The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  “We’re perfectly safe from the black hole, my lord,” Shon-dan said. “We’re nowhere near the danger zone.”

  Martinez quietly turned off the virtual display to take a look at Lord Pa. He sat in a Lai-own chair that cradled his breastbone, and was bent over the room’s game board. The light from the display shone up on his face, on the short muzzle and deep red eyes.

  Behind Pa the yellow chesz wood panels, inset with red enjo in abstract designs, glowed in the recessed lights of the lounge. A heavy crystal goblet sat near one hand, filled with Lai-own protein broth.

  Comforts, Martinez thought. Guaranteed profit. Right.

  “Perhaps we should break for now,” Shon-dan said. He had noticed Martinez leaving the virtual display.

  “Thank you,” Terza said. “That was breathtaking. I hope we can do it again.”

  “I’d be delighted,” Shon-dan said, rising. She was a Lai-own, with golden eyes, and wore a formal academic uniform of dark brown with several medals of scholastic distinction. She was young for all her honors, and the feathery side hairs on her head were still a youthful brown.

  “We have another twenty-three days to Chee,” she said, “and the stars will be there the entire time.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” Martinez said.

  He rose from his couch and walked to the bar, where he poured himself a brandy. He idled toward Lord Pa, who was still bent over his game. Martinez scanned the board, spotted at once the move that Lord Pa should make, and began to point it out before he decided not to.

  On the twentieth day of the voyage, Kayenta’s passengers were beginning to get on each other’s nerves a little.

  The first part of the trip had been as pleasant and social as possible, given that Martinez suspected one of the party of stealing from his family. Marcella, Lord Pa, Martinez, Terza, and Shon-dan had dined together each day. Tingo and other games had been suggested, but interest in gambling waned after it became clear that Terza and Martinez weren’t interested in playing for high stakes, and that Shon-dan’s academic salary didn’t allow her to play even for what passed for small change amid Peers.

  The conversation during and after meals had ranged far and wide, though Terza had cautioned Martinez about raising the kind of questions he burned to ask, detailed questions about the financial arrangements between the Chee and Meridian companies. “It will sound like an interrogation,” she said.

  Martinez confined himself to a few mild queries per day, beginning with broad questions about the progress of the Chee settlements, then going into more detail as the conversation developed. Marcella and Pa seemed pleased enough to talk about their work, and Martinez found himself genuinely interested in the technical details, though Martinez made a point of breaking off when he saw a slight frown on Terza’s face, or felt the soft touch of her hand on his thigh.

  Shon-dan talked about astronomical subjects. Martinez told his war stories. Terza avoided the subject of her work at the Ministry, but spoke of High City society, and brought out her harp and played a number of sonatas.

  But now, by the twentieth day, the conversations had grown a little listless. Marcella spent much time in her cabin, working on Chee Company business, smoking endless cigarettes, and playing spiky, nerve-jabbing music that rattled her cabin door in its frame. Lord Pa received and sent detailed memoranda to his crews on Chee, and otherwise spent a lot of time puzzling over his game board.

  Martinez sent frequent videos to his son – the three months aboard Wi-hun with a small and lively child had been challenging enough for all concerned, so Young Gareth had been left on Laredo with his nursemaid and his doting grandparents. The videos that Martinez received in return were full of excitement, for Lord Martinez had introduced his grandson to his collection of vintage automobiles, and had been roaring around on his private track with Young Gareth as a passenger.

  “Gareth’s favorite is the Lodi Turbine Express,” Martinez told Terza. “At his age I liked that one myself, though I liked the Scarlet Messenger better.” And then, at her look, said, “My father hasn’t had an accident yet, you know.”

  “I’ll try to be reassured,” Terza said. She had just come from her dressing room, where she’d prepared for bed: her black hair had been brushed till it glowed and then tied with ribbon, and her face was scrubbed of cosmetics and softly sheened with health. Over her nightgown she wore a bed jacket that crackled with gold brocade.

  After Shon-dan’s astronomical exhibition they’d retired to their suite, glossy light behl-wood paneling veined in blood-red, a video screen in a lacy Rakthan frame, a bathtub hacked out of a single block of chocolate-brown marble and which – to avoid gooseflesh on entering – was warmed by hidden heating elements of a vaguely sonic nature.

  “My father could have worse hobbies,” Martinez pointed out. “Racing pai-car chariots, say.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll try to keep that in mind, too.”

  Twenty days on the small vessel had, perhaps, begun to unravel slightly the serenity that Terza carried with her, the unearthly tranquility that Martinez had come to admire as her greatest accomplishment. He rose from his chair and stood behind her, his big hands working through the crisp silk of her jacket to loosen her shoulder muscles. She sighed and relaxed against him.

  “You miss Gareth, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “So do I.”

  They had not spent so much time apart from the boy since he had been born.

  “This has got to be dull for you,” Martinez said. “Maybe we should have left you on Laredo.”

  “Dull?” Her tone was amused. “Reviewing contracts in hopes of discovering hidden felonies? Surely not.”

  He smiled. “Won’t it be exciting if you actually find one?”

  “But I won’t find one. Not in the contracts. Lawyers have been all over the contracts to make sure no hint of impropriety will be found. If there’s anything to be found, it will be in interpretation and practice.”

  He hadn’t been able to obtain any of the contracts that the Chee Company had signed with their prime contractor – neither he nor Terza nor Roland were officers of the company. But in his capacity as Lord Inspector he’d acquired the entire file of the dealings the Meridian Company had with the Fleet, for building Fleet installations on Chee and in Chee orbit. But Martinez hadn’t enough experience to understand the contracts particularly well, and so Terza had been pressed into the job.

  “Escalator clauses are always suspect, and the contracts have plenty of them,” Terza said. “On a big job there are always a thousand places to hide illegitimate expenses, and this job is literally as big as a planet. Meridian is allowed to revise the estimates if unexpected conditions cause their own costs to rise, and there are always unexpected conditions. A little to the right, please.”

  Martinez obliged. “Surely they can’t jack up their expenses forever,” he said.

  “No. In the case of the Fleet contracts, the local Fleet representative has to agree that the rises are justified.”

  “According to the records she almost always did,” Martinez said. “And now she’s received her captaincy and has been posted to the Fourth Fleet, so I won’t be able to ask her any questions.”

  Amusement returned to Terza’s voice. “I’m sure that if you saw her, she would of course immediately inform you of any unjustified cost overrides that she’d personally approved. I think you’re better off with the new commander. He won’t be obliged to defend his predecessor’s expenses.” She stretched, raising her arms over her head, torquing her spine left and right. Martinez could feel the muscles flex beneath his fingertips.

  He left off his massage as she bent forward, flexing her spine again, pressing her palms to the deep pile carpet. She straightened, sighed, turned to face him.

  “Thank you,” she said. She put her arms around him, pillowed her head on his chest. “This could still be a pleasant vacation, you know.”

  I’ve been on vacation for t
hree years, he wanted to say. Digging around in old Fleet construction contracts was the most useful thing he’d done in ages.

  But he knew what Terza meant. “I’ll try to remember to look at the stars now and again,” he said.

  Her arms tightened around him. “I had thought we might make good use of the time.”

  Martinez smiled. “I have no objection.”

  Terza drew her head back, her dark eyes raised to his. “That’s not entirely what I meant,” she said. “I thought we might give Gareth a brother or sister.”

  A rush of sensation took his breath away. Martinez’s marriage had been arranged, not an uncommon phenomenon among Peers – and in Martinez’s case, Roland had arranged the marriage with a crowbar. For all that Martinez had genuinely wanted a child, young Gareth had been arranged as well. Martinez knew perfectly well that Terza had been lowering herself to marry him – Lord Chen required significant financial help from the Martinez clan at the time – and Martinez had always wondered just what Terza had thought of the long-armed provincial officer she’d been constrained, on only a few hours’ acquaintance, to marry.

  Wondered, but never asked. He never asked questions when he knew the answers might draw him into sadness.

  He had watched with increasing pleasure as Terza floated into his life, supported by that quality of serenity that was, perhaps, just a bit too eerily perfect. He had never been completely certain what might happen if Lord Chen, his finances recovered, ordered his daughter to divorce. It was always possible that she would leave her marriage with the same unearthly tranquility with which she’d entered it. He had never known precisely what was going on behind that composed, lovely face.

  Until now. A second child was not part of the contract between their families.

  He and Terza were writing their own codicil to the contract, right now.

  “Of course,” Martinez said, when he got his breath back. “Absolutely. At once, if possible.”

  She smiled. “At once isn’t quite an option,” she said. “I’ll have to get the implant removed first. Kayenta’s doctor can do it, or we can wait till we get to Chee.” She kissed his cheek. “Though I’d hate to waste the next twenty-three days.”

  Kayenta’s doctor was a sour, elderly Lai-own who had scarcely been seen since the beginning of the journey, when he gave the obligatory lecture about weightlessness, acceleration, and space-sickness. Whatever the quirks of his personality, however, he was presumably competent at basic procedures for interspecies medicine.

  “I think you should see the old fellow first thing tomorrow,” Martinez said. “But that doesn’t mean we should waste tonight.”

  Her look was direct. “I hadn’t intended to,” she said.

  Hours later, before the forenoon watch, Martinez woke from sleep with a start, with a cry frozen on his lips. Terza, her perfect tranquility maintained, slept on, her head pillowed on his chest.

  He hadn’t had one of these dreams in at least two months. For a moment, blinking in the darkness of Kayenta’s guest suite, he had seen not Terza’s black hair spread on his chest, but hair of white gold, framing a pale face with blazing emerald eyes.

  His heart thundered in his chest. Martinez could hear his own breath rasping in his throat.

  There were other reasons why he hadn’t inquired what Terza thought of their marriage.

  He had his own secrets. It seemed only fair that he allow Terza to keep hers.

  The cable of the elevator descended from geostationary orbit, a line that disappeared into the deep green of the planet’s equator like a fishing line fading into the sea. On the approach, what the monitors showed Martinez of the elevator itself was a pale gray tower of shaped asteroid and lunar material, the massive counterweight to the cable. The tower terminated in a series of sculpted peaks that looked like battlements, but which were actually a kind of jigsaw mechanism to lock additional weights into place should they be needed.

  Ships docked at the elevator terminus at the base of the tower, in zero gravity. Passengers then traveled down a weightless tube to the hub of the residential and commercial areas of the station, where they could shift laterally to either one of two fat rotating wheels of white laminate that contained living quarters for workers, Fleet personnel, Shon-dan’s astronomers, and anyone in transit from Chee to anywhere else.

  Martinez thanked Marcella and Lord Pa for the ride on Kayenta before they left the ship, since he knew that once he transferred to the station, the awesome role of Lord Inspector would descend on him, and a long series of rigid protocols would take place.

  Which in fact they did. As soon as Martinez floated out of the docking tube, one white-gloved hand on the guide rope that had been strung from the tube into the bay, he heard the bellow of petty officers calling the honor guard to attention, and the public address system boomed out “Our Thoughts Are Ever Guided by the Praxis,” one of the Fleet’s snappier marching tunes.

  The honor guard were all Lai-own Military Constabulary in full dress, with the toes of their shoes tucked under an elastic strap that had been stretched along the deck to keep everyone properly lined up in zero gravity. Standing before them, braced at the salute, was Lieutenant Captain Lord Ehl Tir-bal, who commanded the station, and his staff.

  Lord Ehl was young, and short for a Lai-own – he and Martinez could almost look level into one another’s eyes. Lord Ehl introduced his staff, and then turned to the cadaverous civilian who stood behind the party of officers.

  “My lord,” he said, “may I introduce Meridian Company’s chief engineer, Mister Ledo Allodorm.”

  “Mister Allodorm,” Martinez said, and nodded.

  “An honor to meet you, my lord.” Allodorm’s face, like those of all Daimong, was permanently fixed in the round-eyed, open-mouthed stare that a Terran could read either as surprise or terror or existential anguish. His voice was a lovely tenor that sounded like a pair of trumpets playing in soft harmony, and Martinez could see his soft mouth parts working behind the gray, fixed bony lips as he spoke.

  Martinez performed a ritual inspection of the honor guard, after which Martinez, Terza, their servants, and their baggage were loaded into a long, narrow viridian-green vehicle that would carry them to their lodging. Lord Ehl and Allodorm both joined them, and Ehl pointed out the features of the station as, on little puffs of air, the vehicle rose and began its journey down the docking bay.

  The post of Chee’s station commander was Lord Ehl’s first major assignment, and his delight in his new command showed. He pointed out the features of the station, which was fresh and glossy and, to Martinez’s mind, rather overdesigned. Every feature, from the cargo loaders to the computer-operated ductwork on the air vents, was of the largest, brightest, most efficient type available.

  “The air-purifying and circulation systems are custom designed,” Ehl said. “So is the power plant.”

  “We didn’t just take a thousand-year-old design off the shelf,” Allodorm said. “Everything on this station was rethought from basics.”

  Custom design is very expensive, Martinez thought. “It’s very impressive,” he said. “I’m not used to seeing new stations.”

  “The first new station in nine hundred years,” Allodorm said. “And now that the Convocation’s begun opening new systems to expansion, we can expect to see many more.”

  “You’ve done all this in a little over two years,” Martinez said. “That’s fast work.”

  And awfully fast for such custom work. Perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t custom after all.

  How would anyone know? No one had built an orbital station in eons. You could take an old standard design and change a few minor specifications and call it custom work.

  All he knew was that, even if the circulation system was custom designed, the air smelled the same as it did on every other station he’d ever been on.

  The vehicle jetted down the connecting tube to the hub of the two wheels, where it entered a large elevator and began to descend toward the living are
as. “You’ll be the first occupant of the Senior Officers’ Quarters,” Ehl said. “There will be a full staff on hand to look after you. Please let one of them – or me – know if anything is unsatisfactory.”

  Gravity began to tug with greater insistence at Martinez’s inner ear. “Thank you, lord elcap,” Martinez said. “I’m sure everything will be satisfactory.”

  One full gravity had been restored by the time the elevator reached the main level of Wheel Number One. The staff of the Senior Officers’ Quarters were lined up by the exit, as if for inspection. Ehl gave an order, and the staff scurried to the vehicle to unload the luggage and to help Terza and Martinez from their seats. The luggage was placed on motorized robot carts, and Martinez and Terza walked followed by the carts and Lord Ehl and the staff and Allodorm.

  “My lord,” Allodorm said, “I hope you and Lady Terza will accept the hospitality of the Meridian Company, two nights from now. The company’s executive and engineering staff would be honored to meet you.”

  “We’d be delighted,” Martinez said.

  Lord Ehl and the Fleet officers on station were dining with him tomorrow night, and he’d already been sent a rather ambitious schedule involving trips to various Fleet installations. He recognized Ehl’s plan well enough, which was to keep him so busy going from place to place, viewing one engineering wonder after another, and receiving toast after toast at banquets, that he would have precious little time to do any actual inspections. There wasn’t necessarily anything sinister in this scheme – it was the sort of thing Martinez might do himself, were he in charge of an installation and saw a Lord Inspector bearing down on him.

  Ahead was the bright new corridor, curving only slightly upward, walls that looked as if they were made of pale ceramic, lighting recessed into the tented ceiling. Martinez looked down at the polymerized flooring beneath their feet. It was a dark gray and rubbery, giving slightly under his shoes, the standard flooring for an installation of this type.