Wasteland of flint

to gently rub it between her fingers.

Two Imperial Marines in sharply creased black dress uniforms with crimson piping stiffened to attention as Gretchen approached a hatchway outlined in pale blue. Each Marine had his hands behind his back, but heavy flat pistols were slung on their belts and they had visors as sharp and sleek as Maggie's. The Navy rating escorting her bowed politely and thumbed a comm pad set into the bulkhead next to the hatch.

'Doctor Gretchen Anderssen, Commander,' he announced in a stiffly formal voice.

The pad chimed and the hatch recessed with a slight chuff and then slid up into the bulkhead. Her mouth suddenly dry, Gretchen nodded to the young man, then stepped inside. The room was small, like everything on the Cornuelle, but managed to hold a low traditional table for six, dressed with crisp white linen and thin porcelain cups. A very short man, barely reaching Gretchen's shoulder, bowed in greeting from the head of the table. The five other officers – ranging from the petite executive officer, Sho-sa Kosho, down to a midshipman, or sho'i ko-hosei, with pale red hair – also bowed in place, their hands flat on the tatami mat floor. Their incline was slightly deeper than Hadeishi's. Gretchen kept her face composed, hands together in front of her, and managed a bow halfway between those that had greeted her.

'Welcome, Doctor Anderssen,' Hadeishi said. Gretchen blinked in surprise – the Nisei's Norman was flawless. 'Please, join us.'

Gretchen slipped off her deck shoes before entering the room, turning the motion into a second bow.

The midshipman scooted a little to one side. Gretchen knelt, smiling politely at the boy. He couldn't have been more than sixteen. Like the other officers, he wore a perfectly white dress uniform, with the fire-snake emblem of the Imperial Navy worked in copper at his collar. Above his heart rode the sunburst symbol of the Cornuelle and a square glyph holding a running man.

The other officers remained still, heads lowered. The captain smiled down the table at Gretchen, and raised a thin porcelain teacup in polite greeting.

'Doctor Anderssen, welcome to the Cornuelle. I am Mitsuharu Hadeishi, her captain.'

'Konichiwa, Mitsuharu-san. Thank you for making me so welcome.'

'Your Japanese is excellent,' Hadeishi said, smiling, eyes crinkling up. Gretchen felt an odd sense of dislocation. She had worked with many Nisei; at the university, on Old Mars, even on Ugarit. They were unfailingly polite but she had never encountered a Japanese man, particularly one her social superior, that had genuinely smiled at her.

'Thank you. Your Norman is perfect.'

'No, please, I have a slight accent.' Hadeishi set down his cup. 'You have already met Lieutenant Kosho, my executive officer and pilot. This fellow next to her is Lieutenant Second Hayes, our weapons officer.' Hayes nodded, somehow appearing deferential to Kosho, though the XO was a tiny woman, even slighter of build than the captain. Lieutenant Hayes was nearly six feet tall and powerfully built. Gretchen smiled politely.

'The young ensign is Smith-tzin, who runs communications, and this last is Lieutenant Second Isoroku, master of our engineers.' Smith managed to nod politely and Isoroku, a bull-headed bald Nisei, had no reaction at all. Obscurely, Gretchen found this cold behavior comforting – his reaction was what she had expected, not the genial, almost cheerful tone expressed by the commander. Hadeishi stood and straightened his dress jacket. His uniform was very simple, expressing the best attributes of the Empire – humility, modest dress, quiet unassuming power – though his collar tabs were gold and the eagle glyph of an Imperial war commander sat next to the sunburst. An elderly man in a simple dark gray kimono appeared with a tiny green jade cup and a slim sake flask. Hadeishi bowed to him, took the cup and turned, facing his right.

There, on a bulkhead covered with inset wooden screens painted with mountains in cloud, were two portraits. They were not holo images, but traditional paintings on cream-colored rice paper, in a delicate ink-brush with faint washes of color. On the left, looking very young, was the Lord of the World, Ahuizotl, the sixth of that name, huey tlatoani of the Mйxica and all other peoples under the domain of the Empire. The artist had captured his pensive nature well, looking off to one side, slim hand pressed against his chest.

Hadeishi bowed deeply to the image of the Emperor, then raised the jade cup.

'So, meditate on this, eagles and jaguars,' he began, his Nбhuatl slow and measured, as flawless as his Norman. 'Although you may be jade, although you may be gold, you too will journey to the fleshless land. We all must disappear, no one will remain.'

The room became very still, each man and woman at the table looking down. The servant had disappeared. Gretchen saw the captain's face was composed and calm. She recognized the words, written nearly a thousand years before by a man who had opposed the policies of the Empire when it was still young. Her eyes drifted to one side, watching the faces of the other officers. The poetry of NezahualcГіyotl, the doomed prince of Tetzcoco, was banned throughout the Empire. The poet's philosophy did not express the ascetic martial spirit deemed fitting by the great powers of the Mйxica.

Hadeishi lowered the jade cup, pressing it against his lips, then raised it again, to the second portrait. This was a grumpy old man, his face pinched in a scowl, his hair bound up in the traditional samurai knot at the back of his head. He frowned, irritation alive in the smooth brushstrokes. He was Juntoku, the one hundred and thirty-sixth Tenno no Nihon, Emperor of Japan and all the Nisei people. Hadeishi smiled faintly, saying; 'Mere green herbs they are, grown in the mountain soil; yet if I pluck them with grace, how joyful is the toil!'

Then he placed the jade cup into the hands of the little old man and turned to face the table again. The welcoming ritual complete, two ratings slipped out of the tiny galley behind the officer's mess and began serving the first course. Gretchen felt her stomach grumble, smelling sweet onions and broth. For a moment, she was frozen, watching everyone else pick up their spoons.

Then the captain somberly tasted the miso and nodded to the two cooks. They grinned and everyone was eating. Gretchen forgot about her worries for a moment, listening to the quiet cheerful banter among the officers and enjoying the excellent meal.

'You were worried by my poetry.' Hadeishi was sitting in his office, a tiny cluttered room dominated by a wall of old books and a great deal of quick-cycle paper in stacks on an inset metal desk. He cradled a heavy Jomon-style sake cup in his hands. The liquor was hot, steaming up in the slightly chill air of the ship. Gretchen was sitting opposite him, in a real chair, still uncomfortable, holding a similar cup. She cradled it gently, having determined as the captain was pouring that it was an artifact and possibly two thousand years old. Her training urged her to pack it in shockfoam and label it, not sip smooth, old sake from the broad-mouthed bowl.

'Yes. Is it treason for you to speak those words?'

'No.' Hadeishi shook his head, a grin hiding in his dark eyes. His hair was long and a little stringy, though he kept it tied back. Here, in this softly lit room, filled with the familiar odor of old books and ink, he seemed elfin with delicate features and sharp little mustache. 'It is traditional, among the Nisei and Nбhuatl both, to offer songs to the great. It is not disrespectful to offer a small portion of a masterpiece – particularly those composed by royalty. But I understand your situation. From your mouth, NezahualcГіyotl is treason. Where were you born?'

'On New Aberdeen,' she said quietly, taking a small, careful sip.

'But you are not a Skawt? Surely not with a family name like Anderssen.'

Gretchen shook her head. Her poor family situation had weighed against her in school, at university, in getting employment, even under the burning suns of Ugarit. As a child, her ancestry had been a fierce burden, but she had struggled, and survived, and she felt no need to hide or dissemble.

'No, we are Swedish. Refugees.'

Hadeishi smiled over his cup, then put the bowl aside on the desk. 'Your people fought well and accepted defeat honorably. It pains me you should suffer for this, but I suppose not everyone can be blessed like the Skawts, the Irish and the Nisei, with the favor of the Lord of Men. Someone, after all, needed to stand fast in the face of the Empire. Glory is impossible without a mighty opponent.'

'I suppose.' A little over a hundred years had passed since the Mйxica had crushed the last independent nations on Anбhuac. The Swedes and Russians, fighting on in the ruins of their great cities, had surrendered only when all else had fallen to the Jaguar and Eagle Legions. Many of the survivors had scattered to the trans-solar colonies, or even beyond the embrace of Sol. Gretchen's grandparents had managed to settle on New Aberdeen, one of the lusher, Earthlike planets the Empire had apportioned to those races of men who were 'Third From the Center.' Her