The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Buy you a drink?”

  “Thanks, Ari. I’ll have some of that Sellaree.”

  A glass of ruby wine was placed in front of Martinez. It was one of the Commandery’s special tulip glasses, rimmed with the same glossy white ceramic out of which the bar had been shaped, and with a stripe of the same pale green as the carpet, a color scheme intended to set off to advantage the darker green of the officers’ tunics.

  “Isay. Gare…” Abacha’s words were unusually tentative.

  Martinez looked at him. “Yes, Ari?”

  Abacha gave a laugh. “I don’t know whether you’ll be annoyed by this or not—I think it’s amusing, actually—but it seems you’re famous.”

  Martinez raised his heavy brows. “I? Famous?”

  “I’m afraid so. Do you remember yesterday, when that fellow from All-Sports Network called Operations Control?”

  Martinez scratched his two days’ beard. “Panjit something, wasn’t it?”

  Abacha gave a nervous laugh. “Panjit Sesse, yes. Well—things were getting busy, you’ll recall—and I was going to cut the fellow off. But I didn’t—he suggested that I keep transmitting to him, and it appears that I did. Without thinking about it. He heard everything.”

  “Everything,” Martinez repeated, trying to remember if he’d said anything particularly embarrassing.

  “Everything up till the time my shift ended and I left. Everything we did was broadcast on All-Sports Network.”

  “And the censors didn’t…?”

  “The censors seem to have taken the night off. Maybe they were watching the football match—it was Lodestone versus Andiron, you know.”

  Martinez probed carefully, like a tongue exploring a painful tooth. “I—We—didn’t say anything that…”

  “Oh no.” Abacha laughed. “Nothing that will haunt us. You were quite decisive, in fact—sent your message to Kandinski requesting a rescue mission before informing Lord Commander Enderby that a situation even existed.”

  Martinez’s brittle laugh was a poor imitation of Abacha’s, and his head buzzed with calculation as he laughed.

  Did Enderby know? If he didn’t, someone was sure to tell him. But of course Enderby knew that someone must have requested a rescue mission from Kandinski.

  If only Enderby’s informant wouldn’t rub his nose in it, wouldn’t jog him with an elbow at the football match and say, “By all the virtues, Enderby, you allow your aides a deal of latitude.”

  But someone was bound to. The fleet sailed not so much in the starry void as on a sea of rumor, an incoherent mass of information, speculation, gossip, intrigue, interest, and collusion. Martinez, without seeking them out, was nevertheless privy to an outrageous number of secrets, some of which—if true—were blood-chilling. But it hardly mattered whether they were true or not, they were things that the Fleet knew. It was known that the Naxid Fleet Commander Toshueen, finding his son disappointing, had cut off the youngster’s head and eaten it; it was known that Squadron Commander Rafi had ordered cadets to tie and beat him, and as for Enderby’s wife…well, a lot was known about Enderby’s wife.

  That Martinez had good, authoritative reasons to disbelieve all these stories scarcely mattered: the Fleet always told stories about itself, and the sort of stories it told were eternal. There was a need in the Fleet for stories, and now there was a new story, how Lord Commander Enderby had been made a fool of by his aide.

  Martinez had always hoped he would be the subject of one of these stories, but this wasn’t the sort he had in mind. He had the sense that his promotion, already slipping from his fingers, had just floated beyond his reach.

  His sense of grievance, however, was only momentary. He was too tired to feel anything for very long.

  He said good-bye to Abacha and took a cab to the apartment he kept in the High City, let his clothes fall on the floor for his orderly to pick up, and fell into bed.

  His orderly woke him at the usual hour, and Martinez dragged himself to breakfast. Lieutenants were entitled to two servants, paid for by the Fleet—the service was nothing if not generous to its officers—but Martinez had never found duties enough for more than one. This was Khalid Alikhan, a master weaponer of more than thirty years’ service, a man Martinez saved from retirement when the old Crisis was decommissioned. He was tall and grave, with iron-gray hair and the curling mustachios and goatee favored by senior warrant and petty officers.

  As a servant, Alikhan was adequate: though he kept the place tidy and looked after Martinez’s uniforms, he was an indifferent cook, and both his manners and accent were rough. But that didn’t matter—Martinez knew he could always hire more polished servants if he wished to entertain. It was Alikhan’s thirty years spent in the Fleet weapons bays that Martinez found invaluable, the fund of Fleet wisdom and experience to which Alikhan gave him access.

  Alikhan knew more of the Fleet’s stories than anyone Martinez had ever met.

  “There are quite a few messages, my lord,” Alikhan said as he poured the first coffee of the day. “They started coming in yesterday morning.”

  Alikhan’s words brought the day’s first cloud of despair: Martinez felt his head sinking between his shoulders. “Reporters, I suppose?” he said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Alikhan offered Martinez his breakfast of porridge and pickled mayfish. The jellylike mayfish, splayed across the plate’s Martinez crest, trembled greenly in the morning light.

  “I saw the broadcasts, my lord,” Alikhan said. “When you didn’t turn up the other night, I checked the video to see if some crisis might be detaining you.”

  “Was it exciting?” Martinez shoved porridge into his mouth. He was rarely awake enough in the mornings to care what his breakfasts tasted like, and this one, so far as he could tell, tasted more or less like the others.

  “Well,” Alikhan said, “the broadcasters really didn’t know what to make of it, but to anyone with real experience,” by which he meant the Fleet, “to anyone who knew what was happening, it was…” He made an affirmative movement with one shovel-fingered hand. “It was suspenseful, my lord. Very interesting.”

  “Let’s hope the lord commander isn’t too interested,” Martinez said savagely.

  “He might decide that you’re a credit to the service, my lord,” Alikhan offered, though he sounded dubious.

  “He might,” Martinez agreed, then added, “He’s decorating that cadet, Sula…nothing was said about decorating me.”

  The pickled mayfish oozed over Martinez’s palate. He washed it down with coffee, and Alikhan topped up his cup.

  “People are interested in you,” he said. “There’s that.”

  “That’s nice, I suppose. But that’s not going to matter in the service.”

  “But those people could be, I don’t know…useful.”

  Something in Alikhan’s manner made Martinez straighten. “How do you mean?”

  “Well,” Alikhan began, “I recall a lieutenant on the old Renown, name of Salazar. There was a problem with one of the missile launchers during an exercise—the missile ran hot in the tube, was spraying gamma rays all through the bay, could have blown up…Salazar was the officer in command, took charge and got the missile out of the tube—those were the old Mark 17 launchers, my lord, very unreliable unless they were maintained properly, and these weren’t. That’s what the board of inquiry determined—there were two officers cashiered over that one, and a master weaponer and two weaponers first class were broken in the ranks.”

  “They took it seriously, then,” Martinez said. Weaponers were broken in rank often enough, he supposed, but if they cashiered a couple of Peers instead of shifting them to some meaningless duty, then their dereliction must have been serious.

  “It spoiled a very large fleet exercise,” Alikhan said. “Lord Commander Fanaghee—that’s the clan-elder of the Fanaghee that’s got the Naxid squadron at Magaria—he was humiliated in front of Senior Fleet Commander El-kay. And of course we could have lost
the Renown. The destruction of the Quest had already been blamed on the Mark 17, and cautions sent around the Fleet.”

  “I see,” Martinez said. “So how did Salazar make out?”

  “Well, he was decorated, of course—the hero of the hour. Very popular. But it was what he did with his celebrity that caught my attention.”

  Martinez had forgotten the existence of his breakfast. “And what was that?” he asked.

  “He was interviewed. And in the interviews, he stressed the discipline of the Fleet under Lord Commander Fanaghee, the inspiring example of his seniors, the capability of the instructors who had taught him how to manage the missile launchers.”

  “He flattered everybody,” Martinez said.

  “He turned what had been a black eye for the Fleet into something that reflected well on the service. Fanaghee ordered him promoted to lieutenant captain, even though he’d only passed for lieutenant nine months before.”

  Martinez decided that Salazar’s example was certainly worth pondering. He cocked an eye up at Alikhan. “What became of Salazar? I never heard of him.”

  “He died, my lord, a few months later. Too many gamma rays flooding that missile bay.”

  At least there were no gamma rays in Martinez’s case. “I can’t talk to reporters without clearing it with the lord commander,” he said.

  “I would advise obtaining permission, my lord,” Alikhan agreed.

  “Damn Abacha, anyway!” Martinez said. “This is all his fault.”

  Alikhan refrained from comment.

  Martinez concentrated on his breakfast. The taste, he reflected, wasn’t bad at all.

  Enderby granted Martinez permission to talk to reporters, comforted perhaps by the fact that Fleet censors would have the final say in what finally reached the public. Martinez found his opportunity when Enderby was called to meeting. Gupta went along to take notes, but Martinez had nothing to do but monitor signals traffic.

  Martinez spoke to several reporters from his comm station in Enderby’s office. He told them that it was the example of Fleet Commander Enderby and his other seniors that had inspired him during the rescue mission. Enderby saw that the Home Fleet was trained and disciplined and brought up to the mark. It was thanks to Enderby that the Home Fleet was ready for anything.

  “It is one of the glories of the Praxis that lines of responsibility are clearly defined,” he said. “I have my job and I’m responsible to my lord commander, just as others are responsible to me. When I undertake a task, I know that my lord commander has entrusted me with it, and I do my best to ensure that it will be performed up to his expectations.”

  The reporters listened and took dutiful notes, if only because it was the sort of thing the censors would like to see in their reports. They asked questions about Martinez’s history, his family. They seemed equally interested in Cadet Caroline Sula, however, and the fate of the dog Orange. They wanted to know if it were possible to interview Sula.

  “I’ll ask,” Martinez said. “But I have to remind you that she’s still some distance out. It’s not going to be a sparkling dialogue, with her answers taking an hour to get back to you.”

  He sent the reporters as much information about Sula as he felt appropriate for them to know, with no mention of the miserable fate of her parents. He sent them her picture, which he was sure would pique their interest, if not their lust.

  And then, looking at the picture, that glorious face, he began to think about Cadet Sula himself. She was out there alone, hours beyond reach of even the simplest message, and in a tiny vessel with no comforts. Her nearest neighbor was a corpse.

  What was she thinking about? he wondered. Her last message, the shocking picture of the fragile, strangely aged Sula, had suggested that her thoughts were not comfortable ones.

  If she were to think about anything, he decided, perhaps it ought to be Gareth Martinez.

  He reached for his comm to send her a message.

  Sula lay in the darkness of the cockpit, afraid to sleep. She had managed to function throughout her evaluation of the situation on Midnight Runner, the return to her own pinnace through the airlock, and her brief report to Operations Control. She had done well as she ungrappled, shifted the pinnace to provide a better purchase on the yacht, engaged the grapples again, and fired the main engine.

  Midnight Runner, out of control and with its crew dead, had been boarded by a Fleet vessel. That made it salvage, Fleet property. Her duty was to bring it to Zanshaa, where it would be sold, or—very possibly—turned into personal transportation for some high-ranking Fleet commander.

  Sula began with a very gentle acceleration while monitoring the magnetic grapples carefully, and was pleased to discover that two vessels could maintain an acceleration of half a gravity before any strain on the grapples became apparent.

  Half a gravity was something she could maintain very well, easy on the bruised bones and kinked muscles that still ached from her earlier, more brutal accelerations. So she plotted her course with half a gravity in mind and began the long, long burn.

  It would be thirteen and a half days to the halfway point, where she’d turn and begin a half-gravity deceleration burn for another thirteen and a half days. Twenty-seven days altogether, alone, in this little room.

  Once everything was plotted on the computer and the torch began to fire, she had nothing to do. It was then that the cold, slow, nightmare tentacles of memory began to enfold her mind.

  The worst part was that she knew what was happening. She knew that the asphyxiated body of Blitsharts had brought forward the memories she most dreaded, the past she’d tried her best to bury, bury deep in the innermost frozen ground of her self…bury there like a corpse.

  It would be twenty-seven days to Zanshaa. Days spent in the night of space, alone with a dead man and live memories. Of the two, the dead man was preferable company.

  Sula considered giving herself something to help her sleep, but she dreaded the moment before the drug would take her, the darkness enfolding her consciousness in its dark wings, followed by the surrender to the tide of night…

  It was too much like smothering.

  She ran ship diagnostics over and over, finding nothing wrong but hoping the repetition would lull her to dreamless sleep. It didn’t help, of course. She was condemned to the memories.

  Memories of the girl called Gredel.

  Gredel’s earliest memories were of cowering in the darkness while violence raged on the other side of the flimsy door. Antony screaming at Nelda, the sound of his slaps on Nelda’s flesh, the crash of furniture as it was broken against other furniture or against the walls.

  Antony was very hard on furniture.

  Unlike many of the children she knew, Gredel had actually met her father, and her father was not Antony. She’d met her father twice, when he passed through the Fabs on his way to somewhere else. On both occasions he’d given Nelda money, and Nelda used some of it to buy her a frozen treat at Bonifacio’s in Maranic Town.

  Nelda looked after Gredel because her mother, Ava, was usually away. When Ava came, she usually brought Nelda money, but Nelda didn’t seem to mind when Ava didn’t.

  Ava and Nelda had been to school together. “Your ma was the beautiful one,” Nelda told her. “Everyone loved her.” She looked at Gredel and sighed, her hand thoughtfully stroking Gredel’s smooth cheek. “And you’re going to have that trouble too. Too many people are going to love you, and none for the right reasons.”

  Nelda lived in the Fabs, the many streets of prefabricated apartment buildings, all alike, down the Iola River from Maranic Town. Poor people lived in the Fabs, though everyone at least had money for rent. People with no money at all slept in the street until the Patrol picked them up and shipped them off to the agrarian communes that covered most of the land surface of Spannan—though the Patrol didn’t sweep through the Fabs very often, and sometimes people lived on the streets for years.

  Gredel’s mother Ava had spent time in an agrarian commune�
�not because she had no money, but because she was involved in some business of Gredel’s father. He wasn’t arrested, but he had to leave the Fabs for a long time. Nelda explained to Gredel that her father had “linkages” that kept the Patrol from arresting him, though the linkages hadn’t worked for Ava. “Someone had to pay,” Nelda said, “and people decided that person was your ma.”

  Gredel wondered who decided such things. Nelda said it was all very complicated and she didn’t know the whole story anyway.

  Nelda worked as an electrician, which paid well when she was working. Usually, however, there was no work, and she earned money by hooking people illegally to the electric mains.

  Antony, the man who bellowed and roared and hit Nelda, was her husband. He wasn’t around much because he wandered from town to town and job to job. When he returned to the Fabs, it was because he didn’t have work and needed Nelda’s money to pay for liquor. And when he was drinking, it was wise to stay out of his sight.

  When Ava returned to the Fabs from her sentence in the country, it didn’t look as if she had suffered very much—she was beautiful, with the same golden hair and creamy skin as her daughter, and with large blue-gray eyes. She was dressed wonderfully—a blue blouse, with the upswept collar that turned into a glittering, gem-encrusted net for her hair, and a skirt that wrapped around her twice and showed her figure. Her hands had long, curved nails painted a glossy shade of blue-gray, to match her eyes. The scent she wore made Gredel want to stop and just inhale. Ava had already found someone to take care of her.

  She took Gredel on her lap, smothered her with kisses, told Gredel what she did in the country. “I processed food,” Ava said. “I roasted grain for Naxids, and I processed soy curd for Terrans. It wasn’t hard work. It was just boring.”

  Most of the work on the farms was automated, Ava said. Not many people were needed in the country, which was why most of the countryside was empty and all the people were packed into the cities, most of them in places like the Fabs.

  Gredel adored her mother, but never had the chance to live with her. The men who took care of Ava—and there were several over the years, all “linked” in some way—didn’t want children around, and when Ava was without a man, she didn’t want Gredel with her because it would make a man harder to get.