Praxis def-1

by Walter Jon Williams

  After the music ended there was a pause, then Sula helped to fill it with applause.

  “I’m glad to have a chance to hire an orchestra,” confided Lady Amita, her hostess, during the interval. “Musicians aren’t going to be in very great demand during the mourning period.”

  This aspect of mourning hadn’t struck Sula till now. “It’s good of you to give them work,” she said.

  “Terza suggested it. She has so many friends among the musicians, and she’s concerned for them.” Her face assumed a touch of anxiety. “Of course, once she’s married, we don’t imagine she’ll be spending so much time with-” Tact rescued her in time. “With those sorts of people.”

  The interval ended, and the orchestra began to play again. Sula watched Terza’s long, accomplished fingers as they plucked the harp, her intent face hovering near the strings, and then Sula glanced across the aisle at Maurice Chen and Lord Richard, both gazing with shining eyes at the graceful woman on stage. Sula suspected her own accomplishments would never gather quite that level of admiration-she was a good pilot and a whiz with math, but she’d already destroyed any hope of a relationship with the one person who had ever shown appreciation for that particular blend of skills.

  Not that she would have had a chance with Martinez anyway, not in the longer term, and certainly not with someone like Lord Richard. She had long ago discovered that her looks attracted eligible men right up to the point where their parents found out she had no money or prospects, after which the young men were dragged off to look elsewhere. Strangely, however, this made her attractive to their fathers, men who had married once for the sake of procreation and family advantage, and who now, widowed or divorced, were looking for fun in their declining years, and someone beautiful on their arm for other men to admire.

  If she’d been interested in older men, Sula supposed she could have done very well for herself. But she would have been lost in the complex, intricate world that those men lived in-she hadn’t grown up in it the way they had, or had a fraction of their experience-and she didn’t fancy being in the position of a pampered, addled, half-imbecile doll, trotted out for show or a romp in bed, then sent off to the boutique or the hairdresser whenever anything important went on.

  The Fleet, for all its frustrations and disadvantages, was at least something she understood. Given a chance, perhaps only the merest breath of a chance, the Fleet was a place where she could do well.

  After the concert, Sula complimented Terza on her playing. “What instrument do you play?” Terza asked.

  “None, I’m afraid.”

  Terza seemed surprised. “You didn’t learn an instrument at school?”

  “My schooling was…a bit spotty.”

  Terza’s surprise deepened. “You were taught at home, Lady Sula?”

  Clearly no one had told Terza about Sula’s past. “I was in school on Spannan,” she said. “The school wasn’t very good and I left early.”

  Something in Sula’s tone perhaps suggested to Terza that the matter was best left unpursued, and so it was.

  Sula raised her coffee cup. “This is the Vigo hard-paste, isn’t it?”

  Which led to a discussion of porcelain in general, and a tour of some of the family’s collection, led by Lord Richard.

  It never hurts to know a genial senior officer, Sula told herself, and exerted herself not to tell him he was an idiot when he got something wrong.

  The vote appointing Akzad as Lord Senior of the Convocation was unanimous. The choice had been obvious. Lord Convocate Akzad was a member of an exemplary and dignified Naxid clan that had provided scores of distinguished civil servants and high-ranking officers of the Fleet, he had served in the Convocation most of his life, and he was a prominent member of the previous Lady Senior’s administration.

  There was a certain amount of speculation concerning why Akzad hadn’t retired or committed suicide along with his contemporaries. Privately, the convocates admitted to one another that Akzad wanted the highest office in the empire more than he wanted his ashes to rest with the Great Masters. But it was also admitted that he deserved the office, and that his administration would be run smoothly and be free of innovation. The Convocation was not in favor of innovation, especially not now, when citizens were uneasy after the death of the Shaa and continuity was most to be desired.

  Maurice, Lord Chen rose from his seat when the vote was called, then remained on his feet and applauded as Akzad took his seat at the dais and with great ceremony was cloaked in the stiff, brocaded robe of the Lord Senior. He was then presented with the overlong wand, burnished copper with silver bands, that he would use to call the Convocation to order, to recognize speakers, and to command the audio pickups that would broadcast the speaker’s words to the 631 members of the Convocation.

  The Convocation meeting room was a large fan-shaped building tucked beneath a wing of the Great Refuge, a carved stone amphitheater with the seat of the Lord Senior at its focal point. The gray-white granite of the acropolis was carved in abstract, geometric patterns and inset with marble, porphyry, and lapis. Each convocate had a seat appropriate to his species, along with a desk and display. They faced the dais, behind which was a transparent wall with a spectacular view of the Lower Town, the Apszipar Tower prominent on the far horizon.

  The applause ending, Lord Chen took his seat and paged through his correspondence while Lord Akzad gave his acceptance speech. When Lord Chen’s turn came, he rose to congratulate the Lord Senior on his appointment and express confidence in Akzad’s forthcoming administration. With any luck, he’d get an appointment himself, command a department or chair a more important committee than that of Oceanographic and Forestry, on which he now sat.

  After the long round of congratulations, the Convocation was adjourned. Akzad would need several days to form his government and make his appointments.

  As Lord Chen made his way out of the hall, he found himself walking alongside Lord Pierre Ngeni. The young convocate walked with his head bent, frowning at the floor, his heavy jaw grinding some particle of a thought to a fine powder.

  “Lord Pierre,” Maurice Chen said, “I hope your father is well.”

  Pierre gave a little start and look up. “I beg your pardon, Lord Chen. I was thinking of-well, never mind. My father is well, and I wish he were here. He’d be certain to be a part of this new government, but I’m too young, alas.”

  “I encountered one of your clients the other day. Lord Roland Martinez.”

  “Ah.” His heavy jaw ground once. “Lord Roland, yes. He’s arrived from Laredo.”

  “A three-month journey, he told me.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the brother of the fellow that helped Caro Sula try to save Blitsharts, isn’t he?”

  Lord Pierre looked as if he had just been struck by indigestion. “His brother, yes. Lord Gareth.”

  Maurice Chen waved at a friend across the lobby. “Dreadful accent the man’s got,” he said.

  “Both brothers. The sisters’ voices are sweeter, but more insistent.”

  “You’re marrying PJ to one of them, aren’t you?”

  Lord Pierre shrugged. “PJ’s got to marry someone. A Martinez is probably as high as he can hope.”

  Lord Chen guided Pierre into the lobby lounge, where legislators, meeting clients or family, were thick on the deep pile carpet before the bar. He caught the eye of one of the waitrons and signaled for two of the usual.

  “The Martinez family’s very wealthy, I understand,” he said.

  “And they’re doing their best to display it while they’re here.” Sourly.

  “They don’t seem vulgar, though, from what I’ve seen of them. I haven’t seen them making the mistakes the newly arrived usually make.”

  Lord Pierre hesitated, then agreed. “Nothing gauche,” he said. “Except their accents.”

  “Lord Roland spoke to me of his plan for the opening of Chee and Parkhurst.”

  Lord Pierre looked at Chen in surprise. �
��He only spoke to me of it a few days ago. I’ve barely had time to consider the scheme.”

  “The scheme seemed fairly complete to me.”

  “He should have let me present it to people, once I’d had a chance to review it. The Martinez clan are always in a hurry.” Lord Pierre shook his head. “They have no patience, no sense of occasion-everything’s a rush with them. My father tells me it was the same with their father, the current Lord Martinez.”

  “Lord Roland has only a limited time on Zanshaa. I’m sure he’d like to get things in train before he leaves. And he’s certainly done his homework.”

  Drinks arrived. Lord Pierre raised his glass to his lips, then hesitated. “I say, Lord Chen,” he said, “what’s your interest in Roland Martinez?”

  Lord Chen spread his hands. “Just that he seems a very…thoroughyoung man. He’s looked into a number of schemes that have got jammed up one way or another, what with uncertainty and inertia and the death of the Great Masters. Including the station at Choy-on, which should have been expanded to a full-scale antimatter ring ages ago.”

  Lord Pierre’s pebble eyes gazed unblinking at Maurice Chen. “You have shipping interests at Choy-on,” he said.

  “And I also have ships that could be leased long-term to help settle Chee and Parkhurst.”

  “Ah.” Lord Pierre took a long, deliberate swallow of his drink, and seemed to chew it on the way down. “Since you’ve taken such an interest in Clan Martinez,” he said, “I wonder if you might consider helping Lord Gareth.”

  “Lord Gareth needs help?”

  “Lord Gareth needs promotion. I really don’t have any family remaining in a position to help him, not since my great-aunt retired.” His lips tightened in what might have been a smile. “Butyou, I seem to remember, have a squadron commander in the family.”

  “My sister, Michi.”

  “And your daughter is marrying a captain, I seem to remember.”

  “But Lord Richard can’t promote anyone to command. He has no command himself, at present.”

  “Your sister can, and does.”

  “Possiblymy sister can,” Lord Chen qualified. “I’ll inquire and see what she can do.”

  “You’ll have my gratitude.”

  “And you already have mine. For letting me bore you with this subject.”

  “Not at all.”

  Later, as he left the lounge, Maurice, Lord Chen reflected on the conversation and decided that things had, for a change, gone very well.

  Now if only he could get out of Oceanographic and Forestry and into something more useful.

  Sula raised her glass to the newly commissioned Sublieutenant Lord Jeremy Foote, and toasted his good fortune. Foote had insisted on filling the glass with champagne despite her protests. She moistened her lips with the wine and put the glass down.

  “Thank you,” Foote said. “I appreciate you all turning up for my farewell dinner.” He unleashed a bright white smile. “I wonder how many of you would have shown if I hadn’t been paying for it.”

  Sula allowed herself to smile as the predictable laughter rolled from the guests.

  It would have been impolite to refuse Foote’s invitation. The Fleet hadn’t found her employment, other than to run messages in the Commandery, which put her in the cadets’ lounge every day. After a few straightforward attempts to get her into bed, and some equally unsuccessful tries at bullying her into doing his work, Foote seemed to accept the fact that she wasn’t interested in playing his games, and then treated her with a brotherly familiarity calculated to annoy her. But they had survived the time in the cadets’ lounge without actually plunging daggers into one another, and Sula supposed that was worth a toast or two, especially as she’d never have to toast him again.

  She had to admit that Foote looked fine in his new white uniform with its dark green collar and cuffs, his sublieutenant’s narrow stripe bright on his shoulder boards. He hadn’t actually done anything so unfashionable as to pass his lieutenants’ exams: his uncle, as a senior captain commanding theBombardment of Delhi, was allowed to raise two cadets to a lieutenancy every year provided he had vacancies in his own ship, and Foote had long been marked for one of these. Tomorrow Foote would take up his post asDelhi’s navigation officer, where well-trained subordinates and a computer would doubtless assist him in not diving the heavy cruiser straight into the nearest star.

  Foote had thrown a splendid party. He’d rented a private dining room in the 1,800-year-old New Bridge restaurant in the High City, and provided entertainment as well, a raucous six-piece band that had the floorboards throbbing beneath Sula’s feet. The food arrived in fourteen courses-Sula counted-and the drinks were unending. Cadet Parker seemed to have ordered up a woman to go along with the food and drink-at least, Sula hadn’t yet met any woman who dressed that way for free-and Sula wondered if Foote was paying for that as well.

  After Foote started grabbing his guests and shoving them under the long table so they could sing the “Congratulations” round fromLord Fizz Takes a Holiday, Sula slipped from her place, opened one of the tall doors, and stepped out onto the balcony. Drunken chanting echoed behind her as she braced her arms on the wrought-iron and polished brass rail and gazed down at the night traffic. Peers walked or drove on their usual evening round of parties and dinners and meetings; servants slumped along to the funicular that would take them to their homes in the Lower Town; and groups of young people half danced their way to a night of adventure.

  It had been a while since she’d been part of such a group, on her way to such an adventure. She wondered if she missed it.

  Sometimes, she decided. Sometimes she missed it very much.

  She had spotted Martinez once, at the Imperial, at a performance ofKho-So’s Elegy, which was about the most exciting sort of entertainment permitted in the month following the Great Master’s death. Sula had been in the Li family box with Lady Amita and some of her friends, and saw him in the stalls below in the company of a woman with an astounding hourglass figure and glossy dark hair.So that’s the kind he likes, she sneered, and immediately sensed the injustice of her thought-Martinez had seemed to like her well enough until she’d ruined everything.

  She didn’t think he’d seen her at the theater. She’d stayed in the box through intermission, chatting to Lady Amita, and delayed their departure as much as she could.

  A pair of arms encircled Sula from behind. She found herself relaxing into them, then Foote spoiled the illusion by talking.

  “You looked lonely,” he said. “This party isn’t your sort of thing, is it?”

  “It was, once,” Sula said. “Then I turned seventeen.”

  “There’s been talk about you.” Foote nuzzled her hair to one side and spoke at close range into her ear. “We’ve been wondering if you’re really a virgin. I bet the others that you aren’t.”

  “You lose,” Sula said. She detached his arms from her, turned to face him, and felt a fierce inward satisfaction as she thought,Good. Open season on you, then.

  Foote brushed invisible lint off his new tunic, then glanced out at the city. “That’s your old home by the funicular, isn’t it? The one with the blue dome.”

  Sula didn’t look. “I guess it must be,” she said.

  He looked at her. “I know about your family. I looked it up.”

  She affected surprise. “Don’t be silly.You — actually looking something up? You just paid someone to do it.”

  Foote looked nettled, but he let it go by. “You really should be friends with me. I could help you.”

  “You mean your uncle the yachtsman could.”

  “He would if I asked him. AndI could, eventually. I’ll get promoted as fast as it’s legally allowed-the next few steps are already worked out. Then I’ll be able to help people. And you don’t have any patronage in the Fleet, so you’ve got to have friends or you’ll be a lieutenant forever.” His look softened. “You’re the head of one of the most senior human clans. Eminent as my own. It’s unjust
that someone with your ancestors shouldn’t be promoted to the highest ranks.”

  Sula smiled. “So how many times do I have to join you in the fuck tubes for this injustice to be corrected?”

  Foote opened his mouth, closed it.

  “Would six times a month be enough?” Sula went on. “We could put it in a contract. But you’d have to do your part-if I don’t make lieutenant at the earliest legal opportunity, you could pay a fine of, say, ten thousand zeniths? And twenty thousand if I don’t make elcap, and so on. What do you say-shall I take it to my lawyer?”

  Foote turned to face the party on the other side of the tall glass doors and leaned back against the iron rail with his arms crossed. His handsome profile was undisturbed. “I don’t know why you talk this way.”

  “I just think everything should be clear and understood right from the beginning. It only makes sense to put a business arrangement in a contract.”

  “I was just offering to help out.”

  Sula laughed. “I get offers of that sort every week. And most of them are better than yours.”

  A massive exaggeration, but one she decided was justified under the circumstances.

  Sula also decided she should exit before Foote regrouped. She gave his sleeve a pat of mock consolation and strolled through the open door into the dining room.

  Except for Parker and his companion, the guests had climbed from beneath the table. The band was making a lot of noise. Sula sat at her place, reached for her sparkling water, and discovered that someone had spiked it with what seemed to be grain alcohol.

  These youngsters and their hijinks, she thought wearily.

  For a moment she thought about downing the drink and chasing it with her untouched champagne. The idea had a certain attractive gaiety to it. She remembered the person she’d been the last time she was drunk and smiled. These people wouldn’t like that person at all.

  The problem was, she wouldn’t either.

  She put the glass back on the table, and a moment later knocked it and its contents into the lap of the person next to her.