by David Drake
"Marie's telling me about her sister's wedding," Chekoumian said, waggling the letter again. "That's her sister Irene, the younger one. But please, sit down! You're off duty, are you not? You can have a drink."
He signaled for a steward as he gestured Blavatsky to the contoured chair beside his own.
"Well, maybe a little wine . . ." she agreed shyly. Abraham was aware of her duty hours.
"Irene's the young one," Chekoumian added with a frown. "Marie—my Marie, little Marie—"
He dropped the letter on the circular drinks table to pat the back of Blavatsky's hand.
"Marie's bothered by that, I know, though she doesn't say it," he continued. His broad face brightened like an equatorial sunrise. "But won't she be thrilled when I sweep up to her door in the most expensive limousine I can rent on Bogomil?"
"Sir and madam?" asked the steward who paused at their table.
Chekoumian and Blavatsky looked up. On the wall behind the bar, the brilliant denizens of a coral atoll on Tblisi wheeled in tight patterns. "Could I have something from your homework!?" Blavatsky asked. "Tblisi has wines, doesn't it?"
"Wonderful!" cried her companion. "Yes, of course. Bring us a carafe of Evran with two glasses—and take this away."
Chekoumian thrust his part-finished screwdriver across the table. "The vintage is from gene-tailored grapes," he explained to Blavatsky. "We're very up to date on Tblisi."
"A carafe of Evran," the steward said to the bartender. Both men were natives of New Sarawak; and both had been aboard the Empress of Earth since her maiden voyage.
The bartender glanced toward the only occupied table in the lounge. The passenger had switched on his hologram reader to project plans of the house he intended to build. He was pointing out details of the widow's walk to the Staff Side rating beside him.
The bartender raised an eyebrow.
The steward, out of sight of the couple at the table, hooked the first and middle fingers of his left hand. He jerked them upward, as though they were a gaff landing a prize fish.
* * *
Three court ladies sang the 17th-century Terran ballad about Clerk Colville, who'd gone to tell the mermaid who'd been his mistress that he intended to marry a human female. A fourth of Lady Scour's companions provided the lute accompaniment in the dining room paneled in richly-carved woods and ivory. She deliberately used only two hands to achieve the delicate fingering.
"Would you agree that 'My skin is whiter than the milk,' Ran Colville?" Lady Scour asked.
One of Lady Scour's hands flicked her blouse like a bullfighter's cape. The smokey fabric might have been translucent in strong light, but it was effectively opaque beneath the dining room's paper lanterns. The single garment, unless surprise and the mere glimpse had deceived Ran, was the only thing Lady Scour wore over her breasts.
"I would agree with anything your ladyship said," Ran replied. "Because of your rank, and your beauty . . . and because of my respect for your mind, all three."
He chose his words carefully so as not to bring up the fact that her words had been from Clerk Colville. The line just before the one Lady Scour quoted was, "It's all for you, ye gentle knight. . . ."
The clan mistress leaned forward chuckling. She took a shellfish from a dish of pungent sauce and popped it into Ran's mouth. He chewed and swallowed. The tidbit, like most of the meal that had preceded it, was excellent. He'd forced himself to stomach only a few items, and those more for texture than taste.
Lady Scour held out her thumb and forefinger, still red with the sauce. "Go on," she said. "Lick them clean. You wouldn't have the mistress of Clan Scour going about with greasy fingers, would you?"
Ran began to laugh. He was man enough to be flattered by the attention, and Lady Scour was woman enough to be—interesting. Whatever sort of flesh wrapped the package.
The Szgranian's fingertips seemed slightly warmer than a human female's would have been, but Ran couldn't claim perfect objectivity.
Another lady-in-waiting, this one clad like a yellow beachball in swathes of gauze, flounced into the dining room. She whispered in her mistress's ear.
Lady Scour nodded, then rose to her feet with the grace of a willow tree swaying. "Very well," she said in satisfaction. "Now, Randall Colville, for the entertainment But you'll have to be perfectly quiet. Stay close and let me guide you by touch, because there won't be any light."
She led Ran toward the wall behind her couch. He didn't realize it was a door until Lady Scour touched a band of dark wood. A section of balanced paneling pivoted open on its vertical axis.
The hallway beyond was narrow and almost completely dark. Ran's eyes had adapted enough during dinner to make out a faint glow fifty meters along, but that was all.
The court ladies stared after their mistress and her guest, but they continued to sing. An instant before the door rotated closed again, their voices dissolved into giggles and whispers that Ran couldn't make out.
Lady Scour touched Ran's shoulder and hand and the point of his hip, where her fingertips rode lightly, shifting like valve tappets on a cam lobe.
"Very quietly . . ." Lady Scour whispered, her breath warm on Ran's ear.
The screen at the corridor's end was double-walled like the panels of the palanquin. It looked down into a lantern-lit room in which Szgranians writhed together. For a moment, Ran wasn't sure either of the number or the intentions of the folk he watched. There were too many arms and they could have been locked in murderous violence.
The scene came into mental focus: it was a couple, and they were making love.
"Rawsl," Lady Scour breathed into Ran's ear. "I asked my maid Sins to entice him into this room."
A soft plosion of warmth did duty as a snort. "Rawsl would never wonder why. He thinks he's irresistible."
The couple lurched and staggered around the room. The female was silent, but Rawsl snorted loudly. He held Siris from behind, clutching her four breasts and spreading her thighs. The maid's feet were off the floor, and her six arms reached back to clasp him.
"Are you that strong, Ran Colville?" Lady Scour whispered as her multiple hands undid the pressure seams of his uniform. "I'm much heavier than Siris. Only someone very strong could support me."
Ran hadn't noticed it happen, but Lady Scour had lost her clothing somewhere. The down on her skin was soft and warm by comparison with the hard fabric of her dress.
"You're not that heavy," Ran said as he turned from the screen to his hostess.
She wasn't human—but neither was Rati, the Hindu goddess of lust
And nobody could deny that Lady Scour was female.
She had thin lips and a tongue as long and coarse as a cat's. As they kissed, she undressed him. Though the pattern of human clothing must have been at least slightly unfamiliar to her, the Szgranian's six hands and suppleness made an easy job of it.
Ran's eyes had adapted to the current level of light. When he stepped out of his trousers, his elbow nevertheless thumped the wall of the corridor in which they were engaged.
"There's a chamber through that door . . . ." Lady Scour said, nodding vaguely toward what seemed a blank panel, but she didn't stop what she was doing.
Nor did Ran.
At the last moment, it occurred to Ran that the relative size of genitalia can vary widely between species of similar total mass. If that was a problem, though, it was her problem and she was in control. Lady Scour gripped Ran with two pairs of arms and the heels of her feet locked behind his buttocks. Her remaining hands guided him within an orifice that seemed tight but slid smoothly.
All the Szgranian's muscles tightened. She screamed, not in pain but in sheer ecstatic triumph.
Part of Ran's mind wondered what the couple in the room below thought. But he didn't much care.
* * *
The Embarkation Hall was lighted at thirty percent of Earth daytime norm—more than adequate to see by, but dim compared to the brilliance of the Empress's exterior floods scattered in through the o
pen hatchway.
"Good evening, Mr. Streseman," Commander Kneale said from the angle of a pilaster as the Grantholm passenger moped past with his eyes lowered.
"Oh!" said Streseman. He was alone. An hour after the Empress of Earth landed, stewards had carried his train of static-supported cases across the starport to the Grantholm combination vessel Thornburg, He must have paid off the staff at that time, because no little folk from New Sarawak pursued the young Grantholmer now for their tips.
"I regret that you had to be transshipped to reach your destination," the commander said. "I've heard good reports regarding passenger accommodations on the Thornburg, though. I don't think you'll find her too uncomfortable for a short hop."
"No, no, of course not," Streseman said. "You couldn't possibly be expected to land on a planet in the middle of war. A ship as valuable as this . . ."
He looked out the hatchway toward the alien city beyond. Betaniche was a dark mass. Occasional lamps glowed through the paper walls like will-o'-the-wisps over the surface of a marsh. Without turning back toward Kneale, the youth asked, "Has there been any word of the Brasil, sir?"
"No sir," the commander said. "Nothing at all since she entered sponge space in the Tblisi system. At this point, we can only hope that her passengers and crew are safe somewhere."
Streseman grimaced. "You think she's been hijacked, I suppose," he said. He met Kneale's eyes. "Well, that's the only reasonable possibility, isn't it? First-class starliners don't simply go missing."
"Not often, no," Kneale agreed. "But I don't intend to make unnecessary assumptions without data."
The commander smiled tightly. "Nor," he added, because Franz Streseman ceased to be simply a passenger on Calicheman, "do I intend to let up my guard."
The young man laughed without humor. "I imagine you're glad to get rid of all us Grantholmers here. Well, you've got a right to feel that way—but don't forget that you loaded quite a number of passengers on Nevasa, too. Some of them may just have been getting off a potential bomb target—but you're bound to have taken intelligence personnel aboard too."
The Empress's ventilation system kept up positive pressure, as always on a planet, but the stink of the fires ringing the field still crept into the Embarkation Hall. Streseman's nose wrinkled as he looked out into the night, though the disgust he felt had little to do with the odor.
"I'm not unaware of that, Mr. Streseman," Kneale said quietly. "I hope you don't feel that Trident Starlines has discriminated against one or the other party in the conflict."
"No, of course not," Streseman agreed. "I'm—"He shook his head. "I'm not—in a good mood tonight, sir. I suppose I'd better get over to the Thornburg if I'm going."
There was a series of pops and crackles from the night. Commander Kneale visibly stiffened.
The rating stationed on the gangway leaned back within the hatch and called, "It's just fireworks, sir. A bunch of the—"
He looked at Streseman and recognized the youth as a Grantholmer.
"—passengers we disembarked here, they've took over a couple dockside bars and they're having a party. Patriotic songs and as much hell-raising as the locals let 'em get away with."
"Thank you, Rossignol," Kneale replied. When the crewman had returned to his post, Kneale said in a low voice, "You don't have to leave the Empress, you know, sir. We have empty berths."
He cleared his throat and added, "Mr. Streseman, I'd find you a berth in my cabin if I had to, after what you did on Calicheman."
Franz Streseman stepped forward and clasped the Trident officer by both hands. "Sir," he said, "I have to go. You understand duty. But I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
He turned his head very quickly, but Kneale could hear tears in the youth's voice as he went on, "She doesn't understand, though. I told her that I would come back to her as soon as the war was over, but I had to report to my unit. I'm a Streseman. She says if I loved her, I'd stay with her and we'd—we'd build a new life on Tellichery or somewhere.
"But I'm a Streseman!"
Kneale squeezed the younger man's hands in sympathy. Streseman forced himself to turn and look Kneale in the face. "What do you think, sir?" he asked. "I'm going to do it anyway. But am I wrong?"
"I think . . ." the commander said very carefully. "That you're eighteen, Mr. Streseman. And yes, I think you're wrong, because you're doing more or less what I did at your age. And I was wrong."
He smiled with genuine affection. "But that's what being eighteen is for—making mistakes. Just don't kid yourself about what you're doing."
Streseman squeezed back, released his hands, and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. "Sorry about that," he muttered. "I'd best be going. Thank you, sir. I appreciate—everything. You'll give my regards to Lieutenant Colville?"
"I will indeed," Commander Kneale said. "I'm—you might say waiting up for him right now. I think I may have . . . given Mr. Colville an order, more or less, that I wouldn't have done if I'd known quite as much about Szgranian culture as I've found since reviewing the pilotry data in his absence."
Franz Streseman straightened and gave Kneale a stiff-armed Grantholm salute. "Thank you again, sir," he said.
"One thing, Mr. Streseman . . . ?" Kneale said.
"Sir?"
"If you survive what you're getting into just now," the commander said, picking his way with delicacy through his vocabulary. Kneale knew Streseman's rank in Grantholm society; but he knew there was no society equal to that of the men and women who held civilization together across the starlanes.
"If you've done what you feel is your duty," he continued, "come and see me, will you? Because Trident Starlines can always use officers who know their duty."
Kneale grinned starkly. "And know how to handle themselves in a tight spot. Which both you do very well."
He returned the salute, not as a Trident officer with palm outward, but with one languid finger to the brow, the way the Parliamentary Guard on Sulimaniya recognized their officers when Hiram Kneale was a boy of eighteen.
* * *
The shanties at the edge of the port area were still smoldering when Ran's palanquin swayed to a halt, then grounded. There were no open flames, but the sludgy reek of incomplete combustion hung in a waist-high layer in the pre-dawn air.
The Empress of Earth brilliantly illuminated herself. The starliner's glare trickled through hundreds of meters of paper walls, providing a dull beacon for the last stage of Ran's journey back from the palace. A Staff Side rating lounged at the top of the main gangway, the only human in sight at this hour.
Haifa dozen of the servants preceding the palanquin carried lanterns. The leading male blew his seashell horn as before, though the streets were empty except for a few figures huddling at the corners of buildings for shelter. Ran wondered if those derelicts had owned the dwellings which the starliner ignited on landing.
He hadn't expected an entourage to accompany him back to the Empress. If anything, his escort was larger than had been the force which took him and the clan mistress up the bluff. There must be at least thirty armed and fully-caparisoned warriors surrounding the palanquin.
Rawsl stalked through the streets immediately ahead of the palanquin. Unlike the other warriors, he carried only pairs of swords, daggers, and short-hafted axes—the weapons traditional to his race before Szgrane came in contact with starfaring humans. Several of the escort lumbered along under the heavy tubes of plasma dischargers. The remaining warriors carried either an assault rifle for the lowest pair of hands or a brace of machine pistols with snail magazines.
There were no inside handles on the palanquin doors. While Ran fumbled for a catch which didn't exist, Lady Scour's chief aide twirled the door open and stepped back. The eight bearers had withdrawn to the fringes of the entourage of Szgranians.
"I hope you have enjoyed your trip through Betaniche," Rawsl said, placing his hands behind his neck in the Szgranian gesture of submission.
"Yes, thank you," Ran sa
id as he got out of the vehicle. He ached in unfamiliar places. He was pretty sure that every one of Lady Scour's fingertips had left a bruise on his back as she climaxed the third time.
Rossignol from Commander Kneale's watch was on gangway duty. He straightened with a bored man's interest in any change.
"May we tell our mistress that you are fully satisfied with the way we carried out her instructions to bring you back to your ship, then?" Rawsl asked, still in his formal posture.
"Yes, certainly," Ran said. Rawsl was acting like a concierge prodding his guest for a tip.
"Let no one leave the vessel," the Szgranian aide snarled in his own language.
A dozen of the escorting warriors, including those with plasma weapons, rushed toward the Empress. Rossignol bolted backward. Hatches began to shut across all three gangways. A klaxon within the starliner began to honk.
"Since we have satisfied our mistress's instructions," Rawsl said, "now we can satisfy the demands of honor." He drew both his long swords.
Ran bent, grasped a palanquin pole, and jerked. The smoothly finished hardwood was screwed and pinned into its socket. The vehicle skidded a few centimeters when Ran put his back into the effort, but as a weapon it was as useless as the bedrock.
Rawsl gave a high-pitched chirp. He thrust. His swordblades were slightly curved, but if Ran hadn't ducked behind the palanquin, the point would have crunched in and out through the bone and gristle of his rib cage.
"Prod him to me," ordered Rawsl. "This animal must not be allowed to hold back in the slaughter chute."
The main hatch had shuddered, then reopened fully again. Szgranians facing the starliner aimed modern weapons up the gangways from which human help might come. The other warriors had drawn their swords. They formed a rough circle with Ran, the palanquin, and Rawsl as the hub. Lower ranking Szgranians, male and female both, squatted beyond the ring of warriors and called encouragement to Rawsl.
Two warriors on Ran's side of the palanquin shuffled toward him, their swords raised like crab pincers. They'd drawn daggers in their central pairs of hands. Ran had as much chance of grabbing a weapon from one of them as he did of surviving a bath in battery acid.