Impersonations

by Walter Jon Williams

  As paranoia took hold, she began to wonder if Danitz had actually found out something and was trying to blackmail her in some incredibly clumsy way.

  In any case, there was no point in staying to make herself a target.

  “Pack up,” she told Spence and Macnamara when she returned to her rooms. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

  Who was she now? she wondered. The person who fled from a threat that might not even be real.

  * * *

  The next stop was Cappadocia, in central Anatolia, where Sula viewed the eerie hoodoo spires and monoliths of the local topography, and ordered a set of porcelain. She had gotten used to the more violent colors of Earth and ordered a pattern of tulips and pomegranates vivid with reds and blues and greens. It was too bright and brilliant and eye-catching for a formal dinner—she’d have to buy another set later—but it would be a delightful setting for a small, intimate dinner for friends.

  Assuming she ever made any friends, of course.

  Next was India, followed by China. Lord Moncrieff Ngeni kindly provided letters of introduction to the local authorities, and Dr. Dho-ta to historians and archaeologists, and so she was well received and feted and taken on special tours of the local monuments. The hospitality was flawless, but she felt a certain discontent with the historical banquet laid before her. Constantinople’s problems were reproduced wherever she visited: what remained of Earth’s unique civilizations had been subjected to earthquake, flood, war, accident, and above all to time. Much was reduced, lay in ruins, or had been built over by the universal culture of the Shaa. Some places had been reconstructed, as had the pyramids, but often the reconstructions seemed crude, or designed to please visitors rather than transmit Terran ideas and Terran cultural heritage.

  Which, she realized, was exactly what the Shaas would have preferred. Genuine Terran ideas might be dangerous; administrators probably thought it far safer to build a harmless historical amusement park.

  Years ago, when she was Earthgirl, she’d been in love with this place, with the epic stories of kings and queens and world-striding emperors she’d found in the histories, with the stories of eccentric scientists, poets, generals, and spies that she’d uncovered. She wondered now if she’d invented most of those stories herself out of a few sanitized facts culled from heavily censored histories, all combined with her desperate need to escape her own drear circumstances and enter a dazzling world filled with adventure and exoticism.

  Maybe she’d been more desperate than she remembered.

  * * *

  She didn’t neglect her work while she was traveling. A daily summary of events kept her informed. Documents came down from the dockyard, were viewed, signed, or sent back for redrafting. Some personnel were caught misbehaving, Koridun recommended punishment, and Sula confirmed Koridun’s suggestions. A jurisdictional dispute was settled by Parku without Sula having to intervene.

  “I’ve received several messages from the Manado Company, my lady,” Parku told her. “They’re eager to know when you’re going to sign the contract allowing them use of the dockyard.”

  “I want to review it again,” Sula said. She’d looked at it carefully and found it unobjectionable on the surface, but she still sensed something wrong with the arrangement, and she hesitated to confirm it.

  “The last call came from Lord Peltrot Convil,” Parku said.

  “Who’s he again?”

  “Chief operating officer of the company, my lady.”

  Lord Peltrot had slipped Sula’s mind, and she decided she might as well let him slip again. “Is their ship still in dock?”

  “Manado departed five days ago, following provisioning. Their crew included two company officers sent out from Zanshaa.”

  What, Sula wondered, would bring two officers all the way from the capital?

  “Do you have their names?”

  Parku did. Judging by their names, one was Daimong, the other Lai-own.

  “What were their titles?” Sula asked.

  “Both were referred to as ‘senior engineering staff.’”

  “What exactly are they engineering?”

  “The Manado Company makes little information available, but I found their names and credentials listed by their previous employers. One is a mining engineer and the other an ecologist who has consulted in the field of environmental systems for space habitats.”

  “Mining engineer,” Sula repeated. She nodded to herself. “They’ve found something out there, haven’t they? Resources they plan to dig out of a planetoid, or something.”

  “I think that is very likely, my lady.”

  “Keep Manado under observation. We don’t want to lose it this time.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  She spent the next two days in Xi’an, reviewing the treasures of Shihuangdi’s tomb, and lost track of the Manado contract until she received a call from Lord Peltrot Convil himself.

  “Lady Sula,” he said, “I wonder when we might expect your signature on the agreement to use your dockyard.”

  Sula looked at the expressionless Daimong face on her sleeve display. To a Terran, Daimong often looked like someone struck by amazement or by horror—Lord Peltrot’s appearance, with its round dark featureless eyes and open, fixed mouth, seemed set in an expression more akin to belligerence. His chiming voice was deep and bell-like.

  “I’d like to review the contract one more time, Lord Peltrot,” Sula said.

  “My understanding is that the contract was approved by the Judge Martial, so there is no legal impediment.”

  “That’s true. But I wish to—”

  “I believe you’re visiting Terra at present, Lady Sula.” Lord Peltrot’s bell-like voice took on an insistent, clanging tone. “May I offer you hospitality at our headquarters at Manado so we can discuss the matter?”

  “Where is Manado, Lord Peltrot?”

  “On the island of Sulawesi.”

  Which, east of Borneo and straddling the equator, was near one of the elevator terminals for the antimatter ring, and therefore a practical place for a company engaged in space exploration to have its headquarters.

  Sula considered the offer and decided she might as well accept. Seeing Lord Peltrot and touring the Manado Company’s facility might give her a clue about why she felt uneasy about the Manado contract.

  “I’m pleased to accept your invitation, Lord Peltrot,” she said.

  * * *

  “I’ve finally docked,” Goojie reported. “I walked straight into a meeting with the managers here on the ring, and since I had nothing to do on the ship but view their reports, I think I was pretty well prepared, and it went well.”

  “Congratulations,” said Sula.

  It was their first actual conversation, as opposed to recording messages for one another. The antimatter ring was close enough to the planet to permit something like normal dialogue, with the delay of less than second between a word spoken on the planet and its arrival on the ring.

  “I’ll be here another few days,” Goojie continued, “and then I’ll be ready to come down to the skyhook and start to explore the planet.”

  Sula was only moderately surprised. Peers were regularly appointed to positions where they weren’t expected to do more than a modest amount of work—her own appointment as head of the dockyards being a prime example.

  Still, she thought, she should perhaps express more surprise than she actually felt.

  “Are you sure they can spare you this early?” she asked.

  Goojie grinned. “Kan-fra’s headquarters is in Quito, and there are branches of the company all over the planet. I’ll be based in Quito and can decide to inspect any of the subsidiaries at any time.” She laughed. “It’s my proactive policy! I want to be involved in decisions on every level!”

  “Congratulations,” Sula said. “I wish my policy was as proactive as yours.”

  “You’re in China now, yes? Where are you going next?”

  “Manado, on Sulawesi.”
>
  “Yes? Is there good shopping there?”

  Sula laughed. “I don’t know. I’ll be there for a meeting.”

  “I’m going to have to go down to the planet somewhere; it may as well be Sulawesi. Shall I meet you there, schedules permitting? Or shall I go on to my inspection tour in New Zealand first?”

  “You’re going to start in New Zealand? Why New Zealand?”

  “The Arch of Macedoin. I’ve always wanted to see it.”

  Well, the Arch was on Sula’s itinerary, though she hadn’t planned to see it anytime soon. “New Zealand’s a long distance from Manado,” she pointed out. “Or anywhere, for that matter.”

  “I have access to a company aircraft. You can fly as my guest.”

  Which certainly seemed preferable to rattling across half the Pacific in a ground-effects craft. “Is there room for my two staff?” Sula asked.

  “Servants, you mean? Of course.”

  It seemed only polite to try to reciprocate the hospitality. “I’ll see if you can ride in the elevator’s Fleet compartment as my guest.”

  Sula had a few days left in China, during which she visited a reconstructed Wall and some reconstructed pagodas, and also ordered the large porcelain dinnerware set suitable for her rank. Hard-paste, thin, beautifully pale, the hand-painted rim decorated with the Sula crescents and in the center the badge of the frigate Confident, her first—and probably last—actual command.

  And then she surrendered to her weakness and bought four Jian tea bowls dating from the Song dynasty. They were not part of a set—sets did not survive thousands of years and the successive fall of empires—so each was unique, with a crackled black glaze described variously as “partridge-feather,” “hare’s fur,” or “tea dust,” depending on exactly how the glaze separated during cooling. The patterns were random but beautiful, and Sula could feel the ripple of the broken glaze against her fingertips when she caressed the cups. She had only to see them in the store to know exactly how she would display them in her tower office back on the ring.

  She didn’t want to think about how much of her money she’d spent on the cups.

  Who was she now? A connoisseur, apparently.

  * * *

  Sulawesi’s odd shape, with its four long, thin peninsulas spread out like the fingers of a lemur, disguised its considerable size, with more landmass than England. Manado was an enormous port on the northernmost peninsula through which the commerce coming up and down the skyhook was shipped to all of Asia, Australia, and the west coast of the Americas. Cargo ships the size of skyscrapers lay at the harbor’s piers, their decks stacked with containers coming from as far away as Seizho, Zanshaa, or Arkhan-Dohg. Huge masts shaded the harbor, each capable of spreading vast viscose-thin sails so enormous and perfectly cut that they could propel the huge ships with efficiency so high that the engines would only be used if the wind died away completely.

  Naxids scurried everywhere. They liked the equatorial heat as much as Torminel hated it. Sula reminded herself that the Naxids on Terra had never rebelled, that for the length of the war, they’d remained good citizens of the empire, but still she couldn’t help but feel crosshairs on the back of her neck.

  The tropical heat and humidity had Sula broiling in her dress uniform. She wished it featured cooling units like those in Koridun’s rig.

  Fortunately, she wasn’t exposed to the heat for long: Macnamara drew the car up to a nondescript office building overlooking a shabby boatyard, and Lord Peltrot welcomed Sula and brought her into his climate-controlled office. She tucked her cap under one arm as she entered.

  Peltrot was short and stocky, which hadn’t been obvious from his video image. He had a forceful way of walking, with his chest and chin outthrust. He must have bathed very recently, because Sula didn’t need to resort to whiffing the perfume she’d dabbed on her wrists and handkerchief.

  The Manado Company offices were small and featured only a handful of employees working behind large displays to the incessant sound of banging and clattering from the boatyard.

  “Our personnel are scattered in ports throughout the empire,” said Lord Peltrot. “That’s where day-to-day decisions are made, so we don’t need impressive offices. Our investors are interested in profits, not in ostentation.”

  Which made them unique among the rich people Sula knew. “Who are your investors?” she asked.

  “We’re privately held,” Peltrot said. “I regret to say that’s all confidential.”

  Sula peered over the shoulder of a Lai-own and saw that her display showed Terra stretched out in projection, with the paths of ships marked out on the blue water.

  “You own seagoing ships as well as spaceships?” she said.

  Peltrot gave a bright, affirmative chime. “Organizing one form of transport is very much like organizing another. It was convenient to acquire expertise during an expansion, and a shipping company was available. Just as we acquired the Bombardment of Utgu after the end of the late conflict.”

  Sula decided not to pursue the awkward question of how the Manado Company had obtained a warship. That was all well before her time, and she wouldn’t get the real answer, anyway.

  But the knowledge of that irregularity—a warship badly needed in the Fleet somehow finding itself in civilian hands—was enough to make her uneasy about the contract. No matter that it seemed innocuous, Sula feared being entrapped in some shady scheme that would get her in trouble.

  Lord Peltrot took Sula into his private office, a very functional space with a desk of transparent material, photos and models of ships belonging to the Manado Company, and great bay windows overlooking the port. Because Peltrot spent so much time there, the air held more than a whiff of his perpetually decaying, perpetually renewing flesh. Sula stepped to the windows in a kind of reflex, as if they might bring fresh air, but they were sealed against the tropic heat. She gazed out to see the cones of volcanic islands—three, four, five—all visible on the brilliant blue of the sea. The volcanoes all had clouds obscuring their peaks, but Sula didn’t know whether this was smoke from the craters or merely cloud.

  “Are the volcanoes active?”

  “Yes, yes, they are. Some of them, anyway. There are more just to the east, but you can’t see them from here.” His tone was dismissive.

  “Are there eruptions?”

  “Small ones. Mahawu—that’s one of the ones you can’t see—blew up about twelve years ago. Some of the suburbs had to be evacuated, but only temporarily, and it’s been quiet since.”

  “I’ve never been on a planet with such active geology. It takes a little getting used to.”

  Peltrot stepped behind his desk and gestured toward the visitor’s chair. “Would you care to sit? May I offer you coffee, tea? Wine, perhaps?”

  “Tea would be pleasant, thank you.”

  Peltrot ordered tea. Sula sat in a businesslike gray armchair that immediately adjusted itself to her Terran physique. Lord Peltrot sat in a larger, more plush version of the same chair.

  “Lady Sula.” Lord Peltrot’s voice had changed to a deeper, more resonant tone. His fixed, expressionless belligerence, his perfectly round gleaming black eyes, seemed focused entirely on Sula. “I’d like to bring up the matter of the contract for use of your Fleet dockyard.”

  “Of course.”

  “I am concerned that you have not signed it. Our own lawyers and the Judge Martial have both approved the wording.”

  The sound of a rivet gun hammered from the boatyard, and Sula’s heart quickened as if in response. She adjusted herself in the chair and faced Peltrot squarely.

  “You realize that the original agreement was signed before my appointment,” she said. “And discovering such an unusual arrangement naturally raised questions in my mind.”

  “Questions were not raised before,” Peltrot replied.

  “Perhaps not, but still—”

  “I should think our arrangement was perfectly clear.”

  Sula looked at him directly. “W
hat was it you found out there?”

  There was a moment of silence, the masklike face rigid, the black eyes staring. Behind the pale immobile lips, Sula saw mouthparts shifting, chewing the air.

  “That is confidential,” Peltrot said finally. “That has always been understood.”

  “It’s clear to anyone that you’ve found something, presumably something valuable.”

  A discordant timbre entered Peltrot’s voice. “I thought it had been agreed that this sort of inquiry was not the province of the Fleet.”

  Sula allowed impatience to show in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re bringing into my dockyard,” she said. “It’s possible you might be carrying hazardous materials, in which case—”

  “There are no hazardous materials!” Peltrot’s voice sounded like crashing bells. “There is no danger whatever to your station or your personnel!”

  “That’s as may be—”

  The door opened and a dark-skinned Terran steward entered pushing a tea trolley. There was a long, ungainly silence as Sula’s tea was poured, as Peltrot was given a violet-colored beverage. Sula dropped three sugars into her cup and stirred. The steward exited with his trolley, and Lord Peltrot again turned his formidable lidless gaze on Sula.

  “There is no possibility of altering the arrangement,” he said.

  “I haven’t asked for—”

  “You will have no more!” Peltrot proclaimed. “Everything was agreed!”

  The vehemence startled her. Apparently, he thought she was demanding a bribe. “I have asked for nothing—” she began.

  “The agreement must be signed!” The Daimong voice sounded like a ship dying, bulkheads cracking, crew shrieking, atmosphere venting into space. “There is no more room for negotiation!”

  Fury burned like a blowtorch along Sula’s nerves, and she stood. “I have asked only for information!” she snapped.