The Praxis (11 page)

Sula knew there was no way she was ever again going on board that ship of the dead, no way short of a direct order, and she would resist even that. She had climbed out of one dark nightmare pit and wasn't about to descend into another. The mystery, if there was one, could be solved without her.

Martinez shifted to another topic. “I'm running out of Spate to send you,” he said. “I did find an old interview, however, and I'll send it along on this transmission. I'm also enclosing two comedies with the Deuces, one of them a minor masterpiece, plus the latest installment of
Oberon
and the most recent plans for the Great Master's funeral.” His face assumed a bland pleasantness. “I hope the weather's fine where you are. I'll transmit again when duties permit.”

The screen went dark. Sula considered replaying it, then decided to save it for later, if she got lonely enough.

Aside from monitoring her engine and life-support boards, twice-a-day isometric exercise and the consumption of bland rations, she literally had nothing to do, and of course nowhere to go. Her pinnace had been designed for voyages of hours, not many days. Martinez's broadcasts, which averaged two a day, were the only human contact she could expect to receive until she requested docking instructions for the Zanshaa ring.

She wondered why Martinez bothered. Of course, men constantly reminded her that they considered her attractive, but surely there were other women on Zanshaa, and besides, conducting a courtship at a distance of light-hours seemed excessive.

Maybe he just felt sorry for her, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with only a vacuum-mummified corpse for company.

But though Sula wondered about his reasons, she found she didn't care what they were. He appeared on her viewscreen twice a day, offered news, commentary, and human warmth; he demanded nothing; and he beamed her entertainment that kept her amused in the darkness. She was deeply grateful. She was even nearing the point where she hardly noticed his accent.

 

“I'
d appreciate it if you could send me some texts,” Sula said. “I can't be watching passive entertainment all the time, enjoyable though it is. I'd like something to chew on.”

Martinez sipped at his cocktail as he glanced at the list she'd appended to the message:
Kwa-Zo's Fifth Book of Mathematical Puzzles; Proceedings of the Seventeenth Quee-ling Con
ference on the Textural Mapping of Wormhole Space; Pre-Conquest Earth Porcelains: Asia.
Not the lightest of reading.

He was beginning to believe that Cadet Sula was a toil.

“If there are any charges for the texts, I'll reimburse you,” she said.

The download fees, if any, would be insignificant, but it was nice to know that she was conscientious that way.

Martinez looked at the display. Sula lay on her acceleration couch with the helmet and upper half of her vacuum suit removed—the lower half was presumably retained for sanitary purposes. Her hair was stringy, her shirt rumpled and sweat-stained, and she looked in need of a shower, but her gaze was lively and interested, and she seemed much improved over the pale, stricken ghost he'd seen after she found Blitsharts dead in his cockpit.

“Thank you for taking such an interest in me,” Sula went on. “I enjoy your messages and everything you've sent me, and I only wish I could send you messages at least as interesting and amusing as yours. But—” She gave a little sigh. “—I'm afraid the news from here has been pretty dull. The most exciting events of the day involve bowel movements, and I'll spare you the data unless you have an unusually morbid turn of mind.”

She could still joke, then, Martinez noted. For some reason, this cheered him. He took another sip of his cocktail in celebration.

Sula shifted on her couch, moving easily in the half-gravity of her ship. “Thanks for the information about Blitsharts's insurer and creditors. I'm not going to go poking around about
Midnight Runner,
though—I don't want the official investigators complaining that an overeager cadet messed up their evidence. Sorry.” She gave a wan smile. “I hope you'll forgive me for declining the opportunity to pass on something interesting for a change.”

Martinez shrugged. He knew that in the same situation he personally would have been over
Midnight Runner
with a magnifying glass and a toothbrush to find out what had happened to Blitsharts. At the very least he'd have downloaded everything he could from the onboard computer.

Oh well. Maybe Sula didn't have that kind of curiosity.

“Thanks again for keeping in touch,” Sula said. “I'll work on making up something exciting for the next transmission.” Her eyes flicked off-camera. “Computer,” she commanded. “End transmission.”

The end-stamp appeared on the screen.

Pneumatics sighed as Martinez leaned his long body back in his desk chair. He was in his apartment, whiling away the moments between the end of his shift and the time when he'd have to leave for a scheduled supper with his sisters.

He considered sending a reply to Sula, then decided there wasn't enough time. He finished his cocktail and was on the verge of blanking the screen when it chimed to indicate an incoming call. He answered and found himself staring at Warrant Officer Amanda Taen.

“Hello?” she queried. “I'm back on station.” A broad smile spread across her face as she saw that Martinez had answered in person.

He was momentarily derailed as he tried to switch tracks from Sula to the woman he had until recently been pursuing. Warrant Officer Taen was a contrast to Cadet Sula in almost every particular: where Sula was a pale-skinned blonde, Taen had abundant, glossy chestnut hair, dark eyes, and a rosy complexion. Sula's figure—so far as Martinez could tell from the video, anyway—was certainly feminine, but it was also slim; whereas Taen's was so lush as to be almost tropical in its abundance.

Taen exuded a sense of mischief and readiness for fun that haloed her like a cloud of pheremones. Martinez suspected she had no acquaintance whatsoever with
Kwa-Zo's Fifth Book of Mathematical Puzzles
.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Satellite maintenance. The usual.”

Warrant Officer Taen was second-in-command of a small vessel that maintained, replaced, and repaired the hundreds of communication and sensing satellites in the Zanshaa system. She was frequently absent for days at a time, but her furloughs were equally long, and more than compensated for the length of her missions.

“I'm engaged for this evening,” Martinez said. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

Taen's smile broadened. Her look was so direct that Martinez felt it more in his groin than in his mind.

“I have no plans,” she said. “I hope you can make some for me.”

Martinez did so, feeling regret as he did so that it wasn't Sula who had just landed, with a furlough and time on her hands.

Oh well, he thought. The Fleet did not consider junior officers' preferences when it made its schedules. Taen was available and Sula was not, and he would be a fool to deny himself one pleasure just because another was a quarter light-hour away.

 

A
fter speaking to Amanda Taen, Martinez changed into semiformal evening clothes—nothing was
ever
casual with his stylish sisters—and took a cab to the old Shelley Palace, where the Martinez salon had been established.

Along the way, he passed the famous statue of the Great Master Delivering the Praxis to Other Peoples, with its life-size Shaa—twice the size of a Terran—standing on its thick legs with its prow-shaped head lifted toward the horizon. Gray folds of skin draped artfully from the arm that thrust out a display on which the Praxis itself had been carved, beginning with the proud, rather ominous declaration,
All
that is important is known.
Before the Great Master knelt representatives of the subject races, all frozen in postures of astonishment and delight.

Martinez glanced at the statue with a morose eye and went on his way.

The Shelley Palace was a huge old thing, several buildings connected by galleries and passages, built over centuries in a succession of architectural styles, horned stone demons capering on the rooftop next to sleek, metallic abstracts of the Devis mode. Lord and Lady Shelley now lived in a smaller, more modern building on a more fashionable street, rented the front part of their old palace to the Martinez sisters, and used the buildings in back as storage for old retainers and penniless relations, who were often seen drifting about the courtyard garden like ancient, homeless ghosts.

Martinez was let into the building by a young, homely maidservant—no woman in the household was allowed to outshine the Martinez sisters. He was taken to the south drawing room, the one with the view of the Lower City, where he found his sisters Vipsania and Walpurga. They rose so he could buss their cheeks.

“Cocktail?” Vipsania asked.

“Why not?”

“We've just made a pitcher of blue melon.”

“That would suit.”

Martinez took his drink—which was neither blue nor contained melon—and took a chair facing his sisters.

Vipsania wore a mauve gown, and Walpurga a turquoise one. Otherwise the sisters looked very much alike, sharing Martinez's olive skin and dark hair and eyes. Vipsania's face was perhaps a little sharper, and Walpurga's jaw a little fuller. Like Martinez, they were tall, and like Martinez, their height was in the length of their spine, not their legs. Both were imposing more than beautiful, and intelligent much more than not.

Martinez couldn't imagine how he came to be related to either one of them.

“We heard from Roland,” Walpurga said. “He's coming to Zanshaa.”

Roland was Martinez's older brother, the presumed heir to the feudal privilege enjoyed by the Martinez clan on Laredo.

“Why?” Martinez asked.

“He's coming for the Great Master's end.”

Mental calculations flickered through Martinez's mind. “Word hasn't reached Laredo by now, surely.”

“No. He anticipated.”

“He wants to be in at the death?” Martinez wondered.

“He wants to be in at the
beginning,
” Vipsania said. “He wants to petition the Convocation to open Chee and Parkhurst to settlement.”

Under Martinez patronage, of course. That was clear but unstated.

Chee and Parkhurst were two habitable worlds that had been discovered by the Exploration Service in the heyday of planetary discovery, ages ago. As far as anyone knew, they could be reached only by way of wormholes in Laredo's system. Both had been scheduled for settlement, but as the number of Great Masters had grown smaller, so had their ambitions. The expansion of the empire had halted, and the Exploration Service reduced to a fragment of its former self.

It had long been the ambition of the Martinez clan to sponsor habitation of the two nearly forgotten worlds. To be patrons of
three
worlds—now
that
would elevate them to the highest, most rarified ranks of the Peerage.

“I wouldn't expect the Lords Convocate to alter the Great Masters' policy with any speed,” Martinez asked.

Vipsania shook her head. “There are
plenty
of little projects left unfinished. Not all planets to be settled, of course, but appointments to be made, contracts awarded, grants offered, awards rendered, revenues to be collected or disbursed…if Roland, with Lord Pierre's help, can find enough allies in the Convocation, I think the project can move along very well.”

Martinez grimaced. “I hope Roland can get more action out of Lord Pierre than I can,” he said. “And speaking of Lord Pierre, he's got a cousin named PJ who—”

“Gareth!”

Martinez rose as his youngest sister, Sempronia, rushed into the room. She flung her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. He returned the embrace with pleasure.

Martinez genetics had reached back many generations to find whatever had provided Sempronia's template. Her wavy light-brown hair had lightened to gold in the sun, and her hazel eyes were likewise flecked with gold, both hair and eyes contrasting dramatically with the Martinez olive complexion. Her nose was tip-tilted, her lips full, her legs long. She was the only one of his sisters in whom Martinez could at all see the lively girl he had left behind, years ago, on Laredo.

“What have I missed?” Sempronia asked.

“I was about to broach the subject of your marriage,” Martinez said.

Sempronia's eyes widened. “
My
marriage?”

“One of you, anyway. It doesn't seem to matter which.”

He explained about Lord Pierre's cousin PJ. “I don't see why we should marry into a family that won't even invite us to their palace,” he concluded, “particularly as the fellow's going to be a complete burden on his in-laws.”

“We don't absolutely
know
that,” Vipsania said. A little frown perched between her eyebrows. She turned to Walpurga. “What do we know of PJ?”

“He's a social creature,” Walpurga said. “Quite popular, I understand—well-dressed, well-connected, of course, good-looking. I could ask Felicia about him—she's in a better position to know.”

“You're not taking this seriously,” Martinez protested.

Vipsania turned her frown toward him. “Not yet,” she said. “But the Ngenis are a family who could be useful to us in the matter of Chee and Parkhurst.”

“They're our patrons. They're supposed to be useful to us anyway.”

“And in that case we'd have to cut them in on any profits,” Walpurga said. “It might be cheaper to take PJ off their hands.”

“Which of you,” Martinez asked, “plans to marry this wart on the body politic?”

“Not me!” Sempronia declared. “I'm still in school!”