The Sundering def-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I’ll be discreet about the news,” Sula said. Who would she tell?

  Chen and Lord Roland made their excuses and went to do business. Sula spent an agreeable hour with Terza in the garden, then said farewell and went out into the sun of the High City. Her footsteps took her to the La-gaa and Spacey Auction House, where she spent a few pleasant hours looking at the displays.

  The collectible business was booming. People were turning their wealth into, as she’d once put it, convertible things. Jewelry and portable, durable objects—caskets, small tables, paintings and sculpture—were all doing very well.

  Porcelain, by contrast, seemed to be dropping in price. Perhaps people considered it too fragile for the uncertain times ahead.

  One pot caught Sula’s eye: Ju yao ware of the Sung dynasty, a pot four palms high, narrow at the base, broad at the shoulders, and a small central spout. Sula’s hands lusted to caress the fine crackle of the blue-green glaze. The factory that created the pot existed in Honan for only twenty years before a Tatar invasion wiped it from the Earth. Sula pictured the pot fleeing south before the invaders, packed in straw in a bullock cart, ending in Yangtze exile a thousand li from its place of origin.

  The pot had flown much farther in the years since, and was now part of a collection being dispersed. In the current falling market Sula might be able to purchase it for twenty-five thousand zeniths, a sum amounting to perhaps eighty percent of her current fortune.

  It would be absurd for her to spend that much. Insane. And itwas breakable. The luck that carried it safely from the Tatars, and through the Shaa conquest of Terra, might be run out by now.

  But what, she argued with herself, did she have to spend the money on other than herself?

  In the end, reluctantly, she withdrew. Sula had decided to be practical.

  For the next several days she went hunting for an apartment. So many were fleeing the High City that rates were almost reasonable, and she paid a month in advance for a third-floor place just under the eaves of an old converted palace. The furniture was the bulky, ornate, and ugly Sevigny style, but Sula figured she could live with it till her next posting. The apartment came with a Lai-own fledgling to do the cleaning, and a cook would do meals for an extra few zeniths.

  The building was just down a side street from the Shelley Palace, where the Martinez family was staying.

  Sula was thinking about Martinez a great deal. Being near him seemed desirable. Having a convenient place where they could retire, a place that was neither a Fleet dormitory nor a palace filled with a gaggle of inquisitive sisters, seemed only practical.

  She attended the Martinez’s party, and was greeted with cries of welcome. Sula was a celebrity now, a decorated hero, and her presence made the party an occasion. She reacquainted herself with the family—the ambitious Lord Roland, the two formidable older sisters, Vipsania and Walpurga, and the youngest, vivacious sister Sempronia with her absurd fiancé, PJ.

  With all their gifts, none of them seemed a patch on the brother who was absent.

  That night she lay in the huge Sevigny bed and wondered what it would be like, after all this time, not to be lonely.

  The next day, a polite officer from the Courts of Justice delivered the subpoena to her door.

  FIVE

  Martinez welcomedCorona ‘s new captain with all the grace he could muster, which wasn’t much, and then went through the formalities of turning over his captain’s key and various other codes. He wanted very much to say, “Try not to get my ship killed,” but he didn’t. Alikhan had his belongings already packed.

  He declined the new captain’s civil offer of a dinner, claiming he had an appointment on the planet’s surface—and for that matter, he did.

  He was going to meet with his brother, his sisters, the Martinez clan’s patron Lord Pierre Ngeni—anyone, if necessary, up to the Lord Senior of the Convocation, and he would lobby them incessantly until he received an assignment that placed in him command of a ship.

  For after a month’s leave to recover from the rigors of the journey, Martinez had been told to report to a training school for sensor operators in Kooai, in Zanshaa’s southern hemisphere, where he would take command of the post.

  Atraining school. The message was infuriating. A warrant officer could do the job as well, probably better.

  Martinez intended to get himself into a ship again, if he had to personally hector and lobby everyone going in and out of the door of the Commandery. If he had to personally grab Lord Saïd by the throat and shake him until the old man gave way.

  Martinez had already said his farewells to his officers and crew, so when he leftCorona ‘s airlock umbilical he just kept on going. Alikhan had procured him a car and driver, which meant he wouldn’t have to wait for one of the trains that rolled along the upper level of Zanshaa’s accelerator ring. The car took him to the Fleet Records Office, where he delivered the data foil that contained the log ofCorona ’s journey. The foil contained as well the recordings that might well explode Kamarullah’s career, that is if anyone bothered to view them.

  Perhaps no one would. Certainly no one seemed very interested inCorona ‘s journey—news of the Battle of Hone-bar had yet to be released to the public, and the dull-eyed Torminel petty officer who took the data foil seemed far from excited to be meeting one of the Fleet’s heroes, and indeed seemed about to drop into slumber as he handed Martinez the receipt.

  Martinez, fury warring with his body’s pain and great weariness, stuffed the receipt into a pocket and stalked through the translucent automatic doors that led to the anteroom.

  And there she was.

  The impulse at first was to stare, and then to stagger forward and wrap his arms around Sula’s slim body like a shipwrecked mariner clinging to a mast. Fortunately for the dignity of his rank she wasn’t receptive to an embrace: she was braced at the salute, shoulders thrown back, chin lifted to expose the throat, the sign of subordination enforced throughout their empire by the Shaa.

  He paused for a breathless moment to absorb her beauty, the erect body, the silver-gilt hair worn shoulder-length, framing the face with its pale, translucent complexion and its amused, glittering green eyes. Then he raised the heavy baton of the Golden Orb, topped with its sphere of swirling liquid, and bobbed it in her direction, acknowledging her salute.

  “Stand at ease, lieutenant,” he said.

  “Thank you, my lord.” Her brilliant smile showed a degree of conceit, her own smug amusement at the way she’d surprised him. “You met me, once, when I returned to the Zanshaa ring. I thought I’d return the compliment.”

  “It’s appreciated.” His bodily weariness had vanished under a surge of blood, but his thoughts were still torpid and his skull was filled with cotton. He was painfully conscious that she stood before him, brilliant and rested and desirable, and that anything he said to her was likely to be stupid beyond all credence.

  “Shall I join you on your ride to the surface,” Sula asked, “or do you have more business here?”

  “My family is expecting me,” he said. Stupidly.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve been in touch with them. They told me when you were arriving.”

  He and Sula were hovering behind the doors of the Fleet Records Office, blocking traffic, and then Martinez remembered that he was the senior officer and that it was customary for him to walk through the doors first. He did so. Sula followed.

  Alikhan was already standing by the car, shadowed by the door flung up like a wing. “To the skyhook,” Martinez said. There was a knowing smile beneath Alikhan’s curling mustachio as he handed Sula into the car next to Martinez.

  Alikhan and the driver sat in the front, separated by a barrier that one of them tactfully opaqued. Martinez’s nerves tingled with the awareness of Sula’s perfume, a scent that urged his blood to surge a little faster. Sula looked at him as they settled into their seats. “The rumor—which is pretty well official, I’ll have you know—says that you did something spec
tacular, and are about to be decorated. But we’re not allowed to know what it was that you did.”

  Martinez gave a snarl. “It’s satisfaction enough to know that I’ve served the empire faithfully,” he said.

  Sula laughed. “I’ve worked out that you blew up a bunch of Naxids, and that our superiors don’t want the enemy to know it.”

  “You’d think the Naxids would have worked it out by now,” Martinez said.

  “How many enemydid you annnihilate, by the way?”

  Confident that she would not be broadcasting to the enemy anytime soon, he told her. She raised her golden brows as calculation buzzed behind her eyes. “Interesting,” she said. “That means our cause isn’t necessarily lost.”

  “Not necessarily,” he said, still glowering with resentment. Sula gave him a curious look.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you did it?”

  So he did. When he finished, he sensed a degree of disappointment behind her congratulations.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I hoped you’d be able to use my formula.”

  “Well. As tothat …” He raised his left arm. “Set your display to receive. I’m about to violate another security regulation.”

  Martinez beamed her the records of Do-faq’s series of experiments. “Analyze them to your heart’s content,” he said, “and let me know what you think.”

  Sula looked at her sleeve display and smiled. “Yes. Thank you.” She gave him a searching look. “You should be pleased as hell about all this, but you’re not. So who’s pissed in your breakfast?”

  A reluctant grin tugged at his lips. “I’ve lostCorona. That’s no cause for joy. And then there’s my next assignment.” About which he enlightened her.

  She seemed startled. “What happened? Did you steal some fleet commander’s girlfriend?”

  “Not that I know of,” Martinez said, and then found himself wondering if Kamarullah was by some chance a fleet commander’s girlfriend. The mental image caused him to smile. He turned to Sula.

  “Andyour next assignment?”

  She gave him an annoyed look. “I’m dealing with the ghost of Captain Blitsharts.”

  Blitsharts had been responsible for their first meeting: Martinez had planned, and Sula executed, a perilous rescue of the famous yachtsman. Who, when rescued, had turned out to be dead.

  “Blitsharts?”he said. “Why Blitsharts?”

  “The Fleet Court of Inquiry determined his death was accidental. But his insurance company insists it was suicide, and there’s a civil trial coming up. I’m to give a deposition, and the Fleet has extended my leave till then.” She looked up at him. “After which I will be free. Just in case some celebrated captain wants to request me for his next ship.”

  Which was an invitation to kiss her if anything was, and he put his arm around her and was about to lean in close when the car came to a halt and the doors popped up with a hydraulic hiss.

  Damn. All he had got was a taste of her dizzying perfume and a tingling awareness of the warmth of her skin.

  She gave a rueful smile as he withdrew. When he rose from the car, a score of Fleet pulpies snapped to the salute, throats bared. Anyone in uniform—even the Lords Convocate themselves—were required to salute the Golden Orb, which was why Martinez had chosen to carry it. He’d hoped to relieve his feelings of anger and resentment by abusing his privileges with as many senior officers as he could find.

  Now the orb was a dreadful inconvenience. He was going to have to spend the day trying not to walk into stiff, braced figures murmuring “Stand at ease” and “As you were,” and attracting far more attention to himself and to the beautiful and celebrated Lady Sula than he wanted.

  Sula and Alikhan following, Martinez progressed through the stone-stricken mass of Fleet personnel to one of the cars of the train that would take them to the ring station’s lower level—a lower level that, just to make things confusing, was actually above Martinez’s head.

  The Fleet areas of the ring, resolutely unattractive but functional with their docking bays, storage facilities, barracks, schools, and shipyards, tended to obscure the fact that the accelerator ring was one of the great technological miracles of all time. It had been drawing a sun-silvered circle about Zanshaa for nearly eleven thousand years, a symbol of Shaa dominion visible from nearly everywhere on the planet. The lower level of the accelerator ring moved above the planet in geostationary orbit, tethered delicately to the world of Zanshaa by the six colossal cables of the planet’s skyhooks. Built atop the lower level was the ring’s upper level, which rotated at eight times the speed of the lower in order to provide its inhabitants with normal gravity.

  Eighty million people lived on Zanshaa’s ring, housed for the most part in areas considerably more attractive than the Fleet districts, and there was room for hundreds of millions more. To these denizens of the upper level, pressed by centrifugal force to the outside of the station ring, the lower level was actually above them. In order to ascend, they boarded a train that was then accelerated down a track in time to be scooped up by a massive ramp and track that dropped with exquisite timing from the geostationary level. Once there, humming electromagnets braked the train to a stop, and the passengers, bobbing in one-eighth gravity and aided by a series of handrails, made their way along a series of ramps to the giant car that would soon drop through Zanshaa’s atmosphere to the terminal on its equator.

  Without shame Martinez barged into the compartment reserved for senior officers—it was the Golden Orb, not Martinez’s modest rank, that provided access. The hoped-for privacy did not materialize. As Martinez entered he saw the baleful look given him from over the shoulder of the other passenger already strapped into his couch, and his heart gave a lurch as he recognized the hawk-nosed visage of the lord inspector of the Fleet, one of the most feared men in the empire.

  “Forgive me if I don’t stand,” said Fleet Commander Lord Ivan Snow in a sandpaper voice. “I don’t fancy unwebbing right now.” He was in the first row, with a brilliant view through the huge glass window that made up most of the outside wall.

  “That’s quite all right, my lord,” Martinez said. Ducking beneath the low ceiling, he and Sula took couches as far removed from the feared lord inspector as the modest compartment permitted.

  “The day isn’t working out well,” Sula murmured in Martinez’s ear as she bent over his couch.

  “Part of a ongoing pattern,” Martinez answered softly.

  “It may interest you to know,” said the chief of the Investigative Service, “that the cause of the breakdown in communications that occurred at Hone-bar has been discovered. At the same time thatyou, Captain Martinez, are being decorated and promoted in two days’ time, seven traitors will die screaming.” Martinez could hear the quiet satisfaction in the lord inspector’s voice. “Die screaming,” Lord Ivan repeated pleasantly. “I arranged the timing myself.”

  Martinez was for a moment at a loss for speech.Promoted? Finally he managed words.

  “Congratulations on…a successful investigation, lord inspector,” he said.

  “And congratulations to you, lord captain, on a timely and successful combat.”

  Promoted?He had known about the decoration, but this was the first time a promotion had been mentioned.

  Then Martinez felt his ire rising. The training school in charge of a full captain was even more absurd than in the hands of an elcap.

  He wondered if he dared mention the matter to the lord inspector. The wordsdie screaming returned to his mind, and he decided he didn’t.

  “There’s not a lot of point in our talking,” Sula said quietly, as the huge elevator car was locked onto the cable. “Why don’t you sleep? You look about dead.”

  “I feel…” He was about to say “fine” but he realized that the ease of low gravity, and the comfort of his couch, were about to make a liar out of him. So instead he said, “Good idea,” and closed his eyes.

  He was asleep before the car dro
pped out of the accelerator ring and into brilliant sunlight. The growing acceleration that pressed him into his couch was much less than he’d been enduring for the last two months and it failed to wake him. Below, the land blazed with color: brown mountains tipped with white, the light green of the land contrasting with the deeper, more profound green of the sea. The atmosphere was a faint blurring on the edges of the world. The whirlwind of a tropical storm, its white gyre of cloud edged with blue, was thrashing southward from the equator.

  Calculations spinning through her mind, Sula watched Do-faq’s tactical experiments on her sleeve display.

  Martinez woke, his mind fresh, just as the car settled feather-light into its terminal, and the couch swung into its rest position, inverted from where it had been at the start of the journey. He and Sula stepped onto what had, when they’d boarded, been the ceiling, and let the fleet commander precede them from the car. He nodded civilly as he passed.

  “And congratulations to you as well, Lady Sula,” he said.

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  Martinez, as he followed the old man from the car, suspected that the congratulations may not have had anything to do with Sula’s decoration.

  Reunited with Alikhan and Martinez’s baggage, they took another train to the shuttle terminus, where they boarded the supersonic for the city of Zanshaa. Martinez traded the ticket he’d already reserved for an entire four-seat first-class compartment. Alikhan retained his original seat in second class.

  With the Golden Orb, which like a device out of a fairy tale had the power to turn others to stone, Martinez marched to his compartment, installed himself and Sula, and drew down the shades.

  Privacy at last.

  He sat next to her and tried not to melt beneath the gaze of those green eyes. Martinez took her hand.

  “I’m afraid to speak,” he said.

  She tilted her head. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not at my best right now, and I might say something wrong. And then…” He sought for words. “And then everything would be spoiled, and you’d walk out of this compartment and I’d never see you again.”