Praxis def-1

by Walter Jon Williams

  Sula looked down at Foote and smiled sweetly. “Captain Foote of theDelhi? ” she asked. She wrinkled her brow as if trying on a memory for size. “He’s the yachtsman?”

  “Yes. That’s the fellow.”

  Sula let her smile twist into an expression of distaste. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “I’ve always thought yachtsmen were the most boring people in the whole fucking world.”

  Mean pleasure sang in Sula’s heart as she left Foote blinking in slow surprise and Chatterji staring.

  Though the afternoon in the cadet lounge wasn’t without its effect. When Martinez arrived for her, she found herself looking at his legs as she walked beside him through the Commandery.

  Theywere perhaps a little short, she decided.

  Vipsania raised her glass. “Before we go in to supper,” she said, “I would like to salute our special guest. To Lady Sula, who so bravely and skillfully retrieved theMidnight Runner and the bodies of Captain Blitsharts and Orange.”

  Martinez repressed a stab of jealousy as he raised his glass and murmured Sula’s name along with everyone else. Really, he thought, itwas his plan.

  He imagined it was too much to suppose that Vipsania would ever bother to offer a toast to him. He was just her brother, after all.

  But envy faded into admiration as he contemplated Sula, who stood slim and straight as a lance in the parlor of the Shelley Palace, her porcelain complexion lightly flushing at being the center of attention. Her dark green dress tunic served to heighten the intrigue of her emerald eyes. Martinez’s tailor had done a superb job with fitting the uniform, and a bath, a haircut, and modest use of cosmetic had done wonders to repair the pallor and poor skin tone that were consequences of her long, cramped journey.

  Martinez touched his glass to his lips and drank to Sula with complete sincerity.

  Sula raised the glass of sparkling water she’d been nursing since the start of the evening. “I would like to thank Lady Vipsania, Lord Gareth”-with a look at Martinez-“and to the entire Martinez clan for their gracious hospitality.”

  Martinez modestly refrained from lifting his glass as the guests saluted him. He cast a glance about the room and saw PJ Ngeni, a few paces away, looking at Sula with glowing eyes. “Superb!” Martinez heard beneath the crowd’s murmur. “Wonderful girl!”

  Martinez smiled privately.You’ll have no luck with this one, my man, he thought,unless you know the works of Kwa-Zo.

  The Martinez sisters’ party seemed to be a success. Martinez saw several faces he’d first seen at Lord Pierre’s dinner party, and PJ had arrived with a couple of his male friends who were less successful than he at concealing their fundamentally decorative nature. Walpurga was in a corner of the room, laughing and smiling with an advocate she had first met at the Ngeni Palace, a man who represented the interests of the Qian clan. Sempronia was speaking near the garden door to a young brown-haired man in the viridian uniform of a Fleet lieutenant.

  And Sula, Martinez saw, had become the center of a number of young men, including PJ’s two glit friends. Martinez was thinking about rescuing her when the dinner gong boomed and saved him the trouble.

  He wasn’t seated near Sula, who was placed between two of the guests his sisters had poached from the Ngeni Palace, but he had a clear view of her. She was framed perfectly by the chair back, which was made of carved, ancient, darkened Esker ivory that admirably set off her pale complexion. Despite the other guests and the elaborate floral arrangements that had perfumed the air with their scent, Caroline Sula was clearly the object in the room most worth looking at.

  Martinez was shifting from the dining room to the drawing room when Sempronia briefly touched him on the left arm. “This isyour fault!” she hissed. “He’s at me to join him for a walk in the garden!”

  “It’s a pleasant garden,” Martinez said.

  “Not with PJ in it.”

  “Besides,” Martinez said, “it’s your sisters’ fault and you know it.”

  She glared at him. “You should stand up to them for me!” she said. “What are brothers for?” She strode off.

  Martinez mingled for a while, and was on the verge of seeking out Sula when PJ Ngeni touched him on the right arm. Symmetry, he thought.

  “May we speak?” PJ said, and touched his narrow little mustache.

  “Certainly.”

  “I have asked, um, your sister Sempronia if she would join me for a walk in the garden,” he said.

  Martinez drew a smile onto his face. “That will be pleasant,” he said.

  “Well…” PJ hesitated. “The fact is, I’ve become quite fond of Sempronia in a very short time.”

  Martinez nodded. “That’s not unusual. She’s a popular girl.”

  “I thought-if I could get her in the garden-I might ask for her hand.” His voice trailed off. “In marriage,” he clarified.

  “I never thought otherwise.”

  “So I thought I’d ask your advice,” PJ finished, and looked brightly up at Martinez.

  Martinez gazed down at the man. For someone who was supposed to have led some kind of debauched life, PJ seemed remarkably short of social confidence.

  “What’s the problem?” Martinez asked. “Haven’t you propositioned a woman before?”

  PJ flushed. “Well, yes,” he said, “purely in a sporting way, of course. But I have never proposed marriage, with all its,” he gave a little cough, “responsibilities and duties, and-” He looked bleak. “-so forth.” His voice trailed away, and he looked up at Martinez again. “Do you have any objection to my asking for your sister’s hand?”

  “No.”Not for asking, Martinez thought.Actually marrying, I’d have to shoot you.

  This answer didn’t relieve PJ’s anxiety. “Do you think she…do you think darling Sempronia will accept me?” He licked his lips. “She seems to be rather avoiding me, actually.” He cast a glance to a corner of the room, where Sempronia was still talking to the brown-haired young officer.

  “She’s one of the hostesses, she’s got a lot to do,” Martinez said. “I think if you ask her, the answer would please you.” It was time to get PJ on his errand. He clapped the man on his shoulder. “Go to it,” he said. “Courage!”

  PJ’s eyes seemed to be looking not at Sempronia but the abyss. “Very good of you,” he murmured. “Thanks.”

  He marched toward Sempronia as if to his execution. Martinez smiled at the thought of the two people, neither of whom wanted a life with the other, stumbling their way toward the engagement that would satisfy their families. He decided he would prefer not to witness the painful outcome, whatever it was, but instead looked for Sula and found her sipping a cup of coffee, miraculously free of admirers.

  “We don’t have to stay all night,” he said. “I know a place in the Lower Town that’s fun.”

  Sula tasted her coffee and returned the cup to its matching saucer of hard-paste porcelain. “Is this the new Spenceware Flora pattern?” she asked.

  Martinez looked at the cup as if seeing it for the first time. There was a pattern of violets and a faint, matching purple stripe. “I don’t know,” he said. “To me it looks like, well, a cup.”

  Sula looked up from the saucer. “I can ask your sisters when we say good night.”

  They bade farewell to Vipsania and Walpurga, who told Sula that the cup was in fact the new Flora and thanked her effusively for coming. The presence of the recently decorated Sula, Martinez knew, was enough to assure a mention of the party in tomorrow’s society reports, and that had been his sisters’ object in inviting her in the first place. They wanted to get certified as fashionable hostesses before the official period of mourning for the last Shaa brought large society functions to a close for a full year.

  Martinez took Sula down the funicular railway to the Lower Town, and they gazed through the rail car’s transparent roof at the great expanse of the huge metropolis rising to embrace them like a wide, golden sea. Gusts of wind made little excited screams against the car’s
hard edges. Martinez turned to one side and saw the old Sula Palace towering on the edge of the High City, its distinctive stained-glass dome glowing blue, and with a start he turned to Sula, remembering the way her parents had died and lost their property. She was looking toward the palace as well, but her face was relaxed. Maybe, after all these years, she didn’t recognize the place.

  Martinez took Sula to a cabaret off the city’s main canal, sat her in a quiet corner, and ordered a bottle of wine. He was surprised when she put a hand over the mouth of her glass and asked for sparkling water instead.

  “Don’t you drink at all?” he asked.

  “No. I-” She hesitated. “I used to have a problem with alcohol.”

  “Oh.” There was a moment of surprised silence. Then he looked at the wine bottle in his hand. “Does it bother you if I drink? Because if it does, I’ll-”

  “I don’t mind. Have all you like.” She smiled thinly. “Just don’t expect me to carry you home.”

  “I haven’t had to be carried yet,” he said, an attempt to carry off the awkward moment with a little bravado.

  He sipped his wine but decided to strictly limit his intake. The idea of being inebriated in Sula’s presence was suddenly distasteful.

  “So,” he said, “you’re an expert on porcelains? I remember sending you that book.”

  “I’m hardly an expert,” Sula said, “I’m just very interested.” Her eyes brightened and she seemed as relieved as he to leave the awkward subject of alcohol behind. “Did you know that fine porcelains were invented on Earth? That porcelain was one of the few things, along with tempered tuning, the Shaa thought a worthy contribution to interstellar civilization?”

  “No. I didn’t know that. You mean no one had pots until Earth was conquered?”

  Sula’s eyes narrowed. “Of course they had pots. They had all sorts of ceramics. Stoneware, even. But translucent, vitrified ceramics, white clay mixed with feldspar-real porcelain, the kind that rings when you tap your finger against it-that was invented on Earth.” Her lecturing tone suggested that Martinez’s question had disappointed her.

  He disliked disappointing beautiful women, and decided not to risk her disapproval by asking about tempered tuning, whatever that was. He took a careful sip of his glass and decided to try the compliment direct.

  “I’m reminded of porcelain when I look at you,” he said. “Your complexion is extraordinary, now that I can appreciate it in person. I’m having a hard time not staring.”

  She turned away from him, an ambiguous smile twisting her lips. And then she gave a brief laugh, tossed her head, and looked him in the eye. “And my eyes are like emeralds, right?” she said.

  Martinez answered with care. “I was going to say green jade.”

  She nodded. “Good. That’s better.” She turned away again. “Perhaps we can save the descriptions of any remaining parts for another time,” she murmured.

  At least the thought of her other parts-this time or next-was cheering.

  “Do you collect porcelains?”

  Sula shook her head. “No. I-Not with the way I’m living now. Not if I’m sharing cadet quarters with five other pinnace pilots. Nothing would survive.”

  It was also possible, Martinez realized, that Sula couldn’t afford the kind of ceramics she’d like to own, not if she were actually living on her cadets’ pay. He didn’t know what financial resources the execution of her parents had left her.

  “There’s a whole wing of porcelains in the Museum of Plastic Arts,” he said. “We could go there someday, if you like.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Sula said. “It was the first place I went when theLos Angeles came here to refit.”

  He could scratch the museum tours off his agenda, he thought. Though it might have been fun, seeing porcelains with an expert as lovely as any of the ceramics on display.

  “Any luck in finding a good posting?” Sula asked.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Does it have to be a staff job?”

  Martinez shook his head. “I don’t mind ship duty. But I’d like it to be a step up, not a step back or sideways.” He put his arms on the table and sighed. “And it would be nice to be in a position to occasionally accomplish something. I have this ridiculous compulsion not to be totally useless. But that’s difficult in the service, isn’t it? Some days it’s a struggle to find a point in it all. Do you know what I mean?”

  Sula looked at him and nodded. “We’re in a military that hasn’t fought a real war in thirty-four hundred years, and most of its engagements before and since consisted of raining bombs on helpless populations. Yes, I know what you mean.” She cocked her head, silver-gilt hair brushing her shoulders. “Occasionally we pull off a nice rescue,” she said. “Though we hardly need cruisers or battleships for that, do we? But all those big ships make terrific platforms for enhancing the grandeur and self-importance of senior captains and fleet commanders, and grandeur and self-importance are what holds the empire together.”

  Martinez blinked. “That’s blunt,” he said.

  “I’m allowed to be blunt. I understand my position very well.” She looked at him. “You know about my family?”

  Martinez gave a cautious nod. “I’ve seen your file.”

  “Then you know that the military is the only career I’m allowed. But even though I’m a clan head, there’s no clan for me to be head of, so there will be no powerful relatives to help me get promotions. I can get a lieutenancy on my own, but once I pass the exam, that’s about all I can expect. If I astonish everyone with my genius, I might be promoted to elcap, and if I make full captain, it will probably happen only on retirement.” She gave a cold smile. “The consolation of my position is that I can say what I damn well please,” she said. “None of it will change anything.” She looked thoughtful. “Except…” she began.

  “Yes?”

  “If I do an absolutely brilliant exam. Sometimes senior officers take an interest in the cadet who scores first. Or even second.”

  Martinez nodded. It had been known to happen. Even commoners could do well if they had the right patron. “I wish you the best of luck,” he said.

  “I hope luck has nothing to do with it,” Sula said. “I’ve never got anywhere by counting on luck.”

  “Fine,” Martinez said amiably. “No luck to you, then.”

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  There was a brief silence, and then Sula said, “In the last couple days, since I’ve arrived on Zanshaa, I’ve started getting messages from people. People who say they were friends of my parents.” She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of them. I don’t remember things very well from that period.”

  “You should meet them.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe they could help you. They may feel that they owe your parents that.”

  Sula considered this for a moment, and then her eyes hardened. She shook her head. “It’s the job of the dead to stay dead,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  SIX

  Sula raged inwardly against her certainty that everything she said was wrong. She was making a botch of the whole evening, and all because she didn’t know how to talk to someone who liked her.

  She had been another person once, and then decided not to be that person again, and to avoid anything, like alcohol, that might bring that person back. But she didn’t know how to be this new person very well, and she kept getting it wrong.

  It’s the job of the dead to stay dead. Nice light cocktail-bar conversation, that.

  She reminded herself that Martinez was only trying to help.

  Of course, he was also trying very hard to get her into bed. This prospect wasn’t entirely without its attractions, though she’d been chaste for so long that she wondered if she’d have any idea how to behave with a man. It would be on a par with everything else this evening to somehow make a total botch of it.

  Martinez could probably handle any problem that would ar
ise, she decided. She could trust to his efficiency that way.

  She might as well surrender. It wasn’t as if chastity had benefited her in any way that she could see, and Martinez could hardly make her life worse than it was.

  Fortunately, entertainment began before she could completely poison the conversation. A pair of singers and a band mounted the stage and began a series of dance tunes, and Martinez seemed pleased that it was she who asked him to dance and not the other way around.

  Sula had once enjoyed dancing, but her only practice in recent years had been at the academy, where everyone stood nervous and perspiring in dress uniforms and hampered by a rigid etiquette. She was out of practice at dancing for pleasure, but fortunately, Martinez was an able partner-those stumpy legs knew their business, she decided-and his expertise neutralized her initial awkwardness. She discovered in herself a tendency to bounce on the balls of her feet with each step, but reminded herself that the whole point was to keep a low center of gravity, and told herself sternly to glide, not bound like an eager puppy.

  As the evening progressed her awkwardness faded and she relaxed into the movements, the steps, and Martinez’s arms. Their bodies moved into a close synchrony, and she found herself responding easily to the merest suggestion of his touch, the lightest impulse on her palm or hip or back. Her body molded to his during the slow dances, and warm blood flushed her skin at his nearness. There seemed progressively less point to the whole chastity business.

  They danced for an hour and then stepped outside to cool off. Clouds scudded low overhead, obscuring Zanshaa’s ring, and gusts of wind blustered around the corners of the buildings. A pleasure boat floated past on the canal, darkened, but with its contours outlined in cool blue neon-it looked like a skeleton boat, a visitation from another plane. Martinez dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and opened his high uniform collar. “Next time,” he said, “I’ll wear civvies.”