by David Drake
"Now what?" von Pohlitz demanded. The black crewman's new expression made him uncomfortable.
"Now we wait fifteen minutes," Babanguida said. "And then we exchange chips, hey?"
* * *
Mohacks appeared in just under nine minutes. He set the key, a chip with a hand-lettered legend, on the table but covered it with his palm until von Pohlitz slid the two thousand credits to Babanguida. Both ratings strode toward the Social Hall without looking back. The steward watched them go.
"What was that all about?" Mohacks asked when they stepped through the doorway into imperial Rome.
"A thousand apiece," his partner said. "That's what it's about."
"Why the hell did they want that room?" Mohacks demanded.
"They didn't," explained Babanguida. "They wanted the Nevasans. But I thought it'd be more interesting to have them bust in on Lady Scour's bodyguards in the middle of the night."
* * *
The Szgranian maids converged on Ran Colville from either end of the Bamboo Promenade, near the entrance to the Cochin Coffeehouse. Stiff "plumes" of pastel gauze sprang from their backs, giving each of the tiny females the volume requirements of an abnormally fat human.
Ran paused with a professional smile—wondering as he did so what the expression meant to a Szgranian. Well, they were in a human environment, so they had to adapt to human body language. . . .
Passengers walking in the promenade ranged from sauntering couples, chatting and peering with vague attention at the bamboo growing along the sides and spine of the walkway, to serious exercisers who pumped their arms and kept track of time, kilometers, and calories burned. The latter proceeded with their mindless schedule, but those to whom the promenade was primarily a change of scene paused to view the Szgranians.
The Cochin had a roof of simulated thatch, supported by poles set in a low stone foundation so that those within the shaded interior had a broad view of the promenade. The half dozen customers, drinking iced and sweetened coffee, now watched Ran and the aliens.
The young man at the table nearest the entrance was Franz Streseman. Ran recognized him because the Grantholmer had been spending time with Ambassador Lin's daughter. All three Staff Side officers were nervous about the situation, though thus far it seemed to be a young male and female getting together on a voyage; which was as common as breathing, if not quite as harmless.
"Our mistress requests that you accept the honor of her presence," said the maid in a yellow outfit. The Szgranians' six arms and gauzy dress made them look rather like butterflies.
"You may take a reasonable time to prepare yourself with ablutions and ceremonial garb," said the maid wearing green as pale as a Luna moth's wings. "Does your species wear ceremonial garb?"
"Or perhaps you can write a poem," added yellow. "It is traditional for those honored by the clan mistress to thank her with a poem."
Half of Ran's mind concerned itself with the question of how the maids had found him. That was simple. They—or Lady Scour—had asked the ship's AI to locate Lt. Randall Colville; and the question was as pointless as it was easy to answer. All it did was to keep Ran from thinking about the real problems.
According to Ran's hypnogogue crash course in Szgranian culture, "honor with her presence" meant exactly what Ran would have assumed it did had the summons come from a wealthy, bored human female. And, because Lady Scour was a passenger, his response was going to have to be the same also.
"I'm very sorry," he said aloud. "I am honored beyond words by your mistress's notice, but because of my duty to Trident Starlines, I am not able to respond appropriately."
The maids looked at one another in disbelief. One of them tittered in a high-pitched voice, covering her lips with four of her hands. The other thrust her arms straight out to the sides, the intervals as precise as those scribed around a circle by a compass set to the radius. Ran recognized that as a gesture of utter horror; suited, for example, to a high-caste female who learned that her lover had disgraced himself with a mere servant.
"We can't tell her that!" pale green cried.
"You must," said Ran. "Your mistress understands duty. She will understand that I have my duties, so long as I'm aboard the Empress of Earth, and that I will be faithful to my charge."
The Szgranian maids scampered off together, looking more like butterflies than ever with their plumes rising and falling as they ran.
"Bravo!" a passenger called, half-seriously.
Ran glanced around. He was unpleasantly aware that though he'd kept his voice low, the maids had spoken loud enough for everyone within several meters to hear. To a Szgranian, there was no need for privacy. It was literally an affair of state.
Ran smiled and gave an exaggerated shrug. As he started to walk away—he tried to chat with the Purser's Assistant on every watch, to get that officer's different perspective on the voyage—Franz Streseman called, "Excuse me, Lieutenant Colville? Might I speak with you for a moment?"
"Of course, Mr. Streseman," Ran said as he stepped into the Cochin. "Have you been having a good voyage?"
A potential human problem who wanted to talk became a first priority for Staff Side.
"Oh," said the youth as he sat down again. "You know my name?"
"We try to learn the passengers' names," Ran said, which only by implication was a lie. To the brown-jacketed steward who appeared at his side, he added, "A coffee for me, please."
Autoservers had their place. The unit in every First Class cabin could handle virtually any drink demand, as well as supply food better than that available in most groundside hotels. Some of the Empress's public areas were served in the same coldly efficient fashion—but there were good commercial reasons for human stewards as well.
Many of those who could afford star travel felt that ordering humans around was a necessary way to display power. Also—and somewhat less demeaning of the species—many planets simply didn't have the technological base to build and maintain service robots. Passengers from such worlds were uncomfortable when faced with machinery they didn't understand. It was no business of Trident Starlines to make a large proportion of its wealthy passengers feel inferior.
"I, ah, have a problem," Streseman said as he peered intently into his glass. He swizzled the ice and dregs with his straw. "You—"
He looked at Ran in concern. "I don't mean to be personal."
"I can live with it," Ran said, smiling. "Tell me."
"You've had a lot of experience with women, haven't you, sir?" Streseman said. He held the straw precisely upright as if someone was about to drive it into the glass with a maul.
"Not on the Empress or any other ship I've served on," Ran said calmly. "Apart from that, yes, some."
The steward brought his iced coffee. Ran raised the glass and sipped the rich, sweet fluid without taking his eyes away from Streseman. There was a touch of coconut milk in the drink.
"I . . ." the youth said into his glass again. "I haven't Much, I mean. But I've met a really wonderful girl. Just by accident Only her father is a government official from Nevasa and I, ah, I'm from Grantholm."
Ran set his glass down carefully. "I can see that might be difficult," he said with equal care.
"Oh, it's not, not really!" Streseman insisted. "I mean, we're both against the war. It's stupid and worse! Horrible, really. Only—"
He paused, staring at his drink while synthetic crickets chirped in the synthetic thatch above the table.
"Her father doesn't approve?" Ran suggested quietly.
"No, it's not that either," Streseman said. "Maybe—well, if he knew, I suppose he'd forbid Oanh to see me, but he doesn't pay her any attention. He's too busy with his staff, planning—"
He gestured broadly, angrily. "Planning whatever they're going to do on Tellichery. He doesn't care about his daughter at all."
If he didn't care, boy, Ran thought, he'd have left her on Nevasa. But you're young.
"If that's not the problem . . . ?" Ran said aloud.
&n
bsp; Streseman prodded his ice with the straw. "She doesn't know I'm from Grantholm," he said miserably. "I told her I was an engineering student on Earth—"
He looked up sharply. "And that's true! But—"
Face and voice lost animation again. "You see, it just never came up that I was from Grantholm. And now I'm afraid to tell her."
Ran sipped his coffee. "Tell her," he said gently.
"She'll think I've been hiding it," Streseman said. "That I'm a spy or something. She won't see me again,"
"That's possible," Ran agreed. "But what she does is her business. It's your business to tell her the truth."
"I don't know why I'm worried," the youth muttered. "I'll never see her after we reach Grantholm, anyway. I—"
He swallowed. "I'll be assigned to my father's old unit, the Seventeenth Commando. I—don't expect to survive the war."
"Ah . . ." said Ran. Now he was the one who was uncomfortable. "You don't approve of the war yourself?"
Streseman straightened. "I know my duty," he said stiffly. "Stresemans have always known their duty."
Ran finished his coffee and stood up. "Then do your duty, Mr. Streseman," he said. "If you can face death, then you can face one young girl."
The youth began to laugh. "Yes, that's so simple, isn't it?" he said. "Only hard to do."
He grimaced. "But I will do it, when we land. I don't—"
He shrugged and flared his elbows. "Your ship is confining, for all her size. I don't want that when I tell Oanh."
Streseman rose and shook Ran's hand. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he said. "I—you have helped me see my duty."
"Women don't always make a fuss over the same things that men do," Ran said. That was fair, after all, because women certainly did fuss over things that men could take or leave . . . and generally left. "Good luck, though."
As Ran walked away, he thought about Lady Scour. Good luck to both of us, Streseman. Whatever that means.
* * *
"Ah," said Wade, as Reed bowed and gestured him forward. "So this is your surprise."
The doorway was a high arch bordered by SHOOTING GALLERY in large letters. The sign's color metamorphosed slowly through the optical spectrum. At the moment, the letters were a green gradually being absorbed by its own blue component.
"We thought that with all your shooting experience," Da Silva said, "that you'd like to try the facilities here. We've booked the gallery for the next hour."
Dewhurst gave Wade a hard, humorless grin. "Yes," he said. "Lizard hunting on Hobilo, wasn't it?"
Without waiting for a reply, Dewhurst stepped forward. The "door" quivered about him. It was a hologram rather than a physical panel.
"You know," Wade said with a puzzled expression as he followed, "I don't recall mentioning that to you fellows. The lizard hunting, I mean."
"Don't believe you did, old man," said Belgeddes. "That was just before the Long Troubles broke out, when the Prophet's boys were trying to get you to run guns for them, wasn't it?"
"That was it, all right," Wade murmured from the other side of the shimmering curtain. "Not the sort of business a chap wants to dwell on."
Reed looked at Da Silva. They stepped through, into the gallery, themselves.
A party of K'Chitkans had taken the gallery ahead of Reed's party. They were still excited, bobbing their heads and chirping to one another in simultaneous cacophony as they waved their down-covered arms. When the humans appeared, the bird-folk bowed formally and exited through the hologram, still gabbling.
"Wouldn't think they could handle guns meant for men with those short arms," Da Silva said.
"Needs must when the Devil drives, friend," Wade said. "I recall firing a Zweilart cavalryman's gun once, with a curled stock and a bore I could stick my arm down. I was so keyed up under the circumstances that I didn't feel the recoil, even though it knocked me flat on my fundament I jumped right up and let go with the other barrel."
"There's a story there, I shouldn't wonder," Reed said, glancing at the ceiling.
The interior of the shooting gallery was almost entirely a holographic construct. An autoserver by the door held a selection of rifles, shotguns, and energy weapons which it provided when a passenger presented his ticket for identification. The "weapons" weren't real, but they were full weight and the shooter could set them for any desired level of flash, bang and recoil.
"What's your choice, Wade?" Dewhurst said gleefully. "Don't believe they've got Zweilart hand-cannons here, but a black powder 8-bore ought to be pretty similar, don't you think?"
The gallery had scores of possible backgrounds. The scenery which the K'Chitkans had chosen was modeled on the veldt of southern Africa with a profusion of life unseen since the 19th-century. Elephants, zebras, and antelope of many varieties paced back and forth in the middle distance, but the score displayed in letters of light above the counter was entirely of lions: 117 of them.
Dewhurst handed the immense double rifle to Wade. "No, no—"Wade said with a gentle smile. A black-maned lion leaped from behind the thornbush an apparent hundred meters away and began bounding toward the men.
"I'm truly sorry," Wade said, his back to the target, "but I absolutely can't shoot under these—"
The holographic lion made a final spring and vanished in the air.
"—conditions."
"Jungle?" Reed offered. He touched the control panel on the counter. Lush foliage of green light replaced the holographic bush. A snake thirty meters long slithered through the air, gliding around treetrunks on its flattened ribcage.
"Or ice cap?" Jungle flashed into a wasteland in which snow-covered blocks alternated with wedges of blue ice, shattered and overturned as the glacier that spawned it broke up in a bay just deep enough not to freeze to the sea floor. A creature humped toward the viewers across the irregular surface. Occasionally it bared yellow tusks.
"'No' generally means 'no' when Dickie uses the word, fellows," Belgeddes said. There was enough of an edge in his voice that Reed cleared the display, leaving only a large, circular room with gray walls.
"That wasn't Earth, was it?" Dewhurst said, blinking toward where the last creature had been before the projectors shut off.
"Bifrost," Wade said. "A sea devil, though the real ones are usually shot from the air."
Belgeddes clucked his tongue against his palate. "You got yours on foot, Dickie," he said.
"I suppose this just isn't real enough for you, is that it, Wade?" said Da Silva.
"Oh, not that, friend," the tall old man protested. "Quite the contrary, in fact. It's far too real. A setting like this and a gun in my hands, well—too many memories, you see. I don't want to live them again."
"Kindly thought you fellows had, though," Belgeddes said.
"Doesn't bother you to talk about it though, I notice," Dewhurst said, looking up at a corner of the ceiling.
"Not the same thing, friend," Wade replied. He handed back the replica 8-bore. "Talk isn't the real thing, you know."
Reed snorted. "That the three of us know quite well."
Dewhurst offered the rifle to Belgeddes. "Here," he said. "Do you fancy a try?"
Belgeddes threw up both hands in mock horror and said, "Heavens, no! Palling around with Dickie, I've made an effort, but I was absolutely hopeless. Isn't that so, Dickie?"
Wade chuckled. "'Fraid it is, yes. When Tom's got a rifle in his hands, the safest place to be is in front of the target."
"Well, since we've got the gallery anyway . . ." Reed said. He touched a button on the control panel. The empty room became a reed-choked riverbank. A bipedal "lizard" the size of a cow darted past, glancing toward the humans.
"Hobilo," Reed said in satisfaction. He drew a modern rifle with a fat magazine of rocket-assisted projectiles from the counter's stores. "Unless this disturbs you, Wade?"
The older man chuckled and leaned against the back wall. "Not in the least, my boy," he said. "So long as it's you."
Another lizard trotted by. Reed t
urned and fired. The rifle lifted in his hands with a hisscrack! as the simulated projectile broke the sound barrier beyond the muzzle. The lizard continued running.
Dewhurst shouldered the antique elephant gun. A huge carnivore burst out of the swamp. Reed fired twice, missing each time, while Dewhurst tugged in vain at his triggers.
"This damned thing doesn't work!" he shouted as the holographic monster bore down on him.
Belgeddes leaned past Dewhurst and lifted back one of the 8-bore's exposed hammers. "Got to cock these old smoke-poles, laddie," he said.
Dewhurst yanked the front trigger again. The simulated recoil knocked him flat as the holographic carnivore vanished around him.
"Reminds me of a time on Kesterman Two . . ." began Wade, smiling indulgently at the other men.
AIN AL-MAHDI
Clouds in the upper stratosphere of Ain al-Mahdi whipped in holographic clarity past the curved bulkhead of the Starlight Bar, as though the structure of the Empress of Earth was really transparent.
"Not much to see," Reed muttered. "We'd have a better view of the landing in the Social Hall."
"Everybody goes to the Social Hall to watch the takeoff and landing," objected Dewhurst
Da Silva swirled his drink morosely and said nothing. Reed would be leaving the ship here. The five men had achieved a prickly sort of kinship which Da Silva, at least, would be sorry to lose.
"What they see on the ceiling of the Social Hall isn't real," said Wade. "It's a computer construction of what the view would be if we were above the Empress looking down."
"This isn't real either," Dewhurst said. He gestured to the curved image. "It's just interference patterns in light."
"Well, if it comes to that," said Belgeddes, "what you see here—"
He tapped the autobar with his knuckles. It made a flimsy sound.
"—is just reflected light, too. You know what Dickie means."
"Another round?" Reed offered.
To the general chorus of agreement, Wade said, "Really, shouldn't I pay for . . . ?"
"My treat, old boy," said Reed. "On the occasion of getting home safe. Despite the war."