The Sundering

by Walter Jon Williams

  The problem, Martinez thought as he paid the cab, was that he simply didn’t know on what footing the marriage stood. He couldn’t be certain if it was a business arrangement, a piece of practical politics, a folly, or a farce. He couldn’t tell if he and Terza were a man and woman bought and sold, or simply two inexperienced people trying to make the best of what fate had handed them, aware that at any moment fate could declare the whole arrangement nothing more than a joke.

  Martinez opened the door to the Shelley Palace and saw PJ standing irresolute in the hall, and he thought, at least my marriage isn’t that.

  “Oh,” PJ said, his eyes widening. “I was thinking of, um…”

  “Taking a walk?” Martinez finished. “You don’t want to. It’ll rain soon.”

  “Ah.” PJ’s long face was glum. “I suppose I should have looked.” He returned his walking stick to the rack.

  One of the maidservants arrived to take Martinez’s uniform cap. “Shall I tell Lady Walpurga you’ve arrived?” she asked.

  “Not just yet,” PJ said, and turned to Martinez. “Let me give you a drink. Take the chill off.”

  “Why not?”

  Martinez followed PJ into the south parlor, where he saw a glass already set out on a table, the sign that this was not PJ’s first drink of the day.

  “Terza’s well, I hope?” PJ asked as he made a swoop for the mig brandy.

  “She’s very well, thank you.”

  “Would you like some of this,” holding up the brandy, “or…”

  “That will be fine, thanks.”

  They clinked glasses. Rain began to spatter the broad windows, and outside Martinez saw people leaning into the downpour and sprinting to their destinations.

  PJ cleared his throat. “I thought I should let you know,” he said, “that I’ve decided to stay.”

  “Stay?” Martinez repeated. “You mean on Zanshaa?”

  “Yes. I’ve spoken to Lord Pierre and, ah—well, I’ll be staying here to look after Ngeni interests while everyone’s away.”

  Martinez paused with the brandy partway to his lips, then lowered the glass. “Have you thought this out?” he asked.

  PJ gazed at Martinez with his sad brown eyes. “Yes, of course. My marriage to Walpurga is…” He shrugged. “Well, it’s an embarrassment, why not admit it? This way Walpurga and I can part and…” Again he shrugged. “And no one can criticize, you see?”

  “I see,” Martinez said. He swirled his brandy as he considered PJ’s decision. “But Lord Pierre is a loyalist convocate,” he said, “and the Naxids must have him on their list of people they’d very much like to…” He searched for an appropriate euphemism. “Interview. And I can be reasonably certain that I’m also on the list, and now you’re related to me as well.” He looked at PJ carefully. “I don’t really think you’d be safe.”

  PJ flapped away the danger with his hand. “Pierre thinks I’ll be all right. I’m only a cousin, after all. And it’s not as if I know anything…”

  “There may be a great deal of discomfort before the Naxids find that out. And besides, you could be held hostage.”

  PJ put down his glass and straightened his jacket. “As if anyone in the empire would alter their course of action on the chance that I might be killed.”

  Martinez had to concede that PJ probably had scored a point.

  “Gareth,” PJ said, “it’s the only way I can help. It’s war, it’s critical that I do…something. If all I can accomplish in the war is to look after some property and some farms and pensioned-off servants while Pierre is away, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Martinez narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t volunteered for anything else, have you?”

  PJ blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t volunteered to work for the Legion, or the Intelligence Section, or some similar outfit?”

  PJ seemed genuinely surprised, but then turned thoughtful. “You think they’d take me?”

  I hope not, Martinez thought. “I shouldn’t think so,” he said.

  PJ reached for his glass and took a long, morose drink. “No. I’ll just be living in a wing of the palace while the rest of it’s closed up, and making sure that my old nurse and a few hundred other folk are looked after.”

  To Martinez, it seemed as if PJ was genuinely determined. “Well,” he said, raising his glass, “here’s luck to you.”

  “Thank you, Gareth.”

  As Martinez touched his lips with his glass, the front door boomed open and a gust of wind riffled papers on the side table. Martinez glanced through the pocket door to see Roland in the hall wiping rain water from his jacket.

  “Damn it!” Roland called. “I wish I’d thought to take my overcoat. It was sunny when I left. Is that brandy?”

  He strode into the parlor, water droplets clinging to his hair, poured himself mig brandy, and took a deep drink.

  “Sempronia’s married,” he said. “I just came from the ceremony, such as it was.”

  “I thought we weren’t speaking to Sempronia,” Martinez said.

  “We’re not.” Roland took another drink. “But I was required to sign the papers permitting the whole thing to take place. Which I had to do, because Proney was threatening either to travel with Shankaracharya as his mistress, or to join the Fleet as a common recruit and serve as his orderly.”

  Martinez concealed a smile. “She hasn’t lost her spirit, I see.”

  “No. She has her young man thoroughly under her thumb, from what I could see.” There was a cynical glimmer in Roland’s eye. “In ten years, she’ll look brilliant and he’ll look fifty.”

  Martinez looked at his brother. “Now you’re the only one of us unmarried,” he said. “And you’re the oldest. It hardly seems fair.”

  Roland smiled into his brandy glass. “I haven’t found the right woman.”

  “Why not?” Martinez said. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to marry Terza yourself.”

  PJ, with his recent marital wounds, seemed uncomfortable at a question concerning the rational organization of matrimony.

  Roland waved a hand. “I prefer to keep my arrangements with Lord Chen on a business basis,” he said, then shrugged. “Besides, I’d make Terza unhappy, and you won’t.”

  Martinez gazed at Roland in pure curiosity. “How do you know that?”

  Roland patted Martinez on the shoulder. “Because you’re a decent person who gives everything his best,” he said, “and I’m a cad who would put Terza aside the second I’d fathered an heir on her and could find a better match.”

  Martinez found himself absolutely at a loss for a reply. Roland finished his brandy and smiled.

  “Shall we call Walpurga and have our supper?” he said. “Signing away a sister makes me hungry.”

  Supper was in the smaller family dining room, a place with yellow silk wallpaper and elaborately carved furniture inlaid with bits of white shell. PJ and Walpurga dined in amity, though without any expressions of affection beyond Walpurga’s offhand, “Pass the sauce, dearest.” Roland discoursed on political events. Martinez, when asked, said that he found marriage surprisingly congenial, something he would have said even if it weren’t true.

  When Martinez returned to the hotel he found Terza lying on the bed still in the light trousers and silk jacket she’d worn to her tropical destination, curled around a calla lily she’d plucked from one of her arrangements. There was a satisfied, rather secretive smile on her face.

  Martinez paused in the doorway and absorbed this sight. “What are you thinking of?” Martinez asked.

  Pleasure twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Our child.”

  He felt a shimmering warmth in his blood. He crossed the space between them in a few steps, sat on the mattress, and touched her arm. “You can’t know you’re pregnant already, can you?”

  “No. In fact I’m reasonably certain I’m not.” Terza looked up at him, and shifted to place her head in his lap. “But I think I will be before you leave
. I have a…sense of impending fertility.”

  Martinez stroked the fragrant mass of her hair. Her cheek was warm against his hand.

  “Four days,” he said.

  She sighed. Her dark eyes sought his. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very good to me.”

  He was puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “The marriage wasn’t your idea. You could have taken any resentment out on me—I was the one available, after all.” She took his hand and kissed it. “But you’ve tried to make me happy. I appreciate that.”

  And are you happy? That was the next question, but Martinez hesitated to ask it. There was an air of truth that hung in the room at the moment, and he didn’t want to tempt fate.

  “I can’t imagine wanting to hurt you,” he said.

  She kissed his hand again. “Four days,” she said, and smiled up at him. “We’re lucky to have so many.”

  “We are.” He stroked her cheek as a warm tenderness rose in his blood. “I’m a lucky man.”

  The luckiest man in the universe, he thought, remembering Sula’s words.

  He wondered if Sula would say the same now.

  The day after the Convocation left Zanshaa, the new Military Governor, Fleet Commander Pahn-ko, announced that, as a safety measure, martial law was to be imposed on all of Zanshaa and that the accelerator ring was to be completely evacuated within the next twenty-nine days. As the ring that circled the entire planet possessed an enormous internal volume that housed nearly eighty million citizens, this announcement created something of a logistical challenge.

  It could have been worse, Sula thought. The interior spaces of the ring, enormous but lacking in charm, were the natural habitat of the poor. Yet the authorities hadn’t wanted a critical installation like the Zanshaa ring, with its port and military facilities, its administrative centers and its quantities of dangerous antimatter, to house unstable social elements, and these elements tended to lurk among the lowly. Rents had been artificially kept high and the inhabitants relentlessly middle-class, drawn to the ring by certain privileges, such as excellent educational facilities for their children and the chance to profit as middlemen on interstellar trade, or as contractors for military or civilian transport. Most of the ring was in fact empty, with no water, power, or heat available for anyone trying to live on the cheap in the uninhabited space.

  Now the solid citizens of the ring were going to come down the skyhooks to the surface of Zanshaa, millions every day, each with a bag of possessions and a built-in requirement for food and shelter. If they weren’t poor and needy now, they would be soon.

  The brilliant minds of the Logistics Consolidation Executive were put to work on the problem. “Nearly three million every day for a month!” cried Sula’s Lai-own boss. “Impossible!”

  “Perhaps we could just chuck them off the ring and let them get down on their own,” Sula suggested.

  The Lai-own glared. “I would prefer useful suggestions, if you please,” he chided.

  Sula shrugged. She had found that when she began work on the problem that the evacuation actually made things simpler. The only things going up to the ring were critical personnel leaving Zanshaa, these and engineers getting ready to blow the ring apart. Once the ring was stripped of all the useful cargo and supplies, the giant cars that normally contained cargo could be converted to carry personnel. If enough acceleration couches couldn’t be manufactured in time—and it looked as if they couldn’t—the passengers could be sandwiched between narrow, heavily padded partitions.

  It wouldn’t be pleasant, and they’d bounce around a bit, but it could be done.

  “How are we going to find places for them once they’re here?” the Lai-own cried.

  “We’ve got three billion people on the planet as it is,” Sula said. “Eighty million more is just a drop in the bucket.”

  She began to work on the problem, buoyed somewhat by this evidence that the administration had adopted her plan for evacuating the government and the Fleet and then blowing the ring to bits. It would have been nice, she thought, if someone in authority had acknowledged her contribution. Another medal would have been welcome. Even “thank you” would have been nice.

  No thank-you came. She wondered if Martinez, that bastard, had pinched her share of the credit.

  Her self-destructive impulses had not survived the night she’d heard the derivoo. Homicidal impulses were entertained briefly, then dismissed as unworthy.

  Nothing important, after all, had changed. A man Sula hated had married a woman she barely knew—and why should that matter to her? Her own position was barely altered: she had the same rank, the same distinctions, and lived with the same knowledge of her own danger as she had a month ago. Nothing fundamental had altered.

  All this she argued to herself successfully, and only doubted these truths at night, alone in the giant Sevigny bed, when rage and loneliness and her own desperation stormed through her.

  She was thankful for work, and delighted her chief by the long-burning hours she worked on the evacuation. She was even more thankful when a call for volunteers was broadcast through the Fleet. Hazardous duty, the announcement said, and a chance for glory and promotion while upholding the Praxis.

  Sula reckoned she knew what the call was for. The plan that Martinez submitted to the Control Board called for an army to hold Zanshaa City against the Naxids. It was getting a little late to raise an army, but she supposed late was better than never.

  She considered her situation—she knew that the entire Logistics Consolidation Executive was scheduled for evacuation in ten days. She could spend the rest of the war in her niche, shuttling supplies around, and let others concern themselves with victory.

  That would not give Sula patronage, of course—she’d lost that chance with Martinez. She had her medals and her lieutenancy and a degree of celebrity, but that wouldn’t guarantee further promotion.

  The best chance of earning her next step would be to hazard her life against the Naxids. It made sense to claw out of the war as many chances for advancement as she could.

  The possibility of death was not a significant consideration. She was good at argument, but hadn’t yet managed to construct for herself a convincing reason why her own life was worth preserving.

  Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

  Besides, ever since she’d heard the news of Martinez’s engagement she’d felt like killing something.

  Sula submitted an application, then was called for an interview before a Daimong elcap. Since some of the questions had to do with her experience with firearms and explosives, she decided that her guess as to the nature of the duty was correct. But since her answers to those questions were “basic proficiency” and “none at all,” it wasn’t clear whether she’d be suitable for the duty or not, and she returned to the Logistics Executive, where she was assigned to the problem of feeding and clothing the eighty million refugees from the ring.

  It took only a brief glance at the data to assure her that feeding the strays wasn’t going to be a problem. The planet of Zanshaa, in accordance with the dictates of the Praxis, was self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs.

  But it wasn’t self-sufficient in all foodstuffs. There were climactic and soil conditions, as well as economies of scale, that made Zanshaa less efficient at producing certain crops, and turned it into an importer of some and an exporter of others. Zanshaa’s old, stable, relatively flat continents produced ideal grazing for herd animals, and Zanshaa exported beef, portschen, fristigo, lamb, and dairy products. But its tropical areas lacked certain nutrients in the soil, and this made it a net importer of other foodstuffs.

  High-quality cocoa came only from off-planet. So did coffee.

  So did tobacco.

  Shit in a bucket, Sula thought. Tobacco.

  Sula loathed tobacco, but a determined minority of the human race and even some Torminel and Daimong were devoted to it. Sula remembered from school that there had once been health problems associat
ed with the weed, but medicine had solved those, and now tobacco was merely another minor air pollutant. The Shaa had disapproved of tobacco, just as they’d disapproved of alcohol or betel nut or hashish, but they’d never actually banned any of these substances, just made certain that the products were regulated and taxed and turned to the profit of the government.

  She dived into a frenzy of research on commodities pricing, interrupted only when a courier came with her orders. She’d been accepted, with remarkable speed, into the still uncertain duty for which she’d volunteered, and was ordered to report in two days to the Villa Fosca, an establishment near Edernay a couple hours from Zanshaa City by train.

  On her noon break Sula raced to her bank. Her previous advisor, Mr. Weckman, had left, gone off to Hy-Oso, and his replacement directed her toward the commodities desk. The prices for off-world cocoa, coffee, and tobacco had risen slightly, but the markets didn’t know that the ring was going to be destroyed and that nothing would be coming cheaply from orbit for years. Sula considered futures contracts, but realized that when the Naxids came, it might be difficult for someone on their Shoot on Sight list to collect on her speculation, and decided it would be better to have the actual products under her control. With a certain amount of amazement at her own daring, she used half her fortune to purchase goods that were still in orbit, on the ring.

  Once back at her desk at the Logistics Consolidation Executive, Sula issued orders for those very same cargoes to be sent down the skyhook in the next few days, and to be sent to warehouses in Zanshaa Lower Town.

  Having accomplished this, she sat back at her desk with an unfamiliar sense of wonder and pride. She felt more than just a profiteer.

  She felt like a Peer.

  On her last day in Zanshaa she returned to the High City and the La-gaa and Spacey Auction House. The Ju-yao pot was still for sale, nobody having offered the minimum bid of twenty thousand at the auction.

  “I’ll give the owner fourteen for it,” Sula told the polite young Terran who greeted her. “But I’m shipping out and I’ve got to have it today.”

  Either the woman’s shock was genuine or she was a good actress. “But my lady,” she said, “it’s worth—”