"Wait a minute," Chulayen began. "I have not—I cannot—Grandmother, at least give me some time to settle my personal life! You know what long hours this position means; I must find somebody to watch over Neena if I am to take it up. She has . . . nightmares," he finished lamely.
Madee cocked an ear toward the sounds of a clapping-and-singing game in the outer room. "Oh, I think Khati will do well enough to take charge of Neena. After all, she is out of a job now."
"Somebody must be with Neena at night, and if I am to be Minister pro tem—"
"So Khati will live in your house." Madee lifted an eyebrow. "Surely the Minister for Lands and Properties has a household big enough to accommodate one small girl-servant?"
"Her place is in my mother's house, with me," Sonchai protested.
"Absolutely not," Madee told him. "Do you forget that I live next door to your mother? Do you think I wish to be disturbed by your childish quarreling all day and night?"
She quashed Chulayen's remaining protests without mercy and sent him away to begin the monumental task of sorting through the previous Minister's records, which had been left in some disarray.
"Khati living in his household, caring for his daughter," Sonchai brooded. "I don't like it. You will have those two married before they know what happened to them."
"Weren't you just complaining about the difficulty of finding a husband for her? Stop looking at the dark side of everything, Sonchai. Khati needs some time with a gentle man who can help her forget the Bashir, and Chulen needs a girl to protect to help him forget Anusha. Trust Mother Madee, she knows best."
"That sounds," Sonchai commented, "remarkably like a campaign slogan."
Madee smiled.
* * *
Elsewhere, similar rearrangements were taking place with similar complications and protests.
"Isn't this slightly illegal?" Calandra Vissi asked.
Evert Cornelis shook his head. "Kalapriya is now a direct protectorate of Rezerval. It is definitely the Federation's job to provide liaisons with each of the independent tribal territories. And do you have any idea how hard it is to find people who know anything about Kalapriya, have some concept of Federation law, are willing to work under primitive conditions, and have no ties whatsoever to Barents?"
"What makes you think you've found one now? I'm a Diplo, not a bloody administrator. I don't know anything about running a state!"
"I don't have to ask you," Evert said simply. "You took the Diplomatic Oath to serve where assigned."
"As a Diplo, not as a Resident or Liaison or whatever you call it!"
"The oath doesn't say anything about choosing your role. Annemari has ceded your services to my office on account of the emergency, and I'm assigning you to Udara." Evert smiled. "Don't fret, Calandra, you won't be the only Diplo stuck on Kalapriya. Anybody with a language download chip who isn't presently engaged on work of Federation security is in danger."
"I don't see why you can't use Barents Trading Society people. They weren't all involved in the 'mats-for-arms plot, you know."
"Officially," Evert said, "no member of the Barents Trading Society may act in any role whatsoever on Kalapriya, public or private, until the special commission has officially investigated and exonerated them. Unofficially, we're reassigning the ones we're sure of to administrative posts wherever we can slot them in, appointments to be confirmed and back pay made up only when the inquiry has finished. So if you think you have it bad . . ."
"No pay until a Federation Special Commission completes its inquiry," Calandra said. "That could be years."
"They should have cleaned their own house when they had the chance," Evert said. "A few years on Kalapriya without pay or offworld luxuries beats a Federation prison."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Calandra, "and anyway, what makes you think they're going to have to do without offworld luxuries? It seems to me that the Federation needs to rethink its entire position on cultural contamination. What did we learn from Kalapriya, anyway? That some Barentsians are greedy and corrupt and not to be trusted with power? Give me a break. Some of every group will be greedy and corrupt and not to be trusted with power. Most, probably. I think the real lesson is that you can't have contact with primitive cultures and not have an effect on them. You can't quarantine technology like a communicable disease. The primitive cultures of the Dispersal are going to have culture shock and a giant technical leap forward. The only question is whether the Federation exerts some control over the flow of technology, or puts down a blanket ban and leaves it to the criminals and smugglers."
Evert's smile grew broader. "And I thought you didn't know anything about governing? As soon as you're settled in Udara I want a position paper from you on that very subject."
"I haven't agreed yet," Calandra warned him. "Would you rather have a cooperative Diplo-Resident or one who does the absolute minimum required?"
"That," Evert said, "rather depends on the price of the cooperation, doesn't it?"
Calandra told him exactly what it would cost.
* * *
Gabrel and Maris were still on Kalapriya, in Valentin. As one of the few Barents Trading Society members who was known to be absolutely clear of any involvement with the 'mats-for-arms trading ring, Gabrel was temporarily filling three different executive positions and consulting daily with Federation committees on the reorganization of Kalapriya as a direct protectorate. And he hadn't made a move toward Maris since they got back, which was extremely frustrating. It seemed as though getting back to Valentin had reactivated all his proper Barents officer-and-a-gentleman training.
Granted, they didn't have a lot of privacy, but she could have stayed with him in his quarters, couldn't she? Instead, Maris was living at House Stoffelsen, now a sort of elegant boarding house for Federation employees; the Stoffelsens had departed Valentin rather hastily and without filing travel plans after Tasman. A number of their fellow Society members had followed suit; Valentin was notably empty of traditional colonial types, and notably full of Rezerval bureaucrats whose climate-controlled suits kept disappearing, requiring them to indent for replacements on a continual basis.
"The Kalapriyans are taking to outworlder technology like a Rudhrani bureaucrat to graft," Gabrel observed of this trend one evening when they were taking a decorous walk down the long shaded avenue that led from House Stoffelsen to the streets of Valentin. "What do you suppose they'll do when the power packs run down?"
"They're solar-powered," Maris told him. "They won't run down. And if they did, I expect the Kalapriyans would find a way to steal new power packs too. They don't seem to be sufferin' from whaddyacallit, cul-something?"
"Culture shock?"
"Righto. Except it is something shocking the way they get hold of them climate suits. Good thing the climate control unit for the office buildings ain't portable."
Gabrel coughed, seemed about to say something, then stopped.
"What is it?"
"I—oh, nothing."
Maris regarded him with exasperation. "It's been 'oh, nothing' for days now. If you've come to your senses and repented getting involved with a Tasman scumsucker, why don't you come right out and say so?"
"If I didn't want to be here with you, I wouldn't have to," Gabrel pointed out. "I could be too busy with work. Actually I am too busy with work; you can't imagine how many lies I have to tell before I can sneak off to spend an hour with you."
"Good practice for you," Maris said heartlessly. "Anyway, why do you work so hard to get a free hour or two if we're going to spend it walking up and down in the park like this?"
Gabrel went dark red. "I'm trying to treat you with respect. Maybe you aren't used to that, but—"
"Huh. I thought it wouldn't take you long to remember what I was."
"I—" Gabrel took a deep breath and stopped. "Maris, are you trying to pick a quarrel with me?"
"No! Well, maybe. Sort of." She was trying to break through the formal Barents courtesy that had separated
them since they got back to Valentin. Quarreling wouldn't have been her preferred way to do it, but she had to do something to find out how he really felt—and to break her news to him. Come to think of it, Gabrel wasn't the only one who'd been unnaturally reserved. She'd been keeping a lot back too. But she couldn't keep it back any longer, not now that Calandra had confirmed it for her; the news was about to bubble out of her. "I . . . I'm not sure what you want."
Gabrel regarded her with exasperation. "I want to marry you. I want everybody in Valentin to see that I respect you and am treating you like my promised wife. I've just been waiting until I knew what position I could offer you."
"Do you think I care about that?"
"Well, I do!" Gabrel stopped shouting and controlled himself with a visible effort. "And I just got confirmation of it today. If you happen to be interested. I can support a wife now."
"You don't need to support me. I'm getting a position too, so there!" Oh, the God of Major Fuckups was sure on the job tonight. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. She had meant to tell him her news, cry on his shoulder a bit about having to be separated for a while, get him to promise to wait for her. Having a fight wasn't on the agenda at all.
Gabrel went on as if he hadn't heard her, which was probably a good thing . . . or was it? Maybe the Valentin Gabrel couldn't hear the words "job" and "girl" in the same sentence. That would be a more serious problem than the years of separation that lay ahead of them. "I've just had formal confirmation that when the Federation completes its takeover here, I'm to be posted as assistant to the new Resident in Udara. The post carries a liberal allowance for lodging and dependents, so we can be married as soon as my orders are cut."
"Well . . . there's one problem," Maris said. "It looks like I'm going to have to go away for a while."
"Not back to Tasman?"
"Of course not, I couldn't go back to that life even if I wanted to. They were gonna kill me, remember?"
"Yes, well. Your—um, 'friends' aren't operating out of there anymore, you know. You'd be perfectly safe."
The upheavals of the 'mats-for-arms scandal had caused a much more thorough shaking up of Tasman than the search for a disappeared Diplo would have done. The disused tunnels that Johnivans' gang had made their home were mapped now, and filled with foam sealant. Johnivans and Keito had spaced themselves rather than be arrested; most of the rest of the gang were serving lengthy sentences on distant prison worlds. Maris had been unable to find out what had happened to Nyx; she hoped the computer hacker had hacked herself a new identity and vanished into the databases of the Federation.
"Well, where are you going, and for how long? I need to tell my family and set a date. They'll want to come here for the wedding. Or maybe we should be married on Barents," Gabrel mused. "My mother would like that, and it would be cheaper for us to go there than for the whole clan to come out to Kalapriya . . ."
"We've got time to work that out," Maris said uncomfortably.
"Not all that much. I expect my posting will be finalized within a few weeks, and I'll be expected to go right on upcountry when that happens. Good thing, really, my mother won't have a chance to make a Big Society Deal out of our wedding. There won't be time."
"Um . . . I expect she'll have plenty of time," Maris said in a small voice.
"Why? How long are you going to be gone for, anyway? And you never did tell me where you're going."
"I'm going," Maris informed him, "to Rezerval. I got a scholarship to Diplo School."
"You what? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I been tryin' to tell you, but you kept interrupting! The Calandra Vissi Diplomatic Scholarship," Maris said dreamily. "Imagine, me, a Tasman scumsucker, learnin' all that stuff about other worlds and unarmed combat and political science and astrogation and diplomacy and languages and . . ."
"But you said you were going to stay here and marry me."
"I want to go to school first."
"I thought you loved me!"
"I do love you! But I don't hardly know who 'I' am, Gabrel, don't you see? First I was what Johnivans wanted me to be, then I was trying to be Calandra, and now . . ." Maris couldn't find words for it. "I never had no real education, you know? And I never seen anywhere but Tasman and Kalapriya. And not even the upper levels of Tasman. Now I got a chance to learn something and be somebody. To be a real person. With an ID that ain't a forgery, and skills that count for something. And . . ." She was out of words to convince Gabrel. If he hated her for going away to school, it would break her heart. But she would go anyway.
"And you're only seventeen," Gabrel said gently. "I keep forgetting."
"Nice Barents girls get married at seventeen," Maris argued against herself.
"And you," Gabrel said, "are definitely not a 'nice Barents girl.' That's one of the things I love about you." He took her by the shoulders, holding her very gently, as if he were afraid she might disappear if he held on too tightly. "You need to fly, and I'm trying to clip your wings. Go to Diplo School, Maris. I can wait."
"You want me to go?"
"Gods, no! I want to drag you back to my quarters and ravish you until you change your mind."
"Okay by me." Maris glanced at her shiny new chronocalculator, a parting gift from Calandra. "Like you said, I'm not a nice Barents girl. And after going off upcountry with you, I don't think I got much reputation left to ruin. We got three days before me shuttle leaves. How much ravishing you think you can get in by that time?"
"Enough to change your mind about going away to school?" Gabrel said.
Maris grinned. "I don't think so. But if you want to try, I think it's only fair to give you a chance!"
THE END
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Disappearing Act Page 34