Infinite Stars

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  “I didn’t mean to seem mysterious, Penny,” Daniel said after glancing around. “Janofsky was doing a favor for me and I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of a stranger. Which you pretty much are to him.”

  “And you’re not?” said Pennyroyal. The sun, setting beyond the harbor mouth, stained pink the white-washed facades of buildings. The landscape beyond the city was heavily wooded. The ordinarily dark-green native foliage had a purplish cast in slanting light.

  “I met Janofsky when I was six, in my Uncle Stacey’s shipyard,” Daniel said. “I didn’t remember that—remember Janofsky, I mean. There must’ve been hundreds of spacers dropping by to give their regards to their old captain. Janofsky had been a young rigger on the Granite, the dedicated exploration vessel that Uncle Stacey made his Long Voyage in.”

  “When they discovered twenty-seven worlds that’d been lost to civilization for two thousand years?” Pennyroyal said. She had known that Daniel’s “Uncle Stacey” had been in the RCN, but until now she hadn’t connected the name with Commander Stacey Bergen, the most famous explorer in Cinnabar history. “No wonder you’re such an astrogator!”

  “I had a leg up,” Daniel agreed with a slight smile. “Uncle Stacey never got rich, but the spacers who served under him say he was the greatest man who ever lived. The greatest captain, anyway. Janofsky asked about Uncle Stacey when I came aboard the Swiftsure, and I asked him to make some contacts for me in the shore establishment here when he went on liberty yesterday.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” Pennyroyal said, “it was about liberty that I wanted to talk to you. You remember that story Vondrian and Ames told, about going on liberty on Broceliande with a ship’s corporal?”

  “Yes, I certainly do,” Daniel said, his expression suddenly guarded. The corporals were the assistants to the master-at-arms, the ship’s policemen. “They went to a gambling house that was raided by the police. One of the guards started shooting. If Vondrian hadn’t been able to bribe the police to release him and the other cadets, they’d have been jailed for conspiracy to murder.”

  “Well, I always suspected that was a set-up,” Pennyroyal said. “Today I heard that one of the ship’s corporals, Platt, had offered to guide a group of cadets to a place at a distance from the harbor where the drinks were higher class. I remembered Vondrian’s story and thought we ought to warn the others.”

  Pennyroyal could have done that herself, but she knew that if the story came from Leary it would be believed. If she told people what she’d heard during a night of drinking with two friends from an earlier class at the Academy, she’d be mocked as faint-hearted. An RCN officer with a reputation for cowardice wouldn’t stay an RCN officer long.

  There were plenty of people, instructors as well as cadets, who thought Daniel Leary was bumptious, a fool, and even certifiably mad. The rumor about him pleasuring the Commandant’s daughter in the Academy chapel justified any of those descriptions—and Pennyroyal, who had been on watch in the choir loft, knew the story was true.

  Nobody thought Leary was a coward.

  “Well, as it chances…” Daniel said carefully. “I had heard about the expedition and thought I’d join it. I’m not fancy about what I drink, but Platt says the women are higher class too. They do interest me.”

  “Are you joking?” said Pennyroyal, but he clearly wasn’t. There had to be something behind Leary’s bland smile, though.

  Another thought struck her. “Say!” she said. “Is your man Hogg going along? I don’t doubt he’s a real bruiser even if he does look like a hayseed with maybe two brain cells to rub together, but you can’t muscle your way through a dozen cops!”

  “Umm, Steward’s Mate Hogg has business of his own to attend to tonight, he told me,” Daniel said. “He’s not really my man, you know. He insisted on following me from the Bantry estate when I broke with my father and entered the Academy, but I can’t afford to keep him. He’s living on his pay and whatever he might add to that by playing cards.”

  Hogg’s winnings were greater than his RCN pay, from what Pennyroyal had seen in the galley; but however the former Leary tenant made his living, he continued to refer to Daniel as “the young master.” Still, Hogg doubtless had a life beyond service to Cadet Leary.

  Pennyroyal stared at her friend. “What are you planning, Leary?” she said. “You’ve got something on.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I plan to go to a high-class entertainment establishment…” he said. “And have a good time. That’s all.”

  “If you’re going, then I’m going along,” Pennyroyal said. “That’s flat. Understood?”

  This time Daniel grinned. “You know I’m always glad to have you beside me, Penny,” he said. “But don’t act surprised at anything you may hear, all right?”

  “All right,” said Pennyroyal, grinning back. “It’s about time we change to go on liberty, then.”

  She wasn’t sure it would be a night she’d remember as “a good time,” but she knew it would be interesting.

  * * *

  Pennyroyal and Leary had bunks near one another in the stern. The accommodations block already swarmed with cadets changing into the clothes they would wear on liberty. A few cadets had sprung for gray 2nd class dress uniforms. Though only commissioned or warrant officers had a right to wear Grays, senior cadets were customarily allowed the privilege.

  That wasn’t an issue with Pennyroyal: she couldn’t afford to buy anything unnecessary until she graduated and was commissioned as a midshipman. Midshipman’s pay wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “Leary, where did you get those!” Pennyroyal said as she finished pulling on the clean utilities she would be wearing and got a good look at her friend—wearing Grays.

  “Umm, they’re from a hock shop on the Strip,” Daniel said, touching his left lapel with two fingers. There was barely visible fading where rank tabs had been removed. “A mate of Janofsky’s tailored them for me. Some of these senior spacers do better work than you could get on the ground.”

  “Right, but you were broke!” Pennyroyal said. “Where did you find the money?”

  “I was broke,” Daniel said. “But I found the money. I’ll explain it later, but for now I want to catch Platt before he leaves his cabin.”

  Pennyroyal fell in beside Leary, though he was walking toward the pair of aft companionways instead of the set amidships with the rest of the cadets. She said, “But we’re supposed to gather in the main boarding hold at 1730. At least that’s what I heard.”

  “I had a different idea,” Daniel said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get there.”

  They skipped up the companionway in a shuffle of echoes. Even with only two of them in the steel tube, their boot soles on the non-skid treads were multiplied into a whispering chorus as overwhelming as surf in a storm.

  Most warrant officers bunked in curtained cabins ahead of the racks of the common spacers. The master-at-arms and his—hers, on the Swiftsure—four corporals were a deck above for their own safety and comfort.

  The ship’s police were responsible for enforcing the ship’s discipline. Even the best masters-at-arms were corrupt to a degree: there would be gambling during a long voyage despite regulations; limiting it to a few rings which paid for the privilege was better for discipline than a rigid ban.

  The Swiftsure’s police were at the far wrong end of the corruption scale, however. What Pennyroyal had seen since she and the rest of the cadets boarded made her even more sure that Vondrian, known to be wealthy, had been set up by the ship’s corporals in collusion with locals.

  She and Leary left the companionway and almost collided with a lieutenant whom Pennyroyal didn’t know by name. She jumped to the side of the narrow corridor and snapped a rather better salute than Leary, ahead of her, managed.

  “What in blazes are you two doing on this level?” the lieutenant demanded. His words weren’t slurred, but the odor of gin enveloped them.

  “Sir!” said Daniel, holding his salute. “Corpo
ral Platt ordered us to attend him in his quarters, sir!”

  “Platt?” the lieutenant said with a grimace. “Bloody hell.”

  He pushed past and into the companionway. He had not returned the salutes.

  Leary apparently knew exactly where he was going. They were nearly at the sternward end of the corridor when he stopped at a door, not a curtain, and knocked on the panel.

  “Cadets Leary and Pennyroyal reporting, Corporal,” he called toward the ventilator.

  For a moment there was no response; then Platt jerked the light steel panel open. He held a communicator attached by flex to the flat-plate display against the outer bulkhead. There was a scrambler box in the line.

  Platt’s scowl turned into a false smile. He took off his headphones and said, “I was on my way down in a few minutes, Leary. I just needed to take care of a few things for tonight.”

  “We came about tonight, Corporal,” Daniel said. “Pennyroyal and I had the notion of just the two of us going with you. Instead of thirty or forty cadets chipping in for a cattle car or whatever you’ve got laid on, I thought I could spring for a taxi. All right?”

  “Umm…?” said Platt. He hung the handset and earphones back beneath the display. He was a middle-aged man, balding from the forehead; not fat but soft looking. “Well, if you’re willing to pay…”

  “I don’t mind spending my father’s money on giving myself a good time,” Daniel said. “There was no bloody point in sucking up to the Speaker if I wasn’t going to get something out of it.”

  Pennyroyal felt her face stiffen. In the past Leary had spoken of his politically powerful father only when he was drunk and someone asked him a direct question. His answers then had been uniformly curt and hostile; she would have said that Daniel was more likely to become a priest than ever to make up with his father.

  As for money, Daniel had seemed interested in it only when he wanted to buy a round of drinks for the table but didn’t have it to spend. The notion that Daniel Leary would patch up a bitter quarrel in order to afford taxi fare was ludicrous—except that was clearly what he had just implied.

  “All right, Leary,” Platt said. He stepped into the corridor and latched the door behind him. “I’d heard your Hogg saying something like that. Your Old Man’s pretty well heeled, ain’t he?”

  “I’ll say he’s well heeled,” Daniel muttered as Platt led them along the corridor toward the down companionway. “Anyway, it’s just too much money to walk away from.”

  Platt glanced at the cadets; glanced at Leary, anyway. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do then,” the corporal said. “We’ll go out through the forward hatch. That’s for officers’ use, but I can square it. That way we won’t run into the rest of your cadets in the main hold, and there’s a better class of hire cars waiting.”

  “Sounds great!” said Daniel. He pulled a hundred-florin coin out of his belt purse. That was even more of a surprise to Pennyroyal than seeing her friend in Grays. “Say, are they all right with Cinnabar money at this club you’re taking us to?”

  “They’re all right with any kind of money at the Café Claudel,” said Platt. “And the more, the merrier.”

  From the purr in the corporal’s voice, the same was true of him.

  * * *

  “What’s the fare in Cinnabar florins, my good man?” Leary asked in an upper-class drawl as they pulled up under the porte-cochère.

  The hire car was a limousine with room for eight in the cabin, though there were signs of age and wear. The leather upholstery was cracked, much of the gilt was gone from the brightwork, and the soft interior lighting was further dimmed by burned-out glowstrips.

  Even so, it was the most impressive private vehicle Pennyroyal had ever ridden in. She wasn’t sure that she could have found its equal on her homeworld of Touraine. If she had, it still wouldn’t have been carrying the orphan daughter of a parish priest.

  “Thirty Cinnabar florins, master!” chirped the driver through the sliding window into the cab.

  “Bloody hell, Leary!” Pennyroyal said. “Ten’d be high! It’s not but three miles from the harborfront!”

  A pair of husky servants in white tunics and gold braid opened the car’s double doors. They weren’t carrying weapons.

  “Here you go,” Daniel said, handing a fifty-florin coin through the window. “If you’re still around when I’m ready to leave, there may be another one for you—but I’m on a twenty-four-hour liberty and I don’t expect to end it early.”

  Platt had gotten out of the vehicle and was waiting beside the house attendants. Pennyroyal got out with Daniel following her. The driver called, “I’ll be right here in the VIP lot, master. You can count on me!”

  “I dare say we can, for that kind of money,” Pennyroyal muttered.

  “My father always said ‘Spend money to make money,’” Daniel said cheerfully. “Well, that was one of the things he said. Regardless, Corder Leary certainly made money.”

  Café Claudel must have originally been a country house, though Pennyroyal had gotten only a glimpse of the building as the limousine approached by a curving drive. The gardens facing the house seemed overgrown, though the late-evening light wasn’t good enough for certainty.

  Platt led the cadets up steps to the doorway where an attractive blonde woman wearing a morning coat and striped trousers waited. “Say, Dolly?” Platt said as they approached. “These two are with me. See that they’re treated right, okay?”

  “The Claudel treats all of its guests properly, Master Platt,” the woman said with a professional smile. She was older than Pennyroyal had thought from a distance.

  “I need to talk to Kravitz,” Platt said. “Is he—there he is.”

  He turned and said, “I need to chat with the manager, Leary. You two come in and have a good time, okay?”

  A trim little man with a goatee had just entered the anteroom from the lobby. The corporal went off with him. The doorkeeper’s eyes followed them, then returned to Pennyroyal and Leary.

  “You’ll find a bar to the left within,” the blonde said. “There’s gaming off the lobby to the right. Upstairs, if you’re interested in no limit games…?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “No!” said Pennyroyal, more fiercely than she had intended.

  “I might be later,” Daniel said, “but just for now I’m hoping to find a drink.”

  “The Claudel’s cellar is famous,” the doorkeeper said, “and we have a wide range of off-planet spirits also. If your particular preference isn’t available, our bartenders can suggest a near approximation, I’m sure.”

  Pennyroyal wondered what the staff would suggest if she asked for industrial ethanol, the working fluid used in the Power Room, cut with fruit juice. They could probably find a high-proof vodka with a similar kick—though at a much higher price. But that was another matter…

  “And perhaps…” Daniel added, “a friend or two to show me the establishment’s sights. Eh?”

  The doorkeeper’s smile was minuscule but real. “I think you’ll be able to meet someone congenial in the lobby, sir,” she said. “If not, a word to any staff member will bring a further selection. And there are rooms upstairs for whatever sort of discussions you’d like to have.”

  A group—two older men and a woman of their age, accompanied by three much younger women—arrived. Daniel and Pennyroyal stepped into the lobby to clear the anteroom.

  Pennyroyal whispered to Daniel, “This place is way beyond my budget, Leary. Even if the drinks are cheap. Look at the clothes these people are wearing!”

  “Give me your hand, Penny,” Daniel said. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to throw you out for hunching over a beer and looking miserable, but right now you’re part of my protective coloration.”

  “Pardon?” said Pennyroyal. When she didn’t move, Daniel took her right wrist in his left hand and pulled it toward him, then gripped her right hand with his own. There were two large coins in his palm.

  “Lear
y, I can’t take this!” she whispered, closing her fingers over the coins. They were hundreds from the size.

  “I’ll get it back, Penny,” Daniel said cheerfully. “Trust me on that.”

  Grimacing, Pennyroyal transferred the money—two gold-rimmed hundred-florin pieces, all right—to her purse. What in blazes is going on?

  The lobby was a high room with a railed mezzanine; the three tall windows at the back were capped with arched fanlights. The zebra-striped bar, running the full depth of the room, was staffed by three female bartenders. Daniel walked up to the youngest-looking and took out another hundred-florin coin.

  “Can you break this for me, my dear?” he said, holding it up between thumb and forefinger.

  “Certainly, sir,” the woman—close up, she was over thirty—said. “Do you care what form the change is in?”

  “So long as I can spend it here, it doesn’t matter,” Daniel said with a laugh. “I don’t expect to have any left when I leave.”

  Pennyroyal assumed the bar was made of extruded material. Daniel rapped it with his knuckles and said, “Natural wood, by the gods! Is it native to Foret, my dear?”

  “I believe it is, sir,” the bartender said, her eyes on the small stacks of coins and scrip she was arraying on the bar in front of herself. “But from the southern continent. Master Kravitz may have more details.”

  “Ale for my friend and myself just now,” Daniel said, sweeping his eyes around the room. There were forty-odd people in the lobby, half of them at the bar. He glanced at the price list on the back wall between a pair of paintings—mythological, presumably, since the men and women had feathered wings. He slid a local note back to the bartender. As she turned to draw the beers, Daniel stuffed a similar note into the brandy snifter of tips for her station.

  “Let’s circulate, shall we, Penny?” Daniel said as they turned away. On the couches between the windows and to either side of the anteroom sat attractive women and men, not couples though mostly in pairs. He sipped his beer and added, “Not bad at all.”

  Without changing his mild expression, Daniel said, “I’m not one to preach, Penny, but we might decide to leave here rather suddenly. I’ll probably be nursing this—”