Fortunes of the Imperium (21 page)

Alas, he was the only one at the table who would speak to me. My study had taught me a good deal about human nature, including a few lessons that I hadn’t anticipated and really didn’t enjoy. I had only wanted to make people happy. I thought my studies would provide pleasure. Instead, I had inadvertently created codependency; I for the admiration, they for the guidance, however false its source. More fool I.

I hoped I would not remain a pariah for the last few days aboard the
Bonchance
.

I signed in for another brief shift with Dee. I had introduced him to Angie aboard the
Rodrigo
, and as far as I could tell, he was getting along with her like old friends. The LAIs on both ships were puzzled by the isolation into which I had been cast. They did not join in the boycott of Lord Thomas Kinago, Lieutenant, Incorporated. Nor did my own crew, represented as it was within the sick bay of my toils by Anstruther. I was grateful for their friendship. Although a Kinago never surrendered even in the face of adversity, I was glad not to have to be stalwart in isolation.

My tasks provided me solace. I duly scanned circuit boards with my detectors, seeking the minute variations in signal strength that indicated a weakness in one element or another. It was rather like being a criminal investigator. I was in search of the archvillain, Broken Circuit, and his heinous sidekick, Short. No cracked capacitor or malfunctioning chip or overgrown organocircuitry was going to get past Detective Inspector Thomas Kinago, no, indeed!

“Aha!” I cackled, my multiply-magnified eye alighting upon a tiny filament of conductive foil that had somehow detached itself from the board beneath, interfering with the healthy working of the communications console it occupied. “There you are, vile fiend! Nanites, deal with him!” I watched with pleasure as the stream of silver particles surged out of their box and into the offending component, as if it was a troop of brave police officers defending the law—in this case, the law of conservation of energy. They would soon deal with Broken Circuit!

My viewpad sounded, signaling a live communiqué. Someone wanted to speak to me! Eagerly, I glanced at Dee.

“May I take this?” I asked.

“A short break is acceptable,” he said. He went on sorting infinitely minute electronic components into equally tiny slotted compartments. I accepted the call.

A familiar countenance filled the small screen: dark eyes in an ascetic and cleanly shaven face, topped by neat dark hair. The collar that met the noble chin must have been honored by the contact.

“Parsons!” I exclaimed with pleasure, happily resuming my quotidian persona. “I have not seen you for several days.”

“I have been busy, my lord.” His usual lack of expression seemed to be flavored with a slight taste of hesitation.

“Is there something I may help with?” I inquired. The hesitation I thought I had seen vanished as if it had never existed.

“You may, my lord. I must request a favor of you.”

A favor? Parsons was asking a favor? I savored the moment as I replied.

“No question, to the last coin in my treasury, or the last drop of blood in my veins, Parsons. What may I do for you?”

“I have a subject for you, my lord,” he said, his dark eyes fixed upon mine. “A young woman?”

I waved a dismissive hand in the vicinity of my hairline.

“I am up to here with young women, Parsons. My cousins and her friends are enjoying my discomfiture with all their might. Those I have met that I thought I had made friends have decided that I am no longer nice to know. Speak to me not of young women, Parsons! Or old ones. Or males of any species.” I might as well be evenhanded with my opprobrium.

“But your special talents are needed at this time,” Parsons pressed.

I perked up.

“My special talents? Of which do you speak? I have so many.”

“That number may be debated at another time, my lord. I wish to call upon your abilities in the occult, er, sciences.”

In spite of myself, I was intrigued. I leaned closer to the small screen.

“A reading, Parsons?” I asked. “The captain seems to be very annoyed that I am practicing on his ship.”

“One last reading.”

“Are you certain that it would be a good idea?”

“As a favor to me, sir.”

“The world is not enough for you to ask, Parsons,” I said, expansively. “Where and when?”

“Now, sir.”

“With full rig and rigmarole?” I asked, not willing to appear too eager. “It adds to the psychological impact, you know.”

“You may employ all of your impedimenta, my lord. Meet us in the hydroponics garden in fifteen minutes.”

I glanced around, suddenly reminded of my circumstances.

“I don’t think I am permitted to go yet.”

“You are dismissed,” Dee said, without turning his optic sensors toward me. “Launch time has been scheduled.”

My viewpad emitted a very shrill, short blast. I gazed at it in dismay. My personal electronics had fallen prey to transient signals of annoying tone and frequency since I had come aboard the
Bonchance
.

“I have no idea where that noise came from, Parsons,” I said. “I am very sorry for the effect it must have had on your eardrums.”

“It is of no moment, my lord,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”

“I will be there.”

I took my leave of Dee and hurried to my quarters.

Once the captain had put me on punishment detail, I had put aside my robes and charts with the thought that they would not be needed again until the
Rodrigo
launched one jump from the frontier, approximately three days hence. It was with growing joy that I unpacked all of my goods and conveyed them to the designated meeting point.

No one was in the garden when I arrived. The courting couples and those seeking a quiet place to read must have had other duties. Beyond the glass wall that separated the cultivated wilderness from the hydroponics laboratory I could hear Diesen’s voice admonishing this shift’s workforce to be more careful with their future comestibles. I had the sweet-scented leafy haven to myself. Parsons and my putative subject were yet to come, giving me adequate time to erect the pavilion, set up the table and stools, and choose from thousands of charts in my collection the most impressive one to have projecting upon the billowing wall. I sat with my hands folded upon the table, suppressing my impulse to wriggle with happiness. As this was to be my last subject aboard the
Bonchance
, I wanted to make the event memorable.

The dark presence that was Parsons loomed out from between the honeysuckle vines. Beside him trembled a slim, nervous creature. I studied her as she approached.

Anstruther had a pale complexion that acted as a handsome counterpoint to her long, dark hair and deep blue eyes. In contrast, this young woman had been painted entirely in pastels. Her skin was translucent, and her irises such a pale blue they seemed to have no color at all. Her hair, cut very short, just hinted at golden red. Her white tunic, marking her as infirmary staff, further added to her ethereal appearance. I could have plucked her off the page of one of my fairy bestiaries as a water sprite or a snow angel. She drooped reluctantly upon the stool across from me.

“Lord Thomas, this is Ensign Kan Goliffe. She is in need of your wisdom.” Parsons delivered this statement, then took two paces backward. The young woman glanced over her shoulder at him, then turned nervously to me.

I tried to look kindly and wise.

“You have come to me with a problem, I believe?” I asked. I reached for her hands, but she pulled them back against her midsection.

I was, as I have indicated, becoming adept at reading the moods of my subjects. This one was flighty and unhappy. I considered which of my many studied methods of divination would elicit the greatest response from her. If I could not make physical contact, palm reading was out of the question. A horoscope was too distant and impersonal. She needed something more intimate.

“You seem so troubled,” I said. “Let us see how the fates have been misusing you.”

From within the breast of my robe I drew forth an artifact of my own heritage. With her eyes fixed upon my hands, I unwrapped the silk cloth that sheltered a stack of ancient but still-crisp pasteboards and spread them out upon the table. The colorful images bloomed on the dark cloth like the flowers surrounding us.

“These Tarot cards belonged to my great-great-great grandmother Loche,” I said. “She had a reputation as an accomplished seer, some four millennia in the past.” I gathered them up again and shuffled them gently. “Tell me when to stop.”

I counted fifteen gathers of the deck before she emitted a tiny whisper.

“Stop. Stop!”

“This is your significator,” I said. The blindfolded woman of the Two of Swords. Troubled, indeed! I divided the remaining deck into three piles. “Point to one of these.”

Hastily, she chose the middle. I put the other two stacks beneath the middle one, and dealt ten cards off the top in a pattern that was as lost in time as Earth herself.

I placed the significator in the center.

“Do you find yourself pulled this way and that by two different forces?” I asked. I glanced up. Those colorless eyes were wide with terror. “Two different ideologies, perhaps?” I was rewarded with an open flinch.

I began to wonder precisely into what Parsons had dumped me. The Celtic cross reading showed a soul in torment. At base, she was withdrawn and shy. Since then, she had let herself be controlled by outward forces. I found I was telling myself a story that would have done credit to a dark, stormy night. Instead, I gathered up the rest of the deck and began to turn cards over one by one. I had become very good at interpreting on the fly, but I didn’t like what I was reading, in the cards or in her face.

“You are influenced from afar,” I said. The next card made my skin tingle. “And nearby as well. A lover, perhaps? More than one?”

She spoke aloud for the first time, the words almost dragged out of her as though they were chained together. I was fascinated to watch her.

“One man at home. One man on the ship.”

I turned over the Chariot, then sword cards, one after another. My subconscious kicked words out of my mouth before I knew I was speaking them. I wished I could say that I was channeling a higher force, because I felt uncomfortable being their source.

“They know one another. But you don’t manage them; they control you. What have they made you do that you don’t want to?”

She gaped at me in open horror, and I felt an answering sense of shock. I had hit, as the ancient gold miners once said, pay dirt. This was all real to her. I had never had a subject who was so open in her reactions. I watched her with a sense of guilt.

“You don’t know! You can’t know!” she wailed.

I gave her an apologetic smile.

“I don’t, really. It’s a coincidence that puts the cards into this order, but I see what I am saying resonate in your face. Tell Uncle Thomas. How bad is it? Are you cheating on them with a third lover?” I asked, playfully, but she was too terrified to see anything funny in the moment.

No. She, too was experiencing guilt. Guilt and fear and shame. I was appalled. I felt like pulling my tent down, balling it and the robe up and bundling them into the nearest disposer, but Parsons nodded once, firmly, finally. He needed me to keep going. I was fearless in physically daunting situations, but I felt helpless in the face of a fellow creature going through internal emotional distress.

“What do you fear, Ensign?” I asked, in a soft, calming voice similar to that my nannies had used when I awakened with nightmares as a child. “You’re safe here. My tent is a haven. Nothing bad has ever happened in here, I promise, except for the time I gave myself a paper cut with the cards. Are you afraid that they will both leave you?” A barely perceptible shake of the head. “No? Are they threatening you in any way?”

She sat up. For the first time that ghostly complexion took on a roseate hue. I felt very much as if I should take the name of her on-ship lover and go challenge him to unarmed combat.

“I can’t stand it any longer,” she said. Her eyes bored into mine, looking for help. “They’re
pushing
me.”

“To do what?” I asked. This time she let me take her hand. “To hurt someone? To hurt yourself? This is your safe place. No one can make you do anything you don’t want to do. Tell me. Trouble shared is trouble halved. You’ll feel so much better. Look,” I said, turning over one last card. “The Sun. Bring daylight in on this situation. It will help you to heal.”

Suddenly, words began to pour out of her. She was a medtech, brought along from another ship by a doctor who swept her off her feet. He loved her. He was her entire world. The other man she had known at university. Her first lover. He had become a businessman. I knew how powerful a relationship that could be. They wanted her to cause a catastrophe, out here near the frontier, to cause a distraction. She had to be in the middle of it, so she couldn’t be questioned later on. They pushed her so hard that she was ready to consider self-destruction a welcome escape from their badgering.

I listened with fascination. Her story was as tortuous as any digitavid drama. I felt as though I could not wait to happen next.

“But you wouldn’t kill yourself, would you?” I asked.

Her hesitation spoke volumes.

“Yes.”

I hardly recognized the squeak I emitted as my own voice.

“How?”

The device was in her station, among her personal equipment in the sick bay. It had been assembled from five different packages that were sent to her as gifts. It was set to detonate at a random moment so she would not know when the blow would fall.

I cycled through my own emotional pressures. Part of me was as fascinated as though I was face to face with a poisonous snake. I couldn’t look away or stop listening to her. Another part of me wanted to run away with my fingers in my ears. This was all too real and terrible. How could someone be driven to potential suicide by two people who were supposed to love her? But what was at the back of the unthinkable act was that they wanted her to blow up the sick bay on a warship when it was far from home and other ships. What was their motive? We could all die at any time! I glanced up at Parsons, pleading to be released from my ordeal.