The Praxis (24 page)

Her
self
hated Caro. She knew that now.

If Caro detected any of Gredel's inner turmoil, she gave no sign. In any case, she was rarely in a condition to be observant. Her alcohol consumption had increased as she shifted from wine to hard liquor. When she wanted to get drunk, she wanted it to happen
instantly,
the way she wanted everything, and hard liquor got her there quicker. The ups and downs increased as well, and the spikes and valleys that were her behavior. She was banned from one of her expensive restaurants for talking loudly, and singing, and throwing a plate at the waiter who asked her to be less noisy. She was thrown out of a club for attacking a woman in the ladies' room. Gredel never found out what the fight was about, but for days afterward Caro proudly sported the black eye she'd got from the bouncer's fist.

For the most part, Gredel managed to avoid Caro's anger. She learned the warning signs, and she'd also learned how to manipulate Caro's moods. She could change Caro's music, or at least shift the focus of Caro's growing anger from herself to someone else.

Despite her feelings, she was now in Caro's company more than ever. Lamey was in hiding. She first found out about it when he sent Panda to pick her up at Caro's apartment instead of coming herself. Panda drove her to the Fabs, but not to a human neighborhood: instead he took her into a building inhabited by Lai-owns. A family of the giant birds stared at her as she waited in the lobby for the elevator. There was an acrid, ammonia smell in the air.

Lamey was in a small apartment on the top floor, with a pair of his guards and a Lai-own. The avian shifted from one foot to the other as Gredel entered. Lamey seemed nervous. He didn't say anything to her, just gave a quick jerk of his chin to indicate they should go into the back room.

The room was thick with the heat of summer. The ammonia smell was very strong. Lamey steered Gredel to the bed. She sat, but Lamey was unable to be still: he paced back and forth in the narrow range permitted by the small room. His smooth, elegant walk had developed hitches and stutters, uncertainties that marred his normal grace.

“I'm sorry about this,” he said. “But something's happened.”

“Is the Patrol looking for you?”

“I don't know.” His mouth gave a little twitch. “Bourdelle was arrested yesterday. It was the Legion of Diligence who arrested him, not the Patrol, so that means they've got him for something serious, something he could be executed for. We've got word that he's bargaining with the prefect's office.” His mouth twitched again. Linkboys did not bargain with the prefect, they were expected to go to their punishment with their mouths shut.

“We don't know what he's going to offer them,” Lamey went on. “But he's just a link up from me, and he could be selling me or any of the boys.” He paused in his pacing and rubbed his chin. Sweat shone on his forehead. “I'm going to make sure it's not me,” he said.

“I understand,” Gredel said.

Lamey looked at her. His blue eyes were feverish. “From now on, you can't call me. I can't call you. We can't be seen in public together. If I want you, I'll send someone for you at Caro's.”

Gredel looked up at him. “But—” she began, then, “When?”

“When…I…want…you,”
he said insistently. “I don't know when. You'll just have to be there when I need you.”

“Yes,” Gredel said. Her mind whirled. “I'll be there.”

He sat next to her on the bed and took her by the shoulders. “I missed you, Earthgirl,” he said. “I really need you now.”

She kissed him. His skin felt feverish. She could taste the fear on him. Lamey's unsteady fingers began to fumble with the buttons of her blouse.
You're going to die soon
, she thought.

Unless, of course, she paid the penalty instead, the way Ava had paid for the sins of her man.

She had to start looking out for herself, she thought, before it was too late.

 

W
hen Gredel left Lamey, he gave her two hundred zeniths in cash. “I can't buy you things right now, Earthgirl,” he explained. “But buy yourself something nice for me, all right?”

She remembered Antony's claim that she whored for money. It was no longer an accusation she could deny.

One of Lamey's boys drove Gredel from the rendezvous to her mother's building. She took the stairs instead of the elevator because it gave her time to think. By the time she got to her mother's door, she had the beginnings of an idea.

But first she had to tell her mother about Lamey, and why she had to move in with Caro. “Of course, honey,” Ava said. She took Gredel's hands and pressed them. “Of course you've got to go.”

Loyalty to her man was what Ava knew, Gredel thought. She had been arrested and sentenced to years in the country for a man she'd hardly ever seen again. She'd spent her life sitting alone and waiting for one man or another to show up. She was beautiful, but in the bright summer light, Gredel could see the first cracks in her mother's facade, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that the years would only broaden. When the beauty faded, the men would fade too.

Ava had cast her lot with beauty and with men, neither of which were reliable in the long term. And Gredel knew if she remained with Lamey, or with some other linkboy, she would be following Ava's path.

The next morning she took a pair of bags to Caro's place and let herself in. Caro was asleep, so far gone in torpor that she didn't wake when Gredel padded into the bedroom and took her wallet with its identification. Gredel slipped out again and went to a bank, where she opened an account in the name of Caroline, Lady Sula, and deposited three-quarters of what Lamey had given her.

When asked for a thumbprint, she gave her own.

“M
y lord?” said Cadet Seisho. “I'm looking at a transmission, and Recruit Levoisier says something about the captain that I'm not sure about…”

Martinez glanced at his sleeve display, which showed the cadet's smooth-cheeked face. “Does she say that she's going to kill the captain, maim him, assault him, or disobey the captain's orders?”

Seisho blinked. “No, my lord. It's…more personal than that.”

More
personal? Martinez wondered. Then he decided it was better not to know. “If it's not assault, death, disobedience, or sabotage, it's not treason,” he said. “Pass it.”

Seisho nodded. “Very good, my lord.”

“Anything else?”

“No, my lord.”

“Then good-bye.”

The sleeve returned to its normal mourning pallor. Martinez turned back to his own work—or rather, Koslowski's. The senior lieutenant was off with the team practicing, and Martinez was standing Koslowski's watch as well as his own.

Pulling together with the team involved more than just standing watches. Martinez had been put on a hellish number of boards and other collateral duty assignments. He was the Library and Entertainment Officer, the Military Constable Officer, and the Cryptography Security Officer—at least cryptography was more in his line of specialty. He was on the Wardroom Advisory Board and the Enlisted Mess Advisory Board. He audited the accounts for the officers' and general mess, which called for accounting skills he didn't possess. He was on the Hull Board and the Weapons Safety Board, as well as the Cadet Examination Board, the Enlisted Examining Board, and the Cryptography Board.

He was on the Relief Board, intended to help people in distress, which meant that enlisted personnel were constantly hounding him with their hard-luck stories in hopes of getting money.

And lastly, he was also officer in charge of censoring the ship's mail, a job he was happy to shovel onto Seisho and a couple other cadets.

In fact the cadets and some of the more reliable warrant officers were getting as much of his work as he could safely unload, though he kept anything involving equipment or money in his own hands.

At the moment he was puzzling over wardroom funds. The three lieutenants were required to contribute sums to their mess, intended for the most part to be spent on liquor and delicacies, though some money vanished as under-the-table payoffs to maintain the style of the wardroom steward—in civilian life a professional chef—and large sums seemed to be employed for the purposes of gambling on football games. Since
Corona
had a successful season, and most of the bets were winners, this didn't appear to be a problem.

What disturbed Martinez most was inventory. The wardroom mess had paid for a good many items that were no longer in stock. It was possible that enlisted personnel were somehow pilfering, though it seemed unlikely, given that wardroom supplies were kept separately under lock and key. It was likewise possible that the wardroom steward, who had a key, was skimming. But since most of the items seemed to have vanished since
Corona
had been docked at Magaria's ring station, Martinez suspected that the officers themselves were taking the stuff away, perhaps to give as presents to woman friends in Magaria's ring station or skyhook towns.

But in that case, why didn't the officers simply sign for the items? They'd paid for them, after all.

Martinez had verified with his own eyes that the items had existed. He had signed for them. And now they were gone.

He drummed his fingers on the edge of the display. This might be another good moment to schedule a talk with Alikhan.

His left cuff button chirped again, and Martinez, assuming another query from Seisho, glared as he told the display to answer the call.

“Martinez. What is it?”

The face that appeared on his sleeve answered his glare with an apologetic look. “This is Dietrich at the airlock, my lord. The military constables are here with three of our liberty people.”

Dietrich was one of the two guards on duty at the port to the ring station. “Are they drunk?” Martinez asked.

Dietrich's eyes cut away, outside the frame of the camera, then back to Martinez. “Not at the moment, my lord.”

Martinez restrained the impulse to sigh. “I'll be there in a minute and sign for them.”

Such were the joys of the designated Military Constabulary officer.

He put the wardroom accounts back in their sealed password file and rose from his chair.
Corona
was moored nose-on to the ring station, which meant the forward airlock was “up” from Command, where Martinez was standing watch. In dock, a continuous belt elevator—essentially a mobile stepladder—was rigged in a central tunnel, and Martinez stepped onto this for the ride to
Corona's
forward airlock.

Rigger/First Dietrich was waiting just inside the airlock, his sidearm, stun baton, and handcuffs on his wide scarlet waist belt, and the red elastic Military Constabulary band on his arm. “Zhou, Ahmet, and Knadjian drunk and disorderly. Busted up a bar in the course of getting themselves thrashed by a gang from the
Storm Fury.
”

Zhou, Ahmet, and Knadjian. Martinez hadn't been on the ship long, but he already knew better than to feel sympathy for these three.

He went up the long umbilical to the station and found the three handcuffed recruits with their torn clothing, blackened eyes, and cut lips. Knadjian seemed to have had a fistful of hair torn from his scalp. After
Storm Fury
's recruits finished with them, the Naxid constables who had broken up the fight had probably got in a few licks as well. The miscreants had spent the night in the local lockup, and they smelled about as good as they looked.

The Fleet's enlisted personnel were known with varying degrees of affection as hardshells, holejumpers, or—from the hard gees they pulled—crouchbacks, pulpies, or pancakes. Whatever they were called, they tended to fall into certain well-defined areas on the military spectrum. Zhou, Ahmet, and Knadjian were in the part of the spectrum that involved brawls, floating dice games, drunkenness, the plunder of military supplies, and intrigues with women of low character. If their roles hadn't been so well-defined and traditional, Martinez would have been more annoyed at the three than he was. Instead he was aloof and amused.

Martinez read the charges given him by the constable/ first, who stood braced as far back as a Naxid could rear. He signed the charge sheet, presented in electronic form on the constable's overlarge datapad, and then the other document accepting custody of the prisoners, and as he did so, he sensed the Naxids twitching at the presence of something behind him. He turned.

Squadron Commander Kulukraf, Fanaghee's flag captain, was marching along the ring with a pack of twenty or so of his officers. Martinez figured that the Naxid MCs were twitching as they tried to restrain the impulse to grovel in the face of someone so senior.

Martinez sent electronic copies of the documents to his station on
Corona,
then handed the datapad back. “You can take off their handcuffs, constable,” he said.

“Very good, my lord.”

The crouchbacks, released from restraint, rubbed their wrists and eyed the MCs sidelong, as if tempted by the idea of clouting them now that their fists were free. Martinez decided to cut this dangerous thought off with some ideas of his own.

“You have twenty minutes to shower, clean up, and present yourselves to Rigger Chaves for fatigues. The captain will hear your wretched excuses and award punishment in the morning. Get moving.”

The recruits moved. Martinez smiled, and considered which toilets needed cleaning and which brassware most needed polishing.
All
, he decided.

He turned back to the head constable. “Thank you, constable. You may—”

He noticed that the constable was braced at the salute facing into the ring, and the other constables with him. Martinez whipped around and braced.

Squadron Commander Kulukraf had moved closer and was pointing at
Corona's
hatch with one dark-scaled hand. The Naxid officers looked from Kulukraf to
Corona
, then to their sleeve displays and back to Kulukraf again. Red patterns on their chests flashed complex patterns at one another, the chameleon-weave jackets transmitting the color shifts of the beaded scales beneath. None of them spoke.

Kulukraf ignored Martinez and the others braced at the docking tube, then made his way onward, fast-moving feet beating at the rubberized surface of the ring station's main thoroughfare. Martinez watched him go, then relaxed.

“Thank you, constable,” he repeated. “You may go.”

“Very good, my lord.” The constables braced briefly, turned, and thrashed deck after Kulukraf.

Curious, Martinez looked after Kulukraf. The Naxid squadcom and his officers had stopped at the next docking tube on the station, that of the light cruiser
Perigee,
and were going through the same routine, pausing and staring and making notes.

“The squadcom was here yesterday with a different bunch,” Dietrich volunteered.

“Was he?” Martinez looked at him. “Do you know what he's up to?”

“No idea, Lord Lieutenant. They just flashed at each other, like today.”

Martinez wondered if there was some kind of big surprise inspection scheduled. But only a total swine of a fleetcom would schedule an inspection two days before the Festival of Sport.

Right, he thought. And Fanaghee wasn't exactly known for dripping sweet compassion over her subordinates, was she?

Martinez decided he'd better have a quiet word with the warrant officers who ran each of the ship's departments. And, while he was at it, make sure his own communications rigs, both the primary and auxiliary, were immaculate, and his subordinates at their most presentable.

 

“M
ay I speak with you privately?”

Lord Richard Li was the only person at the reception besides Sula who was wearing dress whites, and Sula only wore her uniform because she didn't have anything elegant or expensive enough for this company. Lord Richard, she presumed, had some other reason.

“Privately?” Sula looked at him in surprise. “Yes, of course.”

It was Terza Chen, Lord Richard's fiancée, who had invited her to this function at the ornate Chen Palace, but Terza had glided off in her elegant way, and left Sula with Lord Richard.

He took Sula's arm and led her to a library off the front hall, dark wood carved with a pattern of holly, and ancient leather-bound books sealed behind glass, their delicate contents preserved by a mixture of rare gases. The sight made Sula want to lunge for the cabinets, pop the seals, and indulge in an orgy of reading.

On the desk was a small fountain, water trickling over small stones, that gave the air a slight scent of brine. Lord Richard gazed at the fountain for a moment, then turned to face Sula.

“Lord Richard?”

“I heard about the
Midnight Runner
verdict,” he said. A Fleet Court of Inquiry had just proclaimed Blitsharts's death an accident, the result of a faulty water intake coupling.

“Unfortunately it's only the
first Midnight Runner
verdict,” Sula said. “There's going to be a lawsuit before the insurance company will part with any money. They're going to say that Blitsharts damaged the coupling intentionally. So I'll be stuck here giving depositions for years, unless I can get ship duty.”

A smile crossed Lord Richard's chiseled features. “Well, as to that,” he said, “I've just returned from the Commandery. That's why I'm in uniform. The announcement won't be made for a few days, but I've been informed that I'll have command of the
Dauntless
when it comes out of refit. We'll be joining the Second Cruiser Division, Home Fleet.”

“Congratulations, my lord.”
Dauntless
was a new heavy cruiser finishing its first refit, with everything that hadn't worked properly on its first tour repaired, replaced, or redesigned. It was a perfect command for this stage of Lord Richard's career, and spoke well of Fleet Commander Jarlath's confidence in him.

“I know you'll do well,” Sula said.

“Thank you.” Lord Richard inclined his head as he looked at Sula. Behind him the little fountain chimed.

“You know,” he said, “that I get to promote two lieutenants into
Dauntless
when I get command of her. In view of your family's kindness to mine over many years, I wish to offer you one of those places.”

Sula's heart gave a surprised little skip. A captain's promotions were usually
quid pro quo
arrangements within or between families—“I'll promote your youngster, and you'll see my cousin gets the supply contract for the satellite relays on Sandama.” But Sula didn't have anything to offer in exchange. This was pure kindness on Lord Richard's part.

Sula found herself flushing with the effort to compose her thanks. Composing thanks wasn't one of the things she did well. “Thank you, Lord Richard,” she managed. “I—I appreciate your—your confidence.”

He smiled with his perfect white teeth. Sula observed little crinkles around his eyes when he smiled. “We'll consider it done, then,” Lord Richard said.

“Ah…my lord.” She felt herself flush. “You know that I've been cramming for my exams.”

“Yes. Well, now that won't be necessary. You can enjoy yourself.” Lord Richard began to step toward the exit across the deep pile of the Tupa carpeting.

“I was going for a first, my lord,” Sula said. Lord Richard hesitated in mid-stride.

“Really?” he said.

“Ah…yes.” Her cheeks must be pouring out nova heat, she thought.

“Do you think you have a chance?”

There, Sula reflected, was the key question. The cadet who achieved a first—the highest score of all lieutenants' exams given throughout the empire during a year—was almost certain to acquire a name in the service, and very possibly some patrons to go with it. She wouldn't be dependent entirely on Lord Richard for promotion: with a first, many more doors would open to her.