Walpurga echoed Vipsania’s nod. “Oh yes we shall,” she said.
Sempronia turned to Martinez. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this!” she said.
“I’m not,” Martinez said. “If it were up to me, I’d give PJ a swift kick off the planet for daring even to think of marrying any of my precious sisters. But since Vipsania and Walpurga are insisting on taking this seriously, I thought I’d better work to minimize any possible damage.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome!” Martinez said brightly, and sipped his blue melon.
Poor PJ, he thought. The man didn’t know what he was getting into.
The door chime rang, then the other guests began arriving. There was a lawyer named Gellimer who was very attentive toward Vipsania, two young women Sempronia knew from school, a pair of elderly Shelley relatives who lived in the rear of the palace and acted as chaperones, their presence permitting the young ladies to entertain gentlemen. Arriving a bit late was someone from the Treasury named Castro, who followed yachting and was very interested in Martinez’s solution to the problem of Blitsharts’s runaway yacht. Martinez demonstrated the gyrations ofMidnight Runner by hanging a table knife from his thumb and forefinger and rotating it in a complicated way, and he looked across the table to find Vipsania’s eyes on him.
“Do you know Lady Sula well?” she asked.
Martinez was surprised. “We speak now and again,” he said. “Of course, she’s a quarter light-hour out.”
“Do you think she would be interested in coming to our party?”
Martinez was even more surprised. “I’ll ask her,” he said, then smiled.
His sisters rarely made such a useful suggestion.
“Introducing me to your family already?” Sula said. “I suppose I should be flattered.” Her face showed weary but genuine pleasure. “Well,” she said, “why not? The needs of the Fleet permitting, I’d be honored to accept.”
Martinez smiled. He felt a warm buoyancy enter his soul, and was willing to accept the possibility that sisters had their uses after all.
He listened to the rest of Sula’s brief message, then checked the time display to see when Lord Commander Enderby could be expected to return. Not yet—he and Gupta were at yet another one of the interminable planning sessions relating to the Great Master’s end, leaving Martinez in charge of communications while they were gone. Since he had time available, he called Lord Pierre. At the moment, he felt as if he could handle a dozen Lord Pierres.
“My sisters have agreed to be introduced to your cousin,” he said.
For a moment Lord Pierre seemed puzzled, as if he didn’t recall what Martinez was talking about, then comprehension entered his eyes. “Shall I bring him to the—” He hesitated. “Where is it that your sisters are staying?”
Martinez affected surprise. Lord Pierre wasn’t about to get away with that. “You can hardly bring PJ to the Shelley Palace for a cold-blooded inspection,” he said. “He’s not a stud horse.”Though of course that’s exactly what he is . “It’s you that will have to play host, I’m afraid. And since I doubt it would be very comfortable for PJ to have my sisters descend on him like the Three Fates, there should be more than the six of us in the party.”
“Six?” Lord Pierre raised an eyebrow. “You’re planning on attending yourself?”
“A chaperone should be present, don’t you think?”
A frown knit between Lord Pierre’s brows. “You’re going to be formal as all that?”
“These are mysisters, ” Martinez said virtuously.
The whole business of chaperonage was something Martinez didn’t quite understand: things were handled otherwise in a Fleet where recreational tubes were installed on every ship. But some of the old families insisted on keeping their bloodlines unblemished, and would only marry those with a certificate of purity.
Lord Pierre conceded with an annoyed flap of one hand. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll check my schedule and get back to you.”
“Thank you, Lord Convocate.” And he smiled as sweetly as he could.
After that he recorded another rambling message to Sula, and sent it along with downloads ofKwa-Zo’s Fifth Book of Mathematical Puzzles andPre-Conquest Earth Porcelains: Asia.
When he returned to his apartment, he found his evening clothes laid out for him, along with a fragrant corsage of eskartori blossoms, and remembered his date with Amanda Taen. The memory came as a mild surprise. He had been so occupied with making plans for meeting Caroline Sula and arranging a sham engagement for Sempronia that he’d pushed Amanda to the back of his mind. An injustice, he thought, and he’d spend the rest of the evening setting it right.
He told Alikhan to lay out a small cold buffet for later and to chill a bottle of sparkling wine. Alikhan, not unaccustomed to these sorts of commands, nodded without speaking. Martinez shaved again, then changed into the civilian suit with the braided collar and cuffs and the elastic stirrup that ran under his glossy shoes at the instep—accessories that saidfashionable without quite sayingglit —then summoned a cab to pick up Amanda at her warrant officers’ quarters. She wore a gown of russet material quietly stuffed with all the by-products of modern materials science: it supported her lush figure in all the right places, while tucking her in elsewhere. In front, the gown modestly covered her to the throat, but there was no back at all. Her chestnut hair had been pinned up by long golden needles topped by walnutsized chunks of artificial ruby—cheap stuff, but deployed massively and to great effect—while rubies and gold also glittered on her fingers and at her throat.
Her smile was brilliant as her jewelry. “It’s not too formal, is it?” she asked.
“Not at all.” He put a hand on her naked back and helped her to the cab.
He took her to the Penumbra Theater for a comedy, a sex farce of the sort that humans loved and that other races found incomprehensible. Amanda laughed in all the places where Martinez could have hoped she might have laughed.
After the show, he took her to a restaurant in the High City for supper—not one of the absolutely first-class places, which tended to be too starched and formal, but a large, noisy restaurant with overhead galleries, smiling, busy waitrons, and with what Martinez had been assured was excellent food. Ari Abacha was drinking in the bar as Martinez entered, and silently raised his glass at the sight of Amanda. Martinez ate modestly, watched Amanda tuck into her bison steak, and thought how pleasing it was to meet a girl with such unconcealed appetites.
Afterward he took her to a club for dancing, then to his apartment, and then to bed. When he drew off her gown, her abundant flesh seemed to leap into his hands. She was as much fun as he expected, a gloriously healthy young female animal who took what she wanted with both generosity and laughter.
The evening would have been perfect if he hadn’t kept picturing Sula, her image and eyes, her voice, and imagining her scent, some fanciful combination of clean skin and lilac and arousal.
Sula, meanwhile, alone in her sour-smelling cockpit, wondered why Martinez hadn’t sent his usual evening message. She had gotten used to hearing his voice two or three times every day, and now that the voice hadn’t come, she realized how much she missed it.
She decided that his commander had him working late. She opened the file on Earth porcelains and spent the hours gazing at one image after another, of vases and bowls and jugs, all ancient and unbelievably rare and precious. In her mind she touched the lovely objects, stroking surfaces glossy or crackled or smooth, her fingertips caressing the unreachable creations of those immeasurably skilled, unknown, long-dead hands.
FIVE
“He’s old. I hate him.”
Sempronia’s fierce whisper hissed in Martinez’s ear. He looked at his youngest sister with sympathy.
“Sorry, Proney.”
“He keeps following me around the room. What if he wants totouch me?”
“You’ll have to endure it. Think of the family.”
Sempronia narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “Iam thinking of the family. I’m thinking ofyou —because this whole scheme is allyour fault .”
“Ah—here you are.” PJ Ngeni materialized at Sempronia’s elbow, a drink in either hand. “I thought I’d bring you another cocktail.”
