by Bill Baldwin
No sooner had the Carescrian reached the bottom than Saltash bounced from the crowd, a goblet of meem in his hand. "Wilf—it's about time," he said, steering through the crowd toward a gilded alcove in the shape of a great seashell. The people inside were clearly influential, just because they were there. But they somehow looked influential, too. "A lot of important people have been waiting to met you," the diplomat said. "Mustafa's pretty well kept you to himself since you arrived."
As they passed, a tall Imperial Captain with a CIGA ribbon on his Fleet Cloak turned his head and glared. "War lover," he hissed angrily.
Brim passed the man without a glance. "I didn't know there were any of them here," he said.
"The zukeeds are everywhere," Saltash answered, shouldering his way between two gesticulating League officers who were, to all outward appearances, bickering over some arcane point of military courtesy, "including some of the people you are about to meet."
As they climbed two steps that set the seashell off from the rest of the room, a goblet appeared in Brim's hand, delicately placed there by a bright yellow-clad servant hovering nearby with a tray of replenishments. Moments later, the Carescrian found himself surrounded by a crush of curious faces. He shook hands with people whose names he forgot the moment they were pronounced and fielded a host of questions revealing a distinct sense of apprehension at the League's general posture toward their "precious Dominion." During a moment of relative quiet, he reflected on the real root of their fears: actual concern for their homeland or merely a hazard to the privileges they enjoyed under the present regime. Clearly, they would be the farthest from the battle lines when the fighting began. The wealthiest always seemed to find some plausible excuse.
At that moment, Beyazh swept through the crowd with Tissaurd in tow calling, "Time to dine! Time to dine!" The latter offered Brim her arm as she passed. "Grab on, Skipper," she called, "with this crowd of locusts, the good stuff can't last long."
Brim hooked on and was towed at high speed from the seashell (nearly tripping down the steps), through the rollicking crowd, and into a lavishly furnished banquet room whose tapestried walls and gilded sideboys might have graced an Avalonian palace. Mustafa truly honored his nomadic roots, but he also took a back seat to no one when it came to rococo sophistication and splendor. The three had just reached one of the long, sparkling tables piled high with food when they pulled up short at a flurry of activity near the huge pointed archway that formed one end of the room. Presently, Nabob Mustafa IX Eyren (The Magnificent) strode into the hall with a tall and exquisitely formed woman dressed from head to foot in light green robes of diaphanous material. She had an almond-shaped face framed by satiny black, shoulder-length hair, a long patrician nose, full lips, and enormous green eyes that fairly sparkled with cool intelligence.
Such a woman could only be Raddisma, the Nabob's favorite Consort, but no HoloPicturc Brim had seen came even close to doing justice to her beauty. He found himself straightaway fascinated by the woman's natural grace as the couple swept through the crowd like fast cruisers at a Fleet review. The moment they took their seats at center table, the guests eagerly sat in a great scraping of chairs and rustle of gowns.
Brim had little time to contemplate the Consort's exotic beauty, for the moment Beyazh had seated Tissaurd, she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the chair next to her. "You'll not get off that easily this evening. Skipper," she pronounced with mock severity. "I'm determined to have my dance with you." As a footman passed, she held up her goblet for a refill of Logish Meem, then turned to toast something with Beyazh—who was already in deep conversation with a portly Galite'er from the League, When she returned her gaze to him. Brim noticed color in her cheeks, as if she had emptied more than one goblet prior to the banquet. If anything, it made her look even lovelier than normal, and Brim was feeling the two he had already downed himself. As the corps of servants in bright yellow uniforms began to serve their first course, he found himself at considerable pains to avoid staring at her décolleté. Again and again.
The feast itself would have slaked the appetites of a battle squadron during Brim's blockading days. There were whole courses of fish prepared in every conceivable manner. He recognized the lavender scales of a delicate Feloo trout; he'd eaten a whole meal of them in Sodeskaya during his Mitchell Trophy days. Most of the others were disguised by rich sauces. Next came twelve kinds of game fowl from Ordu's own dense Boreal forests, each prepared with a different kind of spiced dressing. Afterward there were lavishly decorated courses of sweetmeats; vegetables, cold as well as hot; and uncounted trays of condiments and cheeses. And through it all, footmen constantly hovered over the table refilling goblets with Logish Meem of the finest vintages. Toward the end of the sweetmeats, he noticed with slight disapproval that Tissaurd had continued to drain her goblet a number of times—but, then, so had he. In fact, he was experiencing increased difficulty in his campaign to avoid staring at the ample expanse of breasts revealed by the deep cut of her formal uniform.
Abruptly, Beyazh excused himself to escort a Lutzian Army General to Mustafa's table, and Tissaurd lost no time capturing Brim's eyes with hers. "Skipper," she charged in a confidential voice, "you have been staring at my breasts all evening." She ran her tongue over her lips for a moment, men winked. "Tell me, do you like what you see?"
Brim felt his face flush. "You've clearly caught me, Number One," he admitted with an embarrassed grin. "And, yes, I like what I see very much. The only word that really comes to mind is 'magnificent.' "
He was saved from further embarrassment by Ogmar Vossell, the Prime Minister, who abruptly gathered his ample potbelly within a voluminous set of robes and stood with a full goblet of meem raised to the room. "And now," he bellowed in a deep bass voice that easily carried above the hubbub, "before the ladies retire, I hereby present the royal toast!"
Chairs scraped and glasses spilled (to the accompaniment of shrieks and anguished groans) while the tipsy guests clamored unsteadily to their feet. Considerable time elapsed before the room quieted sufficiently for the ceremony to proceed.
"To his Fluvannian Majesty, Nabob Mustafa IX Eyren, The Magnificent!" Vossell shouted at length, weaving slightly from side to side.
"His Fluvannian Majesty, Nabob Mustafa IX Eyren, The Magnificent!" the guests bellowed in return. "Long may he rule! Long may he live!" Shortly after their cheering subsided into ambient hubbub, Beyazh returned to his seat and, nodding politely to Brim, proceeded to monopolize Tissaurd until all rose and the women began their traditional migration into the ballroom.
"I think I may be embarrassed in the morning for what I said. Skipper," she whispered as she stopped beside his chair.
"I don't know why," Brim answered quietly. "I was staring, you know."
"I sort of hoped you might be, Skipper," she said, squeezing his forearm for a moment. "After all, I did have them out for you to admire tonight, even if it's Beyazh who plays with them later on." Then, with a rush of color in her cheeks, she joined the throng of women exiting the dining hall. "Don't forget my dance," she called over her shoulder, and was lost almost instantly in a crush of much taller women.
Brim marveled to himself. On a starship's bridge, Tissaurd was clearly one of the best, most talented First Lieutenants in the Fleet. But she was also a damnably good-looking, sexy woman when she wanted to be. And ethically distant as they might be to each other while serving on the same bridge, he felt quite honored that she had thought enough of him to reveal the flesh-and-blood woman he knew lived beneath her professional veneer.
Cigarettes and pipes of all manner, form, and content were quickly passed among the guests by a whole platoon of yellow-clad footmen. Brim refused them all; smoking never had been one of his vices. He did, however, accept a huge snifter of delightful (and elsewhere ridiculously expensive) Fluvannian spring brandy that he managed to nurse while he listened to the talk around him. It was mostly political, as foreign to him as the bridge of a starship would be to most
of them. He tried to concentrate on the trivial questions of influential people with whom Saltash constantly confronted him, but somehow Tissaurd's voice kept interrupting with, "After all, I did have them out for you to admire tonight." It was awfully good to know that she was human.
Mercifully, Nabob Mustafa relinquished his hold on the male attendees earlier than usual and forthwith gave his royal permission for the ball to begin....
* * *
Brim was a terrible social dancer. He'd received scant training in the art, and what little education he'd been forced to endure at the Helmsman's Academy he'd wasted out of pure embarrassment. He could throw the trickiest starships around with the best in the galaxy. He had utter confidence in his ability to make safe landfall in ships that others would have abandoned as derelicts or crashed. He even reckoned himself a reasonably competent lover; certainly he'd endured no open complaints in the last few years. But put him on a dance floor with responsibility for leading a woman in time to music (about which he understood nothing!) and he immediately turned into a rumbling, staggering nitwit whose hands went embarrassingly cold anytime he even thought about the arcane business. As was his habit at such affairs, he stayed well away from the actual dance floor, usually at the bar, carrying on conversations with whom he could and keeping a watchful eye for women who were not familiar with his particular brand of abominable footwork.
He was doing just that, in one of Mustafa's intimate, darkly paneled palace bars when, without warning, Tissaurd poked her head inside and pointed a gloved finger as if it were a blaster. "I-T-'S T-I-M-E," she mouthed theatrically.
Brim felt his heart thump in panic while his hands instantly drained of warmth. His mind whirled with the million-odd excuses he had catalogued over the years. None seemed to fit.
Grinning at his obvious discomfort, Tissaurd motioned with her head toward the ballroom. "N-O-W!" the gamin officer mouthed, thrusting her breasts ever so slightly toward him while maintaining an aspect of virginal innocence.
At that Brim gave up in a rush of meem-induced self-indulgence. If he could dance with anyone, it would certainly be Tissaurd! After all, weren't they the finest flight-bridge team in the known Universe and beyond? Downing the last dregs of his meem, he swept around the end of the bar, gathered her in his arm, and led the way toward the ballroom as if he actually knew what he was doing.
Unfortunately, once deployed on the dance floor with the tiny officer in his arms, he still could only shuffle, more or less with what he supposed people referred to as "the beat."
Surprisingly, Tissaurd didn't seem to mind; she even appeared to enjoy herself as she impudently pressed her breasts into his chest. And wonder of wonders, he even found himself enjoying the experience, especially the sensation of holding his tiny comrade close in his arms. Somehow, he had failed to notice before, but her short hair was scented with the most erotic perfume imaginable!
He had just begun to relax and enjoy himself when, most abruptly, there was no more music. He felt his face flush, wondering how long he had continued his silly shuffling without it. Other couples were already changing partners or heading off the dance floor completely. He looked down at Tissaurd to find her eyes closed and her head resting on his chest as if she hadn't noticed, either. She was still moving to his own ungainly rhythm. Taking a deep breath, he awkwardly whispered, "I think it's over, Nadia."
"I know, Wilf," she replied languidly, with her eyes still closed. "I've decided to ignore it. We'll both be back aboard Starfury all too soon as it is. I'll have to be 'Number One' again instead of Nadia, and you'll be the Skipper who can't even think of cuddling me like you're doing right now. So I've simply willed time to stop. One can do anything she pleases when she's drunk."
"Nadia..." Brim started to say, but a hand grasped his shoulder firmly.
"Sorry, Commander," a tall diplomat declared with a smile, "but this is my dance with the Lieutenant, I believe."
Instantly, Tissaurd came awake. "Legate Zumwalter," she exclaimed, winking surreptitiously at Brim as she slipped from his arms. "Why, I was just looking for you!1'
Brim bowed. "It has been a pleasure, Lieutenant," he said.
"It has indeed been a pleasure, Commander," she replied, capturing his eyes in hers and holding them for a moment, "one I shall not soon forget."
"Nor I," Brim answered, then bowing to the diplomat, he turned and made his way to the sidelines.
Soon afterward, he returned to the ship and a very lonely night.
* * *
In the days following the ball, Saltash returned Brim to the palace often for presentations to influential Fluvannians both in the government and civilian sectors. One morning, after hectic presentations to flag-grade officers of the Fluvannian Home Fleet, they were strolling back to the embassy skimmer through the great hall of the palace when Brim spied a hulking figure who somehow looked familiar. With a great hooked nose and a shaggy red beard, the man was dressed in flowing white robes topped by a brilliant blue fez and looked a great deal like the images of Pasha Korfuzzier that Brim had seen. He was moving stealthily from pillar to pillar in a most suspicious manner. "That's the Pasha, isn't it?" Brim asked.
"Sweet merciful Universe," Saltash swore under his breath, "it is." He stopped in his tracks with a worried look on his face, scanning the room. "And there's Ambassador Zacristy," he gasped a moment later, "directly across from us." Even as he spoke, Korfuzzier drew two snub-nosed blasters from his robes and raised them in the general direction of the Leaguer diplomat. But before he could so much as aim, tiny sirens began to shriek throughout the crowd, and at least ten Imperial agents appeared from nowhere, resolutely trying to wrestle him to the pavement.
Korfuzzier was a huge man, however, and not easily overpowered. Roaring with maniacal fury, he sent hapless agents flying in every direction, then aimed the powerful weapons at two of his assailants, burning them completely in half before he turned to search out his original quarry. By this time, however, Zacristy was nowhere to be seen, so in frustrated rage, Korfuzzier began to randomly spray the crowd.
At the first shots, Brim blindly threw himself over a nearby woman, pressing her close to the cold marble floor as great bolts of lethal energy crackled close overhead. Moments later he roared in pain as a wild shot burned across his back. Grinding his teeth, he struggled to remain motionless and avoid a second burst while the hard-working Imperial agents again subdued Korfuzzier. This time, however, they disarmed him as well. Gradually the screaming subsided, and the hall fell into a shocked silence. "Are you all right?" Brim whispered to the woman, instantly feeling foolish because she couldn't possibly understand his language.
"I shall be quite all right as soon as you let me up," she returned laughingly—in perfect Avalonian.
Before he could comply, however, the shocked Brim found himself harshly dragged to his feet and pinioned between two enormous eunuchs dressed in the black-and-gold checked robes of the Harem staff who shouted at him angrily in what must have been Vulgate Fluvannian. in the distance, he could see Saltash haplessly trying to push his way through the noisy crowd.
"How dare you defile Raddisma, the Nabob's most cherished Consort, pagan?" a third eunuch demanded in Avalonian. This one was at least a quarter again as large as his partners. "Speak," he growled shrilly, "before we make you speak!"
Brim helplessly glanced at the woman he had tried to protect—indeed, it was Raddisma, favorite Consort of the Nabob. And today, he noticed—in spite of the circumstances—she had managed to be even more beautiful than he remembered from the banquet.
When the woman commanded something imperiously in Fluvannian, at least a dozen servants gathered to help her to her feet. At the same time, the three eunuchs released Brim with chastened looks on their faces.
"A fine way to reward you, Commander," Raddisma laughed in a dusky, feminine voice while she straightened her hair. "You very probably saved my life," she added with an appraising look.
Brim had no sooner opened his mou
th to answer when he, the eunuchs, and the Consort were surrounded by a solid wall of scarlet-uniformed soldiers who opened a narrow passage in their ranks to admit Nabob Mustafa himself. "Raddisma," the little man puffed, clearly out of breath, then continued with an unintelligible string of Fluvannian.
The tall woman bowed and answered with a long soliloquy, also in Fluvannian, nodding often toward Brim.
"Commander Brim," the Nabob said at length in Avalonian, turning for the first time from his Consort. "Forgive me," he said. "My mind was clearly elsewhere." He placed a ring-bedecked hand on Brim's forearm. "Raddisma tells me that you saved her life by shielding her with your own body. Are you hurt?"
Brim smiled. "Only my Fleet Cloak, Your Magnificence," he said. "The rest of me seems to be in fine fettle."
The Nabob smiled grimly. "This bravery of yours will not go unremembered, Commander," he said with a serious mien. "I find I am considerably in your debt this trip."
"Not at all, Your Magnificence," Brim replied. "I was honored to serve."
Abruptly the little Nabob saluted in a contemporary manner. "Nevertheless," he said, "you will find that I do not forget those whom I owe."
Startled, Brim returned the salute, but before he could utter a word, the wall of troops opened once more, then followed the Nabob across the floor in the direction from which he had come, leaving Brim once more with Raddisma and her eunuchs.