Incoming transmission. Right.
“Display,” she said.
It was the lantern-jawed staff lieutenant, Martinez. “Cadet Sula,” he said, “I was wondering if you’re lonely.”
Surprise brought a savage laugh to Sula’s throat.Lonely? How could you think that?
“I’m sending you some entertainment,” Martinez said. “It’s all from my personal collection. I don’t know what sort of thing you like, so I’m sending a wide spectrum of stuff. If you’ll tell me what sort of thing you’d prefer, I’ll try to get it to you.”
He smiled “Enjoy.” Then he hesitated, and added. “I’m receiving requests from reporters who want to interview you in regard to the Blitsharts rescue. The lord commander’s given his permission, so it’s up to you. You’ve become sort of famous here.” And then he brightened again. “Let me know if you need anything. Aside from a hot bath, that is.”
The transmission ended. Sula looked at the comm display and saw the steadily winking light that indicated her communications buffer was being filled with compressed audiovisual files.
Entertainment?
Anything was better than lying here alone, with nothing but memories for company.
She watched Spate in the knockabout comedyExtrovert, enjoying his excellent timing, the sheer physicality of his movements. She absorbed Loralee Pang and the Lai-own Far-fraq in the melodramasDr. An-ku Investigates andDr. An-ku and the Mystery Skull. She watched Aimee Marchant in the sophisticated comedyFleet Exercises, with its totally unreal life aboard a battleship, and Cannonball Li in the frantic, classicCrazy Vacation, which she decided was overrated. She avoided the dramasRighteousness andLife of Evil —grim explorations of despair and violence were nothing she wanted to watch right now, despite the happy endings mandated by the censors.
“Send more Spate,” she sent in a private message to Martinez. “And tell the reporters to go eat rocks.”
Martinez proved to be quite a connoisseur of low comedy. In addition to more Spate vehicles, he sent the Deuces inHigh-Low Boys and Mary Cheung inWho’s on the Slab?
It was while watching Spate do his famous mushroom dance inSpitballs! that Sula felt the tide of sorrow begin to flow out of her, propelled by a wind of laughter. She laughed till cramp lay like a fist in her belly, till tears spilled from her eyes. She felt the sadness retreat and flow away until she could dam it up again, until it was safe behind its iron wall.
Thank you, Martinez,she thought.Thank you for saving me…from me.
FOUR
There had been a party at the Ngeni Palace the night before, and the decorations were still coming down. Golden shay blossoms taller than a man were being lowered from the upper regions of the barrel-vaulted hall, ribbons of gold and white unwound from the columns that supported the long balconies, and a gang of servants under the direction of a Daimong in livery was scrubbing the dark red marble floor. Mingled scents of perfume and decay wafted from the hundreds of faded flowers dumped into a hopper near the front door.
Judging by its remnants, the party had been quite large, thronging the halls and corridors. Were Martinez the sort to pay attention to the society reports, he could probably have read rapturous descriptions that morning of the decorations, costumes, and guests that had filled the palace the previous night.
Perhaps hewould examine the society reports, at least as far as studying the guest list. It would be interesting to speculate who had rated an invitation and who hadn’t, and why.
Martinez, for example, hadn’t received an invitation, despite being one of Lord Ngeni’s clients. Ngeni and his clan represented the Martinez clan’s interests here in the capital.
But Lord Ngeni was absent. The Ngeni clan head had taken up the governorship of Paycah, leaving clan affairs in the hands of his son, Lord Pierre Ngeni. It had been Pierre’s party that filled the palace the previous night.
Martinez followed the palace majordomo through the courtyard—filled with orderly rows of greenery and larger-than-life statues of Ngeni ancestors—to Lord Pierre’s office. There were several individuals in the waiting room, not all of them human, not all of them respectable-looking. Martinez was not made to wait.
At least he ratedsome consideration.
Pierre Ngeni was a broad-shouldered, round-headed young man with a resonant baritone voice and the jaws of a mastiff. Like his father, he wore the dark red uniform that marked him as a convocate—a member of the Convocation, the body that provided the empire’s top administrators, and which was permitted to “petition” the Shaa. (When a petition was accepted by the Shaa, it changed its status to that of “law.”) The Convocation would have charge of the empire when the last of the Great Masters finally ended its life.
Lord Pierre’s uniform was well-tailored, but not the extreme epitome of style. At least he was not a glit. Quite the contrary, he was a serious man, dry, who always gave the impression of being busy. His desk was covered with orderly stacks of papers, and two secretaries sat in the room to take notes or dictation, as he required.
“My lord,” Pierre said, rising from behind his desk.
“Lord Convocate.” Martinez briefly braced himself military-style, tilting his chin high, a salute to the other man’s senior status.
“Please sit down.”
Martinez sat in a straight-backed chair clearly designed to discourage people from taking up too much of the lord convocate’s time. Lord Pierre’s chair was a more comfortable one, and its cushions sighed as it took his weight. Pierre tilted his chair back at a generous angle and evaluated Martinez with his mild brown eyes.
“I’ve seen you in the news,” he said. “That rescue you helped engineer—that’s been well spoken of.”
“Thank you, Lord Pierre.”
“A pity you couldn’t bring back Blitsharts alive, or at least the dog.” Zanshaa, or at least the Terran parts of it, were displaying extravagant mourning for the dog Orange, more than they seemed to show for his owner.
Martinez gave a shrug. “I’m afraid that wasn’t up to us,” he said.
“I suppose it wasn’t.” There was a moment’s pause, then Pierre, businesslike, inclined himself and his chair forward. “How may I help you this morning?”
“I was hoping you might be able to arrange another appointment for me.”
Lord Pierre seemed taken aback. “As I recall,” he said slowly, “my father went to some effort to recommend you to Lord Commander Enderby.”
“And I’m very grateful to him, my lord.”
Pierre’s look turned accusatory. “But it hasn’t worked out? Enderby has taken some dislike to you?”
“Not that I know of,” Martinez hedged. “The problem is that Lord Commander Enderby has decided to follow the last Shaa into eternity.”
Lord Pierre’s eyes flickered in surprise. “Ah. I see.” He stroked his heavy jaw. “Mostinconvenient, after all we’ve done. And you have no indication whether his deathbed petition will recommend you for promotion?”
“I can’tcount on any such recommendation,” Martinez said carefully. His hands twitched at the creases of his trousers. “He’s arranged for me to take a post as communications officer on theCorona. It’s more or less the same job I’m doing now, but it’s a small ship under a junior commander, and—”
“A far less prestigious post than aide to the commander of the Home Fleet,” Pierre said.
“Yes.”
“It’s almost as if he were going out of his way to demote you,” Pierre said. The accusing look reentered his eyes.
“He probably thinks it’s time I had ship duty,” Martinez said weakly.
“I will see what I can find,” Pierre said. “The problem is, I have very little influence in the Fleet at the moment—my great-aunt’s retired, and no one in the service owes us any favors right now.” He frowned and lowered his voice, almost speaking to himself. “If you wanted a post in the civil service, I’d stand a greater chance of finding you something.”
“I’d appreciate anything you can do, my lord,” Martinez said. “And perhaps my…recent celebrity…may be of some assistance.”
Lord Pierre tilted an eyebrow at this thought, then his hands reached for the arms of his chair, as if he were about to rise and dismiss Martinez from both his office and his thoughts. But he seemed to think better of it and settled back into his seat.
“How are your lady sisters?” he asked. “I’ve seen them here and there, since they made their introductions
