“Yes, please,” said Perry. “Thank you, my lord.”
Feeling slighted, Martinez wrote Perry an excellent reference, in part so he could feel superior to the whole situation.
That evening, at his meal, he looked at his plate with a degree of suspicion.
What was so special about it? he asked himself.
Sula gave a dinner to thank Michi for her own dinner party, and Martinez, Chandra, and Fulvia Kazakov were invited. Martinez would have been the sole male at the affair if it hadn’t been for Haz, Sula’s premiere.
Sula’s dining room onConfidence was metal-walled and painted a pale, sad shade of green. An overhead duct was a hazard to anyone tall. She had tried to make light of it by paintingDUCK! on the duct in red letters. She served Hairy Rogers for cocktails, followed by wine and brandy. Martinez suspected that, as a nondrinker, her knowledge about how much alcohol people could actually consume without falling over was shaky. She was well on her way to getting everyone plastered.
Martinez sobered at the table, where he sat opposite Sula. Each cell in his body seemed to yearn toward her with every beat of her heart. He hardly dared look at her. Instead he did his best to follow the conversation, which was bright and amusing and concerned as little as possible with the war, Fleet business, or politics. The captains might be losing their ships, and all the officers might have a permanent black mark against their names for being a part of Chenforce, but the long, violent contest was over and they had all survived. Healthy animal spirits were rising, and on a pair of tubes soaring between the stars, there were only so many outlets.
Perhaps alcohol was safest, after all.
As the voyage progressed, he saw Sula frequently. There were only two ships, and the officers were social beings. Some kind of party occurred every day, though it wasn’t always the captains who were involved.
Still, it was half a month before Martinez dared to invite Captain Sula to dine with him alone.
He met her at the airlock—she had a different orderly this time, a straw-haired woman, but still with a Medal of Valor. Martinez escorted Sula to his dining room, where he offered her a choice of soft drinks. She had a glass of mineral water, and Martinez, who out of courtesy to his guest had decided to avoid alcohol, had another. Sula looked at the Jukes portrait of Martinez, looking brave and dashing at the head of the room, and smiled.
“Very realistic,” she said.
“Do you think so?” He was dismayed. “I’d hoped for better than that.”
Sula laughed and turned her attention to the murals of banqueting Terrans, the bundles of grapes and goblets of wine and the graceful people wearing sheets.
“Very classical,” she said.
“It only looks old. Let me show you another piece.”
He took her into his sleeping cabin and ordered the lights on, to revealThe Holy Family with a Cat . Sula seemed amused at first, and then a little frown touched her lips, her eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer to the ancient work. She studied it in silence for several long minutes.
“It’s telling a story,” she said. “But I don’t know what the story is.”
“I don’t either, but I like it.”
“How old is this?”
“It’s from before the conquest. From North Europe, wherever that is.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “Martinez, you are really appallingly ignorant of the history of your own species.”
He shrugged. “Before the conquest it was all murder and barbarism, wasn’t it?”
She turned once more to the painting. “Judge for yourself,” she said.
He looked at the cozy little family around their fire, and a warm affection for the painting rose in him. “The picture belongs to Fletcher’s estate now,” he said. “I wonder if they’d let me make an offer.”
Sula looked at him. “Can you afford it?”
“On my allowance? Only if they don’t know what it’s worth.”
She glanced briefly at the other pictures, the blue flute player and the landscape. “Any other treasures?”
He took her into his office. She looked without interest at the armored figures and the murals of scribes and heralds. Then her eyes were drawn downward to the desk, to the pictures of Terza and young Gareth that floated in its surface.
Martinez held his breath. The moment crucial, he thought.
The light in her eyes shifted subtly, like a wispy cloud passing across the sun. Her lips quirked in a wry smile.
“This is the Chen heir?” she said.
“Yes.”
“A healthy child?”
“So I hear.”
“He looks like his father.”
Her eyes followed the images as they floated over the desk’s surface.
“Howis your marriage, anyway?” Her tone was delicate and light, shaded with irony. They were both pretending that she didn’t care about the answer.
“It seemed to go well enough for the first seven days,” Martinez said. “Since then I’ve been away from home.”
“Seven days?” She smiled. “Fertile you.”
“Fertile me,” he repeated pointlessly.
He fought the impulse to take her in his arms.
Not on Michi Chen’s flagship, he thought.
There was the sound of footsteps in the dining room, Alikhan bringing in the first plates of snacks.
Sula brushed past him as she walked to the dining room door.
Moment passed, he thought. Moment survived.
He followed her. Alikhan stood by the corner of the table, immaculate in dress uniform, white apron, and white gloves.
“Master Weaponer Alikhan!” Sula smiled. “How are you?”
Alikhan beamed from behind his curled mustachios. “Very well, my lady. You’re looking well.”
“You’re very kind.” She allowed Alikhan to draw out a chair for her. “What are we eating tonight?”
“I believe we’re starting with a toasted rice paper packet stuffed with a filling of whipped krek-tuber, smoked crystallized sausage, and spinach.”
“Sounds lovely.”
Sheltered beneath Alikhan’s benign presence, Martinez and Sula managed a civil, pleasant meal. The conversation remained on safe, mostly professional topics, though over dessert he finally managed to deliver an outburst on the subject of Tork. He’d had a lot of practice by now, and his diatribe was exceptionally eloquent.
Sula shrugged. “The war returned certain people to power,” she said, “and they were the people who had no use for us to begin with. What did you expect? Gratitude?”
“I hadn’t expected to be treated so badly.”
“We both have our captain’s rank, and our seniority. Even under the best of circumstances we wouldn’t be promoted to squadcom for years, so we’ve done better than we could otherwise have expected.” She sipped her coffee. “They’ll need us again, for the next war.”
Martinez looked at her in surprise. “You think there’ll be another war?”
“How can there not be?” She flung out a hand. “The Shaa put us all in the hands of a six-hundred-member committee. How effective do you think such a group could be in running something as big and complicated as the empire?”
“Not very,” Martinez said. “But they’re going to have the Fleet, aren’t they?”
“Maybe. ButI think that the only thing a six-hundred-member committee can agree on is that they should all have more and more of what they’ve got already. In the past the Shaa kept a lid on the avarice of the lords convocate, but the Shaa are dead. I think we’ll have war within a generation.” She placed her coffee cup carefully in its saucer and examined it in the light. “Gemmelware,” she said. “Very nice.”
