The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  Martinez made a face. “Can’t you find someone else?”

  “You’re the hero,” Roland said. “That makes your money better than anyone else’s. You and my lord Severin can rehash the war tomorrow, after our special guests have left.”

  Martinez looked at Severin. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There are people here concerned with the Chee development, and it’s the polite thing to keep them happy.”

  Since the Chee development was the settlement of an entire planet, and the special guests were presumably paying for it, Severin sympathized with the necessity of keeping them happy.

  “I understand,” he said.

  Roland’s eyes tracked over Severin’s shoulder, and he raised his eyebrows. “Here’s Terza now.”

  Severin turned to see a small group on the lawn, an elegant, black-haired woman in a pale gown walking hand-in-hand with a boy of three, smiling and talking with another woman, fair-haired and pregnant.

  “Cassilda’s looking well,” Martinez remarked.

  “Fecundity suits her,” said Roland.

  “Fecundity and a fortune,” Martinez said. “What more could a man ask?”

  Roland smiled. “Pliability,” he said lightly, then stepped forward to help his pregnant wife up the stairs. Martinez waited for the other woman to follow and greeted her with a kiss.

  Introductions were made. The black-haired woman was Lady Terza Chen, heir to the high-caste Chen clan and Martinez’s wife. The child was Young Gareth. The light-haired woman was Lady Cassilda Zykov, who was apparently not an heir but came with a fortune anyway.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Severin said.

  “Thank you for keeping my husband alive,” Terza said. “I hope you won’t stop now.”

  Severin looked at Martinez. “He seems to be doing well enough on his own.”

  Lady Terza was slim and poised and had a lovely, almond-eyed face. She put a hand on Severin’s arm. “Have you eaten?”

  “I had a bite coming down in the skyhook.”

  She drew Severin toward the door. “That was a long time ago. Let me show you the buffet. I’ll introduce you to some people and then – ” Her eyes turned to Martinez.

  “Tingo with Mukerji,” Martinez said. “I know.”

  She looked again at Severin. “You don’t play tingo, do you?”

  Bankruptcy doesn’t suit me, he thought.

  “No,” he said, “I’m afraid not.”

  Terza took Martinez’s arm in both her own and rested her head on his shoulder. “It was time you came home,” she said. “I’ve never seen you with your own people.”

  He looked at her. “You’re my people, now,” he said.

  Terza had spent most of her pregnancy on Laredo, but without him: that had been wartime, with the Convocation in flight from the capital and Martinez fighting with the Fleet. After that, with the rebels driven from Zanshaa and the war at an end, the family had reunited in the High City to bask in the cheers of a thankful population. Chee and Parkhurst had been opened to settlement under Martinez patronage Roland had been coopted into the Convocation.

  Now, three years later, the cheers of the High City had faded. Enmity on the Fleet Control Board kept Martinez from command of a ship or any meaningful assignments. Terza led an active life that combined a post at the Ministry of Right and Dominion with a full schedule of High City diversions: receptions, balls, concerts, exhibitions, and an endless round of parties. Martinez was feeling more and more like his wife’s appendage, trailed around from one event to the next.

  The choice was stark: either go home or write his memoirs. Sitting down to write the story of his life, like an old man at the end of his days with nothing to offer to the empire but words, was an image he found repellent. He arranged for passage to Laredo on the huge transport Wihun, and embarked his family and their servants.

  Before he left, Martinez applied to be appointed Lord Inspector of the Fleet for Laredo, Chee, and Parkhurst, thus giving his journey an official pretext. The appointment was approved so quickly that Martinez could only imagine the joy on the Fleet Control Board at the news that Senior Captain Martinez had been willing, for once, to settle for a meaningless task.

  The appointment kept him on the active list. It gave him the authority to interfere here and there, if he felt like interfering. Maybe he would interfere just to convince himself that the postwar arrangement hadn’t made him irrelevant.

  “Captain Martinez! Lady Terza! Are you ready for tingo?”

  Martinez decided that he wouldn’t submerge into irrelevance just yet, not as long as games of tingo were without a fifth player.

  “Certainly, Lord Mukerji,” he said.

  Lord Mukerji was a short, spare Terran with wiry gray hair, a well-cultivated handlebar mustache, and all the social connections in the worlds. He had been brought in as the president of the Chee Development Company in order to provide the necessary tone. Opening two whole worlds to settlement was beyond the financial capabilities even of the staggeringly rich Lord Martinez, and outside investors had to be brought in. It had to be admitted that the Peers and financiers of the High City preferred to hear about investment opportunities in tones more congenial to their ears than those uttered in a barbaric Laredo accent.

  And Lord Mukerji had certainly done his job. Investment had poured into the company’s coffers from the moment he’d begun spreading his balm on the moneyed classes. Important Peer clans were signed on to become the official patrons of settlers, of cities, or even of entire industries. Company stock was doing well on the Zanshaa Exchange; and the bonds were doing even better.

  Martinez and Terza took their seats as a tall figure loomed above the table. “Do you know Lord Pa?” Mukerji said.

  “We’ve met only briefly, before dinner,” Martinez said.

  Lord Pa Maq-fan was a Lai-own, a species of flightless birds, and was the chairman of a privately held company that was one of the prime contractors for the Chee development. From his great height he looked at Terza and Martinez with disturbing blood-red eyes and bared the peg teeth in his short muzzle. “All Lai-own know Captain Martinez,” he said. “He saved our home world.”

  “Very kind of you to say so,” Martinez said as Lord Pa settled his keel-like breastbone into his special chair.

  He was always heartened when people remembered these little details.

  “I haven’t kept people waiting, I hope.” Lady Marcella Zykov hastened into her place at the table. She was a first cousin of Roland’s bride, Cassilda, and the chief of operations for the Chee Company, having been put in place to look after the money the Zykov clan was putting into the venture. She was a very short, very busy woman in her thirties, with a pointed face and auburn hair pulled into an untidy knot behind her head, and she absently brushed tobacco ash off her jacket as she took her place.

  “Shall we roll the bones, then?” Lord Mukerji said.

  All players bet a hundred zeniths. The bones were rolled, and they appointed Marcella the dealer. She ran the tiles through the sorting machine and dealt each player an initial schema.

  “Discard,” said Terza, who sat on her right, and removed the Three Virtues from her schema.

  “Claim,” said Lord Mukerji. He took the Three Virtues into his schema and smiled beneath his broad mustaches. He waited for Marcella to be dealt a new tile, then touched a numbered pad on the table. “Another two hundred,” he said.

  Martinez thought it was a little early in the game to raise, but he paid two hundred for a new tile just to see where the game would go. Two rounds later, when Lord Mukerji doubled, Martinez and Terza both dropped out. The game was won by Lord Pa, who had quietly built a Tower that he promptly dropped onto Lord Mukerji’s Bouquet of Probity.

  “Roll the bones,” said Mukerji.

  The bones decided to make Mukerji the dealer. As he ran the tiles through the sorting machine, Marcella looked up from the table.

  “Will you be traveling to Chee, Captain Martinez?”

  “I’
m Lord Inspector for Chee,” Martinez said, “so I’ll be required to inspect the skyhook, the station, and the other Fleet facilities.”

  “And Parkhurst as well?”

  “There’s nothing in the Parkhurst system at the moment but a Fleet survey vessel. I can wait for it to return.”

  “I can offer you transport on the Kayenta,” Marcella said, “if you can leave in twenty days or so.” She turned to Terza. “That way Lady Terza can accompany you without the discomforts of a Fleet vessel or a transport.”

  Martinez was pleasantly surprised. He’d been planning on booking a ride on one of the giant transports heading to Chee – they carried immigrants as well as cargo and had adequate facilities for passengers – but Kayenta was the Chee Company’s executive yacht, with first-class accommodations and a crew that included a masseur and a cosmetician.

  He turned to Terza, who seemed delighted by the offer. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll definitely consider the option.”

  “Are you going out to Chee yourself, Lady Marcella?” Mukerji asked.

  “Yes. They’re beginning the new railhead at Corona, and Lord Pa and I will need to consult with Allodorm.”

  Martinez caught the surprise that crossed Terza’s face, surprise that was swiftly suppressed. Terza took up her tiles.

  “Is that Ledo Allodorm?” she asked.

  Lord Pa’s blood-red eyes gazed at her from across the table. “Yes,” he said. “Do you know that gentleman?”

  “Not personally,” Terza said, as she looked down at her tiles. “His name came up, I don’t know where.”

  Martinez noted with interest that his wife wore the serene smile that experience told him was a sure sign she was telling less than the truth.

  “Shall we roll the bones?” asked Lord Mukerji.

  Mukerji doubled three times on the first three rounds and drove everyone else out of the game. Martinez realized he’d found his way into a very serious and potentially expensive contest, and began to calculate odds very carefully.

  Terza won the following game with the Six Cardinal Directions. Lord Pa won the next. Marcella the game after. Then Lord Pa, then Martinez with a Bouquet of Delights over Lord Mukerji’s Crossroads.

  “Roll the bones,” Lord Mukerji said.

  Lord Pa took another game, then Terza, and Marcella won three games in a row. In the next game, the bones rolled six, so the stakes were doubled and the bones rolled again, and this time proclaimed Martinez dealer. He discarded Two Sunsets, only to have Lord Mukerji claim it, which argued that Lord Mukerji was aiming at filling a Bouquet of Sorrows. Mukerji in his turn was dealt, and discarded, a South, which Martinez claimed to add to his East and Up to make three of the Six Cardinal Directions. On subsequent turns, Martinez was dealt a South, needing only a North and a Down for six. Mukerji claimed Four Night Winds, doubled, kept a tile he was dealt, doubled, was dealt and discarded Two Ancestors, and doubled again anyway. Terza and Lord Pa dropped out of the game during the doubling, turning over their tiles to reveal unpromising schemas.

  Martinez looked at the total and felt his mouth go dry. He received a generous allowance from his father, but to continue the game would be to abuse his parent severely.

  His worried contemplation of the score made him a critical half-second late when Marcella, dropping out of the game, made her final discard, a Down.

  “Claim,” Mukerji said.

  Mukerji had claimed the tile simply to thwart him. Martinez, the word already spilling from his lips, had no choice but to let Mukerji take the tile he badly needed to complete his hand.

  “Double,” Mukerji said, his eyes gleaming.

  Martinez looked at his schema, then scanned the discards and the tiles of the players who had dropped out of the betting. Neither of the two Norths was revealed, and neither was the second Down.

  He looked at his own tiles again. Beside the Directions he had Three and Four Ships, a Sunlit Garden, and a Road of Metal. If he got Two or Five Ships, he’d have a Small Flotilla. A Flotilla plus the Cardinal Directions equaled a Migration.

  He scanned the discards and reveals again, and saw singletons of Two and Five Ships, which meant other Ships were still in the sorting machine.

  Or already in Lord Mukerji’s schema.

  Martinez decided it was worth the risk.

  Without speaking Martinez dealt himself another tile. It was Four Ships, and he discarded it. Lord Mukerji ignored it and took another tile, which he discarded.

  Five Ships. Martinez claimed it, discarded his Road of Metal, then dealt himself another tile, which he discarded.

  He was suddenly aware that the room had fallen silent, that others stood around him, watching. Roland watched from amid the spectators with a frown on his face, and Cassilda with her hands pressed protectively over her growing abdomen. Lord Pa’s red eyes were obscured by nictitating membranes. Marcella was frozen in her seat, but her hands formed little fists and her knuckles were white.

  Terza, on his right, had the serene smile that she wore to conceal her thoughts, but he saw the tension crimping the corners of her eyes.

  Lord Mukerji was dealt and discarded a tile, and then Martinez dealt himself an Angle, which he discarded.

  “Claim,” Mukerji said in triumph.

  He laid down his completed Bouquet of Sorrows, then added the Angle to his Point and his Coordinate, making a Geometry. His grin broadened beneath the spreading mustache as he pushed the odd Down into the discard pile.

  “That’s a game for me, then,” he said.

  “Claim,” said Martinez.

  He turned over his tiles to reveal the incomplete Migration, which he completed by adding the Down and discarding his Sunlit Garden. From the room he heard a collective exhalation of breath.

  He looked at Mukerji, who was suddenly very white around the eyes. “That’s a limit schema,” Mukerji said.

  Honesty compelled Martinez to speak. “And the bones came up six, if you remember, so the limit is doubled. And I’m dealer, so that doubles again.”

  Lord Mukerji surveyed the table, then slowly leaned backwards into his chair, draping himself on the chair back as if he were a fallen flag.

  “What is the limit?” Martinez heard someone ask.

  “Ten thousand,” came the reply.

  “Fucking amazing,” said the first.

  “Well played,” said Lord Mukerji. “I do believe you let me have that Cardinal Direction on purpose.”

  “Of course,” Martinez lied.

  Mukerji held out his hand. “You must give me an opportunity for revenge,” he said.

  Martinez took the hand. “Later tonight, if you like.”

  There was applause from the crowd as the two clasped hands.

  “I need to visit the smoking lounge,” Marcella said, and stood.

  Martinez rose from the table. His head spun, and his knees felt watery. Terza rose with him and took his arm.

  “That was terrifying,” she murmured.

  “Ten thousand doubled twice,” Martinez breathed. “For forty we could buy a small palace in the High City.”

  “We already have a small palace.”

  “I could have lost it tonight.” He passed a hand over his forehead.

  Roland loomed up at his other elbow. “That was well judged,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “But you were lucky.”

  Martinez looked at him. “I am lucky,” he said. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have been a senior captain before he was thirty.

  “Just so you don’t go counting on it.” A mischievous light glowed in Roland’s eyes. “You’re not taking up tingo as a substitute for the excitement of combat, are you?”

  “Combat’s easier,” Martinez said. He looked at his brother. “That isn’t true, by the way.”

  “I know.”

  A thought passed through Martinez’s mind. “Mukerji wasn’t playing with our money, was he?”

  “You mean the Company’s? No. His presidency is ceremonia
l; he doesn’t have access to the accounts. He doesn’t even take a salary.”

  Martinez raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh,” Roland said, “we gave him lots of stock. If the Chee Company does well, so does he.”

  “He may have to sell some of his stock after tonight.”

  Roland shook his head. “He can afford a lot of nights like this.”

  “How many, I wonder,” Terza said. She stroked Martinez’s arm. “I should make sure Gareth’s got to bed. If you’re all right?”

  “I could use a drink.”

  “Absolutely not,” Roland said. “Not if you’re committed to an evening of high play.”

  Martinez let go a long breath. “You’ve got a point.”

  Terza smiled, patted his arm, and went in search of the children. Martinez went to the bar with Roland, ordered an orange juice, and poured it over ice.

  Roland ordered champagne. “You don’t have to rub it in,” Martinez said, and turned to find Severin at his elbow.

  “You’re finding your way all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. There’s a Chee band tuning in the ballroom. I’ll dance.”

  “Good.”

  “I hear you’ve done something spectacular at tingo. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  Martinez felt a tingle of vanity. “I made a mistake early on,” he said, “but I calculated the odds correctly in the end.”

  He explained the play as he made his way back to the parlor. They came to Mukerji, who was speaking with Lord Pa. “If the geologist’s report was in error, then it must be done again, of course,” he said. “I’m sure Cassilda will – ” He broke off, then looked at Martinez. “Lord captain,” he said. “Shall we resume the game?”

  “We seem to be without a few players as yet,” Martinez said. “May I introduce Lieutenant Severin? He saved the empire at Protipanu, and saved me a few months later, during the battle there.”

  Pa looked down from his great height, nictitating membranes clearing his red eyes as he gazed at Severin with studious intensity. “I don’t recall any of that in the histories,” he said.

  “The wrong people wrote the histories,” Martinez said. Those same people had decided to keep Severin’s contribution to the war a secret. He had used a trick of physics to physically move a wormhole out from under a Naxid squadron, and since the empire depended for its very existence on the wormholes that knit its systems together, the censors had decided not to remind people that such a thing could be done.