Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 3

by Sharon Lee

  “We will drink to the wisdom and the mercy of the gods and their consorts!” he cried then, entering into the spirit of the moment.

  They drank.

  “We will drink to fond partings,” Ponnor said, and they did that, too.

  Father Julian sighed, surprised to see that his glass was nearly empty. He felt at peace, and more than a little drowsy.

  Across the table, Ponnor set aside his glass and rose.

  “I leave you now,” he said. Father Julian felt his hand lifted, and blinked when Ponnor placed a reverent kiss upon his knuckles.

  “Enjoy your sweet lady, sir,” Ponnor said, and was gone, walking briskly out the door.

  At once, the man and the woman at the single tables rose and followed him out.

  That was odd, thought Friar Julian, and sleepily raised his glass for another sip of blusherrie.

  “Hey,” said a rough voice at his side. Friar Julian blinked awake and smiled sleepily up at a man wearing an apron. The barkeeper, perhaps.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “What I wanna know,” the man said, looking down at him with a thunderous frown, “is who’s gonna pay for them drinks.”

  Friar Julian sat up straight, suddenly and vividly awake.

  Money! He had no money! Ponnor—

  “The guy with the mustache said you’d pay for them, too,” the barkeep said, using a blunt thumb to indicate the two single tables, now empty. “We ain’t the church, here, see? You drink, you pay.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Friar Julian, his heart sinking, thinking of the few coins left in the cash box, after the medical supplies had been purchased.

  Futilely, knowing they were empty, he patted the pockets of his robe. The right one was as flat as he expected, but the left one . . .

  Crinkled.

  Wondering, Friar Julian pulled out a bright blue envelope. He ran his finger under the flap, and drew out a sheaf of notes. Notes! Not coins.

  He offered the topmost to the bartender, who eyed it consideringly.

  “Hafta go in back to change that,” he said.

  Friar Julian nodded.

  Alone, he fanned the money, seeing food, medicines, seeds for their kitchen garden . . .

  Something fluttered out of the envelope. Friar Julian bent and picked it up off the floor.

  It was a business card for one Amu Song, dealer in oddities, with an address at the spaceport. Father Julian flipped it over, frowning at the cramped writing there.

  The gods help those who help themselves.

  He stared at it, flipped the card again, and there was the word, oddities. He thought of the North Transept, the cluttered tables of worthless offerings there.

  . . . and he began, very softly, to laugh.

  The Rifle’s First Wife

  Courtesy of a young man we didn’t expect to survive his first meeting with Clan Korval, we get to look at the interplay of the suddenly mixed cultures of Surebleak. Needing to meet his new troop’s expectations, Diglon Rifle, former enemy combatant, has been studying to become a more independent person. Noticed by Lady Anthora, he gets to work with plants, and to pursue his own individual interests—one of which happens to be card playing. What could go wrong? We had to ask this question because Diglon Rifle, much like the Taxi Driver and the Uncle, became far more of a character in the Liaden story than first expected. Enjoy—we did!

  The sweat felt good to the Rifle; the effort did, the whippy wind gusts and sudden lulls providing an extra challenge to a course laid out in part by the blind necessity of defunct mining machines and part by the will of men long gone. Clan Korval and their minions had yet to exercise their will on most of the land, other than bringing the impossible tree and likewise impossible house to what had been a quarry, and starting an experimental joint farm with the bordering landholder.

  In the distance, seen between the spiky pathside thistle-grass, were rows of extra-hardy vegetables—and many days he was among them, along with the small expert who was Alara chel’Voyon, Field Ecologist. Thus did Line yos’Phelium, Clan Korval, dispose of his time this work stretch, for which he was not at all unglad.

  He held a look in that direction momentarily, sometimes she acknowledged his passing, as did all of the folk here, particularly those in charge. She’d been there today when he started his run, but Alara wasn’t visible now, nor her field kit. He’d been concerned these last several days, that he’d not been performing his duties properly, or that the anomalous results they’d had were discovered to have been due to some error of his. The ecologist’s usual low-key banter had been missing, and she both shorter of temper and of praise.

  “Did you triple measure? Have we got the image?” Not only had she asked such self-evident questions, but at the end of the day yesterday she’d neither offered a Liaden bow or a Terran-style wave, merely pointing out that she’d see him on his next work shift in the fields.

  In going over the social parts of his interactions with the biologist it seemed too that Alara—as she expected to be called for the everyday work transactions—had been less talkative for some few days, perhaps even from the last morning in the city. Something was perhaps not in order, then, at the center of her work . . . or in her need to come out to the fields, as much as she sometimes seemed to enjoy it. His duty, of course, was set by others.

  He did not dispute Korval’s right to place him in the fields with a sometimes sharp-tongued Scout who was bent on making each and every plant in the experimental rows grow larger and more edible than the one next to it. They owned his oath, did the yos’Pheliums, and if his fitness for work in the fields was determined by the one the Explorer called Scout, it was not his to deny it.

  It had seemed odd at the first that he’d passed review with not only the elder Scout, who had taken their temp oath in order to see one of the troop reach medical care while there was still hope, and then the Scout and the Captain, to whom Nelirikk was expressly sworn, but also had been presented to the Scout’s almost respectably sized cousin—called brother, a sub-commander and his wife—Shan yos’Galan and Priscilla Mendoza—and then, to the machine that wandered the house feeding cats, and to the woman Anthora, also a yos’ Galan.

  That one, oh, that one. She’d looked to him at first like a cuddle-girl, impossibly tiny and soft, vulnerable and needing protection . . . and then she’d really looked at him. Her eyes—he still blinked at the thought of her eyes, never doubting that she was one of the Liaden witches he’d been warned of in training, and never doubting, either, the warmth of her smile as the several kittens had wrestled at his feet.

  It was the kittens he thought, and the hearty Terran-style nod Lady Anthora gave, that had brought him to the work in the field: she’d turned to the Captain and the Scout and said “This one will much prefer growing things to shooting things, once he is used to it.” And then she’d laughed, turned back, and told him to always mind the cats, if they spoke to him, and wandered off.

  His breath was comfortably labored, and he turned for the last of the run, preparing, and then busying himself as he usually did with a sprint to finish.

  The tree shadowed him now and in that shadow he felt an extra warmth, as if the tree’s very bulk forced the winds to flee before its willingness to stand firm, or else that it exuded a welcome to those who belonged.

  Belonging to a world was an unusual thing—he’d grown up as a man of arms, expecting that all he belonged to was the Fourteenth Conquest Corps. That was when the Yxtrang High Command had been his decision maker, a time he was, in retrospect, glad was over. He had stood on seventeen worlds in his life, counting this one, and this was perhaps the third where he stood somewhat welcome. Large by most Terran standards, to Liadens he was out of reason large, overly muscled, and menacing. He’d discussed Liad’s reaction to him with the Explorer, Nelirikk, who also owed allegiance to Korval’s uncanny leaders and their line, and the Explorer had it that Surebleak welcomes them, and that Liad must be considered a toss-up.

 
; While breath was being caught back to normal, he shook his hands, stretched his arms, allowed the thoughts he’d been thinking to creep back to the world, the people he knew here, and his duty to Line yos’Phelium. A spray of dust carried a flimsy light-green leaf, and he bowed to temptation, and swept it from the air, noting approximate time, and shoved it in his pocket. He’d recognize it, or the Field ecologist would . . .

  As was, then, it was otherwise a wild and strange world, here, far from the spaceport he was posted to as a shift guard every other tenth day, and the weather, though seasonably warm by local standards, was uncertain as it always was, and then bordering frigid. He’d fought in more comfortable places.

  And then he was back in a calm provided by the towering tree overhead and the outer walls of the tiny fortlike house that enclosed its base. He had not worn off the euphoria of the run, and that was good.

  His run had been a moderate one, by choice, given his evening plans, and he’d received the news that he’d exceeded his average time for the relumma by a healthy four percent. The rest was due, he expected, to his concentration on thoughts other than running, and to the fact that one of his objects of consideration had been visible during his courses.

  “Hello, I am present in the house,” he said, having entered the small side-hall that he and other staffers used, “and on rest day. Is there need for me to alter my schedule?”

  The “house” in term of personnel was not only the security ‘bot, but also a butler, several house folk, a cook, a handyman, and himself and sometimes his several non-clan superiors. Elsewise, guesting in the house could be just about anyone, ranging from Boss Conrad, ruler of the world, to children of Korval clan members, to cats, to visiting scouts, pilots, musicians, and just strange odd folks. Since he was on garden security at this time rather than house security, his position didn’t require him to report to the butler as long as the ‘bot knew of him . . . not that reporting to the butler was onerous, though one did sometimes have to search the maze of rooms for some time to find him.

  This was day six of this tour of what he called Tree Home; day six was a day largely of his own necessities, a luxury he appreciated very much. That his immediate superior was on duty elsewhere this day made it even less likely than normal that he would be interrupted at his private studies and work. That he was permitted private study and work—was far beyond luxury. That he, Diglon Rifle, the only certified Rifle on this world—even the only one in this system!—would have R&R leave this evening would have astonished someone more used to allowing such concepts their sway.

  He had always been a simple man. Through creche and schooling and training, and through seven rotations of the vaunted Fourteenth Conquest Corps, he’d taken what life brought with little question, accepting the rights of others to order his presence and actions: it was a given that a soldier of the Yxtrang would revere honor and order, and even orders themselves, requesting little for himself. It was only lately that his life had taken an odd turn for an Yxtrang, for now he was oft expected to both know and to pursue his choices when they did not conflict with the needs of his superiors.

  He had spoken on entry, knowing that the house, in the person of the security ’bot, Jeeves, was already well aware of his presence, if not by the touch of his hand to pressure plate, then by the weight of his step on the foot mat at the door, or the sound of his breathing. It was the way things were properly done, the announcement, and few on the planet Surebleak were as happy to do things the way they were done, as was he.

  The house had delighted him by giving his run time and allowing him to know that no schedule change was required.

  “Welcome, Diglon Rifle. The research information you requested is available; shall I save files to your data trees, deliver hard copy to your quarters, or deliver by voice as you work? Shall I mark this restricted personal, general research, or place it in the open query bin?”

  It bothered him that he was addressed in Yxtrang troop mode, but it was part of his duty to the new Captain he was sworn to. Perhaps he should ask if he might be free of that on his day off . . .

  The voice had been practicing with someone, or several someones; not only was the inflection closer than it originally had been to that of active troopers, now it began to come close to the proper accent and timing as well. True, the voice had also been practicing with him, but he felt that the inflections were likely due to study and dialogs with his elders-in-former-troop.

  Diglon had long ago gotten over the odd fact of the robot’s apparent self-animation and personality as well as his seamless integration into house systems; in fact he’d long ago gotten over many things about his new station in life. That was a troop’s job after all: To put behind past actions and necessities in order to concentrate on the present order set, to follow orders, to . . .

  Well, he thought, a rare Terran sound momentarily burying a phrase translated out of Liaden for a phrase out of Trade, and then the stutter as the Terran, direct from the Captain, returned to echo across his life, having lost the war to irony and become fact.

  The Yxtrang concept, learned at first by a story told by an elder Troop, was rote as a child and reinforced at first once per ten day and then once per five day and then once per day until at last it was part of his very waking thought: Today I will joyfully do the work of the Troop, without delay, remorse, reserve, or restriction.

  That the head of local security was both a bot and available to him as a unparalleled library of information resources . . . well then, he understood that the bot had once been a butler for Clan Korval and a war robot. The robot, then, was of the troop as much as he . . .

  “Please, place it in my day file, under personal,” he said, elated, moving through the halls leading to what once had been servants’ quarters and now was Security’s small corner of this house under tree. He could use a shower, and then study. On impulse, he added, “On my non-duty day I would prefer to speak in one of the locally used languages, if that is practical.”

  “As you say, Rifle.” Those tones were in a strict Terran, without recourse to the Surebleak slang the troop was also absorbing.

  The idea that he might have an access-restricted personal file that his troop mates and even his immediate superior might not enter at whim—an amazing thought that had frozen him for minutes the first time it was explained to him—continued to elevate him. That he could alter policy by expressing his wish! The Conquest Corps had been inadequate!

  “This troop, this Line yos’Phelium, Clan Korval,” Nelerikk Explorer had explained early in his relationship with the house, “is a troop of victors. It functions well by following orders and commands, as any well-organized troop may be expected to function, but it is victorious because it assumes and it demands that all troops are capable of making decisions. Personal initiative is not only expected, it is required. From the very oldest to the very youngest, all are expected to exceed norms, to excel at their own assigned duties as well as at duties or arts they choose themselves. Culture, arts, science, skills of joy or skills of survival, it is not expected that any one owing allegiance here should be backward in the pursuit of accomplishment. One must study what is at hand, and seek to improve the lives of all.”

  His independent accomplishments thus far included a modest facility with the Trade language and likewise a modest facility with Terran, many words of Liaden if not a casual speaking ability and a well-studied ongoing interest in the casual games of chance he was able to take part in when on Portside duty, where games of cards were a staple of the day’s schedule. There his tendency to taciturn study of his hand did him well, and had led to his part in a public card tournament, and then to tonight’s plans, for having won . . .

  If the card games were not the kind of study that was expected of him, no one complained, and indeed, he had discovered that several of the ex-mercenaries in employ of Port Security would hold the start of the evening hands if he was expected. It was a comradeship not quite the equivalent of troop, but then it h
ad become clear to him over time that he could not expect to find that exact feeling again in his life.

  The feelings he did have in his life now were . . . different. He’d noticed almost at once, starting with looking into a mirror to assure his readiness for duty after the Captain’s order was followed and he’d had his vingtai removed as neatly as mud and blood might be swabbed off after an engagement. He’d been both surprised and pleased at his face, finding his aspect not uncomely and his wrinkles not oversetting; he looked younger than Nelirikk Explorer and felt that was, somehow, an advantage.

  More, it seemed to him that it mattered more to him what his face looked like, and as cut-short as it still was, the arrangement of his hair made more of a difference to him now. Now, why? Because now there was not a troop regulation style required of him, nor as far as he could determine a troop regulation length. It felt odd, but he was comparing the styles of those around him.

  Hazenthull Explorer . . . now that was another thing. If he’d found his own face acceptable, he’d found hers worrisome, for the animation was largely gone from it, as nicely shaped as it was. He’d seen her in the throes of duty, where there was strength and courage and . . .

  But there, he was noticing more about the Explorer than her face, and it had come to him in the night why that might be so, given the general exuberance he’d enjoyed since his face-cleaning.

  The med-tech had apologized for “taking the pair of you into overtime” and that pair, Hazenthull and himself, had been in a unit where rations where short and command stingy in the best of times, and certainly more so after the landing. The only thing they’d not been short of were their inoculations. And in a combat unit those inoculations would have included medical restraints on the distractions of boredom, hunger, and more hormonal issues like anger and sex.