Planetary Parlay

by Cameron Cooper

  Lyth called himself Lyth Andela, because I had named him that in a crunch situation, but there were no other Lyths in the Carina worlds, so he could have just used his first name if he chose to.

  Keskemeti had to know all that, so he was asking his question to prompt Rayhel Melissa onto the subject. Apparently, Keskemeti could be subtle when he needed to be. Good to know.

  Rayhel Melissa sat back, toying with his wine glass, which appeared to be as full as it had been when the meal begun. “All Terrans have a family name associated with their given name. The two names, put together, tell everyone where a person was born and which family they are aligned with.” He nodded down the table toward Isuma Florin and Constantine. “The Constantine, there, is the head of his family. The Constantina.”

  “The Constantina family?” Keskemeti said.

  Rayhel shook his head. “The Constantina. It is plural. If you refer to the family, the name is Constantine.”

  “So an Ami is of the Constantina?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And if their first name was, say, Mary, then I would call her Mary Constantine?”

  “Ah, no,” Rayhel said quickly, looking embarrassed. “Only the Agar can be named that way. The Ami are always ‘of the Constantina’.”

  “And the Drigu, too?” I asked.

  Rayhel’s smile told me he knew I was provoking him. He answered without heat. “Yes, the Drigu the Constantina own are also ‘of the Constantina’.”

  “That must make the written versions of names interesting,” Marlee Colton said.

  “Actually, the written versions are much simpler,” Rayhel replied. “They do not change from generation to generation. I, for example, use the namegraph my father used, and that every Melissa has used for thousands of years.”

  I frowned. “But surely your father was using the namegraph when you were born. How did people distinguish between the two of you?”

  “I had my own namegraph given to me from among the family namegraphs, when I was born. When I became head of the family, I released that namegraph and took the Melissa namegraph as my own.”

  “So another Melissan could use the namegraph that you were given when you were born?” I asked. “Even if their name was Charles?”

  “Or Charlotte,” Rayhel replied. “Now you understand.”

  “How do strangers to the family know how to pronounce the namegraph, if they don’t know who it refers to?” Keskemeti asked, frowning heavily.

  Rayhel looked at him, his smile absent. “Strangers have no need to know that. Everyone in the family, of course, knows exactly who the namegraph refers to.”

  I saw Marlee Colton’s brows lift in surprise. She made a great fuss of centering the plate which had just been placed in front of her, hiding her reaction.

  I wondered how she had settled upon Colton as her last name. I sensed a story there. “Are women permitted to become the head of their family?” she asked Rayhel.

  “In a few families, women have sometimes risen to the head of the family,” Rayhel replied. “Isuma is an example of that.”

  “She is The Florin?”

  “Precisely.”

  I studied Isuma Florin, absorbing this fact. She had struck me as a lightweight, with little agency of her own, but to have become the head of a family that didn’t encourage women to such heights…that put a different light upon her. That strength did not show in her demeanor—not that we had seen so far, at least.

  Keskemeti picked up his fork and peered at the meal which had just been placed in front of us. It appeared to be some sort of protein dish with a vegetable preparation on the side. The meat was pale. It was a very simple plate, with no sauces or multiple ingredients, as promised. Sauces and additional vegetable platters were being placed down the center of the table.

  “Thank you for your explanation, Rayhel…is it permitted to use just your first name?” Keskemeti asked and looked across the table.

  Rayhel Melissa picked up his own fork and the knife that had been placed on the other side of the plate. “We are aware of your use of first names on a day-to-day basis and are happy to accommodate that custom for now.”

  “Thank you again, Rayhel,” Keskemeti said. He picked up the knife on the other side of his plate, following Rayhel’s example. “If I may ask another question?”

  “Of course,” Rayhel said, his tone friendly.

  I sliced off a piece of the meat and tried it. I suspected it to be chicken, and it certainly tasted like it. It was bland, for it lacked any sauces or flavorings. I reached for the nearest sauce and dripped a little on my plate to try with the next bite.

  “I understand that your societies are structured around the primary families, who all have ancient lineages and histories reaching back into antiquity—”

  “Well, some don’t reach quite that far,” Rayhel interjected, his tone amused.

  Huh. Not all families were considered up to standard, then. But Keskemeti was way ahead of me on that point, for he finished his question with, “I was wondering if the families are all considered equal—”

  “Yes,” Rayhel said flatly, as he poured sauces and served himself from one of the vegetable platters in the center of the table.

  “—or if there is a first among equals?” Keskemeti finished, as if Rayhel had not spoken at all.

  Good question.

  “Every family representative in the Assembly has an equal vote,” Rayhel replied. The polite tone was back.

  “But…perhaps I do not understand,” Keskemeti said, sounding sincerely apologetic, and I didn’t believe it for a second. “But is not Belfon Constantine the Director of the Assembly? Would that not make his family…superior?”

  Rayhel’s fork paused for a tiny fraction of a second. If I had not been watching him intently, waiting for his answer, I might have missed it. He put the fork in his mouth, chewed and swallowed, before replying. “You misunderstand the role of the Director of the Assembly, yes,” he told Keskemeti—and also everyone within hearing distance, for many of the little side conversations had stopped while they listened to Keskemeti quiz Rayhel. “The Director role is one of administration, of orchestrating Assembly sessions so they do not become unruly or overlong because of petty discussions about minor points.”

  “He is a traffic controller?” I asked.

  Rayhel looked as though he was trying not to laugh. “I am not sure what a traffic controller does, but if the name is literal, then yes, I suppose you might call the Director a controller of traffic.”

  I glanced down the table at Belfon Constantine, who was speaking softly to Jai and those beside him, while Isuma ate tiny morsels from her fork.

  I wasn’t a fan of politics, but I’d dealt with enough power-hungry generals and the Emperor himself, to know that Rayhel was exaggerating. Or belittling to hide the true state of the Assembly power structure.

  I suddenly yearned to be back in our suite, with the door shut, and with Slate in front of me. There were a few direct questions I wanted to ask, that I couldn’t ask here at this table. I’d been discouraged by Jai and Kristiana and even Dalton about on-the-nose questions while here on Earth. “Let the diplomats ask the probing questions,” Dalton had told me. “You’ll just piss everyone off.”

  “I don’t piss everyone off,” I’d protested. “You’re still talking to me.”

  “I’m a sucker for punishment,” Dalton replied. “You’re already angry about going there, Danny, and you’re pessimistic because of it. So for once, try to control your impulses, huh?”

  I decided a change in subject to something innocuous was needed. A palette cleanser. I stirred and raised my voice so it would carry down four places. “Isuma…may I call you that?”

  She turned her head toward me and gave me a happy smile. “I would be proud if you did use my first name. Thank you for asking. You are…Líadan, yes?”

  “Danny,” I corrected her.

  “How charming. Danny.”

  I shamelessly borrowed
Keskemeti’s approach. “Forgive me for my ignorance, Isuma, but it seems to me that you are…well, managing this dinner, and most of the administration surrounding this meeting. Have I misunderstood?”

  Jai watched me, not quite hiding his anxious expression. Dalton, on the other side of the table and far down at the other end, was staring at me, too. I think he was trying to caution me.

  Isuma gave me another bright smile. “That would be an accurate representation of one of my duties during this historical event, yes.”

  “Then you would be the right person to ask.”

  “Ask what?”

  “When we arrived here, this morning, we crossed a high bridge to reach this island. From there, we could see a wrecked spacecraft lying in the shallows just off the beach.”

  “Ah,” Isuma said, with a nod. “The Success to the Bold. Yes.”

  “I was wondering how it got there.”

  Isuma returned to her meal and loaded her fork—and not with one of her microscopic portions, this time. “No one knows how it got there. We’re not entirely sure what the name of the ship is, either. The Assembly gave the wreck that name, merely to have a name to refer to it by.”

  Rayhel’s lesson about namegraphs let me understand the implications in what she was saying. The Assembly had given the wreck a namegraph. Success to the Bold was likely a literal translation of the ideas in the namegraph.

  I felt pleased to have worked that out. Mace’s patient ideograph lessons had not gone to waste.

  I stared at her, dumbfounded. How could a ship that big, landing a hair’s breadth away from their east coast, go unnoticed? The mass of the ship alone must have made the ground tremble when it landed. There had been no impact crater around the thing, but that could have been washed away by the sea, or perhaps it hadn’t dropped very far…perhaps it had been hovering over this island, protecting it?

  How could a ship of such size, brought down while protecting its capital, not have tales told about it? It wasn’t that old, or rust would have reduced it to iron filings by now.

  All these conflicting thoughts jostled in my mind, but I managed to keep them there and not pepper her with incredulous questions. Instead, I forced my voice to the same light, happy tone she used and said, “I am a captain of a starship myself. I would very much like to visit the wreck while we are here. Would that be possible?”

  Isuma’s fork was overfull. She put it down on the plate with a small clatter. “I do not see why that would be an issue at all. Let me know when you would like to go, and I will arrange for a guide to take you there.”

  I was back to staring once more, feeling winded. I had expected a blank refusal. I would have refused, if our positions had been reversed. Let the opposition crawl all over one of my military vessels? Even the wreck of one would give away a lot about how their military worked—or it would to me, at least. The placing of the captain’s chair on the bridge, how big the bridge was, which would tell me how many direct reports the captain had to deal with in the middle of a crunch. Their fighter landing bays, if they even used smaller fighters. Armament placings—just the size of one would tell me how big the gun was that used to be mounted on it.

  Oh, I itched to check the wreck out, and learn what I could and Isuma Florin, The Florin, had just handed me the code to the door.

  Amazing. No, unbelievable.

  I murmured something that might have contained a thank you in it, and sat back to finish my meal, my mind racing.

  Belfon Constantine clearly didn’t like Isuma’s generosity. His face was thunderous as he stared down at the tablecloth before him. He was riding out his reaction, then. Perhaps saving his fury for later, when we couldn’t witness it.

  The course was cleared away and replaced by a bowl with a small heaping of—

  “Ice cream,” Keskemeti murmured, sounding surprised.

  “You know ice cream?” Rayhel asked.

  “We do,” Keskemeti said. “Surely a state cannot be uncivilized if it serves ice cream to honored guests.” He beamed at Rayhel, but the warmth didn’t reach his eyes.

  Rayhel pushed his bowl far away from him, to the center of the table. “I will not indulge, not because I resent the company, but because ice cream does not agree with my stomach. I would have two days of unpleasant side effects if I was to eat it.”

  “An intolerance,” Marlee Colton said. “We have those, too. I pity the poor people who cannot eat ice cream, though.” She scooped up a spoonful and ate it with relish, laughing at Rayhel.

  He gestured toward the bowl. “Please, take mine, if you like.”

  The movement of his arm shifted the sleeve of the jacket and not for the first time, I caught a glimpse of something red and glittering up his sleeve. It wouldn’t be a weapon—not colored red and shiny enough to draw the eye when the light fell on it. That would defeat the point of stashing it out of sight up his sleeve.

  “There is something on your wrist, Rayhel…I keep noticing it,” I said.

  Rayhel drew back the sleeve of his jacket, to reveal his wrist—and it was not a skinny wrist at all. He turned his wrist back and forth so the lights caught at the facets of an enormous blood red jewel embedded in the flesh of his wrist, just above the protruding wrist bones.

  The jewel had to be three centimeters across, roughly circular, and the facets were flattened so the jewel would not catch on anything. I stared at it, fascinated.

  “This is the Melissan mark of office for The Melissa. It symbolizes the blood debt owed to the family by the Florin.”

  “Blood debt?” I repeated. I was not the only one to echo him. Everyone stopped eating to look at Rayhel, various degrees of alarm or interest in their faces.

  Rayhel laughed. “It is purely ceremonial,” he assured us.

  “How ceremonial?” I shot back. “What is the debt the Florin owe the Melissan?”

  “That’s a forward question, Danny,” Eliot Byrne said softly, on my left.

  I didn’t care. It wasn’t a completely rude question, at least. I kept my gaze on Rayhel.

  He didn’t show any discomfort at my probing. “One hundred and seventy years ago, the Florin embarrassed the Melissa on the field of battle by ordering them to deliver a message to the enemy.”

  My heart jumped a little. “What enemy?” I demanded, leaning forward.

  Even Eliot Byrne was listening, his eyes narrowed, his spoon in the air and dripping melted ice cream.

  Rayhel’s smile faded. “I do not know how it goes in your worlds, but among Terrans, a defeated enemy is never spoken of again. We have no wish to remember them. They are banished from our history books and from our minds.”

  Which was why no one knew how a mothership had managed to splat into the water spitting distance from here.

  Or did they?

  —14—

  Jai barely waited until we were back in the suite to jump on me from a great height.

  “What were you thinking, asking them about blood feuds?” he railed at me. “And a tour of one of their military vessels?” He shook his head.

  “Even I didn’t expect her to say yes, Van Veen,” I railed right back, because I was tired and I was running on nervous energy and didn’t know if I would be able to sleep, even though I desperately wanted to. There was too much to think about. “I was nice. I didn’t swear. Rayhel didn’t even seem upset about it. But they have an enemy, Jai! They’ve got a huge military for a reason!”

  “Yes, and we already guessed that much. You didn’t need to go digging into dirty family history to find out,” Jai shot back. “We’re trying to save the Carina worlds from a war we can’t afford and can’t win. You’re not helping with your probing and cynicism.” He paused, as Marlow pushed a mug into his hands.

  “No caffeine,” Marlow murmured and moved away. Everyone else in the common room was trying to pretend they couldn’t hear us, as they dug through crates looking for whatever they were looking for. Elizabeth Crnčević and Peter Kole had one of the food crates open, and
an induction plate going on top of the next crate. That was where the warm beverage had come from.

  The Drigu, those who had assigned themselves to the people still in the common room, stood around the walls, as far out of the way as possible, with the same blank not-here looks in their faces that I’d seen on Juro’s.

  Dalton sat on a different crate watching me and Jai confront each other, not even trying to hide that he was listening.

  Jai gripped the warm mug and gave a heavy sigh. “I realize your priorities are different from ours, here, Danny, but if you could at least avoid setting our agenda back, I would appreciate it.”

  “I don’t think I did,” I returned and hated that there was a note of defensiveness in my voice.

  “Rayhel is a hard man to read, but I don’t think he was offended,” Eliot Byrne added, from behind me.

  Arati Georgeson, who made laconic men look chatty, ambled over to us rubbing his jaw. He carried a lot of extra weight, which tended to deemphasize how tall he was until he got right next to you, and he had a nervous mannerism that made it seem like he was socially introverted. Yet he was the Mayor of Blinni and had been the Mayor long before the Shutdown. He’d brought his people through the worst of the Shutdown and he was still leading them. That said more than he ever did. He had a very high forehead over sharp, intelligent eyes. I didn’t underestimate him, even though he never spoke.

  But he spoke now. “Danny…did Rayhel sit at the table after you were seated?”

  I stared at him, my heart giving a little jump.

  “Yes, he did,” Eliot Byrne said. “He and I sat at the same time, and Danny was absolutely in her chair, because I had to figure out how to not step on her dress as I sat down.”

  Kristiana straightened from stirring the pot on the plate. “He singled Danny out.”

  Peter Kole and Kristiana exchanged glances.

  “Not sex,” Peter Kole added, as if they had spoken.

  Kristiana waved her spoon at Peter. “He needs watching.”

  Peter nodded.

  Fiori sailed out of the corridor opposite the one where Dalton and my room was and paused at the edge of the common area. She had taken two rooms at the far end, one as her surgery. “Is anyone having a bad reaction to tonight’s meal?” She glanced around the room.