The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  By the end the phrases were flying naturally from his lips, as if he’d been addressing the Convocation all his life.

  “I know this in my heart,” he concluded. “With the wisdom and leadership of this body, and with such courage and skill as that demonstrated by the crew of Corona, our noble cause cannot fail!”

  The room erupted in cheers and applause that lasted longer than it had the first time. Martinez tried to smile his wise, confident smile, and saluted them again with the orb.

  And if you don’t like the accent, he thought, you can lump it.

  There was a reception afterward in the Ngeni Palace. The place was fragrant with the scent of hundreds of floral bouquets, and brilliant with glowing decorations in the shape of snowflakes, no two alike, that hovered below the high ceiling and cast a silver glow on the assembled throng. Snow, the real thing, dusted the window ledges outside and sparkled brilliantly on the trees in the courtyard. Convocates, high-ranking members of the Fleet, and senior administrators filled the rooms and galleries.

  None wore mourning. The Convocation had decided to cancel the mourning period for the last Great Master, and with it the customary restrictions on the size of social engagements. Officially this was because the rebellion took priority over sorrow, though if Martinez were a convocate, he would have wanted mourning canceled on the grounds of confusion, because it was no longer possible to know whether one was mourning the Great Master, war casualties, dead Naxid rebels, or the stability and peace of the old imperial order.

  No longer having to worry about which twenty-two to invite to any function, society happily removed its corsets and began to take what pleasure it could from winter and rebellion.

  In any case, Martinez was pleased to be wearing viridian again.

  “I didn’t know you were going to make a speech,” said Lord Roland, Martinez’s older brother.

  “I’m planning on being a convocate myself someday,” Martinez said. “I thought I’d let them know that I can speak in public, and can be useful, and that Laredans don’t drool or twitch or pitch a fit when they get nervous.”

  “Actually, I was planning on being the first convocate to be co-opted from Laredo,” Roland said. He was a little taller than Martinez, a result of his longer legs. His Laredo accent was pronounced. “I hope you’ll defer to seniority.”

  “Maybe,” Martinez said. “But if I don’t, I’ll work hard to get you in. Now’s the time; there are vacancies.”

  He didn’t know how seriously to take his own words. Lieutenant Captain Lord Convocate Gareth Martinez? It certainly seemed possible, on such a day as this. The Convocation was in a generous mood. They had already given the Laredo shipyards an order for three frigates, and guaranteed a substantial profit for the Martinez clan and their dependents.

  Perhaps, after all this time, his father’s plans were actually bearing fruit. Marcus Martinez had been snubbed in the Fleet and on Zanshaa, and returned to Laredo determined to become so rich that no one would ever dare snub him again. He had become ridiculously wealthy, even by the standards of Peers, and his children were elements of his scheme to storm the city and cast down its social walls. But until now, Martinez hadn’t thought it was possible to purchase respect, not from the old families like the Ngenis and the Chens.

  Until now. Since the rebellion, all sorts of things seemed possible.

  Lord Pierre Ngeni arrived and raised his glass in salute to Martinez of the Golden Orb. Martinez raised the orb in reply, then noticed a piece of Fleet Commander Tork’s flesh hanging from the baton, stripped it away and let it fall.

  “We were discussing,” Martinez said, “how the first convocate from Laredo should be one of your clients.”

  Lord Pierre hesitated. He, theoretically, represented Laredo in convocation through his patron/client relationship with the Martinez clan, though of course Lord Pierre had never been to Laredo, and would never go. “I’m sure,” he said finally.

  “You can never have too many allies in Convocation,” Martinez said.

  Lord Pierre turned to Roland. “Now that your shipyards have got those contracts,” he said, “you’ll be returning home?”

  “It will take me three months to get there,” Roland said, “and by then your frigates will be half finished. There’s no need for me to be on site—my father can handle all that. No,” Roland smiled, “I’ll be in the capital for quite a while. Probably a few years.”

  Lord Pierre did not seem cheered by this. He turned to Martinez. “But you, Lord Captain, you must leave soon.”

  “In two days, to make up this new squadron. I’ve barely met my new officers.” And what he’d seen hadn’t encouraged him: a gray-haired lieutenant who hadn’t been promoted in sixteen years, and a new-fledged youngster with scarcely any more seniority than Vonderheydte. He clearly had his work cut out for him.

  “Do you think Jarlath will strike for Magaria?” asked Lord Pierre. “Everyone seems to think he will.”

  “I don’t think he’s got the numbers,” Martinez said.

  Roland gave a little smile. “I thought you said we couldn’t fail.”

  “We can if we try.”

  Later, as strains of music floated toward the assembly from the orchestra in the ballroom, Martinez found himself with a powerful yearning to have Amanda Taen in his arms. But Warrant Officer Taen was away in her ship, repairing satellites for the next month, and Martinez hadn’t the time to make a new connection, not unless he made one now.

  As he walked toward the ballroom, Martinez found himself next to PJ Ngeni. Melancholy seemed to have become a permanent fixture on PJ’s long face, and Martinez assumed this to be a consequence of frequent contact with his sisters. Martinez more or less knew how he felt.

  “I say, Gareth,” PJ said.

  “Yes?”

  “Terrific speech you gave this morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It made me want to—to do something, if you know what I mean. Do something useful, in the war.”

  Martinez looked at him. “To join the Fleet?”

  “I hardly think I—” He hesitated. “Well, to do something.” PJ touched a hand to his collar. “I wonder if I might ask your advice. On a more personal matter.”

  Martinez lifted his eyebrows. “Of course.”

  “I wonder if it’s normal for someone from Laredo—a young woman, for example—to maintain, ah, a sort of social and emotional independence.”

  Martinez hid a smile. “Of course,” he said. “Laredans are renowned for their independence, both of thought and of character.”

  “Ah, I wondered. Because, you know—” PJ frowned. “I hardly ever see her. Sempronia, I mean. Formal occasions, yes, and she gives me a kiss on the cheek and…” His voice trailed away, then he resumed. “But she has her own friends, and she spends time with them, and I never…” He tried again. “She’s in school, of course, and she says she wants to enjoy her school friends while she can. And I can’t object to that, because I’ve had my friends over the years, and…” His brows knit in puzzlement. “But so many of her friends are officers. And they’re not in school.”

  For a moment Martinez almost felt a breath of sorrow for PJ Ngeni. And then he remembered who he was talking to, and his sorrow blew away like cherry blossoms in the spring.

  “I think you should just have patience,” he said. “Sempronia’s the pet of the family, and she’s used to having her own way.” He gave PJ’s arm a consoling pat. “She’ll grow to appreciate your virtues in time,” he said. “And as for the officers—well, I’m sure she just wants to take advantage of their company before they go off to war.”

  “Hmm.” These thoughts processed their way across PJ’s face. “Well. I suppose.”

  Martinez found out more about at least one of the officers the next morning, after breakfast. He was packing his night case, preparing to leave for a meeting called by his new squadron commander, Captain Farfang of Destiny, when he heard a tentative knock on his door.

&nbs
p; “Yes?”

  “It’s me.” Sempronia’s voice, muffled by a thumb’s length of Shelley Palace teak.

  “Come in.”

  Sempronia, her expression tentative, swung the thick door inward and entered. She saw him in his unbuttoned tunic, and walked up to work the silver tunic buttons, her teeth resting lightly on her lower lip and her hazel eyes comically crossed as she concentrated on the work. She finished the last button, straightened the collar, then stepped back to survey the result.

  “Thank you,” Martinez said.

  “You’re welcome.” She crossed her arms and frowned at him. He went to his dressing table and took from it the gold disk on a ribbon that he could wear if he wasn’t going to lug the Golden Orb about.

  “You aren’t going to carry the orb with you?”

  Martinez placed the disk about his neck. “To carry the orb on anything other than a formal occasion would be conceit.”

  “But Gareth,” Sempronia protested, “you are conceited.”

  Martinez decided that the higher wisdom lay in not answering this charge. He turned to her. “And the reason you came here, Proney…?”

  “Oh.” She hesitated. “I wanted to talk to you about one of your officers.”

  “One of my officers?”

  “Nikkul Shankaracharya.”

  “Ah.” This would be his second officer, whom he had met just two days before, and with whom he’d exchanged perhaps three dozen words. A sublieutenant of less than six months’ seniority, with a faint little mustache and a hesitant manner. At the first meeting, Shankaracharya had made little impression, though Martinez had a strong sense that this one, perhaps, would take a lot of work.

  “A friend of yours, is he?” Martinez asked.

  A faint rose color brightened Sempronia’s cheeks. “Yes. I was hoping that you could, well, look after him.”

  “That’s my job,” Martinez said. “But is Shankaracharya likely to need much looking after?”

  Sempronia’s flush deepened. “I think he’s very talented. But he’s shy, and he doesn’t put himself forward. You’re likely to trample him into the deck without even noticing he’s there.”

  “Well, I promise not to trample him into the deck.” He cast his mind back, uncovered a memory of Sempronia talking to a dark-haired officer at the family’s reception for Caroline Sula.

  Her eyes darted from one corner of the room to the next. “He admires you very much. He pulled strings through his patron Lord Pezzini to get aboard Corona.” Her lips twisted into an S shape. “Of course, he doesn’t know you like I do.”

  Martinez approached Sempronia, reached out a hand and lifted her chin, so he could see her eyes at rest. “Is Shankaracharya very important, Proney?” he asked.

  Her lips thinned to a line and she nodded. He kissed her forehead.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll do my best for him.”

  Her arms went around him briefly in a fierce hug. “Right, then,” she said. “If you look after Nikkul, I might forgive you for PJ.”

  She dashed from his room then, and he finished packing and called for the servants to carry his gear to the cab that would take him to the maglev station. Alikhan wasn’t available—Martinez liked to think he was looking after Corona in his absence. He threw his winter overcoat over one arm, took the Golden Orb in its traveling case, marched down the broad staircase to the foyer, and said good-bye to his family.

  Outside, snow glittered white beneath Zanshaa’s dark green sky. The antimatter ring arced overhead, with its dockyards and the improvised squadron of which Corona was a part. The squadron would leave tomorrow, on special duty. Martinez didn’t know where they were bound, knew only that they wouldn’t be made a part of the Home Fleet, because they had been assigned to the Lai-own Do-faq’s command, and not Jarlath’s. He assumed there would be many long days of acceleration before he found out, unless Captain Farfang chose to inform his captains at the day’s meeting.

  But it turned out that Captain Farfang couldn’t tell him anything, because he was dead.

  “Destiny was finishing its conversion from a Naxid ship to one crewed by Torminel.” This from Dalkieth, his middle-aged senior lieutenant. Her excited voice was high-pitched yet soft, almost lisping, a child’s voice that contrasted with her lined face. “Work was completed on the crew quarters last, so the hardshells had been bunking on the station and only came aboard last night to make final adjustments to the ship’s environment. And you know that Torminel prefer a lower temperature than Naxids, because of the fur.”

  “So it wasn’t sabotage?”

  “If it was, the saboteur was on the crew and died with everyone else. Because when they programmed the new temperatures, someone lost a decimal point somewhere, and Destiny’s environment was cooled to one-tenth what it should be.”

  Martinez was puzzled. “But the temperature change should have been gradual enough to—Oh.”

  “Yes,” Dalkieth said. “Torminel have a hibernation reflex. When it gets cold, they just go into a deeper sleep. But even hibernation doesn’t preserve them against an environment below freezing.”

  Martinez shivered. “All of them died?”

  “All of them. A hundred and twenty-something, dead in their racks.”

  “And the guard on the airlock?”

  “Destiny wasn’t going to be in commission till today. Guards were provided by the Office of the Constabulary, not the ship itself. No one went in or out of Destiny till early this morning.”

  When they found ice coating the walls, and frozen Torminel with frost glittering in their fur. Martinez wanted to lean back in his chair and marvel in awe at the horrific, whimsical blow of fate that had deprived the squadron of both its heaviest ship and its commander. But there was too much to do: two-thirds of his crew were strangers, a figure that included the officers. So far as he knew, Corona and its squadron would still leave the station tomorrow.

  “Who’s in command of the squadron?” he asked.

  “Kamarullah is the senior captain. Nothing official’s been said, though.”

  He rose from behind his office desk, conscious of the football trophies that were still bolted to the wall behind him. Tarafah’s suite had at last been reassembled, and he’d been moved into it, after insisting on triple-strength locks and bolts on the liquor store.

  “Right,” he said, “department inspections at 2601.”

  “Very good, Lord Elcap.”

  He carried the Golden Orb on his inspection—not the one the Convocation had presented him the day before, but the cruder version that Maheshwari and Alikhan had made in the frigate’s machine shop. If the crew drew the conclusion that he appreciated their gift more than that of the Convocation, he would not be disappointed.

  The results of the inspection were a little better than he expected, but he’d only completed half of it when Vonderheydte informed him that an urgent, private communication had been received from Squadron Commander Do-faq. Martinez dismissed the crouchbacks, including those he hadn’t yet inspected, and took the communication in his office.

  Junior Squadron Commander Do-faq commanded the Lai-own cruiser squadron that had been heading toward Zanshaa from Preowin since the rebellion. Hollow Lai-own bones couldn’t stand much more than two gravities’ acceleration, and he’d been accelerating the whole way. Now that Do-faq bad arrived at Zanshaa, he wasn’t about to slow down: he’d continue a wide, eccentric circuit of the system until shooting off toward whatever wormhole the Fleet had assigned him, and in the meantime he’d command his light squadron, which included Corona, via remote control.

  How Do-faq was going to coordinate his squadrons if he ever had to fight was an open question, given their wildly different performance characteristics. But then, Lai-owns were supposed to be diabolically subtle tacticians, as their performance in the Lai-own War had shown, and Martinez told himself it wasn’t his job to worry about it anyway.

  Martinez used his captain’s key to decode the squadron commander�
��s message, which had crossed the six light-minutes that separated Zanshaa from the Lai-own squadron. When the picture resolved on the display, he saw that Do-faq was a youngish Lai-own for his post, as demonstrated by the dark featherlike hair on the sides of his flat-topped head, the hair that Lai-owns lost on full maturity. His wide-set eyes were golden, and his broad mouth, lined with peg teeth, was set in the weary lines that spoke of nearly thirty days of continual acceleration.

  “Lord Captain Martinez,” he said. “Allow me to congratulate you on your promotion and your receipt of the Golden Orb. I hope to have the honor of meeting you in person one day, should the constraints of the service ever permit it.”

  Martinez found himself warmed by these civilities. It was always pleasing to discover that your superior officers had a good opinion of you and were willing to say so. He was more accustomed to his superiors pretending that he didn’t exist.

  Do-faq slid nictating membranes over his eyes. “The loss of Destiny has forced me to a number of painful decisions, among them, the reluctant conclusion that Lord Captain Kamarullah is unsuited for command of the squadron.”

  Martinez stared at the screen in complete surprise, and touched the control key. “Page crew Alikhan to the captain’s office.”

  Do-faq continued, his voice weary. “The other captains senior to you would, I am certain, be suitable enough for the task. But they lack combat experience—we all lack such experience. All but you.”

  The nictating membranes slid away from Do-faq’s eyes, and Martinez found himself staring into the lord commander’s brilliant gold eyes.

  “I am willing to appoint you to command the light squadron, Lord Captain Martinez,” Do-faq said. “I realize that you may consider this an undue burden, considering the problems you must be facing in Corona now, with so many new crew and with the other difficulties of a new command. You may decline the appointment without prejudice…”