by P. J. Fox
Talin’s expression turned thoughtful. “Alice—what’s her problem?”
Aria shrugged. “I gave her some advice that she didn’t like.”
“But still,” Talin protested, “I’m surprised….” He trailed off.
“Yes?” Aria prompted.
“I’m surprised that people would dare talk to you like that,” he blurted out.
“Why?” Aria asked, genuinely curious.
“Because you’re….” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the unspoken words hung plainly between them: because you’re married to my father. If only, Aria thought, things like that made a difference. Talin might have learned a lot in a short amount of time, but he wasn’t nearly cynical enough to understand certain aspects of life here. Thank God.
She sighed, chagrined. “People don’t accept me—some people, that is—because I’m young and foreign and too independent. Or so I’m told.” This time, her laughter had a sad quality to it.
“Solaris sounds like a terrible place to live,” Talin said with conviction. “I’m not surprised you left.”
And then he proceeded to describe a horrible place that bore no relation to Aria’s actual home. The Union wasn’t the only state with a propaganda machine, she observed. Talin’s information came, he assured her, from reliable sources: people who’d defected during the Great War, some of whom were still alive or whose testimony had at least been preserved on film and lectures at the few classes he’d attended.
“I mean, Solarians herd people onto rafts and send them out in the ocean to die!”
“No they don’t.”
Talin eyed her suspiciously. “That’s why you have no healthcare—because you believe in survival of the fittest, and want the old and infirm to die. Only people who can afford healthcare, because they’re already too fit and healthy to need it deserve it, right?”
Aria was at a loss for how to respond. She’d never understood her government’s viewpoint on this subject, let alone well enough to defend it to anyone else. She agreed with Kisten that having one’s basic needs met was a fundamental right, and had always disagreed with her father’s belief that how much a man owned was a function of how much he deserved.
“And,” Talin continued, “women are forced to work as slave labor while men laze about and do nothing.”
Again, Aria couldn’t disagree. She’d seen how her sister’s life was; the endless cycle of toil could easily be described as slave labor. Zelda cooked, cleaned, strained her back lifting load after load of laundry, ran around after her children and was told, both by the media and by her husband, that she was weak for complaining of exhaustion or wanting help. A real woman should be able to “have it all” with a smile. In fact, a more ambitious woman would do all of this and work outside the home. And bake more cookies, besides.
“Are there really pictures of naked women everywhere?”
Aria considered the question. “Yes,” she said. If advertisements could properly be called pictures. Naked women were used to sell everything, from lingerie to cereal.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
You’re thirteen, she wanted to tell him. But the truth was, she wasn’t entirely sure what age constituted the appropriate age for this sort of thing. And she certainly wasn’t going to ask Kisten. Besides, what Talin had heard about the Union was no stranger than what she’d been taught about the Alliance. Life in the evil empire had proved to be more relaxed than life on supposedly freedom-loving Solaris. And Aria still hadn’t managed to convince Garja that her status denoted some meaningful curtailment of freedom.
They’d almost reached the main tent when Aria saw Alice. She stopped and Talin stopped, too. He’d followed her line of sight, and was now seeing what she was seeing. Neither of them spoke. No speech was necessary. Alice was standing next to one of the players, the unnamed sergeant, grinning up at him and flirting shamelessly. At no point had Aria ever seen her friend act like that with Captain Gore. The man who was, at least in theory, her husband.
And was, Aria saw further, nowhere to be found.
Yes, women did have their own way of waging war.
The man said something, and Alice trailed her small fingers down his sleeve.
“This,” Naomi said, “is not good.”
Aria turned, surprised to see her erstwhile friend. Who seemed, for the moment, to have forgotten her own antipathy as she studied Alice with what Aria plainly saw was real concern.
“She told you, then.” Naomi turned slightly. “That things aren’t good.”
“Yes.” And spectacles like this wouldn’t make them better.
“I’d better go rescue her.”
Naomi was just about to do so when another voice spoke. The familiar drawl was warm and vaguely mocking. “Well if it isn’t my favorite little harlot in training.” Setji smiled lazily, and Naomi blushed scarlet to the roots of her hair. Aria didn’t think she’d ever seen Naomi blush, let alone this color. Talin, for his part, studied Naomi with open interest. “I had a rather excellent play,” Setji continued. “I was wondering if you saw me when I—”
“You were terrible,” Naomi said coldly.
“Takes one to know one,” Setji replied mildly.
Aria ignored them both. Inside the main tent, she found Kisten talking to, among others, Ramesh Gore. “It’s a fine madness,” Kisten was saying, discussing—naturally—his love of horses. A love which, clearly, Captain Gore shared. As did almost everyone else present.
Bell and her young lieutenant had somehow made it to the tent and were chatting, still, in the corner.
Aria hoped on a different subject by now, for both their sakes. He looked animated and, for a wonder, so did Bell. Her plain, sallow features were lit from within with an emotion that Aria had never seen on them before: enthusiasm. Unlike Alice, she seemed quite happy to be the center of attention. Undoubtedly, Aria thought with a pang, for the first time. Poor little Bell, whose parents had sent her to Tarsonis in the hopes that men out here would be less discerning. Motiani, for his part, was looking at Bell as though she were Venus come to earth. Bell, with her oddly shaped nose and frumpy hair and terrible fashion sense, who wrote ballad after ballad about dead dogs and rotting logs.
Aria glanced outside to where Alice was still chatting up her new friend. Captain Gore, with his back to her, was too busy hanging on Kisten’s every word to notice or, Aria suspected, care. Setji had left the tent and was smoking slowly while he practiced the art of nonchalance, his eyes focused on some far distant point. The tip of his thin, expertly rolled cigarette glowed now and again as he inhaled. But Aria knew that he’d noticed and was watching Alice, the same as Aria was. All around her, voices tinkled in laughter.
A fine madness, indeed.
SIXTY-FIVE
Kisten sat at his desk, and regarded the man across from him. Lieutenant Motiani was usually so casual that his nervous, overly contained demeanor came as something of a shock. Certainly, it didn’t sit well on the normally outgoing young man. Studying his knees, he fidgeted.
He was here for the obvious reason, and one that Kisten had anticipated since the polo match a week ago. He’d seen his aide with the redoubtable Bell, a frumpy little bore if ever there was one, and known then that any man who could stomach her company for longer than ten minutes must be insane. Or in love. Kisten’s aide had been making his own pathetic brand of overtures to the young poetess for some time, although she’d seemed oblivious enough.
And really, Kisten couldn’t blame her; even an intelligent young woman would have been hard put to glean any meaning from Motiani’s abbreviated mumblings. He’d practice his lines in the outer office when he thought Kisten wasn’t listening and then, when the grand moment came and the lady in question was actually in front of him, he’d disappear in a hurry of red-eared embarrassment and leave her standing there wondering what exactly had happened. She’d evidently asked Aria, on more than one occasion, if the poor thing were suffering from some sort of bra
in fever.
The hell he wasn’t, Kisten decided. As Minai Motiani had only gained the power of speech in regards to his intended a week ago, Kisten could have hoped that the happy couple had extended their courtship slightly longer. However, no one else would ever be so silly as to want either one so it was just as well that both were decisive. Bell was—in Kisten’s mind, equally inexplicably—just as thrilled with the young lieutenant.
Having neither charm nor looks, nor common sense in any great amount although he was actually quite intelligent, he’d found in Bell a woman who thought of him as nothing short of a knight in shining armor. She thrilled to his lengthy and tiresome discussions of his many sisters and their many doings, his sainted mother and equally sainted father and how he’d decided to pursue a life on the frontier after a childhood spent watching films on the topic that portrayed heroes and prostitutes alike as having hearts of gold and villains as men easily recognizable by the speculative twirling of their mustaches.
Had Kisten ever been this young?
“How old are you?” he asked his aide.
Clearly not thirty yet, if he needed Kisten’s permission to marry.
“Twenty-eight, sir.”
“I see.” What Kisten saw was that he’d never felt so ancient in his life. When he was the lieutenant’s age, he’d been a prisoner of war. This wet behind the ears infant wasn’t even six years his junior. He might as well be turning a hundred and thirty-four soon, instead of thirty-four.
No wonder he’d been given this governorship, he realized with a flash of insight; he should be dead.
He was regarded by most as a great deal older than he was, both because he was a man of some importance and because he had a teenaged son at an age where most men were just becoming fathers if they contemplated the act at all. He’d had his son at an age when his peers, like himself, were at university and he was the age now where those same peers were just beginning to put serious thought into their careers. Kisten wondered, and not for the first time, how this had happened to him. When had he become such a stick in the mud?
“Have you heard her poetry?” he asked, more kindly than he’d expected to.
“Mine’s dreadful, too,” his aide confessed.
“Then,” Kisten replied, “you have my blessing.” He sat back in his chair, his eyes still on the younger man’s. “But tell me, if you wouldn’t mind satisfying a friend’s well-meant if entirely inappropriate curiosity, why do you want to get married?”
Overwhelmed at being called “friend” by this most august of personages, Motiani found himself temporarily stymied. Kisten, who hadn’t thought it possible to shut him up for any length of time, was a touch relieved. He waited, enjoying the novelty of silence, and eventually his question was answered.
“Because,” the lieutenant said quietly, “she’s the most wonderful person in the world and the fact that she’s willing to marry me makes me the luckiest man in the world.” He paused. “You’re married,” he said artlessly, “you must understand.” And then, realizing that this last remark would be construed by most as scandalously over-familiar, reddened.
Kisten smiled slightly, only the barest quirk of the lip betraying his feelings. “As a matter of fact,” he agreed, “I do.”
Growing up, he’d been somewhat unusual among his friends in that his parents still loved each other. If they ever had. Many of his mother’s acquaintances made cutting comments at seemingly every opportunity about how the best husbands were those one never saw. They passed on this resentment to their daughters in the form of advice.
Motiani smiled slightly.
Kisten arched an eyebrow. “What are you smiling for? Get back to work.”
His aide left, and Kisten stared out the window without seeing the men parading outside. He was, as usual, exhausted from weeks longer than most men’s months and too little sleep. He’d averted disaster, but only by the narrowest of margins, and was still laboring under a mountain of work that threatened to become an avalanche at any second. The Blues had recovered well enough and, indeed, the whole cantonment seemed to be on its best behavior. Morale was up, crime was down…and Kisten, focusing on the rows of neatly pressed uniforms, couldn’t help the nagging sensation that something was very badly wrong.
Part of him wondered if this was because, preconditioned by disaster, he was now disposed to regard any evidence of success with suspicion. But part of him remembered that the last time he’d ignored this suspicion he’d ended up betrayed from within his own ranks and cast into prison.
He’d spent the last few nights reading reports by moonlight in his office until the moon finally set and the birds began to chirp. He’d rather have been in bed with Aria, who wondered what was going on but didn’t ask. Was probably afraid of the answer. She, for reasons that were unclear to him, seemed to doubt the sincerity of his affection.
If she had any idea what he saw—and felt—when he looked at her, she never would again. Of that he was positive.
He hadn’t spent as much time with Aria as he’d have liked, lately, but marriage wasn’t courtship and some inconveniences had to be endured while they lasted. He’d thought about buying her a ring, as the giving of rings seemed to be a custom with some significance on Solaris, but hadn’t gotten around to actually doing so. That Renta was ideally suited to this task had occurred to him, but he didn’t suppose Aria would agree. Still, the fullness of his shopping knowledge extended to handing the clerk his credit card and pointing at what appeared to be the most expensive item on display. A procedure that, admittedly, had served him well in the past. But maybe she’d prefer being taken on a ride, or a picnic…?
He forced himself back to the task at hand. When the lieutenant had come in, he’d been in the middle of writing a letter home about one of the men under his command—and had been, now, on and off all morning. Every time he picked up his stylus, he was reminded anew that this man had a very important parent.
He studied what he’d written so far: …a worthy, zealous, obedient and gentlemanlike specimen of the highest order, he has an excellent temper and is assuredly a joy to all who know him. He has, however, neither the talent, education, habits of business nor firmness equal to his present situation and thus I must recommend…. He sat back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. Recommend what, exactly? Pain stabbed him behind the eyes, brought on by a miserable combination of exhaustion and caffeine withdrawal. How had the poor slob gotten here in the first place?
The answer to that rather rhetorical question was easy enough: he’d gotten here, because there was a vacancy. Death, whether from disease or simple excess, was beyond common. Ram Saghred, the former commissioner, had been an opium habitué of some years and had recently died from an overdose. Living under the constant shadow of death made men callous. They mourned briefly, only to declare someone else their best friend while bidding drunkenly on the bastard’s possessions. Nine-tenths of the civil service continued to behave as though still incarcerated at the boarding schools from which they’d been culled; they didn’t seem capable of looking out their windows and noticing a difference.
For example, that the mists outside were filled with raptors and not feather dancers.
Putting the letter aside again, Kisten perused the second of the morning’s reports on religiously motivated unrest. The woman who’d been passing out homemade copies of the scriptures had, mercifully, died in the troubles along with her husband. However, a new and almost equally revolting character had sprung forth to fill the void: Imahd Kolb.
The cleric was a native of Brontes who reminded Kisten uncomfortably of his great grandfather—or, rather, the stories that Kisten had heard about the man. Udit’s father had been Charonite, of course, but no less inflexible for all that. He’d taken to his new empire, and its religion, with an enthusiasm that bordered on zealotry. Likewise, Imahd Kolb was convinced that Haldon represented not merely an uncivilized backwater but the innermost circle of Hell.
I have visited
the valley of death, one of Kisten’s operatives had recorded him as saying, I have seen the den of darkness where Satan himself dwells! The cleric had gone on to describe scenes of “sinful and disgusting behavior” which had, disappointingly, turned out to be nothing more than various civil servants worshipping the local gods or, in some cases, the old gods. As Kisten himself had been known to do behind closed doors.
Aria continued to regard Mohana, the God of Love, with suspicion. Sometimes, late at night, she’d whisper that the blue-skinned statue was looking at her. Indeed, his eyes seemed to gleam with more than simply the reflected light of the moon. His bland, benevolent smile made even Kisten uneasy at times, although he couldn’t say precisely why.
One benefit of his consort being from Solaris, he thought sourly, was that she had no preconceived notions about which religions were normal. They all seemed equally heathen to her. Solaris, from what Kisten understood, was full of men like Kolb: if not in terms of their specific preaching, then in terms of their fanaticism. Kolb regularly vented his particular brand of spleen to crowds all over the city. Hundreds thronged into already packed squares.
There was a rap on the door and, a minute later, Aros poked his head in.
Kisten’s second looked well enough, and had filled out a little, but he hadn’t shown any signs of making friends. Lady friends, that was. Kisten was certain, although Aros would never admit such a failing, that he must be lonely. Aros, not Kisten, was the sort of person who should have a family. He’d know what to do with one, and appreciate it.
“We’ve finally gotten this back,” he said, referring to the report on corruption and Brotherhood ties within the municipal police.
“Leave it with me.” Kisten waved tiredly. “And the chief?”
“Is clean. His second in command, not so much.” Aros winked.
SIXTY-SIX
The officers’ club at the cantonment was a discouraging place to visit. Every day, a group of men that Aria had taken to calling the Haldon levee stumbled in, took their seats and began complaining. The high-ceilinged casbah smelled of mold and the plink, plink of drips competed with the marginally functional fountain in the center of the main dining room.
