Logs (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  Martinez was probably no longer necessary to Chandra's plans.

  Chandra entered the dining room looking splendid in her full dress uniform, the silver braid glowing softly on the dark green tunic and trousers. Her auburn hair brushed the tall collar that now bore the red triangular tabs worn by Michi's personal staff.

  "Congratulations, lieutenant," Martinez said

  Alikhan arrived with a warm, creamy pumpkin soup, fragrant with the scent of cinnamon. Chandra tasted it and said, "Your cook has it all over the wardroom chef, good as he is."

  "I'll tell him you said so."

  "That was one of the small compensations of being with Fletcher," Chandra said. "He'd always give me a good meal before boring me to death."

  Martinez considered this as he sampled the soup and decided that Chandra could at least pretend to be a little more stricken by the death of an ex-lover.

  "What did he bore you with?" Martinez asked.

  "Other than the sex, you mean?" When Martinez didn't smile at her joke, she shrugged and went on. "He talked about everything, really. The food we were eating, the wine we were drinking, the exciting personnel reports he'd signed that day. He talked about his art. He had a way of making everything dull." A mischievous light came into her eyes. "What did you think of what he had hanging in his sleeping cabin? Did it give you sweet dreams?"

  "I got rid of it," Martinez said. "Jukes found some less depressive stuff to hang." He looked at her. "Why did Fletcher have Narayanguru there? What did he get out of it?"

  Chandra gave an elaborate sigh. "You're not going to make me repeat his theories, are you?"

  "Why not?

  "Well," she said, "he said that if he ever joined any cult, it would be the Narayanists, because they were the only cult that was truly civilized."

  "How so?"

  "Let me try to remember. I was trying not to listen by that point." She pursed her full lips. "I think it was because the Narayanists recognized that all life was suffering. They said that the only real things were perfect and beautiful and eternal and outside our world, and that we could get closer to these real things by contemplating beautiful objects in this world."

  "Suffering," Martinez repeated. "Gomberg Fletcher, who was filthy rich and born into most privileged caste of Peers, believed that life was suffering. That his life was suffering."

  Chandra shook her head. "I didn't understand that part, either. If he ever suffered, he didn't do it when I was looking." A curl of disdain touched her lip. "Of course he felt he was more refined than the rest of us, he probably thought his suffering was so elevated that the rest of us didn't understand it."

  "I can see why the Shaa killed Narayanguru, anyway," Martinez said. "If you maintain that there's another world, which you can't prove exists, where things are somehow better and more real than this world, which we can prove exists, you're going to run afoul of the Praxis for sure, and the Legion of Diligence is going to have you hanging off a tree before you can spit."

  "Oh, there was more to it than the invisible world business. Miracles and so on. The dead tree that Narayanguru was hung on was supposed to have burst into flower after they took him down."

  "I can see where the Legion of Diligence would take a dim view of those stories, too."

  That night, sitting on his bed while he drank his cocoa and looked at the picture of the woman, her child, and the cat, he thought about Fletcher sitting in the same place, contemplating the ghastly figure of Narayanguru, and thinking about human suffering. Martinez wondered what Fletcher, a prominent member of two of the hundred most prominent Terran families in the empire, had ever suffered, and what comfort he received by looking at the bloody figure strung on the tree.

  Doctor Xi had said Fletcher found his position a burden, for all that he worked dutifully at what was expected of him. He wasn't really an arrogant snob, according to Xi, he was just playing a part.

  Fletcher had been empty, filling his hours with formal ritual and aesthetic pleasure. He hadn't created anything; he hadn't ever made a statue or a painting, he just collected them. He hadn't done anything new or original with his command, he'd just polished his ship's personnel and routines the same way he'd polish a newly-acquired silver figurine.

  He had suffered, apparently. Perhaps he had known all along how hollow his life had become.

  He had sat where Martinez was now sitting, and contemplated objects that other people considered holy.

  Martinez wasn't going to figure Fletcher out tonight. He put the cocoa aside, brushed his teeth, and rolled beneath the covers.

  Time passed. Martinez dined with Husayn and Mersenne on successive days, and the next day spent eight hours in Command, taking Illustrious through the wormhole to Osser. Squadrons of decoys were echeloned ahead of the squadron, in hopes of attracting any incoming missiles. Along with the decoys flew pinnaces, painting the vacuum ahead with their laser range finders. Every antimissile weapon was charged and pointed dead ahead.

  Chenforce made some final-hour maneuvers before passing the wormhole, checking their speed and entering the wormhole at a slightly different angle, so as to appear in the Osser system on a course that wouldn't take them straight on to Qupyl, the next system, but slightly out of the direct path.

  Martinez lay on his acceleration couch, trying not to gnaw his nails as he stared at the sensor displays, waiting for the brief flash that would let him know that missiles were incoming. His tension gradually eased as the returning radar and laser signals gradually revealed more of the Osser system, and then a new worry began to possess him.

  The Naxids would have to wonder why Chenforce had changed its tactics, particularly when they hadn't met any genuine opposition since Protipanu, at the very beginning of their raid. If the Naxids analyzed the raiders' maneuvers, then reasoned backwards to find what the tactics were intended to prevent, they would be able to see that Michi Chen and her squadron was very, very concerned about a missile barrage fired at relativistic velocities.

  If the tactic hadn't yet occurred to the Naxids, Chenforce might now be handing them the idea.

  But that was a worry for another day. For the present it was enough to see that the ranging lasers were finding nothing, that more and more of the system was being revealed without an enemy being found, and that Chenforce was as safe from attack as it was ever going to be.

  Days passed. Martinez conducted regular inspections to learn his ship and crew, and to confirm the information reported on the 77-12s. He dined in rotation with Lord Phillips, who was scarcely more talkative than he had been at their previous meeting, with Lieutenant the Lady Juliette Corbigny, whose volubility more than made up for Phillips' silence, and with Acting Lieutenant Lord Themba Mokgatle, who had been promoted to the vacancy left as Chandra shuttled to Michi's staff.

  Gazing at the painting of the woman, child, and cat, he realized that there was another figure, a man who sat on a bed opposite the fire from the woman and her baby. Martinez hadn't noticed him because the painting was dark and needed cleaning, and the man wasn't illuminated by the fire. One moment he wasn't there, and the next Martinez suddenly saw him, head bent with a stick or staff in his hands, appearing like a ghost from behind the painted red curtain.

  Martinez couldn't have been more surprised if the cat had jumped from the picture into his lap.

  The dim figure on the canvas was the only discovery Martinez managed during that period. The killer or killers of Captain Fletcher remained no more than a phantom. Michi grew ever more irritable, and snapped at Martinez and Garcia both. Sometimes Martinez caught a look in her eye that seemed to say, If you weren't family…

  In time, after the first breathless rush of taking command was over, Martinez was reminded that there were too many captains' servants on the ship. He had Garcia take Rigger Espinosa and Machinist Ayutano into the constabulary, with the particular duty of patrolling the decks on which the officers were quartered. Buckle the hair stylist was sent to aid the ship's barber. Narbonne was taken
onto Martinez' service as an assistant to Alikhan, a demotion that Narbonne seemed to resent.

  That left Baca, the fat, redundant cook that no one seemed to want, and Jukes. Baca was eventually taken on as an assistant to Michi's cook, a post he wasn't happy about, either, and that left Martinez with his own personal artist.

  Martinez called Jukes into his office to give him the news, and the man turned up in Fleet-issued undress, and managed to brace rather professionally in salute. Martinez decided he must have got to Jukes before Jukes got to the sherry.

  "What did Fletcher rate you, anyway?" he asked.

  "Rigger First Class."

  "I don't suppose you know anything about a rigger's duties?"

  The artist shook his head. "Not a damn thing, my lord. That's why I need a new patron."

  "Good luck in finding one."

  There was a moment of silence. Jukes looked as if he'd been hit with a hammer.

  "Thank you for changing the pictures in my cabin," Martinez said. "It's a considerable improvement."

  "You're welcome." Jukes took a breath and made a visible effort to re-engage with the person sitting before him. "Was there a piece you particularly liked? I could to locate other works in that style."

  "The one with the woman and the cat," Martinez said. "Though I don't think I've seen any painting quite in that style, anywhere."

  Jukes smiled. "It's not precisely typical of the painter's work. That's a very old Northern European piece."

  Martinez looked at him. "And North Europe is where, exactly?"

  "Terra, my lord. The painting dates from before the Shaa conquest. Though I should say the original painting, because this may be a copy. It's hard to say, because all the documentation is in languages no one speaks anymore, and hardly anyone reads them."

  "It looks old enough."

  "It wants cleaning." Jukes gave a thoughtful pause. "You've got a good eye, my lord. Captain Fletcher bought the painting some years ago, but decided he didn't like it because it didn't seem one thing or another, and he put it in storage." His mouth gave a little twitch of disapproval. "I don't know why he took it to war with him. It's not as if the painting could be replaced if we got blown up. Maybe he wanted it with him since it was so valuable, I don't know."

  "Valuable?" Martinez asked. "How valuable?"

  "I think he paid something like eighty thousand for it."

  Martinez whistled.

  "You could probably buy it, my lord, from the captain's estate."

  "Not at those prices, I can't."

  Jukes shrugged. "It would depend on whether you could get a license for cult art, anyway."

  Martinez was startled. "Cult art. That's cult art?"

  "The Holy Family with a Cat, by Rembrandt. You wouldn't know it was cultish except for the title."

  Martinez considered the painting through his haze of surprise. The cult art he remembered from his visits to the Museum of Superstition, and the other pieces he'd seen on Fletcher's cabin walls, made its subjects look elevated, or grand or noble or at the very least uncannily serene, but the plain-faced mother, the cat, and the child in red pajamas merely looked comfortably middle-class.

  "The cat isn't normal with the Holy Family?"

  A smile twitched at Jukes' lips. "No. Not the cat."

  "Or the frame? The red curtain?"

  "That's the contribution of the artist."

  "The red pajamas?"

  Jukes laughed. "No, that's just to echo the red of the curtain."

  "Could the title be in error?"

  Jukes shook his head. "Unlikely, my lord, though possible."

  "So what makes it cult art?"

  "The Holy Family is a fairly common subject, though usually the Virgin's in a blue robe, and the child is usually naked, and there are usually attendants, with some of them, ah-" He reached for a word. "-floating. This particular treatment is unconventional, but then there were no hard and fast rules for this sort of thing-Narayanguru, for example, is usually portrayed on a ayaca tree, I suppose because the green and red blossoms are so attractive, but Captain Fletcher's Narayanguru is mounted on a real tree, and it's a vel-trip, not an ayaca."

  A very faint chord echoed in Martinez' mind. He sat up, lifting his head.

  "-and Da Vinci, of course, in his Virgin of the Rocks, did a-"

  Martinez raised a hand to cut off Jukes' distracting voice. Jukes fell silent, staring at him.

  "An ayaca tree," Martinez murmured. Jukes wisely did not answer.

  Martinez thought furiously, trying to reach into his own head. Mention of the ayaca tree had set a train of associations cascading through Martinez' mind, and he had reached conclusions; but it had all happened in an instant, without his having to think through a single step. He now had to consciously and carefully work backward from his conclusions through the long process to make certain that it all held together, and to find out where it had started.

  Without speaking he rose from his desk and walked to his safe. He opened a tunic button and drew out his captain's key on its elastic, inserted the key into his safe, and pressed the combination. Airtight seals popped as the door swung open, and Martinez caught a whiff of stale air. Martinez took out the clear plastic box in which Doctor Xi had placed Fletcher's jewelry, opened the box, and separated from the signet ring and the silver mesh ring the gold pendant on its chain. He held the chain up to the light, seeing the tree-shaped pendant dangling, emeralds and rubies glittering against the gold.

  "An ayaca tree like this?" he asked.

  Jukes squinted as he looked at the dangling pendant. "Yes," he said, "that's typical."

  "Would you say that this pendant is particularly rare or unusually beautiful or stands out in any way?"

  Jukes blinked at him, then frowned. "It's very well made and moderately expensive, but there's nothing extraordinary about it."

  Martinez flipped the pendant into his hand and returned to his desk. "Comm," he said, "page Lieutenant Prasad."

  A shadow fell across his door, and he looked up to see Marsden, the ship's secretary, with his datapad.

  "My lord, if you're busy…"

  "No. Come in."

  "Lord captain." Chandra's face appeared in the depths of Martinez' desk. "You paged me?"

  "I have a question," Martinez said. "Did Captain Fletcher wear a pendant in the shape of a tree?"

  Chandra was taken aback. "He did, yes."

  "Did he wear it all the time?"

  Chandra's look grew more curious. "Yes, so far as I know he did, though he took it off when he, ah, went to bed."

  Martinez raised his fist into view of the pickups on the desk, and let the pendant fall from his grasp so that it dangled on the end of its chain.

  "This is the pendant?"

  Chandra squinted, and her face distorted in the camera pickups as she stared into her sleeve display. "Looks like it, my lord."

  "Thank you, lieutenant. End transmission."

  Chandra's startled face faded from the display. Martinez looked at the pendant for a long moment as excitement hummed in his nerves, and then became aware of the silence in his office, of Jukes and Marsden staring at him.

  "Have a seat for a moment," he said. "This may take a while."

  He was still reaching deep into his own head.

  He called up a security manual onto his desk display, one intended for the constabulary and Investigative Service. Included was a description of cults and the methods of recognizing them.

  Narayanism, Martinez read, a cult based on the teachings of Narayanguru (Balambhoatdada Seth), which were condemned for a belief in a higher plane and for the founder's alleged performance of miracles. Narayanguru's teachings show a kinship to those of the Terran philosopher Schopenhauer, themselves condemned for nihilism. Though cult tradition maintains that Narayanguru was hanged on an ayaca tree, historical records show that he was tortured and executed by more conventional methods in the Year of the Praxis 5581, on Terra. Because of this false tradition, cultists someti
mes recognize one another by carrying flowering branches of the ayaca on certain days, planting ayacas about the home, or by using the ayaca blossom on jewelry, pottery, etc. There are also the usual variety of hand and other signals.

  Narayanism is not a militant cult and its adherents are not believed to pose an active threat to the Peace of the Praxis, except insofar as they promote false beliefs. The cult has recently been reported on Terra, Preowin, and Sandama, where entire clans sometimes participate secretly in cult activity.

  Martinez gazed up at Jukes, and held out the pendant dangling from his fist. "Why would Captain Fletcher wear this pendant?" he asked. "It's not a particularly rare or precious form of art, is it?"

  Jukes looked blank. "No, my lord."

  "Suppose he was actually a believer," Martinez said. "Suppose he was a genuine Narayanist."

  A look of pure horror crossed Marsden's face. Martinez looked at him in surprise. Marsden took a few moments to find words, but when he spoke his voice trembled with what Martinez supposed was fury.

  "Captain Fletcher, a cultist?" Marsden said. "Do you realize what you're saying? A member both of the Gombergs and the Fletchers? A Peer of the highest possible pedigree, with noble ancestors stretching back thousands of years…"

  Martinez was taken aback by this rant, but was in no mood for a pompous lecture on genealogy. He cut Marsden off in mid-tirade.

  "Marsden," he said, "do you know where the personal possessions of Thuc and Kosinic have been stored?"

  Marsden larynx moved in his throat as he visibly swallowed his indignation, "Yes, my lord," he said.

  "Kindly bring them."

  Marsden rose, put the datapad on his seat, and braced. "At once, lord captain."

  The secretary marched away, his legs stiff with anger. Jukes looked after him in surprise.

  "An odd man," he said. "I had no idea he was such a snob." He turned to Martinez and raised an eyebrow. "Do you really think Captain Fletcher was a cultist?"

  Martinez looked at the pendant that still dangled form his hand.

  "I don't know why else he'd wear this."