“I’d spend my last minim to make you happy.”
She rewarded the use of the personal pronoun with a smile. “So what do you hear?” she asked.
“Riot at the Blue Hatches, the place where they were shooting people,” One-Step said. “A crowd of mourners got arrested for killing a prison officer.”
Sula paused a moment, thinking. “Was it on the news?”
“No. One-Step heard it from a…colleague.”
Street rumor would spread fast, Sula knew, though what it gained in speed it lost in accuracy.
“Anyone killed?” she asked.
“My friend didn’t know. Probably there were deaths, though. There’s a lot of killing going around.”
He stepped forward and held out something that shone yellow-white in the light that spilled from the apartment window.Resistance.
“I’ve seen it.”
The plastic flimsy vanished. “You be careful,” One-Step said. There was a surprising earnest quality in his voice. “You step out into the street, you look for police first. Look for police at the train, at the market. Always make sure you have an escape route.”
Sula looked at him. “Doyou have an escape route, One-Step?”
His black eyes shone in the light as again he silently held out the pale sheet of plastic.
Resistance.
Sula turned. “Good night, One-Step.” She slid her key into the door lock, and alloy bolts drew back.
“Good night, miss. Keep well.”
He’s going to die,she thought as she walked slowly up the stair.They’ll be shooting at me, but they’ll hit him.
Plenty of bullets had been aimed at her earlier in the day, after all, but killed nearly five hundred other people instead.
EIGHT
Three watches ticked by with nothing for Martinez to do but spend his time at hypertourney, check the tactical display to see if anything had changed, and stare at Terza’s picture in the surface of his desk. No one invited him to dine. He considered having the lieutenants to an evening inDaffodil —the ex-civilian yacht that had brought him toIllustrious, and which he had turned into kind of an informal club, an alternative to the full-dress dinners Fletcher had imposed on the cruiser—but then he reflected that he’d have to invite Chandra and decided against it.
No one was in a mood for amusement anyway. Not with Termaine coming closer and closer, and the memory of Bai-do fresh in everyone’s mind.
After breakfast the next morning, Martinez occupied himself with the list of Authorized Names. When the Shaa made a conquest, they produced lists with names authorized for children. Names with subversive content— Freedom, Prince—were forbidden, along with names relating to superstition or other irrational beliefs contrary to the Praxis.
Since the conquest thousands of years ago, humanity had changed in countless ways, but the names had stayed the same.
Not that this was a particular hardship: there were still thousands of names to choose from, all sanitized by higher authority. Martinez liked the long list, because he could spend hours at it, and he could think about his unborn child the entire time.
Perhaps his child could be called Pandora, “All Gifts.” Or Roderick, “Renowned Ruler.” Or Esme, “Beloved.”
If male, he could be named after Terza’s father, Maurice, or his own, Marcus, except that he didn’t quite understand what the names meant. “Moor” and “Of Mars,” all right, but what were Moors and Mars?
If she were a girl, she would surely be beautiful, and therefore could be named Kyla, or Linette, or Damalis.
Pity that he couldn’t simply name his child “Genius,” because surely that would apply better than anything.
Martinez glanced up at the sound of purposeful footsteps, and looked up to see Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher standing in the door of his office. Fletcher wore his full dress uniform, with white gloves and the ceremonial sickle-shaped knife at his waist.
Martinez jumped to his feet and braced. “Lord Captain!” he said.
Fletcher looked at him from his deep-set eyes. “I’d be obliged if you’d join me, Captain Martinez.”
“Certainly, my lord.” Martinez began to walk around the desk, then hesitated. “Should I change into full dress, my lord?”
“That won’t be necessary, Lord Captain. Come along, if you please.”
Martinez left his office and joined the captain, who was accompanied also by Lord Sabir Mersenne, the fourth lieutenant, and Marsden, the captain’s short, bald secretary, both also in full dress. Without another word, Fletcher turned and began walking down the corridor, the others following. Martinez wondered if he should have worn full dress when eating breakfast by himself, or at least should be embarrassed that he hadn’t.
Fletcher’s silver-embossed scabbard clanked faintly on the end of its chain. Martinez had never seen the captain wear his knife, not even at his very formal dinners.
The party went down two decks, leaving behind officers’ country and the haunts of the enlisted. The captain marched to a hatch and knocked with a gloved hand.
The hatch was opened by Master Engineer Thuc, whose towering figure nearly filled the doorway before he stepped back to reveal the engine control room. Beneath panels showing strong-thewed characters working with huge levers and winches on some impossibly antique machinery, the control room crew were lined up, braced, and spotlessly turned out.
Apparently Captain Fletcher was conducting him on one of his frequent inspections. The captain was a demon for inspections and musters, and usually inspected some part of the ship every day thatIllustrious wasn’t engaged in some other crucial business. Today was the engine division’s turn, but Martinez could not imagine why he had been invited along. He wasn’t a line officer, but staff, and not in Fletcher’s chain of command—the state ofIllustrious ‘s engines was none of his business.
So while he watched Fletcher and his two subordinates crawl over the engine control room, passing white- gloved fingers over the glossy surfaces, Martinez wondered why he had been summoned to observe this ritual, and paranoia soon began to scuttle through his mind on chitinous insect legs. Surely this had to do with Chandra Prasad. Surely Fletcher suspected him of being her lover, and the inspection was part of an elaborate revenge plot.
The captain found flaws—a suspicious creak in an acceleration cage that indicated a worn part, a scratch on the transparent cover of a gauge, an emergency radiation suit carelessly stowed—and then the party went on to look at the engine department’s storage lockers, at the heavily shielded antihydrogen compartments, and—after donning ear protection—at the massive reactor that powered the ship and the huge turbopumps that operated the thermal exchange system.
Martinez knew that in the reactor room the noise was hellish, but his earphones automatically pulsed out sound waves that canceled that of the pumps, and all he heard in his ears was a distant white noise. But hisbody reacted to the sound: he could feel the vibration in his bones and in his soft organs, and when he touched a wall or pipe.
Fletcher stroked the pumps with white-gloved fingers, found them clean, and then returned to the engine control room so that his questions might be heard. Thuc followed the captain in docile silence, his muscular body looming over Fletcher’s shoulder except when he darted forward to open a hatch or a locker door.
“You’ve changed the filters on the main pump recently?”
“Just after Protipanu, my lord,” Thuc said. “We aren’t due for another change for two months.”
“Very good. And the pump itself?”
“We’ll swap it out in another…” Thuc considered his answer, his eyes focused somewhere above the captain’s left shoulder. “…thirty-eight days, my lord.”
“Very well.” The captain tugged his white gloves over his wrists and smoothed the fine kidskin over his fingers. “I’ll just inspect your crew then.”
He marched down the line of engine crew, stopping to make an occasional comment about dress or
