. He removes the soggy stump of a Cuba Libre cigar from his mouth and gestures with it. “That housing development,” he says in a distinct Bronx accent, “is the best thing that ever happened to us."
Many items were salvaged from the unintentionally mobile home of Dorothy's aunt Em and Uncle Henry. In a wire magazine rack next to the flush toilet were Aunt Em's back issues of Collier's and Vanity Fair, and a Sears & Roebuck catalog (minus the first thirty pages) advertising such novel items as hunting supplies, washing machines, door locks, and shoe lifts for the short statured. A supplement detailed Sears & Roebuck's generous credit plan. On a narrow vanity shelf beneath the medicine chest mirror were Coty cosmetics, including a cake of rouge in a cameo box with a cracked, ivory-handled, horsetail brush, a thick glass jar of vanishing cream, and lipsticks in various reds. On the scarred maple dresser in the bedroom were books—among them the 1898 edition of the Home Medical EncyclopAedia (with a comprehensive listing of drugs, their effects, and methods of administration), Hobbs’ Guide to the Stock Exchange, Smythe's Guide to Investments and Agrarian Commodities, and The Shooter's Bible (with a chapter on home loads). Beneath the books, in the top dresser drawer, were a box of Lucifer matches, a package of Diamond rolling papers, and Union Leader tobacco in the Crimson Couch package. Scattered about were fifty-five cents in change and a rumpled dollar bill (which solved the mystery of the hitherto unknown word “dollar” that occurred with such frequency in the Sears & Roebuck catalog, in the back of Aunt Em's magazines, and in the Hobbs and Smythe books). There was also a box of Cuba Libre cigars hand-wrapped in Havana, and beneath this were twelve worn-cornered, black-and-white French postcards, most of them thumb-worn at the lower left edge. In the drawer below this were bras, panties, and elastic girdles.
In the utility room was a gasoline-powered generator. In the living room was a cathedral-arched Philco radio. Discovered beneath a loose board in the larger bedroom were two unlabeled glass jugs of illegally distilled grain alcohol, colloquially known as “hooch."
The house had been picked clean in days.
The King of the Flying Monkeys waves his fragrant cigar. “Best thing that ever happened,” he repeats.
The Wicked Witch of the North slits her green eyes at the King of the Flying Monkeys. “The best is yet to come,” she grates. She smiles, and the King of the Flying Monkeys finds he must look away.
The Wicked Witch of the North gazes back into her crystal ball.
In it are a river and a rocket.
Held aloft by its short, stubby wings, the Soviet cruise missile amorously hugs the terrain. It is a submarine-launched missile that has come all the way across the western United States, zooming along a scant hundred feet from the ground. Being launched from a submarine means that it has escaped detection by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radars in Alaska, and if the Defense Support Program satellites haven't detected it by now, there is little that can be done about it if they do.
Traveling across the continent, its terrain contour matching capability, guided by a preprogrammed minicomputer that uses a radar altimeter to match the contour of the ground with on-board maps obtained from spy-satellite photographs, pilots the cruise missile swiftly toward its programmed destination.
With simple-minded determination it follows the twisting path of the Missouri river, avoiding radar detection, until its pea-brain tells it that it is time to turn now. The missile veers southwest, whistling to itself as it carries its 300-kiloton nuclear warhead toward Omaha, Nebraska.
What would pass for the sound of a DC-10 crash elsewhere is laughter in the castle of the Wicked Witch of the North. Her Tartar-like guards are used to the sound and do not flinch, but the flying monkeys are not, and they cover their enormous ears.
The Wicked Witch of the North turns away from her crystal ball and fixes her evil-eyed gaze on the King of the Flying Monkeys. “Bring me my broom!” she screeches. Her voice is a thousand jagged fingernails dragged across two hundred spotless blackboards.
The awful sound raises the fur of his neck, and the King of the Flying Monkeys turns to obey.
“And make sure it's full this time!” she calls after him. “I don't want to run out of smoke the way I did before!"
She rubs her long-fingered, black-nailed, green hands and turns back to the lovely prime-time viewing on the crystal ball.
In it are blackness and stars.
Orbiting high above the Earth, a Soviet satellite receives a coded radio signal.
The satellite—with a microchip brain even smaller than that of the Soviet cruise missile—sets in motion the short program that has waited years for this moment.
Four small explosive bolts blow away its small metal shell to expose the warhead beneath. A thick, ceramic heat-shield covers its nose; it will be sheared away by friction, and the remainder discarded, during the warhead's descent.
Gyroscopes spin soundlessly in the vacuum of space. The bulbous-headed body pivots until its single cone of rocket exhaust points away from delicate blue marble of the Earth. The engine flares for seventeen seconds, and the pea-brained missile begins its seventy-two second descent toward Omaha, Nebraska.
God takes a flash picture right behind Lieutenant Rhino's F-18.
“What the fuck was that?"
“Cut it, Tee Dee Four,” orders the voice of Looking Glass.
Up yours, Rhino commands silently.
“That,” says a radio voice, “was Omaha.” Rhino notes the use of the past tense. “Cut it, Tee Dee Three,” orders Looking Glass.
Tee Dee Three, muses Rhino. Golly gee, Tee Dee Three, see the bee?
The overpressure wave hits them from behind. The five jets nose up and ride it out nicely. Rhino hangs ten all the way.
Why can't they break piñatas, or hold a parade, or anything else in the goddamned world? the Scarecrow wonders. But no, they've got to light the biggest damned fire they can make, and I have to preside over it.
If the wind changes I'm going to go up like a firework. The king of ahhs.
The Scarecrow bows to a party of Good Witches-in-Training from the South-southeast. They blush behind thick layers of rouge, duck their heads, and smile shyly with reddened lips. With charming sophomorism they recite spells to light the brands they contribute to the bonfire's blaze. Straightening, the Scarecrow fixes his painted eyes on the white-taffeta-gowned butt of one of the Good Witches.
One of the prudish Munchkins catches him staring at the Good Witch's butt. The Scarecrow stares him down until he turns away, red-faced and muttering apologies.
Short little fuck.
He looks back at the white-clad derriere. One gloved hand strays unconsciously to the zipper of his overalls and fingers the stuffing beneath.
Maybe I shouldn't have asked for brains.
By Lieutenant Rhino's reckoning—as dead a reckoning as ever there was—they have just crossed over into Kansas airspace.
What are they doing down there? he wonders, looking out at vast stretches of farmland. Hiding?
Shooting each other to get into air-raid shelters, probably. There's a missile silo for every cow, ‘round here.
What would they think if they knew we were up here?
Be pissed off, he decides. Hell, they paid for this. Their money went to build Kneecap and Looking Glass. Somebody picked beans for weeks to pay for the radiation-shielded fuselage. Someone else, some skinny redneck riding a tractor from sunup to sundown, got hemorrhoids plowing from January to the middle of March to contribute to the long-range radar, the teletype printers, the mile-long reel-out antenna.
Hey, down there! he sends telepathically, waving. Thanks! You guys paid for my F-18!
He tips his wings in salute.
The Wicked Witch of the North takes to the air on her broom, which leaves a much blacker trail than even the most flatulent of the F-18s. She doesn't need to understand overpressure waves and aftershocks, dynamic pressure and “dirty” bursts and gamma radiation, to know that she will be safer in the air. She doubts even her castle will survive the coming onslaught, and her castle is about as tough a castle as a contractor can build.
Besides, she'll need to be in the air to open the Rainbow Bridge.
She orders all her Flying Monkeys to take off with her, and they flap around her, shrieking delightedly. It's been a while since the old hag let them cut some air.
She checks her skywriting smoke level. The dipstick shows full. Not that she doesn't trust the King of the Flying Monkeys, but you never know. Good help is pretty hard to find in Oz these days.
“AWACS shows a bogey,” announces the electronically dehumanized voice of Looking Glass.
“Numbers?” Tee Dee One demands quickly.
Looking Glass gives Tee Dee One some numbers. The numbers tell him that the bogey is ‘way up high and dropping fast.
Glory hog, thinks Lieutenant Rhino.
“Tee Dee Four,” says Tee Dee One.
Rhino jumps. “Four here."
“Go for it, Tee Dee Four. Short and sweet."
Rhino grins. He guns his engines, rises smartly, and shoots ahead of the Tasmanian Devil formation, pulling back hard on the stick. His contrail darkens behind him.
“Beep-beep,” says the F-18's radar.
Rhino glances at it. A tight-packed group of phosphorescent green-white tactical numbers creeps toward a bullseye on the screen. Rhino relies on his computers; the bogey is too fast to visually sight—by the time he saw it, it would be long gone.
It looks like there's one whopper of a storm about forty miles to the south. A tornado, maybe. Clouds cover the land like puffy gray fungus.
“Beep-beep,” repeats the radar.
“I know it's there!” Rhino snaps.
Fifteen seconds later his targeting computer has a radar lock and tells him he can fire. Rhino's F-18 carries a special missile, an ASAT—Anti Satellite—with the barest smidgen of a nuclear tip to wipe out enemy satellites. But this bogey has managed to sneak right by everybody until almost too late to do anything about it, and Rhino is not sure that his ASAT could maneuver, target-lock, and detonate in time to take care of the satellite-launched missile. If it is an airburst warhead, it will go off at approximately two thousand feet. But since the bomb that shifted Omaha into the past tense was an air burst, this one will probably be a ground-pounder intended to further pulverize Strategic Air Command headquarters and get whoever may have cheated by hiding in underground shelters.
The pea-brain of the descending missile, however, is just smart enough to know that it should try to get out of the way if it detects someone trying to stop it. Since it is moving so fast, it can't maneuver so well, but since it is moving so fast, even the slightest move will make it harder to intercept.
Rhino frowns at the shifting number group on his tactical display. The missile must have seen him coming, because it is running away.
Rhino runs after it.
In what seems like no time they are over the fungus of the storm. The storm is capped by a huge rainbow, and Rhino thinks of McDonalds.
The rainbow draws closer as the Soviet missile speeds down and the F-18 speeds up and across the sky. Lieutenant Rhino's tactical radar is beeping bloody murder now.
Oh, what the hell, thinks Rhino. “Bang,” he says out loud. “Bang-bang."
The F-18's Voice-Activated Weapons Launcher System hears the words. It asks itself if they are the right words. It asks itself if Rhino is allowed to say them.
Yes, it answers itself. And yes.
Satisfied, it throws out a heat-seeking missile. This missile has a “conventional” warhead, meaning that it is not nuclear, but uses the kind of explosive traditional bombers recommend most.
The voice-activated, heat-seeking missile misses, however, and for the strangest of reasons: the satellite-launched Soviet missile dives over the rainbow and disappears.
Targetless, the heat-seeking missile speeds under the rainbow. Lieutenant Rhino and his F-18 sail over it.
"There she is!" Somebody points upward. The Scarecrow looks at the indicated patch of night sky and sees nothing unusual. But he keeps his gaze fixed unblinkingly and, sure enough, one of the stars is moving. It seems to be coming closer, growing brighter as it does.
“Dorothy!” shouts one of the Good-Witches-in-Training from the South-southeast. The one with the nice butt.
“Dorothy isn't due till tomorrow,” says the Scarecrow. But the cry has been taken up: “Dorothy!” shout the Munchkins. “Dorothy!” shout the Good Witches. “Dorothy!” shout the Gillikins, Quadlings, and Winkies.
“Might be the Wicked Witch of the North,” mutters the Scarecrow, wishing he weren't so damned smart.
Something's very wrong.
It hits Rhino as his F-18 sails over the rainbow without a ripple: you can't get close to a rainbow. They're a phenomenon of refracted sunlight, and must keep pace ahead of you because the angle of refraction must remain constant to the observer in order for the rainbow to be visible at all!
And besides, he remembers, rainbows are circular when viewed from the air.
Ahead of Rhino, the Soviet missile is even more confused. Nothing matches the contour signatures contained in its pea brain. The altimeter shows a drastic reduction in height.
Desperate, it switches to infrared tracking and discovers a heat source only a few miles below. It makes a minor course correction and sighs an electronic sigh of relief and fulfillment.
Rhino sees stars through his wedge of windshield. But it can't be night yet! Something is really fucked here.
He follows the missile down through puffy, moonlit clouds that he knows should be puffy gray fungus. He breaks through them just in time to glimpse a brilliant flash ahead of the plummeting nose of his F-18.
Rhino jinks left, kicks in the afterburners, and pulls up, feeling blood drain from his head. His vision dims even though his flight suit tries to fight the G-forces by squeezing his body like a concerned mother.
Just before the flash he glimpsed something he is not about to believe. There is no way he can believe it, no way it can exist, even though his mother read him to sleep describing it when he was a little boy; even though it is exactly what he pictured but never bothered to credit with any importance, any weight, any relevance, to his life, his dreams, his heart's desire.
But inside he knows that he really did see it before he'd begun to pull up from the dive, and he knows that, somehow, he's not in Kansas anymore.
Aftershocks buffet his F-18.
And the Emerald City, the slender spires and fragile domes and jeweled gates; the capital of Oz and host to her miracles; the green flint that sparked the imagination of generations; the Emerald City, where the impossible is as ordinary as a Sunday paper beside a china plate of steaming scrambled eggs; the brilliant, delicate, and eternal Emerald City of Oz, shatters under an explosion beyond the mind's containing—fifty times more powerful than that which destroyed Hiroshima, an explosion equal to the simultaneous detonation of one million tons of TNT. But before those pieces of emerald, shaped by small hands and large thoughts, can fall a measurable distance, they are melted to slag by a flash of consuming, voracious heat—ten million degrees Fahrenheit, heat that fuses sand into glass, heat like the surface of the sun.
Seeing the flash, the Tin Woodman extends a metal arm to grab his famous axe and defend his beloved city, but his arm shimmers, glows, and melts in a fraction of a second. Within his melting chest his heart bursts into flame, as if unable to contain its rage.
The Once-Cowardly Lion, hearing a jungle bellow from somewhere outside his chambers deep within the Emerald City, draws a proud breastful of air to respond to the challenge, but no amount of courage could withstand the onslaught that devours him as unthinkingly as a whale devours a plankton cell.
And the Scarecrow, ruler of the Emerald City and wisest creature in all of Oz; whose greatest fear and enemy is fire, sees all the flames of creation born before his painted eyes, and has only time enough to rail against the brain that could conceive a device that obliterates minds on a wholesale level, before he ignites and bursts and becomes ash and less than ash, not even a flicker in the terrible conflagration that is his city, not even a tenth of a second's worth of fuel to feed the clenched fist of consumed matter that towers above the heart of the land of Oz.
Yellow bricks burn. Poppy fields vaporize. Round houses explode. The bodies of Munchkins catch fire by themselves. Good Witches run screaming, white taffeta blazing; are smashed by a compressed wall of air moving faster than the speed of sound—the overpressure wave—are picked up and hurled like so many clots of dirt; are flensed by debris, are slammed into walls and trees or tumbled like broken dolls upon the ground, twisted and bleeding, powerless to help themselves or their burned and blackened and blinded and bleeding countrymen. Everyone is a child again, pleading for help, calling to make it stop, make it go away, but their cries are subsumed by the howl of the wind.
Firestorms feed on the kindling of smashed houses. Those Munchkins, Gillikins, Winkies, and Quadlings who have managed to hide in cellars are asphyxiated by the voracious greed of fire sucking away the air.
The roiling fist swells above the heart of Oz. It unclenches, and leaves not one life untouched by its fingers.
Flying far away—gloating, unaware that the malevolent life within her body ebbs as those billions of body cells destroyed by an onslaught of neutrons and gamma rays encourage the death of surrounding cells—the Wicked Witch of the North straddles her broom and writes triumphantly in the sky.
She has not even completed the first word before she is shot down by a jet fighter.
The next morning a house landed in the middle of a smoking, thousand-feet-wide crater, and Dorothy Gale stepped right from her snaggle-toothed front porch and onto a vast plain of fused emerald and glass. She cradled Toto in one arm and her ungainly lunch pail in the other. Her ruby-slippered feet clacked across a solid sea of green until she stopped before a wall—a lone wall of emerald brick, the only wall standing for a dozen miles.
A hot wind blew among the ruins. Black flakes settled like filthy snow upon Dorothy's gingham-clad shoulders. A lengthening white contrail stretched across the murky sky.
But this can't be Oz, thought Dorothy. This just can't be.
And so she walked away from the plain of emerald, letting Toto pick his own way through piles of rubble the height of buildings—the rubble of townships and Yellow Brick Roads and talking trees and tall cornfields and horses of a different color—a little girl with braided pigtails wandering the perpetually twilit corpse of a city she dreamed about every night at her aunt and uncle's farm in Kansas. For mile after mile she saw not one living creature, not one standing building. In a few hours she stumbled upon life: a wasteland of leveled houses writhing with groping, burned figures in charred uniforms of red, yellow, blue, or green. Knowing nothing of fallout, blinded by nuclear flash, deafened by detonation, the people of Oz staggered in private blackness and agony through the soft and deadly rain, calling out to ears that could not hear.
Dorothy cupped her hand to the river that fed Lake Quad and drank radioactive water. Fish floated belly-up. Dorothy looked up from her small, wet palm and saw shadows on a stone wall in the remains of a Munchkin village, but there were no figures to cast them. She recognized the Mayor of Munchkinland from his curled-brim hat and spike goatee. The shadow held a scroll in one hand and gestured to the crowd with the other, burned forever onto the stone.
She chased away rats that fed on the festering corpses of Munchkins, two sources of the plague to come, and walked on.
In one day Dorothy saw more burn victims than there are burn-unit beds in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The burned and the unburned alike were afflicted with radiation sickness: vomiting, diarrhea, anemia, hair loss, skin cancers, and infections. There was not one hospital in all of Oz.
The land was growing cold because the airborne debris blocked the sunlight. In a few months the fifteen thousand survivors of Oz—which once boasted a population one hundred thousand strong—will face the first true winter of their lives. Farmers will watch withering crops that signify the doom of their families. In the land of the Winkies, opposite the easterly wind, surviving cows and goats will give forth radioactive milk; the last normal infants born in Oz will suck at the breasts of mothers eating radioactive food and breathing radioactive air. Only half of the fifteen thousand will see the next summer.
Dorothy will not live to see this grim winter. Massive radiation poisoning sleeting through her body disrupted its cells beyond repair, forcing her metabolism to work itself to exhaustion, until it simply gives up. Within days of her arrival she is dead, slumped against a pile of rubble beside a puddle of her own vomit, lunch pail in hand, a widow's shawl of radioactive ash around her shoulders, small bodies huddled beside her, still forever.
Toto, too.
I've got to get back, Lieutenant Rhino thinks frantically. I've got to tell them they can't do this, not this.
Rhino has logged more than a thousand hours in fighter jets. His F-18 fits his body like a tailored suit, and he knows its every tic and tremor. He does not need to look at the gauge to know that he is nearly out of fuel.
But I've got at least an hour left, he thinks. I've got to find it, got to check my course tracker and tactical radar and inertial navigator and trust my dead reckoning to get me back to that rainbow, to get me over that rainbow and back home. To tell them, to make them stop. If he could tell them what they'd done, if they could only see what he had seen, surely they'd understand.
He shuts his eyes and remembers what he saw just before pulling his F-18 up and out.
It was tall. God, it was so tall and slender....
Got to get back and get on the radio. If I do one thing, God, one useful thing in my entire life, let me find that rainbow, let me make it back before I run out of fuel. You gave me the speed and the skill and the talent to fly like a bluebird, God. Now let me use that skill to find my way back and tell them what I've seen, what we've done.
—slender, like the fingers of a lady. And it sparkled like the ocean in the moonlight....
Thirty minutes. I can find it in thirty minutes, God.
—and the color, so bright, even in the darkness before the flash, and so green.
HE WATCHED AS THE LAST of Utit slowly elongated and was consumed by the infinite depths of what had been their (and was now his) pond. It was the part of her she had fashioned into a hand reaching out to him, waiting for his touch but knowing it might not arrive. Despite the time effect, he was sure it had wiggled a good-bye just before it vanished. He may even have remembered what happiness was before he recognized she was gone. Utit was gone. He focused on the center of the pond unable and unwilling to dive in, the accompanying light show above and below the pond, twin geysers of energy, warmed him. 20,000,000,000 pulses of the time-spot passed before he was ready to move again.
Sirtot recalled when, so many pulses ago, he had contemplated going male. The thoughts formed solid in front of him as he watched.
“A nod to the ancient beginnings of the species,” he had explained to her.
Entertained, Utit discussed going female. “To maintain eternal balance,” she had returned to him, spinning with laughter.
Sirtot and Utit had tangled themselves up in the fantasy and considered the possibility of adding life to the void. It was a heartless and cynical joke after so many years of watching the stars around them wink into death. They had known with certainty that there were no longer any others, no new stars being born, no new others to speak with. Who would have rebuked them?
The discussion had continued to the pulse of the time-spot. What hurry? They had eventually concluded that any life they brought forth would be short lived and miserable. Realistically they were too absorbed with their own existence to concentrate on any solid-matter forms they could construct.
In the end they had allowed the idea to dissipate, just as the rest of the universe was. In an ironic comment, they assumed their diametric genders anyway (by no means the only possible genders, but culled from racial memory) in an effort to give a mythic symmetry to the death all around them.
Sirtot focused on the time-spot. It winked at him as it pulsed. A great number of pulses passed, the interval between them diminishing; he instinctively drifted near the blue shore of the pond, his consciousness following his focus. His energy stretched toward it, but he held himself back—hesitant and unsure.
Another memory drifted into his perception.
Utit had guided the small rock into the pond and had entwined her thoughts and energy around Sirtot as they watched it. As it fell toward infinity its movement slowed, its form stretched, and was eventually consumed—sucked into the edge of the shore. Close enough to suckle but too close to escape. A delicate balance.
“Where do you think it all goes?” Utit's thoughts had reached him as pictures and shapes, colors and sound. But the meaning had been clear. The symphony of her thoughts was always a pleasure.
“No idea. Perhaps it is still there, just out of sight, just out of reach."
“That is no answer,” Utit had chided, the rusty taste of hydrogen and the bite of brilliant blue-white hazing the message.
“It is an answer. Just not the one you want.” His retort had carried an unintended bitter cold, but they both knew the situation, and Utit had taken no offense.
Utit had guided his senses outward to the nearly complete blackness. Only a few stars remained, and the time-spot spun its furious dance.
“Imagine,” she had said, “there are other ponds out there with nothing to feed them. Just cold, empty holes. The universe has become a giant sieve. It must have all gone somewhere."
Sirtot had left the statement unchallenged, unanswered.
“Someday I am going to find out the where. Before the cold closes in,” Utit had finished.
Slowly sipping at the nectar of the nearby pond, Sirtot looked up. The black sky was vast and cold. Mere wisps of sound and static answered his stare. One lone star remained to keep the time-spot company. The two points were the only contrast to the solid velvet of his view.
Suddenly, at the edge of thought, the star blossomed. Sirtot concentrated, bringing the entirety of his consciousness to the site, to watch the final convulsions of the star venting its outer layers into the emptiness surrounding it. The sphere of glowing plasma spread its heat into space in beautiful reds, one last time. The hot iron core at the center, not large enough to collapse further, spun viciously. The rotating beacon of high-pitched sound rattled against Sirtot like pellets as it strafed him with radiation.
Sirtot knew how unlikely it was that a new black pond would form to add to his lone source of nourishment, but in these final days, hope had not quite died. He basked momentarily in the expanding plasma, sensing its movement and absorbing its heat. It was so rare.
Later, after the plasma had stretched its darkening tendrils across the unending reaches, and indeed, no second pond had emerged, Sirtot returned his consciousness to his pond, a cool shoal in a frigid sea. Its rim had calmed since his trip. Reaching out he prodded surrounding dust and darkened lumps of dead star-stuff into its depths. The blue glow as they spiraled around and around, and finally in, cheered him. Slightly. If he listened carefully he could still feel the persistent ghost rhythms of the dead star in counterpoint to the time-spot. Both were slowing, deepening in pitch. As everything was.
Only a short way out from the pond the temperature dropped enough to cause him pain. Portions of his consciousness literally stopped, uncomprehending, swirling into mist. He jerked them back and warmed them by the glow of the pond's nearby blue ring. The pattering of particles slowly brought back sensation and, wantonly, he shoved more dust into the death spiral causing the geysers on both sides to spew out a colorful display. He knew it was a waste, but what difference did it make now? He witnessed the inward spiral of individual particles and waited out their near infinitesimal approach to infinity.
This game, too, grew tedious. Carefully guiding his pond, he began to move about in the darkness. He needed more dust. He needed more hardened cores. This area was now swept clean.
The cooling trend worsened. Reaching beyond the influence of his pond grew dangerous, but no less tempting. Indeed, the seductively cold bite of infinity seemed just beyond reach. Eventually it would cuddle up to him, an unwanted partner pool-side. Then he would simply stop. The true meaning of infinity—unending, unchanging.
Utit would have argued that the pond itself was the gateway to infinity, but that wasn't the path he wished to risk.
Ultimately, one end or the other would win out.
Alone, his certainty that there were no others any longer grew shaky. He scanned his surroundings sporadically, vainly searching for more blue sparks. Homesteads: signs of life, signs of companionship, some echo of Utit. Something he hadn't needed, hadn't even known he'd wanted, hadn't believed was important in a very long time. But Utit had gone into the pond so many pulses ago that even the memories were pulling slowly apart.
As he searched, Sirtot remembered when stars still filled the skies. There had been so much to taste, to hear, to create. There had been others like themselves: audiences, performers. But they were not essential then, and now there were none.
Sirtot remembered one performance particularly. Utit had placed their pond near the last star in a dead galaxy. As the last wisps of plasma were drained off into their pond, the performers had ridden on the slow spiral singing of their life, wrapping themselves in the plasma that shifted through a narrow color spectrum from red to blue before heading higher into the shorter and more brilliant sounds. He had watched, transfixed, until the plasma and the performers had tipped past the edge.
It had not occurred to him to ask them why.
That was not his purpose. His purpose was to observe, to watch, to allow it to happen by virtue of his observation. Inevitably, to remember.
Now, so much later, so many star-deaths later, he understood. When he'd watched the performance he'd had no comprehension of what was to come. Then, there had still been seemingly endless galaxies awaiting exploration. Not this persistent ebon void with only two slowly closing eyes to maintain the vigil and keep time. To what end learning the universe, to what end wandering the great vasties, if there was no one left to share what you'd tasted? As it cooled, as it died, what was there to keep him from taking the infinite spin down and run the shore around the maw of the pond? There would be little else to fuel it soon enough.
The time-spot finally spun down to nothing and had been guided into the pond. Only the dim eye of the final pulsing beat watched down upon him. For all he knew, that final star may have already died. It was far away, and he had kept no part of his consciousness focused upon it.
Sirtot looked down as a part of him dissolved and went wending toward the pond. The bits and pieces of his consciousness felt unsteady. He absently tried to pull other protons from his surroundings in an effort replace what had decayed, but there were none new. All had been around since the beginning, and they would all decay eventually.
He glanced at his pool and wondered if now would be a good time to take a dip.
Without warning he was suddenly elsewhere, the sounds different, the taste subtly wrong, the pond nowhere to be found. The cold rushed in at him, and then he was back by the feeble blue light of his shore amid the eternal night of his universe.
Then elsewhere again. He flitted about the universe as he decayed further. The cold slowly numbed his thoughts as each jump kept him from his pond.
Wait long enough and anything can happen, he thought to himself as his mad, undirected dance about the universe continued.
Suddenly all ponds were in the same place, all matter, the final spinning sun, and Sirtot. The greatest collection of mass since the beginning of the universe focused in twisted space. Before it could be elsewhere the mass and the black holes rushed in, Sirtot crushed among them. An impossibly dense white-hot point formed, and the universe whirled in about itself and shrank until even light disappeared. Sirtot, for the first time in untold pulses, was warm, then hot, then fluid, as his energy was made matter again.
With a great outrush it exploded, scattering Sirtot amid super-hot plasma. As he was spread out into the clouds his consciousness merged with the universe; he began to sense the others, returned. The performers from so long ago, minds he had shared passages of suns with, and Utit.
“It did lead to somewhere new!” Utit sang. The sweet taste of neutrinos and strings tangled in her thoughts. “Sirtot, I hope you join us soon.” Her thoughts darkened, her taste soured as she waited at the point from which she had emerged. But soon the sights and music and the warmth of the new universe distracted her. She rushed away as had the others.
He reached out to her to let her know he had never left but instead that she had stayed. Tendrils of golden plasma swirled at his effort. Utit danced around them and pulled others into a circle to enjoy the sound. He sang, and strings fluttered, he shouted and particles sped away, he screamed and light exploded. Each contortion only entertained them more as violet clouds of hot vapor began to clump and condense from his exertions, and Utit and the others watched and sang and whirled, enjoying the cacophony of creation.
But not one of them heard him, not even Utit.
His mood crackled and with it so did the plasma. The heat and colors ebbed, and fear blossomed in Utit's mind. Fear? Sirtot was hit with a cold stab of understanding that became a dark rift deep in the clouds. Utit twisted and fled from the cold rumble of the blackness.
Sirtot controlled himself and the rift warmed; he understood. Utit slowed as the heat returned and was swept up by a group of performers herding potential stars, the great dance continuing. He smiled a chorus of x-rays that pulsed through the performers, tickling them into waves of laughter. Utit effervesced, sparkling brighter to him than everything else. Her energy was sweet in his thoughts but she didn't recognize his color all around her. He could taste himself in her memories, but he was now only a void in her awareness.
The rift began to rumble again deep in his mind as he felt the weight of his solitude. The memory of her fear was still shrill in his mind, he couldn't—wouldn't—do that again.
Her thoughts were inside him. Utit was inside him.
The rumble subsided.
He could watch her. He could swirl the new matter into displays to delight her.
He could still make her smile.
Talk of Mandrakes is Copyright © 1987 by Gene Wolfe, and was previously published in Worlds of IF. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
THE MONS WERE NOT RUNNING. Peak coughed into his breather and turned aside shivering. What do you do when you have to be someplace? And can't get there?
The man beside him pulled car keys from a pocket.
Beg. “You're probably going to work,” Peak said. “I wasn't. I was going to Skybase Five."
The owner of the keys turned to look at him. Both were breaking the great unwritten rule of the city: Do not make eye contact.
“Here, sir,” Peak tried to make it smooth. “Let me show you.” His hand slid into his worn raincoat, past jacket and sweater, and unbuttoned his shirt. Slowly enough to let the owner of the keys see that it was not a weapon, he pulled out his wallet and punched the combination. The pass had come by unasked by e-secure and the picture was two years old, but it was still recognizable. “You can hold it if you want, sir. I trust you."
A thousand grumbling commuters swirled around them.
“Admit John Michael Peak, Ph.D.” The owner of the keys moved his lips when he read. He skipped Peak's number. “Thursday twenty-eight N eighty only, eleven hundred to thirteen hundred only. Building one-one-four.” He looked from the picture to Peak, then back at the picture. “Yeah. that's you all right."
“I'm in xbio,” Peak told him. “Doctor Selim wants to see me.” He did not add that the mere fact might make his career.
“Okay...” The owner of the keys said.
“You've got a car, sir, and you could take me. Downtown will be gridlocked already, with the mons down."
The owner of the keys nodded slowly at first. “Yeah.” A more rapid nod. “I could call in from out there. If they checked on me it'd be on the scan."
“Sure.” Peak had struggled to keep his voice normal. It was going to work!
“Naturally I can't tell the bastards why. Confidential. Come on!"
Together they left the station and rode the speedlator to the street. The car was yellow, and bigger than Peak had expected.
“This Selim,” the owner said as they pulled into traffic, “he was one of them?"
“The only xbiologist they had. They didn't really expect to find life."
“You can turn off your breather,” the owner said. “My car's got ox."
“Thanks.” Peak closed the valve. “Nice of you."
“Ram Boardman,” the owner said. He took a hand from the wheel.
Peak shook it. “Mike Peak."
The wheel motors hummed as they whizzed past the stalled millions headed toward the city. It took twenty minutes to get to the wire; after that it was all clear. Tracking guns picked them up, and the owner slowed as he murmured, “Request egress,” into the dash fone.
“Denied eight one seven H eight one JQ. Special circumstances?"
“We have special circumstances. Gov hicomf. John Michael Peak."
“Yes, sir. Park space one-oh-eight, sir."
The owner grinned at Peak. Peak grinned back.
The officer who showed Peak in wore cermet armor and carried a gun, but his expression was deferential behind his visor. He saluted when Peak showed his pass, and waved him through.
Doctor Selim joined him in the lobby half an hour later and actually said, “It's good of you to come, Doctor Peak."
“The greatest privilege of my life, sir."
“And good of you to say so. Get out this way much?"
“You can't.” Peak shook his head. “Not without a pass."
“So they tell me.” Selim sighed. He was middle-aged, short, slight, and dark. “Got it now? I want to show you my lab."
A new guard touched a button, and a light labeled SEC CHECK flashed green. The wall said, “Pleased to see you, Doctor Selim. Is this man with you?"
“Yes, he is."
A second light shone, this one marked VOC CHECK. The wall opened along an invisible seam. When it had closed behind them, Peak said, “I suppose we're still being monitored for our own safety, sir?"
“We are, but not by human beings. Not unless the central processor tags the record. So they tell me, and I think it's the truth. It would take a lot of people to listen to everything we say. I've looked for them, and they're not here."
Peak made finger motions, waves flying along a wire.
“Too vulnerable. Or anyway I hope so. I'm fifty years out of date, Doctor Peak. Do you realize that?"
“I'm current, Doctor Selim. Just got my Ph.D. With your off-world experience and my knowledge we'd make an unbeatable team.” He hoped it sounded plausible.
“Then tell me, what is it they're so frightened by?"
“Us."
“Extraterrestrial biologists?"
“People who don't work for them. You do, so they're not afraid of you. I'd like to work for them too—I'd love to, in fact—but I don't."
“We're going to fix that."
Peak swallowed. It was a hundred strides and more down a wide corridor more modern than anything he had ever seen before he could talk again. “They think we hate them,” he said at last, “and it's true for a lot of us. A lot of people hate science, any kind. Hate government. Not just ours, any government. They hold science and government responsible for...” His voice trailed off. “For everything,” he finished weakly. “For the way the world is."
“I've seen it,” Selim said. “A little of it at least."
“In the old days they had buildings downtown. Isn't that right?"
Selim nodded. “Fifty years here. It was only eighteen for me. Did I tell you?"
“I read it.” Peak swallowed. “If people got angry back then they could demonstrate. Throw rocks, maybe. My granddad did some of that. So they moved everything out into the country and they keep everybody else inside. Now they do things out here, and most people don't know what they are. I don't know what you're doing, Doctor Selim, and I'm dying to find out. And—and work with you on it, if you'll give me a chance."
Selim nodded again.
“But whatever it is, that's one of them."
“I could tell you another, but the central processor might pick it up. Let's just say they're thinking of moving farther away."
Though tempted to nod, Peak was not sure he understood. “Today I was going to ride the mon to Urban Cee-Cee and try to get a ride from there to keep my appointment with you. I thought with the pass you sent me, one of the people working at Cee-Cee might take me. Only the mons are down, so I got a man named Ram Boardman to drive me. He'd like more than anything to get in here, just for a minute or two, so he could say he's been inside. I promised I'd try."
“I assume he's not involved in extraterrestrial biology?"
“He's an exec, I think. He's got an exec car."
“I'll tell the guards to admit him later. I doubt that we want him standing around while we talk shop. Have you read my report?"
Peak shook his head. “They haven't released it yet. Maybe they never will. There was a summary on the news, but I don't know how good it was."
They turned a corner, and Selim opened a heavy metal door. “Welcome to my parlor,” he said.
There were lab benches and scanscopes, things that looked like plants and things in rectangular temperglass cases that did not look much like animals. Dominating the laboratory was a wall of temperglass; behind it, a small heap of blue-gray matter that scarcely seemed alive.
Selim led Peak toward it. “That is the focus of my collection, the most important specimen I brought back and a form of life more wonderful than anything Earth boasts. Do we begin with it or work up to it? You choose."
Desperately afraid they would be interrupted, Peak said, “Begin with it, please, Doctor."
“Good. I will begin by telling you that like many other things you see here it is neither plant nor animal as we understand those categories. Here's a young one.” Selim pointed toward a plant that resembled an African violet, save that it was black. “It has leaves, as you see, spread areas for the absorption of sunlight. It even puts down roots for such moisture and nourishment as it can obtain from the exhausted soil in which it grows."
“I see.” Peak rubbed his chin.
“But as it matures and stores enough energy to begin its reproductive cycle, its structure exhibits less and less organization. It now utilizes light only poorly. It is time for it to flower. You must see that for yourself. And for you to see it, it must see you and not see me. That glass is preventing it from seeing either of us. For the present, it perceives by ultraviolet, which is blocked by glass."
Selim walked to the edge of the temperglass wall and pressed a button. The wall rose swiftly and silently. “Go in, Doctor Peak. You'll still be able to hear me in there."
“Is it safe to touch?” Peak asked.
“Perfectly."
While the wall slid down behind him, he knelt before the blue-gray heap. It was pocked with pores a millimeter or two in diameter; its surface felt like a dry sponge. He said, “I suppose it must conserve water at this stage."
Selim's voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. “Exactly. It has lost its root structure and is entirely dependent on the water, carbon, and nitrogen stored in what was once its stem. Now it must hope for a visit from some mobile creature if it is ever to become mobile itself."
Peak turned to stare at him through the temperglass. “There's a mobile form?"
“Yes, for the dissemination of seed. Even Earth has them, as you surely know. Tumbleweeds, to give one example of many, discard their roots and roll as they are driven by the wind, dropping seeds as they go. The remarkable thing about this—what shall we call it?"
“Selimus, of course,” Peak said.
“In all humility, there will be more than one creature that will bear my name. Selimus dryas, perhaps. At any rate, the remarkable thing about this dryad is that it has no fixed mobile form. It imitates, at least to a degree, the form of the first mobile life of sufficient size to approach it. Touch it again where you touched it before."
Peak did as he was told, and felt human skin. The pores had shrunk, and there were whorls in the skin, like fingerprints.
“As it imitates you more exactly, it perceives you better. Look for the eyes. They should be appearing near the top about now."
They were brown, too close-set for human eyes, and nearly concealed by their single eyelid. As Peak watched, fascinated, they moved until there was five centimeters of rough brownish skin between them. The flap split, grew lashes of fine, black hair.
“You see, by imitating the mobile form before her, the dryad not only becomes mobile herself, but insures herself from harm. Very few animals attack their own kind. We are one, but the dryad has no way of knowing it, no doubt fortunately."
Filled with wonder, Peak shook his head. “It's intelligent?"
“Not at all. Yet it will leave you in doubt about that for a long, long time. It senses your approval or disapproval, you see, and shapes its course accordingly."
A hand—nearly formless, like a rubber glove painted with nails and knuckles—lifted from the place Peak had touched, growing faster than any mushroom. “The mandrake,” he whispered. “The mandrake's come at last. Or come back. I've never really been sure..."
“That the mandrake was merely the plant we call by that name? Neither have I. The old herbalists said it shrieked when it was dragged, after all; but the man-shaped part was surely the root, so I prefer to talk of dryads. You will recall that dryads, crowned with appropriate leaves, appeared from the trunks of their trees."
So suddenly it left Peak gasping, the dryad stood. What had been mere lumps were trousered knees; the stubby arms grew longer. The mottled area about the eyes became a jack-o-lantern face.
“You are repelled, Doctor Peak.” Selim's voice murmured from the speaker. “You see before you a Frankenstein, a golem. It senses your repulsion. Watch this."
The dryad's face writhed, seeming almost to shimmer.
“Now it seeks to become more like you to gain your approval. But it is not our doppelganger we hope to meet."
For a second or two, Peak saw the figure of a man much like himself. Soon its features softened and its hair lengthened. Breasts swelled beneath the threadbare raincoat it wore.
“Like any animal, she believes your clothes to be part of your self,” Selim continued smoothly. “That's why the bull charges the matador's cape, as you probably know. Should you attempt to unbutton that coat, you will find yourself struggling to loosen the bark of a tree."
The threadbare coat faded, absorbed by the dryad's skin Slowly she lifted a slender arm, beckoning.
He said, “You're not real..."
Her lip moved, opening and closing. A pink tongue moistened her lips.
“You wanted her to do that.” Selim's voice came from overhead. “She cannot speak, but your seed may provide the final impetus. If so, her spores will spead—or would, if she were released from that chamber—and sprout wherever they find a little moisture in a depleted soil. Go ahead."
Peak kept his voice firm. “Let me out of here."
“Do you find her so unpleasant? She will become beautiful for you, become whatever you wish. Isn't she what we all want? Don't we speak of falling in love with our disciplines? Of embracing our subjects? I have embraced mine, Doctor Peak, and want more specimens of Selimus dryas. New specimens adapted to Earth, an adaptation that will be provided by your genes."
Clumsy at first, the dryad's hands toyed with his clothing. It seemed to him that her eyes were full of wonder.
“My presence offends you,” Selim said. “We learned to be less squeamish on the ship, believe me. But I will go. You have an hour."
Peak watched him put down the microphone, turn, and stride away. The metal door closed behind him with a clang that was faintly audible through the temperglass. Peak could not hear, could only imagine, the click of a bolt.
Her fingers had found what they sought. He struck her and she cowered, but did not let go. In a rushing stream of irrelevant thoughts he found, never before like this. Soon he was pouring himself into her, his resolve melting in the primal rut, the overpowering urge to which she seemed as enslaved as he. His hand clasped his waist, drove her loins down upon his own.
Then he felt her tendrils within him, roots as fine as hairs probing and growing. Without the least thought of the mandrake, he screamed as he was dragged—screamed, though there was no one but she to hear him.
The dryad who rose to greet Selim was grossly obese, her thighs swollen, breasts like melons above her bulging belly. A hundred and twenty kilos, Selim decided: two hundred and sixty pounds at least, and perhaps more. “Enough?” he asked.
She shook her head, growing visibly taller.
He pressed a button, raising the temperglass. “You're integrating the information he carried, I assume."
She shrugged; and one hand rubbed her belly, which shook at her touch.
“There's still the man who brought him. I'll call the gate—the guards should have him there. I'll make the call, and tell them to get him. But you will have to speak if you want him. I trust you understand. You will have to tell him you're my secretary. I'll adjust the fone so that he sees only your face. Tell him—and them—that he's allowed in here.” Selim hesitated. “Tell him to drive in, to bring his car."
He thought of Earth as he had seen her since the ship returned, of the festering cities and poisoned oceans, of her enslaved billions.
“Let me speak to Mister Boardman, please."
In the age to come...
The dryad's face was twice the size of his. He adjusted the fone to compensate as she bent, a three-meter giantess, to speak into it. For an instant he envied the owner, at whom she smiled.
“Say,” she said. “You're cute!"
THE SECOND TIME, Stearns buried her himself. Only then could he be sure he had let her go.
He thought to wait beside her blanket-wrapped body until night came to shroud them both. McCune would not be back—the squaw man had bolted, eyes wild, as though the whole of the Shoshone nation was after him. And she might never know the Silver Land of her brother's letters, but he could give her a grave under the moon's shimmering silver light, light that spread over the prairie like a pallid mixture of memory and dreams. He could give her that much.
He looked about, considering. The sod promised hard digging after so many wagon wheels and trampling feet, but he knew the ground could be broken. A powder-dry mound hidden in the high grass encircling the campsite gave silent testimony to that.
Stearns tried to swallow, could not; pulled up his kerchief to mop his face, felt his hat brim slide in the greasy sweat on his forehead. One thought came to him, like a voice raised in prayer. She deserves a place of my choosing. He couldn't stay here, could not dig the second grave next to the first.
With new purpose he hobbled the oxen, loaded the wagon, locked both boxes, and lashed the canvas flaps closed. He saddled the horse, and hoisted the body in its soiled woolen blanket across the saddle like a burlap sack of wheat. The horse shifted nervously. Flies rose in a cloud as it twitched, but he rubbed its nose and spoke softly and the bay did not bolt.
Mounting behind her, he wedged her body between his thighs and the saddle horn. The spade he carried crossways to the horse's rump, lashed to the cantle. The cross for her grave would take care of itself.
Jeb Stearns spent his fifth day alone hunkered in the shade of the wagon while the sun rolled overhead in its rut like a great wheel. The prairie was huge around him, a chest-high sea of rippling grass that dwarfed his memory of the far Atlantic. That was a memory he tried not to conjure; the great bloody ball of the sun glaring down on black-streaked sand, sullen blue-gray water covered by the smoke of burning southern cities.
Here he was cast adrift with no shore in sight. Somewhere out there swam herds of buffalo with coyotes worrying them like barracuda, and Red Indians rode their painted ponies along the currents of the wind.
To stay afloat Stearns made his own island within the deserted camp with a trampled circle of grass as its shore. He shared it with two phlegmatic oxen and a skittish bay saddle horse that seemed perpetually confused by the lack of an evening stall, decent oats, and a nightly curry. Hannah had read to Stearns of the adventures of a man named Robinson Crusoe, cast adrift on a deserted island, and Stearns wondered if this was how Crusoe felt when he first dragged himself out of the ocean—stunned, paralyzed, life blown far off its original course.
But there was one difference Stearns could name. He was still drowning.
Hannah was gone.
The westering sun caught the wagon broadside and threw its shadow directly across the island of beaten-down grass. Past the fire pit, past the mound of scorched blankets where Hannah had lain in her fever, a darker shadow slashing through the stalks revealed a path beaten down by God-fearing men.
Four times, Stearns decided. First time to dig the grave, second time to fetch the body, third time to carry her out there and put her in the ground, fourth time to come back and wait. For Stearns, who'd been fool enough to bring his horse; Stearns, who'd ridden in desperate haste to the Green River ferry in search of a doctor; Stearns, who'd prayed to die in her place. Stearns, who had left his wife to die among strangers.
She was dead, Jeb. What would you have them do?
Stearns looked up, knowing full well he'd watched the damned Lutherans pack up and leave days ago. He was alone. Yet the voice sounded so real, so deep and full, with a fine irony just barely submerged. And a mean streak that Stearns could never have recognized as a child of ten.
“What do you want, Pa?” Stearns’ whisper vanished into the hot, still air. He scrubbed at his cheeks and forehead with a kerchief that came away filmed with dust and sweat. He needed water. He needed a decent meal. He needed a good night's sleep and his wife by his side when he awoke. Then he could leave.
And go where? Home?
Home. Stearns closed his eyes. He'd tried going home, first to his mama's boarding house and then to the little clapboard where he and Hannah had set up housekeeping, but near every night he'd bolt awake with the stink of gun powder and burning flesh in his nostrils and the sight of starving, half naked Southern trash—white folks, not just coloreds—in his eyes. Sometimes instead he watched his brother Nick get cut down amidst the flash and roar of rifle fire. Maybe his rifle fire.
Perhaps he could continue on to Hannah's fabled Silver Land. The letter from Elias Cragmore, Hannah's brother, telling of the silver fields in the Owyhee country had spurred his decision to move west. There was a good living to be had for a hard-working man, said Elias, plenty of room for everyone. They could leave the gold miners to their fever and still never want for a roof over their heads and meat in their children's bellies.
But how could he face Elias without Hannah? How could he bear to look at Elias and see Hannah?
His papa spoke again, the contempt in his voice curling about Stearns like the smoke of half-remembered cigars. Son, your grief has unmanned you.
“No,” Stearns whispered. “I've fought in a war. War's supposed to make you a man."
As if in answer, shadowy figures emerged from the grass to encircle the camp. They were no more than vapor and dust but he knew them—knew they wore gray wool or blue wool or wool the color of blood and dirt. With Hannah gone they were free to torment him. Stearns pushed himself to his feet and plunged into the light beyond the wagon, eyes closed to the setting sun.
Hannah. If she was with him he'd be safe. She always chased the ghosts away. He dreamed his supper where he stood: smelled biscuits baking as Hannah rolled out the dough for another batch; heard the snap of beans as Hannah bent over a colander; watched Hannah spoon drippings over a roast, her cheeks flushed and stray wisps of hair curling against her damp neck.
Stearns reached for her, wanting taste and touch as well, and stumbled, eyes opening as a shooting star slashed across the sky. He shivered with cold. How long had he stood there? Stiff, hollow, Stearns stumbled around the wagon and back into his little island. Instead of collapsing on his bedroll he let the silver tide of the moon sweep him toward Hannah's grave.
When he reached the mound he sank down until his head slipped beneath the shining waves of grass. As he had each night since his wedding, Stearns lay beside his wife and fell asleep.
The bellowing of the team woke him. He shivered in the cold that clung to the ground and curled around himself, throwing out an arm as though he expected it to land in the soft valley between rib and hip. His palm slapped the layer of hoarfrost that covered her grave and reality flooded into him. As he lay stunned, both oxen bellowed in concert, followed by a nervous whinny from the horse.
He rose, stumbling toward camp like a clockwork man. The animals huddled in the lee of the wagon and shifted nervously; the bay rolled its eyes and stamped a hoof into the hard sod.
A shapeless, filth-encrusted figure lay by the firepit.
The dirt-gray lump unfolded enough for Stearns to see ragged skirts and bare dirty feet and small hands reaching. Long, loose, grimy hair fell about her face. Dirt coated her, sealed her lips, sweet dust smell masked human sweat. Wide, blue, blank eyes looked first at Stearns, then westward. She pulled her lips apart and Stearns watched the slow effort, fascinated. “Silver Land,” she said. That was all.
Stearns wrapped her in a blanket, wincing at the feel of her cold, dirt-caked flesh. He pulled her closer to the fire and stoked it with lumps of buffalo dung, then sat back to watch her, distaste making its way toward dislike.
Who was she? How had she come here? And how did she know Hannah's name for the silver fields along the Owyhee River? Stearns puzzled over the questions she'd brought, but weighing on him more was the decision he now faced. He needed to take this woman either back to Fort Bridger or forward to Soda Springs as soon as she was fit to travel. He would have to choose his path, and he would have to leave his wife.
He squatted beside the woman while time sank into the brassy heat and flowed past, unnoticed; he watched the rise and fall of her breast, and it seemed to him that he had never seen a simpler movement. Finally he roused himself to fetch water that he might clean her up.
Stearns winced at the second pot, shrugged at the third. He'd reach fresh water soon enough, no matter which direction he chose. And a good cleaning made a definite difference in the woman's appearance. She was pretty, lying there on the blanket; she hadn't moved during Stearns's ministrations, but her breathing had slowed and her color had improved. He fetched some of Hannah's old clothes—the dresses the Lutherans told him to burn—and clothed her in a simple blue gingham. Honey-brown hair, just beckoning to the bees, fanned out across the old jacket he eased under her head. Delicate features looked almost doll-like in repose, and Hannah's dress was much too big.
Stearns arranged her skirts. She was nothing like his Hannah, and that was important to him. Undressing her, bathing her, pulling Hannah's gingham over her head and around her hips had been like lugging about a sack of feed, for all that he thought she was pretty. She lacked Hannah's spark.
He stood, stretched cramped legs, and left her to do his chores. The oxen grunted impatiently as he staked them to a new patch of ground. He fetched oats for the horse, which could not stomach much of the tough native fodder. Then Stearns fixed his own meal, which had somehow turned from breakfast into dinner. The first bite of cornmeal mush nearly gagged him—he'd forgotten the salt again. He turned his head to spit and saw the woman eying him from her blanket. He swallowed instead and cleared his throat. “Afternoon, Ma'am,” he said, feeling foolish.
The woman watched Stearns, her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes, though a gentle blue in color, reminded him of a river's thick winter ice: her gaze was cold, and movement in the depths seemed distant. “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice, while thin, was clear.
Stearns hesitated, searching for a way to soften his response. “I'm afraid I have to ask you the same question, Ma'am. And how you come to be laying in the middle of my camp."
“I—” She tried to raise up on her elbows, but weakness pulled her back. “Is that how you found me?"
Stearns nodded. “Yes, Ma'am. Hunched up next to the firepit. You were all dirty. I had to clean you up some.” He felt a trace of embarrassment.
The woman didn't seem to hear. She stared upward with narrowed eyes and intent expression, as though watching something; pictures of herself, perhaps, flickering like a magic lantern show. It seemed to Stearns that she never saw clear, for when she turned to him, fear cracked the ice-smooth glaze of her eyes. “What is my name?” she asked.
“I don't know, Ma'am,” he said.
She bit her lip. “Please, just tell me."
“Hush, now,” Stearns murmured. He tried to remember how his mama had soothed the fever from him when he was small. “Don't take on so. You've been real sick, but particulars will come back to you. You see if they don't."
“I have no particulars.” She twisted under the blanket, grasped at his sleeve. “I have nothing to remember, not anymore. You have my name. Please give me my name."
Stearns pulled away, unnerved by her fear. “You're talking wild,” he said. “I tell you what. I'll find your camp. There'll be something there that'll tell who you are. A family Bible? It's all I can do,” he said, nettled by the look she gave him.
“Why won't you tell me my name?” she whispered. She finally nodded and lay back, her eyes clouding. Stearns fetched a drink of water and she stared at him over the cup. “Aren't you going?"
“Now? In the mid-day heat?"
“Of course, now.” She gazed at him with those remarkable eyes, and the day suddenly felt cooler. Stearns stared back.
“Of course,” he echoed. “Of course.” Why not now? Good idea, to find out where she belonged, so he could get rid of her and get back to mourning his wife.
He removed the horse's hobbles and saddled up, making certain he lashed on the Sharp's scabbard and took along plenty of cartridges. The bay protested at the weight of the wool saddle blanket on this hot afternoon, but Stearns merely heaved the saddle up after it and rammed the horse sharply in the ribs with his knee when it puffed out its chest. It blew loudly and gave him a reproachful look. Stearns mounted, looked down at the woman. She nodded, face blank, eyes dark.
“Any idea which direction I'm supposed to head?"
She looked away. “You saw which direction I faced. Head the other way."
Stearns reined the horse about and faced east. Damn and blast her, he thought, sweat slicking his hat band and trickling through his whiskers. The sun creaked along.
As the campsite disappeared behind him Stearns’ dead brother Nick walked toward him through the grass. No—the grass was going through Nick. The blood stains on his Confederate uniform looked real enough, though. He turned and paced the horse with a measured tread unaffected by gopher holes. Stearns was glad that Nick walked beside his left boot—his brother had taken a musket ball through the left eye.
Other men joined Nick, some walking behind, some to each side. Some Stearns recognized, some he did not. Some he had killed, some had died in his arms. To his right marched a man in blue whose leg was blown off at the knee. He marched as though his leg was whole, jagged bone and shredded flesh swinging in time to his stride. All of them looked real in the bright day.
Stearns rode stiff and clumsy in the saddle, eyes fixed straight ahead. They'd never been so clear. The horse tossed its head and snorted as though it could see them too, but Stearns knew it only felt his fear. He felt his fear as cold sweat running down his cheeks and back, as a dark, metallic taste at the back of his throat. Without Hannah to pull him back to the living, without Hannah to ease him awake from his dreams with whispered words of, “Let the dead go, Jeb. Take hold of me,” they would only become more real, he knew it. His hand went back to rest on the butt of the Sharps in its saddle scabbard. Would he have to kill them again? Is that what it would take to be left alone?
They're already dead, boy. His father's voice.
Stearns craned about in the saddle, but all he could see was the grass, the marching men, and the hot sun beating down. “Pa? Where are you? Show yourself."
A ghostly chuckle. Getting shot once in the heart is quite enough, thank you.
“Coward,” Stearns whispered, a quiet word carrying the weight of a lifetime.
The air had taken on an unnatural chill and Stearns shivered as what felt like the breath of the dead blew against his neck. He kept his gaze fixed on his own bobbing shadow as it stretched out longer and longer, just like a piece of taffy—and then he realized it was the only one. He glanced about. The soldiers were gone; all but Nick, who looked up at him, one eye a familiar blue, the other a bloody ruin. He keeps his shadow inside, Stearns thought. Nick grinned and Stearns looked away.
When the sun was half-way to dusk Nick left him. Stearns, dozing in the saddle, straightened up and there, ahead, was the woman's camp. The sight of a lone wagon in a circle of trampled grass triggered a sense of knowing so strong that for a moment he wondered if he'd somehow circled around and come back on his own camp, but here the fire was dead, all the teams gone.
He rode up on the deserted camp slowly, conscious of the long shadows stretching out from the sole remaining wagon. It sat on the west side of a circle of trampled grass big enough to accommodate seven or eight wagons. It was small and new like his but the shadow it cast stretched huge and looked pinned to the prairie like a black bear hide to the wall of a shed. Someone could hide in that shadow, or in the bed of the wagon itself.
Pulling his rifle free, he dismounted and dropped the reins. The bay nosed the grass, looking for forage—a good sign. Judging by how little the grass had rebounded, Stearns figured the camp had been abandoned no later than yesterday afternoon.
“Hello,” he called. “Name's Jeb Stearns, out of Saint Joe. Don't mean no harm."
No answer. Carrying the rifle across his chest with his thumb on the hammer, Stearns picked his way toward the wagon. Almost, he wished he'd kept the bayonet. A few thrusts through the wagon's canvas awning would do a lot to settle his nerves.
And if someone was still in there sick? Stearns thought of Hannah and shrugged. He laid a palm against the warm, silvery wood. The wagon was utterly still, no life left in the wood, none of the creaks and groans brought on by shifting bodies.
Stearns opened his eyes. The shadow was clearer to him now. He could see a raised mound in the center, and his stomach lurched. He turned away, taking deep breaths to calm himself. Sweet Jesus, but he was tired of graves.
He sighed, then hoisted himself up and peered through the oval opening in the canvas awning. The wagon was stripped bare. No flour or cornmeal or beans in casks, no salt or bacon in stamped containers, no oil or molasses in jugs, no tools, no trunks, no bedrolls, no clothing.
If the grave held the woman's dead husband, Stearns wished him still alive. The two families seemed to have had much in common. Perhaps they could have traveled together, been friends by the time they reached the new land.
With an effort he shook away his wishes, climbed down from the wagon and poked about the camp. He could not bring himself to approach the grave but examined the camp's perimeter, finding traces of six or seven wagons. The woman's party hadn't been very big, though they must have stayed for some time, to judge by the pile of ashes Stearns found on the east side of camp.
Yep, quite a pile. He examined it more closely, scattering the ashes with the toe of his boot. Charred pieces of cloth turned up, and thicker pieces, like blanket materiel and leather: a belt, boots, a woman's high-buttoned shoes. Stearns squatted down by the ashes and looked from the cloth to the wagon and back. Her clothing had been burned. He could understand the remains of a man's clothing, but why hers? Had she been so sick that the rest of the party had left her to die? Stearns examined the scraps of cloth, their patterns still visible: delicate sprays of cherry blossoms, plain gingham. A sudden sparkle caught his eye and Stearns scooped up an ash-coated ring. His prodding had rubbed away a spot of gray, letting the gold underneath catch the setting sun.
A wedding ring. A woman's wedding ring. He burnished it on his sleeve and stuck his pinky inside, trying to clean out the center. Only the tip of his finger fit. She was small-boned. It would probably fit her.
The ash caught in fine grooves on the ring's inner surface. It was engraved—most likely with the woman's name. Stearns squinted at the fine lines, but Hannah had been the reader. She'd taught him to sign his name and to recognize the Lord's Prayer, but his knowledge of letters didn't go much past that. He wrapped the ring in a kerchief and tucked it in his breast pocket.
Stearns looked up from the pile of ash at the shadow-swallowed mound. He thought of all the dirt he'd cleaned off the woman. He rose from his crouch like hackles rising on a dog and walked slowly toward it, dreading what he'd find but filled with a dry-mouthed fascination.
The one quick glimpse he'd taken from the wagon hadn't shown him the second grave next to the first. It wasn't mounded, it was scooped out, dirt, rocks and roots scattered about.
The second grave was empty.
Sweet Lord above, they'd buried her alive.
She was up when he returned, clutching the edge of the wagon bed and gazing inside, as though contemplating the hopeless task of lifting herself in. The thought of her abandonment had made Stearns more kindly towards her and he straightened in alarm. “Here, now. Should you be up, Ma'am?"
“I thought to make supper,” she answered with a shaky laugh. “Atone for my cruelty at sending you into the hot afternoon."
“Never you mind about that.” Stearns dismounted and helped her back to the bedroll he'd set up in the wagon's shade, but dusk had blown in on a cool breeze and she shivered. He could feel the chill run through her slender body. Her hair was still down and it brushed his cheek. He should find her some of Hannah's hairpins. He cleared his throat. “Time to move you closer to the fire."
“Time to tell me what you found,” she answered lightly, but her fear shone through the darkening air.
Stearns contented himself with wrapping a blanket securely around her shoulders. When she had it clutched tightly in her thin fingers, he left her to build up the fire. He did not speak. The delicate band of gold nestled in his kerchief weighed him down like a millstone. How to tell her she'd been abandoned by her party, left for dead, her possessions burned?
“Please, sir.” It came out a whisper, but it cut through the sough of the breeze to lodge deep in Stearns’ gut.
He straightened and sighed. Supper could wait. “Your party's gone, Ma'am."
“Gone?” Her gaze turned inward and Stearns looked away. “What do you mean, ‘gone'?"
“Only your wagon's left, and it's been stripped. There's nothing there."
She shook her head, still not seeing him. “I don't understand. You have my name..."
He felt the ring burn his chest through layers of cloth. For a moment he thought to creep away from camp that night and fling it into the prairie. She could choose her own name. She could make a new life, far from sickness and stench and death.
No. She surely had kin. Her husband, Lord protect his soul, the same. They deserved to have word of their own. “I did find your wedding ring, Ma'am. There's writing on the inside of the band, but—my eyes don't see such tiny words so well."
He pulled the kerchief from his pocket and carefully shook the ring onto one palm. He looked up. She was staring not at his hands but at his face, and her eyes burned.
Stearns felt the fear that had been flowing sluggishly through him since he found her grave well up to draw him down. After the war he'd found he no longer believed in all things holy, but things unholy still plagued him and the light in her eyes made him step back.
“Hannah,” she said. “My name is Hannah Stearns."
Night trapped Stearns at the edge of a tiny circle of firelight. He plodded around and around it, unable to venture farther out, unable to come in to the warmth of the fire, like a dray beast harnessed to a millstone. His millstone sat by the fire and watched him. Sometimes her eyes flashed silver.
The moon rose, once again flooding the prairie with a cold light. Stearns faced Hannah's grave and imagined he could feel the moon's light on his face, but tonight the grave did not call. According to the demon woman the grave did not call because she was Hannah. She neither looked nor sounded nor smelled like Hannah, yet the sound of the wind in the dry stalks echoed the gentle rhythm of her breathing until Stearns felt himself hollowed by her indrawn breaths and given form by her sighs.
He turned away from the moon, away from the grave. A ground hog whistled a warning as the silhouette of an owl eclipsed the stars. The demon woman could only be Hannah—or even a demon—if she was real. Stearns pictured the extra places his ma always set at her table, first for Pa, then for Nick. Had Ma ever looked up from a bowl of butter beans to see Pa wink at her? Had she watched Nick run his finger under his Sunday-best collar, which always seemed too tight?
Maybe Stearns had conjured this Hannah out of whole cloth, like his other ghosts. But why in the body of a stranger? Every dead man who plagued him wore the face God had given him. At least the parts of it that hadn't been blown off.
Stearns took one step beyond the circle of trampled grass.
“Jeb."
He had yet to speak his given name. Stearns kept going, swimming through the grass, tripping on gopher holes, fleeing the firelight, the woman, the grave. Finally he came to a shuddering halt and as his breath calmed he looked about to find himself adrift on a ghostly sea. Great swatches of prairie grass rippled in the cold wind, leading a dance of shadows—now black, now silver, then black again, like doors opening and closing. Leaving the clean yellow light of the fire had been a mistake. Stearns closed his eyes and gave in to drowning.
He wasn't surprised to feel her hand slip around the crook of his elbow, though he hadn't heard her approach. He tensed. If she noticed, she gave no sign.
“Isn't it beautiful, Jeb?"
He looked down at this woman so different from his wife, that strange voice holding the same sweet awe, the differently-colored eyes shining the same silver in the starlight. “This is your time, isn't it. You're strong now."
She glanced at him and smiled. “I do believe I'm feeling stronger every moment. It's not the Silver Land I'd hoped for, but I can be happy anywhere with you.” She gave his arm a little squeeze. “Look at that moon. Just like the one you knelt under when you proposed to me."
Stearns remembered that night: a harvest dance, she in her crinolines, her mother's cameo at her throat, her hair shining in the lamplight. He pleaded a game leg—his war wound—and she let him steal her away from the crowds, from the chaperones, steal her out into the moonlight. Remembering, his throat tightened. “Why do you torment me?"
“I never told you this,” she said, “but I almost said no."
“You—what?"
“You asked me to wait for you and I did, but when you came back, I—I was so frightened. You were still Jeb, but not the same Jeb who rode off to war with a lock of my hair you pledged to keep next to your heart."
Stearns stared at her, mute. He believed.
“When you came back you were like a shadow—so thin and worn. You hardly spoke. You never smiled. I came to read to you and you snatched the Bible from me and threw it against the wall.” Her voice shook, and in spite of himself Stearns slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I finally asked my mama, and she said, ‘Honey, men are doctors, but women are healers. If you love that boy, you can help him.’ So I said to my mama, ‘I love that boy.'” She sighed and settled against him. “I still love you, Jeb. And you still need healing. Take hold of me, Jeb."
Stearns pulled her close, breathing in the unfamiliar scent of her hair. He thought of the times he'd thrashed awake from a nightmare filled with dead men to find Hannah holding him, whispering his name. He thought of the times he'd flinched at shadows, jumped at the slam of a window. He thought of her leavetaking from her ma, back in Saint Joe, and wondered for the first time what it had cost her not to cry. “Hannah."
Jeb Stearns joined his wife in the circle of the blanket and pulled her down in the sweet-smelling grass. Afterward, as he had each night since his wedding, Stearns lay beside his wife and fell asleep.
Sometime in the night Stearns had a dream.
He stood before Hannah's grave in the moonlight, but she had a real stone at her head, not some cross scratched in the dirt. The stone was covered in words and pictures of angels, all graven deep. Hannah stood beside him, wearing the dress she'd worn on their wedding day. The tiny flowers woven into the cotton looked black in the moonlight, like worm tracks.
“What does that say?” she asked, pointing to the stone, her voice hollow and quiet and not her own, her face turned away.
“What do you mean?"
“What does that say?” Again she pointed to the headstone.
“I don't know, Hannah,” he said. “Why are you asking me that? You know I can't read."
She dropped her hand and looked at him, eyes like sulfur pools and features cut by runnels, like melted wax. Then she turned and walked away, swaying with the grasses.
“I don't understand, Hannah. Wait. Hannah!"
He called her name, again and again, only slowly coming awake to see gray dawn between slivered eyelids, feel arms around him, hear a soft voice in his ear. “Hush, William,” it said. “Hush, William. Hush."
Horror and disgust in equal measure jolted Stearns awake. He reached for this woman who was not Hannah to shove her away, but the first touch brought memory, and with it sorrow and shame. The arms that held him so gently felt another body, the lips that whispered such loving words brushed against another's hair. And how could he begrudge her that?
The woman did not seem to come awake as Stearns had; instead, as she held him he could feel her shudder against him with the cold and damp, and Stearns cursed himself for falling asleep out in the open air. Whatever soul might grace it, this body was still weak.
He stroked her arm and whispered back until the woman stilled, head limp against his shoulder. Then he gathered her up and carried her to the wagon. The sun followed him in. After he'd settled her in a nest of blankets, Stearns studied her face in the light streaming through the awning. How could this delicate thing ever be Hannah?
The woman shifted restlessly and her pale lips parted with the effort of her breathing. Stearns wondered if he weren't asking the wrong question. How could this delicate thing ever not be Hannah, if that was what Hannah wanted? She wasn't now, not completely, not yet. Stearns knew that. He'd seen the second grave and he had no illusions about who William was.
But he knew he'd held Hannah last night. She wanted to come back to him. And he knew he would do what he could to help her.
He stroked the woman's forehead. She shifted and sighed, and he decided he liked the widow's peak.
The woman awoke uncertain and angry. If she remembered the night she'd shared with Stearns, she gave no sign. As they ate, he told her they would lay by for a few more days.
“Why don't we leave now?” She spoke lightly, but Stearns saw how tightly she gripped her spoon.
“Where would you have me take you?"
The woman slumped forward and set her tin plate on the dirt. A clump of mush had collected at one corner of her mouth and Stearns quelled an impulse to take her spoon and scrape it off, as though she were a baby. “You say I'm your wife,” she finally said. “I would go with you."
“I want you to know you're my wife,” said Stearns. “You've been sick. I want you to rest until you get better, and as you get better you'll remember more."
“Yes, husband.” Her mouth twisted, and she turned away.
“Hannah. What is it?"
She turned to face him but her hands worked and her mouth was still bitter. “Why is it that when I say ‘husband’ I see a tall man with black hair?"
Stearns stared at her, his skin suddenly cold despite the rising morning heat. He tossed the last few clumps of dung on the fire and waved away a puff of ash. “Rest now,” he said roughly. “We need more chips, but I won't be long. When I get back I'll show you all your things. They'll help you remember."
Stearns retrieved a burlap sack from the wagon. The pickings near the wagon were getting slim, and Stearns added a little grease from the frying pan to the fire to darken the smoke. Sometimes smoke just disappeared into the bone-white mid-day sky, and he didn't want to get lost. He kissed Hannah good-bye as he left the camp. She stiffened, but did not turn away.
If they stayed much longer he could use the oxen's droppings, he thought wryly as he set out through the grass. The thought brought more sober ones. Should he stay with this woman who was part Hannah, part not? Last night his future had once more seemed secure; sitting next to her this morning, he'd had a vision of himself hitching up the team and taking her to where her group waited in line at the ferry.
“She came to me,” Stearns said out loud. But had Hannah come because she'd wanted to, or because he'd cried out for her so loudly she could not resist?
Stearns’ father waited for him beside a clump of dung. He still looked as he had to an adoring boy of ten, but now Stearns would call him a dandy. Fine black wool trousers, fine white silk shirt, an even finer silk waistcoat with a small hole over the heart, charred at the edges. The sun gleamed off white spats and a heavy gold watch chain and more than one diamond ring. His hair was thickly pomaded, his moustaches waxed to exquisite points. He smiled. A gold tooth flashed in the prairie sun.
“Lovely woman,” said his father.
Stearns stopped.
“Didn't think she was your type, though. She wouldn't have been my type. ‘Course, you're not my son."
Stearns jerked forward, fists like stones. “How dare you."
“Don't get all het up, boy. I'm talking metaphorically. Even our Lord Jesus Christ liked to talk metaphorically. Just look at all them parables."
Stearns breathed deep while his anger ebbed.
“I only mean you're more your mama's boy.” Stearns would agree with that—Mama was the crazy one, after all. “A very responsible young man. Served his country, now he's tryin’ his best to take care of his family."
Stearns closed his eyes. “Leave me be."
“It wouldn't have done you any harm to learn stud poker, is all I'm sayin'. Or blackjack. Nick learned. Got pretty good at it, too. We play sometimes, ain't that so, Nick?"
Nick now stood at Stearns’ left. When the ball took Nick's eye it took most of the left side of his face. Nick's response was not intelligible.
“'Course, he's a bit older than you. I got a chance to teach him afore I left. Taught him a few more games since we met up again."
Stearns turned to face his father, anger rushing through him again. “Too bad you couldn't see fit to stay with your family."
“'Coward,’ I think you said.” His father nodded. “I admit it. ‘Course, that's another difference between you and me."
“What? You're a coward?"
“No, son.” His father's voice was grave and sad. “I died by violence, but I never lived by it."
To his surprise, hot tears stung Stearns’ eyes. His father sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. It felt as real as Hannah had last night. “Jebediah, my son,” he said gently, “my gold pocket watch was my last stake and my lucky deck of cards got me shot, so all I have to give you is this piece of fatherly advice. A rifle is not a tool of the brave.” Stearns’ father began to fade away. Nick was already gone.
“Pa?” Stearns whispered.
“And it strikes me as a mite cockeyed to hide from the dead behind the dead. Speaking metaphorically, of course. Or perhaps not.” A wry chuckle faded with the figure until both blended in with the faint rustle of swaying grass.
The sun was high overhead when Stearns got back to camp with a full bag and an empty heart. The woman slept in the stifling wagon bed, Hannah's few dresses and petticoats strewn around her, her face stained with tears. Stearns wondered how looking at the old things could help her become Hannah when none of them fit.
He'd fix dinner and wake her when it was ready. He jumped down and rounded the back of the wagon.
A stranger stood near the firepit, taking in the whole of the camp with a calculated air.
Stearns swore, and the stranger turned and gave him the same calculation. He was dressed in a ragged but well-tanned buckskin shirt, pants and high moccasins. A fringed and quilled wallet hung from his belt and tiny shells and trade beads were worked into his greasy blond hair. Long exposure to the sun had left his face a cracked and seamed dark red. Stearns eyed him warily. He'd heard of squaw men hiring themselves out to groups on the trail as hunters and guides, but the Lutherans had had no truck for men who consorted with heathens.
The squaw man gave Stearns a gap-toothed grin. The teeth he still had were tobacco-brown. “Afternoon, friend,” the man called in a clear, friendly voice with more than a touch of Dixie. “Saw your smoke. Name's McCune.” Not a Frenchman, then. The man pointed south. “Ferry's that way.” Not enough fur on him to be a Frenchman. Confederate deserter?
“I know where the ferry is,” said Stearns curtly. “My wife's sick. I'm waiting for her to get better, then we'll catch up with our party."
The squaw man looked him up and down. “You with the Methodists? They had some sickness. Couple folk died."
Stearns shook his head and made a show of brushing past with the bag of dung. He dumped it next to the pit and dropped a few lumps on the fire. The squaw man watched, blue eyes sparkling, like a smart child studying a knotted string.
“Lutherans? Big fat pastor with a beard like Moses? All the men built like two-legged steers?"
Stearns kicked at the fire. It spit back.
McCune's eyes widened. “You're the touched one, ain't you. They told me about you. Wouldn't leave your dead wife."
Stearns backed away, toward the wagon. Toward Hannah. “Leave my camp, please."
McCune shrugged. “Being out here can do some strange things to folks. I've seen worse.” With his seamed and weathered face it was impossible to tell his age, but he couldn't have been much older than Stearns. “When you're ready to leave you'll need a guide and I'm in need of employment. I get you where you want to go and you give me the horse. We'll call it even."
Stearns felt warm wood against his back. “I said leave."
“Who's there?” The woman's voice, thin and querulous. The canvas behind Stearns parted. He turned to the woman, but not before he had the satisfaction of seeing McCune's jaw drop.
She looked down at him, her face slack, her eyes clouded. Stearns hauled himself into the wagon and took her arm. “Just a visitor, Hannah. He's leaving now."
She blinked. “Did William come? Who's Hannah?"
“They said she was dead.” McCune had moved closer and now peered up at the woman. “She don't look so good."
“Will you kindly not speak of it? You'll upset her. Just go, please."
McCune looked not one whit abashed. “I'm not leaving. You need me, you fool, whether you'll admit it or not. You're short supplies, and your wife can't even remember her name."
The woman leaned out of the wagon and would have fallen had Stearns not caught her and handed her reluctantly down to the squaw man. He had to kneel to keep tight hold of her, and his knee slid painfully off the barrel of his rifle. He stared at it, his mouth suddenly gone dry. The woman pulled away from them both, swung to clutch the tailboard.
“I know how to tell you my name,” she said to McCune, her voice almost girlish. “My wedding ring. It's engraved on my wedding ring.” She pulled a kerchief—Stearns’ kerchief—from her bosom as Stearns slapped his empty breast pocket.
“Hannah, no.” As she shook the ring free and handed it to McCune, Stearns’ hand closed around the rifle's polished stock and he knew he was a breath away from once more pointing it at another man.
McCune peered at the ring. “Mighty small writing."
“Put it down.” Stearns fitted the rifle to his shoulder and laid his thumb on the hammer. “I said, put it down."
“'My Elizabeth—mine forever. William. 1859.'” McCune raised his eyes from the ring and froze, gaze locked on the rifle. From now until it spoke back, Stearns knew, McCune would talk to the gun, not to him. “Hold on here, William, my boy. Don't know what your beef is with me, but—"
“That's not William,” said the woman Elizabeth.
McCune risked a glance at the woman, then back at Stearns. “Elizabeth? William? Brewster?"
She shuddered, eyes wide and fixed on McCune like a beaten dog on its master.
“Hannah, don't listen to him."
“The barber said you were dead.” McCune, whey-faced under his grimy tan, threw the ring down in the dirt and backed away. “The barber said they buried you both."
“Me and my husband,” said the woman, her voice matter-of-fact. “But he's not my husband."
Hannah—he could not lose Hannah again. McCune, who had brought this other woman's life with him—the rifle would take care of McCune. Stearns thumbed back the hammer and set the hair trigger. “I told you.” He sighted down the barrel at McCune, who stumbled backward and cursed and prayed to God Almighty. He curled his index finger around the trigger guard, brushed by the hair trigger so close he could feel it. “I told you to stop."
“Jeb!” Hannah's voice. He turned and saw Hannah once more look through Elizabeth's eyes. “Jeb. Let him go."
Let the dead go.
But McCune wasn't dead. Hannah was. Stearns laid his forefinger against the hair trigger as gently as if it was his wife's lips.
A rifle is not a tool of the brave.
His papa was wrong.
Sometimes it was.
As the sun set Stearns sat by the grave and talked while the breeze snatched the flower petals he'd scattered on her grave and swirled them about. He spoke of how the sky passed through rose and gold and pearl on the way to night. He said he'd puzzled out what to tell Elias when he reached the silver fields; did she want to hear? He promised to take better care of the horse.
The moon rose, waning from full but still huge and gravid. His talk changed: he described the life they should have had. He looked up into the belly of the moon as though it was a screen for a magic lantern show. He described their sons, tall and clear-eyed, with her brains and his willingness to work. He told of their daughters, as sassy as their mama but just as loving.
As he spoke, his sight grew clearer. The boys pooled their claims and founded the richest mine in the state. The girls married hard-working men who joined their brothers, or cut down the timber to build their homes, or grew the crops that fed them. He saw grandchildren come along. He saw Hannah, still pretty, still saucy, cosseting the youngest, teaching the oldest whatever they had the patience or wit to hear.
None of the boys—not their sons, nor their grandsons—fought in a war. And none of the girls—not daughter, nor daughter-in-law, nor granddaughter—died in a tent on the prairie, surrounded by strangers.
And at the end, the two of them in one bed, holding hands.
The lantern show winked out.
He looked down at the grave. “That's what we should have had,” he said. “Lot of things I should have had in this life. A pa. A brother. A life without killing. Not having them twisted me, and because of that I made you suffer. I am truly sorry."
With that, he stretched out on the ground, head pillowed against the dirt mound of the grave. His eyes closed to the sound of her breathing in the wind.
She came to him one last time in his dream, and this time she was Hannah—clear-faced, clear-voiced, clear-eyed. She took his hand and raised him up from the burial mound on which he slept. She kissed him, then turned him to face the prairie, painted silver, painted gray. In the shadows lived ghosts.
“Don't stay in the Silver Land,” she said. “It's not a fit place for the living."
He kissed her one last time. “All right, Hannah,” he said. “You know best. You always have."
Hannah smiled at that, and touched his face. She turned and walked away.
Stearns didn't try to follow.
"Logs” is an excerpt from Conventions of War, Book Three of Dread Empire's Fall, which will be published in 2005 by HarperCollins (U.S.) and Simon & Schuster (U.K.)
LORD GARETH MARTINEZ ate alone in his office, staring sourly at the plump buttocks and chubby faces of the naked winged children that so oddly ornamented his office walls. He was served by his cook, Perry, and he dined alone.
It was normal for him to eat by himself. He was the squadron's tactical officer. A tactical officer was normally a lieutenant, and would mess in the wardroom, a kind of club for the lieutenants. Martinez, a full captain, couldn't take a meal in the wardroom without an invitation. Squadron Leader Chen had her own dining room, as did the flagship's Captain Gomberg. Unless someone invited him, or unless he invited others, his unique status on the ship ensured his solitude.
He had left the relatively carefree life of a lieutenant behind, but he missed the companionship that life had brought him. He would have traded that companionship for the loneliness of command, but the fact remained that he wasn't in command, and he had to dine alone anyway.
Perry cleared Martinez’ plate and offered to pour more wine. Martinez placed his hand over the glass.
“Thank you, Perry,” he said. Perry took the glass and left in silence.
Martinez called the tactical display onto the wall, just to make certain nothing new had appeared. Even though the naked children on the walls gazed at the displays as if in fascination, Martinez found there had been no change.
The flagship Illustrious and six other warships—"Chenforce"—were on an extended raid into Naxid space. Their task was to destroy enemy commerce, not to engage Naxid squadrons, and every enemy vessel at large in the Termaine system had been destroyed by Chenforce missiles within the first few days after the wormhole jump into the system. Chenforce would pass by Termaine itself in three days’ time, and had already ordered the commander of the planet's ring station to jettison any ships docked on the ring. Their destruction would provide a close-up demonstration of the raiders’ power.
The raid would last another two or three months. Martinez could look forward to many dinners alone in his office.
He closed the display and gazed at his desk, at the images of his wife Terza that floated in the midnight surface. He thought of the child they had made together and he was suddenly possessed by a desperate exaltation, a hunger he could taste far more keenly than he had his meal. The idea of a child was a wonder to him, and he felt a sudden blade-sharp longing.
Suddenly, desperately, he wanted to be with his family aboard the Ensenada, the Martinez family yacht that was taking them from abandoned Zanshaa to safety on Laredo. He wanted to be with Terza, to bask in her tranquil smile and watch the minute progress of the child growing within her. For a brief, intense moment he would have thrown away all ambition in exchange for a quiet life of familial bliss.
There was a knock on the frame of his cabin door, and he looked up to see Lieutenant Chandra Prasad, the one person on Illustrious with whom he didn't want to be alone.
“Yes?” he said.
Chandra entered, closed the door behind her, and walked to his desk. She braced properly at the salute, shoulders flared back, chin high, throat bared—the posture imposed by the Shaa conquerors on all vanquished species, the better to allow their superiors to cut their throat if they felt so inclined.
“Yes, lieutenant?” Martinez said.
She relaxed and held out a thick envelope. “From Lord Captain Fletcher."
The envelope was of a thick smooth paper of a faintly cranberry shade, no doubt custom-made for Captain Fletcher by the foremost paper-maker of Harzapid. The seal on the envelope had many quarterings, reflecting the captain's illustrious heritage.
Martinez broke the seal and withdrew a card, which invited him to dine with the captain on the next day, to honor the birthday of Squadron Commander Chen. Exigencies of the service permitting, of course.
He looked up at Chandra. She had auburn hair, a pointed chin, and a mischievous glint in her long eyes.
“I'll come, of course,” he said.
“Shall I wait for your reply?” Chandra asked.
Even though the captain's quarters were only a few paces away and the invitation was nothing a sane officer could possibly decline, custom of the service nevertheless required that Martinez reply to a written invitation with a written reply.
“If you're not required elsewhere,” he said.
The mischievous eyes sparkled. “I am entirely at the captain's service,” Chandra said.
Which was all too true. Lieutenant Lady Chandra Prasad was Captain Fletcher's lover, a situation thorny with the potential for intrigue and service politics. That potential was all the greater for the fact that she and Martinez, at the time both obscure lieutenants of provincial origin, had been involved with each other some years earlier, a tempestuous relationship that featured mutual betrayals and a parting that had left Martinez feeling more relieved than rueful.
Martinez didn't know if Captain Fletcher was aware of his past involvement with Chandra, and the lack of certainty made him uneasy. His unease was increased by his knowledge of Chandra's character, which was ambitious, restless, and explosive.
Which was why he didn't want to be alone with her, certainly not for any length of time.
He got a card and envelope from his desk, and in his best hand wrote a brief acceptance. As he sealed the card in its envelope he had a mental picture of Fletcher touching the card stock with his sensitive fingers and shaking his head at its inferior quality.
Martinez offered the envelope to Chandra, who was looking down at Martinez’ desktop with her head tilted, casting a critical glance at Terza's pictures.
“It's unfair that your wife is beautiful as well as rich and well-connected,” she said.
“She's also talented, brave, and highly intelligent,” Martinez said, and held the envelope clearly in Chandra's line of sight.
Her full lips gave an amused twist. She took the envelope, then glanced with her long eyes at the naked, winged boy-children fluttering on the office walls. “Do you like the view from your desk?” she asked. “The captain tells me they're called putti, and they're an ancient artistic motif from Terra."
“I wish they'd stayed there,” Martinez said.
“I imagine you'd prefer naked girls,” Chandra said. “I seem to remember that you liked naked girls very well."
Martinez looked up at her and saw the invitation in her eyes. Suddenly he was aware of the nearness of her, the scent of her perfume. He looked away.
“Not in such quantity,” he said.
“Don't underestimate yourself. You juggled quite a number of us, back on Zarafan."
He looked at her again. “It's not Zarafan any more."
Now it was Chandra's turn to look away. Her eyes passed over the chubby children. “Still,” she added, “it's a good deal more cheerful than what the captain has in his private quarters."
Martinez told himself that he wasn't interested in what Chandra had seen in her visits to the captain's chambers. “Is that so?” he found himself saying.
“Oh yes.” She raised an eyebrow. “It's nothing like what he's got in the public areas."
Pornography, then, Martinez concluded. The thought depressed him. “Thank you, lieutenant,” he said. “I won't take up any more of your time."
“Oh,” Chandra said, “I don't have anything to do. I'm not on watch for hours yet."
“I have work,” Martinez said. Chandra gave a shrug, then braced to the salute.
Martinez again called up the tactical display. Chandra left the room.
Martinez glanced at the display and saw nothing new. In fact had no work, not until the squadcom found a task for him or something unexpected turned up on the tactical display.
Martinez called up hyper-tourney on the desktop computer and tried to lose himself within a game of strategy and abstract spacial relationships.
He played both sides, and lost.
“I have always found tragedy to be the most human of the arts,” said Senior Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher. “Other species simply don't have a feeling for it."
“There's Lakaj Trallin's The Messenger,” said Fulvia Kazakov, the first lieutenant.
“The choral parts are magnificent, as one might expect with the Daimong,” the captain admitted, “but I find the psychology of Lord Ganmir and Lady Oppoda underdeveloped."
Captain Fletcher's dinner stretched the length of the ship's long afternoon. Every plate, saucer, cup, goblet, and salt cellar on the long table was blazoned with the captain's crest, and the table itself sat in the midst of painted revelry. The walls were covered with murals of banquets and banqueters: ancient Terrans wearing sheets and eating on couches; humanoid creatures with horns and hairy, cloven-hoofed legs roistering with wine cups and bunches of grapes; a tall, commanding youth, crowned with leaves, surrounded by women carrying phallic staves. Statues stood in the corners, graceful seminude women bearing cups. A solid gold centerpiece crowned the table, armored warriors mysteriously standing guard over piles of brilliant metal fruits and nuts.
The captain was a renowned patron of the arts, and as an offspring of the eminent, preposterously rich Gomberg and Fletcher clans, he had the money to indulge himself. He had ornamented Illustrious with a lavish hand, sparing no expense to create a masterpiece that would be the envy of the Fleet. The hull had been painted in a complex geometric pattern of brilliant white, pale green, and pink. The interior was filled with more geometric patterns broken by fantastic landscapes, trompe l'oeil, scenes of hunting and dancing, forests and vines, whimsical architecture and wind-tossed seascapes. Most of these works had been created in a graphics program, run off on long sheets, then mounted like wallpaper, but in the captain's own quarters the murals had been painted on, and were subsequently maintained, by a pudgy, graying, rather disheveled artist named Montemar Jukes, who Fletcher had brought aboard as a servant and promptly rated Rigger First Class.
Jukes dined in the petty officers’ lounge: no one present at the captain's dinner was anything less than an officer and a Peer. All glittered in their full dress uniforms, but that wasn't unusual, as the captain's wish was that all meals aboard Illustrious be formal, whether they were a special occasion or not.
Lady Michi, the guest of honor, sat at the head of the table, with the rest below in order of precedence. She was a stocky woman with greying dark hair cut in straight bangs across her forehead. She was the aunt of Martinez’ wife Michi, and as part of the marriage compact, arranged by the families, had agreed to take Martinez as her tactical officer, to replace a lieutenant who had died of injuries.
Fletcher and Martinez sat beneath Lady Michi, and below Fletcher was the first lieutenant, Fulvia Kazakov, her hair elaborately braided and tied into an elaborate knot behind her head, then transfixed with a pair of gold-embroidered chopsticks of camphor wood.
On Martinez’ elbow was Chandra Prasad, her knee pressed familiarly to his. Below them were ranked the other four lieutenants, the ship's doctor, and the cadets
“There's Go-tul's New Dynasty,” Michi said. “A very moving tragedy, I've always thought."
“I consider it flawed,” said Captain Fletcher. He was a thin-faced man with ice-blue eyes that glittered from deep sockets and silvery hair set in unnaturally perfect waves. His manner combined the Fleet's assumption of unquestioned authority with the flawless ease of the high-caste Peer.
He was a complete autocrat, but perfectly relaxed about it.
“New Dynasty concerns a provincial Peer who travels to Zanshaa and comes within an ace of taking her place in elite society,” Fletcher continued. “But she fails, and in the end has to return home. She ends the story in her proper place.” He gave Lady Michi a questioning look. “How is that tragic? Genuine tragedy is the fall of someone born into the highest place and then falling from it."
Chandra's hand, under the table, dropped onto Martinez’ thigh and gave it a ferocious squeeze. Martinez tried not to jump.
“Which is more tragic, lord captain,” Chandra asked, her voice a little high. “A provincial who rises above her station and fails, or a provincial who rises and succeeds?"
Fletcher gave her a sharp look, and then his expression regained its accustomed poise. “The latter, I think,” he said.
Chandra dug her claws once more into Martinez’ thigh. He could sense the anger vibrating in her. The other officers stiffened, their eyes on the drama being played out between Chandra and the captain. They were all aware that she and Fletcher were lovers, and they all could see that the relationship might explode right at this moment, in front of them all.
It was like watching an accident, Martinez thought. You couldn't stop it, but you couldn't turn away.
“So provincials shouldn't try to rise in the world?” Chandra asked. “Provincials should stay on their home worlds and let the High City families deal with affairs? The same families that nearly lost the empire to the rebels?” She looked at Martinez. “Where would the Fleet be if Captain Martinez had followed that advice?"
Though Martinez had to agree that the Fleet was improved by his presence, he preferred not to be used as an example. He knew perfectly well that his every word, uttered in his thick Laredo accent, condemned him as a provincial. He knew perfectly well that the Martinez clan were parvenus who hade elbowed their way into marriages with the highest strata of Zanshaa High City. He knew as well that despite his success the captain considered him a freak of nature, something on a par with a bearded lady or a talking dog.
He knew, but he didn't particularly feel like rehashing it all at Michi Chen's birthday dinner, particularly since nothing he said or did would ever alter the captain's mind.
“How much worse would our situation be without Captain Martinez, I'd like to know?” Chandra insisted.
“Captain Martinez,” said Fletcher easily, “isn't a tragic hero, so far as I know. We're discussing theater, not real life.” He gave a graceful inclination of his head toward Martinez. “Were a figure like Captain Martinez to appear on stage, it would be a tale of high adventure, surely, not the fall of the great."
Chandra gave Fletcher a smouldering glare. “The great have abandoned Zanshaa and are running like hell from the enemy right now,” she said. “Do you think there'll ever be a tragedy about that?” Her lip curled. “Or will it be a farce?"
“I think—” Michi began firmly, with the obvious intention of ending the discussion, but at that moment there was a respectful knock on the door. Martinez looked to see a detachment of the cruiser's senior petty officers clustered in the doorway.
“We beg your pardon, my lady squadcom,” said Master Weaponer Gulik. “We would like to make a presentation on the occasion of your birthday, if we may."
“I would be honored, master weaponer,” Michi said.
Gulik—a small, dour, rat-faced man—squeezed into the room past one of the cup-bearing statues and approached Michi's seat. He was followed by Master Engineer Thuc, a massive, muscled, slab-sided Terran with the goatee and curling mustachios of the senior petty officer. Behind these came the senior machinist, electrician, signaler, and the other petty officers in charge of the ship's departments.
“We wish to present you with this memento of your time aboard Illustrious, my lady,” Gulik said.
The memento was a scale model of the Illustrious, with the green, pink, and white of Fletcher's paint scheme minutely and exactly detailed. The model was mounted on a brass base built in the cruiser's workshops.
Michi thanked the deputation, and led the officers in a toast to the department heads. The deputation left, and the dinner resumed, one course after another, each reflecting the genius of Fletcher's personal chef, each course marked by toasts and compliments.
Martinez was aware of Chandra smouldering next to him, her leg jigging up and down with impatience.
“You might have stood up for yourself,” she told Martinez as he walked to his cabin after the feast.
“No one was attacking me,” Martinez said. “The worst anyone said was that I wasn't a tragic hero, and I hope to hell that's true."
“Fletcher's said a lot of things about you,” Chandra said.
“Yes,” Martinez said. He opened his cabin door, then turned to her. “But I'm not supposed to know that, am I? Because I'm not supposed to be on intimate terms with the captain's girlfriend, am I?"
He closed the door on the mask of thwarted fury that had replaced Chandra's face, made his way to his desk, and sat down. From around his neck he removed the disk of the Golden Orb, the empire's highest decoration, and then opened the buttons on his dress tunic.
After the four-hour formal meal he felt like a bird stuffed and trussed for roasting.
The winged children on the walls looked at him hungrily.
Chandra walked into Martinez’ office in the middle of the afternoon watch and slid the door closed behind her. She looked at the game of hyper-tourney being played on Martinez’ desk top and said, “Well, I'm free of the bastard at last."
Martinez looked up at her, his mind still filled with the intricacies of velocities and spacial relationships. “Congratulations,” he said.
The color was high on Chandra's cheeks, and her eyes burned with fury. She paced back and forth in front of Martinez’ desk like a tigress whose feeding was arriving half an hour late.
“I finally asked him!” she proclaimed. “I asked him if he'd get me promoted—and he said he wouldn't!"
“I'm sorry,” Martinez said. The words came reluctantly. He didn't want this scene taking place in his presence, and he didn't want to know any of the details of her relationship with the captain.
Doesn't she have any friends among the lieutenants? he found himself thinking. Doesn't she have anyone to talk to on this ship?
“Captains can't promote lieutenants,” he said.
“This one can.” Chandra said savagely. “You know how those High City officers stick together—all he'd have to do is trade a favor with one of his cousins, Fletcher promotes the cousin's cadet nephew in exchange for me getting my step."
All that was true enough—Fletcher could have traded a favor with someone. That was how the high-caste Peers kept everything in their small circle.
“Bastard wants me to stay in my place,” Chandra said fiercely as she paced. “Well, I won't. I just won't."
“I didn't understand how you got together with Fletcher in the first place."
Chandra stopped her pacing. Her eyes gazed into her own past, a gaze thick with contempt. “I'm the only officer on the ship who wasn't Fletcher's choice,” she said. “He had someone else picked for my place but he didn't get to Harzapid before the war happened. When the squadron shipped out I got sent aboard. I didn't know anyone and—” She shrugged. “I tried to make myself agreeable to my captain.” Her mouth drew up in a sneer. “I'd never met anyone like him. I thought he had an interesting mind.” She barked out a laugh. “Interesting mind! He's as dull as a rusty spoon."
They looked at each other for a few brief seconds. Then Chandra took a half-step closer to Martinez’ desk, her fingertips drifting over the black surface, cutting through the holographic display of the hyper-tourney game.
“I could really use your help, Gare,” she said.
“I can't promote you, either. You know that."
An intense fire burned in Chandra's eyes. “But your relatives can,” she said. “Your father-in-law is on the Fleet Control Board and Michi Chen is his sister. Between the two of them they should be able to work an overdue promotion for a lieutenant."
“I've told you before,” Martinez said. “I can't do anything out here."
She looked at him levelly. “Some day,” she said, “you're going to need a friend in the service, and I'm going to be that friend. I'm going to be the best and most loyal friend an officer ever had."
Martinez had his doubts: Chandra's friendship seemed to come at a very high price. Though, professionally speaking, could think of no reason why Chandra shouldn't be promoted.
Other than the erratic and impulsive behavior, of course, and the chaotic love life.
But how bad was that, really? he asked himself. Compared with some of the captains he'd known, Chandra was practically a paragon.
Chandra, misunderstanding his silence, leaned forward and took his hand. Her fingers were warm in his palm. The hologram gleamed on her tunic.
“Please, Gareth,” she said. “I really need you now."
“I'll speak to Lady Michi,” Martinez said. “I don't know how much credit I've got with her, but I'll try."
“Thank you, Gareth.” She rested her hip on the desk and leaned across to kiss his cheek. Her scent flared in his senses. He stood, and dropped her hand.
“That won't be necessary, lieutenant,” he said.
She looked at him for a moment out of her long eyes, and her look hardened. She straightened and regained her feet.
“As you wish, captain,” she said. She braced, her pointed chin held high. “With the captain's permission?"
“You are dismissed,” Martinez said. His mouth was dry.
She went to the door and slid it open.
“I meant what I said,” she said, “about being your friend."
She was gone, leaving the door behind her. Someone walked past—Lord Shane Coen, Michi's red-haired signals lieutenant—and Coen cast a curious glance into the room.
Martinez nodded at him in what he hoped was a brisk, military fashion, and sat down behind the game of hyper-tourney.
It was a while before he could get his mind on the game.
Three watches ticked by, with nothing for Martinez to do but sleep, spend his time at hyper-tourney, check the tactical display to see if anything had changed, and stare at Terza's picture in the surface of his desk. No one invited Martinez to dine. He considered asking the lieutenants to an informal cocktail party, an alternative to the full-dress dinners Fletcher had imposed on the cruiser, but he then reflected that he'd have to invite Chandra, and decided against it.
Martinez glanced up at the sound of purposeful footsteps, and looked up to see Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher standing in the door of his office. Fletcher wore his full dress uniform, with white gloves and the ceremonial sickle-shaped knife at his waist.
Martinez jumped to his feet and braced. “Lord captain!” he said.
Fletcher looked at him from his deep-set eyes. “I'd be obliged if you'd join me, Captain Martinez."
“Certainly, my lord.” Martinez began to walk around the desk, then hesitated. “Should I change into full dress, my lord?"
“That won't be necessary, lord captain. Please come along, if you please."
Martinez left his office and joined the captain, who was accompanied also by Lord Sabir Mersenne, the fourth lieutenant, and Marsden, the captain's short, bald secretary, both also in full dress. Without another word, Fletcher turned and began walking down the corridor, the others following. Martinez wondered if he should have worn full dress when eating breakfast by himself, or at least should be embarrassed that he hadn't.
Fletcher's silver-embossed scabbard clanked faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez had never seen the captain wear his knife, but then he'd never accompanied Fletcher on an inspection before. Perhaps the extreme formality was a part of the captain's style.
The party went down two decks, leaving behind officers’ country and the haunts of the enlisted. The captain marched to a hatch and knocked with a gloved hand. It was the hatch, Martinez knew, that led to the engine spaces.
The hatch was opened by Master Engineer Thuc, whose towering figure nearly filled the doorway before he stepped back to reveal the engine control room. Behind the line of acceleration cages, beneath murals showing strong-thewed characters working with huge levers and winches on some impossibly antique machinery, the control room crew were lined up, braced, and spotlessly turned out.
Apparently Captain Fletcher had asked Martinez to accompany him on one of his frequent inspections.
The captain was a demon for inspections and musters, and usually inspected some part of the ship every day that Illustrious wasn't engaged in crucial military business. Today was the engine division's turn, but Martinez could imagine no reason why he had been invited along. He wasn't a line officer, but staff, and not in Fletcher's chain of command—the state of Illustrious’ engines was really none of his business.
So while he watched Fletcher and his two subordinates crawl over the engine control room, passing white-gloved fingers over the glossy surfaces, Martinez wondered why he had been summoned to observe this ritual, and paranoia soon began to scuttle through his mind on chitinous insect legs. Surely this had to do with Chandra Prasad. Surely Fletcher suspected Martinez of being her lover, and the inspection was part of an elaborate revenge plot.
The captain found flaws—a suspicious creak in an acceleration cage that indicated a worn part, a scratch on the transparent cover of a gauge, an emergency radiation suit carelessly stowed—and then the party went on to look at the engine department's storage lockers, at the heavily shielded antihydrogen compartments, and—after donning ear protection—at the massive reactor that powered the ship, and the huge turbopumps that operated the thermal exchange system.
The experience of the chamber was odd. Martinez knew that the noise was hellish, but his earphones automatically pulsed out sound waves that canceled that of the pumps, and all he heard in his ears was a distant white noise. But his body reacted to the sound: he could feel the vibration in his bones and in his soft organs, and when he touched a wall or pipe.
Fletcher stroked the pumps with white-gloved fingers, found them clean, and then returned to the engine control room so that his questions might be heard. Thuc followed the captain in docile silence, his muscular body looming over Fletcher's shoulder except when he darted forward to open a hatch or a locker door.
“You've changed the filters on the main pump recently?"
“Just after Protipanu, my lord,” Thuc said. “We aren't due for another change for two months."
“Very good. And the pump itself?"
“We'll swap it out in another...” Thuc considered his answers, his eyes focused somewhere above his left shoulder “...thirty-eight days, my lord."
“Very well.” The captain tugged his white gloves over his wrists and smoothed the fine kidskin over his fingers. “I'll just inspect your crew, then."
He marched down the line of engine crew, stopping to make an occasional comment about dress or deportment. At the end of the line he encountered Thuc again, and nodded.
“Very good, Thuc,” he said. “Excellent marks, as always."
“Thank you, lord captain.” An hint of a smile touched his lips.
When Fletcher moved it was so fast that Martinez failed to see it properly and could only reconstruct the action later, out of fragments of memory. The sickle-shaped blade sang from the sheath, whistled through the air, and buried itself in Thuc's throat. A crescent of arterial blood splattered the mural behind Thuc's head.
Thuc was too large a man to fall all at once. First his shoulders dropped, and then his knees gave way. His barrel chest sank, then his stomach sagged, and then—as Fletcher's knife cleared his throat—Thuc's head lolled down. It was only then that Thuc fell like a tower of wooden blocks kicked by a careless child.
Martinez’ heart began to beat again, a roaring in his ears. He looked at Fletcher in shock.
Fletcher looked expressionlessly at the body with his ice-blue eyes, and took a step away from the spreading pool of red. He flicked scarlet from his blade with a movement of his wrist.
The smell of blood hit Martinez’ senses, and he bit down hard on the stomach that was trying to quease its way past his throat.
“Marsden,” Fletcher said, “call the doctor to examine the body, and have him bring a stretcher party to carry it away. Cho,” to a staring petty officer, “you are now in charge of the engineering department. Once the doctor is done, call the off-duty watch to help you police this ... untidiness. In the meantime, I'd appreciate a cleaning cloth."
Cho nearly ran to one of the storage lockers, returned with a cloth, and handed it with quaking fingers to the captain. Fletcher used it to clean the knife blade and mop some of the blood on his tunic, then threw the cloth to the deck.
A pale-faced young recruit swayed, then toppled to the floor in a dead faint. Fletcher ignored him, and turned again to Cho.
“Cho,” he said, “I trust you will maintain Engineer Thuc's high standards.” He nodded to the control room crew, then turned and made his way out.
Martinez followed, his nerves leaping. He wanted to flee Fletcher's company, to barricade himself in his quarters with a pistol and several bottles of brandy, the first for protection and the second for comfort.
He looked left and right at Marsdan and Mersenne, and saw that their expressions were mirrors of his own thoughts.
“Captain Martinez,” Fletcher said. The words made Martinez start.
“Yes, lord captain?” He was moderately surprised that he managed three whole words without stumbling, screaming, or falling into dumb silence.
Fletcher reached the companionway that led to the deck above, and he turned to Martinez.
“Do you know why I invited you along this morning?"
“No, my lord."
Martinez had managed another three words. He was making real progress. Soon he might be walking on his own and tying his own shoelaces.
He found himself very aware of the captain's right hand, the hand that would reach across his body to draw the knife. He found his own hands ready to lunch forward and seize Fletcher's forearm if the hand approached the hilt.
He hoped that Fletcher was not aware that Martinez was so focused of Fletcher's right hand. He tried not to stare at it.
“I asked you along so that you could report to Squadron Commander Chen,” Fletcher said, “and tell her exactly what just occurred."
“Yes, lord captain."
“I don't want her hearing a rumor, or getting a distorted version."
Distorted version. As if there was a version that would make this at all comprehensible.
Martinez searched his numbed mind and found a question, but the question required more than three words and he took a second or two to organize his thoughts.
“My lord,” he asked, “do you wish me to give Lady Michi the reason for your, your action?"
The captain straightened slightly. A superior smile touched his lips.
“Only that it was my privilege,” he said.
A chill shimmered up Martinez’ spine.
“Very good, lord captain,” he said.
Fletcher turned and led up the companionway. At the top he met the ship's doctor, Lord Yuntai Xi, who was followed by his assistant carrying his bag.
“The engine control room, lord doctor,” Fletcher said. “A fatality."
The doctor gave him a curious look, and nodded.
“Thank you, lord captain. Can you tell me—?"
“Best you see for yourself, lord doctor. I won't detain you."
Xi stroked his little white beard, then nodded and began his descent of the companion. Fletcher led the party up three decks, to the deck he shared with the squadron commander, then turned to face the two lieutenants. “Thank you, my lords,” he said. “I won't be needing you any farther.” He turned to his secretary. “Marsden, I'll need you to enter the death in the log."
Martinez walked with Marsenne to the squadcom's door. He felt a tingling in his back, as if he were expecting the captain to draw his knife and lunge at him. He didn't quite dare to look at the other lieutenant, and he had a feeling that Marsenne wasn't looking at him, either.
He came to the squadcom's door, and without saying anything to Lieutenant Mersenne he stopped at the door and knocked.
Lady Michi's orderly, Vandervalk, opened the door, and Martinez asked to see the squadcom. Vandervalk said she'd check and left him waiting, then returned a few minutes later to say that the lady squadcom would meet Martinez in her office.
Lady Michi came into her office a few minutes later, carrying her morning tea in a delicate gold-rimmed cup on which glowed the Chen family crest.
Martinez braced. The sensation of air on his exposed throat gave him a sudden shiver.
“Have a seat,” Michi said. Her tone was abstracted, her gaze focused on papers that waited on her desk. She sat in her straight-backed chair.
“How can I help you, captain?"
“Lord Captain Fletcher,” Martinez began, and then his voice failed him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Lord Captain Fletcher asked that I inform you that he's just executed Master Engineer Thuc."
Suddenly he had the squadcom's full attention. She placed her cup very carefully on a felt coaster, then looked up. “Executed? How?"
“With his top-trimmer. During an inspection. It was ... very sudden."
He realized now that Fletcher must have rehearsed the move. You couldn't just cut a throat that efficiently unless you had practiced.
He imagined Fletcher alone in his cabin, drawing the knife over and over as he slashed imaginary throat. The cold blue eyes glittering, the superior smile on his lips.
Michi's gaze intensified. “Did Captain Fletcher give a reason?"
“No, my lady. He said only that it was his privilege."
Michi softly drew in her breath. “I see,” she said.
Fletcher was technically correct: any officer had the authority to execute any subordinate at any time, for any reason. There were practical reasons why this didn't happen very often, including lawsuits in civil court from the victim's patron clan; and usually when such a thing happened, the officer produced an elaborate justification.
Fletcher very simply stood on his privilege. That had to be very, very rare.
Michi turned her eyes deliberately away and took a very deliberate sip of her tea.
“Do you have anything to add?” she said.
“Just that the captain planned it in advance. He wanted me there to witness it and to report to you."
“Nothing in the inspection could have provoked it?"
“No, my lady. The captain complimented Thuc on his department before killing him."
Again Michi drew in her breath. Her eyes grew thoughtful.
“You can think of no reason?"
Martinez hesitated. “The captain and Lieutenant Prasad ... ended ... their relationship yesterday. But if he was going to kill anyone over it, I don't know why it would be Thuc."
Maybe Thuc was handy, he thought.
That night Martinez wore a virtual headset and projected the starscape from outside Illustrious into his mind, hoping it would aid his sleeping mind in achieving a tranquility that had eluded him all day. It seemed to work, until he came awake with his heart pounding and, in his mind, the black emptiness of space turned the color of blood.
Breakfast was a meal eaten without noticing the contents of his plate. He dreaded hearing the businesslike sound of heels on the deck, Fletcher and Marsden and Mersenne, marching to his door to summon Martinez to another inspection.
Even though he half expected the sound his nerves gave a surprised, jangled leap as he heard it. Martinez was on his feet and already half-braced when Fletcher appeared in his open door, wearing full dress, white gloves, and the knife in its curved, gleaming scabbard..
“Captain Martinez, I'd be obliged if you'd join us."
Cold dread settled over Martinez like a rain-saturated cloak.
“Yes, my lord,” he said.
As he walked to the door he felt lightheaded, possessed by the notion that everything from this point was predestined, that he was fated to be a witness to another inexplicable tragedy without being able to intervene, that within an hour or two he would again be reporting to Michi Chen while somewhere in the ship crew scrubbed blood from the deck..
Once again Fletcher wanted him as a witness. He wished Fletcher had just brought a camera instead.
Again Fletcher's party consisted of himself and two others. One was Madsden the secretary, but Mersenne had been replaced by Lord Ahmad Husayn, the weapons officer. That told Martinez where the party was headed, and he wasn't surprised when Fletcher took a turn two bulkheads down, and headed through a hatch into Missile Battery Three.
Gulik, the rat-faced little Master Weaponer, stood there braced along with his crew. Once more Martinez watched as Fletcher conducted a detailed inspection, including not just the launchers and loaders but the elevator systems used to move personnel along the battery, and the large spider-shaped damage-control robots used for repairs during high-gee, when the crew themselves would be strapped in their acceleration couches and barely able to breathe or think, let alone move. Fletcher checked the hydraulic reservoirs of the robots, inspected the radiation-hardened bunker where the weaponers would shelter in combat, and then had two missiles drawn from their tubes. The missiles were painted the same green, pink, and white pattern as the exterior of the ship, and looked less like weapons of war than strange examples of design, art objects commissioned by an eccentric patron, or perhaps colorful candies intended for the children of giants. The captain dusted them with his white-gloved fingers—he expected missiles in their tubes to be as clean as his own dinner table—then had them reinserted and asked Gulik when the loaders had last been overhauled.
At last Fletcher inspected the weaponers themselves, the line of immaculately-dressed pulpies, arranged in order of rank with the petty officers at the end.
Martinez felt his perceptions expanding through the battery, sensing every last cable, every last switch. He seemed hyperaware of everything that occurred within that enclosed space, from the scent of oil on the elevator cables to the nervous way Husayn flexed his hands when the captain wasn't looking to the sheen of sweat on Master Weaponer Gulik's upper lip.
Gulik stood at the end of the line, properly braced. Fletcher moved with cold deliberation up the line, his practiced eyes noting a worn seam on a coverall, a tool inserted in its loop wrong way round, a laundry tag visible above a shirt collar.
Martinez’ nerves flashed hot and cold. Fletcher paused in front of Gulik and gazed at the man for a long, searching moment with his deep blue eyes.
“Very good, Gulik,” Fletcher said. “You're keeping up your standards."
And then Fletcher, incredibly, turned and walked away, his brisk footsteps sounding on the deck, his knife clanking faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez, head swimming, followed dumbly with the rest of the captain's party.
Out of the corner of his eye, as he stepped over the hatch sill, he saw Gulik sag with relief.
Fletcher led up two companionways, then turned to Martinez.
“Thank you, captain,” he said. The superior smile twitched again at the corners of his mouth. “I appreciate your indulging my fancies."
“Yes, my lord,” Martinez said, because “You're welcome” wasn't quite the effect he was after.
Martinez went to his office and sat behind his desk and thought about what he'd just witnessed. Fletcher had called him to witness an inspection at which nothing unusual had occurred.
Fletcher makes scores of inspections every year, Martinez thought. But he's only killed one petty officer. So how eccentric is that, really?
An hour or so later Lieutenant Coen, Michi's red-haired signals officer, arrived with an invitation to join the squadcom for dinner. Martinez accepted, and over a cup of cold green melon soup informed Michi that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at the morning's inspection.
Michi didn't comment, but instead asked about contingency plans for the squadron's nearest approach to Termaine, the next day. Martinez outlined his plans while frustration bubbled at the base of his spine.
What are you going to do? he wanted to ask. But Michi only spoke about the Termaine approach.
At the end of the meal he was more baffled than ever.
That night he came awake out of a disordered dream to find himself floating. He glanced at the amber numerals of the chronometer that glowed in a corner of the wall display and saw that it was time for a course reorientation around one of the Termaine system's gas giants, a final slingshot that would send Chenforce racing past the enemy-held planet.
Martinez watched the seconds tick past, and then the engines fired and his mattress rose to meet him.
Two hours later his orderly, Alikhan, woke him with a breakfast of coffee, salt mayfish, and one of Perry's fresh brioche. After this Alikhan began assisting him into his vac suit in preparation for the walk to the Flag Officer Station.
Everyone on the ship knew the hour at which general quarters would be called, and most were now struggling into their vac suits, or would be shortly.
The suit's checked its own systems and displayed the result on its sleeve display: all was well. Martinez took a last sip of coffee, then took his helmet from Alikhan and dismissed him to go to quarters, where he'd don his own suit with the aide of another weaponer.
Martinez clomped down the corridor, awkward in the suit, and dropped down two decks to the Flag Officer Station. Michi was already present, along with her aides Li and Coen. Michi stood with her back to him, her helmet off, her hair tucked into the cap that held her earphones and the projectors of the virtual array. The unfixed chinstrap dangled on her shoulder. Her head was bent, and one hand was pressed over an ear as if to aid herself in hearing.
Even in the bulky suit Martinez could see the tension in her stance. “Stand by,” she said, and swung around to Martinez, her face a mask of furious calculation. He braced.
“My lady."
“I need you to take command of Illustrious immediately. Something's happened to Captain Fletcher."
“Has he...?” Martinez began. Run amuck with a kitchen knife, perhaps? He couldn't seem to find a way to phrase the question tactfully.
Michi's words were clipped and curt, nearly savage. “There's a report he's dead,” she said. “Now get to Command and take charge before things to completely to hell."
Martinez shifted to the channel that allowed him to address everyone in Command, then paused to collect his thoughts. It was difficult to pass on information that he did not himself possess. He decided to keep it simple as possible.
“This is Captain Martinez,” he said. “I wished to inform you that the lady squadcom instructed me to take command of Illustrious, as Captain Fletcher has been reported ill. I don't know any details, but I'm sure that Captain Fletcher will return to command as soon as circumstances permit."
Well, he thought as he settled into his couch, that was as bland an announcement as he could possibly imagine. He doubted the curiosity of the watch was in any way softened.
Martinez then called up the tactical display and familiarized himself with the situation: Chenforce on its way to pass by Termaine, the two pinnaces and their squadrons of missiles ahead, Termaine surrounded by a cloud of ships that had been cast off and abandoned. If the enemy commander was preparing any act of defiance, he had yet to launch it.
The day crawled by like an arthritic animal looking for hole to die in. Every so often the icons on the tactical display would move very slightly in one direction or another, and then everything would be still again.
Crewed pinnaces launched by the warships flashed past Termaine, cameras and sensors sweeping the planet's ring for hidden weapons or warships, the data fed to the sensor operators in Command and Auxiliary Command. Lieutenant Kazakov correlated the data and informed Termaine that the enemy were to all appearances obeying Lady Michi's commands. The Naxids had been building no less than six warships on Termaine's ring, but none had been completed and all had been cast adrift.
He watched the missile bursts blossom in the display, as the expanding, overlapping spheres of superheated plasma momentarily obscured Termaine and its ring. When the plasma cooled and dissipated, the ring was still there, presumably to the relief of everyone on the planet or its ring.
Martinez watched the tactical situation crawl along for another half hour, then called Michi to ask for permission to secure from general quarters. This time he spoke to her personally.
“Permission granted,” she said.
“How is Captain Fletcher?"
“He's dead. I'll need you and Lieutenant Kazakov to meet in my office as soon as we secure from quarters."
“Yes, my lady.” He paused in hopes that Lady Michi would volunteer more information, but once again she remained silent.
“May I ask how the captain died?” he said finally.
He was prepared to wager that Fletcher had hanged himself.
Michi's tone turned resentful. “Fell and hit his head on a corner of his desk, apparently. We don't know any more than that because we went to quarters soon after the body was discovered. Doctor Xi had the body moved to sick bay, and then had to go to quarters himself, so there hasn't been an examination."
“Would you like me to make an announcement to the ship's crew?"
“No. I'll do that myself. For now, I want to see you in my office."
“Very good, my lady."
Michi ended the communication, and Martinez shifted to the channel that enabled him to speak with others in Command.
“Secure from general quarters,” he ordered. “Well done, everyone."
He took off his helmet and took a breath of air free of the smell of suit seals. As the tone to secure from quarters buzzed through the ship, he unwebbed and stood.
“Who's normally standing watch at this hour?” he asked.
Chandra pulled the helmet off her head and wiped a bit of sweat off her forehead with a gloved hand. “The premiere, lord captain,” she said.
“Lieutenant Kazakov is called elsewhere. If you're not too tired, Lieutenant Prasad, I'd be obliged if you'd take the premiere's watch."
Chandra nodded. “Very good, my lord."
“Lieutenant Prasad has the watch!” Martinez said, loud enough for anyone to hear.
“I have the watch!” Chandra agreed, loudly.
Martinez stalked out of the room. The horsebacked officers on the walls watched with unfriendly, calculating eyes.
“I'm appointing you to command Illustrious,” Michi said. “You're the only captain we've got."
Martinez wished she had phrased it so that he didn't sound like so much like a desperate last resort, but the warm, exuberant pleasure of having a command again soon erased any discomfort.
“Yes, my lady,” he said, glowing.
“Congratulations, my lord,” said Fulvia Kazakov. She sat next to Martinez, across the desk from the squadcom. Her dark hair was knotted as usual behind her head, but she'd changed hurriedly after Illustrious secured from quarters, and hadn't had time to stick the usual pair of inlaid chopsticks through the knot.
“Thank you,” Martinez said, and then realized he should try not to beam quite so much. “A shame it had to happen after such a tragedy,” he added.
“Quite.” Michi said. She touched her comm panel. “Is Garcia there yet?"
“Yes, my lady.” The voice of her orderly Vandervalk.
“Send him in."
Rigger First Class Garcia entered and braced. Under the loose supervision of the Military Constable Officer, Garcia was the head of the ship's constabulary, all three of them, and was a youngish man, a little plump, wearing a mustache. He had never been in the flag officer's office before, at least judging by the way his eyes kept turning to the ornamental fluted bronzed pillars, the bronze statues of naked Terran women holding baskets of fruit, and the murals filled with poised human figures sharing a landscape with fantastic beasts.
“You've finished your investigation?” Michi said.
“I've interviewed Captain Fletcher's staff,” Garcia said. “I wasn't able to see them all personally, but I was able to speak to them through comm when we were at quarters."
“Report, then."
Garcia looked at his sleeve display, where he'd obviously stored the particulars. “The captain worked with Warrant Officer Marsden on ship's business till about 25:01 yesterday,” he said. “His orderly, Narbonne, was the last person to see him. He helped the captain undress, took his uniform to be brushed and his shoes to be polished. That was about 25:26."
Garcia gave a polite cough that indicated his willingness to be interrupted by a question, and when there was none continued.
“Narbonne returned at 05:26 this morning to wake the captain, bring him his uniform and help him dress, but when he entered the captain's room he saw that the captain wasn't in his bed. He assumed Captain Fletcher was working in his office, so he put the uniform and the shoes on the rack, then returned to the orderly room and waited to be called.
“A few minutes later the captain's cook, Baca, brought Captain Fletcher's breakfast into the dining room. The captain wasn't there, but that wasn't unusual, and Baca also withdrew."
“Neither of them looked in the office?” Michi asked.
“No. The captain doesn't—didn't—like to be disturbed when working."
“Continue."
“About 06:01 Baca returned and saw the captain's breakfast hadn't been touched. He knew we'd be going to quarters shortly, so he paged the Captain Fletcher to see if he'd be wanting anything at all to eat, and when there was no answer he went into the office and found the captain dead."
Again Garcia coughed politely to provide a convenient break in his narrative, and this time Michi obliged him.
“What did Baca do then?"
“He paged Narbonne. Then he and Narbonne put their heads together and paged me."
“You?” Martinez was startled. “Why did they page the constabulary? Did they suspect foul play?"
Garcia seemed a little embarrassed. “I think they were afraid they might be blamed for the captain's death. They wanted me there so they could ... assure me they weren't responsible."
Martinez supposed that was plausible. He could understand their reluctance to call an officer when they were standing over the body of their captain.
“I arrived on the scene at 06:14,” Garcia continued. “The captain was cold and had clearly been dead for some time. I paged the doctor and a stretcher party, and then called Lady Michi.” His eyes turned to the squadcom. “You ordered me to conduct an investigation. I told Narbonne and Baca to return to the orderly room, and then waited for the doctor. Once the doctor and stretcher party arrived, Doctor Xi pronounced the captain dead and took the body to sick bay. I looked over the office and, well, it was clear what happened."
“And what happened was?” Michi prompted.
“Captain Fletcher got out of bed some time during the night, went into his office, fell and hit his head. There was an obvious wound on his right temple, and the corner of his desk had some blood, hair, and a bit of skin adhering.” For some reason Garcia had trouble pronouncing the word “adhering,” but he managed it on the third try.
“My suspicion is that the captain got caught off-balance during the course change early this morning. There was one at 03:46. There was a moment of weightlessness, and then when acceleration resumed he was caught wrong-footed. Or maybe he was floating weightless in the room, and resumption of gravity caught him by surprise. Doctor Xi might be able to confirm the timing."
Michi saw Martinez’ surprised look out of the corner of her eye. “Captain Martinez?” she said. “Did you have a question?"
Martinez was startled. “No, my lady,” he said quickly. “I just remembered that I woke during that course change. I wonder ... if I heard something."
He groped through his memory, but failed to grasp whatever it was that had brought him awake.
“It was most likely the zero-gravity alarm that woke you up,” Kazakov said.
Martinez surrendered his quest through his memories. “Very possible, my lady."
Michi returned her attention to Garcia. “Was the captain dressed?” she asked.
“No, my lady. He wore pajamas, a dressing gown, and slippers."
“I have no more questions,” Michi said. She glanced at Martinez and Kazakov. “Is there anything else?"
“I have a question,” Martinez said. “Did you take any notice of what the captain was working on?"
“Working?"
“If he was in his office, I'd suppose he'd be working."
“He wasn't working at anything. The display wasn't turned on, and there were no papers on the desk."
“Where was his captain's key?"
Garcia opened his mouth, closed it, and opened again. “I don't know, my lord."
“Was it slotted into the desk?"
“I don't think so."
Martinez looked at Michi. “That's all,” he said. “I think."
Michi turned to the petty officer. “Thank you, Garcia,” she said.
He braced and made his way out. Michi gave Martinez a look. “That was good thinking, about the captain's key. It's got access to practically everything.” She turned to her desk and began entering codes. “I'll cancel the key's privileges."
This proved to be unnecessary, as the next person to report was Doctor Xi, who put Captain Fletcher's key on the desk in front of the squadron commander.
“I found this on a cord around his neck,” Xi said.
Lord Yuntai Xi was a small man with a well-tended white beard, salt-and-pepper hair that hung over his collar, and a little pot belly. The Xi clan were clients of the Gombergs and he had known the captain from boyhood. He spoke in a steady tenor voice, but there was a deep sadness in his brown eyes.
“Because we've spent most of the last hours at general quarters, I've been able to conduct only a superficial investigation. There is a substantial depression on the right side of the skull, and the skin is torn, and skull fracture is the obvious cause of death. There are no other wounds. I made a small incision under the ribs on the right side and inserted a thermometer into the liver, and from that I calculate that the time of death was 04:01, plus or minus half an hour."
04:01 was only seven minutes after the change of course that might have caused the captain's stumble and death.
“Thank you, lord doctor,” Michi said. “I think in view of the questions that will inevitably be raised, I think an autopsy will be required."
Xi closed his eyes and sighed. “Very well, my lady."
After Xi left, Michi took up Fletcher's key and held the thin plastic strip thoughtfully in her hand.
“Do you wish me to make an announcement to the ship's company?” Martinez asked.
“No. I'll do it.” She tossed the key into the rubbish. “That's a bad coincidence,” she said.
“Yes, my lady,” said Kazakov. Her expression was thoughtful.
“Coincidence?” Martinez repeated.
“First Kosinic,” Kazakov explained, “and then Captain Fletcher."
Kosinic had been Lady Michi's first tactical officer, and unusually for a staff officer had been a commoner, not a Peer. He had died early in Chenforce's journey from Harzapid to Zanshaa, and his death provided an opening on the staff that Martinez had jumped to fill; and he joined the squadron later, at Seizho.
“Coincidence?” Martinez said again. “I don't understand what you mean by coincidence. I thought Lieutenant Kosinic died from wounds received at Harzapid."
“No.” Michi's glare was savage. “He fell and hit his head."
Martinez returned to his cabin to find his orderly Alikhan, assisted by his other servants Espinosa and Ayutano, were packing his belongings.
Alikhan turned to him as he paused in the doorway. He was a tall, iron-haired man, a thirty-year veteran who had retired with the rank of Master Weaponer, and who had returned to the Fleet in Martinez’ service.
“I presume we will be moving to the captain's cabin, my lord,” he said.
“I suppose we will.” Martinez hadn't actually got that far in his thinking.
Nor was there any point in wondering how Alikhan had known of the vacancy in the captain's quarters. Even though no announcement had been made, everyone on the ship might well know by now.
“We've removed your staff tabs from all your tunics except for the one you're wearing now,” Alikhan said. “If you'd care to give me your jacket, my lord?"
Martinez changed into another tunic and stepped into his sleeping cabin. Alikhan and his mates had nearly finished the job, remarkably efficient considering the amount of gear an officer was supposed to carry with him from one posting to the next.
“Are the captain's belongings also being packed?” he asked.
“Everything but what was in his office,” said Alikhan. “There's a constable on guard there."
“Right,” Martinez said. He turned, left his cabin, buttoned up his collar, and marched down the corridor to Fletcher's office. The constable there braced as he entered.
“Come with me, constable,” he told her, and walked through the office, deliberately turning his eyes from the desk with the blood and the scrapings of Fletcher's scalp. He entered Fletcher's sleeping cabin, stopped in the doorway, and gaped.
Something Chandra said had led him to conclude that he'd find erotica on Fletcher's walls, but Fletcher hadn't adorned his private room with anything so ordinary. In place of the bright tile work or classically balanced frescos Fletcher had placed elsewhere on his Illustrious, in the sleeping cabin the walls were paneled in ancient dark wood. The wood was rough-hewn and scarred and had never been painted or polished. Presumably it had been fireproofed as Fleet regulations required, but otherwise it looked as if it had been acquired from some timeworn ruin of a house, a timbered hulk survived from a distant, desolate dark age. The ceiling panels might have been equally as old but were in a different style, dark wood again and roughly hewn, but polished to a mellow glow. The floor was laid with mud-colored tiles with geometrical patterns in faded yellow. Lights were recessed into crude copper sconces. Small dark old pictures sat on the walls in metal frames that winked dully of gold or silver.
Dominating the far wall was the life-sized figure of a man, cast apparently in porcelain. The man had been savagely tortured and then hung on a tree to die. Cuts and blood and the marks of burning tongs were vivid in the translucent porcelain flesh and rendered in immaculate detail by the artist. Despite the many wounds and the agonized posture, the clean-shaven face of the man was serene and unearthly, with unnaturally large dark eyes that wrapped partly around the sides of the head. His hair had been braided in long ringlets that hung to his shoulders. As Martinez took a step closer, he saw that the figure had been lashed by metal bands to what appeared to a chunk of a perfectly genuine tree.
He looked in amazement from the object on the wall to the two servants who stood braced by open trunks half-filled with the captain's belongings.
“What is that?” he couldn't stop himself from asking.
“Part of Captain Fletcher's collection, my lord."
The answer came from the older of the two, a gray-haired man with a long nose and a mobile, liquid mouth.
“You're Narbonne?” Martinez asked.
“Yes, my lord."
“Stand by a moment."
Martinez paged Marsden, the captain's secretary. When the secretary arrived, Martinez turned to him.
“I want a complete inventory taken of all Captain Fletcher's belongings,” he said. “I want that signed by you, and witnessed by everyone here, including—” He nodded toward the guard. “Your name?"
“Huang, my lord."
“Including Huang."
Marsden nodded his bald head. “Yes, my lord."
“I'll try to access the captain's safe so that we can inventory the contents as well."
“Very good, my lord."
Getting into the captain's safe proved more difficult than Martinez expected. A combination was available in records available to the captain, but Fletcher had changed the numbers at least once since he'd taken command, and the old combination was no longer valid. Martinez got Fletcher's captain's key from Michi, but that didn't serve, either. In the end Martinez had to get Master Machinist Gawbyan and an assistant to drill the safe. Gawbyan, who had a truly spectacular pair of mustachios that curled so high and broadly they nearly met his eyebrows, settled grimly to work, and when the safe was finally open the contents were uninteresting: some money, a beautifully made custom pistol with a box of ammunition, some bank records, notes on investments, and a pair of small boxes. One box contained a small, frail old book written in some incomprehensibly ancient alphabet. The other box held a carved white jade statue of a nearly naked four-armed woman dancing atop a skull, a sight that wasn't very shocking after the sight of the tortured man lashed to the tree.
Martinez supposed the book and the statue were valuable, so he decided to keep them in his own safe once Gawbyan finished repairing the damage he'd just inflicted. “Make a note,” Martinez told Marsden, “that I've kept in my own possession a small book, and a small statue of a woman."
“Very good, my lord,” Marsden said, and wrote on his datapad.
He took the objects to the safe in his own office, and on his return encountered Doctor Xi coming up the companion, climbing amid the faint scent of disinfectant. Xi braced rather apologetically, then said, “I was on my way to report to Lady Michi."
“Yes?"
His sad eyes contemplated Martinez for a moment, then grew hard. “Join me if you like."
Martinez led the doctor to Lady Michi's anteroom, and stepped in to find Lady Ida Li behind the desk. “Captain Martinez and Doctor Xi to see the squadron commander,” Martinez said.
They were shown in. Xi made another unpracticed salute.
“I've performed the autopsy,” he said, “but it was hardly necessary, since it was obviously murder nearly from the start."
Michi pressed her lips together in a thin line, then said, “Obvious? How?"
“I put a sensor net around the lord captain's head and got a three-dimensional image of the skull. Captain Fletcher's right temple was struck by three separate blows, grouped closely together—the multiple blows weren't obvious from the superficial examination I was able to conduct this morning, but on the three-dimensional image they were very clear."
“His head was driven into the desk three times?” Michi asked.
“Or hit with a blunt object twice, then slammed into the desk to make it look like an accident."
Michi spoke to her desk. “Page Rigger First Class Garcia to the squadcom's office.” She looked at Martinez. “Who's Military Constabulary Officer?"
“Corbigny, my lady."
Michi turned to her desk again. “Page Lieutenant Corbigny as well."
Martinez turned to Xi. “I don't suppose Lieutenant Kosinic's body is still on the ship."
Xi looked at him. “As a matter of fact, the body's in a freezer compartment. We didn't cremate."
“Perhaps you ought to take a look at it."
Xi turned away, his gaze directed at the wall over Michi's head. His lips pursed out, then in. “I should,” he said. “I wish I had when he died."
“Why didn't you?"
Michi answered for him. “Because the cause of death seemed so obvious. In the fighting at Harzapid, Kosinic suffered broken bones and head injuries. When he came on board he insisted he was fit, but his medical records stated he was subject to blinding headaches, vertigo and fainting spells. When he was found dead, it seemed obvious that he'd fainted and hit his head."
“Where was he found?"
“In the Flag Officer Station."
Martinez was surprised. “What was he doing there alone?"
Michi hesitated. “Li and Coen told me he sometimes worked there by himself. It was less distracting than the wardroom."
“Was he working on anything in particular?"
“He was tactical officer. I'd had him plan a full schedule of squadron maneuvers, concentrating on the defense of Zanshaa."
Martinez turned at the sound of someone entering. Rigger Garcia came into the room and braced.
“Rigger/First Garcia reporting, my lady."
“Thank you. Stand at ease, and take notes if you need to."
“Yes, my lady."
Corbigny arrived a few seconds later, looking a little intimidated in the presence of the squadron commander. The slim, dark-haired young woman was the most junior lieutenant on the ship, and therefore got the jobs none of the other officers wanted. One of these was Military Constabulary Officer, which put her in theoretical charge of the ship's police. If nothing else, supervising the constabulary would give Corbigny a rapid education in the varieties of vice, depravity, and violence available to the average Fleet crouchback, an education desirable and probably necessary for her further development as an officer.
Garcia adjusted his sleeve display. “I'm recording, my lady."
Michi spoke in quick, clipped phrases, as if she wanted to get over this quickly. “The lord doctor's autopsy showed that Captain Fletcher was murdered. You'll be taking charge of the investigation."
Garcia's eyes went wide at this, and Corbigny turned pale. Michi continued.
“Captain Fletcher's office should be sealed off and subject to a minute examination. Look for fingerprints, traces of fabric or hair, anything that may have been carelessly dropped. Take particular care—"
“My lady!” Garcia said almost desperately.
Michi paused. “Garcia?"
“Fingerprints—hair analysis—I don't know how to do any of that!” Garcia said. “The Investigative Service is trained for that sort of thing, not the Constabulary!"
Martinez looked at the man in sympathy. The Military Constabulary investigated cases of vandalism or petty theft, broke up brawls, or arrested crouchbacks drunk on wine brewed up in plastic bags they'd hidden in their lockers. Any technical investigation was well outside their strengths.
Michi's lips thinned to a line, and then she relaxed. “Perhaps I've been watching too many Doctor An-ku dramas,” she said. “I thought there were professionals who handled this kind of thing."
“There are, my lady,” Garcia said. “But none on this ship, I guess."
Michi rubbed her forehead under her straight bangs. “I still want the office examined very carefully,” she said.
Doctor Xi had a smile behind his little white beard. He turned to Garcia. “I might be able to create some fingerprint powder out of materials I have in the pharmacy,” he said. “I'll do the research and see what I can manage."
“Good,” Michi said. “Why don't you do that now, my lord?"
“Certainly.” Xi straightened his slouch slightly in salute, and turned to leave. He hesitated, seeming to remember something, and then reached into his pocket and took out a clear plastic box, the sort in which he probably kept samples.
“I took the captain's jewelry from his body,” he said. “To whom should I give it?"
“I'm having an inventory made of the captain's belongings,” Martinez said. “I'll take the box, if you like."
Martinez took the box and looked through the plastic lid. Inside were a pair of rings, a heavy signet of enameled gold with the Fletcher and Gomberg crests interlinked, a smaller ring made of a kind of silver mesh, wonderfully intricate, and a pendant on a chain. Martinez held the box to the light and saw that the pendant formed the figure of an Ayaca tree in full flower, and shimmered with fine diamonds, rubies, and emeralds.
“We should try to make a list of where everyone was during the critical hour,” Michi continued. “And if anyone was seen moving about."
Again Garcia looked as if despair had him by the throat. “There are over three hundred people aboard Illustrious, my lady,” he said. “And I only have two staff."
“Most of the crew would be asleep,” Michi said. “We'll have the department heads make the reports, so you don't have to interview everyone personally."
“I'll send the department heads instructions later today,” Martinez added.
Michi gave Garcia a level look. “Start now with a careful examination of the scene,” she said.
“Very good, my lady."
He braced in salute and left, clearly relieved to have made his escape. Michi watched him go, then turned to Martinez. There was irony in the set of her smile.
“Any thoughts, captain?"
“Three deaths,” Martinez said, “and I don't see the connection. It would be better if there were only two."
Her eyebrows rose. “How do you mean?"
“If it were only Kosinic and Fletcher killed,” Martinez said, “then I'd say the killer was someone with a grudge against officers. If it were only Thuc and Fletcher, I'd say that Fletcher had been killed by someone wanting revenge for Thuc. But with all three I don't see anything to link them."
“Perhaps there is no connection."
Martinez considered this notion. “I'd rather not believe that,” he decided.
Michi slumped in her chair and looked sideways, at the serene bronze seminude woman in the corner, the one offering a bowl of fruit. Apparently she found no answers there, so she turned back to Martinez.
“I don't know what else to do, so I'm going to have a cocktail,” she said. “Would you to join me?"
Martinez began to accept, then hesitated. “Perhaps I'd better supervise Garcia in his efforts."
“Perhaps.” Michi shrugged. “Let me know if you find anything."
Martinez braced in salute, turned to leave, and then saw Sub-Lieutenant Corbigny, who had stood without speaking for the entire interview.
“Any questions, lieutenant?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “No, my lord."
“You may leave,” Michi said. Corbigny braced and fled.
Martinez walked to the door, then turned back. “Are we still doing the maneuver tomorrow?” he asked.
“Postpone."
“Very good, my lady."
Very little was found in Fletcher's office: Narbonne and the other servants simply kept it too clean. Crawling on hands and knees, Garcia and Martinez found several hairs that were placed in specimen flasks sent them by Doctor Xi. When Xi turned up with a squeeze bottle of his homemade fingerprint powder, they blanketed every solid surface and produced a few dozen prints, most of them of sufficient quality to be read by an ordinary fingerprint reader they procured from Marsden's desk.
While they worked Michi Chen made an announcement to the ship's company, confirming that Captain Fletcher had died and that Martinez had been appointed to fill his place. Martinez, on his knees peering at an eyelash that he'd just picked up with tweezers, failed somehow to be overcome by the sudden majesty of command that had just officially dropped onto his shoulders.
“I regret to inform Illustrious,” Michi continued, “that Captain Fletcher's death was the result of foul play. I ask any crew with knowledge of this event to report to the Constabulary, or to an officer. As the lord captain was murdered between 03:01 and 05:01, the testimony of anyone with knowledge of unusual movement or activity around that time would be very useful."
A new firmness, almost a ferocity, entered Michi's voice. “The squadron is alone, moving deep in enemy territory. We are too vulnerable to the enemy to permit any kind of disorder and lawlessness in our own ranks. Any weakness on our part only makes the enemy stronger. I am determined—” The word was almost a shout. “—determined that the killer or killers of Captain Fletcher will be found and punished.
“Once again,” more subdued now, “I ask anyone with information to come forward before any more crimes are committed. This is Squadron Commander Chen, in the name of the Praxis."
Martinez was impressed. The cocktails had done her good, he decided.
Before long Martinez began to envy Michi her cocktails. If anything were going to be solved this way, with fingerprint comparison and hair and fiber analysis, it would be through long and tedious work, and Martinez had no time for that.
He had a warship to command.
When the job was finished, he rose to his feet and looked at the office, the fine tile and elegant paneling, the martial statues of men in plate armor and the glass cabinets holding objects of beauty, all of it smudged with fingerprints and covered with powder. If he'd set out to disfigure all the grace and perfection with which Fletcher had filled his life, he could scarcely have done a better job.
“Lord captain,” Xi asked. “May I have the codes to the ship's fingerprint file?"
“Yes. As soon as I can find them.” Martinez was happy to have Xi do the job.
“I'll return to my office,” Xi said, “and proceed as best as I can."
Martinez thought again about Michi's cocktails. “May I offer you a drink first?"
Xi accepted. Martinez paged Alikhan and told him to serve Xi in his old office. “I have a brief errand,” he told the doctor. “I'll be with you in a few minutes."
He brought Narbonne and the others into the office to finish packing Fletcher's belongings. Martinez got a signed copy of the inventory from Marsden, then had the captains’ possessions transferred to a locker. Martinez locked the door with his captain's key, and put it under his key and password, so that only he could open the locker.
He remembered the captain's rings and pendant only after he'd returned to Fletcher's office, and so he had Marsden make another note to the effect that he'd taken them into his own possession.
He dismissed Fletcher's servants to clean the captain's office, a task he did not envy them, and went to his own cabin to find Xi sitting comfortably amid the putti, his forensic samples on the desk and a glass of whisky in his hand.
Alikhan had thoughtfully left a tray on the desk with another glass, a beaker of whisky, and another beaker of chilled water, its flanks covered with glittering gems of condensation. Martinez poured his own drink and settled into his chair.
“Interesting whisky, my lord,” Xi said. “Very smoky."
“From Laredo,” Martinez said, “my birthplace.” His father sent him cases of Laredo's best, in hopes exposure would boost the export market.
“What it lacks in subtlety,” Xi said, “is more than regained in vigor."
Martinez inhaled the fumes lovingly, then raised his glass. “Here's to vigor,” he said, and drank.
The whisky blazed a trail of fire down his throat. He looked at the smoky fluid through the prisms of the crystal glass and contemplated his long, singular day.
“My lord,” he said, “do you have any idea? Any idea at all?"
Xi seemed to understand the point of this vague question.
“Who's responsible, you mean? No. Not the slightest."
“Or why?"
“Nor that either."
Martinez swirled whisky in his glass. “You've known Captain Fletcher for a long time."
“Since he was a boy, yes."
Martinez put the glass down and looked at the white-bearded man across his desk. “Tell me about him,” he said.
Xi didn't answer right away. His thumbs pressed hard against the wall of his whisky glass, pressed until they turned white. Then the thumbs relaxed.
“Lord Gomberg Fletcher,” he said, “was exceptionally well-born, and exceptionally wealthy. Most people born to wealth and high status assume that their condition isn't simply luck, but a result of some kind of perfect cosmic justice—that is, that any person as fine and virtuous as themselves should naturally take an exalted place in society.” His brows knit. “I would guess that Captain Fletcher found his position more of a burden than a source of pleasure."
Martinez was surprised. “That—that was hardly my impression,” he said.
“Living up the worlds’ expectations is a difficult job,” Xi said, “and I think he worked very hard at it. He made a very good job of it. But I don't think it made him happy."
Martinez looked at the pink-cheeked winged children who fluttered around his office wall. “The art collection?” he asked. “All this?” He waved a hand vaguely at the flying children. “That didn't make him happy?"
“There are a limited number of roles suitable for someone of his status,” Xi said. “That of aesthete was perhaps the most interesting available.” He frowned, a narrow X forming between his brows. “Aestheticism took up the part of his life that wasn't taken up by the military. Between the two of them he didn't have time to think about being happy or unhappy, or to think about much at all.” He looked up at Martinez.
“Did you wonder about all those inspections, those musters? All the rituals—dressing formally for every meal, sending notes to people he could as easily have called on the comm? If you ask me, it was all to keep him from thought."
He's as dull as a rusty spoon. Chandra's words echoed in Martinez’ head.
Martinez took another sip of whisky while he tried to make sense of Xi's words. “You're saying,” he said carefully, “that Captain Fletcher wasn't precisely a human being."
“Not a fully-realized one,” Xi said. “People realize themselves in adversity, or by encountering opposition, or through the negative consequences of their decisions. For Fletcher there was no opposition or adversity or negative consequences. He was given a part and he played it, more or less convincingly.” Xi lowered his head and contemplated the whisky glass that rested on his pot belly. “He never questioned his role. I often wish that he had."
Martinez put his glass on the table. It made more noise than he intended, and Xi gave a start.
“There were no negative consequences for Fletcher,” he said, “until he killed Engineer Thuc."
Xi said nothing.
“Was that something he did to fill his empty hours?” Martinez asked. “Cut a man's throat?"
Xi peered at Martinez from under his white eyebrows, his dark eyes glittering. “I asked him, you know. The day it happened, at Lady Michi's request. I believe she was hoping I could find Captain Fletcher insane and she could remove him from command.” He made the pursing movement of his lips. “I disappointed her, I'm afraid. Captain Fletcher was perfectly rational."
Martinez tried to avoid shouting. “So why did he kill Thuc?” he demanded.
Xi licked his lips quickly. “He said that he killed Engineer Thuc because the honor of the Illustrious demanded it."
Martinez stared at him. Words died on his tongue. He took a drink.
“What did he mean by that?” he managed finally.
Xi shrugged.
“Were you his friend?"
Xi shook his head. “Gomberg didn't have any friends. He was very dutiful in the way he kept to his sphere, and he expected others to keep to theirs."
“But you followed him."
Xi smiled lightly and rubbed his thigh with his hand. “The job has its compensations. My practice on Sandama was successful but dull, and it turned me so dull that my wife left me for another man. The children were nearly grown and weren't going to need me on hand. When young Gomberg got his first command and made his offer, I realized I hadn't ever seen Zanshaa, or the Maw, or Harzapid Grand Market. Now I've seen all those things, and a lot more besides."
Martinez felt a sudden flash of anger. All these questions had done nothing but draw him farther into the riddle that was Lord Gomberg Fletcher, and the only thing he really cared about the captain was who had killed him. He didn't even care why, he just wanted to find out who'd done it, and deal with that as efficiently as possible.
“What is that thing in Fletcher's sleeping cabin?” Martinez asked. “The man tied to the tree?"
A half-smile played on Xi's lips. “A part of his collection that could not be shown to the public. Captain Fletcher had a special license from the Office of the Censor to collect cult art."
Martinez was speechless. Cults were banned for the public good, and were defined in the Praxis as any belief or sect that made irrational or unverifiable claims about the universe. Banned as well was any art such cults had managed to inspire. Generally such work could only be seen in the Museums of Superstition that had been erected in the major cities of the empire.
Of course there were also private collectors and scholars, those considered reliable enough to deal regularly with such explosive material. That one such might be aboard Illustrious, and might have part of his collection aboard, was beyond all credence.
“Was he interested in any cult in particular?” Martinez finally asked.
“Those that produced good paintings and sculpture,” Xi said. “I don't know if you know anything about ancient Terran art—"
“I don't,” Martinez said shortly.
“A lot of it, particularly in the early days, was the product of one cult or another."
“Really.” Martinez drummed his fingers on the table. “Do you have any idea why Captain Fletcher put that—that thing—on his wall, where it was the last thing he'd see before going to sleep?"
Xi's expression was frank. “I don't know. I'd like to know the answer myself, lord captain."
“It wasn't part of some kind of erotic game, was it?"
Xi was amused. “I doubt very much that Gomberg was interested in homoerotic flagellation fantasies.” He shrugged. “But human variety is infinite, isn't it?"
Thwarted again. Martinez found his anger simmering once more.
“If you say so,” he said.
Xi returned his empty glass to the tray. “I thank you for the drink, lord captain. I wish I could have been more useful."
Martinez looked pointedly at the samples. “Those are what's going to be useful, I think."
“I hope so.” Xi rose and collected the little plastic boxes. “I'll get to my investigations, with your permission."
Martinez sighed. “Carry on, lord doctor."
Xi slouched out without bothering to salute. Martinez looked after him for a moment, then paged Alikhan.
“Tell Perry he can bring in supper if he's ready,” Martinez said. “Also, I won't be moving into the captain's quarters till tomorrow—unpack just enough to get me through breakfast.'
“Very good, my lord.” Alikhan leaned over the desk and to freshen Martinez’ drink. “Anything else, my lord?"
Martinez looked at him. “What are they saying in the petty officers’ lounge?"
Alikhan tone was regretful. “I've been here all day, my lord, packing and so on. I haven't had a chance to speak to anyone outside the household."
“Right,” Martinez muttered. “Thanks."
Alikhan withdrew. Martinez looked through the files newly unlocked by his captain's key and thumbprint, and sent Xi access to the fingerprint file. Perry arrived a few minutes thereafter with Martinez’ supper. Martinez ate left-handed, while his right hand worked with his stylus on his desk top, drawing up one list after another.
All things he needed to do or think about as he assumed command.
After Perry carried the dishes away, Martinez sent messages to all the senior petty officers, the heads of departments, ordering them to account for the movements of all their juniors for the critical hours of the morning. He thought it a job best done soon, while memories were still fresh. This done, he called Fulvia Kazakov, the first lieutenant.
“Are you on watch at the moment, lieutenant?"
“No, my lord.” She seemed surprised at the question.
“I'd be obliged if you'd stop by my office, then."
“Of course, my lord.” She hesitated, then said, “Which office would that be, my lord?"
Martinez smiled. “My old office. And yours, too."
When he'd come aboard, as the third-ranking officer on the ship he'd taken the third-best cabin, which had turned out to be that of the first lieutenant. Kazakov had then displaced the lieutenant next junior to her, and each lieutenant had shifted in turn, with the most junior having to bunk with the cadets. Tomorrow, he supposed, would be a relief for them all, with everyone restored to his proper place.
Except, of course, for Captain Fletcher, whose body was slowly crystallizing in one of Illustrious’ freezers.
Kazakov arrived wafting a cloud of a rather metallic perfume. She wore full dress, and the tall collar emphasized the long neck below the heart-shaped face. Mother-of-pearl inlay gleamed on the handles of the chopsticks she'd thrust through the knot at the back of her head.
“Sit down, my lady,” Martinez said as she braced. “Would you care for wine? Or something else, perhaps?"
“Whatever you're having, my lord, thank you."
He poured from the bottle of wine that Perry had opened for his supper. She took the glass and sipped politely, then returned the glass to the desk.
“I am a very different person from Captain Fletcher,” Martinez began.
Kazakov was unsurprised by this analysis. “Yes, my lord,” she said.
“But,” Martinez said, “I'm going to try very hard to be Captain Fletcher, at least for a while."
Kazakov gave a thoughtful nod. “I understand, my lord."
Continuity was essential. Fletcher had commanded Illustrious for years, and his habits and idiosyncracies had become a part of the ship's routine. To change that suddenly was to risk disturbing the equilibrium of the vast organic network that was the ship's crew, and that network had been disturbed enough already by events of the last few days.
“I intend to continue Captain Fletcher's rigorous series of inspections,” Martinez said. “Can you tell me if he inspected the different departments on a regular rotation, or if he chose them randomly?"
“Randomly, I think. I didn't see a pattern. But he'd call the department head before he left the office to let them know he was coming. He wanted the inspections to be reasonably spontaneous, but he didn't want to interrupt anyone in the middle of some critical work."
“I see. Thank you."
He took a sip of his wine. It tasted vinegary to him—Terza had shipped the best stuff to him from clan Chen's cellars in the High City, but he didn't see what was so special about it.
“Can you give me a report about the state of the ship?” Martinez asked. “Informally, I mean—I don't need all the figures."
Kazakov smiled and triggered her sleeve display. “I actually have the figures if you want them,” she said.
“Not right now. Just a verbal summation, if you please."
The state of Illustrious, not surprisingly, was good. It had suffered no damage in the mutiny at Harzapid or the Battle of Protipanu. Food, water, and fuel stocks were more than adequate for the projected length of the voyage. Missile stocks, however, were down: between battle and the enemy shipping destroyed so far on the raid, the cruiser's magazines were depleted by two-fifths.
Which was going to be a problem if Chenforce were ever obliged to fight an enemy either more numerous or less cooperative than the Naxid squadron at Protipanu.
“Thank you, Lady Fulvia,” Martinez said. “Can you give me a report on the officers? I know them socially, but I've never worked with them."
Kazakov smiled. “I'm happy to say that we have an excellent set of officers aboard. All but one of us were chosen by Captain Fletcher. Some of us were friends before this posting. We work together exceptionally well."
Being chosen by Fletcher wasn't necessarily a recommendation in Martinez’ opinion, but he nodded.
“And the one who wasn't chosen?” he asked.
Kazakov thought a moment before she replied. “There's no problem with the way she performs her duties,” she said. “She's very efficient."
Martinez gave no indication of his awareness that this was a less than wholehearted appraisal. He liked the fact that Kazakov felt sufficient loyalty to the other officers not to put a knife into Chandra's back when she had the chance.
“Let's take the lieutenants one by one,” he said.
From Kazakov's report Martinez gathered that three of the lieutenants were Gomberg or Fletcher clients, following in their patron's wake up the ladder of Fleet hierarchy. Two, Husayn and Kazakov herself, had benefitted from those complex trades of favor and patronage so common among the Peers: Fletcher had agreed to look after their interests in exchange for their own families aiding some of Fletcher's friends or dependents.
Perhaps Kazakov thought that this genealogy of relationships and obligations was all that was required to explain the lieutenants to her new captain, or perhaps she was looking into the future and letting Martinez know that her relations were ready to assist Martinez’ friends in the same sort of arrangement they'd had with Fletcher. Martinez was gratified, but insisted on knowing how well the officers did their jobs.
According to Kazakov they did their jobs very well. Lord Phillips and Corbigny, the two most junior, were inexperienced but promising; and the others were all talented. Martinez had no reason to doubt her judgments.
“It's a happy wardroom?” Martinez asked.
“Yes.” Kazakov's answer came without hesitation. “Unusually so."
“Lady Michi's lieutenants are fitting in? Coen and Li?"
“Yes. They're amiable people."
“How about Kosinic? Was he a happy member of the wardroom mess?"
Kazakov blinked in surprise. “Kosinic? He wasn't aboard for very long, and—I suppose he agreed well enough with the others, given the circumstances."
Martinez raised his eyebrows. “Circumstances?"
“Well, he was a commoner. Not,” Kazakov was quick to add, aware perhaps that she'd put a foot wrong, “not that being a commoner was a problem, I don't say anything against that, but his family had no money, and he had to live off his pay. So Kosinic had to take an advance on his pay in order to pay his wardroom dues, and he really couldn't afford to club together with the other lieutenants to buy food stores and liquor and so on. The rest of us were perfectly happy to pay his allotment, but I think he was perhaps a little sensitive about it, and he severely limited his wine and liquor consumption, and avoided eating some of the more expensive food items. And he couldn't afford to gamble—not,” she added, catching herself again, “that there's high play in the wardroom, nothing like it, but there's often a friendly game going on, for what we'd consider pocket money, and Kosinic couldn't afford a place at the table."
Kazakov reached for her wine and took a sip. “And then of course the mutiny happened, and Kosinic got wounded. I think perhaps the head injury changed his personality a little, because he became sullen and angry. Sometimes he'd just be sitting in a chair and you'd look up and see him in a complete fury—his jaw would be working and his neck muscles all taut like cables and his eyes on fire. Sometimes it was a little frightening. This is extremely good wine, my lord."
“I'm glad you like it. Do you have any idea what made Kosinic angry?"
“No, my lord. On those occasions I don't think the wardroom conversation was any more inane than usual.” She smiled at her own joke, and then the smile faded. “I always thought getting blown up by the Naxids was reason enough for anger. But whatever the cause, Kosinic became a lot less sociable after he was wounded, and he spent most of his time in his cabin or in the Flag Officer Station, working."
Martinez sipped his own wine. He thought he understood Kosinic fairly well.
Martinez was a Peer, and blessed with a large allowance from his wealthy family. But he was a provincial, and marked as a provincial by his accent. He knew very well the way high-caste Peers could condescend to their inferiors, or deliberately humiliate them, or treat them as servants, or simply ignore them. Even if the other officers intended no disparagement, a sensitive, intelligent commoner might well detect slights where none existed.
“Do you happen to know how Lady Michi came to take Kosinic on her staff?” Martinez asked.
“I believe Kosinic served as a cadet in a previous command. He impressed her and she took him along when he passed his lieutenants’ exams."
Which was unusually broad-minded of Michi, Martinez thought. She could as easily have associated herself only with her own clients and the clients of powerful families with whom she wished to curry favor, as had Fletcher. Instead, though she came from a clan at least as ancient and noble as the Gombergs or Fletchers, she'd chosen to give one of her valuable staff jobs to a poor commoner.
Though it had to be admitted, in retrospect, that Michi's experiment in social mobility hadn't been very successful.
“Was Kosinic a good tactical officer?” Martinez asked.
“Yes. Absolutely."
Martinez sipped his wine again. In spite of Kazakov's praising the vintage, it still tasted vinegary to him.
“And the warrant officers?” he asked.
Kazakov explained that Fletcher had his pick of warrant and petty officers, and chosen only the most experienced. The number of trainees had been kept to a minimum, and the result was a hard core of professionals in charge of all the ship's departments, all of whom were of exemplary efficiency.
“But Captain Fletcher,” Martinez said, “chose to execute one of those professionals he had personally chosen."
Kazakov's expression turned guarded. “Yes, my lord."
“Do you have any idea why?"
Kazakov shook her head. “No, my lord. Engineer Thuc was one of the most efficient department heads on the ship."
“Captain Fletcher had never in your hearing expressed any ... violent intentions?"
She seemed startled by the question. “No. Not at all, my lord.” Her brows knit. “Though you might ask...” She shook her head. “No, that's ridiculous."
“Tell me."
The guarded look had returned to her face. “You might ask Lieutenant Prasad.” She spoke quickly, as if she wanted to speed through the distasteful topic as quickly as she could. “As you probably heard, she and the captain were intimates. He may have said things to her that he wouldn't have...” She sighed, having finally got through it. “To any of the rest of us."
“Thank you,” Martinez said. “I'll interview to each of the lieutenants in turn."
Though he couldn't imagine Fletcher murmuring plans for homicide along with his endearments, assuming he was the sort of man who murmured endearments at all. Neither could he imagine Chandra keeping such an announcement secret, especially in those furious moments after she and Fletcher had their final quarrel.
“Thank you for your candor,” Martinez said, though he knew perfectly well that Kazakov hadn't been candid throughout. On the whole he approved of the moments when she'd chosen to be discreet, and he thought he could work with her very well.
They ended the interview discussing Kazakov's plans for her future. Her career had been planned so as to minimize any possible intervention by fortune: in another one of those trades so common among Peers, a friend of her family would have given her command of the frigate Storm Fury, a plan that had been detailed when both the friend and the frigate had been captured by the Naxids on the first day of the mutiny.
“Well,” Martinez said, “if I'm ever in a position to do something for you, I'll do my best."
Kazakov brightened. “Thank you, my lord."
The Kazakovs seemed a useful sort of clan to have in one's debt.
After the premiere left, Martinez stoppered the wine bottle and gulped whatever was left in his glass. With his captain's key he opened the personnel files, intending to look at the lieutenants’ records. Then the idea struck him that Fletcher might have made a note in Thuc's file explaining why the engineer had been executed, and Martinez went straight to Thuc's file and opened it.
There was nothing. Thuc had been in the Fleet for twenty-two years, has passed the exam for Master Engineer eight years ago, and had been aboard Illustrious for five of those years. Fletcher's comments in Thuc's efficiency report were brief but favorable.
Martinez read the files of the other senior petty officers and then went on to the lieutenants, looking through the files more or less at random. Kazakov, he discovered, had been fairly accurate in describing their accomplishments. What she hadn't known, of course, were the contents of the efficiency reports Fletcher had made personally. For the most part they were dry, terse, and favorable, as if Fletcher was too grand to dole out much praise, but instead dribbled it out tastefully, like a rich sauce over dessert. About Kazakov he had written, “This officer has served as an efficient executive officer, and has demonstrated proficiency in every technical aspect of her profession. There is nothing that stands in the way of her further promotion and command of a ship in the Fleet."
A note that “nothing stands in the way” was not quite the same as Fletcher's endorsement that Kazakov would be a credit to the service, or would do a fine job in command of her own ship; but carefully guarded enthusiasm seemed to be Fletcher's consistent style. Perhaps Fletcher hadn't thought that praise was necessary, given that his officers were so well-connected that their steps to command had been arranged ahead of time.
After the dry asperity of Fletcher's views of the other officers, Chandra's report came like a thunderbolt. “Though this officer has not demonstrated any technical incompetence that has reached her captain's attention, her chaotic and impulsive behavior has thoroughly befouled the atmosphere of the ship. Her level of emotional maturity is not in any way consistent with the high standards of the Fleet. Promotion is not indicated."
The curiously-worded first sentence managed to insert the word “incompetence” without justifying its inclusion, and the rest was pure poison. Martinez stared at this for a long moment, then looked at the log to check the date at which Fletcher had last accessed the file. He found that Fletcher had last looked at Chandra's file at 27:21 hours the previous evening, a mere six hours before he was killed.
His mouth went dry. Chandra had ripped apart her relationship with Fletcher, and after thinking about it for two days, Fletcher fired a rocket at Chandra with every intention of blowing up her career.
After which, some hours later, Fletcher was killed.
Martinez thought the sequence through carefully. For this to be anything other than a coincidence, Chandra would have had to have known that Fletcher had put a bomb in her efficiency report. He checked Fletcher's comm logs for the evening, and found that he'd made only one call, to Command, possibly for a situation report before going to bed. Martinez checked the watch list and found that it hadn't been Chandra on watch at the time, but the sixth lieutenant, Lady Juliette Corbigny.
So there was no evidence that Chandra would have known the contents of her efficiency report. Not unless Fletcher had made a point of looking for her and telling her in person.
Or unless Chandra had some kind of access to documents sealed under Fletcher's key. She was the signals officer, and she was clever.
Martinez decided that this theory had too much whisky and wine in it to make any sense, and he failed in any case to successfully imagine Chandra wrestling the fully-grown Fletcher to his knees and then banging his head repeatedly on his desk.
Martinez rose and stretched, then looked at the chronometer. 27:21. At this exact time, Fletcher had made his last cold-blooded alterations to Chandra's fitness report.
The coincidence chilled him. He left his office and took a brief march along the decks, circling back to his own door. He passed the door of the captain's cabin, which was closed, and then found himself turning back to it. It opened to his key. He stepped in and called for light.
Fletcher's office had been returned to its pristine state, the fingerprint powder dusted away, the desk dark and gleaming. There was a scent of furniture polish. The bronze statues were impassive in their armor.
The safe sat silvery and silent in its niche. Apparently Gawbyan had repaired it after his break-in.
Martinez passed into the sleeping cabin and stared at the bloody porcelain figure with its unnaturally broad eyes. He looked at the pictures on the wall and saw a long-haired Terran with blue skin playing a flute, a man dead or swooning in the arms of a blue-clad woman. a monstrous being—or possibly it was a Torminel with unnaturally orange fur—snarling out of the frame, its extended tongue pierced by a jagged spear.
Lovely stuff to see at bedtime, he thought. The only picture of any interest showed a young woman bathing, but what might have been an attractive scene was spoiled by the creepy fact of elderly men in turbans who watched her from concealment.
“Comm,” he said, “page Montemar Jukes to the captain's office."
Fletcher's pet artist ambled into the office wearing non-regulation coveralls and braced half-heartedly, in a way that would have earned a ferocious rebuke from any petty officer. To judge from Jukes and Xi, Fletcher was willing to tolerate a certain amount of slackness among his personal following.
Jukes was a stocky man with disordered gray hair and rheumy blue eyes. His cheeks were unnaturally ruddy, and his breath smelled of sherry. Martinez gave him what he intended to be a disapproving scowl, then turned to lead into Fletcher's bedroom.
“Come with me, Mister Jukes."
Jukes followed in silence, then stopped in the doorway, leaning back slightly to contemplate the great porcelain figure strapped to the tree.
“What is this, Mister Jukes?"
“Narayanguru,” Jukes said. “The Shaa tied him to a tree and tortured him to death. He's all-seeing, that's why his eyes wrap around like that."
“All-seeing? Funny he didn't see what the Shaa were going to do to him."
Jukes showed yellow teeth. “Yes,” he said. “Funny."
“Why's he here?"
“You mean why did Captain Fletcher put Narayanguru in his sleeping cabin?” Jukes shrugged. “I don't know. He collected cult art, and he couldn't show it to the public. Maybe this is the only place he could put it"
“Was Captain Fletcher a cultist?"
Jukes was taken aback by the question. “Possibly,” he said, “but which cult?” He walked into the room and pointed at the snarling beast. “That's Tranomakoi, a personification of their storm spirit.” He indicated the blue-skinned man. “That's Krishna, who I believe is a Hindu diety.” His hand drifted across the scarred paneling to indicate the swooning man. “That's a pieta, that's Christian. Another god killed in some picturesque way by the Shaa."
“Christian?” Martinez was intrigued. “We have Christians on Laredo—on my home world. On certain days of the year they dress in white robes and pointed hoods, don chains, and flog each other."
Jukes was startled. “Why do they do that?"
“I have no idea. It's said they sometimes pick one of their number to be their god and nail him to a cross."
Jukes scratched his scalp in wonderment. “A jolly sort of cult, isn't it?"
“It's a great honor. Most of them live."
“And the authorities don't do anything?"
Martinez shrugged. “The cultists only hurt each other. And Laredo is very far from Zanshaa."
“Apparently."
Martinez looked at Narayanguru with his bloody translucent flesh. “In any case,” he said, “I'm neither a cultist nor an aesthete, and I have no intention of sleeping beneath that gory object for a single night."
The other man grinned. “I don't blame you."
Martinez turned to Jukes. “Can you ... rearrange ... the captain's collection?” he asked. “Store Narayanguru where he won't disturb anyone's sleep, and put something more pleasant in his place?"
“Yes, my lord. I've got an inventory of what items of his collection Fletcher brought aboard, and I'll peruse it tonight."
Martinez was amused by the word peruse. “Very good, Mister Jukes. You're dismissed."
“Yes, my lord.” This time Jukes managed a halfway creditable salute, and marched away. Martinez left Fletcher's quarters and locked the door behind him.
The interview had cheered him. He went to his own cabin and was startled to find that one of his servants, Rigger Espinosa, had laid cushions on the floor of his office and had stretched out on them fully clothed.
“What are you doing there?” Martinez asked.
Espinosa jumped to his feet and braced. He was a young man, muscular and trim, with heavy-knuckled hands that hung by his side.
“Mister Alikhan sent me, my lord,” he said.
Martinez stared at him. “But why?"
Espinosa's face was frank. “Someone's killing captains, my lord. I'm to keep that from happening again."
Killing captains. Martinez hadn't thought of it that way.
“Very well,” Martinez said. “As you were."
Martinez went into his sleeping cabin, where Alikhan had laid out his night things. He picked up his toothbrush, moistened it in his sink, and looked at himself in the mirror.
Captain of the Illustrious, he thought.
In spite of the deaths, in spite of Narayanguru hanging on his tree and the unexplained deaths and the unknown killer stalking the ship, he couldn't help but smile.
After breakfast Martinez put on his full dress uniform with the silver braid and the tall collar, now without the red staff tabs that Alikhan had removed overnight. Martinez drew on his white gloves, and called for Marsden and Fulvia Kazakov to join him. While waiting he had Alikhan fetch the Golden Orb from its case. The empire's highest military decoration was a baton topped by a transparent sphere filled with a golden fluid that, when disturbed, swirled and eddied like the clouds surrounding a gas giant. It was a magnificent award, and Martinez was the first to be awarded the decoration in hundreds of years.
Martinez hadn't even considered strapping on the curved ceremonial knife. The situation would be tense enough without that.
Marsden and Kazakov arrived, each wearing full dress. “My lady,” Martinez said to the premiere, “please let Master Machinist Gawbyan know that we are about to inspect his department."
Kazakov made the call as Martinez led the procession to the machine shop, where Gawbyan, breathless because he'd rushed from the petty officers’ mess just ahead of them, braced at the door.
Martinez gave the machine shop a thorough inspection, questioned the machinists on their work, and made note of carelessness in the matter of waste disposal. If the ship had to make a course change, cease acceleration, or otherwise go weightless, the trash would go all over the shop.
Gawbyan accepted the criticism with a grim set to his fleshy features that suggested that he was going to fall on one of his recruits like an avalanche the second Martinez was out of the room.
When the inspection was over, Martinez found that he'd taken up very little of his morning, and so he called a second inspection, this time of Missile Battery Two. This review lasted longer, with time spent examining missile loaders and watching damage control robots maneuver under the command of their operators. Despite the presence of officers and the stress of the inspection the mood of the crew was nearly cheerful, and Martinez couldn't help but compare it with the foreboding and terror that drenched the atmosphere during Fletcher's inspection two days earlier.
Seeing the sunny spirits among the crew, he felt a suspicion that they might be taking him too lightly. He wanted the crew to view him seriously; and if they weren't, he was prepared to become a complete bastard until they did. Intuition suggested, however, that this wasn't necessary. The holejumpers just seemed pleased to have him in charge.
He was a winner, after all. He'd masterminded both of the Fleet's victories over the Naxids. The crew understood a winner better than they understood whatever it was that Fletcher was.
Martinez found the inspections valuable. He realized this was the best and fastest way he had of finding out about his ship.
“I'd like to see the lieutenants after supper,” Martinez told Kazakov as they left the battery. “We'll have an informal meeting in my dining room. Please arrange for a qualified warrant officer or cadet to take the watch."
“Yes, my lord."
“Feel free to move into your old quarters. I thank your hospitality, involuntary though it was."
She returned his smile. “Yes, my lord."
He went into his old office, opened the safe, removed its contents, and left the door of the safe open for Kazakov. He cast a farewell glance over the putti, hoping he would never see their sweet faces again, and then went into the captain's office—his office—and looked at the statues, still stolid and arrogant in their armor, and the display cabinets, and the murals of elegant figures writing in scrolls with quills or reading aloud from open scrolls to a rapt audience. Martinez opened his new safe, changed the combination, and put his papers in it along with Fletcher's book and the little statue of the woman dancing on the skull.
In the sleeping cabin he found a welcome change. The gruesome Narayanguru was gone, as was the pieta, the snarling beast, and the bathing woman. The blue-skinned flute player remained, though he'd been shifted to a brighter-lit area. Next to him a seascape showed a ground-effect vehicle thundering over a white-topped swell in a blast of spume. Over the dressing table was a landscape of snow-topped mountains standing over a village of shaggy Yormaks and their shaggier cattle.
Pride of place went to a dark old picture that showed mostly murky empty space. The composition was unusual: a sort of frame had been painted around the edges; or perhaps it was meant to be the proscenium of a stage, since a painted curtain rod stretched over the whole scene, with a painted red curtain pulled open to the right. Against the darkness on the left were the small figures of a young mother and the infant she had just taken from her cradle. The woman's dress, though hardly contemporary, nevertheless gave the impression of being comfortably middle-class. The infant wore red pajamas. Neither were paying much attention to the little cat that squatted next to a small open fire at the center of the picture. The cat bore a sullen expression and was looking at a red bowl, which had something in it that didn't seem to please him.
Martinez was struck by the contrast between the elaborate presentation, the painted frame and red curtain, with the ordinary domesticity of the scene. The red curtain, the red bowl, the red pajamas. The young mother's round face. The sulky cat with its ears pinned back. The odd little fire in the middle of the room, presumably on an earthen floor. Martinez kept looking at the picture while wondering why it seemed so worth looking at.
There was a movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see Perry in the door.
“Your dinner's ready, my lord,” he said, “whenever you're ready."
“I'll eat now,” Martinez said, and with a last glance at the painting made his way to the dining room, where he ate alone at Fletcher's grand table with its golden centerpiece and its long double row of empty places.
After dinner Martinez reported to Michi for a report on the status of the investigation. Kazakov was there already, still in full dress, sitting next to Xi, who looked even more rumpled and abstracted by comparison. Garcia arrived a few minutes later with a datapad and his notes.
Xi began with a report on the fingerprints found in Fletcher's office. “Most belonged to the captain,” he said. “The rest were those of Marsden, the secretary, and the captain's servants Narbonne and Buckle, who had cleaned and tidied the room the previous day. Three prints belonged to Constable Garcia and were presumably left in the course of his investigation."
Xi's face screwed into an expression that probably intended to express wry amusement.
“Five stray prints belonged to me. And four prints, the fingers of the left hand, were found pressed under the rim of the desk top at the front of the desk.” He made a movement with his hand, palm up, in the direction of Michi's desk to show how this could happen.
“The prints belonged to Lieutenant Prasad. Of course they could have been left at any time, since the servants wouldn't necessarily polish daily under the rim of the desk."
Or, Martinez couldn't help thinking, the prints could have been made when Chandra held onto the desk with her left hand while slamming Captain Fletcher's head into it with her right.
Michi betrayed no evidence that this idea might have occurred to her. “Make anything of the hair or fiber evidence?"
“I haven't had time, but it's not going to prove anything unless we already have a suspect."
Michi turned to Garcia.
“Any information on the movements of the crew?"
Garcia consulted his datapad, an unnecessary gesture considering the contents of his report.
“My lady, aside from the few on watch, most of the crew were asleep. Those on watch in Command vouch for each other. Of those in bed, the only people who admit moving at all say they were visiting the toilet."
“No reports of anyone moving outside the crew compartments? None at all?"
“No, my lady.” Garcia's tongue flicked anxiously over his lips. “Of course, we only have their word for it, and that's all we're going to get...” He cleared his throat. “Unless we find an informant."
Michi's eyes hardened. She turned to Kazakov.
“Lieutenant?” she said.
Kazakov's tone was faintly apologetic. “It's the same situation with the lieutenants and warrant officers, my lady. Those on duty vouch for one another, and those asleep were—” Martinez saw the motion of Kazakov's shoulders that began a shrug, then saw her consciously suppress it. “—were asleep. I have no information that contradicts their stories."
“Damn!” Michi's right hand made a petulant clawing motion in the air. She glared at each of them in turn. “We can't leave it at this,” she said. “There's got to be something else we can do.” She gave a snarl. “What would Doctor An-ku do?” She didn't mean it as a joke.
“We can search the ship,” Martinez said. “And search the crew."
Michi frowned at him.
“There was a little blood,” Martinez continued. “Not much, but some. It just occurred to me that the killer might have got some on a shirt cuff or a trouser leg. Or he might have wiped blood off his hands with a handkerchief. He might have used a weapon on the captain and only slammed the captain's head into the desk afterward, and the weapon might be found. Or the killer might have taken a souvenir from the captain's room and hidden it."
“The captain might have fought,” Garcia said, “at least a little. He might have marked someone."
“Alert the people in the laundry,” Kazakov said. “They need to check every item."
Michi stood very suddenly. She looked at the others as if surprised to find them still in their seats.
“What are we waiting for?” she said. “We should have done this yesterday."
Searching Illustrious and its crew took the rest of the day, and uncovered nothing. Alikhan was waiting in his cabin to take his trousers, shoes, and uniform tunic for their nightly rehabilitation. “What are they saying in the petty officers’ lounge?” Martinez asked.
“Well, my lord,” Alikhan said, with a kind of finality, “they're saying you'll do."
Martinez suppressed a grin. “What are they saying about Fletcher?"
“They aren't saying anything at all about the late captain."
Martinez felt irritation. “I wish they were.” He handed Alikhan his tunic. “You don't think they know more than they're saying?"
Alikhan spoke with the utmost complacency. “They're long-serving petty officers, my lord. They always know more than they tell."
Martinez sourly parted the seals on his shoes, removed them, and handed them to Alikhan.
“You'll tell me if they say anything vital? Such as who killed the captain?"
Alikhan dropped the shoes into their little carrying bag. “I'll do my best to keep you informed, my lord,” he said. Deftly, with the hand that wasn't holding Martinez’ clothing, Alikhan opened a silver vacuum flask of hot cocoa and poured.
“Thank you, Alikhan. Sleep well."
“And yourself, my lord."
Alikhan left through the door that led to the dining room. Martinez changed into pajamas and sat on his bed while he drank the cocoa and looked at the old dark painting. The young mother held her infant and the little fire glowed and the cat crouched with his ears pinned back, and it all took place inside a painted frame or maybe a stage.
He kept seeing the painting for a long time after he turned out the light.
In the morning Martinez printed a series of supper invitations on Fletcher's special bond paper, and sent them via Alikhan to all the senior petty officers. He didn't know whether Fletcher would have invited the enlisted to supper—he suspected not—and he was certain Fletcher wouldn't have used the fancy bond invitations.
He didn't care. It wasn't his bond paper anyway.
The maneuver began shortly afterward. The ships of Chenforce were linked by communications laser into a virtual environment, and while the ships themselves continued on their way a virtual Chenforce maneuvered against a virtual enemy squadron of superior force, a squadron that was meeting them head-on in at Osser, the system into which Chenforce would pass after Termaine. The system was largely uninhabited, with a pair of wormhole relay stations and some small mining colonies on some mineral-rich moons, but nothing else, nothing that would complicate an engagement between two forces.
For the first time Martinez commanded a heavy cruiser in combat, even though it was a combat that took place only in simulation. The crew in Command were disciplined and well trained, long practiced at their jobs and at working with one another, and they obeyed Martinez’ orders with perfect understanding and efficiency.
Chenforce didn't come through the battle unscathed: out of seven ships, three were destroyed and one severely damaged. Of the Naxid force, all ten were wiped out.
Martinez ended the maneuver pleased with himself and with his ship. The pleased feeling lasted until he returned to his office, where Marsden presented him with a vast number of documents, all requiring his attention, or his judgment, or at the very least his signature.
He ate his dinner at his desk while he worked his way through the documents, and sent Marsden to his own meal.
Chandra Prasad arrived half a minute after his dinner, as if she were waiting for him to be alone. He looked up at her knock, lowered his stylus to the desk, and told her to come in. As she approached the desk he wondered in a curiously offhand way whether she'd come to murder him, but decided against it. The sunny smile on her face would have been too incongruous.
“Lieutenant?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“The lady squadcom just told me that I was the new tactical officer,” Chandra said. “I guessed you had something to do with that, so I thought I'd come by and thank you."
“I mentioned your name,” Martinez said. “But last I heard it was a temporary appointment. I think she's going to try a series of people."
“But I'll be first,” Chandra said. “If I impress her, she won't need the others."
Martinez smiled encouragingly. “Good luck."
“I'll need more than luck.” Chandra bit her lower lip. “Can you give me a hint about how best to impress the squadcom?"
“I wouldn't know,” Martinez said. “I don't think I've managed it lately."
She looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if trying to decide whether or not to get angry. He picked up his stylus and said, “Come to dinner tomorrow. We'll discuss your ambitions then."
Her long eyes turned calculating. “Very good, captain."
She braced and he sent her away and went back to reviewing his office work, and nibbling on his dinner between paragraphs. He had no sooner finished both papers and the meal when Kazakov arrived with a new series of documents that, as executive officer, she was passing to him for review.
It was midafternoon before he finished all that, and went into the personnel files to acquaint himself with the petty officers he would be having to supper. They were as Kazakov had said: long-serving professionals, with high scores on their masters’ exams and good efficiency reports from past superiors. All received high marks from Fletcher—including Thuc, the man he'd executed.
Martinez then checked the documentary evidence that should have corroborated Fletcher's good opinions, and almost immediately found something that appalled him.
His supper, he thought darkly, would be more than social.
He opened the supper with the traditional toast to the Praxis, and then gave a preamble to the effect that he was counting on the petty officers to maintain continuity in a ship that had just suffered a series of shocks, and he knew from their records and their efficiency reports that they were all more than capable of giving all that was required.
He looked from one of the eight department heads to the next—from round-faced Gawbyan to rat-faced Gulic, from Master Rigger Francis with her brawny arms and formidable jowls to Cho, Thuc's gangly replacement—and Martinez saw pleased satisfaction in their faces.
The satisfaction stayed there for the entire supper, as Perry brought in each course and as Martinez questioned each of his guests about the state of their department. From Master Data Specialist Amelia Zhang he learned the condition and the capacities of the ship's computers. From Master Rigger Francis he received a myriad of details from the stowage of the holds to the state of the air scrubbers. From Master Signaller Nyamugali he had an informative discussion on the new military ciphers introduced since the beginning of the war, a critical task since both sides had started with the same ciphers and the same coding machines.
It was a pleasurable, instructive meal, and the satisfaction on the faces of the department heads had only increased by the time Perry brought in the coffee.
“In the last days I've come to see how well managed a ship we have in Illustrious,” Martinez said as the scent of the coffee wafted to his nostrils. “And I had no doubt that much of that excellent management were due to the quality of the senior petty officers here on the ship."
He took a slow, deliberate sip of coffee, then put his cup down in the saucer. “That's what I thought, anyway,” he added, “at least until I saw the state of the 77-12s."
Their satisfaction on the petty officers’ faces took a long, astounded moment to fade.
“Well, my lord,” Gawbyan began.
“Well,” said Gulic.
“The 77-12s aren't even remotely current,” Martinez said. “I don't see a single department that can give me the information I need in order to know the status of my ship."
The department heads looked across the long table at one another. Martinez read chagrin, exasperation, embarrassment.
And well they should be mortified, Martinez thought.
The 77-12s were a maintenance log supposed to be kept by every department. The petty officers and their crews were supposed to make note of all routine maintenance, cleaning, replacing, lubricating, checking the status of filters, of seals, of fluids, of the airtight gaskets in the bulkheads and airlocks, of the stocks of replacement parts. Every item on Illustrious was designed to a certain tolerance—overdesigned, some would have thought—and each was supposed to be replaced or maintained well before that tolerance was ever reached. Every part inspection, every replacement, every routine maintenance was supposed to be recorded in a department's 77-12.
Keeping the records current was an enormous inconvenience for those responsible, and they all hated it and tried to avoid the duty whenever possible. But the 77-12s, properly maintained, were the most effective way for a superior to know the condition of his ship, and to a newly-appointed captain they were a necessity. If a piece of equipment failed, the 77-12 could tell the captain whether the failure had been due to inadequate maintenance, human error, or some other cause. Without the record, the cause of a failure would be anyone's guess, and finding out the correct reason would take time and could distract an entire department.
In wartime, Martinez felt that Illustrious couldn't afford the time and distraction of tracking the cause of any failure of a critical piece of equipment, not when lives were potentially in the balance. And he simply detested not knowing the condition of his command.
“Well, my lord,” Gulik began again. There was a nervous look in his sad eyes, and Martinez remembered the sweat on his upper lip as he stood at the end of the line of weaponers, all passing under Fletcher's gaze. “Well, it all has to do with the way Captain Fletcher ran the ship."
“It's all the inspections, my lord,” said Master Rigger Francis. She was a brawny woman, with broken veins in her cheeks and hair that had once been red but was now the color of a dishrag. “You saw how thoroughly Captain Fletcher conducted an inspection. He'd pick a piece of equipment and ask about its maintenance, and we'd have to know the answers. We wouldn't have a chance to look it up in the records, we'd have to know it."
Master Cook Yau leaned his thin arms on the table and peered around Francis’ broad body. “We don't have to write the information down, my lord, because we have it all in our heads."
“I understand.” Martinez gave a grave nod. “If you have it all in your heads,” he added, “then it should be no trouble to put it all in the 77-12s. You should be able to give me a complete report in, say—two days?"
Martinez found himself delighted by the bleak and downcast looks the department heads gave one another. Yes, he thought, yes, it's absolutely time you found out I was a bastard.
“So what's today, then?” he asked cheerfully. “The nineteenth? Have the 77-12's to me by the morning of the twenty-second."
He'd have to continue the inspections, he thought, because he'd have to check everything against the 77-12s to make sure the forms weren't pure fiction. “Yarning the logs,” as it was called, was another time-honored custom of the service.
One way or another, Martinez swore he would learn Illustrious and its workings, human and machine both.
He let them drink their coffee in the sudden somber silence, bade them farewell, and went to his sleeping cabin intending to sleep the sleep of the just.
“How did I do, Alikhan?” he asked in the morning, as his orderly brought in his full dress uniform.
“The petty officers who aren't cursing your name are frightened,” Alikhan reported. “Some were up half the night working on their 77-12s, and kept a number of recruits up running from one compartment to the next confirming their recollections."
Martinez grinned. “Do they still think I'll do?” he asked.
Alikhan looked at him with a tight little smile beneath his curling mustachios. “I think you'll do, my lord,” he said.
As Martinez was eating breakfast he received a written invitation from the warrant officer's mess for dinner. He read the invitation and smiled. The warrant officers had learned something from the petty officers. They weren't going to wait for their invitation to dine with Martinez and find out all the things he thought were wrong with them, they were going to bring Martinez onto their home ground and then take it on the chin if they had to.
Good for them.
He accepted with pleasure, then sent a message to Chandra saying he would have to postpone their dinner for a day. He knew the message would not make her happy. He followed this with a message that none of the lieutenants would find to their liking, his request that all up-to-date 77-12s be filed in two days.
He then called for Marsden and the fifth lieutenant, whose title was Lord Phillips and whose personal name was Palermo.
Sub-lieutenant Palermo, Lord Phillips was a tiny man whose head didn't even reach Martinez’ shoulder. His arms and legs were thin, his body slender, almost frail. His small hands were beautifully proportioned and his face was pale, darkened slightly by a feeble mustache. His voice was a quiet murmur.
Phillips commanded the division that embraced the ship's electronics, from the power cables and generators to the computers that navigated the ship and controlled its engines, so Martinez started by inspecting the workshop of Master Data Specialist Zhang. The shadowy little room with its glowing screens was kept in immaculate order. Martinez asked Zhang if she had made any progress at her 77-12, and she showed him the work she'd managed since the previous evening. He checked two items randomly and found that they'd been logged correctly.
“Excellent work, Zhang,” Martinez said, and marched with his party to the domain of Master Electrician Strode.
Strode was a little below average height but broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, with symbols of his sexual prowess tattooed on his biceps. His hair was brown and cut in a bowl haircut, with his nape shaved and pale hairless patches around the ears. Martinez expected to find it in spotless condition, since Strode would have had warning that the captain was on the prowl since he'd arrived in Zhang's domain. Martinez wasn't disappointed.
“Have you made any progress with your 77-12?” Martinez asked.
“I have, my lord."
Strode called up the log on one of his displays. Martinez copied it to his sleeve display and asked Strode to accompany him to on a brief tour to a lower deck. He paused by one of the deck access panels, marked by a trompe l'oeil niche on the wall, with Juke's painting of a graceful one-handled vase. Martinez looked again at the annotation in the 77-12..
“According to your log,” Martinez said, “you've replaced the transformer under Main Access 8-14. Open the access, please."
Not looking the least bit pleased, Strode tapped codes into the access locks and the floor panel rose on its pneumatics. An electric hum shivered up through the deck. The scent of grease and ozone rose from the utility compartment, and lights came on automatically.
Martinez turned to Lord Phillips. “My lord,” he said, “would you be so kind as to go into the compartment and read me the serial number on the transformer."
Without offering a word Phillips took the deck access and slid his feet beneath. Crouched in the narrow space, Phillips found the serial number and read it off.
The number wasn't the same as that in Strode's 77-12.
“Thank you, lord lieutenant,” Martinez said, staring hard into Strode's fixed, angry face. “You can come up now."
Phillips rose and brushed grime off his dress trousers. “Close the access, please,” Martinez said. Strode did so.
“Strode,” Martinez said, “you are reprimanded for yarning your log. I will check the 77-12s, and from this point forward I will check yours in particular."
Sullen anger still burned in Strode's eyes. “My lord,” he said. “The serial number was ... provisional. I hadn't had the chance to check the correct number."
“See your logs are less provisional in the future,” Martinez said. “I'd rather have no information at all than information that's misleading. You are dismissed."
He walked off while Marsden was still noting the reprimand on his datapad. Phillips followed.
“You'll have to check those logs yourself, lieutenant,” Martinez told him. “Those forms are going to be full of yarns otherwise."
“Yes, my lord,” Phillips murmured. Martinez couldn't tell if his voice was so soft because he was chagrined by the situation, intimidated by the presence of a senior officer, or if that was his normal voice.
“Come to my office for coffee,” Martinez said.
The coffee break was not a success. Martinez knew that Phillips was one of Fletcher's protegés, that the Phillips clan were clients to the Gombergs and that Phillips, like Fletcher, had been born on Sandama, though like the captain he'd spent most of his life on Zanshaa. Martinez hoped to discuss Fletcher, but Phillips’ responses were barely audible, and so terse and monosyllabic that Martinez gave up the task as hopeless and sent Phillips about his business.
He would have to be satisfied with sending a pair of signals, the first to the petty officers that he was serious about the 77-12s, the second to the lieutenants that they had better supervise the department heads very closely.
Dinner with the warrant officers was much more cheerful, and the table was well provided, thanks to Warrant Officer/First Toutou, who headed the commissary. The warrant officers were specialists, pilots or navigators, supply officers or sensor technicians or the commissary, and didn't run large departments like the senior petty officers. Their own 77-12s would be much easier to complete.
Some didn't have to fill 77-12s at all, as was attested by Toutou's broad smile and laughing demeanor.
The mess orderly was pouring little glasses of a sweet trellin-berry liqueur at the end of the meal when Martinez’ sleeve display gave a chime. He answered.
“Captain, I need you in my office.” Michi's voice told him that she would brook no delay.
“Right away, my lady,” Martinez said. He rose from his chair, and before he could stop them the others rose, too.
“Be seated,” he told them. “And many thanks for your hospitality. I'll return it some day."
Doctor Xi waited with Michi in her office. Martinez looked for Garcia and didn't find him.
“Tell him,” Michi said, without bothering to tell Martinez to relax his salute.
Xi turned his mild eyes to Martinez. “When I was looking through my references for methods of lifting fingerprints, it mentioned that prints left on skin can fluoresce under laser light. So I asked Machinist Strode to provide a suitable laser, and he had one of his minions assemble one for me."
Martinez, still braced with his chin lifted, looked at Xi from the corner of his eye.
“You found fingerprints on the captain?” he asked.
Michi looked up, and an expression of annoyance crossed her face. “For all's sake, Martinez,” she said, “relax and have a seat, will you?"
“Yes, my lady."
Xi politely waited for Martinez to take a chair, and then continued as if there had been no interruption.
“There were fingerprints on the captain, yes. Mine, and Garcia's, and those of my orderlies. No others that I could find."
Martinez had no reply to this, and made none.
“I then got Lieutenant Kosinic's body out of the cooler, and I put a sensor net over his head and got a three-dimensional map of his injuries. He died from a single blow to the head, perfectly consistent with his losing his balance, falling, and hitting his head on the rim of the hatch."
One fewer murder, anyway, Martinez thought.
“When I looked for fingerprints with the laser,” Xi continued, “I found my own, and my assistants'. And I also found one large thumbprint on the underside of the jaw on the right side.” He pressed his own thumb to the point. “Right where a thumb might sit if a person were grabbing Kosinic's head and slamming it into the hatch rim."
He gave a little grin. “It was quite a job to read that print properly,” he said. “I couldn't use a normal print reader, and so I had to take several close-up photographs while the print was fluorescing, and then convert the format to—"
“Skip that part,” Michi instructed.
Xi seemed a trifle disappointed that he was not getting the chance to fully reveal the scope of his cleverness. He licked his lips and went on.
“The thumbprint was that of Master Engineer Thuc,” he said.
Martinez realized his mouth was open, and he closed it.
“I'll be damned,” he said.
Thuc was enormous and covered with muscle, Martinez thought, and certainly strong enough to smash Kosinic’ head on the first try. He looked at Michi.
“So Thuc killed Kosinic,” he said. “And Fletcher found out about it somehow and executed Thuc."
She nodded. “That seems likely."
“He said he killed Thuc for the honor of the ship. He was very sensitive on points of rank and dignity, and maybe he thought it would be an affront to his own pride to order a formal inquiry to reveal the fact that one of his enlisted personnel killed an officer, and so he decided to handle it himself."
Michi nodded again. “Go on."
“But if that's true,” Martinez said, “then who the hell killed Fletcher?"
Michi gave him an odd, searching look. “Who benefits?” she said.
Irritation rasped along Martinez’ nerves. “If you're expecting me to break down and confess,” he said, “you're going to be disappointed."
“Others may benefit besides you,” Michi pointed out. “For example someone who knew that Fletcher would never favor her ambitions, but who thought you might."
Martinez suspected that Michi's choice of pronoun was not accidental.
“Thuc might have had an accomplice,” he suggested. “An accomplice who thought he was next on Fletcher's list."
“Did you know,” Michi said, “that Lieutenant Prasad excelled in Torminel-style wrestling at the Doria Academy?"
“No,” Martinez said, “I didn't. I haven't had time to review her file."
Even if Torminel wrestling didn't quite allow bashing an opponent's head in, Martinez knew it was an aggressive style that included strangulation and all sorts of unpleasant, painful joint manipulation and pressure point attacks. He could now see Chandra immobilizing Fletcher long enough to hustle him to his desk and slam his head against its sharp edge, in the process leaving her fingerprints on the underlip.
“I also see,” Michi said, “that you and Lieutenant Prasad shared a communications course some years ago."
“That's true. While she was there, she didn't murder anyone that I know of."
Michi's lips twitched into a grim smile. “I'll take your enthusiastic character reference under advisement. Did you notice that Captain Fletcher gave Prasad a venomous efficiency report?"
“I saw that, yes. But I know of no evidence that she was aware of it."
“Perhaps she wanted to prevent it from being written, but was too late.” Michi tapped her fingers on her desk top. “I'd like you to inquire, as discreetly as possible, about Prasad's movements during the watch that Captain Fletcher was killed."
“I can't possibly be discreet with such an inquiry,” Martinez said. “And besides, Garcia already accounted for everyone on the ship."
“Garcia is an enlisted man and experiences a natural diffidence when interrogating officers. An officer is best for these things."
Martinez decided he might as well concede. When he thought about it, he no longer knew why he was defending Chandra in any case.
“Well,” he said, “I'm interviewing the lieutenants one by one anyway. I'll ask them about that night, but I don't think any will give me a story different from anything they've already told Garcia."
“I mess in the wardroom,” Xi said. “I could make a few inquiries as well."
“We must find an answer,” Michi said.
On his way to his office Martinez contemplated Michi's choice of words: she had said an answer, not the answer.
He wondered if Michi was willing to sacrifice the answer—the real answer—in favor of any answer. An answer that would end the doubts and questions on the ship, that would help to unify Illustrious under its new captain, that would put the entire incident to bed and let Illustrious, and the entire squadron, get on with their job of fighting Naxids.
It was a solution that would sacrifice an officer, that was true, but an officer who was an outsider, a provincial Peer from a provincial clan, isolated from the others who had all been hand-picked by Fletcher. An officer who no one seemed to like very much anyway.
An officer who was very much like the officer Martinez had been just a year ago.
He didn't like Michi's solution on these grounds, and on others as well. There had been three deaths, and Martinez thought Michi was too quick to consider the first two solved. He had a sense that the deaths all had to be related some way, even though he couldn't guess at anything that might connect them.
In his office he found Marsden waiting patiently with the day's reports. Martinez called for a pot of coffee and worked steadily for an hour, until a knock on the door interrupted him. He looked up and saw Chandra in the doorway.
He tried not to envision a target symbol pinned to her chest as she stepped into the room and braced.
“Yes, lieutenant?” he said.
“It was unfortunate that we couldn't discuss...” Her eyes cut to Marsden, whose bald head was bent over his datapad. “That matter we wanted to talk about at dinner today."
“We can talk about it tomorrow,” Martinez said.
“It would be a little late.” Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. “The lady squadcom had asked me to conduct my experiment tomorrow."
She wants to find out how much you're worth before deciding on your arrest. The bitter thought rose in Martinez’ mind before he could stop it.
He sighed. “I don't know how I can help you, lieutenant.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “In order for this to be what you want, it can't be anything standard. Either my standard or their standard, if you see what I mean. It has to be something that's completely yours, and something that hadn't been done before, or at least not recently."
Her hands clenched into fists, and this time did not unclench. “I understand, my lord.” From the sound, her teeth were clenched, too.
“It's not easy, I know.” Martinez made a conciliatory gesture. “I'm sorry, but I have no useful ideas for you.” He mentally reviewed the last few days. “I don't have useful ideas for anyone, it seems."
Her fists still clenched, Chandra braced, executed a military turn, and marched away.
Martinez looked after her, and a morbid part of his mind wondered if Chandra was angry enough to kill him.
Martinez was killed the next morning, during Chandra's maneuver. Martinez spent the time passing command of the ship to Kazakov in Auxiliary Command, so that his crew in Command could devote themselves entirely to the maneuver.
“The experiment assumes that we are six hours into the Osser system."
Osser again, Martinez thought. It was almost as if Chandra were repeating Martinez’ last maneuver, not a good sign if she wanted to impress Squadron Commander Chen.
“Chenforce has entered hot, and we've been able to search the system a little more than three light-hours out. No enemy force has been detected. Are there any questions?"
Apparently there were none, because Chandra went on. “The exercise will commence on my mark. Three, two, one, mark."
A new system blossomed on the navigation displays.
“My lord,” said Warrant Officer Pan, one of the sensor operators, “we're being painted by a tracking laser."
“Where?"
“Dead ahead, more or less. A rather weak signal—I don't think it's anywhere near—My lord! Missiles!” Pan's voice jumped half an octave in pitch.
“Power all point-defense lasers!” Martinez said. “Power antiproton beams!"
But by that point they were all dead, and within seconds Chenforce was a glowing cloud of radioactive parties spreading itself into the cold infinity of space, and Martinez’ heart was thumping to a belated charge of adrenaline.
Naxid missiles, Martinez realized, accelerated to relativistic velocities outside the system, then fired through the wormhole along the route they knew Chenforce had to take. The reflection of a tracking laser fired from somewhere in the system provided last-instant course corrections.
Through his shock he managed a grim laugh. Chandra had impressed the squadcom, all right.
Michi's voice came into Martinez’ headphones. “I'll want all officers in my quarters for dinner at fifteen and one."
The mood at dinner was sober. The officers looked as if they'd been beaten flat by hours of high-gravity acceleration.
The meals that had been prepared in the wardroom, and in the captain's and squadcom's kitchens, were combined—casseroles mostly, that could cook quietly away in the ovens while everyone was at quarters. Michi had several bottles of wine opened and shoved them across the table at her guests, as if she expected the depressed company simply to swill them down.
“I should like the tactical officer,” she said, “to comment on this morning's experiment."
The tactical officer. Triumph glimmered in Chandra's long eyes as she rose. “The attack was something I'd been worried about all along. I know that we were following standard Fleet doctrine for a squadron in enemy territory, but I wondered how useful that doctrine was in reality.” She shrugged. “I guess we found out."
She turned on the wall display and revealed that in her simulation she'd launched thirty missiles from Arkhan-Dohg, the next system after Osser.
“It was possible to make a reasonable calculation of when we'd enter the Osser system. Since our course would be straight from Wormhole One to Wormhole Two, the missiles’ track was obvious. Our course and acceleration could be checked by wormhole relay stations and any necessary corrections sent to the missiles en route. All the Naxids would need would be a targeting laser or a radar signal to give the missiles’ own guidance systems last-second course corrections.” She shrugged. “And if our course and speed are very predictable they won't need even that."
“Obviously,” Michi said, “we need to make our course and acceleration less predictable.” She looked at the assembled officers. “My lords, if you have any other suggestions, please offer them now."
“Keep the antimissile defenses powered at all times,” Husayn said.
“My lady,” Chandra said, “I had thought we might keep our own targeting lasers sweeping dead ahead and between the squadron and any wormholes. If they pick up anything incoming, we might gain a few extra seconds."
“Decoys,” Martinez said. “Have a squadron of decoys flying ahead of us. The missiles might target them instead of us, particularly since they'll have only a few seconds to pick their targets."
Decoys were missiles that could be fired from the squadron's ordinary missile tubes, but were configured to give as large a radar signature as a warship. They were less convincing the longer an observer had to view them, but with a relativistic missile having only a second or two to make up its mind, that was hardly a problem.
Michi seemed dubious. “How large a cloud of decoys are we going to need?"
Martinez tried to make a mental calculation and failed. “As many as it takes,” he said finally.
Michi turned to Chandra. “I want you to try all these tactics in simulation."
“Yes, my lady."
“Give me regular reports."
“Of course, my lady.” Chandra turned to at the others. “The danger signal will be entering a system where the radars are still operating, or where we're painted by a targeting laser from what will probably be a distant source. That's how we'll know we're running into danger."
Ever since Chenforce had plunged into enemy space, the Naxids had been turning off all radars and other navigation aids in any system the loyalists had entered. Chandra was perfectly right to say that radar would be a danger signal.
Michi poured a glass of amber wine and contemplated it while she tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “The best way to prevent this kind of attack is to blow up every wormhole station we come across,” she said. “That way they can't relay course corrections to any incoming missiles. I'd hate to blow those stations; it's uncivilized. But to preserve my command I'll kill anything on the enemy side of the line if I have to."
She reached out a hand and picked up her glass of wine.
“Isn't anyone drinking but me?” she asked.
Martinez poured himself a glass of wine and raised it in silent toast to Chandra.
He thought she had just made herself too valuable to be blamed for Fletcher's death.
Chandra and Martinez finally had their long-postponed dinner the following day. Even though Martinez thought it was probably no longer necessary, he instructed Alikhan not to leave them alone for too long a space of time.
Martinez was probably no longer necessary to Chandra's plans.
Chandra entered the dining room looking splendid in her full dress uniform, the silver braid glowing softly on the dark green tunic and trousers. Her auburn hair brushed the tall collar that now bore the red triangular tabs worn by Michi's personal staff.
“Congratulations, lieutenant,” Martinez said
Alikhan arrived with a warm, creamy pumpkin soup, fragrant with the scent of cinnamon. Chandra tasted it and said, “Your cook has it all over the wardroom chef, good as he is."
“I'll tell him you said so."
“That was one of the small compensations of being with Fletcher,” Chandra said. “He'd always give me a good meal before boring me to death."
Martinez considered this as he sampled the soup and decided that Chandra could at least pretend to be a little more stricken by the death of an ex-lover.
“What did he bore you with?” Martinez asked.
“Other than the sex, you mean?” When Martinez didn't smile at her joke, she shrugged and went on. “He talked about everything, really. The food we were eating, the wine we were drinking, the exciting personnel reports he'd signed that day. He talked about his art. He had a way of making everything dull.” A mischievous light came into her eyes. “What did you think of what he had hanging in his sleeping cabin? Did it give you sweet dreams?"
“I got rid of it,” Martinez said. “Jukes found some less depressive stuff to hang.” He looked at her. “Why did Fletcher have Narayanguru there? What did he get out of it?"
Chandra gave an elaborate sigh. “You're not going to make me repeat his theories, are you?"
“Why not?
“Well,” she said, “he said that if he ever joined any cult, it would be the Narayanists, because they were the only cult that was truly civilized."
“How so?"
“Let me try to remember. I was trying not to listen by that point.” She pursed her full lips. “I think it was because the Narayanists recognized that all life was suffering. They said that the only real things were perfect and beautiful and eternal and outside our world, and that we could get closer to these real things by contemplating beautiful objects in this world."
“Suffering,” Martinez repeated. “Gomberg Fletcher, who was filthy rich and born into most privileged caste of Peers, believed that life was suffering. That his life was suffering."
Chandra shook her head. “I didn't understand that part, either. If he ever suffered, he didn't do it when I was looking.” A curl of disdain touched her lip. “Of course he felt he was more refined than the rest of us, he probably thought his suffering was so elevated that the rest of us didn't understand it."
“I can see why the Shaa killed Narayanguru, anyway,” Martinez said. “If you maintain that there's another world, which you can't prove exists, where things are somehow better and more real than this world, which we can prove exists, you're going to run afoul of the Praxis for sure, and the Legion of Diligence is going to have you hanging off a tree before you can spit."
“Oh, there was more to it than the invisible world business. Miracles and so on. The dead tree that Narayanguru was hung on was supposed to have burst into flower after they took him down."
“I can see where the Legion of Diligence would take a dim view of those stories, too."
That night, sitting on his bed while he drank his cocoa and looked at the picture of the woman, her child, and the cat, he thought about Fletcher sitting in the same place, contemplating the ghastly figure of Narayanguru, and thinking about human suffering. Martinez wondered what Fletcher, a prominent member of two of the hundred most prominent Terran families in the empire, had ever suffered, and what comfort he received by looking at the bloody figure strung on the tree.
Doctor Xi had said Fletcher found his position a burden, for all that he worked dutifully at what was expected of him. He wasn't really an arrogant snob, according to Xi, he was just playing a part.
Fletcher had been empty, filling his hours with formal ritual and aesthetic pleasure. He hadn't created anything; he hadn't ever made a statue or a painting, he just collected them. He hadn't done anything new or original with his command, he'd just polished his ship's personnel and routines the same way he'd polish a newly-acquired silver figurine.
He had suffered, apparently. Perhaps he had known all along how hollow his life had become.
He had sat where Martinez was now sitting, and contemplated objects that other people considered holy.
Martinez wasn't going to figure Fletcher out tonight. He put the cocoa aside, brushed his teeth, and rolled beneath the covers.
Time passed. Martinez dined with Husayn and Mersenne on successive days, and the next day spent eight hours in Command, taking Illustrious through the wormhole to Osser. Squadrons of decoys were echeloned ahead of the squadron, in hopes of attracting any incoming missiles. Along with the decoys flew pinnaces, painting the vacuum ahead with their laser range finders. Every antimissile weapon was charged and pointed dead ahead.
Chenforce made some final-hour maneuvers before passing the wormhole, checking their speed and entering the wormhole at a slightly different angle, so as to appear in the Osser system on a course that wouldn't take them straight on to Qupyl, the next system, but slightly out of the direct path.
Martinez lay on his acceleration couch, trying not to gnaw his nails as he stared at the sensor displays, waiting for the brief flash that would let him know that missiles were incoming. His tension gradually eased as the returning radar and laser signals gradually revealed more of the Osser system, and then a new worry began to possess him.
The Naxids would have to wonder why Chenforce had changed its tactics, particularly when they hadn't met any genuine opposition since Protipanu, at the very beginning of their raid. If the Naxids analyzed the raiders’ maneuvers, then reasoned backwards to find what the tactics were intended to prevent, they would be able to see that Michi Chen and her squadron was very, very concerned about a missile barrage fired at relativistic velocities.
If the tactic hadn't yet occurred to the Naxids, Chenforce might now be handing them the idea.
But that was a worry for another day. For the present it was enough to see that the ranging lasers were finding nothing, that more and more of the system was being revealed without an enemy being found, and that Chenforce was as safe from attack as it was ever going to be.
Days passed. Martinez conducted regular inspections to learn his ship and crew, and to confirm the information reported on the 77-12s. He dined in rotation with Lord Phillips, who was scarcely more talkative than he had been at their previous meeting, with Lieutenant the Lady Juliette Corbigny, whose volubility more than made up for Phillips’ silence, and with Acting Lieutenant Lord Themba Mokgatle, who had been promoted to the vacancy left as Chandra shuttled to Michi's staff.
Gazing at the painting of the woman, child, and cat, he realized that there was another figure, a man who sat on a bed opposite the fire from the woman and her baby. Martinez hadn't noticed him because the painting was dark and needed cleaning, and the man wasn't illuminated by the fire. One moment he wasn't there, and the next Martinez suddenly saw him, head bent with a stick or staff in his hands, appearing like a ghost from behind the painted red curtain.
Martinez couldn't have been more surprised if the cat had jumped from the picture into his lap.
The dim figure on the canvas was the only discovery Martinez managed during that period. The killer or killers of Captain Fletcher remained no more than a phantom. Michi grew ever more irritable, and snapped at Martinez and Garcia both. Sometimes Martinez caught a look in her eye that seemed to say, If you weren't family...
In time, after the first breathless rush of taking command was over, Martinez was reminded that there were too many captains’ servants on the ship. He had Garcia take Rigger Espinosa and Machinist Ayutano into the constabulary, with the particular duty of patrolling the decks on which the officers were quartered. Buckle the hair stylist was sent to aid the ship's barber. Narbonne was taken onto Martinez’ service as an assistant to Alikhan, a demotion that Narbonne seemed to resent.
That left Baca, the fat, redundant cook that no one seemed to want, and Jukes. Baca was eventually taken on as an assistant to Michi's cook, a post he wasn't happy about, either, and that left Martinez with his own personal artist.
Martinez called Jukes into his office to give him the news, and the man turned up in Fleet-issued undress, and managed to brace rather professionally in salute. Martinez decided he must have got to Jukes before Jukes got to the sherry.
“What did Fletcher rate you, anyway?” he asked.
“Rigger First Class."
“I don't suppose you know anything about a rigger's duties?"
The artist shook his head. “Not a damn thing, my lord. That's why I need a new patron."
“Good luck in finding one."
There was a moment of silence. Jukes looked as if he'd been hit with a hammer.
“Thank you for changing the pictures in my cabin,” Martinez said. “It's a considerable improvement."
“You're welcome.” Jukes took a breath and made a visible effort to re-engage with the person sitting before him. “Was there a piece you particularly liked? I could to locate other works in that style."
“The one with the woman and the cat,” Martinez said. “Though I don't think I've seen any painting quite in that style, anywhere."
Jukes smiled. “It's not precisely typical of the painter's work. That's a very old Northern European piece."
Martinez looked at him. “And North Europe is where, exactly?"
“Terra, my lord. The painting dates from before the Shaa conquest. Though I should say the original painting, because this may be a copy. It's hard to say, because all the documentation is in languages no one speaks anymore, and hardly anyone reads them."
“It looks old enough."
“It wants cleaning.” Jukes gave a thoughtful pause. “You've got a good eye, my lord. Captain Fletcher bought the painting some years ago, but decided he didn't like it because it didn't seem one thing or another, and he put it in storage.” His mouth gave a little twitch of disapproval. “I don't know why he took it to war with him. It's not as if the painting could be replaced if we got blown up. Maybe he wanted it with him since it was so valuable, I don't know."
“Valuable?” Martinez asked. “How valuable?"
“I think he paid something like eighty thousand for it."
Martinez whistled.
“You could probably buy it, my lord, from the captain's estate."
“Not at those prices, I can't."
Jukes shrugged. “It would depend on whether you could get a license for cult art, anyway."
Martinez was startled. “Cult art. That's cult art?"
“The Holy Family with a Cat, by Rembrandt. You wouldn't know it was cultish except for the title."
Martinez considered the painting through his haze of surprise. The cult art he remembered from his visits to the Museum of Superstition, and the other pieces he'd seen on Fletcher's cabin walls, made its subjects look elevated, or grand or noble or at the very least uncannily serene, but the plain-faced mother, the cat, and the child in red pajamas merely looked comfortably middle-class.
“The cat isn't normal with the Holy Family?"
A smile twitched at Jukes’ lips. “No. Not the cat."
“Or the frame? The red curtain?"
“That's the contribution of the artist."
“The red pajamas?"
Jukes laughed. “No, that's just to echo the red of the curtain."
“Could the title be in error?"
Jukes shook his head. “Unlikely, my lord, though possible."
“So what makes it cult art?"
“The Holy Family is a fairly common subject, though usually the Virgin's in a blue robe, and the child is usually naked, and there are usually attendants, with some of them, ah—” He reached for a word. “—floating. This particular treatment is unconventional, but then there were no hard and fast rules for this sort of thing—Narayanguru, for example, is usually portrayed on a ayaca tree, I suppose because the green and red blossoms are so attractive, but Captain Fletcher's Narayanguru is mounted on a real tree, and it's a vel-trip, not an ayaca."
A very faint chord echoed in Martinez’ mind. He sat up, lifting his head.
“—and Da Vinci, of course, in his Virgin of the Rocks, did a—"
Martinez raised a hand to cut off Jukes’ distracting voice. Jukes fell silent, staring at him.
“An ayaca tree,” Martinez murmured. Jukes wisely did not answer.
Martinez thought furiously, trying to reach into his own head. Mention of the ayaca tree had set a train of associations cascading through Martinez’ mind, and he had reached conclusions; but it had all happened in an instant, without his having to think through a single step. He now had to consciously and carefully work backward from his conclusions through the long process to make certain that it all held together, and to find out where it had started.
Without speaking he rose from his desk and walked to his safe. He opened a tunic button and drew out his captain's key on its elastic, inserted the key into his safe, and pressed the combination. Airtight seals popped as the door swung open, and Martinez caught a whiff of stale air. Martinez took out the clear plastic box in which Doctor Xi had placed Fletcher's jewelry, opened the box, and separated from the signet ring and the silver mesh ring the gold pendant on its chain. He held the chain up to the light, seeing the tree-shaped pendant dangling, emeralds and rubies glittering against the gold.
“An ayaca tree like this?” he asked.
Jukes squinted as he looked at the dangling pendant. “Yes,” he said, “that's typical."
“Would you say that this pendant is particularly rare or unusually beautiful or stands out in any way?"
Jukes blinked at him, then frowned. “It's very well made and moderately expensive, but there's nothing extraordinary about it."
Martinez flipped the pendant into his hand and returned to his desk. “Comm,” he said, “page Lieutenant Prasad."
A shadow fell across his door, and he looked up to see Marsden, the ship's secretary, with his datapad.
“My lord, if you're busy..."
“No. Come in."
“Lord captain.” Chandra's face appeared in the depths of Martinez’ desk. “You paged me?"
“I have a question,” Martinez said. “Did Captain Fletcher wear a pendant in the shape of a tree?"
Chandra was taken aback. “He did, yes."
“Did he wear it all the time?"
Chandra's look grew more curious. “Yes, so far as I know he did, though he took it off when he, ah, went to bed."
Martinez raised his fist into view of the pickups on the desk, and let the pendant fall from his grasp so that it dangled on the end of its chain.
“This is the pendant?"
Chandra squinted, and her face distorted in the camera pickups as she stared into her sleeve display. “Looks like it, my lord."
“Thank you, lieutenant. End transmission."
Chandra's startled face faded from the display. Martinez looked at the pendant for a long moment as excitement hummed in his nerves, and then became aware of the silence in his office, of Jukes and Marsden staring at him.
“Have a seat for a moment,” he said. “This may take a while."
He was still reaching deep into his own head.
He called up a security manual onto his desk display, one intended for the constabulary and Investigative Service. Included was a description of cults and the methods of recognizing them.
Narayanism, Martinez read, a cult based on the teachings of Narayanguru (Balambhoatdada Seth), which were condemned for a belief in a higher plane and for the founder's alleged performance of miracles. Narayanguru's teachings show a kinship to those of the Terran philosopher Schopenhauer, themselves condemned for nihilism. Though cult tradition maintains that Narayanguru was hanged on an ayaca tree, historical records show that he was tortured and executed by more conventional methods in the Year of the Praxis 5581, on Terra. Because of this false tradition, cultists sometimes recognize one another by carrying flowering branches of the ayaca on certain days, planting ayacas about the home, or by using the ayaca blossom on jewelry, pottery, etc. There are also the usual variety of hand and other signals.
Narayanism is not a militant cult and its adherents are not believed to pose an active threat to the Peace of the Praxis, except insofar as they promote false beliefs. The cult has recently been reported on Terra, Preowin, and Sandama, where entire clans sometimes participate secretly in cult activity.
Martinez gazed up at Jukes, and held out the pendant dangling from his fist. “Why would Captain Fletcher wear this pendant?” he asked. “It's not a particularly rare or precious form of art, is it?"
Jukes looked blank. “No, my lord."
“Suppose he was actually a believer,” Martinez said. “Suppose he was a genuine Narayanist."
A look of pure horror crossed Marsden's face. Martinez looked at him in surprise. Marsden took a few moments to find words, but when he spoke his voice trembled with what Martinez supposed was fury.
“Captain Fletcher, a cultist?” Marsden said. “Do you realize what you're saying? A member both of the Gombergs and the Fletchers? A Peer of the highest possible pedigree, with noble ancestors stretching back thousands of years..."
Martinez was taken aback by this rant, but was in no mood for a pompous lecture on genealogy. He cut Marsden off in mid-tirade.
“Marsden,” he said, “do you know where the personal possessions of Thuc and Kosinic have been stored?"
Marsden larynx moved in his throat as he visibly swallowed his indignation, “Yes, my lord,” he said.
“Kindly bring them."
Marsden rose, put the datapad on his seat, and braced. “At once, lord captain."
The secretary marched away, his legs stiff with anger. Jukes looked after him in surprise.
“An odd man,” he said. “I had no idea he was such a snob.” He turned to Martinez and raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think Captain Fletcher was a cultist?"
Martinez looked at the pendant that still dangled form his hand.
“I don't know why else he'd wear this."
“Maybe it's was a gift from someone he cared for."
“A cultist he cared for,” Martinez muttered.
He leaned back in his chair and followed his chain of reasoning again, piece by piece. No part of it was implausible by itself, he decided, and therefore his ideas were better than any other theory that had come his way.
Much of it had to do with the way the Praxis viewed cults, and the way that the servants of the Praxis had interpreted their duty.
The Shaa had believed in many things, but they did not believe in the numinous. Any cult that promoted a belief in the supernatural was, by definition, a violation of the Praxis and was illegal. When the Shaa conquered Terra, they had found the place swarming with cults, and had acted over time to suppress them, moving gradually over several generations. Meeting houses of the faithful had been torn down, turned to secular use, or converted to museums. Believers were dismissed from government and teaching posts. Cult literature was confiscated and its reproduction forbidden. Cult organizations were disbanded, any professional clergy dismissed, and schools of instruction shut down.
Any believer determined on martyrdom was given ample opportunity to exercise his choice.
Cults had never vanished, of course. The Shaa, who were not without their own shrewd intelligence, had perhaps never expected they would. But by forbidding the spread of doctrine, by forbidding professional clergy and houses of worship, by forbidding the reproduction of literature and cult objects, they had turned what had been by all accounts a thriving business into a strictly amateur affair. If there were meetings, they were small meetings that took place in private homes. If there were clergy, they had no opportunity for specialized study, and had to hold regular jobs. If there was literature, it was copied clandestinely and passed from hand to hand, and errors crept in and many texts were incomplete.
Believers were usually not harassed as long as they did not practice in public or proselytize, and in time learned discretion. Though belief was not destroyed, its force was reduced, and in time cults became indistinguishable from superstition, a set of arcane and irrational practices designed to achieve the intervention of who knew what against the inflexible workings of an unknowable fate. Over the centuries the supernatural had simply ceased to be a threat to the empire.
Marsden returned within a few moments, carrying a pair of grey plastic boxes. “I assumed you wanted possessions other than clothing, my lord,” he said. “If you want to examine the clothing as well, may I requisition a hand truck?"
That would be for Kosinic's trunks containing the amazing number of uniforms required of an officer, plus his personal vac suit. Thuc would have had fewer uniforms, and used a vac suit from the ship's stores.
“The pockets would have been emptied, and so on?” Martinez asked.
“Yes, lord captain. Pockets are looked through, and other places where small items might be found, and anything discovered put in these boxes."
“I won't need the clothing, then. Put the boxes on my desk."
Martinez opened Kosinic's box first. He found a ring from the Nelson Academy, from which Martinez had graduated before Kosinic arrived, and a handsome presentation stylus, brushed aluminum inlaid with unakite and jasper, and engraved “To Lieutenant Arthur Kosinic, from his proud father.” There was a shaving kit, a modestly-priced cologne, a nearly-empty bottle of antibiotic spray that a doctor had probably given him for his wounds. Martinez found some fine paper, brushes, and watercolor paints, and looked at several finished watercolors, most planet-bound landscapes of rivers and trees, but including one recognizable impression of Fulvia Kazakov sitting at a table in the wardroom. To Martinez’ unpracticed eye none of the watercolors seemed particularly expert.
In a small pocketbook were a series of foils, neatly labeled, that held music and other entertainments. At the bottom of the box was a small pocket-sized datapad, which Martinez turned on. It asked for a password, but Martinez wasn't able to provide one. He slotted his captain's key into it, but the datapad was a private one, not Fleet issue, and wouldn't recognize his authority. Martinez turned it off and returned it to the box.
The few belongings, the cologne and the academy ring and the inexpert watercolors, seemed to add up to an inadequate description of a life. Whatever had most mattered to Kosinic, Martinez thought, it probably wasn't here: his passions remained locked in his brain, and had died with him. Martinez looked again at the stylus, sent by the father who might not yet know that his son had been killed, and closed the box on Kosinic's life.
He turned to the box labeled Thuc, H.C., Master Engineer (deceased) , and found what he was looking for right on top.
A small enameled pendant in the form of a tree with green and red blossoms, hanging from a chain of bright metal links.
“I think there was a group of Narayanists on Illustrious,” Martinez explained to Michi Chen. “I think Captain Fletcher was one of them. He wore a Narayanist symbol around his neck, and he had a huge statue of Narayanguru in his sleeping cabin. I think he adopted the pose of a collector of cult art so that he could collect Narayanist artifacts legally, and he covered his activities by collecting artifacts from other cults as well."
“If you insist on that theory,” Michi said, “You're going to have trouble with the Gombergs and Fletchers, maybe even a suit in civil court."
“Not if I'm right, I won't,” Martinez said. “If there are Narayanists in either of those families, we won't hear a word from them."
Michi nodded silently. “Go on,” she said.
He had asked Michi into his office on a confidential matter, and she had been surprised on her arrival to find Marsden and Jukes present.
“I think I know why Captain Fletcher was killed, but you'll have to be patient,” Martinez began.
“I've been patient so far,” Michi said. Martinez could have quibbled with that, but decided against it. He called to Perry to bring out coffee and snacks, and ordered Marsden to record the meeting and take notes.
“I think there were, perhaps still are, a number of Narayanists aboard,” Martinez said. “Captain Fletcher protected them. Somehow Kosinic found out about at least some of this, though possibly he didn't know the captain was a part of the arrangement. As Kosinic's knowledge was now a menace to the cultists, one of them—Thuc—killed Kosinic."
Michi nodded. “Very well,” she said.
“It was a masterfully done murder, and we would never have found out about it if Captain Fletcher wasn't killed the same way and made us suspicious."
Perry and Alikhan arrived at that moment with coffee and little triangular pastries, and Martinez fell silent while everyone was served. He took an appreciative taste of the coffee and felt heat flush at once to the surface of his skin. He could feel his theories boiling in his skull, and he wanted to let them escape; he was so impatient that it took an effort to compliment Perry on the coffee. Finally the two left the room and he was able to continue.
“We know that Thuc was a Narayanist because he, too, wore a Narayanist medallion. I think that once Kosinic was killed, Captain Fletcher began to realize that he was in a bad spot. All it would take would be a little indiscretion on the part of a petty officer, and Fletcher would be implicated in the death of a fellow officer—and not just any officer, but a member of the squadron commander's staff.
“He couldn't indict Thuc, because any public proceedings would expose his own membership in the cult. So he used his officers’ privilege and executed Thuc during the course of an inspection. You didn't see him do it, but I did—and it was very clearly premeditated, and very cold-blooded. He'd obviously practiced cutting Thuc's throat many times before he performed it."
Michi's eyes flickered as Martinez said this, and she turned to Marsden.
“You were there, Mister Marsden. Do you agree with this assessment?"
Marsden had been listening with his bald head bent over his datapad, and his stylus poised to make corrections on the transcription of the conversation that his pad was automatically making. He looked up with a face that might have been carved of flint.
“The lord captain was not accustomed to leave anything to chance,” he said.
Michi listened to this, and slowly nodded. She turned back to Martinez.
“Go ahead, my lord."
Martinez gave a little shrug. “Everything from this point is completely speculative,” he said. “I think Captain Fletcher was intent on eliminating every member of the cult in order to protect himself, but I can't be certain that he wasn't just after Thuc. In any case, one or more other cult members assumed that Fletcher was going after them, and they acted to kill him first."
Michi absorbed this quietly. “Do you have any idea who those other cult members might be?"
Martinez shook his head. “No, my lady. The only people I'm inclined to exempt from suspicion are Weaponer Gulik and the crew of Missile Battery Three. Fletcher inspected them on the day of his death and didn't execute any of them."
“That still leaves something like three hundred people."
“Though I would start with those among the crew who are from Sandama, like the lord captain, or who are Fletcher's clients. Doctor Xi, for example."
“Xi?” Michi was startled. “But he's been helpful."
“He helpfully explained away his own fingerprints that were found in Captain Fletcher's office."
“But he was the one who proved that Captain Fletcher was murdered in the first place. If he'd been part of the conspiracy, he would have kept silent."
Martinez opened his mouth, then closed it. Doctor An-ku I'm not, he thought.
“Well,” he said, “let's not start with Doctor Xi, then."
She held his eyes for a moment, and then her shoulder slumped as she seemed to deflate slightly. “We're no better off than we were. You've got an interesting theory, but even if it's true, it doesn't help us."
Martinez took the two pendants, Fletcher's and Thuc's, in one large hand and held them dangling over his desk. “We searched the ship once, but we didn't know what we were looking for. Now we do. Now we're looking for these. We look in lockers and we look around necks."
“My lord.” Martinez and Michi both turned at the sound of Marsden's flat, angry voice. “You should check me first, my lord. I'm from Sandama, and I was one of Captain Fletcher's clients. That makes me a double suspect, apparently."
Martinez gazed at Marsden and his annoyance flared. Marsden was offended on Fletcher's behalf, and apparently on behalf of the crew as well. A search of the crew's private effects was an insult to their dignity, and Marsden had taken it to heart. He was going to insist that if Martinez was going to violate his dignity, he was going to violate it personally, and right now.
“Very well,” Martinez said, having no choice. “Kindly remove your tunic, open your shirt, and empty your pockets."
Marsden did so, a vein in his temple throbbing with suppressed fury.Martinez sorted through the contents of Marsden's pockets while his secretary pirouetted before him, arms held out at the shoulder, showing he had nothing to hide. No cult objects were detected.
Martinez clenched his teeth. He had degraded another human being, and for nothing.
And the worst part of it was that he felt degraded himself for doing it.
“Thank you, Marsden,” Martinez said. You bastard, he added silently.
Without a word the ship's secretary turned his back on Martinez and donned his tunic. When he had buttoned it, he resumed his seat and put his datapad on his lap and picked up his stylus.
“The last inspection was too helter-skelter,” Michi said. “And it took too long. This next has to be more efficient."
The two of them discussed this matter for a while, and then Michi rose. The others rose and braced. “I'm going to dinner,” she told Martinez. “After dinner we'll confine the crew to quarters and begin the search, starting with the officers."
“Very good, my lady."
She looked at Marsden and Jukes, who had spent the entire meeting sipping coffee and eating one pastry after another. “You'll have to dine with these two in your quarters. I don't want news of this getting out over dinner conversation in the mess."
Martinez suppressed a sigh. Marsden was not going to be the most delightful of dinner guests.
“Yes, my lady,” he said.
Michi took a step toward the door, then hesitated. She looked at Jukes, her brows knit.
“Mister Jukes,” she said, “why exactly are you here?"
Martinez answered for him. “He happened to be in the room when I had my brainstorm."
Michi nodded. “I understand.” She turned away for a moment, hesitated again, then returned her gaze to Jukes.
“There are crumbs on your front, Mister Jukes,” she said.
Jukes blinked. “Yes, my lady,” he said.
The officers’ quarters were searched first, by Martinez, Michi, and the three lieutenants on Michi's staff. The officers’ persons were also searched, with the exception of Lord Phillips, who was officer of the watch and in Command.
“This is what you're looking for,” Martinez told them then, showing them the two pendants. “These are cult objects, representations of ayaca trees. They need not be worn around the neck—they could be a ring or a bracelet or any kind of jewelry, or they could be on cups or plates or picture frames or practically anything. Everything needs to be examined. Do you understand?"
“Yes, my lord,” they chanted. Kazakov and Mersenne looked determined. Husayn and Mokgatle were uncertain. Corbigny seemed worried. None spoke.
“Let's go, then."
The lieutenants and Martinez and Michi and Michi's staff marched off in a body to inspect the warrant officers and their quarters. No ayaca trees were found, on jewelry or anyone else. Now reinforced by the warrant officers, the party moved on to the petty officers’ quarters.
The petty officers stood braced in the corridor, out of the way, and did their best to keep their faces expressionless. Lady Juliette Corbigny held back as the other officers began going through lockers. Her white, even teeth gnawed at her lower lip. Martinez ghosted up to her shoulder.
“Is there a problem, lieutenant?"
She gave a little jump at the question, as if he'd startled her out of deep reflection, and she turned to him with her brown eyes open very wide.
“May I speak to you privately, lord captain?"
“Yes.” He looked over his shoulder and saw precious little privacy to be found, only the row of narrow cabins being searched by a gang of officers.
“Come with me,” he decided.
Corbigny followed him to the companionway, where he walked to the shadow of the steep stair and turned to her.
“Yes?"
She was gnawing her nether lip again. She paused in her champing to say, uncertainly, “Is this a bad cult we're looking for?"
Martinez considered the question. “I'm not an expert on cults, good or bad. But I think the cultists are responsible for Captain Fletcher's death."
Corbigny began to gnaw on her lip some more. Impatience jabbed at Martinez’ nerves, but instinct told him to remain silent and let Corbigny chew on herself for as long as she needed to.
“Well,” she said finally, “I've seen a medallion like that on someone."
“Yes? Someone in your division?"
“No.” Her eyes looked wide into his. “On an officer. On Lord Phillips."
The first thing Martinez thought was, Palermo Phillips? That can't be right. He couldn't imagine little Phillips banging Fletcher's head against his desk with his tiny hands.
His second thought was, Maybe he had help.
“Are you sure?” Martinez asked.
Corbigny gave a nervous jerk of her head. “Yes, my lord. I got a good look at it. I remember him running out of the shower that day you paged him and inspected his division. He was in a hurry to get his tunic on and the chain of the pendant got caught on one of his buttons. I helped him untangle it."
“Right,” Martinez said. “Thank you. You may rejoin the others."
Martinez collected Cadet Ankley, who was qualified to stand watches, and Espinosa, his former servant who had been shifted over to the military constabulary, then walked straight to Command.
“The lord captain is in Command,” Lord Phillips called as he entered. Phillips rose from his couch to let Martinez take his place if he so desired.
Martinez marched forward until he stood before Phillips, who even fully braced failed to come up to his chin.
“My lord,” Martinez said, “I'd be obliged if you'd open your tunic."
“My lord?” Phillips stared up at him.
Suddenly Martinez didn't want to be there. He had begun to think the whole day had been a mistake. But here he was, having joined the role of detective to his authority as captain, and he could think of nothing but following the path he'd set himself, wherever it took him.
“Open your tunic, lieutenant,” he said.
Phillips looked away, suddenly thoughtful. His hand came slowly to the throat of his tunic and began undoing the silver buttons. Martinez looked at the rapid pulse beating in Phillips’ throat as the collar came open, as the gold links of a chain were revealed.
Anger suddenly boiled in Martinez. He reached out, took the chain, and brutally pulled until the pendant at the bottom of its loop revealed. It was an ayaca tree, red and green jewels glittering.
Martinez looked down at Phillips. The chain was cutting into his neck, and he was on his toes. Martinez let go of the chain.
“Please accompany me, lieutenant,” he said. “You are relieved.” He turned and addressed the room at large. “Ankley is the officer of the watch!” he proclaimed.
“I am relieved, my lord!” Phillips repeated. “Ankley is the officer of the watch!"
As Ankley came forward, Martinez bent to speak in his ear.
“Keep everyone here,” he said. “No one is to leave Command until a party arrives to search them."
Ankley licked his lips. “Very good, my lord."
Cold foreboding settled into Martinez’ bones as he marched to the ship's jail. Phillips followed in silence, buttoning his tunic, and Espinosa came last, a hand on the butt of his stun baton.
He walked through the door into the reception room of Illustrious’ brig, and the familiar smell hit him. All jails smelled alike, sour bodies and disinfectant, boredom and despair.
“I'll need your tunic, belt, shoes, and your lieutenant's key,” Martinez said when he came to the brig. “Empty your pockets here, on the table.” He had been Military Constabulary Officer on the Corona, and he knew the drill.
The stainless steel table rang as Phillips emptied his pockets. He rolled an elastic off his wrist, one that had his lieutenant's key on it, and handed that to Martinez.
The sense that this was all a horrible mistake continued to hang over Martinez’ head like a dense grey cloud. He couldn't imagine shy, tiny Phillips committing a crime as serious as stealing a candy bar, let alone killing his captain.
But it had been Martinez’ idea that the deaths were cult related, and that cult symbols would mark the killers. He had begun this. Now Fate would finish it.
“All your jewelry, please,” Martinez said.
Phillips took off his academy ring with some effort, then opened his tunic and reached for the chain with both hands. He looked at Martinez.
“May I ask what this is about?"
“Two people wearing that medallion have died,” Martinez said.
Phillips gaped at him. “Two?” he said.
Martinez’ sleeve comm chimed. Martinez answered and saw Marsden's frozen face resolve on his sleeve's chameleon weave.
“The lady squadcom was wondering where you went,” he said.
“I'm in the brig, and I'm about to report to her. Have there been any developments?"
“None. We're about to finish here."
“Tell Lady Michi that I'll be right there."
Martinez ended the conversation, and looked at Phillips to see bewilderment still on his face.
“I don't understand,” Phillips said.
“Your jewelry, lieutenant."
Phillips slowly took the chain from around his neck and handed it to Martinez. Martinez issued him a pair of the soft slippers worn by prisoners and showed him to his narrow cell. The metal-walls were covered with many thick layers of green paint, and the single light was in a cage overhead. The room was almost filled with the toilet, the small sink, and the acceleration couch used for a bed.
Martinez closed the heavy hatch with its spy hole and told Espinosa to remain on guard. He put the ayaca pendant in a clear plastic evidence box and returned to the petty officers’ quarters. The cabins had all been searched, and the search party had gone on to the body search, women searching women in the petty officers’ mess while men searched men in the corridor.
Nothing was found. Martinez approached Michi and handed her the box with the ayaca pendant inside. She looked up at him in silent query.
“Lord Phillips,” he said.
At first Michi was surprised, and then her expression hardened. “Too bad Fletcher didn't get him first,” she said.
Michi's expression didn't soften throughout the rest of the search, and Martinez could tell she was thinking hard, particularly after the search of the enlisted, and those on duty in Command and Engine Control, produced no cult symbols, no murder weapons, and no suspects.
“Page Doctor Xi to the brig,” Michi told her sleeve display. She looked up at Martinez. “Time to interrogate Phillips,” she said.
“I don't think he killed Fletcher,” Martinez said.
“I don't, either, but he knows who did. He knows who the other members of the cult are.” Her lips drew back from her teeth in a kind of snarl. “I'm going to have the lord doctor use truth drugs to get those names out of him."
Martinez suppressed a shiver. “Truth drugs don't always produce the truth,” he said. “They lower a person's defenses, but they can confuse a prisoner as well. Phillips could just babble names at random for all we know."
“I'll know,” Michi said. “Maybe not this first interrogation, but we'll keep up the interrogations day after day, and in the end I'll know. The truth always comes out in the end."
“Let's hope so,” Martinez said.
“Get Corbigny here as well. I'll take her to the brig with me. You and—” With a look at Marsden. “—your secretary can get back to running the ship."
Martinez was startled. “I—” he began. “Phillips is my officer, and—"
I want to watch as you use chemicals to strip away his dignity and his every last secret. Because it's my fault you're putting him through this.
“He's not your officer any more,” Michi said flatly. “He's a walking dead man. And frankly I don't think he's going to welcome your presence.” She looked at him, and her look softened. “You have a ship to run, captain."
“Yes, my lady.” Martinez braced.
He and Marsden spent the rest of the day in his office dealing with the minutiae of command. Marsden was silent and hostile, and Martinez’ mind kept running into blind alleys instead of concentrating on his work.
He supped alone, drank half a bottle of wine, and went in search of the doctor.
As he approached the pharmacy he encountered Lady Juliette Corbigny leaving. She was pale and her eyes were wider than ever.
“Beg pardon, lord captain,” she said, and sped away, almost in flight. Martinez looked after her, then walked into the pharmacy, where he found Xi slumped over a table, his chin on one fist as he contemplated a beaker half-filled with a clear liquid. The sharp scent of grain alcohol was heavy on his breath.
“I'm afraid Lieutenant Corbigny isn't well,” Xi said. “I had to give her something to settle her tummy. Part way into the interrogation she threw up all over the floor.” He raised the beaker and looked at it solemnly. “I fear she isn't cut out for police work."
Savage, pointless anger roiled in Martinez. “Did anything go well?” he asked.
“The interrogation wasn't a success, particularly,” Xi said. “Phillips said he hadn't killed the captain, and didn't know who did. He said he doesn't belong to a cult. He said the ayaca pendant was given to him by his sweet old nurse when he was a child, and by the way the story can't be confirmed because she's dead. He said he had no idea that the ayaca had any significance other than being a pretty tree that a lot of people put in their gardens."
Xi slumped over his table, and took a drink from the beaker.
“When the drug hit him he kept to his story until his mind got the addles, and then he started to chant. Garcia and the squadcom and Corbigny, when she wasn't spewing, tried to keep him on the subject of the captain's death, but he kept going back to the same chant. Or maybe there were different chants. It was hard to tell."
“What was he chanting?"
“I don't know. It was in some old language that nobody recognized, but we heard the word Narayanguru all right, so it's a cult ritual language and when the Investigative Service hears the recording they'll find someone to identify it, and that will be the end of Lord Phillips, and if the IS is on speaking terms with the Legion that week and passes the information, the Legion will probably arrest half the Phillips clan and that will be the end of them, because the Legion have many more methods of interrogation than are available to us here, and doctors who are far more bad than I am, and who are very proud that their confession rate is nearly one hundred percent.” He looked at the beaker again, and then raised his head to look at Martinez.
“Captain, I have been remiss. I am a bad doctor and a bad host. Will you share my beverage of consolation?"
“No thanks, I've had enough already. And you're going to have a hell of a hangover."
Xi gave a weary grin. “No, I'm not. A dose of this, a dose of that, and I will rise a new man.” His face fell. “And then the squadcom will turn me into a bad doctor again, and have me shoot chemicals into the carotid of a harmless little man who didn't hurt anybody, if you ask me—which nobody did—but who's going to die anyway, and I wish I'd kept my damn mouth shut about the captain's injuries.” He poured more alcohol into his beaker. “I thought I was going to be a brilliant detective, tracking clues like the police in the videos, and instead I find myself involved in something soiled and disgusting and sordid, and frankly I wish I could throw up like Corbigny."
“Keep this up and you will,” Martinez said.
“I shall do my best,” Xi said, and raised his glass. “Bottoms up."
The taste of defeat soured Martinez’ tongue. As he left the pharmacy, he swore that the next time he had a brainstorm, he'd keep it to himself.
A call from Garcia brought Martinez out of bed and running to the brig while still buttoning his undress tunic over his pajamas. “There was a guard here all night, lord captain,” Garcia said in a rapid voice as soon as Martinez entered the room. “There's no way anyone could have got to him."
Martinez walked to Lord Phillips’ cell and looked inside and wished he hadn't.
Sometime over the course of the night Phillips had torn open the acceleration couch that served as his bed, pulled out fistfuls of the foam padding, and then filled his mouth with the foam and kept packing it in until he choked.
Choked to death. Phillips was half off the couch and his mouth was still full of foam and his face was black. His eyes were open and gazed overhead at the light in its cage. Bits of the foam floated over the room like motes of dust.
Doctor Xi knelt by him. He eyes were red-rimmed and his hands trembled as he made a cursory examination.
“He knew he'd crack,” Michi said after she arrived. “He knew he'd give us the names sooner or later. He decided to die first to protect his friends.” She shook her head. “I wouldn't have thought he had the nerve for it."
Martinez turned to her, rage poised on his tongue, and then he turned away.
“We're still no better off than we were!” Michi cried, and slammed her fist into the metal door.
Later that morning Martinez conducted vicious, mean-spirited inspections of Missile Battery One and the riggers’ stores, but it didn't make him feel any better.
“General quarters! General quarters! This is not a drill!"
From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew this wasn't a drill from the first word. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.
Martinez sprang for the companion just as the gravity went away. The distant engine rumble ceased, leaving the corridor silent except for the sound of Martinez’ heart, which was thundering louder than the general quarters alarm. Martinez had no weight but he still had plenty of inertia, and he hit the companion with knees and elbows. Pain rocketed through his limbs despite the padding on the stair risers. He bounced away from the companion like an oversized rubber eraser, but he managed to check his momentum with a grab to the rail.
His feet began to swing out into the corridor, and that meant Illustrious was changing its heading. He had to get up the companion and into Command before the engines fired again. His big hand tightened on the rail and he began to swing himself back to the steep stair so that he could kick off and jump to the next deck.
No good. The engines fired without warning and suddenly Martinez had weight again. His arm couldn't support his entire mass and folded under him, and the rail caught him a stunning blow across the shoulder. He flopped onto his back on the stair. Risers sliced into his back.
Martinez tried to rise but the gravities were already beginning to pile on. (Two gravities. Three ... ) Pain lanced through his wrist as he seized the rail to try to haul himself upright. The stair risers were cutting into him like knives. (Four gravities at least ... ) He gasped for breath. Eventually Martinez realized he wasn't going to be able to climb.
He realized other things as well. He was on a hard surface. He hadn't taken any of the drugs that would help him survive heavy gravity. He could die if he didn't get off this companion, cut by the stairs like cheese by a slicer.
A sort of crabbing motion of his arms and legs brought him bumping down the stairs, each step a club to his back and mastoid, but once his buttocks thumped on the deck it was harder to move, and the risers were still digging into his spine. (Five gravities ... ) His vision was beginning to go dark.
Martinez crabbed with his arms and legs and managed to thump down another stair. Comets flared in his skull as his head hit the tread. He clenched his jaw muscles to force blood to his brain and dropped down another step.
It was Chandra's nightmare, he realized. Relativistic missiles were inbound and he needed to get to Command. It would be the height of stupidity to die here, vaporized by a missile or with his neck broken by the sharp edge of a stair.
Martinez thumped down another stair, and that left only his head still on the companion, tilted at an angle that cramped his windpipe and strained his spine. (Six gravities ... ) His vision was totally gone. He couldn't seem to breathe. Without the drugs Terrans could only rarely stay conscious past six and a half gravities. He had to get off the stair or his neck was going to be broken by the weight of his head.
With a frantic effort he tried to roll, his palms and heels fighting for traction against the tile, fighting the dead weight that was pinning him like a silver needle pinning an insect to corkboard. Vertigo swam through his skull. He fought to bring air into his lungs. He gave a heave, every muscle in his body straining.
With a crack his head fell off the stair and banged onto the tile. Despite the pain and the stars that shot through the blackness of his vision he felt a surge of triumph.
Gravity increased. Martinez fought for consciousness.
And lost.
When Martinez woke he saw before him a window, and beyond the window was a green countryside. Two ladies in transparent gowns gazed at the poised figure of a nearly naked man who seemed to be hovering in a startlingly blue sky. Above the man flew a superior-looking eagle, and on the grass below the two ladies were a pair of animals, a dog and a small furry creature with long ears, both of whom seemed to find the floating man interesting.
It occurred to Martinez that the man in the sky wasn't alone, that he, Martinez, was also floating.
His heart was going like a triphammer. Sharp pains shot through his head and body. He blinked and wiped sweat from the sockets of his eyes.
The man still floated before him, serene and eerily calm, as if he floated every day.
It was only gradually that Martinez realized that he was looking at a piece of artifice, at one of the trompe l'oeil paintings that Montemar Jukes had placed at intervals in Illustrious’ corridors.
The engines had shut down again. Now weightless, Martinez had drifted gently from the deck to a place before the painting.
He gave a start and looked frantically in all directions. The companion leading to Command was two body-lengths away. So far as he knew the emergency, the battle or whatever it was, had not ended.
He swam with his arms to reorient himself, and kicked with one foot at the floating man to shoot himself across the corridor. Striking the wall he absorbed momentum with his arms—pain shot through his right wrist—and then he did a kind of handspring in the direction of the companion.
He struck the companionway feet-first and folded into a crouch, which enabled him to spring again, this time through the hatch atop the companion.
From there it was a short distance to the heavy hatch to Command. The door was armored against blast and radiation and would have been locked down at the beginning of the emergency. Martinez hovered before the hatch, his left hand clutching at the hand grip inset into the door frame, his right stabbing at the comm panel.
“This is the captain!” he said. “Open the door!"
“Stand by,” came Mersenne's voice.
Stand by? Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think Martinez was, some snotty cadet?
“Let me into Command!” Martinez barked.
“Stand by.” The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain's orders.
Well, Martinez thought, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.
But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?
Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knuckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn's nose, some of them catching on his little mustache; and there was a cut on his lip.
There hadn't been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee—or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn't been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Doctor Xi was coping with.
With a soft hiss, the door slid open after Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.
“I have command!” he shouted.
“Captain Martinez has command!” Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.
Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.
“Missile attack, my lord,” Mersenne said. as he caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. “At least thirty. I'm sorry I didn't let you into Command, but I didn't want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with—didn't want to irradiate the entire command crew."
It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.
“Any losses?” Martinez asked.
“No, my lord.” Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. “We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities when there was an engine trip."
Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.
“Engine trip?” he said.
“Number one engine. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I'll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one."
So now Martinez knew why he'd suddenly found himself floating. The engines had quit, apparently on their own, and in the middle of a battle.
He pulled his displays down from over his head, heard them lock, began a study of the brief fight.
The Battle of Arkhan-Dohg, from the first alarm, when a targeting laser had painted the squadron, to the destruction of the last incoming missile, had taken a little less than three minutes.
“One failure in the point-defense array,” Husayn reported from the weapons station. “Antiproton gun three failed after one shot."
“Just like Harzapid,” muttered Mersenne.
“How many decoys do we have in the tubes?” Martinez asked Husayn.
“Three, my lord."
“Fire them immediately. We want to get decoys ahead of the squadron in case the Naxids have a followup attack."
The Command crew looked a little hollow-eyed at this possibility.
“Decoys fired, my lord. Tubes cleared. Decoys proceeding normally under chemical rockets to safety point."
“Replace them in the tubes with another set of decoys,” Martinez added.
Primary command crew were drifting through the hatch and quietly taking up their stations. Alikhan arrived lugging Martinez’ vac suit by a strap. Martinez told him to report to the weapons bays after putting the suit in one of the vac suit lockers: he didn't have time to put it on right now.
“I've commenced a countdown on engines two and three,” Mersenne reported. “We're at five minutes twenty-one."
“Proceed."
“My lord,” Husayn said, “decoys’ antimatter engines have ignited. All decoys maneuvering normally."
“My lord,” said Signaler Roh, “Judge Arslan queries our status."
“Tell them we experienced a premature engine shutdown,” Martinez said. “Tell them we expect no long-term problem."
“Yes, lord captain. Ah—Squadcom Chen wants to speak with you."
“Put her on my board."
“Yes, lord captain."
Martinez hadn't strapped on the close-fitting cap that held his earphones, virtual array, and medical sensors, so Michi's voice came out of the speaker on Martinez’ display, and was audible to everyone in command.
“Captain Martinez,” she said, “what the hell just happened?"
Martinez reported in as few words as possible. Michi listened with an intent, inward look on here face. “Very well,” she said. “I'll order the rest of the squadron to take defensive positions around us until we're maneuverable again."
Martinez nodded. “May I recommend that you order more decoy launches?"
“Lieutenant Prasad's already taken care of that.” Michi's head tilted as she looked into her display. “Captain,” she said, “you look like you got run over by a herd of bison."
“Acceleration threw me down a companion."
“Are you all right? Shall I page Doctor Xi to Command?"
“I'm sure he's busy enough where he is."
She nodded. “Find out who painted us with that laser,” she said, “and blow him the fuck up."
“Yes, my lady."
“And take out the wormhole stations as well. I'm not having them spotting for the enemy."
It's uncivilized, Michi had said when she'd first raised the possibility of destroying wormhole stations. She'd occasionally done it in the past, to preserve secrecy concerning Chenforce's movements, but she'd left most of them alone.
Nothing like being shot at, Martinez thought, to rub away these refined little scruples.
The orange end-stamp came onto the display, signaling that Michi had broken the collection.
“Sensors,” Martinez said, “are we still being hit by that laser?"
“No, my lord,” Pan said. “They switched off as soon as the last missiles were destroyed—and because their information is limited by the speed of light, they don't know what happened here yet. So they must have had advanced warning concerning exactly when to light us up, and when to stop."
“Did you get a bearing?"
“It would help if I could communicate with the other ships and triangulate."
“Do so.” Martinez turned to Husayn. “Weapons, target wormhole stations one, two, and three. Take them all out, one missile each. Don't wait for my command, just do it."
“Yes, lord captain."
Martinez let himself float for a moment in his harness and considered the order he'd just given. It was uncivilized. The wormhole stations not only maintained communication between the worlds, they acted to stabilize the wormholes by balancing the mass moved through them in either direction. Commerce would be slowed to a crawl through wormholes that were in danger of becoming unbalanced.
With the destruction of its wormhole stations, Arkhan-Dohg would in effect be be blockaded. It was a blockade that would continue until new stations were both built and equipped with the massive asteroid-sized chunks of matter they used to keep the wormholes in balance. The war might have been over for some time before Arkhan-Dohg saw another merchant vessel.
“One minute to engine ignition, my lord,” Mersenne said.
“Hold at ten seconds.” Martinez hesitated, then said, “We can proceed on two engines without trouble?"
Mersenne's tone was confident."Yes, my lord."
“Missiles launched and proceeding on chemical rockets. Tubes clear."
“Roh, put me through to the squadcom."
“Yes, my lord."
Ida Li's face appeared on Martinez’ display. “You have a message for Lady Michi?"
“Just that we'll have two engines online in less than a minute. Does the lady squadcom have a heading for us?"
“Stand by."
The screen blanked, and when an image returned it was that of Chandra Prasad. “I'm sending course coordinates to your pilot's station now. Acceleration one-tenth of a gravity, until we're sure the engines don't cut out again."
“Understood. Mersenne, sound the warning for acceleration."
There were a few moments of genuine suspense waiting for the engine countdown to conclude, and then there was a distant rumble and a slight kick that sent the acceleration cages slowly tumbling until they settled at their deadpoints. Computers balanced the angle of thrust of the two engines to compensate for the loss of the third. Acceleration was gradually increased until one constant gravity was maintained.
“Engines performance normative,” Mersenne said.
“Very good."
“My lord.” It was Pan. “We've tracked the origin of that targeting laser. It was Arkhan Station Three."
Arkhan, with its relatively small population, didn't rate a full accelerator ring around the planet, but instead had three geosynchronous stations tethered to the planet's equator by elevator cables. Station One had a modest-sized accelerator ring grappled to it, like a gold band attached to a diamond.
“Husayn,” Martinez said, “one missile to target Station Three, please."
As the missile was launched he supposed the Naxids had no right to be surprised. Squadcom Chene had made it clear that anything that fired on it would be destroyed, be it ship, station, or ring.
He hoped the Naxids had evacuated the station's thousands of civilians before putting them in a crossfire, but he suspected they hadn't. The Naxids, so far as he could tell, never had a Plan B—if Plan A didn't work, they just tried Plan A all over again, only with greater sincerity.
“My lord,” said Roh. “I have a message from Rigger Jukes."
“Yes?” Martinez couldn't imagine what the artist wanted.
“He asks permission to enter your quarters and inspect the paintings for damage."
Martinez suppressed a smile. The artworks were in highly intelligent frames that should have guarded them against acceleration, but nevertheless the impulse to protect the eighty-thousand-zenith painting showed Jukes had his priorities straight.
“Permission granted,” he said.
“My lord,” Mersenne said, after the missile went on its way. “I've tracked the origin of the engine shutdown."
“Yes?"
“It was a high pressure return pump from the number one heat exchange system. It failed, and set off a cascade of events that led to complete engine shutdown."
“Failed?” Martinez demanded. “What do you mean, failed?"
“I can't tell from this board. But for some reason when the pump failed, the valve on the backup system failed to open, and that led to the engine trip. The computer wasn't a hundred percent confident that it could keep the ship balanced with only two engines firing at all of eight gravities’ acceleration, so it tripped the other engines as well."
“Right,” Martinez said. “Thank you, Mersenne."
This was going to take some thought. And as soon as the ship secured from general quarters, he was going straight to the engine compartment and find out just what had happened.
“Yarning the logs.” Martinez spoke in a cold fury. “You yarned the logs to hide fact that you hadn't been doing scheduled replacements, and as a result the ship was driven into danger."
Master Rigger Francis stared expressionlessly at the wall behind Martinez’ head and said nothing.
“Didn't I give you enough advanced warning?” Martinez asked. “Didn't you guess what would happen if I caught you at something like this?"
Rage boiled in Martinez, fueled by the murderous aches in his head and wrist. For the first time in his career he understood how an officer could actually use his top-trimmer, could draw the curved knife from its sheath and slash the throat of a subordinate.
The evidence that damned Francis was plain. The huge, sleek turbopump designed to bring return coolant from the heat exchanger to the number one engine had been partly dismantled by Francis and her riggers. The plain metal-walled room reeked of coolant, and Martinez’ shoes and cuffs were wet with the stuff. The finely-machined turbine that was the heart of the pump had disintegrated, sending metal shards downstream that jammed the emergency valve designed to shut off coolant flow in the event of a problem with the pump. With the first valve jammed open, a second valve intended to open the backup system had refused to open, and the result was an automatic shutdown for the engine.
It was difficult to understand how such a critical pump could suffer so catastrophic a failure. The pump and other pieces of crucial equipment were deliberately overdesigned, intended to survive well beyond their official lifespan. The only way a pump would crash in so terminal a fashion was because routine maintenance had been neglected.
That much was deduction. But what was the final nail in the master rigger's coffin was the fact that the serial number on the pump and the number recorded in the 77-12 were different. So far as Martinez could tell, the number in the 77-12 was pure fiction.
“Well,” Martinez said, “Rigger Second Class Francis, I suggest that you get your crew busy replacing this pump."
Francis’ eyes flashed at the news of her demotion, and Martinez saw the firming of her jowls as her jaws muscles clenched.
Martinez turned to Marsden, who stood with his feet meticulously placed on a piece of dark plastic grate so as not to get coolant on his shoes.
“Who's the senior rigger now?” Martinez asked.
“Rigger/First Patil.” Marsden didn't even have to consult his database for the answer.
Martinez turned back to Francis. “I will require the new department head to check every one of your entries in the 77-12. We don't want any more mysterious failures, do we?"
Francis said nothing. The humid atmosphere of the room had turned her skin moist, and droplets tracked down either side of her nose.
“You are at liberty to protest your reduction in rank,” Martinez said. “But I wouldn't if I were you. If Squadron Leader Chen finds out about this, she's likely to have you strangled."
He marched out, shoes splashing in coolant, his head and wrist throbbing with every step. Marsden followed, far more fastidious about where he put his feet.
Martinez next visited the weapons bay where Gulik and Husayn were both examining the guts of the antiproton projector that had failed in the Naxid attack. The whole mechanism had been pulled from the turret and replaced, and now a post-mortem was under way, parts scattered on a sterile dropcloth that had been spread on the deck.
Gulik jumped to his feet, bracing with his chin high as Martinez approached. There were dark patches under his arms, and sweat poured down his face. Martinez hadn't seen him this nervous since Fletcher's final inspection, when he'd slowly marched past Gulik and his crew with the knife rattling at his waist.
Martinez wondered if word had already passed to Gulik about what had just happened to Francis. The noncommissioned officers were wired into an unofficial communications network, and Martinez had a healthy respect for its efficiency, but he could hardly believe it worked this fast.
Perhaps, Martinez thought, Gulik was always this nervous around higher officers.
Or perhaps he had a guilty conscience.
He called up Gulik's 77-12 on his sleeve display and quietly checked the serial numbers. The serial numbers matched, so at least Gulik wasn't yarning his log.
“Do we know what happened?” Martinez asked.
“The electron injector's packed up, my lord,” Gulik said. “It's a fairly common failure, on this model particularly."
The antiprotons piggybacked on an electron beam, which kept the antiprotons contained until they hit the target, so the electron injector was a critical component of the system.
“I'll do further tests,” Gulik said, “but it's probably just a matter of tolerances. These parts are machined very precisely, and they're stuck in the turret where they're subject to extremes of temperature and cosmic rays and all knows what. The turrets are normally retracted but we're keeping every point-defense weapon at full charge now, with the turrets deployed. Critical alignments can go wrong very easily."
Martinez remembered what someone had said in Command, and he said, “So it's not what happened at Harzapid?"
Gulik gave a start. Husayn answered for him, and firmly.
“Decidedly not, my lord."
Martinez sensed that a significant moment had just slipped by, somehow, but he had no idea why it was significant.
“What did happen at Harzapid?” he asked.
There was silence as both Husayn and Gulik seemed to gaze for a moment into the past, neither of them liking what they saw there.
“It was bad, my lord,” Husayn said. “The Naxids were outnumbered five to one, so they tried to bluff us into surrender. They occupied Ring Command and ordered us all to stand down. But Fleet Commander Kringan organized a party to storm Ring Command, and he ordered the loyal squadrons to prepare a fight at close range with antiproton weapons.
“None of us kept the antiprotons on our ships when we were in dock—you know how touchy they can be—so Lieutenant Kosinic was sent with a party to bring antiprotons in their containment bottles. He did, but when we hooked them up to the antimatter feeders we discovered that the bottles were empty."
Martinez looked at him in surprise. “Empty?"
“The Naxids must have got into our storage compartment and replaced the full bottles with empty ones. The squadcom sent Kosinic was out again to get bottles from Imperious, which was berthed next to us, but that's when the shooting started. That's when the docking tube was hit and Kosinic was wounded."
Husayn's mouth stretched in a taut, angry grimace beneath his little mustache. “The Fourth Fleet blew itself to bits in a few minutes of close-range fire. All the Naxids ships were destroyed, but most of the loyalists were hurt, too, and some ships completely wrecked. There were thousands of deaths. But the Naxids didn't shoot at us! They knew Illustrious was helpless."
Frustration crackled in Husayn's voice. Martinez could imagine the scene in Command, Fletcher calling for firepower that simply wasn't there, the weapons officer—Husayn himself—pounding his console in fury. Kusinic racing along the docking tube with a party of desperate crouchbacks and the hand carts that carried the antiproton bottles. The long moments of helpless silence as the battle started and the crew waited for the fire that would rend their ship and kill them, followed by the horrid realization of the insult that the Naxids were flinging in their teeth, that the enemy knew that Illustrious could be of no assistance to their own side, and disdained so much as to target them.
The feeling of helplessness, Martinez thought, must have been at least as frustrating and terrifying as that of the captain of a ship pinned to a stair by heavy gee while his ship fought for its life without him.
“Captain Fletcher cast off from the ring, my lord,” Husayn continued, “and maneuvered as if to attack. We were hoping draw their fire away from the others, but the Naxids still refused to respond. We hit them with our lasers, but the lasers really can't do the sort of damage antimatter can in those conditions, and...” He grimaced again. “Still they wouldn't attack us. We watched the whole battle from the sidelines. Captain Fletcher was in a perfect rage—I'd never seen him like that, never saw him show emotion before."
“Where was Squadron Commander Chen?"
“On the planet, my lord. Dinner party."
Martinez couldn't imagine Michi being happy about what had happened to Illustrious, either.
“We were very glad to finally get a swat at the Naxids at Protipanu, my lord,” Husayn said. “It was good to pay them back."
“Yes,” Martinez said. “Illustrious did very well at Protipanu. You all did very well."
He looked from Husayn to Gulik, who was still standing rigid, the sweat pouring down his face, his eyes staring into some internal horror.
No wonder they hadn't talked about it, Martinez thought. He had thought Illustrious had won a hard-fought victory alongside the other loyalists of the Fourth Fleet, and had assumed the cruiser had just been lucky not to suffer any damage. He hadn't known that Illustrious and its crew hadn't been a part of the fighting at all, all except for Kosinic and his little party who had been caught out of their ship.
“Very good,” Martinez said softly. “I think we might institute a series of test firings and inspections to make sure the point-defense weapons won't fail when we need them."
“Yes, my lord."
“Carry on then."
As he left Martinez felt Gulik's wide-eyed stare boring into his neck, and wondered what it was that Gulik was really looking at.
Martinez’ next stop was the sick bay, where he received Doctor Xi's report on the twenty-two crew with broken bones, and the twenty-six more with bad sprains or concussions, all as a result of the unexpected high accelerations. The failure of engine number one had probably saved the ship from more casualties, and very possibly from fatalities.
Xi examined the back of Martinez’ head and prescribed painkillers, and a muscle relaxant before bed. He scanned the wrist and found a minor fracture of the right pisiform carpal. He taped the wrist and gave Martinez a shot of fast-healer hormones, then gave Martinez a med injector with more fast-healers.
“Three times a day till you run out,” he said. “You should be healed in a week or so."
Martinez toured the sick bay, speaking to each of the injured crouchbacks, then returned to his office to find Jukes waiting, happy to report that the artworks had survived the accelerations without damage. Martinez sent Jukes on his way, then made official his demotion of Francis, added a furious couple of paragraphs to Francis’ efficiency report, and had supper.
He remained awake for the countdown that started engine number one, and made certain that the new turbopump was performing up to specs before calling for Alikhan to bring him his nightly cocoa.
“What are they saying now, Alikhan?” Martinez asked.
Alikhan was looking with great disapproval at Martinez’ shoes, spattered with engine coolant and the muck of the heat exchange room.
“Francis is furious,” he said. “She was planning on retiring after the war, and now she'll have a much smaller pension."
Martinez held his cup of cocoa under his nose and inhaled the rich, sweet scent.
“So she's gathering sympathy, then?” he asked.
Alikhan drew himself up with magisterial dignity, and dropped the soiled shoes into their bag. “Fuck her,” he pronounced, “she put the ship in danger. You could have cut her throat, and maybe you should have. As it is, you hit her where she hurts. With Francis it's always about money."
“Right,” Martinez said, and concealed a smile. “Thank you, Alikhan."
He swallowed his muscle relaxant, and then slid into bed and sipped his cocoa while he looked at the painting of the woman, child, and cat.
Day by day, Illustrious was becoming his ship, and less something that belonged to Fletcher, or the petty officers, or the Fourth Fleet. Today had been an important step in that process.
Another couple months, he thought pleasantly, and the cruiser would fit him like a glove.
Chenforce made a high-gravity burn around Arkhan-Dohg's sun and hurled itself for Wormhole Three, its presence marked by the radioactive dust that had been its relay station. No Naxid missiles barred their way.
On the other side of Wormhole Three was Choiyn, a wealthy world with five billion inhabitants and considerable industry. Four uncompleted medium-sized warships, large frigates or light cruisers, were cast adrift from its ring and destroyed, along with half a dozen merchant ships that had been unable to clear the system in time.
No Naxid attack threatened, but to be safe Michi vaporized all the wormhole stations anyway, lest they provide tracking data to the enemy.
Martinez’ life was busy with drills, inspections, and minutiae. Patil, Francis’ replacement, produced revised 77-12s that corrected Francis’ elisions, and Martinez’ inspections showed that Patil's data were not in error.
Cadet Ankley, who had been made acting-lieutenant after Phillips’ suicide, had spectacularly lost his temper when an inspection of his division had turned up some chaotic inventory, and had to be returned to the ranks of the cadets while Cadet Qing was promoted in his place.
This failure was balanced by Chandra Prasad's success. Her exercises had Chenforce pelted by relativistic missiles from all directions, and also compelled the squadron to confront an assortment of Naxid attacks, the enemy converging on Chenforce on a variety of headings, and with a wide variation in velocity.
Doctor Xi told Martinez that his wrist had healed, and discontinued the fast-healers.
After Choiyn came Kinawo, a system that featured a main-sequence yellow star orbited by a blue-white companion so furiously radioactive that the system was bereft of life except for the crews of a pair of heavily shielded wormhole stations, both of which were quickly destroyed. Chenforce would transit Kinawo in six days and then enter El-bin, a system with two habitable planets, one heavily industrialized and the other covered with grazing, herdsmen, and their beasts. After El-bin was Anicha.
For the most part Illustrious settled into a routine, inspections and drills and musters. The officers invited one another to dinner parties, but behind the gaiety was a kind of weariness: it was clear that everyone had been on the ship too long.
Martinez now found the 77-12s perfectly reliable. Because they gave him ways of knowing his ship, and because Illustrious was performing so well in the squadron exercises, Martinez reduced the number of inspections and hoped the crew were grateful. He also abandoned the full-dress formality at least part of the time: on occasion he arrived at an inspection in Fleet-issue coveralls and crawled into conduits and access tunnels, places where Fletcher would never have gone lest he soil his silver braid.
There began to be more disciplinary problems among the crew, fights and occasional drunkenness. They had been on the ship too long and were getting on each other's nerves. They also had too little to occupy their time. It would have taken only thirty-odd people to con the ship from one place to another, and another thirty weaponers to manage the fighting. The rest were partly for redundancy's sake, in the event of casualties, and many of the crew were intended to support the dignity of the officers, acting as their servants; but mainly crew were needed for damage control. In an emergency hundreds of pairs of well-trained hands might be needed to keep the ship alive. The rest of the time the officers had to invent work for them, cleaning and spit-polishing, playing parts in rituals and ceremonies and performing and re-performing routine maintenance.
Everyone, officers and crew alike, were growing tired of it all.
Perhaps it was the boredom induced by the long days of the ship's routine, but Martinez began to think about the killings again. And after thinking for several days, he asked Chandra to come to his office in the middle of one long, dull afternoon.
“Drink?” he asked as she braced. “By which I mean coffee."
“Yes, my lord."
“Sit down.” He pushed a cup and saucer across his desk, then poured from a flask that Alikhan habitually left on his desk.
A rich coffee scent floated into the room. Chandra sat expectant, eyes bright beneath the auburn hair.
“I wanted to ask you about Kosinic,” Martinez said.
Chandra, reaching for the coffee, pulled her hand back and blinked in surprise. “May I ask why?"
“Because it occurred to me that all our thinking about the killings has been exactly wrong. We've been looking at Captain Fletcher's death and trying to reason backwards about what might have motivated it. But Kosinic's death was the first—he was the anomaly. Thuc's death followed from his, and I think Fletcher's followed as well. So if we can just work out why Kosinic was murdered, everything else will fall into place."
Chandra frowned as she considered this reasoning, then gave him a searching look. “You don't think it's all down to Phillips and the cultists?"
“Do you?"
She was silent.
“You knew Kosinic,” Martinez said. “Tell me about him."
Chandra fiddled with the powdered creamer—Illustrious had long ago run out of fresh dairy. She took a sip, frowned, and took another.
“Javier was bright,” Chandra said finally, “good-looking, young, and probably a little more ambitious than was sensible for someone could be in his position. He had two problems: he was a commoner and he had no money. Peers will mingle with commoners if they've got enough money to keep up socially; and they'll tolerate Peers who have no money for the sake of their name. But a commoner with no money is going to be buried in a succession of anonymous desk jobs, and if he gets a command it's going to be a barge to nowhere, an assignment hat no Peer would touch."
She took another sip of her coffee. “But Javier got lucky—Squadron Commander Chen was impressed by a report on systems interopability that happened to cross her desk, and she took him on staff. Javier wasn't about to let an opportunity like that slide—he knew she could promote him all the way to captain if he impressed her enough. So he set out to be the perfect bright staff officers for her, and at that moment war broke out and he was wounded."
She sighed. “They shouldn't have let him out of the hospital. He wasn't fit. But he knew that as long as he stayed on Chen's staff he could have a chance to do important war work right under the nose of someone who could promote his career—and of course by then he was in a perfect rage to kill Naxids, like all of us but more so."
“He had head injuries,” Martinez said. “I've heard his personality changed."
“He was angry all the time,” Chandra said. “It was sad, really. He insisted that what had happened to Illustrious at Harzapid was the result of a treacherous Naxid plot—which of course was true—but he became obsessed with rooting out the plotters. That made no sense at all, because by that point the Naxids were all dead, so what did it matter which of them did what?"
Martinez sipped his own coffee and considered this. “Illustrious was the only ship that wasn't able to participate in the battle,” he said. “Was that what Kosinic was obsessing about?"
“Yes. He took it personally that his load of antiproton bottles were duds, and of course he was wounded when he went back for more, so that made it even more personal."
“The antiproton bottles were stored in a dedicated storage area?"
“Yes."
A ship in dock was usually assigned a secure storage area where supplies, replacement parts, and other items were stockpiled—it was easier to stow them there, where they could be worked with, rather than have the riggers find space for them in the holds, where they wouldn't be as accessible when needed. Those ships equipped with antiproton weapons generally stored their antiproton bottles there, in a secure locked facility, as antiprotons were trickier to handle than the more stable antihydrogen used for engine and missile fuel. An antiproton bottle was something you didn't want a clumsy crouchback to drop on his foot.
“The Naxids had to have gained the codes for both the storage area and the secure antiproton storage,” Chandra said. “I don't see how we'll ever find out how they did it, and I don't see why it matters at this point. But Javier thought it did matter, and if anyone disagreed with him he'd just turn red and shout and make a scene.” Sadness softened the long lines of her eyes. “It was hard to watch. He'd been so bright and interesting, but when he was wounded he turned into a shouter. People didn't want to be around him. But fortunately he didn't like people much, either, so he spent most of his time in his quarters or in Auxiliary Control."
“He sounds a bit delusional,” Martinez said, “but suppose, when he was digging around, he found a genuine plot? Not to help the Naxids, but something else."
Chandra seemed surprised. “But any plot would have to be something Thuc was involved in, because it was Thuc who killed him, yes?"
“Yes."
“But Thuc was an engineer. Javier was on a flag officer's staff. Where would they ever overlap?"
Martinez had no answer. Suddenly Chandra leaned forward in her seat, her eyes brilliant with excitement. “Wait!” she said. “I remember something Mersenne once told me! Mersenne was somewhere on the lower decks, and he saw an access hatch open, with Javier just coming out from the underdeck. He asked Javier what he was doing there, and Javier said that he was running an errant for the squadcom. But I can't imagine why Lady Michi would ever have someone digging around in the guts of the ship."
“That doesn't seem to be one of her interests,” Martinez murmured. “I wonder if Kosinic left a record of what he was looking for.” He looked at her. “He had a civilian-model datapad I didn't have the passwords for. I don't suppose that by some miracle you know his passwords?"
“No, I'm afraid not.” Her face grew thoughtful. “But he didn't carry that datapad around with him all the time. He spent hours in Auxiliary Control at his duty station, so if there were records of what he was looking at, it's probably still in his logs, and you can—"
His mind, leaping ahead of her, had him chanting her conclusion along with her.
“—access that with a captain's key!"
A quiet excitement began to hum in Martinez’ nerves. He opened his collar and took out his key on its elastic. He inserted the narrow plastic key into the slot on his desk and called up the display. Chandra politely turned away as he entered his password. He called up Javier Kosinic's account, and scanned the long list of files.
“May I use the wall display?” Chandra asked. “I could help you look."
The wall display was called up and the two began a combined search, each examining different files. They worked together in a near-silence interrupted by Martinez’ call to Alikhan for more coffee.
Frustration built as Martinez examined file after file, finding only routine paperwork, squadron maneuvers that Kosinic had planned as tactical officer, and a half-finished letter to his father, a letter dated the day before his death but filled only with mundane detail, and containing none of the rage and monomania that everyone else had described.
“He's hiding from us!” he finally exploded.
His right hand clenched in a fist. The captain had hid from him too, too, but he'd finally cracked the captain's secret.
Kosinic would crack too, he swore.
“Let me check the daily logs,” Chandra said. “If we look at his activity, we might be able to see some patterns."
The logs flashed on the wall screen, the automatic record of every call that Kosinic had ever made on the computer resources of the ship.
Tens of thousands of them. Martinez’ gaze blurred as he looked at the long columns of data.
“Look at this,” Chandra said. She moved a cursor to highlight one of Kosinic's commands. “He saved a piece of data to a file called ‘Rebel Data.’ Do you remember seeing that file?"
“No,” Martinez said.
“It's not very large. It's supposed to be in his account, in another file called ‘Personal.'” Chandra's cursor jittered over the display. “Here's another save to the same file,” she said. “And another."
Though he already knew it wasn't there, Martinez looked again at Kosinic's personal file and found nothing.
“It must have been erased."
“Or moved somewhere,” Chandra said. “Let me do a search."
The search through the ship's vast data store took about twelve seconds.
“If the file was moved,” Chandra concluded, “it was given a new name."
Martinez had already called up the log files. “Let's find the last time anyone gave a command regarding that file."
Another five seconds sped by. Martinez stared in shock at the result.
“The file was erased,” he said.
“Who by?” Chandra said. When he didn't answer she her neck to read his display upside-down, and then gave a soft cry of surprise.
“Captain Gomberg Fletcher,” she said.
They stared at one another for a moment.
“You can't suppose,” Chandra began, “that Fletcher was somehow part of the Naxid plot, and that Javier found out about it, and Fletcher had him killed."
Martinez considered this, then shook his head. “I can't think anything the Naxids could offer Fletcher to make him betray his ship."
Chandra gave a little laugh. “Maybe they offered to give him a painting he really wanted."
Martinez shook his head. “No, I think Kosinic must have discovered the Narayanist cult. Or he discovered something else that got him killed, and Fletcher suppressed the information in order to protect the Narayanists.” He looked the data glowing in the depths of his desk, and his heart gave a surge as he saw the date.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “The date shows that Fletcher erased the file the same day he died.” He looked more carefully at the date. “In fact, he seems to have erased the file around the time he was killed."
Chandra surged out of her chair and part way across his desk to confirm this. Her perfume, some kind of deep rosewood flavor with lemony highlights, suddenly floated into his senses. Glowing columns of data reflected in her eyes as she scanned for information. “The erase command came from this desk,” she pointed out. “Whoever killed him sat in your chair, with the body leaking blood on the floor next to him, and cleaned up the evidence."
Martinez scanned along the log file. “Fletcher logged in three hours earlier, and never logged out. So he was probably looking at Kosinic's file when the killer arrived."
“What other files was he looking at?"
Chandra slid off the desk and onto her own chair. She gave a series of rapid orders to the wall display.
“That night he made entries in a file called ‘Gambling,'” she said.
Martinez looked at her in surprise. “Did Fletcher gamble?"
“Not in the time I knew him."
“Did Kosinic?"
“No. He couldn't afford it."
“Lots of people gamble who can't afford it,” Martinez said.
“Not Javier. He thought it was a weakness, and he didn't think he could afford weakness.” She looked at Martinez. “How else do you think he exposed himself to hard gee acceleration when he had broken ribs and a head injury? He couldn't afford to be wounded, and he did his best to ignore the fact he should have been in hospital.” She returned her attention to the display. “The gambling file was erased at the same time as Javier's rebel file."
Martinez scanned the files that Fletcher had been accessing in the two days before his death. Reports from the department heads, statistics from the commissary, reports on the status of a damage control robot that had been taken offline due to a hydraulic fault, injury reports, reports on available stores ... all the daily minutiae of command.
Nothing was unusual except those two files, “Rebel Data” and “Gambling.” And those had been erased by the killer.
And erased very thoroughly, as Martinez discovered. Normally a file was erased by simply removing it from the index of files, and unless the hard space had been overwritten with some other data, it was possible to reconstitute it. But the two missing files had erased through a method of overwriting their hard space with a series of random numbers. There was no way to find what had been in those files.
“Damn it!” Martinez entertained a brief fantasy of hurling his coffee cup across the room and letting it go smash on the nose of one of Fletcher's armored statues. “We got so close."
Chandra gave the wall display a bleak stare. “There's still one chance,” she said. “The system makes automatic backups on a regular schedule. The automatic backups go into a temporary file and are erased by the system on a regular basis. The files aren't there any longer, but the tracks might be, if they haven't been written over in the meantime."
“The chances of finding those old files must be..."
“Not quite astronomical.” She pursed her lips in calculation. “I'd be willing to undertake the search, my duties permitting, but I'm going to need more authority with the system than I've got as a staff lieutenant."
He warmed his coffee while he considered Chandra's offer. He supposed that she was still theoretically a suspect. But on the other hand it was unlikely she'd offer to spend her time going through the ship's vast datafiles track by track.
Unless of course she was covering up her own crimes.
Martinez thought were interrupted by a polite knock on the dining room door. Martinez looked up to see his cook, Perry.
“I was wondering when you'd be wanting supper, my lord."
“Oh.” Martinez forced his mind from one track to the next. “Half an hour or so, then?"
“Very good, my lord.” Perry braced and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
Martinez returned his attention to Chandra and realized, a little belatedly, that it might have been the polite thing to invite her to supper.
He also realized he'd made up his mind. He didn't think Chandra had killed anybody—had never believed it—and in any case he had to agree with Michi that the squadron couldn't spare her.
If she wanted to spend her spare hours hunting incriminating tracks in the cruiser's data banks and erasing them, he didn't much care.
“If you'll give me your key,” he said, “I'll see if I can give you more access."
He awarded her a clearance that would enable her to examine the ship's hard data storage, then returned her key. She tucked the key back into her tunic and gave him a provocative smile.
“Do you remember,” she said, “when I told you that I'd be the best friend you ever had?"
Martinez was suddenly aware of her rosewood perfume, of the three tunic buttons that had been undone, and of the fact that he'd been living alone on the ship for far too many months.
“Yes?” he said.
“Well, I've proved it.” Chandra closed the buttons, one by one. “One day the squadcom talked to me about whether or not you could have killed Fletcher, and I talked her out of the idea."
Martinez was speechless.
“You shouldn't count too much on the fact that you married Lord Chen's daughter,” Chandra went on. “The impression I received was that if you died out here, it might solve more problems for Lord Chen than it would cause. He'd have a marriageable daughter again, for one thing."
Martinez considered this, and found it disturbingly plausible. Lord Chen hadn't wanted to give up his daughter, not even in exchange for the millions the Martinez clan were paying him, and Martinez’ brother Roland had practically marched Lord Chen to the wedding in a hammerlock. If Martinez could be executed of a crime—and furthermore a crime against both the Gombergs and the Fletchers—then he couldn't imagine Lord Chen shedding many tears.
“Interesting,” he managed to say.
Chandra rose and leaned over his desk. “But,” she said, “I pointed out to Lady Michi that you'd played an important part in winning our side's only victories against the Naxids, and that we really couldn't spare you even if you were a killer."
The phrasing brought a smile to Martinez’ lips. “You might have given me the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “I might not have killed Fletcher, after all."
“I don't think Lady Michi was interested in the truth by that point. She just wanted to be able to close the file.” She perched on his desk and brushed its glossy surface with her fingertips. A triumphant light danced in her eyes. “So am I your friend, Gareth?” she asked.
“You are.” He looked up at her and answered her smile. “And I'm yours, because when Lady Michi was trying to pin the murder on you—with far more reason, I thought—I talked her out of it using much the same argument."
He saw the shock roll through Chandra like a slow tide. Her lips formed several words that she never actually spoke, and then she said, “She's a ruthless one, isn't she?"
“She's a Chen,” Martinez said.
Chandra slowly rose to her feet, then braced.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said.
“You're welcome, lieutenant."
He watched her leave, a little unsteadily, and then paged Mersenne. When the plump lieutenant arrived, Martinez invited him to sit.
“Some time ago,” Martinez said, “before I joined the squadron, you found Lieutenant Kosinic leaving an access hatch on one of the lower decks. Do you happen to remember which one?"
Mersenne blinked in utter surprise. “I haven't thought about that in months,” he said. “Let me think, my lord."
Martinez let him think, which Mersenne accomplished while pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.
“That would be Deck Eight,” Mersenne said finally. “Access Four, across from the riggers’ stores."
“Very good,” Martinez said. “That will be all."
As Mersenne, still puzzled, rose to his feet and braced, Martinez added, “I'd be obliged if you mention my interest in this to no one."
“Yes, my lord."
Tomorrow, Martinez thought, he would schedule an inspection, and something interesting might well come to light.
After breakfast Martinez staged an inspection in which Access Four on Deck Eight was opened. The steady rumble of ventilations blowers rose from beneath the deckplates. Martinez descended with Marsden's datapad, squeezed between the blowers and a coolant pipe wrapped in bright yellow insulation material, and checked the serial numbers on the blowers against the numbers on the 77-12 that had been supplied by Rigger/First Patil.
The numbers matched.
Martinez crouched in the confined space and checked the numbers again. Again they matched.
He straightened, his head and shoulders coming above deck level, and looked at Patil, who looked at him with anxious interest.
“When were these blowers last replaced?"
“Just before the war started, my lord. They're not due for replacement for another four months."
So these were the same blowers that Kosinic had seen when he'd gone down the same access. If it wasn't the serial numbers, Martinez thought, what had Kosinic been looking for?
Martinez ducked down the access again and ran his hands along the pipes, the ductwork, the electric conduit, just in case something had been left here, a mysterious message or an ominous warning. He found nothing but the dust that filled his throat and left him coughing.
Perhaps Mersenne had been wrong about from which he'd seen Kosinic emerge. Martinez had several of the nearby access plates raised, and he descended into each to find again that everything was in order.
It was hours later, while he was eating a late supper—a ham sandwich made of leftovers from the meal he'd given Michi—that a memory burst on his mind.
With Francis it's always about money.
That had been Alikhan's comment on the cruiser's former master rigger, and suddenly, days after they'd been spoken, the words suddenly seemed to echo in Martinez’ skull.
Gambling, he thought.
Martinez carried his plate from the dining room to his desk, where he called up the display, then used the authority of his captain's key to access the commissary records and check the files of the commissary bank.
Actual cash wasn't handed to the crew during the voyage: accounts were kept electronically in the commissary bank, which was, technically anyway, a branch of the Imperial Bank which issued the money in the first place. Crew would pay electronically for anything purchased from the commissary, and any gambling losses would be handled by direct transfer from one account to another.
The crew were paid every twenty days. Martinez looked at the account of Rigger Francis, and saw that it totaled nearly nine thousand zeniths, enough to buy an estate on nearly any planet in the empire.
And this was only the money that Francis had in this account. She could have more in accounts in other banks, in investments, in property.
Martinez called for Alikhan. His orderly came into the dining room first, was surprised to find Martinez in his office, and approached.
“Would you like me to take your plate, my lord?"
Martinez looked in surprise at the plate he'd brought with him.
“Yes,” he said. “No. Never mind that now."
Alikhan looked at him. “Yes, my lord."
“I want to know about the gambling that's going on among the petty officers.” Martinez looked at him. “Do they cheat?"
Alikhan considered his answer for a long moment before speaking.
“I don't think so, my lord. I think they're very experienced players, and at least some of the time they play in concert."
“But they gamble with recruits, don't they?"
Martinez thought he saw an angry tightening of Alikhan's lips before the answer came.
“Yes, my lord. In the mess, every night."
It's always about money. Again Alikhan's words echoed in Martinez’ head.
Gambling was of course against Fleet regulations, but such regulations were applied with a degree of discretion. If the petty officers played cards in their lounge, or the lieutenants wanted to play tingo in the wardroom, or the recruits roll dice in the engine spaces, action was rarely taken. It was a minor vice, and nearly impossible to stop. Gambling games and gambling scams were almost universal in the Fleet.
But the gambling could become dangerous when it crossed lines of caste. When petty officers gambled with recruits, serious issues of abuse of power came into play. A superior officer could enforce a vicious payment schedule at extortionate rates of interest, and could punish recruits with extra duties or even assault. A recruit who owed money to his superior could not only lose whatever pay he happened to possess at the time, but could lose future salary either in direct losses or interest payments. The recruit might be forced to pay in other ways: gifts, sexual favors, performing the petty officers’ duties, or even being forced to steal on behalf of his superior.
It had been months since Chenforce left Harzapid, and it would be months more before Illustrious would stop in a Fleet dockyard. A recruit in the grips of a gambling ring could lose his pay for the entire journey, possibly the entire commission.
“Who's taking part in this?” Martinez asked.
“Well, my lord,” Alikhan said, “I'd rather not get anyone in trouble."
“You're not getting them in trouble,” Martinez said. “They're already in trouble. But you can exclude those who aren't a part of it by naming those who are."
This logic took a few seconds to work its way through Alikhan's mind, but in the end he nodded.
“Very well, my lord,” Alikhan said. “Francis, Gawbyan, and Gulik organize the games. And Thuc was a part of it, but he's dead."
“Very good,” Martinez said. He turned to his desk, then looked back at Alikhan. “I don't want you talking about this."
“Of course n—"
“Dismissed."
Martinez’ mind was already racing to the next problem. He called up the accounts of Francis, Gawbyan, Gulik, and Thuc, and saw that they jumped on every payday—but when he looked at the figures, Martinez saw they were being paid far more than their salary. Nearly two-thirds of their income seemed to becoming in the form of direct transfers from other crew. Martinez backtracked the transfers, and found no less than nine recruits who regularly transferred their entire pay to the senior petty officers. They'd been doing it for months. Others were paying less regularly, but still paying.
Anger simmered in Martinez. You people like playing with recruits so much, he thought, maybe you should be recruits.
He would break them, he thought. And he'd confiscate the money, too, and turn it over to the ship's entertainment fund, or perhaps to Fleet Relief to aid distressed crew.
He checked the totals and found that Gulik was losing the money practically as fast as he was making it. Apparently the weaponer was truly devoted to gambling, and eventually lost every bit of his earnings to his friends. At the moment he had practically nothing in his accounts.
The scent of coffee wafted past his nose, and he looked up from the accounts to find that someone had placed a fresh cup of coffee by his elbow, next to a plate of newly-made sandwiches. Alikhan had made the ghostly delivery and Martinez hadn't even noticed.
He ate a sandwich and drank a cup of coffee.
Always about the money, he thought.
He opened the 77-12 that he'd viewed just that morning and looked again at the serial number of the ventilation blowers. He backtracked through the record and found that Patil had corrected the serial number from the purely fictional one that Francis had originally recorded in the log.
Every item in Martinez knew, came with its own history. Every pump, every transformer, every missile launcher, every robot, every processor, and every waste recycler came with a long and complex record that recorded the date of manufacture or assembly, the date at which it was purchased by the Fleet, the date at which it was installed, and each date at which it was subject to maintenance or replacement.
Martinez called up the history of the air blowers on Deck Eight and discovered that, according to the records, the blowers had been destroyed with the Quest, a Naxid frigate involved in the mutiny at Harzapid.
Rebel Data, he thought.
He checked the history of the turbopump that had failed at Arkhan-Dohg, and found that the turbopump had been decommissioned three years earlier, sold as scrap, and replaced by a new pump fresh from the factory.
His mouth was dry. He was suddenly aware of the silence in his office, the easy throb of his pulse, the cool taste of the air.
He knew who had killed Kosinic and Fletcher, and why.
Invitations went out in the morning, sent to all the senior petty officers. An invitation for drinks with their new captain, set for an hour before supper, was not something the customs of the service would let them decline, and decline they did not. The last affirmative reply came within minutes of the invitations being sent out.
The petty officers entered the dining room more or less in a clump: round-faced Gawbyan with his spectacular mustachos, Strode with his bowl haircut, burly Francis, thin, nervous Cho. Some of them were surprised to find the ship's secretary Marsden waiting with his datapad in his hands.
The guests sorted themselves out in order of seniority, with the highest-ranked standing near Martinez at the head of the table. Gulik was on his right, across from Master Cook Yau, with Gawbyan and Strode the next pair down, each with a grand set of mustachios; and then Zhang and Nyamugali. Near the bottom of the table was the demoted Francis.
Martinez looked at them all as they stood by their chairs. Francis seemed thoughtful and preoccupied, and was looking anywhere but at Martinez. Yau looked as if he had left his kitchens only reluctantly. Strode seemed determined, as if he had a clear but not entirely pleasant duty before him; and Gulik, who had been so nervous during inspections, was now almost cheerful.
Martinez picked up his glass and raised it. Pale green wine trembled in Captain Fletcher's leaded crystal, reflecting beads of peridot-colored light over the company.
“To the Praxis,” he said.
“The Praxis,” they echoed, and drank.
Martinez took a gulp of his wine and sat. The others followed suit, including Marsden, who sat by himself to the side of the room and set his datapad to record. He picked up a stylus and stood ready to correct the datapad's transcription of the conversation.
“You may as well keep the wine in circulation,” Martinez said, nodding to the crystal decanters set on the table. “We'll be here for a while, and I don't want you to go dry."
There were murmurs of appreciation from those farther down the table, and hands reached for the bottles.
“The reason this meeting may take some time,” Martinez said, “is because like the last meeting, this is about record-keeping."
There was a kind of collective pause from his guests, and then a resigned, collective sigh.
“You can blame it on Captain Fletcher, if you want to,” Martinez said. “He ran Illustrious in a highly personal and distinctive way. He'd ask questions during inspections and he'd expect you to know the answers, but he never asked for any documentation. He never checked the 77-12s, and never had any of his officers do it."
Martinez looked at his wine glass and nudged it slightly with his thumb and forefinger, putting it in alignment with some imaginary dividing line running through the room.
“The problem with the lack of documentation, though,” he said, keeping his eyes on the wine glass, “is that to a certain cast of mind, it means profit.” He sensed Yau stiffen on his left, and Gulik gave a little start.
“Because,” Martinez continued, picking carefully through his thoughts, “in the end Captain Fletcher only knew what you told him. If it looked all right, and what he was told was plausible, then how would he ever find out if he'd been yarned or not?
“Particularly because Fleet standards require that equipment exceed all performance criteria. Politicians have complained for centuries that it's a waste of money, but the Control Board has always required that our ships be overbuilt, and I think the Control Board's always been right.
“But what that meant,” he said, “is that department heads could, with a little extra maintenance, keep our equipment going far longer than performance specs required.” He looked up for the first time, and he saw Strode watching him with a kind of thoughtful surprise, as if he was recalculating every conclusion he'd ever drawn about Martinez. Francis was staring straight ahead of her, her gray hair partly concealing her face. Cho seemed angry.
Gulik was pale. Martinez could see the pulse beating in his throat. When he saw Martinez studying him, he reached for his glass and took a large gulp of the wine.
“If you keep the old equipment going,” Martinez said, “and if you know where to go, you can sell the replacement gear for a lot of money. Things like blowers and coolers and pumps can bring a nice profit. Everyone likes Fleet equipment, it's so reliable and forgiving and overbuilt. And they were getting this stuff new, right out of the box."
He looked at Francis’ scowling profile. “I checked the turbopump that failed at Arkhan-Dohg—using the correct serial number, not the number that Rigger Francis tried to yarn me with—and I found out the pump was supposed to have been retired three years ago. Someone had been keeping it going long after it should have been sold as scrap."
Martinez turned to Gulik. Sweat was pouring down the weaponer's face. He looked as deadly sick as he had been on the morning of Fletcher's last inspection, as the captain stalked toward him with the knife dangling at his waist.
“I also checked the serial number of the antiproton gun that failed in the same battle, and that was supposed to have been retired thirteen months ago. I hope that whoever sold the replacement wasn't selling it to someone who was intending to use it as a weapon."
“It wasn't me,” Gulik croaked. He wiped sweat from his upper lip. “I don't know anything about this."
“Whoever did it,” Martinez said, “didn't intend to endanger the ship. We weren't at war. Illustrious had been docked in Harzapid for years without so much as shifting its berth. The heavy equipment was going on and off the ship all the time, moving through the locked storage room where substitutions could be made without anyone being the wiser."
Martinez turned to look down the line of petty officers. “In order to work this scheme,” he said, “you'd need that storage room. You'd also need the services of a first-rate machinist, with access to a complete machine shop, so that the old equipment could be rehabilitated before it was reinstalled."
Strode turned his head to look at Gawbyan. The master machinist's lips had thinned to a tight line across his fleshy face. His mustachios were brandished like tusks. One large, fat-fingered hand had closed into a fist around the stem of his wineglass.
“So far, so good,” Martinez said. “Our happy band of felons were making a profit. But then they took on some partners. And the partners were Naxids."
That surprised some of them. Yau and Cho stared. Strode's mouth dropped open.
“Specifically,” Martinez said, “the Naxid frigate Quest, which was berthed next to Illustrious on the ring station. I expect the gang knew the Naxid petty officers informally before anyone mentioned the possibilities of mutual profit. And then they began using one another's facilities and swapping parts with one another, which is how equipment from the Quest ended up aboard Illustrious.
“Now in order to exchange parts, the codes for the storage areas had to be exchanged as well. And that didn't work out so well, because the Naxids involved somehow got the extra codes for the antiproton storage areas—maybe they came up with a plausible story of needing to exchange antiproton bottles, or maybe they just hid a camera where they could get a view of the lock—but the result was that shortly before the Naxid rebellion, all of our antiproton bottles were exchanged for empty ones."
The our was deliberate, even though Martinez hadn't been there. In war there was us and them, and Martinez wanted to make it clear who was which.
“The result was that Illustrious was helpless to defend itself in the battle, and unable to aid our comrades. I'm sure you all remember what that was like."
They did. He watched as they relived their helplessness, as anger blotched their faces, as jaw muscles clenched at the memory of humiliation.
“The bastards,” Nyamugali said. Hatred burned in her eyes. “The bastards,” she repeated.
Us and them, Martinez thought. Very good, signaler.
“Illustrious survived the battle,” Martinez said, “no thanks to the thieves. But the Naxid rebellion left them with a problem. Before the war, they were felons; but once shots were fired, they were traitors. And while the penalty for theft from the state can be dire under the Praxis, the cost of being found a traitor is much, much worse.
“The thieves’ problems increased,” Martinez said, “when an officer launched his own, personal investigation of how the antiproton bottles turned up empty. Maybe his injuries had turned him into an obsessive, or maybe when he was running into the storage area to fetch the bottles, he'd seen something that made him suspicious. But once Kosinic started conducting his own equipment inspections—lifting access plates and checking the machine spaces—it was clear that he was going to find the evidence that would condemn our ship's clique. So Kosinic had to die."
“It was Thuc.” Gawbyan's voice came out in a half-strangled croak. “Thuc killed Kosinic because of the cult. You said so yourself."
“I was both right and wrong,” Martinez said. “Thuc did kill Kosinic. But not because Thuc was a cultist. Kosinic was killed because Thuc was a thief, and Thuc may not have acted alone."
There was a moment of silence. Somewhere down the table, Master Data Specialist Zhang tossed back her glass of wine, then reached for a bottle and refilled it.
“Kosinic's death was ruled accidental, as it was meant to be,” Martinez continued. “All continued well for the conspirators, until the worst possible thing happened. Captain Fletcher himself grew suspicious. Maybe it was his turn to wonder how only his antiproton bottles, of all those in the Fourth Fleet, had turned up empty; or maybe he began to realize the weakness in his own system of inspections; or maybe he grew offended when he discovered that a gambling ring composed of high-ranking petty officers was skinning a group of recruits in the mess hall every single night."
That accusation struck home, Martinez saw. Even those who weren't a part of the gambling had to know about it, and most of them had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Captain Fletcher was a proud man,” Martinez said. “His pride had already been offended when his ship was disarming in a crucial battle. That was the sort of thing that would have launched an official investigation if Illustrious hadn't been so badly needed in the emergency—and maybe there would have been an investigation anyway if Fletcher hadn't been so well connected, I don't know.
“That his ship had not only been humiliated at Harzapid, but was also home to a gang of traitorous thieves was a further blow to the captain's pride. Any kind of official investigation would reveal how badly Captain Fletcher had let things get out of hand. That would be a black mark that neither his career or his pride would be able to survive.
“So Captain Fletcher decided to handle the situation on his own. He executed Thuc and claimed captain's privilege. No doubt he intended to execute the rest as well."
“I wasn't a part of any ring,” Gulik said suddenly. “Fletcher had the chance to execute me, and he didn't."
Martinez looked at the weaponer and slowly shook his head. “Fletcher looked at your current bank account and saw that you were broke,” he said. “He didn't think you were a thief because he couldn't find the profits. But when I looked at a running total of your bank account, I saw that you were very clearly a member of the ring, but that you're also a compulsive gambler whose money slips through your fingers almost as soon as you earn it."
Desperation shone in Gulik's eyes. There was a strange odor coming off of him, sweat and fear and alcohol ghosting out of his pores.
“I never killed anybody,” he said. “I didn't have anything to do with that."
“But you know who did,” Martinez said.
“I—” Gulik began.
“Quiet!” Francis barked. She glared down the table at Gulik. “Don't you see what he's doing? He's trying to get us to turn on each other.” Her fierce gaze looked at each of the petty officers in turn. “He's trying to divide us! He's trying to get us so frightened that we start make accusations against each other!” She looked at Martinez, and her lip curled. “We know who really killed Fletcher, don't we? The man who stepped into his place as captain!"
Martinez fought to control the surge of adrenaline that poured into his veins at the accusation. He pressed his hands carefully to the tabletop to control any trembling. With deliberation he looked at Francis and gave her a sweet smile.
“Nice try, Rigger Francis,” he said. “You're at liberty to file that accusation if you wish. But you'd better have evidence. And you'd better have an explanation for how air blowers from the Quest ended up on Deck Eight, Access Four."
She stared at him for a moment, hate-filled eyes locking his, and then she turned away. “Fucking officers!” she said. “Fucking Peers!"
Martinez spoke into the ringing silence, and tried to keep his voice level.
“So Fletcher had to die. And once the killers disposed of him, they must have again congratulated themselves again on a narrow escape. Except that then I stepped into Fletcher's place, and I insisted on every department completing its 77-12."
Martinez permitted himself a thin smile. “The conspirators must have had a debate among themselves as how best to handle the new requirement. If the 77-12s had accurate information, it would point to obsolete equipment and the Quest. But if the logs were yarned, an inspection could reveal the deception."
He looked at Francis. “Rigger Francis’ misadventures with the turbopump demonstrated the folly of yarning the log. So the others gave correct information and hoped that no one ever checked the hardware's history.” He shrugged. “Last night I checked."
He swept the others with his eyes. “I'm going to assume that any department with equipment from the Quest is run by someone who's guilty. I've checked enough to see that there's machinery from the Quest in the Thuc's old department, and in Gulik's, and in Francis'."
Francis made a contemptuous sound with her tongue and turned her head away. Gulik looked as if someone had just thrown a poisonous snake in his lap.
Martinez turned to Gawbyan. “They couldn't have done any of it without you. So you're guilty, too."
Gawbyan's lips emerged from the thin line into which he'd pressed them. “Naxids,” he said. “Naxid engineers could have done that work."
Martinez considered this idea and conceded that it was possible, if unlikely.
“Your account at the commissary will be examined closely,” he said, “and we'll see if you share any mysterious payments with your mates. That'll be proof enough as far as I'm concerned."
A contemptuous look entered Gawbyan's eyes.
“I didn't kill anyone,” Gulik said rapidly. “I didn't want to be a part of any of it but they talked me into it. They said I could earn back some of the money I'd lost at cards."
“Shut up, you rat-faced little coward,” Francis said, but she said it without concern, as if she'd already lost interest in the proceedings.
“Gawbyan and Francis killed the captain!” Gulik cried. “Fletcher had already shown he wasn't going to kill me, I had no reason to want him dead!"
Francis flashed the weaponer a look of perfect disdain, but said nothing. Martinez saw Gawbyan's big hands closing into fists.
If this were one of the Doctor An-ku dramas that Michi enjoyed, this would have been the moment at which the killers would have produced weapons and made a murderous lunge for Martinez, or taken hostages and tried to bargain their way out. But that didn't happen.
Instead Martinez called for Alikhan, and Alikhan entered from the kitchen with Garcia and four constables, including Martinez’ servants Ayutano and Espinosa. All, even Alikhan, were armed with stun batons and sidearms.
“Gawbyan, Gulik, and Francis,” Martinez said. “Lock them up."
All three were cuffed from behind. There was no resistance, though Francis gave Alikhan a scornful look.
“Wait, captain!” Gulik said as he was manhandled out the door. “This isn't fair! They made me!"
Alikhan remained behind, hovering behind Martinez. Martinez felt a great tension begin to ebb. He picked up his wine glass and took a long drink and put the glass back on the table.
It wasn't as if he didn't deserve a drink right now.
He looked at the remaining petty officers. “There were lines crossed on this ship,” Martinez said. “Four senior petty officers conspired to rob recruits of their pay, and no one complained, no one talked, and no one did anything about it. Those same recruits branched out into sale of Fleet property, and they put the ship in danger over and over. People died at Harzapid because of those four.
“And it wasn't just the petty officers,” Martinez said. “Captain Fletcher crossed some lines, too, and maybe that made others think it was acceptable."
He looked at his remaining guests and saw them staring at nothing, or perhaps looking inward. Cho and Zhang seemed angry. Patil looked as if he were ready to weep.
“If any of you were involved with any of these schemes,” Martinez said, “I need to know now. I need to know what you know. Believe me, it will go better with you if you turn yourselves in than if I find it out on my own. Right now I haven't done anything more than spot-check the logs, and I haven't look at financial records in any kind of detailed way. But I will. Now that I know what to look for, I'll have that information very soon."
There was silence, and then Amelia Zhang turned to Martinez and said, “You won't find anything wrong in my department, my lord. And you can look at my finances and see I live on my pay and that most of it goes to my kids’ school fees."
“My department's clean,” said Strode. He brushed one of his mustachios with a knuckle. “I yarned my log, I admit that, but I didn't like those others, Thuc and Francis particularly, and whenever they talked to me about ways of making money I wouldn't listen."
Martinez nodded.
“Illustrious depends on you all,” he said. “You're more important to this ship than the officers. You're all professionals and you're all good at what you do, and I know that's the case because Captain Fletcher wouldn't have had you aboard otherwise. But those others—they're the enemy. Understand?"
He has a feeling he's made better speeches in his career. But he hoped he'd succeeded in creating a dividing line, the kind that is necessary in war, between us and them. Those he'd just labeled as us were people he needed very badly. Illustrious had been scarred, not in combat but in its heart, and the remaining petty officers were going to be a vital part in any healing. He could have had the killers arrested in their beds and dragged to the brig, but that wouldn't have had the same effect on their peers. It could have been put down to arbitrary action on the part of an officer, and that wasn't what Martinez wanted. He wanted to demonstrate in front of their peers how guilty the killers were, and exactly how long and detailed their treachery was, and how badly it had put the ship in danger. He had wanted to separate them from us.
Martinez felt a sudden weariness. He'd done everything he'd set out to do, and said far more than he'd intended to say. He pushed back his chair and rose. Chairs scraped as they were pushed back, and the others jumped to their feet and braced.
Martinez reached for his glass and raised it.
“To the Praxis,” he said, and the others echoed him. He drained his glass, and the others drained theirs.
“I won't keep you,” he said. “I'll talk to the new department heads tomorrow morning."
He watched them file out, and when they were gone he reached for a bottle and refilled his glass. He drained half of it in one long swallow, and then he turned to Alikhan.
“Tell Perry I'll have supper in my office after I report to the squadcom."
“Very good, my lord."
Alikhan turned and marched, adjusting the belt with its sidearm and baton. Martinez looked at Marsden.
“Did you get all that?"
“Yes, my lord."
“Turn off your record function, please."
Marsden did so, and stood bald and impassive, waiting for Martinez’ next order.
“I'm sorry about Phillips,” Martinez said.
Surprise fluttered in the other man's eyes. He turned to Martinez.
“My lord?"
“I know you would have saved him if you could."
There was an instant of surprise on Marsden's face, and then he mastered it, and his face was impassive again.
“I'm sure, my lord, I don't know what you mean."
“You people have hand signals and so on, don't you?” Martinez asked. “You would have given Phillips a warning if he hadn't happened to be on watch in Command.” He took a breath and sighed it out. “I wish you had."
Marsden looked at him with intense brown eyes, but said nothing.
“I worked out a while ago,” Martinez said, “that Thuc may have been a killer, but he wasn't a Narayanist. The tree pendant was found in Thuc's belongings because you put it there, Marsden, when I sent you to collect his things. You knew that I was about to launch an investigation into cult affiliations, and you wanted to get rid of the evidence. So you took the pendant from around your own neck and put it in with Thuc's jewelry."
Marsden's neck muscles twitched. He looked stonily at Martinez.
“My lord,” he said, “that's pure speculation."
“I couldn't work out why you were behaving so strangely,” Martinez said. “You were very angry when I first mentioned Narayanists—and then you denounced me for daring to insult the Gomberg and Fletcher clans. You forced me to search you right then and there, though of course that was after you'd ditched your pendant. I thought you were some extreme kind of snob. What I didn't realize was that I'd just insulted your most deeply-held beliefs.
“The problem is,” Martinez said, “that pendant helped to condemn Phillips. You didn't know that one of Thuc's fingerprints was found on Kosinic's body. That linked murder and Narayanism in my mind, and I charged off on a campaign to find cult killers. That's the way cultists are always portrayed in video dramas—killing people and sacrificing children to false gods. I was misled by a lifetime of watching that sort of drama. I forgot that Narayanism isn't a killing sort of belief."
“I wouldn't know, my lord,” Marsden said.
Martinez shrugged. “I wanted you to know I was sorry about the way I handled things. You won't forgive me, I'm sure, but I hope you'll understand.” He took a long drink of his wine. “That's all, Marsden. If you can copy me that recording, and append a transcription as soon as you can, I'd be very much obliged."
Marsden braced. “Yes, my lord."
“You are dismissed."
Marsden turned and walked away, his back straight, his head facing rigidly forward. Martinez watched the door close behind him.
Apology not accepted, he thought.
He took another long drink of his wine, and then he walked to his office, put the wine glass on his desk, and walked out into the corridor.
It was time to report to Lady Michi.
Steven R. Boyett is the author of Ariel and The Architect of Sleep, and co-author (with illustrator Alan Aldridge) of The Gnole. He lives in Southern California and wouldn't have it any other way. Steve has been a writing teacher, editor, martial-arts instructor, and professional paper marbler, among other things. He is too modest to admit it, but he plays a mean digeridoo. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and he has also written comic books and a draft of the movie Toy Story 2.
Visit Steve's website at www.steveboy.com
Gordon Gross is actually the long-time writing team of Eve Gordon and Harold Gross, whose work has appeared in Fantasy Fiction, Analog, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds III, the cookbook, A Cup of Comfort, and most recently in the anthology Absolutely Brilliant in Chrome (Phobos Books).
Harold Gross has been a professional actor and a computer professional for many years. Besides writing as half of Gordon Gross, he has been awarded top honors in the 2nd Annual Phobos Fiction Contest, and received an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: 16th Ed.
Eve Gordon worked as an independent computer programmer and certified trainer in a previous life, but with the formation of Literary Ends has been reborn as a clothing designer and seamstress. Besides writing as half of Gordon Gross, Eve's other interests include obsessive gardening, reading, stand-up comedy and SCUBA diving.
Visit Gordon Gross's website at www.gordongross.com/
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon within sight of an 11,700 foot volcano. His fiction appears in Asimov's, Postscripts, and Realms of Fantasy, as well as the critically acclaimed collection Greetings From Lake Wu. He is the author of the collection American Sorrows, and editor or co-editor of the Polyphony anthology series, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, TEL: Stories and Exquisite Corpuscle. Jay is a 2004 Hugo finalist and the recipient of the 2004 John W. Campbell Award.
Visit Jay's website at www.jlake.com/
Patricia MacEwen is a physical anthropologist (translation: bone freak) who has worked in the forensic field for the past 13 years, including 9 years as a crime scene specialist for the Stockton Police Department and a stint as a Scene of Crime Officer for the UN's War Crimes Tribunal. Currently working on various archaeological digs in Central California, Ms. MacEwen holds a B.S. in Marine Biology from Long Beach State and is finishing a master's thesis in forensic anthropology at Cal State University Sacramento. Her interests include alien sex, cathedrals, Darwin Award winners and stupid crook stories.
Holly Wade Matter's stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Century, the fantasy and horror volumes of the award-winning Bending the Landscape anthology series, and most recently the Crossings anthology from Double Dragon Press. Ms. Matter lives in Seattle with her husband and four recalcitrant house-rabbits.
Visit Holly's website at home.comcast.net/~weemallard/
John Meaney is the author of three published novels—To Hold Infinity, Paradox and Context, the latter two titles being the first two books in the Nulapeiron Sequence. The third Nulapeiron novel, Resolution, is forthcoming in early 2005 from Transworld/Bantam. All three books are soon to be published in the U.S. by Pyr. His novelettes “Sharp Tang” and “Entangled Eyes Are Smiling” were shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award in 1995 and 2004 respectivley, and To Hold Infinity and Paradox were on the BSFA shortlists for Best Novel in 1999 and 2001.
Visit John's website at www.johnmeaney.com/
Kristine Kathryn Rusch's novels (science fiction, fantasy, mystery/crime, and romance) have been published in 14 countries in 13 different languages. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won Hugo awards for both editing and fiction. Her short work has been reprinted in six Year's Best collections. She has also been the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award, the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel, the Ellery Queen Reader's Choice Award, the Science Fiction Age Reader's Choice Award, and the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award, and been nominated for the Locus, Nebula, and Sturgeon awards, and the Asimov's Reader's Choice Award.
From 1991-1996 Kris was the editor of the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Before that, she and Dean Wesley Smith started and ran Pulphouse Publishing, a science fiction and mystery press in Eugene, Oregon. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.
Visit Kris's website at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com/
Lori Ann White lives with her husband, writer Gary W. Shockley, and her cats in a tiny house in Silicon Valley. When she's not writing fiction, she works as a information technology drone, teaches martial arts, plays with hot glass, and plots to become the neighborhood eccentric.
Her stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Best of the Rest 3, and Polyphony 3, her reviews in Strange Horizons, and a poem forthcoming in “Astropoetica” (www.astropoetica.com). She's putting the finishing touches on a historical fantasy novel set in southern China during the Boxer Uprising and wondering what's taking the agent who is looking at it so long to get back to her.
Visit Lori's website at home.pacbell.net/pbwriter/
Walter Jon Williams has published more than twenty novels and short fiction collections. Most are science fiction or fantasy—Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire to name just a few—a few are historical adventures, and one, The Rift, is a disaster novel in which “I just basically pound a part of the planet down to bedrock.” And that's just the opening chapters. Walter holds a fourth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Kathy Hedges.
Visit Walter's website at www.walterjonwilliams.net/
Gene Wolfe is the author of two dozen novels and hundreds of short stories. Possibly the most critically acclaimed SF/Fantasy author of our time, he is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, as well as two Nebula Awards, two World Fantasy Awards, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Prix Apollo. He lives with his wife, Rosemary, in Barrington, IL.
Visit This Gene Wolfe tribute site at mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfe.html
Conversion Note: I cut all the ads and other artwork. This is a conversion from a Rocketbook format document, and all of the ads, logos and other artwork in the .rb file were pixillated B&W low-res things that just looked like crap, so I dumped them. They were not, IMO, worth the space, although I'm sure the original printed versions looked fine.