Logs

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?'