“This is Rhi Teshet,” Haval said. “When he isn’t watching horrible melodramas—”
“You have no sense of culture,” Teshet said.
“—he’s the lieutenant colonel in charge of our infantry.”
Damn. Definitely Kel, then, and in his chain of command, at that. “A pleasure, Colonel,” Jedao said.
Teshet’s returning smile was slow and wicked and completely unprofessional. “Get out of the habit of using ranks,” he said. “Just Teshet, please. I hear you like whiskey?”
Off-limits, Jedao reminded himself, despite the quickening of his pulse. Best to be direct. “I’d rather not get you into trouble.”
Haval was looking to the side with a “where have I seen this dance before” expression. Teshet laughed. “The fastest way to get us caught is to behave like you have the Kel code of conduct tattooed across your forehead. No one will suspect you of being a hotshot commander if you’re sleeping with one of your crew.”
“I don’t fuck people deadlier than I am, sorry,” Jedao said demurely.
“Wrong answer,” Haval said, still not looking at either of them. “Now he’s going to think of you as a challenge.”
“Also, I know your reputation,” Teshet said to Jedao. “Your kill count has got to be higher than mine by an order of magnitude.”
Jedao ignored that. “How often do you make trade runs into the Gwa Reality?”
“Two or three times a year,” Haval said. “The majority of the runs are to maintain the fiction. The question is, do you have a plan?”
He didn’t blame her for her skepticism. “Tell me again how much cargo space we have.”
Haval told him.
“We sometimes take approved cultural goods,” Teshet said, “in a data storage format negotiated during the Second Treaty of—”
“Don’t bore him,” Haval said. “The ‘trade’ is our job. He’s just here for the explodey bits.”
“No, I’m interested,” Jedao said. “The Second Treaty of Mwe Enh, am I right?”
Haval blinked. “You have remarkably good pronunciation. Most people can’t manage the tones. Do you speak Tlen Gwa?”
“Regrettably not. I’m only fluent in four languages, and that’s not one of them.” Of the four, Shparoi was only spoken on his birth planet, making it useless for career purposes. Which reminded him that he was still procrastinating on writing back to his mother. Surely being sent on an undercover mission counted as an acceptable reason for being late with your correspondence home?
“If you have some Shuos notion of sneaking in a virus amid all the lectures on flower-arranging and the dueling tournament videos and the plays, forget it,” Teshet said. “Their operating systems are so different from ours that you’d have better luck getting a magpie and a turnip to have a baby.”
“Oh, not at all,” Jedao said. “How odd would it look if you brought in a shipment of goose fat?”
Haval’s mouth opened, closed. Teshet said, “Excuse me?”
“Not literally goose fat,” Jedao conceded. “I don’t have enough for that and I don’t imagine the novelty would enable you to run a sufficient profit. I assume you have to at least appear to be trying to make a profit.”
“They like real profits even better,” Haval said.
Diverted, Teshet said, “You have goose fat? Whatever for?”
“Long story,” Jedao said. “But instead of goose fat, I’d like to run some of that variable-coefficient lubricant.”
Haval rubbed her chin. “I don’t think you could get approval to trade the formula or the associated manufacturing processes.”
“Not that,” Jedao said, “actual canisters of lubricant. Is there someone in the Gwa Reality on the way to our luckless Shuos friend who might be willing to pay for it?”
Haval and Teshet exchanged baffled glances. Jedao could tell what they were thinking: Are we the victims of some weird bet our commander has going on the side? “There’s no need to get creative,” Haval said in a commendably diplomatic voice. “Cultural goods are quite reliable.”
You think this is creativity, Jedao thought. “It’s not that. Two battles ago, my fangmoth was almost blown in two because our antimissile defenses glitched. If we hadn’t used the lubricant as a stopgap sealant, we wouldn’t have made it.” That much was even true. “Even if you can’t offload all of it, I’ll find a use for it.”
“You do know you can’t cook with lubricant?” Teshet said. “Although I wonder if it’s good for—”
Haval stomped on his toe. “You already have plenty of the medically approved stuff,” she said crushingly, “no need to risk getting your private parts cemented into place.”
“Hey,” Teshet said, “you never know when you need to improvise.”
Jedao was getting the impression that Essier had not assigned him the best of her undercover teams. Certainly they were the least disciplined Kel he’d run into in a while, but he supposed long periods undercover had made them more casual about regulations. No matter, he’d been dealt worse hands. “I’ve let you know what I want done, and I’ve already checked that the station has enough lubricant to supply us. Make it happen.”
“If you insist,” Haval said. “Meanwhile, don’t forget to get your immunizations.”
“Will do,” Jedao said, and strode off to Medical.
JEDAO SPENT THE first part of the voyage alternately learning Tlen Gwa, memorizing his cover identity, and studying up on the Gwa Reality. The Tlen Gwa course suffered some oddities. He couldn’t see the use of some of the vocabulary items, like the one for “navel.” But he couldn’t manage to unlearn it, either, so there it was, taking up space in his brain.
As for the cover identity, he’d had better ones, but he supposed the Kel could only do so much on short notice. He was now Arioi Sren, one of Haval’s distant cousins by marriage. He had three spouses, with whom he had quarreled recently over a point of interior decoration. (“I don’t know anything about interior decoration,” Jedao had said, to which Haval retorted, “That’s probably what caused the argument.”)
The documents had included loving photographs of the domicile in question, an apartment in a dome city floating in the upper reaches of a very pretty gas giant. Jedao had memorized them before destroying them. While he couldn’t say how well the decor coordinated, he was good at layouts and kill zones. In any case, Sren was on “vacation” to escape the squabbling. Teshet had suggested that a guilt-inducing affair would round out the cover identity. Jedao said he’d think about it.
Jedao was using spray-on temporary skin, plus a high-collared shirt, to conceal multiple scars, including the wide one at the base of his neck. The temporary skin itched, which couldn’t be helped. He hoped no one would strip-search him, but in case someone did, he didn’t want to have to explain his old gunshot wounds. Teshet had also suggested that he stop shaving—the Kel disliked beards—but Jedao could only deal with so much itching.
The hardest part was not the daily skinseal regimen, but getting used to wearing civilian clothes. The Kel uniform included gloves, and Jedao felt exposed going around with naked hands. But keeping his gloves would have been a dead giveaway, so he’d just have to live with it.
The Gwa-an fascinated him most of all. Heptarchate diplomats called their realm the Gwa Reality. Linguists differed on just what the word rendered as “Reality” meant. The majority agreed that it referred to the Gwa-an belief that all dreams took place in the same noosphere, connecting the dreamers, and that even inanimate objects dreamed.